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#perhaps i’ll do top two if my energy allows
pinkminecraft · 1 year
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firein-thesky · 1 year
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Chapter Three: Anew
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Masterlist | <- Chapter Two: Anything, Everything | Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God -> | Read on Ao3
Pairings: Satoru Gojo x f!reader
Summary: And the form leans down, closer, as their voice drops to a murmur, all honey and thorns, the promise of something far greater than you. A storm to come. The future that you will bear upon the slant of your shoulders. And when they speak, you know they’ve cursed you;
“I will teach you how to make a God.” 
(Arranged marriage, angst, hurt/comfort, dark content)
Warnings (specifically for this chapter): Parental abuse (emotional and physical), possessive behavior, unhealthy relationships, toxic dynamics, parental death, manipulation, smut; specifically, loss of virginity, first times, pushy Gojo? (Gojo is not as slow or empathetic as he perhaps should be/pushes the reader a little, but there is consent), oral (f receiving), mentions of shame/guilt in regards to pleasure and sex. Please be wary of overarching story warnings, too. Let me know if you think I should add any other warnings! **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**
Word Count: 21k......i am mentally unwell.
A/N: a day late but my apology is a huge fucking chapter. i wrote all this before i saw the leaks. i have many thoughts. but first, a huuuuge thank you to @lorelune for beta-reading this beast of a chapter and helping me through it. i feel like i struggled awhile and their feedback helped so much, as always. i also really appreciate your feedback! and would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! thank you all for reading and thank you for waiting for this chapter!! enjoy!
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“Gods require isolation.” 
In your vision, colors bleed and bend together in a waterfall of light. You can hardly make out the shape in front of you, can hardly make out the voice. It almost aches, somewhere in your teeth, in the core of you, to try and focus on them.
“Gods cannot have equals, otherwise they wouldn’t be Gods. Do you understand?” 
“But there are so many–” you have a hard time getting out the words, chewing around them strangely, like cotton in your mouth. Your voice is just a croak, “there are so many Gods.” 
“No,” there is a shaking, as if they’re denying you, “forget what you previously knew. Those are myths, not Gods.” 
You blink hard, as if you could clear your vision. You feel like you might be sick, stomach turning over itself, twisting and churning–
“Gods are alone.” 
“Lonely?” 
A pause.
“Yes, lonely, at the top of their world.” The voice hums, like bees in your ears, like the vibrating of cursed energy that simmers low in your hearing, that sizzles to life when used. The person almost feels like–like a curse.
“Gods are lone stars that gaze down upon the earth, they shine brighter, they guide and shower and collapse inwards to become something else entirely.” 
“Stars?” You garble.
“Gods devour everyone around them, so they are the only ones left. Do you hear me?” 
“Yes,” you say and you think tears are pricking your eyes. 
“Don’t cry yet,” coos the voice, lullaby soft, the way a mother sounds, the way you wish a father would sound. “Do you understand, then?”
“Yes,” you hiccup, “Gods are lonely. Gods are very, very lonely.” 
***
You know you will devour Suguru as he walks to you in the garden for a final time. 
The last time you see him before his betrayal, he is in a strangely amiable mood, one that you aren’t often on the receiving end of.
And just as strangely, you allow yourself to indulge him. You aren’t as snappy or harsh, you aren’t posturing and snarling. 
You’re just a friend for him, in his last few hours as a sorcerer and not a curse user. 
“I think I’ll miss visiting you like this when you get married to Satoru.” He says. 
“Satoru wants a garden when we move out. He’s fond of it now, too.” You tell him, “you can visit me in that garden.” 
You know he never will.
(Well—once, he will. But he will not be himself anymore, not really, not ever again. Suguru has always been the type to grow out of his own skin, always chased divinity down until he was stumbling and panting for it, like a starved dog on a futile hunt. 
And when he finally gets it between his teeth, he will have had to die for it, and it will not be him at all, but someone else. 
He will just be the conduit. The possessed. The hollowed out. He’ll gorge himself on it only to still be left starving.
Because maybe that’s all divinity is; the empty stomach, the eternal hunger for something more than yourself. The emptiness of being more than just yourself.) 
“Hm, I won’t have to deal with your father.” Suguru says and he sinks a little heavier into some of the taller, heather soft grass by the pond.
“Tell me about it. I have wanted to escape him for my whole life.” You say.
“Will you?” He asks.
Eventually, you nod. 
Then you admit, “I’ll kill him one day.”
Suguru’s brows dart upwards and he turns his face towards you, towards the sun. He has to squint when he looks at you, he has to shield his eyes a little. The sun hallows you, swallowing you up in its honey bronzed light. 
“You will?” He asks and there’s a strange note in his voice. 
“After he kills my mother.” You don’t know exactly why you tell him this, only that it bubbles out of you, only that you know you are supposed to. 
“How long have you known?” Suguru’s voice is almost gentle for you. 
“Years now. I knew he would kill my mother the moment I received Foresight. And a year or so later, I looked into his future, too.” You lean back on your elbows, tip your face up to the light. 
Suguru swallows. “Is he–I’ve always known he was controlling but–to kill your mother–” 
“He knows.” 
“Knows what?” Suguru asks. 
“That I’ll kill him. I told him after he hit me the first time.” 
You say it so plainly that all Suguru can do is stare for a moment. 
But then he sits up and there is something dark in his eyes, unfathomable, “does Satoru know? And he just let’s this–for all of his fucking power and–” 
A crackling sort of anger spits to life inside him. You’re so surprised that for a moment, all you can do is stare at him now. 
“Suguru,” you say softly and you stop him from standing by catching his wrist in your slight hand, you stop him from going to do who knows what, “Satoru doesn’t know.” 
“Why doesn’t he know?” Suguru hisses, “does Ieri? Anyone?” 
You shake your head. 
“Satoru would kill him if he knew. There is a version where he kills him days before our wedding.” You say and your own voice has taken on a hushed quality, stilling him. 
“A version?” Suguru asks.
You nod. 
“But I want to do it myself.” You admit and the confession is so raw and unkept that it startles you with its truth. “I have wanted to do it myself for a long time, I think.”
Suguru looks at you strangely, changed. 
But when he says, “I always knew there was something horrible in you.” There isn’t any malice in it, rather he sounds deeply fond, a little heartbroken. You sidle up to his side, scoot in close so you can feel the warmth of him. 
He drops an arm around you. He tucks you into his side. 
“Don’t tell Satoru,” you nuzzle down into him, surprisingly compliant. Whenever Suguru has tried to touch you before, you have met him with teeth and nails and all sorts of fight. But now, you melt easily. “Don’t do a thing.” 
You feel his fingers dig into you. 
“How am I supposed to stand idly by and allow you to be–” 
You turn your head against his shoulder, look up at him through your lashes, “please? I don’t ask much of you, do I?” 
Suguru shakes his head. “I don’t like this. Why does it have to be this version? Isn’t there another? Where you’re safe? Where you aren’t–” 
“I don’t think I would be so horrible if there was a different version.” You admit softly to him.  
Suguru goes quiet. 
Then, “I wouldn’t have you any other way, you know.” 
The admittance is surprisingly tender. Your eyes sting with it. 
He catches your chin between large fingers, tilts you up so you can’t hide your shining eyes from him. “Wretched as you are–I think you’re perfect. I only wish–” 
“Suguru,” you almost don’t want him to say this part. You can feel it pulling at you, tugging and tearing at your tender heart, plucking at your insides. 
“There was a version where you were safe. And you didn’t have to be horrible. And I didn’t have to be horrible, either.” 
You’re startled by the tears that he catches, one with his thumb. “What’s this? Tears for me? But you hate me so terribly.” 
You shake your head a little into his hands, “I don’t–” 
“It’s alright,” he hushes, and you think he sees you in a different light now, you think something has shifted massively between you. And so close to the end. “Just tell me if there’s a version where we’re safe and–” 
You swallow hard around the prickly lump in your throat, the sob trapped there. You feel more tears escape from the corner of your eyes, especially as they crinkle up into your sad smile. 
Your vision blurs with him, with the man who wanted to be a god. 
The lie comes easily, almost wistfully, to your trembling lips;
“Yes–somewhere out there is a version where we are safe. My father doesn’t hurt me. And Satoru is more than just a God. Yu Haibara lives. A Zenin boy doesn’t lose his father. Two little girls are not locked in a cage. And you don’t have to be so horrible, either.” 
***
Ieri comes to you in the middle of the night. 
You have not slept, because you know, and you’ve been waiting for her. 
You padded out into the garden, barefoot, awhile ago. The night air has a nip to it. Moonless night. Starless night. Endlessly dark in the heavens tonight. The world seems to be hushed with the violence that’s happened, with the betrayal that has taken place. You wonder if every betrayal made the world go this silent; Set and Osiris, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas. 
Ieri knows where to find you, knows you’ll know, knows you too well, and she joins you now in your garden. 
She’s been crying. Eyes glassy and lined with red, makeup smeared halfway down her face. 
You fold her into your arms and you can feel her shudder as she holds back another sob.
“You knew,” she gets out, “you knew the whole time.” 
“Yes.” You whisper, holding her tighter to keep her from freeing herself, as if you could wrestle her anger or heartbreak still. 
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why wouldn’t you–”
“Was I supposed to condemn him?” 
“Couldn’t you have saved him? You knew–you know all of it.” Ieri is shaking, perhaps terrified, perhaps furious, “will you do this to all of us? What good is your technique if you don’t intervene?” 
“Not everything should be changed.” 
She grabs you by the shoulders suddenly, viciously, nails chipped with burgundy polished digging hard into your skin. She wants to leave torn little half moons. She wants to hurt you. But she’s a doctor. She’s a healer. 
Her eyes fly over your face, tears stream down her ruddy cheeks. Her gaze darkens, digs into you, tries to see what she perhaps missed in you. She tries to find her friend inside of you, tries to find your anguish or heartbreak, too. 
“What am I supposed to do with you?” She asks suddenly and it is not fond but, devastated, “how am I supposed to–” 
Her voice bites off into a strangled whine. 
“Trust me?” 
And when she says, “I don’t know how Gojo does it.” 
It isn’t heated or mean, it’s just–honest. Tired. 
And it hurts worse than you’re anticipating. The ache blossoms so fiercely that your breath catches with it, almost as if she’d struck you. It makes a lump form in your throat. Her eyes like dark moons look at you with a new form of disgust, mistrust. You want to seize her suddenly, you want to cry, you want to do what you do to Satoru where you cling and beg and whine. 
You know it won’t work on her, though.
So you swallow and say, “I loved him, too, you know.” 
And it’s the truth, more than you realized. 
“Then why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you save him?” 
Your mind catapults you into a memory of your own and you remember the ancestor of yours who looked too guilty to say he was trying to save you, but stop you. 
Perhaps it is the same, after all. 
“Ieri,” you whisper, strangled, “there was no stopping him.” 
There is no stopping me. 
“No,” she says and her eyes water, filling, “no. The Getou I know wouldn’t have–he killed his parents. He killed–” 
Her hand comes over her mouth and she turns away from you. She holds her stomach with her free hand like she’s trying to keep it all inside of her, like she’s trying to keep all her grief and anger from spilling out. 
You wonder how she will feel when you kill your father. 
Will she understand? Will she hold her stomach again like she’s going to be sick? 
Perhaps for both you and Suguru, you say, “I’m sorry.” 
Perhaps you are admitting to parts of it. “I’m sorry.” You say again and she finally turns to look at you. And then she is grabbing you and she is teetering in your arms as you whisper, “I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, I’m so, so–” 
A sob creaks out of her and she falls apart in your arms until Satoru walks to you on wary, unsteady feet, and does the same. 
The three of you don’t sleep and instead sit in a garden that once held four, and watch as the sun breaks over the sky like shattered, red glass reflecting hot and hazy. The day turns on.
Life continues, even if it feels like theirs have ended, even if it feels like you’ve lost something greater than you can name. 
Greater than you ever anticipated.
And you say to no one, perhaps the sky, your voice small like a child’s;
“I’m sorry–I’m sorry–” 
***
Suguru Getou is condemned to execution.
And for all his power, there is nothing that Satoru can do to stop any of this.
(To stop the future you have set into–)
When Suguru kills one hundred and twenty one people, you know why he does it. Maybe he even sees you in them, kept away out of fear of their technique, maybe he is just horrible. You think he must understand then, when you’d mentioned two, little girls. It must've all slid into place for him finally. 
You think he realized his fate in the blink of an eye, the inevitability; perhaps why you despised him and then loved him. He must realize what he is about to do to Satoru. 
Still, Satoru comes to tell you–to seek your counsel. You’ve never seen him quite so lost. So–
You know he won’t listen to you when you tell him, “you will have to kill him.” 
He looks at you hard and long, stricken like you’ve hit him or wounded him, like you’ve pulled a knife out and pushed into the tender parts of him. He looks at you like you’ve betrayed him. 
“How could you say that to me?” He hisses and you can hear it in his voice, thick with emotion, with tears.
“I don’t say it lightly,” you respond and you’re startled to find your own voice failing, the sudden tears you have for the man you apparently hated so badly are still fresh. You don’t know why you’re mourning him like this, why it hurts so bad when you knew–you planned–
“I’m sorry,” you tell him and when he sinks into your embrace, you go down with him, “I’m sorry.” you say again and again and maybe you sound like your mother. Maybe you sound like someone else. 
But you cradle his head to your beating heart, card your fingers through his hair, and let him be just a man in your arms. 
***
Everyone steps in to help Satoru with Megumi and Tsumiki. 
Nanami often is the one who stops by to drop them off to be with you in the morning or evenings, after the kids have gotten done with school. Sometimes Utahime, who is remarkably good with kids. She is also remarkably kind to you, more so than you’d ever imagined or thought. Ieri jokes that she pities you to have to marry Gojo, who is, to her, the most insufferable person alive.  
You think it’s something more, but you can’t place what yet. 
Megumi rushes past Nanami to disappear into the garden. Tsumiki lingers and greets you before loping after her brother.
“How were they?” You ask him.
Nanami pauses before saying, “they miss Gojo, I think. Megumi especially is–” 
His expression pinches for a moment, before he schools it. 
“Well, he’s acting out a little.” 
“I’ll talk to him.” You promise. “What has he done?” 
“He’s picking fights with classmates. His teacher told me and said–well, she said that it would do well for him to have a solid presence in his life and not,” Nanami is careful with what he says now, but it still comes out a little too bluntly, “rotating babysitters.” 
It stings a little, but you swallow, nod around it. You know it’s true. But as they say, it does take a village and you and Satoru are hardly adults yourself. 
You aren’t even yet, technically.
Still, you say, “I’ll see what I can do. Thank you, Nanami, I know it means a lot to Satoru, too.” 
Nanami’s usually stoic features soften barely, before he nods and says, “of course.” And then he inhales slow and asks, “how’s Gojo?” 
In truth, you’ve hardly seen him.
But you’d never let anyone know that, you’d never admit, in any way, that he is untouchable to you. So you look out into the garden to find the kid’s dark heads of shining hair under the sun, bobbing about, moving around the lush green.
The wind eases past you and finally, you say, “he’ll be okay.” 
Nanami seems to understand, so he swallows, and nods. “Tell the kids I’ll see them tomorrow.” 
“I will,” you promise and watch as he walks off, his figure in the spun gold light of the sun and seems to shine through him, almost, as if he were made of light entirely. 
It really is such a shame, you think, as tears prick your eyes, of what will happen to him. 
***
“The wedding is approaching,” your father says over dinner.
“And so is her birthday.” Your mother reminds him. 
They’re planned for the same day–the wedding has been planned for your eighteenth birthday since the vow was created. The days have unspooled before you and turned to years. You have seen how this wedding in too many little futures of others, have known and anticipated it the way hospitals often have temples and churches inside of them 
Your father pays her no mind.
“This is a huge moment for our clan,” he says, “and I have asked countlessly in the past but–” 
“I’ve already seen his future.” You say.
His eyes round with surprise and then hope. The sick sort of excitement that comes from a ravenous sort of hunger. 
“I can’t believe you–” he shakes his head, elated, “finally. What did you see? How can the clan–”
“Did you think I would tell you?” 
His face falters. 
“We want to destroy the clans. Why would I tell you anything that helps them?” 
Your father’s face goes pale. It goes slack with disbelief. And then anger sharpens his eyes, slicing to you. 
He stands from the table abruptly enough that your mother flinches so hard she nearly drops a bowl. “Don’t–” she whimpers, throwing her arm out in front of you to stop him, to keep him from grabbing you. 
It breaks your heart, to see her hand, outcast over you to protect you, trembling like a leaf in a violent wind. She is horrified, but she is still trying to protect you. 
You almost see red. You almost want to kill your father right now. 
“You cannot allow this.” Your father seethes, “did you hear her?” 
“She’s my daughter,” is your mother’s only response, half desperate, chest heaving. 
“Mom–” you beg, but it’s too late, because your father lunges for her first. When he grabs her, all of your world narrows, and her strangled, pained gasp is the only thing you hear. Your father throws her into the wall so harshly that it leaves a dent and he goes for her again, while she is a crumpled mass on the floor and–
And you reach for the knife at the table like it has always belonged in your palm
You grab your father by his hair and yank his head far enough back to expose the fluttering line of his vulnerable throat. You are certain you have looked like this to him before, eyes bugging with his fist in your hair, mouth agape. 
You put the knife to his throat and hiss, “I will do this now if you lay another hand on her.” 
Your father begins to tremble the way your mother did. The way you did as a child. 
“You won’t,” he croaks. 
He doesn’t mean it. 
“I will.” You vow. 
And you wonder how Suguru felt, with his parents or the others he killed in the name of trapped, hurt children, you wonder if it felt like this. If it will be worse or better. You want to run to him now, you think, and ask. Is it worth it? Was it worth it? Will I ever get the smell of blood out from under my nose? 
Your father goes slack, let’s you know he is done. Defeated for now, subdued enough that he will not hit her. 
Your mother watches in horror. 
He slinks away, muttering to himself, grasping at his head, his throat. You think you are driving him mad. You think you are haunting him, that you have grown into a curse and not a girl at all. 
You toss the knife away and throw your arms around your mother and you rock her the way she used to rock you as a child, trying to quiet her cries, trying to soothe what you know will never settle. 
***
Satoru hasn’t been the same since Suguru’s betrayal. 
Though you knew this would pain him, it bothers you that it is able to affect him so greatly. Still, you remain doting, loving. You let him lay with his head in your lap, on your chest. You let him squeeze you too tightly, you let him bruise you. 
Most importantly, you let him believe that you are all he can trust. Over and over again, you murmur it to him when he sleeps in the afternoon sun with his head in your lap, beneath you is a picnic blanket in the garden, you let it infect his mind. 
And still, he pulls away from you. 
He becomes more untouchable than ever. Distant to you the way that stars are, bright in your sky but unreachable, a thousand lightyears away. You sit by your window, waiting for him, hoping he’ll fall back down to earth sometime. 
You think he’s avoiding you. 
It makes you want to curse and scream and cry. It makes you want to throw a tantrum all over again and see if he’ll come running. It makes you want to tear down mountains and carve the moon from the sky. 
You know what you have to do; it will cause a great deal of trouble for you, but you will do it. You will take it for him. Always for him. 
You visit him at Jujutsu Tech for once. 
You show up in his dorm and are mildly surprised that Megumi or Tsumiki aren’t here. You thought you’d at least be able to see them, too.
So instead you sit and wait for him to return in the quiet of his empty room. One hour turns to two, then three. 
The sun settles high in the sky and then begins to sink. 
You doze on his twin bed, in the last rays of the sun that manage to steal through the window, cut through the blinds. 
When you wake, it’s to the shadow of Satoru in his doorway. You sit up, groggy, blinking sleep away. 
“Not that I’m mad to return to a girl in my bed, but, what are you doing here?” He asks and instantly, you can tell he’s tense, on guard. He shuts the door behind him, he wades into the room, avoiding you. He doesn’t greet you with a kiss to the cheek or a secret smile. He falls into the chair at the desk. 
“I haven’t seen you in over a week.” You tell him, voice still hushed with sleep. And then, “where are the kids?”
“With Shoko for a bit. She’s had them for the day, helping them study.” 
“You could’ve brought them to me.” You tell him and perhaps it pains you that he didn’t. 
“Your father let you out of the garden?” He asks in return, avoiding it. Avoiding you. You can feel the distance he is trying to force between you two. His voice is strange. 
You don’t heed his warning. You don’t bother to backtrack. 
“No. I snuck out. I’m sure they’re looking for me.” You tell him and in the dark lavender of evening, you catch a sliver of his smile. A ghost of himself. Your heart trips over itself in blind hope. You press on, “I missed you. I wanted to see you.” 
When he doesn’t respond to that, you add, “I’m worried about you.” 
Now he rises and finally comes to you. He stands, tall and towering over where you’ve sat up on his bed. He lifts a large hand, grown so large since you were kids, and carefully touches the apple of your cheek. 
“No reason to ever worry about me, darling.” He says, but you can tell, even with the blindfold, that his gaze has gone hollow, unseeing you. He pulls his hand away and your cheek tilts, chases after the warmth of his palm; he’s untouchable, so untouchable. “I’m the strongest. You should know better.” 
He turns away from you again, wanders to the window, gazes out at a dark courtyard. 
“Satoru,” you say as gently as you can. 
“I should get you back. Your father will be upset. I’ll take the blame.” 
“Satoru.” 
“I’ll smooth things over with him. I’m sorry to have worried you. Nothing’s wrong, though–” 
“Satoru.” You snap. 
He freezes, finally has the good sense to be quiet for a moment. 
You stand from his bed, rise like a ghost (maybe that’s all you are these days–a ghost of a girl, a vow he can’t shake, the pressing of time that he can only feel, but not see), and drift to him. Your touch doesn’t match your tone or your anger; you are gentle, when you put your hand on his back. 
“Look at me.” You tell him.
When he turns, your fingers skim over his ribs, all the way to his chest. 
You lift your hand to his face, to the blindfold and deftly, you pull at it. 
He frowns and for a moment, you think he might try to pull away and deny you, but he doesn't. 
He goes completely still. 
You tug gently, until the blindfold slips away and hangs uselessly around his neck. 
His eyes are much sadder than you remember, the blue of them all sapphire dark, nightened and deep. 
“Why have you been avoiding me?” You ask, now that you can see all of him. And he can see all of you. 
“I’ve been busy.” 
“Don’t lie to me.” 
A grimace drifts across his features. You have always been able to see through the lies, the masks, the godhood he wears. 
You wait with him, patient, and seemingly careful. You can feel the thrum of his heart beneath your palm, can feel the rise and fall of his chest, the simmer of his cursed energy. Of yours. You look at your hand, small against his broadening chest. 
“I’m not lying,” he murmurs, then tries to sweeten you to him by covering your hand with his. His hand has grown so large since he was young. It engulfs yours now. “I have been busy.” 
You think he realizes he wants affection, you can tell in the way he pulls closer. He’s deprived himself of it recently, so you aren’t surprised that a taste of it would make him suddenly hungry. But if he isn’t going to answer, you aren’t going to give into him. You won’t feed him. 
You slip away from him with a disappointed sigh. Coolness rushes between you, separating you, starving him. 
“You’ve always been busy. You always come to visit me.” 
His eyes flash in the darkness. 
“Have you considered that you can’t be the center of my life?” He asks and his voice is light, but barbed. He sounds like his mother. “That I have far more important responsibilities than visiting and playing house with you?” 
You don’t flinch. He’s being needlessly cruel. You know how this plays out. You always know. 
“Spare me,” you tell him, not particularly cruelly, but tired. “Don’t undermine me like that. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” 
He bristles. Opens his mouth like he might say something, then firmly shuts it. 
Speechless. 
(How did you do that? Suguru laughs, how did you get him speechless?)
The memory rushes to you, of that warm day. Satoru must think of it, too. It must settle over him like a phantom, because Satoru goes perfectly still. You watch any anger or frustration seep out of him, like it’d been punctured. It leaks from him now, so that he’s deflated, just a shell of himself. 
“Is this about Suguru?” You ask him gently, when you think he can stomach hearing his name out loud. 
His lashes flutter, a muscle in his jaw feathers, but otherwise he remains unmoved. 
“Don’t you know everything?” He asks, voice cool, trying to remain untouchable, trying to remain frozen and far from you. 
“You know I don’t.” You answer gently and it’s only half-true. You turn back towards him, step into his orbit once more. 
“But did you know this one?“
“Yes.” You answer honestly, tip your chin up to look into his eyes, all dark heaven. 
He moves so fast that you don’t even catch it. You think he may have even used his technique, caught you so fierce and quickly that you gasp, feel the muscles of his hand jump as he squeezes your face in his large palm. 
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” He begs and he’s trying to shroud himself in anger, but you can hear the grief in its footsteps. The heartache wells inside of you. “Why wouldn’t you try to stop it?” 
“You don’t understand.” You hiss, “You have no idea–” 
“You should’ve told me!” Satoru’s voice catches, “maybe I could’ve–” 
“You couldn’t have.” You tell him. 
“You don’t know that!” He snaps, “he–we–I would’ve done anything–” 
His eyes well with tears and your hands instantly go up to his shoulders, his neck. 
“Satoru–” you try to soothe, but he’s still gripping you so hard you’ll bruise. 
“I would’ve done anything to stop him–” 
When he falls apart, it is always you there to hold him, to put the pieces of a God back together again. You hold him tight around the middle and he curves over you like a drought-driven plant, desperate, bowed. 
And you tell him again and again, that you’re here. He has you. He’s always had you. He always will. A vow made as children that is still carved into the both of you, written into your fates, and imprinted on your beings. 
Your own religion. 
You lay with him on his little twin bed. You run your hands through his hair. He soothes under your touch. He mouths at your throat in a way that makes you flush darkly, that reminds you you’re alone with him, for once. You’re alone with him in a little twin bed made for one, now holding two. 
And when he admits, “I know you did what was best, but I can’t help but resent you a little.” you almost, almost feel guilty. You feel the lump in your throat, the splintering of your heart, that has always been so painfully, willfully, soft and vulnerable for him.
You have half a mind to start wailing, howling like you’re going to shake apart.
“Some days I loathe you so much that I love you more, or love you so much that I loathe you.” He admits, fingers bruising into your ripe skin, into the softest parts of you. 
Instead you curl around him tighter, like a little asp constricting around its prey. You curl around him and think, I did do what’s best. 
I did what’s best for us.
***
Your father is furious, but Satoru takes the blame, as he promised. 
Your father wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you around Satoru. 
But even after he leaves, your father doesn’t touch you. 
He can’t even look at you. 
He flinches when he does. 
And you stand at the end of the hallway like he used to and you wonder if this is how he always felt. 
You wonder if this is how it will always feel to surpass your parents, to take what they were and be more, to swallow them whole. You wonder if you should feel worse for garnering his fear. 
But then you think of yourself as a child, looking up at him, desperate for his love and acceptance, and in the same way that he could not find sympathy for his own daughter–
You have no sympathy for the father that raised her. 
***
Preparations for the wedding are a nightmare for both you and Satoru. Between dealing with higher ups that both of you would rather overthrow, your father, and his mother, the wedding hardly begins to feel like a wedding at all. Just a spectacle, a feat of the century. 
It doesn’t help that in the midst of this, Satoru is still grieving Suguru, who lives and festers and grows. More than that, Megumi and Tsumiki also demand his full attention. Megumi is picking fights in school. Tsumiki is struggling in other, quiet ways. 
You’ve told him to focus on buying a bigger space for the four of you, that you’ll handle the higher ups and the wedding planning and his mother.
