You're calling Shouta "Daddy."

Not even calling, really—you're crying. Big, fat tears which roll down the apple of your cheeks and strike clean through the blush settled on their peaks. The sight is distracting. Hitoshi isn't sure there's enough blood left in his brain to do anything but leer at how Aizawa's form swamps your own—your pretty hands scrabbling at the bicep tucked around your neck, your throat working around strangled, shallow gasps.

He's never seen you from this angle before, so when Aizawa snaps his hips into you, Hitoshi watches both your toes curl and your hips rise from the bed like a wave cresting with some strange out-of-body feeling. As though he’s an incorporeal being merely floating by the scene.

With Aizawa's weight settled atop you, pressing you flat to the bed, there isn't far for you to go.

Hitoshi swallows.

You cry again—a sweet, high-pitched noise of alarm—and Hitoshi's fingers tighten in his pants, twisting the fabric beneath fingers like a child as he’s drawn to soothe the noise through pure Pavlovian response. He has to remind himself that, for once, he isn't in charge of the scene.

Not tonight.

"Daddy."

A brush of lips on your sweaty nape. "What is it, sweet girl?"

Your expression screws up as though it's a slice of paper put to flame. "Please, I— I—"

Heat crawls up Hitoshi's spine at the panic lacing your voice. The lilting vowels and consonants so familiar to Hitoshi suddenly sound foreign. He doesn't recognise your headspace, and if the way you buck under Aizawa's hold like a spooked animal is any indication, neither do you.

Aizawa squeezes your waist with a big hand. "Words."

"Dad-dy," you repeat, a sob fracturing the word in two. "I—" You suck in a quick breath, exactly the way you do when you're trying to suppress more tears.

Hitoshi bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood. Are you okay? Aizawa doesn't appear worried, but he never does. While Hitoshi trusts his Sensei with his life, entrusting him with yours is a different ball game entirely. He finds his fingers itching to reach out and touch you.

"I can't." Shaking your head, you press your cheek into the comforter miserably, and Aizawa lays his cheek atop yours.

"Yes, you can."

"No—"

"You can," Aizawa repeats, nothing but confidence to be found in his tone. He slows his movements down, grinding deep and slow inside until you're able to gulp in a few big, shuddering breaths.

Hitoshi likes seeing you cry when you're feeling good.

This is… this is decidedly not that.

The pout twisting your lips is nothing short of overwhelmed. Wetness clumps your lashes. Splotches of red decorate your face. And yet, Hitoshi feels the arousal rush to meet him like a physical force, sweeping him under as though caught in a rip current and carried out to sea.

Why is he into this?

Why is he into his girlfriend crying because she's fighting subspace as another man fucks her? Not even another man—Aizawa. Sensei, pseudo-father figure, and friend all rolled into one mess of a relationship.

Surely this isn't right.

Then his gaze drifts up to Aizawa, and he realises… maybe it is. Because Aizawa is staring down at you with an expression nothing short of smug, the corner of his mouth quirked upwards into the most irritatingly attractive expression Hitoshi has seen in his life.

And isn't that another realisation…

Hitoshi trembles slightly as the ferocity of his arousal worsens.

He could jerk off. He knows he could. But he's never been great at keeping quiet, and if either of you acknowledges Hitoshi's involvement in this scene, even as an uninvolved third party, he might spontaneously combust in the most humiliating death of all time.

"Words," Aizawa murmurs, when you seem only an inch more lucid than before. Though he punctuates it with a particularly deep roll of his hips, the hand on your waist lifting you slightly to meet him, and you keen like you've been shot.

Because he's mean.

Meaner than Hitoshi thought he would be, anyway.

Yet, you don't seem to hate it. The opposite, really. You raise your hips further—it must feel good, the way his thick cock is splitting you open—and Aizawa switches attitudes abruptly, forcing your hips back down in a blink. Somehow, this makes you moan the loudest.

Hitoshi manhandles you in bed. He throws you around, slaps you when you ask, ties you up and fucks you until you're babbling so good so good 'toshiii. So perhaps it's truly the fact that he's never seen seen you from this perspective that's skewing his own, but he's sure you've never sounded quite so pathetic about it—as helplessly turned on as you do now. As though you're powerless under Aizawa’s touch and enjoying every second of it. The thought sends a fission of arousal lancing straight through Hitoshi's sanity and heat curls into the cavernous reach like a cat. Hitoshi slouches further in his chair, thighs spreading wide and hisses when his hard cock brushes the seam of his pants before wincing at the fact he’s made any noise at all.

You appear to search your brain for a few seconds before moaning another guileless, "Daddy."

"Hm?"

Aizawa is plastered over you from head to toe. You sigh when he presses his knees against the outsides of yours, forcing your legs tighter together. Hitoshi knows from experience you love the drag of a cock inside you like this—how it stretches you perfectly, strokes your pussy just right, the pressure high enough to have your head swimming.

You love how you're forced to take it when you're trapped under Hitoshi.

When you're trapped under Aizawa, too.

"What are you whinin' for, huh?"

"I'm not," you exhale shakily. "I'm not whining."

"Oh yeah?"

You shake your head petulantly.

"Not whining on my cock?" Aizawa slows to a stop and both men watch the way you bite back a noise of complaint, desperate not to prove his point. "Not scarin' poor Shinsou here?"

Hitoshi lurches at the reminder that this is happening. That he's merely sat and watched as Aizawa has fucked you silly. Your bleary gaze falls to Hitoshi, and he tries his best to look normal.

If the small quirk of your lips is anything to go by, he failed.

Your voice is small when you ask, "Y'scared, 'tosh?"

Hitoshi shakes his head, mutely.

Aizawa raises an eyebrow.

Hitoshi straightens slightly. "No, I'm—" He clears his throat. "No, baby."

"Liar," Aizawa accuses blandly, eyes slitting in amusement.

You bristle, the palms you have pressed to the comforter suddenly trying to push you upright; as though the possibility of Hitoshi not being into this isn't funny to you, as though you're being dragged from the space you were so close to with an abruptness that brings only strident. Aizawa stops the motion easily, his chest barring you from getting any further than a scant few inches from the bed. You let out an uneasy noise from the back of your throat.

"Hey, hey."

Your eyes are fixed on Hitoshi. "Let me up."

Hitoshi can't find the words to soothe you.

"Sweetheart—"

"No. Let me up."

Aizawa sighs—quiet and long-suffering—before releasing his bicep from around your neck, grabbing your chin in the same big hand and forcefully turning your head downwards. You bristle at the manhandling this time and try to rip your chin away. He doesn't budge, though, shaking your jaw once sharply.

"Look."

"Shouta," you growl, lowly.

"Does Shinsou really look scared to you?"

For a second, Hitoshi thinks you're going to fight the older man again. Instead, you hesitate and do as he says.

You look.

Your gaze drifts up from Hitoshi's feet. He fights to keep still under the worried heat of it. Only moments before you reach his crotch, Hitoshi realises exactly what Aizawa is playing at and blood rushes to his cheeks. He sits up quickly, flexes his fists on his legs. He can't cover his dick because you're his fucking girlfriend and you've seen it before and more importantly, it would only make him look super guilty.

Like incriminatingly so.

Your eyes land on his crotch.

Hitoshi wants to sink into the floor as he watches your body lock into a kind of stillness he's only ever seen in nature documentaries, right as a predator spots its prey. It's not a dynamic Hitoshi is used to with you and his eyes blow wide in surprise, dick twitching in his boxers. You notice. He knows you do.

Does Aizawa notice, too?

Fuck, he hopes not. This is humiliating enough as is. He knows once the two of you get back to your flat, he's never living this down.

He has no idea what his expression is right now, but it can't be anything good.

"Y'see?" Aizawa asks quietly, right by your ear.

You nod, still staring at Hitoshi's straining cock.

"He's scared because he's never seen you like this."

You swallow. Blink slowly.

"Never seen you fucked into silence."

Some emotion caught between shame and arousal washes over Hitoshi.

Is that true? Has he not been treating you right?

Experiencing a similar awakening of your own, you wriggle under Aizawa. He only braces his palms on the comforter, either side of your tits, and starts up a harsh rhythm again, fucking into you without remorse. You let out a startled moan, collapsing bonelessly into the sheets.

"Guess you needed a real daddy, hm?"

At that, you really do cry. An awful sound, tangled high in pleasure and embarrassment, which snakes across the room to settle on Hitoshi's shoulders like a curse. Aizawa fucks into you as though you're rabbits in heat, muscled limbs weighing your own down to the bed and Hitoshi feels like he's losing his mind a bit, so he can't imagine how you're feeling. Sole subject to his mentor's fierceness. Limbs pinned like a butterfly's wings.

Your eyes flutter. "Fuck-nghhh— yesyesyes!"

"Y'call Shinsou daddy, too?" Aizawa asks conversationally. "Let him treat you like this?

Gasping, your palm hits the comforter once, as though you need some sense of control in the face of Aizawa's onslaught.

Aizawa grins, thick thighs tensing with each thrust. "You shouldn't, you know. It goes to people's heads."

"Ohmygod."

"Feel good?"

"Yeah— yes."

"Good."

A moan lights up the air. Even Hitoshi smiles at that noise—Aizawa wasn't calling you good, but you've reacted as though he was all the same. He loves how you respond so freely to praise, instinct overriding any overthinking. There's something so… sweet about it.

About you, really.

Naturally, Aizawa recognises you for what you are immediately.

"You want me to tell you how good you're bein' for me?"

Expression flashing, you arch deeper into the bed, presenting yourself to him.

"How gorgeous you look right now."

A broken whine. More tears.

"How well you're takin' me."

Your thighs tremble violently, legs bending at the knee and kicking up into Aizawa. You don't seem like you're trying to escape. Not with how you're also biting your lip raw to stifle your moans. Out of nowhere, Aizawa changes the angle, shifting higher up your body to drill down into you and the reaction is instantaneous—like a forest fire to bone dry tinder. Even Hitoshi inhales at the slick noise of Aizawa's cock fucking your dripping pussy, the sight of your brain quieting right in front of him.

Aizawa chuckles, though it's tense, lined by the pleasure he's clearly trying hard to ignore for your benefit.

"You always this sweet for Shinsou?"

It's a pointless question.

You're drooling into the comforter, small fingers tangled in the sheets like you're holding on for dear life. You try to suck in a breath, but Aizawa fucks the answer out of you within a second. You never stood a chance.

Instead, Aizawa turns his head to Hitoshi.

He jolts at being remembered.

Jolts again at the molten arousal in his Sensei's eyes.

"Uhhh, she's usually…"

You let out a high whine, animalistic in quality. Both men glance at you for a second, at the way you're slipping through your own fingers with every thrust.

"…more… lucid," Hitoshi finishes lamely.

"Is that right?"

Hitoshi suppresses a shiver at his gravelly tone. He nods.

Aizawa's lips quirk up.

The new angle appears to be your undoing, because very quickly you're tumbling back into teary-territory—wet lines streaking down your face as you get flung towards your edge.

"Daddy," you sob.

"Daddy's here."

"Da—" you suck in a shuddering breath, "—ddyyy."

"I know, baby."

You must tighten around Aizawa because he releases a low, choked moan and you respond to the sound like a flower blooming in the sun—squeezing around him again, fingers twitching with the urge to touch when you can't do anything but take what Aizawa is giving you.

You hiccup. "I'm—"

"You close?"

"I'm close," you echo.

Aizawa fucks into you faster somehow, and you all but bow off the bed, trapped between sweaty sheets and his hulking body—your orgasm clearly biting at your heels.

Hitoshi would know.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah—"

Can read desperation in your climbing voice. Delirium in your glassy eyes. Mind-numbing pleasure in the severe quakes lining your entire body, as though you can't take much more, as though you'll meet your edge and be lost in its abyss.

"Please, daddy."

Aizawa doesn't say a word, dragging his palms up the bed until he's pressing his big hands over your forearms. You whine, the noise spun out endlessly with each wet schtick of Aizawa's cock slamming into your pussy until it's one continuous mewl, until it's barely anything more than mindless crying. Hitoshi's sanity is in tatters—his mind swimming in the knowledge that all it takes to get you like this is apparently Aizawa's low murmurs and his older cock. Your fingers spasm on the bed and Aizawa slides his hands up your arms, tangling his fingers over yours to press them into the bed harder.

You let out a choked sob. "Please, pleaseplease—"

Aizawa brushes his stubble over your shoulder, biting down lightly on your shoulder.

"Daddy's got you."

You gasp. "Don'tstopdon'tstop!"

Turning your head to the side, you search blearily for Aizawa's eyes. He tilts his own and meets your gaze. Hitoshi watches quietly as your own flick down to his Sensei's lips, as the idea of kissing him crawls into the forefront of your mind, exactly how it always does with him when you're close. When you want to cum with Hitoshi's mouth on yours.

Aizawa watches you carefully. You lean forward, a whine on your lips begging to be pressed against his. Hitoshi waits with bated breath for the moment you both connect. At the last second, you stop. Wide eyes flicker to Hitoshi's, a clear question in them and feeling for the first time tonight like he's back in control, even if for a brief blink, Hitoshi straightens and nods his chin.

"Go on."

You whimper in relief, wasting no time as you immediately turn to Aizawa and kiss him, wet lips parting to lick into his mouth, shame a long-forgotten concept with Aizawa bullying into you. Sensei's eyes don't close fully, but it's a near thing, and he returns your hungry kiss with just as much heat—tipping his head to deepen it with a groan from the back of his throat.

You sink into the kiss like someone coming home, all worries and anxieties and thoughts left at the door for tomorrow. All the matters is now, Aizawa on you, in you, coaxing you right where he wants.

Hitoshi's dick twitches again, and he slides his palms under his thighs.

You press a broken whine into Aizawa's mouth.

Aizawa swallows it easily before raising himself up slightly—cock still fucking your wet heat, fingers still tangled with yours—and breaking apart for a breath. Hitoshi watches a string of spit lengthen until it snaps, hitting your cheek to become indistinguishable from the tears spilling with each thrust. His Sensei pants an inch from your mouth. Then, he's lifting his head higher and waiting for yours to echo his movements.

Inevitably, you do. Your head tipping back to stare at him, cock-drunk.

Aizawa smiles, something small.

"Open your mouth," he murmurs.

There's no hesitation as your lips drop open obediently.

Hitoshi watches, shell-shocked for a reason he doesn't want to face, as Aizawa drops a glob of spit into your waiting mouth.

You light up, moaning louder than he's heard all night, and he finds out why a second later as you cum—body shaking through your orgasm. Face screwed up in surprise, thighs trembling fiercely. Aizawa fucks you through it in a way that can only be described as mean. Quick, fast thrusts that quickly have you gasping, choking air into your lungs, hands pushing up against where Aizawa has them pinned as you ride out the blinding pleasure.

Hitoshi's hips kick up into the air at your broken keens.

Maybe he can touch himself… it's not like either of you will notice right now. And he's so hard that if he doesn't do something soon, he'll have no blood left to drive you both home after this, and surely that can't be safe. Driving with a boner has got to be somewhat like driving while tired… right? Nodding to himself, he frees a hand from under his thigh to drop it down atop his cock. He hisses at the light pressure and grinds the heel of his palm along his hard length, biting his lip.

Your whines get louder as Aizawa fucks you right through your orgasm and into oversensitivity. Hitoshi can hear the wet squelch of your pussy sucking in Aizawa's cock despite your little pained whimpers.

"Shouta," you plead.

Aizawa snaps his hips into you cruelly.

You correct yourself without missing a beat. "Daddy."

"There you go."

Hitoshi shivers.

Then, abruptly, Aizawa slides out of you. Neither of you is expecting it, if yours and Hitoshi's twin inhales are anything to go by.

A whine gets punched out of your chest at the emptiness and when Aizawa lifts his weight from you, it seems the combined absence of everything him is enough to have a fresh bought of tears spilling down your face. You slump into the bed like a puppet with its strings cut and press your face into the comforter pitifully as your body trembles through the aftershocks. Hitoshi watches Aizawa crawl down your body and peer at your swollen cunt. He palms at the globes of your ass. You jolt, clearly not expecting the touch. It's this side of sweet—thumbs stroking at the crease where your ass meets your thighs, long fingers squeezing the flesh like a stressball.

Then, he tightens his grip.

Hitoshi has barely a moment to wonder what he's doing before Aizawa is using his hold to expose your cunt further and lift your hips from the bed slightly. You make a low noise of discontent at being manhandled so soon after cumming.

Even from where he's sat, Hitoshi can see the arousal slicking your folds and the creamy white dripping down to your clit. The longer Aizawa keeps you like this, the further it leaks over your swollen folds.

Luckily, his Sensei has never been a patient man.

The only warning you get is Aizawa gently blowing air on your clit before he's licking a lazy, wide stripe up your core as though mimicking a big cat preening their young.

You light up like a firework.

"No—" you gasp, "daddy, no!"

Aizawa swirls his tongue around your clit and sucks, humming airily. You jolt as though electrocuted. Hitoshi supposes it isn't that far off. Not with the way you immediately tense up, legs kicking out helplessly. Aizawa isn't even holding your down anymore, but you still can't move—boneless and held in place by your hips as easily as one would a child.

"Please, it's too much— I— ahhh-nghh—"

Aizawa fucks his tongue back into you and moans. His clear noise of pleasure only seems to make you panic further.

"No, nonono—"

Hitoshi finds himself leaning forward in his seat subconsciously, following your call like an ancient summons. Something so intrinsically written in his DNA, he can't ignore it.

He should say something, right?

Tell Sensei to stop.

For some reason, he opens his mouth and cannot find the words.

Hitoshi brushes an anxious hand back through his hair, sweeping it off his forehead, and shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

Aizawa's ruby eyes flicker over to him at the movement. Face still buried in your cunt, he leans back enough to bite out a sharp, "Sit."

The word lances through Hitoshi's dazed panic before he even registers it as a command. His spine locks immediately, and he presses it against the chair's back as though cornered by Aizawa’s voice. He hadn't been planning on getting up, despite his ruminations on interrupting, but he certainly isn't going to now. The command pools like liquid honey in his stomach as he silently wonders what the hell is wrong with him.

Aizawa licks at you, sliding his tongue inside again within a blink and forgetting about Hitoshi just as quickly. Meanwhile, he's still reeling from being chastised in this context.

Your cries, somehow, aren't the loudest thing in the room.

Because sure, he's been scolded by Aizawa countless times. Cuffed over the head and yanked back by the collar and levelled with looks that could topple villains. Yet here he is—inarguably aroused by his Sensei directing a slice of that dominance on him.

"Hurts," you whimper lowly.

"I know it does." Aizawa presses a kiss to your clit. "Doing so good, sweetheart."

You settle at once, though not without a quiet sniffle.

Hitoshi feels much like he's drifting out at sea with no hope of finding land. No life raft. No meager drift wood to cling to until he's saved.

He watches you sink deeper while he's drowning himself.

Aizawa leans back and trails a glob of spit onto your pussy.

You moan.

"Daddy," you turn your head, "'s' t'much."

Hitoshi stares unseeingly at your foggy expression, hears through layers of cotton the slurring of your words.

Sensei doesn't stop.

"You're okay," he murmurs into your cunt.

You keen at the vibrations, arms splaying wide, feet kicking out. Pretty face smushed in Aizawa's comforter as though you belong there. If anything, the slack leash on your composure only seems to spur Aizawa on more, who squeezes your ass in two big hands, lifting you higher to eat up into you like a starving man with his final meal. The temperature in the room is rising; Hitoshi can feel sweat beading along his collar despite barely moving; you are covered in a thin sheen of perspiration.

Aizawa almost purrs against you, and your spine arches so deeply it looks as though it should hurt. A drawn-out whine tipping into the first vestiges of pleasure once more.

"Daddyyy—"

You don't sound like you're complaining anymore.

By Aizawa's rumbling laugh into your cunt, it's clear he's realised the same.

Pleasure licks up Hitoshi's spine as he grinds his hand down against his cock, and he exhales a shaky sigh—thighs spreading, spine relaxing from its rigid posture into his chair’s soft back. His eyes flicker between Aizawa's wet face, buried in your cunt as though he's trying to carve a home for himself there, and the way you're gasping and writhing and crying into the comforter, like it's a tennis match.

Hitoshi's dick twitches under his hand when you try to squirm away—clearly panicking as the pleasure creeps back up on you in the face of Aizawa's relentlessness—only for his Sensei to tug you backwards as easily as breathing, straight onto his waiting mouth, two large hands spanning your hips and digging into the meat painfully.

You cry out, hips spasming.

Hitoshi watches through some kind of fog as Aizawa stops fucking his tongue into the mess you've made and drags it down to your clit instead, mouth closing around the sensitive bundle of nerves much like an airlock on a spaceship.

You know you can't escape. Hitoshi does too.

He's not even sure he could escape his Sensei.

But you seem much more confident to try, chest heaving and fingers clutching the comforter like you're holding on for dear life as your hips jolt up and down. Hitoshi's not even sure it's a conscious movement, but Aizawa follows you easily, abusing your clit and your sensitive cunt with his tongue and his mouth and the attractive scruff on his face.

You get no reprieve.

A loud slurp rings in the air, right as Aizawa sucks your clit into his mouth, and you almost yell, a shrill, strangled noise caught in the back of your throat begging to be heard. You turn your head to the side and search for Hitoshi's gaze. Hitoshi takes in your blown-out eyes and the glassy way you stare at him in supplication. His heart stutters in his chest.

"Daddy," you stretch out a hand towards him along the bed, breath hiccuping, "help."

At that, Aizawa stills. Hitoshi tenses a moment later. You don't even seem to realise you've said anything wrong. Fingers lifting to grab at Hitoshi as though pure will could summon him to your side. Sensei lifts himself from your cunt a few inches to utter carefully.

"'Daddy,' huh?"

Aizawa's tone bites at his ankles. The urge to run far away from the older man and drag you with him rises, flash flood-fast.

"Shinsou can't help you, sweetheart. Not tonight."

Your whimper cracks the air like a whip.

"You think he's going to come save you?" Aizawa asks, hands kneading your ass.

You gasp when he slides a thumb between the two globes, only to drag it up and down your swollen folds. He circles your clit once, twice, enough to hear a hitch in your breath, before he presses his thumb inside your cunt and hooks it. Your hips drop down to the bed without both his hands holding you up. His Sensei doesn't seem bothered, though, content to let you flump under his touch.

"He's sat there getting himself off, sweet girl."

Hitoshi's hand flies from his cock and to the safety of the chair seat embarrassingly fast. He had almost forgotten—had been grinding against his palm like a teenager and so wrapped up in the fantasy before him, despite still scarcely believing it to be real.

"Little pervert loves this."

Aizawa nods his chin at Shinsou like he's showing you, despite your face still being buried in the sheets as you whimper lowly at every brush of Aizawa's fingers over your clit, every twitch of his thumb inside you.

"Seeing you crying on my cock," he continues through a small grin. "My face."

At the reminder, Hitoshi's eyes flicker to Aizawa's mouth—glistening with your slick in the low light of his bedroom. He trails upwards and almost exits his own body when he sees his Sensei's dark gaze locked onto him.

How long has he been staring?

Aizawa's next words are directed at you; Hitoshi knows they are, but the way his Sensei doesn't glance away has him twitching in his slacks. "You're stuck with me tonight."

Hitoshi feels a wave of fire consume his thoughts for a rational second.

"Jesus."

The first word Hitoshi has uttered tonight, and great… he sounds like a fucking idiot.

A bleary set of curious eyes flickers over to him. He can feel the blush staining his face and fights to keep a straight face despite the way he can feel precum leaking from his tip and wetting his boxers.

There's a suspended moment of quiet and then a gentle slap echoes in the room.

"Ohhh…" You bow from the bed immediately, back curling up like a cat's.

It takes Hitoshi a second to figure out what happened, but he catches on just in time to see Aizawa's fingers—his thumb still hooked inside you—lifting from your pussy and landing in another wet smack.

"Hh—nghh—"

His fingers smooth over your clit in apology. Three more slaps in quick succession—each wet plap further stuttering the gasp you try to inhale.

You hide your face back in the sheets and release a muffled whine. "Da—a-ddyyy."

Hitoshi swallows. You don't sound like you anymore, voice high and ready and plaintive in a way he so rarely hears—if ever. A part of him wants to panic. But he knows Aizawa has got you. Can read it in the confident tilt of his body, the assured look on his face. If Hitoshi had to guess, he had this scene planned down to the minutiae from the moment you brought it up.

You're only playing right into his hands.

"More?"

You shake your head into the bed and press a dull, pathetic whine there. Aizawa delivers another slick slap to your clit, and you shiver, hips jerking once instinctively.

"Can't think, huh?"

You shake your head again.

"That's alright," Aizawa murmurs kindly, pressing a small kiss to the back of your thigh—right on the crease where it meets your ass. "Daddy can think for you."

Hitoshi watches as those words fall over you like a weighted blanket, the only thing tethering you to this world, he's sure. For your expression loses all its indignant colour at once, smoothing out into a calm ocean. It's almost disquieting. Hitoshi knows you carry too much, knows you struggle to leave it at the door—knows what you really need is someone to force you to drop it. He didn't expect Aizawa to catch on this quickly. As though he's had years to learn you inside and out the way Hitoshi has, and not a matter of an hour, if that.

The corner of Aizawa's lips quirk up, though this time it's less mean and more pleased. Hitoshi swallows at the way you're spread out like a waiting sacrifice. Without hesitation, Aizawa dips back down and licks into you once more, tongue flicking inside you alongside his thumb. Your gasp is muted. All your subsequent sounds too. As though they're being forcefully filtered before they can be heard, and all that's meeting the air is you at your core, peeled back and bare and so raw, Hitoshi could cry.

He doesn't.

But it's a near thing. Especially when you close your eyes and start to bask in the attention Aizawa is lavishing on you, hips drawing back and forth to meet his mouth.

