You’ve lingered at court for years, brought from the confines of your noble house when you were just a girl, standing at the same height as him then. A lady in waiting for Lady Jena Dondarrion, his own aunt, and you were exactly what he viewed you as, what you should be.

Forbidden fruit.

You were taken under her wing, shielded and protected by the elder ladies just as you were by your father’s title. And it still leaves him with a scowl at just the thought, because he shouldn’t even give you one.

You’re careful, always present, a sparkling eyesore in royal jewels and silken dresses that remains standing in his way in corridors and blinds his view as you cheer for his cousin in the royal box at tourneys. You’re simply there, and yet still, you find a way to take over, laughing in jest, sitting so close, so comfortably with his family, his blood. The very people he only orbits, you bond and live beside. So pleasant and proper and.. captivating.

The same woman who stands dutifully among ladies and Kingsguard, the very one that charms his uncle and cousins with a smile and quip, the same who has his own younger brother chasing after you with laughter so loud it makes his head ache.

So achingly beautiful it grates at him. Chips away at everything he’s laid so properly before everyone like a vice. That now it’s seemingly driven him to the point of madness.

He shouldn’t have to do it, any other maiden or lady would be falling at his feet, no matter how nervous or scared. And he should have that, you should be doing so, but you won’t pay any mind to him, nor even give the chance. Kind and polite, tight lipped smiles from across the long table or a simple nod in shared company, that’s all. He doesn’t return them, but he watches, he waits.

In fact you bide more time into his cousin Valarr. The Young Prince, the one they speak of such a dutiful husband he will make, a great man like this father, that betrothals are soon to flood in with time. The man you reserve the softest smiles for, your arm in his as you walk amongst court.

And it makes him seethe.

Because he knows who it should be. And it should be him.

—

The ride back to the keep was a deadly silence, eerie with only the distant thunder of Ser Donnel’s stallion behind his own. Rain washed down in torrents, chasing them into the gatehouse as he slid from the saddle.

Ser Donnel had not questioned his Prince on the whereabouts, or why he called on him at such a late hour to journey into the streets of Flea Bottom, but they had done so. A small cabin the place was, down the back of a dingy, cobbled alleyway, lit only by torchlight in which the man stood vigilant underneath. Many would go to such a place for their ailments, whatever troubled them, their head, their aches, but no such place for a royal.

They had maesters for that. Though Aerion insisted, shoving past the older knight with a frown.

Whispers carried just as fast through King’s Landing, more so than their Ravens did. And the ailment the Prince had ordered for would not be cured by some lowly maester’s balm. This was urgent. And Aerion listened, far more than people cared to notice, and those whispers led him there.

“Should you need anything else, your Grace?”

Aerion fumbled with the belt of his cloak, tugging it from himself as the dirt caught from the streets and rain fell to the ground, leaving only his shirt and trousers clinging to him. His eyes flickered only for a moment, before shaking his head, shoving a small bundle into his pocket.

“No. Leave me.” He called back, straightening the tunic at its collar.

And the man took his leave, standing straight backed as Aerion passed him from the stables and walked in heavy strides through the pouring rain and into the lower stairwell of the Keep.

The damp still drips from him now, the warmth of the chambers doing little to settle the aching anticipation in his bones. The backs of his calves press sharp into the wood of the bed frame beneath him, boots planted harsh into the floor. His finger flicks back and forth along the clasp that encases the bundle.

A sphere, much like a perfume or pomander lord’s carry on their belt, something unsuspecting. Its patterns cover in gold and silver, wrapped in black twine all along its outside. A witch’s knot. One he’d heard through the woman’s rambling inside of the rickety, old store. Supposed that it was to ward evils away from its user, if used correctly.

He lets out a huff, sharp and drawn, eyes drifting along every intricate detail before cracking it open.

A singular diamond shaped vial lies inside of it.

He wasn’t certain what to expect, the witch left that much of it out. But its results are the only thing he’s after, no matter how queer the insides might seem. The liquid near enough matches his eyes, a deep velvety purple, swirling with a dark shimmer silting at the bottom.

Thunder rumbles low in the distance, rain now lashing onto the windows with a ferocity that would make some tremble. Would leave others to think on their decisions, to take their time to weather the storm around them, to think of such outcomes.

But he doesn’t, because Aerion never has, and he doesn’t care to any longer.

The instructions come back to him in parts, staring solely into the palm of his hand where he reaches for it with jerked fingers. But it doesn’t come simply, nor without price. He goes to take it, reaching in before he can stop himself from embarrassing himself any more. Though his movement acts otherwise, just as he plucks it, he jerks back, raising his finger to his lips where a searing pain pricks at him, the sphere tumbling to the floor.

A thorny branch from the twine sticks into his finger, catching along the skin and pouring blood from down until it drips onto his wrist. He bring it between his lips, sucking it into his mouth and licking it once before snatching it away, the sting of it dripping into his palm, his brow pulling tigh.

Remove the binding, break open the seal, speak your truth.

And drink.

That was all he was told. He can’t help but think how pathetic it sounds.

But he does it regardless, uncorking the vial with a sharp pop and bringing it to his lips before he can think against it. Aerion pauses in a single breath, eyes fluttering closed and open halfway.

“Make her be mine.” He rasps.

And he drinks, tipping the substance down his throat without another second that passes. It catches in the back of his throat, the taste tangy and bitter, a sickly bitterness that coats his tongue, slapping it against the roof of his mouth.

And it’s done.

—

The morning welcomes the way it does most often. With a chambermaid and gentle greetings, and a pitcher of water at your bedside. News of an upcoming tournament held in the near Stormlands is on everyone’s lips, carrying from room to room before a knock wraps at your door.

Your maid eyes you, following carefully as you nod, “Please.” She bows with a simple smile, settling the tray of cloths and linens in her hand onto the table before stepping towards the door.

Lady Ellyn steps in with a peek of her head around the heavy wood, near enough making your maid jump as she steps back, sliding the door open further. Your closest confidant, one your own age unlike many of the other ladies. Her hair cascades in a braid that weaves her golden hair down her back, as fair her complexion. A wide smile breaks on her rosy face when she sees you, thanking the young girl gratefully before jumping at the end of your bed.

The very image of her cousin, Lady Aelinor Penrose, married to the Prince Aerys. You only hope, silently, a similar sorrow won’t fall on her also. A girl far too giddy and joyful, even at this time in the morning.

“Come we must break our fast.” Her hand taps the plush furs, tugging them slyly as they slide from your legs, the cotton your your nightgown going with it. You snatch it with a warning glare, stopping her from pulling it completely.

“If you’ll allow me to be ready first.” You huff, raising your arms above your head with a yawn. She nods, rolling her eyes as she stands from the end of the bed to round to your side. The mattress dips as she sits herself onto it, kicking her legs off of the edge as she waits. And waits, expectant eyes blinking at you.

“Fine, fine I’m coming.” She claps her hands at that, rising as you do with her, sliding, less wistfully out of the comforting warmth of your bed.

Lady Ellyn stays with you as you are dressed, chatting away about the travelling market passing through King’s Landing. You listen, but her voice drifts, eyes following out of the window, watching the birds that circle the street. Hands lace your bodice carefully, a deep pale gold with trimmings of crimson and silver jewel.

“Oh.. you look ethereal.”

Your feet step from the stool carefully, taking a deep breath from the boning breaking into your spine and chest. Your maid curtsies, both women looking at you in a profound awe, and though she doesn’t speak, her face tells that she agrees.

“Careful, wearing such a dress, the Prince Valarr will be all over you.” Lady Ellyn takes your arm with a snicker, and you swat her with the other, a grin finding its way to your face.

“Well suppose I’d have some competition with you, my lady.”

The pair of you find your way through every winding hall until you settle in the great hall. You break your fast with the ladies. Lady Jena, Lady Dyanna greet you with a nod and a smile, seated already beside their good sisters Lady Aelinor and Lady Alys. All seem to be in good spirits, you and Lady Ellyn seated opposite one another as another elder lady sits at your right.

Talk picks up as it usually does, fresh fruit picked from gardens and far away orchards, toasted bread and jams are decorated and layered china bowls and plates. You take your helping as the rest of them do, chatter echoing the hall, heard only by yourselves and the Kingsguard that stand tall by each large door.

It only depletes to a silence when they open once more, all heads turning in a wondrous gaze. Prince Valarr steps across the hall, greeting the older ladies first and his mother with a kiss to the cheek.

They remain in their seats while you and the lower ladies rise at his arrival, chair scraping out behind your knees as you hold your skirts.

His aunt Dyanna teases him, remarking with a sip of her summer wine that he’s avoiding council again. Valarr only laughs, light and courteous, completely princely.

And then from across the table, his eyes land on you. It’s natural, just as he’d expecting you to be there, and the smile softens on his face, meeting his eyes as he steps closer. Only then does he excuse himself from his mother, leaving them to resort to their whispering just behind.

“My lady.” His voice is gentle, more tender than it should be for such a meeting and you feel another pair of eyes on you. Lady Ellyn. Staring obviously from across the wooden table as she sits down quietly.

You curtsy, inclining your head before your eyes meet again. Golden brown and violet, the very image of his father’s, except they aren’t as hardened, boyish still beneath the young manish demeanour.

“My prince.” Your skirts sweep the stoney floor as you stand upright, mere inches between you, blinking up at him.

“I’ve been hoping I’d catch you.” He speaks hushed enough it’s for you, but loud enough it doesn’t inspire scandal.

That alone makes Lady Jena exchange a knowing smile with Lady Dyanna. One only mothers seem to be aware of. And his glaring advance to orbit your side.

A short laugh escapes you, tucking your arms in front of you, “I wasn’t aware I was difficult to find.”

“No,” Valarr smiles. “I’ve simply been elsewhere.” He states it as though disappointed, as if elsewhere were not where he wanted to be at all.

“I’d hoped…” He clears his throat, a rumble under his breath, inclining his head, feeling the burn of eyes at his back, before they swiftly look away. “Though it may not be proper, that if you attend the tourney…”

He looks almost embarrassed, a blush creeping his pale cheeks as he shakes it from himself. You offer him a nod of encouragement.

“…you might consider lending me your favour.”

A thumping appears fast and palpating in your chest and you blink, once, twice and hard. The pair of you have known each other since you were children, surrounded by propriety and politeness in close encounters, and you had always been close. But a favour was something else entirely. A favour was a promise.

Surprise wracks your features, and somehow everyone around the table is far more interested than they were before. Lady Aelinor covers her mouth to hide the grin that appears, though you cannot say the same.

Yours widens, more than you can stop yourself, stumbling out your words, “I’d be honoured.”

It is simple, courtly. Nothing improper that would leave gossip for either of you, but he takes your hand in his, a warm palm curling gently around your own.

“Then I will not disappoint you.”

He bows his head, releasing you from his grip carefully before returning to the hall, bidding the rest and his mother a farewell. And nothing more. However as the door closes, the table erupts. Laughter and chatter, swooning and fawning over you as you make an attempt to sit down again. A reddened blush covers your cheeks as you listen to them.

A favour..

Perhaps you’ll be crowed his Queen at the tourney.

Lady Jena hushes them, finding you from across the raucous, and she simply nods, lending an understanding motherly gaze, settling you the way it always had. She doesn’t speak it aloud, but talk for far longer than known have you and Valarr been considered for a match.

She had only hoped it had happened this way.

Valarr had chosen of his own accord, and he had chosen you.

However, shadows encase the halls of the Red Keep, tracing the very perimeters of tapestries and stone that you can’t quite see. Another pair of eyes, beyond Ellyn’s excitement and the ladies’ awe, watches on.

Aerion sees it all.

He hadn’t planned to stay as long as he did, merely passing through on his way to his own duties. To things much more important. But then he saw it, witnessed with his own eyes how his cousin stood himself before you, cohorting and smiling.

Only his eyes were not on Valarr, they were on you.

His fingers tighten around the twisted pommel of his sword, shoulder resting onto the thick, marble pillar beside him. It’s tight enough his knuckles are turning white, skin near splitting with how he hard he curls his hand around it. But he doesn’t notice, not even as a voice addresses measly and careful behind him.

Aerion doesn’t just pretend to not to hear it, he can’t. All he can hear is the rush of blood thrumming in his ears. All he can see is Valarr’s smile, proud and affectionate, and you smiling back. And he twists his hands tighter.

The bell tolls and breakfast comes to an end, clattering plates and pattering footsteps that don’t even notice him standing in the distance. Not his mother, or his aunt, or you. Instead you’re taking Lady Ellyn’s arm, whispering happily as you leave.

“The roses must finally be blooming.” She speaks to you as a jest, nudging your arm as you follow everyone toward the outsides. Though it sparks something in you, softly joking back as you loosen your arm.

“I believe I’ll see for myself.” You purse your lips as you move from each other, turning your backs with a promise to find the other later.

Aerion doesn’t move for another minute. Or maybe two. He isn’t counting, only turning his head without his eyes following to the voice insisting at his side.

A squire. A skinny young man dressed in washed colours. He says something about his father and uncle, that he has been called upon.

Aerion only tells him that he’ll be there shortly, waving him off. The boy scurries away, ducking into a bow before leaving once more to deliver the news. Even though he has no intention of following just yet.

And it is not questioned, because it’s completely him, even if more detached. Callous and careless, perfect in the fractured way of a Prince not bothering to concern himself. And only when the hall has emptied, does he rise from the pillar.

He adjusts his hand, tearing it away from his sword without urgency, straightening the drape of his cloak as he turns for the other doorway. He’s attempting not to explode on the spot seeing you disappear into the gardens. But he doesn't follow openly, he lets you leave first, down the steps of the Keep and out onto the balustrade that overlooks the hedgerows and flowerbeds. It’s rare for you not to have an escort, it's improper, wrong even for you.

And so Aerion takes another path, stepping with a practiced ease across the other side of the balcony, circling it so that by the time you reach the rose garden, he’s already standing around the altar of flowers, rocking on his heel. If you did not have an escort, you will. His hands clasp behind his back, one lazily on the pommel of his sword, staring out over the hedges, as though he’d been admiring the flowers.

It’s something you’d always done when time would allow it, escaping endless company and lessons to be with your thoughts. You were looking forward to it, on your lonesome, time to think over what had just happened at breakfast. But the head of mussed silver hair made you slow where you walked. You pause for a moment, the crunch of gravel turning his head at the sound, and for a moment you go to walk the other way but violet eyes catch you. You curtsy just as fast, the way you’d been taught.

“My Prince.” You speak gently, wavering in confusion. It doesn't feel as familiar as it did before, as it did with Valarr, but you do it out of politeness.

He doesn’t answer straight away, only turning to face you with his body, face still fixed on the roses.

“You favour this garden.”

It’s not a question, but a statement. And you smile, rising to straighten your knees.

“I do.”

You always have, stalking away from court just as enamoured with the ocean of greenery in the midst of the stone and hardened rock, as you have since you were a girl. He was right. Though how he one was a mystery.

“I’ve noticed.” It’s simple, nothing but a mere observation, one that perhaps had been made by many over time.

But he changes the subject before you can ask.

“The white roses are dying.”

You glance beside him, toward the bed of them.

“They bloom again in spring.” You counter softly, tutting silently at Lady Ellyn’s comment from earlier.

“I know.”

You squint your eyes at him, tempting a foot forwards, skirts hanging in between your fingers. You hadn’t many conversations with the Prince, with orders to keep your distance always whispered into your ear, you’d listened, but you hadn’t realised he’d been so odd. Cocky and dismissive, yes.

But the tension was almost one sided. The grit of his teeth evident as if he were in deep thought.

“You usually come earlier.”

“I beg your pardon?” A muffled laugh escapes your throat and you blink.

“You’ve been late this week.”

“I.. have?”

“You’ve been attending to my aunt, have you not?”

It’s as if discussing the weather, once again, only an observation, and a crystal one at that. One anyone could work out easily enough.

“Well she has a great need for me, for all of us. I didn't realise anyone had noticed.”

“I notice many things.” Aerion falls casually, the natural hint of arrogance clear in his tone.

Like my cousin Valarr taking a liking to you.

He looks at you then, finally. And you feel yourself shrink, not shyly, but under the complete intensity of it. And so you busy yourself, standing on the opposing side to him as you reach for the dying roses, plucking the heads from them.

“Do you enjoy court?” His eyes follow you, burning into your back as you tempt a smile back up at him.

“Very much.”

“Four years you've been here.” He tastes it on his tongue like he's contemplating it, settling in his stance to take you in fully.

You go to pluck another rotten bloom, grasping it in between your fingertips when a thorn catches the pad of your finger. A sharp hiss escapes you, a dark bead of blood welling across your skin. It’s small, simple, only enough to burn, you could have wiped it away on your skirts and been done with it.

Only a figure appears at your back, a hand enclosing around your wrist. Quicker than either of you had expected. Your eyes flicker between him and your hand, his grip turning it in his hold. His thumb steadies your palm, studying the crimson beading across your hand like something catastrophic.

“It’s only a thorn, my Prince.”

He doesn’t answer, his thumb hovering closer, just beneath the cut. A touch almost reverent as he punched it by the slightest to stop the blood.

You laugh again, sharper this time, attempting to ease the strangeness.

“I’ve survived worse. Suppose we both have in this court.”

It’s still silent, but his face contorts. Agreement in a sense you wager. And then you realise, he’s still holding your hand. The skin is warm, warmer than you’d expected, calloused from swords and rough at the edges even though it’s pallor is almost entirely without blemish. Save from the risen line across the side of his palm.

“You have hurt yourself.”

He blinks for the first time, slowly, flickering his eyes to your own. As though he’d forgotten.

“What?” His eyes snap up, still holding his fingers around your own.

“Your hand.”

You turn it gently before he can pull away and stop you.

”This.”

The scar where the twine bit into him.

His skin shudders under yours, and for a heartbeat he simply stares at it, and the memory comes rushing back.

The linen, the black twine, the vial.

Her to be mine.

His fingers tighten, not simply to hurt but enough that you notice, snaking your hand from his carefully, but it stays there.

“It’s nothing,” His voice comes too quickly, brow pulling tight and tone distant, “A scratch.”

“It looks painful.”

“It isn’t.”

"I suppose we both enjoy injuring ourselves." The words cut deeply, your smile more cutting. Almost innocent just as you try to ease the awkwardness.

But Aerion cannot tear his eyes away from the two hands. Yours and his. The tiny drop of blood from your finger and his faded scar, resting against one another.

A sign. And for the first time it settles wholly in his chest, there isn't doubt, not just arrogance, but something is telling him.

Divine.

He doesn’t speak of it, he releases your hand instead, a beat too late. Your own fingers enclose around your wrist absentmindedly, swiping away at the last drop of blood from your finger, the wound closing already.

“It has been five.”

He looks up again.

“Five years in court.” You correct him, smoothing your sleeve over your arm.

“I know.” He takes a step back, eyes growing distant as he nods, flexing the length of his fingers to curl them into his scarred palm.

“I forget you’ve probably read everyone’s histories.”

Aerion doesn’t answer. Because he didn’t learn any of that from record, he had learned it by remembering. Something that now, is all he seems to know.

You go to speak, to dismiss yourself and apologise for the predicament you’d found yourselves in, that somehow that would cure the pained confusion from his face. But another voice calls out and does it for you. You cannot quite make it out, but you turn your head, Aerion’s ears pricking, barely acknowledging it.

“I ought to go.” You call out to him, inclining your head to attempt a better look. Out of pure politeness.

He nods, “Of course.”

And you go, leaving with a scoop of your skirts and taking off the way you came. He doesn’t follow, he doesn’t even move, simply rests back onto the wooden beam beside the roses, fingers resting out along their stems. Across the thorns and petals and the drops of blood you’d left onto the whites of them.

He exhales sharply, violets fluttering closed as he watches on from the opening of the gardens. Because he doesn’t have to move to know where you’ll go, what will happen next. It’s already mapping over and over in his head.

You’ll take Lady Ellyn’s arm, and journey your way to the Lady Jena’s compartments, making your way across the east gallery of Maegor’s Holdfast to join the rest of them.

And through the bay windows of the lower quarters, he can see it all, just as he predicted. The first crack of satisfaction breaking its way onto his features, because now he doesn’t have to want for anything, it’s coming to him.

Or so he thinks.

—

The corridors bustle far too early for the hour, alive with movement and the sounds of footsteps and talk echoing the halls of the Keep longer. Ladies hurry between apartments, while squires carry polished helms. Servants step hurriedly aside as members of the royal family pass.

The tourney is only days away, and everything feels louder. An inescapable chaos that for once is more joyous than it is uncontrollable.

You walk beside Lady Jena and Lady Ellyn. Conversation drifting from gowns to the coming lists, Jena wonders aloud who might be crowned, eyeing the pair of you at her side

“Perhaps Prince Valarr has already chosen.” Lady Ellyn teases and your cheeks warm.

“Do stop."

More footsteps resound from the opposite end, steel plated heavy ones, already armoured from morning drills and practice, cutting you off from where you’re about to further scold Ellyn.

Aerion's breastplate catches the light filtering through the window, one gauntlet hanging loosely in his hand. You catch sight of him in a rush as you turn the corner, and the corridor narrows.

There is no avoiding one another.

All of the ladies curtsey.

“My prince.”

You offer the same polite smile as always without saying a word.

And for just a heartbeat too long, his gaze travels over you with quiet familiarity

Lady Dyanna notices, “Aerion.”

At last he turns, his mother’s voice reaches him.

“You’ve been on the practice field since dawn.” She mentions gently, looking him over and the scratches and dents that litter the armour.

“I have.”

"You’ll wear yourself out before the tourney.”

A faint corner of his mouth lifts, self assured and arrogant.

"I doubt it.”

Yet while he answers her, his attention drifts.

Back to you, with just his eyes. Like a compass stubbornly finding north.

You shift your weight, suddenly and strangely aware of yourself. Lady Ellyn begins speaking again, incoherent and hushed into your ear as the congregation begin to dismiss themselves.

“Aerion.”

Prince Maekar’s voice cuts cleanly through the corridor, as commanding as you'd expect. Aerion straightens instinctively, his father approaching with measured strides. He is dressed for the yard himself, a stern coldness set onto his features as he reaches him.

“You’re late.” The older man speaks with a measured annoyance.

“I arrived before sunrise.” Aerion bites back coolly, not enough to push, but enough.

“And yet Ser Donnel has been left waiting.” Maekar stands at his side, starting to shoulder him out of the way, “You’ve kept him.”

Aerion glances toward the training yard, then back to you. For one final time. And it is enough that even Maekar notices the delay.

“What is it?”

The question is simple, heads turning to face them both as Dyanna shakes her head, Jena on her arm huffing amusedly.

Aerion answers almost immediately, “Nothing.”

Maekar follows the direction of his son’s gaze for an instant only. He sees, a cluster of ladies and his son’s disobedience. Nothing else. And the sight annoys him further.

“Come.”

This time Aerion obeys.

But not before inclining his head toward you. A gesture no different from any other prince might offer. Only when he’s disappeared around the corner does Lady Jena murmur, almost teasing,

“The prince seems unusually attentive of late.”

“The tourney must have everyone restless.” Lady Ellyn laughs, the group of you stepping through the stoney corridors and out into the halls.

You smile because it’s the easiest response. Because what else could it be? And yet find yourself looking towards the empty corridor where he’d vanished.

You try to shun the thought, the idea of it. But it had felt, for one impossible moment, as though none of them had held his attention quite as completely as you had.

—

The chambers are thrown into darkness by the time he gets to them, ordering every servant out of his way as he enters. Every one of them scurries with trays and pitchers in hand, doors closing swiftly behind them.

Aerion had taken up all day in the training yard, fighting whatever prickling itch had settled itself inside of his bones. And no amount of driving his sword had aided it, it only made it worse.

It was supposed to work out in his favour. To do exactly what he had asked it to do. For you to be his more than anyone else in the realm. And he had been plagued for so long, too long, made to live a life so troubled and pathetic.

But it was going to be different, because he found a cure. It was meant to be what he wanted, and what he wanted was you.

The witch must have cursed him, tricked him into another means in his desperation, because it twisted itself into something far different.

It will enhance what is there, leaving only the truth. Her words still ring loudly in his head, pulsing in his temples with every moment that passes. Love shall grow deeper, desire will burn, and obsession.

Well, it overflows.

And denial is a cruel mistress. One that comes back to bite those that aren’t careful, and he denied it even now, but Aerion had fallen into its trap. Because you did not feel what he had, desire and lust and want wasn’t your emotion. You were simply oblivious, trying to figure out every advance he had been making.

It was his.

The idea angers him. That you would have been anything else but his the way he wanted you to be. It makes him tick to imagine you elsewhere but at his side, a rage so raw it pumps tight in his veins along with whatever else has planted itself inside.

His hand collides with the marbled basin, hard and fast, stone cracking under force. A pained groan leaves his throat, eyes flickering to catch his face in the reflection from the dimly lit candles behind. The expression he finds undoes him, wide eyes and crazed, deep violets blown a deep black, rimmed a bloodshot crimson at the edges from lack of sleep, rendering him almost lifeless.

“What the fuck is this.” Aerion isn’t certain who he’s talking to, but it comes out a lowly whisper, the pain pricking hard up his fingers. He attempts to flex them but they only freeze his grip, stiffening like the aching in his back. The muscles of his chest stretch in the glow as he straightens, watching his hand intently. He doesn’t go to aid it, nor bathe it in the warm water below, he just stares. Allows himself to feel the tingling sensation run up his arm.

And that’s when it replaces itself. Like a sudden snap of a tree branch underfoot.

A new feeling washes over him all at once, one that takes the pain away and the angst with it. His eyes squint at his skin, focusing on the broken skin of his knuckle. And suddenly it breaks him open much like the wound, the confusion fading, like the first drop of wine onto a pure tongue.

Why was he questioning it? Why not just let it happen? The questions differ from the old ones. He no longer asks why it’s happening, or what is. This is purpose, this is what he had asked for, and pride would not let him falter.

No, he wouldn’t let it.

If the potion was strong enough to come to fruition, to bring him closer to you, he’d give into it. It wasn’t doing harm, it was the divine, the way it should be. And so he’d let it take over, allow it to do its work, he’d continue his advances like he had planned to all along, this time harder.

Perhaps that way, you would come around.

—

Muddled. That’s the only way you can describe it.

The days before the tourney pass in a blur of banners, arriving lords and restless anticipation. And they pass with excitement not only of the celebration itself, but of you, and the two princes who are circling you.

Aerion begins appearing where you’d least expect him, not often enough to call it coincidence and yet it’s too often to ignore.

The library one afternoon, though he’d never struck you as a man fond of books. The castle walls at dusk, overlooking the training fields where you’d only stopped to escape the heat. The sept of all places. One other place you’d found that grants you freedoms and peace away from court, and yet a shadow lingers behind the entrance, beyond where the candles burn low at the altar.

Aerion treats it like chance, hardly speaking, still looking down his nose at everything that passes him by. He is still what exactly what you’ve come to view him as, cutting, controlled. A deviant in the eyes of many. The Prince you’d been warned about hasn’t changed, he’s only embedded himself.

And you told yourself it was. Chance.

You had to.

Yet something had shifted. And not even in him, in you.

You’d begun looking first. Before entering a room and before stepping into a corridor, some foolish part of you wondering whether violet eyes might already be there. And more often than not, they were.

At supper, he no longer sat with the detached indifference you’d heard whispered about since first arriving at court. He still spoke little, carried himself with that same cold composure, yet whenever laughter drifted from your end of the table, his gaze followed it. Fleeting glances had turned into things you’d feel, long enough that the burn of a cold stare was almost always on you.

When the eve of the tourney came, the Great Hall filled with music and anticipation. The feast was brighter than usual, draped in crimson linens and the dragon’s banger. Knights boasted with their cups in hand, ladies quietly wagering amongst themselves.

You were situated in the very center, taken with the conversations of Lady Jena and Lady Dyanna, attending to their husbands who they sat beside, no doubt in private jest of other lords. Your plate was empty, wine steadily sinking to the bottom of your cup as you glanced around the room.

Prince Valarr accepted endless well wishes with an easy smile, turning about the hall gaining many a favour from the crowd. Though Aerion remained almost entirely silent, not rising from where he shoved himself into his chair at the far end of the table.

The only time he seemed truly attentive, was when another lord leaned a little too close to hear what you’d said over the music. A meagre thing. Elder Lord Beesbury sharing his excitement for the tournament to come, as he had done in his drunkenness to near everyone else in the room.

But Aerion saw what he wanted to, his goblet paused halfway to his lips, watching over the golden, jewelled rim before taking a sip. Lord Beesbury had departed with a gentle hand to your shoulder, fatherly, encouraging, and nothing more.

And Aerion had already turned away, sinking the last of his Arbor Gold with a sharp clatter to the table.

It became difficult to remember the Prince people had warned you about. Though not for the reasons as before. Before it was duty, responsibility to bow to those higher than yourself, it was recognition.

But now, he seemed sharper than ever. It felt as though the rest of the court occupied his attention by obligation, while yours held it by instinct.

And what was one to do when he has suddenly deemed that you are worthy of his attentions.

Aerion had never proved them to you as his cousin Valarr did. He did not leave tender written letters in the hands of your maids, nor did he have flowers brought to your chambers, in fact you’d had more conversation with squires in the years you’d been living beside him than ones with him.

But he stood closer, vigilant like he claimed it his as his birthright, across every space that had you found yourself in, in places that were hard to ignore.

And it was enough to leave you wondering.

Why, you?

—

Aerion had always resorted to some sort of violence. It was custom, to be expected. He was a knight, a Prince, he had some reason to make people fear him.

It was how he first gained the name, Brightflame.

But something flickered deeper beneath it all, something more fierce than the anticipation sitting amongst the lists. This was a drive unpredictable, a thirst for blood that couldn’t be quenched. He'd splashed his face in cold water many times before leaving the pavilion, adorned from helm to toe in the agile, scaled steel.

It wasn’t nerves that consumed him.

He had ridden in too many lists for that, and the young lord opposite him was hardly a challenge. One look had been enough. His seat sat too high, his grip too eager on his reins.

He would not last, that much was certain.

The thought made something warm and terrible course beneath the steel on his shoulders. It had begun the moment his eyes found you amongst the royal boxes.

Bathed in Targaryen crimson and black, sunlight catching the embroidery upon your sleeves as you leaned forward beside the other ladies. Unaware and smiling politely at those around you. He committed that to memory, tightening the reins of his stallion as he swung himself atop it.

Before more of the scene caught his sight, unconsciously following to where you sat beneath the sun.

A young lord lowered his visor only halfway, flashing that broad, youthful grin at you as he stops right before the box.

“For you, my lady.” His lance tips toward your stand, blinking up at you hopefully. A ripple of laughter and knowing murmurs traveled through the galleries surrounding the lists.

Whispers had already begun these past days. The courteous letters from Prince Valarr, the lingering conversations. Now another young knight had found courage enough to dedicate a tilt in your honour.

You smile because court demanded it. Nothing more, and instead your mind began drifting to who would be his challenger. Valarr came across your mind.. and you’d hoped in silence it would be. That the tourney would be as grand as people were speaking of and you had reason for your favour to be given. Truly.

But it had already been decided, hooves thundering in a burst through wooden gates before anyone could catch him.

The herald’s voice carried across the field and all heads snapped up.

“Prince Aerion Brightflame.”

The roar that answered swallows the rest.

His horse shifts beneath him, stamping impatiently against the earth. Aerion settled the lance beneath his arm with practised ease, violet eyes never once leaving the man opposite.

Few seconds passed as squires rushed to each of their sides, checking the lasts of their armour and swiftly running back as the first horn sounds.

They charge, steadfast with a few yards between them until they narrow. Wood shatters, the impact echoing across the lists as both lances splinter into flying shards. Neither rider yielded an inch.

A respectable pass, an unassuming one. The crowd applauds loudly, Lady Ellyn gripping your hand with the same harsh tension squeezing in your chest.

The young lord laughs as squires hurried forward with fresh lances, Aerion rounding his stallion from the other side as he snatches the one from his hand.

“Well struck, my prince.”

The second tilt comes harder, the laughter from the lord ringing in his head beneath the helm, the sight of a smile through his visor. The young lord aimed for glory now, lowering his lance sooner, riding faster.

And so Aerion waited.. and waited. He did not bite. Not until the final heartbeat, where he shifted barely an inch in the saddle.

The opposing lance skims harmlessly across his shield. But his own strikes true, a sharp angle upward to the shining bottom of his breastplate.

The crack rings across the grounds, breaths held tight in throats as both men waver from the strength of the collision. The young lord lurches violently, nearly torn from the saddle and every face leans in, clutching fans and wooden beams. A breath passes and coin is slyly passed in the lower crowds, predictions already being made. But he rights himself to cheers from the crowd, swivelling his helm properly back onto his head.

A close thing, too close.

Aerion watches him recover, slamming down his visor with a growing satisfaction.

All eyes watch on with an intrigued intensity. Prince Baelor with his hand wrapped around his wife’s own, face unreadable as he studies his nephews movement. And his expression cracks, the familiar recognition of something dreadful to come. Prince Maekar sits near enough the same from the other end, only with less interest and with his back slumped in the chair, knowing just as much as a father would.

Something is wrong.

You manage to stomach what you can, gaze flitting between both men as they prepare themselves for another round. A hush falls over the stands, and by the third pass, the laughter disappears. completely.

The young lord no longer smiles. And all of the joy seems to fade. He adjusts his shoulder where the last blow had landed, wincing before taking another lance. And from across the field, Aerion is an unnerving still, his horse breathing steadily hoof kicking up the mud, where his chest heaves, unable to.

You find yourself gripping the edge of the splintered wooden beam below you. Though you aren’t certain why, only that something about the Prince was more unsettling than usual.

Not his skill. But his focus. Far too narrow for what could be considered normal, as though the rest of the tournament had fallen away, a deadly calm.

And it leaves only one obstacle before him.

The final horn.

The horses spring forward once more as it sounds, dust exploding in the mud beneath pounding hooves.

The distance vanishes almost instantly, because this time Aerion does not merely seek victory. He seeks blood. And he drives through the impact, lance sticking squarely against the young lord’s groin with a sickening force that sent him flying clean from the saddle.

He hit the ground shoulder first rolling to his side and then landing on his head. The sound silences the cheering, every one jolting backward at the side of his horse continuing riderless down the lists.

The young lord does not rise, his groans turn guttural and wheezed, breathless with the dented armour shoving into his cracked rib.

And for a lingering moment, no one moves, only squires rushing to his side with maester’s following. Voices erupt from every side of the field, your head turning to follow and chase every sound.

“A healer, we need one.”

“Clear the lists.”

Aerion slows his stallion at the far end of the barrier, glancing back only once with his head held high. His face stays unreadable, hidden beneath the dragon scale helm without so much as a scratch. As though he, too, were merely watching another unfortunate accident.

Yet from your place amongst the royal boxes, something cold settles in your bones, a shiver wracking your body. You remember the way the young lord had raised his lance towards you, the way Aerion was watching, or must have been the way he entered himself upon the tilt. And though the applause had died, the feeling that this had not been simple misfortune refused to leave you.

Because it was not.

The herald concludes Prince Aerion the victor for the morning despite the scene. Though he does not smile, in fact his face doesn't change at all as he raises the visor for a final time. The man’s blood drips down his cheeks, splattered across his nose and forehead, silver hair dirtied with mud and sweat, and the faint curve of his lip.

One that can only be seen as, pride.

Most eyes remain fixed upon the injured knight as he is lifted carefully from the churned earth, one arm hanging limp, blood soaking steadily through the padding beneath his breastplate. Servants hurry around him as the lists descend into organised chaos and the royal box remains seated, lords with faces in their hands, ladies shuffling readily to exit, quiet in the tense understanding you all are aware of.

Tradition demands its ending. The victor must name his Queen of Love and Beauty.

Moments pass before his horse turns, midnight black under armoured bone and ivory. But he doesn't ride to the pavillion of noble ladies, nor does he stop before the Prince's to bow, he turns to you.

Your stomach knots in one impossible heartbeat, and you wonder, hope, that he might pass. Maybe he will choose another, forget the weeks that have passed and the confusion he had led you both into.

But he doesn’t

He continues guiding the stallion to the royal boxes, lance still tucked beneath one arm. Its splintered tip is dark with mud, a smear of blood stains the ash wood lower down where it had been gathered after the final tilt.

The crowd falls strangely quiet, even the murmurs seem to wait and you rise because every lady chosen before you has risen. Because there is no graceful way not to.

But he doesn’t stop for them, Aerion stops beneath you.

Violet eyes meet yours, and for once they look whole. Bright in a sinister sense, like you are the very thing he can see. And only him.

Without speaking, he lowers the broken lance, the use of a weapon now tranformed asan offering.

Upon its jagged end rests the circlet of winter roses. White petals, much like the ones you recall from the gardens, already beginning to bruise beneath flecks of drying earth.

“My lady.”

His voice carries only far enough for those nearest to hear. There is no flourish or perormance, not even for the sake of his victory, but there is confidence, out of want. Because everyone’s eyes are on you both, you can feel it, everyone can see. His father, his mother, the crown Prince, even Valarr from the distant saddle of his own stallion, seated tilting his head in intrigue.

And a jealous silence.

The circlet trembles ever so slightly as you reach for it. And so he takes it himself, rising as you lean clutching the balcony, to place it upon your head.

His fingers brush your temple as he does, deliberate with a singular touch of a strand of your hair, before pulling back. He shifts back into the saddle as you rise straight in front of him, forcing a smile and the bend of your knees into curtsy. His head turns, taking the reins in hand as he faces Prince Baelor and the hosting lord.

“Your Queen of Love and Beauty.” Aerion announces.

Only then do the cheers begin, scattered and uncertain, excitement growing louder as tradition overtakes unease. You shove yourself back into the wooden chair, glancing at Lady Ellyn as her she eyes you back, mouth agape and in shock. Everything that is expected of you, you have done, posture straight and graceful.

Yet beneath the roses, your skin has gone cold.

—

By sunset, the remaining tilts are abandoned. Officially, it is out of respect for the injured knight. Unofficially, no one much wishes to continue after what they’ve witnessed. The boxes empty early, the crowd sifted back into their respected pavilions where music plays quieter, more tranquil, and wine flows heavily.

Every conversation somehow finds its way back to the lists, and you have long left the bustle behind, choosing to be farthest from it. The roses have begun to wilt against your hair, sticking thorny into the corner of your head as you remove them before reaching your pavilion, carrying them loosely in one hand.

The petals leave damp marks across your fingers, the broken ones falling onto the carpeted trail beneath you.

Aerion sees you before you see him, though you don’t notice him at all. He has been walking without destination. Or so he tells himself. The maze of tents stretches ahead, canvas walls shifting gently in the evening breeze.

He rounds one corner with a roll of his shoulders, the weight of his armour discarded.

And he stops, not because of you. He lets you walk on, the dark hues of dusk creeping in over the shadows of the trees. The flap of a healer’s pavilion hangs open, and inside something more curious. The young lord laid beneath candles and incandescent, his breathing shallow as the maester binds cracked ribs while another mixes milk of the poppy nearby.

The knight’s eyes are closed. But he is alive, broken, but alive.

Aerion watches for only a moment, the maester’s do not notice him, no one does.

You step quietly between the rows of pavilions, clutching the circlet of roses he’d placed upon your head. You never glance toward the healer’s tent, never see the knight within, disappearing into your own, canvas falling shut behind you.

Aerion remains where he is, gaze lingering first on your tent until he shifts back to the injured lord.

The maester speaks to another as he shakes from the bed, “If the night is kind, he shall recover.”

Aerion’s jaw tightens in certainty, looking once more toward the closed flap of your pavilion, toward the place where you are beyond sight.

The decision settles over him with terrifying calm, an inevitability.

He turns away before anyone notices he’d ever been there. And long after the camp has fallen into silence, hours passed when the last torches burn low and even the horses have stilled, Prince Aerion returns to his own bed.

Alone.

—

You’d been none the wiser, in fact no one had been. Wine flowed delicately in your system and sleep succumbed you in the early evening. Though your mind lingered occasionally.

The Prince.

You hadn’t thought much of him before. Only what you had been told. Callous, cruel, a bully to many, even his brothers. Much like his father in a darker sense someone had mentioned. Though Prince Maekar was cold, he bore the love in his children and for his elder brother Prince Baelor quite clearly.

Aerion was something different.

There was a glint in his eye that often unnerved many people, many young maidens falling into hushed whispers from his presence alone. There was a darkness there, one you had witnessed today with your own eyes, as much as you wanted to deny it.

He shouldn’t have paid attention to you at all. As a lady in waiting to his own aunt, it was hardly a need for you to cross paths at all, but somewhere along the lines, he had began appearing inside every part of your life, forming his own web that had you tangling and restless even in dreams.

Existing where he never had before.

The morning comes damp and cold, due prickling the morning grass where drunkards still sway and grumble their chants past the tents. The stoked fire has burned low, the furs from the bed gifting you the last covers of warmth. You toss and turn for a while, shifting under the sheets so harshly your hair musses around you. You sit up at last, abandoning the idea of sleep altogether.

Myrish carpet finds your feet as you press them into the ground and into your slippers, tugging the large, silken coat from its stand and around your shoulders, your chemise hidden dignified underneath. Maids sleep in their beds around you, snoring softly where rest has not yet escaped them, but you don’t go to wake them. Instead you let them rest, crouching and tiptoeing out of the pavilion and into the morning air.

There are few still moments before it comes tumbling down. First it is a scream, shrill and piercing from metres away, and then running, the first breath of fresh air you take stolen as your eyes snap fully awake.

You follow the sound, and it seems others from every direction have the same idea, men and women rushing down the road, to find something that makes you stumble.

“The knight..”

You don’t hear the rest, the crowd picks up before you're drawn from it, sliding through the sea of heads until you find your place at the front, coat cloaked tight around your middle.

The knight had succumbed to his wounds, crumpled in a heap in the middle of the stoney pathway, and in a pool of his own blood. How unfortunate, voices counter. It happens.. a tragic tilt, an injury too great.

“Shame..” Another voice you hear.

But something doesn’t feel quite right, it doesn’t make any sense. He was taken away by the maesters and that was the last anyone had seen of him. A stab wound opened from his back, ripped around a hole in his thin cotton shirt. This was no injury, it’s fresh and still leaking..

It’s murder.

The commotion grows wild, biting colder than the chill of the morning as you glance around, stepping back from it as the thought punches you in the chest. Perhaps it’s a lie, perhaps it’s just another fool making scandal for the sake of it.

Perhaps—

A familiar face makes its way out of the crowd, one that stirs you more than it should.

Aerion.

Standing on the outskirts of the townsfolk jeering and yelling, far from the royal pavilions you’d both been assigned to.And he’s looking, already. Not at the knight’s crumpled body, not at the crowd.

At you.

As though your opinion and the shock on your face matters more than the dead man lying fifty yards away.

That should be the first thing to properly make your stomach turn, and then the memories come. They rearrange themselves cruelly.

The gardens, the roses and the way he knew you’d be there.

The thorn and the scar on his hand, the way he finished sentences before you were able to even speak. The fact his pride was not just about bitterness, it was knowing, it was stating facts only you were aware of.

The way he’d watched the knight all afternoon and the prolonged silence when the man spoke. The crown he placed in your lap and the burn of his eyes bearing into yours.

It’s all there, it just wasn’t in the right order before.

—

You don’t accuse him, you can’t. Doing so would be high treason, and stating it would be against what you want to believe.

But you cannot breathe in this air, swarmed with people and stuck between the entrance of the paviliona, and him. So you leave, you take off behind where anyone can see.

The woods. The only place you can think of, and you nod to Lady Ellyn as you pass who only gives you a short nod, peeking from the tent beside you own, her face a pale through the mist.

The woods.

And not because you're running, but because it’s quiet, it’s the closest place you can put distance between all of this. You walk further than you mean to, your lungs burning leaving an ache in your throat. Past the horses, past the pavilions, until the shouts are only nearby echoes through the trees.

You come to a stop along the root of a large oak, hand bracing against its rough bark as you catch your breath. The leaves shake and shudder with the breeze, shades of green shading you all around.

“A curious place to hide, dove.”

The name punches your chest, knocking whatever air was left in your lungs from them. You don’t jump, but the hairs on your skin stand on end, your eyes closing tight. Because somehow, you had already known he was going to come.

“Did you follow me here?” You breathe out, pressing your hand tighter to the tree, standing straighter.

“No,” Twigs crunch under his boots, his tone nothing short of calm and collected, the dangerous kind, “I though you’d come here.”

You turn on your heel, and the sight nearly makes you laugh. His hands are clasped in front of him, sunlight filtering on the striking silver of his features, red tunic clasped perfectly.

“Why were you there?” You don’t know what to make of you own words, it comes out so fast in a burst as you rise to stand opposing him.

He raises an eyebrow without looking away.

“At the gardens you were there..”

“The roses..” You continue without cowering, stepping forth on the uneven earth.

“You knew that I would be there.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t falter not once, and your eyes dart past him, right toward where knights and Kings guard rush past over the bushes.

“The knight.”

It’s the first time he looks away, not in guilt or remorse but recognition. The lines of his face draw tight, striking in the dappled light.

And you notice, shuffling in place, slippers sinking into the dirt.

“Did you do it?”

A long silence comes, and so you ask again, clearing your throat as if scratches.

“Did you kill him?”

There it is. His jaw tightens, muscle flexing from the bone.

“He wasn’t worthy. He presumed himself.”

Your nails bite into your fingers as you clutch them at your sides, he dares a look once before looking away, to your hands, to your face. Like it doesn’t phase him.

That’s all he can say. The knight thought himself worthy. Of you. Your blood runs cold, there’s no denial in it, and he doesn’t even begin to give it.

You blink, gaze catching the faintest flicker of blood on his sleeve, darker than the crimson tunic, running a dark brown along the hem.

“You’re frightening me.” You state it loudly, shakily on your breath as twigs crunch underfoot.

That breaks something him, it cuts him deep. Because he didn't intend to frighten you, he wanted you closer, to be near you, to make you see what he sees.

To make you his.

He steps closer, a foot disappearing between you.

“A Prince wouldn’t—” You start, raising your head to meet his height.

“Wouldn’t what?” He takes another step, head tilting at you and your mouth snaps shut. And he answers for you, he’s already forgotten duty, no care left for it.

“I’ve done everything I know.” Another step. “I’ve buried everything else, fought it, ignored it. It refuses to leave.. you refuse to leave.”

“All it’s about is you. Where you are, and why you’re not by my side.” He sounds almost annoyed, like the admission angers him.