You went many years rarely seeing her. As a child, she watched you and Satoru, always gazed at you a little too intensely, followed you the way a predator must watch prey. Or perhaps the way prey must watch a predator– you never know anymore, which you were. Maybe some horrible beast of both; a rabbit with jagged canines, antlers cut sharp and protruding from your poor head, a wolf with large ears and soft paws, a fox, if nothing else. Both hunted and the hunter.
You don’t know when you became accustomed to the taste of blood in your mouth.
But when his mother pushes, you finally push back. No longer a child, no longer fangless.
You’re taking tea with her, discussing further wedding plans, when she says, “you may have my son fooled, but I see right through you.”
She says this very casually, like she might be saying, the sky is blue, or I am the mother of a god. Both, you think, could ring softly in her melodic voice. She does seem like the mother of a god, all icy hair, now going silver, like a star. And oh, her eyes, her eyes are just like diamonds. Like her son’s, the god.
The tea is scalding, you cup it in your palm and let it warm against your skin, wait to bring it to your lips.
“Oh?”
“The moment I saw you, I knew.” She says, eyeing you over the rim of her own tea cup. “I knew you’d be his downfall. A shame, really. It’s too bad I didn’t have a daughter, sons can be so–”
“I have no intention of being Satoru’s downfall. Quite the contrary, I have done everything in my power to ensure that he will not have a downfall.” You respond coolly and you can feel her gaze, the way it tries to dig down into the tender parts of you, like a hawk sinking its talons around the fleshy bits of your heart.
She doesn’t particularly scare you except–
You don’t know this conversation. You know her fate, because Satoru will feel it and you know him. But this is new territory to you.
“I knew when I saw you,” she repeats, “but especially after your binding vow to him, that you were going to burrow yourself underneath his skin. You were going to be his own fault. The only mortal part of him. That’s why you will be his downfall.”
It strikes you as strange that she believes this. Besides, you know you have only seeded him, twisted and molded and shaped him into the boy-god he is now. You know who his real mortal parts are, know who they will always be, and it is the children in his care.Perhaps, Suguru Getou, too.
No, you were never lovely enough to be anything mortal. You were never normal enough to be anything so simple.
“I think you’re mistaken,” you say and the words come to you the way prophecy does, “I shaped him.”
Her eyes flash like the too-hot part of a flame and she says around her teeth, like she’s biting down into it, “I made him. And he almost killed me.” She collects herself then, but her mouth is twisted into this sickle curve of a grimace, “perhaps one day you will understand, what it’s like to be torn in two, and love them either way.”
You think you must know it already, at least a little.
“Do you love your husband?” You ask. “My mother does not love my father.”
Like your parents, she was arranged to marry Satoru’s father.
And easily, she says, “no. I never did. I learned him.”
“My mother fears my father.” You tell her.
“Many women do.” She responds, “I think we are more similar than you are to your own mother. She was always a little too sweet.”
You hum lightly and finally, dare to take a sip of tea.
“I don’t believe we are much alike at all.” You say before finally setting the tea cup down onto the table in front of you, palm still hot from it.
“You have been scheming your whole life. You were never content to be anything other than extraordinary. Trust me, I was once young and full of the same vigor.” She says dryly, gently tossing some of her long, silver hair over her shoulder. “The only thing that makes you special is that you will be Satoru’s wife.”
You can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you.
“No,” you say.
“No?” she asks.
“Can you see the future?” You ask her. 
Silence. 
“I, too, have a technique–” 
“But can you see the future? Are you invincible?” 
She refuses to say no again. 
“You have a technique, but it’s not like ours. Satoru and I have always been different. I am not like you. I wish the only reason I am special is because of him. I wish all I had to do was learn him.” You think you must’ve always known him, anyways, some part of you. There was no need to learn, when you were so interwoven, so intertwined. 
“Spare me the self-pity, it’s unbecoming of a girl of your stature–”
“I love your son.” You say plainly, like one might say the sky is blue, or I am not only a god’s wife, but his godly wife. “And he loves me, too.”
“I didn’t think you were this naive–”
You set your hands against the table, lean forward in a way that must be vaguely threatening because her gaze sharpens. Predator or prey. Some wretched amalgamation of both.
“He’ll kill for me. That isn’t an exaggeration, that’s just a part of the future. He’ll do anything I ask of him. Would your husband, for you? Is he a god? Would a god do anything for you?” You watch her face carefully, the way it twists. 
“I’m his mother–”
Your voice drops to a hush and the light catches the mismatched color of your eyes;
“More than that, I have killed for him already and no one even knows it. I will again. And that is far, far worse than if I was just some scheming wife.”
She sits back in her chair with a look on her face that might be bitterness. You think she tries to swallow around it. Perhaps, it is more akin to hatred. Maybe even, fear.
“Now,” you continue, and with all the grace of a god, you sweep your tea cup into your hand and take another slow, easy sip. “You wanted to talk about the flowers for the wedding?”
And you think she is smarter than she looks because she does not look at you the same way again. If you thought there was contempt in her gaze before, you have never quite seen loathing like this.
You talk of flowers, like you didn’t just admit murder to her. You’d like something blue. It will look nice, you tell her, with gold and silver. 
When Satoru stops by later, with Megumi and Tsumiki in tow, you brush a kiss to his jaw in greeting in front of his mother. Perhaps to spite her. Tsumiki tucks herself up against your side and Megumi lets you smooth his wild hair down against his pouting face.
She gazes at the two dark haired children around you, at the way her son looks lovingly at the three of you and you smile, slow and knowing, asp-like.
“I will know, by the way, what it’s like to love them either way.” You tell her as Megumi tucks his face into your shoulder and you turn to kiss the top of his small head. 
Usurper that he is, you’ll love him either way.
***
Life keeps turning, but you find yourself clinging to the past in a way you aren’t prepared for. You know you must go on, with the wedding, with adulthood, with what you have made but–
But sometimes, when you touch Ieri or Satoru, you let it drag you into the past. Into sweeter memories and the ghost that now haunts the three of you. 
Suguru is there and he is lighter, before Haibara’s death, and he and Satoru toy and tease and play. 
They follow you and Ieri around the garden like shadows. You burn with these visions of him, can’t understand, couldn’t foresee, why you relive it so much. You knew you cared about him but–
You always thought it’d be easier, since you knew. 
You didn’t think you’d miss him or his half moon smiles. 
The past tastes sickly and in it, he holds a peach over your head and lets you reach and jump and squabble for it. He slyly nudges you right into the pond and then he follows you in a moment later. He stretches out in the tall grass beside you, he lays his arm over you, he laughs when you yell and huff and bite. He talks about your wedding and the bachelor party he will throw. A future you will never see. 
He simmers with a love for you and Satoru and Ieri that you feel as if you didn’t see in the present but can only see now, in Hindsight. 
He says things like, “you’re such a curse of a girl.” with the fondest smile on his lips. 
And he says–
In Satoru’s memories, he tells him–
Satoru asks him, “if anything ever happened to me. You’d look after her, wouldn’t you?”
And Suguru says, “of course. I’d do anything for her.” 
Satoru smiles, boyish, infinitely happy and it guts you so thoroughly for a moment that you forget how to breathe, you forget how to stomach this. 
“Careful,” Satoru laughs, “she is still my fiance.” 
Suguru laughs, low and soft and the memory is souring, curdling inside of you in a way that makes you want to throw it all up.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could keep the two of you apart.” 
Except for you, you think, except for you, you wretch and cry and wail. 
***
Your wedding takes place on the eve of your eighteenth birthday. 
You wish you could say you’re prepared, in some way, for all of it. But you find that even a lifetime can’t prepare you for becoming the wife of a God. The ceremony itself is stuffy, rather tense, with uneasy truces between clans and political talk interwoven and murmured and laced into every other sentence. The only people there that you or Satoru genuinely want are his friends. Your mother. 
Who cried the day previous. She apologized again, that she couldn’t stop any of it for you, that it all turned out this way, like it was her fault at all. 
(Not your fault, it’s never your fault–you want to tell her, but don’t.) 
She said she’s only glad you’re marrying someone like Satoru, someone you know, someone you love. Who loves you. 
She said she takes great comfort in that, that at least you’ll know love like that. 
You have to bite back a laugh–love like this? Oh, what it’s done to you. And oh, what you’ve done for it. 
You are married beneath a setting sun on the top of their mortal world, high above the city. It is fit for what they believe are gods. 
“A monumental day, history being made in front of our very eyes. Two of the most extraordinary sorcerers in hundreds of years, now bound together.” The officiant rattles on and on. 
Satoru makes a face and even beneath the blindfold, you can tell it’s a rolling of his eyes. Your lips twist into a half smile. 
Vows are such a tricky thing, you think. 
There are the official ones they have you repeat. But then there are yours, his, ours that have always been there. The ones that have been etched onto your heart since you were a child. 
And the world as his witness, without an ounce of shame, like he is again a child, he vows;
“I will always have you.” 
And with a flash of your teeth, like you’re biting down into it, you repeat, you curse him, “I will always have you.” 
Easily, he promises, easily, he gives himself to you, “You will always have me.” 
Almost viciously, you vow, “you will always have me.” 
Murmurs ripple. His mother is white knuckled. Your father is lock-jawed in anger. Your clan worries and hushes. His does, too. But you don’t see any of it, just Satoru, when he leans down to seal his lips to yours. 
It’s a little harsh, vicious in the way that love is. In the way that your love is, horrible little thing you are, there is nothing and no one now–
Nothing and no one who will take him from you. Who will stop you now. 
***
The reception afterwards is mostly for politics. You and Satoru are supposed to play nice but–
He’s being a shit. Smarmy. You don’t ask him to stop, so he doesn’t. You don’t particularly care to be polite or good, to not frighten the other sorcerers and the clans. In fact, you think Satoru is flexing a little bit, as if to say ‘you wanted this, you wanted this our whole lives. As if to say, we will not be as obedient as you thought. As you hoped.’ 
In hindsight, you think they regret your arranged marriage. 
You don’t know what they expected, forcing two of the most powerful sorcerers together. Did they think you wouldn’t band together? Did they hope you would still hold loyalty to them above all else, and not each other? 
You spent your whole life being reared and raised to be their perfect weapon, their perfect wife, their perfect god. To fit alongside Satoru. Were you not groomed for this? Are you not perfect for it? 
You can’t fathom their shock. 
Still, you can tell he is trying to enjoy his evening, if only with you, if only for you. 
“It is our wedding,” he’d said to you just days prior. “It’s for us. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be,” he’d said, “but now it is.”
You can tell many disapprove of his blatant affection for you, disapprove of the way he’s teasing them to make you laugh. They hate that you laugh, that you won’t scold him. They hate what they have created. 
His arm has been around you nearly the entire evening. Whether on the crux of your waist or the small of your back, around your shoulders or fitting his fingers to the bend of your torso along the lines of your rib, he has clung impossibly close to you. 
“What do you say?” he asks, dropping kisses like falling stars over your cheek, your jaw, tickling along your neck playfully. “Should we find Shoko and Nanami and the kids? I don’t want to spend anymore time with these geezers.” 
“Yes,” you agree, letting him catch you in a fuller kiss, one that bleeds warmth into you, runs a thrill down your spine as you feel the soft brush of his teeth, a little tongue. 
You pull away before he can deepen and he grins at you, a little raucous, a little knowing, before you can pinch his side and get a little yelp from him, before you can spirit him away to where you know everyone waits for you.
“Finally,” Shoko says, leaning back in her chair, “I was going to die of boredom just watching you two greet all of them.” 
“It’s horrendous,” Satoru agrees before Tsumiki, who’d been in Nanami’s care for the evening, bounds straight into Satoru’s arms for a hug.
He laughs and catches her easily, picks her up even though she’s a little too old for it, and spins her around. 
Megumi leaves his seat next to Nanami to ease himself up to your side, wrap his arms around your waist and peer up at you with those eyes so deep. 
“You look nice,” he mutters into your hip and you know it means a lot coming from him. And then, he peeks up at you through his long lashes, “are you happy?” 
The question catches you by surprise, for some reason, and your heart suddenly swells. Tenderness bundles itself up, knots your heart over itself. You think about the question; are you happy? 
Can you be? 
Are you allowed to be? After everything you’ve done? After everything you will do? 
Tears prick your eyes. 
But you are happy, you decide, you are happy now. You are happy for tonight. 
And you nod to him, running your fingers through his unruly hair, “I’m very happy, Megumi.”  
He studies your face, squeezes just a little tighter around you, and says, “then I’m happy, too.” 
Satoru suddenly gets his big hand on the top of Megumi’s head. “Look at you, Megumi, you look so handsome in your suit.” 
Megumi starts to fuss, like he always does with Satoru, batting at his hand, trying to scrap with him, even when Satoru laughs. Perhaps especially when he laughs. Satrou pushes his little head around in his palm, tormenting him. 
Tsumiki eases up to your side as the boys scrap and you welcome her into your arms as if she could have always belonged there. 
When she looks up at you, you can tell she’s debating on saying something. You smooth out a piece of her hair, swiping it behind her ear, “what is it?” You ask and maybe you remind yourself of your own mother finally. 
“I don’t remember my mother’s wedding to Megumi’s father much. I was really young.” She frowns, “I wish–” 
“I wish I remembered more of it. Of them. I wish Megumi remembered them.” You can sense the tears in her before they even well. You can feel your own caught in the back of your throat for her. 
For everything inside of you, you cannot fathom how an unending well has opened inside of you for this child. For Megumi. You always thought, your whole life, the only space inside of you would be an infinite void and only the one who possesses Infinity could ever control that. 
But it’s as if they’ve made a new space. 
You swipe her tears away with your thumb before they can fall. “Tsumiki,” you try to soothe. What can you say? What would you want to hear? What will you want to hear when your own mother is gone? 
How do you not fall apart for her–for everything–of all that will happen to her, here and now? 
Instead, she says, “I hope we remember this one, at least.” And she gives you her best and brightest smile. The one that sparks and brightens a room. 
You hold her tight to you, you clutch to her, perhaps unsure if it’s her who needs this or you. You hold her until you feel as if you can pull away and won’t burst at the seams, until you are certain that you can smile back at her. 
“You will,” you assure her, voice thicker than you’d like, and then, “and it’s okay–Satoru has already taken far too many pictures.” 
She laughs then, overspilling from her in a way that is lovely and young and beautiful. 
You feel arms wind around you from behind, the smell of tobacco, of plum, and smile when you see Ieri’s manicured fingers fasten themselves around you.
She hooks her chin over your shoulder and smiles at Tsumiki, too. 
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” you respond, turning your cheek into hers. 
“What do you say, Tsumiki? Should we go dance the night away?” Ieri then says, her smile lazy but genuine and you think, perhaps, she sensed, or knew that Tsumiki was feeling tender. 
You find you are grateful for her, not for the first time in your life, but you realize how much and how grandly Ieri has been there. 
“I’d like to dance!” Tsumiki says and you smile as Ieri unwinds herself from you.
“I’ll get a glass of wine.” She says, “and then we can hit the dance floor.” 
“Do I hear dancing?” Satoru perks up, Megumi caught underneath his arm, kicking and thrashing a little. 
“Satoru, put him down,” you tell him.
“Oh, you’re lucky, Megumi, my wife has set you free.” And he sets the boy back down onto his feet, who looks ready to scrap again with the little scowl on his face, but you take hold of his wrist before he can.
“Come on, Megumi, we’re going to dance.” You say to him, tugging lightly and his frown deepens, but he does allow you to pull him towards the dance floor. 
No one is dancing because it’s a stuffy room of jujutsu higher ups, sycophants and clan leaders. There is music, but no one is dancing.
“Nanami, you too!” Satoru cries, throwing his arm around the poor young man. Freshly eighteen as well. 
“I’m going to need a drink,” he mutters and it makes you laugh, blossoming out of you. 
“Where’s Utahime?” Satoru then asks, “let’s get everyone.” 
It is a small struggle to grab everyone, but once done, the dance floor welcomes you. 
Nanami and Utahime need at least two drinks, before they give in and begin to dance, Nanami bobbing along and Utahime beginning to sway and move. Ieri, you think, has been tipsy this whole time and you don’t blame her. Megumi takes a little bit to drag out of his shell–
But you take his hand and you dance with him, letting him lead you, ducking beneath his arm when he spins you. You bring him out and back in, spin around the room with him until he’s cracking a smile, until you’re laughing, genuinely, with all the love inside of you. 
Murmurs spread around you, people gossiping, passing judgment at the group in the center. But Ieri pours wine into your mouth carefully, laughing when some gets on your chin, wiping it away quickly to not fall any further. You and Utahime work to get Nanami to loosen up–you make him dance with you, too, can see the flush of pink high on his cheeks as he looks to Satoru, who only laughs merrily in return.
 And suddenly two drinks have turned to four and perhaps people are scandalized.
By young people, being young for once. 
By the way the kids are running around, laughing, and screaming. Dancing and singing. You and Satoru let them terrorize the place. Satoru bends down to Megumi and tells him to go steal sweets for him, to go trip that man there, and go ahead and bump into her as well.  
They’re mortified by the way Satoru grabs you, curls a broad hand around your waist and pulls you close, sways with you to the upbeat music from the DJ Satoru specifically requested despite everyone’s disapproval. 
The night blooms. 
Your father tries to convince the DJ to stop. Satoru’s mother is scowling from across the room but–
When you catch your mother’s eye, she is smiling. Nodding her head along subtly. 
You pull away from Satoru suddenly.
It was never in your mother’s future, this moment, but you can’t help but feel like you need it now, more than anything. Maybe she needs it more than anything. There’s a questioning look on Satoru’s face, before he sees where you’re already headed off to.
And then your hands are in your mother’s and she’s shaking her head no a little, laughing nervously, but you don’t let her go. 
You don’t want to let her go. 
“I can’t–” she says to you but you don’t listen, dragging her out to the dance floor. 
You know her time is rapidly approaching, quicker than you could’ve ever realized. You’ve blinked and suddenly you are not just a child who knows what will happen to her, but a new adult, on the night of your wedding, not even a year out. 
All at once, you realize how rapidly everything has approached. The world turns and you just wish you could still it, place one hand over Time and capture it between your fingers, wrestle it still. 
Instead, you spin around the room with your mother. She’s shy and it occurs to you that she probably never got this at her own wedding.  
So you give it to her now. 
Satoru dances with her. Let's you dance with her until she laughs a little. 
And she tells you she loves you. She’s happy for you, if you’re happy. 
She still slips from your hands and recedes to the edges again, but she watches you with shining eyes, overjoyed and lovely.
You look at all of your friends as they dance and drink and shout and sing, watch Megumi and Tsumiki, and perhaps at the same time as Satoru, you realize there is one missing. 
(Perhaps three, in total, because you wonder about a future with Suguru and the two little girls. Two little girls like Megumi and Tsumiki. You think they should’ve been friends, that it would’ve been nice to have them around–)
You look at Satoru the moment his face falls a little, as his brows pinch into a sort of mourning that you know well. 
You slip your hand into his. 
“I wish–” he starts.
“I know.” You tell him, “me too.” 
He shudders a little, a rocky inhale, a slow exhale like he’s trying to stabilize himself. 
Grief lingers in both of you, stitched into your existences, melded down to your marrows. 
Perhaps for all gods, it is. Perhaps it is a requirement of godhood. 
You squeeze his hand. 
You pull him back into life, into your friends, and evermoving Time. The world spins and so do you, late into the night, when everyone has gone home.
When the stars sing and Nanami’s tie has been lost and Shoko’s hair is a mess and there are lipstick smudges on Satoru’s cheeks and the kids are tired.
Megumi is sleeping on two chairs put together and Tsumiki is trying her hardest not to nod off as well. 
“I’ll make sure everyone gets home safely,” Utahime promises, a little weary herself, but sober, and still walking. Which is more than the rest can say. And for once, she hugs Satoru and gives him a genuine smile. She tells him she’s happy for him; she’s glad he was able to have fun, at least, on his wedding night. She hugs you, too, and you don’t know Utahime well yet. 
But you will, when Satoru becomes a teacher alongside her. 
Nanami gently wakes Megumi, eases the drowsy boy into standing alongside his sister. Megumi is tired enough that he lets Nanami hold his hand to usher him out. Tsumiki tucks up next to him, too, and your heart aches watching them. 
Ieri kisses your cheek sloppily, and then Satoru’s, who laughs at her antics, who shoos her into Utahime’s waiting arms. 
Until they’re parading out and it is just you and Satoru, always just you and Satoru, at the end of a night. At the beginning of a day. 
Your shadows cast tall and wide behind you in the last lights of the venue. 
He looks at you and smiles and says;
“Let me take you home.” 
***
In front of you sprawls your new home. 
You have yet to see it in person, until tonight. 
Satoru had whined about wanting to surprise you, how it was impossible to do so, since you’d already seen the future.
I’ve already seen the home you will give me, you tell him and you want to tell him, I see it in my dreams. I see it in the softest, most shuddering parts of my heart. 
Still, it is hard to put into words what you feel as you gaze at the front door, at the windows that line the place; wide and glittering and will certainly let in enough light to drown the place in it. 
“Do you like it?” Satoru prompts, nervous, “the outside, anyways?” 
A laugh springs from you, “yes,” you gasp, “of course I do.” 
He unlocks the front door then and before you can take another step, you’re suddenly airborne. 
You yelp.
“It’s tradition somewhere, isn’t it? To carry you over the threshold of our new home?” 
This time your laugh is full and bursting, clutching tight to his neck, the silks of white that drape over your body flutter and twist in his big hands. It hikes up and you can feel the cool brush of night, just before Satoru kicks the door shut behind him.
And then he sets you down and–
You take a few, fawn-like steps, into your new home. It’s open with dark wood but he’s decorated it with soft creams and silky flowers on low tables. It’s surprisingly put together and surprisingly warm. 
Homey, almost. 
You think it looks nothing like his childhood home of marble and steel and clean, shocking white. Nor yours, brooding and stiff and vacant. It looks comfortable, like you build something here. 
It looks painfully, viciously, human.
Your chest tightens. Your vision blurs.
“There’s a garden out back, not quite as big as the one you grew up in but there’s a pond still and–and Tsumiki and Megumi finally have their own rooms upstairs.” Satoru says, watching, enamored, as you move about the space. 
It isn’t huge, not long and sprawling, but it isn’t small, either. And for this area, so close to the campus, you know it was no small lump of money. 
You have seen yourself here for awhile now, in Satoru’s future, living and sleeping and humming to yourself as you move about the space. You have seen your life here already but now it truly blossoms in your vision. 
You turn to him and you realize you’re crying, tears finally brimming over and onto your cheeks. This will be the first time away from your parents, from your garden, from the small world you’d been isolated to all your life. 
It will be your first night with Satoru, the first of many, of forever. 
“Don’t cry,” he hushes but you can tell, perhaps, that his voice has gotten thicker, tighter with emotion. He takes your face in his great, broad hand and curls it around you protectively. There’s an inkling of possession in the act, the sudden firmness, the way he guides your face up to his. 
Then, soft as midnight, dark as the sky, “I always told you I’d take you away, didn’t I?” 
You shiver, feel it race up your spine at the edge he has in his voice. Like he was always planning it, like he’d thought about it so often it turned him inside out, like it was an inevitable part of your future. 
You nod into the warmth of his hand, nuzzle into the cup of his palm. 
“And I have.” He says, “you don’t ever have to see your father again, if you don’t want to. Any of your clan.” 
You know you will see your father once more. 
Satoru swipes away a tear before it can fully cascade down your cheek. 
“Don’t cry,” he says again. 
You reach up to slip your fingers, cool and soft, against his cheek, to dip under the fabric of his blindfold. He wore it the whole night, you missed his eyes the whole night. 
You let your fingers explore the soft part of his under eye, careful as you feel his lashes tickle, as you creep up towards his brow bone. 
The blindfold comes off in a heap. 
His eyes are glassy, too, like he may cry. 
“I love you,” you say, perhaps for the first time so plainly. It falls from your mouth as easily as stars falling from the sky. 
He seems to shudder with it, before he eases forward, brings your face up like a flower seeking sun, and presses tender, little kisses to your cheek. 
I love you, too, they seem to say, to scatter like petals, I love you, too. I’ve always loved you. 
You turn your face, seeking, and his lips catch yours in a deeper kiss. Slow and warm like honey, ambrosia poured hot down the body of you, feeling it slither deeper. You have rarely been truly alone with Satoru throughout all your years; it didn’t stop you from kissing or touching, if not carefully, if not always with one eye open. 
But now there is no one but you two. 
And you feel confident in pressing closer, in tangling your hand in his hair, silky and soft between your fingers. You feel his hand flex, before sliding along your hips, pulling you closer still. 
A soft nip of your teeth, testing, letting you flex your nails in his shoulder. 
You feel his hitch of breath.
Your desire sharpens, digs its claws into you. You’ve always wanted him in some way; wanted him near and to be yours, wanted him weak and strong, wanted him desperate and assured. You have wanted him in the marrow of you, since you were a child. Since the moment he told you that he would always have you. 
“‘Toru,” you murmur and your voice is perhaps softer than you’ve ever heard it, higher in a way that is just shy of a whine. You flush with embarrassment. Heat burns your ears, your neck. 
For all your own strength, you are always rendered horrendously hopeless for him. It’s like an affliction, some illness you can’t shake, something that has overridden you your whole life.
“What is it?” He hushes back, lips hovering over yours, “what do you need?” 
It’s almost mocking, in that sweet, lullaby voice of his.
You seize him, by the hair, by the front of his clothes, “don’t be cruel.” 
Your voice wavers, though.
And he huffs out a laugh, reaches one hand up to untangle it from his shirt, soothes until you release the hold on his hair, too. “I’d never be.” He lies and then he ducks his face to the crook of your neck. 
You’ve felt him here before, felt him nuzzle and kiss softly, felt the tickle of his hair on your cheek. But now you feel the wet warmth of his mouth, open, tongue soft against your skin. The strike of teeth. You always knew he was holding back with you before; in fact he’d done so deliberately at points. 
If you’d crawled over him, he’d pause, and ease you off. His cheeks had always been so pink. He’d had to explain it wasn’t rejection but rather a thread of his control. 
Not to be a traditionalist, he’d say, but I’ll only have you when it’ll only be us and all the time in the world. 
You wish your technique was time bending, rather than sight. You wish you could manipulate it more than you do now, wish you could manipulate the actual length of it. Freeze it. Hold it. 
Rewind it. 
You push at him a little and for a moment, he doesn’t relent, and you are reminded of how strong he’s become. Broad and tall. Lean with muscles, grown into himself in a way that you have always known and yet, are still surprised to feel beneath your hands. 
Finally, he eases away from you and you step away, slip from him to wander further into the house without a word. 
He watches you for a moment, the way he always has, explore the garden, wander around a new place that is yours. His. Each other’s. It’s a strange dance you both know well, this sort of give and take, push and pull where you make him chase. You make him wait. You make him come to heel. 
You ease around the banister of the stairs and slowly begin to climb them when he finally moves from his spot. He comes to the side of the stairs and you are only just as tall as him, two steps up, with the railing between you. 
Just as he had earlier to you, you put your finger beneath his chin and lift his face, tilt it up into looking at you. Pretty boy that he is, he gazes at you from beneath lashes like snowflakes. 
“I want to see the rest of my house,” you say softly. 
His smile is fond, if not amused. 
“Yours?” He asks. 
“Mine.” You agree with a sharp, small smile of your own and his laugh is a welcome sound. 
“Everything is yours.” He agrees. 
“Mine,” you agree again and this time you kiss him soundly as a reward. 
Only briefly though, a lick of heat, before you slip from him and disappear up the stairs. Quicker than before, you take the stairs, as if to run from him. 