His Sensei hums happily into you.

You whimper in response, as though there's nothing better to you than hearing your partner pleased, than the knowledge that you're doing something right, doing good.

Hitoshi bites his lip. Between one blink and the next, his hand finds its way back to his cock—grasping the shape of himself through his pants and stroking it firmly. His hips jump up from the chair at the first wholehearted touch.

He wants more.

Wants to get his cock out and stroke himself until he's cumming all over the smart shirt he put on earlier this evening when he was still a bundle of nerves at the prospect of Aizawa fucking his girlfriend. But he forces himself to be happy with the heavy petting, instead. Anymore, and it would mean admitting quite how much it's turning him on to see his beloved Sensei turn you into a sobbing mess.

In his eagerness to consume you, Aizawa is near unhinging his jaw—tongue licking wide stripes up your pussy, dipping inside you, curling around your clit. You tremble beneath it all, body melting into the sheets and hands twitching absently at each touch. You seem overwhelmed. Like your edge is approaching closer than you thought it would. Your hips rock back onto Aizawa's face more insistently, and he matches you easily, doubling down his efforts until you're releasing a litany of sweet, short whines consecutively—toes curling and shins kicking upwards at the knee.

Hitoshi can smell the sweat in the air—see the beads of perspiration catching the light along the dips and curves of your body. Aching to taste, his jaw unsticks itself from the iron grip it's been held in, and a small sound of arousal meets the air. Hitoshi winces immediately, but neither of you notices, not when you're a breath away from cumming, nor when Aizawa is clutching you like a meal—all big predator hands and tongue.

"Closecloseclose, 'm close, daddy-nghhh, daddy—"

Aizawa hums into your cunt, pulling out his thumb, petting one hand down your thigh and tightening his fingers there, using his hold to splay you open further. Your hands jerk out. One stretched wide and clutching the bedspread. Another flinging back in an effort to find Aizawa's.

"Daddy," you plead.

Sensei glances over the swell of your ass and sees the request for what it is—touch, connection. A rock in an open ocean threatening to swallow you whole. He reaches for you easily with his other hand, as though the action of grounding you is as familiar to him as breathing. As natural as the tides and the wind and the way a predator plays with its food.

Tangling your fingers together, Aizawa lowers them to the bed and squeezes. Hitoshi's breathing has long since surpassed shaky. He thinks he might actually be dying. Lungs expanding and contracting in short, heaving spurts that bring nothing but madness to poison his mind.

You sob, the sound lined with comfort—you know you're safe.

Daddy's got you.

Daddy's making you feel so good.

Daddy's in charge. You don't need to think.

Hitoshi swallows back a groan, head tipping back slightly as the pleasure surges—as you clutch Aizawa's hand so tightly the colour bleeds into white.

When you cum, there's a strangely silent air about it for someone usually so loud.

Your mouth opens around a moan that he never hears, another gasp cut off at its head. Your eyes open and then widen. Every muscle in your body locks tight—thighs tightening around Aizawa's head, toes and fingers curling. It's the hottest thing Hitoshi's ever seen.

But Aizawa doesn't let up.

Doesn't seem phased by the death grip, nor the way you're trying to strangle him.

He licks you through it, slurping on your clit and flicking his tongue cruelly. You shake and shake and shake. Trembling like a leaf barely clinging to its tree in the heart of a storm. Eventually, you find your voice again. A light, throaty keen tumbling from your lips.

Aizawa doesn't stop.

Your keen turns into a whimper, blown-out like spun sugar.

Aizawa doesn't stop.

More tears fall down your face. Body tensing and relaxing rhythmically, as though you wish to escape, to crawl away from Aizawa, but that endless well of your energy is finally dried up.

A broken sob. Helpless.

Aizawa doesn't stop.

Hitoshi's so close. Boxers soaked through, hard cock pulsing under his hand. Every noise you make has his dick twitching like a reflexive action—like you're both one and the same, one mind in two bodies.

"Da-ah-ddy," you sob, hiccuping over the word. "T'mucht'mucht'much."

You try to lift the hand tangled with his to push at his face, but Aizawa shuts that down quickly, chuckling into your cunt when you let out a panicked whine, too limp to do anything but take what he's giving you.

Aizawa doesn't say anything, keeps his mouth close to your pussy. Eats away at you like oxygen corroding metal—stripping back layer after layer until there's nothing left, until you're twitching like a dying animal, until you're crying out and cumming on his face again. Cunt fluttering on Aizawa's mouth, arousal dripping down the stubble on his chin—the insides of your thighs rubbed pink and raw.

You have nothing left to give after this one. Hitoshi can see it as clear as day.

You're gone.

The cries he hears aren't your own, nor is the way your body shakes through your third orgasm helplessly.

Aizawa doesn't stop.

Hitoshi feels his stomach swoop.

Your hips spasm madly and he uses his hold on your thigh to push you wider, to push you down into the bed and scrape his teeth gently over your clit just to hear you sob.

"Da-ah—"

You try. You really do.

"Da-ddy-ple-ah-seee-uhhh-nghhh—"

Your cries fall on deaf ears, though. And Hitoshi can do nothing about it. Can't help you. Can't soothe you. Can't do anything but watch you fall apart and hope that his Sensei knows how to pick up the pieces after the scene ends.

"Please-ah-ahh-ngh-plea—" you hiccup wetly. "—please."

Hitoshi doesn't even know what you're begging for. If you want Aizawa to stop or keep going until there are truly no thoughts left in your brain. If you're begging for the sake of begging or begging because you really will rupture at the seams, if all your insides will tumble onto the bed in a vulnerable, undignified heap of entrails that Hitoshi honestly doesn't think he's equipped to handle.

Aizawa slurps at your cunt. All it takes is him fucking his tongue inside you, chin brushing your clit roughly, and you're coming again with a sharp, startled cry.

"Daddy!"

Hitoshi's toes curl, thighs tense. He takes one look at the blissed out expression on your face and cums too, thick spurts of release wetting his already damp boxers. Warmth drips down to his balls. He kicks up into his touch with a hiss and notes the way Aizawa's gaze flickers over to him for just a moment before he's focusing back on you, sucking your clit into his mouth as you tumble within moments back into overstimulation. The pleasant wave of your orgasm is barely a wave at all—as though you dipped a toe in the water only to be submerged entirely a beat later, yanked so deep you can't breathe.

You honestly look like you're about to pass out.

"Haaa-ngh-ahhh, st-stop n'moren'morepleaseda-ah-ddy."

Now, you’re desperate enough to try to crawl up the bed, body heavy with delirium, and you try to get your knees under you to move. It doesn't work. As soon as your hips raise up a scant few inches, they drop back to the bed with another brush of Aizawa's tongue. As though that's all it takes to render you utterly useless.

You get an elbow under you—another suck on your clit—and collapse face-first into the sheets.

"Daddydaddyda-ah-ddy," you chant listlessly, as effective as words being carried away by the wind. "I c'n't— can't— nonono, n'moreplease— ple-hah-please. Please!"

Aizawa hums against you and your gasp melds with a low, wounded whine—more pain than pleasure, but Hitoshi can't help the way his spent dick twitches anyway. He's sick in the head like that. Enjoys seeing you writhe and cry. He's never seen you quite this fucked out before, though.

"St-sto-ah-stop," you whine. "Pleasedaddyplease, stop."

Hitoshi wonders where the line is for his Sensei. What would it take to get him to actually stop? Is there a number of orgasms he's going for? Or is he reading your body and listening to your little whimpers the same way animals sense air pressure changes? Hitoshi would've hesitated when you were trying to crawl away from him at least. Aizawa didn't even seem phased. In fact, he's still eating you out like there's nowhere he'd rather be. Perfectly settled on his stomach, lapping at the wet mess of arousal dripping from your core, with one big hand keeping your pussy on his face and the other pressing your weak hand to the bed.

"N'moren'more I c'n't— daaaddyyyy!"

Aizawa laughs again, a soft puff of breath that only serves to make you arch your back, thighs tightening and spasming through a weird, panicked stretch as you relax them right after. You let out a choked sob and press your face into the blankets. You've been crying for so long that your entire face is wet, and Hitoshi stares at the sight in some kind of daze.

Aizawa is tongue-fucking you again. Your chest is still heaving—not even recovered from your last orgasm, or the one before that—and Hitoshi might actually die. He can feel his dick hardening again in his ruined boxers, and the feeling is simultaneously uncomfortable and so hot that he bites his bottom lip until he feels it split. Until there's an iron tang along his tongue. Until he wishes he were the one with his face buried between your legs instead. Until he wishes he were the one beneath—

"Daddydaddydaddy—" you jerk the hand under his again, desperate for something, anything, but Aizawa merely squeezes his own, "—nghhh stopstop, plea-uhhhhhhh—"

Between one breath and the next, you're tipping over into another orgasm, but this time it isn't pretty. You let out a loud, cracked cry—so pitiful that Hitoshi winces in sympathy immediately—and immediately dissolve into shuddering tears, riding out the orgasm through wet, gasping breaths. Hitoshi isn't even sure if it feels good this time. There's been no real break between orgasms, and Sensei has been torturing you nonstop.

Though Aizawa does lap at you more gently this time, tongue licking wide, flat stripes up your pussy. When your whine overflows into anguish, Aizawa finally slows to a stop. Apparently, stopping doesn’t mean not touching you at all. He gives you a brief reprieve, letting you suck in one stuttering breath, another, lets you open your eyes—Hitoshi didn't even realise they'd closed, gaze caught on Aizawa’s vigour—then, he leans forward and presses a soft kiss on your clit: a brush of lips, a quiet, wet smacking sound as he parts, like how Hitoshi kisses the forehead of his cat.

Hitoshi startles at the wall of heat that realisation brings.

You whimper, entire body twitching like a live wire.

A kiss.

Another.

Hitoshi inhales something shaky. More tears stream down your face.

You both know he's winding down the scene now—that you're okay, that you're good, that you got through it. But you're still reacting to every kiss like it's a brand. As though each one could be the promise of more trials and tribulations you won't survive.

Aizawa tilts his head up and kisses your entrance. Places a chaste kiss on either side of your pussy. One on your perineum. Another on the crease of your ass. He loosens his fingers around yours and brushes his thumb over the back of your hand kindly.

"Did so well," he murmurs into your thigh, pressing a kiss there. "So well, sweet girl."

Your sob of relief splinters in two as you recognise the words for what they are—you're done.

Aizawa sits up after placing one final kiss on the globe of your asscheek, and you immediately slump deadweight onto the bed without his hand propping your hip up. You're a mess. Flushed and sweaty and teary-eyed. Trembles wrack your body with every shaky breath you inhale as you try to get oxygen back in your lungs—as you try to slow down the borderline-hyperventilating you've been doing.

Unfortunately, Hitoshi is immediately distracted by Aizawa's cock. Red and weepy, slapping against his stomach when Aizawa shifts his legs under to sit between your spread ones. He rolls his shoulders before brushing big palms up and down your legs soothingly, content to quietly watch for now as you regulate your breathing. Hitoshi watches the exchange with a strange pain in his heart, as though someone has reached through his chest and squeezed it in their fist.

"There y'go," Aizawa says, a palm massaging the meat of your thigh.

You whine lowly, but it's more for the sake of making noise than anything else. This is particularly apparent when you make no move to do anything after—lying like a corpse as though Aizawa literally ate your soul out through your pussy. Leaning down to brush the hair matted to your nape, Aizawa's mouth tips up into a small, satisfied smile. It's fond, too—Hitoshi realises with a start. Undeniably sweet and soft and… affectionate, where he stares down at your spent, quivering form.

Hitoshi feels like he's going to throw up. His dick is also half-hard again.

Predictably, this moment of panic is precisely when Sensei decides to turn towards him.

Aizawa gives him a once-over before quirking a brow.

"You okay?" he asks quietly, as though preserving the peace of your afterglow.

Hitoshi nods. Swallows once against the sand in his throat. Brushes an antsy hand back through his hair to try to burn some of the weird energy simmering low in his gut. He isn't okay, not really, but he can't say as such to the older man.

Aizawa doesn't chastise, but Hitshi can tell he wants to.

"I'm okay," he corrects, putting his thoughts into words—stomach swooping when he registers the rough notes to his voice, coarse from disuse.

Narrowing his eyes, Aizawa gives him a short nod.

Then, "Go shower. I'll clean her up."

Hitoshi winces. Shouldn't he be the one looking after them both? After all, he wasn't even technically involved in the scene.

"No, it's— it's okay. I'll, uh," he moves to stand, "I'll get you both a wet flannel."

"Shinsou."

Hitoshi's spine locks again embarrassingly fast, despite being only halfway out of his seat. Jesus. He really hopes his Sensei doesn't notice how weird he's being. A bit of weird after his girlfriend just got fucked is fine, but if he realises why he's acting weird…

Hitoshi will die.

He tilts his head, trying to seem nonchalant. "Hm?"

Aizawa only trails his eyes down to Hitoshi's crotch. He's confused for all of a heartbeat before he follows his Sensei's gaze to where there's an absurdly obvious cum stain on his trousers. He tenses his jaw. That's humiliating, Hitoshi thinks to himself dryly. What am I, a teenager?

But then again, this is less humiliating than the alternative: jerking off and having his spent dick in his hand and cum all over his nice shirt, had he not thought better of it.

Thank god he did cum in his pants, all things considered.

Aizawa smirks, the corner of his eyes crinkling in amusement. "Go shower," he repeats. "I've got her, don't worry."

Hitoshi glances down at you and—oh. You're asleep.

Upset expression smoothed out into peacefulness. Face still wet and flushed. Hands still half-clutching the sheets like you're not quite convinced you're safe just yet. He looks back up at Aizawa, but his gaze gets caught on the way.

"But you're still..." he gestures helplessly to Aizawa's hard cock, hanging between his legs.

How the hell do you tell your mentor they're still hard?

How the hell do you say it's okay if you need to go and deal with that?

"I'm okay," Aizawa chuckles. Hitoshi feels his skin break out into gooseflesh "Why don't you both stay the night? I'll get you some clean clothes. Cook you dinner.

Hitoshi bites his lip uncertainly.

"Saves you driving home…" Aizawa adds.

Hitoshi can't find his words. Aizawa seems to notice.

"That was heavier than I was anticipating," he offers lowly, eyes turning kind.

So his Sensei didn't have it all planned out then. Weirdly, Hitoshi feels some relief at that.

"It was," Hitoshi agrees a bit uselessly, still lost as to the turn tonight's taken—the realisations he's been forced to reckon with.

Aizawa nods. "So stay."

He says it like it's simple.

Maybe it is.

Hitoshi stares at his fucked out girlfriend strewn across Aizawa's bed. At his Sensei, hovering over her like a sentinel.

Yeah, Hitoshi thinks to himself quietly, tipping his chin up to meet Aizawa's wine-pool eyes. Maybe it is.

"Alright, we'll stay."

‹‹ MASTERLIST

Qifrey takes the goblet from Olruggio—half-filled, but still heavy in his hand. The corner of his mouth lifts when he notices your eyes lingering on its contents, stirred by quiet curiosity. As far as he remembers, you've never had the opportunity to imbibe before.

"Apprentice, do you want to—"

Before Qifrey can finish, you're already leaning across the table to pick up a decanter. Both men fall silent as you begin to pour carefully into an empty goblet.

"Um." Olruggio starts, visibly alarmed when the level of liquid continues creeping higher and higher. "That might be a little too much..."

You ignore him. Only when the goblet is filled nearly to the brim do you set the decanter back down, deep red swishing dangerously close to the rim as you lift it to your lips.

You take a cautious mouthful. At first, there's no reaction from you at all. Qifrey's about to gently prompt you when your face scrunches up ever so minutely.

"Euh."

Without another word, you push your goblet into his empty hand before ambling off into the festival crowd—presumably in search of water to wash the taste from your mouth. Qifrey sighs softly through his nose and looks down at the two drinks he's now holding, though the fondness tugging at the corner of his mouth ruins any real attempt at exasperation. He raises your abandoned goblet to his lips instead.

Olruggio stares after you until you disappear amongst the throng, before glancing sideways at Qifrey. "You spoil them," he says, after a while. Qifrey smiles faintly into the rim of your—his now, he supposes—cup.

"It's hard not to."

Olruggio watches him for a moment longer. For a second, Qifrey thinks he might speak further, but whatever is on his mind ultimately goes unvoiced. The two of them drink silently side by side beneath the flickering lanternlight instead, arms brushing ever so often, and Qifrey is starting to feel the faintest hum of warmth unfurling in his fingertips when a passing villager suddenly recognises him.

It's not long before Qifrey finds himself pulled into conversation. He barely manages a glimpse of Olruggio—grinning, goblet lifted teasingly in farewell—before an over-eager farmer tugs him further from the table, insisting he hear about this year's harvest. Another villager he vaguely recognises comes up to thank him profusely for removing a boulder that'd been damming the river upstream. A young couple insists he share a toast with them, while an elderly woman presses yet another cup of wine into Qifrey's hands and refuses to let him leave without trying her granddaughter's honeycakes.

By the time he manages to extricate himself and circle back to the wine tables, the powdered sugar from the pastries still clinging faintly to his tongue, he finds Olruggio sprawled face-first across the wood, snoring faintly. Qifrey stares at the two empty decanters next to him before slowly reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

He's drooling.

"…Unbelievable." Qifrey unclasps his cloak with a quiet sigh. The heavy fabric slips from his shoulders, and he gathers it carefully in his hands before draping it over Olruggio's slumped back. The man barely stirs, mumbling something utterly incomprehensible into the tabletop.

Qifrey shakes his head and goes to find you instead.

 He spots you eventually, near one of the smaller fires scattered along the edges of the square. It's quieter here, far enough from the heart of the celebrations that the festival clamour softens into a distant hum. You don't notice his approach—seated cross-legged with your back to him, next to a girl roughly your age. The flickering firelight washes over you both, casting your silhouettes in shifting glow and flickering shadow, outlined against the dark.

And the two of you are alone.

His steps slow on instinct. Even from a distance, Qifrey recognises her as the baker's daughter. He cannot make out your face from this angle but hers is plainly visible—dark curls pulled back from a heart-shaped face, a smile designed to put people at ease. Her eyes shine bright as polished amber as she speaks, hands moving expressively while the fire crackles warmly between you.

It hasn't been long since you passed the Pentacle's second test—he needs to ensure you don't accidentally let slip the secret behind magic. Qifrey lingers a few paces away, remaining just close enough to stay within earshot.

She's asking about your spells now. About the magic you've learned and yet to, the villages you've helped as a witch. Her fascination is written openly across her face, her smile bright at every answer you give. You're responding in your usual tone—brief, practical, somewhat curt—but she seems delighted to listen to them regardless. Even as Qifrey watches, she shifts closer gradually across the mat, until her shoulder bumps lightly against yours.

Quite suddenly, Qifrey realises what he's looking at. This girl isn't interested in magic. She's interested in you.

The thought lands strangely, oddly shaped and ill-fitting, a square cube shoved through a round hole. For a moment, Qifrey can only stand there half-hidden in the shadows, watching—and realising, with faint disbelief, that somewhere along the way, you've stopped being a child.

And he hadn't noticed. Not until now.

The baker's daughter is still talking animatedly beside you, chin propped in one hand as she rambles on about how exciting it must be to be a witch—learning magic, seeing things ordinary people never will. Every so often she laughs at one of your short replies, smiling as though your reticence only encourages her further. Eventually, her expression softens slightly.

"But it must get lonely sometimes, doesn't it?" she asks, tilting her head to look at you so that her dark hair spills over her shoulder. "Living all the way out there in the atelier?"

You shake your head. "I have Master," you say, plainly.

The words strike him with embarrassing force. Catch him off guard, soft and aching all at once, fingertips rolling over old bruises that have yet to fade. Qifrey still remembers what you'd said that day, by the fountain.

Master is the prettiest.

"No, I mean…" The girl blinks, then laughs softly under her breath, before nudging your shoulder lightly with hers. "Do you have someone you're interested in?"

You stare at her blankly. "What does that mean?"

Her smile widens. "It means someone you think about a lot," she explains patiently, leaning in with one hand cupped around her mouth, the ends of her hair tickling the curve of your shoulder. Qifrey can barely catch what she's saying from where he stands. "Someone whose smile makes your heart beat faster. Someone you want to kiss. Someone you like more than anyone else in the world."

Your brow furrows, before your gaze drops to your lap. From the shadows, Qifrey feels a faint frisson of guilt stab through him; perhaps, he has kept you too isolated all these years as his apprentice. You should not have to learn about these things from a village girl beside a bonfire while he lingers awkwardly in the dark, hiding from your sight. As your master, Qifrey should have explained such matters himself—or at the very least, asked someone more experienced in these conversations to guide you through them.

You are frighteningly skilled in the domain of magic. You are quick to learn and quicker to understand, your mind sharper than most young witches your age, and you can navigate spells even some adults would struggle to grasp. It is his failing, then, that this conversation is leaving you aflounde—

"Oh. Then yes."

Qifrey stills.

The baker's daughter brightens at first—only for disappointment to flicker almost immediately across her face a second later. It's subtle, but unmistakeable. She leans in closer, echoing the question hovering in Qifrey's thoughts.

"Who is it?"

Qifrey should leave. This is not a conversation he ought to be listening in on; he should have walked away minutes earlier instead of lurking like a thief, making flimsy excuses for himself. He's just about to make a hasty retreat when, for some unfathomable reason, you suddenly look up and glance over your shoulder—eyes landing directly on where he stands just beyond reach of the firelight.

"Master."

Qifrey's heart vaults into his throat. Caught. "Sorry," he finds himself saying before he can think better of it. "Olruggio passed out from drinking too much, so…"

So what? His explanation trails off uselessly. The words feel awkward and clumsy in his dry mouth, slipping from his tongue without direction or purpose. Under your gaze Qifrey feels painfully transparent—as though you are picking apart every half-formed thought behind his fumbling excuse with ease. It is a deeply unsettling feeling, considering you are simply looking at him the way you always do.

Before Qifrey can scramble for another excuse—or perhaps, to flee entirely—you rise to your feet, brushing the dust from your clothes.

"It's alright. I can go."

Behind you, the girl's expression deflates with poorly concealed disappointment. It's quickly smoothed over with a smile, however, when you offer her a polite nod in farewell. Manners obliged, you cross the short stretch between you, grass crunching softly beneath your feet and fall into step next to Qifrey, the motion as easy and natural as drawing breath. Qifrey tries his best to keep his gaze from wandering as he leads the way back to the village square.

By now, majority of the festivities have begun to wind down. The two of you retrieve Olruggio from the wine tables; his friend is too drunk to do anything beyond mumble incoherently, much less offer any assistance. Qifrey quickly inks a levitating spell onto a stretcher you assemble from spare canvas and poles, and Olruggio moans tragically when you roll him onto it together.

"I'm never drinking again," he mumbles.

Qifrey sighs, one hand pressed to his forehead. "You say that every time."

"This time I mean it."

You snort softly under your breath, reaching down to cajole the stretcher into the air. "Mr. Olruggio can tell himself that tomorrow morning."

In response, Olruggio only groans.

Despite the sorry state Olruggio is in, it's a leisurely walk back to the atelier. Normally, Qifrey wouldn't mind the trek—embedded glowstones illuminate the winding path with soft pools of warm light, and the autumn wind is pleasantly cool against his cheeks—but tonight, his thoughts eat away incessantly at the edges of his mind. The question circles endlessly, its grip unrelenting, no matter how hard he tries to dismiss it.

There is someone.

Qifrey thinks hard, as you walk through the dark fields with Olruggio's stretcher floating between you, his soft snores accompanying the steady crunch of your footsteps on gravel. Who? Who have you been watching when Qifrey wasn't paying attention, thinking about, wanting to kiss? A few faces come to mind, but none feel right. And worse still is the uncomfortable realisation that he hadn't noticed—anything at all.

"Master?"

He nearly stumbles over his own feet. Qifrey's arms flail for balance, windmilling wildly, before he manages to catch himself at the last second. Faintly mortified, he glances over—only to realise belatedly you've been observing him the entire time.

"Master seems deep in thought," you say, unhelpfully.

Qifrey feels like an insect—pinned to a display card, positioned beneath a viewing glass, exposed to your wordless scrutiny—this feeling, again. He swallows and glances away, throat dry all of a sudden.

"Sorry." The admission slips out eventually, awkwardly. His own voice is oddly startling amidst the quiet rustling of wind in the fields. "I… overheard, earlier. What you and that girl were talking about."

You eye him for a moment before shrugging. "It's okay. I don't mind."

Now Qifrey just feels silly. The conversation lapses back into silence after that and Qifrey must bite his tongue to keep himself from prying further—your private life is your own, and if there are matters you've chosen not to bring to him, then he's no right to interfere. Yet on the other hand… as your master, is he not also responsible for your wellbeing beyond magic alone? For guiding you through all the fragile, complicated parts of adolescence no spellbook will prepare you for?

Unfortunately, Qifrey's own experience is painfully lacking—woefully inadequate for someone attempting to act as a proper mentor in this regard. He fights back the urge to scrunch his face up in frustration in front of you and drops his gaze to the path beneath his feet instead. Beldaruit had shoved a stack of books into his arms before he'd left the Argentgard—books about apprentice raising, books he hadn't so much as glanced through before abandoning them at the door. In hindsight, a mistake—because now, Qifrey hasn't the faintest idea how to broach this subject.

"Well," is how he ends up doing it, anyway. "The one you're interested in… what kind of person are they?"

You glance up and your eyes meet. Qifrey has to hope the faint light of the glowstones are too dim to illuminate the desperate curiosity on his face.

"Master wants to know?"