He steps forward again, and you're frozen on the spot, rocking back on your heel.

“I have no reason to be at your side.” You speak plainly.

His hand wraps around your arm, looking down as you attempt to yank it back, but you can’t, he has it firmly gripped, shoved between your bodies as he stands right before you.

“Do you think I enjoy this?” He whispers lowly, violets turned a dark purple, so deep you can see your reflection in them, startled.

“Then let it go..”

He chuckles then, low and dark and broken. And the look in his eyes is something you’ve never seen before. It’s chipped away at the edges, so undone and unhinged as if you’ve asked him to stop breathing.

“If I could..” He leans in closer, breath hitting your jaw as you turn your head away, the sickly woody scent of him reaching your nostrils . “I would have weeks ago, but you keep— you’re still here.”

“Why me, all of this.. you don't love me, it’s simply the idea.” You stumble out, biting the words around your tongue as you bare your teeth back in warning.

“Don’t.” His fingers grip tighter, clamping at your wrist.

“Don’t what?” You counter.

“Reduce this.”

You stare at him instead of speaking, and his brows furrow, because you don’t give him anything, a blank space that he’s created, “You’ll see.” He assures and he releases you from his grip, your arm wrenching free as you step backward.

And he lets you, he doesn't chase, left in the hollow of the woodland, nostrils flaring as he hands his head.

—

The walk you take is slow, unnerved with your fist clutched tight to your chest.

The grounds are dismantling piece by piece with servants packing their wagons, pavilions taken apart, and squires rushing by. Everything moving on just as it usually does. And some part of you imagines you’d dreamt it, how wrong and odd it is to think of such a thing.

That perhaps the grief over the knight has made everything seem stranger than it is.

The canvas shifts gently in the breeze as you reach it, stepping inside amongst the maids, now awake and folding your clothes and dresses. Some hand long over the bed, others draped over chests, but you pay no mind to any of it. It is the table that catches your eye first.

More so what’s on it. Beneath the flowered vase, the one Valarr had gifted you in china blue. There it sits.

An envelope. Yellowed parchment pressed in a dark, crimson stamp, pressed with the three headed dragon along its lining. Your eyes stare longer than your fingers are tempted to move, tracing over the seal before you finally break it.

It tears with a pop, the envelope opening to reveal the letter inside. All of it perfectly placed. So calculated it could only be one of two.

All eyes in the room fall to you hushed with their heads low, parchment crackling softly beneath your fingers

It’s not a love letter, or a simple request, it’s formal.

The sort of letter a noble would send. A Prince. It speaks of honour, of houses, of futures and seeking permissions to court.

To take care of you and properly.

Nothing inside of it would be deemed improper, yet every word your eyes flutter over carry the weight of what you’d heard between the trees. Not because of what you have dreamt, or the teases that have came your way.

Not because they are from Valarr, they’re not. But because cause they are his words.

Written in that same dark, unwavering hand.

“By your side, it would be an honour to take my place.”

The words are rearranged, and so clearly not his, at least not the way he’d word it.

Because the words jumble before your eyes as you blink, and the only thing you see, hear, is his voice ringing in your ears and your stomach turns sharp, bile rising in your throat.

What Aerion had been truly meaning to say.

Be mine.

Leaving out the final part, the one that lingers in his head.

You already are.

extras:

҉　- main story canon compliant piece.

Ꮺ୧ making out w/ better bobby. Ꮺ୧ better you! ҉　 Ꮺ୧ "baby." ҉　 Ꮺ୧ "open your mouth." Ꮺ୧ pillow fort. Ꮺ୧ in the beginning. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ my, what long tongue you have. Ꮺ୧ sunlight. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ slow dancing. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ rib time. Ꮺ୧ conceiving w/ bb. Ꮺ୧ bb watching you w/ bobby. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ intimacy hdcs w/ BB. Ꮺ୧ memories. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ cuteness aggression. Ꮺ୧ twins au. / bb & bobby. Ꮺ୧ mr. kitty. ҉　 Ꮺ୧ entity discourse. Ꮺ୧ tolerance.

⎋ M.E.G. ENTITY 0 — RESEARCH FILE INDEX:

↹ MEG-ENT-0000-ADDM-██ — Restricted Addendum: Reproductive Capability Assessment (Filed Under Protest)

He's watching you. You can't help but notice that Bobby doesn't stare the way other men stare, heavy and obvious.

He watches. There's a difference. Staring is passive. Watching is a skill.

You can see it in the way his eyes move: cataloguing, framing, composing. Those eyes. Pale blue, sharp, amused in a way that suggests he's always in on a joke nobody else has heard yet. They land on your face and stay there with an intensity that makes you want to look away and also makes you want to never look away and you're not going to think about that right now. Even in a shitty diner booth with fluorescent lighting and a crack running through the formica, Bobby Franklin is looking at you like he's already thinking about angles.

"And you're—Terrence said you do everything yourself? Shoot, edit, all of it?" you croak out, forcing yourself to swallow a mouthful of coffee.

"I don't trust anyone else with the camera." He says it the way other people say they don't trust anyone else with their car keys. Flat. Non-negotiable. His fingers are wrapped around the coffee mug and you notice—you're noticing too much, you need to stop noticing—the veins on the back of his hands, the way the leather jacket sits on his shoulders like it grew there, the silver hoop catches light every time he tilts his head. "It's a one-man operation. Well." The twitch again. Almost a smile. "Usually two-man. One behind the lens, one in front."

You nod. Push the eggs. Your fork makes a sound against the plate that's louder than it should be because neither of you is talking and the diner is mostly empty. The jukebox in the corner is broken and has been broken since Reagan. Your knee is bouncing under the table. You press your palm flat on your thigh to stop it. It only partially works.

"How behind are you?" Bobby drawls.

Your head snaps up. "What?"

"On rent," he clarifies patiently. "Terrence said you were in trouble. How behind?"

He leans forward when he asks it and the chain shifts against his collarbone and you catch a breath of him leather and something underneath, warm, clean, just skin—and your stomach coils.

You're nervous. You're nervous and attracted and the two are braiding together into something that makes it hard to hold your fork steady.

This would be easier if he were sleazy. If he looked like what you'd imagined when Terrence first explained the arrangement. Some greasy guy with a moustache and a waterbed. Instead he looks like this. Sharp jaw and piercing, amused eyes and an earring, a chain and a full mouth that does that little twitch and you're in so much trouble.

You put the fork down. Two months. You're two months behind because the temp agency dried up and the waitressing gig fell through and you've been living on ramen and the leftovers your neighbour leaves outside her door in tupperware containers that you're pretty sure are meant for the stray cats but you're not proud enough to care anymore.

"Two months," you admit, staring down at the eggs. Not looking at him. Looking at him is becoming a problem.

Bobby whistles. Low. Through his teeth. "Well shit. Landlord breathing down your neck?"

You scoff, swallowing down the bitterness. "He's past breathing. He's at written notices."

Bobby leans back in the booth. The vinyl creaks beneath him. He's got one arm stretched along the back of the seat and the other hand wrapped around the coffee mug and the morning light from the window is hitting the side of his face and you think, abstractly, the way you'd think about a painting in a museum: he's beautiful. Sharp angles. Pale eyes. Cali tan and an ease in how he slouches in his seat.

"The money's good," he says suddenly, tongue poking his cheek as he drags his attention back towards you. "That's the first thing. I'm not gonna bullshit you. It's not Hollywood money, obviously, but for Santa Clara? For a couple hours of work?" He tilts his head. "It'd cover your rent. Easy. One shoot."

You stare, unblinking. Sceptical. "One shoot."

"One shoot."

You pick up the fork again. Put it down again. Your fingers won't stop moving.

"Look—" Bobby leans forward. Elbows on the table. The leather jacket he's wearing creaks with the movement, and he's closer now and the watching has intensified into something that feels less like a camera and more like a hand on your skin. "I'm not trying to pressure you into shit. Terrence vouched for you because I asked him if he knew anyone and he said he knew a girl who was real smart and broke and—"

He stops. Mid-sentence. The watching goes still. There's a shift in his expression. A loosening, a slip, the mask of professional detachment developing a crack.

"Shit," he says softly. Almost to himself. "You're pretty. Real pretty."

You bristle. The flinch is automatic. A full-body tightening that starts in your shoulders and works down, because you know this game, you've played this game, the compliment that's actually a crowbar, the flattery designed to pry you open. Men in diners don't tell you you're pretty because they mean it. They tell you you're pretty because they want something and that something is usually between your legs.

"Don't do that," you say sharply. Your voice is harder than you intended.

Bobby blinks. The crack in his expression widens and what's behind it isn't a game. It's surprise. Genuine, unperformative surprise, the kind that creases the corners of his eyes and makes him look younger than however old he is.

"Do what?"

"The—flattery thing. The buttering up. I don't need you to tell me I'm pretty to get me to agree, I already—" Your throat tightens, and you knot your fingers in your lap, setting your jaw. "I'm already here. I'm already desperate enough to be sitting in this diner talking about—so you don't need to—"

"Hey." His hand comes up. Not touching. Just a gesture. A pause button. "I wasn't buttering you up. I was just—" He runs a hand through his hair, clipping his sunglasses. He looks, for a half-second, almost flustered. "I was looking at you and it came out. That's it. That's the whole thing. You're pretty and my mouth moved before my brain did and I'm—" He picks up the coffee. Takes a long sip. Sets it down. "Sorry. Professional hazard. I notice faces."

You stare at each other in silence.

He wasn't mocking you.

The realisation lands with a warmth that starts in your chest and spreads to places you weren't expecting.

He wasn't mocking you. He was sitting across from you in a vinyl booth and the light caught your face and he thought you were pretty and he said so because his mouth was faster than his filter. And now he's drinking burnt coffee to cover the fact that he's embarrassed about it.

"Okay," you say quietly.

He pauses, cup halfway to his mouth. "Okay?"

"Okay, tell me the terms."

Bobby sets the coffee down. The professionalism clicks back into place but the tips of his ears are still pink and you file that away somewhere warm and private.

"I shoot everything at my place. My equipment, my setup. VHS. I've got two cameras, one static, one handheld. The handheld's the one that matters. That's the one I operate." He taps the table with his index finger. Rhythmic. A habit. "I edit everything myself. I distribute through a guy I know in the valley who handles the duplication and the mailing list. You never have to talk to him. You never have to talk to anyone. Your face, your name, none of it goes on the packaging unless you want it to."

"What name do you use?" you ask, curious despite yourself.

"For me? Bobby." He shrugs. "I'm not creative about it."

"And for—"

"Whatever you want. Pick something. Pick nothing. Some girls just go by a first name. Some make something up. One girl I worked with went by the name of her landlord's dog. Said it felt like revenge." The almost-smile again. "Point is: it's yours. The whole thing is yours. You say stop, I stop. You say no to something, it's no. I don't push. I don't coerce. I don't do anything you haven't agreed to beforehand and if you change your mind halfway through, the camera goes off and we're done. No questions. No attitude."

He says all of this in the same tone he'd use to explain how a camera works. Methodical. Clear. Like he's said it before and means it every time.

"How much?" you ask.

He tells you.

You put your fork down carefully because the number he just said would cover two months of rent and groceries and the electricity bill that's been sitting on your kitchen counter turning into a small paper monument to your failure.

"One shoot," you say again, making sure.

"One shoot," he echoes with a nod. "Couple hours. You walk out with cash."

Hope and desperation surge up your spine, working your tongue. "Cash?"

"I don't do checks. Checks leave paper trails and paper trails make people nervous." He drains the last of the coffee. Grimaces. Apparently even Bobby Franklin has limits and Moreno's coffee has found them. "You don't have to decide now. Think about it. Call me."

He pulls a napkin from the dispenser and writes a number on it in handwriting that's surprisingly neat for someone who looks like he's never filled out a form in his life. Slides it across the table.

You look at the napkin. Look at him. then back at the napkin.

You pick it up, folding it neatly.

"Tomorrow," you say. "I can come tomorrow."

Bobby's eyebrows rise. Just slightly. Then he nods slowly. "Tomorrow works."

He pays for your eggs. You don't argue. You should argue but the rent was due six days ago and the eggs were $2.15 and the pride you'd normally spend on "I can pay for my own breakfast" has been liquidated to cover more pressing debts.

At the door of the diner he holds it open for you. Not performatively. Just does it. And when you pass him your shoulder brushes his chest and he smells like that warm thing again, the underneath thing, and his pale eyes track your face one more time and he says "See you tomorrow" in a voice that's dropped half a register and the warmth in your chest migrates south and you walk to your car thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, what am I doing?

You're covering rent. That's what you're doing.

That's all you're doing.

His apartment is above a furniture store.

You stand on the sidewalk for four minutes before you go up. The building is nondescript. Beige stucco, iron railings, a set of stairs on the outside that lead to a door that needs painting. There's a cat on the landing that looks at you with the serene judgment of a creature that has never once had to worry about rent.

You envy the cat greatly.

You're wearing a sundress because you didn't know what to wear and the sundress felt like a compromise between "trying too hard" and "not trying enough." You changed three times.

The first outfit was too casual. The second was too much. The sundress is yellow and you hate that you care what colour it is.

You knock.

Bobby opens the door and the first thing you register is that he's not wearing the leather jacket.

T-shirt. White, thin, cropped in a way that shows the shape of him underneath and is making it difficult to maintain eye contact. Jeans slung low on his hips. Bare feet on the hardwood. His hair is damp from the shower and pushed back off his face and without the sunglasses holding it up you can see the full architecture of him.

The jaw, sharper in natural light than in the diner's dimness. The earring. The chain, sitting in the hollow of his throat, rising and falling with his breathing.

He looks good in his own apartment. Relaxed in a way he wasn't at Moreno's, the professional edge softened into something more lived-in.

He leans against the doorframe and says, "Hey. Come in" and the drawl is thicker in the morning.

You're going to be professional about this. You're not going to think about his forearms, which are now visible because the t-shirt sleeves are short and his arms are lean and tanned and there's a vein running from his wrist to his elbow that you're staring at. Stop staring at it.

The apartment is small and clean and full of light. Not the fluorescent light of the diner but real light, California morning light, pouring through windows that face east.

There are photographs on the walls, black and white, and you realise after a second that he took them. They're good. They're better than good. A bridge in fog. A woman's hands. A street at night, wet, reflecting. He has an eye. You knew that from the diner, from the way he watched, but seeing it on the walls makes it real.

Bobby Franklin has an eye and he uses it for this and also for what you're about to do and the cognitive dissonance of "artist" and "adult filmmaker" is something you're going to have to sit with.

"Coffee?" he asks, padding toward the kitchen. Bare feet on linoleum.

The t-shirt rides up slightly when he reaches for a mug on the top shelf and there's a strip of skin above his waistband and the muscle that cuts along his hip and you look away so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.

"Please."

He pours you a cup. You stand in his kitchen and drink it and it's good. Your hands are shaking and the cup rattles against the saucer and you set it down before he notices except he's already noticed.

"Hey," he calls out, leaning against the counter. Arms crossed. The t-shirt pulling across his chest. His stare is piercing, amused, reading you the way they read you at the diner except now there's nowhere to hide behind a menu and a plate of eggs. "We don't have to do anything today. We can just talk. Get you comfortable. No pressure."

"I'm fine," you force out.

He gives you a sceptical once over. "You're shaking."

"I'm fine and I'm shaking. Both can be true."

His mouth the twitches, the almost-smile that you're beginning to understand is Bobby's version of a laugh. A contained one. Controlled. Like even his amusement is something he runs through a filter before letting it out. But his eyes crinkle at the corners and the amusement reaches them and it's warm, genuinely warm, and some of the tightness in your chest loosens.

You talk.

He asks you questions. Mercifully not invasive ones, not the peeling-back kind. Surface questions. Where you grew up. How you know Terrence. What music you like. And you find yourself answering, not because he's charming (he is) but because he's easy. Bobby Franklin is easy to talk to in a way that contradicts everything about his sharp jaw and pale stare and the fact that there are two video cameras set up in his bedroom that you can see through the half-open door.

He listens the way he watches: completely, with his whole attention, like whatever you're saying is the only thing happening in the world. And he's funny. Dry, quick, a deadpan that sneaks up on you.

You laugh at something he says about Terrence and his face creases in a way you haven't seen before. Surprise. Pleasure. Like your laugh was an unexpected pleasure.

He tucks it away fast, smooths the expression back to amused neutrality, but you saw it. You saw it and it made your stomach warm.

An hour passes. Your hands stop shaking. You've stopped noticing the cameras through the doorway. You've started noticing other things.

The way he gestures when he talks about photography, loose and animated, the only time his cool composure fully drops. The way he licks his bottom lip when he's thinking. The way the chain shifts against his throat when he laughs. The pale eyes that keep finding your face and staying there a beat longer than conversation requires.

You're attracted to him. This is no longer a thing you can file under "irrelevant." This is a thing that is happening in your body, in the kitchen, in the warm light, and it's making the prospect of what comes next feel less like a transaction and more like something you might actually want and that's more frightening than the cameras.

He shows you the bedroom eventually.

It's not what you expected. No red lighting, no satin sheets, no sleazy backdrop. Just a bed—queen, white sheets, a quilt that looks like it came from someone's grandmother—and two cameras. One on a tripod in the corner, aimed at the bed. The other on the dresser, smaller, a different angle. Both VHS. Both off.

"The one in the corner is the wide shot," Bobby explains, standing in the doorway behind you. Professional. Tour guide. "It runs the whole time. Catches everything. The one on the dresser is for close-ups. I adjust it as we go. The handheld—" He nods toward a third camera sitting on the nightstand. "That's the one I use. That's the one that makes the money."

You nod, staring at the bed. The white sheets. The grandmother's quilt. The two dark eyes of the cameras. Your pulse is loud in your own ears.

"I'm sorry," you blurt out, not looking at him, still staring at the bed. "I'm being weird about this. I've obviously never—I haven't done anything like this before and I don't know how to—"

He kisses you.

His hand is on your jaw first, angling your face toward him. Gentle but sure, the confidence of someone who knows the effect he has and is choosing to use it kindly. And then his other hand comes up. Both hands cupping your face now, his palms warm against your cheeks, his thumbs resting along the line of your cheekbones, and his mouth finds yours.

The first press is soft. Almost chaste. Just the warmth of his lips settling against yours, testing, asking. You inhale sharply through your nose, and he catches it. Absorbs it. Tilts your face up with those hands and kisses you deeper.

Bobby's mouth opens yours. Coaxing, slow.

His bottom lip drags against yours, the faintest graze of teeth, and then his tongue follows. Warm, unhurried, curling against yours in a way that makes your knees actually weaken.

You've kissed people before. This is not that. This is Bobby Franklin kissing you with both hands cradling your face like you're worth holding and his tongue moving against yours with a patience that suggests he could do this for hours. Just this. Just the wet slide of his mouth on yours and the taste of good coffee and the way your breath mingles when he tilts his head and changes the angle and finds something deeper.

His thumb strokes your cheekbone. Back and forth. This light, rhythmic brush while his tongue curls against yours, while his bottom lip catches between your teeth and he makes a sound—small, low, a vibration you feel more than hear—and your hands are on his chest. When did your hands get on his chest?

You can feel his heartbeat through the white t-shirt, fast, faster than his relaxed composure suggests, and the knowledge that Bobby Franklin's heart is hammering while he kisses you makes you dizzy.

He tilts his head the other way. Your noses brush. The tip of his against the side of yours, a small warm nudge, almost playful.

He kisses the corner of your mouth. Your bottom lip. Takes it between his and sucks, gently, and your fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt and pull and the sound you make is swallowed by the warmth of him.

He pulls back.

Not far. An inch. Maybe two. His hands still on your face. His thumbs still on your cheekbones. His forehead nearly touching yours and you can feel his breath on your lips and his eyes are right there. Those pale, watchful, bright eyes, scanning your face. Reading you. Making sure.

Your lips are tingling. Your whole body is tingling. You're standing in a stranger's bedroom being held by the face and kissed like you've never been kissed before.

"Was—" Your voice is thin. Wrecked. He kissed your voice right out of you. "Was the camera rolling?"

Bobby smirks.

Up close, from two inches away, with his hands still warm on your face. One corner of his mouth lifting in that lazy, crooked, insufferable way. His eyes half-lidded. And it goes trough you like wildfire, flooding your nervous system with liquid heat.

"No," he answers huskily, his thumb tracing your cheekbone one more time. "Just felt like doing that."

He holds your gaze. One beat. Two. Three. Letting the smirk settle. Letting you feel the weight of it—the fact that he kissed you off-camera, off-clock, for no professional reason.

The fact that his heart is still hammering under your fists and his pupils are blown wide and he kissed you because he wanted to. Because you were standing in his bedroom apologising for being nervous and he looked at you and his mouth moved before his brain did. Again.

"Still okay?" he asks, softer now. The smirk gentling into something warmer.

"Yeah." Breathier than you want it to be. Your hands still in his t-shirt. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Good." His hand drops from your jaw. Trails down your arm. Fingertips only, light enough to raise goosebumps, tracing the inside of your wrist where the pulse jumps. "I'm going to undress you now. Slow. Before the cameras go on. Just us. That alright?"

You nod.

He starts with the straps of the sundress. Easing them off your shoulders one at a time. Not pulling, guiding. His knuckles graze your collarbone and you shiver, his eyes tracking the shiver down your body with an attention that makes you feel like the only light source in the room.

"You wore yellow," he notes conversationally. Like he's remarking on the weather while his fingertips trace the neckline of your dress. "Looks good on you. Warm. Shows off your skin."

The dress pools at your feet. You're standing in his bedroom in your underwear and the morning light is on you and Bobby is looking at you the way he looked at you in the diner when his mouth got ahead of his brain.

"Pretty," he murmurs. Like he can't help it. Like the word just falls out of him when he sees you. His thumb traces your hip bone above the elastic of your underwear. "Real pretty."

This time you don't bristle.

He reaches past you. Flicks on the tripod camera. A tiny red light. Then the dresser camera. Another red light. Two eyes, open, watching.

"Don't think about them," Bobby says, his mouth near your ear. His hands settle on your waist, warm palms on bare skin. "Don't think about the cameras. Don't perform. Just feel me. Can you do that?"

You jerk your head. "I can try."

"That's all I'm asking." His lips brush your ear. Down. Along your jaw. The corner of your mouth. His hands slide up your ribcage and his thumbs trace the underwire of your bra and you exhale, shaky, and he catches it. "There you go. Just like that. Stay with me, yeah? I got you."

He unclasps your bra with one hand. Practiced, efficient, but the way he peels it away is anything but. Reverent, almost, easing the fabric off like he's unwrapping something valuable. The air hits your skin and your nipples tighten. Bobby's gaze drops and his jaw flexes and for a moment, just a moment, the professionalism wavers. His throat moves on a thick swallow.

"Lie down," he instructs, a little rougher than before. "On the bed. On your back."

You lie down. The sheets are cool beneath you, the quilt soft. on your skin

The light from the window falls across the bed in a warm band and you're naked except for your underwear and Bobby is standing over you still fully dressed and the power imbalance should feel wrong but it doesn't because his eyes are eating you alive and his hands are clenched at his sides and you realise, with a jolt that goes straight through you: he's holding himself back.

This is Bobby exercising control. This is what it looks like when he wants to touch something badly and is making himself wait.

He picks up the handheld camera. Lifts it to his eye. And something shifts in him. Visibly. The control locks in, the professional takes over, and he's Bobby-behind-the-lens. Steady. Composed. Seeing everything.

"Touch yourself," he says. Director voice. "Just your skin. Nothing heavy. Just run your hands over yourself. Get comfortable."

You do. Your own hands on your own body, palms skating over your stomach, your ribs, the swell of your breasts, and it feels strange and exhibitionistic but then Bobby says "gorgeous, just like that, you're doing so good" and the praise lands in the pit of your stomach like a lit match. Your back arches. Barely. Just enough.

"Yeah," Bobby breathes from behind the camera. "That's it. That's perfect. Look at you."

He films you touching yourself for what feels like hours and is probably three minutes. Then he sets the handheld down on the nightstand. Red light still blinking, and he crawls onto the bed.

Not between your legs. Beside you. Lying on his side, propped on one elbow, his face level with yours. Close enough that you can see the flecks of darker blue in his irises and the faint scar on his chin and the way his throat moves when he swallows. Still dressed. T-shirt. Jeans. Bare feet.

"Keep going," he murmurs, watching your hands on your own body. "Don't stop on my account."

Your hands move. Over your stomach. Up. And Bobby's hand joins them. One warm palm laid flat against your sternum, between your breasts. Not groping.... just resting. Feeling your heartbeat through your ribs.

"Fast," he notes. His thumb strokes the valley between your breasts and you shiver. "Slow down. You're rushing."

You do as he asked, your hands sliding over your skin with less urgency and more intention. Bobby's hand follows, learning new terrain, the dip of your waist and the flare of your hip and the soft give of your stomach where you've always been self-conscious and he presses his palm there like he's making a point.

Like that spot, specifically, is worth his hand.

Then his mouth replaces his palm.

He starts at your throat. A kiss. Open-mouthed, warm, the press of his lips and the faintest edge of teeth. Then your collarbone. The notch at the base of your throat where your pulse is hammering. Down. The flat of his tongue dragging along your sternum, tasting the thin sheen of sweat that the California morning and your own nerves have produced.

His mouth is unhurried. Exploratory. He's not kissing you so much as he's mapping you with his lips, charting the terrain the way he'd scout a location before a shoot. Finding the light, finding the angles, finding what works on you.

His mouth finds your breast. Kisses the swell of it. The underside, where the skin is softest. And then his lips close around your nipple and he sucks—not hard, not gentle, somewhere in between, a warm wet pressure that sends a bolt of sensation from your breast directly to your cunt and your back arches off the mattress.

"Oh."

Bobby hums against you. A sound of satisfaction. His tongue circles your nipple, flattens, flicks.

His free hand slides up your ribs and cups your other breast, thumb rolling across the peak, and the dual sensation—mouth and hand, wet and dry—makes you reach for him. Your fingers find his hair. Sandy strands, still slightly damp from the shower, thick between your fingers. You grip. Pull.

Just... needing something to hold onto while his mouth does this to you.

The pull makes Bobby groan. The sound vibrates through your nipple and into your chest and your hips lift off the bed involuntarily, pressing into nothing.

He feels it and his mouth tightens. Pulls harder. His teeth graze the sensitive peak and your fingers clench in his hair and you tug, genuinely tug, trying to pull him up, pull him to your mouth, because you need to kiss him, you need—

He doesn't let go.

His mouth stays locked on your nipple, sucking with a focused intensity that borders on stubborn, and you're pulling his hair and he's groaning and he will not come up, will not release, and the wet heat of his mouth is making you clench around nothing.

Your thighs press together, your hips rocking against air, seeking fullness, friction, anything, and Bobby—Bobby, who is supposed to be a professional, who is supposedly in control of this situation—reaches down with his free hand and cups you between the legs.

Just cups you. His whole palm, warm, pressed against the soaked cotton of your underwear. Just holding the heat of you in his hand while his mouth works your nipple and your fingers twist in his hair and the sound that comes out of you is breathy and too high.

"Bobby—please, I need—"

He releases your nipple with a wet pop that you feel in your spine. Glances up at you, his lips swollen. His eyes heavy-lidded and dark and his hand still cupping you, pressing against the damp fabric, feeling the heat seep through.

"Need what, baby?" Low. Rough. His fingers flex against you, palm grinding just slightly against your pulsing core, one small movement of pressure through the cotton. "Tell me."

"Touch me," you plead, trying to press closer. "Actually touch me."

His fingers slide under the elastic. Find you bare. Find you soaked. And the sound he makes—a sharp exhale through his nose, almost a hiss—is the sound of a man who knew what he was going to find but is still wrecked by the reality of it.

"Jesus." Barely a whisper. His fingers parting your folds. Not penetrating yet, just circling your clit. Just petting. Long, feather-light strokes through the slick of you, up and down, spreading the wetness with an aching patience that makes your hips chase his hand. "So wet, baby. This all from—was this from my mouth? From me sucking on you?"

You nod. You can't speak. His fingers are petting you like he's got all the time in the world and no intention of giving you what you need. Long strokes. Root to tip. Parting you with two fingers and letting the middle one drag between, barely touching your clit, just enough to make your thighs shake.

"Pretty little pussy," he murmurs, and the words shouldn't work.

They're filthy and crude and you've heard variations in the tapes you've watched that made you cringe, but Bobby says them the way he said "you're pretty" in the diner. Like a fact. Something he can't help observing. Like your body laid out in morning light is a view he needs to narrate. His fingers keep petting. Lazy. Wet with you, making you drip onto his grandmother's quilt.

Then his mouth starts traveling south.

He kisses down your stomach. Your hip bone. The crease of your thigh. Hooks his fingers into your underwear, drags them down, tosses them off the bed without looking. Parts your thighs with both hands, spreading you open, and the sound he makes—not a groan this time, something lower, something guttural, a sound that vibrates in his chest—is not for the camera.

You know this because the camera is on the nightstand and he hasn't touched it and he's not angling for a shot. He's just peering down at you. Spread open in the morning light. And that sound is coming out of him because he can't stop it.

"Fuck," he whispers, his thumbs pressing into the crease of your thighs. "Okay. Okay."

He lowers his mouth to you.

Bobby eats you out the way he kissed you earlier. Unhurried, thorough. Long strokes of his tongue that start at your entrance and drag upward, tasting the length of you, and you feel his groan against your cunt when the flavour hits and your whole body shudders.

He circles your clit with a pressure that's devastating in its patience. He's not trying to make you come fast. He's tasting. Exploring. Learning what makes your hips jerk and what makes you gasp and what makes your fingers find his hair again.

You fist both hands in those sandy strands and pull and the sound he makes—rough, grateful, hungry—vibrates against your clit. Your hips buck and his hands tighten on your thighs. Holding them apart, his thumbs stroking the soft skin in counterpoint to the filthy things his tongue is doing.

He's found a rhythm now. Flat, wide strokes punctuated by the pointed tip of his tongue flicking your clit in a pattern that your hips start chasing, lifting off the bed, grinding against his mouth, and he lets you. Lets you ride his face with his hands gripping your thighs and his eyes closed and his entire world narrowed to the taste and the sound and the wet.

"Bobby—oh my god—"

"Mm." Against you. His mouth full of you. His tongue pressing flat, licking you open in a broad swipe that makes your vision swim. "Taste incredible. Could stay here all fuckin' day."

He could. You believe him. He looks like he means it. Settled between your thighs like he's found the only place in the world he wants to be.

You tug his hair again and his moan is muffled against your cunt and you feel it everywhere, the vibration traveling through your pelvis and up your spine, and you pull harder and his tongue presses harder and the feedback loop is building. Your hands in his hair and his mouth on you and the wet sounds and the moans and you're close, you're getting close—

He pulls back with a wet, slick sound.

You whimper. The loss of his mouth leaving you throbbing, aching, empty.

"Not yet." His chin is wet, his lips swollen. Bobby's eyes are glazed and dark, the professional gone, replaced by something feral that's been living underneath the cool-boy surface and is now looking at you like it's deciding whether to devour you. "Not yet, baby. Want to be inside you when you come. Wanna feel you, yeah?"

You moan in response, dizzy. And your moans are real. That's the thing that's changing the temperature of the room.

You're not playing them up, not pitching them for any microphone, not performing the breathy exaggerated sounds you've heard in the tapes you've watched out of curiosity and mild horror. You're just reacting. And it's affecting him. His breathing has changed. His hips are pressing into the mattress in a grind he can't seem to control and you realise he's hard.

He's been hard for a while. He's been eating you out with his cock straining against his jeans and he hasn't touched himself once.

Bobby sits back on his heels. Pulls the t-shirt over his head in one motion. His chest is flushed. Lean, not bulky, the body of someone who lifts camera equipment for a living and forgets to eat regularly. The belt buckle. The zipper. The happy trail of hair dipping dangerously beneath the belt buckle. He pushes the jeans down and kicks them off and he's—

your mouth goes dry.

Bobby Franklin naked is a problem. Bobby Franklin hard is a crisis.

He sees you looking. The smirk returns. That lazy, insufferable lift of one corner of his mouth. "See something you like?"

"Shut up."

You sit up. Grab his hips. Pull him toward you and the surprise on his face—genuine, unperformed, the mask cracking again—is worth everything.

He stumbles forward on the mattress, knees sinking into the sheets, and your hands are on his stomach, his ribs, dragging your nails lightly down his sides and he hisses. His cock twitches and you feel powerful in a way that has nothing to do with cameras or money.

"How do you want me to fuck you?" His voice is gravel. Wrecked. He's peering down at you with his hands cupping your face, thumbs on your cheekbones, and the professionalism is a memory. "Tell me."

"From behind." No hesitation. The words tumbling out before your brain can edit them. "I want—on my stomach, I want you behind me, I want—"

Bobby's eyes go wide. His whole face flushes harder. Cheeks, ears, the V of his throat. He drops his head against your shoulder and laughs. A real laugh. Rough and bitten-off and disbelieving.

"Shit, baby." Muffled against your skin. "Can't say stuff like that to me. Can't just—" He lifts his head. The flush is gorgeous on him, spreading down his neck. "Yeah. Fuck yeah. Turn over."

He flips you. Firm and purposeful. His hands on your hips guiding you onto your stomach, lifting your hips until your ass is raised and your face is in the pillow and you feel exposed in a way that's terrifying and thrilling.

"Look at you." His hands on your hips, sliding up. Over the curve of your ass. Both palms cupping you, squeezing, spreading, his thumbs tracing the cleft while he breathes hard through his nose. "Every angle. Every fuckin' angle. 'S not fair."

His hand draws back. Comes down on your ass. Not a slap, not quite, a firm pat that's more proprietary than punishing and the sound it makes in the quiet bedroom is obscene. Your hips jolt. He does it again. Lighter. Smoothing his palm over the spot after, kneading with a hum.

"Could cover you like this," he mutters, stroking the curve of your ass with both hands, spreading you again, looking at you from behind with an expression you can feel even though you can't see it. "Just—stay right here. Just like this. Prettiest goddamn thing I've ever shot and I haven't even started the camera yet."

He reaches for the handheld. Turns it on. Red light. Frames the shot—you on your stomach, your hips raised, the curve of your spine. His hand still on your ass. Claiming. Warm.

He sets the camera on the mattress, angled up. Reaches for himself. You hear it. The wet sound of him spitting into his palm, the slick stroke of his fist over his cock, and then he's behind you. The hot thick length of him pressed against you, nestled between your folds, and he groans and you groan, and he doesn't push in.

He rolls against you.

Long, grinding strokes, his cock sliding through the slick mess of you, dragging across your clit with every thrust. The head catching at your entrance and pulling away. Over and over. Using the length of himself to stroke you, to tease you, to coat himself in you until the sound of skin on wet skin fills the room and your fingers are clawing at the sheets.

"Feel that?" His chest pressed against your back. His mouth against your ear. "Feel how hard you got me? Been like this since the diner. Since you sat down in that booth and looked at me with those fuckin' eyes. Thought about this. Thought about what you'd feel like."

His hips roll. The head of his cock catches your entrance again, presses, almost, almost—

"Bobby, please—"

His cock throbs against your core. "Tell me."

"Fuck me. Please." You suck in a shaky breath. "I need you to—"

He spits again. You feel it, warm, landing where his cock meets your cunt. His hand stroking himself once, twice, spreading the slick. And then he notches himself at your entrance and pushes in.

One long stroke. All the way. Your body opening around him and his groan matching yours. Colliding, two raw sounds meeting in the air and becoming something bigger than either. He bottoms out and holds you in place, and you feel every inch of him, the stretch, the heat, the fullness, his forehead dropping against the nape of your neck and he breathes "oh fuck" against your hair and his whole body shakes.

"God—you feel—" He can't finish. His hips twitch, involuntary, the tiniest thrust that pulls a gasp from both of you. "Baby. Baby, you feel—"

He starts moving. And the control lasts about thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds of measured strokes. Finding the angle. Professional. Thinking about the shot, the camera on the mattress, the red light.

And then you push back against him with a greedy sound, meet his thrust with your hips, grinding onto him, taking him deeper, and you moan. Really moan, the sound that's been building since he put his mouth on your nipple and refused to let go, and something in Bobby snaps.

His hand grabs your hip. His other hand braces on the mattress beside your head. And he fucks you.

Not the controlled version. The real version. The Bobby Franklin that exists underneath the smirk and the camera and the professional detachment. Hips driving into you with a force that shoves you into the mattress, that punches the air from your lungs, that turns your vision white around the edges. Sweat beading on his chest and dripping onto your spine. His breathing ragged, broken, gasping against the back of your neck in hot bursts.

And you're both gasping, coiling, pushing into each other blindly. Your hand reaches back, finds his hip, his thigh, pulling him deeper, harder, your fingers digging into the muscle and he groans like you've wounded him.

His hand finds yours, laces your fingers together beside your head, pressing your joined hands into the sheets, and the intimacy of it cracks something deep in both of you.

"So good," he's babbling against your spine. His mouth open, dragging wet kisses between your shoulder blades. "So fuckin' good, squeezing me so tight—can you hear that? Hear how wet you are? Hear what you're doin' to me?"

You can hear it. The obscene wet sound of his cock driving into you, the slap of his hips against your ass, the creak of the bed frame that he's going to have to explain to the furniture store below.

"Bobby—" Your voice is gone. Shattered, croaking. "Bobby, I'm gonna—I can't—"

"Yeah you can." Growled against your ear. His teeth grazing your earlobe. Biting down. "Cum for me. Wanna feel it. Wanna feel you squeeze my cock so tight I can't fuckin' think—"

He lets go of your hand. His fingers fist in your hair. Gathering the hair, wrapping the strands around his fingers. And he lifts your head from the pillow, arching your neck back, turning your face toward the camera on the mattress that's still rolling, red light blinking, catching everything.

"Show them," he murmurs against the shell of your ear. "Let 'em see how pretty you look when you cum for me."

You fall apart.

The orgasm rips through you. An earthquake, seismic and structural that starts where he's buried inside you and radiates outward.

Your mouth opens on a moan that you don't recognise as your own voice, wanton, cracked, genuine. There's no performance, no production, it's pulled from somewhere primal and raw inside you. And Bobby feels it. Feels the clench and the shake and the sound and his rhythm breaks, shatters, his hips slamming into you without finesse, chasing his own end through the aftershocks of yours.

He comes with a loud, greedy moan, a gruff sound of laughter caught in his throat. This breathless, incredulous sound, muffled against the back of your damp neck, like he can't believe what just happened to him. His hips jerk again, pressed flush against your ass. His hand loosens in your hair, fingertips grazing your scalp.

His body shudders against yours in waves that slow and gentle and eventually still.

His lips find the shell of your ear. Warm. Spent. Still inside you.

"With a moan like that," he rasps, kissing the curve of your ear, "and a pussy that grips me that tight?" He laughs against your skin. Loose. Golden. The real laugh, the unfiltered one. "Shit, baby, you're gonna be famous."

You laugh too. Into the pillow. The sound surprising you. The lightness of it, the ease. The fact that you can laugh, right now, naked and sweating and thoroughly ruined in a stranger's bed with two cameras rolling.

You're laughing because he's funny and because the sex was extraordinary and because you came to this apartment expecting something transactional and clinical.

Instead you got Bobby Franklin's mouth telling you you're pretty like he couldn't help it and Bobby Franklin's hands holding yours while he fucked you and Bobby Franklin laughing against your neck like making you come was the best thing that happened to him all week.

He pulls out, slowly, carefully, making you shiver at the loss, and collapses next to you. Reaches over and clicks off the handheld. The red light dies. The static camera in the corner is still running and neither of you moves to turn it off.

Bobby lies on his back, chest rising and falling. Staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man whose professional boundaries have just been comprehensively violated by his own want.

"So," he says to the ceiling. "Same time next week?"

You turn your head on the pillow. He turns his. Pale eyes. Flushed face. Hair wrecked. That almost-smile.

"Same time next week," you agree, still breathless.

The static camera runs for another four minutes before Bobby remembers to turn it off.

In the footage—which he will watch later, alone, ostensibly for editing purposes—you can see two people lying side by side on white sheets, not touching, not talking, just breathing, and at the 2:47 mark the girl in the yellow sundress starts laughing again and the boy with the camera reaches over and takes her hand and doesn't let go until the tape runs out.

He doesn't use that part in the final cut.

You married Aerion Targaryen because your parents deemed it fitting. They considered it proper that they should cast the dice to capture a dragon, so that, with its claws, you might enrich the family name. And Aerion was a dragon, of that there was no doubt — not one of the great ones that once ruled the skies of Valyria, but a hungry dragon, with eyes that burned and fangs always bared. On the day he went out to hunt, you offered yourself as sacrifice.

You weren't noble, no. Your family possessed some wealth, gold enough to clothe you well and fill your belly, but they'd no standard, no sworn swords, no tower of stone to call their own. Still, noble blood ran in your veins, though diluted like watered wine. You were descended from cadet branches that had once been Arryn and Tyrell, and your parents, in their ambition, believed this remnant of noble blood would suffice to make you fly. They believed you could give the family an important name, a name feared throughout the Seven Kingdoms.

And you fought for this with the few weapons you had. You drew close to Prince Valarr, the heir's heir, who was as generous and kind as rare (even almost none) boys in Westeros. He had you as a good friend, as a sister that the court had never truly given him — for Matarys was far younger and he couldn't have with her what he had with you — and King Daeron II, the boy's grandsire, permitted you to remain at his side. He saw in you a beneficial influence, someone capable of teaching his grandson the ways of common men, of showing him a world beyond battles and blood.

And then, on one of the days when the sun bathed the Red Keep, you saw him.

He wasn't a dragon of scales and giant teeth, he didn't spew flames nor have wings to cover the sun. But his eyes burned with a fire not of this world, and from him emanated a terror similar to what Balerion once spread across Westeros. He saw you the very instant you saw him, and in that moment, both of you knew something had changed.

Aerion had found his prey.

Some days passed since that first glance. Enough for summer to deepen over King's Landing, for the roses in the gardens to bloom in profusion, and for your mother to lose sleep counting the imaginary coins your marriage would bring.

You came to know each other better at dinners, as was proper at court. He watched you over his goblet of wine, his violet eyes darkened by something you preferred not to discover. You spoke of the unusual heat, the court gossip, the dances planned for the next tourney. But behind the words, there was another conversation — one of carnal interest, made of glances, of the way his fingers brushed yours when passing the bread.

Then, one night when the stars seemed more distant than usual, he led you to his chambers. Aerion could be seductive when it suited him, and you let yourself be carried away by his charm after a few goblets of wine with Valarr.

The door closed behind you, and he drew near, so close you could feel the heat of his body, the smell of ashes and something sweet that always accompanied him.

"Stay this night," he murmured. It wasn't a request.

You stepped back one pace… only one.

"Why would I stay, my prince?"

His eyes narrowed, surprised. Maekar's son wasn't accustomed to being questioned.

"I'm not asking for this," he said, with the calm of one who'd never needed to ask for anything. "It's my will, and my wishes are usually granted."

"Of course, my prince…" you interrupted him, letting the ghost of a smile escape. "What do you think I am? A whore to warm your bed at your convenience?"

"I didn't say that."

"You said it with the way you look at me, as if I were the same as the women you send for when the night grows too long for you."

Aerion frowned, visibly disconcerted. He wasn't used to resistance, much less from someone he desired.

"Then why did you come with me?"

"Because I wished to be desired by a man who doesn't flee from what he feels, or so I thought you were. I want a husband, not a lover who'd have me this night and tomorrow scarcely know my name."

"I'd still remember your name, darling." He laughed, but there was no humour in that sound. "But you must know what you're asking of me, and you must know you've no such claim upon me."

"Well, my prince, I ask for what every woman should have the right to ask for." You held his gaze. "And if you're not man enough to give me that, I'll wait for someone who is. Perhaps your cousin, Valarr, understands the meaning of honour better than one who calls himself a dragon."

Aerion stared at you for a long moment, and for the first time, you saw something beyond the fire in his eyes; as if he were relishing the provocation, as if he now had respect for you, or something close to it.

"You're more dangerous than you appear," he said at last. "Brave… or completely senseless. I've not yet decided which of the two disturbs me more."

He stepped forward. Then another. The space between you closed further, leaving only the warm air of his breath against your neck when he leaned in, smelling you and tucking away a lock of your hair that had come loose after the dance with Matarys.

"Mind your tongue, darling," he whispered in your ear, his fingers trailing down your collarbone to the silver necklace at your throat. A gift from your family.

"Don't call me darling." You retorted, your eyes meeting his.

"Of course, sweetling." He smiled cruelly when your brows drew together in displeasure. "There are men in this realm who lose their heads for less."

"Then you'll have to put mine on the walls as well, my prince," you riposted, lifting your chin as your eyes descended to his lips. "I'd rather face death than live as a shadow of your will."

For an instant, you thought he'd touch you, would pull you to him, or worse, would order you removed from there when his hand slowly closed, as if containing an impulse too difficult to tame. However, he tilted his head, looking at every detail of your face, drawing near your lips, but not touching them, merely leaving the ghost of a kiss there.

"They all want something from me," he said, his lips brushing yours as his violet eyes slowly rose to meet yours. "Power, name, blood, but none of those women would dare speak to me as you do."

"Because none of them believe they're worth more than a whim."

"Men of my house don't survive by being gentle."

"A pity."

The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile, but neither was it anger.

"Do you know what happens to women like you?" he asked, drawing back slightly to look at your whole face. The heat of his body made your heart leap in your chest, above your neckline.

"I know what happens to those who kneel," you answered. "And I shan't be one of them."

For a moment, you thought he'd advance, would crush your resistance as he did with everything else. Instead, Aerion brought his hand to your chin, lifting your face with two firm fingers. It wasn't brutal, and, strangely, that unsettled you even more.

"Look at me," he commanded.

You obeyed. His eyes were living fire, but now they held a pure desire, something he rarely allowed himself.

"You ask me to marry you," he said slowly. "Yet you speak to me as if you were already my equal."

"Because I'd only lie with a man who saw me as such."

His fingers tightened for a second longer than necessary. Pride, fury and desire seemed to war within him.

"If I wanted you only for a night," he said, his voice hoarse, "you'd already be in my bed."

"And if I wanted only a night," you retorted, "I wouldn't be here now."

He released your chin slowly, as if the gesture required effort.

"Be careful," he warned. "You're playing with something you don't know how to control."

Aerion turned and walked to the window, as if he needed distance to think.