In the blink of an eye, Satoru shudders to life in front of your vision. 
(You know this moment, have cherished the memory in his future before it became a memory at all.) 
He catches you before you can get past him and you still yelp in surprise. 
Funny, you think, he’s never done that to you before. He usually lets you lead and run and stray from him. He follows dutifully. 
“Cheater,” you gasp, looking up at him in surprise. 
“I didn’t know there were rules.” He smiles, but you duck out from beneath his hold and he allows you to escape, wandering deeper into the hallway.
You know the first room on your left is Megumi’s. And then Tsumiki’s is on the right. You know they will share the bathroom beside Megumi’s room. And if you go straight down the hallway, at the end of it, will be your bedroom. 
So that is the first one you pick, it’s the first door you open. 
Dark wood and pale blue. Gold. Cream. The bed is set low into its frame, larger than you even thought they made. There is a balcony attached, draped with curtains of off-white, hiding the night sky from you, hiding the small table and chairs he’s placed out there, that you will spend many mornings and evenings on. The room is–
Perhaps a flex of his money, more than the other places of the house (despite the kid’s room, with all the toys in the world he could ever give them, with more than they know what to do with but Satoru has always been a spoiler, an indulger–)
And you can tell now that he is trying to spoil you. 
You turn to face him, just as he comes up behind you, and before he can ask another question, you pull him down into a fierce kiss. 
He makes a startled noise against your lips, before you taste the smile at the corners of his mouth, feel it, perhaps it’s smugness. Satisfaction that he’s pleased you. 
For a moment, you think you have the lead on him, but he suddenly nudges you backwards. Blindly, you let him lead you, steps tentative and small, but he demands more, and he takes the space that you relent eagerly. 
You pull away, to gain your footing, to slip from him again and this time, when you dart away–
You know he will warp in front of you, have seen this moment many times before, so you dance away from him, as if to prove something to him. 
He laughs, “cheater.” 
The smile you give him over your shoulder makes him follow, trail after you as you wander around the room. 
There is an attached bathroom, large and spacious. Luxurious. The tub is deep and wide, overlooking a window of the gardens. It’s beautiful. 
When you turn back to face Satoru once more, he’s seated on the edge of the bed. He’s loosened the top several buttons of his shirt. Opened himself up further to you. You keep away, as if to tempt him. 
“The bath is huge,” you say. 
“Needed to fit both of us.” He says so plainly it takes your breath clear from your lungs. The idea of it, the two of you, bare and in the tub together, force heat down into your face, your neck. 
He laughs a little and if his ears are pink, too, who's to say? 
“Are you shy about it?” He asks, and then, “are you scared?” 
Your fingers twist in the silk white of your kimono, the beading catching against your skin. Carefully, tentatively, you nod.
“Are you?” You ask.
“Not really.” And then, “a little. I want to please you.” 
For a heartbeat, you almost ask if it’s his first time, if he’s sure, since he’s not so nervous. But you know his future better than anyone. You know he means it when he says, “I want to–” 
He swallows around what could be glass or pride or rationality;
“I want to consume you.” 
He laughs but it seems strange, a little off kilter, “I want revenge, with how you make me feel, you know?” 
You can feel your chest quicken its cadence, rise and fall sharply, your heart squeezing and pumping as hard as it can inside of you. 
“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head, “I don’t mean to scare you more.” 
“I don’t believe you.” 
His left eye glints when he tilts his head back to regard you. 
A God will try to consume me tonight. 
A thrill goes through you, vicious and exciting in equal measure. 
“I’ll be good to you,” he promises. “I’d never hurt you.” 
You hum in acknowledgement, but you don’t promise it back, nor do you fully believe him. 
“Come here,” he says and he spreads his legs a little, perhaps subconsciously. 
You realize somewhere along the line he’d become a man. And he’s always kept his desires hidden from you previously, or perhaps far from you, almost untouchable. So to be confronted with them now, you feel a little unstable. Wobbly on your feet. 
You pull at your wedding garments, silky beneath your fingers, but aren’t brave enough to take it off. You swallow hard. You know if you go to him, you’ll be undone. 
“We don’t have to, either, if you don’t want. We’ve never done anything by the book, anyways.” He says and you feel as if he’s peering into you, into the squirming, soft, terrified parts of you. 
You realize you know intimacy with violence; you’ve only been able to express your desire for him with tooth and nail. You have never been able to melt or be delicate, but met his affections with violet bruises and tender-pink scrapes. 
You have never been able to swallow around gentle love. Or…pleasure. 
Shame seeps in at the idea of it, pleasure; your pleasure from him.
I want to please you. 
You always assumed when you had him, it would be a sort of claiming, you always saw it as another way to sink your claws into him. Of course, you want him, perhaps more than anything, but you never saw your own pleasure in it. Just, the pleasure of knowing he was yours, all yours. 
“No,” you blurt, “I want to. I want you.” 
“Then come here,” he says again, slower. 
And the way he says it, low and soft, lilting almost, turns you into just a girl. Disarms you so easily you almost sway with it. 
Instead, you drop to your knees, easy, and plant your hands on the floor. 
The moment you make the first move to crawl to him, he curses softly. You feel your cheeks burn and burn and burn. It isn’t like–
He’s seen you crawl a thousand times before, in the garden, over him and Ieri, roll around in grass and hill. He’s seen you be wild and untempered and free. 
But now you willingly follow his command, no less like this. You force yourself to pick your head up, to catch his eyes, to crawl easy and slow to him like you have a thousand times before. 
And when you get between his legs, he takes you by the face and kisses you fiercely, with more violence you’ve ever felt from him before. 
You rise up to twine your arms around his neck as arms band around your waist and just like that, you are in his lap once more. Just like that, you are kissing a god open mouthed and feeling it burn and twist inside of you. 
His hands slip up your sides, greedy in a way he has never allowed himself to be, catching on fabric and folds. He pulls you tighter to him, so you can feel that he’s–
You flush darkly. Moan softly with the realization and then feel the urge to hide in him, in the crook of his shoulder. He doesn’t let you, though, when you try to shy away, holds you still over him. So you have to feel him, so you have to try and keep from panting. 
“I had no idea you were so shy,” he breathes, almost laughing when you squirm, “I always saw you as unabashed.” 
“I never–” you don’t even know how to say it, and you hate how your voice pitches when you add, “I don’t have any experience with this.” 
“Neither do I, really.” He agrees, “but it’s just me.” He cooes, “it’s always been me.” 
This time he does allow you to hide in his neck, to duck down into him and let him soothe you with a big hand up and down your flank, your back. You’re near trembling with it and he must realize it, because he adds, “you really are nervous.” 
But he isn’t exactly being comforting. 
You sink your nails into him, “you’re enjoying this.” 
He laughs into your hair, “a little. I’ve never seen you this way before.” 
You nip at his throat a little, just the nick of your incisors, and feel him shudder beneath you. You feel his hips flex up into yours and with your legs spread, knees on other sides of his thighs, you can feel him, hot and hard at your center. 
You cling to him.
His hands flex around your waist, squeezing gently, before he suddenly urges the soft rock of your hips against his. 
It makes you gasp, it makes you terrified. 
Again, he moves your hips for you, guiding. Again, it’s startling to feel him, feel and know that there is so little fabric between you two. So little between you; no more clans or parents to stand in your way. 
He kisses you again, hard but sweet, still guiding you, moving your hips back and forth over him. Back and forth, until–
A moan startles out of you and this time, you feel yourself twitch your hips into him on your own accord. 
“That’s it,” he murmurs, “do what feels good. Doesn’t it feel good?” 
Another rock of your own hips, another push of his own and you nod, hovering above him slightly, lips parted over his. 
Then, you don’t need his hands at all, don’t need them to guide you at all. So he lets you learn and explore, lets his own hands wander over places he previously never allowed himself. He lets himself touch you in a way you have never felt; there is a sudden urgency to him now. 
You arch your back a little, encouraging, allowing, and his hands ease up onto your chest, all warmth from his palms seeping into you. It’s a surprise, almost, the heat of him, the way you fill his hands. 
He groans behind his teeth, squeezes lightly, as if afraid to hurt you and then bolder, harder. 
Your breath hitches when his thumb catches on the peaks of your breasts from over the fabric. So he does it again, firmer, and again, until you’re keening softly. Until you’re bucking a little more involuntarily against him. 
He suddenly pulls at the silk ribbon wrapped delicately around your waist, twists it around a hand until you feel the knot come away, feel the fabric give the way your stomach does, dropping slightly. 
You fist your hands in his shirt again, perhaps afraid. 
“Easy,” he murmurs, holding the front of your kimono closed still, if only for you, if only to give you a moment to adjust. The silk in his hands looks small, smaller than all of it swathed around you, drowning you in its starlight. 
When you’ve lessened your grip on him, he opens you up to him, painstakingly slow, bares you to him, pulls it down enough to pool at your waist. 
You feel the urge to hide again, to sink your nails into his skin, to fuss under his gaze. 
But then his bare palms are on your skin, warm hands, solid, real, burning hands that scorch up your torso to cup your breasts again. 
He watches your face now, lips parted, as his thumb sweeps over your nipples again, watches the way your features twist up. The feeling turns lightning hot, burns itself down to the wick inside of you, pooling low in your core. 
And Satoru is–enchanted. Enamored. Eyes a little rounded, hands eager. 
Without warning, he suddenly dips forward, lips parted, and fastens himself to the bud of your breast. 
Your hand disappears into his hair, shocked, fiending for an anchor and he groans against you when you tighten your hand into a fist. You pull, but it only encourages him, tongue laving over you, pink darting out against your flesh. 
You think he’s thought of this before, thought about doing this to you, wanted it for awhile now. You think it’s going to unravel you, as he drags his lips over to your other breast, as he latches on there, too. 
You can’t help but squirm in his embrace, pushing your hips into his, before arching your back into his seeking mouth. You can’t decide what you’d rather have, don’t think it matters because he’s the one in control now, holding you to his mouth, ducked down to your chest. 
You feel the graze of teeth. The sudden littering of kisses, nips. When his eyes flick back up to your face, he looks a little dazed, eyes all blue haze, glassy. 
He suddenly lays back, onto his elbows, hands falling back to your hips and you feel them squeeze, feel them guide you again. 
And he just watches a moment, with you on top of him, half bare, wedding silks petaled and pushed to your lower waist. His cheeks are flushed, lips stung pink, lashes fluttering as he watches you. 
He curses under his breath. 
You don’t think you’ve ever heard him curse this much before. 
“Angel,” he says, unbridled, from some deeper part of him, in a tone of voice that makes you flush. “Angel,” he says again, softer, more loving, breaking open on his lips like ripe fruit, “look at you, angel.” 
You tip forward, unable to keep from him, unable to remain up and so bare. So you press yourself to his chest, press your lips to his frantically, desperately seeking his solace, whatever comfort he’ll give you. Hide your bare chest to his, feel him hum against your lips, big hands all over your lower back, dipping lower still. 
“Lift your hips for me,” he says against you, rewards you by peppering kisses across your cheek, the corner of your mouth, your jaw, when you listen to him. He eases more of the fabric off of you, until his hands are running against pale lace, thumbing along the waist band of your panties. 
You shiver with more skin exposed, with your kimono gone. 
You pull at his own clothes desperately, if uncoordinated, just grabbing and fisting. You feel his laugh, taste it against your mouth, more than you even hear it. And his hands finally come up to help you, to ease off buttons, pull the fabric of his own out of the way until you can feel his bare chest. His bare arms. Muscled beneath soft skin. He’s so—
Sometimes you wonder, when he got so large. When did he become so strong? He was once so lanky. 
You keep pulling, until his entire torso is exposed to you, until you’re perched on his lap with your hands on his bare stomach. 
The dipping of his hips, the sculpted lines, draw your interest, eyes cast down as you finally take him in, too.
You inhale slow, grow brave enough to let your fingers brush against the button of his pants. 
“Go on,” he urges, watching you raptly. Eyes darting between your face and your nimble fingers.
You swallow hard and carefully pull the button through. Let it pop open easily with the tension there, can feel the heat of him, the hardness. Before you can falter, you take the zipper in hand and tug gently as well, until it reveals the dark briefs and—
The outline of him.
You look back up to him, perhaps for guidance, perhaps to gauge his own reaction, and he must sense your sudden uncertainty. 
“C’mere,” he soothes, bringing you to him in another kiss, heated and slow and deep. Tongue dipping against yours, licking softly into you until you’re distracted. 
Too distracted to notice where his hands are going, until you’re suddenly rolled onto your back, underneath him.
He slots his waist against yours. You can feel him more clearly through his briefs now, can feel the way he twitches as he pushes all tight up against you.
When he breaks from this kiss, it’s messier, spit dewy and wet between you. And his mouth eagerly trails down your jaw, sloppy kisses, and drags of his tongue down your throat, back to your chest.
He lingers here again, suckling, humming against you contently. Your hands sink back into his hair, moan bursting from you sweetly when he flicks his tongue just so. His eyes light up with the sound, working over the bud again and again, making your hips arch and ache.
He makes you sore with his own inexperience and eagerness, makes you fuss, until he relents and heads—
Lower.
“Satoru,” you call and the anxiety that picks up your voice doesn’t even make him pause. As if he’s expecting it.
His lips trail over your stomach, scattering wet little kisses.
You tug at his hair, trying to urge him back up, but he doesn’t listen.
He sidles down lower, manhandles you open so he can hook your legs over his shoulder. You try to shut your thighs but he easily keeps you parted, like you’re hardly trying at all.
“Satoru,” you say again, in warning, voice trembling, “don’t—please—“ 
He arches a brow, considers you, before completely disregarding you. 
You make a noise of irritation. 
“Stop being so shy,” he coos, “this is how I want you—this is—“
He glances down between your legs with a reverence that makes you hide your face in your hands, “this is what I’ve dreamt about.” 
He sets his lips to your inner thigh. 
“You’re so embarrassing!” You gasp between your fingers. 
He laughs and you can feel it, against the crux of your leg, so close to where you’re aching and hot and— “I haven’t even done anything yet.” 
He dots warm, open mouthed kisses to your skin, up and down your thighs. The sharp press of his teeth make you jump and squirm away from his hold, but he keeps you still and near. 
He takes his time, too much of it, as you begin to fuss again. You cry out to him, pull at his hair meanly, and all he does is muffle his laugh against you again. 
“I’m being cruel, aren’t I?” He says. 
You don’t know where he’s gotten his confidence, but it makes you want to hide or scream or drag your nails across his skin until it comes away torn and tattered. 
You think it’s something he’s always been rather content with, eager for, brave around—you. Your touch. Touching you. 
As if to say, since I am touchable to you, I will ruin you for any other touch. As if to say, well if I am not allowed to hide from you, you are certainly not allowed to hide from me.
You nod your head, bleary eyed.
“Okay,” he hushes, “okay.” 
The sudden hot press of his mouth to your core, through the pale blue panties, makes you gasp all strangled and tight.
“Satoru—“ you whimper in embarrassment, and you want to close your legs and just disappear. You want to twist away from him and hide. 
He hums against you, low and soft, and you can feel him mouthing and kissing over the fabric, where you’re most sensitive. 
He hooks a finger in the waistband of them and pulls, tugs gently and this time you really do sit up and try to get away from him.
“Calm down,” he says and there’s still an insufferably handsome smile at the corner of his lips, “it feels good, doesn’t it?”
“It’s so—“ 
Vulnerable, terrifying, horrible.
As if he can read your mind, as if he knows this moment the way you do, “what are you scared of?”
You swallow and look down at him and he peers back up at you, eyes all heaven blue, a little lovestruck, a little too hungry. 
You can’t even form the words, shaking your head a little, hands coming up to hide your face again. 
“Ah, come on now,” he muses and he sits up with you now, too. He pulls your hands away from your face and holds them in his, trapping them so you can’t run from him. “Tell me.” 
“Being bare.” You manage to get out, “being so—“
“Open to me?” He asks, “it’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it?” 
You realize he means that you have always been able to see every aspect of him; every aspect of his future and past and know it and have it and claim it. You know perhaps more about himself than he does at points. 
And maybe that’s all intimacy is, is knowing someone, very horribly, in ways that they may never know themselves.
You don’t know yourself like this, desire-driven, flayed open, a live wire of sensitive nerves and squishy, soft terror. You don’t know and won’t know what he sees or feels or tastes, you don’t know what he thinks.
In the same way that he has never known what you see or feel, what you tasted when you bit down on his future, what you think or know. 
I want revenge.
There’s a certain delight in his eyes, when he says, “I think you’ve gotten away with being very guarded for a long time. And I won’t have you guarded with me anymore.” 
You try to move your hands, take them back, or maybe suddenly cling to him and beg and simper and remain guarded. You want to try and manipulate him, you realize sharply, so that he’ll do this your way.
But he holds fast. 
“Lay back down,” 
“Satoru—“
“I’ll only ask once more.”
Tentatively, you lay back onto your elbows and he allows your hands to slip from his because you’ve obeyed him. 
You feel strange, experiencing this moment where you had previously only seen in the future, skipped over it almost, out of—
Shyness. 
He settles back down into the crux of your hips and this time, when he pulls the sweet, lace panties from your hips, all you do is let out a shuddering breath. Defeat, maybe, or anticipation, you can’t tell. 
His hand comes up, soothing, giving you the smallest comfort, before you feel his thumb, as careful as ever—
Slipping through ribbons of silky flesh, slick with desire, so sensitive that you squeeze your eyes shut.
He makes a soft noise, intrigue or affection, and adds a little more pressure.
“How do you touch yourself?” He asks and when you chance a glance down to him, you feel as if you’ll shake apart. 
His eyes are so dark and lust-blown, pools of blue ink. 
“I don’t know—“ you gasp.
His eyebrows quirk upwards in surprise, “you don’t know?” 
“Satoru—“ It comes out as a warning.
Don’t tease, don’t be mean, don’t be cruel.
“Don’t you touch yourself?” He asks and he glances back down to the way his thumb moves through you slowly, up and down, easy, with its slick glide.
In truth, not often. Or much at all. You explored, a little, you know, technically. 
But you just—neglected yourself. Your desire. You thought, in the scheme of things, there was so much more to worry about than pleasure. 
You don’t know when, but you became shy of your own body unless it was pain, unless it bloomed to bruise or fit to bleed or made you cry. You thought it strange to chase pleasure, especially at your own hands.
Did you even deserve it?
“Not really—“ you get out.
“You know what sex is, don’t you?” He teases and this time you flick his ear and make him laugh, warm and blossoming into the skin of your thigh. 
“I just didn’t—I don’t know!” You snap and now he sees that he’s pushing you perhaps a little too far because he softens. 
“Alright,” he says, “then we’ll find out.” And then his eyes catch yours, glittering in low light, “but you have to tell me what feels good. Can’t get shy on me.”
And then as gently as possible, you feel his thumb press fractionally inside you. His hands and fingers are bigger than yours so the sensation is strange and a little startling. 
You gasp.
He draws out, then gently back in. His eyes fixed on where your body swallows around his finger. 
Again, he repeats it and this time, pushes a little deeper.
To feel someone inside you is horribly vulnerable. Especially with his gaze fixed so squarely on where you’ve hardly seen yourself—
You always understood that this opening was a little unreachable. Even to yourself.
It’s why we keep our children there, isn’t it?
So as the feeling blossoms and Satoru murmurs softly to you, you find your hips twitching a little towards him. 
“There,” he coos, “does it feel good?” 
You nod, soft, small, and are rewarded by getting more of him. You throb, can feel it, the little pulse in your body and catch the cry that threatens to burst out of your throat behind your teeth. Trap it. You’re still scared to let it out or to give into pleasure. 
His thumb disappears to run outside of you again and you think he’s being a little indulgent now. He’s exploring, gently, watching, fixated.
Until he finds the bundle of nerves that makes you jolt.
He laughs a little, “right there?” 
“Yes,” you breathe, chest tight, knowing this is where, of any place you’ve felt pleasure, it was from here. And you know, technically, what he’s found and what he wants with how he sets his attention there now. 
Your body tenses but you don’t know—
When he dips forward to lave his tongue gently over your folds, you finally let go of that cry. 
You aren’t expecting it, can hardly process the wet heat of his mouth, as he makes another noise, low and needy and presses his mouth to you again.
Again, his tongue rolls out, and then he kisses, and then he’s open mouthed again and he’s experimenting. Tasting. Testing. And you’re just forced to bear it, your desire and his, in the small space between your legs.
You can tell he’s inexperienced, if not infinitely earnest and enthusiastic. And perhaps with your own inexperience and sensitivity, it makes it all worse. Or better. It feels—
You tangle a hand in his hair again and he groans against you when you pull on silver strands. You can feel the sound in your core and you tremble with it, shudder. 
His mouth is slick and shining and pink. 
He looks a little wrecked, a little uncertain and wobbly finally, too. 
“So good,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “you’re so good. Better than I imagined. How does it feel?” 
You whine a little, throwing your free arm over your eyes as you flop back onto the bed and he makes a displeased sound. You’re trying to hide from him. And he won’t stand for it, just like you never stood for it with him. 
“Use your words for me, angel.” He torments, he just about sings in that stupid, lovely voice of his. 
“It—“ you get out, “it feels good.” 
And then his mouth is back on you, bolder, a flash of wet tongue opening against you, messily devouring you as a reward. His eyes go soft lidded, desire-filled, all hazy newfound lust. 
You realize, dazedly, that his hips are pressing into the mattress, his own desire on a tight leash. 
“It feels good—“ your voice pitches, hips arching up into his grasp as everything turns molten and—and—
Good. 
It feels so good, you realize with a jolt, this strange heat. 
Like nothing you’ve ever felt before.
You feel his finger then, easy and slow, dip back inside you. Feel yourself cling to it. You can feel the way his tongue comes back up to that bundle of nerves to lick broad and slow over it.
Sloppy, but determined, eyes pitching back up to watch your face contort. 
You’re a fragile thing in his hands, you realize, teetering towards a precipice that frightens you, but that you know will—
It’ll feel good. 
“Toru—“ kitten soft, pulling fitfully at his hair, “I’m going to—“ you can’t even say it, can’t get the word to form in your mouth because it feels so strange there, but he groans against you and pushes a little deeper, gets a little more firm with you.
Your breath gets caught in the tangle of your throat, all knotted up, and the pleasure crashes on you swiftly and firmly. Takes you in it’s jaws and makes you squirm and cry out, whimpering as you feel—
You can feel the pulsing in your core against his eager mouth, feel the way it tightens and sucks at his finger. 
You try to shut your legs again, involuntarily, and he keeps you open.
Forces you open.
It is a horrible feeling.
Even worse when he’s being—lewd, licking broad stripes, letting translucent spit and, and—
Your desire drip and fall from his shining mouth.
You whimper, try to squirm away from him now as your pleasure gains a sharp edge and a vicious side to it. He must finally take enough pity on you or come out of his own haze, to notice, and finally draw away. 
And he looks at your face, perhaps disheveled, perhaps a little hazy in your own way, seeking and lost and desperate and he smiles. 
“Look at you,” he murmurs, coming up the length of your body, pressing his lips against yours before you can even think about it. Doubt it. Fret about it. You taste yourself on his mouth and it makes your heart trip up over itself, messy kiss that it is, it makes you shy again. But he doesn’t allow you to be. Still, you duck your face into his throat, peppering kisses there, nuzzling up against him, desperate for his affection suddenly. To be praised and stroked and adored. “So sweet when I strip you bare.” 
As if to counter him, you sink your teeth into his neck, and he laughs against your temple. 
You feel a little braver now or perhaps, needier, because you wrap your legs around his waist. Fix yourselves together like you were always meant to be, let him feel you, bare and warm and sticky, through the last bit of his clothes. 
He moans, a little shamelessly, and presses his hips into yours even more. 
And since he’s been so desperate for your desires, you murmur, “want you–I want you.” 
You can feel his chest heave a little with it, the weight, the sound of your voice against his ear. 
“How do you want me?” He murmurs back, though, as if to make it worse. “How did you think of this night?” 
In truth, you’ve always known it. So you know, when you twine your arms around his neck and hitch your legs a little higher on his waist, it will be just like this. 
Belly up and vulnerable, pliant on your back for him, for once in all your life. 
“Like this,” you murmur, pulling him in tighter, little vice grip that you’ve got, “just like this.” 
“Okay,” he breathes, maybe at the desperation in your voice, the sort of raw honesty that could break him apart, break him open. “Okay.” He says again, as if he could ever truly deny you. 
There’s some fumbling then, to get the rest of his clothes off, to reveal milky skin and the corded muscles of his thighs, his–
Your hands, uncertain, but desperate to please him, wrap delicately around his cock. 
He shudders a little, surprised, but hips push into your hand eagerly. 
He’s longer than you expected, but smooth in your palm, hot to the touch. 
“Getting brave?” He asks but you kiss at his jaw, his throat. 
“I want you to–” you unstick the words from your mouth, syrupy, and earnest, “I want you to feel good, too.” 
He makes a strangled noise, lets his head drop against your shoulder. 
“Listen,” he murmurs, “I’m not–” he laughs a little, trembling when you squeeze around him, when you fumble and stroke him. “I’m not going to last long.” 
And this time, you laugh, and it shakes some of  your fear off of you, opens you even further to him somehow. 
“That’s okay,” you sigh, wiggling your hips, suddenly eager to know he wants you this badly. You guide him until he’s found the heat of you, slippery and soft. “We have all night.” 
You can taste his smile, taste the groan, and can imagine the way his brows pinch together in pleasure. 
“We have our whole lives.” You tell him when he pulls away from the kiss.
“I have so much I want to do with you,” he says and though it makes you flush deeply, it also feels as if he’s saying–in life, I have so much I want to do with you. 
I have so much of you, and so much of life, and I want them both. I want it all. 
He takes himself in hand, lets your own hands fall away, slips himself, back and forth, between your legs. His face slackens a little, blissed out, and a higher noise gets pulled from him. 
“I’m really not gonna last long, angel.” He says again even as you let your head fall back, laughing, and his lips immediately follow to your throat. 
You buck your hips a little and the head of him catches and it makes you both freeze. 
You seize up. 
“Satoru–” you get out, nervous again, seeking, but this time he doesn’t deny you. 
“I know,” he hushes, “I know–you’re so tight. Just breathe.” 
You suck in a sharp breath as you feel his hips flex, feel the way you part around the tip of him, muscles so foreign, now being stretched, fitting snug around the shape of him. 
Your walls flutter.
“Relax,” he breathes, and it’s almost a hiss against your lips, and you don’t think it’s for you this time, but for himself. 
You try to breathe, though, in through your nose, try to loosen your legs a little around him enough to let himself press a little deeper. A hiccuped breath. 
Satoru kisses you hard, perhaps as a distraction, as you squeeze around him. As you feel the real burn and stretch of him, feel the way it carves inside of you and–
Tears prick your eyes. You don’t know how anyone does this easily or without someone like Satoru to you. Someone to call your own, who calls you his. Always has. 
He presses all the way into the hilt of him and you swear you can feel him in your stomach, feel your muscles clench and throb around him in painful little squeezes. He pulls away from your lips to let you breathe, to let his forehead drop to yours, his hair tickling against your cheeks. 
You whimper and he immediately coos at the sound, instinctive, as he’s done his whole life for you. You realize, perhaps dumbly, that this position is a familiar one in the sense that you bury yourself in the crooks of his body, cling to him like a child, and cry. And he has always soothed you. 
And right now seems, in many ways, no different. 
“Wrap your arms around me,” he murmurs and you wind yourself around his neck, wind yourself tight so that he might never untangle you. So that you might choke him.
And then he lifts you, sits back, and settles you gingerly in his lap. 