"Of course." Your matters are Qifrey's matters, and the thought of you miserable or hurt over some unworthy fool makes something unpleasant tighten low in Qifrey's stomach. But you hadn't told him, and remembering that leaves behind a faint, irrational sting that Qifrey immediately tries to strangulate with both hands. "But if you don't want to tell me, that's alright too. I promise not to pry."

Olruggio snuffles loudly between the two of you. He'd fallen asleep before you'd even stepped foot out of the village and hasn't stirred since. Without looking, you reach over for the loose edge of his cloak and yank it carelessly over Olruggio's face.

"They're kind," you begin, after a few contemplative paces. Your voice is barely audible beneath the night wind, and Qifrey has to lean in to catch your words. "Gentle. Everything I do, they're always encouraging me, no matter how I perform. And when I'm standing by their side…" You inhale quietly, then push out a soft breath before continuing. "It feels like being under the shelter of a big tree—as if nothing can touch me there."

Qifrey searches for something to say in response and finds himself strangely empty-handed in the face of your frank response. An emotion he can't quite put a finger on twists like gnarled roots beneath his ribs.

"They sound like an amazing person," is what he says, at last.

You smile—more to yourself than him, cradling a secret you're not quite willing to place in his hands. It's soft-edged, quiet, so achingly sincere that Qifrey finds himself caught somewhere between looking away and simply staring. Terrible as the thought is, he's never imagined you capable of looking at someone that way—so unbearably tender Qifrey feels as though he's intruding simply by witnessing it.

Yet, he's been proven wrong. Someone has managed. Who? Just who managed to put such an expression on your face?

"Yeah." You nod, completely oblivious to his inner turmoil, lacing both hands behind your back as you walk. "They are."

Something sour settles against the roof of Qifrey's mouth but he swallows it down before it can fester into something uglier. Qifrey should feel relieved that you've found someone who makes you feel safe—it's what he wants for you. What he needs to do is trust your judgment.

"Do they know?"

You tilt your head at him like the answer should be obvious. "No."

"Oh. Well…" Qifrey coughs lightly, unsure. "If they're so important to you, then maybe you should tell them?" It seems like the next step in the natural order of things—or, at least Qifrey thinks it is. He doesn't know. His gaze flickers down to the snoring lump on the stretcher, one arm dangling limply over the side before he looks away again. You frown.

"How?"

Qifrey immediately regrets bringing up the subject at all. "Well, I…" He falters almost at once, floundering—fingers steepling together before he starts absently wringing both hands instead. It's an impossible struggle, scrambling desperately for words that don't make him sound completely inane while you stare. "I think it should… probably be somewhere private? With only the two of you?" Qifrey offers uncertainly, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth. "A good moment when the other person isn't busy or distracted… and all their attention is on you."

"Oh," you say, far too seriously. Qifrey can feel his face growing warmer by the second. Stars above, he wants to pluck off his hat and shove his head face-first into it until this conversation passes. But you are looking at him attentively, still awaiting your master's advice, and so Qifrey forces himself to continue.

"I don't think you need to prepare anything elaborate," he adds on, weakly. "The important thing is to be sincere when you do it."

"Sincere," you repeat.

"Yes. Even if they don't share the same feelings…" Qifrey clears his throat lightly. He desperately needs something to distract himself but has nothing. "If what you say is genuine, then I believe the other person will understand that."

You're silent for a moment. There's a thoughtful expression on your face that makes Qifrey wonder whether you are truly turning his disastrous advice over in your head.

"What about Master? Is there someone you're interested in?"

For the second time that night, Qifrey nearly trips over his own feet. He lurches dangerously for a second, gravel crunching sharply beneath the soles of his boots before he glances over with a light chastisement on his lips; certainly, you must be teasing him. But it doesn't seem so. You only regard Qifrey with those familiar, inquisitive eyes—and heat crawls slowly up his neck. It's moments like this that make him even more grateful for his collar.

"You…" Qifrey reaches out before he can think better of it. You startle, eyes darting up when his hand comes to settle atop your head.

"Master?"

"I don't have time for romance," Qifrey says, with a lightness he doesn't entirely feel. "My hands are already full with an apprentice like you."

"So Master is blaming me?"

Your disgruntled expression almost makes him laugh despite himself. "Perhaps." Qifrey doesn't elaborate, offering no further explanation before his hand begins ruffling through your hair instead. You let out a startled yelp and try to duck away, glaring up in poorly concealed offence while Qifrey smiles properly for the first time that night.

"Master!"

One day, you will leave the atelier behind. You will become a fine witch—far finer than Qifrey ever was—and perhaps you will travel farther than he's dared, to lands past the peninsula and beyond. Or perhaps you might follow in his footsteps, taking on apprentices of your own with kinder intentions than he did you, and maybe you will build a life with the person you spoke of so warmly tonight, your future unfolding slowly beside theirs instead of his. There are infinite prospects, such countless possibilities, yet the one thing Qifrey is certain of is this: that one day, inevitably, you will surpass him in every way, just as a sapling eventually outgrows the shade of the tree that shelters it. And that day…

Qifrey finds himself looking forward to it.

The spring weather here possesses a notoriously fickle mind; one moment the sun hangs bright and warm overhead, turning the hills of the Downs golden with its light—and the next there's rain scattering across the grassy slopes in glittering sheets. Olruggio's out today, on another job at some nearby lord's castle, and Qifrey is in the kitchen taking stock of the pantry staples when the first droplets begin pattering against the atelier windows. Frowning faintly, Qifrey glances up from baskets of legumes on the counter to peer out of the glass, just in time for the drizzle to abruptly thicken into heavy rain.

The laundry, Qifrey remembers suddenly, just as you exclaim, "The laundry!" from somewhere near the door.

"Apprentice—" he starts, intending to tell you to leave it and wait for the rain to pass, but you're already out before he can get the words out. Sighing softly through his nose, Qifrey crosses the atelier to where you've left the door hanging half-open instead and looks outside.

You've already made it to the clothing lines strung up beside Olruggio's workshop somehow. You're reaching up on your tiptoes, struggling to to tug down one of the larger bedsheets he'd hung earlier that morning, arms already laden with gathered laundry. Even as he watches the rain steadily soaks the darkening fabric of your robes, trickles down the strands of hair plastered to your cheeks.

Before he can think twice, Qifrey steps outside. The cold spring rain splashes across what little bare skin he has exposed, droplets scattering unrelentingly across his senses, but it's still enough to make him cringe. Qifrey ignores the discomfort, hurrying across the grass towards where you're wrestling with the sheets.

"Apprentice."

"Master?" you blurt, visibly shocked to find him standing beside you in the rain. "What are you—"

"Focus on getting the sheets down," Qifrey says, already reaching out to take the bundles of damp fabric from your arms while you tug the clothespins free. "I'll hold these."

You hurry obediently. Rainwater trickles unpleasantly down the back of Qifrey's neck in rivulets, but he exhales slowly through his mouth and keeps his attention of you instead. With your hands free, you dart quickly from line to line gathering the remaining laundry before shoving them into his arms. Qifrey is just about to take your wrist and make the mad dash back to the shelter of the atelier when—

"Wait!"

You tug at his robe before he can move. Qifrey blinks in confusion, droplets of rainwater catching on his lashes as you yank your palm quire from your inner sleeve, hunching protectively over the paper amidst the downpour. In your other hand, your wand. You set the nib against the page, sketching with quick, practiced strokes as the spell takes shape beneath your hand—sigils and keystones instantly familiar to Qifrey. Then you're rising onto your tiptoes again, leaning in close, and Qifrey's breath hitches when your fingertips brush over the bare column of his throat.

A slip of damp paper slides neatly into the folds of his collar. Qifrey glances up just as the rain parts above his head, as though held at bay by an invisible hand. Water continues pattering steadily against the grass, the atelier's shingles, your dripping sleeves—but not a single drop touches Qifrey.

"I've always wanted to do that," you say.

Qifrey looks down at you, frowning. "What about you?"

You shrug lightly. There's rainwater dripping from your wand, and your palm quire is soaked through. "I'm already wet. Doesn't matter."

Qifrey clicks his tongue softly at that, but before he has the chance to admonish you—or simply drag you beneath the shelter of his own arm instead—you're already turning on your heel. Qifrey huffs, fondness and faint exasperation mixed together, and follows after you, easily catching up with his longer stride.

"You've gotten good at that spell, haven't you?"

"It's my favourite."

Qifrey glances at you over his armful of laundry in mild surprise. You've always shown to be partial to water magic, but this is a simple spell—nothing more than practical utility, the sort of magic most witches learn early and rarely think about again. An odd choice, considering how much of your talent lies in far more complex magic. "Why that one?"

"It changed my life," you say, simply.

It's hard to keep the smile from his face when you slip past him and through the atelier's open doorway. It's a small thing, really, but the thought that you've kept that spell close all this time makes him absurdly happy. Qifrey shakes his head, warmth settling in his chest despite his damp clothes, before he follows you inside.

There is already a trail of water dripping across the flagstones. Qifrey pauses briefly to inspect the topmost sheet bundled in his arms, rubbing absently at the drenched fabric between his fingers. Despite your efforts, it looks like the whole lot will have to be rewashed—a pity. He'll toss them into the washing barrels later after he's drawn you a hot bath.

"Apprentice," Qifrey calls as he ruffles his damp hair roughly, glancing around the mess of the kitchen counter. He'd been sketching a moisture-extraction spell earlier before the rain interrupted things. The water on his glasses makes it difficult for Qifrey to spot his own quire and he tugs them from his face, but he can still hear your footsteps pattering about near the hearth. He swipes at the lenses with a sleeve before he finally finds what he's looking for. "Come here. I'll draw a heating spell to—"

His throat abruptly closes around the rest of that sentence.

You're standing by the hearth, back half-turned to him as you wring water from the hem of your robe. It's soaked through, rainwater falling in steady drips from the sleeves, pooling at your bare feet—you must have kicked off your boots in the doorway earlier—and the wet cotton clings to the shape of you. It is what allows Qifrey to see: the water beading at the ripe peach-flushed skin of your nape, every divot of your spine beneath sodden cloth, where fabric gathers at your thighs and pulls taut at the small of your back. More than he should have ever allowed himself to.

Heat roils low in his gut, a long-starved beast rearing its head—familiar in its shape but frightening in its intensity. Desire.

Qifrey wrenches his gaze back to the kitchen counter, heart suddenly hammering hard and fast in his chest. What is wrong with him? You're his student. You're his apprentice. You are so young, still barely just a—

—but you haven't been for a while now, have you?

Dread, cold and tinged with something uglier Qifrey doesn't dare name, curls its claws viciously into his stomach. How can he be having these thoughts? Worse, how can he possibly still be lingering on them at all, instead of recoiling outright from sheer shame?

"Master?"

Qifrey's head snaps up. You've turned toward him, brow furrowed faintly in concern. Your hair is still dripping, and the firelight catches maddeningly on the droplets clinging to the tip of your nose, your upper lashes. He tightens his grip until the quire's bronze edges sink like fangs into his skin.

"The spell—" Qifrey tries, his voice sounding strained, strange to his own ears. "I need to—I forgot the—"

"Master?" You're too close all of a sudden, frowning openly now. "Are you feeling alright? You're acting strange—"

He turns away before you can come any nearer. There's a faint rushing noise in Qifrey's ears, so shrill it's almost a scream, rising to a fever pitch—loud enough that he can barely hear the rain outside.

"I forgot I have something urgent," Qifrey says abruptly. "Dry yourself off. And put on something warm."

He leaves before you can respond. His footsteps ring sharply down the hallway, too quick and uneven against the floorboards to be anything but fleeing. When Qifrey reaches his room he shuts the door firmly behind him before slumping back against the wood, breathing hard.

Master?

Qifrey groans and squeezes his eyes shut, digging the heel of his palm harshly against his good eye as though he might somehow scour the image from his mind. What is wrong with him? He's washed your hair before, when you'd broken your arm chasing quadryphons down the hillside just outside the atelier. It was him who'd changed your bandages and tended to you after Kestrel's Maw, applying creams and salves gently to your wounds as you'd tried not to wince and hiss. He's even shared a bed with you on nights when bad dreams left you sleepless and in need of a warm presence. And not once—never once—had he looked at you the way he just did.

Qifrey lets his hands fall between his knees. His palm quire slips loose from his fingers, clatters to the floorboards. On the page where he'd started sketching the heating spell for you, conjuring ink smears wet and crooked across the paper, dark stains blooming through the unfinished spell. Ruined.

When did this happen? Qifrey thinks despairingly to himself. When did I—

Qifrey cannot bring himself to finish the thought. The very idea makes something twist violently in his chest. Qifrey cannot put a name to it, because naming it would make it real, and making it real would make him a monster—even more of a monster than Qifrey ever thought he could be.

Qifrey throws himself desperately into avoidance after that.

Dangerous thoughts thrive when left in stillness, and so Qifrey gives himself none. He starts taking on jobs he normally wouldn't—ones that take him far from the atelier, some of them for days at a time. It's easier to exhaust himself into numbness than risk thinking too deeply at all. And when he cannot escape the atelier outright, Qifrey buries you beneath increasingly difficult assignments under the guide of preparing you for the Pentacle's third test—research work, spell reconstruction, transcription—anything that will keep you occupied in your room while he locks himself away somewhere else.

But at night, alone in his bed, the thoughts come anyway. Memories twisted into sick, perverted fantasy—the way your spine would feel under the curve of his palm through wet cotton, the warm press of your body against his in the dark, bare legs tangled with his. The soft whisper of your breath against his throat. Master. Master. Times before he can catch his thoughts they slip from his grasp, and he wonders what it would sound like if you said it different—if the word would catch on a moan, if it would break apart with a sigh against his mouth.

Master.

It's a futile exercise. Qifrey runs all the much harder, anyway.

In a desperate attempt to curb his thoughts, Qifrey turns towards safer, uncomplicated things instead. Olruggio's visibly surprised the first time Qifrey asks to accompany him on a job, but welcomes him with the same thoughtless warmth he does most things. And it's easier—easier to sink into the familiar steadiness of Olruggio's presence and gentle eyes, to lose himself in the long evenings spent shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the stars, to share spells and wine and laughter that doesn't ask anything of him. Easier than thinking about you.

You notice, of course. It would have been an insult to assume otherwise. But you've never been particularly forthcoming about your own feelings, and so you still call him "master" and do the work he assigns and prepare tea for him in the mornings. Tea that Qifrey now drinks steaming hot instead of lingering at the kitchen table with you, before leaving the atelier on yet another week-long job. You're upset by this new arrangement, that much is obvious, but at least Qifrey is spared the small mercy of having to confront it directly.

You'll grow accustomed to it eventually, Qifrey tells himself as you watch him tug on his cloak by the door, one hand already on the latch.

It'll pass.

You catch him one summer evening, vespertine insects chirping softly outside while the sun pulls and stretches at the atelier's shadows. Qifrey hears your approaching footsteps but does not turn around, busying himself instead with packing his satchel at the kitchen table, the light from the window staining his hands saffron-yellow.

You're quiet for a while, hovering silently behind him like a spectre. Eventually, you work up the courage to speak.

"Master, about dinner—"

"Hm? Ah, there's soup in the perpetual cookpot." Qifrey cuts you off before you can continue. He'd spent most of the afternoon preparing a fresh batch of shorecumber yoghurt soup while you were shut away in your room—as though feeding you properly could somehow compensate for everything else Qifrey's failed to do lately. "I also made some carapace and mountain apple salad, if you'd like."

"No, I'm not—" He catches the faintest edge of frustration creeping into your voice before you stop yourself. "I don't want perpetual soup."

Qifrey blows out a quiet breath between his teeth. The conversation is already slipping towards dangerous territory, toward questions he does not want to answer. He lowers his head to rummage through his satchel instead, pretending to check for an ink bottle he doesn't really need.

"Oh. Well then, there's some bread in the pantry that needs clearing, and—"

"Actually," you interrupt softly, "I was thinking I could cook for Master, tonight."

His fingers slip on the rounded glass. Qifrey barely catches the ink bottle before it can tumble from his hand and shatter across the table; the Qifrey of a few months ago would have accepted immediately, probably with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm—but now the thought of sitting across from you at the dinner table feels almost terrifying. Your eyes are always watching, always observing; Qifrey is suddenly terrified you might somehow notice the ugliness festering behind his own.

The thought alone turns his stomach. No. No, he cannot.

"Sorry," Qifrey says, still refusing to turn around. "I'm helping Olruggio with a project tonight. I'll be late, so don't wait up for me." He gathers the loose papers scattered across the table, shoving them carelessly into his satchel as the pages crumple beneath his fingers.

"You're always late now."

Qifrey's thumb falls still against the clasp. Your words are quiet but the accusatory note in them pierces him cleanly, a bolting deer felled mid-flight. He turns slowly. You are standing behind him with your expression carefully blank, but Qifrey knows you too well by now not to recognise every little sign and tell—your shoulders held stiffly, hands clenched within the sleeves of your robe.

"Does…" You falter, voice lapsing briefly before you force out the words anyway. "Does Master not want me anymore? Because he has Mr. Olruggio now?"

All the air flees Qifrey's lungs at once like a rushing wind. What?

"Apprentice—" He hurriedly sets his satchel down on the table, but even with his hands freed Qifrey still does not dare reach out and touch you. You're not looking at him now, your gaze fixed stubbornly on the ground between his feet. His fingers curl helplessly into fists at his side, panic crawling up his throat like bile. "No. No, that's not—"

But it has been, hasn't it? Suddenly, horribly, Qifrey's reminded of the story you'd once told him—of the cliffs, of the sea. The way your parents had decided there were too many mouths to feed and chose yours to abandon because you'd been the smallest. And in his frantic attempt to bury his own shame, it dawns on Qifrey with terrible clarity that he has been doing the same thing to you all over again.

The realisation makes him sick all the way to his stomach.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out. "I'm so sorry. I—I've been an idiot."

You look up at him then, and Qifrey's breath catches painfully in his throat. Your eyes are stubbornly dry but rimmed faint red, shadowed with exhaustion. Your cheeks seem thinner, too. Questions strike him one after another in sickening succession: Have you not been sleeping properly? Eating as you should? Questions Qifrey would have—should have—been able to answer easily, had he paid you more than a passing glance these past few weeks.

He takes a step closer, then another, before Qifrey fully realises what he's doing. "I didn't mean to make you feel that way. I was just—I was just being selfish. Caught up in my own things. I forgot—" Every word that passes his lips feels empty, and his explanations sound like nothing more than excuses even to his own ears. Qifrey reaches out and gently loosens your fists from their white-knuckled grip on your robe, one finger at a time. Your hands are stiff in the cradle of his own. "I forgot you needed me to be here. I'm sorry."

You don't respond; you only look at him with those quiet, uncertain eyes—like the ones that had stared up at him in Havso all those years, dulled and wary all at once—as though weighing whether you can still trust the things he says to you. Please, Qifrey wants to beg. Please tell me I haven't already broken something I can't fix.

"I'll make it up to you," the words tumble out of him now, wobbly kneed and hurried, tripping over each other on the way out. "I promise. No more late nights, no more disappearing for days. And—I'll cook dinner. And make any dessert you like." Qifrey squeezes your fingers gently, almost desperately, trying to make you believe him in ways he doesn't know how. "I'm not going anywhere. Understand?"

You stare at him for what feels like an eternity. Slowly, you nod.

"Okay," you say.

Relief hits Qifrey like a blow to the gut. He wants, all at once, to pull you into his arms—to feel your smaller frame against his chest and hold you there until that bright-eyed certainty returns to you, to reassure himself that he has not yet destroyed whatever fragile thing exists between you beyond repair. But he is weak and a coward, too aware of himself now in all the wrong ways, and so Qifrey settles for simply holding your hands, his thumb stroking carefully over the faint ink-blot stains along your knuckles.

"What do you want for dinner?" he finally asks.

Your brow pinches. "You're not going to Mr. Olruggio's?"

"Olly's smart—I'm sure he'll figure the problem out without me." Qifrey reluctantly releases your hands to undo the clasp of his cloak. He hangs it carefully on its hook by the doorway before turning back to you with the best smile he can muster. "I'll stay in tonight—it's been a while since we've had dinner together."

Finally, something flickers across your face. Then—

"Stew," you say. Qifrey blinks.

"Stew," he repeats. "You mean, the one with the squash vegetables?"

"Yeah."

A quiet laugh escapes him before he can stop it. It's such a painfully simple request that Qifrey cannot help the sudden rush of fondness that swells in his chest—he would have cooked anything you'd asked for after all this. But you asked, and so Qifrey turns toward the kitchen instead, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows.

“Stew it is, then.”

That night, a knock comes at his door again.

Qifrey knows who it is before he opens it. It's been a while since you've sought the comfort of his bed—you haven't since he started pulling away—but you've always had the habit of reaching for him on nights you are frightened or too troubled to sleep on your own. And after today, Qifrey supposes he should have expected this.

"Master," you say quietly, when he nudges the door wider with a tentative hand. Part of him knows he should tell you no—however innocently this ritual started, it is surely inappropriate now, especially with the way his thoughts have muddied as of late. But you don't ask, and by the time Qifrey opens his mouth you are already slipping past him and into his room.

His refusal lodges itself in the back of his throat as he watches you from the doorway. You're already seated on the edge of his bed, bare feet tucked under his blankets while you reach for the pillow he keeps for you. It's routine, now; you arrange his bed to your liking and lie down once satisfied, and eventually Qifrey settles beside you with deliberate distance kept between your bodies. Sometimes he reads compendiums aloud until your breathing evens out, others he talks about whatever spellwork occupied his day. But most nights end the same way: you, tucked against his side, one of his hands absently combing through your hair until sleep finally absconds with your consciousness.

His presence comforts you, Qifrey supposes. The same way a baby suckles on a pacifier, or a frightened child reaches for a familiar blanket. You are not thinking of anything improper—not of the way the dim lamplight catches against the bare slope of your shoulder, nor the way his eyes lingers on the exposed sliver of skin for a second too long before he tears them away.

He's the only terrible one here. Perhaps Qifrey should gouge out his other eye, too.

"Master." You're watching him from the bed, knees drawn up beneath the blankets, waiting. "Are you coming?"

Qifrey has already been terrible enough of a master to you these past few weeks. The thought of rejecting you yet again because he cannot control his own mind is unbearable.

You turn down the lamp as Qifrey climbs carefully into bed next to you. The mattress dips beneath his knee in the dark, and he lies stiffly atop the blankets with his hands folded over his chest, squeezing his eye tightly shut. Even with his poor sight this close proximity is too much; he cannot—will not—look at you.

"Go to sleep," Qifrey says quietly.

You remain still at first. He can hear your soft breathing beside him in the dark, and for a fleeting moment Qifrey thinks you might have already drifted off.

But suddenly, you move. The mattress creaks as you turn on your side, blankets rustling, and then your arm is sliding around the curve of his waist. Qifrey's breath shudders out, lips parting in a soundless gasp. You pull yourself close, the entire line of body pressing flush against his own, and bury your face against his throat—nose barely skimming the sensitive stretch of skin just beneath his jaw—and Qifrey can feel can feel your heartbeat, thrumming against his ribs like it belongs behind them instead. Every place your bodies meet burns as though his nerves themselves have been doused in oil and set alight.

Sparks race down the length of his spine, flint striking steel in his belly. A feeling slips down his throat, thick as honey, sharp as glass. Qifrey cannot do this. He can't, he can not—

"Don't leave," you murmur, breath curling against the naked hollow of his throat. "Master can't ever leave me."

Your words are small in a way Qifrey has never heard before, fingers trembling faintly where they're twisted tightly into the fabric of his sleep shirt as though he might disappear the moment you let go. You're afraid—truly afraid—and Qifrey loathes the fact that he was the one who made you feel that way. So despite the quiet part of him still insisting this is wrong, that the line between master and apprentice was never meant to blur like this, Qifrey carefully threads his fingers through your hair and pulls you closer against him.

"I'm not going anywhere." His voice is barely a whisper in the dark. "I promise."

"Really?"

"Yes."

His answer must have finally reached that quiet, terrified child inside you, because not too long after that your grip on his shirt loosens and your breathing begins to even out to soft, damp exhales against his skin. You must be exhausted from today—or perhaps you simply haven't been sleeping properly for a long while, now. It shames him that he doesn't know the answer.

The shadows stretch and settle against the far wall, pale moonlight washing silver across the blankets at the foot of the bed, the tangled line of your legs beneath them. And Qifrey holds you in the dark and lets himself pretend—just for a little while—that this quiet, aching hunger within him is not something so terrible after all.

It's a good morning when Qifrey's worst headache yet hits.

The morning starts off pleasantly enough. Sunlight unfolds slowly in a corner of his room, warm and sleepy in a way that demands nothing of him, and Qifrey wakes to the sound of you pattering carefully about the kitchen. You're likely on your tiptoes, a valiant attempt not to rouse him—but a futile one, unfortunately; his left eye has always left him a sensitive sleeper. Qifrey tarries in bed for a moment longer before finally pushing himself upright, and fumbles blearily across the nightstand for his screwtop tin of glueflower paste.

There's already a steaming cup of erbe tea waiting for him on the kitchen table when he steps outside. It sits beside a half-finished piece of buttered toast, whose owner seems to have become distracted; you're standing at the sink with your back to him, attempting to wrestle a particularly fat willowgrape from your brushbuddy's grasp before the greedy creature can choke on it. Qifrey very pointedly ignores the stirring behind his ribs as he slides himself into his usual chair.

Your eyes find his over your shoulder, regardless. "Morning, Master."

The brushbuddy chirps, emboldened by your momentary lapse in attention, and instantly makes a grab with its tiny paws. Despite himself, Qifrey finds it difficult not to smile. A good morning, he thinks quietly to himself as he reaches for his cup. A perfect one, actually.