"The gods are cruel," he murmured. "Just when I thought the whole world belonged to me, a woman appears who dares to deny me…"

"The world may belong to you, but I do not," was all you said.

He stood there, thinking on your words, and didn't look at you again, not even when he walked to the door and left. Something seemed to have disturbed him, perhaps the fact that you weren't what he thought you were, perhaps because he found it would be easier than he intended.

The next morning, he went to speak with your father. He took Maekar as witness to the promise he made to your father, to protect you, to care for you, to make you part of him, and then he asked for your hand in marriage, without Maekar himself expecting it, he knelt and asked your father, and there was only a nod, permitting him to make you truly his. And even if your father didn't permit the union, Aerion would marry you. He hadn't knelt to beg for your hand, but to ask the gods that your father might forgive him if he'd to act otherwise.

The wedding was small by court standards, almost discreet for those accustomed to excess and rumour. Still, it seemed too grand for someone like you who'd never dreamed of setting foot in the halls of the Red Keep without lowering their eyes. You dressed in the colours of your new house: red and black. The heavy fabric flowed over your body, marking more than was usual (because it had been Aerion's demand to eliminate any remnant of purity in you). Upon your hair, the crown of silver flowers rested too delicately for the family you now belonged to, as fragile as the fortune that had led you there.

When they placed you before him, you felt his gaze first before even raising your eyes. Aerion wasn't smiling. He watched you as he'd done that night; as if he were still deciding whether this was a conquest… or whether you were still challenging him. His hands touched yours, there was an instant when the hall seemed to disappear. The touch wasn't tender, nor was it cruel. It was possessive. Warm. A warning that this marriage wouldn't be made of your wills, but of Aerion's.

"You're mine now," he murmured, so low that only you could hear, while the septon intoned the blessings.

"I'm your wife," you answered, also in secret. "There's a difference."

His lips curved into a delicate smile, sufficiently capable of making you respond while he held your face; you admired the dimple in his cheek showing almost imperceptibly, which for a few moments made you forget how cruel he could be, whether touching you or not.

The bedding came with sunset. The ladies led you to the chambers you were to share, and this time the doors closed with the gods' blessing upon the union. Aerion moved towards you with the same confidence as always, but something was different now, you had become his territory, and that dragon had always been fierce in defending what was his. And for a moment you prepared yourself for the touch, for the consummation that every wife must endure after marriage.

You didn't retreat when he closed the distance, but he stopped, making you feel the ghost of his hand lowering the strap of your dress. Aerion halted, and his eyes travelled over your body as if he were grasping you, as if they could touch where he refused to go with his hands, pondering, torturing you slowly.

"Take off the dress," he commanded, wetting his lips.

It wasn't a request.

You obeyed, because that too was your choice, and he knew it. The fabric slipped over your shoulders, your waist, forming a red and black pool at your feet. You stood before him in only your skin, the warm blood rushing to your cheeks and the air seeming to fail you a little more.

Aerion said nothing, took a goblet of wine from the nearest table while leaning against it, sipping and watching you entirely as if appreciating a work of art that finally belonged to him.

"I lied when I said I didn't want you," he murmured, clenching his jaw. "My brother's the one who dreams, but it seems you're the gods' vision sent to torment me."

"Torment?"

"Yes." He set the goblet back on the table and stepped forward. Then another. The distance between you shrank until the heat of his body was almost unbearable. "Because I wanted you in that instant. I wanted to take you right there, before the septon, before my father, before everyone. I wanted to tear that dress off with my teeth and show every one of them that you were mine."

His hand rose, finally. His fingers brushed your shoulder, so light they seemed a question.

"In a short while, you'll forget how we should be," your voice came out hoarse.

"I know, but now…" He traced the path from shoulder to wrist, slowly, studying each of your reactions. "Now I wonder if you know what you've done."

"I married you."

"You gave yourself to me." His fingers tightened on your wrist. "There's a difference."

He pulled your wrist, drawing your body against his. His breath warmed your face, those violet eyes burning into you.

"I'm going to fuck you tonight," he said, and the words were such a shock you lost your breath. "I'm going to fuck you until you forget your own name. Until you forget there was a world out there, before me."

"Aerion…"

"No." His free hand covered your mouth, gently, his eyes fixed on yours. "I'm going to fuck you tonight, and tomorrow, and every night after that. Not because the law allows it, not because a septon blessed it, but because I want to and because you want to. Say you want to."

He removed his hand from your mouth, but held your gaze.

"I'm too good for you."

"And that makes me need you even more." He slid his lips along your jaw. "I'll never be gentle enough for you, but tell me you want me too."

"I want to," you whispered.

"You want to what?" he provoked, his mouth so close to yours they almost touched. "Say it. Say exactly what you want. You want me to fuck you? You want me to devour you? You want me to fill you until there's room for nothing else?"

"I want you to fuck me," you repeated, and the words came out firmer than you expected. "I want…"

You hesitated, but his eyes didn't let you escape.

"You want what?"

"I want your child."

Aerion smiled against your neck, that seemed to excite and amuse him because the hand that held your wrist rose to your nape, pulling you into a kiss that wasn't a kiss. His mouth pressed to yours with a hunger that seemed accumulated over years, not weeks. His tongue invaded, took, claimed, and you clung to his shoulders as if you were drowning.

When he drew back, both of you were gasping.

"A child of mine won't be like other children," his voice was torn, unrecognisable. "He'll be… like me."

"You think I'm afraid of that?" you answered, and your hand travelled from his shoulder to his chest, to his womb, to his belt buckle. "It's precisely why I ask."

"My grandsire told me about you before I saw you that day, he said: the boys never tire of her, nor of her sweetness. And I didn't know why, until I saw that 'fuck me' look in your eyes."

He guided you to the bed without ceremony, your back meeting the sheets with a push that drew a smile from you. Aerion hovered over you, his arms on either side of your head, his pupils dilated with desire.

"I'm going to fill you," he promised, his voice a growl. "I'm going to fill you with me, night after night, until there's no doubt in your mind, in the mind of the entire court, that you're mine. That what grows here" His hand descended, fingers spread over your bare womb. "Is mine. Is ours."

"Then do it," you challenged, lifting your hips to meet his. "Show me the dragon you claim to be."

The smile he gave you was the most dangerous thing you'd ever seen.

He leaned in to kiss your neck, his teeth grazing your sensitive skin, while his hands worked to rid himself of what he still wore. And when finally you were skin against skin, warmth against warmth, he paused for an instant.

"Say you're in love with my body," you murmured against his ear. "and that's why you're fucking it."

"Sweetling, if it feels good then it can't be bad," he answered in a half-sigh. "I'm something they all want, but only you can have."

His hand descended slowly, tracing in the air the contour of your neck, your shoulders, descending to the curve of your waist without touching. And each imaginary movement drew from you a shiver that he saw, that he knew he provoked. Aerion stepped back again, one pace, then another, and you stood there, still, feeling the emptiness where his warmth had been before, not understanding.

"But you'll wait," he said, fastening his belt while displaying his abdomen with some scars. "You'll wait and desire and imagine. You'll lie in this bed every night thinking of how it would be and when I finally take you, if ever I do take you, it'll be because I decided it, not because you demanded it."

"You want to fuck me now, Aerion. You want to see me on my knees. You need to consummate this marriage for us to be truly wed," you said, taking a step towards him. "The gods decide these things," you answered, bringing your hand to your womb.

"The gods have nothing to do with it, sweetling."

So he left the chamber and left you alone on your wedding night, as should not have been.

The months that followed were a constant lesson. You learned Aerion's humours as one learns to read the signs of an approaching storm; by the scents in the air, by the tension in his shoulders, by the cruelty that took his eyes when something displeased him. There was sweetness in him, yes, but it was a treacherous sweetness.

There were nights when he sought you with an urgency bordering on desperation, nights when his hands trembled touching you and his mouth whispered things you'd never repeat to anyone. And there were days when he scarce looked at you, building walls so high that not even your love — if that was what you felt — could scale them.

The court watched. The court always watched.

"Be careful of him," his mother, Dyanna Dayne, once advised in a rare moment when you found yourselves alone. "My son has too much fire in his veins."

"I'm his wife," you repeated, as if that explained everything.

She smiled, a sad smile that made you shrink inside.

"Being a dragon's wife is not the same as taming one, child."

You didn't understand then, but you would, in time.

Aerion remained by your side at dinners, at walks through the gardens, at court obligations. His eyes always found yours. He'd draw closer than necessary, his warm breath brushing your nape, his hand hovering over yours as it had once hovered over your body.

"Did you dream of me last night?" he asked one morning, with a smile that knew exactly what it provoked.

You denied it, but the flush on your cheeks betrayed you.

"I dreamed…" he confessed, leaning in to whisper in your ear. "I dreamed I finally touched you. That I heard your moans, that I felt your nails in my back. I woke hard and furious that it was only a dream."

He drew back before you could answer, leaving you with your heart racing and your legs weak. Thus he tortured you. With words, with glances, with the eternally delayed promise of a touch that never came. And you, fool that you were, discovered that desire can be as painful as any wound. Your body burned for him in ways you'd never imagined, and he knew. He knew and delighted in your torment.

"Why do you do this?" you asked one night, when he'd accompanied you to your chamber door and remained there, so close you could feel the warmth of his body, yet so far you could do nothing.

"Because I can," he answered simply. "Because it's the only thing you still don't have of me. You've had my name, you've had my oath, you've had my respect, but my body is still mine. And until it's your choice, not my gift, you won't have it."

The next morning, he left for Lys.

There was no farewell or explanation, only a servant who came for his clothes, a ship that departed the harbour, and you remained in the Red Keep, with your belly empty and your hands trembling because you still hadn't had him, because the marriage was called ill-starred for not having been consummated.

The months that followed were long as winters. The letters you sent went unanswered. The rumours that arrived from Lys spoke of feasts, of women with silver hair and dark eyes, of whole nights awash with wine and forbidden pleasures. And you imagined, and imagined, and each imagining was a knife he drove into your chest without being present.

The court whispered, the ladies looked at you with ill-disguised pity. Your parents wrote increasingly desperate letters, asking after heirs, after assurances, after anything that might justify the sacrifice they'd made in giving you to a dragon.

And you had no answers.

Until, one autumn morning, the news that Maekar had summoned his son back echoed through the corridors. It wasn't a request, but a command. Dragon's blood or no, Aerion was still a son, still a subject, still owed obedience to his father.

And he obeyed.

The ship docked at King's Landing's harbour beneath a grey sky threatening rain. You stood on the quay, because pride forbade you waiting in your chambers like a patient wife. You stood on the quay so he'd see you, so he'd know you hadn't bent, hadn't withered.

When he disembarked, you saw the months in Lys had done him good — or ill, depending on perspective. His face was more lined, his eyes darker, his mouth crueller. He wore silks of vibrant colours, and round his neck hung a golden collar you'd never seen before.

"Wife," he greeted, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "How good to be received by such a fair sight."

"Husband," you answered, and your voice came out as cold as you'd wished. "It's good to have you here."

He drew close, and for the first time in moons, you felt his true warmth, not merely the memory of it. So close you might touch him, if you dared.

"Did you miss me?" he murmured, low enough that only you could hear.

"I missed a husband I never had."

"You've still got a tongue, I see. Good. It'd be a shame if the months had tamed it."

He drew back before you could answer, and offered you his arm with a courtesy so perfect it almost hurt.

"Come, my father awaits me. And afterwards… afterwards we've much to discuss."

You took his arm because there was no choice, and as you walked through the streets of King's Landing, with the people bowing at the prince's passing — not from respect, but from fear — you felt his gaze upon you.

The rumour reached her ears through a trusted handmaiden, a whisper that made her blood boil and freeze all at once. King Maekar, in conversation with his son, had supposedly said that she'd grown weary of the local lands and customs, and would soon be returning home. But it was Aerion's reaction that set the court tongues wagging — the dragon had flown into a rage, bellowing at his father that she belonged to him. Not to another kingdom, not to another life — to him. Maekar, pragmatic and generous as he was, had supposedly just shrugged and reminded his son that she wasn't his. Not until the marriage was consummated. And it wasn't.

Aerion fell silent then, because in that moment, he understood; even married to her, even with her name inscribed beside his in the parchments of the Seven Kingdoms, she still wasn't his. Not the way he wanted. Not completely.

And you? You desired him. You desired him to look at you again like he did that first night, when his eyes burned your skin before any touch. You desired him to touch you, to finally slide his hands where they'd never been, to murmur your name against your neck as the night swallowed the room. You desired him to take you. To claim you.

But Aerion was cruel. He could smell your desire like smoke. He saw the way your body changed when he entered a room, how your breath caught, how that wetness gathered between your legs where no one else could see. And he delighted in it. In your exposed hunger, in the power of keeping you on the edge, in the knowledge that you waited… waited like a virgin wife who was no longer virgin in thought.

He knew you wanted him and so, he waited for you to beg.

When he returned to the chambers, the door closed with a thud that made you startle as you brushed your hair before the window. You felt his gaze before you saw him; he watched the golden robe you wore, slipped over your shoulders and you knew it wasn't yours. You'd taken it from his clothes, from those he'd brought from Lys, and the fabric held not just his scent, but the audacity of your gesture. Provocation or necessity, you no longer knew.

He sat down. The chair creaked as he leaned back, and you stayed there, turned away, your fingers pretending to fuss with your hair. But your eyes, in the window's reflection, devoured his every movement. You saw when he took a grape, deliberately. You saw when he brought it to his lips and bit. And he admired you.

Aerion bit another grape slowly, and you heard the wet sound, imagined his tongue gathering the juice from his own fingers.

"Come here." His voice broke the silence, but it wasn't a request. It never was.

Your fingers stopped in mid-air. The comb slipped, falling on the stone floor with a clink that echoed louder than it should have. You turned, slowly, and he was still there, reclined in the chair as if all the world could wait. His legs slightly apart, his free hand resting on his thigh, his eyes devouring you from head to toe and climbing back up, slower still the second time.

Because the shift you wore was thin. Diaphanous. Almost transparent in the room's half-light, but cruelly revealing where the hearth's light danced over your body. The fabric, a thread of pale silk that barely deserved the name of clothing, clung to you like a second skin, and the orange glow of the flames outlined every curve.

Your breasts, round and full, were warm from the hearth's heat, and the flush spreading across your skin was from desire. Your nipples hardened under his gaze, marking the silk with two dark buds that seemed to beg for — no, demand — his mouth. You saw when his gaze fixed there, when his jaw tightened, when the fingers on his thigh squeezed slightly.

He said nothing. But the hand that had rested idle began a slow, almost distracted movement, his fingers tracing circles on the cloth of his breeches. Beneath the dark fabric, something stirred. Hardened. And he made no effort to hide it, to disguise it — on the contrary, he shifted in the chair, his legs opening a little more, as if offering you the view, as if to say: do you see what you do to me? Do you see what you want?

You swallowed hard. Saliva scratched down your throat, because your mouth was dry, because your whole body was a single point of heat concentrated between your legs. The shift, too thin, hid nothing and you knew he saw. Saw the dark of your nipples, saw the tremor of your breath, saw likely the contour of your hips, your belly, and further down, where the triangle began to show beneath the silk, because the shift was short, because the fabric rode up when you moved, because he had commanded you to come and you had come to him and now you stood there, exposed, offered, devoured.

His eyes travelled down. Slowly. Following the line of your neck, the valley between your breasts, the curve of your waist, the parting of your legs — because you, without realising, had slightly spread your feet, as if your body already knew what your mouth dared not ask.

"I won't ask again," he said, his voice like velvet rasping over goosebumped skin.

You took a step. Then another. The distance between you shrank, and now you could see his eyes up close, their violet almost melted by the darkness of his dilated pupils. You could see his hand, still on his thigh, his fingers so close to the bulge pushing against his breeches.

"Closer."

One more step and you were between his legs now. His breath warmed the silk over your belly, and you could smell him, that strange perfume from Lys still on his clothes, the heat of his body, the almost solid desire that emanated from him like smoke.

Aerion raised his hand and his fingers touched the hem of your shift, brushing the bare skin of your thigh, and you trembled, but he didn't move higher. He stayed there, tracing slow circles on the inside of your thigh, each circle closer, each circle higher, until his fingers were a hair's breadth from where the silk was damp, where the heat seemed most intense.

"You're wet," he said. It wasn't a question.

You closed your eyes. Shame and desire twisted in your chest in a knot so tight it hurt.

"Look at me."

You looked.

"Say it."

"Yes," you whispered. "I am."

He smiled again, but the smile died quickly, replaced by something deeper, darker. His fingers finally moved higher, pushed the silk aside, found the wet heat of your cunt, the soft, open flesh, and you moaned — a small, hoarse sound that seemed to come from somewhere very deep.

He didn't touch you as you expected, just ran one finger, slowly, gathering the moisture, bringing it to his mouth afterwards, his eyes fixed on yours as he tasted.

"Sweet," he murmured. "Mine."

His fingers, still gleaming with your wetness and the saliva from his mouth, closed slowly, as if saving for later the taste his mouth had already known.

"Do you want something?" The question came sweet, almost mocking, and you knew he already knew the answer.

You swallowed hard.

"Yes."

He smiled, not with his whole mouth, just one corner, a half-smile that made your belly clench.

"What do you want?"

Bastard. He knew. He knew and wanted to hear, wanted you to confess, to humiliate yourself in your own need. You wanted him to take you. To fill you. To do what no words on marriage parchments could... mark you inside, fill you with his seed, make you his in a way no king could undo.

"I want you to touch me," you whispered.

He laughed softly, a sound that vibrated in his chest and echoed in your belly.

"I've already touched you... you want more."

It wasn't a question, it was an accusation, a provocation, the taut rope between what you dared ask and what he demanded to hear.

"Yes," the word escaped like a moan. "I want more."

His hand moved then, not to your body, but to his own lap. His fingers slid over his breeches, over the bulge that grew there, hard, hot, almost aggressive beneath the dark cloth. He squeezed, slowly, and you saw his jaw tighten, saw his head tilt back for an instant, his eyes closed.

"Do you see what you do?" he murmured, his eyes opening again, locking onto yours. "Do you see what you do to me, little whore?"

The name pierced you and you shuddered, your hands clenching at your sides, your nipples so hard they hurt against the thin silk.

"I see," you whispered.

"And do you want it?"

"I want to feel it inside me. I want to feel every vein, every pulse, every drop that comes from there. I want you to fuck me until I forget my own name, until I only know how to say yours," you replied, your knuckles white, trying to strip yourself of all dignity.

He stood then — the chair scraped back, pushed away — and suddenly he was before you, his free hand gripping your nape, pulling you close until your face was a handspan from his.

"Is that really what you want? For me to fuck you like a bitch? To mount you until you're completely wrecked, full of me, dripping my seed wherever you walk?"

"Yes," you answered without hesitation, your eyes fixed on his. "I want that and more. I want you to fill me so much I get pregnant the first time. I want to walk through this castle with your seed inside me, with your get in my womb."

His hand tightened on your nape, his fingers digging into your skin.

"Then beg. Beg as you should. Beg like the whore you are, who spends the night soaking the silk for me, who wears my clothes, who burns in my absence."

His hand moved down, found the thin strap of your shift on your shoulder, pushed it down. The silk gave way, slid, freeing one breast, the red, hard nipple meeting the cool air of the room. He looked, lingered, but didn't touch.

His hand moved down, found the thin strap of your shift on your shoulder, pushed it down. The silk gave way, slid, freeing one breast, the red, hard nipple meeting the cool air of the room. He looked, lingered, but didn't touch.

"Beg."

You opened your mouth and the words were there, all of them, dirty and sweet and desperate.

"I want you to fuck me. To claim me. To fill me with your seed until it runs down my legs, until there's no doubt in anyone's mind who I belong to, who possessed me, who made me his."

His eyes burned, burned so much you could almost feel the heat in his pupils.

"I'm going to fuck you against these walls until you can't stand. I'm going to fill you so much you'll dream of my seed. And tomorrow night I'll want you again. And again. And again. Until I'm certain it's done."

"Then do it," you challenged, your hands moving down, finding his breeches, undoing his belt with agile, impatient fingers. "Do it. Fill me. Put your heir in me. Show this whole damn kingdom that I'm yours and you're mine."

He pushed you against the wall — you felt the cold stone on your back, his heat in front — and then his breeches fell and he was naked, hard, enormous, the tip of his cock already wet, brushing your thigh.

"Look," he commanded.

And you looked down. You saw his cock, thick, long, the tip red and glistening, veins pulsing beneath stretched skin. You saw and your mouth watered, your hands moving down, wanting to touch, wanting to feel.

"It's beautiful," you murmured. "It's mine."

His hand found your cunt, his fingers parted your lips, felt the heat, the wetness, the opening that dripped, begging for him, throbbing indecently.

"This is how you beg," Aerion murmured, and finally his mouth descended on your breast.

The shock of wet heat against sensitive skin made your legs weaken. He bit, pulled, sucked with a hunger that seemed to come from somewhere very deep, while his hands tore at the thin silk, pushed away what remained of your shift, left you naked before him, before the hearth, before everything.

When his mouth released your breast, the nipple was red, throbbing, marked by his teeth. He looked, satisfied, and then his hands gripped your hips, pulled you against his body, and you felt his hard cock pressing against your belly.

"I won't be gentle," he warned, whispering in your ear. "I won't be sweet. I'll fuck you until you forget your own name, until you only know how to say mine. I'll fill you so much you'll feel my seed inside you for days. You'll walk through this Keep with your legs apart, dripping, and everyone will know."

You moaned, a loud, lost sound, as his hands turned you, pushed you against the nearest wall. Aerion brought his cock near your cunt and you saw; your whole body responded, a spasm that made more fluids run, that made your cunt open, empty, starving.

"Is this what you want?"

"Yes," you moaned. "Fill me, make me yours, fuck me until I can't walk..."

He lifted one of your legs, aligned his cockhead with your soaked cunt and pushed.

The moan that came from you was primal, animalistic, because he was big, because he filled you, because every inch that entered seemed to open a path to somewhere no one had ever been. He pushed more, more, until his hips met yours, until he was completely inside, so deep you felt your heart beating in your throat, in your eyes, in every pore.

"Deeper," you begged, whimpering. "Fill me completely. I want to feel you in my throat."

He buried himself deeper, his hips flush against yours. You wanted him to move, to fuck you, to fill you, to fulfil every damn word he'd spoken.

"Move," you begged. "Please, Aerion, move, fuck me, I want to feel..."

He moved with a slow, deep thrust that made lights explode behind your eyes. Then another. Then faster, harder, his hips slapping against yours, the wet sound of bodies meeting filling the room along with moans, curses, the filthy words he murmured in your ear.

"You're mine, sweetling. Mine. This cunt is mine, this arse is mine, this womb is mine. And I'll fill it. I'll fill you so much you'll get pregnant tonight, you'll have my child inside you, you'll walk around heavy, full of me, and everyone will know it was you who managed to tame the dragon, and when this one's born, I'll fuck you as many more times just to carry other children, isn't that what you want?"

"Y... yes," you moaned, your eyes rolling back.

The thrusts were fast now, desperate. You felt his cock sinking into your cunt, every inch, every time he buried himself to the hilt and seemed to touch your soul. Your legs faltered, but his hands held you, supported you, fucked you against the wall like you were a doll, like your body's only purpose was to receive that cock, that seed, that essence.

"I'm going to come," he warned, his voice a snarl. "I'm going to come and I want you to feel everything. I want every drop to go inside you, to swim, to find your egg and fertilise it. I want to see your belly grow. I want to see you birth my children. I want you to be the mother of my dragons."

"Yes," you screamed. "Yes, fill me, Aerion, make me yours, give me your seed, I want it all..."

He thrust one last time, deep, so deep it hurt, and then you felt it. You felt the first spurt, hot, thick, jetting inside you as if it would never end. Then another. Another. He trembled all over, roaring against your neck, while his seed spilled, filled, overflowed at the edges where your bodies met.

And you came too. Your whole body a spasm, your nails raking his back, your mouth open in a silent scream as your inner walls clenched, gripped, sucked every drop of that hot seed inside, deeper, to the very place where life began.

When he stopped spurting, he stayed inside you, still hard, still trembling. And you smiled, exhausted, empty, full, as you felt his seed running down your leg and his cock hardening again inside you.

"How long have you waited for this?" he asked, brushing your entrance. "How many moons have you knelt before me?"

"Many," you whispered, pushing back the hair that stuck to your face. "Many moons. Many nights."

"And what do you want, wife? Tell me again."

"I want your child," the words escaped in a single breath, as if you said it all at once. "I want to be the mother of your children, Aerion."

"You will be. I'll plant my heir in your womb and then I'll plant another, and another, until your body can no longer hide what we've done."

His hands found your face, and he grabbed you.

"You want to be the mother of my children? You want everyone at court to see your belly grow and know it was me who filled you?"

"Yes," you answered, and the word was a moan. "Yes, my prince."

Aerion kept moving inside you, prolonging your pleasure, taking you to higher and higher peaks.

"Now," he said when he felt you were ready again. "Now I'll fill you again. I'll give you everything you asked for."

His thrusts grew deeper, more urgent. And when you felt another spurt of his seed inside you, when you felt the heat spread through your entrails, a new orgasm took you, even more intense than the first.

He kept spilling inside you for a long time, each pulse a promise kept. And when he finally quieted, when his weight on you was a blessing instead of a burden, he kissed your forehead with a tenderness you didn't know existed in him.

"This is only the beginning," he murmured, still inside you. "Tonight I'll fill you as many times as I can. And tomorrow we'll do it again. And the day after. Until there's no doubt."

And he kept his word.

That night, he took you more times than you could count. In every position you'd imagined, in every way you'd dreamed. And each time, when he reached his end, he spilled inside you with a moan that echoed your own pleasure.

"I want to see you heavy with my child," he said the fourth time, when he had you on all fours, buried deep inside you. "I want to see your breasts swell, your belly grow. I want to feel your body change because of me."

"You will," you promised, arching back against him. "I'll give you many children. As many as you want."

"All of them," he agreed, quickening his pace. "I'll fill you so many times you'll lose count. You'll be the most fertile wife in the Seven Kingdoms."

His hands found your face, and he slapped you — a sharp, dry crack that made your head turn and your skin sting, but you smiled. His smile widened when he saw the gleam in your eyes, the way you tilted your face back, offering the other cheek.

"You want to be the mother of my dragons?" he repeated, and his hand came again, harder, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the chamber. "You want everyone at court to see your belly swell and know it was me who filled you?"

"Yes," you answered, and the word was a moan, your eyes brimming but fixed on his. "Yes, my prince. I want everyone to know I'm your whore, your wife, the mother of your dragons."

He spat in your face and the warm liquid ran down your cheek, mixing with the tears that had already begun to fall, and you moaned, your hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him closer.

"You're a bitch in heat," he murmured, his voice thick, his hips beginning a slow, deep movement that made his seed spill even more, that soaked the bed beneath you. "A bitch who only wants cock, only wants seed, only wants to be mounted by a dragon until she can't take any more."

"I am," you confessed, your voice breaking between sobs and moans. "Ride me like a dragon, make me drip..."

He spat again, and then his hands found your breasts, squeezing, twisting your nipples until they tore a scream from you — pain and pleasure mingled, confused, you no longer knew where one began and the other ended.

"Quiet!" he ordered, and his hand came again, another slap, and another, and you felt your face sting, the hot tears falling, but you didn't shut up, you didn't want to be silent, you wanted everyone to hear, everyone to know.

"I can't," you whimpered, your voice loud, uncontrolled. "I can't be silent when you fuck me like this, when you're so deep, when you're so big..."

He covered your mouth with his hand, his fingers pressing, almost suffocating, while his thrusts grew stronger, more brutal, the bed banging against the wall in a rhythm that must have been echoing through every corridor.

"You want them to hear?" he snarled in your ear, his hand still covering your mouth. "You want the whole bloody court to hear how the princess moans? How the princess cries? How the princess begs for more cock?"

You nodded, your eyes wide, tears and spit running down your face, and he laughed, a cruel, delighted sound.

"Then scream," he said, removing his hand. "Scream like the whore you are. Scream so everyone hears who you belong to."

And you screamed. When he thrust deep again, when you felt his cock pulse inside your cunt, ready to spurt again, you screamed his name, loud, desperate, a sound that wasn't human, that was pure instinct, pure hunger, pure need.

"Aerion! Aerion, fuck me, fill me, give it to me, give it to me, give—"

The spurt came before you finished the sentence. Hot, violent, jetting as if he were breathing fire inside you. Then another. Another. And you came with him, your body arched, your nails raking his back, your mouth open in a scream that must have woken half the castle.

He kept pumping, each thrust making his seed run, spread, soak your thighs, the sheets, everything. And when he finally stopped, when he lay still inside you, gasping, you felt the hot seed running, dripping, forming a puddle beneath you.

But he didn't pull out. He stayed there, still hard, pulsing inside you.

"More," you whispered, your voice hoarse from screaming. "More, Aerion."

He looked at you and saw your face swollen from crying, the marks from his slaps, the dried spit, your eyes red but bright with desire. And he smiled.

"You'll have it," he promised, and began to move again. "You'll have it until dawn. Until you can't take any more. Until you only know how to say my name."

He took you more times than you could count, in every position you'd imagined, in every way you'd dreamed. On your belly, your face buried in the pillows while he fucked you from behind and pulled your hair, wrenching screams from you that you muffled in the bedclothes. Riding him, his hands on your hips guiding the rhythm, squeezing until they left purple marks. Against the wall, your legs locked around his waist, your bodies slipping with sweat and seed that covered you like a second skin.

Each time, when he reached his end, he spilled himself inside you with a groan that echoed your own pleasure. And each time, you begged for more, wept for more, screamed for more.

"I want to see you heavy with my son," he said, when he had you on all fours, buried deep inside you, one hand tangled in your hair pulling your head back while the other slapped your arse, leaving the skin red and hot. "I want to see your breasts swell, your belly grow."

Aerion smiled, quickening his pace, his thrusts so strong you no longer had strength to hold yourself up — you collapsed onto the bed and he continued, mounted on you, fucking you like an animal. By the seventh time, you could no longer speak, only hoarse moans, silent tears, your body aching but hungry, always hungry. He laid you on your side, lifted your leg and entered again, slow, deep, and you felt every pulse.

"Do you feel it?" he murmured, his mouth at your ear. "Do you feel how hard I still am? How I still have seed to give you?"

You nodded, a sob caught in your throat.

"I'm going to come again," he warned.

"Please," you whispered, your voice thick with want. "Please, my prince, fill me again. Please don't stop. Never stop."

He groaned and thrust deep, one final time, and the seed spilled, hot, abundant, filling you once more, overflowing, running down your legs, mingling with everything already there. And when he finally quietened, when his body settled on yours like a dead weight, you still felt hunger. You still wanted more.

"Tomorrow," you murmured, your eyes closing, consciousness slipping. "Tomorrow I want more."

He laughed, tired, and kissed the nape of your neck.

"Tomorrow," he promised. "And the day after."

The next morning, you woke wrapped in his arms, with his cock still inside you — he'd stayed there all night, as if afraid the child might escape if he parted from you.

"You're still empty," he murmured, moving slowly inside you when he noticed you were awake. "I still need to fill you more."

And he filled you. And filled you. And filled you.

The days that followed were a whirlwind of pleasure and exhaustion. Aerion rarely left you, and when he did, it was only to fetch food or wine, to strengthen you for the next attempt. Your body ached in ways you'd never imagined, but each ache was a reminder of what you were doing, what you were creating.

"You're fuller today," he observed on the third day, his hand resting on your still-flat belly. "Or is it my imagination?"

"It can't be that quick," you laughed, but your heart leaped at the possibility.

"It can. We're dragon's blood… we do everything quicker."

On the fifth night, as he took you against the bedroom wall, your legs locked around his waist and your moans echoing off the stones, something changed. He stopped suddenly, his eyes wide.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, and his voice sounded strange.

"What?"

His hand moved down to your belly, pressing gently.

"There's something different."

You looked down, to where his hand touched, and for the first time you noticed a small protuberance, almost imperceptible, but there. A curve where there'd been flatness before.

"It can't be," you whispered. "It's too soon."

"I told you," he murmured, and there was triumph in his voice. "Dragon's blood."

He withdrew from you carefully and carried you to the bed, laying you on your back. His eyes never left your belly, his hand settling again on that small curve.

"My son," he murmured. "My heir... my seed growing inside you."

"Our son," you corrected, as you had so many moons ago.

This time, he didn't argue. This time, he simply nodded.

"That should have solved the problem," he said with a light laugh, his hand rubbing your belly gently. "Now you already have a child of mine."

You nodded, smiling, exhausted. He'd fucked the life into you trying to put one inside you, and they'd been the best nights of your life — nights that would soon repeat themselves.

His eyes glared at the water as if he could command the fish to bite by sheer noble decree.

“They won’t bite if you keep scowling at them,” a bright voice chimed from behind him.

Aerion stiffened, his jaw tightening. He turned his head sharply, expecting a person sent by his father to drag him back to his lessons.

Instead, he saw you.

You were the daughter of Maekar’s most trusted ally, having arrived only an hour ago.

While the adults spoke of their business, you had wandered out into the sun, your heavy skirts already trailing in the damp grass.

You looked entirely out of place among the solemn guards, a little burst of warmth against the grey stones of summerhall.

“Go away,” Aerion snapped, turning back to the water, “You’ll frighten them.”

“You’re the one frightening them,” you retorted easily, completely unbothered by the venom in his tone.

You marched right up to his rock, your slippers squelching in the mud, and plopped down beside him without asking. “My father says that fishes can sense when someone is angry. They don’t like the energy.”

“Your father is a fool, and so are you,” he hissed, expecting you to cry or perhaps run back to the castle.

But you didn’t seem bothered as you tilted your head, watching the bobber dance on the ripples. “You’re doing it wrong anyway. The bait is too high.”

Aerion opened his mouth to deliver a cutting remark—something about how a dragon did not take lessons from a silly girl—but before the words could leave his lips, your smaller, warmer hands brushed against his.

You reached out, bypassing his defensive posture, and gently adjusted his grip on the handle, lowering the tip of the rod so the bait sank properly into the water.

The prince froze. No one touched him without permission. No one dared.

Yet, as the silence stretched between you, the bobber suddenly dipped aggressively. A heavy tug yanked the line down, nearly pulling the rod from his hands.

“See!” you gasped, your face lighting up with a blinding grin. “Pull, Aerion! Pull!”

Forgetting his pride, Aerion yanked the rod back with all his boyhood strength. A massive trout broke the surface, thrashing wildly and splashing mud and lakewater directly across his pristine tunic, and right into your face.

Aerion braced himself for the screaming. Noble girls and boys always screamed when they got dirty.

But then a bright laughter echoed across the banks. “Look at the size of it! We caught it!”

Aerion looked from the wiggling fish to your mud splattered face. His lips twitched, fighting a smile before he forced his features back into a proud mask.

“I caught it,” he corrected, though his voice lacked any real bite. “You merely watched.”

“We caught it,” you insisted, bending down to take a closer look at the trout.

Your father’s visit ended shortly after, and the brief, strange kinship evaporated into memory as the years pulled you both down separate paths.

Years slipped by like water through fingers, and when you finally returned to court as a young woman, the boy by the lake had become a man feared by the entire realm.

Aerion was breathtakingly beautiful, and notoriously cruel. He walked through court with a sharp tongue and a sharper temper, but that did not faze you.

From afar, Aerion watched you navigate the treacherous nature of court. You were a vision of light, offering warm smiles to the guards, listening patiently to the older women, and showing unfaltering kindness to everyone you crossed.

To him, it was grating. All noble ladies were trained to be sweet, performing acts of grace to secure a good match or win the favour of higher lords.

He waited for you to finally lose your cool.

But the day never came. No, the reality of your kindness crashed directly into him one afternoon near the small council chamber.

You were walking down the corridor with a butterfly that had landed on your arm when the doors of the chamber burst open.

A flurry of lords tumbled out into the hall, fleeing in terror. Among them was the master of coin, frantically wiping dark ink from his doublet with his bleeding hands, his face pale as death.

“Seven hells,” one of the other lords whispered hoarsely, scurrying past you. “The prince has lost his mind entirely!”

You stopped, watching the chaotic retreat. Instead of turning back like any sensible person would, you set the butterfly on a nearby branch and stepped through the heavy doors.

An iron candelabra laid overturned on the floor, dark wax spilling across the polished wood, and an inkwell had been shattered against the wall.

Aerion stood by the high window, his back to you. His shoulders were incredibly tense, and his chest was rising and falling with heavy, angry breaths.

“I thought I made it clear,” Aerion growled without turning, “The next soul to disturb me will lose their tongue.”

“Then it is a good thing I am capable of writing. I do not need my tongue.” you responded lightly, closing the heavy door behind you.

Aerion went still. He turned slowly, his stormy eyes dark with lingering rage. When his gaze landed on you, he let out a harsh, bitter scoff.

“Come to play the saint for me too?” he sneered, maintaining his distance. “Save your sweet smiles for the lords in the hall. I have no patience for your endless charity.”

You took a few measured steps into the room, keeping a respectful distance yourself.

“I don't think they don’t understand how stressful it can be,” you said softly, ignoring his cruel words. “they whisper and push, expecting you to sit quietly while they try to manage your family’s rights. It makes sense that you’d lose your patience when they refuse to listen.”

He stared at you from across the room, his mind struggling to process what he was hearing. He had expected an admonishment, or at the very least, fear.

“They are parasites,” Aerion muttered, his posture unlocking just a fraction. “They look at me as if I am mad because I refuse to let them dictate my bloodline’s terms.”

“I can see that,” you replied gently, giving a small smile. “They may be stressed as well, but no one should have to bend to their whim.”

The room went silent before you spoke again.

“Whenever the court gets too loud for me, I find that walking around the gardens helps. The fresh air is always calming.. maybe it would help you too. It’s quiet out there.”

The fire in his eyes flickered, clearly caught off guard by the suggestion. He stared at your face, the lines of his memory remembering the specific curve of your smile.

A breathless laugh escaped him.

“The gardens?” Aerion repeated, his voice dropping the edge it possessed just moments ago.

He took a step forward, assessing your form. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Years ago at Summerhall, you told me the fish wouldn’t bite because of my ‘anger.’ Now you’re trying to herd me into the bushes to calm down.”

Your eyes widened slightly in surprise, a soft laugh bubbling up. “You remember that?”

“I remember a girl pushing my hands around and getting me covered in mud,” he murmured.

He then let out a soft click of his tongue, turning to look at the doorway. “Fine. We will walk the gardens. But only because your previous method somehow worked.”

“Of course,” you smiled.

As the weeks progressed, a unique friendship blossomed between you.

Aerion still remained difficult as ever to the rest of the world, but your presence seemed to simmer that down.

The shift did not go unnoticed by the ladies of the court, leading to an afternoon that they wouldn’t stop gossiping about for days.

You were walking through the outer courtyard with a small retinue of noble ladies, the daughters of prominent lords from the Reach. They were talking endlessly, giggling as they spoke of whatever irrelevant topics crossed their minds.

“You must be careful, my dear,” one of the ladies said, leaning in closer to you. “Prince Aerion may be amused by your novelty but once he grows bored of playing with his new toy, you will be left with nothing but yourself.”

“He is a prince of the blood,” another lady chimed in, her voice tight. “They take what pleases them for a moment and cast it aside. Do not mistake a tyrant’s passing curiosity for actual regard.”

“Aerion simply values sincerity,” you replied, offering an unbothered smile. “There is no game being played.”

“You are far too gullible–” the former lady was cut when Aerion walked out from the room beside.

The ladies instantly adjusted their posture, immediately dropping to curtsies as he approached, each of them desperately hoping to catch the prince’s favour despite their previous warnings to you.

Aerion ignored them, his eyes locking firmly onto you.

Without a word of greeting, and completely disregarding decorum, he walked into the center of the group and stepped right into your space, his frame towering over you.

“You’re late,” his voice was low—meant strictly for you, though it carried across the hall.

“Late for what, my Prince?” you asked, tilting your head up to meet his gaze with your beaming expression.

“I am going to the cliffs, and you are coming with me,” he stated flatly.

Behind you, a collective intake of breath echoed from the ladies. Here he was, actively seeking you out, his attention consuming you and utterly shattering their spiteful claims that you were just a passing game.

You looked back at the girls, giving one last smile before parting from them. “Very well, my Prince, if you insist.”

“I do,” Aerion tilted his head, turning on his heel to fall into step right beside you, his side brushing against yours as he guided you out of the yard.

That would not be the first or last time the court would witness the two of you separating from the rest of the world.

During one evening, after failing in your search for Aerion through the whole castle, you found him alone in the secluded parts of the library.

He was sitting alone, staring dead at a massive volume of ancient Valyrian history.

“I am not in the mood for company,” he hissed out, “leave.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in worry before approaching and setting down a small plate of pastries on the corner of the table. You pulled out the empty chair beside him and sat down despite his request.

Reaching over the plate, you picked up a small pastry and held it right in front of his face, completely disregarding his brooding glare.

“Eat,” you insisted gently as Aerion still refused to acknowledge you. “You always go for these specific ones. I know you like them.”

His fingers that had been gripping the edge of the book twitched, and he finally turned his head to look at you.

The weight on his shoulders gradually disappeared as he looked at the pastry, then up at your fond expression.

Aerion didn’t move to take it from your hand. Keeping his intense gaze locked firmly onto yours, he leaned slightly forward.

Then, totally unprompted, he took a bite right out of the pastry while it was still held between your fingers.

A tiny giggle slipped past your lips, a bright warmth blooming all the way to the tips of your ears at the sheer intimacy of it.

You tried to bite your lip to hide your surprise, but your shoulders shook with quiet amusement as you looked into his smug face.

Aerion chewed slowly, the corners of his lips twitching at your giddy reaction.

“You are ridiculous,” he murmured as he swallowed.

“Maybe,” you agreed, your heart fluttering as you set the remaining half down onto the plate. “But it worked. You feel better already, don’t you?”

Aerion stared at you for a moment, drinking in your presence. He did feel better—the tight, suffocating knot in his chest had already unraveled. But it was certainly not because of the pastry.

Slowly, he hesitantly reached out across the small space between your chairs. With one deliberate movement, he dragged your chair until it hit his.

Then, his hand moved to flip over on the table with his palm facing up, his fingers sprawling open in a silent, stubborn invitation.

You, on the other hand, did not hesitate. You slid your hand into his palm, your fingers easily weaving through his.

Aerion squeezed your hand, his rings pressing firmly against your skin, though his touch was surprisingly careful.

However, the true demonstration of expanse that you two had built played out before the entire court during a grand feast, where Aerion’s attempt to maintain his reputation crumbled.

The feast was deafeningly loud.

You were seated next to Aerion by Prince Maekar.

Aerion had spent the first half of the feast interacting with other lords while you conversed with other ladies.

He was glaring at a group of lesser lords when he noticed your sudden silence. Just then, some of the lords he had been talking to earlier called out to him and he tried to force his eyes back on them.

Aerion was aware that you two were the topic of conversation as of late. He couldn’t let the people of court think he had gone soft. At least that was what his pride told him.

But the sight of your fragile form pulled at him like a physical anchor, shattering his resolve. His demeanor instantly changed.

He turned fully in his seat toward you, his cold stare evaporating.

“You’re pale,” Aerion murmured, voice stripped away of anything harsh. “What is it?”

“Just… a headache, Aerion,” you whispered softly, giving him a tired smile. “The noise is particularly loud tonight.”

Aerion didn’t waste a second as he gently used his hand to cradle the back of your head.

His fingers began combing through the loose parts of your hair, his thumb tracing circles down your temple to ease the pressure.

The chatter around the surrounding tables died down, dozens of eyes tracking his movements, yet no one dared to disrupt. They watched as Aerion paid no mind to everything else the moment you showed discomfort.

You leaned into his touch, a smile returning to your face. “Aerion… everyone is watching.”

Aerion let out a defeated sigh as he grinned. “Let them stare,” he concluded, his fingers tucking in a strand of hair behind your ear. “You’ve broken me anyway.”

Shifting his broad shoulders, he blocked the rest of the room from view, shielding you from prying eyes.

“You are tired,” he paused, “if anyone breathes a word about that, I will have their heads.”

“You can’t murder the entire court,” you teased, lifting your head up for a moment.

Forcing your eyes open, you turn around, trying to see if any of the stairs are open. That’s when you see him—a white-haired man who appears to be stuck in… something. His arms are bound behind his back as he’s talking to a black-haired man in front of him.

Blood rushes through your veins, heartbeat in your ears. You don’t hear anything over the dull thump thump thump, but you just know your heels are click clacking on the once-white floors, leaving behind crimson footprints.

You nearly slip a few times, the sticky substance making the already polished floors even harder to navigate, and you nearly wipe out just before you’re standing behind the white-haired man.

“It’s okay, we can get you out of here,” you whisper—or maybe you’re shouting? You’re not sure. All you know is that you’re tug tug tugging on the fleshy things that are keeping him bound in place, to no avail. The eyes on the corner cubes look at you, trying to claw at the fleshy substance, and if it had a mouth, you’re sure it would be laughing at you.

Fingers trembling, you go to see if it has any weak points, fingers skimming over the man’s forearm that’s still restricted, trying—and failing—to see if you can just get your fingers under it. To free him and get the two of you out of here.

You’re aware of the eyes that are on you—too many eyes. Blue, amethyst and those black ones that aren’t human, but you just can’t…. can’t give up now. This man is looking so lost, so you keep trying, whispering under your breath that it will be fine.

And then it’s all black. You’re falling, but also not. Your hair whips around your face and you can feel the way your headband shifts on your head by the sudden draft, but you’re still standing. Completely dark, until it’s not.

Stumbling, you instinctively shoot a hand out to try and keep yourself from falling. Luckily that seems to work, because your hand grazes something… gritty? Huh, a brick wall?

Sight returns to you next. For a second you think this has to be a joke—a prank you weren’t in on. Because your hand is on something round and white and— and…

Oh god, oh god, oh god oh god oh god.

Gagging, you turn slightly to the side, before emptying the contents of your stomach onto the floor. Your hair dangles in front of your face for a second, before you can feel someone pull it away from your face, holding it in a neat ponytail.

You’re still throwing up, but you blindly jab your elbow behind you, the touch scaring you. A warm hand clamps itself over your elbow, preventing it from going any further. “Easy now, that’s it, let it all out.”

A warm voice comes from behind you while the hand is rubbing small, soothing circles on your underarm. It’s a sweet gesture, honestly.