You’re stretched wide over him, holding yourself up desperately, and he’s aiding, hands at your waist. 
But then, gently, he lets you slip down. 
You hiss, but then find the back of your legs kissing his thighs, sitting snug.
“There,” he conjoles, letting you sit with him deep, deep inside you. Still. He kisses at your tear-stained cheeks, wet and soft, “that’s it. Just sit still for a moment.” 
You feel his tongue against your jaw, your throat, the flint strike of his teeth, of pain. You whimper into his shoulder and he continues to hush you, calm you, pull you closer so that he can run a broad hand over your sides, over your back. 
He pets through your hair, carefully, pushing it from your face to see your tears. The way you sniffle. He forces you to peer down your nose at him, lashes fluttering. 
You nuzzle into his cheek now, scattering wet, little kisses along his skin. He hums and you feel him twitch inside of you, feel the way his hands flex on your waist. 
“So sweet now, aren’t you? Usually so mean, suddenly so good for me.” He says against your jaw, “just falls apart in my arms, don’t you?” 
“Stop,” you mutter, pushing your face back into his neck to hide. 
“You just melt with my cock inside of you, huh? Is that it?” His voice goes soft and low and–
This time, you bury your nails in his shoulders. “Satoru!” 
But he can feel you flutter around him and he can feel the way your breath catches against his throat. 
“Why don’t you try moving, angel?” He coaxes, “just like earlier.” 
You shake your head, if only to spite him, so he begins to kiss you again. Hands dipping over your skin, moving up to your chest once more where he cups and squeezes. You can feel him again, deep inside you, throbbing. So desperate himself, held back by his own control. 
And then his mouth is again dipping down, to the peak of your breast, and he groans when he latches onto your nipple again. 
If you were braver, you’d have half a mind to comment on how he needs to keep his mouth busy. 
But for now, it only makes you loosen up finally, warmth a slow roll in the depths of you. 
You can feel yourself, dripping over him, rooted so deeply inside of you. It’s horrible but it’s–
It feels good, you tell yourself again, it feels good. 
Through the haze of the initial pain, there is pleasure that blooms. 
Your hips rock towards his, keeping him buried to the hilt, but you watch as his lashes flutter against your skin, cheeks hollowing with a suck that makes you keen and it’s–
It’s like lightning. 
You move again, squirm in his lap, until he pulls off your chest with a ragged groan, disheveled and half out of his mind. His hands help your hips, guide you slow, up and down over him until you’re dropping them all on your own. 
And he’s half mad with it, letting his head fall back, letting his hands grab and squeeze greedily. Greedy. 
Gods are greedy. And they will devour you.
You moan, clutching at his hair, his shoulders, feeling yourself become something else entirely–someone else entirely.
New being, new creature born out of something more than your pain, and the guilt, and the violence. New god, with the roll of your hips, and the way you feel him in the depths of you, all around you.
Satoru suddenly pushes you back again, so you’re belly up once more, finally sets his own pace and it’s a little more desperate. Teeth sink hard into your neck, capture you, make a high noise come out of you that you haven’t quite heard before. 
He grabs at you, pulls your hips up, hits somewhere deeper that makes you yelp. It makes tears well again and he can’t help himself anymore, hips beginning to stutter, lose their rhythm.
When you tip your head back, he suddenly grabs your face, bringing you back to face him. 
“Say it for more,” he gets out, voice wrecked and cracking at the end and–
Of course you know. 
“You will always have me,” you tell him, against his lips, spit slick and the whine caught in his throat. 
“You will always have me,” he promises.
You sink your nails into his shoulder as if to emphasize your next words, feel him keen now, “I will always have you.” 
And he gives you a harder thrust, as if to retaliate, just to feel you whimper, just to feel you cling to him. Settles himself deep inside of you, almost cruelly, as he gets out, his voice darker than you’ve ever heard it before;
“I will always have you.” 
Your cry is almost strangled, a hiccup of it, as you pulse and shatter around him like you were always meant to. 
He can’t help himself then, can’t help the bitten off groan that’s turned half into a whine, or the way he keeps himself buried, snuggly inside of you, as he fills you with warmth. 
It’s more soothing than you thought it’d be, the feeling of him like this. 
He leans heavier into you, mouths at your chest again, gentler now, more content. 
And he tips his head up, so you can see the catch of his starlight eyes, and he murmurs, “I love you. More than you’ll ever understand, I think. In a way I can’t even properly express.” 
But you sift your hands through his hair and look down at the man you’ve known all your life and think, I changed all of time for you. 
You smile softly, watery, and he leans up to clear your tears away again. And again. Like he always has. 
I did everything for you, you think.
Then you say, gently, and you think your voice has a newer quality to it, more honeyed–it almost sounds familiar to your own ears;
“I think I understand more than you’d know.” 
 And he laughs a little, but it’s off kilter all over again, and he’s kissing you and you swear you’ll let him devour you in every way he likes, for the rest of your life. 
You realize it isn’t so bad– to be devoured by a God. 
***
Your life has transformed before your eyes. 
At once, it was an endless cycle of your childhood home; your father’s violence and your mother’s scurrying and you, somewhere between them. You, some horrible form of both. 
But now you live with Satoru and Megumi and Tsumiki. And Ieri visits and Nanami pretends he doesn’t want to visit, but does, and Utahime brings flowers. 
Satoru and her become teachers together. 
And you walk Megumi and Tsumiki to school and walk them back home, too. You watch the sun in the sky and you think about trying to preserve this time forever. You think about trying to get the sun to stop. Or to swallow it whole. 
You fall into bed with Satoru, (in countless ways, over and over, like you’ve discovered a new world together, another part of yourself, of him, that yawns open inside of you), and miss him tremendously when he’s away. 
Megumi, as if he knows, always seems to ask for movie nights when Satoru’s gone, or perhaps he just misses him, too. You think Megumi struggles more than Tsumiki or Tsumiki is better at hiding it. You can only imagine, with what they’ve been through, how they’re doing. Their life has been unstable, uprooted, and now they finally have a home. A place that they will reside for longer than a few weeks, a few months, a few years. You know it might be hard, though, and you know they’ll struggle. You and Satoru watch them closely, perhaps too closely. 
“How do you think they’re doing?” You ask Satoru one night after putting them in bed, as you begin to strip your clothes of the day. Immediately, you feel Satoru’s hands sliding along your stomach, eagerly pulling you pack into his chest. He’s warm, his hands, his body. 
“I think Tsumiki is doing alright. Megumi is…” He trails off but you understand, “I don’t think he’s doing as well.” 
“He struggles with change.” You respond, “but I think it will be good for him, to finally have a stable home.” 
Satoru looks at you for a moment in his arms, against his chest, his eyes softened, before he says, “I never thanked you, you know.” 
“For what?” You ask, turning your face to find his eyes. 
“For taking them in, without a second thought.” 
“I’ve always known them, Satoru.” You tell him, “I’ve always known that we’d–”
He nods like he knows, but he still says, “it’s a lot to ask of you.” 
“It’s not a lot to ask to love them.” You tell him, “it’s hard not to.” 
“I know,” he agrees and he swallows around something. And then he asks, “you wouldn’t let anything happen to them, would you?” 
You tilt your head and hear the real question in his words, the way he trembles with it. 
“Never.” You agree. 
“Even over me?” He insists, “I want you to pick them–over me.” 
You think Satoru has always known more than he tends to let on. 
You swallow hard. You don’t even want to think of it, don’t want to think about–
“I won’t have to.” You tell him softly, shaking your head as if to clear your mind of the memory, the version of this life where you have to pick. But you’ve been so careful and you’ve played it all so well, so perfectly that there’s no way now. Is there?
You have the urge to suddenly reach for your necklace, swing the pendant in front of your gaze and tear through time, just to be sure. 
“Say you did,” he murmurs, “I want you to–I want you to say you’d pick them.”
“Okay,” you say, if only to get him to leave it, let it drop from you. You want to forget. You want to shake your head, harder, until it all rattles out of you.
“No,” Satoru says softly, holding you to him before you can dart away, “I need to hear you say it.” 
Something inside of you squirms. 
You glance upwards to find the mirror hanging across the room as decoration, catch the way he’s holding you, the look in his eyes. His reflection looks strange to you now, towering, darker than ever before. 
He fastens himself tighter to you, “I know that you’ve put me before everyone until now.” He says softly, “that between me or Suguru, it would always be me. If it came down to it, I think you would let everyone burn, so long as it saved me. I know it’s–” 
He stops himself. 
And then he says, “but it can’t be for them. Do you understand?”
You can feel tears welling in your eyes. 
“So just say it for me now,” he soothes, “promise me, you’ll put them first.” 
You feel as if two intrinsic things inside of you stretch and pull, struggle with one another. The urge to do as he asks, or the urge to finally, after everything, put others before him, when there’d been no one else. 
Both feel counterintuitive. Confusing. Your head begins to throb and if you didn’t know better, you’d think–it almost tastes like cursed energy, the air tangy with it, sharp. 
Satoru turns you towards him and he takes your chin in between his fingers delicately and forces you to look up at him. “Promise me,” he murmurs. 
You swallow around the hard lump forming in your throat. You don’t know why you’re crying. It’s not as if–
It’s not as if you don’t love Megumi or Tsumiki. 
It’s just–you’ve only ever known Satoru, in the deepest, most ruthless, most tender parts of you. 
“I promise,” you whisper, “I promise to put Megumi and Tsumiki before you.” 
“No matter what–” He urges. And even though it burns and aches, sticks like thorns in your throat, Satoru Gojo makes you give him your second binding vow;
“No matter what.” You choke out, “no matter what.” 
***
The day your mother dies, you spend the morning holding Tsumiki. She’d had a nightmare. She said she used to always sleep with her mother when she had this dream and now she is in your bed. And you are holding her the way your mother used to hold you when you had visions. 
Satoru has gone away on a mission. Your bed had been empty until she’d filled it. 
You try not to cry or let her know you’re crying, but you lay in bed with her beside you and you think of your own mother. 
And this was–the fixed point. The one you could never fix. In countless versions, you tried to stop this day, and in all, you failed.
You wonder then, if there are moments that are so certain, no one can touch. Not you, not fate, not a thing. 
You think the inception of you created her death, in the way that you are forcing it to create your father’s. 
If there is anyone truly damned, you think it must be your mother. 
You wonder if Tsumiki will think the same of you one day. If Megumi will look at you and realize, at some point, you were never going to be anything other than damned. 
After you walk the kids to school, you return to your childhood home. 
You stand outside its doors and know what will meet you beyond them. For a moment, you feel like screaming, screaming bloody and howling, wailing in the streets, crying out to the heavens. You think about what is on the other side of that door and you wish you’d never seen it all. Out of all the lives you’d peered into, you wish your mother was not one of them. You wish you had no idea what will meet you or what you will do.
You think of Suguru suddenly, if he stood outside his parents door and knew, too, that he brought death. That the creation of him, brought the death of them. 
You suddenly miss him so sharply and keenly that you want to run to him. You wonder if he would open his arms to you now, or if it’s all over, so torn to shreds that there is not anything he could want from you anymore. Perhaps not anything but your divinity. 
You stand outside their door like a reaper. 
You know you have to enter. And that time will not stop, you can never force it still. 
You inhale. 
You push open doors that have never felt heavier. 
The bloody tilt of your mother’s head makes you feel like a child again, terrified all over, and sick to your stomach. She is still alive now, gasping, and shaking. 
When she finds your eyes, she is almost relieved to see you, like you were the only and last thing she could’ve ever wanted to see. 
You feel something inside of you, already splitting, come away from its seams. 
“Mom,” you say, like you’re a child again, crawling to her on bloody floors. 
Still, she reaches her hand out to touch your cheek, as if she may comfort you. Even during death, she tries to comfort you. You choke hard on the sob working its way out of you. 
“You s-shouldn’t be here,” she whispers, mouth cut open with blood. “You need to–” 
She’s trying to save you from your father. 
But you couldn’t leave her like this, couldn’t leave her to die alone. 
You shake your head, cupping her palm to your face, keeping it there, “it’s okay, mom. I’ll be okay.” 
And I want you to be okay, you want to say, I want you to live longer. I want to have you for longer. You feel the tears rush hard and hot down your face.
At least you had longer than Tsumiki or Megumi. At least you had her this long. 
But for all your power, for everything that could’ve happened, you just couldn’t. Save. Her. 
You’ve known from the first moment you opened a gold bled eye. 
“I love you,” your mother gets out, as clearly as she can, as if she needs you to know, “I love you.” 
“I love you, too,” you whisper, squeezing tighter to her hand. 
You can hear your father’s footsteps, somewhere down the hall. As if you’ve heard them a thousand times and for this final time. 
“You are the best thing i-in my life. Always.” Her voice is hoarse, it looks like it hurts her, to get the words out, but for you, always for you, she does, “always.” 
Your mind burns and blurs and there are a thousand things you wish you could say to her now. A life that you wish you could unwind and reverse, a life you wish you could’ve saved, a child you wish you could’ve been. 
Your father opens the door to the living room for the final time.
And when he sees you, it’s as if he knows now, too, that it is the time. 
He doesn’t tell you he loves you, when you kill him, he doesn’t say a word, when you are covered in his blood, too. 
(You gut him, the way Zeus did to Kronos, and crawl back to your mother, bloodied.)
And all you can think to do is press up against her, like you are a child again in the home you grew up in. To be held by her for the last time of your entire life. 
You don’t know how long you stay like that, only that at some point, the sun is setting, and smolders bronze, casts all the world in a fiery glow. 
And eventually, your husband lifts you, bloody and silent, from your mother’s arms, to carry you out of that house for the final time.
You watch, quiet as the dead, in his arms, as it slowly rises to flames. 
(When the higher ups of the sorcery world investigate, they will say your father killed your mother, and then himself, by burning the place down. They will say he couldn’t handle your disgrace, that he was never well, anyways. He was a haunted man.)
And the garden you grew up in burns and the house you called a home cracks beneath hungry flame. Your father’s body burns away and releases you and your mother’s body falling to ash makes you want to tear out your own heart. 
It all burns and you watch, silent, knowing that your mother or father will never turn to curses now, they will never haunt you or hunt you again, knowing that you are the last curse left of that house. 
And it will be a long, long time until you are burned with them, too. No, now you are born anew, born again, covered once more in your mother's blood. You do not scream this time. The fire burns hot and bright in your vision.
Gods are very lonely, you think again, and you watch your childhood go up in flames.
***
Masterlist | <- Chapter Two: Anything, Everything | Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God ->
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skarlette1 · 1 month
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Wishful Wand: Part Two (New)
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--Part Two of Wishful Wand
Finding myself stranded in an alien pocket dimension was one of the weirdest consequences of orgasm that I’d ever dealt with. Definitely top five. If this tall, darkly beautiful stranger thought she could intimidate me with weirdness, she didn’t know who she was dealing with. I was proud that being Zelda Zane, ace reporter, meant that I always got the story, and never became the story.
I glared at the woman. “How did I get here?”
“I brought you, of course. More precisely, I summoned your erotic energy field here through my Wishful Wand that you so obligingly used to pleasure yourself, Zeldazane.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“I crafted my Wishful Wand to draw forth erotic energy and send it to me. There is nothing it knows that I do not. I’ve tasted every sensation your flesh has enjoyed from my handiwork. I’ll shape what gives you pleasure in the future.”
I knew that Al-Phae’s people had created technology that ran off what she called erotic energy. Did that mean this strange woman was Quimtonian? “Just who are you, anyway?”
“I am Commissar Zehd, rightful ruler of Quimton, banished to this hateful realm by treachery. Short-sighted, jealous weaklings knew the only place that could keep me from taking my place in the sun was the dread Shade Circumference. You, Zeldazane, are going to help me escape this accursed prison.”
I’d never head of Zehd, but Al-Phae had mentioned the Shade Circumference when I’d asked her about Quimton. “Banished? Only Quimton’s most dangerous criminals were sent into the Shade, far from the light of their red star.”
“Criminal? I was a patriot! Until that witch Al-Phrynn betrayed me! She banished me to this place that is not a place. What did their betrayal gain them? Nothing! The so-called ‘rightful rulers’ of Quimton died along with my home. How fitting that the prison they cast me into is the very reason I wasn’t killed along with the world I loved. It was all that Al-Phrynn could do to send her infant daughter to safety on your backwards planet.”
“You mean Al-Phae. Captain Alpha’s mother put you here.”
“You have cleverness for a lesser being, Zeldazane. I can see why Al-Phrynn’s daughter chose to cultivate you as her erotic confection. That is why I have brought you here. I will have my revenge by bringing Al-Phrynn’s sanctimonious daughter to her knees. You shall further my plan.”
Supervillains are just waiting to tell their plan to anyone who’ll listen. It’s almost too easy. “A plan for revenge? Sounds dangerous.”
“Dangerous for Al-Phrynn’s daughter, certainly. She shall never expect that the Earthling Sammiesims is already in my thrall. Even now she prepares an artificial body to host my projected consciousness.”
I knew Sammie was acting strangely! She was brainwashed to betray me to Zehd. “That’s devious. But how will possessing the body of a gynoid help you gain revenge?”
“Earthlings are quaintly short-sighted. Even though the shell is a primitive synthetic life form, it will allow me to get close to Al-Phrynn’s daughter unsuspected. My mastery of erotic energy is unparalleled. I only need an single unguarded moment to siphon every drop of erotic energy from Al-Phrynn’s daughter, leaving her a withered husk. Flush with her power, I shall shatter the walls of the Shade Circumference and escape this prison permanently.”
I had all I needed to know. “You’re mad if you think that will work. Al-Phae isn’t even on Earth.”
“Perhaps not at the moment. But she will return when her erotic confection beseeches her. You have an intimate connection with Al-Phrynn’s daughter, Zeldazane. You will lure her into my clutches.”
“I’ll never betray Al-Phae. I love her.”
“Love? Of course you love her, little Earthling. You are an unworthy creature who has tasted the pleasures of Quimtonian flesh. You cannot help but love her. It matters not. Your love is meaningless. Your will is meaningless. Your choice is meaningless. You have raised your erotic energy with a tool I crafted. You’ve shared that passion with me and therefore, I claim it as mine to shape. As I shape your erotic energy, I sculpt your soul, Zeldazane. Or what passes for a soul among paltry Earthlings.”
“This is one Earthling that you won’t be sculpting, Zehd. I will fight you with every breath in my body. I will never obey you.”
“You may choose to struggle, if you wish. Your reaction matters not. You may devote yourself to me fully. You may despise me. You may dismiss your memories of this place as a dream. You may plan and plot and struggle against me. It matters not, Zeldazane. You shall follow my commands.”
“If you’re trying to scare me into submitting, you are sorely mistak—”
“Enough chatter, Zeldazane. Pleasure yourself.”
My arm behind my back was wracked with a sudden cramp, like I’d held it in an unnatural position for too long. Without a thought, I stretched my arm out, still clutching the wand. It felt no better. Moving it in search of relief, I quickly discovered the one position my arm naturally wanted to be in: holding the wand between my thighs. The pleasure that washed over me was the first sensation since I’d been in the Shade Circumference that didn’t feel fundamentally wrong. “Ooooohhh. That feels so fucking good. But I won’t … ohfuck … won’t help you.”
“You will do as I command, little Earthling. Crest now.”
Instantly, my body craved orgasm and the wand easily supplied it. I screamed and shook with wave after wave of bliss. It was all I could do to keep from collapsing to my knees.
“You see, Zeldazane? Every crest sculpts your erotic energy, perfecting its ability to hear my commands.”
Still wobbly, I glared up at her. “All I hear … is a criminal ... saying a lot of bullsh—”
“Crest now.”
I climaxed again, my eyes rolling back as I drowned in bliss. The orgasm consumed me fully. I hadn’t experienced anything so powerful since Al-Phae had been gone. When I finally came back to myself, I was on my knees before Zehd, panting. “This … won’t … work....”
“Of course it will, Zeldazane. I have broken hardened Quimtonian sex warriors with that Wand. A stubborn Earthling is nothing. Particularly one who has already developed a taste for Quimtonian sex. Crest now.”
My back arched hard, pressing my pussy against the wand as passionate release burned through my body. My muscles went so taut for so long, I thought I’d tear something (or would have, if I could have thought at all). After an eternity, I collapsed back on the spongy ground. When I could breathe again, I don’t know where I found the defiance to mutter, “Won’t … I … won’t … I ...”
“You will, Zeldazane.” Zehd knelt beside me, her dark eyes holding my gaze. “Crest now.”
I came, her eyes boring into my soul. “... I ...”
“Don’t speak, Zeldazane.” She caressed my cheek with her hand, as strong and soft as Al-Phae’s, but so cold. She slipped a thumb between my lips. “Crest now.”
I came, her thumb penetrating my mouth with bliss.
“Crest now.”
I came, my body shaking the way she shaped it.
“Crest now.”
I came, my mind dissolving in Zehd’s acid passion.
“Crest now.”
I crested, hearing Zehd’s command in the depths of my soul. I twitched helplessly at her feet.
She studied my weakened state. “My first command is that you shall tell no one else about me and my plan. Do you hear my command, Earthling?”
I struggled to catch my breath from that spate of orgasms. “I’m a … reporter. I tell people … what I hear and—OHHHHH!” My body convulsed again with bliss.
“My second command is that you shall assist Sammiesims with reviving the synthetic body for my inhabitation. Do you hear my command, Earthling?”
Somewhere I dredged up another scrap of willpower. “I won’t obey just because I hear you—OHMYGOD!” I writhed with another orgasm overwhelming me.
“My third command is that you shall contact Al-Phyrnn’s daughter and summon her into my trap. Do you hear my command, Earthling?”
“I … I … I hear you—OHFUCKOHFUCK!” The pleasure overwhelmed my other senses, burning away my awareness with ecstasy I couldn’t resist.
--To Be Concluded...(Next Week)
---
Like what you read? Will you buy me a coffee and request something rich to sink my teeth into? Or peek into the depths of my longer fiction?
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kxowledge · 2 months
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I thought I’d be more anxious about the whole PhD applications process. I am not. I am actually very much fine with the prospect of not getting in. Partially, it’s because I have only applied here, which means that, if rejected, I still can apply to many other places & equally that I haven’t gotten a string of rejections, which perhaps would have tugged at my self-esteem. Partially though, it’s because I’m fine with the idea of not doing a PhD.
It's not because I don’t want to do one – I think this sort of career would suit me very well! – but at the end of the day, it’s a job like any other. I’ve always known that I could have gone for something else and be okay, but now this doesn’t feel like a second choice imposed upon me. If academia isn’t for me, I can perhaps think of doing something else that’s completely different – something that could help with the lack of meaning I feel at the moment. I don’t have clear plans, I’ll decide when it comes to it, but there’s many opportunities I’d consider. There’s three-four I keep circling back to, around agroecology, teaching, and more directly helping others. I would still apply next year (and possibly another cycle as well) before giving up, but I wouldn’t be too upset if it doesn’t work out.
I have the second and final interview next week. And I’m very calm about it. Confident in my abilities and confident that I’ll be happy no matter what awaits me in the future.
I did a tarot reading two days before my first interview. Three cards popped out. The Tower – representing a surprising change – is very fitting. It’s an invitation to embrace it and look at it in a positive light, which I think is the attitude I have going forwards, no matter what this change will entail. Looking at the card, I also thought of “bad” habits I’m trying to get rid of. It also indicates a revelation, and I must say, I am going through a period of realization, understanding more and more what’s important to me: human connection. This means love and helping others and so much more. The Eigth of Cups signals a similar direction: the seeking of a deeper meaning, focusing on my personal truth and concentrating on what is important. It also speaks about growing weary and lacking energy, which is very much the condition I find myself in. Not emotionally, but physically. Allow me a small parenthesis about this.
It has been almost a year since I started feeling this way. ["This way" being fatigued, often with a low-grade fever, stomach pain, exhaustion after very little activity, frequent headaches, little appetite, nausea]. I thought what I was experiencing was burnout. August is when things got worse – surely triggered by the bacterial infection I got in India. I thought I had started making progress towards the end of 2023, but then I got Covid (again) and it all went downhill. It is entirely possible that this is long Covid. It could be something else. It could be nothing.  I haven’t seen a doctor about this. I mentioned it in my last visit and it got dismissed. I will go in the next few weeks for another visit, as I promised my dear ones. I don’t have much faith however in the doctors’ ability to do something. Especially if it is long Covid, there really aren’t recommendations and treatments in place (though research is underway).
I haven’t been fully transparent with my family about the extent of how fatigued and sick I am, though they know I’m not in top shape. My boyfriend on the other hand is similarly worried (but hasn’t gone down the spiral of googling what specific types of illness it can be). I am too. It feels like something serious. And it’s so much pain that the other day I actually thought that I don’t think it would be worth living like this. I hadn’t had this sort of thoughts for a long time. I’ve been trying to manage my energy more and I might share bits of this journey here, as perhaps they might be helpful for someone else too.
Finally, the Emperor. Structure, which is what I need for growth. An order and sound principles. The way forward.
#p
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edosianorchids901 · 1 year
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Wish Upon a Star
@flashfictionfridayofficial prompt - "birth of a star"
“Hey, angel. Angel. Angel.”
The insistent voice broke through Aziraphale’s concentration. He lowered his book, just a little, and peered at Crowley over the top. “Yes, my dear?”
Crowley hovered in the doorway, no part of his body still for more than a second or two. “On a scale of one to ten, how pissed off would you be if I accidentally collapsed the cottage into a black hole?”
Aziraphale blinked. “How much coffee have you had?”
“Er, dunno.” Swaying from side to side, tempting, Crowley grinned. “Not that much. Anyway. How pissed off would you be?”
“Fifteen,” Aziraphale said dryly.
Crowley winced, whole face wrenching. “Hrgh, okay. I’ll try really hard not to do that, then.”
“I would appreciate it.” Good Lord, what was that silly old serpent doing? “Crowley?”
Crowley had been in the process of vanishing down the hall, but he zipped back with an unconvincingly innocent expression. “Yeah?”
Aziraphale wagged a finger at him, attempting to be stern. “No supernovae either, you naughty demon.”
A brilliant smile lit up Crowley’s face. “I’ll do my best. Hey, on a scale of one to ten, how annoyed will you be if I interrupt your reading again in like ten minutes?”
It was difficult not to laugh when he was being so adorably enthusiastic. “I suppose it depends on the nature of the interruption. If you interrupt me with a black hole or a supernova, I shall be very cross. Otherwise, it’s perfectly okay.”
“Terrific.” The wicked grin widened. “Be back in a minute. Hopefully.”
“I thought I had ten minutes to read!” Aziraphale called as Crowley bolted.
The footsteps didn’t so much as pause, thundering down the hall and then pounding upstairs to the attic. Aziraphale chuckled, amused, and tried to resume reading.
He wasn’t finding it easy to focus, though, too curious. And besides, there wasn’t much of a point. Crowley always got very excited when he tried something new. When he first started working in the garden, he’d called Aziraphale outside to look at something several times per day.
Smiling, Aziraphale slipped a bookmark between the pages and waited. Perhaps they’d have some celebratory wine or champagne if the mystery project went well.
He didn’t have to wait long. Crowley rushed back downstairs and burst into the library. He skidded to a halt and held out his hand. “C’mon. You’ll love this.”
Aziraphale took his hand and allowed Crowley to drag him along. “No black holes, then?”
“Nope. It went perfect.” Before they reached the attic, Crowley turned to him. “Close your eyes, angel.”
This was rather fun, in a way. Aziraphale closed his eyes, holding tightly to Crowley’s hand. Crowley would make sure he didn’t trip over anything, not even the stairs.