The pain strikes without warning. It is sudden, blinding—as though someone has driven an iron spike through his head and is now deliberately twisting it, grinding its point deeper into the soft tissue of his brain. Qifrey's vision swims. The cup slips from his spasming fingers, and then he feels the scalding splash of tea across his fingers, blistering hot. He groans into the heel of his palm, the sound muffled strangely, ringing in his ears as if he's underwater.

"Master?"

Your hands are on him all of a sudden—his shoulder, his waist, and then his forehead, damp and clammy with cold sweat. Qifrey register your touch only in fragments, words reaching him as though from some distant shore; the next moment he's half-collapsed on the couch, worn cushions sagging beneath his weight as you lower him carefully. He catches a glimpse of your face for less than a second—pale, jaw tight, lips pressed in a thin line—before you're gone, footsteps hurried and shouting for Olruggio.

Qifrey barely manages to make out the hushed snippets of your exchange before Olruggio's rushing out of the door. He squeezes his eye shut against the pounding in his skull. Part of him wants to protest—that it will pass, that calling for the doctor is pointless, that there is nothing they can do for the ailment that plagues him—but the words barely make it past his lips.

Suddenly, your hands are on the sides of his face again, slapping his cheek lightly to rouse him when his head lolls. "Master. Master." Your voice is gentle, but even in this state Qifrey can pick up the undercurrent of worry bleeding through. "Drink up."

Something presses against his lips—the blunt edge of a wooden spoon. Qifrey parts his mouth obediently without thinking, swallowing whatever you offer him.

The tincture is sharp and metallic like cold moonlight on his tongue, slipping down his throat. But its effect is immediate. The pain does not vanish but loosens its grip with alarming speed; the muggy fog over his thoughts lifts, his nausea easing, and the pressure behind his eye recedes.

Too quickly.

Qifrey grabs you by the wrist before you can pull away. You startle in his grip. "Did you use forbidden magic?" His voice comes out hoarse. "Tell me."

"Master—"

"What did you use?"

His gaze drops instinctively to your hands, searching for the telltale traces of fresh spellwork. Qifrey has spent years wrestling with these pains—yet no physician, tincture or elixir has ever managed to cut through one with such frightening speed. How could you have—

"Tell me, Apprentice," Qifrey repeats, and this time the fear seeps through despite his efforts to hide it. "You didn't use healing magic, did you?"

You look at him, and for a second Qifrey feels dread warp, cold and heavy, in his stomach. Then, slowly, you shake your head.

"No."

Qifrey blinks. "No?" But how—

"I didn't use healing magic." You glance down at the wrist still caught in his hand, before continuing. "I used magic during the extraction process—the spineneedles are delicate, so I used a preservation spell to stabilise the active compounds while the toxins boiled off during heating." You hesitate. "I've been researching it for a while, now."

Spineneedles. Relief floods through Qifrey, so suddenly he nearly sags back into the couch. Not forbidden magic. Just careful study, patient experimentation, and far more thought than any apprentice should be devoting to a problem like this.

"Perhaps my apprentice shouldn't be a witch after all," Qifrey mutters tiredly, tipping his head against the cushions. It's like all the tension has gone out of him, leaving only fatigue in its place. The ache in the back of his skull has lessened to a distant throb. "With your talent, you should be a doctor instead."

"If it'll cure Master, I'll be anything."

Your words are spoken matter-of-factly, but Qifrey's breath lodges thickly in his throat. Something about it feels dangerous, precarious, like he's standing on a sheet of ice so thin he can hear it cracking beneath his feet. Qifrey is suddenly reminded of another conversation similar to this one—one that had drifted too close to unspoken territory for comfort. You'd not been particularly satisfied with his answer then, but he had not possessed a better one to give. "Apprentice, we already had this discussion about why healing magic is forbidden—"

"I love Master."

You say it so matter-of-factly that Qifrey barely registers what you've said at all, until he does. Everything inside him seems to go still at once. Slowly, disbelievingly, he lifts his head.

You are still watching him, wrist resting within the loose cradle of his fingers. Surely, he must have misheard. But there is no embarrassment in your expression, nor nervous laughter, no frantic attempts to retract your words. Only certainty.

"You—"

"Master said confessions should be done sincerely," you interrupt quietly. "When it's only the two people involved, and all their attention is on me." You hesitate, just for a moment, and then: "I just wanted to Master to know he'd be worth it. Master is everything to me."

It's as if time has lapsed into nonexistence for a second. Qifrey can hear the soft rustle of the morning breeze stirring the kitchen curtains, the faint squeak of your brushbuddy as it slinks about the rafters—but all of it feels impossibly far away. Because you are still looking at him with that earnest, unwavering gaze, admitting to the same feelings Qifrey has spent months convincing himself belonged to him alone, and yet—you are his apprentice.

You are his apprentice.

You'd been little more than a child when he'd picked you up in Havso; young and impressionable back then, his to protect and care for. And now a terrible thought reaches deep into his chest, a worm burrowing into the rotten core of an apple—had he done this? Mistaken possession for care somehow, shaped your innocent devotion into something it was never meant to become? Every lesson huddled over spellbooks, every time he'd reached across the cluttered kitchen table to guide your hand, every reassurance whispered into your hair in the dark—suddenly they rearrange themselves into something more disgusting, grotesque beneath his scrutiny.

The possibility that he might have been cultivating this unknowingly all along sickens Qifrey to his stomach. The only thing that frightens him more is this: how desperately he wants, anyway.

You are so painfully ignorant of it all—the warped thoughts he has harboured of you, the nights he's lain awake, hand fisted in his pillow to keep it from wandering someplace it shouldn't. You don't know about the ways he's been slowly driving himself mad in the dark. You have no idea what kind of monster you have just confessed your love to.

"Apprentice," he manages at last. "You can't—you don't—this is only infatuation, and—"

Your hand closes around Qifrey's before he can drop your wrist—gently, like you're approaching a spooked stag, poised to bolt. Nausea rolls unpleasantly through his stomach.

"I know my feelings. Master needn't try convince me otherwise."

Your certainty is what unspools the remainder of his repudiation. He's helpless, Qifrey thinks ashamedly, to stand before it. For one treacherous second he imagines what it would be like not to pull away; to turn his hand beneath yours and weave your fingers together, to close the distance he's spent months desperately maintaining. He imagines allowing himself the same foolish hope he'd once indulged in with Olruggio—before knowledge, before loss and guilt had hollowed him out and taught him the price of wanting something he could never have.

The fantasy dies almost immediately.

"I don't see you that way." The lie scrapes against his throat on the way out, self-mutiliation—if words could cut, they would leave his pharynx in ribbons, a bloodied mess. But this must end here and now. "You're my apprentice, and I care for you a great deal, but nothing beyond that."

Silence settles between you, quiet folding in on itself. Then, softly, you say, "That's alright with me. I just wish Master would be more honest with me."

Qifrey has heard those words before—not spoken in exactly the same way, but close enough. Close enough that for one dizzying moment he is in two places at once: here, your wrist still caught in his grasp, and somewhere years ago, watching someone else he loved—still does—offer up everything for a wretched, unworthy cause.

All I have left to say is… just go easy on me, okay?

For a strange, terrible moment, Qifrey thinks he would have preferred anger. Hatred he could have endured. Tears he would have tried to comfort. Instead you place something infinitely more fragile in his hands and ask for nothing in return—and Qifrey wants to weep from the absurdity of it all. Who is he to deserve such grace, such senseless devotion?

You deserve better, Qifrey thinks, despairingly. But still he cannot bring himself to speak those words aloud, in the same way he cannot seem to release your hand and so they remain, lingering like ghosts—everything he wants to confess but can't ensnared in the silence between you.

The smoke reaches them before any messenger does—a dark, greasy plume unfurling against the pale morning sky. It is visible even from the atelier's window, though Qifrey does not notice it until Olruggio bursts into the room without warning, already yanking on his cloak as you glance up from your books.

"Fire," is all Olruggio needs to say, breathless, for Qifrey to understand. His hand closes around Qifrey's upper arm, drawing his attention toward the horizon. "It's coming from the direction of Hearthglen Village."

Qifrey is on his feet even before Olruggio finishes speaking. Despite the dry spells of summer, Hearthglen is protected by enough fireproofing spells to withstand far worse than a stray spark or lightning strike—Qifrey has full trust in Olruggio's magic, in this regard. Small fires could happen. But infernos capable of producing a column of smoke like that—thick and black enough to stain the horizon from miles away—are impossible.

Should not be possible.

"Apprentice," Qifrey calls over his shoulder as he strides urgently towards the door, pulling his hat onto his head along the way. "Stay here."

He doesn't wait to see if you listen. He and Olruggio are out of the door in the next second, sylph shoes flaring with green light as they take to the air, hurtling straight towards the smoke billowing upwards into the morning sky.

Qifrey should have trusted his instincts.

The fire is not natural—Qifrey knows it the instant they crest the hill and the village comes into view, fire licking at the thatched roofs, dragging barns and homes alike into its insatiable maw. And there they stand amidst the carnage—their white hat and trailing veil a stark smear against the smoke-charred sky—a single painted eye staring back at Qifrey from where their face should be. For a heartbeat, the years collapse inward and hate rises in the back of his throat like bile, acrid. But answers can wait—and people cannot.

Olruggio doesn't hesitate. He banks sharply left, already racing toward the line of burning buildings, shouting for the villagers to flee. Qifrey launches himself at the Brimmed Hat, water surging from the village well in a roaring column in response to his spell.

The Brimmed Hat laughs. They're infuriatingly talkative—they make several attempts to strike up a conversation in the middle of the fight, chattering away as though this is some pleasant afternoon stroll rather than a village burning around them. Qifrey ignores every word. Water tears through the square at his command, rushing in great swells to smother flames and strike at his opponent, but the Brimmed Hat dances around each strike, veil fluttering in the heat haze, that ominous painted eye seemingly able to see Qifrey's every move before it happens.

Out of the corner of his eye, Qifrey glimpses Olruggio moving through the smoke and chaos. Olruggio disappears into a burning building and emerges with a wailing child tucked carefully in the cradle of his arms, depositing them into a frantic mother's embrace before he turns back to the flames. Again and again he does this—vanishing into the smoke and reappearing with another villager in tow. The fire continues to spread, racing from rooftop to rooftop with unnatural hunger.

And then Qifrey sees it. Olruggio runs into another house, already half-consumed by flames. But one of its support beams has already begun to bow beneath the strain and the building is tilting dangerously; already Qifrey can hear the groan of timber in his mind under the strain. But before Qifrey can say anything—so much as do anything—it gives way. The entire structure collapses onto itself with a roar, disappearing beneath a shower of firebrands and burning debris. For a single, terrible instant, it resembles a funeral pyre.

It's only a momentary lapse, but it is enough. The spell catches him squarely in the chest.

Qifrey is on his hands and knees even before he registers the fall. He hunches over, scorched ground hot beneath his palms, and tries to clear his throat, but the damage presses heavily up his windpipe—wet and viscous. Blood. Qifrey chokes. The taste of copper floods his tongue.

"Oh dear." The Brimmed Hat drifts closer. Their veil flutters lazily behind them as they hover just in the corner of Qifrey's periphery. "Not so threatening now, are we?"

They raise their hand again. Qifrey tries to move but his body will not obey him, his wand slipping from between his fingers, viscid with his own blood. The cobblestones beneath him spin into dizzying tesselations. And then—

A blade of water cuts through the air. It hits the square with enough force to split stone, carving a deep furrow into the ground where the Brimmed Hat had just been standing just a second ago. Both Qifrey and the Brimmed Hat look up at the same time.

Qifrey almost doesn't recognise you at first, hovering above the town square, framed against the smoke-darkened sky. The hem of your cloak flaps in the wind, your wand and quire just barely visible beneath it. The Brimmed Hat's visage is concealed behind that painted eye, but Qifrey can tell that they're surprised. They turn toward you, hands lifting as if in greeting or surrender.

"Now that's intere—"

Another spell hurtles down. The Brimmed Hat vaults backwards, vanishing into a cloud of smoke before reappearing atop the remains of a collapsed building several yards away. Your magic obliterates the ground they had been standing on, stone and dirt exploding outwards in a violent spray.

"You're serious!" They sound more delighted than alarmed, laughter echoing through the ruined square. "What terrifying killing intent, for a Pointed Hat so young!"

You ignore them. The moment your feet touch the ground you are already running to Qifrey's side, dropping to your knees next to him hard enough to tear the fabric of your trousers. Your hands are on him immediately, one bracing his shoulder while the other presses desperately against the wound in his chest. Qifrey struggles to lift his head to, pain lancing through his chest with each ragged breath he drags into his lungs. The edges of his vision blurs every time he inhales—his ribs are definitely broken.

"I thought…" He coughs, the words coming out rasping and wet. "I told you to stay… at the atelier…"

"Master can punish me all he likes later." Blood continues seeping stubbornly between your fingers despite the pressure, but that isn't the problem—it's the fluid slowly accumulating in his lungs, the way his breathing has gone thick and rattling. Qifrey can see the moment realisation dawns behind your eyes as you listen to each uneven breath, and with it comes panic. When you meet his eyes again you look frighteningly young, your fingers slick and red with his blood.

"Master." Your voice catches. "Master, what do I do?"

The answer is supposed to be there; behind his teeth, on the tip of his tongue. Qifrey is your teacher, your master—he should know what to say, how to fix this. But the only thing staining his mouth now is blood.

"Master," you say again, and this time you almost sound like you're begging. "Please. Tell me what to do."

"Oh, how touching." The Brimmed Hat drifts over, knees tucked loosely against their chest. Their painted eye is now fixed entirely on you, and when they speak again, their voice seems to have softened into something coaxing, almost kind. "Such devotion. I haven't seen such an adorable master-apprentice pair in years."

You don't react. Your attention remains fixed wholly on Qifrey—one bloodstained hand pressed against his chest as you desperately rifle through the contents of your satchel, searching for something, anything that might help. The Brimmed Hat laughs, a little pitying.

"It's admirable how hard you're fighting to save him, little Pointed Hat. A shame that even if you succeed today, he'll be dead soon enough, anyway—though I suppose dead isn't quite the right word for it."

Qifrey's stomach drops.

"No," he chokes out at once when your hands go completely still. Blood flecks his lips as he struggles for breath. "Don't listen to them—"

"What do you mean?"

At your question, the Brimmed Hat tilts their head—and though their face remains hidden behind their white veil, Qifrey is suddenly, horribly certain that they are smiling.

"You haven't told them?" They click their tongue softly, delighted, almost sympathetic. The gesture is mild, mockingly gentle. It makes hatred surge through Qifrey so fiercely that, for a moment, it eclipses even the pain. "You should be more honest with your apprentice."

"Shut up—" Qifrey tries to force himself upright and immediately regrets it. Agony carves a white-hot line through his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. A violent cough doubles him over, sends fresh blood bubbling between his lips and splattering across the cobblestones. "Apprentice, they're lying. Don't listen to—urgk—a word they say—"

But you are no longer looking at him. Qifrey feels a wave of panic surge through him, overwhelming, drowning him beneath it. He knows that look, is familiar with it—the expression you wear when confronted with a puzzle you cannot solve, when every thought narrows around a single question like a predator's jaws clamping around a prey animal's neck.

"Master," you say, very slowly. "What are they talking about?"

"I—"

The Brimmed Hat cuts across him with a low hum of amusement. "Little witch… did your master ever tell you about how the silverwood propagates before?"

Whatever remaining blood Qifrey has drains from his face.

"Unlike other plants, the silverwood spreads by lodging itself into animal hosts... even humans." They tilt their head at Qifrey, and he very briefly catches the flash of a sharp grin beneath their veil before they continue. "Gradually, it takes over the host's body bit by bit, until there is nothing left but a very beautiful silverwood tree." They spread their hands with a flourish, a theatrical gesture. "That is the fate awaiting your master, dear apprentice."

The words land like stones, sinking silently into still water. Qifrey dares not look at your face. He cannot. He is afraid of what he will see there—the dawning horror, the terrible understanding, the slow realisation of his deception.

Then the Brimmed Hat laughs.

"But do not despair!" They throw their arms wide, head cocking as they look at you. "We are witches, are we not? Magic exists to challenge the impossible, to overturn fate!" They hover just a little closer, voice lowering into something almost conspiratorial. "As long as you are willing, you can save your master. I'll even give you a nifty little spell to preserve his life until you can find a better solution." One hand, bare-skinned and terrifyingly human-like, slides up to curve around the shape of their mouth. "All you need to do is cast it yourself."

"Apprentice—" The word comes out mangled with fresh blood, thin and watery with his spit. "Apprentice—don't—you cannot—"

Qifrey tries to push himself up, to reach for you, to do anything to stop what he sees coming. His arms shake violently beneath him before they give way altogether, and he crashes back against the cobblestones hard enough to drive what little breath remains from his lungs. He needs to move. Why won't his body listen to him?

Slowly, you get to your feet. You move as though caught in a dream, entranced by some spell, hands hanging at your sides, stained with the drying streaks of his blood. And your face, your face—when he finally forces himself to look—is bloodless and set, and yet, so very terrifyingly calm.

"Apprentice," Qifrey begs, desperate. "Please."

because unlike makki, iwaizumi doesn’t immediately start laughing.

there’s just... a pause.

then hajime’s voice, low and normal and totally unaware of the crime scene he has stepped into. “you busy?”

issei looks directly at you.

you shake your head at him in horror and delight.

he licks his lips.

“little bit.”

“then why’d you answer?”

“’cause you called. i’m polite, iwa.”

“you sound weird.”

issei hums, and his thumb slides back over you, slow enough to make your legs tense.

you bite down on your knuckle.

“do i?”

another pause.

oh, hajime knows now.

you can hear the exact second he knows. the silence changes shape. gets heavier. more aware.

“... matsukawa.”

“yeah?”

“are you fucking around right now?”

issei’s smile is lazy and lethal.

“technically, my mouth’s occupied.”

you make the worst sound into your hand.

hajime goes dead silent.

not scandalised loud like oikawa. not delighted loud like makki.

silent.

issei’s brows lift like he’s fascinated.

then, with the calm of a man setting down a drink, he taps speaker and lays the phone flat on your stomach.

the cool edge of it makes you twitch.

you choke on a laugh, which turns into a gasp when he slides two fingers back into you, slow and deliberate.

“oh my god,” you breathe.

the phone is right there. resting on your stomach, speaker up, close enough that every little broken sound you make has nowhere to hide.

issei looks too pleased with himself.

“iwa,” he says casually, as if he is not knuckle-deep and watching your hips start to lift. “you still there?”

no answer.

issei’s fingers curl.

your back arches.

“hajime,” issei sings, awful and soft. “don’t be rude.”

“i’m here,” iwaizumi says, voice tight.

there it is.

not hanging up. not telling him to stop. not even pretending hard enough to hate this.

issei’s grin goes slow.

“yeah?” he murmurs. “you wanna be?”

the silence after that is fucking insane.

you stare at issei, wide-eyed, breath catching in little pieces as he keeps touching you. he’s not even going down on you anymore. he’s just watching. sitting between your legs with his cheek against your thigh, fingers moving steadily, gaze flicking between your face and the phone on your stomach like this is some kind of casual group activity.

“i asked you something,” issei says.

hajime exhales through his nose.

“... if she’s okay with it.”

your whole body tenses.

issei’s fingers pause.

not stop, exactly. just slow.

his eyes come to yours, humour gone thin for half a second. the real question underneath it.

you nod.

he waits.

“yeah,” you whisper. “i’m okay with it.”

issei’s smile comes back, softer first.

then worse.

“you hear that?”

“i heard,” hajime says.

his voice sounds different now. lower. rougher around the edges.

god help you.

issei kisses the inside of your knee. “good. then stay quiet if you’re gonna be shy about it.”

“fuck off,” hajime says, but it has no bite.

“mm. that isn’t very nice, hajime.”

you laugh, breathless, and issei rewards it by dragging his fingers just right.

your laugh snaps into a moan.

hajime makes a sound.

tiny. barely there.

but it is a sound.

issei hears it.

of course he does.

“oh?” he says.

“don’t.”

“didn’t say anything.”

“you were about to.”

“i was just thinking.”

“do that privately.”

issei’s fingers slow, and you whine before you can stop yourself.

he looks down at you with mock pity.

“see what you did? distracted me.”

“issei,” you complain.

“yeah, baby?”

he says it so casually. so warm. like he isn’t turning you into a trembling mess with his best friend listening.

“don’t stop.”

iwaizumi’s breath catches audibly.

issei’s eyes darken.

“bossy.”

“you’re being annoying.”

“i’m being generous.” his gaze flicks to the phone. “aren’t i, iwa?”

hajime says nothing.

issei laughs quietly.

“still there?”

“yeah.”

“quiet.”

“yeah.”

“you jerking off, boy scout?”

the silence is immediate and catastrophic.

your eyes go huge.

“issei.”

“what?” he asks, innocent as a knife. “it’s a question.”

hajime’s voice comes back strangled. “you’re a fucking asshole.”

“that wasn’t a no.”

“jesus christ.”

“that wasn’t either.”

you are going to die.

you are actually going to die in this bed because matsukawa issei cannot behave for five consecutive minutes and iwaizumi hajime apparently has a closet pervert streak big enough to qualify as a second apartment.

issei leans down and kisses you, right above where his fingers are still moving.

soft. terrible.

then he speaks, not to you this time.

“she’s so wet,” he says, conversationally. “you should feel this.”

your face burns so hot you think you might pass out.

hajime swears under his breath.

issei watches your reaction like he loves it.

“she likes when i talk about her,” he continues, still lazy, still cruelly calm. “acts embarrassed, but she gets tighter every time.”

you shake your head.

his fingers curl again.

your hips jerk.

“liar,” he murmurs to you.

“i hate you.”

“no, you don’t.”

“i might.”

“you’d miss me.”

“i’d miss your dick.”

“same thing.”

hajime makes another sound then, partly a laugh, half a curse. like he can’t believe he is hearing this. like he cannot believe he is not hanging up.

issei’s smile sharpens.

“there you go,” he says. “knew you were alive.”

“shut up.”

“nah. iwa, she’s trying so hard not to make noise.”

“don’t drag me into it.”

“you’re on speaker on her stomach. you dragged yourself in.”

“that was you.”

“you could hang up.”

nothing.

issei hums.

“thought so.”

then he lowers his mouth back to you.

and if the fingering was bad, this is worse.

because now he is showing off.

not in a clumsy way. not obvious and exaggerated. issei is too smooth for that, too confident in the exact way that makes him irritating. he just settles back between your thighs and eats you out like he knows hajime is listening to every wet sound, every shaky breath, every broken little syllable of his name you fail to swallow.

your hand flies into his hair.

the phone shifts on your stomach as you arch.

“careful,” issei murmurs against you, and the vibration makes your legs tremble. “don’t drop him.”

“i’m going to kill you,” you gasp.

“after?”

“maybe.”

he laughs into you.

hajime says nothing.

but he is breathing.

that’s the thing that gets you. the quiet on the other end isn’t empty anymore. it’s full of him. tense and controlled and too present. you can imagine him sitting somewhere with his jaw clenched, phone in one hand, the other maybe—

you whimper.

issei’s eyes flick up.

“oh, what was that?”

“shut up.”

“you thinking about him?”

you try to close your thighs, which is a mistake because his shoulders are there and he just spreads you open again.

“don’t hide now.”

“issei.”

“answer.”

your pulse is in your throat. “maybe.”

hajime curses.

issei grins against you.

“cute.”

then he stops talking and gets serious.

which is how you know you’re fucked.

he knows exactly how to pull you apart when he wants to. knows when to tease and when to shut up, when to give you pressure, when to back off just enough that your body chases him. his hands lock around your thighs, his mouth gets precise, and everything narrows down to heat and breath and the weight of the phone rising and falling with your stomach.

you come with hajime listening.

it’s not graceful.

it never is with issei when he’s showing off.

your back arches, one hand in his hair, the other clutching at the sheets, and the sound that leaves you is loud enough that you hear hajime inhale sharply through the speaker. issei doesn’t let up until you’re squirming, thighs trembling against his cheeks, voice breaking around a too-much little sob.

then he lifts his head.

slowly.

mouth wet.

eyes dark.

“good?” he asks.

you nod weakly.

“words.”

“i’m good.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

he pats your thigh once.

“great.”

then he grabs your hips and yanks you down the bed.

you squeal.

actually squeal.

because you’re overstimulated and boneless and he moves you like you weigh nothing, dragging you to the edge so suddenly that the phone nearly slides off your stomach. you catch it with one clumsy hand, laughing breathlessly even while your whole body is still shaking.

on speaker, hajime makes the craziest fucking sound.

not a full moan.

not a word.

just this punched-out, involuntary thing that tells on him so badly the room goes still for half a second.

issei freezes.

then looks at the phone.

then at you.

his smile becomes a war crime.

“iwa.”

“don’t.”

“that was cute.”

“don’t.”

“you liked that?”

“fuck you.”

“i’ll pencil you in.”

you laugh again, helpless, and hajime sounds like he might be suffering psychic damage.

issei stands at the end of the bed.

and yeah.

yeah, you forget how to speak for a second.

because he is tall. tall in that loose, lanky way that hides the sheer size of him until he is standing over you with your hips in his hands and his hair falling into his eyes. he drags you to the very edge, lifts your ass like it’s nothing, adjusts you until your legs are hooked just right.

the angle alone makes your stomach flip.

then he lays his cock over your lower stomach.

just rests there.

heavy and hard and obscene against your skin.

you stare down.

he does too.

“issei,” you breathe.

“i know.”

he loves this.

loves seeing it. loves the visual of how deep he’ll reach, how far up your body he can mark the promise of it before he even gets inside. it makes him smug in the worst way, quiet and satisfied and absolutely aware of what it does to you.

his thumb strokes your hip.

“look at that,” he murmurs.

hajime is dead silent.

issei tilts his head toward the phone.

“wish you were looking, iwa?”