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you finally look behind you, and sure enough, you’re met with white hair. Only this time it’s standing up, and a blindfold is placed over his brilliantly blue eyes.

A Kakashi cosplayer. Of course you tried to save a Kakashi cosplayer out of everyone in the crowd. But then again, what else could you have done? Leave the poor guy behind while everyone was getting slaughtered left and right? No, that wouldn’t be right.

When he notices you looking at him, he lets go of your hair, and it gently sways back in place. From the corner of your eye you can see bits and pieces of gunk—whether it’s your own vomit or flesh or even brain matter, you’re not sure, and you honestly do not want to know, either—in the strands of your hair. Fucking fantastic.

Putting his arms in the pockets of his jacket, he walks to the other side of the… room? and goes to sit down. Straight. Onto. The. Skulls.

Another wave of nausea hits you as you turn back around and heave.

The stranger is up in a flash, right behind you as he holds your hair out of your face once more. This time he isn’t touching you, which you’re honestly grateful for.

A few minutes later, he goes to stand on the opposite of the room, leaning back against the wall of skulls that are rattling. That’s right, the whole room is made of white, rattling, human skulls. You go to stand in the middle of the room, not touching anything but the bones you’re standing on, staining them in crimson.

“You should’ve just ran, you know,” the man finally speaks up, having crossed his arms over his chest. There’s a faint sadness to his voice that you don’t want to think about right now, so you just huff and roll your eyes. “I’m serious. I tried to get you out of there, but you kept trying to free me.”

Ah, so he had tried to talk to you. Not that you heard him, though. The blood rushing through your veins alongside your heartbeat in your ears and the confused murmurs of the people made you not be able to hear anything.

“Yeah well, I’m sorry I tried to do something,” your own arms cross over your chest, trying to cover some of your cleavage. “No one could get out, and then I saw you in that… thing, and I couldn’t just not help.”

The man lets out a humorous laugh, shaking his head while he finally slides down the wall, rubbing his hands over his face. “Of course I get stuck in here with a non-sorcerer.”

Wrinkling your nose you look down at your outfit—yet another mistake of the night. You were so focused on the skulls that you had forgotten that there are all sorts of… gunk on you; mostly blood. Your pristine white heels still stained in crimson.

In a flash you’re crouching, trying to wrench the stupid things off without touching anything that isn’t leather or whatever the fuck these cute heels were made of.

When you and your friends made plans to go out for Halloween tonight, you didn’t expect your night to end like this. Well, who would have guessed, anyway. It isn’t a normal occurrence, so you didn’t really think about people being massacred.

The tight body con is sticking to your skin, crinkling as you’re crouched down, and you can vaguely remember your friend telling you that you should put lube on it to keep it nice and shiny. No thank you, you didn’t want to walk around all sticky. Seems like that part didn’t really work, though, cause the crimson substance is sticky on your skin.

Once you get the heels off, you throw them to the far end of the room, not wanting to have them anywhere near you any longer.

It’s when you look down that you notice the second thing—flesh. Stuck in your fishnets. Swallowing down the bile that’s threatening to rise up your throat, you clamp your fingers on one of the pieces before yanking it off.

There’s a slight tearing sound that doesn’t sound like anything fabric, before you throw the piece away again. Your hands shake as your breath gets shaky. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inha—

Two big hands clamp themselves over yours. “It’s okay. Hey, hey, look at me. Here—” he puts your hands over his chest as he takes a biiigg breath in, nodding at you to follow him, which you try to do. “That’s it. Can you do it again for me?”

Slowly, the two of you get your breathing back under control. A few tears have escaped from your eyes as you look up at the man. His blindfold is around his neck now, those bright, blue eyes staring down at you with concern.

“There we go, all better,” he whispers as he keeps looking you over. “Close your eyes.”

“I.. wait, what?” That is not something you expected to hear from the guy, not after he just called you a ‘non-sorcerer’—whatever the fuck that means. You thought Naruto and his friends were Ninja’s, but maybe they’re called sorcerers over there? “C’mon, I’ll clean you up. Just close your eyes.”

Your mouth opens and closes a few times before you finally nod. Heavy pieces of hair graze your cheek, leaving behind a wet substance on your skin, but you don’t try to wipe it away.

There’s the sound of him pulling something out of his pocket before he whispers a ‘I’m going to touch you now’, which he only does when he gets your little ‘okay’ in return. The first touch of a tissue against your cheek makes you jolt, but you keep still.

The stranger wipes your face clean—he even wipes your forehead and chin, which you hadn’t even realised were stained with whatever—before he cleans your hair as best as he can with the tissue. It’s when he balls it up and throws it over to the same corner as where your shoes are that you decide to speak up.

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me,” you mumble, feeling him crouched in front of you as he plucks things out of your fishnets while he wipes away all the blood from your skin with a new, clean tissue. “I don’t think you would’ve wanted to be stuck with someone in a sexy bunny outfit.”

The ears on your head droop a bit at the mention, and you’re glad you can’t see them, because you do not want to see if they also have blood and brain matter all over it. But then again, he didn’t clean them, so surely they aren’t dirty?

“You don’t have to apologise,” he says, still crouched down in front of you, meticulously wiping you clean. “I should’ve known it wasn’t really him.”

That confuses you just a little. Is he talking about the black-haired man that was standing in front of him? Now that you think back on it, it did seem like they were having a conversation of sorts.

Clearing your throat, you shift your weight slightly as he makes his way toward your back, going to wipe away whatever is on your calves. “Still, I’m sure there’s better company to be had.”

He just hums, a sound that barely travels over the rattling of the skulls underneath your feet. Your toes curl in, actually feeling them now that you’re focusing on them. It’s not something you want to focus on, but there’s literally nothing else to think about but that and all the bodies.

The rattling reminds you of mere minutes ago, when the train tracks started to rumble and people thought they could get out. Hope in their voices as they announced the train was coming—coming to save them from being slaughtered.

People were still dropping like flies left and right by unseen forces. Thud. thud. thud. thud. Another body. A head dropping from its neck. Piles upon piles of people who were standing there mere seconds ago—from laughing to annoyance to panic. Laughter turned into screams turned into silence.

You could hear it, the train coming closer and closer, big headlights illuminating the space as people pushed and pushed and ran towards the doors, trying to get in and get out of here. The savior in this horrid, horrid place.

The click clack of your heels turned faster and faster, until you, too, were stood behind people, trying to get onto the train that had just gotten here. People were pushing and shoving, elbows catching ribs, tender skin bruising under the force.

Thud. thud. thud. More and more screams got cut off.

You didn’t dare to look to the sides, just focused on the blonde hair of the girl with angel wings in front of you. It was swaying wildly as she looked around and pushed people out of the way to get closer to the doors, her own heels click click clicking on the tiles.

And then the doors opened with a hiss, the sound that should’ve relieved you, the sound that would’ve meant you guys could get out of there—only that wasn’t the only sound that was made. Weird gurgling noises were made before the first scream ripped itself from someone’s throat.

Countless of… monsters stumbled out of the train—blue, green, purple; all sorts of sickly hues and deformed limbs—biting and clawing at anything and everything they could get their deformed hands on. The biting of the heads, flesh tearing, clothes ripping, the sound of blood spraying out of wounds.

No, no, no, no— shaking your head, you ran back, as far away as possible from the train, from the monsters that poured out of there. The polished tiles that were once white were now covered in a pool of blood, the sound sick to your ears as it muffled the footsteps.

Stepping back, you shake your head. “No— no. no. This can’t be happening—”

Instead of your foot landing on blood-slicked tile, it fell onto leather. A shoe is underneath you, knee pressing into your calf as you stumble back, falling right into the arms of the stranger that was cleaning you up from all the horrors that happened mere minutes ago.

“It’s okay… Nothing to see here. Just me and you,” the man whispers into your ear as he wraps an arm around your shaking body. One hand cards itself through your hair as he whispers how everything is okay now, that there are no more monsters.

Sobs tear themselves from your throat, fat tears cascading down your face as you bury your face into his jacket, dampening the fabric quickly.

Your fingers claw at anything you can reach—his back, his arms, his thighs, your own thighs. The sound of your fishnets ripping has you scream out, fingers clawing at your own ears and eyes. Just get it out, get it out, get out.

Big hands gently take a hold of your fingers, preventing you from hurting yourself any further. They’re soft, big in only a way that makes sense if the person attached to it was also big. “Hey, hey… no hurting yourself. C’mon, let go of your ears.”

You can’t. Can’t get rid of the sounds, the visuals. Flesh tearing, blood splattering and draining from a wound, clothes ripping, limbs popping off like Lego pieces.

It’s on the floor, the ceiling, clothes—on you. It’s on you. There’s blood and gunk and brain matter on you. Fingers twitching, your arms jerk in his hold trying to scrub away the blood . There’s so much of it—your heels once white are now red.

The stranger doesn’t let go of your hand, just holds on a little tighter as he cradles you against his body, still whispering in your ear that everything is fine now. That nothing will hurt you in here, so you have to stop hurting yourself. But how can you? How can you when there’s so much on you.

Blood. There’s so much blood, the copper scent filling your nostrils with each stuttering inhale. It’s dripping down your face, onto your legs, onto your shoes. Drip. Drip. Drip.

“Can you open your eyes for me, please?” the white-haired man’s voice is a little more desperate now, still cradling you against his chest in a way that constricts your hands. Fingers are still clawing at him, no doubt leaving behind angry marks, if not worse. But you can’t focus on that right now. “C’mon, open your eyes. Promise nothing will happen.”

Swallowing, you do. Blinking a few times, your vision is blurry with tears, body still trembling, fingers now digging into his jacket. The first thing you see when your vision clears up is those brilliantly blue eyes, the ones you saw earlier.

Once he sees you look at him, he smiles. Small, a little brittle, but real. It’s there on his glossy lips, directed at you.

“See,” he whispers, arms still holding you tight in case you want to claw your own flesh out once again, gauge it all out, scrub it clean until there’s only tendon and nerves remaining. “Just me. And you.”

Taking is a stuttering breath, you go to look beside you when he quickly grabs your chin and directs your gaze back over to him. “Just focus on me for now, okay?”

And you do, not once looking back from those beautiful shades of blue until your breath finally evens out. Until your heartbeat slows down enough for him to grab a—new—tissue for your face. This time not because there’s blood and gunk on it, but because of the snot and the tears.

You accept the tissue with clammy hands, before you wipe your face, grimacing slightly at the feeling. God, you probably look like a mess—you certainly feel like one. Your gaze drops down a little to his jacket, seeing the way it’s soaked through at a spot, no doubt your doing.

He follows your gaze and chuckles. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve had worse things on my clothes than a bit of tears and snot.”

Well that certainly doesn’t help you, because it immediately makes you think back at the blood and the— shaking your head quickly, you lean back slightly. His grip loosens, but he keeps you on his lap, afraid that making one wrong move will send you over the edge once more.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, voice hoarse with the way you were sobbing and screaming—yes, you were screaming. At one point Gojo thought he would go deaf, but he couldn’t just let go of you with the way you were trying to gauge your own flesh out.

“It’s okay,” he reassures you, hands still on your waist and hip—in a respectful way, of course—as he looks at you. Your gaze finally flits down—half because you’re shy with the way he’s devoting his attention on you, not that he can really do much else here in this hellhole, and half because you just remembered he was cleaning you up.

Sure enough, your skin is entirely clean. The only blood you can see is on a few of the skulls a few meters away where you were stood when you still had your heels on. Following the trail, you see the way you walked, before the stranger puts a hand before your eyes.

“You might not wanna look there. Blood and your stomach’s content,” he meekly says, white bangs falling in front of his eyes slightly.

Right, you threw up because of the vibrating skulls. The entire walls and floor are spanned in them, no other sounds being made apart from your breathing. The sound that triggered the flashback of the train and the people.

“Sorry,” you mumble again—this time without you really knowing what you’re apologising for; the fact that you threw up and he had to hold your hair back, or the fact that he was cleaning you up and you quite literally stumbled into his lap while having a panic attack, or the fact that you got him all scratched up during the episode. Well, whatever, you’ll apologise ten times over if you need to.

“Like I said, not the worst thing that has happened to me,” his smile returns to his face as he finally lets go of your waist, but doesn’t move you from his lap. Shrugging off his jacket, he lays it down on the ground for you, patting it with his hand. “You can sit on this, if you want.”

That’s honestly so sweet—everything he has done so far is incredibly sweet. All the gross things that have happened in the past, what, twenty-ish minutes were all things he didn’t have to do, but did so anyway without a second thought.

Shuffling off his lap, you go to sit onto his jacket, and it’s big enough for you to even stretch your legs a bit. Pulling your knees up, you wrap your arms around them while putting your chin on them. It’s only now that you remember that you’re half-naked.

Your cheeks heat up in an instant, heartbeat going wild behind your ribcage as you pull your knees up further, trying to hide your cleavage from the man’s gaze. Not that he’s looking at you, he’s respectfully looking away, fingers fiddling with each other on his lap as white wisps of hair gently fall over his eyes.

“Were you out with friends?” The question falls from your lips before you can stop it, having to say something to fill the silence. To not think about what just happened on the train platform.

He looks up at that, cerulean gaze lifting up to your bunny ears before they find your eyes. He just looks at you for a second, a beat too long, causing you start squirming in place.

Right, he probably doesn’t wanna be reminded of the fact that his friends could very well be dead.

Luckily—or unluckily—for you, you were the only one who had to catch the train to go back home. All of your friends were still bar-hopping, but you had an early morning and couldn’t afford to go home late tonight.

“No, I got… called into work,” he mumbles, then puts on a smile that stretches thin at the edges. Winking, he pulls his blindfold up, hiding those pretty blues from you once more. In a way, you’re sad that he decides to hide them.

The blue is actually perfect, but you thought Kakashi had a red eye or something like that with markings in it instead of those beautiful blues he’s sporting. Where did he even get those contact lenses from? And why would he go into work with a cosplay on? “Working while in cosplay?”

He raises one, snowy brow at that. It peeks out just over his blindfold. Leaning back onto his elbows, he plays with the fabric a little, pulling it away from his face before he lets it snap back against his skin. “This isn’t a cosplay.”

At that you raise your own eyebrow. If it isn’t a cosplay, then what is it? His hair isn’t gray as far as you can see, but rather stark while. The only people who have white hairs are— “Oh! You’re an albino… then why the blindfold?”

The words slip out before you can even stop them. People might not like it if they get called an albino, after all. Or maybe they do, you’re not sure. All you know is that you put a hand in front of your mouth, clamping it shut.

He laughs at that, a full chested laugh that rings in the space, echoing slightly off the walls. Pearly whites on full display, and gosh, doesn’t he have cute canines! They’re slightly sharp, poking into his bottom lip—not vampire sharp, just natural.

“You know, I don’t think anyone has ever said that to my face before,” he chuckles, swiping away a stray tear that threatens to soil the fabric. Sitting back up, he lets the blindfold fall around his neck again, hair falling down into his face.

And it’s true, in all of his life, people either looked at him as ‘The Strongest’ or ‘The Six Eyes bearer’, and never just as a person. There has always been some sort of strength test as far as he can remember, even from when he was a mere child.

Back at the estate, he was isolated from all the other children, having to train at the bright and early age of three years old, never being able to just play with the other kids.

Of course he had tried sneaking out before, tried to just be normal kid, but his caretakers always found him and drug him back towards the estate, to his room which was plain, for the Six Eyes cannot have his focus wean on silly things such as toys.

When he got to high school, he wasn’t reminded that he was the strongest constantly. No, Geto and Shoko saw him as a normal person—to a point, of course. But that all changed after he defected. The shared laughter turned into silence.

And fuck, hasn’t it been long since someone just looked at him like a person rather than Gojo Satoru, The Strongest sorcerer of the modern world.

An albino. Granted, that’s the first time someone has actually said that, out loud. While white hair was prevalent in the Gojo clan, he was an albino after all. But no one, and he means absolutely no one had said that before, considering they thought the Six Eyes were this pretty blue, but it was actually never confirmed to be.

Maybe being stuck with a non-sorcerer isn’t as bad as he initially thought it would be. Honestly, anything is better than being alone here. The lady in a sexy bunny costume, stuck, with him. It’s laughable, honestly. It’s also definitely something that… thing didn’t account for, judging from the look on his face when the two of you got sucked into the realm.

Looking over at you, he really looks. Not at the costume, but at the person. You still have a mortified expression on your face after calling him an albino, scrambling to undo your mistake of blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

It’s cute, honestly. The slight flush to your face only adds to it, and Gojo can see the way your blood is rushing to your cheeks, further solidifying the fact that you’re utterly embarrassed.

The bunny ears on top of your head shift with each movement, headband thiiiss close to falling from your head until you push it back. It’s the only part of you that didn’t get stained in blood. The white fluff is still completely white. But that little cotton tail however… yeah even thinking back on it, he winces.

Your shoes definitely aren’t faring any better, being thrown to the side the moment you finally took them off. Skulls still painted velvet from where you walked, but he doesn’t mind as much. Blood, he can do. Exorcising curses really isn’t for the weak-stomachs, and if you did have one, you would overcome it sooner than later.

Luckily your body con itself is completely black, but he did have to wipe some off—not that you noticed that part, too busy reliving the past thirty minutes in your mind to completely know what was going on in the meantime.

The little tail couldn’t be saved, but he did try to wipe off most of the blood, the once-white fluff now a more pink-ish color.

You’re still trying to cover yourself, and he wishes he had something other than his jacket to offer. Luckily it isn’t cold here, but he can’t imagine how uncomfortable it is to be stuck with someone you don’t know whilst being half-naked.

God, he really pulled a non-sorcerer into his nonsense. But then again, it’s probably better you’re here rather than outside right now. Here you can’t be attacked—can’t die the gruesome death many, many others have suffered.

A chill runs up his spine. He tried, he really did, but of course he had to be caught off-guard. A brain using his former best-friend’s body as an vessel to catch him off-guard, truly sick and twisted.

You’re scrambling closer to the white-haired man, apologising over and over again until he finally holds up one of his hands. “It’s okay, really. I don’t think anyone has ever connected the dots before.”

That makes you shut up, perched on your knees as you’re leaned forward, eyes still wide but your mouth finally having stopped moving. “I— really?”

“Really,” he confirms, a small smile still gracing his lips as he looks at the wall before his eyes slide back over to you. “People don’t really look at me that way.”

You tilt your head at that, looking him over—like actually just looking. Not thirsting over him, though he can see the way your heart starts to beat a bit faster, not looking at him like he’s the strongest, but just assessing him as a person.

“You have white hair, and white eyelashes. Your eyes are bright blue—which is a common thing in albinism, though people often think they only have red or purple eyes because of the lack of pigment in the eyes, but if they just looked it up they would see people with albinism most often have bright blue eyes—and your skin is slightly on the pink side, almost as if you got sunburnt—did you get sunburnt?”

He wasn’t ready for the assessment, nor the whole explanation behind the eye color in people with albinism. And the way you’re so confident, saying it with your full chest, it just… does something complicated to his heart.

All this time he liked to hide behind sarcastic quips to not show any vulnerability. That has been drilled into him since he was younger, after all. The Six Eyes cannot cry. The Six Eyes is stronger than anyone else, control your emotions. The Six Eyes— Never was it Satoru the toddler. People cared about his status, his symbolism in the sorcerer world, rather than the person who was beneath all of that.

And here you are—a complete stranger—just rambling on about how he’s an albino out of everything. Most of the time when non-sorcerers—both men and women alike—came up to him, it was to tell him how hot or pretty he was, or to just slip their numbers into his hand, trying to be discreet while absolutely failing at it.

But not you, the person he got stuck in this god-forsaken prison with. No, you just see him as he is. An albino person, albeit a pretty one at that.

The two of you talk a bit more about anything and everything, him trying to keep your mind off what just happened on the train platform. The exchange of names is a quick thing, and it sometimes still surprises Gojo that someone doesn’t know his name.

Of course he knows non-sorcerers don’t know his name, but he isn’t around enough of them for him to actually feel that—sure he goes outside and everything, but he doesn’t have the time to just strike up a conversation with whoever he so pleases. He has duties to do with deadlines, and enough people are already pissed at him because of his carefree persona.

He sees the way your eyes flit to the corner where your shoes are, and it’s like everything suddenly slams back into you—the bodies, the screams, the monsters. The chatter immediately dies, smile vanishing from your face as you pull your knees up to your chest.

You’re not sure how much time has passed, but it feels like it has been hours already, and maybe it has. But you’re not sure. Your bag lay somewhere abandoned on the platform, which has your phone and everything in it.

Gojo apparently also doesn’t have a phone with him. Why he doesn’t, you’re not sure, but it’s not something you’re going to ask him, either. So it’s just up to you to guess how long it has been.

The light in the room doesn’t change, even though the two of you have been silent for a while now, so there’s no indicator of the sun setting or rising or anything.

You start picking at your nails, trying not to show how restless you’re becoming, but it’s getting harder and harder the more time slips through your fingers.

The silence grows uncomfortable, the two of you having nothing to talk about. It’s almost as if the words get stolen right from your throat every time you try to voice something, anything so you two aren’t alone in this room. The only sounds right now are the skulls rattling, jaws snapping together as the two of you just breathe.

It’s hard to do that—breathe. The room feels tinier than before. It wasn’t that spacious to begin with, but with each inhale it seems to be closing in on you even further.

Gojo is just lounging back, one arm propped behind his head as the other plays with his blindfold. He occasionally mumbles something to himself, but he doesn’t try to address you even once.

Why on god’s green earth would he just… lie there?! Acting as if any of this is normal. As if it’s normal what happened mere hours ago. …Has it even been hours? It feels like it has, but you’re not sure.

The sound of his blindfold snapping against his skin has you flinching slightly. It’s not something he’s doing on purpose, clearly lost in his own mind, muttering to himself about things you don’t bother to ask, but the snap snap snap makes you slowly inch away from him.

You shift where you’re seated right now, the rough texture of the skulls grates against your skin with each shift. Your toes curl in, trying to not think about the fact that you’re seated on skulls. You’ve been seated on skulls.

They’re everywhere. Underneath you, behind you, in front of you—as far as the eye can see. White, round, gritty, jaws snapping against each other but never actually biting. It’s all you can focus on, how much white there is.

Skulls, Gojo’s hair, the stupid bunny ears that have flopped over, obstructing your view with a patch of fuzzy white hair. White, white, white. The only things that aren’t white are your costume and Gojo’s clothes.

Looking around, it’s all you can see. White skulls snapping together. If it weren’t for the skeleton in the far right corner, you would’ve thought that this was a room full of skulls—hell, at first you thought they were only skulls—but they’re full on skeletons. Stacked so tight together you can’t see them.

But that’s all there is to the room. Skeletons. White as far as the eye can see, except for the two anomalies that are you and Gojo. Blinking you look around again, skulls, skulls and more skulls. No necessities such as water or food.

No water or food.

Shit. The two of you are trapped here in a prison without fuel. Is that… is that why all these skeletons are here? Because they starved to death.

Your mouth suddenly feels parched, swallowing a few times, you try to get rid of the sensation, but it doesn’t help. If anything, it makes it worse—bile threatening to come up the more times you swallow.

Looking over at Gojo, you note how he’s still now. Finger no longer playing with his own blindfold, nor murmuring to himself. His head is tipped back, arms crossed over his chest.

Does he not realise the situation the two of you are in?

Standing up, you can feel the gritty texture of the skulls through your costume, scraping against your back slightly. It’s not something you’re currently thinking about. No, if anything, you turn around to face the wall, fingers skimming over the skulls, careful not to get bit by them.

Surely this prison can’t be endless. Your fingers skim across the wall of skulls, rattling under the pads of your fingers as you try to find something—anything that confirms your suspicions. Sure, Gojo said there wasn’t anything the two of you could do, but you just refuse to believe that. refuse to believe that someone build a prison that truly had no out.

What the fuck even is this thing. Back outside it was all fleshy with eyes that actually moved, tracking movement every time you pulled on the flesh that was wound tightly around Gojo’s arms, the thing not budging even an inch.

In here, it’s all rattling skulls and skeletons as far as the eye can see. You’re not sure of these skeletons are real skeletons, but to safe your own sanity, you’re just going to pretend like they’re fakes from a Halloween store. Just prop skeletons, nothing to be afraid of.

Trying to take one of the skulls—skeletons, really, but you’re gripping the skull between your fingers—you try to move it, maybe there’s some sort of mechanism like in movies where you have to pull a specific book in a bookshelf to make the hidden passage open up—or in this case, the exit.

The skeleton surprisingly moves, pulling it clean from the wall, as it tumbles over with a crash. The bones scatter on the ground with faint clink clink clinks, and you jump slightly at the sound. Looking over your shoulder, you see Gojo already eyeing you, then the skeleton, then you again. You meekly smile at him before turning back towards the wall. To no one’s surprise here, there’s another skeleton behind the one you just pulled out.

When you try to pull that one out, however, you’re stopped. That one is truly stuck. Yes, it’s still rattling, bones clinking together, but it cannot be moved like the one you just did.

Maybe that’s where you can find the secret passage.

Looking up, you’re suddenly aware of just how tall this room is—it’s dark up top, but you can faintly see where the realm ends.

With a determined huff, you do a few stretches, try to get your muscles nice and loose. You can do this, you can totally climb skeletons to take them down one by one, trying to find the secret passage. Gojo said something about not getting out of this thing any time soon, so why not?

Grabbing onto one of the skulls of the skeleton higher up, you wrench your foot on top of another skull, trying to find balance, before you haul yourself up. You can hear Gojo mumble out a concerned ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ along with him standing up and walking over to you, but you just continue your climb. Another skull grabbed, another meter gained.

It goes well for all of three meters, before one of the skeletons gives way. Unluckily for you, you were holding onto it, and your entire back bends backwards, arms flailing around as you try to grip onto something, to no avail.

Hair whips around as you fall quickly, a small yelp leaving your lips as you close your eyes and brace yourself for impact.

The impact never comes—well it does, but not in the way you thought it would. The skeletons would be hard—possibly breaking under the weight of your fall—and would definitely hurt you, no doubt leaving behind bruises for the next weeks to come. But instead of bone, you get caught by soft, but strong muscles.

A slight grunt leaves Gojo’s lips as he catches you from midair, knees slightly buckling under the weight, but he keeps the two of you upright. Refusing to topple over. Cradling you closer to his chest, he furrows his brows, concern and annoyance clear on his face. “What did you think would happen?”

For a moment you can’t reply, can’t do anything other than just stare into his eyes. Those blues that are beautiful to look at, only this time there’s an emotion swimming in them that hasn’t been here yet. It makes you swallow slightly as you look down, fingers fiddling slightly.

“Just thought there might be a secret passage somewhere,” you mumble out, clearly embarrassed by the fact that you fell, but also because you just… decided to climb a wall full of skeletons without even letting him know.

“And you thought it would be wise to climb the wall of loose skeletons?” Well he doesn’t have to say it like that—like it was a stupid plan to begin with, almost as if he’s scolding you, which he honestly is.

You’re old enough to know better, old enough to know you can’t just scale anything. Even if they weren’t loose, there would be a good chance of falling down, and the two of you can’t have that. What if you broke a bone? Or got a concussion? Or even worse, got a hole in your head and bled to your death?

“Sorry,” There it is again, the same word you’ve been saying on repeat today, though this is the one instance where you should actually apologise. He did not have to catch you, probably needing to hear you whine when you got bruised.

Sighing through his nose, he closes his eyes and tips his head up. After a few seconds, he finally looks down at you again before finally putting you down onto your feet. “Just… don’t bother. I’m telling you, we can’t get out of here.”

With that he goes to sit back down onto the ground, this time pointedly not looking at you. You feel the slight burn in your chest and behind your eyes—you never did well with disappointment, so it doesn’t surprise you when that feeling bubbles up behind your ribcage once more.

“So I’m just supposed to, what, sit here and wait until we get out?” You can feel a vein start to tick on your neck, jaw clenched as you look at him. He’s just… laying there! As if the two of you aren’t trapped in a room full of skeletons that are rattling and vibrating, jaws snapping slightly.

You just can’t believe he’s so carefree about all of this, as if this is a normal occurrence. Like he spends his Friday nights like this, in a room full of bones that ‘can’t be opened’. It absolutely enrages you just how he just doesn’t seem to care.

“I’ve told you, we can’t get out of here from the inside. It’s a prison designed to keep whatever is in it in. Only the person who trapped us can let us out, and considering he isn’t going to do that, we’re going to be here for a while.”

He isn’t even looking at you while he explains this… prison thing to you. And what does he even mean with the fact that there is no door on the inside, that’s just weird. This is real life, not some sort of wizard world.

“Yeah, right. And I’m a wizard who likes to make little cubes that can’t be exited from the inside,” you sarcastically reply, crossing your arms over your chest as you tap one foot on the skull below you.

Seriously, all he’s saying is that this is a magical room that just so happens to trap you guys inside for what seems like forever.

If you had to choose a death, you’d probably much rather be on the outside, where people got decapitated instead of dying of thirst, dehydrated until you’ll just shrivel up and eventually become one of the skeletons yourself. God it will be so slow and painful.

“I know you aren’t a sorcerer. I would’ve known the moment I saw you,” he replies, vaguely tapping his blindfold before he sighs out and lets his head fall back against one of the skeletons he’s leaned against. There is that word again, ‘sorcerer’. He said it when the two of you first got here, but you didn’t think too much of it, but maybe there’s more behind his words than he lets on. “Just… my students will get us out of here.”

“You're a teacher and you expect your students to get you out while hundreds of people die outside? No offense, but how would they have any idea that you're in this—what's the word? magical cube in the first place?”

It just… it just doesn’t make any sense. Does he really think he’s important enough for his students to lay their lives on the line, just to get him out of here? Self-centered much.

Sure, he is sweet, and you have no doubt that he can be sweet towards his students, but this is just ridiculous. Does he really think that his students out of everyone would get you out of here? Why not his own friends, or like, his family or something like that?

Gojo just shrugs at your question, putting his blindfold back on as he doesn’t elaborate any further, which doesn’t help the situation the two of you are in at all.

The argument spirals from there, with you getting more and more agitated while Gojo just stays seated and throws out sarcastic quips. While he isn’t directly being mean back, it does irritate you that he just doesn’t seem to care all that much about the situation the two of you are in.

He keeps going on about the fact that the two of you can’t get out of here and that his students will come up with a plan, but he isn’t really giving out more.

What fucking moron would think their students would go out of their way to save their teacher? Seriously, there is no way he’s that important to the youth that they would risk their lives for him.

At one point he just… stops responding to you. You’re not sure if he’s even looking at you—the blindfold making it hard to see where exactly his gaze is now—but he has his lips tightly sealed. The motherfucker is stonewalling you!

With a huff you go to sit down onto his jacket, crossing your arms over your chest. With an annoyed sigh you try to call out to him a few more times, but he just stays quiet. Rolling your eyes you lay down. Your lids are starting to feel heavy, and you’re not surprised by it even in the slightest.

When you were stood on the platform, it was only eight p.m., but considering the fact that you’ve been in this god forsaken cube prison thing for over what feels like hours already, you aren’t surprised that the sleepiness is hitting you like a train.

No, fuck, not like a train. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to will away the thoughts that immediately flood your mind again—green, purple, blue monsters spilling from the train, tearing the flesh—

Shaking your head, you exhale. Okay it doesn’t hit you like a train, but rather like… like a plane, or something heavy hitting. Maybe a car or something—okay enough of that, just… go to sleep.

You peek over your shoulder once more to look at Gojo, but he’s turned away from you slightly. He really isn’t looking at you. Fine by you. You’re just going to sleep, or try to anyway.

You shift on the jacket once again, skulls rattling under it, making your entire body vibrate, just enough to feel it. It’s almost like a mosquito buzzing past every few seconds with its high pitched bzzzz that makes you snap your eyes wide open once you hear it.

Sighing out through your nose, you stretch out a little, your toe sliding of the cool velvet lining of Gojo’s jacket and onto the gritty texture of one of the skulls. It’s not colder by any means, but the difference in textures throws you off slightly.

The longer you try to fall asleep, the more restless you get. Peeking an eye open, you look at Gojo, who’s sitting upright with his arms crossed, biceps bulging in his shirt as his head is leaned back, blindfold back on. You’re not sure how he’s just… asleep like that—like there aren’t tens of skulls rattling both underneath and behind him.

He looks rather peaceful like this, eyes no longer shifting around, looking around the room for an out. No he’s relaxed like this, tension slowly bleeding out from his form, making him sag a bit more than he has let himself ever since the two of you got trapped in here.

Smiling, you turn around again, trying to see if you can sleep on your other side, like that maybe, maybe would help. The moment you do, though, a riiiippp can be heard through the endless space the two of you occupy.

A scream immediately tears itself from your throat, airway getting constricted slightly as your pulse hammers in your ears. The sound reminding you of all that has happened today, and what if something happened to you—you can feel something dig into your toe, straining against it, and you’re almost a hundred percent sure something just tore your toe clean off.

The skulls. The skulls are biting you. They don’t just rattle, why would they just rattle, that doesn’t make sense. They have thrown Gojo in here to let him die—not to just trap him, but to die in this god forsaken prison—the skulls are alive. Oh god, oh god they’re alive. They’re going to eat the two of you, eat you until you’re nothing more than just bones yourselves—

“Hey, hey… it’s okay, nothing happened,” Gojo murmurs, crouched in front of you now. He isn’t touching you, but his blindfold is off as he looks at you with that concerned, cerulean gaze of his, the same eyes that have had that look in them since you got here. “Nothing happened.”

“My toe,” you whimper out, heart still hammering against your chest as you refuse to look down at the damage—at the fact that you can feel something cutting into the flesh. You just cannot handle seeing another injury.

Fat tears are starting to roll down the apples of your cheeks as you take shaky inhales. They don’t fill your lungs completely, having you gasping for air more and more, until you’re completely ventilating. Panic courses through your veins as your hands clamp down onto Gojo’s forearms, whispering about your toe being gone.

Gojo says your name then, in a tone you only hear when a parent is trying to calm their child down. “Nothing happened to your toe. No injury. No blood. Your fishnets ripped, that’s what you heard—what you’re feeling right now is the nylon straining against your skin.”

Shaky pupils find themselves toward your own feet, swallowing the nausea down as you try to confirm what he’s saying. And sure enough, there’s no blood to be seen. No actual injury as you originally thought there was, just your own fishnets pinching your toe.

“Just take them off, that way they can’t be ripped any further,” Gojo says after a while, when he notices your breathing pattern return to normal.

“Huh?” you mumble out, still looking at your toes, wiggling them for good measure—trying to see if everything still works as expected. To see that they’re really still attached to your foot rather than having been cut off.

“The fishnets, take them off. This is the second time they ripped, and you’ve clearly had a flashback both times,” he clarifies, blue eyes still trained on your form with concern.

Swallowing, you give a shaky nod, before you realise you’re still holding onto his forearm—fingers absolutely digging into the flesh, leaving behind angry marks, and you’re pretty sure you punctured the skin on some places.

A gasp leaves your mouth as you quickly retract your hands. Mouth opening to apologise over and over again, Gojo holds a hand up, cutting you off from even thinking of doing such a thing. “It’s fine, really. Just a few marks. This is nothing I haven’t endured before.”

He wont mention the fact that he was on the brink of death once, torso and neck having been slashed open, blood pooling around him as he focused his cursed energy on his neck while he used RCT to regenerate himself. There’s still a faint scar on his chest from it, but no one ever sees it, for good reasons.

Biting on your lip, you just look at him for a little bit. He really isn’t easily startled—not with you throwing up, nor with the blood or now with the fact that you’ve accidentally hurt him.

“Can you turn around?” you finally whisper, because if you have to take the fishnets off, you have to take the entire bunny costume off, which isn’t something you had planned on doing for the night unless it was in your own apartment where you were alone — which is also why you didn’t mind going commando under the costume, choosing to forgo pasties or skin-colored tights. The costume was too high-cut to even consider wearing panties, so that didn’t help, either.

He raises a brow, but quickly does as he’s asked. Back towards you, you just look at him for a few seconds, looking at the way his muscles bulge under his fitted tee, even though he isn’t actively flexing. It’s not something you noticed when he had his jacket on, but then again, you didn’t notice much when he still had it on—too busy freaking out and everything.

“You’re aware I can feel your gaze on me, right?” he teases you without turning around, still staring straight ahead at the skulls on the other side on the room. Heat immediately rushes to your face as you look away from him and down to your own costume.

Standing up, you try to get the stupid thing off, but it’s harder than you expected, taking embarrassingly long for you to get it off to take off the fishnets. When you finally do, you heavy out a sigh as if you’ve done ten hours of manual labour, instead of taking off a costume.

After removing the fishnets, you just stand there for a minute—butt naked, behind a stranger you’ve known for a total of… what, thirteen hours? You’re not sure how much time has passed, but all you know is that it’s weird for you to be in this predicament.

Looking down, you see the costume. Right, you have to get it back on again. Well, shit… Huffing and groaning you put it back on, but you can’t properly get to the zipper that’s on your back—your friend helped you get ready earlier, and now you’re trying to do it alone, hands bent at an awkward angle as you try to find the zipper.

You look to your right, where Gojo is still not looking at you. Fuck it… clearing your throat, you try to get his attention, which you note that you have when he hums under his breath. “Can you… help me zip this up?”

Warmth blooms on your face once again as you hold up the top part of your costume to prevent your breasts from spilling out of the slutty thing. It really isn’t helping that this was your costume of choice for the evening.

Gojo turns around to look at you, one snowy brow raised, but he stands up himself. Fingers warm against your skin, you jolt slightly at the feeling, touch still being a trigger for you as you try to calm yourself damn. Zipping you up, he tugs on the zipper slightly before whispering a “done”.

Clearing your throat, you step back. the two of you awkwardly stand there for a few more seconds before you motion toward the jacket on the floor. “I’m just… gonna try to sleep.”

“Mhmm,” he murmurs as he watches you drop to the floor and roll onto your side—away from him. Gojo goes to sit down, forearms perched on top of his knees which he’s brought to his chest. Luckily it doesn’t take you long to fall asleep this time.

He’s been eyeing you ever since you fell asleep. The twisting and turning didn’t stop, even after sitting just a bit closer to you. Your bare legs brush over the skulls and skeletons

He still feels guilty that all he could offer was a jacket. Sure, it’s a big jacket, bigger than most, and it does act as a sort of blanket for you, but you’re still barely dressed. Halloween night normally is one of the busier nights for sorcerers, the scares and fright of people attracting more and more curses, but this one he didn’t see coming.

While he’s glad you’re in here with him, he also feels like it’s unfair to you that you got dragged into something, a world that you weren’t even supposed to be in, even less of all know of.

Sure, he knows with how many people died that the government couldn’t suppress the fact that there are sorcerers out there in the world, but he does wonder how they’re going to phrase it.

He snaps out of his thoughts when he hears you start to mumble in your sleep. Frantic ‘no’s’ falling from your lips as a small, sheen layer of sweat starts to form on your body. You start to twist and turn even more now, the jacket crinkling under your body, and he wonders if he should wake you up.

Before he can even do that, you wake up with a gasp, eyes wide, as a small scream leaves your lips. Gojo is in front of you in a second, reassuring that it was all a dream—well, that you’re not living in that horrible nightmare right now. He unfortunately can’t help with the fact that whatever you dreamt about really did happen.

So he’s trying to comfort you, your arms wrapped around his waist as you sob into his chest. Fingers clenched into the fabric of his t-shirt. It dampens where you press your face, but he doesn’t even feel it, merely keeping himself busy with trying to calm you down.

The two of you sit there for a long time, long enough for you to have stopped crying, eyes completely red as dried tear tracks streak your face.

He can see the way your blinking is starting to slow down again, but every time your eyes close for more than a second, you jolt upright again, frantically looking around the room.

“Go lay down,” he whispers, looking at the way you’re trembling. Swallowing, you shakily nod, hair and those stupid bunny ears swaying with the motion as you go to lay down. He grabs your hand and puts it around his wrist, pressing your thumb right over his pulse point. “Go on, sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

There’s slight mistrust in your eyes, but you do as he says. Your breathing slows down slightly after a few minutes, thumb digging a bit harder into his wrist as your subconscious slips away from you.

Gojo stays like that, sitting upright while you keep ahold of him in your sleep, small, angry crescents left behind in his skin where you’re unconsciously digging into his skin. While you keep waking up every odd hour or so, it’s definitely better than it was before. Plus, it’s only the first night after something so traumatic happened, so he can’t blame you.

The bags under your eyes are horrible, but at least you got some sleep. Gojo on the other hand, didn’t get in more than an hour of sleep, but he doesn’t mind. If it’s anything he’s good at, it’s going without sleep for days on end. His title as being the Strongest unfortunately also comes with things people don’t even think twice about.

Days are spent in silence, neither of you really saying anything when you’re awake. You’ve let go of him somewhere on day three, his skin all red and angry, but he once again reassured you that everything is okay.

Eventually, after what you think is five days, the two of you get to talking. Surprisingly it’s Gojo who begins the conversation. “Remember what I said about you being a non-sorcerer?”

You turn toward him, your hair all messy from where you kept tossing and turning in your sleep. You’ve carded your fingers through it countless of times, but it keeps that slightly static-y look to it—his jacket, as nice as it is, does not do any wonders to your hair.

“Mhmmm, still don’t know what that means,” you answer, looking him in the eye. He’s removed his blindfold, the fabric hanging around his neck as his bangs fall over his forehead.

“You ever believed in wizards?” What a weird question. Sure, when you were younger you did believe in it, but when you grew up you realised that magic was nowhere to be found in real life. It was like Santa got taken away from you for a second time, honestly.

He continues after he sees you nod your head, going on a whole spiel about how there are these people that are called sorcerers. People with cursed techniques—abilities, essentially—that are fueled by cursed energy—negative emotions that forms into a sort of energy that the sorcerers can use for said abilities.

It’s a ridiculous story, really, and you interrupt him multiple times during it, but you don’t prevent him from talking. And he can see the way you doubt him, eyeing him as if he’s gone insane.

But then again, you are trapped inside a room full of skeletons that are moving. Not only that, from the outside it’s a weird, flesh contraption with eyes on them that follow your every move. So maybe it isn’t as crazy as it actually seems.

Gojo goes into detail about what curses and sorcerers are, and why they exist in the first place. It’s nice in the way that it keeps your mind off everything that has happened the past week.

The conversation lasts days, mainly because you don’t really believe him and keep trying to talk about how cool it would be to actually have powers. Which Gojo sighs at, because he really does have powers!! He just… can’t use them in here.

At one point you’d snorted at him and told him he was just a shitty math wizard—blue and red and hollow purple and Infinity and whatever else kinda math he had to do for his powers to work—which he faked being offended at, only to laugh about later.

You also learned that this prison isn’t specifically made for Gojo, but it has been specifically used to seal him. And in the process, you somehow also got sealed—something he still isn’t sure about how that happened in the first place.

With Gojo being the Strongest and everything, they just wanted him out of the way to enact their plan; whatever that may be.

In the span of a week you’ve learned everything there is to know about curses and sorcerers, sometimes having Gojo re-explain something because you didn’t really understand it or simply because you forgot something.

There’s a whole world out there co-existing with the ‘normal’ one without anyone knowing. It honestly fascinates you a little. And hey, if Gojo made all of that up just to entertain you, kudos to him, because it certainly has you excited.

After getting to know lots about the sorcerer world, you start giving out details of your own life—what type of job you have, where you grew up, hell, you even told him all about your friends.

At the mention of your friends, the two of you fall silent for a bit. You’re not sure if they’re safe or if they had been slaughtered, but you don’t want to dwell on it too much. If they died, you just hope it was a quick and painless death. If they’re still alive, all you can hope is that they didn’t get scarred by the incident too much.

The conversations last, what feels like days on end. Sometimes you keep nodding off, head falling forward slightly as your hair falls in front of your face like a little curtain, before your brain supplies the repressed memories.

You always wake up with a scream, and every time Gojo is right there with you. You’ve also noticed that he doesn’t really sleep himself. Sure, there are times he nods off, but only for an hour or two before he’s awake again.

While you aren’t sure if he also has nightmares like you do, you do know that he doesn’t scream or startle awake like you do. It’s simply like a switch got turned off and on whenever he goes to sleep and wakes up; always sitting upright, arms crossed over his chest as he lets his head fall back against the skulls.

Time in here feels odd in general. The same type of light shines down on you two constantly. There’s no way of knowing if it’s day or night, and Gojo every so helpful decided to tell you that time just doesn’t flow here—whatever the fuck that means—because his Eyes told him that.

Well in a way you’re glad that time doesn’t pass, because it means you don’t starve to death, but it also makes you feel all the more isolated.

Whenever you and Gojo aren’t talking, the silence feels suffocating. The rattling of bones and the snapping of the jaws makes you pick the skin around your fingers—something Gojo has scolded you for because the blood always takes you right back to the train station.

At one point in time, Gojo has told you that you two could just sleep together. When you’d looked at him with this scandalised look in your eyes, he quickly clarified that you two could just hold each other. Not in a sexual way, but because it clearly helps whenever you hold his wrist when you go to sleep.

Yes, that’s something you still do months later. Sure, you and him have gotten closer together to a point of being actual friends—well that’s what you like to believe anyway—but it’s still one thing to hold his wrist at night, and another of him actually holding you.

Eventually you relented, the position awkward at first. You’d tried to sleep, but each inhale and brush of his chest against your back just made you more and more aware of him actually holding you. While, yes, it did kind of calm you down, it absolutely was no help with getting to fall asleep.

Once you did fall asleep however, it was… better. The dreams weren’t as vivid as they once were, dulling to something more manageable. You slept for longer periods on end, not waking up as much during the night. (Was it even considered night?)

It also seemed to help Gojo. While you’re not sure if he always slept, it was clear that he was at least resting more. His breathing evening out while he relaxed slightly.

And with that, time seemed to pass fairly quickly. You’d long since stopped counting, but if you had to make a guesstimate, you’d say it’s been around two years since the two of you had been trapped in this hell-hole.

All you could hope is that it wouldn’t be much longer, because the loneliness—despite being in here with Gojo—had started to get to you a little.

“C’mon, enough sulking around. Why don’t you teach me how to fight?” You nudge Gojo with your toe, the fabric of his jeans soft under your flesh. He’s been sitting there, zoning out for the past few days. The two of you haven’t moved much, and you didn’t really mind, but right now you were bored out of your mind—you have been for the past… year, honestly.