Up the stairs, and they stopped. “Okay,” Crowley whispered, arm slipping around his shoulders. “Check it out.”
Aziraphale opened his eyes and gasped. Curtains shielded the attic window, and the light remained off. But in the center of the room, a brilliant blaze. Reddish in hue, almost painful to look at, but absolutely stunning.
“Good Lord,” Aziraphale whispered. He stepped closer, studying the warm glow. The orb itself could easily fit in his hands, but it brimmed with energy and power. “You… you made a star?”
“Made a lot of ‘em,” Crowley said, trailing a finger through the flickering corona, like one might play with a candle flame. “This is the first one I’ve done since I Fell, though. Didn’t know if I could.”
“Oh my. Oh, Crowley, it’s beautiful!” Aziraphale gazed up at his demon, in awe. “This was your first try?”
“Yup. It’s pretty run of the mill, on the cooler end of main sequence.” At that, Crowley gave the star an almost critical look, like he might give a wilting plant. But his expression softened at once, and he smiled at Aziraphale. “You said no black holes or supernovae. So I thought I’d play it safe, make something smaller.”
Aziraphale chuckled. “Well, I do appreciate the caution, and it’s a wonderful star.”
Crowley gave a winning smile. “You wanna watch me make another one?”
Excitement rushed through Aziraphale, and he nodded vigorously. This would be much more exciting than an evening’s reading. “Oh, I would love to. I’ve always wished I could have seen you in those days.”
Crowley wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Well, when you wish upon a star…”
Aziraphale stretched to give him a proper kiss, and then turned his gaze back to the new creation in their attic. “If wishing upon a star does mean my dreams will come true, well… I suppose I’d wish for an eternity of days very much like this. And perhaps several more pretty stars.”
Crowley laughed and held out a hand. A surge of power went through him, and his fingertips glowed as the first traces of a new star flickered to life. This one slightly blue, its light mingling with the red star’s to flood the room with shades of purple. “Wish granted.”
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fahrni · 1 year
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Saturday Morning Coffee
Good morning. I’ve just finished my first cup of joe time to do a little writing while the second cools a bit. ☕️
The back is still misbehaving and I’m over it. Don’t you wish it was that easy to heal something? You just say “I’m over it” and it’s magically fixed? Yeah, me too. Physical therapy, I’m coming to see you. Be kind to me.
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Grist
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have allegedly achieved the first-ever net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction, according to the Financial Times, which cited three unnamed sources with knowledge of the recent experiment.
The Iconfactory
More than any other year in recent memory, 2022 brought big changes—some good, some bad, and some sad. During our 25 years in business we’ve learned to roll with all manner of punches and continue forging ahead. This year was no different.
I’m a huge fan of The Iconfactory. I use more than a few of their products, including Tot, which I’m using now to write this post.
I also use Twitterrific, xScope, and Wallaroo. Really great software, excellent people.
Comic Sands
Social media users cheered as Democratic President Joe Biden masterfully trolled former Republican President Donald Trump’s big “announcement” with a few announcements of his own.
President Biden announced a bunch of really nice accomplishments.
TFG’s big announcement was a bunch of NFT trading cards with his face superimposed over the top of various fit men. Laughable, but true.
The great grift continues. You too can own these gems for $99.00US. I wonder how many of his poor cult members fell for it? Poor saps. 🤣
Fortune
Cavill, who has played Superman since 2013’s “Man of Steel,” took to Instagram on Wednesday to share the “sad news” that he would not be returning to the iconic role.
I loved Mr. Cavill as Superman and will miss him as The Man of Steel.
And to really rub salt in the wound he had to turn down his role as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher, which kind of ruins that too. 🤬
Six Colors
Lawsuits, new laws, and proposed regulations have been swirling around Apple and some of its core business practices for years now. But on Tuesday came the first report—from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, perhaps the most reliable breaker of secret Apple news—that Apple’s planning on changing its App Store policies in major ways.
Apple allowing Third Party App Stores? What? Has hell frozen over?
Look, if we do get Third Party App Stores I Apple will require each of them to pass a percentage of each sale directly to Apple.
Tim Apple: “Welcome to the Apple Platform, Third Party App Store.”
Third Party: “Thank you, Tim. It’s good to be here.”
Tim Apple: “I’ll take 27% of every sale, due at the first of the month.”
Third Party: “😳”
Apple always wants their piece of the pie, so to speak. 🥧
The Washington Post
HOUSTON — Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: Compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.
What is wrong with these people? Trans rights are human rights! Get lost Paxton. Texas, what a terrible state. Embarrassing and dangerous.
Our country lacks empathy for fellow human beings. It’s sickening.
Fulton News & Record
The men standing before the cameras in Moore County were sober-faced and serious as they addressed the intentional and targeted attacks on two electric substations the night before. Forty-five thousand residents lost power, schools and businesses closed, the county was forced to declare a state of emergency and curfew, and local communities were put both at risk and on edge
Swift.org
The Foundation framework is used in nearly all Swift projects. It provides both a base layer of functionality for fundamentals like strings, collections, and dates, as well as setting conventions for writing great Swift code.
Kenny Kerr
The windows crate provides bindings for the Windows API, including C-style APIs as well as COM and WinRT APIs. This crate provides the most comprehensive API coverage for the Windows operating system. Where possible, the windows crate also attempts to provide a more idiomatic and safe programming model for Rust developers.
Vox
It’s not about doxxing. It’s about Elon.
Bingo. This entire time a man we all thought was some kind of genius was just another grifter. Don’t get me wrong, the man is smart, but I don’t think he’s a genius. He’s a narcissists and needs to be in the news. See, even I’m talking about him. That’s his super power.
How do you go from society’s Tony Stark, focused on accelerating the world toward sustainable energy, to being the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving screaming about the woke mafia?
— Christian Selig (@ChristianSelig) December 16, 2022
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linelpisffxiv · 2 years
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FFXIVWrite2022 2: More like Jolt
“Not bad,” Az-- Terpsichore says as he completes the movements they taught him.
The sword in his hand is beautiful, Hedone and Harmonia did a wonderful job making something that was meant for the job while incorporating his love of nature.
“I’ve been practicing,” he says. “I know you won’t let me on my own until I perfect at least one. I figure the sword and one mind stone combination is better than the four mind combination.”
“The weapon is the same either way,” Terpsichore says. “That said, I’m more fond of the other style, but that is my own preference.”
“I’ve heard stories of other weapons, are they all based on this same one for you?”
They shake their head. “Quite a few, yes, but others, not so.”
They draw their mind stones, and the four stack to meld into a staff. Then the top releases itself and changes to a different position. “Different energies demand different orientations there. If I were to copy Hades’s style, I’d use the first, but if I were to imitate Venat’s, then this one is better.”
With that, they pull them back into four separate pieces.”
They tap on something by their neckline, under his robe. The mind stones flash and replaces are two sharp knives by their side. “My mother taught me other styles, of course. This is my favorite when I need range, but also speed. Hard to be nimble when I’m not.”
They draw the knives from their resting places, and they bifurcate- trifurcate even. It spreads into three knives on each side covering their knuckles.
“One of the few constructs with my own name in the creator’s spot. Also the name of the construct. The Chief of the Bureau of the Architecht was so pleased the great Azem did it, he wanted people to remember my name, and so the Terpsichore knives exist. But enough of that, show me what you have.”
“H-how?” he stutters out the question.
“You know how you can create a string of aether to move into a target? Come at me.”
He’s about to ask how again, when with something that sounds like the jingling of bells, they disappear, dashing about a kalamos away.
He tries to use his own dash, but by the time he’s there, Terpsichore is a kalamos away again, in a different direction.
“I can keep this up until you catch me, perhaps longer.”
An interesting game they suggest. It takes almost a dozen attempts before he catches them.
“Now do it with four. Icaros is a skill I use with them to imitate a similar feature. It allows me to be where I need, and would be good practice with controlling the others.”
He’s about to protest.
“I’ll show another weapon if you do it again.”
He grins. That sounds like great practice. And how many people can claim that they were trained by an Azem?
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sixeyesgojo · 3 years
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jjk characters handling your period
Summary: “What do you mean, no baby this month either? Okay, suffer then.” - your damn uterus
Pairings: Gojo/Megumi/Nanami/Naoya/Toji x Reader
Content warning: the monthly bloody nightmare your uterus puts you through and the whole shebang that comes with it, language warning, suggestive themes, explicit warning for Toji (you’ll see why)
A/N: purely self-indulgent because I suffer. @megumifushi and @sukirichi , my gals, I gotcha. Also dedicated to all readers who suffer from the same fate (may it be right now or not). Also: Yes, absolutely open the video I linked in Megumi’s part (it’s safe, I promise).
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Gojo Satoru
You turn and turn in bed uncomfortably. Something isn’t right, you think and it’s not the fact that Satoru is missing next to you. Not knowing immediately irritates you. All of a sudden you become painfully aware of your lower region. Yes, of course it had to be that time of the month. You just knew you already stained your panties and perhaps the sheets haven’t been spared either. Getting out of bed, then realizing it was already past noon, you sprinted to the bathroom. Fuck, moving fast was not a good idea. 
Having changed the sheets and your stained panties, you made your way to the kitchen. Your stomach growled, signaling you were hungry, but at the same time you feared. Smelling food, let alone tasting too much of it, was a slippery slope – either your nose would protest or your stomach, no in-between. Regardless, you had to eat; or were you supposed to starve to death because of this? Not in this lifetime. “I AM BACK!” an annoyingly loud voice rang through the apartment. You groan and turn around. “Fuck off, Satoru,” you say. Your irritation flaring up for seemingly no reason. “Stop being so motherfucking loud. My head feels like it’s going to split in two and my pussy is fighting the crimson war right now,” you snarled at him.
“Oh honey, seems like I called the right shots then,” he declared proudly and held up a bag filled with... snacks? “I already called in sick for you for the next few days,” Satoru continued to explain as he wrapped his arms around you, “and I’ll be by your side 24/7 for the next two days. We’ll do fun stuff. How does movie night with lots of cuddling for tonight sound?”
“Why are you so nice to me right now?” you mumbled, tears welling up in your eyes. “Simple: I don’t want to be castrated by you,” he whispered back and planted a kiss on your cheek. “Fair enough. What will we do tomorrow?” He stayed silent but pulled out a black card out of his sleeve. You gasped.
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Fushiguro Megumi
Ping. A notification. Quickly, you scrambled to get your phone to see what that was about. You desperately needed some distraction right now. The pain was too much. Your boyfriend Megumi had gone somewhere you didn’t know. All you knew was that your boobs were sore, the sensitive nipples rubbing against the fabric were already too much. In addition to that, you also experienced period cramps, resulting in back pain as well. Life was not easy at the moment but at least you could lay in bed for today, doing absolutely nothing.
Unlocking your phone, you saw a new message from Yuji: “omg look at this???” [Video link] It was a video of 42 seconds. There was a cute seal – probably the cutest and fluffiest seal you have ever seen – and background music. It may have only lasted 42 seconds but it definitely triggered some happy feelings inside you; it was so pure and you loved the energy of the clip. Perhaps these feelings were a bit too intense and overwhelming. Tears streamed down your face and you started sobbing uncontrollably. Why were you like this? It wasn’t even a sad video, was it?
You buried your face in the blankets, weeping as if someone just broke up with you. Through your loud crying, you did not notice the door opening. A jangling noise could be heard from your nightstand. Instantly, you shot up to check for intruders but luckily, it was Megumi. A frown spread on his face. “What happened?” he asked as his thumbs wiped your tears from your cheeks. You showed him the video, still sobbing, “Look at the seal... It’s so c-cute. I just... got emotional because it really t-traveled the world. This cutie deserves the whole world...”
“And so do you,” he bluntly stated, “now take the ibuprofen I brought you for the cramps and rest up.” As a matter of fact, he not only brought you painkillers but a hot water bottle and food as well.
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Nanami Kento
“No, give me that. Lay down and rest. I can dust off the shelves on my own,” his deep voice commanded. If there was a man that screamed “male wife” it was definitely Nanami Kento, particularly when it came to you being on your period. You weren’t allowed to do anything in the house, except for very light chores. With good reason. “Kento, I can do–” Yeah, no, it wasn’t possible and Kento knew it too well.
You weren’t lucky when it came to period symptoms. Besides excruciating back pain, extremely sore breasts and headaches, you also had the luck to suffer from dizziness every single time you experienced the monthly nuisance. The first time you even passed out. In fact, it had happened several times. And that was precisely how Kento decided to not let you do anything. Still, you felt bad to leave everything to Kento. His work already demanded so much from him and here you were, being babied and even spoon-fed. You didn’t even have to cook your own meals or wash and iron laundry.
You had barely said those words when the unwelcome whirling sensation took you over again. Your feet wobbled, you were in danger of crashing to the ground. In a flash, Kento was by your side to steady you. “I told you not to overdo it.” He cupped your cheek with his warm hand. “Sorry, Kento. I’ll... just rest for a minute.”
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Zenin Naoya
Period pain? Laughable. Naoya thought it was pathetic. A woman – these already weak creatures – having period symptoms was a mystery to him. What could possibly hurt about bleeding a little? He couldn’t understand. Your pitiable and sorry state was only another inconvenience to him. Not that you hindered him in any way – you were obedient enough to be quiet and complain as little as possible – but he absolutely despised seeing that annoying expression of pain on your face every time he had to look at it.
Hell, he didn’t even want to engage in sexual activities with you during that time, even though he had randomly picked up somewhere that it might help. Not that he wanted to help you, it was your problem and yours only, not his. “Stop looking at me with those eyes. It’s disgusting,” he remarked condescendingly as he got dressed for wherever he had to go. “When will you be back?” you croaked out but he totally ignored you.
“Women are so damn weak. It’s so fucking pathetic, I almost want to give you a hug,” Naoya gagged. He was about to leave the room but stopped in his tracks. Looking over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of your face that was contorted with pain. In long strides, he made it to one of the cabinets, fished out a tiny box and threw it on the bed. “Tsk, you better get well soon so you can serve me again, dumb bitch.”
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Fushiguro Toji (soft)
Work hadn’t been treating him kindly: not yesterday, not today, not ever. Although he was highly capable and never failed to exceed himself, all Toji truly wanted to do was to go home. When he finally made it through the door, he called out, “Am home.” Usually, you would come running to greet him but when nothing but silence greeted him, his hand instantly moved to the cursed creature lingering on his shoulder. It was suspicious. Did enemies manage to find this hideout? Where were you? His hands started sweating.
Stealthily, he approached the kitchen. To his surprise, he saw your form in front of the counter, hunched over in pain. Dropping his offensive stance immediately, he quickly strode over to check on you. “Hey, what are you doing there?” he asked, hesitatingly putting a hand on your shoulder. You looked at him, grimacing with pain, “Oh, Toji. I didn’t realize you were home yet. Sorry, I’m not done cooking dinner yet, I just feel so nauseous, exhausted and my entire back  and shoulders hurt so much. It’s so sore.” “I see.” He nodded, understanding what was happening. Suddenly, he lifted you effortlessly. You squealed, “Toji!! What are you doing?!” “Taking care of you,” he promised. “But dinner!” “Don’t care.”
Making his way to the bedroom, Toji laid down with you on top of him. Something about his warmth already made you feel better but as his large palms rubbed your back in circular motions, you felt as if you were in heaven. Toji’s ministrations soothed the pain so well, you almost let out a moan. Now that the pain didn’t overshadow all the other symptoms anymore, the drowsiness took over. “Toji, ‘m tired,” you mumbled; eyelids fluttering already. “Then sleep. I’ll take care of dinner later,” he whispered. You only hummed in response, already far too gone. Slowly but surely, his steady heartbeat lulled you to sleep. “Sleep tight.”
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Taglist: @megumifushi​ @gojos-mochi​ @assbuttbaek​ @bleueluna​ 
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bnhamixjuice-sfw · 3 years
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ANON REQUEST: Hawks, Dabi and Aizawa: spot an ex he had a bad break up with, he sees her walking around struggling to hold on to a bag of groceries while pushing a stroller with a toddler in it that looks awful lot like them, and the he awkwardly confronts them when the bag falls out of her hands.
Tags: Manga Spoiler, Mention of cheating, Angst to Fluff.
Hawks
“I’m so sorry Dove, I didn’t mean to–”
“Didn’t mean what? to deny that I’m your girlfriend in front of the media ‘cause you had a job agreement with the commission not to reveal me! okay Keigo you’re doing this for what reason exactly? Hero Reputation? More women you can use to cheat behind my back again and expect me to forgive you? I–I don’t want this kind of life anymore!”, you wailed in pure anguish roughly wriggling your wrist away from his firm clutch.
He felt suffocated when he needed to let you go for all the things that he did to hurt you, holding back the urge to chase you outside when you frantically closed the door, not looking back anymore on him. Leaving the top pro hero falling on his knees, lonely between these four walls of his house.
After all this time he can’t forget you, longing to see your face everywhere he goes even on pro hero awarding events or his usual patrol work with Endeavor looking for you through the crowds, praying to see your smile again that he misses the most.
His life was crumbling apart without you, but luck was on his side today when he spotted you not too far from where he was signing autographs for his fans while stealing some glances. As always, you’re still beautiful standing there.
Trying to fix your grocery bags while clasping the baby-carriage’s handle. He hesitated at first to approach you thinking you’re probably waiting for your husband to pick you up and your child. And that’s when a tuft of yellow hair popped out.
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“Mommy look it’s Hawks, Awtoglaph pweasee awtoglapph”, his excited pleas reached Hawks’ ears. pointing his fingers towards your ex-boyfriend who waved a hand on both of you.
Soon red feathers clumped together on the ground, preventing your bag to fall.
“Wow what do we have here, a kid full of energy today, so where do you want me to sign your autograph?”, stooping down beaming a smile with his eyes crinkling behind his yellow visor making your child gasp in awe.
He knew instantly that his suspicion was right seemingly looking at his own reflection with those golden honey orbs and black lines on those eyelids and small bump protruding behind the kid’s shirt, red feathers similar to his, messily cramped inside.
“Ke–Hawks here… ”, almost calling out his first name when you handed him a notebook and a pen.
Slightly feeling his gloved hand against your palm.
“Hawks look I hab wings too–”
“Honey we need to go home now or else you’ll miss your favorite show again, now say bye bye to Mr. Hawks”, you interrupted, sneaking a warning glare on him not to tell him anything before gently freeing your child’s wings out from his shirt’s makeshift holes.
“Little fledgling I guess your wings were moulting, so did your Daddy tell you about it”
“Hab no Dawdy but Oh you see… Mommy Lov’ Dawdy so much that she booboo cries” you were shock-stricken softly hushing your child out of embarassment.
“Well kid make sure to tell your Mommy not to cry okay cause Daddy loves her so much, yes don’t forget to tell that to her every day I–”, he stammered with his voice started cracking, overwhelming him with emotions too easily, swallowing the lump forming on his throat.
“Your father loves you too kid trust me, and surely there’s not a single day he’s not thinking of your Mommy, his only Dove–Ah I think I’m taking too much of your time Miss I-I’m so sorry”, halting it immediately, muffling a few sniffles before finally signing his signature.
Your heart began thumping so loud, not expecting him shamelessly grabbing your hand, burying you into a warm embrace in public.
“Wait Keigo stop this, everyone’s taking so many pictures of you”
“No I don’t care anymore, listen Dove I’m so sorry and I still love you, come back to me please I promise I won’t hurt you again, I’ll do better this time just let me make up for it, and for our son”
You can’t blame yourself for giving in, accepting him wholeheartedly knowing this is what you promised to him once.
To never let your future child experience the same heartache he suffered from his past.
Dabi
He regret those cruel words that came out from his mouth the first time he was too fed up of your constant admonishment of putting a rest on his revenge against his family forever since you cannot bear to see him exhausting his body anymore, starting this heated discourse again between you.
“You always bring this up y/n every single day and it’s too annoying already, why are you siding on Enji too much Babydoll… come on just say it you really want us to have a perfect family, so cool to have a child with this debilitating quirk too right?”
Sucking your inner lips anxiously avoiding to tell him something about that last one, you felt his grip on your sholders constricting furiously waiting for you to answer him back, but your tears spilling from those precious eyes made his stomach churn in guilt realizing what he had done when you began screaming on his face that everything’s over, shoving him away and locking the door of your house shut.
He knew how much of a dick he was, the worst break up that’s been haunting him everyday with your terrified face forever etched on his mind
It’s been a long time since the last time he saw you after you moved from your old house and he cannot find you everywhere until today.
He saw you pushing a stroller on the side of the road and having a hard time balancing the bag of groceries on your other hand.
Perhaps you found someone better than him and additionally having a child; a normal child considering he’s not the father. that’s what he thought until something caught his attention.
Squinting his eyes, he was slack-jawed to find a familiar cerulean orbs and red hair on that young boy giddily calling you Mommy.
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He took this rare chance of talking to you again by catching your bag of groceries that you clumsily dropped, your eyes met recognizing your ex-boyfriend instantly when he removed his mask. piercing eyes gazing down below observing your child’s similar features.
“Babydoll why didn’t you tell me about him, our son?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Dabi and refrain from calling me that nickname anymore, also stay away from MY son before I call the police”
You breathed heavily snatching back your grocery bag from his grasp, clutching the stroller’s handle in pure anger.
“Daddy you meanie, go home”, tugging his pants with those tiny hands.
It hurts you to see your own child begging for his father to go home, when you can’t even tell him how you often show his own picture to your child that’s why he recognized his own father easily, keeping him close to his heart and memory forever.
You can’t hate your only child’s father.
He was expecting him to cry on his intimidating face when he bent his knees down to look at his child closely, ignoring your earlier threat by patting his son’s head seemingly accepting this foreign fatherly instinct.
“Kid look I’m obviously a bad guy, I don’t want you to get in trouble so maybe next time when your Mommy allows me, don’t worry I’ll probably see you again next time pepperoni haired kid”, chuckling when he saw his son’s childish pout, letting him pinch his stapled cheeks annoyed at his nickname.
“Y/n this is goodbye then”, flashing you that thin smile noticing his lips quivering a bit as he stood.
Shoving both of his hands inside his pockets before turning around to walk slowly away from both of you ignoring your child’s tantrum cries calling for him to go back.
“Ssh… sweetie don’t cry okay–Wait Touya!”
He stopped on his tracks when you yelled his real name again, like how you used to call him that before out of endearment.
“We’re going to stay here from now on so same address, the usual okay knock thrice and use our anniversary day on pressing the doorbell and don’t forget our password, listen I’m doing this for our child only so you better show up tonight or I won’t ever give you a chance”
He disappeared quickly after that, and tonight he never failed to show up incessantly ringing the doorbell many times even greeting you that typical password; a kiss.
A yearning kiss, hands intertwining the moment you opened your heart once again.
Aizawa
“Shouta you keep missing my calls these past few weeks when I needed you the most, you barely have enough time to visit me when I was sick the whole week and now you’re late, fine I don’t wanna hear your excuses anymore”
Those bitter words pierced him like thorns, seeing you slip out that engagement ring from your finger and placing it on a table whispering those bitter words he doesn’t want to hear from you.
“It’s better if we end this relationship now before we regret something, I–I can’t imagine my future being married with you or even having a child with you who pathetically seek for time and attention from his workaholic father, sorry Shouta”, you covered your mouth trying to bite back your tongue from spilling about your unborn child.
Running outside the restaurant leaving him heartbroken that he can’t further speak out his words anymore because everything that you just told him was painfully true.
He doesn’t deserve you, blaming himself for not appreciating you enough despite of your effort of enduring the hardships of having a pro hero fiance who often risk his life for his students. A man who can’t even spend a time to take care of you.
Nevertheless, he wanted to mend back those strings that binds you to his heart, always pouring out his loneliness on visiting that Cat Cafe on his day off every week reminding him of memories you two share.
You often take him there to spend a date knowing he’s fond of cats and snapping lots of photos of him every time he ends up sleeping on the corner with cats huddling close to his face nearly suffocating him.
Keeping your engagement ring to him all the time was the only thing that calms him down whenever he’s in dire situation on his job, thinking how much he wish to meet you here again.
Unbelievably seeing you again one time, rubbing his weary eyes once and twice to know if it’s truly you. Indeed, he can’t forget that familiar caring smile of his beloved, finding you outside the cat cafe currently having a problem of organizing your bag of groceries.
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“Mawmmy, neko pweasee I wanna touch it!”, your daughter began whinning clapping his hands to get your attention.
He can’t believe his own eyes when your child resembles him too much with that obsidian dull eyes and sleek black hair minus for that pigtail hairstyle but that scowl seems a carbon copy of his own.
“Wait Baby I–”
“I think you need help Y/n”
You were flabbergasted to find your ex-fiance taking a hold of your bag of groceries with his whip that was about to hit the ground and voluntarily offering his Neko tote bag for you which you persuaded him not to.
“Mawmmy pwease I want that too, Neko”, her tiny hands reaching out determined to get it no matter what.
“Baby no–”
“Well your daughter love cats so much, you can give this to her, please just a friendly gift”, taking out something from his pocket leaning down a bit to his side to rummage on that keychain, letting you see his necklace around his neck with that old engagement ring of yours dangling.
“Found it, here kid I’m not sure if you’ll like this”
“Aww Mawmmy have that too um…right Mawmmy, so no thanks Mister”
There’s no way you were married that’s what Shouta suspected when he saw you not wearing any ring, and obviously that cat keychain was closely similar to his anniversary keychain that you two bought for each other.
“Y/n I can drive you two back to your house if its okay–”
“Mawmmy please say yes”
You sighed in defeat not having a choice in the first place and also giving freedom to your child to spend time with her father who doesn’t know about this.
His car was still the same, sitting beside him and your child now sleeping behind after getting so tired ogling on his car’s cat accesories.
You chuckled upon seeing your daughter’s face on the mirror messily drooling, leaning slightly on your side to wipe the corner of her mouth.
“Darling is she our daughter”
“Eyes on the road Shouta, and yes so what will you do about it. Do you expect me to ask for any financial support from you oh maybe spending your precious time for our daughter that I can’t even get from you years ago”, you sarcastically uttered, stabbing him rudely with those truthful words he was unprepared to hear from you.
“I understand if you’re still mad at me y/n, but I just want you to let you know that I want to set things right first before asking you to forgive me. Because I don’t want to miss this opportunity again to tell you how much I wanted to talk to you or maybe to see you in your white wedding dress”
You can’t resist how determined he was to get close to you again, feeling his hand slowly making its way on you.
Giving back that engagement ring to whom it truly belongs, and that was you, a dream he wanted to come true despite it being too impossible.
Turning your head away to wipe your own tears, proposing for the second time that you have been waiting to hear from him all along.
“She’s your daughter Shouta and don’t you dare make her cry of I’ll scratch your face harder than what your cat does”
“That’s too kind of you, I mean my cat misses your deadly belly rub too, you named him Mr. Pickles right, well I’m sure he’d be thrilled to see his Mom again and his new sibling soon”,
You both exchanged soft giggling catching up on one another by starting the conversation about your lives and so on and so forth, and apparently your child was eavesdropping on both of you.
Your daughter muffled a “Pro hero mission success” after accomplishing her goal, peeking a bit to see you wearing that shiny ring.
She knew it the first time she saw that stranger recognizing him from one of the picture you often place under your pillow, her daddy.
Well she did inherit Shouta’s intellectual skills after all.
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Do not repost this fic/headcanon.
Disclaimer: I don't own My hero academia nor its characters and plot.