“don’t be mean,” you manage.

“shame. i’m so good at it.”

hajime’s voice is rough when he says, “you’re evil.”

“little bit.”

“more than a little.”

“you’re still here.”

another pause.

then hajime says, very low, “yeah.”

oh.

oh, that gets everyone.

even issei’s expression flickers for a second, amusement giving way to something hotter. he looks down at you, brows raised like, you hearing this?

you nod, dazed.

“yeah,” issei says softly. “he is.”

then he slides into you.

you lose your breath.

fully.

it’s so deep at that angle that your hands fly to his wrists, nails digging in as he holds you up to meet him. your mouth opens, but nothing comes out at first. just a stunned little gasp that cracks at the edges when he bottoms out.

issei’s jaw tightens.

“fuck.”

hajime mutters something under his breath that you don’t catch.

issei catches it.

“what was that?”

“nothing.”

“liar.”

“keep going.”

the words are clipped. controlled. almost angry.

they make you clench so hard issei groans.

“oh, she liked that.”

“stop narrating everything,” hajime says.

“no.”

then he starts moving.

slow at first, because the angle is insane and because you are still sensitive from his mouth. deep, measured thrusts that push the air out of you every time, his hands firm under your ass, lifting you to meet him like he’s using your body exactly how he wants and making sure it ruins you properly.

the phone is still on you, slid down now to stick to the sweaty skin just below your tits.

you can feel the vibration of hajime’s breathing through the case.

it is obscene.

it is ridiculous.

it is so hot you almost can’t stand it.

issei talks through everything.

of course he does.

he tells you how good you feel, how tight, how pretty you look trying to take him like this. tells hajime how your face changes when he gets deep enough. how your thighs shake. how you get louder when you forget to be embarrassed.

and hajime just listens.

quiet.

too quiet.

until issei pushes.

“say something, iwa.”

“no.”

“why not?”

“because you’re already insufferable.”

“she wants to hear you.”

your eyes fly to his.

issei grins.

“you do.”

“i—”

he thrusts deep, and your words scatter.

“see?”

hajime’s voice is rough. “she okay?”

the question punches right through all the heat.

because it’s hajime, of course it is. repressed pervert or not, he still sounds like himself. grounded. careful. checking, even with his voice strained.

you swallow, breathless.

“yeah. i’m okay.”

“you sure?”

“yeah.”

issei’s expression softens for the smallest second.

then he ruins it by saying, “hear that? she’s okay. you can keep jerking off now, boy scout.”

“mattsun,” hajime snaps.

you make a sound that is half laugh, half moan.

issei’s grin comes back full force.

“there we go.”

“you’re going to hell.”

“probably. wanna come with?”

“not answering that.”

you are absolutely dissolving.

every thrust punches up into that deep, impossible place that makes your legs go useless. issei’s hands hold you steady, thumbs digging into the soft of your hips. your head tips back against the mattress, one hand fisted in the sheet, the other pressed weakly over the phone like you can somehow hide the sounds and keep hajime close at the same time.

issei notices.

“don’t cover him.”

“i’m not.”

“you are.”

“you’re annoying.”

“you love it.”

“you’re too deep.”

his hips slow immediately.

“too deep bad?”

you shake your head fast.

“no. good. just— fuck!”

“more words.”

“good,” you gasp. “it’s good.”

“yeah?” his voice goes warm and filthy. “you want more?”

you nod.

“say it.”

“more.”

hajime exhales sharply.

issei’s eyes glitter.

“oh, he liked that one.”

“i hate both of you,” you breathe.

“liar.”

then he gives you more.

not faster. deeper. meaner in that careful way that has your body going loose and desperate beneath him. the whole bed shifts with it, rhythm steady, your ass lifted in his hands, his cock hitting so deep that your vision goes blurry.

and then he says it.because he knows exactly when to.

“wanna come for iwa?”

you whine.

“yeah?” he asks, voice low. “wanna come while he jerks off to the sound of you getting fucked like this?”

hajime makes a strangled noise.

“issei.”

“what?”

“you’re— fuck.”

issei laughs, breathless and dark. you nod before you can think better of it.

issei’s gaze snaps back to you.

“please,” you whisper.

his hands tighten.

“please what?”

“make me come.”

“who for?”

you are gone. truly gone. no dignity. no shame. just heat and pressure and hajime’s breathing through the speaker.

“for haji.”

the silence after that is violent.

then hajime groans. low. wrecked. utterly ruined.

issei’s composure almost cracks.

almost.

“fuck,” he mutters. “good girl.”

he shifts one hand, keeping you lifted with the other, and gets his thumb on your clit.

that’s it. that’s the end of you.

the angle, the pressure, the phone, hajime’s barely contained sounds, issei’s voice talking you through it like he has all the time in the world. it all collapses at once.

you come hard enough that your voice breaks. hard enough that your whole body shakes in his hands, hips jerking uselessly as he keeps you exactly where he wants you. issei talks you through the entire thing, filthy and soft, telling you there you go, that’s it, let him hear you, while hajime swears on the other end like he’s trying not to fall apart too loudly.

issei follows not long after.

he holds you tight, thrusts going uneven, head tipping back with a groan that would be embarrassing if he were capable of shame. he comes deep, still standing at the edge of the bed, hands locked around you like he’s anchoring himself through it.

for a few seconds, no one says anything.

you are wrecked.

hajime is silent.

issei is breathing hard, staring down at where he’s still inside you with a lazy, satisfied look that makes you want to kick him if your legs worked.

then hajime says, flat and disbelieving, “are you fucking serious?”

issei doesn’t miss a beat. “nah. her name isn’t serious.”

hajime hangs up. immediately. the room goes dead quiet.

then you burst into exhausted laughter.

issei looks down at the phone, then at you, completely calm.

“rude.”

“you are the worst person alive.”

“he asked.”

“you are insane.”

“yeah.” he finally eases you back onto the bed with surprising gentleness, one hand sliding under your thigh so you don’t jolt too hard. “you good?”

you blink up at him, sweaty and ruined and still trying to recover from the fact that iwaizumi hajime just got dragged into this ecosystem and absolutely did not leave.

“yeah,” you mumble. “i’m good.”

“yeah?”

“mhm.”

“nice.”

he pulls out carefully, and you make a tiny miserable sound because everything is too much now. he kisses your knee like he’s apologising, which is offensive because he is not sorry.

then he grabs his phone.

you squint at him. “what are you doing?”

“checking if he blocked me.”

“did he?”

a pause. “no.”

“coward.”

“right?”

the phone buzzes once in his hand.

issei reads it and smiles.

“what?”

“iwa says he hates me.”

“you deserve it.”

“he also says to never call him again.”

“you answered his call.”

“i’ll remind him later.”

“don’t.”

“i won’t.”

“you absolutely will.”

“probably.”

you groan and cover your face.

issei tosses the phone aside and pats your thigh.

“okay. shower.”

“don’t boss me around after ruining my life.”

“you’re gross.”

your eyes snap open. “it’s your fault.”

“yeah.” he shrugs, shameless. “still gross.”

“i hate you.”

“no, you don’t.”

“i hate your friends.”

“no, you don’t.”

you stare at him and he grins.

“especially not haji.”

you grab a pillow and throw it at him. he catches it against his chest, laughing, then leans down to kiss your forehead like he has any right to be sweet after all of that.

“come on,” he says. “shower before makki finds out and the group chat becomes unlivable ’cause we left him out.”

It takes Olruggio a moment to comprehend your words—how can there possibly be such a thing as "kissing for too long"?—but gradually the fog in his head clears just enough for him to focus. So kissing him has been uncomfortable. Perhaps you never said anything because you didn't want to hurt his feelings, but that only makes Olruggio feel guiltier now. He gets so buried in his work that it's simply easier to maintain a beard than to stay clean-shaven. It never once occurred to him how it might feel against your skin.

The next morning, Olruggio wakes before you do. He clambers out of the hammock, painstakingly careful not to rouse you from your sleep, and pads barefoot over to the washbasin. He's about to reach for his facecloth when he catches sight of his own reflection in the small mirror hanging over it. Olruggio stares at it for a long while—the dark smudge of stubble shadowing his jaw, the slightly uneven patch at his chin. The careless scruff of a man who's stopped looking at himself too closely a long time ago.

Hm.

He glances back over his shoulder. You're still sleeping soundly in the hammock, blankets tangled around your bare legs, one arm dangling limply over the side. Fondness blooms quietly in Olruggio's chest, steaming erbe tea steeped in hot water, warmer than the morning sunlight pouring in through the upper window.

Then he turns back to the basin and crouches down to dig beneath the sink, rummaging through old tins and cracked cups until his fingers close around what he's looking for.

It's late morning by the time you awake. The instant your consciousness stirs, you become aware of the reason—the space in the hammock beside you is grievously empty, the blankets lacking in any trace of another's body heat. The loft and workshop, too, are disappointingly Olruggio-absent. So you stretch, expelling your sleepiness from your body with a long yawn, before reaching for your outer robe and climbing down the stairs. Olruggio's probably in the main wing of the atelier, preparing breakfast—though it might be closer to lunch, with the late hour you've awoken.

You shuffle across the catwalk, rubbing sleep from your eyes. Sure enough, when you push open the kitchen door, there he is: standing with his back to you, quietly humming as he whisks a bowl of eggs at the counter. Qifrey had mentioned heading to the Great Hall for some errand yesterday, and you can hear the apprentices' distant voices drifting down from upstairs—something about a mess and who's responsible for it. Perfect.

You creep up behind him—on your tiptoes, quiet as a mouse—before you slip your arms around his waist, pulling him back against you. Olruggio makes a startled sound, nearly dropping the whisk in his hand, and you lean in to kiss the side of his jaw before he can turn around. Your lips seek the familiar scratch of his jaw… but instead of stubble, your mouth meets smooth, bare skin.

Huh?

You scramble back so fast you nearly trip over your own feet, heart hammering in your chest. Is there an intruder in the atelier? Did Qifrey dye his hair black all of a sudden? Did you just accidentally kiss the wrong man? What—

"You scared the heck outta me!" Olruggio yelps, whirling around so quicklly a few flecks of yolk splatter onto the counter, whisk clutched protectively to his chest. His cheeks are stained pink, ripe as rose apples—and without the beard, there's nowhere for the colour to hide. "You—"

"What happened to you?" you cry, lifting a shaking finger to point it at him. "Who—who are you?"

Olruggio freezes for a second. His expression collapses into immediate offense in the next. "What do you mean, who am I?"

"You look like a completely different man!"

"I shaved!"

"You removed half your face!"

"I didn't remove—" he hisses, the nectarine-pink flush on his face deepening to a lurid crimson. Still, his hand flies to his cheek on instinct, as if checking to make sure the missing beard hasn't somehow taken a substantial portion of him with it. "It's the same face!"

You stare at him for a long moment, agape, before you take a step closer. Olruggio immediately glances away, chin ducking in an attempt to shy away from your attention, but still he lets you take his jaw in your hand. You tug his newly bared cheeks this way and that, tilting his face toward the light as if to confirm he isn't some imposter wearing Olruggio's skin.

The same nose, same blue eyes. The same soft, flustered mouth.

"You shaved," you say, disbelief seeping into your voice. "I've never seen you shaved before. What brought this on?"

Olruggio's face only gets redder, somehow.

"You mention you sometimes get a rash when you're kissing me," he mumbles under his breath, refusing to meet your eyes. His gaze stays doggedly fixed on some point past your shoulder—the windowsill, the kettle on the table, anywhere but your face. "I didn't want ya to have to put up with that anymore, so…"

The sentence trails off, swallowed by his embarrassment.

It's hard to do anything but stare at Olruggio. At the flush burning high on his cheeks, the clean shaven jaw he's so clearly self-conscious about. His hand twitches at where it's fallen at his side, as though he wants to reach up and touch it, and your chest fills suddenly with so much warmth it overflows, a bubbling spring that spills forth with no end.

Oh, he's impossible. You tug him in by the waist, ignoring the way Olruggio lets out something suspiciously close to a squawk. Impossible, and so, so lovely. Before he can squirm away you pull him firmly against you and bury your face in his soft chest. This close, you can feel everything—the rapid, rabbit-quick beat of his heart, his stuttering breath.

"Oh, Olly." His name alone feels like an endearment in your mouth. "When I said that, it didn't mean I disliked it. Actually, I'm rather fond of it—it's like a little mark I carry of you, after we've been together."

Olruggio blinks, expression slightly stupefied. "Really?"

"Yeah." You smile—soft, fond, perhaps just a little mischievious—before your fingers tug aside the collar of his shirt to rub at the fading crescent of teeth marks sitting low at his collarbone. "Besides, haven't I give you a few marks of my own, too?"

Whatever flush had dissipated from Olruggio's face races back up at once. "That's—that's different—"

You wind your arms around his neck this time, the faint edge of laughter still on your lips as you pull him down towards you again. Olruggio squeezes his eyes frantically shut. Just before your mouths can meet, however…

"I can't." You break away from him, laughing so hard you have to brace a hand against his chest just to stay upright. "I don't think I can stop laughing long enough to kiss you until you get your beard back, Olly."

"by all means," you huff, vash's clawed fingers dragging dully over the top of your bare foot. "feel me up. weirdo."

your voice is embarrassingly affection, but it's not like vash knows that. hell, you don't even know his proper name—vash being the name of the cove below your house and you figured... well. you weren't thinking straight when you decided to name the merman who emerges from his shallows just to ogle your legs. you rarely are around vash.

sometimes it feels as though he understands you. other times, you may as well be talking to a fish.

quite literally.

vash veers forwards and water splashes up onto the rock you're sat on, his wide chest touching your feet. he peers at your shin with such intensity you can't help but laugh softly.

"must look weird to you, huh?" you wiggle your toes but vash doesn't startle. "i've been visiting you for months and you stare at my legs every time..." you laugh again. "you sure you're not bored yet?"

this time, however, vash leans forwards—teeth bared like a warning sign—towards the inside of your knee.

"vash what—" you try to jerk away from him but the hand on your foot suddenly tightens.

and for the first time since you started visited the cove, you feel fear. your gut swoops as those sharp teeth get closer and closer and oh god you really need your legs not like this please not like th—

oh.

it tickles. kind of.

the way vash drags only the tips of his teeth along the delicate skin. almost like he's tasting you—except there's no tongue involved to your great confusion.

he widens his jaw and the bottom teeth come into play. two sets of razor-sharp teeth scraping you so softly you would believe you're imagining it if not for the very real, very wet, very cold hand with an iron-clad grip on your foot.

you tug your bottom lip between your teeth.

"is this some kind of... is this a greeting? am i supposed to bite you back?"

vash makes another gurgling noise, his other hand landing on your other foot like shackle. his teeth creep up past your knee. you fight the reflex reaction to jam vash's chin with the limb as he rises up out of the water.

he's huge.

a fact that, while easy to forget, is difficult to reconcile with when all eight-to-nine-foot-something of him is threatening to... well. nibble you to death?

vash's teeth creep past your mid thigh, and drift inwards, nipping at the soft skin as he gets nearer and nearer to your core. you shift awkwardly on the rock, unsure exactly when you're supposed to stop him and not quite confident he'll even let you.

god knows you can't force him to do anything. including making him stop this peculiar, almost-tasting of your legs.

his webbed hands squeeze your feet once, twice.

you feel a wet nose brush against the gusset of your bikini bottoms when his teeth reach the top of your thigh and muffle a startled, utterly mortified moan at the sensation.

then, he's gone. backing out of your space with all the grace of a lithe cat.

vash makes what seems like it could be meaningful eye contact with you for a few long seconds and your mouth opens and closes around a soundless noise of confusion.

all before he turns tail and slips back into the water without a sound. leaving you alone in his home—and with an embarrassing warmth lingering in your gut you hope doesn't translate between your species.

it was just a custom, you try to convince yourself. not... not whatever my brain thinks he was doing. do mermaids even know what sex is anyway? probably not, right.

you shake your head and shamefully, just once, squeeze your thighs together for some relief before you rise from the rock and head home.

you peer at him over your book. you sigh a little. it’s hot out today, so he’s in a white vest and these navy shorts. biceps golden and thick. thighs thick and golden. he’s perched his black designer sunglasses to the top of his head which only pushes all of his hair back with it. he’s devastatingly gorgeous. his forehead, pretty nose and pouty lips. he’s frowning at whatever he’s reading, leaning his elbows onto his knees so he can get to typing. a huff at the end.

“is that the berry blast? i was thinking of getting that one?”

you look towards the voice, landing on a handsome guy standing on the opposite side of your table. he’s just walked in, also dressed for the weather with his cap, basic white shirt and shorts.

you’re still unsure if he was talking to you and you see bakugou, out of the corner of your eye, look up to the man.

“is it nice?” he repeats. the man is slightly shy, scratching the back of his head. he’s clearly nervous now he’s got your attention as he shuffles from foot to foot. keeps crossing his arms then lets go. you can tell he’s around your age and he’s not not your type. but also you’re not sure if he’s flirting with you or not. can he not see your boyfriend right there?

“oh, yeah it is. it’s my first time trying it,” you reply dryly, pressing your thumb in between the pages of your book so you don’t lose your spot.

the man’s eyes light up at your response and now bakugou looks at him directly. is this random man flirting with his girlfriend in front of him? is he invisible? does he look like a fucking dickhead?

the man nods in response to you, paying bakugou no mind. he’s so enamoured by you he doesn’t feel the boiling confusion brewing beside you.

“ah cool. i think i’ll give it a try,” he sniffs, looking at your book, then your dress. you can see him figuring out what to comment on next.

bakugou adjusts his posture. leans back in his seat, spreads his legs and holds up his smoothie.

“this green shit is good too. you should give it a try,” katsuki pushes and as if the guy is just finding out he’s there, he rapidly nods his head. looking from you to bakugou and trying to bring the conversation back to you and him.

“right, thanks man.”

then he’s looking back at you, giving you all his attention completely. 

you hear bakugou swear under his breath. it all makes you want to laugh at his expense.

“i came in here and i had to talk to you, i thought you were gorgeous. i love the dress,” he rushes, “i was wondering if i could get your number or insta?”

you give him a sweet smile, shaking your head lightly. you point your thumb in the direction of bakugou, “that’s my boyfriend. sorry.”

bakugou raises his eyebrows at the man, holding up his hand with a sarcastic wave.

“i don’t let her give her number to men that want to date her.”

you giggle at your boyfriend’s stupidity, your first giggle of the day actually and it causes the corner of bakugou’s lips to quiver with the urge to smile.

though looking back at your new admirer, you both slowly see the light drain from his eyes. his shoulders slump next. he’s obvious in the way he stares at bakugou’s arms and he blinks as if he might recognise him from somewhere.

“oh shit… i didn’t think… loads of people on this table and i thought everyone was sitting alone. fuck, sorry guys.”

bakugou’s gritting his teeth, “no fuckin’ social awareness.”

you kick his foot under the table, “no it’s okay, thank you though!”

once the man apologises again, spinning around to leave the shop completely, bakugou has already dragged your chair beside his, metal chair legs clacking together. he shoves his phone in his pocket and takes your hand with his now free one.

you giggle at the touch. there’s no way anyone doesn’t think you’re a couple now. in fact, you get a few stares from the other smoothie drinkers on the table.

“i’m sorry for the shit earlier,” he blurts, “i’m not all over you for a minute and someone already tries to take you from me. what the actual fuck?”

bakugou huffs to himself, practically trying to pull you to sit onto his lap so nobody can mistake what you are to each other. what else does he need to do? tattoo you on his arm? he’s already done that actually. your eyes, your name, your birth flower.

“i’m sorry too but we were seated far apart, doing separate things and not talking.” you grin at him and he just looks at your lips. it’s been far too long since he’s kissed them. “fair assessment i think.”

“‘course you think that. gonna stamp my name on your forehead,” he mutters, kissing the corner of your lips. 

bakugou’s not one for pda, but it’s needed when people are trying to drag you from under his nose.

“this should keep you on your toes. remind you that everyone wants me,” you joke but bakugou blinks at you. looks at you then looks away. 

he agrees, in fact, it makes him sit up straight and kiss you on your mouth again, in the middle of this random smoothie shop.

“i said i was sorry,” he huffs, holding your hand to his waist. “wanna try mine?”

you nod, “i’ve been waiting for you to ask!”

you put the straw to your smoothie by his lips so he can try yours.

“yours is better than mine,” you whine and bakugou chuckles.

“wanna swap?”

“you sure?”

“y’know i don’t mind.”

you take bakugou’s green smoothie while he holds your pink one. you eye his throat as he tajes three big gulps, the smoothie sinking away faster than your previous sips.

“thanks for buying them, ‘ki.”

bakugou smiles at you, gold tooth shining in the sunlight pouring through the windows. “i wouldn’t have heard the end of it if i let you pay while we were fightin’.”

you huff, “we weren’t fighting! it was a disagreement in communication styles.”

“yeah, we had a fight about that,” then he looks at your outfit with warm eyes, ones you welcome, unlike the random guy before. “your dress is pretty, baby. you look pretty today. i didn’t say that before.”

“thank you. you look sexy, always do.”

you swipe his sunglasses off his head, plopping them onto your face. 

“you’re gonna have to give them back when we get outside,” he tells you but he can’t help his grin, now unable to see your eyes.

“i forgot mine because you were rushing me!” 

bakugou rolls his eyes, albeit playfully. “look in your bag.”

“i didn’t put them in here,” you say but still you do. you unzip and pull it open, dipping your hand in and immediately frowning, “did you put them in here or am i going crazy?”

“you’re goin’ crazy,” bakugou stands up, brushing off his shorts and reaching for your hand. you stay seated in his sunglasses, your designer ones he bought you for your birthday in your hands.

“katsuki!”

“you’re not crazy, i put them in there when you were shoutin’ that you didn’t wanna go out with me anymore,” he nudges his head in the direction of the door, “let’s go, ‘wanna walk in the park.”

“you’re so annoying,” you tell him but you love it when he interlinks his fingers with yours, letting you walk out the shop first, smoothie in hand.

“love you too. now pass my glasses.”

You'd proceeded to intently question his bathing habits after that, each query more absurd than the last. By the end of it, Qifrey had been laughing near uncontrollably into his hand, shaking his head as he looked at you. "Why are you so curious about this topic?" he'd asked, eye flashing with faint amusement. "Do you want me to show you?"

You'd been entirely certain, at the time, that he'd meant it as a joke. But you'd reached across the table to take his hand and said yes anyway, watched the way his breath caught at your answer. One thing had led to another, and then the two of you had stumbled through the atelier half-fumbling and half-kissing, clothes discarded piece by piece until you'd ended up tangled with him beneath warm steam and running water.

Now, joining Qifrey in the shower is one of your favourite pastimes. Getting him there, however, is a whole different story.

"Qifrey." You stand over his bed, one hand cocked loosely on your hip as honeyed sunlight streams in through the far window. "Qifrey, c'mon."

He only curls tighter on his side beneath the covers, retreating into them like a garden snail withdrawing into its shell. Nothing emerges from the blankets aside for a string of unintelligible sounds—soft, muffled protests lost to the stuffing of his pillow. You bite back a smile. He's always like this in the mornings before he's properly awake—petulant, unwilling to leave the warmth of the bed, and even more reluctant to step anywhere near the shower. In moments like these, you catch glimpses of the child you'd once grown up with; a strange contrast to the composed, inscrutable master he presents himself as to everyone else. Now, he's nothing more than a sleepy, sulking creature—burrowing beneath the blankets in hopes you'll give up and let him stay there forever.

You like it, though. You like being able to see him like this: soft-edged with sleep and grumbling in a way so few people ever do.

"Qifrey," you say again, more coaxing this time as you sit on the edge of the bed, mattress creaking faintly beneath your weight. Your fingers comb gently over the hair covering his bad eye. "You're going to be late taking the girls to the Great Hall if you don't get up now."

There's a pause. Then, slowly, he pushes himself upright, blankets pooling in the cradle of his lap. His pale hair sticks out in every direction, hopelessly tousled around the sharp lines of his face, while his rumpled nightclothes hang just loose enough for the collar to slip off one bare shoulder. Still sleep-soft and warm from bed. He looks like he's been dragged straight out of a dream.

One blue eye—the same shade as the cloudless sky outside—cracks open to peer at you through the tangled mess of his hair. Qifrey always looks softer without his glasses. Younger, somehow. He also looks deeply aggrieved at being awake, though, so you lean forward to press a kiss to his temple, his cheek, and then the softening corner of his mouth.

"…hrgm," he says. But he looks less put-out about it, now.

"I'll shower with you." You already had, earlier that morning, when you'd dragged yourself from both the bed and the warmth of his arms to start breakfast and deal with the laundry, but you don't particularly mind doing it again. Rising to your feet, you begin undoing the fastenings of your robe as you move towards the washroom, letting your outer layers slip from your shoulders and to the floor behind you as you go. "Don't keep me waiting too long, hmm?"

You turn the corner just in time to hear the quiet fwump of Qifrey reluctantly dragging himself upright from the bed. It's followed a moment later by the sound of socked feet against wooden floorboards, uneven and sluggish with sleep.

"Manipulative," you hear him mumble, from somewhere behind you.

You smile to yourself as you fetch the bar of soap from the counter—calendula and rosemary and mint—before turning towards the vapour bubble hanging from the ceiling. The device had been modified years ago by Olruggio, miniature heating spells etched carefully into the upper and lower trays with a searneedle wand so the water stays comfortably warm no matter the weather. Qifrey had tried baths before, but being so completely surrounded by water had reminded him too much of the box he'd been found in. Showers were easier and allowed him to step away the moment it became too much.

You check the little dials along its side. You'd already used it earlier that morning, so the water heats almost immediately at your touch. Warm.