His head lazily lolls to the side, bangs swooping across his forehead as those ceruleans find your form. They’re slightly lidded, hazed over with a boredom you’ve been seeing too much lately.

The two of you have shared a lot of stories… a lot. And it isn’t weird that the two of you eventually also had nothing new to talk about, considering you’ve been stuck in here for years. Curses, childhoods, everything and anything was shared to the point you had even tried to talk about other things, such as mangas, but eventually you even ran out of things to say about those.

A lazy hum slips from his lips, not even bothering to really move. Sure, you didn’t particularly want to train, much less spar with the strongest sorcerer alive—though you’re a hundred percent sure he would go easy on you—but you’d do anything to feel less bored.

Nudging him a little harder, you try to get him to actually reply, make him stand up and teach you how to fight for when the two of you get out of here. “Seriously, what if we have to fight once this realm opens and I just don’t know how to even defend myself?”

“Then I’ll just protect you from whatever’s trying to attack you,” he easily replies, blinking slowly as a yawn escapes from his lips. You’re not sure how long the two of you have been awake for, but you do know it hasn’t been long enough for him to be yawning like that. “I am The Strongest, after all.” He supplies.

“Yeah, well, ‘The Strongest’ is currently stuck in a box, so the least he can do is teach me how to defend myself,” you huff out. Going to stand up, you wipe away invisible dust, feeling the way your skin is indented where you were sat on the skulls.

The velvet of Gojo’s jacket is nice, and it keeps you from actually feeling the gritty material of the bones, but sitting for hours or days on end still makes your flesh almost mold to the shape of the bones.

You can see the way Gojo rolls his eyes at your statement, still not bothering to get up. He’s told you before that you should just meditate and keep your mind empty in order not to go insane. Unluckily for him, you can’t do that sort of stuff for too long on end, because surprise surprise, you still get bored.

It also doesn’t help that you still have nightmares. While it has happened years ago at this point, you still remember what happened on the train platform like it was yesterday, and your heels that lay abandoned in the far corner of the room are an ever present reminder of it.

The red almost hurts to look at, and you quickly snap your gaze away from them. The splatters of blood do not help your mentals whatsoever, so you turn back to the only other (living) person in this room.

Bending at the waist, you grab a hold of Gojo’s arm, trying to haul him up. A grunt leaves your lips as you put all your might in trying to get him up to spar with you, only for him to lay there, boneless. It’s like trying to pick up a toddler who doesn’t wanna be picked up—letting their entire body flop to the floor , not helping you at all.

“Come on you big oaf. Get. Up,” you grunt out as you plant your feet and try to put all your might in trying to get this lazy fuck to stand up.

Said lazy fuck unfortunately isn’t really a lazy fuck. He has been working out ever since the two of you got here. Not every day, but enough for him to build muscle. Before, he filled his tee out pretty nicely, more lean muscle than anything. Now? Now he’s buff, as if he crushes skulls for fun. He doesn’t, and can’t, not here anyway, but he looks like it.

You still remember the first time he dropped to the ground and just started doing pushups. No announcement, no sound, just dropped and started doing them as if it was normal. A few fays later, when his chest was starting to get more muscle and he could do more and more pushups, he started to ask you to sit on his back, give some extra weight. And you had done so.

Shaking away the thought, you pull once more, only for Gojo to give one, firm tug on your own arm. Toppling over, you squeak as you faceplant right in his chest. His arms wrap around your waist as he puts his chin on top of your head. “Or, we can just lay down and sleep.”

“Let go of me,” you wiggle in his grasp, and he tightens it slightly with a stubborn ‘no’. “Seriously, Gojo, we haven’t been awake for long enough to go back to sleep. Why are you so sleepy in the first place, you used to work out all the time.”

Your voice is slightly muffled by the fact that you’re currently pressed into his pecs, lips grazing against his tee with every syllable you utter.

“We’ve been awake long enough to take a nap,” he easily replies, though his voice sounds far away, like he’s thinking about something he isn’t currently voicing. His grip tightens a fraction. “Now stop squirming and close your eyes.”

“Promise me you’ll teach me how to fight after you wake up?” You ask him, finally stilling in his grip. Honestly, you couldn’t even put up a fight even if you wanted to. Sure, Gojo worked out, but you didn’t. You were used as weights for him whenever he needed you to—squats, bicep curls, sitting on his back when he did pushups, etc.

He just hums in reply, tracing small, nonsensical circles on your back. Rolling your eyes, you finally relent. “Fine, but I’m gonna hold you to that promise.”

Luckily you didn’t have to do any convincing when the two of you woke up from your nap. Gojo still had that far-away look in his eyes, but he at least got up.

Now the two of you are standing across from each other, just looking for a bit before he tells you how to adjust your stance properly. When he tells you, he also shows you, sometimes correcting your stance so you have proper form.

“All right, throw a punch at me,” he says, hands still in his pockets as he rocks on the balls of his feet slightly. Okay, just… throw a punch, nothing to be worried about. With a slight jab forward, you try to hit him right in the side, but Gojo only steps to the side, your arm not even grazing him. “Again.”

This continues for a while, you just trying to hit him while he boredly sidesteps all your attempts at hitting him. It’s only when sweat is starting to beat down your neck that he finally tells you to take a break.

Flopping down onto his jacket you let out a long, suffering groan. There’s slight movement beside you, before you can feel Gojo nudge you slightly. “Not bad.”

“Not bad? I didn’t even hit you once!” You turn your head to the side, watching him sit there with a slight smile on his face—the one you haven’t seen in ages.

He just looks at you, really looks. The way you’re sweating because you finally had a work out in… however long the two of you have been here. Little wisps of hair are sticking to your nape and forehead, a small layer of sheen glinting in the weird light that spills onto the two of you.

You noticed when he zoned out for too long, of course you did. The two of you have been stuck here long enough to know little tells from each other.

Just like he knows whenever you feel restless, a small finger twitch alongside the slight furrow in your brow is a dead giveaway. Or when you’re having a nightmare again. It isn’t as bad as it used to be, but he still knows when you’re having a bad dream. Always pulling you closer, stroking your spine whenever you begin to toss and turn next to him. It’s something he found out after a year of being here.

He still had his horrible sleep schedule ingrained in him, only having slept for four to five hours a day for as long as he can remember, so he was awake most of the times you were asleep. Now, he sleeps through the night. Well… whatever you can call the night.

Time doesn’t flow here, so it’s difficult to know just how much time has passed, but he does know that he sometimes wales up after you do, which surprised him when it first happened. You had a small smile on your face as you muttered about him being a sleepyhead.

It felt… nice, honestly. Not having any responsibilities for the first time since he was born. That doesn’t mean he likes it in here, though. As much as he likes your company, he’d much rather be with his family—his students and colleagues.

That’s been something he’s been thinking about lately, and he knows you’ve noticed. His mood has gone down significantly, and you’re trying anything and everything to not get him to think whatever he’s thinking of, but it’s hard not to.

He fucked up when he got captured, like really fucked up. And now his students and colleagues alike have to free him. How ironic, the strongest merely reduced to nothing because he was caught off-guard. Memories of a certain black-haired friend flash through his mind.

While Gojo has shared a lot about himself and his students, there are things he hasn’t shared with you. Such as what happened for him to get captured like this—the real reason why he got captured, not the one he gave you. While it’s true he got caught off-guard, he never told you about Suguru. And maybe it’s better you don’t know.

But it all makes him think, makes him doubt things. Sure, the two of you will get rescued eventually, his students will succeed in that, that much he’s certain of. But will people only get him out of here because he’s the strongest, or also because he’s Gojo Satoru, the man beneath the legend.

He eyes you again. You’re kicking your feet a little while you grumble something at him, poking him in his thigh for emphasis, but you’re not actually mad.

You, maybe the only person who has actually seen him—the real him that he closed off ten years prior. Sure he hasn’t told you everything about his childhood, but he hasn’t done that to anyone. It’s simply not something people needed to know.

If you two had met before this whole incident, would you have come to save him—despite being a non-sorcerer—because he’s Gojo Satoru, or because he’s the Strongest?

With a defeated sigh, he lets his head fall back against the skulls. The rattling of them makes his mind run rampant, but it’s not something he can help. It’s been running amok for these past few days. It’s what you noticed in him when you told him to spar you. Sure, it’s a good idea for you to actually be able to defend yourself, would the two of you ever get out of this prison, but he also knows it’s a distraction tactic.

What he doesn’t expect is for you to so forcefully poke his leg he has to jerk it away with a hiss. You’re pointing to the other side of the room where one of the skeleton lay. “Keiko just told me you didn’t teach me shit, so stop zoning out and get up so you can properly teach me this time.”

Wait what now? Keiko? Who the fuck is Keiko? And why are you acting as if there’s anything here that can talk to you other than him. Maybe the time in this realm has you finally losing your marbles a little. “Keiko?”

“Yes while you were moping around these last few days, I made some friends,” you finally stand up again, walking over to the skeleton you were pointing at. “This is Keiko, she knows martial arts. And she just told me you didn’t do shit, so get your ass up and fight me.”

Right, okay so you have gone crazy. Maybe it’s the lack of water after you worked out. Your brain deprived from the fact that you were sweating and not getting any liquids into your body. But then again, he has worked out here before without a problem.

“Right… Keiko. And who are the rest of your friends?” He slowly asks, because you did say you had multiple of them.

Your face lights up as you quickly go to arrange the skeletons, they rattle in your hold, not quite sitting upright, falling to the side before you put them against the wall with a huff and a pointed finger that says ‘stay right there’.

Once you’ve arranged five skeletons, you turn back to him, hair swaying wildly as you stretch your arms out. “meet your new friends! Keiko, as I've already told you. Then we have Sota. Sota likes to teach ballroom dances, great teacher if you ask me, unlike someone I know—”

You eye him then, lip slightly curled up in mock seriousness. Gojo just rolls his eyes and points to the skeleton next to “Harry”.

“—Right okay, so this is Akari. She makes candles. We should buy some from her, support small businesses and shit.”

He almost snorts at that. Yeah, you’re definitely off your rockers, and this just confirms it, but he lets you continue introducing the last two skeletons to him.

The first one is a doctor, and when he asks you what type of doctor it is, you just throw your hands up and tell him you don’t know because the skeleton refuses to tell you because it would be a HIPPA violation!

That, he does genuinely chuckle at. The sound foreign to his own ears when it slips out from between his lips. He can see the way you pause then, eyes softening at the sound of his laugh. A small smile graces your own lips, eyes crinkling slightly.

After a few moments, you finally point at the last skeleton with a flourish. “And this over here, is Tomoe. She’s a sorcerer whose powers are necromancy!”

“Cursed Technique, first of all. Second of all, that’s not how a technique works. C’mon, Bunny, I tried to teach you this so many times. You can’t just work with the dead if you were to infuse them with cursed energy.”

You huff at that, letting your head fall back with a groan, and Gojo swears you stomp your feet a little like you’re throwing an actual tantrum. “Oh my goooodd, you’re such a buzzkill! Tomoe said she’s a necromancer, so she shall be a necromancer.”

“Well she wasn’t a very good necromancer if she ended up dead,” Gojo sarcastically replies.

Crossing your arms over your chest, you pout at him. “Everyone dies eventually! Just because she worked with the dead doesn’t mean she couldn’t die.”

“Why couldn’t she just be a pediatrician or something?” Gojo asks then, genuinely curious. Why would you choose the skeleton to be a sorcerer out of all things when you have a real one right in front of you? And the Strongest one at that.

“Because she told me she was a sorcerer!” You whine, annoyed that he isn’t just fucking listening to you. “And just so you know, Tomoe doesn’t like you and said they would win in a one v one against you.”

“You’re insane, you know that, right?” Gojo mumbles out as he sees you carefully put all of the skeletons back to where they were laying before.

Turning around, you dust off your hands and walk straight up to him. Putting your hands on your hips, you look down on him. “Insanely funny, thank you very much. You’re just jealous of the fact that I made friends in here other than you.”

“Mhmmm, friends that can’t talk to you while you have a living, breathing one sitting right here,” he rolls his eyes at you. And you smile at that, because he seems almost jealous of the fact that you ‘made friends’. Obviously all of this was just to get him out of that funk he’s been in these past couple of days, and it does seem like it worked, even if only a little bit.

Sitting down next to him, you nudge him with your shoulder. He hums, a sound that comes deep from within his chest. “You doing okay, Satoru?”

It takes him a bit to respond, eyes tracing over the skeletons you just used. They’re neatly arranged, put back together, and it makes his chest a bit tighter. You care so much about menial stuff, and it makes him feel incredibly soft.

“Yeah, just… room is getting to me a little.” He vaguely gestures to the thousands of rattling skulls, not really saying anything. But you hear it loud and clear; he’s feeling lonely, isolated even, and you can’t blame him for feeling that way. It sucks being stuck in this prison for so long, despite the two of you keeping each other company.

Letting your head gently fall onto his shoulder, your fingers find his, giving his hand a slight squeeze. “We’ll get through it, together,” you whisper.

You can feel his shoulder relax a bit. Exhaling through his nose, he gives a small kiss to the crown of your head. “Together.”

He wakes up in a cold sweat, heart racing from the nightmare he just had. His mind is still reeling from it as he sits up, his back pressed against the wall, the rattling of the skulls absolutely not helping him right now.

He can see you sit up from the corner of his eyes, concern etched all over your face as you try and touch his knee. Jerking it away, he puts his hands in his hair, running his fingers through the white locks as his fingers tremble.

You’re calling out to him, he can see your lips move, almost as if it’s in slow motion. Hands kept meticulously to yourself, but still hovering over him. He can hear the way you’re calling out his name, but it comes out all warbled and distorted.

Breath comes harder now, chest heaving up and down as he looks around the room. Skulls blur together until he can’t see them individually anymore. Six Eyes is overloading his senses, even as he squeezes his eyes shut.

Pulling up his knees, he puts his head down between them, fingers still at the back of his hair, almost ripping out the hairs. The oxygen in the room feels thin, as if his lungs aren’t filling correctly.

Inhale. exhale. inhale. exhale. inhale exhale inhale. exhale. inhale inhale exhale inhale. His breath stutters with every intake, chest absolutely quaking as a tear slips from his eyes. His entire body is now trembling—or maybe it’s because of the rattling skulls beneath him.

Gentle fingers cup his jaw, forcing his head up. Your face is blurry, but the concern is right there. “Satoru, what’s going on?”

Opening his mouth to answer, he chokes out a sob. You coo at him to take it easy and that he just needs to focus on his breathing. When you finally utter the words panic attack, he nods his head in agreement.

“Okay… okay, uhh— shit I don’t know! Think about something that makes you happy, maybe?” you’re getting more frantic now. You’ve never seen someone have a panic attack before, so you’re not sure what you should do. The only thing that comes to mind is that people put little bags to their mouths to breathe into, but you guys obviously don’t have that here.

When he shakes his head, pupils shaking as another tear escapes, you swear. Looking around the room, you’re trying to find something, anything for him to help his mind get off this. “Okay, just— try and slow your breathing for me, okay? Here, breathe with me.”

You put one of his hands on your chest as you take a big inhale of breath, trying to get him to at least get some oxygen in his system, but after a few failed attempts, it’s clear that that isn’t going to work.

“Satoru I need you to look at me and give me a clear answer, okay? I need your breathing to calm down, and I read somewhere that if I slapped the person it would shock them out of it—“

“What?” he croaks out, the words not fully comprehending in his mind.

“Yeah… it’s a bit rude but if it helps I’m willing to do it, so tell me if—”

“No slapping, no…” he whimpers, folding in on himself once again. He jolts slightly from where he’s sitting, almost as if he can feel something that isn’t there. Maybe an old memory or something like that, because his breathing starts to get more erratic than before.

“Okay, okay. No slapping, got it. Uhhhh…. fucking why is that the only thing I’ve ever picked up from watching tv. Okay would it help if I just talked to you, maybe that would calm you down? Or I could hold you like you did me—”

Before you can even continue rambling on about the—limited—possibilities, Satoru wraps his arms around you, burying his face into your neck as he hyperventilates. Your hands are laying limp by your sides before you carefully put on into his hair and the other on his back.

“Hey, you’re fine,” you whisper into his ear, carding your fingers through his hair. Going to properly sit, you maneuver the two of you so he can properly cling onto you. “Wanna tell me what brought this on?”

He mumbles something into your collarbone, voice muffled, and you can’t hear exactly what he’s saying. “Sorry, can you say that again?”

“‘Was alone,” he hiccups out, breath still erratic as he whimpers. Your hands stop their movement for a second before they resume their ministrations. He got a panic attack because he had a nightmare that he was alone?

“You’re not alone now, Satoru,” you put your cheek on top of his head. “I’m here y’know.”

You’re not sure how long the two of you sit there for, time flows weird in here anyway, but after a while his breathing finally goes back to normal, a few tears dried on his cheeks as he slowly but surely lets go of you.

Tilting your head down, you look him into the eye. “You okay?” you whisper, almost as if you’re afraid to break the moment and have him have another attack. Luckily he doesn’t, but he does shock you by leaning forward and putting his lips onto yours.

It’s soft in a way you didn’t expect it to be—lips a bit chapped, but nothing unbearable—as he leans in further. You let yourself get lost in it for a second too long, a second that lets you forget all about the rattling skulls and the isolation and the fact that you’ve been here for years already, if you had to guess.

But when his tongue traces the seam of your lips, you finally pull back, lips parted, eyes wide as you look at him. The person you’ve been stuck here with for what seems like an eternity. The one they call the strongest because he has powers that trump everyone else’s.

He’s seen you at your most vulnerable moments, the ones where you woke up screaming and crying. Held you through it all, telling you it’s okay to let it all out, that it’s okay to feel this way after everything that happened.

Now it’s your time to see him at his most vulnerable. His lashes flutter open, little tear droplets still clinging to his white lashes, eyes slightly red as he looks like a kicked puppy. A small breath leaves his kiss-bitten lips, swollen and red, glossy by his own spit.

“Just help me forget… please,” he whimpers out, hands uselessly clenching beside him as he stares you down. “Let me know I’m not just making you up.”

It’s something he did when he was younger—making up friends, playing with them whenever he was alone in his room, having completed the training for the day. There weren’t many things that he owned, just a blanket he got to keep and his bottle of water.

Heart beating out of his chest, like it wants to claw itself out and present itself to you. Present the ugly truth that he’s kept hidden about his childhood—how empty and hollow his heart is. Blood pouring down his fingers as he would give it to you.

Would you caress it, or would you crush it between your dainty fingers? Put your teeth in it and rip a chunk out of it? The same way all of the people in his life have done until now. Stomping, crushing, clawing at his heart until nothing was left.

Would your mouth be stained red as you would put your lips to the organ, pressing feather-light kisses to it, show the care that you have been showing ever since the two of you got stuck here? Or would you sink your teeth in them, make it hurt a little?

The same sort of red that you were covered in when this realm opened. Skin stained in crimson, bathed in the velvety color that was sticking to you.

So he represents it to you—his heart. Vulnerable and still beating despite having been locked up here with you. Will you accept it in your dainty hands, keep it warm for him. Or will you crush it by denying his one wish?

Do you finally see him for the monster he really is? The one that enjoys the fighting, enjoys ripping off the limbs of curses as they pop out of place. Sounds of flesh and curse tearing, the same way flesh tore back on the platform that was stained in red.

He sees the way your eyes look at him—really look, trying to confirm if he’s really asking you what you think he’s asking, seconds bleeding together, just like his bleeding heart trying to thump itself out of his ribcage. He would tear it open for you, show you just how sincere he’s being.

There’s a slight change in the way you look at him, like you’re starting to really see the Gojo Satoru underneath the persona he’s been wearing all his life. The one who’s afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, even when the room is full of people, the one who can’t let himself cry, because he’s the strongest.

“Is that what you want?” you finally breathe out, biting on your lip slightly as you can’t look away from him. The person who you’ve been stuck with for what seems like an eternity, asking you to help him forget by giving himself all of you.

There’s a slight pang that goes through your heart as you think about it. Snow-white hair falls into his eyes, but he holds your gaze. Bright blue eyes holding your gaze as he shows you him at his most vulnerable—the part he hasn’t shown you in years.

Buried beneath all the layers of faux-confidence and self-assuredness is just a boy who is trying to keep himself together, keep himself sane in this prison that makes you want to cry and scream and lash out.

A shaky nod escapes him, snow-white hair bouncing up and down with the motion, one of the skulls shifting under his grip, fingers white from how hard he’s digging them into the poor thing. For a moment you think it might crack under pressure—his finger, not the skull. You’ve long since found out that the skulls are indestructible.

Blood rushes up your cheeks, spreading warmth over your face and chest as you finally lean forward, softly putting your pillowy lips onto his again. So soft, he almost can’t believe you are touching him again, not helping with the feeling that you’re just some part of his imagination he’s had since he was all but a small boy.

Shifting around, he leans back against the wall of skulls, rattling against his back. The feeling real in a time where everything feels like sand slipping through his fingers, time bleeding out before his mind gives out.

Gripping your hips, he puts you onto his lap. Your weight settles on top of him, thighs bracketing his, skin soft and dimpling under the tight grip he has—all real. Real, real, real. You’re real. The soft hitch of your breath as he presses his mouth further against you is so real. Heart beating out of your chest in an erratic rhythm, also real.

But it’s not enough. Not enough for him to forget his childhood, the one he so desperately wants to forget especially in times like these. Not enough for him to know that you’re real and not just made up, the flesh under his fingers dimples the way it should, feels the way it should, but what if he’s just imagining it.

Digging his nails in further, you gasp out into his mouth, hips jerking on top of him as they pierce the skin. Blood rushing down, reddening the skin. Droplets of red stain his nails, sliding underneath them, burying themselves in the cuticles as a reminder that this is it.

Your own nails dig themselves into his shoulders, not enough to break the skin, but enough to leave behind your own marks.

Tongues clashing in a battle of dominance, he suuucks on it, tasting your saliva. That part that doesn’t belong to him, telling him that it’s enough. Sharp canines find themselves into your bottom lip, pulling on it slightly, biting just a bit too hard, puncturing the skin.

It leaves behind a smear of red on his own lip, which he licks off with a groan. The copper taste filling his mouth, painting him in crimson before he surges forward again, lips melding together in a fight that neither of you know how to stop now that it’s been started.

Messy, that’s what this is. The clash of teeth and tongue, spit and blood mixing together. It’s on your lips and chin, dribbling down it before Gojo leans down and licks it up,leaving behind a pink trail on your skin before he finally dips his head down further.

Pillowy soft lips land onto your neck, kissing and biting the skin as he marks you up. Red blooming under his mouth as he trails it down to your collarbones. Your head falls back, giving him more access, fingers twining into his hair, pulling on it when he nips at your skin again and again.

Leaving behind marks in his wake, he finally looks up at you. The way your pupils are blown out and eyes half-lidded. Blood on your skin, just like when you got here, only this time your own rather than someone elses.

Bringing his thumb up, he smears it all over your lips, watching the way it spreads. It’s messy. It’s beautiful. He can feel his cock jump in its confinements, pressing up against your heat.

Your lips wrap around his digit, muscle swirling around it as you lap the red, sticky substance from his finger. And if that wasn’t enough to get him over the edge, the way you bite on it, making a small pinprick on the pad of his finger, certainly is.

With a growl he flips the two of you around. Your bare shoulders find themselves onto the skulls, hair shaking underneath you in a small halo. The sight of you so… marked does something to him; makes his heart beat a bit faster in his ribcage, almost knocking on it to get out. Blood rushing through his veins as he just stares for a moment.

Finally he leans down, suckling softly on the exposed part of your breast. The parts where your bunny costume doesn’t cover your soft flesh. Marking it up, leaving behind blooming bruises and teeth-indentations in its wake.

He just bites and bites and sucks, until he finally gets to the fabric. Pulling it down with his teeth, one of your breasts spills free, nipple immediately hardening to the air in this god-forsaken place.

“You look beautiful,” he almost groans out, looking at your face twist up in pleasure as he wraps his lips around your hard peak. Swirling his tongue around the bud, he lathers it up in his saliva, leaving behind a small sheen on your skin, before he gently bites into it.

Mewling out, you wrap your legs around his waist, fingers tightening in his hair as your back arches from the uncomfortable skulls beneath you.

When he had asked to forget, you didn’t realise he would absolutely devour you in the process. But you’re not complaining about it even one bit. It’s the first time in forever you felt something different than that ever-present dread that has settled deep in your belly since you first got here.

That feeling has been replaced by warmth shooting through your core, absolutely throbbing around nothing as blue eyes stare up at you, drinking in every reaction he’s pulling out of you.

His lips are red, dried blood starting to crust on his chin as he finds your other nipple. He twists and turns it with his teeth, pulling on the bud before soothing it with a lap of his tongue. The sting leaves you hissing out, but you don’t tell him to stop.

Your hips roll up, brushing against his bulge that’s twitching with need. Your core is hot and heavy, fabric clinging to your folds. There’s a small layer of sweat that’s starting to form on your skin, leaving him with this mix of copper and salt in his mouth.

A small sting on his tongue makes him hiss out, a droplet of sweat entering a small wound he didn’t know he had, before he smiles at the feeling—the feeling of him feeling something, proof that he isn’t fading away.

Cock stirring in his pants, he grinds down onto you. The swell of your breast presses against his cheek as you mewl out, pulling his head down to meet your skin. The flesh soft against the apple of his cheek, hair brushing against your skin as he puts his forehead onto your chest.

“Need you inside of me,” you say—and it’s the first thing you’ve asked from him in what feels like hours. There’s another roll of his hips, bulge catching your clit over the fabric, and it has you positively moaning out. “Please.”

And how can he say no to that? No to the person who makes him feel real, makes him feel seen. He would trust his heart with you, would look at you like you hung the moon with the way you so delicately hold onto it, like a baby bird with a broken wing.

Your hands tug on his hair, pulling him in, the same way he’s sure you would wrap your fingers around his ribs, pulling him in, cradling him against your body. Leaving behind a bloody mess of proof that everything is real.

Would you polish the bones? Make them clean until no blood remains? Crawl inside of him, keep him warm and company wherever he goes. The same warmth that wraps around him as he enters you in a swift movement.

Heart pumping in your hand as you cradle it closer to your chest, the way he’s pumping in and out of you right now.

Licking a broad stripe up his neck, you leave behind marks of your own. Porcelain skin cracking under your teeth, warmth blooming instantly. Pale skin turning red wherever you touch him, bleeding for you in the way his heart bleeds for you.

His lips meld with yours once more. Blood-red against blood-red. It’s something he didn’t know he needed, and it was in front of him all this time. You suck on his tongue, the same way your gummy walls suck him right back in whenever he pulls his hips back.

Clamping down on him, you shatter. A moan bleeds from your lips in the form of his name—not in the way he’s ever heard it before.

He spills inside of you with a stutter of his hips, your name leaving his lips before he kisses you once more. The sound overwhelming to him. Your warmth and his mixing together, until it all bubbles out of you.

There’s a moment where he wants to ask if you’d bleed for him, but he bites his tongue. Bleed you did, the evidence right there; even if it was just for him to forget for a little while—forget about him being Gojo Satoru. Right now he’s just Gojo Satoru, the man whose heart has been bleeding for almost three decades.

His tongue finds your core, lapping up your mixed juices. Red and milky white mixing together until it’s all pink, just like that cotton tail on your tailbone. Would you clean him like this—with your tongue, or would you take a different approach?

Collapsing against the ground, he pulls you onto his chest. A small, nagging voice in the back of his mind tells him he went too far. Marks bloom on your skin bright and fresh, but there’s a small smile gracing your lips.

“You think we have to wait much longer before we get out of here?” you whisper, voice a little hoarse from all the noises he pulled from you. He sighs into your hair, trying not to think about how much longer the two of you will be in this hell-hole. “I have no idea.”

©CursedKisss

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All cooped up in this traditional meeting room, one where generations of matches had been made and very rarely broken.

A coming-of-age ceremony, where the two of you had officially been declared leaders - and an engagement.

Your engagement. 

It was a business transaction of sorts. One that didn’t require any input from either marrying parties, according to the council of elders who sat upon either side of the table and stroked their beards in smug success. 

You’d heard that several clans had physically fought over this chance, before the Gojo clan ultimately chose you. And you knew why - you were one of the very few that had something to lose. 

The chance to attend Tokyo Jujutsu High. 

In short, play sorcerer all you want for three years, and in return they’d be free to enforce an old betrothal alliance between your two clans and demand a powerful new heir to jujutsu society - a win-win.

Though- looking at your reluctant fiancé, still donned in his dark silk robes from his ceremony, you wonder if you really should have just run away as your friends from Kyoto had urged you to. 

And one look at Gojo’s scrunched-up face told you he might just be thinking the same thing. Delicate features marred. Pouty lips nothing of the whispered legends you’d heard of the young prodigy—a monster. A blessing. The strongest.

He sounded very much his age as he echoes, “I’m never marrying you.”

You open your mouth- “And I-”

“-will be part of young Satoru’s high school journey!” Your father puts a hand on your shoulder, lightly squeezing. Becoming part of the Gojo clan was just as big of an opportunity for him as it was for you. Apparently. “We’re sure the young couple will get over their pre-wedding jitters by the time they’re back from graduation to continue their duties- right?”

A tap on your figure, that was your cue to answer.

Instead, you just turn your face towards Gojo, look him serenely in the eyes, the sweetest practiced smile on your face- and flip him off. Pre-wedding jitters your ass. 

The gasps that cloud the stuffy summer meeting chamber atmosphere were almost comical. As if you’d just sprung out of your seat and made an attempt on the poor, sheltered heir’s life. Out of the corner of your vision, you think you see one member of the council clutch his heart and faint-

“Pffft–!” That slight snigger rips through the air in sheer contrast, and every pair of eyes in the room peaks curiously over at the way Gojo muffles a slight chuckle. 

Your eyes widen, you think you liked him better like this.

Almost as if he’d just sensed your thoughts, he’s schooling his face into one of a steady lack of emotion, lightly clearing his throat.

Though, you catch the pointed tips of his ears scorching cherry-red.

“Where is the ring, boy.” Gojo’s father was a stern man, and his commanding voice was just as cut-throat. Seated right beside his son in a mirror image of you and your own father, he didn’t have to be loud to make Gojo’s spine stiffen almost unnoticeably still.

Ramrod-straight, silent- the younger version of the former head stuffs one hand between the fabrics of his yukata. 

And you weren’t sure what sort of ring might be bestowed on you by the famed Gojo clan - you didn’t allow yourself to imagine it. Perhaps a clean silver to match their emblem? Perhaps studded with sapphires for their new head’s irises?

Whatever it may have been, you don’t get to find out.

Because in that moment, Gojo Satoru flashes you with the obnoxious plastic pink of a ring pop. The very same kind you’d sneak out of your estate to buy from that little corner shop down the road, fifty yen maximum. 

“Satoru.”

Make that twenty yen.

“What?” His voice almost lilts into a whine as he responds to his father - trying oh-so-hard to pretend nothing was wrong, and this was totally the silver heirloom engagement ring of his family. Just…smelling slightly of artificial strawberry.

Gojo senior pinches his nosebridge, “I swear to- if you are not serious about that damn- school-”

“It’s alright!” Your fiancé seems just as bewildered at your interruption as you are, and you narrow your eyes enough to tell him that if he messed up your chances at going to Jujutsu High then his blood would be on your hands. Strongest or not. Reaching out your left arm, “I don’t mind, truly.”

And while the rest of the chamber murmurs, Gojo leans over the table to slip his mocking engagement ring onto your finger. To be married. To be his.

Holding your hand in his larger, slightly roughened ones, “I’d rather die than marry you.” He’s crouching to whisper in a heated pant, each syllable sticking to your skin. Only mostly meaning it.

And you whisper back into his furiously pink ear—“And I’d rather marry a special grade curse.”

.

.

.

Gojo Satoru met you in the summer, like one of those heat-induced fever dreams.

Okay, perhaps that wasn’t the best comparison- but in his defense, penning flowery literature was never his best subject after he nearly caused a clan rift by comparing Zenin Jinichi to a bullfrog. 

It was a compliment, really!

But you were a whirlwind, one that left his world tilted and his skin sizzling with heat in the aftermath- in a bad way, of course! You were a bad fever dream - a pretty one, sure, dressed in your most decadent cerulean robes and a withering glare - but still one of those you think back to even months later. 

Even nearly a year later when he’s sixteen and had insisted on walking up the ancient stone steps of Tokyo Jujutsu High without his entourage of attendants and elders.

“Hello hello—” Gojo’s running his pale fingers through even paler, short hair to free it of pinkish cherry blossom petals. Looming around the naturally green gardens of campus, “Where is- oh!”

Just as soon as he was about to tug his opaque, round sunglasses off to inspect whether it would impress his fellow students- that lady working at the store said so, so it must be, he bought twenty-five! Gojo spots a figure leaned against one of the ancient oaks by the dorms. 

That velvety blue of the dress code was one that he could recognize anywhere after so many years of yearning for it. 

And before he can stop himself, he’s sprinting towards the dark blob as fast as his lanky legs could take him. Calling out, “Yoohooo–! Your one and only favorite classmate is here~”

“Ieri–!”

“Wait-”

“You-”

So caught up in both your excitements to meet your new classmate - one of Utahime’s friends who happened to be your age - you two didn’t notice the one, single thing that you two couldn’t deny. Right by your side.

Your betrothed.

You snarl, stopping short. “What are you doing here-” And he does, too, hands haughtily planted on either side of his slender hips as he leans in close.

Snapping at you, the brief glimpse of his electric blue eyes sends goosebumps down your body. “I could ask the same from you. Couldn’t resist my charms so you had to follow me, hm~?”

“I’m here to learn, obviously. Why are you here- to get exorcised?”

“Take that back! I’m here to learn, too.”

You knew that it was part of your betrothal contract that the two of you would attend Tokyo Jujutsu High, you knew that the two of you would end up seeing each other one way or the other. And you already knew your clan stowed that stupid pink ring away deeply at the bottom of your suitcase (where you’d hopefully never have to see it ever again).

But you still raise a brow at the flashy designer stamping on his shades. “…Really?”

And Gojo could’ve taken disgust- hell, he would have even welcomed anger. 

But that genuine, wondering confusion in your tone as you swept your eyes up n’ down his defensive stature made him flush- “H-how dare you- duel me. Right here, right now.”

“Haaah? You would duel your future wife?”

“Scared?”

“No, just wondering why you didn’t ask sooner.”

Scoffing, both of you dart your heads in unison to the girl with the shortly-cut hair that was following your argument like the fiercest of tennis matches. Immediately turning ashen-faced at your attention, and damn near devastated when Gojo happily keens. “Bob girl! Can you keep score of-”

“No.” She deadpans. 

Frankly, you wondered just how she managed to sound as if she’s seen every horror there was to see in the world already. Possibly because she already had, right there, but Shoko doesn’t spend her time answering your unspoken question.

Too busy digging in her jacket pocket for-

“Cigarettes!” Gojo squeals, never having seen someone his age take a puffed-out drag of one so close-up before. The clan always detested anything that would ‘stain the purities of the body’- and right now, Ieri Shoko looked like she couldn’t handle sitting there one more second longer if she didn’t have one. 

He points a lengthy finger your way, accusatory. “I blame you for this- somehow- you must have corrupted her with your ways and made her feel all strange like you did me.”

You roll your eyes, “Yeah? I blame you for our marriage-”

And he’s uttering for the second time, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m never marrying-” 

But just as Gojo was about to whirl on his feet and flick out a few cursed tendrils of energy like he’d taught himself. He was thinking of calling this one ‘Blue’ after that shade of your robes the first time you met, and the way you were about to be it’s first-

A deep voice cuts off his train of traitorous thoughts- “Yeah- mhm, I’ve gotta go. My new classmates are here.” 

A new-comer. 

And the black-haired boy looks as if he’d no sooner flip his cellphone closed to end his ongoing call and pretend he never walked out of the dorms than join whatever mess he’d just walked in on. 

Amethyst eyes slowly swivelling underneath his tied-back bangs to look at a fuming Gojo…to an equally-matched you…to Shoko, already chain-smoking her fifth cigarette away by now.

“Actually…could you stay on the line for a bit longer, momma.”

.

.

.

“It’s legal if it’s personal property, isn’t it?”

You groan, “It’s not your personal-”

He quickly taps the polished handle- “Now it is.”

“That’s…” You’re squinting your eyes, as if it will somewhat blur and spare you the sight of Gojo Satoru attempting to steal that shiny red moped parked at the outer edge of campus. If anything happened, you didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting called in as a witness, at least.

Shoko puts you out of your misery as the one voice of reason, “Yeah, that’s a lie.”

Geto cups a hand over his gaze to fight off the breaking rays of sunset, voice amused. “Well, I don’t see any cameras here.”

“Perfect—!” Gojo sings, clapping his hands together as he stares over his ridiculously gaudy glasses. It was nearing the end of first year, early December wind your fifth uninvited guest as the four of you chose to stay over in the dorms for your first high school holidays. “The key’s still here so we can sneak out, buy me the best birthday cake in Tokyo- no, in all of Japan, and sneak back in right before grump ol’ Yaga-”

“Sneak off from who-”

And, there, was aforementioned grumpy ol’ Yaga. 

Running at full speed toward your deviant little group from the top of Jujutsu High’s stairway. Which, considering the tough, rocky path, wasn’t too fast at all- but the four of you just bolt.

Faster than you’ve seen anyone move during any cursed mission, if you’re being quite honest. 

Shoko running, phone in hand with a suspiciously blinking camera light that meant she was recording the entire ordeal. Geto urgently twisting his fingers into what you’d learned was his summoning technique - he’d meant to call his Rainbow Dragon for a rapid escape, but ended up manifesting the massive, sleek form of his Giant Catfish who scooped him up into the murky depths of its mouth and slithered away.

And Gojo? 

Oh, Gojo was letting out the most impressive high pitched squeal before he’s slamming something hard, and helmet-shaped on top of your head. 

“Wh- hey!” Before you can even register it, two massive hands are grabbing onto your waist to sit you down on the cushioned back of the moped. Backwards. “Wrong way-”

“I don’t know how to drive!”

Your feet hitting the side, your back hitting Gojo’s larger one, it takes only a singular split-second for him to jam that lil’ key and speed off down the stony path of the campus. With Professor Yaga yelling from behind and you yelping, “Gojo I’m gonna kill you-”

“My bad, I meant to grab Yaga.” He’s grumbling at you from the front, the roll of his eyes practically carrying on the whipping wind. 

“Yaga would’ve known how to seat a kidnapee-”

“You want to touch me?”

“…No”

“Scared?”

Your wide eyes watch the disorienting way the lush nature of the Jujutsu High passes by, as if you were stuck in a kaleidoscope. “No.”

He only hums, finally getting used to controlling the vehicle enough that he was mostly sure he wouldn’t crash into every upcoming tree. “Prove it~”

Wordlessly, Gojo slows down enough that you won’t be part of his definitely-opportune traffic accident as you shift your body ‘round. The faux leather cover creaking! once you rover your palms onto his shoulders for balance- “There.”

“Ever seen anyone hold onto the driver like this? Ya prude-”

“Fine-” You’re cutting him off- cutting yourself off by clinging your hands in a neat knot around Gojo’s firm core. And through the flashing shard of the side-view mirrors, you catch the way his ears burn. “You better not get an erection.”

Okay, only partly sure he wouldn’t crash into an oncoming tree.

The deep timbre of his voice cracks- “H-hey!” You knew how to push his buttons just so. “Gods- why’d it have to be you?”

“And why’d it have to be you.”

The part he doesn’t say out loud is that it would’ve been stranger if it was anyone else. 

Not that you needed to hear it- of course not, you were still his infuriating, bold- stubborn fiancée who was forced onto him, after all.

Yet, to Gojo who’s held close by you, and to you who was clinging onto him for dear life as the haven of Jujutsu High melts into the bustling city, he doesn’t think he’s had a more peaceful birthday.

It takes fifteen minutes for the two of you to ride to that cozy convenience store on the outskirts of Tokyo, and what felt like hours (but in reality was five minutes) to give up on convincing the elderly clerk that you both were totally not a couple out for an after-school joyride.

And then - as if the universe was directing its very own prank at your expense - only three for Gojo to grow impatient and throw a tantrum swerving the moped to and fro until you finally tore open that packet of sparklers bought as birthday celebrations.

Honestly, what else did you expect from a man who organized his own surprise birthday party?

“Cake? Check. These things? Check. Happy birthday to me~” He’s tipping the starlit firework upside down to draw bands of gold in the darkening air. “Must be in the top seventeen birthdays I’ve ever had-”

You scoff, your breath emitted as a small cloud. “You’ve only had seventeen.”

“It just dropped down to eighteenth thanks to you-” And you swear you see the strongest outline a dick in the air with his sparkler, you swear he purposefully made it bigger than the one you’d drawn. “And nineteenth if we get arrested for the moped.”

In response, you draw the biggest dick. One with his face. 

You were parked on the side of a lazy road, only the occasional car and Gojo’s wonderment breaking the tense silence - perhaps the most civil one you’ve had in years.

It was odd being out with Gojo Satoru. No sniping over your betrothal, and if he tried hard enough- he could pretend that there was none. That there might be. But for now, the two of you were just two classmates sneaking out to ransack your local stores, “If we do get arrested, I’m blaming you.”

He nods, dramatically. Bumping his broad deltoid against yours, “As husband, that would be my duty.”

“So…” You’re blinking, your own sparkler’s ashy ends drooping onto the ground. There was no doubt on your mind that Geto would not have mercy on the two of you for finishing about half of these sticks. But you had something else on your mind right now, “You’re saying you don’t mind-”

“Wait. wait, no, that’s not what I meant. O-of course I mind!” And Gojo doesn’t give you the time to call out the way his breath gasps- the way his voice shakes, the way he’s flushing. Furious, “Never- in my right mind- would I marry you.”

A ring of gold from the dying sunlight wraps around your irises and irritates him so much when you finally look away to rustle your hand inside the numerous shopping bags.

Airily musing, “Then, I guess as my not-ever-husband you wouldn’t want your not-ever-wife to gift you this-”

“I take it back, I’m marrying you.”

If the elders of your clan knew that all it took for Gojo Satoru to accept the betrothal would be a packet of extra, extra-caramelized popcorn then they would have had the two of you married off by yesterday.

“Make no mistake, this was meant for me.” It wasn’t. You did eye this particular brand too long before swiping it off the shelf and paying when he wasn’t looking. You did think of nothing but the plastic ring burning a hole deeply inside your skirt pocket. And the way he’d whined and thrown himself on the floor of the nearby theatre on your last outing to the city, when Geto refused to buy him caramel popcorn.

So you’d bought it- to shut him up and spare your poor throbbing temples, if anything. Of course. 

But you can’t help the words that tumble out of your mouth at the glowing expression gracing his features. “But- here- happy…birthday. I’m not getting you anything for the next ten years.”

He’s silent.

Pondering.

And he can’t think of anything more flat than a little ‘thank you.’

The red, red metallic bag with enough sugar content to put anyone but Gojo Satoru into a coma sits carefully where you’d plopped it into his arms. And he looks at it with the sort of twinkle in his eyes that you’d never seen before. “Well…If I brought Yaga instead of you, he wouldn’t have bought me this.”

“I take it back-”

“Thank you.” Almost as if realizing those awful, treacherous two words himself, he backtracks with a sputter. Strange, he should bug Shoko into doing some sort of heart check-up on him soon. “W-we’re married for as long as I eat these. And after that? Divorce, sweetheart.”

Pretending to wipe your forehead in relief, “Thank goodness-”

“Oi-”

“What-”

And with your grumblings and partially-filled bags in tow, he’s fastening the singular helmet on you - so fast that you think he might’ve just taken advantage of his powers to do so. 

Just to watch you strangle out in what was definite annoyance as he pets the plastic top as if you were a child. Smack, smack! 

“I’d be a good husband- not that you’d ever know.” Gojo sticks his tongue out at you, vrrrrr—ing the moped engine so that your snarky reply gets drowned out. “And next time I am bringing Yaga instead.”

He takes back those words soon enough when Yaga catches the two of you right at the gates of Jujutsu High. Trying to race back away on his brand-new moped. 

.

.

.

“So- you see” Long, white lashes flutter rapidly, “Take pity on your poor, sheltered student. The Gojo elders really didn’t teach me-”

“I should’ve set the mission sooner so that I could be rid of-”

Geto pipes up above Professor Yaga’s booming lecture, a hand raised in every ounce of solemn discipline that his best friend didn’t show. Another mission. Constant. “In my defense, it was his idea.”

Valentine’s day. Also the early first day of second year; and it only brought about more missions, a couple more students as first-years, and a slightly-longer haired thorn at your side betrothed. And, apparently, this - three annoying, grating voices muffling through the gaps of your dorm’s front door. 

“I call shots on not answering to that.” Utahime pipes up where she was sprawled out on your bed and knitting her brows at your interrupted girl time. It’s not often that she gets time off from Kyoto to bother her only friends in Tokyo.

Snickering at Shoko’s absent-minded ‘ditto’ and Haibara’s- why was he even here, anyway - “I could! But maybe you should do it, he is your fiancé!”

Utahime cackles, face twisting from mirth to disgust when she inspects that plastic ring from where she’d dug it up from your drawer. “On Valentine’s day, too- oh I would rather die if I were you.”

It takes you a few moments to realize that all three occupants of your bedroom were staring at you for an answer. Pointing at yourself, “M-me?” Facing Haibara, “And why do you know that- you’ve been here for a day.”

He smiles, dazzling. “Ah, Gojo-senpai was telling us- it was why Nanami was trying to call home and leave.”

“Oooo, you heard the man.” Shoko presses a few buttons on her phone, and you hear the suspicious beep–! of the camera starting. Only incriminating herself further when she’s raising it upwards and flapping her hands forwards to urge you to open the door.

You groan, “Next time, we are not having girl’s night in my roo- wait.” And it had never caused you any trouble to leave and enter your dorm, it had never taken you more than a gentle push to open your door. So why was it that it just refused to open right now- “What the-”

It’s as if the door was locked from the outside somehow. 

Shoko leans in further with her recording camera as you prod, as you turn your shoulder to hit the wooden pane and shove- 

“Why- isn’t this-” You’re hissing through grit teeth, feet planting firmly on the surface and cracking open the bedroom door inch by inch. Gasping, “-open-ing–!”

And the sight before you was one you’d remembered for years.

Not just because smack-dab front n’ center to your vision was a pathetically kneeling Gojo Satoru, cowering in front of your looming teacher- but because of what was actually blocking your entryway. 