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d-criss-news · 2 years
Text
Darren Criss: ‘Nobody wants to know about the good things on Glee – but I was f***ing there’
You’re getting a full-on TED talk where I get further and further up my own ass and pop out of my own mouth, so buckle up.” Darren Criss is an explosion of chaotic energy. The Glee star also has a lot say, often veering off in slightly paranoid tangents to readjust his points for fear of being misquoted. Maybe it’s because he knows I’ll have to mention some contentious topics, such as his Glee castmate Lea Michele’s behaviour on set or his history of playing LGBT+ characters. Or maybe it’s because I am a member of the British press, which he says is “evil”, adding, “I do not trust you.” Even the topic of his new Christmas album, A Very Darren Crissmas, takes us to unexpected places.
“Aside from it being a painfully convenient pun… It’s a very, very me thing, from the people that I worked on it with and the songs that I chose that are deeply personal,” he says. “There is just a whole lot of me in this and arguably, it’s one of the most personal albums or bodies of work I’ve ever made. But it perhaps might get lost in the sheen of what Christmas is.” His nails, aptly, are painted with candy stripes.
As I sit across a large conference table from Criss, it’s clear he’s put a lot of thought into making the perfect festive record, from his collaborators (Adam Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood) to every meticulously placed high hat or pizzicato string. “To me - and this isn’t to over romanticise it because I’m promoting a Christmas album - when you think of the Great American Songbook, and you think of jazz standards, Christmas songs are a huge part of those,” he says. “On Top 40 radio, they will play songs from the Thirties to the Fifties right alongside the best of the most contemporary hits. That’s such a f***ing crazy anomaly to how music consumption ordinarily works.
Criss says he’s “cursed with constant curiosity in processes”, whether that be with music or acting. It was on YouTube that he first found recognition, starring in the parody stage show A Very Potter Musical, before making it big time on musical comedy Glee, as Blaine Anderson, a member of rival show choir the Dalton Academy Warblers. But it was his chilling performance as the sadomasochistic killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story that felt like a watershed moment, earning him an Emmy, Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice and SAG Award.
Before Glee, Criss had had small roles in Eastwick and Cold Case, but Ryan Murphy’s showchoir comedy allowed him to do both his passions simultaneously. He’d previously gone up for bit parts on the show but being cast as Blaine was his “Slumdog Millionaire moment”, where his first song on the show (a cover of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”) reached No 8 in the Billboard Hot 100. As with his Christmas album, it was a place to perform old and new songs together - something he was doing before the show, when he would spend hours every week playing covers in bars and restaurants.
Blaine joined the show in season two (when Glee was already watched by tens of millions) as a love interest for fan-favourite Kurt Hummel, played by Chris Colfer. For many viewers, it was the first time they’d seen a young gay couple presented positively on the small screen. “I have a lot of queer folks that come up to me, particularly older folks, that will say how much that relationship meant to them,” Criss tells me. “They’ll say, ‘When I was growing up, I didn’t really ever get to see that on TV’… and then I always remind them, neither did I… As a cis straight man, I also didn’t see that. And while I have not grown up as a queer person, I’m a lifetime subscriber, man. I’m a season ticket holder to the queer experience. I grew up in San Francisco in the Nineties; these are people that raised my cultural awareness… [so] also it means a lot to me.”
But the topic of straight actors playing LGBT+ roles is a much-debated issue. Neil Patrick Harris, who starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway before Criss did it on the US tour, has previously defended the practice, saying that there is “something sexy” about it. How does he feel about it? Here, that mistrust comes out in Criss - a fear of misspeaking on “complex” issues. “This is a really tough one because, let’s just say, I’ve been s*** on,” he says. “No matter what I say, I’m going to get into the same mess that I’ve always gotten in, which is me being what I believe is very fair and diplomatic, but nobody’s interested in that, because compassion is not currently in vogue. So I don’t know what to say.” We can come back to the question if he wants time to gather his thoughts? “I’m making it sound like I have some controversial thing to say, which I don’t,” he hastens to clarify. “What I say is very normal.” We agree to come back to it.
Unfortunately for us both, the hard questions can’t end here. Last year, Glee was rocked by a series of accusations of bad practice and a toxic work environment on set. The most prominent were aimed at Lea Michele, who played the annoying and ambitious Rachel Berry and was accused by former co-star Samantha Ware of making her life a “living hell” on set. I can feel Criss suck the air through his teeth as I mention the allegations. “Bro, you’re getting right into it,” he says.
There’s a pause. “This is no bulls*** PR nonsense between you and me in this room, and whoever the f*** you want to tell. I have nothing but positive things to say about every single person on that show. I had such lovely interactions with everybody… for somebody who may get pinned as Mr Happy-Go-Lucky, it’s a bummer to me that I can’t celebrate the good things about people who have been extraordinary because I think the great things about people are not as fun to advertise as s***ty moments.” While he says he’s not speaking about any cast members in particular, he knows that fans want the “juicy tea” and will “love to try and think of their own version” when they read this. He’s probably right.
Criss continues: “Working on set is an extraordinarily high-pressure zone where the rules are famously written in sand… There’s a great deal of context and compassion that is missing that nobody wants to know about or write about. But I was f***ing there, and I saw a lot of good things. I saw ‘not great’ things, but not because these people are bad people, truly.” Maybe it’s his “bleeding heart idealism”, he adds, but “I don’t believe anybody was ever twisting their moustache, like” - he puts on a Dick Dastardly voice - “‘I know, I shall compromise these people by doing the following things.’”
It’s also easy to forget that this was a young cast, many of whom were in their first TV roles and had been “shot out of a cannon into the public sphere”. “I f***ing dare anybody out there to have the constitution to be able to deal with that in a way that is spotless,” he says. “Think about it this way. Think about members of your family, fights that you’ve had, things that were said that weren’t meant… If it was written down, or somebody outside the family saw it and broadcast it to other people, it would make you look like a s***ty family… The next night, you’re at dinner, the holidays roll around. You give each other a hug, you respect each other, you love each other. That’s how families work… No one’s gonna write about the good stuff. So I’m here to tell you there was a lot more good stuff than there was bad stuff.”
It was on the show that Criss first worked with Ryan Murphy - a man he describes as a provocateur and a “first-rate showman”. The Nip/Tuck creator was Glee’s showrunner, but it took The Assassination of Gianni Versace, episodes of which were directed by Murphy, for the pair to really collaborate. The second American Crime Story season told the story of Andrew Cunanan, a young Californian who murdered five men in 1997, one of whom was the Italian fashion designer. While the other ACS miniseries have told incredibly well-known stories, Criss found creative freedom in the fact that Cunanan - who died by suicide eight days after shooting Versace - was more of a mystery.
“Unlike if you’re playing OJ, or if you’re playing Monica Lewinsky or Bill Clinton, or these public figures that have an extraordinary amount of documentation of how they look, how they sound, how they walk, how they talk, there was next to nothing on Andrew, which gave me kind of carte blanche to do whatever,” he says. “I think if Andrew was somebody that everybody knew, I think people would have had a very different expectation, because the assignment would have been different.”
It’s here that Criss brings us back to the LGBT+ question, saying that he doesn’t want to “shy away” from the topic. “I think for any role that you’re up for, you want to know if you add value to it, right?” he says. “The Cunanan role came up simply because I’m half Filipino and I share a pretty similar likeness to the guy… He was also very white passing, which I am as well, so there’s a lot of things there that really fit… There are so many performances that are either straight roles given by queer actors or queer roles that are done by straight actors that are so beloved, that we just don’t talk about those. But if they’re done poorly, we get up in arms and we blame it on the fact that this person isn’t queer, this person isn’t straight, as opposed to maybe they just weren’t the right person for the job?”
The problem, he says, is the “double standard” placed on performers once they become public figures - say, on a show like Glee. “If there’s a role that requires somebody or something about them, whether it’s a queer character, or a character that does this or has this background, if we know nothing about them, do we have the objectivity to appreciate their performance?” he asks. “Did they do a good job? Did they service the story? Did they give it life? Did we believe it? Did it give the thing that that character represents visibility? And because the veil has been lifted, we can see everything about somebody. I’m now in a position in my life where folks can look up anything about me, at least [that] I’ve let out there. That is a standard that is held up to the roles that I play.”
Criss says that while there’s no “hard and fast rule”, he is acutely aware of the “social barometer” and has turned down “plenty of queer roles” over the years, saying: “I’ll read a script and go, ‘I, as a consumer, would rather see a queer man do this role.’” A few years ago he made headlines for seeming to say that he wouldn’t play an LGBT+ character ever again. Today, he says that was a misquote. “I was like, ‘I never said this,’” he says. “What I did say was that I don’t want to be another…” He seems to lose his train of thought. “This is less about what I said and more about the issue of clickbait and how it can dilute what was actually said and it becomes corrosive to the overall message. That’s what’s unfortunate to me.” He pauses. “You should f***ing quote me on that. You won’t, but it’s OK.”
‘A Very Darren Crissmas’ is out now
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ymiwritesstuff · 3 years
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The Limits of a Hero
Hello hello, I’m here to bring you something rather special. A quick fun fact: When I started writing years ago, Link was actually the first character I ever wrote for, so this piece is sort of going back to my roots as a writer. That, and I’ve been in a HUGE Twilight Princess mood lately, (I recently bought a few volumes of the manga and I am very much enjoying it) so I thought I’d write this quick thing for my favorite incarnation of Link. I hope those of you who also like him will enjoy this.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Link x Reader
Summary: During a seemingly ordinary night out in the woods you decide to give the hero a much needed chance to rest.
Notes: Fluff, some light angst
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The tree trunk felt rough against your back, but it provided a much-needed opportunity to finally rest and recollect your energy after yet another day of fighting against the twilight and its corrupt ruler. Yet you found a strange calm when surrounded by the night, the warm flames of the campfire swaying in the cool wind.
The wood crackled, the breeze howled and your eyelids grew heavy. You wouldn’t close them, however. Not yet. Instead, you kept your (E/C) eyes on the glowing fire, occasionally throwing in a stick or two to make sure your source of heat wouldn’t disappear.
Your thoughts wandered, as they often did ever since you were thrown into this dangerous adventure. How did everything change so fast? You could still hear the water trickling down the waterwheel in Ordon as if it was yesterday. Everything had gone wrong so fast, and now you were trying to save the entire kingdom from something you didn’t fully understand.
You knew it was the same for Link. But unlike you, he was much better at suppressing his confusion and doubts. You had noticed a change in him, no doubt caused by the sudden responsibility laid upon his broad shoulders. In addition to the more obvious changes in his attire, his cerulean eyes lost some of their glow, he somehow grew even more silent and he didn’t smile as often. All because he felt that his role as the hero chosen by the Gods demanded it.
It must have been tiring, you thought, yet he pressed on, never once letting even a single mention of how much it all weighed down on him slip from his lips. But you could see it. Whether it was in the way his shoulders fell with a sigh whenever he finished slaughtering a group of Bokoblins or how he yawned and stretched his arms almost every time he hopped off Epona. His body was fatigued, but his eyes held nothing but determination.
The rustling of leaves that came from behind snapped you back to reality, and your eyes fell on the bush where the grey animal soon emerged from, carrying something in his mouth the edges of which and a part of his lower body was seemingly damp. You watched as he walked with heavy steps towards the fire before dropping the thing you recognized to be a Hyrule Bass on the ground.
The fish flopped on the dirt and you found yourself raising a confused eyebrow at him, before locating his fishing rod not too far away from the fire, indicating that he had forgotten to take it with him. You looked at the fish again.
“Are we this desperate?” You managed to ask him as his beastly form quickly reverted to his original form you were familiar with. He sat on the ground and gave you a slight nod.
“We’re running low on food,” he said, taking a sip from his bottle of water. Most of his equipment was laying on the ground, though he was still fully clad in his green tunic, chainmail and all.
You noticed him taking out a small knife, no doubt intending to use it to prepare the freshly caught fish. He would not dare use his sacred sword for such a task. The bass was fairly big, enough for both of you, you surmised.
“I can take care of it,” you offered, noticing the tired look in his eyes as they turned to you. He shook his head lightly.
“It’s fine, (Name),” he assured and began cutting into the flesh, but you persisted.
“You haven’t slept properly in days.” It had been an exhausting few days, filled to the brim with battles against Shadow Beasts and other enemies. It took its toll on both of you yet he showed no outward signs of fatigue. Not that it was necessary, for right now, anyone could see the dark circles and bags under his otherwise gorgeous eyes.
He glanced at you, clearly pondering over your words while continuing to cut the fish. You were right, as you often were. He was exhausted, but the selflessness in him didn’t want you to lose any of the sleep you needed.
“Someone has to keep watch,” he began, but you quickly shut him down.
“Which I can do.”
You scooted over to him, noticing him making the final cuts to the scaly flesh of the fish. Placing a hand on top of his, you kept your eyes on him, trying to convince him.
“You need to rest, Link. Please.”
Upon hearing your voice that left your lips as a quiet plea he finally gave in, letting out a sigh that carried all his exhaustion into the air and letting go of the knife. He finally turned to you, his drained eyes glowing in silent relief.
“Will you be alright? You know you can wake me up any time if-”
“I’ll be fine. The only thing you need to worry about is getting some sleep.”
Your hand reached up to slowly remove his cap, exposing his dirty blond hair that bathed in the glowing embers of the campfire. You offered him a smile equally warm as the flames which he thankfully returned.
Planting the tiniest kiss on his cheek, you retreated from him, once again leaning against a lone tree. With your hand you lightly patted your lap, wanting the hero in front of you to have the best possible chance at getting a good night’s rest.
He laid his weary head on your lap and almost immediately, he let out a long yawn that indicated just how much he needed this, despite his stubborn protests. Your fingers found their way into his hair, running through his locks in a soothing manner.
Silence fell around you, though it was a refreshing change from the usual noises of battle and struggles. You stared at the fire once again, its welcoming warmth enveloping both of you.
“You’ve changed,” you admitted, thinking back to the simpler times, during which Link would have been more than compliant to sleep when he needed it. He let out a soft sigh, his eyes glued to the starlit sky above.
“I guess I have,” he agreed. You wondered if he meant it to the same degree as you did. Even now, you noticed the solemn expression on his face you had never seen back home.
Home. You thought about it a lot. Maybe a little too much at times. Ordon meant a lot to you, even more to Link you assumed. Perhaps that’s why he had gotten so stoic and serious. He was merely trying to protect what he held dear.
It was admirable, he was, by all accounts, a hero. Courageous, selfless, strong, yet still a mere Hylian. A capable Hylian indeed, but still a Hylian. A Hylian who the entire kingdom needed to save them. Everyone expected so much of him, it seemed as if he himself forgot his limits.
“You’re not all-powerful, Link.”
Your eyes fell on him, and his own looked up at you. Someone needed to be his voice of reason, and you were more than willing to take that role if it meant ensuring his safety when he sometimes couldn’t.
“Maybe I should be.”
Your eyebrows frowned at that. You knew he felt a certain sense of guilt about what happened to the children of the village. They were safe now, but there was a stinging sensation of shame embedded in him that made him feel responsible for all of it.
“Don’t say that. You did all you could. Pushing yourself to the point where you can’t stay up anymore won’t solve anything.”
He knew you were right. You almost always were. Link had always secretly wondered if it was a blessing that it was you who had accidentally stumbled across the same wall of Twilight that had transformed him into a beast. In all honesty, he was thankful.
“I’m just... Worried about you,” you confessed, feeling a small sense of dread in the core of your being. Just thinking about what could happen to him if he didn’t take care of himself made your stomach churn.
A troubled look fell on his face, as if he was feeling guilty about making your eyes fill with concern. You inhaled deeply and pressed your lips on his forehead, not wanting your own uneasiness make him anxious.
“Rest now. I’ll keep watch.”
With a small nod, he allowed his heavy eyelids to close and it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, soft snores escaping his mouth that was partially agape.
For the first time in days, he looked truly peaceful. His body relaxed, rid of any signs of stress or tension, the only movement being that of his chest, moving up and down due to his steady breathing. With a smile you continued running your digits through his hair, hoping to comfort him even in his dreams you could only hope were as tranquil as your current surroundings.
“Goodnight, Link.”
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inhuman-obey-me · 3 years
Text
Payback's a Murder
Word Count: 2k Description: Mammon may be the Avatar of Greed and may constantly try to con his brothers, but others who try to do the same will find themselves at the wrong end of his murder. Part of the A Demon's Nature series. Finally got back to this, so here we go with Mammon's turn! Note: Mulciber is a demon mentioned in John Milton's Paradise Lost. He served under Mammon and was an architect. Can also be found on AO3 here. content warning: blood, body horror, torture via the sharp ends of birds
The Avatar of Greed often found himself in trouble, whether it be because he stole personal belongings to sell or tried to cheat someone out of cash or … well, there were a lot of ways. Call him reckless, but when he saw an opportunity to make some cold, hard Grimm, he wasn’t about to pass it up!
But if someone tried to cheat him out of something? That wouldn’t do. Few dared to try it if they knew just who they were dealing with, but that didn’t stop some from trying anyway. They always regretted it afterwards.
The real issue, however, was if someone tried to cheat his brothers out of something. After all, he was the only one allowed to rip them off (that was his justification, anyway). The moment he finds out someone else tried to play confidence demon with any of them, it was a one-way ticket to the Great Mammon’s Beatdown Extravaganza.
He was walking by Leviathan’s room earlier when he heard a loud crash, some swearing, and a slight rumble under his feet. After some door breaking, tackling, and forcing his hotheaded brother to not summon Lotan, he found out what had made him so upset. Apparently, there was some demon running around with elaborate schemes swindling others -- well, nerds -- out of their money. He went on to explain something that Mammon did not at all understand -- as was usual when he got into his otaku rambling. If his brother had not been so upset, Mammon would have commended the guy for knowing how to target and hit a jackpot.
After some additional pestering, Mammon managed to get a rough description of this third-rate demon and realized he had a pretty good idea of just who it was. It was someone far closer to him than he’d like to admit.
So now here he was, leaning against the bar at one of the Devildom’s many clubs, drink in hand as he monitors the floor. If he was right, he would see the other cozening demon somewhere here tonight, so now it was just a waiting game. As Lucifer had told him repeatedly, You have to show that you’re Number Two. He planned to make that very clear tonight.
He felt the pulse of the bass vibrating through his body as the DJ amped up their music, more and more demons flowing into the space as the prime clubbing hours arrived. A few who noticed Mammon acknowledged his presence, some whispering about how he seemed to look way more serious than normal. The Avatar of Greed, not partying the night away already? Strange.
His patience was just about to run out when he caught a glimpse of just the demon he was seeking out. Hair as orange as a flame, he wasn’t too hard to spot amongst the crowd of more muted succubi surrounding him. Mammon downed the rest of his drink in one go, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket as he made his way to his target.
“Mulciber. Already getting started, huh?”
“M-Mammon?!” He seemed startled to see the other, but cleared his throat as he regained his cool composure. “It’s good to see you, man! Why don’t you join us all for a drink?” The succubi around him giggled, one daring to lean towards Mammon in an attempt to latch onto his arm, but he quickly placed a hand up to stop her.
“No touchin’, sweetheart.” He shot her a look that made her immediately back away, a pout on her lips. “And that’s a nice offer, Mulcey, but I was hopin’ I could talk to ya real quick in private.”
Mulciber could tell that no was not an option in this conversation, given the serious look in the Avatar’s eyes. “Oh, uh, sure. Sorry ladies, I’ll be back soon. Gotta take care of business!” He gave them a wink as they continued on to the table for their party. Clearing his throat again, he turned back to his superior. “So, what’s shaking, boss?”
Mammon just gave him a smile before nodding his head towards a side door, motioning to accompany him there. The lesser demon complied, following him outside to a side alley. The night air was brisk, causing a shudder to run through Mulciber’s spine. At least, he hoped it was the weather that was making him feel like this …
“I heard ya got up to another scheme.” Mammon fiddled with a lighter, flipping the top off and on with his thumb and a jerk of his hand as he spoke. Click, click, click, click. “Wanna tell me about it?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, totally!” Mulciber nervously replied, wondering why Mammon seemed so interested. Did he want a cut of the check? Fishing for ideas for his own next get-rich-quick scheme? Or --
Oh.
Oh no.
He suddenly remembered that one of the victims of his scheming had been the very Avatar of Envy. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, delighting in the fact that he was even able to rip off a Greater Demon. Meant his plan had to be pretty genius, right? But now … now he was starting to realize that he may have just made a big mistake.
“Hm? Ya haven’t said a word, Mulcey-boy.” Mammon turned to face him, tucking the lighter into his pocket. He took a step towards the other, who immediately took a step back -- only to be met with a hard brick wall. “Or didja have a moment of realization?”
“L-Listen, Mammon, I’m sorry! I didn’t know at the time, I swear!” Mulciber brought both his hands up, as if that would stop the other from approaching him.
“Oh? ‘Cuz your face says differently, buddy.” He bared his fangs, the usual gradient in his eyes now glowing a furious gold. There’s a malicious grin on his face as he takes a step back, and then he begins to … whistle?
Mulciber does not like where this is going. He’s heard that tune before and it makes his hairs stand on end. “Look, man, please, I’ll do whatever I have to do to make it up to you!” There’s already desperation in his voice, which almost makes Mammon laugh.
“Glad to hear it. Then ya won’t have a problem with what’s about to happen next, yeah?”
It starts in the distance, a noise that made it feel as if your eardrums were being pierced by a thousand shards of glass. It grows louder and louder, closer and closer. An omen.
Mulciber shrinks against the wall, his grey eyes wide in fear. He knows running is pointless -- the other demon would quickly catch him, and leave him even worse for wear as repercussion. “P-please, Mammon, sir, don’t do this … “
“Didn’t you just say ya’d do whatever ya have to do?” Mammon shakes his head, his wings stretching out wide as if to entrap the lesser demon where he stood. “And you really think suddenly pullin’ out the formalities is gonna get ya any mercy here?”
The flapping of numerous wings now filled the air, a large murder of crows circling in the dark sky above. Their bone-chilling caws and cries rain down upon them as the birds eagerly await their master’s command.
Mammon lunged forward and grasped the other’s jaw, his claws digging into flesh as he brought his face threateningly close. “Pretty ballsy of you to think messin’ with any of us was the right move.” He growled, a rumble in his throat. “Looks like someone needs remindin’ of his place.”
“I-I wasn’t thinkin’ at the time! C’mon, you know how that is, don’t you? I was just thinking of making some big bucks, I didn’t mean to go and step out of line--” Mulciber frantically rambled, trying to ignore the searing pain he was feeling from Mammon’s grip.
“I’m sure that was the case, Mulcey, sure!” If it wasn’t for his mocking smile, the Avatar would have nearly sounded genuine. “But that doesn’t mean you can escape the consequences, ya’know?” He let out a tsk, watching as blood dripped from where he had pierced the other’s skin.
He let go of Mulciber, taking a few steps back as he shook his hand as if to clean it of the ichor. There was no denying the glee he was feeling from this -- it had been a while since he decided to flex his abilities and powers on another. Looking up to the sky, he whistled out another tune, causing the crows to descend.
“He’s all yours.” He commands them in a language only they could understand, and in a flash the black-feathered birds rush in to attack. Their squawks mix with Mulciber’s shrieks as they begin to peck at him with their beaks and scratch him with their claws. Mammon fishes out the lighter from his pocket once more, grabbing a cigarette from the box he had on him with his other hand. Leaning against the opposing alley wall, he lights up and takes a slow drag, watching as the flurry of feathers pulverize his inferior.
The crows tear at Mulciber’s flesh, their sharp beaks riddling his body with small cavities and painting him with his own blood. He continues to cry and scream, though it’s obvious he’s losing energy by the second as they grow weaker in intensity, his body slumping towards the ground. Perhaps he had learned his lesson? Surely, he’s just waiting for it all to stop now, right?
Mammon takes a glance around, humming in delight as he catches sight of a discarded iron pipe. He drops the remains of his cigarette to the ground, stomping it out before retrieving his now makeshift weapon. It feels cool and light in his hand, and he gives it a small toss in the air before catching it again with a satisfied smile.
“Alright, alright. You all can leave him alone now.” Mammon commands his murder once more, followed by another whistle to let them know they could go back to doing whatever they were doing before now. One of them flew over to Mammon, perching on the metal rod in his hand, looking up at him with a puffed up chest in pride as blood stained its beak.
“Yes, who’s my good lil’ birdie?” Mammon cooed, scratching the crow under its chin. “Go get yerself cleaned up, okay?” It cawed in delight before flying off to join the rest, who were fading back into the dark night sky. The Avatar of Greed shook his head fondly before turning his attention back to the matter at hand.
Mulciber lay crumpled on the ground, though was making efforts to sit upright as he gasped for breath. His body hurt all over, as if every inch of him had been pierced with needles. He feebly looked up to meet Mammon’s gaze, a whimper leaving him as he noticed the rod in his hand.
“What? I couldn’t let my birds have all the fun, now could I?” Mammon grasped the rod firmly in both hands before swinging it down with a deafening crack as it hit the other, who let out another sharp cry of pain.
“Hm, perhaps just another for good measure.” Whack. Another wail.
“Okay, okay. One more.” Whack. Another splatter of blood.
Content at the shuddering and sniveling mass that was left, Mammon kneeled down to get close to Mulciber’s ear, his next words full of menace. “Ya really should have stuck to the building business. Keep that in mind in the future, ‘kay?”
Mammon stood up and let the iron rod clatter to the ground, its hollowness ringing into the night. He made his way back inside to order another drink, ignoring the whispers and stares from the others in the club. It was doubtful that Mulciber would make an appearance here after what had happened for a while.
He knocked on the bar counter, getting the attention of the bartender. “Give me a glass of your finest whiskey. Put it on Mulciber’s tab.”
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Text
tongue-tied like we’ve never known || h. styles
warnings: dad!harry, swearing, not really proofread
word count: 2.3k
summary: two single parents try to start their lives again...
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Mornings were always the worst for you. Trying to pry Tommy out of bed, and even yourself for that matter, was always an incredibly stressful task. But you’d learned to live with it and quickly come to accept it. After all, he was only young now. He’d be old soon enough and you knew you’d miss these youthful years. 
You stood by the school gates, waiting for little Tommy to come bounding out of school to tell you all about his latest adventure. You always looked forward to hearing how his day went. As small children scrambled out of the doors after their teachers and straight into the arms of their parents, your eyes fell onto Tommy. He was with a boy you didn’t recognise. “Look, look! Meet my new friend,” Tommy grinned as he stood before you excitedly. “This is my mum.”
“Hello,” the little boy, dark-haired with perhaps the most striking green eyes, smiled. “I’m Oscar.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Oscar,” you smiled. “Are you new?”
The boy nodded, his cheeks flushed slightly. You couldn’t help but smile at the fact that Tommy had made a new friend. He’d been kind to the new kid and offered him a form of friendship. 
You were tugged away from your thoughts as you heard a voice behind you. You quickly turned to see a man, a little taller than yourself. You figured this was Oscar’s father from the dark hair to the green eyes. “There you are,” he smiled warmly and it seemed to make your heart flutter, as if he was smiling at you.
“Daddy, this is my new friend, Tommy,” Oscar grinned excitedly. 
For the first time, the man shifted his gaze from the two young boys to you. Your stomach lurched as you made eye contact with him. “You must be Tommy’s mum,” he said, extending his hand for you to shake. “I’m Harry.”
“Y/N,” you smiled, shaking it gently. You hadn’t felt like this since you first met Tommy’s dad. It was all of eight years ago now on a night out with your university friends, most of whom you didn’t even speak to nowadays. He had been kind then and polite and the sort of man you’d always envisioned yourself marrying. So, you ended up getting together and everything seemed great for the first year and a half. But then things began to decline and you both seemed to lose trust in one another and you felt as if you were putting all of your energy into this relationship. It was killing you. But then you fell pregnant with his baby and he broke up with you anyway. You went back home to live with your own parents for a while before you eventually found a proper job and moved into your own house. 