Steam is already curling lazily through the room by the time you begin peeling off the rest of your clothes. A few moments later, Qifrey appears in the doorway, wearing the mournful expression of a man being walked to his own execution. It eases slightly, though, when he sees you shrugging off your shift, soft linen slipping from your fingers to land by your feet in a crumpled heap.

It's a little strange, but you've never been shy about Qifrey seeing you like this. Never felt the need for it. You bend over to tug off the scant remainder of your clothes, kicking them off to join your discarded shift, before stepping under the warm spray. Water cascades over your shoulders and back in soft streams of steam and heat. You glance back at Qifrey in silent invitation, wiggling your fingers coyly at him.

Qifrey squints at you for a long moment before he sighs. Then, with the long-suffering air of someone resigning himself to fate, he begins to take off his own clothes.

There's not much for him to remove—only the oversized tunic he'd slept in that is nothing like, thankfully, the elaborately collared shirts he usually wears. You love seeing them on him, loathe fumbling with the accursed straps as he laughs, the sound vibrating beneath your fingertips. This one comes off easily when he tugs it over his head, and it's followed quickly by his trousers, discarded in an untidy heap next to yours.

When he's as naked as you are, he finally steps under the spray with you. You notice the way Qifrey stiffens the instant the water hits his back: shoulders drawing taut, breath hitching faintly, lips pressing tight for the briefest second. It's subtle, barely perceptible, but you notice. You always have. It's the same thing every time,

You reach up to fiddle with the vapour bubble, carefully lowering the water pressure until the spray softens to a gentle patter, then coaxing a little more warmth into the steam. "Too much?"

Qifrey shakes his head. "No, no." A slow exhale passes between his lips as he presses himself more firmly against you, leaning into your warmth like a flower turning to the sun. He nuzzles into the crook of your neck, swallowing. "Just… just the usual."

"Mm. Let me help, then."

You tug him closer by the waist until there's no space left between your bodies, warm steam curling around the two of you as you tilt your head to kiss him gently. Qifrey sinks into it almost immediately, damp lashes fluttering against your cheeks until they fall still. You move your mouth slow and unhurried against his—fingers gently cradling his jaw, thumb rubbing slow circles over the quickening pulse of his inner wrist—giving him something else to focus on besides the water running softly over the two of you. Qifrey's fingers curl tighter against your waist, damp hair brushing your forehead every time he leans deeper into the kiss with a quiet sigh.

Slowly, you let your hands wander wherever the water does—over the bare expanse of his back, the notches of his spine, the sharp jut of his hipbone, coaxing his mind to focus on you instead, the closeness of your bodies, your touch. Qifrey lets out a shuddering breath against the wet curve of your shoulder. He melts into you, soft and pliant under the hot water, the same way sugar cubes dissolve into warm tea.

You reach for the bar of soap, lathering it up carefully between your palms until thick suds gather, and Qifrey cracks open one eye to watch. The whole bathroom smells pleasantly of flowers and herbs.

You start with his hair. Qifrey lowers his head for you instinctively, eye slipping shut again as you work the lather into the pale strands, fingers combing gently through wet tangles. The water will rinse it clean soon enough, so you move on to his shoulders instead, pressing a soft kiss to each to coax them into loosening before you continue. Down his arms, across his chest. Qifrey trembles faintly when your fingertips brush across his nipples—soft pink-brown against shower-flushed skin—and you have to bite back the urge to lean in and put your mouth on them. Instead, your hands continue tracing the lines of his body, nails scratching lightly over the soft plane of his stomach before gliding lower, following the shape of his hips and the long line of his legs.

Here, you have to crouch down to reach the rest of him. The water runs in rivulets over his thighs, his lean calves, his narrow ankles. You're about to start when you feel a hand at your shoulder, long fingers closing over your upper arm to tug you back up.

"Hey," he murmurs. Qifrey's voice is soft, slightly hoarse when he peers down at you. "You don't have to. I can do that myself."

You look up at him, blinking away scattered droplets of falling water. Qifrey's face is flushed—perhaps from the heat or your hands, perhaps both. His eye is bright in the dim light of the bathroom, darting back and forth from your face uncertainly like he still hasn't decided whether he wants you to stop or keep touching him forever. His lower lip catches briefly between his teeth.

You have the sudden urge to reach up and tug it free with your thumb, to suck it into your own mouth and kiss him until that hesitant expression dissolves into something else completely. But you are already on your knees, supplicant before him, and so you simply smile and kiss the side of his knee. Qifrey shivers.

"I want to," you say, simply. "Besides, I'm down here already."

You kiss his other knee, too, just because you can. A quiet breath escapes Qifrey as you start to lather up his legs properly, careful to remain gentle as you work the soap over his calves, his shins. You can feel him watching you as you do.

By the time you reach his thighs, you notice. His cock, soft when you'd first stepped into the shower together, has thickened up somewhat. Not fully hard, but stirring with interest despite the heat and water and everything else. You wrap your soapy fingers around him and he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth.

"What's this, hm?"

Qifrey exhales slowly—a shaky, half-laugh caught somewhere in the back of his throat. "How else am I supposed to react with your hands all over me like that?"

You laugh quietly at the faint strain in his voice. His hips twitch ever so slightly towards you when your thumb sweeps lazily over the tip, spreading the drop of slickness you find there. The flush on his cheeks has deepened, crawling down his neck. Smiling, you settle properly on your knees, warm water cascading over your shoulders, and guide his cock into your mouth.

Qifrey lets out a quiet sound, caught somewhere between a gasp and a groan. His hand finds the side of your head, fingers curling through the damp strands—winding loosely, but not pulling or pushing. It's not as comfortable as some erotic catalogues make it out to be. Water seems to run endlessly into your eyes and your knees are beginning to ache where they're pressed against the tessellated tiles. But you care less about your pleasure and more about the way you can feel him tremble under your palms, the way his quiet pants become audible as they echo off the slick walls. You trace your tongue over the tip and he shudders. There's no taste of him yet—not with the water washing away every trace of him in the shower—only the faint remnants of soap still clinging on his skin. You want more than that. You want him.

You take him deeper, slow and deliberate, letting your tongue press flat along the underside. His breath stutters above you. You take your time, unhurriedly, feeling him grow heavier in your mouth, the way his thighs tense beneath your free hand. The water continues to fall around you both, but Qifrey doesn't seem to notice it at all. He lets out a quiet moan, one hand tightening ever so slightly in your hair while the other braces flat against the wall behind him.

"Hah…"

You pull out until only the tip remains, dragging the flat of your tongue over the head before suckling lightly there. Qifrey chokes softly. The faint salt of his precome coats your tongue and you hum happily, glance up through your lashes. His lips are parted, chest rising and falling too fast, eye squeezed tight. You frown. He's not looking at you.

You curl one hand around his knee for balance and swallow him down further, gagging lightly when the head nudges the back of your throat. Qifrey makes a strangled sound—half a moan and half your name.

"W-Wait—"

His knees buckle with a gasp that sounds suspiciously like a curse. He nearly falls—would have, if the wall hadn't been there to catch him. You let him slip out of your mouth with a soft pop, laughing quietly as he sags against the damp tiles, chest heaving, panting.

"You—"

"Watch the language, love." The endearment slips out before you can stop it, a prisoner making a run for it. You nibble at his hip, hope it's enough to keep him from noticing. "What if the girls were to hear, hmm?"

Qifrey huffs a breathless laugh, his head tipping back against the wet tiles. "That's the least of my concerns when—" His voice breaks into a whine when you take him in your hand again, stroking lightly, idly. "—mgh—when this is happening right in front me…"

You grin up at him, slow and a little wicked, before you slip him into your mouth again. This time, you keep one hand wrapped around his thigh—keeping him close close—while the other strokes where your mouth can't quite fit. You work him deeper and deeper, patient but with a focused intent, until the head nudges against the sensitive back of your throat again. The familiar urge to gag rises but you force yourself to breathe through your nose, relax your jaw to take him deeper still, until he slips past the last resistance and into the tight confines of your throat.

Qifrey's whole body shivers, toes curling against the wet tiles. His head tips forward then back, like he can't bear to look at you but also can't bring himself to look away. Look, you want to say. Look at me.

Your mouth is currently full, however, so you have no choice but to settle for other means. You dig your nails lightly into the back of his thigh—not enough to hurt, just to get his attention—and when his head dips down, you look up at him through your lashes. His eye finds yours, hazy and glassy and dark as ink, just as you hum around him. The vibration pulls a sound from his chest—something desperate, almost broken—and his hips jerk forward before he can stop himself.

Qifrey arches off the wall with a shuddering cry—one hand scrabbling against the slick tiles while the other tightens fractionally in your hair. His pleasure spills hot across your tongue, and you have to resist the urge to close your eyes to savour the taste. You want to watch him, and watch him you do—the way his mouth falls open, the way his eye squeezes then flutters half-open, how his chest heaves like he's forgotten how to breathe. He's flushed all the way down his pretty neck, white hair plastered to his forehead, dark with water. His lips part around something that might be your name.

Beautiful. He's so damn beautiful.

You swallow slowly, one last time, only pulling back when Qifrey's grip in your hair loosens and his thighs stop shaking. Your calves ache ever so slightly when you get back to your feet, but when you pull him into a kiss and he moans at the taste of himself on your tongue, all of it seems to fade away. Much in the same way you hope it does, for him.

He finds you one afternoon as ordinary as any other. It's raining when he reaches the port town of Havso—a steady patter that turns the cobblestones slick and darkens the wood of every dock and doorway. For all the precision Qifrey has honed over water, getting wet remains an irritation he's never quite outgrown, and the sound of rain prickles at his awareness like a thousand fine needles, impossible to ignore. He hurries through the narrow streets, searching the shops—for a new cast iron pot to replace the one that had cracked last week, some twine for binding dried herbs, other small sundries—when he sees you.

The canvas awning you're huddled beneath is doing almost nothing at all—not to protect you from the cold spring rain, or from the sharp, biting winds sweeping in from the coast. Water drips steadily from the hem of your smock, your hair plastered in wet strings to your narrow cheeks. Despite this, you don't move.

Qifrey doesn't mean to stop. But he does.

You look up when his shadow falls over you. He takes the edge of his cloak, the water dispelling spell inked discretely beneath its hem, and sweeps it in a gentle arc above your head. The rain above you curves away. Your eyes widen ever so slightly, your gaze tracing the water trickling off the air as though sliding off an invisible dome, before you look back at him again.

"I don't like getting wet," Qifrey says, in manner of explanation.

You simply stare. For a moment, Qifrey wonders if you speak the common tongue at all—it's not uncommon for sailors from foreign kingdoms to abandon unwanted children in port towns like this—or if you're simply mute.

"You're soaked," he tries again, more gently this time. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

Silence stretches in the space between each of his heartbeats. The rain patters, fingertips dancing along the boundary he's drawn. Then, you shake your head.

So you do understand him. Qifrey should have guessed—children like you are a dime a dozen here, orphans, strays, the overlooked and unclaimed. No one would notice if one or more vanished from the edges of the docks.

Convenient, a colder part of him supplies. You are old enough to comprehend, young enough to be malleable, and compared to an apprentice born into a family of witches, you won't know enough of magic—and by extension, the silverwood—to ask questions that he doesn't want or know how to explain.

He takes you in.

The first few weeks are easier than he expects. You come to him with no poor habits to unlearn—no stubborn rune-drawing tendencies, no theoretical 'shortcuts' circulated by some of the lazier professors in the Great Hall. Teaching you is like working on a blank sheet of parchment. You simply watch what he does and try to do the same. And when you fail—which is often—you do not seem to be affected or frustrated. You simply do it again.

The only real issue is that you have never learned to write. Qifrey watches your hand wobble across the parchment—leaving dark splotches in some places, lines breaking off in others. Your fingers wrap around the ink wand like a stick you've picked off the ground, all knuckles and no finesse.

Qifrey lets out a quiet sigh.

"Your grip is wrong."

You look up at him, uncomprehending. Qifrey sighs again and hesitates, just briefly, before he steps closer and leans down. His hand slides over your fingers, carefully adjusting each one until the wand rests properly between them, the tip hovering just above the parchment.

"Like that."

The moment he releases you, however, your grip tightens again reflexively. The wood of the ink wand creaks faintly in protest. He quickly takes your hand again.

"Gently," he murmurs. "Like holding a robin's egg."

Qifrey guides your hand across the parchment. A straight line. A square. A circle. Your hand relaxes under his, just a little.

"Just like that," he says, and lets go. You look at the ink wand in your hand. "Now, try again."

You practice until the sun goes down.

He teaches you the basics. The three basic components that make up every spell, the five elemental sigils for fire, wind, water, earth and light. The keystones that govern a spell's direction and strength and purpose, how the sizes of the rings can affect its range and potency. Everything he says, you memorise. And everything he teaches you, you practice until you can reproduce it by heart.

After only about a few months of training, Qifrey dares to say that you've reached the standard that most witches your age who've grown up around magic would be at. The rate at which you're learning is… unexpected, to say the least. He should be pleased. Any decent teacher would be.

Qifrey tells himself this as he watches you inscribe a heating spell along the belly of a copper kettle. It's a reasonably complex problem for a beginner—the spell must conjure heat but not fire, be stable enough to maintain an even boil, hot enough to warm but not so fierce as to warp or melt the metal. It's a careful balance of precision and power that tends to elude most newcomers to spellcasting.

You hand him the kettle when you finish. Qifrey pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and lifts it up to his good eye, turning it slightly in the flickering light coming from the fireplace. The dispersion keystones are neatly drawn, arranged around the central fire sigil in two concentric circles. The limiting keystones sit where they should, too—balanced on either side, ready to dampen the spell the moment the heat climbs too high.

"Good," Qifrey says at last. The word feels thinner than it should be. He lingers a moment longer than necessary, as if searching for some flaw to justify a correction, but finds none. "We'll be able to use this to brew tea in the mornings, now."

You nod once at his assessment from where you're watching him by the kitchen table, then ask, "What next?"

There is no flicker of pride. No satisfaction in your work, no pause to take in what you've done. Just a simple what next, as if each perfected spell is nothing more than a marker on a long road you don't care much to tread on.

The first thin root of worry pushes through the soil of his chest.

Qifrey tries to keep his distance at first. He really does. A master-apprentice relationship only needs to go so deep for one to learn and the other to worry, and too much closeness would be counterproductive in his attempts to keep the silverwood at bay. He buys you all sorts of magical books and supplies you with wands and ink when you need it. He cooks, too, warm and filling meals that nourish the body and are rich in nutrients, until the hollowness in your cheeks softens, replaced by a healthier, rounded plumpness. He corrects your glyphs when he spots mistakes and guides your hand when your lines falter. It barely assauges the guilt in his chest.

You don't make it easier for him. Through no fault of your own, he knows, and yet somehow, that only makes it worse. You don't seek him out for any needs outside of your magic studies, never ask for anything, and eat exactly what he puts in front of you without comment. You wake up at dawn to start the tea kettle, and from there you start practicing magic without ceasing until he has to firmly tell you to go to bed.

There are no tantrums, no complaints, no childish demands for attention or affection. Surely, even children must have their preferences. Trinkets they like, foods they refuse to eat. But you are quiet and serious and wrong in a way that he cannot name, and Qifrey finds himself watching you much the same way Beldaruit had once watched him.

"You don't have to keep doing that," he tells you one evening. You're hunched over the kitchen with a half-empty cup of water, the parchment in front of you crowded with dozens of identical glyphs. The fire sigil that you'd just traced over in water glistens for a moment, then fades as the parchment slowly dries. You must have drawn the same glyph at least a hundred times now.

You don't look up, dipping your wand in water again. "My circles aren't perfectly round yet."

"You don't have to master everything in a single day. You could take a break."

"Why?"

Qifrey doesn't have an answer for that. Or rather, it's perhaps that he has too many. Because you look tired but refuse to admit it. Because your hands will cramp if you keep going. Because watching you work yourself into the ground makes me feel something too similar to what I used to feel for Olruggio, and that scares me.

"It was only a suggestion."

You consider it for a moment, and then turn back to your parchment. Qifrey sighs, pushing aside his robes to lower himself into the chair across from you.

"Do you have any reason for learning magic?"

You rotate your wrist once in the air before setting the wand's nib to parchment. "You asked me to."

"That's my reason, not yours."

"It's the only one I have."

Qifrey watches your hand move across the paper, and something in his chest tightens. This arrangement is supposed to be simple—selfish, yes, but simple. You are supposed to ask things of him, to need him in small, manageable ways that keep him worried just enough about your progress and studies without causing him too much concern. You have done exactly just that.

And yet here he is, worrying about you constantly for a completely different reason.

He thinks of Beldaruit's gentle gaze, the soft curl of smoke illusions coaxed into being on nights when sleep proved treacherous, when the memories of darkness and rain pounding unceasingly against metal and claustrophobia set in. He remembers Olruggio's warm smile and even warmer eyes, the ribbon on his hat that Qifrey still touches sometimes in the dark, tracing the multiple preservation sigils he's inked onto the silk.

His reminder to never forget, to never grow complacent.

"Take a break," he says again, and this time, there's something in his voice that makes you stop.

You look at him for a long moment, head tilting slightly to the side. It reminds Qifrey vaguely of a sparrow. Finally, you speak.

"You're worried," you say, as though you're making an observation. Qifrey forces a smile.

"I'm your master. It's what I'm supposed to do."

You glance down at your parchment once more. For a moment he thinks you might refuse, ignore his words and go right back to practicing, but then you set your wand down next to the paper and push your chair back, legs scraping along the slate flagstones.

"I'll continue tomorrow," you announce, without looking at him.

"Good," he says in response, and the two of you sit in silence at the kitchen table, undisturbed except for the crackling of the fireplace, and Qifrey has to remember how to breathe without counting the spaces between each one.

Hearthglen Village is about a few furlongs from the atelier, more often than not in need of small, persistent fixes, and thusly, the ideal place for you to practice using magic after passing the Pentacle of Proving's second test. Qifrey walks beside you through the small handful of thatched cottages scattered through the patchwork quilt of farmfields, returning the villagers' greetings with easy familiarity. It's always good to maintain good relations with the unknowing, especially those living nearby.

Eventually, the two of you arrive in front of the client who'd requested Qifrey's services. The problem is simple: a farmer's irrigation ditch has gone haywire somehow, and now his turnips are drowning in mud. Qifrey could fix it alone in ten minutes, but that isn't the point. He nods towards the field, giving you an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

"Go on."

You hesitate only for a moment before you go, hovering tentatively over the knee deep muck with your sylph shoes as you float out to the irrigation ditch. Your expression is reminiscent of a wet cat's—vaguely displeased, faintly affronted, as though the world has committed a personal offense by being this unpleasant. Qifrey has to hold back a smile.

In the meantime, Qifrey chats with the farmer as you work—something about the summer heat this year, the stubbornness of the soil—but he makes sure to never let you slip from his sights. You're already at the ditch, hat bobbing as you hover over the mud. He can almost picture your hand beneath the shelter of your cloak: fingers wrapped around the wand, drawing those precise lines that you'd practiced over and over again with unswerving confidence.

He's listening to a rundown of this year's cabbage harvest when a faint rumble echoes across the field. The earth shifts, groaning as though rousing from a long slumber, and then the water starts to move. Mud loosens and starts to drain from the fields, revealing the green leaves of the turnips peeking out through the soil once more. It's quickly replaced by a steady stream of clear water.

The farmer's face brightens with relief. He claps his hands together with a delighted laugh, already turning to call out his thanks as you drift back over to the solid ground of the path, the hem of your cloak splattered with drying mud. You don't smile back; instead you wipe the faint sheen of sweat from your brow and look to Qifrey for approval.

He pushes his glasses up and nods once. "Well done."

You accept his verdict the same way you accept everything else—quietly, without visible pride or disappointment. The farmer tries to press a basket overflowing with all variety of squash into your hands and your eyes find Qifrey's like you aren't sure what to do with gratitude. He takes it for you.

"They're a natural," the farmer nudges Qifrey as he moves to leave. "Where'd you find a talent like that?" Despite the surge of pride that races through him, he hesitates.

"They found me," Qifrey says, instead.

More villagers request your help over the course of the afternoon. A family's goat wandered into a small ravine, a child's kite got stuck in a tree. You lift the frantically bleating animal to safety with a levitating spell, and coax the wind into tugging the kite loose from an elm's tangled branches while the village children gather to watch you work with eyes full of wonder. The girl bounces on her heels as the toy finally drifts down into your waiting hand, and you hand it over without a smile.

The child hugs your legs anyway. You stand there awkwardly, arms glued to your sides, and Qifrey has to look away before he laughs.

Hours later, after the last request has been fulfilled and the sun is low enough to turn the clouds a warm ombre-ochre, you and Qifrey decide to walk home, the path stretching before you like a pale ribbon through the fields. You walk next to him in silence, as you always do, fingers stained with smudges of black ink and clay soil.

"You did well today," he says.

"Thank you."

"But."

You glance at him then. Just a slight flicker of the eyes, darting sideways and upwards. You've learned, by now, that your master is far from straightforward around topics that are necessary but difficult to broach.

"But?"

"But magic doesn't seem to make you happy," he finishes.

You neither deny nor confirm it. Your steps just slow slightly against the gravel scattered on the path, stones crunching beneath the soles of your boots. For a while, there is only the sound of the wind moving through the wheat fields.

Eventually, you speak.

"Does it have to?"

Qifrey thinks about that. About the way you've perfected every spell he's taught you but never once asked to learn any out of your own desire. About how you can spend hours, days, drawing circles and lines over and over again simply because he tells you to. About how quickly you've become good at magic—and how little of it seems to belong to you.

"It doesn't have to," Qifrey says, at last. He's cast all sorts of magic in his life, spells that have burned and hollowed, ones that have scarred and pained him beyond what any physical wound can. Not all of it was joy. Not all of it was kind.

Yet.

"But you should find a reason. To desire magic, I mean."

You glance at him, eyes briefly searching, as though weighing the shape of his words, their meaning. He licks his lips, suddenly dry.

"Magic is meant to grant wishes of the people," he says, more gently now. "To bless them. That includes yourself." His lips press together, smile half-formed before faltering, and the wind moves through the fields, rustling restlessly through the long grass. "I—I hope you can learn magic not because I tell you to, but because you want to."

The last sentence escapes him in a rush, as though forced from his lungs with some sort of wind dispelling spell. The thought settles heavy in his chest again, the silverwood shuddering. For all his care—for all the effort he's poured into teaching you properly, responsibly—one truth remains unchanged: Qifrey had taken you in because he needed an apprentice. Not out of kindness. Not out of any noble intent he can comfortably name.

He doesn't know what he would say if you ever asked him why. Any lie would feel too great a disservice to the one person he'd thrust this fate upon, and the truth feels brittle, insufficient—something that would fracture the moment he speaks it aloud.

But you never have. Sometimes, he suspects that you already know.

The remainder of the walk back passes in silence. The sky fades from sienna to lavender before deepening to a dark indigo. One by one, the first stars emerge at the very top of the firmament, their light faint and trembling. You say nothing, and Qifrey tells himself to give you time—you need space to process things, and pressuring you would only make you retreat further into yourself, like a snail hiding in its own shell.

The atelier comes into view at the end of the lane, its windows dark. Qifrey steps ahead, undoing the sealing glyphs on the door. It swings open with a soft creak, and he pauses, holding it ajar for you to step through.

You don't.

He turns back to see you standing a step behind the threshold, gaze lowered to the path at your feet, as though something he cannot see there has snared your attention and taken it captive. Qifrey frowns, head tilting.

"Apprentice?"

You don't answer immediately, hands in your pockets, the tip of your boot scuffing the ground. Then, quietly—

"I want to cure Master."

For a moment, Qifrey forgets how to breathe. He can only stare at you, mouth slightly parted. The words fail to catch despite him having nothing to say. Your voice had been small, careful—like you'd been turning the words over in your mouth for miles, smoothing their edges so they wouldn't cut your tongue on the way out. Of all the things he'd imagined you might say, this had never even been within his considerations.

He grips the door handle a little more firmly for support. The brass carvings bite its patterns into his skin of his palm.

"Cure me," he repeats, dumbly.

"Yes." You nod, the movement slow, as if hesitant in your admission. "The headaches that you try to hide from me. And your right eye, too," you add, pointing at the side of his face covered by his hair, as if he might not know the one. "You touch it when you think I'm not watching, but it seems like it hurts."

Qifrey didn't realise you'd noticed. He thought he'd been careful.

"I thought I asked you," he says, more quietly, more unsteadily now, "to want something for yourself."

"I don't like seeing Master in pain."

Qifrey’s grip on the door falters. Something tightens in his chest—perhaps the silverwood, perhaps something else, so sharp it cuts him open like a blade, and yet he doesn't know whether he wants to let go. For so long, he's been waiting—for you to want something, to reach beyond instruction, to claim even the smallest piece of magic for your own.

And you have.

Qifrey exhales slowly, the sound thin against the quiet of the evening. For once, there is no ready answer waiting behind his teeth. He thinks of Olruggio's face, the path to salvation he'd offered Qifrey paved with the pieces of his own memory. He thinks of the tree growing inside of him, its roots tangled in his ribs, its branches seeking the sun through where his eye once used to be.

Healing magic is a direct alteration of the body, and every form of body alteration is forbidden—banned on the Day of the Pact, enforced by the Knights Moralis with iron and fire. And even if it wasn't, the silverwood is not merely an illness. There is no cure for what grows inside of him.

But you don't know any of that.

So Qifrey smiles softly. Releases his death grip on the door, pulling away to rest a hand on top of your head, the same way Beldaruit used to do for him.

"That's very kind of you," he says.

Your expression doesn't change, but the tautness in your shoulders loosens just a fraction, as if you'd been bracing for him to laugh at you, to dismiss your dream as a fool's flight and fancy. Instead, he pushes the door open wider and gestures you inside.

"Come on," Qifrey tells you, swallowing the sudden thickness lodged in his throat. "Wash up. I'll make squash stew for dinner."