It wasn’t some lock on the outside as you’d suspected, it wasn’t a large desk or anything of the sort. It was a massive, heaping pile of buttons. 

Gold with bits of purple. So many that it was almost as tall as your door.

“What. The. Hell.” Your deadpan voice cuts Gojo off in the midst of some complaint to Yaga about ‘why is it named the Vessel Mission anyway, that’s stupid.’ And three sets of eyes snap to you as they finally register your entrance. 

“Ah…” Geto’s the first one to break the silence of your impromptu staring match, even though Gojo was pointedly staring away. Eyes twitching the longer his best friend stared at the mountain of buttons on your doorstep, he looked exhausted. “Satoru, care to explain?”

He’s gulping, “You see, this all has a very reasonable explanation and a very reasonable line of thinking-” 

“It’s all Satoru’s fault-”

“What-”

“Of course, it is.” Yaga rubs his aching temples, as he often seemed to do whenever he was around his group of second-years for just a minute too long. The older man turns to you with a weary, tired expression - and you make note of his dark circles, “This is the fifth pile of second buttons I cleaned from your door today- this hour.”

Ah, that explained it.

And it feels like your brain had just short-circuited, “Oh…wait- second buttons-?” Nevermind how he’d come across so many. Bought, most likely.

“I told you the elders taught me nothing-” Gojo squawks, scrambling onto his feet. He’s flailing his hands about, it was not his fault he didn’t know that second button meant…a confession. Or the fact that Geto hadn’t bothered to tell him and only watched with an easy smile as he made a fool of himself. “It was a prank- a prank! And his idea- he helped! I was going to block your door with buttons-”

“-second buttons.”

“-and make you all huffy and puffy that way you get-”

“-on Valentine’s day.” You’re finishing off, arms crossed. Carefully scrutinizing up at him- he hadn’t come across a growth spurt since last semester, he’d rammed into one at full speed. You shudder, in disgust, surely. “Did the elder’s hypnotize you or is there something you’re not telling me…”

And he hates it.

He hates how you look right through him in a way that induces some sort of heart condition in him- and Gojo would know, he’s visited every doctor in Tokyo just because of it. They all laughed. 

One even wrote up his letter of resignation.

Sputtering, ears pink in anger- and Gojo was glad that his pale hair had grown out just enough to cover it. Strangely. “Y-you wish, ex-wife.”

You’re swatting the back of his soft locks, and Geto doesn’t note how Gojo seemed to have put down limitless so you could swat him.

“Dickhead.”

“Delinquent.”

“Blind mouse-”

Gasping, he clutches onto the frame of his shades. “Oh, now I really don’t wanna marry you-”

Yaga’s had enough. 

“Enough!” 

One of the veins near the side of his forehead nearly pops, and you step back with a wince at the oncoming scream- Gojo shuffling behind as if he was bravely offering you up for sacrifice. 

“Enough- enough with the- the confessions-” Yaga spears a finger straight at Gojo’s directions and speaks over his protests. “-and the flirting! Flirt after the mission-” Then at you, and you could hear your friends cackling from either side. “Detention for everyone!”

Dammit- another line on your divorce document. 

.

.

.

You didn’t get to ‘flirt’ after that Star Plasma mission - not that you would, but still.

In fact, you didn’t get to do all that much after tasting death so close to your little haven at Tokyo Jujutsu High. 

And life goes on, sometimes leaving those behind.

And other times honing others who choose to stay and snap-

“It’s Suguru.”

“I know.”

The defection of Geto Suguru. The murder of his parents. His mother.

Your voice was more empty than he’d ever heard it- and he wanted you to scream at him, he wanted you to sob. Anything and everything other than the trained, stable tone that clashed against everything he was feeling right now.

But you only stare out into the yolky yellow tint beaming over the sprawling grounds. Sat on the flat, stone staircase of campus with your knees hugged to your chest- and he was close enough on the steps to hear your low mutter. “I’ll be leaving, too.”

Gojo’s head snaps to you- “What?”

“It’s my clan.” You’re swallowing, refusing to look at him directly. And that in and of itself almost hurt as much as when you did- and, for perhaps the first time, he’d rather have his heart race in those strange little palpitations. Right now, it was just heavy. “And yours. They don’t think it’s safe for a ‘future Gojo bride’ to be so close to danger.”

“Then we won’t marry.” He’s declaring, snowy brows set stubbornly.

“I know.” You lilt your head back to watch the sluggishly swimming clouds above, likely the last time you will from here. The council will be here tomorrow, and with them, your departure. You had that silly pink ring on your little finger, he notices. “I’m leaving.”

“I already said we won’t-”

“No, dickhead. I’m leaving.”

Widened, quivering blue peripherals lock onto you- and Gojo’s rosy lips part into a soft oh! 

He knew what you meant- hell, when he first wanted to enroll in this damn school, he’d threatened to leave the clan over and over until they’d finally relented. And suddenly he’s hit with the loss of his little group - no more missions, no more convenience store runs, no more you.

You were to graduate in a year, with only half the students left in both your grade and the one below. Nanami wasn’t even going to become a sorcerer anymore, not after Haibara. 

And he knew - he just felt - that you won’t be there for it. That you might never be. 

How he wished to run, too.

“Utahime’s friends with that one special grade sorcerer- Yuki Tsukumo. I’m leaving with her today to continue training my own way.” You’re continuing, hands flexing in your lap. “And leaving the clan. Officially.”

Huffing, “What? Gonna leave your poor husband at the altar—?”

“Like I’ve always wanted to.”

“Without even a kiss for the bride?” And he doesn’t know why he says it. Even more, he doesn’t know why he holds the line of your gaze and can’t bear to look away, even as his heart starts up that familiarly strange ba-dump–! rattling his chest. 

The tips of his ears tinging the very same blood-red as the sun now, Gojo thinks he can hear his eardrums whistling once you lean in. Once you close your eyes. And once you press your lips to his plush, soft ones for a mere single second. 

“There-” You’re murmuring, trying to sound stern even though the waver in your voice gives you away. “Now you’ve been deflowered and can’t complain. You’re an absolute curse, you know that?”

And, suddenly, he gets it.

Oh, so that was why all those cardiologists he visited laughed at him for about a year straight. 

He gets it.

Chuckling bitterly, of course. Of course, he has to understand now. Of course, he loses every shred of sun just as soon as he closes his hands- because for what reason should a weapon crave normalcy? Crave sealed fate? For what right should he demand that you stay here to bind you to him? 

His mouth quivers, head turning so that you won’t see the wet glitter of his eyes in the dying daybreak. “So now I’m a special grade and a curse? Does that make me the special grade curse you want to marry?”

Your flip phone buzzes, and he already knows it’s time. Standing up, “You had the curse part down pat even before you were a special grade. Probably why your bride’s running off, Satoru.”

It was the fifth and last time that Gojo Satoru would be declaring that stupid sentiment. Smile only half-true. It was a cruel summer.

But he always was good at waiting.

Gojo tugs on that cold second button of his uniform, calling out in place of a goodbye. “Good thing we won’t be getting married, sweetheart~”

.

.

.

Itadori Yuji has spied on his teacher’s phone before.

He didn’t mean to–he swears it! And was it even that much of an invasion of privacy if he simply glanced over at the glaring lockscreen wallpaper? Surely, it wouldn’t have been as bad as if he had peered over Gojo’s shoulder when he actually unlocked his phone…

…Okay maybe he had seen a snapshot of the older man’s home screen as well, but like he said- it was an accident. Flickering his curious eyes over as he opened up his catalogue of movies during their training together. 

But what wasn’t an accident was just how vividly he remembered each wallpaper. 

On his lockscreen; taken from the inside of what looked like one of Tokyo Jujutsu High’s dorms, with a massive pile of toppling buttons in the center and a much younger Gojo Satoru (and someone who looked faintly like Kenjaku?) kneeled on the floor. Clearly being punished.

Yet, what was most interesting was the scowling, arms-crossed figure of another student he was staring up at. Unable to tear his eyes away, even through his shades.

It was you.

That familiar face also featured in Gojo’s home screen - a more blurry photo, this time, as if it was still in motion. Of his teacher in the process of scrambling onto a shiny red moped, keys turning, with you stowed away in the backseat - yelling and sat backwards. 

And Itadori tried not to think much of it, but he saw you in the small framed photograph that Principal Yaga pretended not to have on his desk, yet, polished every day. 

He saw you in the postcards that Professor Shoko pinned up on the packed bulletin board of her infirmary, amongst diagrams of dissections and slaughter. He saw you in the brief, blurry facetime that the other teacher, Utahime, from Kyoto was on during parts of the exchange event.

And he saw you at the foot of Gojo Satoru’s bed, after he’d won.

Older, more mature now - but inevitably you.

Itadori could tell, even in the forlorn way you were slumped over the side of the mattress in Shoko’s clinic, body half-seated on a chair like you’d been there all night. 

“You…” He’s breathing, making you stir against his will. 

You blinky your teary eyes up in groggy confusion, fingers instinctively tightening on the large, callused fingerpads of Gojo’s digits. “Huh? Oh, you must be Yuji. And Megumi, and Nobara.”

Itadori was just about to open his mouth and answer that no, he was actually just Yuji- when a disgruntled voice behind him makes him realize he isn’t alone. “We apologize for the trouble, we can come back later if you-”

“Oh, no no.” You wave Fushiguro’s words off as the three enter - well, as Fushiguro enters and Kugisaki shoves Itadori inside. “I’m sure he’d want everyone here when he wakes.”

Gojo had won in Shinjuku, but Satoru was still sleeping.

Famed eyes closed. Bundled in the arms of bandages and reverse cursed energy ‘round his toned middle, he was breathing in slow unison with the beep! of the nearby heart monitor. Alive. 

You really did have Shoko to thank later.

And Itadori knew that as a student he should be more invested in how his unconscious teacher was doing, but he just couldn’t help but keep sneaking glances over and over. Wondering just who you really were-

“So, is the wedding going to be anytime soon?”

Fushiguro speaks, and the rest of the trio gapes. How dare he ask something like that from a sorcerer so lovely. And wait- why were you chuckling? “Oh right-” Nodding down at Gojo’s large form, of course, he told his honorary son everything. “I am his fiancée.”

“His what-”

“How much did he pay you-”

“Kugisaki, don’t be rude-”

Fushiguro nods, “No, she’s right.”

“Unfortunately, only this.” You’re scrunching your nose as you answer Kugisaki’s question- pulling out a tiny chain from underneath your uniform with an aged, faded pink plastic ring pop.

And she responds like she’d been personally wronged, dragging her hands carefully down her eye-patched face. “Ohhh- I knew it- not only is he a deadbeat teacher, he’s a deadbeat husband, too.”

“To be fair I did leave him. Of sorts.” You wave a hand airily, already having heard from Ijichi about the fate of the higher-ups. The clans. Over the younger girl’s ‘understandable!’ “I just landed in Tokyo today, I wish I could’ve come sooner but- ah, well.”

“B-but…” Everyone looks at Itadori as he stammers out, cheeks burning a slight rouge once your hand drifts over Gojo’s exposed core. Whispering in one breath, “How did he get a wife so pretty…”

“Hey- that’s my wife you’re talking about.”

You could recognize that smug, simpering tone anywhere. You’d be able to pick it out from a crowd of thousands. 

Laughing- as he’s tackled into a hug by an overeager Itadori, and the falsely reluctant rest.

It was quite strange to see Gojo Satoru like this - not just laid barren and sprawled over some hospital bed, but without any of his usual blindfolds and sunglasses. Just like when you’d met. And he always was so honest with his eyes.

And he was back.

And you were back - after ten years.

Which is why Itadori and Kugisaki have to fight the urge to look away at the expression settling over Gojo’s serene face. Wondering how you - his fiancée, of all things - would react. Winning against the King of Curses was quite the accomplishment, even for the strongest.

Would you cry? Would you throw your hands over him as they just did? Should they actually get up and leave the room-

“You- you complete idiot.” Gojo half-wonders whether your strength could rival Sukuna himself once you strike down a punch to his scarred shoulder. Yelling, glaring- crushing him into a hug. 

Your voice is suspiciously thick once you’re gurgling out into the pale crook of his neck, “I thought you said you’d rather die than marry me.”

And they don’t know what they’re more surprised about- the way that Gojo had the audacity to say those words to you, or the way that Gojo had the audacity to listen to those very words and laugh. Head thrown back, “Sweetheart, I’d come back from death just to marry you.”

Pulling away, you take the longest look at your betrothed that you think you ever have.

Everything from his longer, still-snowy hair, tickling the tips of sparkling sapphire eyes. Slightly slicked back to reveal shyly red-dusted ears, and a cute lil’ dimple at the edge of his boyish grin.

He was still the same Gojo you’d left behind - even though he was taller, stronger. So much bigger that you could feel the flex of his deltoids underneath your palms, and the ripple of his beefy forearms looped around your waist.

He was still Gojo. Always beautiful. 

SLAM!

“O-oh.” You’re jolting at the sudden closing of the clinic door, clearly his students had left the two of you to some privacy, and you’re almost embarrassed. “We’re an awful example.”

“When have we ever been a good example?”

“Well, I could say that about you-”

He only tugs you closer, breathing out as if the first breath he’d taken in a while since Shinjuku. Since you’d been gone. “I missed my wife.” And the two of you knew you should alert Shoko by now, but you only stay still- with you nearly in his bed by now. 

For what felt like hours. Years. 

“Yeah? Well, I- I missed you, too. I thought I lost you.” You wince, “I’m sorry for departing so suddenly.”

It was sincere - but the feeling of Gojo’s smirk pressing up against the side of your thumping pulse almost makes you reconsider it. “I know how you can make it up to me, wifey~”

Scoffing, he was really ramming up the ‘marriage’ part of your relationship by now. “Nothing with buttons or mopeds or-”

“No no-” Lurching back slightly, the plush, puckered fringes of his lips lean in oh-so-closely. Until you could practically taste the saccharine sugar of his heated breath, “You know, I never got to kiss the bride.”

Oh.

Oh.

Then he’s kissing you- and you’re kissing him. And it’s all that you’ve ever wanted with the sharp, pointed ends of Gojo’s canines digging into your bottom lip to drag you back.

Drinking you in like a man parched- he’s finding life in your mouth. Slipping his tongue in past the spit-glossed crevice of your mouth and uttering a hot pant. “Please-” Manhandling you with his strong, scarred arms up to straddle him on the rickety mattress. “Please.”

And you’ve never heard the strongest beg like this.

Never heard him flutter his droopy lashes and look at you through starved, feral eyes. A translucent bubble of spittle sparkling by the end of his swollen lips, “P-please.”

Never heard him stutter. 

Clearly he’s reading something in your sultry eyes because Gojo’s hastily shuffling the two of you down the bedsprings. Head hitting the puff of his pillows, your ass hitting his sharp pelvis. 

Your fiancé holds you upright and rubs a clawing hand doooown the back of your spine, toying with the metallic zipper on your sorcerer’s uniform skirt. “Fuck that about hah- not marrying you.” He’s crooning out in a throaty tone, strands of white nearly covering his greedy gaze. “M’ready to consummate our marriage right here, right now.”

“B-but Satoru- you just woke up-” 

“So?” There’s something deep n’ dark in his tone that made shivers skitter up your spine. Attempting to clench your thighs together but all it does is make your outer pussy push against the smooth path of his white happy trail. “Your husband’s the strongest, sweetheart.”

And then you’re being roughened up- then your skirt’s bearing the brunt of being almost torn clean off your hips. 

Gojo barely even registered his power, not giving two shits if it meant that he got to admire your pale blue panties up close and personal. A firm hand groping your right cheeks help push your clothed pussy up until your slit strikes the edge of his chin, thighs now straddling his pretty, pretty face.

Rosy lips purring over that darkening wet splotch between your legs, “Bon appétit.”

“Shut up and just- oh, fuck!”

He’s flopping the pinkish crown of his tongue out just enough to dab a lil’ dewdrop of spit between your swollen pussylips. And it’s just all that it takes for the first taste of your saccharine pussy to coat his tastebuds-

“O-oh!” He gasps, his hazed peripherals widen. You’re faintly registering the way that the shiny overhead lights of the private room flicker- 

Gojo grins as you gape, “Did you just…”

“Guess m’not in control anymore.” He’s snickering, stuffing himself nose-deep into your cunt. And there’s such a primal hunger in him, the way he’s not even caring for your poor, sodden panties before he’s hanging his jaw open and slide-slide-sliiiiding the edge of his mushy tongue up n’ down your folds. “Heh-” A light goes out somewhere down the corridor. “Whoops.

He’s whacking his jawline on the soft inner parts of your thighs and it still isn’t close enough. Tilting his head just so to slip his damp muscle between your ruined fabric.

“Shit- shit, your tongue is sooo big.” You find yourself keening, hips rocking back and forth at a mindless pace. And, truly, you now knew why Gojo talked so much because his tongue was so-very-lengthy, already circlin’ your sticky hole, “Like you better- hck! better like this.”

And the way he looks at you gets you even more drenched, haplessly watching as Gojo opens his throat wide enough to let the cloying droplets of your slick fall down to his maw.

“Oh yeaaaah–?” Gurgling already with the beads of sap that soak the lower half of his face, he’s starin’ you right into your fluttering eyes once he’s tugging your panties to snap! back on your heated core with an index. “Whaddaya gonna do about it?”

Before you can answer - before you can even think, the very tippy-top dome of his fingertip coils slimily down your naked slit. He feels you - so soft n’ warm - for the first time and pants. “Gonna ngh- argue with me from here to make up for it? Hmmm—?”

Almost as if on cue, your pert pussy is letting out the rawest lewd squeeelch at his touch. Bucking wildly, “Are you all talk or what ngh-”

“Looks like you’re all talk.” And you seriously were so wet that it was dripping down Gojo’s handsome chin, rovering a few more solid inches of his index to keep pryin’ your cunt apart with a wet plap!

Then a second inch- and a second finger.

His probing fingers are so big that the gummy channels of your walls have to mold to each size and measurement just to take him. “Look at ya- taking me in sooo well but ya don’t even- sit-” One of his hands claws on your left ass cheek to hold you down where you were hovering your weight, the other sinking in—

You’re squealing at the press of his thick, knobbled middle finger curving against one of your most tender spots. “What if I suffocate-”

“Then suffocate me.”

“You just came back to life.”

“I came back to life just to ngh- see this pretty pussy.” Gojo snarls up at you, tugging you down. Pulling you. Manhandling you. He just wanted to French kiss your pussy until he had that smart mouth of yours stupid. And those silly lil’ panties were a barrier- 

Within seconds, he has shreds of your underwear tattered and ripped between his pearly whites. 

Looking like a fucking animal once he’s finally sitting you down properly and stuffing himself so deep that you nearly see his pale, straight nosebridge disappear between your folds. 

Snaking his tongue to stuff and stuff where two of his fingers were pumping in n’ out in n’ out in n’ out. You were being dually stuffed open, the sting of him stretchin’ you out and swiping the gooey bottom of your core just delicious. 

“Don’t mind- haaaa-” Breaths ragged, movements sloppy. Gojo wastes no time in pursuing his delicate lips and spitting, “-dying now that I got ta see her. Now that I got to- hck- taste.” 

Hand shaking where he slides it along your thigh, breaths stuttered.

He’s feeling your slick waterfall down with every lap and slash of his tongue, bearing no mercy. Your thighs rendered all jittery and sleek with a sheen of syrup every time he flicked the tip of his tastebuds on top of your clit. 

“I’ve been so fucking thirsty- sooooo fucking thirsty.” Gojo whines, and you swear his baritone voice cracks. Hitches. Hips rutting up into the empty air, “You know how long I’ve wanted this- do you have any. Fucking. Idea?”

He sounds genuinely ruined, spitting back into your treacly pussy just to follow the wad dooown the seam of your pussy with his tongue. 

A third finger puckers ‘round the edge of your entrance, and you’re whining once Gojo lazily slugs the first pad inside and scrapes the roof of your cunt. “Please- since when- ngh- s-since…”

Giggling, higher-pitched than usual. “Oh, sweetheart- you don’t even wanna know.” You’re whimpering when he’s swatting down the velvety edge of his tongue on your sensitive nub three times before pulling away. Smack-smack-smack. “Spit in my mouth n’ I’ll tell you, h-heh.”

Breathless, “What did you just ask—?”

“Scared?”

And Gojo’s pale brows raise when you’re hunching forwards just enough to grab his clammy cheeks, streaming out a glittery streak of spittle straight into his ajar mouth. “Not if it gets you t-to- shut up-”

You spit in his mouth, and from the slightly-angled turn of your head you catch the way that his throbbing erection twitches. 

His fingers thwack so hard your very bones rattle, and Gojo drools the knot of slick straight back through your hole. Letting the jointed bumps of his digits stretch rub your pussy all red and raw from the inside. 

“That’s it that’s it.” He’s goading you on, scouring the searchlights of his digits inside of you for that one fragile target. And you’re feeling him poke his fingertips into the nooks n’ crannies near your g-spot, making you see stars. “I’ve wanted you to shut me up- use my ngh- face since I fucking knew what it was. Heh- if you’re not scared-”

“As if I’d be scared-”

“Prove it. Ride me.” 

“I am-”

“Not enough.” Within just a single blink of your glassy eyes, Gojo’s raising his non-dominant hand up with enough cursed energy that the neglected ol’ blindfold strewn on the edge of his bed flies into his grasp. 

Twisting his thick fingers over the silken fabric, circling it over your neck and immediately hauling you further down- “Ride me. Ride the st-strongest like you own it- h-haaaah- I’m your husband, aren’t I?”

With every word, with every second he’s thrashing four exact strikes of his fingertips scraping your poor g-spot. Slurring out a damp sluuurp every time your sheeny pussylips are gobbling him up. 

“Yes- hck! yes.”

Grumbling, sleazy grin just glued to the knobbly tip of your clit. “Yeah- yeah, then use me like I am.”

Kissing right back every time he’s surging his head up and mazing the flexible ends of his tongue muckily. It’s so wet n’ long that you’re damn near feeling the scrape of his tastebuds by your favorite spot, sloppily—“D-don’t think m’gonna last, Satoru.”

Gojo audibly, pornographically moans as you start carnally hastening your tempo. 

Cumming on his face- fuck, this was the wettest of his dreams all those long, lonely nights. In response he only latches his strawberry-pink lips against your cunt further, feeling every hot gush flood his throat. 

And you were so close that Gojo was drooling- pupils stirrin’ around the whites of your eyes with every circle of his thick tongue, throat cracking with whines every time he’s slushily spearing your pussy with his fingers. Over  n’ over. 

Rovering alllll around to prick your tenderest areas with- fuck, now four of his fingers.

Your husband spikes the edge of your g-spot, hard. Pulling you down with the corner of his blindfold just to dig his finger in deeper, “W-wanna cummm— ngh- please.”

“Call me husband.” He cockily smiles over the rim of your cunt where he was devouring you like a feast. “Call me- nghh- husband and I’ll let you cum.”

“Please-” Grabbing a fistful of his hair to shove him deeper and hopefully quieten his teasing. “-h-husband.”

Gojo groans like he’s the one cumming, “Ohhhh- again. Louder.”

“Husband-”

“Again.”

“Husband– Toru–!” Pouting stubbornly, “Unless you fucking can’t- oh, fuck.” 

Both you and the protesting bedsprings sing out in embarrassing synchronization once he’s shoving you into your high with a soft, sudden zap–! of one jujutsu-coated fingerpad across your g-spot. “Cumming- nghhh- m’cumming m’cumming–!”

And it feels so good you lose your vision to pure white, it feels so good that you can only throw your head back and ride him through each one of your peaks.

Milking the highs of your orgasm in repeated, filthy drags of your hips that knock the top of your glazed slit against his buttony nose. Whack! 

“O-ohhh—” Gojo throws his head back at the sheer, sensual motion. It just feels so good having you slickly rovering your pussy over his gaping maw, chasing the heat of his tongue slithering across your clit. Your sweet insides squeeze around his long fingers that Gojo thinks he could just cum right then n’ there.

And he almost does.

Almost- with almost inhuman reflex, he’s sneaking his free hand underneath the covers to plug up his leaking, red-hot orifice. Drivelling out a few creamy cobwebs of pre before he can plop his thumb over it. Close one. 

You ogle with a parted mouth as he grits his teeth hard enough that the plane of his neck throbs with a few veins, “Fuh-fuuuck–!”

And if you didn’t know any better, you’d have claimed that sounded like a whine.

A whimper.

But before you can call Gojo out on it, he’s sitting nearly ramrod straight against the cool metallic headboard. Starchy blankets - all drenched and coated at the hem with your trickling sap - all but thrown to the bottom of the bed. 

“Don’t worry- hah-” Suddenly, you feel something hot and moist gliiiiide between your puffy core. And it was so thickly curvy that your folds are being smeared apart as much as possible, “Made sure to save the big one for when m’inside, sweetheart.”

Mewling, “Big one?” Pathetically swaying your mouth open the moment he starts suckling on your tongue like some cute candy, “You sure about that?”

“See for yourself, my wife.”

You don’t know what to gape at more. 

What Gojo Satoru looks right now - eyes hooded, face flush, ivory tendrils of hair slicked back with sweat, several layers of sickly sweet slick stuck from the tops of his cheeks and gleaming down to his jawline - or the way that his cock looks like right now.

He was completely naked underneath, and you’re mentally counting about nine inches- possible even ten. Ten inches of solid, barreling length scrubbed all red n’ raw with ribbons of precum. Bursting out from the hole at the top of his fat mushroom tip and all the way down to the soft white hairs at his base. 

Drenched.

And Gojo gives the left of your ass cheek a good spank when it seems like you won’t be talking any time soon. Too hypnotized. “There there- big, huh?”

You’re huffing, “Y-you wish.”

“No need to liiiie- s’all yours.” Something in him cracks when he bucks up ever-so-slightly to let the shiny bulge of his cocktip scrape down your slit, mixin’ a heady concoction of white pre and slick that makes him salivate. “Look at her- she’s sayin’ she wants more.”

“You’re pussydrunk.” Such loud squelching noises that he jerkily lurches his head closer to listen to, as if his favorite song.

“Hell yeah I am, my wife.” With a raspy chuckle, Gojo slips the circle of his divot just underneath your swollen folds and hisses. “Now- I won. Your husband ngh- won today, why don’tcha gimme my reward, sweetheart?”

Oh-so-ready to make him cry on your tongue, you eagerly start snaking your hand downward. 

Fist almost enclosed around the bulky cylinder of his hilt before he stops you right there. V-line hitting your pelvis as he fucks up, up, up- 

“Nononono- another time. Right now…” Gojo slouches back, liiiicking that candied glaze of your juices off of his right hand. One by one. Before cushioning it underneath his head and watching you through sexy half-lidded eyes. “How do you want me?”

You hum, pretending to tap your chin in thought. “How you’ve wanted ta- ngh- have me, Toru–”

How he’s dreamed of having you.

Of shoving his thick cock between your pussy folds and fucking that smug smile off of your face while you tried to snap back at him. And his body moves before his brain.

Your back hitting the dampened sheets, your shirt and bra puddling onto the floor.

He doesn’t think he can breathe, he doesn’t even think he can think—especially when he sees that pink plastic ring pop as a pendant on your necklace and leans down to kiss it.

Every ounce of blood sprinting down from his hotly melted mind to balloon up his shaft so hard and cherry-red. Gojo’s tip is practically bawling by the time he’s flipping the two of you over and swiping the hard, aching bulge of it down your cunt.

Your thighs on his shoulders, his pelvis against your ass. 

Eyes widening—a mating press. A fucking mating press.

Gojo’s barely even done folding you completely in half before he aligns the round, spheroid edge of his cockhead to crown your sloppy hole and rut. Gasping, he shuts his eyes firmly at the warmth. “Wanted this.”

“O-oh fuck–” Coming your jittery fingers through Gojo’s sweat-splattered hair. He’s just so big that just the feeling of his globular tip makes you see white. 

“Wanted this wanted this- wanted this.” Gritting his teeth, furiously. He’s hiking his thighs up so that yours are pushed all the way up to hit your tits, bending you with all his powerful strength. “Have no idea how long- I’ve wanted you like this. Always in this position.”

“Why this one?” It was so filthy - even for him.

“What? Your husband’s the ngh- strongest and you expect him not to put you in a mating press the minute he sees you?”

Spanking the slivery slit of your cunt with one hand, Gojo fucking angles his head and grins at the slight puddle of sap that collects on his wrist. 

“So soft n’ sweet-” He bends his knobbly thumb in to twist the button of your clit, licking his pink lips lazily at the way your arousal glitters further soaked. And it wasn’t just that- your husband was just so girthy that he’s tuggin’ your entrance apart to fit his heavy shaft inside. “Oh, always wanted this pretty hole begging f’me.”

Just as he speaks, Gojo slips yet another inch inside and makes your oversaturated pussy keen. “B-bold of you to assume- ngh- I’m the one begging.”

“Ohhh- she’s not?”

“She- fuck!”

Before you can even speak, he’s rolling his sculpted hips and slamming your spit-glued mouth shut. Cooing down with fluttering lashes, “What was thaaaat–?”

You feel a damn sob break at the back of your voicebox at the feeling of his rounded slit lodging against the treacly roof of your cunt. So wet that he’s constantly rubbin’ his veins back and forth on your walls, half-ruts. Half-thrusts. Just to fit in. “Fuh-fuck you!”

And then you’re swearing that Gojo grows harder. Bigger.

The corner of his head swelling up to an even thicker circumference that strikes your soggy cervix with a plop! 

He’s bottoming out with a breaking tone, “Who’s fucking who now?”

And now that you’d given him an inch, he was taking a mile.

Fucking you into the rickety clinic bed like he was trying to stop your cute, arguing mouth from shrilling out. Every swab of his bulging cock enough to make your tongue flood with cockdrunken spit, he pounds his entire length into you like he hates you.

Slap!

So hard that the skin on his prominent v-lines stains completely red. And Gojo isn’t even feeling the pain, he’s only spanking hard abs into your front again. And again. And again.

Mouth falling into a sagged oh! as Gojo tilts his head down and watches when your geysering cunt swallows him up from the ruby-red tip to the bulk of his base. Heavy balls just peeking out cheekily.

All the way up until his pure white tufts of hair scratchily massage your clit and make you rut. “There- there.” The flat mountains of his palm come creeping down your tummy to press as he sliiides inside. With a smile, “Inside. Fuck- it’s inside. Can feel me all deep inside, s’like you’re hngh- made for me.”

“S’just s-sooo big, though!” You’re whimpering once he rubs over the callous of his thumb right at the bumpy point of his mushroomy head spearheading in. 

Gojo grunts, “And what happened to me being small~” 

You clench in response- the only thing you can do. And it’s like the entirety of the chamber tenses with something thick coating each atom of the air. 

You just had to clench once and his cursed energy was lapping. Out-of-control.

So powerful that it might just be enough to cause alarm-

“Oh.” As if alerted by something invisible, Gojo raises his free arm towards the door. Lengthy lashes coating with a flicker of blue lightning- before, like nothing ever happened, he’s back to rutting and rutting. In long, methodical strikes of his bashing, bulbous head. Probing deeply into every ridge.

Before you can ask what was the matter, there’s the metallic jiggling of the hospital doorknob. Locked - by his power.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“I-is anything the matter in here?” Someone- you think it might be Ijichi - calls out from the other side. “The cursed levels were just so high that-”

“Listening to the voice of another man when I’m the one fucking you?” Gojo snarls out, two of his battle-hardened fingertips swatting the side of your cheek so that you’ll stop staring at the door. 

Not when he was looking at you like that.

And not when he was the one unsticking your left hand from the side of his muscular obliques, gently kissing your ring finger even though he was drilling into you ferally. “Don’t you think of anyone else when- haaah- I’m the one fucking you-” The fangs of his canines bite in to the flesh of your digit, “Not when I’m your husband.”

“Wh-what if he hears—”

The end of your whine is caught up in his mouth, gnawing down on your lower lip and draaagging. “So let him.” He melts his glissading abs down onto your core, making you feel every bump and scar. “Let him- fuck. S’our long overdue honeymoon- and you’re gonna fucking- take- it-”

Mewling, “Fuck- fuck yes. More.”

It’s like those words have him going mad.

Gojo’s slick orifice grovering into the very bottom of your pussy, he tugs back on the blindfold dangling ‘round your neck to arch you further. Letting his zig-zagged veins creep down your g-spot, precisely. 

“Yes- fuck. Your husband.” Repeating and repeating every time he hits your sweet splotchy areas. “M’your husband” And then he clings onto your clit, then he twists his wrist and lets the pads of his digits buzzzz–! with cursed energy. “Your husband.”

Almost as if he couldn’t believe it.

He’s departing his breath out in a scalding breeze every time you squeeze. Bodily shoving apart the inner parts of your legs with his large, flexing shoulders. 

“Please- please please-” You’re wailing out utterly raw, the top of your throat feeling like it was clogging up after every ba-thump–! of his sweetly leaking cock probin’ every space inside your cunt. Swelling up so big that it was almost hard for you to clench- “Feels so ngh- good–”

“Yeaaaah–? Your husband’s makin’ you feel all good, huh?” The strongest couldn’t even give a shit about the way your screams were reaching a fever pitch. 

Faster, sloppier.

Fingers starting to stain with a bright syrupy coating of your slick, he doesn’t even mean to- but he can’t help the way that the air touching his skin crackles with energy. Drawing out hearts on your perked clit like a lil’ bullet vibrator.

“Go on- say it.” He outlines a very obvious ‘S’ on top of your rugged nub that makes you quiver like a leaf underneath him. And then an ‘A’, a ‘T’, ‘O-R-U.’ Coaxing out your tiny whimpers, “Say my name—”

“Toru- hck! Satoru.”

He twitches, syllables taking on a shaky manner. “O-oh right, that’s my name.” Chuckling, fuck- did he forget his damn name? Just that drunk on your pussy that he’d rather just be called your husband forever and ever. His flushed face pushes forwards to bite on that blindfold and pull you back down, “Call me your heh- husband again.”

Just uttering those words makes him jolt his mushroomy, flared tip inside you until the ridge hits the door to your womb. His balls on your ass. Bruising. 

You almost felt shy as he hastily brings down one of your hands to caress his rippling core. From each washboard ab to scar, sensually. “H-husband. My husband.”

Shit- he needed to make you cum now or he was going to, already feeling a steaming drop of pearly liquid empty out from his balls. 

“There- there we- go-” And by now Gojo’s fucking you so hard that he’s starting to scrunch his partially-closed eyelids with the weight of big, sparkly tears of sensitivity. “Whatever my wife wants.” The crowned tip of his shaft red and swollen enough to burst, pushing and pushing. “Anything my wife wants.”

“I’m close-” You’re sobbing, reeling him in so close with a grasp of his tensed back muscles. And it was true, his Six Eyes was showin’ him the way your nerves were sizzling, the way your mouth flooded with spittle. 

He counts underneath his breath. Five. Four.

Lips wobbling oh-so-adorably, “Toru, m’gonna cum. Let me cum.”

“Ohhh— s’that what you want, sweetheart?” He rolls his thumb over your overstimulated clit until you scream a yes. “Cum then.” Three. Spitting on the hills of his crowned fingerpads, Gojo makes sure they’re tight with particles of cursed energy. Two. Before spanking down- “Cum, my wife.” One.

You don’t know who cums first.

But to Gojo Satoru it doesn’t even matter- all he needs is to make sure is that you were creaming all over his ravaged cock, and that he was there to pump all his columns of wadded seed inside. 

Room lights shattering, somewhere in the distance sounding with a sonic boom! Gojo fucks himself hoarse on your pussy until the expanse of his skin was littered with pure power and lightning. 

“O-oh my god s’too mmm–” Your mouth dribbles with sap, gooey walls of your cunt sticking to the sides of his veiny shaft. Every tiny drag of his winding lines makes your high explode- “There’s so- hah- so much of it-”

So much that it was overspilling. 

And Gojo can only glide the planes of his digits down the saccharine white sap that leaked from between your legs. Gluing his fingers to the stray gaps of your hole, and they were buzzing. “No wastin’ now.” He bites down on the plush gum of his bottom lip and still can’t hold back his snickers. “Gotta g-give you the ring- and my second button. Then take you out for a- a ride-”

He could almost laugh at the dazed confusion on your face, arching up his spine just so that his cock pummeled into you deep and stayed there. 

“A ride and then a real ride. On a moped.” Giggling at his own joke, “Take you to eeeevery sweet convenience store in Tokyo you ngh- missed out on. Tell each one m’your husband and we’re having a summer wedding.” Kissing you softly, “M’thinking theme colours blue.”

That in and of itself is enough to make his drivelling orifice stream out yet another jetstream of cum, wadding up the entrance to your womb with clingy sap. 

He finishes off with another lecherous slurp that makes you feel so hot inside that it was almost feverish. “A-and then what? S’this all for you big- ngh- honeymoon idea?”

“And if it is?”

“Should’ve left you at the altar-”

Gojo’s red, raw cock jolts. “Ohhhh- just for that m’gonna fuck you in every hah- convenience store, too. Maybe they’ll hear- doesn’t matter.” Grinning, he hikes up a thigh until he is gyrating just enough to swirl his pummeling length in circles. The plump curve of his balls digging into your ass, eyes glowing with blue in the darkness. “Your husband’s the strongest.”

You don’t know if you can do anything but scoff through your embarrassment, “A-and real humble, huh?”

“Well…” He tilts his head with a dopey smile, “Did I tell you that was my first time? Been savin’ myself for heh- marriage, my sweetheart.”

Fuck.

“I love you. Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard?”

Oh- “I love you, too.”

And something in you told you that this was far from over.

Maybe it was the way that Gojo’s cock strikes the back of your cunt with a splosh of sap, slimily mazing through until it feels like he streams out a squirt of something. You’d just made him squirt- or maybe it was the way that he kisses your plastic engagement ring. 

Gaze delirious. Ears red. Fucked-out. 

“So…what was that they said about a Gojo heir, my wife?”

.

.

.

“The electricity has been suspiciously unstable today.” Shoko wrinkles her nose up at her completely shattered office lightbulb. The sixth today. 

Urgently flicking through her notes before she made a break for her most important patient as of late - the strongest.

Or, as she knew him, that damn Gojo with a penchant for tantrums and harboring a hopeless love for his betrothed. Often both at the same time. Speaking of said betrothed, she’d already shared a hasty greeting with you once you’d first arrived here- before you practically ran to the idiot’s room, that is.

Two peas in a pod.

“We have been getting strange him-level readings on cursed energy levels in this area since a few hours ago.” Utahime grumbles, barely out of the hospital herself but already steady at work as one of the new higher-ups.

“That so? Strange.”

“Yeah, and when I asked Ijichi about it he only looked pale and ran like he saw a-”

The two gasp. In unison.

“He finally proposed.”

A/N. Wrote this with a fever (Gojo was just that hot aha).

The porch sits right on the edge of it, a little island of yellow lantern light with you cross-legged in your chair, enamel bowl in your lap, fingers slick with bean juice. Crickets grind away in the ditch, frogs answer from somewhere near the pond, and the heat that pressed on your skin all day finally lets go a little, turning soft and damp and heavy instead of mean.

Your daddy, Joe, stands out by the road with a cigarette, just that small orange coal drifting up and down whenever he draws on it.

He’s mostly shadow, hat brim pulled low, shoulders a dark cutout against the pale strip of dirt lane. The smoke hangs around him in thin gray strands, catching the lantern glow before the breeze worries it apart.

The wagon makes itself known before you see it.  A tired rattle carrying over the fields long and low, iron and wood complaining in a way that could belong to any old rig on any old night. 

The mule steps out of the dark first, ears flicking, hooves whispering in the dust, harness creaking, then the wagon-bed, then the man riding it, the whole shape of him hunched against the evening like the road’s been sitting on his back.

He climbs down slow, not careless, one boot testing the ground, then the other. He isn’t tall; not one of those long, scarecrow boys you see come through town sometimes. He’s put together closer to the earth than that, thick through the shoulders and arms, weight settled in the meat of him instead of stretched out. 

Shirt pulls across his chest where the fabric has been asked to hold too much too often, sleeves rolled to his forearms, muscle and old work written in the dust and veins there. Suspenders run straight over his torso, holding everything decent, but there’s something loose under the neatness, a restless set to the way he carries himself, like he’s got more energy than his frame knows what to do with.

His hat sits low enough to shade most of his face until he steps up nearer and the porch light reaches for him.

“Evenin’, Sir,” he says, voice a slow scrape, low and worn, like it’s been dragged over gravel and cigarettes for years. 

The vowels don’t belong to your county, not exactly, but he leans into them like he’s been practicing, trying to make them fit the dirt under his boots.

“Evenin’,” Joe, flicks ash toward the ditch without turning. “You Remmick?”

“Yes, sir.”

He takes off his hat then, presses it to his chest in a gesture that seems to be humble, and in that little bow you see the line of him clear. 

Hair dark and close-cropped, stubborn where it’s tried to wave up and been tamed with water and a hand. Jaw rough with stubble that looks more forgotten than stylish. 

There’s a hardness around his mouth, something that could tilt into a grin or a snarl with not much provocation either way.

When he straightens and lifts his eyes, they cut toward the porch, and you feel it right away when they land on you, as sure as if somebody laid a hand on your bare ankle.

A limp green bean hangs between your fingers, ends torn and wet.

His gaze drifts, following your calves where your skirt’s ridden up, running along the slope of your shins and the span of your knees pressed together, sliding up the line of your apron and the thin open V between your collar buttons where the night air pushes in against your skin. 

He looks like he’s reading you, not just seeing you, taking his time over every line.

You go still, sharp-aware of every place your dress touches your body and every place it doesn’t.

The bean pieces drop into the bowl as you lower your eyes to the boards. The porch wood is dark and warped from years of feet, knot-holes winking like little eyes in the dim.

You fix on those, on the small wet snaps and soft taps of beans piling against enamel. Anything that is not the feeling of a stranger’s stare walking up and down you like a man checking fence.

“Baby,” your father says, voice flat, cigarette smoke curling out on the word. “Say evenin’.”

You wipe your hands on your apron and stand, bare feet quiet on the boards. “Evenin’,” you say, polite as sunday, letting the rest of what you feel sink down where it won’t show on your face.

Remmick smiles like he hears it anyway. It isn’t wide or warm. Just a slow tug at one corner of his mouth, a small, crooked tilt that never quite reaches his eyes.

“Evenin’, miss,” he answers, and there’s a drag in that word miss, the s held just long enough to make it catch.

Miss, when he could have asked for your name, when any decent man might have. Your father hasn’t offered it yet, so you keep it closed up in your mouth.

“Girl oughta be in bed this hour,” Joe mutters, eyes on the yard, not on you. “Ain’t no call for her to be sittin’ out like some boy on watch. Night’s for men workin’, not for women gawkin’.”

The words land on your shoulders like an old coat, familiar weight, old smell.  You bite down on what you want to say and feel it burn on the way down.

“I’m finishin’ the beans,” you tell him instead, hands tightening on the bowl till the rim bites into your palms. You don’t bother trying to explain that the dark sits easier on your skin than the hard white noon does, that the night gives you a little space to stretch.

You can feel Remmick watching you still, not with that sloppy hunger you’ve seen from boys in town, all elbows and gawking.

This is like he’s comparing what he sees to something he’s held in his head a long time. 

“Don’t reckon there’s any harm in her gettin’ some air, Sir,” he says after a moment, pitched low, as if he’s offering reason and not meddling. “So long as she stays where you can see her.” He tips his head, and his eyes make another lazy path over you, unashamed. “World’s rough for a girl on her own.”

Your daddy snorts, jaw tightening just enough for you to notice. “You just worry ‘bout them fields, son. I didn’t hire you to advise on my girl.”

The almost-smile on Remmick’s mouth doesn’t quite leave. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I’ll give all my attention to what you’re payin’ me for.”

He keeps his words aimed at your father, but his gaze is not that obedient. It flicks back to you when he says attention, and there’s weight in it, promise, something that makes your skin prickle fine all over. Something in you bristles right back, lifts its head like a barn cat whose tail’s been stepped on.

You draw a breath and set the bowl against your hip. “Where you want him sleepin’?” you ask your father, eyes fixed out over the yard so you don’t have to meet either man’s stare straight on.

“In the old place.” Joe jerks his chin toward the smaller farmhouse slumped beyond the well—a squat little shape where the lamplight doesn’t reach, half-eaten by shadow. “Closer to the barn. Got a bed and a stove. Man don’t need more than that.”

Remmick turns to look at it, and the lantern light catches his eyes in a strange way, making them flash for an instant like there’s something slick behind them.

The little house sits there like it’s been waiting, windows dark, door shut up tight, roofline sagged just enough to look suspicious.

“That’ll do,” he says. “I’m a night sort myself. Easier workin’ when the sun’s gone and the air ain’t tryin’ to boil you clear through. Less trouble all around.”

He says it easy, like it’s about sweat and shade and nothing else, but you hear the way he shapes night in his mouth, the soft way he lets it roll off his tongue, and something in your belly curls up smaller and sharper.

“Heard you don’t care much for daylight,” Joe says, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Remmick’s jaw shifts, a muscle ticking like it wants to answer on its own. He glances at you, quick and bright, before he looks down at his boots. “Sun don’t care much for me,” he finally drawls. “Burns me to char if I let it. Always been that way. Doctor said I got delicate skin.”

The word sits wrong in your ear as soon as it’s out, delicate, dangling over this stocky man with forearms roped up in tendon and dirt ground into his knuckles, hands that look like they were made to break things, not handle them gentle. 

It slips out of you before you can catch it, quiet and skeptical. “Delicate,” you repeat, eyes finding his without meaning to.

He catches that and settles into it like a cat into a warm spot. “You don’t think so, miss?” he asks, voice a touch softer now, gaze steady and unblinking.

You ought to let it pass. Ought to dip your head and let the men talk over you, let delicate lie between them like some joke you weren’t meant to get. 

Instead you hold his stare in the lantern glow, take your time looking back the same way he did to you, tracing the faint hollows under his eyes, the line of his nose, the mouth that looks used to biting down on words and maybe on other things too.

“No, sir,” you say finally, after a beat that stretches long. “You don’t look delicate at all.”

Something shifts behind his eyes at that, something pleased and sharp that makes your heart knock once, hard, against your ribs. The corner of his mouth tugs just a shade higher.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to live up to what you see,” he murmurs. “Would be a shame to disappoint you.”