Anyway, you found yourself walking down the street, Tommy and Oscar running ahead slightly, with Harry. You had Tommy’s light bag clasped between your hands, listening to Harry tell you about Oscar. “And yeah,” he concluded, “we moved down here a couple of weeks ago, just the two of us.”
“What about Oscar’s mother?” you couldn’t help but find yourself prying. 
Harry seemed to tense slightly, before shrugging, “She was never really around much. Her parents thought she should have gotten an abortion but she didn’t want one and had the baby anyway. So, they kicked her out and she left Oscar with me and moved to Dublin with her friends.”
“That’s shitty,” you sighed. “At least you have Oscar, though, right?”
He nodded, smiling, “Exactly. What about Tommy’s dad then?”
“He was a dick. He broke up with me a couple of months after I told him I was pregnant,” you replied. 
“Yeah,” Harry chuckled, “sounds like a dick. Does he see Tommy then?”
You shook your head, your eyes caught between Harry’s and your son's lively figure running up and down the path ahead of you with Oscar. “No. He’s tried to reach out a couple of times but I haven’t let him see him. I just feel like introducing him to his dad six years later could just, you know, fuck it up. Besides, if he didn’t want to be with me through all the shitty, difficult stuff, then I don’t think he’s allowed to enjoy all the joys of being a parent.”
“Well,” he smiled, “good on you.”
And that was how you met Harry Styles. Over the weeks that followed, you would walk Oscar and Tommy to and from school with him. Tommy would spend time round at Harry’s and Oscar would spend time round at yours. And it felt like every time you saw Harry, you felt simultaneously more comfortable around him but more and more nervous. 
But you hadn’t dated anybody since Tommy was born. Having a young child seemed to be a deterrent for a lot of people. Or maybe had more to do with the fact that you didn’t have time for a relationship between work and raising Tommy. Sure, you’d been on plenty of dates and it wasn’t as if you weren’t ready to get back into the world of dating and relationships. If not for yourself, for Tommy. You wanted him to have some kind of parental figure that wasn’t you. 
You found it difficult to focus on the book you were reading when all you could hear was the two boys laughing loudly upstairs. Oscar was round for dinner and Harry was due to pick him up any minute. And as a knock at the front door finally snapped you into a new state of consciousness, you got up to answer it. Harry stood happily on the other side, his eyes lighting up at the sight of you. “Evening, Y/N,” he smiled. 
“Evening, Harry,” you mocked. “Do come in.”
You opened the door wider, allowing the man to step into your home. You called down Oscar and Tommy, only to be met with groans. They appeared at the top of the stairs, their faces twisted into bitter scowls. “Why?” Tommy sighed. “Can he stay for a bit longer?”
You exchanged a glance with Harry, who shrugged. “Fifteen minutes,” you sighed. Really, all you wanted was to go to bed. They grinned and dashed back into Tommy’s small bedroom. You guided Harry into the kitchen, letting him sit himself down at the table. “Do you want a drink?” you asked.
“I’m okay, thanks,” he smiled.
You grinned, pouring yourself a glass of orange juice, “Suit yourself. So, how was your day?”
“Stressful,” he sighed. “Thanks for looking after Oscar.”
“Anytime,” you shrugged. “He’s delightful. Besides, you’ve looked after Tommy so many times, I kind of owed you.”
“Nonsense,” he laughed. “We’re not exchanging favours. We’re just… helping out a friend.”
You couldn’t help but let yourself deflate at ‘friend’. You had known all along that you were just two, young single parents that only knew each other through their six-year-old sons. But a tiny fragment of you hoped what was happening meant something more to Harry, like it did to you. There were instances of harmless flirting and subtle glances. “Right,” you nodded, forcing a soft smile. “Well, thanks for helping out a friend.”
His fingers drummed mindlessly on the table and your eyes wandered from their tips to the tattoos that peeked out of the cuff of his jacket. “Got any plans for tomorrow?” Harry asked and you almost cringed at the small talk. 
But alas, you shrugged, “Not really. I have some work to catch up on, so an action packed day for me tomorrow. What about you?”
He shook his head, “I wish I had plans. Could go out for drinks or something, but I can’t because I have a needy six-year-old.”
“Treasure it while it’s still here,” you said. 
“Believe me,” he grinned, “I am. God, I’m so scared for the day he just… stops needing me. You know, the day he just sort of realises that he no longer needs me to wash his clothes or walk him into town or buy him things. And it took me ages to get used to putting somebody before myself, I don’t think I could imagine living without him now. Like, one day he’ll go off to uni and get a job and only come home every other birthday or Christmas.”
You smiled gently. You were sure he’d never been so vulnerable with you before. “It’s weird to think that’s what we’re doing with our parents now. We fear the day our kids stop needing us, but our parents are living that day.”
He hummed in thought for a moment, “I should probably go see my mum soon. I haven’t seen her in months. And my sister.”
“You have a sister?”
He nodded, “Yeah. Gemma is her name. She’d love you.”
“I’m sure I’d love her if she’s anything like you,” you said. 
You took a final gulp of your orange juice, your eyes beginning to feel heavy. You looked at the clock on the wall, noticing twenty minutes had passed since Harry arrived. “Right,” you smiled. “I’ll go get Oscar.”
And as you walked towards the kitchen door, Harry quickly said, “Wait!”
You turned back to look at him, your heart pounding heavily. All kinds of questions and hypotheticals raced through your mind as he paused for a moment. “Do you think you’ll ever meet somebody else, Y/N?” he asked. 
“Meet somebody else?” you repeated, though you were sure you knew exactly what he meant. 
“Yeah, you know… like somebody to replace Tommy’s dad. Somebody for you to settle down with and raise Tommy together. Do you think you’ll ever meet them?” he asked. 
You were utterly confused as to what had prompted him to ask such a question. But you’d be lying if you said you couldn’t hear your heart in your temples or taste your blood in your mouth. “Maybe,” you shrugged. “Do you?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I’d like Oscar to have a mum.”
“Yeah,” you nodded, “I think that would be great for him. I’ll go get him.”
That night as you lay alone in your bed, you couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to share your bed with Harry. To feel his body beside yours on cold nights. To be woken up by his lips peppering your face in light kisses in the morning. To discuss all the trivial things when neither of you can sleep at night. Maybe he was trying to tell you something that evening…
Oscar had become ill over that following weekend. Nothing too serious, but something that warranted a day or two off school. So, after you picked Tommy up from school, you drove to Harry’s to check if they were both okay. Tommy sat at the end of Oscar’s bed, recounting everything the young boy had missed at school, while you busied yourself in Harry’s kitchen. You were heating up some of the soup you had made for the poor boy. “You’re really too kind. You didn’t have to do this,” Harry told you as he made you a cup of coffee. 
You shrugged, “Well, Oscar’s like my second son at this point.”
He smiled, albeit his cheeks a little red, “I’m glad you think that. I’m pretty sure he thinks of you as a mum at this point too.”
Now it was your turn to turn red. Your face heated up at Harry’s passing comment. Did he really think of you as a mum? “That’s sweet,” you said. “About what you said the other night… about meeting somebody, my friend says she knows a guy she thinks I’d get along with. So, I think I’m really going to try dating.”
He stiffened slightly, “Oh yeah? That’s great, Y/N.”
He hugged you and you couldn’t help but feel so safe in his arms. The hug was perhaps a second or three too long, but neither of you pulled away. And, as your bodies were pressed together, it was almost as if you shared a brief but looming epiphany together. “But,” you began again, “why try dating a stranger when I already know somebody?”
“That’s a good point,” he whispered softly, finally pulling away to make eye contact. He explored your face and you felt his warm breath on your cheeks. 
“I mean, this guy that I know, he’s sweet. Really sweet. He’s super funny and caring and so, so generous. And he has a kid himself, so he won’t be put off by the single parent thing.”
He understood what you were trying to tell him, “Sounds like an angel. Who is this fine man of whom you speak?”
You grinned, “I don’t know if I should say. He has tattoos and green eyes.”
“So he’s incredibly handsome as well as being an angel?”
“I suppose you could say that,” you chuckled. And, as if the sky were falling down, Harry wasted no time in pressing his lips to your own. He kissed you and you kissed him back. All of your prior dating worries just seemed to slip away as you buried your fingers in Harry’s soft hair. It was only when you heard a quiet ‘mum?’ from the doorway did you jolt apart. Tommy stood in the threshold of the kitchen and suddenly the microwave went off, notifying you that Oscar’s soup was ready. You and Harry turned back to each other, finally registering Tommy’s presence, “Shit.”
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t0wnspersonb · 4 years
Text
Better Off As Lovers (Tsukishima Kei x Reader)
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Word Count: 5,076
Warnings: SMUT, oral (female receiving), bad language, my shit writing
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salty4tsukki
said:
hello! i luv ur blog sm!! can i pls req a scenario (or hc if that’s easier) of tsukki and reader going from enemies to lovers? perhaps reader ended up doing tsukki a solid that saved his ass and that marked the turning point of their relationship? sfw+nsfw if that’s oki!! tysm in advanced :-)
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Here is some spice for you guys. I hope you like it, I had a lot of fun writing it lol. Tsukishima is such a fucking prick, I absolutely love it. @salty4tsukki​ I hope this was what you had wanted, also thank you so much for your support! Requests are closing tomorrow! I’m slowly but surely making my way through all of the requests and writing stuff up. I should probably be focusing on school but ya girl is avoiding responsibilities right now lmao. I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend!😚😚😚
~~~~
“You’re literally the fucking worst.” you hissed; eyes narrowed into slits. “I bet hell gave you back to earth because you’re worse than Satan himself.”
 All you got in response was a raise of a blonde eyebrow and an ignorant smirk.
 “You want to get hit? Is that what you’re asking for?” You threatened, holding your fist up for emphasis.
 You had never been more upset; in all honesty you probably wouldn’t have been this annoyed about the situation if it was someone else. 
 But because it was him, you knew that it was intentional, it wasn’t an accident as everyone else was making it seem.
 “Now, now…” Koganegawa said, stepping between the two of you. “Tsukki didn’t know that was your dessert. It was an honest mistake.”
 “That’s not an honest mistake Kanji!” You screeched. “I literally told everyone how excited I was to finally get my hands on that famous strawberry shortcake from that bakery! I got the last slice and he went and ate it!” you pointed at the tall blonde accusingly; who’s smirk was growing wider and wider as you wailed about the unfairness of it all.
 “Can’t you just go get another one?” Kyoutani huffed, rolling his eyes from his spot on the floor.
 “They’re famous for a reason Kentarou! I had to get up super early to stand in line! And even then, the line was super long! I waited for hours! You think I’m going to do that again!?” You were all but hysterical now.
 You might have already been having a rough day though, and your missing cake was the cherry on top to it all.
 The soft huff of a laugh caused you to whirl around, your tiny fists coming up to hit Tsukishima on his chest repeatedly.
 “You’re the fucking worst!” you huffed out, frustrated tears springing to your eyes. The tall blonde was full on laughing at you now, much to your embarrassment and anger.
 You couldn’t lie, it was a tad bit irrational to get so upset over a missing slice of cake. But it was a long sucky day, you were looking forward to that delicious morsel of strawberry goodness after practice, and it wasn’t fucking there.
 “You’re so weak,” Tsukishima mused, easily grasping your hands in his large ones, preventing you from hitting him further.
 Despite his rude words, his grip was surprisingly gentle. 
 You still ripped your hands away from his in anger. 
 “Don’t touch me, you thief.” You growled, cradling your hands against your chest, eyes glaring into the tall male.
 “You’re so annoying. I already apologized.” Tsukishima said, stretching his arms above his head. 
 “An apology won’t bring back my cake!” You snapped, grabbing your stuff from the floor. “You’re the worst Tsukishima. Let’s go already, Kentarou.” You huffed.
 The said male rolled his eyes before saying goodbye to his teammates, following you out of the gym.
 You were still fuming quietly as you two walked home together.
 Funnily enough, you had developed a close friendship with the small male, which resulted in him walking you home since he lived close by. 
 “I hate him.” You whined, tugging at the bottom of Kyoutani’s team jacket.
 He swatted your hand away, causing you to whine again, reaching for him once more, he sighed in irritation but let you hold onto his jacket this time.
 “You guys just need to fuck already.” He said.
 You stopped walking; causing Kyoutani to be yanked back since you were holding onto his jacket. 
 “What the fuck Y/n?” He growled.
 “I would never in a million years have sex with someone like him.” You said, face twisting in disgust.
 Kyoutani had definitely lost his mind with that comment. Tsukishima was your enemy, your opposite half, the worst person that you have ever met, there was just no way.
 “Are you serious?” He asked deadpanned. “It’s so disgustingly obvious you two like each other.” 
 You rolled your eyes at him, releasing his jacket from your grasp as you guys continued walking. “You’re blind Kentarou, we hate each other.”
 “I think you’re the one who’s blind Y/n. I’ll see you tomorrow for morning practice.” he said waving goodbye to you as you entered your home.
 The rest of your night was plagued with thoughts of Tsukishima, leaving you with a bitter taste in your mouth despite the fact that you had brushed your teeth.
 There was no way that Tsukishima liked you, nor you him. You did find him incredibly attractive, but who wouldn’t? He was tall and muscular, incredibly intelligent, and he was a good volleyball player. 
 Of course, people would find him attractive, but his personality was anything but, to you at least.
 Your first ever interaction with him was entirely unpleasant, his mocking attitude and sarcastic comments left you with the worst impression of him, and it resulted in how you felt about him now.
 But then… What did Kyoutani mean about you being blind?
 You screamed loudly into your pillow.
 ****
 “You look terrible.” Tsukishima raised his eyebrow at you, taking in your disheveled form.
 “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” You muttered, rubbing at your eyes tiredly. 
 Tsukishima was actually quiet for once, somehow you had missed the flash of concern that shot through his eyes.
 That didn’t go unnoticed by Kyoutani, who rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath how dense both of you were.
 Practice ran smoothly, there surprisingly wasn’t any sarcastic comments directed at you from Tsukishima. For the most part, he left you alone today, much to your relief.
 Now you were currently in one of the history classes you were a TA in. Between managing a volleyball team, and being a teaching assistant, it was no wonder you were always stressed out.
 Funnily enough, Tsukishima was one of the students in that class. 
 “We’re going to hand back your midterm essays now.” The professor announced. You grabbed the papers from your folder and started walking around the class handing them back to the nervous students.
 Your brows furrowed as you had realized that you only held three more papers in your hand, you hadn’t even given Tsukishima’s - oh. Your eyes widened slightly as you looked over at the tall male, he looked irritated, his eyes finding yours, there was a slight shake to his head.
 He had never turned in the essay. 
 That’s right, the essay was due around the same time that volleyball practices were incredibly strenuous in preparation for some important matches.
 But the midterm essay counted as a large portion of the grade, which meant that if Tsukishima received a zero, then he would fail the class, which meant that he wouldn’t be allowed to play volleyball any -
 “I seemed to have made a mistake Professor.” You said. “I think I lost Tsukishima’s paper…”
 What were you doing?
 Shit, you could get in big trouble for this so why were you doing this?
 “It’s not like you to be scatterbrained like this Y/n.” the Professor shook his head. “I swear you take on too many tasks, between this and being a team manager… Tsukishima, do you mind turning in the paper again to Y/n? Let us say… by the end of the day?”
 “It’s no problem sir.” Tsukishima said quietly, eyes glancing over to you as you finished handing out the last of the essays.
 “I’m sorry Tsukishima, I hope you can forgive me.” You said sweetly, bowing at him slightly.
 What the fuck?
 What the actual fuck were you doing?
 Tsukishima was taken back by your tone and your show of respect towards him, that was new. 
 That was… shit was he blushing? He ignored the creeping heat in his face and the slightly quicker thump of his heart. He pushed his glasses up slightly. “It’s not a problem.” he said quietly.
 You nodded at him once more as you made your way back towards the front of the room, ignoring the rising blush in your own face and the racing of your own heart. You got lucky that the professor really took a liking to you as his TA, you could get away with murder when it came to this class.
 Tsukishima was incredibly lucky as well, he was the top student in this class, never missed any assignments, always participated in class, so of course the professor was going to be more lenient with him.
 No one would have ever guessed that he had never turned in his midterm, except you.
 That was something that you didn’t understand, why would you help him out? 
 It was because he was just part of your team, right? You were doing this because you wanted your team to succeed right? He was one of the best players you had, so if you lost him that would hurt the team… that was why, right?
 Or maybe… maybe Kyoutani was right.
 Maybe, just maybe, by chance you actually did harbor a small attraction to the tall blonde.
 ****
 The rest of the day was seemingly uneventful, and you found yourself wrapping up the evening volleyball practice.
 “Hey.” an all too familiar voice called out, a sudden shadow being cast over your small form as you began picking up the volleyballs on the floor.
 You glanced up to see Tsukishima looking down at you, curiosity clear in his gold eyes.
 “What is it?” You asked, ignoring the quickening of your heart. What was wrong with you?
 “Why did you do that?” he asked, beginning to pick up the balls.
 “What do you mean?” You sighed tiredly, you just wanted to go home. You had no energy left in your body to argue with the snarky male before you.
 “You knew that I didn’t turn in the paper… why did you lie to the professor like that?” He asked quietly.
 “Well…” your eyes slid over to him before looking down at the ball in your hands. “I knew that the professor would cut you some slack since you are one of his favorite students… plus… it would be bad if you got a zero, right? You would’ve failed the class…” You trailed off, your eyes glancing back up at him, taking notice to the small smirk that began to cover his lips.
 “- and we can’t afford to lose one of our players! You’re tall and stupid but you’re a decent player so that’s why I did it! I didn’t want to hurt the team just because you were being stupid and forgetful!” You said, voice annoyed as you all but slammed the volleyball into his arms. “Hurry up and put those away, I want to go home.” you huffed, stalking away.
 You hadn’t noticed the small smile that overtook his face as he watched you walk away.
 “Are you ready to go?” You asked once you guys had finished cleaning up, Kyoutani nodded, grabbing his bag from the floor.
 “Hold on.” a hand grabbed the back of your jacket, yanking you back into a warm and broad chest.
 You blinked up to see Tsukishima peering down at you, eyebrows raised. 
 You could feel your face burn at his proximity and as you stumbled away from him. 
 “W-What is it now?” You stuttered out.
 “Here. Professor said to give it to you by the end of the day. I just had to reprint it out.” he said, handing you his midterm.
 Your eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you actually did the assignment?”
 “It was already done, I just forgot to submit it.” he said, shrugging.
 “And I thought you were just lazy and didn’t do it at all.” You said in awe, eyes skimming through the papers.
 “Don’t put me in with the likes of you.” he snorted, eyes rolling, although there was an unseen fondness swimming within those golden orbs, unseen to you at least. It was entirely apparent to Kyoutani who seemed to have a larger scowl on his face.
 “Shut up stupid! I’m going to grade your paper harshly now!” you hissed, glaring at him.
 “You can try,” he drawled out. “But I did the assignment perfectly. I shouldn’t get anything less than an A.”
 “We’ll see.” you snapped.
 ****
 “Stupid Tsukishima. Does he have to be perfect at everything?” You grumbled to yourself as you finished grading his paper.
 He was right.
 He did the assignment perfectly.
 You shouldn’t have said anything to the professor, especially if he was going to be so smug about it.
 Why was he so infuriating? 
 You could see the flash of his smirk behind your lids when you blinked, it caused your heart to race, your fist to clench tightly together. You just wanted to slap that stupid smirk off of his stupid gorgeous face and -
 Damn it.
 It seemed like recently your thoughts were completely consumed by him. 
 “Speak of the devil.” You muttered to yourself when you noticed who was calling you.
 “What do you want?” You hissed.
 “Oh, good you are awake.” His rang smoothly through the speaker.
 “Yeah because I stayed up late to grade your midterm, so I didn’t have to worry about it over the weekend.” You huffed, sitting back in your chair.
 “Well what’s the verdict?” he asked smugly. 
 You could feel your nostrils flaring in anger at his tone. “You got an A. Which is surprising to me since you’re the biggest moron that I know.” 
 “I already told you not to lump into the same category as you.” 
 “I’m hanging up now.” you announced, your blood boiling at his comment.
 “Wait. Go open your door.” he demanded.
 You frowned. “Why would I do that?”
 “Just do it and hurry up.” you could all but see his eyes rolling.
 You huffed angrily, stalking over to your front door, and yanking it open to reveal the blonde male smirking at you.
 You could feel your brows furrow as you tried to register what was happening.
 Tsukishima, your enemy, was standing at the front of your home, cladded in his team jacket and joggers, and he was holding a bag.
 “Took you long enough.” he said, removing the phone from his ear and stepping past you into your home.
 He was already removing his shoes and placing them on the shoe rack near your front door, heading towards your kitchen.
 “Are you just going to stand there all night?” he called out, never looking back.
 That comment snapped you out of your confusion, you quietly closed the door, following after the blonde that was beginning to make tea like he was in his own home and not someone else's.
 “What are you doing?” You asked quietly, eyes following his every movement. 
 “Just be quiet and sit down.” he said simply, and for some reason… you actually listened.
 You wracked your brain for all the reasons as to why Tsukishima was in your home this late at night, using your kitchen.
 You snapped back to reality when he placed a plate and a mug in front of you. 
 Your eyebrows raised slowly, but you couldn’t help the twinkle in your eyes as you gazed at the treat before you.
 A slice of cake, but the strawberry shortcake from that bakery to be exact. The sweetness of the strawberries and cream, along with the earthy scent of the tea, caused a delicious warmth to swell up in your body.
 “How did you -”
 “It’s a thank you.” he cut you off, pulling up a chair across from you, tea and cake sitting in front of him. “For helping me out with the paper.”
 You couldn’t help the smile that began to stretch across your lips, Tsukishima seemed shy almost, embarrassed maybe? Whatever it was, it was a pleasant change from his usual scowl and smirk.
 “Did you wait long?” you asked quietly, carefully cutting into the cake. “They aren’t even open at this hour…”
 “No, the line wasn’t too bad, I went after practice finished.” he said, glancing over at you. It was a partial lie, Tsukishima did wait a long time, but he did go after practice had finished.
 “Why did you wait this long to come over then?” you asked, sighing in pleasure as you took a bite.
 There was a reason why this bakery was so famous for their strawberry shortcake, it was the best cake you had ever had.
 “I thought you might’ve been too busy in the evening, since you promised coach you would hand in those data forms tomorrow… and the in class activity we did today… you said you would grade tonight and get it back to us Monday…” he trailed off quietly, cutting into his slice.
 You blinked at him, the thumping in your heart increasing.
 Since when was he so observant with you?
 “Since always. You’ve just never noticed.” he said, gold eyes boring into your own.
 You could feel your face heating up, shit, did you really ponder that aloud?
 What was this feeling bubbling up in your gut? It burned and turned pleasantly the longer you stared at him.
 A sudden shyness washed over you as you broke eye contact, eyes casting back down to the cup of tea that was now resting between your hands.
 “O-Oh.” 
 It was silent again, it wasn’t awkward, but there was definitely something lingering heavily in the air.
 You just couldn’t place your finger on it.
 “You have something…” Tsukishima began to say, suddenly reaching over, his strong fingers gently grasped your chin, tilting it up, thumb beginning to brush at the corner of your lips.
 Without even thinking about it, your tongue darted out, swiping across his thumb, tasting the saltiness of his skin and the sweetness of the cream that had lingered at the corner of your mouth.
 Tsukishima’s eyes darkened considerably; air rushing out of his nose as he exhaled deeply. His thumb rubbing against your lower lip. 
 Your eyes glazed over, lips parting slightly, inviting him entrance to your mouth. Tsukishima’s thumb pushed past your lips, resting on your tongue. Your eyes fluttered shut, your tongue gently running along the pad of his thumb.
 You could feel the blood roaring in your ears, your stomach twisting in arousal.
 “Fuck.” he whispered, the sound of a chair being pushed back, his thumb leaving the wetness of your mouth.
 It all happened so fast, by the time you had opened your eyes Tsukishima was hauling you out of your chair and up on the counter. His large hand grasped your face firmly before slamming his lips against yours.
 You gasped, allowing his tongue to snake his way in, exploring every inch of your wet cavern.
 You couldn’t help the moan that tore through your throat, your arms coming up to wrap around his shoulders, fingers sliding into the blonde locks at the back of his head, your legs wrapping around his hips.
 Fuck, you couldn’t get enough of this. He was everywhere, warm and solid against your body; all you could smell was him, all you could taste was him and fuck did he taste good. You could still taste the sweetness of cream on his tongue, the tartness of the strawberries, and him.
 It was intoxicating.
 You were drowning in everything that was Tsukishima and fuck did you like it. The way his big hands gripped at your face, your waist, pulling you closer, kissing you deeper, it was too much.
 But it also wasn’t enough.
 “What are you - ahh - what are you doing?” you whimpered out, eyes rolling into the back of your head as he trailed his hot lips against your throat, sucking and biting at every inch of it.
 “What do you think I’m doing you idiot?” he breathed against the shell of your ear. He grinded his hips against yours causing the loud moan to escape your lips, he was hard against you.
 “I don’t…” you whined softly as he grabbed your hips, pressing you tightly against his crotch, grinding against you sinfully. “I don’t understand… Tsukki… Kei.” you whined again, hips bucking up on their own, aching for more friction.
 Fuck you were so wet, so hot and bothered, you needed him to touch you more.
 “Fuck.” he hissed out, eyes squeezing tightly together as you whined out his name. “Fuck… you’re so infuriating. You still don’t get it do you?” he growled out, nipping at your lobe as his ragged breathing increased. 
 You couldn’t muster up any words, all that escaped your lips was a drawn-out moan as one of his hands reached up and massaged one of your breasts harshly. 
 “I like you, Y/n. I’ve liked you since the very beginning. But you never… fuck…” he hissed as you slipped a hand under his shirt, nails dragging against his smooth skin. You could feel the muscles of his stomach flexing beneath your touch, the pace of his hips increasing against yours.
 “You never noticed.” he finally growled out, reaching up and yanking your shirt off your body. “The only time you ever paid attention to me was when I made you mad, you simple minded woman. It’s so easy to get you riled up…” he kissed you harshly now, teeth knocking together before he bit into your lip harshly, causing your nails to dig further into his chest.
 “But then in class when you lied straight-faced to the professor… and then when you looked at me with that sweet expression, and those wide eyes… I couldn’t help but wonder what other kinds of faces you can make for me.” he finished quietly. His breathing was labored, and his lips were swollen but the intensity of his gaze caused your body to squirm.
 “What do you say?” he asked, his voice deep and rough, his grip on you was still tight, but his hips had stilled, he was pulled back slightly from you, allowing you space to breathe.
 “Please.” You whimpered out, tears springing up in your eyes, you were too riled up now, body too hot and aching for release.
 You needed him. You needed Tsukishima to touch you more, you needed him to whisper filth into your ear, you needed to feel his skin sliding against yours, and most of all, you needed him be buried deep inside of you.
 “I need to hear you say it Y/n.” He grasped your jaw, angling your face up to his as he stared down at you. “Say it.”
 You could feel your lower lip quivering, you were aching for it, aching for him. “Kei please! Just - just fuck me already!” you wailed. “What are you waiting for!? Just fuck m-” he yanked you off of the counter, your legs wrapping tightly around his waist as he carried you to your couch, dropping you down haphazardly before his hands were everywhere, ripping the clothes off your body until you were completely bare.
 He stared shamelessly at your nakedness, eyes running over every curve of your body. His hands rested on your bent needs, pulling them open and staring openly at your glistening cunt.