You nod and disappear up the steps to the second floor. Your footsteps fade quickly, and soon Qifrey's ears pick up the sound of running water, of the bath being filled.

He remains in the doorway a moment longer, one hand braced against the frame, the other lifting—almost unconsciously—to brush over where his right eye used to be, featherlight. The motion is familiar, thoughtless. Almost habitual.

But he's been exposed, now. A deprecating laugh escapes him, the wisps of it slipping between his teeth. It's only now, Qifrey thinks, that he's beginning to realise just how foolish he'd been.

He's fallen into the pit that he'd dug with his own two hands.

Sleep eludes Qifrey that night.

He lies on his back, one arm thrown over his forehead, the other resting on his chest. Beneath skin and bone, the cage of his ribs, the silverwood pulses its slow, patient rhythm, waiting. The ceiling above him is indistinguishable in the dark, but he's stared at it so many sleepless nights that he can recall to memory the grain of every plank, the small water stain in the corner that faintly resembles a bird in flight.

Just above him, in the room upstairs, you are sleeping soundly—or he hopes so, at least. Belly full of squash stew, dreaming of pleasant things. That you are warm and resting, and that, for once, you are not pushing yourself past the point of sense simply because he asked it of you.

I want to cure Master.

Qifrey turns onto his side, facing the wall. His pillowcase smells faintly of lavender—scented sachets you'd made last week, making use of some aromatics a village herbalist had given you for your help. He'd accepted one when you'd offered it, almost without thinking, assuming that it was thoughtful but practical gesture.

Now, the scent lingers like smoke.

Beldaruit used to say that the best apprentices were the ones who could surprise you. Qifrey always assumed he meant talent, insight, some brilliant intuition that no one else could replicate. Someone who could make teachers lean forward in their seats and think, that's the one.

But here, lying in his bed, your words from hours ago still sitting warm in his chest, he wonders if the old man had meant something else entirely.

Qifrey pushes out a breath, the tip of his tongue pressing behind his teeth. You will learn about the forbidden magic, eventually. Every witch does—and as your master, it will be his responsibility to teach you about it. Some things are too dangerous. Some lines cannot be crossed. All magic that is drawn on the human body or affects the human body is outlawed.

And that includes healing magic.

You will learn that, and then you will not ask too many questions about why his eye cannot be fixed. Eventually, you will move on and find another, better wish.

But for now, Qifrey takes your words and folds them carefully, tucking them away into the furthest corner of his heart where the silverwood cannot reach. He closes his one good eye and waits for the sun to rise once again. And when it does, Qifrey will greet you in the kitchen downstairs with a cup of hot tea and a smile, he will teach you combination sigils and binding spells, and he will never bring it up again.

Because some wishes are too heavy to be said aloud, and some teachers are too selfish to let them go.

Summer slips unnoticed into autumn, and autumn, in turn, yields to winter. Qifrey teaches you to crochet, then to knit—awkward at first, fingers too stiff around the slumbersheep yarn until Qifrey takes your hands and guides you through the movements, much in the same way he does when teaching you spells. He shows you how to tend to the heating spells that keep the house warm without burning it down, how to summon precise gusts of wind to blow snow off the atelier's sloping roofs. And the months pass just as the weather changes—gradual, inevitable, marked only in hindsight by the shift in the air, the thinning of light.

And as you grow older, Qifrey finds the distance he once tried so carefully to maintain eroded by the same unrelenting tide. Bit by bit, day by day—until one morning he wakes up and realises he cannot quite remember what it feels like to not have you there.

It's not something that changes overnight. Instead, it is a thousand small, mundane things—the way his hand moves without thinking to drop two cubes of sugar into your teacup, the copper kettle with your heating spell whistling behind him on the stove. You're at the basin with your sleeves rolled up to your elbows, washing a skillet faintly smelling of bacon while a brushbuddy dozes on your shoulder. Everything is good, and everything is warm.

This is dangerous, Qifrey thinks. And then he thinks it again, because the first time hadn't been enough to make him stop.

The morning he's forced to confront it comes without warning. Quietly, unassumingly, a thief in the night.

Qifrey notices that something is different the moment he steps into the quiet of the kitchen. The kettle is cold, and the matching cups that a travelling potter had made for you sit upturned on the counter, untouched from where you'd set them aside to dry last night. He stands in the doorway for a moment, listening. The atelier breathes around him like an extension of his own body—the soft creak of timber settling, the low whisper of wind along the eaves—but beneath it, nothing. No quiet patter of footsteps in the floor upstairs. No water running in the washroom.

Perhaps you're sleeping in, he tells himself. The idea is almost pleasant. You never do; you're always awake before him, tea already steeped, moving around the kitchen to prepare breakfast—presence slipped so easily into his morning routine that he'd stopped noticing it altogether.

Qifrey sets the kettle to heat, before rummaging for the battered tin of tea leaves in the overhead shelf. He prepares a cup for you, placing it at the chair that has become yours in all but name, and sits across it with his own. The brew's a little more astringent than he's used to—steeped a touch too long, perhaps—but he drinks it anyway, idly sorting through the neglected stack of mail from the council.

The sun climbs higher in the sky. Light spills through the kitchen window, between the gap in the curtains, inching slowly across the table to catch on the rim of your untouched cup. Qifrey looks through the latest spell you've been working on: an attempt at replicating his Palm Dragon Teacup. He makes small suggestions in the margins, noting down more efficient arrangements and combinations of keystones, ideas for refining its precision. Still, it's good work. Your work is always good.

More time passes. He finally completes drafting a letter to the Great Hall—something about independent ateliers and watchful eyes—and sends it off before picking up a book about complex fire spells. Qifrey thumbs through the pages slowly, more out of idleness than focus, pausing every now and then when something catches his eye. A variation making use of the stabilising keystone. A more efficient heat-dispersal glyph. He dog-ears about six different pages with the intention of showing them to you later, when he looks up and realises that your tea has long gone cold.

Qifrey closes his book, sets it aside, and heads for the stairs.

Your bedroom door is closed.

That isn't surprising to Qifrey. You've always been a private person by nature, and you're even moreso protective of your few possessions, your personal space. Qifrey learned early on not to intrude without invitation or cause.

But your diversion from routine is… odd. Surely you will forgive his worry.

Qifrey hesitates, knuckles hovering over the wood of your door, before he knocks. "Apprentice?"

No answer.

He knocks again, a little sharper this time. "It's past noon. If you want to sleep in, just let me know, alright? You deserve the rest."

Still no answer.

The thin thread of unease tightens around his chest.

"I'm coming in."

The door swings open easily beneath his hand. The room that he steps into is familiar and empty. Your blankets are carefully folded at the foot of the bed, your traveling cloak absent from its hook by the window. And your sylph shoes, the ones that he'd helped you mend just last week, are missing from their place next to the dresser.

Qifrey stands in the center of the room, the air suddenly going very, very still. The silverwood in his chest trembles.

Calm down, he tells himself firmly. Your bed is made—your absence must be deliberate. There must be some sort of explanation. Perhaps you wanted a taste of mischief, to act your age for once. Perhaps you snuck out to one of the nearby villagers, Hearthglen or Azmar, to meet people, make friends. Be normal. You mentioned the daughter of Azmar's baker last week. He recalls a girl your age with flour on her apron who'd been fascinated with your magic. Perhaps you've gone to pay her a visit.

He turns slowly, forcing his gaze to move along with him. Your ink wands are in a little cup on your table, textbooks sitting in rows on the shelf where they belong. Encyclopedias, histories, grimoires he'd deemed safe for for your learning. Nothing out of place. He's about to leave the room, fetch a guidance orb just to make sure that you're alright, when—

Something small and furtive shifts between a gap in the books. The brushbuddy's tail twitches into view before it darts back into the narrow space behind, as though caught somewhere it shouldn't be.

Qifrey frowns.

He reaches up and pulls the entire front row of volumes aside, setting them down on the table with a heavy thump. Dust stirs in the air. Behind them sits another, shorter stack of books, tucked neatly out of sight. Aside from him, there isn't another occupant in this atelier for you to hide things from. Which means you meant to conceal this deliberately. From him.

Why?

Qifrey ignores the cold uncertainty in his chest, picking up the first book. Medical journal. Second. Herbal remedies of the Southern Continent. Third, an encyclopedia on human anatomy, although only the section on ophthalmology is bookmarked, annotated so densely that barely any margin is left untouched. The rest of the books are of a similar vein.

Only the last one is different—a notebook, worn pages filled with a cramped but script that he would recognise anywhere. The rest are filled with sketches—plants that even he doesn't recognise at first glance, roots and leaves and bulbs rendered with careful attention to detail. Analgesic properties. Toxic in high doses. Antispasmodic. Causes hallucinations.

He flips through more rapidly, pulse quickening, but the later pages only get worse.

Burn, left forearm. Applied tincture from ground monoceros horn and milkwort. Moderate pain reduction, mild nausea. Bruise, right knee. Poultice from steeped elderwood and nightpoppy. Significant pain relief, but results in complete loss of sensation and movement in area. Lasts three hours. Burn—

Qifrey's vision blurs. His other hand grips the edge of your chair, knuckles white, breath coming out sharp and shallow as he forces himself to breathe. You've been hurting yourself. On purpose. Testing remedies for… for—

He doesn't dare to let that thought complete itself. He turns the pages quickly, skimming past entries until he reaches the last one. The ink is smudged where the parchment presses together, as if you'd jotted it down and closed it in a hurry. It's still faintly wet.

There is a rough sketch of silvery stems and thin, needle-like leaves. Spineneedles, you've labelled them. Your notes crowd the margins: potent pain-relieving properties. Possible long-term restorative effects. Grows only in steep valleys inhabited by winged serpentines, venom necessary for germination. And below it—

Kestrel's Maw, eight furlongs north of atelier. Serpentines least active at dusk and dawn.

Qifrey feels his blood turn to ice in his veins. Outside the window, the sun hangs high in the cold winter sky, almost at its zenith—long past dawn, past any reasonable margin of safety. It's far too late. You should have been back hours ago. No, worse—you should have never gone at all, risking your life for such foolish, pointless endeavours. You should have been in this very room, sleeping soundly beneath the blankets, unharmed and safe and under Qifrey's protective eye. Instead—

He'd flown over Kestrel's Maw once, years ago. He still remembers the way the cliffs drop away into nothing, wind screaming through the narrow ravines, strong enough to throw even an experienced witch off balance. And the serpentines there are especially aggressive—great, winged creatures with beaks like drawn swords—nesting in the crevices where the spineneedles grow.

And that's where you've gone.

I'm responsible for this, Qifrey thinks numbly, and the words are a realisation as much as an accusation aimed at himself. I did this. I made you this way. I wanted someone to worry about, and now—

The image comes to him, unbidden: your body, broken at the base of the ravine. Impaled by sharp spikes at the bottom, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Cloak ripped and dark with blood, flesh torn from your bones by monstrous beaks. And your face—that quiet, serious, earnest face—pale, chest still, eyes open yet blank and vacant and unseeing and—

No.

No.

Qifrey runs. He doesn't think. He doesn't allow himself to. The door is too far—he shoves your shutters open and throws himself out of the second floor window, into the harsh midday sunlight. For a second, wind rushes up to meet him, flailing, falling—before the sylph seal beneath his feet flares. And then he's airborne, rising too fast but not fast enough, the wind tearing at his hair, the fragile control he's forcing himself to hold together.

Please, not them, is all he can think as he hurtles through the sky. Not my apprentice. Not them. I'll do anything. Please, please, please—

He doesn't know who he's begging, only that he'll beg anything, bargain everything—if it means that you're still alive when he arrives.

Even from a distance, the ravine makes for an unnerving sight. The karst pinnacles spear upwards as though they seek to pierce the sky, like the vicious teeth of some enormous, long-dead beast. Qifrey had forgotten how sharp they were, every edge honed to something hostile. Even the light falls strangely, splintered by stone so that shadows fall where they shouldn't, fractured into shifting planes that make depth and distance difficult to judge.

He clears the plains beneath him with unmatched speed, wind tearing past him—

—and then, he sees you.

You're clinging to a narrow outcropping perhaps fifty feet below the cliff's edge, body pressed close to the rock wall as though trying to become one with it yourself. Your sylph shoes are missing from one foot, and there's a long rend in your cloak. You aren't moving—only holding on, just barely—feet perilously close to the edge of a fatal, yawning drop below.

Above you, three winged serpentines circle patiently in the air. Their beaks hang slightly open, tongues flickering you as if tasting the air—your blood, your fear, the inevitability of what's next. The only mercy here is that they're not attacking. They are waiting, drawing it out. The same way a cat toys with a mouse it already knows cannot escape.

Qifrey doesn't stop or slow. He dives.

The wind screams past his ears, rising to a fever pitch as he plummets. His palm quire slips into his hand by instinct alone, wand flying over the paper in sharp, practiced strokes before he can even spare a thought as to who might be watching.

The spell takes shape in a single breath. Water wrenches itself from the air, the thin moisture caught in wind and stone, surging upwards into a coiling mass until it takes shape—a great, fluid dragon, its body twisting through the open air with a roar that echoes throughout the entire length of the gorge.

Two serpentines are caught in its jaws almost immediately, their cries cut short amidst the sound of snapping wing and bone. The third shrieks, veering sharply away before wheeling back, beak gaping in fury—but Qifrey is already moving, one arm wrapping around your waist and tearing you off the cliff face, hauling you bodily into the open air. You make a quiet sound in the back of your throat—the closest to afraid he's ever heard you—fingers gripping at the front of his shirt.

"Master—"

"Don't call me that right now."

The serpentines shriek behind him, rallying. Qifrey presses the sylph seal on his boots together, the weight of you unwieldy and palpable in his arms, and flies home.

You don't speak on the way back. Neither does he.

The atelier rises into view at the edge of the fields, its familiar shape cutting through the blur of wind and motion. He lands harder than he intends, knees buckling for a second before he forces himself forward—half-carrying, half-dragging you through the front door. Your cup remains where he left it, untouched on the kitchen table, and he sets you down onto the chair—the same one he'd been sitting in just an hour prior, drinking tea and so, so oblivious—more roughly than he intends.

You don't complain. You never do. The same way you never protest, never ask, never tell him anything—

Qifrey turns away. His hands are shaking. He wrenches open the drawers, rifling through them with none of his usual care, yanking out bandages, salves, clean gauzes. Something clenches in his chest like a fist, squeezing, tight, so tight.

"What were you thinking?" he snaps. He almost doesn't recognise his own voice—low and taut and cutting. "Going to such a dangerous place—alone—without telling anyone—without asking—"

He finds the antiseptic, shoved into the back of a drawer. His fingers slip on the stopper, trembling faintly.

"You could have died. Do you understand that? You could have died. Those creatures—they could have—" Sent you plummeting down the cliff. Eaten you. Torn you to pieces. He can't bring himself to finish the sentence. The images they conjure are too much to bear.

He whirls around again, still not quite looking at your face, and takes your left arm. The cuts are worse up close—long, ragged scratches that split skin, dried blood flaking at the edges. Your palms and fingers are raw and abraded from where you must have clung to the sharp rock.

Qifrey dabs at them with more force than necessary. You flinch just once, before going still again.

"Rash. Reckless. Stupid." The words spill out of him like water from a broken dam. They're sharp enough to wound, meant to hurt, and he knows this even as he says them but cannot bring himself to stop. "I didn't teach you that. I taught you to think, to assess, not throw yourself off cliffs for—for worthless plants—"

"Master—"

"I said don't." Hearing that title alone makes him want to scream. "Don't call me that now. You don't have any right to when you—"

"It's Master's fault."

The words land like a slap. Qifrey turns to look at you—one hand frozen over a roll of bandages, the echo of them stinging—only to find your mouth drawn taut in a stubborn line. And your eyes, those quiet, watchful eyes that have always followed him so carefully, are hard with something he's never seen in them before. Not guilt. Not shame. Something closer to accusation.

As though he is the one who has wronged you.

"Oh, it's my fault," he repeats, his voice rising sharply on its own, an unpleasant mixture of anger and incredulity. "I didn't tell you to sneak out without telling me. I didn't tell you to seek out winged beasts you have no experience fighting. I didn't tell you to—"

"Yes, because Master never tells me anything—"

"For good reason!" He throws his hands up, the dishcloth—stained with your blood—twisting taut between his white knuckled fingers. Qifrey wants to shake you. Maybe tear his hair out. Another part of him—a smaller, quieter part—wants to lock you in this atelier and throw away the key forever, just to make sure that you are safe. "There are things I don't tell you because they are dangerous, things that I am trying—I have been trying—to protect you from—"

"I don't need to be protected like a child—"

"Then stop acting like one!" Qifrey is shouting now. He knows that he is shouting. He can't stop. "Sneaking around behind my back, hiding books in your room, burning and cutting yourself, putting yourself in mortal danger for a cure that doesn't exist!"

Your obstinate expression only darkens further. "Master can't know for certain—"

"I do!" His hands come down hard on the tabletop, and you flinch. Your teacup jumps, porcelain clattering as it tips. Cold tea spills across the gingham patterns. "I know because—" Because he's already been to the Tower of Memories, and he knows that what ails him is no illness or curse. "—because I've already read every book, tried every remedy—I know that there is no cure! There is no cure, and there will never be, so stop trying to throw your life away for something so—"

"I won't!"

Something in Qifrey snaps.

"If you're so unwilling to listen to me," he says, his voice suddenly cold and flat, in a way that doesn't belong to him, "then maybe you should no longer be my apprentice."

The moment those words leave his mouth, Qifrey knows at once that he would do anything to take them back—tear them out of the air, swallow them whole even if they cut his throat to ribbons—but the damage is already done.

You go very still. The anger doesn't leave you, not entirely, but something beneath it fractures—hairline cracks spiderwebbing across thin river ice. Your mouth works soundlessly, shaping around words that don't make it out, before pressing into a thin, bloodless line.

When he dares a glance up again, your lashes are wet. You're not crying—you never have, not in front of him, at least—but your eyes are bright, too bright now, in a way that feels dangerously close. Your lower lip wobbles only once before you sink your teeth into it and force it still.

Qifrey hates water. The sound of rain makes his chest tight, and the feeling of being wet makes his skin crawl. He hates the way it blurs the fading remnants of his vision, the way it soaks through his clothes and leeches the heat from his bones, the way it reminds him of things he's forgotten and things he wishes he could forget.

But this—this—is worse.

Qifrey's hands falter, then drop back to his sides. Why had they even been raised in the first place? The kitchen is too quiet now, empty except for the phantom ghosts of your anger and his, the steady drip of tea from the table's edge, forming a puddle on the flagstones beneath. He feels exhausted all of a sudden—wrung dry and scraped hollow.

It's only then that he notices the bag. Your hand—the other one, still dirty and bleeding—is curled around a small pouch of cloth, pressed so tightly against your chest that your knuckles have gone white. Even after everything, you are still clinging to it. Still trying, desperately, to keep it safe.

"Give me the bag," he says.

Your eyes jump to Qifrey's face. You glance down at the bag, as though just only remembering thtat it's there, before your fingers tighten around it again, spine curving over it protectively. Hesitation flickers across your expression for a brief second, before you give a small, stubborn shake of the head.

No.

Qifrey sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, patience fraying, before he reins himself in forcefully. He's done more than enough damage, today. "I won't—I'm not going to do anything to it," he says, trying to sound reassuring, more gentle. He doesn't know if he succeeds. "Just—please. Give me the bag."

You stare at him for a moment longer, as though wordlessly weighing whether you can trust his words. Then, slowly, reluctantly—you loosen your death grip on the pouch and hold it out.

It's surprisingly light in his hand, once he takes it. Almost as though it holds nothing inside at all. His fingers, still faintly numb and tacky with your blood, fumble with the drawstrings as he pulls them loose. He looks inside.

A handful of silver leaves lie scattered across the bottom of the pouch. Thin and gleaming, each one shaped like a sewing needle. Spineneedles. Carefully gathered, but so few of them—barely enough to brew a single thumb-sized vial of tincture.

Yet the mere sight of them is enough to strip all the anger from him in an instant. Qifrey stares down into the pouch, the thin scatter of silver leaves there glinting faintly like stars in the night sky, and feels something inside him give way.

He isn't angry with you. He's never been angry with you. The one whom Qifrey is so unbearably angry with, so deeply ashamed of—is himself. Because the only reason you did any of this—pushed yourself to such lengths, put yourself in harm's way—is because he let you believe he could be cured. He'd smiled and selfishly kept the words you'd uttered that day close to his heart, like a precious treasure, and in doing so, he'd unwittingly sent you hurtling straight into danger's embrace.

A slow, quiet breath escapes him. Qifrey slowly lets himself sink to his knees in front of your chair, suddenly weary in a way that he cannot quite name.

You shift at the movement, glancing down at him with something uncertain in your expression, unsure of his moods.

"…Master?"

He sets the pouch on the table and carefully takes your hands in his. You try to tug them back to your chest on instinct but he holds on to your wrists, gentle but insistent. Qifrey turns them over, palms out, your fingers curling slightly, and looks at the small, round marks he's never looked close enough to notice before. Burn scars. Old and new, layered together, a wordless record of every time you had pressed pain into your own body in search of something that might help him.

His throat closes around the words he doesn't have.

"Thank you," is all he can say, in the end. Even then, it feels inadequate. "For trying to cure me. For going to such lengths to ease my pain." Qifrey pauses, his thumb brushing over a half-healed scab on your knuckle. "But it… it won't work."

You look at him, then. The defiance has receded from your eyes, leaving behind a thin, wavering uncertainty in its place. "How can Master be so sure it will not work?"

Because I've already tried everything. Because I read about it in the Tower, and I know the truth. Because the problem isn't my eye or the headaches—it is the tree growing inside of me, the parasite that will kill me if I stop worrying, if I stop hurting, if I let myself be happy for even a moment.

But Qifrey cannot say that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. His fingers drift down unconsciously to brush the ribbon trailing from the top of his hat.

"Because, like I said, I've tried every remedy in existence." He shakes his head with a defeated smile, squeezing your hands. "Nothing works. And it only hurts me more—more than my eye or any headache—to see my beloved apprentice put themself in danger for my sake."

You go still, fingers curling loosely under his own.

"I should be the one protecting you," he continues. "Not the other way around. That—that's the whole point of having an apprentice." Qifrey almost laughs at that, the line of his mouth twisting into the shape of a half-formed, self-deprecating smile. Oh, he was so, so foolish. "I'm supposed to keep you safe. And yet, here you are, throwing yourself into danger for me."

His gaze drops back to your hands, the small scars scattered across your skin.

"I'm content," Qifrey says quietly. "With what I have now. The atelier. You." And as the words leave him, he realises that they are not merely for your sake—they are true, plain and simple. "The pain is small in comparison."

You don't speak for a moment. The afternoon light has shifted, turning golden and syrupy, pooling on the floor between you like liquid honey. Qifrey can hear the sound of his own heartbeat in the silence, a slow, steady march in his ears.

"But I don't like to see Master in pain."

Your voice is small, but matter-of-fact. You say it in the same way you might state an obvious truth, such as fire is hot and water is clear and the sun rises in the east. As if it's simply a fact of the universe that you dislike seeing him in pain—and therefore, you must do something about it.

Qifrey's heart clenches, a sharp and sudden thing. Before he can think better of it he's already leaning forward to gather you into his arms. It's the first time he's ever hugged you, he realises distantly. He's held you when you were learning to use sylph shoes for the first time, guided your hand and wand through careful strokes, rested a light hand on your head once or twice—but never anything like this. Never returned even a fraction of the quiet comfort you've given him simply by being there. Some master he's been.

You go stiff for a moment against his chest, caught off guard by the suddenness of the gesture. A few breaths pass before your shoulders loosen, ever so slightly, and then your forehead dips, coming to rest slowly against the line of his collarbone. And your hands, one half-bandaged and the other still dirty with smeared blood and dirt, come up to grip tentatively at the back of his shirt.

When had you become so precious to him?

He closes his one good eye and presses his face into the top of your head, ignoring the way his glasses push up on the bridge of his nose. Your hair smells faintly of lemon verbena and soap. "Don't do something so dangerous again, alright?" His voice comes out muffled, even to his own ears. "Promise me."

There's a long pause. Then: "I don't want to give up, Master."

Qifrey sighs, something between an amused sigh and weary acceptance. Clearly, it'd been wishful thinking at best to hope otherwise, and the fault for it lies squarely with him. He draws back just enough to look at you. Your fingers tighten in his shirt.

"If you have any ideas," he says at last, the words coming together with reluctant resignation, "tell me first. Before you do anything. We'll experiment together—here, in the atelier, where it's safe." His eye narrows slightly, a faint edge of sternness threading through the softness. "I won't stop you from trying. But I'm not going to lose you to a cliff face or anything else, and there will be no forbidden magic. Do you understand?"

You hold his gaze. For a moment your expression is unreadable—eyes too much like mirrors, reflecting too much of him back at himself, too clearly, too honestly. Then, slowly, you nod.

"Okay."

"Good." The word leaves him more easily than expected, as though some heavy weight has finally been lifted from his shoulders. Qifrey pulls you in again, a brief but quieter second embrace, before he lets you go and leans back. Even with the space between you now, the residual warmth of you lingers, settling into the hollow places between his ribs like sunlight.

"I'll make dinner tonight," he announces, getting to his feet. "You should get some rest. But first—let me finish treating your arms."

"Okay."

You hold your arms out obediently. He takes them, careful as though he's handling some priceless, irreplaceable magical artifact, tutting softly under his breath at the state of you. The cuts, the burns, the bruising—he tends to each with attentive hands, and insists on drawing you a bath of milk and herbs as he works, all while you squirm and offer half-hearted rejections in protest.