Your daddy grinds his cigarette out under his heel, done with this line of talk. “You can unload what you got, then I’ll show you the place,” he says. “Got work waiting for nobody. You ain’t too tired from sittin’ on a wagon all day, are you?”

Remmick rolls one shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck. The stretch shifts his shirt over his back, pulls the fabric across solid muscle there.

You feel your breath snag for half a second and hate that it does.

“Wagon ain’t heavy,” he says. “I’ll get settled quick, then you can put me to whatever needs doin’.”

Joe nods and starts toward the dim outline of that little house, his boots crunching through the loose gravel near the well. The lantern light falls behind him with each step until he’s just another moving patch of dark.

Remmick lingers at the foot of the porch. He settles his hat back on his head, brim bringing his eyes into shadow again, but you can still feel them.

“You finish them beans,” he tells you, voice gone softer, aimed up at you like a secret. “Man works better with a full belly.”

There’s nothing in the words you could point to and call wrong, nothing on the surface you could carry to your father and hold up like proof.

Still, the way his gaze drifts down and back up as he says them leaves something slick and uneasy under your ribs. Heat crawls up your neck, hot in a way that has nothing to do with the air.

“I’ll see to what’s mine,” you say, gripping the bowl till your fingers ache. “Same as you should see to yours.”

His laugh is low, a rough little sound that lives in his chest and doesn’t quite make it to his teeth. He dips his head a fraction, like you’ve handed him a dare instead of brushing him off. “Oh, I intend to,” he replies. “You can count on it.”

Then he turns and walks after your father, stride easy, body moving with a loose sort of purpose. His shadow stretches out along the yard behind him, tossed strange and long by the lantern, then swallowed up as he and Joe move past the well. 

The small farmhouse waits ahead, black windows staring, door a darker cut in the wall. It looks, for one breath, like it’s swallowing the two men whole.

You stand there with the lantern hissing softly at your elbow and watch the dark take them. 

When the yard settles again, when their footsteps fade and the crickets creep back up to full volume, the space between the barn and the house does not feel the same. It’s as if something else has stepped into it and sat down, something you cannot see but can sense just the same, like a pressure change before a storm.

You sit again, bowl back in your lap, fingers finding another handful of beans by habit alone. The wet snap of them breaking sounds too loud in the hush, echoing in the hollow boards under your feet. 

Every few seconds, your eyes drag toward that low silhouette out past the well, toward the little house that is not empty anymore.

You tell yourself you’re only minding where your father put a stranger. 

The first night after he arrives, he walks the fence line while you wash dishes.

You hear his boots dragging through the loose gravel near the yard, then the softer sound of steps in the grass. 

The screen door hangs open to let the air move, lantern burning low over the sink. Your arms are wet to the elbow, suds creeping up your forearms as you scrub at a pan that’s older than you are. 

Out past your own reflection in the dark window, you catch a small shape of motion—the swing of a lantern out near the barn, then the shorter, solid outline of him moving along the fence, checking posts, rattling wire. 

He doesn’t look up at the house that you can tell, doesn’t lift the light toward you, just keeps on with that steady pace, head bent. 

Still, your shoulders hunch like you’ve been caught at something you haven’t done. The glass fogs a little with the breath you don’t remember letting out.

You tell yourself it’s good your father found a man willing to walk the property at night. That’s what you tell yourself as you rinse plates and stack them, as the little yellow circle of his lantern slides back and forth along the edge of your sight.

The second night you have to bring him his supper, because your father ‘forgets.’

It’s late by the time the last of the pots are scraped and put away, your back aching from standing, hair pasted to your neck. Joe leans back in his chair, radio humming low on the table, and says without looking up, “That boy eat?”

You still your hands on the dishrag. “Ain’t seen him at the table.”

“Damn it,” He grumbles, more at himself than you. “Told him come in if he heard me holler and I ain’t never thought to holler. Fix him a plate and take it down. Man don’t work right hungry.”

You swallow whatever you were about to say about whose job it is to feed farmhands, scrape together a plate from what’s left—two biscuits gone hard at the edges, a ladle of beans, a piece of ham with more bone than meat—and cover it with a clean cloth. 

The air outside hits your damp skin and feels cooler than it ought to. The night smells like dirt and hay and whatever’s blooming along the ditch. 

The smaller farmhouse sits out near the barn with a faint thread of light leaking around the edges of its curtain, not bright enough to spill onto the yard. You walk out there, skirt brushing your ankles, plate balanced careful in both hands.

You knock, knuckles soft on the wood. For a second there’s nothing, then the faint scrape of a chair, the hush of someone crossing a small room. 

The door opens only halfway. He fills the gap, shoulder and chest just there, heat and sweat.

“Evenin’,” he says, voice a little rough, like he hasn’t used it since sundown. “You lost?”

You hold the plate out, not stepping any closer than you have to. “Daddy forgot to call you in. Told me to bring your supper.”

His eyes go to your hands first, to the way your fingers wrap the rim of the plate, then to the food, then back up. 

He doesn’t reach right away; he lets the moment stretch, his gaze traveling from your wrists up your arms, lingering on the damp on your skin, on the few stray strands that have worked loose at your temple and stuck there. 

“That’s mighty kind,” he says at last, taking the plate so slow his fingers brush yours. 

They’re not as rough as you expected, just warm and solid, the pads of them catching against your knuckles. “Hope he didn’t drag you out here from your bed on account of me.”

“I wasn’t in bed,” you answer, because lying feels worse than telling him anything true. “Kitchen don’t clean itself.”

He makes a small noise at that, somewhere between agreement and amusement. “No, ma’am. World’d fall apart if it weren’t for everything women do men don’t think about. Least he can do is call me in for a plate now and then instead of sending you.”

You don’t like that it sounds almost gentle, that there’s no clear edge you can grab onto and call wrong.

You nod once and start to turn away, wanting the room behind that door to stay his business and not have to wonder what’s in it.

“Miss?” he says, and you stop even though you don’t want to. “You tell your daddy I’m obliged. To him and to you.”

You keep your eyes on the yard. “He’ll hear you tomorrow.”

“Maybe I like the thought of you carryin’ my thanks,” he says, voice dipping lower.

You don’t answer to that. You walk back toward the big house with your empty hands and you feel his eyes between your shoulder blades all the way to the porch steps.

Another night you pass him by accident at the pump.

You come around the corner of the house with a pail in each hand, too focused on not sloshing well water onto your skirt to notice him right off. 

He’s just there suddenly in the lantern’s edge, sleeves rolled high, suspenders hanging loose at his hips, hair damp with sweat or water; you can’t tell which. 

The pump squeaks once as he lets go of the handle. Moonlight catches the wet on his forearms, the curve of muscle there, the scar that runs pale along his left wrist like a rope burn that never faded.

You stop short, pails swinging. “Didn’t know you were usin’ it,” you say. “I’ll wait.”

He tips his head, that same little crooked half-smile thinking about showing up. “You scared I’m gonna dirty the water, standin’ too near?” His accent is thicker tonight, as if he’s tired of smoothing them for everybody’s sake.

“I ain’t scared,” you say. Your voice comes out flatter than you mean it to, which only makes him watch you harder. “Just got taught not to crowd folk when they’re at work.”

“And here I thought you were just bein’ polite,” he murmurs. He steps back from the pump, gives you room to pass. “Go on, then. Wouldn’t do to have Mr. Joe’s girl haulin’ from the ditch ‘cause I hogged the handle.”

You move past him, the damp of his skin ghosting near your elbow, the smell of iron and sweat and something like tobacco clinging to him. You set a pail under the spout and work the handle, arm moving in a practiced rhythm.

The pump groans, then warm water shudders up from below, splashing cold over your fingers when you misjudge the first rush.

His gaze sits on your hands again, on the bare forearms you didn’t bother covering because it’s night and there’s no sun to scold you. “You do all that yourself?” he asks. “Water, cookin’, everything inside?”

“Me and Mama,” you say, though your mother’s cough has been bad enough lately you both know it’s more you than her. “Daddy’s got the fields.”

“And now he’s got me,” Remmick says, watching your arm work. “Guess I’m supposed to make life easier ‘round here.”

“Then do it,” you answer, a little sharper than you meant. The second pail fills and you swing it away, careful not to splash your toes. “Don’t stand around talkin’ about it.”

For a heartbeat there’s quiet. Then he laughs, low and delighted. “There she is,” he says under his breath, as if he’s been waiting on that bite. 

When you glance over, he isn’t offended. He looks satisfied, eyes bright, lean mouth curled up. “You keep snappin’ at me like that, miss, I might start thinkin’ you’re sweet on me.”

“Or you might start thinkin’ wrong,” you shoot back, lifting both buckets. The weight drags at your shoulders, but you’d sooner drop in the yard than ask him to carry them.

He doesn't offer, just watches you walk away, and you can feel that as keenly as the pull of the water on your arms.

There are other little moments like that, small as splinters. Like, when you cross paths in the barn one evening when you go to check on a cow that lowed funny through your window. 

He’s already there when you reach the threshold, one hand on the animal’s neck, murmuring something soft and nonsense in her ear. 

She calms under his touch, sides heaving slow, eyes rolling less. The lantern hangs from a nail overhead, throwing golden light over the dust in the air, over his shoulders, over the cow’s hide. 

He glances up when he senses you, and for a blink his irises flash almost too light, as if the lantern’s in them and not above him. Then they’re ordinary again, a color you could name if you got close enough, and he’s saying, “She just didn’t like the thunder,” even though the sky’s been clear all day.

You lean on the stall rail, arms folded, watching his hand move in slow strokes along the cow’s neck. 

The steadiness of him with animals makes something twist in you, something like reluctant respect and something like fear, because if he can soothe two thousand pounds of nervous flesh with a voice and a touch, what could he do to yours if he ever decided to try.

On another night you fix a tear in one of his work shirts at the kitchen table because your father plops it there and says, “Stupid fool’s gonna walk around with his arm hangin’ out if someone don’t thread a needle.” 

You mutter that Remmick has two hands and surely they can manage a seam, but you fetch your sewing basket anyway. 

The fabric smells faintly of him, sweat and field and that odd metallic thread that’s been nagging at the back of your senses since he arrived. 

You push the needle through worn cotton and wonder how a man gets a rip that clean across the bicep, by snagging it on barbed wire or nail head, without a single bloodstain around the torn edge.

He shows up to collect it before you take it down yourself. Don’t know how he knows it’s ready, but he’s at the door not long after you knot the last stitch, hat in hand like he’s paying a call.

Your father’s gone out back to piss or smoke or both, your mother’s dozing in her chair, so it’s just you in the quiet kitchen with your fingers still sore from the work.

“You didn’t have to,” he says when you hand the folded shirt over. “Could’ve walked around indecent a day or two, see if anyone complained.”

“My father would,” you say. “Don’t like loose things on his land.”

He takes the shirt with his good arm, the other rolling his shoulder like it aches. The lantern throws his eyes into little warm coins. 

Some nights you only see him from a distance.

Through your bedroom window when you should be sleeping, you catch the sway of his lantern again and again, marking his rounds. In the moonlight, his stride is compact, efficient, not showy. 

He moves like someone who’s spent a long time walking alone, someone who knows better than to waste steps. He never seems to stumble, never misjudges a rut or loose stone.

You watch him slip between the barn and the smaller house, in and out of shadow, and you tell yourself you’re just making sure he’s where he should be, that you are only doing what your father would want.

You notice, too, the nights when the light in his window stays on longer than makes sense. Long after your father’s snores have settled and your mama’s breath has evened into sleep, after you’ve lain there staring at the ceiling until your eyes burn, that far-off square of yellow will still be sitting out there at the edge of your sight. 

Sometimes you think you see the shadow of him cross it, head bowed, shoulders hunched, moving back and forth in a tight little path, but when you squint it’s gone.

Once, you step out onto the porch for air and catch him already looking.

You don’t see him at first; you just feel that prickling awareness that has become his signature in your body. 

Then your eyes find him where he’s paused near the barn, one hand on the fence post, the other hanging loose at his side. No lantern this time, just moonlight on his face, flattening all the hard parts, making his eyes look too bright and his mouth too soft. 

He doesn’t look away when you notice him. He doesn’t call out or tip his hat in greeting. He just stands there in the dark, steady as another post, and lets you decide whether to step back inside or stay where the night can see both of you.

You stay a breath longer than you should, chest tight, heartbeat stepping up loud between your ears. Then you reach for the door, fingers curling around splintered wood, and it feels, for a strange second, like you’re the one retreating and he’s the one who lives here.

By the time a week has worked itself around, his presence has braided into the place.

The horse knows him, ears twitching toward his voice before dawn. The dogs have quit barking when his boots scrape the yard at dusk. Your father has stopped watching him like he might bolt and started calling for him when something heavy needs lifting. 

The small farmhouse doesn’t look so empty now; you’ve grown used to the idea of a man’s breath in there, a man’s boots by the door, a man’s shadow on the curtain.

You’re the one still wary, nerves still stretched thin every time you feel his eyes, even if nobody else in the house seems to notice how often that is. 

You catch him in little reflections—a sliver of him in the pump’s metal, in the window glass, in any surface that throws back light—and he’s always looking your way. 

Not always outright, not always rude, but always aware of you. Always clocking where you are in the yard, whether your sleeves are rolled, whether your hem rides high on your calf or hangs proper at your ankle.

You tell yourself it’s just because there’s not much else worth watching out here.

You don’t quite believe it.

Clouds bruise up toward the horizon, swallowing the moon a few bites at a time. You’re at the kitchen table with mending in your lap when you hear it—one sharp, panicked bawl from the barn that cuts straight through the hum of crickets and the low murmur of your father’s radio.

You’re on your feet before you think about it, thimble still shoved on your finger, needle stuck tight in a loop of thread. 

Your father says something about “damned horses spookin’ at their own shadows” but doesn’t move from his chair.

His back’s been bad all day; he’s been walking like every step hurts. Mama’s dozing, her breath a thin whistle. 

So you grab the lantern from its hook, light blooming up in a hot bloom that stings your eyes, and head out barefoot into the yard.

The grass is cool against your soles, damp from the thick air. The little farmhouse where Remmick sleeps has a strip of light at the curtain-bottom, but you don’t see him outside. The barn looms ahead, big and dark, door standing half-open like a mouth. Another low, fretful sound comes from inside, not as sharp as the first but enough to hurry you along.

“Easy now,” you call as you slip in, lantern held high. “Hush yourself, girl, I’m comin’.”

The barn swallows the outside sounds. In here it’s hay and dust and the soft shuffling of hooves, the rustle of wings up in the rafters. 

Your mare stamps once, snorting, eyes rolling white when the lantern light hits her. You cross the packed dirt quick, set the lantern on a hook so you’ve got both hands, and reach for her halter, stroking her long face.

“It’s just the weather actin’ strange,” you murmur, words more for yourself than her. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you.”

She settles a little under your voice, but her muscles are still tight, skin twitching under your palm.

You’re so focused on her that you don’t hear him until he’s already in the doorway.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

His voice slides through the gloom, low and rough. 

You jerk a little, head snapping toward the barn entrance. He’s just inside the threshold, lantern in his hand turned down low, throwing more shadow than light. Sleeves rolled, suspenders hooked proper tonight, hair damp at the temples like he’s just come in from a hard walk. 

“Lord,” you mutter, heart kicking hard. “You move too quiet. Thought you were a ghost.”

He lets out a short huff of a laugh. “Not yet.” The lantern swings by his knee as he steps inside, setting the hay shadows dancing. “Heard her fussin’. Figured I’d check before she took it into her head to kick through a stall.”

“She just spooked,” you say. “Storm brewin’ somewhere.”

He comes up nearer, close enough that you can see the sheen of sweat along his throat, the bead of something darker at the cuff of his shirt where it brushes his wrist. 

His gaze does a quick, automatic sweep of the stall—manger, bucket, the mare’s flanks, your hand on her halter—and then it hooks on you, like it always does, like there’s a string between his eyes and your skin.

“You shouldn’t come out here by yourself at night,” he says, quiet, not rebuking exactly but not gentle either. “Barn full of spooked stock, any one of ’em could knock you right off your feet. Ain’t proper for a girl to be runnin’ around after dark alone.”

“That girl’s got ears,” you answer, voice tight, stroking the mare’s neck to hide your own nerves. “She can hear you fussin’ without talkin’ over her head.”

His mouth does that little tilt again, amused. “Reckon she can,” he says. “Reckon she don’t listen half as good as she ought, neither.”

You’re just shaping a sharp reply when it happens.

Something cracks outside, a dry, sharp sound—maybe a limb breaking, maybe a board settling wrong, maybe thunder grumbling way off where the clouds are thickest. 

It doesn’t matter what it is. The mare flinches hard, shoulder slamming sideways. The stall rail shudders under the hit, and you’re standing too close, lantern throwing crazy shadows as the world jolts.

Your first instinct is to get out of the way. You jump back, skirts swishing, hand flying off the halter. You pivot toward the stall opening and catch—not air, not clear space, but the edge of an old nail head that’s been working itself loose from the post for years.

The sound of fabric tearing is loud as a gunshot in the barn.

It rips from just below your hip down the side of your thigh, a long, rude run that opens your dress like a mouth. 

Cool air hits bare skin where cotton should be.

You gasp, more from the exposure than pain, and slap your hand down, fingers clutching at the split to keep it from gaping wider.

For a heartbeat you stand frozen, lantern light swinging, breath shallow, your leg half-bared through the torn seam.

You don’t have a slip on under this dress, not a proper one. It’s too hot. You’ve got plain cotton drawers and a whole lot of skin, and you know without looking that the tear has gone high, high enough that if you weren’t grabbing it shut he’d be seeing places no man has any business looking at on you.

“You all right?” Remmick’s closer before you register him moving, his boots whispering over packed dirt. His lantern clanks against a beam as he hangs it up. He reaches for you by pure reflex, hands coming to your arms, steadying you where you’ve stumbled.

“I’m fine,” you snap, too quick, humiliation burning your face, neck, chest. “Let go.”

You twist away from his grip, turning your hip, trying to angle the torn side away from him. 

The dress shifts anyway, hem dragging through straw, and there’s a flash of thigh where your fingers don’t quite cover everything. You feel the rush of blood under your skin like you’ve been slapped.

His eyes drop before you can stop them.

It’s an instinct with him just like yours, hungry and automatic. His gaze hits the split, the glimpse of your leg, and sticks. Time slows down around that look. You see it happen, see the way his pupils widen, see the quick, sharp inhale he tries to hide.

“Jesus,” he breathes, almost soundless.

You yank the torn fabric tighter, the motion making the rip strain up higher, edge brushing the curve where your thigh meets your hip. Your whole body feels like a lantern flame, exposed and flickering. “Don’t you look,” you hiss, low and furious. “Turn around.”

One of his hands lifts, like he might actually offer to cover the tear for you, fingers curling as if they want to fit over the place you’re guarding. He stops himself, hand hovering for an awful second near your hip, close enough that you feel the heat of him even through the thin cotton. 

“Ain’t my fault you went tearin’ yourself open on every nail in the county,” he says, tone trying for light and landing somewhere rougher. 

His eyes drag up slow, from your knuckles clenched in the fabric, up the bare strip of thigh he already saw, up the shape of your waist and the heave of your chest. “Maybe you should let me look and make sure you didn’t cut that pretty skin to ribbons.”

The way he says pretty makes your stomach flip and your teeth set.

“I ain’t cut,” you spit. “And I sure as hell don’t need you inspectin’ me.”

He should look ashamed. Though, he doesn’t. There’s color high in his cheeks now, not from heat, not from work. His mouth’s gone a little slack, like he’s holding back words. His gaze keeps sneaking back to the place your hand guards, greedy, any time you aren’t staring right at him.

“If you say so,” he murmurs finally. “Wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

You hear the echo of his earlier lie in that word, delicate, and decide if you stay here another minute you might do something you can’t take back, like slap him or cry or both.

You shift your grip to catch more fabric, bunching the torn side up in your fist so nothing shows. It makes walking harder; you’re hobbling, half-skipping, desperate not to let the skirt fall. “You see to the mare,” you manage, chin up, eyes burning. “I’ll fix my dress.”

He steps back enough to let you pass. As you squeeze by him in the narrow space, your shoulder brushes his chest, your bare calf bumps the hard line of his boot. 

“Careful,” he says, voice quiet, right by your ear. “Would be a shame if the rest of that dress gave up and left you standin’ in nothin’ at all.”

You don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. You duck your head and hurry out, every step measured so the torn seam doesn’t pull, one hand clamped between your thighs, lantern bumping at your knee. 

The night air on your exposed skin feels wrong, every stray breeze finding its way up under the rip.

You keep your eyes fixed on the glow of the house, on the square of the kitchen window, on anything that is not the barn behind you.

You slam the kitchen door with more force than you mean to, startling your mama awake, mumble something about a nail catching you and make straight for your room. You don’t light your own lamp; you don’t want to see what he saw. You stand there in the dark with your back to the door and your dress torn open under your hand, heart hammering, ears roaring, shame and something hotter and uglier twisting up together in your belly.

Down by the south fence, in the smaller farmhouse, Remmick sits on the edge of his narrow bed with the easy, humming satisfaction of a man who’s been saving something up.

He lit the lamp as soon as he stepped in, not out of any real need for light but because he likes the way it throws shadows, likes the way it paints dim gold over bare wood and gives him something soft to look at while his mind runs back over the evening. 

The room is small and warm from his own body heat, close enough that every breath feels shared with the walls. Old wood, dust, a curl of tobacco from the roll-up he finished outside, and under it all the ghost of you clinging to his clothes—soap and starch and sweat—make a thick little stew in the air.

He shrugged out of his shirt as soon as the door shut, tossing it over the chair without bothering to check if the seam you mended had held. 

The rip in the fabric is nothing next to the rip in your dress that he can’t stop savoring. He works the buttons of his trousers loose without hurry, fingers moving with the contented patience of a man about to sit down to a meal he’s been smelling all day.

He doesn’t try not to think of you. That would be a waste of a perfectly good night.

He leans back against the wall, boots kicked off, pants open at the fly, and lets the picture come as easy as breath. 

You in the barn with your hand clapped between your thighs, dress split wide, that slick little strip of thigh flashing when the cloth slipped. The way your eyes flared when you realized he’d seen, outrage and mortification and something bright under both. The sound of your voice when you told him not to look, like you already knew he was going to anyway.

“Hell,” he mutters, half laughing under his breath as his cock swells heavy against the thin barrier of his briefs. “Ain’t nothin’ on this earth I’d rather think on.”

His palm drifts down over his belly, fingers tracing a slow path to the bulge at his groin. Even that light touch makes him suck in air through his teeth. 

He presses his hand over the outline of himself, feeling the hot, solid weight of his cock straining upward, and a low, pleased sound curls up out of his chest. He palms it once, a lazy roll, enjoying the way it kicks against his fingers like it’s eager too, then he slides his hand inside.

Warm cotton gives way to hot skin. He wraps his fist around the thick base of himself and exhales like he’s been holding that breath since the barn, relief and hunger tangled up in it. His cock sits heavy in his grip, veins standing up, the head already wet where precum has gathered from how long he’s been walking around hard on the memory of you.

“Look at that,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, thumb smearing that slickness over the swollen tip. “Worked up over one little tear. You’d laugh yourself sick if you saw me now, wouldn’t you?”

The thought of you seeing him like this, spread out on his narrow bed with his trousers open and his cock standing full in his hand, only makes him harder. 

He drags his fist down slow, savoring the drag from head to base, then back up again, the friction sharp and sweet all at once. The first few strokes are measured, a man settling into a rhythm he plans to enjoy, not something hurried and guilty he has to choke down.

He lets his head tip back against the wall, eyes slipping shut so he can see you better behind his lids. 

Not the church version, not the good girl with the hem tugged just so and the buttons done up high. 

The barn version. Lantern light sliding over your bare thigh, the tremble in your fingers when you clutched at the rip, that split second when your hand wasn’t fast enough and he got the clean, unearned look he’s been replaying ever since.

“Shit,” he breathes, hand tightening, the slide of skin on skin picking up a little speed. 

He drags his fist down again, slower, getting a feel for every inch, for the way his cock swells harder in his grip with each pass. Arousal slicks his thumb, gathers at the crest of the head, and he spreads it with an easy, greedy little twist, working it around until the slide turns wet and smooth. 

His hips lift into his own hand without much prompting, body eager after nights of walking around with you on his tongue and in his teeth and under his nails.

“Bare leg,” he mutters, watching his hand move now, eyes half-lidded, lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks. “Goin’ about your business like you ain’t got that tucked up under your skirt. Like I ain’t seen it now.”

He remembers exactly how the tear opened, how the cotton gave and the seam surrendered, how your thigh flashed in the jumpy lantern light. 

That first raw glimpse lives in his chest like a hot coal. Skin smooth and soft-looking, the curve of muscle under it, the sweet thickness where it met your hip. 

He remembers your drawers too, plain white cotton clinging to you, riding that line between demure and lewd when the fabric shifted wrong.

His hand moves faster at that, instincts catching up with memory. He curls his fingers a little tighter, pulling from the heavy base up to the slick crown, milking a fresh bead of precum up with each stroke. 

“Bet you went home and stitched that dress up neat as a Sunday virtue,” he says, voice roughened by breath. “Head bowed, lips bit, pretendin’ that leg ain’t still there underneath, smooth as cream and just as soft. Bet you can’t stop thinkin’ about me seein’ it neither.”

He can picture you at your little table, lamp burning, needle in hand, fingers trembling just enough to make the thread snag. Your face hot, your mouth set, your thighs pressed together under the cloth as you sew shame into every stitch. He imagines you tugging that seam tight, that same hand that clutched the torn fabric now working the needle, every pull a memory of his eyes on you.

His free hand slides down his belly, fingers pressing over the flexing muscles there, holding them tight as he fucks up into his own fist. The bed creaks under him, wood complaining, but he doesn’t slow. He spreads his legs wider on the mattress, giving himself more room to move, and the extra slack lets his strokes lengthen, his hips roll, everything turning into a slow rhythm.

“You know what I see when I close my eyes?” he asks the ceiling quietly, dragging his thumb across the slit. “Not that pretty little mouth tellin’ me not to look. I see that hand of yours slip. I see that dress fall open just a little more.”

The picture in his mind sharpens: you, back against a stall post, hand too busy clutching at rough wood to hold your skirts closed, light catching on the full line of your thigh as the rip edges skid higher. 

He imagines the flap of cloth falling aside, full view of your leg from knee to hip, drawers pulled tight over the mound between your thighs, a faint darker patch where heat and sweat have gathered.

His cock throbs in his grip at that. He grits his teeth, pushes his palm down hard, and his hips jerk, chasing the pressure.

“Yeah,” he growls softly. “That’s it. Dress up around your waist, showin’ all that sweet flesh. You holdin’ on to that wood like it’s gonna save you, eyes full of righteous fury while your body’s tellin’ on you.”

His fingers slip lower on the stroke, pausing to cup his balls, rolling them in his palm, feeling the tight, heavy pull there. The sensation punches another sound out of him. He goes back to his cock with renewed urgency, arm working harder now, hand pumping.

He lets himself wander further than any real moment has gone. Lets the memory of that tear turn into something else, something he can taste.

He imagines stepping in close before you can bolt, one hand catching your wrist, the other gathering your torn skirt up and out of his way. Imagines your gasp, that little sharp intake he already knows, your bare thigh hitting his hip as he pins you to the stall. Your panties stretched tight over the soft swell of your cunt, his fingers pushing up against the dampening cloth, feeling how hot you are through the barrier.

“Pretend you don’t want it,” he murmurs, throat rasping. “Try to act like you ain’t gettin’ wet for me while you fuss.”

The words sound vulgar and right in his mouth. His cock swells at it, the head aching now, sensitive with every pass. He squeezes at the top, thumb pressing just under the crown, and his whole body shudders, pleasure rushing up his spine.

“Be a good girl,” he hears himself whispering to the woman in his head, the one pressed to barn wood with her dress in tatters. “Spread ’em for me, let me see what you’re hidin’.”

His hand flies now, finding a quick, dirty rhythm. His breath comes rough, each inhale catching, each exhale spilling out in curses and half-formed praises.

“You’d flush right up to your hairline,” he pants, head rolling against the wall. “Act all offended while your thighs tremble and that pretty thing between ’em throbs. Might even cry a little, wouldn’t you? All sweet and scared and soaked.”

The image of you crying—eyes bright, lashes wet, lips bitten—while your body betrays you sends him right to the edge. His balls draw up tight, cock jumping in his fist, veins standing out under his skin. Heat coils at the base of his spine, that familiar pull gathering everything in, ready to snap.

He spits into his hand for more slick, doesn’t even bother wiping his mouth. The added wetness turns his strokes into something obscene, the sound echoing in the small room. His forearm snaps, muscles burning, chasing the crest bearing down on him.

“Come on then,” he grits. “Show me.”

He imagines hooking a finger under the edge of your drawers and pulling the cotton aside. Imagines the first sight of you bare between your thighs, folds swollen, maybe already glistening, all that heat finally out in the lantern light instead of tucked away in shadows and good manners.

“That’s it,” he rasps, voice breaking, hips jerking harder into his fist. “Knew you’d be pretty there. Knew you’d be soft.”

The wave hits with no ceremony; it slams through him like a mule kick. His whole body locks, stomach clenching, heels digging into the thin mattress, head thumping dully against the wall. 

A groan tears out of him, rough and strangled, half-swallowed behind clenched teeth. His cock jerks in his hand, once, twice, then again, spilling hot over his fingers and across his stomach in thick, pulsing ropes.

He rides it out, hand still working, strokes shortening but not stopping, milking every last drop. Cum coats his knuckles, drips over his fist, slicking his grip until his palm slips on the softening length. 

“Fuck,” he breathes when he can breathe again, voice low and wrecked.

His strokes slow, then ease off altogether, fingers loosening their grip. 

For a moment he just sits there, chest rising and falling, wrist slick and heavy, cock giving a few last, half-hearted twitches in his hand. Sweat cools on his forehead, a bead sliding down along his temple.

He looks down at the mess on his belly, streaks shining in the lamplight, dripping off the side of his hand. There’s no disgust in the way he examines it; if anything, there’s pride. A crooked smile tugs at his mouth, lazy and satisfied.

“Look what you pulled out of me, and you weren’t even here,” he murmurs, more pleased than ashamed. 

He wipes his hand across his stomach, smearing instead of cleaning, fingers drawing idle patterns through the stickiness before he drags them off onto a wadded-up shirt at his side. 

The cotton takes the worst of it, darkening where it soaks, but he doesn’t fuss about the rest. Let it dry on his skin. Let it sit there as a reminder.

He tucks himself back into his briefs, though he doesn’t bother fastening his trousers all the way, leaving the fly gaping a little for air. 

His body feels loose and heavy now, bones sunk deep into the thin mattress. The edge is blunted, that sharp hunger dulled to a warm, low thrum, but it’s not gone.

He leans his head back and lets his eyes drift half-closed, the lamp still burning low. 

In the quiet, he can almost hear you tossing under your own quilt up the rise, feel the echo of your indignation, imagine the way your fingers might trace absent circles over the mended seam of your dress while you tell yourself you hate him.

He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, savoring that thought as much as any touch.

“Gonna see it torn again,” he says softly, not quite a promise, not quite a threat. 

The lamp flickers, a tiny flame fighting sleep. Outside, crickets scream and something small scurries through the grass. 

The little house settles around him with soft creaks and sighs. He closes his eyes fully at last, the picture of your bare thigh and your furious face smoothing together into one sweet, ripe ache he’s already wondering how soon he can taste again.

Most nights Remmick does his rounds like he’s supposed to, lantern swinging at his knee, gate latches checked, fence wire plucked and listened to like strings. 

But once he knows the map of the place in his bones, once he has counted every post and measured every path, his feet start wandering off the straight lines your daddy would like him to walk. 

He learns where the shadows fall thickest under the pecan tree by the side yard, where the dark under the eaves hides a man from anyone glancing out through lamplight. 

He learns just how far back he can stand and still see into the kitchen window when you’re up late, sleeves rolled, forearms wet to the elbow, talking to your mama while you scrub a pan. 

He learns that when you think everybody’s settled, you lean your hip against the counter and tilt your head a little while you dry your hands, and that little shift of weight does things to your dress you’d never let it do in town.

He finds out you like the back porch at night even more than you like it at dusk. That when the work is done and your parents are loud in their sleep, you slip out with a glass or a cup and sit with your legs stretched, ankles crossed, toes tracing idle circles on the board beneath them. 

From the fence line he can see the shine of lamplight on your bare shins when your hem rides up, can see the loose, tired way you soften back into the chair. 

He watches you tilt your face toward the dark yard like you’re asking it questions it hasn’t answered yet, listens to the little sounds you make—half-sighs, half-hums—that never show up when anyone else is awake. 

He leans on a post with a cigarette hanging from his fingers and looks until he’s had his fill, no hurry in him, nothing but a lazy, steady satisfaction in knowing you have no idea.

He learns your bedroom window, too. Where it sits in relation to the oak, how far up the slope he has to stand to see its square of light. 

The first time he notices the curtain isn’t quite shut, it’s by accident; he’s walking back late, boots slow on the path, when a slice of movement catches his eye. 

Curtain gapping, lamp turned low, you moving around your room in that soft circle people make before bed. 

He stops in the shadow of the tree without even thinking, shoulder to rough bark, the leaves above him murmuring in a wind that doesn’t get down into the yard. 

From there he can see you in fragments—an arm as you reach up to unbutton, a brief glimpse of the side of your neck, the line of your shoulder as fabric slips. 

He tells himself he’ll move when you’re done, that he’s only making sure you got in safe. He stays until the lamp goes out.

The night he sees you in the bath, there’s not even that thin excuse.

It’s late enough the frogs have worn down to a sleepy chorus and the crickets sound drunk. A low, warm fog sits over the fields, pressing scents in close: damp earth, animals settled in their pens, soap drifting thin from the open kitchen window where somebody forgot to latch it right. 

He’s finished his rounds early, all the work of the night sitting behind him instead of ahead, and he feels that restless itch under his skin again, that soft, prowling urge that has nothing to do with fences and everything to do with you.

The house is a square of softer dark against the sky, only a couple of windows holding light. 

He knows which is which now without having to think about it. Kitchen, front room, your parents’ room. The little back room off the side where the big galvanized tub sits when somebody’s been lucky enough to haul enough water. 

Tonight it’s that one glowing gentle behind its thin cotton curtain, lantern hanging somewhere just out of sight, making the fabric look like a pale, breathing thing.

He circles wide, slipping along the edge of the yard where the grass meets the packed dirt of the lane, where the shadows from the trees throw him one more thin cloak. 

The bath window is low, glass fogged a little from steam. The curtain is drawn but not all the way, left a thumb’s width open on one side—enough for light to leak out in a narrow spill. Enough, if a man stepped in close and angled himself just right, to see inside.

He comes up under the sill, breath slow, boots quiet, and lays his palm flat against the siding to steady himself. The boards are cool and rough under his fingers. He leans his shoulder into them and tilts his head, lining his eye up with that careless little gap.

Heat hits him first, a wet, sweet breath rolling out into the night. The lantern inside throws shadows high on the wall, flickering over the curve of the tub, over the length of you in it.

You’re sunk down in the water with your knees bent, one leg drawn up just enough for him to see the shape of it under the surface, the other stretched straighter, foot braced on the far side. 

The water glows around you, gone cloudy with soap, clinging in beads to your skin where it’s out of the tub. 

Your shoulders show above the rim, bare and slick, drops running down in slow trails. 

Steam curls off your chest, off the slopes of your breasts where they rise from the water, soft and heavy, nipples pebbled tight from the heat or the air or both. The lamplight loves them, catching on every curve, laying little gold crowns on each peak.

Your head is tipped back against the rolled towel you’ve wedged between neck and tin, eyes closed, lips parted just enough for breath. One arm drifts along the tub’s edge, fingers dragging lazy patterns through the thin scum of soap there, the other resting across your stomach.

He watches your ribs move with each inhale, the slight swell and fall of your belly under your palm.

You're so unaware of him that it feels almost holy.

He drinks it in like it’s what he came here for all along, no flinch in him, no apology. His gaze roams where it will. 

From the line of your throat down to the hollow between your collarbones, where a small puddle has gathered and overflowed in slow rivulets; down over the slick, shining hills of your breasts, the way they shift just a little with every breath, the way the waterline cuts across them. Lower, to where the curve of your stomach disappears under the opaque water, hinting at more, promising everything.

You shift, lifting one arm to drag the washcloth over your shoulder. The washcloth trails over the round of your shoulder, down the outside of your arm, across the swell of your breast, nipple tightening even more when the rough cloth skims past.

You don’t seem to notice the way your own body responds; you’re too busy chasing day-dirt away, lifting your arm to scrub your neck, tilting your head to give yourself better reach.

From his vantage, he sees everything. His hand tightens on the siding, knuckles going white, that buzzing hunger flaring up bright and hot behind his eyes.

He stares, not making a sound.

You work the cloth down your arm and set it aside, then slide both hands into the water, scooping and pouring over yourself. 

You lift your leg a little, knee rising higher, water spilling off in sheets, showing him the smooth length of your thigh all the way to the place where it vanishes back under the cloudy surface. The muscles there flex as you shift, your toes stretching, calf defined a moment before settling again. 

For a brief second, the water thins enough he can see the shadowed shape where your thighs meet, softened by the haze but there, real and mouth-watering.

His eyes go dark on it, pupils swallowing light. He leans in a fraction more, cheek almost touching the glass, breath fogging the edge of the pane where it meets the frame. 

Every small move you make sends little waves across your body, playing light over the parts he can see, hinting at the parts he can’t.

You sigh, the sound faint through the wall but clear. Your head tips a little to the side, cheek turning toward the window without quite facing it. 

One hand skims over your sternum, following the center line of your body until it disappears under the water. 

Your fingers paddle lazily there for a moment, moving along your own stomach, over the soft give of your lower belly. 

He imagines exactly where they’re drifting, what warm, slick places they’re brushing, even if you’re not thinking of it like that. Your face gives nothing away but relief, a tired little slackness, the expression of someone finally easing aches out of their bones.

“You ain’t got a clue,” he breathes, lips ghosting the words against the flaking clapboard. There’s satisfaction in it, not cruelty. “Bathin’ like Eve in a picture book with the curtain open and the devil on the outside lookin’ in.”

His hand, the one not braced on the wall, shifts restlessly by his side, brushing the front of his trousers. 

He doesn’t touch himself proper, not yet; this is looking time. He wants to be empty enough of the last time to fill up on this one entire. 

His fingers flex anyway, his palm pressing for a moment against the growing bulge, acknowledging it. His cock swells quick and eager, remembering the barn, welcoming the new fodder.

You lean forward to reach the soap, and the angle changes. 

For a breathless few seconds he gets the long line of your back, the way it curves from nape to waist, the hollow above your hips, the dimples that show when you move just so. Water slides off you in glittering trails, trickling down along your spine, pooling in the small of your back before spilling lower. 

As you sit back again, that same water slips over the round of your ass where it breaks the surface, catching the light along the curve, then vanishes under the cloudy bath.

He closes his eyes briefly, just to fix it, then opens them again. He doesn’t want to miss a thing.

You lather your hands, work the soap into your skin, fingers massaging into your shoulders, down along your collarbones. 

The more you scrub, the slipperier you become, water beading and running, foam clinging in thin streaks before melting away. 

When you finally slide your hands under the water, scrubbing lower, your elbows move in a rhythm that makes something low and obscene curl in his gut. 

He knows you’re only washing, just doing what needs doing, but to him it looks like a preview, looks like a rehearsal of things you haven’t yet learned to want.

He watches until the waterline creeps lower on the lantern as the bath cools and you sink down, chasing warmth. Watches as you finally let yourself relax fully, shoulders sliding under, just your face above the surface, eyes closed, breaths slow and even.

Only when you sit forward and reach for the towel hanging on the peg beside the tub does he ease back from the window. 

He knows if he lingers another second, if he sees you stand, water sheeting off every inch as you step out, he’ll plant roots under this sill and never leave. 

There will be other nights, he tells himself.

He peels himself off the wall, body humming, and slips back into the darker yard, breath still measured, strides easy. 

By the time he’s at the edge of the light, he has his lantern in hand again, held low, the picture of a man just passing through on his way to some small piece of work.

He doesn’t feel a lick of shame. What would be the use of it, when the memory of you in that tub is already lodged in his body like a polished stone, something he can roll under his tongue whenever he chooses. 

You’ll go to bed clean and soft, thinking maybe about chores and storms and the seam you mended this morning. 

He’ll go back to his little house with your wet skin behind his eyes and no confusion about what he plans to do with it.

The day’s been long, the kind that starts with a rooster and ends with your back feeling twice your age. 

By the time supper’s put away and the kitchen wiped down, your father’s in his chair with his boots off, socks so full of holes you don’t know why he bothers wearing them, radio mumbling low out of the corner. Your mother’s gone to bed early with a headache, door cracked just enough that you can hear her cough now and again.

You’re halfway through folding the dish towels when you remember.

Mama’s good jar of salve.

You can see it plain in your mind’s eye: small tin with the blue lid, the one she guards like treasure. 

She sent you looking for it just after dinner, when she noticed the raw place on your father’s wrist from rope burn and the darkening bruise on your own hip from where the stall rail caught you days ago. 

You’d gone to fetch more wood for the stove first, meaning to get the salve on your way back, and somehow it slipped right out of your head, chased off by smoke and scolding and the rush to get biscuits off the fire before they burned.

Your father’s already grumbled twice about the barn nail and told you if you’d been paying mind you wouldn’t have torn your dress, wouldn’t have bruises, wouldn’t have needed fussing. 

You can hear him in the morning if he finds that wrist still angry and your hip still tender. Can hear that disappointed click of his tongue.

You’d seen him hand the tin to Remmick earlier in the week, mumbling something about “keep this on hand, boy, in case you tear yourself up,” and watched the new hand tuck it into the pocket of his coat before heading down to the little farmhouse.

“That’s where it is,” you murmur, more to the quiet kitchen than to anyone. A little knot between your brows loosens when you place it. “Down there.”

You glance at the clock. It’s late enough the newsman’s gone off the air, early enough the world hasn’t quite tipped into the dead hours where the dark feels thickest. 

Outside the window, the yard is quiet, the barn a heavy shadow, the smaller house beyond it just a darker square against the field.

“Where’s that boy?” Your father mutters around his cigarette, not really expecting an answer. “Ain’t heard him come in for coffee. He out checkin’ fence or sleepin’ on my dime?”

“Out, I reckon,” you say, folding the last towel with a sharp little snap.

Truth is, you haven’t heard his boots either. You haven’t seen his lantern bob by the window. It’s been a soft, blank stretch of night, no sign of him.

You tell yourself that means he’s at the far end of the pasture or walking the ditch line. Exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“I’ll fetch Mama’s salve,” you add, already untying your apron, tucking it over the back of a chair. “She’ll want it first thing in the mornin’.”

Joe nods, smoke curling out of his nose. “Don’t you linger,” he says, not looking up. “Get what you need and bring your tail back in this house. I don’t want you down there visitin’ like it’s social hour.”

You bite back the urge to say you’d sooner visit the pig pen. “Yes, sir,” is what comes out instead.

The night air catches you on the porch, damp and soft, smelling of cooling dirt and a hint of something sweet blooming out by the fence. 

You step down barefoot, skirts whispering around your calves, the boards’ splinters familiar against your soles. The big house’s light spills just to the bottom of the steps, then gives up, letting the yard roll out into dark.

The little farmhouse sits a ways off, past the well, past the worn track where the wagon turns. All its windows are black. No orange seam under the curtain, no silhouette rising and falling against the glass. The barn is quiet too, doors thrown shut, only a thin line of moon-silver along the roof.

You latch onto the sight of that dark little house like proof. He’s not there. He’s out somewhere with a lantern and a bad attitude. 

You’ll be in and out before he knows you’ve even left your room.

You wrap that thought around yourself like a shawl and start across the yard.

The grass is cool and a little slick with dew under your feet, clinging between your toes. Crickets saw at the edges of things, frogs mutter down in the low spots. The well’s stone lip rises out of the ground like something old and patient; you ghost past it, keeping your eyes on the squat shadow of the farmhouse.

Up close, it looks smaller, somehow meaner. The door is shut, the porch bare save for his boots lined up neat off to one side. You take in that detail with a little flick of relief—boots off means man in bed, not loose in the yard—before another thought slides in behind it: or just inside.

You hesitate only a heartbeat.

The want to not get scolded in the morning, the want to have Mama’s salve where she can lay hands on it, outweighs the whisper of sense telling you this is foolish.

You lay your palm on the door and push.

It gives with a small, tired creak, the smell of the place rolling over you in a warm wave: wood, straw, tobacco, sweat, and that faint metallic thread you’ve started to think of as his alone. There’s a lamp turned low on the table just inside, wick pinched till the flame is barely more than a coal in a glass throat, enough to lay out the shapes of things and nothing more.

“Remmick?” you call, voice barely above a whisper, more habit than hope. When nothing answers—not a word, not a shift of boards—you let your breath out slow and step over the threshold.

The door eases halfway shut behind you, not latched. You don’t bother with it; you don’t plan to be here long enough to worry about what’s open and what isn’t. 

The room is small and spare, just like your daddy said it was. Bed against one wall, blanket rumpled from someone sitting, if not lying. Chair with a coat thrown over the back, shirt draped careless on top. Table with the lamp, a chipped cup, a folded knife. A shelf holding a few tin plates, a jar of coffee, the heel of a loaf.

You move quick but careful, eyes trying not to linger on the smaller things that say a man’s been living here—his belt coiled on the chair seat, his hat hanging from the peg, the empty space on the floor where his boots were. 

You head straight for the coat, remembering your father’s hand dropping the salve tin into its pocket.

You pinch the fabric between your fingers, easing it aside, but the weight you expect to tug at the hem isn’t there. The coat hangs light. You pat the pockets; they’re empty, save for a wadded rag and a stray button.

“Damn,” you breathe, annoyed, under your breath.

Maybe he moved it. Maybe he took it out so the tin wouldn’t fall and get lost when he shrugged the coat on.

You cast your eyes around the room, searching high shelves, low boxes, any place someone might set a small, important thing.

The table catches your attention next. You circle it, gaze skimming over the knife, the cup, the lamp. 

There, near the edge, half in shadow—a squat little tin no bigger than your palm, blue lid dulled with age.

You smile in spite of yourself and reach for it. “Got you,” you murmur, closing your fingers around the cool metal.