 “Don’t look.” you whimpered, moving one of your hands to cover yourself up. He easily knocked your hand away.
 “Don’t hide yourself from me.” he said as he moved to remove the rest of his clothing. 
 Tsukishima was beautiful, long, and lean, his muscular frame exposed to your greedy eyes as you scanned his body.
 Your lips trembled at the sight of his stiff member, leaking precum and standing painfully tall.
 He grasped his cock lazily, his hand easily sliding up and down his shaft as he gazed down at you. His other hand reached down to gather the obscene amount of wetness that was gathering between your legs.
 “You’re soaked,” he moaned, eyes flashing dangerously. “You want me to fuck you? Or do you want me to taste you?”
 You could feel your mouth run dry at his questions.
 Tsukishima’s eyes narrowed slightly, his large hand coming down to swat at your thigh. You gasped the stinging sensation, your arousal spiking dramatically.
 “Answer me.” he demanded.
 Your lips trembled, eyes glazing over with unshed tears, you were so pent up, you needed something, anything that would provide you with some kind of release. 
 It was only for a moment, but there was a flash of gentleness, the hand that had swatted at your thigh rubbed at the skin tenderly. 
 “You’re so beautiful.” he said quietly, and then he was moving to situate himself between your legs, grasping at your thighs before his head ducked down and his hot tongue licked a strip up your soaked slit until it rested on your clit.
 You moaned loudly; your head being thrown back as your body trembled with pleasure.
 His tongue lapped lazily against you, flickering up and down against that swollen bundle of nerves, occasionally dipping further down, sliding into your entrance, tasting you completely before sliding back up.
 It didn’t take long for you to get close to your orgasm. Your body was taut, aching for release. It was too much almost; your fingers tangled tightly in his hair, you couldn’t tell if you were pushing him away or pulling him closer.
 All you knew was that he was giving you everything right now. Tsukishima pulled your clit into his mouth now, sucking hard, his front teeth gently brushing against it.
 Your legs were tense, thighs quacking as you approached your release, the quiet room was filled with your drawn out moans and pants, wet slurping noises escaping your lower half as Tsukishima all but devoured your cunt completely.
You came with a cry, body convulsing against the cushions of the couch, thighs trying to close together, squeezing tightly against Tsukishima’s head. You whimpered brokenly as you tried to wiggle yourself away from the blonde that was still sucking at your clit, but his grip was tight, refusing to let you go, forcing your over sensitive cunt to produce another orgasm.
 In the midst of it all, he yanked himself away, lining his stiff cock against your swollen entrance and then snapping his hips forward, sheathing himself inside of you completely.
 A loud cry tore through your lips, you were still in the middle of your orgasm when he entered, your slick gushing out around him and spilling onto the cushions below.
 “Are you gonna cum again?” he breathed watching you in awe as you struggled to adapt to his size.
 “Fuck you are.” he moaned, your tight walls fluttering around him as your third one ripped through your body. “I can’t believe you came again just from me entering you.” he breathed out, hands resting on your hips.
 Tsukishima gave you no time to adjust, his hips snapping forward harshly as he set a brutal pace.
 You could feel your eyes rolling into the back of your head, your fingers gripping at the couch, needing something, anything to hold on to.
 His cock rubbed against your walls perfectly, your body having no time to keep up with his movement, the stretch burned, the pleasure toe curling. Your legs were wrapped around his waist, pulling him in deeper, keeping him closer.
 Suddenly your world shifted, Tsukishima hauled your body up, forcing you to sit on top of his thick member. You cried out loudly, this new position caused his cock to rub up inside of you at a new angle.
 He never stopped, his large hands gripped at your hips now, forcing you up and down as you rode him, his hips snapping up to meet the downwards roll of your hips.
 All you could do was grip at his broad shoulders weakly, struggling to keep up with his pace, struggling to adjust to the new depth that he reached within you.
 But you couldn’t. You could hardly breathe, you couldn’t think of anything except for Tsukishima and the pleasure he was giving you.
 “Look at you.” he groaned, eyes never leaving your face. “You make the sweetest faces when I’m inside of you.”
 “Kei…” You sobbed. “Please.”
 You weren’t sure what you were asking for at this point, the pleasure was mind numbing, the room was filled with sounds of your moans and his grunts, the wet squelching noises of your cunt as it was being stuffed over and over again was something that might’ve embarrassed you if you had the time to even think about it. 
 But you didn’t, all you could think about was unraveling again, all you could think about Tsukishima Kei. Your enemy, the most annoying man you had ever met, but he was also the most intelligent man you had ever met, the most beautiful man you had ever met, and now he was the only man that you ever wanted to receive pleasure from. 
 You came again with a loud sob, gushing around him, dripping onto his upper thighs, body trembling against his as you collapsed on top of his chest.
 He groaned your name loudly, thrusting up sharply into your cunt once more before spilling himself into your hot center. 
 It felt like time had stopped around you as you struggled to catch your breath. You weren’t sure how long it was that you guys stayed like this.
 But you have never been more tired, more comfortable in your entire life than right now.
 You could feel your eyes drooping down, your face buried into the crook of his neck, his long fingers gently tracing delicate patterns into the skin of your back.
 Tsukishima shifted, easily picking you up, your legs wrapped around his waist, his member still buried deep inside of you. You vaguely remember answering his question about where the bathroom was and soon you found yourself perched up on the bathroom counter. 
 You could feel his cum slowly leaking out of your swollen cunt, trickling down your leg as he gently cleaned you up. You didn’t even remember how you ended up in your bed, but now you were curled up against the tall blonde, wrapped up in the security of his arms as he rubbed your back gently.
 “I still hate you Kei.” you mumbled against his chest, sighing softly before pressing your lips into his smooth skin.
 “I know.” he smirked against your hair, pressing a gentle kiss on the crown of your head. “Go to sleep. We’ll go and get breakfast tomorrow.”
 Okay maybe you didn’t hate him, but he was still infuriating to you. 
2K notes · View notes
cordria · 3 years
Text
Twin Cores - DP
Saw this headcanon on Tumblr… awhile ago? It stuck with me, and I ended up writing this, and now I can’t find it to give the person proper credit. Lemme know if anyone recognizes this idea and knows who came up with it. (heart) 
Was gonna do this idea for the Big Bang thing, but I forgot all about signing up. ;) Wonders. So I’ll just post it and come up with new ideas.
~2,700 words. 
--
Danny floated high above the clouds, up where the air was thin and cold and the stars sparkled brightly overhead. It was terribly late, and Danny knew he’d be paying for this at school tomorrow, but this was always the best part of his week. He couldn’t come up here all the time, but when he cound, he always found himself relaxing. Hands behind his head, he floated on his back, studying the stars.
He let out a breath through his lips and brought a hand forwards to massage his chest, closing his eyes. Yesterday had not been good day. An accident with some of his parents’ technology had completely ruined his day. For reasons Danny didn’t understand, his chest had felt overly full since. Almost like he needed to cough up something - which couldn’t be, because his ghost form didn’t have any real lungs to cough with. 
With a groan, Danny stretched and rolled his body through a bunch of sharp loop-the-loops and twists, hoping maybe he could work out the kink. Nothing. Hopefully it wouldn’t prevent him from getting a good night’s rest. He was exhausted.
He floated for a few minutes longer, watching the sky and hoping for a meteor or two, slowly turning the overfull feeling over in his mind. He pushed and prodded at the odd sensation, trying to come up with what in the world it could be. 
It had to relate to his parents’ invention. Unfortunately, the day was a fuzzy blur in Danny’s memory and if something in particular had happened to him, he wouldn’t be able to remember it on his own. All he could do on his own was a vague understanding of what had happened.
Getting zapped with one of the newer devices yesterday had resulted in Danny getting split - again. His ghost half had fallen captive to the hero-like obsession of his core, and had gone on a hero-spree. A memory of rescuing a cat from a tree in a very overblown, comic-like way surfaced and Danny buried his face in his hands, embarrassed for himself. “Ugh, I hope nobody videoed that. Or anything else,” he muttered.
His human half had wandered aimlessly through the day, not knowing what to do with no driving force behind everything he did. Vague memories of eating pizza and not noticing the ghost haunting the place next door until Sam pointed it out filtered through the shadows. 
From what he remembered, it hadn’t been a horrible sort of day for either half of him. His ghost half had been allowed to play with his obsession all day and his human half had gotten to just be… human. But he’d been split for much longer than ever before; Tucker and Sam were unable to work through how the strange invention worked. 
Danny didn’t remember being much help with the endeavour. In fact, he sort of remembered his human half stealing the device, passing it to his ghost half, and the thing getting placed on top of the school for the afternoon. Jazz finally got it using some of the newer modifications to the Fenton’s vehicle that allowed it to fly. 
By the time the three of them figured out how to reverse the effects, it was late in the evening on the second day - more than 36 hours since being split. Phantom had started to turn more and more ghost, losing more of his humanity each hour, delving deeper and deeper into this hero obsession. His eyes had turned more ghostly, teeth sharpening, fingers turning into claws. Even a cape had started to mist into view.
Danny slowly ran his tongue over his teeth - they were still a bit too sharp - and pulled his hands far enough away from his face to glance at his fingers. They weren’t claws, not like many ghosts had, but… his fingers no longer really looked human. The changes that had happened to his ghost form the last two days appeared to be permanent, even now that they were rejoined back together.
Danny… didn’t want to think about that. Not yet.
And his human half had started to go through changes as well. Danny vaguely remembered - towards the end of the escapade, when he’d convinced himself that he didn’t want to be rejoined with Phantom - trying to avoid everyone and ending up in a tree, floating in a very inhuman way. His totally human form regaining some of its ghost powers.
Danny mentally poked at the odd, full sensation in his chest again. Perhaps it was that his ghost powers had grown while he was separated. Phantom hadn’t been exactly a half-a-ghost when they’d been slammed back together. And Danny had been just a bit of ghost too. Perhaps now he was somehow 60% ghost and 50% human… and his body was trying to adjust to being too much ghost. 
His mind poked at the sensation in his chest just a bit too hard. Danny slammed his eyes shut tight as he felt the sensation of transformation travel through him - lightning sharp and aching into his phantom bones. Panic set in a second later. He couldn’t transform up here - there wasn’t enough oxygen for his human form to breathe. He’d pass out and fall to his death. 
He gasped and threw his arms out, instinctively trying to grab something even though he was on the edge of the atmosphere, as the transformation arced through his arms and legs. He kept his eyes closed as he fumbled for his ghost side. He needed to transform back fast. His human side would already be aching to breathe, desperate for oxygen after the last hour of being in ghost form.
But his ghost side… was… 
Danny opened his eyes as he realized he wasn’t falling. As he realized his ghost form wasn’t something to grab for, because he was still a ghost.
“But…” he whispered, startled and confused. He’d felt himself transform. There was no mistaking the sensation that had swept through him. He looked around, almost as if the answer would be written in the air next to him.
Then the stars caught his gaze. He froze, mouth falling open, as he stared up at the sky. There were more stars than before, the whole sky alight with points of light. And he knew them - with each star he focused his eyes on, he knew what that star was. How far away it was, what it’s name was, what kind of star it was… 
Delight sparkled inside him as he let his gaze drift across the heavens. Stars he didn’t even know existed seemed to soak into his skin, whispering all their secrets in his ears. “How…?” he breathed, twisting around and around and looking everywhere he could. “Why?”
His gaze snagged on the moon, crescent-shaped and gleaming. He almost felt like he was drowning in it’s glow, feeling everything about it. The ice hiding in its craters. The human-built machinery peppering its surface. The soft warmth still coiling in its dying core. He could just… go there. He could be there in about three seconds. He could just…
He threw up a hand, blocking the moon’s glow, blinking hard and pushing the thoughts out of his mind. “Holy shit,” he whispered, breathing hard, focusing on Earth, on human thoughts, on normalcy. “What is this?”
Then he saw his hand, thin fingers topped with sharp claws, glove missing. His forehead furrowed as he realized both his gloves were gone, as was the logo on his chest, and the white belt around his waist. A black shirt and black pants. His boots looked like his normal shoes, just moon-lit white. Actually, minus the claws and some color changes, he looked… like he had yesterday. “Uh… What is going on with me?” 
He could feel the pull of the stars overhead. He knew he could just lean back, put his arms behind his head, and float there, watching the sky forever. Just revel in space for all time. Instead, he kept his gaze down towards the tops of the clouds. 
At least the first step of what he should do now was clear. Whenever he was dealing with anything out of the ordinary, Sam and Tucker knew what to say. They’d help. He’d go home, grab his phone, and call them. 
Danny flew towards Amity Park-
-and suddenly drew to a stop. He twisted around, eyes wide, realizing that he’d somehow overshot his home by a dozen miles or more. “What the fuck?” he said. He’d only been flying for a moment - how was he all the way over here? “I…”
He licked his lips and tried again. He set his gaze on Amity Park and flew-
-right past Amity Park again. It was an eyeblink of time between one side of the city and the other. Danny hung in the air, confused and slightly annoyed. “What is going on?” he said. A new power, obviously - but one that had unfortunate timing. His fingers curled, the claws digging uncomfortably into his palms. “This is what I get for leaving my phone behind,” he groused. The phone wouldn’t have done well in the thin, cold atmosphere. Even if he’d have brought it with, there was no guarantee it would have still been working. 
“Are all my powers wonky?” Danny asked, raising his hand and pushing energy into his hand. Instead of a steady, gas-like glow, the energy sparkled and hissed, like he was holding onto an exploding firework. “Odd.”
His powers were working differently, so it was time to try using them differently. Time to change tactics. Instead of focusing on a direction, Danny focused his mind on a destination. He closed his eyes, picturing where exactly he wanted to end up. Opening his eyes and taking a deep breath, he tried to fly as slowly as possible.
The world seemed to blur and twist, glowing uncomfortably bright for the fraction of a second Danny allowed himself to be in motion. When the world settled back into place, Danny found himself hovering about ten feet off the ground, within the city of Amiry Park, only about a half-mile from his house. “That worked a lot better,” he said, rather pleased with himself.
Instead of chancing another attempt at flying, Danny figured he’d turn himself human. A ten foot drop wouldn’t be too bad, and he could walk home. It would be the least-tricky way to get home. He took a moment to worry that this new power would prevent him from turning human as easily as normal, but then slammed that idea shut and closed his eyes. 
Danny pushed his ghost form away, pulling at that warm and heavy feeling in his mind. There was a sparkling sensation in his mind, then the sharp pain that came with turning himself human again. He dropped, landing lightly on his toes, breathing a heavy sigh of relief that at least this was still normal. He bounced a few times, testing out a few basic powers - invisibility seemed to work like normal, as did phasing through things. He didn’t try floating, for fear of accidentally ending up two towns over and two hundred feet above the ground in human form.
He walked home, rubbing his chest at that strange, too-full sensation, and snuck in the back door. Despite the fact that all the lights were out, he kept himself invisible to avoid his parents. It was so far past curfew that Danny didn’t even want to think about the trouble he’d be in if they realized he was still out. 
His bedroom door was still locked. Danny phased through it, flipped on the lights, and dumped himself into his bed. “Ugh,” he groaned, feeling the drain of the last two days on his body. He glanced over at the clock. Just before two in the morning. Part of him wanted to just curl up in his bed and fall asleep, try to get a few hours of sleep before tackling school tomorrow. But too much of him had a tight ball of anxious curiosity.
He groaned as he rolled out of bed and stepped in front of his mirror. He looked awful. Dark rings under his eyes and a horrible, pale tone to his skin. He looked half dead. “On the positive side, nobody will question it if I want to stay home sick tomorrow,” he muttered. He shuddered and shifted his weight, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then triggered the transformation.
His ghost form spread like lightning across his skin, slammed through his head, and settled into his chest like a cold ball of fire. He squeaked one eye open just a touch, not sure of what he was going to see. 
Phantom was peering back at him. Danny relaxed, letting his eyes open, and studied himself. From more than a few feet away, he looked absolutely normal. But up close, there were minor changes from the last few days. Teeth that were too pointy. Fingers that were a little more claw-like than normal. Hair that was more… smokey. Just a little. His mouth twisted, unsure of how he felt about the changes. “At least there’s no cape,” he murmured. “I’d look too much like Vlad with a cape.”
He squared his shoulders, set his teeth, and tried flying. He floated up and moved around his bedroom like normal. “So normal.” He caught sight of his claws and shivered. “Mostly.”
“Now…” He took a deep breath and jabbed hard at the over-full feeling in his chest. He was half-hoping nothing would happen. But light sparkled along his body, that tingling almost-painful sensation changing him in very subtle ways. His clothes changed from a jumpsuit to shirt and pants, his shoes looked like they would squeak on the floor as he walked. He was still glowing and transparent. “I’m… a different ghost?” He spread out his arms, feet firmly on the floor afraid to hover. “And I have like… superspeed.”
He took a very careful step forwards, peering closely at himself in the mirror. His eyes looked the same, with the normal green glow. His teeth were sharper, canines almost like little fangs. And… he leaned in, studying his freckles. They glowed, star-like, forming constellations across his skin. 
His mind veered off tangent, remembering the stars overhead, the glittering facts that swirled through his mind, the odd bubbling joy that came with even thinking about space. The freckles on his cheeks rearranged themselves into the constellation Draco, and sparks and speckles swirled into life across his clothes. A supernova that resolved itself into the stars overhead. Danny could trace the stars in his clothes, knew everything about each star. He was caught by the strongest urge to fly there. To zip through space to Alrakis, a binary star system eighty-eight light years away. It would only take him 221 years, 5 months, and 3 days…
Danny jerked himself out of his thoughts. He couldn’t fly for over two hundred years. He shuddered and blinked, settling back on his heels. The glowing freckles on his face settled down, his clothes faded back to black. The familiar sort of pitch-black of space. The sort of black Danny imagined the universe looked like before stars existed. “I have space powers now,” Danny realized, his voice slow and excited. “I have space powers! I’m a space ghost!”
Curious, Danny poked at that over-full feeling in his chest again. The world tingled and flashed, and he was back to his old self. Phantom, with the logo and the better posture and the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. “I’m two ghosts, somehow? Two ghosts… and a human...” Danny stared at himself in the mirror. “Or...” he rested his hand on his chest, feeling that strange overly-full feeling. “Or something…?”
Danny shook his head, not sure where to even begin processing that one. Then he turned himself human again, watching the world get dark as the ghost energy faded away. He scratched at his scalp, trundled over to his bed, and dropped into its softness. 
There wasn’t much he knew right then. The first was that space powers were the coolest power he could have gotten. And the second was that all this would be easier to process after a few hours of sleep and a large cup of caffeine. 
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mlm-writer · 3 years
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The Kappa Situation (Ray Palmer x GN!Reader)
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Pairing: Ray Palmer (The Atom, LoT ver.) x Gender Neutral Metahuman Reader Rating: Explicit Words: 1915 Summary: You get injured, you get some flashbacks, Ray is a darling angel. Sexy times. Note: Mashed two requests together, then changed some wording to make it gender neutral since gender is sometimes so unnecessary. Uhh reader has the power to manipulate magnetic fields. Oh and a Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore.  Tags: flashbacks, love confessions, idiots in love, oral sex, and hinted sub!Ray... ok it is kinda there. OH AN NO BETA BECAUSE I AM LAZY 
The ring moved slowly parallel to the metal bar it was around. With brows knitted in concentration, you manipulated the magnetic micro fields around it to move it to the finish without it touching the bar. You just passed your personal record. A smile formed on your lips as you moved it further. That was until the door to your room opened and the sound disturbed your concentration. The edge of the ring touched the bar lightly and a loud buzzer hurt your ears in punishment. 
“Dammit! What do you want?” You turned around to find Ray in the door. He looked at you like a kicked puppy. “Ah Ray… Can this wait? I am in the middle of training.” He frowned. Normally he would have gone already and given you your space. 
“I feel like you’re kind of avoiding me. Did I do something wrong?” He tilted his head. It was so cute. You tore your eyes away from him and grabbed the energy shake off the side table. That puppy look was exactly what you were trying to avoid. Dammit there were fairy godmothers and elves and whatnot wandering the timeline. There was no time for your dumb crush. Lives were at stake. 
“No, not at all, don’t worry about it. I just have been concentrating on improving my microfields. You know that if I refine it I could generate electricity right? That skill will be necessary eventually and I don’t want to be the idiot who did not train enough to get us out of regular Legends shenanigans.” You sat down on your bed and took a good swig from the shake, concealing your face with the bottle. 
“Oh… oh yeah ok,” Ray replied and you thought for a moment that he was going to leave you alone. However, he did not move from his spot. You kept on drinking, side-eyeing him. Your eyes raked over the perfect-fit jeans and the dark red sweater he wore on top of it. Oh how he was a champion of hiding his perfect body. When you came to his head, he had his eyes on you as well. You lowered the bottle and cleared your throat. “Can I uh…” Ray started, “God… I just want the truth. I don’t like people not liking me, especially not if I like them very much.” He ran his hands through his hair during his mini-ramble. The dark brown locks stood up in all directions now. 
“I like you too, Ray. I promise, I am not upset with you.” You chose your words carefully as you rose to your feet. Ray caught on your words. He was used to realising that your ‘better’s never meant ‘good’ and your ‘no lies’ did not mean ‘full truth’ either. You wondered when he had learned your loopholes so quickly. 
He walked inside, the door whooshing close behind him and the situation suddenly felt so intimate. “Not upset then… Perhaps disappointed?” You sighed and shook your head. He kept coming closer. “Then… Sad? Are you sad?” You chuckled and shook your head again. “Furious?” Another shake of the head. Another step closer. He stopped walking when there was half an arm’s length between you. He was talking, but you could not take your eyes off his perfect lips. You were so smitten. Dear Lord, have mercy on your soul. 
Inhibition slipped you as you finally looked up at Ray. Your intense stare shut him right up. “Ray Palmer, I have been avoiding you because I’m super into you. Now please leave me alone or kiss me.” No one could shut up Ray Palmer like you. The boy scout with so many words turned into a gaping fish at your words. Since he was not jumping at the opportunity to kiss you, you pointed towards the exit, but he took a gentle hold of your wrist. 
“No, no, I choose kissing… just… can we wait with that? I am pretty sure my breath still smells and I wouldn’t want our first kiss to be… gross… not that… I mean, ha, I am into you too, super into you, super duper…” 
You did not kiss that day. The memory was cut off with a dull ache in your chest. You opened your eyes, squinting at the ceiling. “Where am I?” You mumbled to yourself. There was shuffling and suddenly your boyfriend was in your vision. He was rambling. How typical. “What happened?” You, very intelligently, inquired, cutting through the words with only two of your own. 
Ray blinked at you. “You saved my life, don’t you remember?” As he stared at you with concern, you frowned, trying to remember. 
The kappa ran between the trees and the bushes. Ray was hot on its tail, his smaller size allowing easy navigation through the highly vegetated area. It was a wonder how Japan from the future had dense forests within the city serving as a park. You moved into position near the park’s entrance. You saw the green creature run right past it and you started running parallel to it. The sidewalk was full, even at this late hour. People yelled at you as you pushed them aside. You were just in time to see Ray change back to his normal size and make a jump to catch the kappa. 
He rolled over the sidewalk and right into the street. You sprinted as you spotted a hover car coming right at him. “Ray! Move!” You exclaimed, totally forgetting about your comm. You stopped in the middle of the crossroads and stretched out your arms. The magnetic field repulsed the hover car, slowing it to a stop right in front of Ray. You let out a sigh of relief, before you found yourself off your feet, right before everything went black. 
“Ah yeah, a car. You’re welcome, by the way.” You held your arm out and Ray took it to help you up. He helped you out of the medbay. Apparently you were all good, just bound to be sore with some minor injuries to your rib that Gideon could not fix for you. “Where are the others?” 
Ray was the perfect gentleman as he guided you to your new, shared room. “Still taking care of that kappa. We took it almost to the waverider, but it got away before the hatch was fully down.” You sighed, making a joke about how they were hopeless without you. Once in your room, Ray pulled you close and let you lean against him as he undressed you. You smiled as you smelled the mixture of his deodorant and grime of a long day. You helped him minimally, letting him undress you like a doll. Once you were down to nothing, he pushed you down onto the bed. “Don’t lie down yet. I’ll clean you up a little so you can sleep comfortably.” 
You hummed and let him take care of you. Ray returned shortly after with a bucket of water and a small towel. He was methodical and careful as he wiped down your skin. You closed your eyes and let your head hang back. The second he was done, you carefully lowered yourself down onto the bed, legs still hanging off the edge. Ray walked over to your dresser to get you some underwear. You whistled at him. He looked over his shoulder at you, an unspoken inquiry on his face. “I am naked on our bed and there is no one on the ship. Don’t you want to make use of that?” You winked at him, making him laugh. 
“As much as I would love to - for the record I really, really want to - I don’t think we should have sex with your injuries.” You pouted at him and trailed a hand down to your sex, rubbing yourself slowly, teasingly. “Uhm, uh…” You smirked when Ray was clearly having doubts about his righteous decisions. You saw his eyes follow the path of your fingers. “Just oral? I can do that, you can just lie there.” You failed at suppressing the grin that spread over your face. As he gestured to your body while suggesting you’d just lie there.
You chuckled and beckoned him over with your fingers. “I’ll take anything from you, but please lose your clothing as well.” Ray pulled his black shirt off in one smooth motion. He then unceremoniously pushed his jeans and underwear down together. Ray dropped to his knees like a man about to worship a god. He put your legs over his shoulders, removed your hand and got to work with his tongue. He lapped over you with languid strokes. Your eyes closed and your head fell back onto the bed. A happy sigh left you as his glorious tongue licked up your taste. 
“I love doing this,” Ray announced between licks as if you were not awfully aware of how happy he could be from just servicing you with his mouth. He teased you with only the tip of his tongue, before going back to those slow, long licks. You sighed and put a hand through his soft hair, pulling a little so he would put his lips around your most sensitive parts. Just one tug was all it took for Ray to drop the teasing and just get to work with sucking and licking and moving his head like he would die from a lack of your pleasure. 
You moaned at the sudden spike of pleasure. Your back naturally arched off the bed and you winced at the pain that stabbed through your ribcage. And just like that, the pleasure stopped and Ray was looking you over with saliva still dripping down his chin. “Are you ok? Are you in pain?”
“Yes and yes… You are so adorable,” you sighed as you shifted. “Sorry, could not help myself from moving. Having you suck on me like that is just very good.” You smiled sheepishly at him. Ray nodded and stroked your cheek with his thumb. He told you to relax as he went down again. He put your legs over his shoulders and you were expecting him to go back to what he was doing before, but instead you felt his tongue circle your hole. “Fuck Ray, please,” you whimpered at the idea of his tongue inside you. 
Your boyfriend was nothing if not obedient. He gently pushed his slick tongue inside, fuckign you with it. The pleasure was just as good, just less intense. While it was previously like bullets of pleasure through your body, this was like a continuous stream of pleasure that would slowly send you overflowing. You removed your hand from his head to touch yourself, your fingers gliding easily over yourself with Ray’s saliva still there. You allowed to let all the soft sounds escape you, being free in your expression of pleasure. 
Ray was a champ, who did not stop until he heard you gasp and then a hand landed on your abdomen to steady you as his tongue slid back up to replace your hand. An exclamation of pleasure left your lips, the feeling overruling the slight ache of your injuries protesting against the muscles tensing from your orgasm. You were panting as much as you could once the pleasure subsided. Ray rubbed your thighs for a hot minute, until he got up again. Your eyes were unfocused staring at the ceiling until they eventually closed, your body giving in to the exhaustion. 
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