Somewhere in his chest, the silverwood stirs.

vacancy and blankness become common themes in your mind whenever the avatar dares to be near. he leans down to your height, an easy going smile slanted onto his lips with the type of carelessness that comes with throwing caution into the wind too many times to count. “hm?” he’ll often say, as though the added height makes it harder to hear and aang is always so keen to listen, clinging onto your every word as though it’s ancient scripture. you’ve never had this problem before, not growing up glued to his side and watching him become the world’s hero — at least you think. 

perhaps your heart has always fluttered for him like petals in a breeze.

it’s just worse. now that you know each other intimately. 

aang takes up space.

the tent you’ve set up for the night feels cramped, fit for a bird who doesn’t dare fly free. what one might call a prison, another would call a dwelling for something precious. the width of his shoulders, down to the angular taper of his torso are somehow large enough to shield the bare bones of your body from any one who may happen to pass by. you feel sheltered underneath him, daunted by his mountainous shape that seems to cast a shadow over you — one where you can hide the quiver in your bottom lip, not from fear but from anticipation. a root in your lungs that intermingled with the bronchial trees that help you breathe. the root then florets and flutters, bringing a pleasant tingle south of where your mind grows misty as though a cool fog has broken over a calm body of water. 

it’s all because of how…thickset and strapping he’s become. 

your dainty fingers traverse the mountainous man like an explorer trying to reach the top, you feel the way the jus les in aang’s back ripple and interlock underneath his clothes that strain to keep him contained. he peers down at you with a kind of … alluring patience. the fact that he’s willing to wait, won’t use his strength against you, worsens the lurch of lust in your lower stomach and between your thighs which part to make room for his waistline. through the smog that clouds your sensibilities, you manage to take a peek at the avatar, let your gaze fall over the edge to admire the sights of his plush heaving chest and the sky blue arrowhead markings that he wears proudly on his sleeves — you can’t believe how beautiful he is. that he’s yours. that he puts his shoes next to your own when he steps into your home, that he’s got a favourite pillow on his side of the bed that you share, that he—!

“are you sure you want to do this?” his voice breaks through the clouds like a striking ray of sunshine ready to ghost its warmth over your skin. when you blink, aang is already looking, already analysing you the way one would read over their favourite passage in a book to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. he drinks in the details of your visage, the breathless part of your lips and the dilation to your sparkling eyes — there’s hunger within them, an appetite only aang has the ability to appease. he knows the answer to his question before he’s even asked it, unspoken as the words hang his perfect pearly white teeth. hooked there like they’re the keys to your heart.  

“aang,” your heart, that organ of yours — the one that keeps you alive and present and in the moment. it skips a beat, enough to make you notice but not enough to make you worry. it won’t beat out of your chest, you won’t die of a heartache if the way he looks at you doesn’t kill you first. something out of history, something timeless to be admired for generations to come. you wait for your heartbeat to settle under the nightly ambience outside of your tent, though you’re sure aang might have picked up on it already. “i said yes.” 

he leans away from you to shrug off a flurry of orange and yellow fabrics — revealing a battle scarred and well-carved body. there’s so many colours within aang, the sun, the sky at golden hour, the brilliant blue of the morning, the stormy grey whirling in his eyes. he could be a painting, a work of art they’d speak of for millennia to come… but he’s yours. taming up space in your mind as though he hasn’t a dime of rent to pay.

there were times where you’d hesitate to reach out and touch the avatar, to smooth over the sketching of his scars in the middle of his chest. now you’re sure, certain, pressing your fingers into it because it has to mean something. you have to affect him as much as he affects you. 

“aang.” you repeat all the letters of his name, seriousness stirred between them — blending like honey in milk.

an infallible, perhaps teetering on the edge of omniscient, beam breaks out on the smooth canvas of the avatar’s face. no longer youthful like you remember, but older, handsomely aged like a brew perfected over time. “if you’re positive.” he says, cheerful — so maybe a little childlike, tongue darting out to playfully nip your fingers that now cup his chin. wagging his clean shaven head from side to side.

so handsome, there’s barely enough room in your head to think anything else in the world could be this pretty.

you almost forget that you’re bare. naked as the day you were born. you shudder when aang’s bare hand presses firm against your sternum — warm because, of course, he’s the avatar who can bend the elements at his skilled will. it’s heated a touch, but still goosebumps rise on your skin in a tidal wave, and your nipples harden into whipped peaks. aang ignores them in search of something more, not that he doesn’t want to take his time with you. you’re just undeniable, you’ve been waiting all day for more than intimately placed touches and soft lips against your forehead. there’s more he intends to give to you. 

the avatar finds your slick entrance with the kind of practised ease only a man in love would possess. there’s no need for guidance when he can effortlessly find the points and spots that have you dulcetly drawling his name as though it’s one of your prized possessions. a best kept secret. a hidden treasure. two digits, thick and calloused, slide in with little to no resistance and curl almost instantly in search for your sweet spot — pressing down hard on the gooey nub nestled further along your walls. for the whole duration, aang waits for your silent please, consent for more, with baited breath. his lungs full of enough anticipatory air to give birth to a thunderstorm.

that’s all the sign he needs to navigate further south, follow the pulse of your blood flow to the aching buzz hardening in your clit. cheekily, the avatar tacks the pad of his thumb to the pleasure button, brushing it from side to side, round and round in tight circles — launching you into the stratosphere with what feels like a gust of blistering hot wind. meanwhile, his deft fingers between pudgy thighs get to work — the pace aang begins with reflects exactly who he is, unyielding and unpredictable. the intensity doesn’t build slow, it’s rapid akin to that of a dangerous river sectional. though his movements are not rushed, the flex of his wrist aids the two digits scissoring you open for the stretch that’s yet to come.

your entrance grows sappy and filthy around what manages to fit inside — filling you and dragging along your molten ichorous walls, so hot you’d put a fire bender to shame. the little squeaks  that escape you, airy and feather light layer messily over lewd squelching sounds echoing from between your shaky legs that tremble as though the earth has decided to split in two. grey eyes start to glimmer, mimicking the moonshine through nightly cloud cover, and a wry grin splinters on the avatar’s soft lips — a result of your precious cunt, making a spectacle around aang’s fingers. rippling and drooling down arrow shaped tattoos that twist around the length of his muscled arm and wrist. 

aang maps you out, travelling your gooey walls as though he’s trying to rediscover a place he once called home. familiar. welcoming. like discovering a new island, he pinions against pleasure spots lining your walls that you’d never be able to reach without him . although your tightness presents as resistance, the manner in which you paw at his wrist in a quiet plea for more and anything further to placate the twist in your gut, tells aang that you want this. need this. soaring high, aang flies you to new heights of ecstasy — sets your body adrift, floating above cloud nine.

he’s mesmerised, watching his favourite view, the squeeze of your cunt around him to prevent escape. each time his digits pump in and out of you, you cutely clench at the knuckle, as if to stop him from going too far. under the candle light, the avatar can’t help but flux into the giddy feeling like a slow drip of pale candle wax pooling at the base of its holder. simply knowing that he is the one making your pussy gush, translucent essence sliding down the length of your swollen slit and into the rustling fabrics below, licks his ego. stokes it like coals on a flame. 

“so wet here, so soft.” aang makes a sort of chuffing noise against your hairline, swooping down to level flat against the flooring of your tent. chest to chest, hearts beating in sync as though they’re drums following a similar tune. though aang’s voice dips low, the baritone register winding ropes within your lower stomach,  his intonation is cheery — bright like the sun at noon. “pretty baby, just look at you chasin’ it.” 

your hips twitch upwards at the avid taunting, called upon by his convincing siren’s song. you wonder if he’s bending your body in the same way he does with the four elements because you arch your back into the centre of him, magnetised by the lull of his heart beating for you. 

“someone’s impatient, easy baby.” neither mean nor gentle, aang divulges objective fact — sweat settling into the smile lines that bracket his subtle smirk. his teasing is as relentless as the press of his digits against the one special spot that clears your mind completely. he gives, gifting you another slab of arcadia until it stacks high to come tumbling down because aang has always been so, so kind. your quivering hole stretches wide over the broad stroke of his fingers, clear and sticky essence a glimmering glaze over them, wetter and wetter by the second beside you can’t stop bucking against their force. 

you point him in the right direction as he navigates your ecstasy, helping him erratically assault your pussy even though the avatar is more than capable of crumbling you like precious stone. but you burn everywhere, in your pelvis and your muscles pulled tight with the tension of holding back — flames burn at the oxygen nurturing your lungs and if aang weren’t the center star that boils to a billion degrees, the heat in your face would be enough to rival him. 

a dopey, delirious smile creates a habitat amongst your sweat-slicked features — carved against them like ancient scripture on stone only a man such as aang has the skill to decipher. “been waiting all day...” waiting for more than just hands under clothes. more than just yearning gazes swapped between the motions of your friends. “please, please, please. need you more…” the plea tastes like desperation against the tip of your tongue, the kind you only feel when your whole world is about to cave in, the sort that brings a tear to your eyes with the same sharp rapidness of a tidal boar. 

aang grounds you, soothes you, becomes the very force that brings you back to land out of fear the waters may wash you away. he takes up that space around your heart that knocks the beat down to a level that’s sustainable. with sweltering kisses marked against your hairline, chaste balmy from his own layer of perspiration, appearing almost like a second skin.  in response, a heatwave crashes through your body like a desert breeze — particles of unadulterated lust and hunger catching on the high points of your body. 

the back of the avatar’s head is clammy where you reach to it for leverage, crossing your arms at the back of his head. you bring the hardline of aang’s body against you, his stomach meeting yours with a wet slap because so much arousal has pooled there. his cock, leaky, hard and monstrous, rocks against soft flesh — jumping between you both like a glaring warning sign because he is just so big. 

“i don’t want to hurt you, might not be ready yet.” he says with the same restraint as a child being told to wait until after dinner for a sweet treat. aang is good, he regards you gently as though you’re something that might fracture with too much pressure — yet he knows what you can take, how much you can endure for the sake of losing yourself to him for a little while. just like his body on top of yours, aang’s large palm slots perfectly against your pussy — the seat of his palm grinding against your puffy clit alongside the rhythm of his thrusting fingers. nirvana begins to flash behind your eyes, blurting your vision as you blink up at him meekly. 

you like the burn. the stretch. the pain that comes with taking aang and he reads it in your darkening eyes, open like a book.

“it won’t hurt,” you argue back, though your words carry no weight. they taper into a cottony sigh, whisked away from the night’s breeze — icy against your temperate skin. sweat drops from his shoulders to your chest, glueing him to you. he’s a solid mass on top of you, contrary to the silky webbing of your mound, ruined beneath his fingers that work you unrelentingly. pleasure breaks through you like the sun rising above the horizon, highlighting the glow of your body as an orgasm nears. “please don’t make me wait, aang…”

aang chuckles, the weight of it carried by whirling winds and his fingers leave you for just a moment, an empty hole waiting to be filled – trembling without him. seamlessly, his delicate caress glides over your throbbing mound, growing cold and slick as time passes by. strings of clear, tarry elixir pruriently prevents his touch from straying too far from where you need him most. “you’re so pretty when you say please.” he exhales through his nose in a serene gust, spreading his fingers to watch your arousal web amidst them.

“aang–!”

“how about i make you cum?” he volunteers, and you despite the steamroll of fog starting to cloud your mind, you fail to miss the playful lilt that clings to his every word. it’s more of a statement than a suggestion, with aang riding the clouds between your thoughts, there’s no room to argue either. he acts first, on the same kind of brave impulse you’ve seen from him in battle many times before, delivering a few sappy love taps to your unattended sex. toying with you through a guise of a half-lidded smile that lures you into feeling safe.

he discerns your swollen clit from equally swollen folds once more, a muddlement of sin to be solved by one of the most powerful beings on earth, and draws his name across the hood of the sensitive little nub — drawing back the extra skin just to press your own slick into it. your back peels away from the tent’s flooring from where sweat had gathered to cleave the skin to it, trembling and twitching as you bow into aang, invade his space, crawl into it for sanctuary. though, in this safety net – you find yourself pincered, caught between his lips that descend upon yours and the lengthy, agile pointers that act with the alacrity of the sky’s breath. aang licks into your mouth briskier than your brain can keep up, stealing every soft breath and shackly snuffle that lays underneath your tongue. he tastes you like he’s losing a memory he wants to keep, tracking your flavour in your breezy breath before you have the sense to plead for more.

in due time, he’ll give it to you.

he’ll instimulate the careful crease between your brows and the petulant little pout that drags down the corners of your mouth even as you meet his with the same balance of the elements. harmonious and restorative all at once. he kisses you like it’ll heal him, the dulling phantom ache in his scars, the mass of loss in his past and the burdens of the future. you take it all to your lungs, inhale it into the space within your vital organs because pain like his should never be borne alone.

even still, the avatar hisses with a mix of awed ail when your nails break carmine crescent moons against the blue sails of his arrowhead tattoos. you grasp at his sinewy forearms for stability, something grounding like a plant taking root in new soils, and clench around dexterous digits that once more reclaim the claggy path of your ruined insides. whilst you howl like a storm’s winds and chase the seed of pleasure flourishing within your bubbling tummy – aang has a vision, like one of those who have walked the same path before him, casting imagery of hurricanes pulled from skies and storm clouds torn to little tufts in the name of you. 

because he loves you. 

your struggling, shuddering thighs and aerated gasps. the way you hold onto him like a lifeline as your orgasm brings you right to the edge of balance – the pendulum threatening to knock you off. aang’s fingers twist and brush amongst your sensitivity and it’s not long before all the pleasure that had been building crumbles under the tidal wave of arousal that crashes through you. “let go for me, baby,” he whispers earnestly against your cupid’s bow, hoping that it coaxes you along and unties the tightness lingering there. “there you go, good girl…” 

his words undo you like your binding holding you together never existed, weakened by time and attention. the care aang takes to bring you to heaven pushes you into release, one that has your juices splashing down the length of aang’s burly arms as though he’s squeezed a ripened fruit. all at once, you seize beneath him and gush into his palm seat, quaking through aftershocks where your cunt is the epicentre. he finds your mouth, fallen open in a whiney mewl, and wheedles you into a soothing wet kiss where tongue’s tangle and breathing draws ragged like the sharp edge of an earth-bended mountain.

once you’re calm, reduced to the gentle rock of a boat on the very water aang controls, your needy screams retreat too. everything melting  into soft pants and a dreamy gaze through your droopy eyelids. 

your appetite remains unruly, however.

“wan’ more.” you mumble in a quiet wisp – demanding, nearing playful. a challenge laying in the candle light like a trap for the avatar, plans barely concealed by the mirth swirling in your clearing, glassy eyes.

in their reflection, aang sees himself. body worn but spirit never tired of the games you play with one another. he heedily lowers you back to the flooring of the tent, arranges you neatly amongst fur pelts and blankets that soften like his leer on you.a picturesque view, skin shining like the surface of silk, thighs sticky with your body’s syrup, bare chest heaving like you’ve got oxygen to spare. you’re so beautiful it's easy to give into you. if there were any weakness the avatar were to possess, it would be you.

silence, bearable and conservant, is born between your bodies. it steals space, not unkindly, because you know aang’s quiet  gives way to his next actions, the plan he’ll take to bring you to bliss once more. his large palms, coarse from weathering the elements, span down your being again – through the valley of your breasts, down your sternum and into the soft fleshiness of your tummy.

“you’re sure?” he laughs, holding breath under his tongue. even as he questions you, aang shuffles onto his haunches to shred the last of his dignity – the fabric of his pants whirring across the tent.

your vision stoops low, following the arrows that point to the one thing you’ve been craving all evening. to say the avatar is … gifted… would be an under estimation – his shaft is ample in both size and weight, dripping from the dull tip and seedy slit, slightly curved with balls that are pink and plump. ripe with seed. you feel your stomach twitch underneath his touch and he does too – as though its preparing to take his size fully. grey eyes darken with a storm of lust once you find aang’s face again – merriment dawning on his features.

“you’ve asked me that a million times already,” you huff, cadence carrying petulance. “you don’t think i can handle you, avatar?’

he shakes his head. “i know what you can handle, i pay attention to your limits.” he says it like he knows something you don’t, a trick up his metaphorical sleeve to be unveiled the further this game advances. your move. it reads.

crawling over you once more, broad upper body blocking out the world and a slender waist shuffles between your thighs. aang is at your neck this time, gently nipping at your neck to leave his mark in the same manner that you’ve left one on his heart. saliva soothes the crease of his teeth indented into your skin, warm and distracting while the hands once at your stomach press into the lissome fat at your hips – manhandling you in the position he desires most. 

there’s no space between you know, not even a millimetre, ardent flesh bonding and soon to become one. the beat of your heart links like the next note of a song, nipples brushing sensitively as they harden under the night air. aang throws your legs over his wide-set shoulders, spreading you open and parting the webs of slick glueing together your swollen folds. a warm, gooey pressure burns against your entrance, his hips jutting forward to run his cock through the length of your slit – the sensation is not unwelcome, the slight sting of pain feels just like returning home after a long journey. where everything aches and nothing seems to settle.

his tip dully breaks through the translucent netting gathering at your entrance, gradually filling you inch by inch until you physically feel swole just from the tip. you flutter around him weakly, once for every throb of his girth against your nociceptive ridges.

only half of what he has makes it in, and even then, you experience the kind of fullness that comes with that of a full moon. hard to ignore, a sight to behold. you lift your lower half, circling your hips down to swallow what he offers, because too much is never enough and you have always been greedy when it comes to aang.

he’s a hero to the world, barely something you get to keep sacred and to yourself.

it’s hard to miss, impossible not to notice and aang bucks forward ever so slightly, rewarding you with more stretch, more burn, more of his cock. you suction around the rippling pang and clasp the back of his damp neck while your body accommodates for his size. “aang…m-more!’ your voice is raw, throat bobbing from the delighted tears you’ve been holding back and the avatar’s strong hands lift your lips higher, hoping it’ll alleviate the ache for more.

“baby, you’re being so greedy tonight, what’s with that?” the question slips into the sudden torrid atmosphere, though it’s amused – sitting behind a smile you can’t see ( it blurs as you sniffle ), aang groans. fractured, lust living between the cracks. “just take this much for now,” he doesn’t bottom out, only thrusts shallowly, letting the sweltersome head of his cock nudge your ribbed walls. “can’t give you all of my cock… have to be somewhere you can get help if it goes wrong,” 

that should be enough to destroy you.

aang fucks you half way down his length all whilst caging you in, his sweet mouse caught in a trap, pushing and pulling from your adorably selfish hole – beginning a sensual, swing to his own hips. you feel the wiry muscle of his thighs crook against your ass as the avatar practically puts you through the bedding. in your mind, aang makes up the middle of the universe, yet to him, your pleasure becomes the heart of his – he uses the strength bursting from his biceps to jerk you back and forth on what plugs you full. 

he is not rough, but focused, relishing in the juices you baste him in – smearing your juices along his hard stomach, where it pools against his tattoos and his belly button. the force he uses to roll into you lulls a symphony of whiney bleats from between your wet and kiss swollen lips, a sweet song that mingles with the soft slap of skin on skin filling your tent.

your body threatens to break once more, your arms like a loose neck tie around his thick throat and your shaky  hands finding purchase on his clean shaken head. all you can do is sink into him, let him overrule your body, taking it over— mind, body and soul. in return, he frees a hand to angles in your roots like the winds rushing through your hair, hugging you close so that you never fade away. even then he kisses you as though the world has taken you from him, too much all at once, overwhelming you with the curve of his tongue breaching realms beyond your pearly white teeth. aang tastes you, and tastes you, lips balmy  moving against yours with such vigor it nearly distracts you from the intensity of his thrusts.

where aang usually carries the scent of freshly cut grass and freedom – the fragrance twists into something more profane, the husk from your cunt and the sweat evaporating on your skin from how frequently it all meets. the atmosphere tingles with his devotion to you. 

your calves start to tingle where they violently shake on aang’s shoulders, every part of you spasms even down to your cunt that wraps around him like a vice. you feel ravaged, fractured, pathetically split open on his thickness even though it’s still only half. 

it doesn’t matter how you thrash and whine in a desperate effort to swallow another inch, aang remains sturdy above you. immovable. where the blankets and pelts begin to slip from the motion of your bodies working together, the avatar allows his mouth to cover you – silken spit drying against your breasts that bounce from passionate motion. he acts with the motion of a starved man who cannot go a second without another meal, tongue circling your areolas at a speed that matches the feverish punch of his weighty girth against your g-spot.

you cannot imagine a world without aang in it, without aang’s presence filling every corner like the sunrise in an empty room. kisses golden and glowing. the way he looks down at you like you’re worth a war and regards you with cool toned eyes that feel free of burden when you’re in view – draws you closer to a peak. there are so many feelings in aang’s eyes, slithering between your bodies, he fills you with more with each rut of his hips into yours, a creamy and lewd ring frothing around what doesn’t fit inside. 

“y-you’re so good,” you babble him earnestly, losing breath to his intensity, pussy pulsating over the prominent veins and ridges twirling around aang’s chubby girth. his thrusts pull and push at your spongy insides – bumping against pleasure spots you didn’t even know you had. “c-can you please just…give me more…?”

“you’re so needy, baby,” aang circles an arm around your waist and leans back on his haunches. his knees resting pelts whilst he manoeuvres himself  in a kneeling position. this time, he is able to bottom out fully, unexpectedly. he hits the hilt with a low, rumbling sound against the crown of your head – as if finally being sheathed inside of you has pulled him to pieces before you.“how’s this? d-deeper? fuller?”

in this new position, you’re sure you’ve crossed over to the spirit world. the new pressure is blinding, the assault on your g-spot is constant and mimics the ever-turning of the planet you live on. if you could, you’d cry out for the aid of a spirit but instead, through the lasciviousness lodged in your throat, his name is born like a prayer on your lips. “a-aang!”

“yeah, i know,” he mutters, overcome with emotion, eyes on you everywhere. the angelic contortions of your face, the drip of nectar from your hypersensitive cunt to his balls. everywhere.  “gods i know, you’re practically choking me out down there. that’s nice… so nice.”

your eyes become misty and aang’s voice becomes a murky strain, breaths of exertion coasting over your heated face as he strikes up an almost bullying, breezy pace to his slender hips as they pummel into your sex. now, he is able to hit deep — twist and turn your gummy organs up and drag over the sensitive ridges you can’t reach normally.

clawing at aang’s neck, you use the last of your vigour to grind against him. futile but sweet. your second release borders on pain since you’re spread over him, dull head of his cock near kissing the entrance to your womb. you asked for this, now you’re slumped and weak in his lap. a pathetic ragdoll that’s loved more than it’s toyed with. neither of you mind the fade in your endurance, after all the support and care you’ve given to aang through his hardest moments – he adores being able to return the favour like this. watch himself bulge in your tummy whilst your mind slips away from you. watch the faint part of your lips as you cry his praises and flit of your lashes whilst you attempt to hold his gaze.

“you like it better like this, i know.” aang coos, tone not too far off from wonder. lilt a little more than condescending. without disparaging his strength, he hauls you back and forth on his soiled shaft, a crude mix of precum and the sweet nectar your cunt drools helping him glide through your tightness.   “when i…. move you up and down up and down… there we go,” for the millionth time that night, he laughs. pure and bright, sparking your nerve endings. that’s when you gush, when the chord of tension snaps and you begin to violently convulse with your second orgasm.

he leans an arm past your back to steady himself with balls of air at his finger tips, other hand jumping up to span into the curve of your spine whilst you keen into him. wailing high like whistling winds. “you’re so cute when you’re cumming.” he purrs, boyishly devoted to your pleasure  just as you reach the summit on the mountain, your peak, squirting all the way down aang’s thickness. 

the world around you blurs as though water has mixed with wet paint used to capture darling memories,. a scream rips through you and burns at the fraying edges of your voice. clear streams of arousal shoot from your sluice sex and dampen the pelts, soak aang to the bone – nearly forcing his drowning dick out of you.

his rhythm barely wavers; not even when he is chasing both of your releases, running with the wind as his tip nudges against your pleasure spot over and over. moans rising in octave with every step he takes closer to orgasm.

for a moment, you think, your presence fills aang with as much light and life as he does with you. 

a thumb winds down to your clit with a brand new purpose, noting the aftershocks running through you that bring him his own sense of euphoria. he’s careful with you now, gently jerking you in his lap while his thoughts turn blank, mind crowded with thoughts of only you.  “so small… compared to me. it’s adorable, god, you really are —!” when aang cums, his forehead falls to yours, grey eyes brimming with a glowing blue that extends to the tattoos painted permanently into his body. he glows bright, a beacon of love in the night. then he hiccups, airy and low, succumbing to your shuddering warmth – ecstasy twisting through him like a tornado that’s grown over time. “perfect.”

opaque white shoots into you in viscous ropes, clinging to your wet walls – gathering in a frothy ring at your entrance. none of it is wasted, the avatar insistent on plugging you full. he finds sanctuary in the curve of your neck, breathy curses tattooed into your skin which tickle pleasantly. aang keeps you in his arms before exhaustion settles into your bones and his body threatens to cop out completely—  he just about manages to land on his side before his weight crushes you.

a pregnant silence takes up space in the tenant. tender as your weary eyes meet and heart rates slow to a standstill. aang’s face creases with adoring attachment, triumphant and adoring and childish. you don’t need words to know that he loves you, that he would give up anything to stay right here with you.

i love you.

it comes easy, reciprocating – you find his fingers in your heap of lips and brush a kiss against them so briskly one might mistake your light affection for a breeze.

i love you always.

aang takes up space, in your room next to your things. in your mind where all your best memories lie. and most importantly, in your heart.

end ! likes are appreciated, but just liking doesn’t do much on tumblr! to support and motivate myself and other writers, reply, reblog and comment if you'd like to see more!! — asks are open to thirsts and thoughts! join my taglist ! love you!