You pop the lid just enough to see the salve inside, pale and thick, smelling faintly of herbs and camphor, then press it back down with a soft click. The job’s done. Simple as that.

You turn, already thinking about the path back to the house, about slipping this into Mama’s hand and letting yourself be proud she won’t have to wonder where it is in the morning.

You don’t make it two steps.

There he is.

Standing in the doorway that leads to the small back room, shoulder braced against the frame like he’s been leaning there a while, like he grew right up out of the wood.

He’s shirtless, skin slicked faint with sweat, the rise and fall of his chest slow and easy. Suspenders hang loose against his hips, clipped to his trousers but fallen off his shoulders, framing the cut of his torso in dark lines. 

The lamp’s low light paints him in gold and shadow both, dipping into the hollow between his collarbones, skating over the plane of his stomach, catching on the trail of hair that runs down from his navel into the waistband of his pants. 

His arms cross over his chest, veins standing faint along the backs of his hands where they rest against his biceps.

His feet are bare. His eyes are not gentle.

“Find what you was lookin’ for?” he asks, voice soft, too soft, the scrape of it wrapping around the words like a touch.

Your heart gives one wild jump, slamming up against your ribs hard enough to hurt, then starts to run. 

You hadn’t heard him come in. Hadn’t heard the back door, hadn’t heard the floor protest, hadn’t heard anything but your own little fussing search and the tiny pop of the salve lid.

For a foolish second you think about hiding the tin, tucking it behind your back like a child caught in a pantry. You don’t. There’s nowhere to put it he wouldn’t see, and you refuse to give him the pleasure of watching you scramble.

Instead you hold it up just enough that he can see the blue lid glint in the lamplight. “My mama’s salve,” you say, surprised at how even your voice comes out. “Daddy gave it to you. He forgot where he put it. I came to fetch it.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at the tin for more than a passing glance. His attention stays on you, heavy as a hand between your shoulder blades. He rakes his gaze from your face down to the salve, then lower, slow as a man looking over a field he’s about to plow.

You suddenly know exactly how your dress is sitting—where the fabric pulls across your chest from turning too quick, where the skirt clings to your thighs from the damp in the grass, where your collar gapes just a breath more than it should because you didn’t bother with the top button in the heat. Your skin prickles under each place you picture his eyes touching.

“You always just walk yourself into a man’s house without knockin’?” he asks after a beat, one brow ticking up.

“This ain’t a house,” you reply, chin lifting a shade. “It’s a shack my father stuck you in so you’d be closer to the barn.”

Something like amusement flickers across his mouth. “Still mine for now,” he says. “Door was shut, wasn’t it?”

“You left the lamp on,” you shoot back. “Anybody with decent sense would take that as invitation in case of emergency.”

He uncrosses his arms then, letting them drop to his sides. The motion makes muscles jump in his chest, the lines of his shoulders shifting under skin. “And what’s the emergency, miss?” he asks. “That your mama’s medicine was sittin’ ten yards farther than you like it?”

His tone isn’t mocking. It isn’t kind either. It’s something in between, something testing. Like he’s poking at you with words just to feel where you’re soft.

You swallow, the salve tin suddenly heavy in your hand. “I said why I came,” you answer. “I’ll be goin’ now.”

You move to head toward the front door, the one you came in, but the room is small, and he doesn’t move. One pace brings you close enough to smell him. Another pace would put you near enough to brush him if you misjudged your route.

He shifts his weight to fill the doorway more fully, one hand lifting to rest on the frame to the side of him. It leaves his ribs bare, that patch of hair under his arm catching the lamplight. There’s a faint scar along his flank, pale against the warmth of his skin, old and ugly, like something tore him open once and he lived anyway.

“Seems a shame,” he says, looking at you. “You comin’ all this way just to snatch up a tin and run.”

Your pulse hammers harder. “It ain’t far.”

“For you,” he agrees. “For me it’s a long, lonely walk most nights. I might be grateful for a little company.”

“You got company,” you say, words a little sharper than you intend. “You got every cow, every dog, every fence post on this land. You don’t need me.”

He lets that roll over him like water off a duck’s back. “Maybe I’m tired of talkin’ to things that can’t talk back,” he murmurs. His eyes flick down to the salve again, then to your hand, to your wrist where your pulse beats visible in the hollow. “You tore yourself up any today, or you just borrowin’ this for show?”

“Bruise on my hip,” you admit before you can remind yourself you owe him nothing. The words come out stiff. “Ain’t your concern.”

“Everythin’ that happens on this farm’s my concern when it means workers showin’ up busted in the mornin’,” he says. “You do work, don’t you? Or are you just here to keep the place pretty.”

Heat flashes through you, quick and mean. “You've seen me work,” you say. “You've seen me at that pump, at that stove, out in the yard. Don’t you stand there half-dressed and ask if I do my share.”

His mouth twitches at half-dressed. He doesn’t bother to hide the way his gaze drops, quick, down the front of himself and back up, as if to say he knows exactly how much he’s wearing and how much you’re seeing. It’s deliberate, that small, shameless acknowledgement of his own body.

“Believe me,” he says, voice dropping lower, “I’ve seen you.”

The words land between you, heavy and thick. They mean more than they say. Every peek he’s stolen presses into the space they open up: your bare leg in the barn, your shoulders shining in the bath, your tired posture on the back porch, one strap slipping careless down your arm before you hitched it back up.

You don’t know about most of that. What you do know is enough to make your throat go dry.

“I ain’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” you say, trying to wrestle the conversation back onto some ground that feels steadier. “My father told you that when you got here. Told me too.”

His eyes gleam at the mention of your father, some dark amusement sparking there. “He told me to show you respect,” he says. “And I have. Haven’t laid a hand on you that you didn’t walk too close to yourself.”

Your mind trips over the memory of his fingers catching your arm in the barn, steadying you when your mare spooked. The way his hand hovered near your torn dress, heat just shy of your hip. The way he stood in the yard with his eyes on your mouth and called you miss like it was something he wanted to lick.

You draw yourself up as tall as you can manage in the little room, salve tin tight in your grip, refusing to yield the step he’s trying to take without moving his feet. “Then you’ll move,” you say, voice low but steady. “So I can go on home and keep livin’ my life with all that respect you’re so proud of.”

For a moment, you think he might laugh in your face. His lips part, teeth catching on his bottom lip, eyes glinting.

Instead he just looks at you.

It’s worse than if he’d laughed. He looks like a man deciding how honest he feels like being tonight. Like he’s weighing whether to keep playing at politeness or lay something sharper on the table between you.

The lamplight flickers, shadow jumping along his jaw as he tilts his head. “You walk out that door,” he says finally, nodding toward the porch, “and I’ll let you. I ain’t gonna drag you nowhere you don’t step first.”

Relief and something colder flick through you at the same time. “Good,” you start to say, but he isn’t done.

“But,” he adds, and that one little word lands heavy, “you come walkin’ into my place after dark again, all alone, dressed like that, lookin’ at me like you don’t know whether you wanna slap me or cry on me—well.” His gaze drops to your mouth and back. “That’s you steppin’. And I’ll take it as such.”

Your heart stutters, one hard misstep in its rhythm. “You overestimate yourself,” you snap, even as your fingers twitch on the tin.

He smiles then, slow and wolfish, the expression finally reaching his eyes in a way you haven’t seen yet. 

“We’ll see,” he says.

For a long, tight second, nobody moves. The walls feel closer, the air thicker, the lamplight too intimate. You hear the frogs outside, the creak of the house settling, the little wet sound of your own swallow. His bare chest rises and falls, steady, like he’s got all the time in the world.

Then he steps to the side.

The doorway opens up behind him, a narrow slice of night visible over his bare shoulder. It’s more space than you expected him to yield, less than you’d like.

You duck past, your shoulder nearly brushing his chest, the heat pouring off him making your skin prickle. You feel his eyes on the side of your face, on the line of your throat, on the way you have to hitch your skirt just a little to keep from tripping as you step over the threshold.

“Goodnight, miss,” he says softly, right by your ear, breath warm as it ghosts over your neck. “You be careful now. Dark’s full of things you don’t know about.”

You don’t trust your voice not to shake, so you don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it. You just walk, bare feet hitting the packed earth hard, fingers biting into the salve tin so tight the metal cuts a little crescent into your palm.

Rough wood presses into your hips, edge digging a little where your nightgown’s ridden up, breath catching in short, shallow pulls because he’s got one big hand flat between your shoulder blades, holding you there, and the other is on your ass, fingers clawed into the thin cotton, bunching it up and away from your thighs. 

The lamp in the corner throws a low, mean light over the kitchen, just enough to show you the knot in the tabletop and the chipped plate someone left on the shelf, just enough to catch the shadow of his arm when it moves.

You came down here hot with it. Anger, mostly. 

At him for looking at you how he does, for crowding doorways and talking low in your ear. At yourself for feeling anything besides disgust when he does it. 

For weeks that feeling has sat under your skin like a burr under a saddle, rubbing everything raw—every brush of his eyes, every sly comment, every late-night glimpse of his lantern out in the yard when you should’ve been sleeping. 

Tonight it tipped over. Tonight you lay in your bed and stared at the ceiling and saw his bare chest in that little house instead, heard his voice saying we’ll see, felt your own body answer in a way that wouldn’t quit.

So you got up after the house went quiet, barefoot on the boards, heart in your throat. 

You didn’t bring a lamp. You told yourself you were just going to tell him off, to say plain that you didn’t want him looking, didn’t want him speaking to you sideways, didn’t want the innuendo and the smirks and the way he made you feel peeled without ever laying a proper hand on you. 

That was the story you wrapped yourself in as you crossed the yard, nightgown clinging to your knees.

He opened the door before you could knock, like he’d been standing right on the other side with his palm on the handle, listening.

You remember the way his eyes moved over you, slow, no shirt, just those loose trousers hanging low on his hips, lamp behind him making his shoulders look broad and his face unreadable. 

You remember his mouth forming your name, quiet and satisfied, like he’d been waiting to say it like this. 

You remember the way all that anger and want surged up together in your chest, wild and tangled, and how you said something too sharp, voice shaking, about him needing to keep his eyes to himself if he wanted to stay on your daddy’s land.

Now here you are with his hand on your back, pressing, holding you down exactly where you came—over his small scarred table in his small farmhouse kitchen—your own fingers gripping the edge in a white-knuckled clutch.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” he drawls above you, breath warm near your ear, words rolling over your spine. “That what you told me?”

You glare at the knot in the wood like it did you personal harm. 

Your face is hot, your body even hotter, a slow, heavy throb deep between your thighs that started halfway across the yard and hasn’t done a thing but grow. 

“I ain’t visitin’,” you say, the words a little muffled by the way he’s got you folded. “I came to talk sense into you.”

His laugh is low and pleased, hand on your back sliding a little, fingers spreading, thumb settling along your spine. He presses down just enough to remind you who’s holding you where you are. 

“Is that what you call it,” he says, “showin’ up in your bed things after dark, sneakin’ through my door with your hands empty and your eyes wide? Talkin’ sense?”

His other hand cups your ass through the thin fabric, palm wide over you, squeezing like he’s testing a piece of fruit at the market. 

The nightgown has twisted up, hem caught high over your hips, leaving the bottom curve of you bare to his touch, only the cotton of your drawers between his fingers and your skin. 

Heat floods that spot, a sharp, shameful pulse that makes your breath catch.

“You been walkin’ around twitchy as a cat for days,” he goes on, hand kneading, thumb digging into the give of your flesh there. “Snappin’ at me, snappin’ at your daddy, gettin’ that look on your face every time you see me like you don’t know whether to spit or spit somethin’ else.”

“Shut up,” you hiss, mortified at how true it feels in your bones. 

You shift your hips, trying to wriggle away from that hand, and all it does is grind you back against his palm, soft cotton dragging over the swell of you, catching on the seam that runs right over the place you’re trying not to think about.

He makes a sound at that, low in his throat, rough and appreciative. “Yeah. There she is,” he says, words coming a little thicker now. “All that fire. You walked your own self down here, girl. Nobody dragged you.”

“I came to tell you to stop,” you manage, though the way your voice climbs at the end takes the bite out of it. His fingers curl, grab a little handful of your ass cheek through the cloth, and you feel the ache spike hotter. “Stop lookin’. Stop talkin’ like that. Stop—stop–”

“Stop makin’ you feel all twisted up?” he supplies, not unkind, just plain. 

His hand on your back softens, spreads, rubbing along your spine like he’s soothing a spooked animal even as the other keeps kneading at you. 

“Stop remindin’ you there’s more to be had in this world than hymns and beans and mendin’?”

You suck a breath in through your teeth. “You ain’t the only man alive,” you snap. “You ain’t special.”

His grip tightens, a hard squeeze that makes you gasp. “No,” he agrees easily. “But I’m the only one you marched down here to cuss out in your bare feet and nightclothes, so I’d say I’m doin’ something right.”

You hate how your body answers that, how something low in you liquefies at the thought of it, at the truth you don’t want to name. You hate the way your thighs press together of their own accord, seeking pressure, seeking relief, even as you hold yourself rigid under his hand.

He feels it. His palm slides down, fingers curling under the heavy curve of you, thumb dragging along the crease where your ass meets the top of your thigh. 

You’re hyper-aware of every inch, every callus on his skin, every place the old wood digs into your hips. When his hand moves inward, fingers bumping close to the center of you, you flinch.

“Don’t—” you start, panic and want knitting together, but the word thins out when his touch presses just a little firmer over the damp cotton there.

“You’re soaked,” he says softly, no mockery in it, just raw, hungry wonder. “Walked through my door mad as sin, all full of pretty speeches, and your cunt’s already cryin’ for somethin’ to hold on to.”

Shame scorches up your neck. “Don’t call it that,” you choke, mortified, the word hitting you deep and low and making everything worse.

He hums, thumb tracing a slow circle over that swell, pressing right where the cloth is clinging. The pressure is perfect, unbearable. 

“What you want me to call it, then?” he asks, voice brushing the shell of your ear now. 

“Your virtue? Your purity? That sweet spot between your legs that ain’t nobody touched?” His thumb moves again, firmer, and your hips jolt against your will. “’Cause I see it all over you, darlin’. You came here wantin’ me to stop, but your body came here wantin’ somethin’ else entirely.”

You shake your head, even as your toes curl, even as your lungs drag in another sharp breath that tastes like him and the lamp smoke and the hot, close air of this little house. 

“You’re—you’re foul,” you say, but it comes out thin, breathy. “You been lookin’ at me, watchin’ me, talkin’ to me like—”

“Like I know what to do with you,” he cuts in, a hint of impatience threading through his heat. “And I do. You think I don’t see what’s eatin’ at you every time you glance down at my hands, or my mouth, or lower?”

His fingers slide along the seam of your drawers, finding the little ridge where cloth meets cloth and pressing right there. 

It sends a jolt through you big enough you can’t muffle the small sound that drops out of your throat. 

His hand on your back pushes down, keeping you bent, letting you grind into that touch without rising off the table.

“Listen here,” he says, voice roughening, patience fraying. “You came. You’re here. You can tell me to stop and I will. I ain’t gonna take what you don’t hand me. But don’t stand there in my house, drippin’ on my floor, and try to lie about what you’re feelin’.”

The room seems to shrink around those words. 

You know he’s right. You also know how far you are from where you were supposed to be, from the girl who said she’d never let a man like him get close, from the girl who swore she’d keep herself intact till some tidy, respectable husband came along with a ring and a house and his hat in his hands.

You think about those men. Faces you’ve seen in church, in town, men who look at you when they think you’re not noticing with a hunger they don’t know what to do with. Men who’d apologize if their fingers brushed your wrist too long.

Then you think about this man, bare-chested behind you, hard and unashamed, his hand pressed between your shoulder blades, the other on you like you’re his to handle. 

You think about his eyes in the barn, on your torn dress. About the words he said in this very room, about stepping. About how you’ve been walking around with your jaw clenched and your thighs pressed together ever since.

“Tell me the truth,” he says, thumb pressing a little harder, his other fingers spread wide over the swell of you. “You want me to let go of you and send you back up that hill with your temper, you say it. I’ll move. You can go pray extra loud come Sunday.”

The lamp crackles softly, a tiny sound in the heavy dark.

“And if I don’t?” you hear yourself ask, voice small but steady. “If I say I don’t want you to move?”

His hand stills on your back for one beat, then both of them tighten—one pressing you down, one grabbing a handful of your ass like he’s staking a claim. A breath leaves him in a long, shuddery exhale that ghosts hot over your neck.

“Then I’m gonna take real good care of what you brought me,” he says, tone gone hoarse and thick, the restraint in it the only thing keeping you from shaking. “Gonna give you somethin’ to think about next time you lay awake in that bed of yours. Gonna fuck you on this table till you don’t remember what you came down here mad about.”

The word fuck lands hard in you, a punch and a promise all at once. 

You grip the edge of the wood like it’s all that’s keeping you upright, though you’re already bent, already braced.

“Say it,” he murmurs, leaning in until his chest brushes your back, bare skin hot where it touches the thin cotton. 

The admission sits in your throat like a hot stone. It feels enormous. It feels like stepping off a ledge.

“I want—” The word catches, but his thumb flicks over you again, sharp and sure, and your hips roll without permission, a little helpless grind that betrays every fight you’ve been waging with yourself. “I want you,” you gasp, shame and relief crashing together. “I want you to—to do somethin’ about it.”

He lets out a sound that’s almost a groan, almost a laugh, almost a curse, his body crowding you tighter, his weight a solid wall of heat at your back. “That’s my girl,” he says, and the possession in it makes your knees wobble, makes that core of you clench hard around nothing.

His hand leaves your back long enough to grab a fistful of your nightgown at the hem, yanking it up in one rough motion that leaves it bunched around your waist. 

Cool air hits your drawers, the bare backs of your thighs, the soft part just under your cheeks, and then his palm is there, skin to skin at last, cupping you hard. 

His fingers dig in, thumbs pressing outward, spreading you slightly, mapping the give.

“You’re shakin’,” he says, sounding pleased. “Ain’t even touched you proper yet.”

“You’re takin’ your time,” you manage, though the words shake too.

He chuckles, low. “First time’s never good when a man rushes,” he answers, matter-of-fact. “And I know you ain’t had nobody in you yet, feelin’ the way you do under my hand.”

Before you can answer, his fingers hook into the waistband of your drawers and tug. The fabric resists for a second, elastic biting into soft flesh, then slides down, dragging over your hips, over the swell of your ass, down the backs of your thighs until they tangle around your knees. 

He leaves them there, trapping your legs just enough you can’t kick or close up, just enough that you’re open and vulnerable and aware of it.

Cool air kisses you everywhere the cloth just left. 

You feel filthy, bare from waist to mid-thigh, bent over his table with your nightgown rucked up, your cunt exposed to the room, to him. It makes your head swim.

Then his hand is back, and there is no room for anything else.

He cups you from behind, fingers sliding through the slick heat of your folds, and you hear a sharp breath hitch out of him. “Oh, hell,” he says, reverent.

You make a broken, helpless sound that doesn’t sound like it belongs to you. 

No one’s ever been there before, not like this, not with fingers spreading you, rubbing through you, middle finger catching on that aching bud you’ve only ever touched in the dark with guilty hands. 

The sensation is lightning-bright, stabbing up your spine.

“Easy,” he murmurs, palm flattening across your low back again, his body curving over yours, caging you. “I got you. Gonna make it good for you before I stretch you around me. Don’t want you too scared to enjoy your first fuck.”

The way he says first fuck, like he’s staking a flag there, like he’s carving his name into it, makes something fierce flicker through you, a strange pride knotting up with the fear. 

You push back against his hand without meaning to, chasing more.

He feels it. “That’s it,” he encourages, fingers pressing deeper between your lips now. “Ask for what you want with that pretty body. Tell me where it hurts.”

“Everywhere,” you pant, honesty ripped out of you on a wave. “It hurts everywhere.”

He laughs, breath hot against your neck, mouth close enough you feel the shape of it. “That ain’t hurt, girl,” he says. “That’s need.” 

His fingers finally find your entrance, slick and hot and clutching, and he presses the pad of one inside, just the tip, testing. Your whole body clenches around that intrusion.

“You relax for me,” he tells you, tone sliding into something commanding. “Breathe.”

You suck in air, lungs burning. 

He slides the finger in a little further, thick and probing, opening you. 

The stretch is sharp, uncomfortable, but there’s an undercurrent of relief in it. He works it in and out slowly, letting you get used to the feel, letting your body learn the shape of him.

“That’s good,” he murmurs when he feels you soften around him, the praise lighting up something small and hungry in your chest. “See? You take my finger just fine. Gonna take my cock too when I’m done with you.”

He adds a second finger before you can brace, and this time the stretch makes you gasp loud, muscles clamping down. It burns, a deep, insistent ache, like you’re being pried open.

“Shh,” he soothes, his index finding that little bundle of nerves again, circling steady, sending sparks to chase the hurt. “I know. I know. We gotta loosen you up some or you’ll split yourself on me.”

The blunt truth of it makes you squeeze your eyes shut, face hot against your forearm. 

You can feel him behind you, solid, his chest glued to your back, his arm moving between your legs. When you manage to breathe past the initial shock, the burn eases, replaced by a full, pressurized feeling that fills your head with nothing but sensation.

He moves his fingers, slow at first, pumping them in and out of you in short strokes, stretching, coaxing. 

Your body starts to answer despite itself, hips rocking back in tiny motions, seeking that deep, sweet drag. 

Every thrust brushes against something inside you that makes your legs tremble, makes your breath hitch. 

“Listen to that,” he says, voice thick, and it takes you a second to realize he means the wet sound loud in the little kitchen as his fingers work in and out of you. “You hear yourself takin’ me in? That’s you wantin’ it.”

It’s filthy and true and you can’t deny it. 

There's a coil tightening low in your belly, every nerve in your body funneling to where his hand is. Your grip on the table edge goes slippery with sweat.

“Remmick,” you gasp, not even sure what you’re asking for, only that you’re strung too tight.

“There you go,” he groans, fingers driving a little deeper, curling just right.

It hits without much warning. One second you’re climbing, the next you’re over the edge, everything snapping. 

Your body seizes around his fingers, clenching so hard it almost hurts, that coil unspooling in a rush of pleasure so intense it blanks your mind.

A breathless moan tears up your throat. Your thighs shake, knees nearly buckling, if it weren’t for his hand on your back and the table under your palms you’d be on the floor.

“That’s it,” he groans, riding you through it, fingers still working, still moving until you’re whimpering, too sensitive, twitching with each little aftershock. 

You sag against the table when it finally lets you go, chest heaving, sweat cooling on your neck. He eases his fingers out of you slow, gentle for the first time since you walked in, his hand sliding up to rest on your hip. You can feel his other hand at your back again, rubbing small circles, keeping you grounded.

“First one’s always a little wild,” he says, sounding almost fond. “You doin’ all right?”

You nod, or try to. Your head feels full of cotton, floaty and heavy all at once. “I—” Your voice comes out hoarse. You clear your throat. “I’m fine.”

“You’re more than fine,” he says, and there’s a smile in it. “You’re perfect.” He shifts behind you, and that’s when you feel it, really feel it—his cock pressed up against the back of your thigh through the fabric of his trousers. 

He’s been hard this whole time, you realize dimly, all that while he was working you open. The blunt head drags over your skin when he adjusts, the thickness of him obvious even through cloth.

Your stomach flips, fear and anticipation knotting together. “You’re really—”

“Oh, I’m really.” He sounds almost amused. “You wanted me to take you on this table, remember?” 

His hand leaves your back and you hear the soft, familiar sound of a belt coming loose, a buckle clinking, the rasp of leather through belt loops. Then buttons, quick and practiced, fabric shifting.

You suck in a breath, every sense straining.

A moment later, something hot and slick—not his fingers this time—nudges against your entrance. He slides the head of his cock through your slick folds slowly, up and down, coating himself in you, bumping your clit on the downstroke, making you twitch.

“Jesus,” he mutters, more to himself than you. “You feel that? How you’re grabbin’ at me already and I ain’t even in?”

You do feel it, and it’s terrifying. Your body recognizes him as something it’s meant to hold, meant to take, even as your mind stumbles over the size of him, over what this means.

“I—wait,” you say, panic flaring for a second, the reality of it looming. “Remmick, I’m—”

“I know,” he says, and for once there’s no teasing in it. “You listen to me. It’s gonna burn at first, then it’s gonna feel like you never should’ve gone without it this long. You trust me?”

You hesitate. He feels it in the way your muscles tense around the head of him. His hand comes up, fingers wrapping loosely around your throat from behind, thumb tipping your chin just a little. The touch sends a different kind of shiver through you, sharp and grounding.

“I ain’t gonna break you,” he says quietly, close to your ear. “I want you comin’ back to this just as bad as I want you right now.” His hips roll just enough that the blunt tip presses hard against your opening. 

The hand at your throat, the tone in his voice, the memory of his fingers and the way your body just came apart on them thirty seconds ago—they all crash together, and you find yourself nodding before you know you’re doing it.

“Go,” you whisper, the word trembling, but there.

He makes a sound then that’s half-growl, half-groan, all man. His grip on your throat tightens just a hair, his other hand clamping down on your hip.

“That’s my girl,” he says again, rough with need. “Hold on.”

The head of him breaches you with more resistance than his fingers ever met. 

Your body tries to clamp down, to keep him out, muscles fighting the stretch. He doesn’t slam in, but he doesn’t baby you either. He works himself in slow, steady pressure, teeth gritted, hips driving forward inch by thick inch.

The burn is real. It’s sharp, like you’re being split open from the inside. You gasp, nails scraping at the wood, whole body bowing. For a second it’s too much.

“Breathe,” he grunts through his own strain, hand at your throat sliding up to your jaw, thumb pressing at your cheek. “Breathe through it. You’re takin’ me. Look at you. You’re takin’ me.”

He isn’t wrong. Beneath the pain, there’s this breathless awe—at the size of him, at the way your own body yields, at the feel of being filled in a way you never have before. 

You force yourself to inhale, exhale, again, again. Your muscles flutter around him, protesting, then slowly easing.

When the broadest part of his head passes the tight ring of your entrance, the rest slides in easier, still stretching, still burning, but less violently. 

He sinks deeper, stopping only when his hips are flush with your ass, his pelvis pressed to your backside, balls snugged up against your cunt. You can feel him everywhere, heavy and solid in your core, pulsing faintly.

“Christ,” he rasps, the words hot against your neck. “I can barely think straight. Sweet girl, you just swallowed every inch of me.”

You exhale shakily, overwhelmed. Full doesn’t begin to cover it. You feel stuffed, stretched to the point of coming apart, and yet under the ache, something else is already starting—a low, thick pleasure that moves like honey, spreading outward from where you’re joined.

He holds still for a long moment, breathing hard into your hair, chest rising and falling against your back. His hand at your hip rubs little circles, the one at your jaw softening its grip.

“You tell me when it stops hurtin’ so sharp,” he says. “I ain’t in no rush, even if my cock’s yellin’ otherwise.”

You try to focus. The worst of the burn ebbs, leaving a throbbing soreness, but the sense of him—deep, impossible, yours—is starting to bloom into something almost good.

“Move,” you whisper, surprising yourself. “Just a little.”

He laughs, breath short. “Greedy already,” he says. “Alright.”

He pulls back, just an inch, maybe two, dragging that thick length along your walls. The friction is intense, raw and tender and electric all at once. Then he pushes in again, slower, watching for any flinch. 

Your fingers dig into the table, but you don’t cry out, don’t tell him to stop. Your body clutches at him on the way out, sucks at him on the way back in.

He does it again. And again. Each shallow thrust smooths the hurt a little more, replaces it with deeper sensation. The initial sting fades into a deep, stretching fullness that makes your knees weak, that makes heat lick up your spine in waves.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, hand sliding from your jaw back down to your throat, wrapping around it more firmly this time, not cutting your air, just pinning you, reminding you where you are and who’s holding you. “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.”

He lengthens his strokes, pulling back farther, pushing in harder. The wet slap of his hips meeting your ass starts up, quiet at first, then louder, the sound of skin on skin obscene in the still night. 

Every push drives him deeper, nudging at something inside you that makes your breath jump, that sends little shocks through your belly, like he’s bumping the edge of something tender and secret and his.

Your body has learned the shape of him, stretching you from the inside. 

You can feel every ridge, every vein, the way the fat head spears through the tight clutch of you and then disappears into that deep, hot place that was empty your whole life and now is nothing but him.

His hand at your throat tightens, just a little. Not enough to cut your air, but enough to make each breath a thing you have to pull for, chest heaving against the table edge. His palm is broad and warm, thumb resting under your jaw, fingers curved along the side of your neck. 

Every time his hips snap forward, that grip reminds you he’s there; it pins you in your own skin so you can’t float away from what’s happening, can’t pretend it’s anything but what it is: you getting fucked open on a man’s cock in his kitchen like you were meant for it.

Then his hand drops. It slides down the column of your throat, over the dip of your collarbone, fingers spreading wide as they drag lower, rough palm grazing the top swell of your breast through the thin cotton. 

He cups you from behind, big hand wrapping around the weight of it, lifting, squeezing. The nightgown bunches under his fingers as he kneads, thumb rolling over your nipple until it stiffens hard, the fabric rasping just enough to make you whine.

“There,” he mutters, voice gone thick, like he has to taste every part of you. “Knew these’d feel good in my hand.”

He squeezes once more, harder, the pressure sending a sharp line of sensation straight down to where he’s buried in you, your nipple trapped between his thumb and the heat of his palm. 

Your back arches, pushing more of your tit into his grip even as his cock grinds deeper. 

For a second you’re caught between the drag inside and the rough, greedy hold on your breast, pleasure ricocheting between the two.

Then his hand is moving again, leaving your aching nipple peaked under the cotton, skimming back up over your breastbone, returning to your throat like it owns the place. His fingers curl back into their collar around your neck, thumb settling under your jaw, holding you where he wants you while his hips keep driving.

“Listen to you,” he groans, and you realize he doesn’t just mean your voice—wrecked and breaking on every inhale—but the wet, filthy noise your body’s making, the slick drag of his cock pulling out of you, the obscene squelch when he pushes back in, the slap of his balls hitting the curve of your cunt. “You hear that? That’s this pussy lovin’ every inch I’m givin’ her.”

The word makes your stomach flutter and your cunt clench down around him so tight he curses, hips stuttering. 

There’s no room for modesty now; everything between your legs is wide awake and telling on you. 

Every time he pulls back, your inner muscles chase after him, hugging, clinging, like you’re frightened of losing that fullness, like your body’s praying he’ll push right back in—and he does, like he’s answering a call.

He adjusts his stance, feet shifting on the rough floor, and angle changes. The next thrust lands different, deeper, the thick head of him driving up and forward to grind against a spot inside you that makes your vision white out around the edges for a beat. 

You jolt, a strangled noise ripping out of you, fingers scraping along the tabletop as your whole body goes tense.

“There it is,” he pants, catching that reaction, chasing it. 

He does it again on purpose, hips rolling instead of just snapping, driving that same path, making sure he hits that spot with the crown every time. 

“You feel that? Right there? That’s what you been needin’, girl. That ache way up high you ain’t never had a name for.”

He's right on it now, relentless. 

Each stroke is a steady assault, steady enough your body starts to learn the pattern, tension building with every collision. The soreness from taking him the first time smooths into a deep, hot throb that wraps around the pleasure, one feeding the other. 

Your toes curl, your thighs tremble, your stomach ripples around the intrusion like you’re trying to swallow him even deeper.

He slides the hand from your hip back around your front, into the slick heat between your thighs, and finds your clit like he’s been doing it all his life. 

His fingers are slick with your own mess, rough pads moving in tight, ruthless circles over that swollen bud. It sends lightning directly up your spine, straight to the base of your skull. 

You choke on a sound that isn’t quite a word and jerk against his hand; his arm around your throat holds you in place.

“Goddamn, you’re twitchy,” he groans, grinding his hips down so the bone of him presses your ass, so his cock bruises into that soft spot inside while his fingers roll your clit. “You gonna fall apart on me again? You gonna let me feel you squeeze all over my cock proper this time?”

Your answer is a breathless, broken, “Please,” your voice ragged, half sob, half prayer. 

The table shudders under the force of his thrusts now, the legs complaining in small creaks that match the rhythm of his hips. The lamp flame jumps in its glass, throwing wild shadows against the wall—a tangle of your bent body and his frame hunched over you, shoulders rolling as he works inside you like he’s plowing up hard ground.

Spit slicks your lips; you realize at some point your mouth fell open and just forgot how to close, breath dragging in ragged, wet pulls. 

You couldn’t be bothered to care if you tried; everything is narrowed to the hot place his cock is sawing through and the bright, brutal pulses from his fingers on your clit.

He can feel you climbing, feel your body drawing in tight around him, feel your channel starting to flutter. He growls, low and guttural, the sound pressed against the back of your neck. “That’s it. That’s it, squeeze me.”

His hand at your throat tightens a hair more, narrowing the world to his breathing and yours, the rush of blood in your ears, the drag of wood under your palms. 

The smallest bit of pressure makes every sensation hit harder; your body goes light and heavy at the same time, limbs tingling, cock-deep pull inside you the only thing that feels solid.

He pistons into you now with a steadier, punishing rhythm, cock dragging from the fat base at your entrance all the way to that deep end that makes your belly flip, then back again. 

Your ass jiggles from each impact, flesh rippling under his grip. His fingers at your clit don’t falter.

You can hear yourself now, high and ruined, begging without even knowing what for. “Don’t stop—don’t—Remmick, don’t—oh—oh God—”

“Mhm, use my name,” he hisses, hips crashing into yours, the wet slap echoing off the close walls. “You say it when you can’t hold yourself together no more.”

He leans forward, the sweat on his skin slick against the thin cotton of your nightgown bunched at your waist. 

His mouth finds the side of your neck, teeth scraping over the delicate skin there, then biting down just hard enough to make you gasp. He sucks, draws blood closer to the surface in a hot sting that only makes your cunt flutter harder around him.

Between the choke of his hand, the sharp pinch of his teeth, the relentless grind of his cock, and the ruthless attention on your clit, you don’t stand a chance.

The orgasm slams into you hard enough your knees buckle, your body trying to curl in on itself while he holds you stretched over the table. 

Everything constricts at once—your throat around his hand, your belly around the deep ache, your cunt around his cock. You clamp down on him with startling force, walls seizing, milking, clutching like you’re trying to suck him straight out of his skin.

You cry out. There’s no pretty word for it. Sound rips out of you high and raw, your voice cracking on his name. 

Your vision goes fuzzy with white at the edges, the kitchen shrinking to the rough wood under your hands and the thick, unyielding length splitting you and the brutal roll of pleasure ripping through you in waves.

“Fuck—fuck,” he grunts at your ear, the feeling of you spasming around him cutting through every ounce of control he has left. “That’s it, that’s it, girl, grip me—Jesus—”

He doesn’t stop moving, not really; he grinds through it, forcing his cock to keep sliding, short, deep thrusts, using the vice of your orgasm to wring everything he can from you. 

You’re shaking all over, thighs trembling so hard your feet skid a little on the floor, toes digging uselessly for purchase. 

Another rush of slick gushes around him, soaking his cock, dripping down over his balls, sliding warm along the inside of your thighs.

Your body keeps clenching in pulses, the pleasure cresting and breaking over and over until it tips toward something sharp, too much. You whimper, the sound small and shredded. His hand leaves your clit finally, stroking shaking skin instead, but his hips don’t stop.

The rhythm goes ragged, less measured, more frantic. His thrusts turn into short, hard ruts, like his body’s the one begging now. His fingers flex around your throat, then loosen just a little, thumb stroking your jaw instead as his breathing unravels.

“Gonna fill you up,” he groans, voice pitched low and rough. “You want that? You want me shootin’ deep in you, huh? Want to feel me leakin’ out you all the way back up to that house?”

The words, filthy as they are, punch right through your oversensitivity and light up something molten in your gut. 

Your sore, flooded cunt tightens around him involuntarily at the thought of carrying him inside you, his spend rolling down your thighs later when you climb into your own bed. 

You can’t shape the answer into full words; what comes out is some strangled mess that sounds like y-yes and a choke.

“Yeah, you do,” he snarls like he heard it. “You greedy little thing, comin’ down here pretendin’ you just wanna talk when your cunt’s hungry as hell.”

He drives in hard, once, twice, three more times, each thrust bottoming him out, pelvis grinding against the round of your ass. 

The slap of his hips is loud now, sloppy, wetter, your combined mess making the impact slick.

Then his whole body locks.

His stomach clenches tight against your back, jaw clamped against the side of your neck. A sound tears out of him, not quite human, something between a growl and a groan. His cock jerks inside you, swelling even thicker for a heart-stopping second, and then you feel it—hot, heavy spurts of him spilling deep, pounding against your cervix, flooding that space that’s been empty your entire life with a hot, liquid fullness.

He curses low and hoarse on each pulse, hips rocking in tiny, helpless movements as he empties himself, his own climax dragged out by the way your slick, oversensitive walls keep squeezing and fluttering around him. Every time your cunt milks him, another rope of cum kicks out of him, painting you inside.

“God—damn—” he grits, shuddering, one hand sliding from your throat to slap down next to your own on the table, fingers splayed wide, knuckles white on the wood. “You feel that? Feel me givin’ it to you?”

You do. You feel all of it. Every pulse, every twitch, every deep throb of him lodged inside, filling you, staking a claim. Your whole body feels stuffed, weighty, like he’s poured something molten into your bones.

The shakes take him then. You feel them where his chest is plastered to your back, quivers running through him in waves as his orgasm tapers off. 

His cock softens a little inside you but doesn’t slip free; your swollen entrance and the spent thickness of him keep you plugged together. Each small movement sends a slow, slick ache radiating outward.

For a long moment neither of you says anything.

He slumps more of his weight onto you without meaning to, and you sag under it, cheek pressed to the tabletop, breaths coming in harsh, uneven pulls. 

Sweat has glued your nightgown to your ribs where it’s still covering your upper body; where it’s bunched around your waist, the fabric clings damp to your skin with a mixture of your own wetness and his.

Eventually, he finds his voice, though it’s wrecked, scraped raw at the edges. “Jesus,” he mutters, words ghosting hot over the shell of your ear. 

For the first time since he pushed into you, he eases his hips back.

You gasp, a little shocked moan slipping out as his softening cock drags along your raw walls. 

When his head slips past your entrance, your muscles clench on instinct, reluctant to let him go, but gravity wins. He slides free, leaving you empty in a way that feels sharp, unfinished, even with his cum already starting to seep down, warm, from inside you.

Something thick and wet trickles out immediately, a slow, viscous roll that slides over your swollen folds and down the curve of your inner thigh. You feel it clearly, a hot trail in the cooler air of the kitchen. The knowledge of what it is, whose it is, makes your face burn and your belly tighten all over again.

He sees it too.

“Look at that,” he says softly, voice full of rough, satisfied awe. 

His hand leaves yours and slides down, palm cupping the underside of your ass, thumb catching one of those white streaks, spreading it lazily over your sensitive skin. You flinch, a little gasp escaping before you can stop it.

“Too much?” he asks.

“A little,” you admit, breath still stuttering. 

He makes a pleased sound at that, thumb dragging one last lazy stripe through the mess before he rubs his hand off on his own thigh. 

He straightens slowly, the absence of his weight making you sway for a second. His hands, empty now, come to your waist, smoothing down the bunched nightgown. He tugs it back into place over your hips, hiding what he’s done as best cloth can hide it.

Then he crouches a little, fingers catching the waistband of your drawers. They’re still tangled around your knees, sticky with your slick. 

He coaxes them up, guiding the cotton over your tender flesh, covering your cunt, trapping his spend where it is. 

The pull of the fabric against your oversensitive skin makes you hiss and bite your lip, but it also feels lewd and intimate in a different way—his cum pressed up against you, soaked into the cloth that sits right over your entrance.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, sealing you up like that. It shows in the way his thumb lingers a second too long at the gusset, pressing lightly, as if to make sure the material is snug, as if to feel one more time that he’s right there even with clothes between you.

“Gonna be walkin’ home with your panties stickin’ to you and a piece of me tryin’ to leak right back out,” he murmurs, voice a dark purr. “You’ll be thinkin’ of me every step.”

You make a weak noise, somewhere between a protest and something softer. Your legs feel unsteady when he finally helps you pull them fully into place, when he urges you upright with hands at your waist. 

When you stand, it’s like your bones have gone wrong—heavy at the hips, light at the knees, a deep, interior throb that makes you aware of your own body in a way you’ve never been.

He turns you gently, so your hip leans back into the edge of the table instead of your chest, so you’re facing him. His hair is damp and rumpled, a curl fallen low over his forehead, chest and stomach slick with sweat. 

His gaze sweeps over you, taking in the mussed nightgown, the bite marks blossoming at your throat and shoulder where his teeth worried your skin, the slackness of your mouth, the glassy shine to your eyes. 

Confidence sits easy on him; he looks like a man who’s put in a long night’s work and is proud of the job he’s done.

“You’re gonna cuss me tomorrow,” he says, voice low and a little smug. “When you sit down. When you walk. But you ain’t gonna regret it.”

You swallow, throat thick, his words settling warm and heavy between your ribs.

“No,” you admit, even quieter than before, and there’s no sense lying now. “I don’t… regret it.”

His mouth curves. “Good.”

You look away, suddenly aware of the time, of the silence of the big house up the hill, of how your mama and daddy are sleeping through something that’s gone and rearranged their daughter from the inside out.

“I need to go,” you say, voice small but steadying. “Before my father wakes up for water, or Mama starts callin’ and finds my bed empty.”

His hands fall from your waist, though not without one last, slow sweep along the curve of you, like he’s committing it to memory. 

“Go on,” he says. “Before I talk you into layin’ down on that bed in there and not leavin’ till the rooster screams.”

Your body responds to the image with an exhausted throb, a clench around nothing. 

You push off the table and take a careful step. Your thighs rub, slick, the damp cotton of your drawers pulling against you; you feel a fresh little leak of him inside you, a warm ooze that soaks into the fabric and clings. It makes you stutter a little, the soreness set deep in your core.

Remmick watches the way you move, jaw flexing, something like pride and hunger both tightening his face. 

He reaches for his trousers, tucking himself away, but he doesn’t bother with a shirt yet, doesn’t bother pretending he’s anything but what he is: the man who just fucked you on his kitchen table and filled you til you’re walking crooked.

You make it to the door on legs that still shake. Your fingers land on the frame as you pull it open, the cool breath of the night spilling in. 

Before you step out, you glance back. His eyes are on you, unreadable now, dark and steady in the lamplight.

“You come down here again,” he says, voice quiet, sure, “don’t pretend you’re just here for salve or scoldin’. You knock on my door after dark, I know what you’re askin’ for.”

You hold his gaze, the soreness between your thighs, the fullness inside you, the ache in your muscles all speaking louder than any denial you could muster. 

His eyes follow you out into the dark, low and pleased, and as you cross the yard barefoot, nightgown brushing your knees, his cum warm and sticky between your legs, you know he’s standing there in that doorway shirtless, watching you go with no shame at all, already planning just how he’ll take you the next time you come scratching at his door.

Truthfully, you are equally at fault.

A debutante turned degenerate, you're the furthest thing from pure or lotus-like. Your true nature has stayed hidden from good jujutsu society only through your father's willful blindness—and even now, thoroughly scandalized, you can still do no wrong in his eyes. Nor in Choso's, your annoyingly overprotective half-cursed cousin.

As far as they were concerned, you'd been “corrupted against your will”.

So the blame landed squarely on Toji. And with his less than stellar reputation—to put it generously—no one dared argue otherwise.

Not that it stopped his snark every time he was scolded for it: "That garden had already been ransacked—I merely pitched a tent."

So despite being little more than glorified fuck buddies, both clans scrambled to save face. A shotgun wedding was arranged overnight. Heavens forbid a disgraced black sheep and a thot-daughter spark a war between two of the most powerful families.

The result: you and your squalling little parasite are now Zenin property.

But that alone wouldn't have landed Naoya in this mess.

No—this situation is special.

Seeing as the union only granted you and your daughter entrance to the family—not Toji.

Not that he'd return even if given the chance. He only agreed to marry you for your sake, and your daughter's. Nothing beyond that. So without any real tie to an actual Zenin, you're little more than a ward who took on the name.

Yet Toji thought enough of you not to throw you to the wolves entirely. Before leaving to do gods-know-what as an assassin, Toji asked Naoya personally to watch over you both.

Naoya scoffed at first. Playing babysitter to some woman and her infant? Technically his father Naobito's responsibility—nothing he'd have to bother with until he assumed the role of heir.

Still—Naoya wasn't about to deny a request from Toji, who made it a point never to ask his family for a fucking thing (and who could also destroy them all on a whim.)

Toji-kun said he trusted Naoya alone with the task.

And to Naoya, that acknowledgment was everything.

Fine.

However, that just means seeing to your proper treatment—it didn't mean Naoya signed up to be sleep-deprived. 

Fuck—and if even a hint of a dark shadow appeared on his flawless complexion by morning?

There. Will. Be. Bl—

The final straw arrives before Naoya even finishes the thought. 

A possessed banshee, 7th ring of hell, kind of screech—that even rivals some curses he's previously exorcised—rings out so loud his right ear pops.

That’s fucking it!

Naoya is out of bed, his room and down the corridor in only four strides. 

You had to be awake. 

Not even the dead could sleep through this.

So, why the hell hadn’t you handled it already?

How hard is it of all things to get a baby to shut the fuck up? 

You’re its mother aren’t you?!

Reaching your quarters, Naoya yanks the shoji door open.

And immediately freezes.

As he expects, you’re wide awake. 

Yet nothing could've prepared him for your silk robe to be wide open and resting at your elbows—leaving your breasts completely exposed.

Seated in the midst of tangled blankets and sunken pillows, you shift restlessly to find a position that comforts your baby girl enough to latch while she stubbornly thrashes in your arms.

You give up with a weary sigh, returning to the rocking. Her cries have lessened to frustrated whimpers now that she's moving, but they haven't stopped.

From the doorway, Naoya gives you a measured once-over.

You look like shit. Hair frizzy and damp at your temples, tired eyes, a slight tremor of exhaustion in your hands as you reposition your daughter. 

That said, somehow, infuriatingly, you still manage to look appealing.

The moonlight spilling through the slatted window ensures it as it traces your plush curves, highlighting the faint sheen of exertion on your skin catching the light like a glow.

Gaze dropping, Naoya’s jaw ticks at the sight of your swollen, milk-heavy tits—nipples taut and glistening with pearlescent drops, coaxed free by your baby's cries.