“kento dear,” you began, soft steps quietly thudding against the wooden floors as you made your way to him, who was fully dressed: soft charcoal sweater hanging off his frame, pushed up revealing his forearms, reading glasses hanging off the bridge of his nose while his sandy locs unstyled in a way you almost never got to see outside these walls.

which, unfortunately, was the problem. he was far too comfortable for the atrocities he had just committed against you whilst you slept.

“did you touch it?” your voice coming out suspiciously calm.

nanami doesn’t even look up from the cup of jasmine tea he was nursing. “no.”

you only narrow your eyes as you finally end up next to him. “kento.”

that bratty tone of yours was enough to earn you a glance now, hazel eyes tired yet sharp all the same. “i told you, no.”

“yeah, well,” you huff, crossing your arms, looking up at him expectantly, “waking up feeling like i got left in a meat locker says otherwise.”

he shuts his eyes as he takes a slow sip of his tea, setting it down with a soft clink, the steam curling between you. “interesting,” he begins, voice flat with quiet amusement.

“you seem quite functional for someone who claims they’re—” he pauses, unimpressed, before lifting his hand and giving your forehead a quick, precise knock with his knuckles, withdrawing before you can even think to catch his wrist. “—frozen solid.”

“ugh!” you huff, hands missing his wrist and instead clutching your forehead with an adorable frown. “i’m not frozen solid, but i’m going to be. i don’t know why you just can’t leave it on 72.”

he exhales slowly through his nose, “you know i get hot. i shouldn’t have to strip to be comfortable in my own home,” he says flatly.

his hand lifts without much ceremony, gently replacing yours on your forehead. he briefly rubs the spot he’d knocked before his fingers slip down to tug lightly at your ear, earning an immediate, indignant whine from you.

“or would you prefer i start walking around the house naked instead?”

“what? i’m not answering that.” you say, turning your face slightly away from him, the words coming out clipped as you huff under your breath, “pervert…”, still clearly offended at the recurring offenses.

you manage to slap his arm away. “i don’t see why you insist on wearing long sleeves and then complain you’re hot.” you grumble. “you’re making me hot just by looking at you.”

he scoffs softly at that, as if the answer is obvious. “i wear it because i enjoy being properly dressed,” he replies, smoothing an imaginary crease from his sleeve before leveling you with a look. “and physiologically speaking, it’s significantly easier to warm up than it is to cool down.”

“so, like i said,” he murmurs, reaching for his tea again, “the thermostat stays where it is.”

and just like that, the war begins . . .

the rest of the day was full of quiet hostilities:

the two of you swiping the thermostat in opposite directions each time you walked by, addressing each other by first name as if you were two disgruntled coworkers trapped in an enemies to lovers arrangement rather than of spouses, nanami opening windows for “circulation” while you wrapped yourself in blankets like a victorian child afflicted with a devastating illness, texting each other back and forth instead of verbally communicating.

YOU ‣ my hands are blue and numb. i hope your happy

KENTO ‣ *You’re How are you texting me then?

YOU ‣ don’t be annoying ken. that’s not the point

clearly, neither of you were willing to concede. which only meant this was quickly becoming a battle of endurance rather than a dispute about “temperature”. which also meant this was not going to end soon.

or so you thought.

despite the many, many hours of domestic warfare, the two of you still end up in bed the same way you always did, backs turned dramatically beneath the blankets, the thermostat unfortunately still set at 63. which meant nanami was winning.

the cold seeped through the sheets and curled around your legs until your body instinctively tucks in on itself, shoulders hunching deeper beneath the comforter with a quiet frown hidden against your pillow. beside you, nanami remaining entirely unaffected, laid comfortably on his side with one arm tucked beneath his pillow, warmth practically radiating off of him in waves.

it was infuriating.

because no matter how committed you were to the cold war, your body had always betrayed you first when it came to your husband.

sometime somewhere in between stubbornness and sleep, you found yourself shifting toward him subconsciously, inch by inch until your forehead presses against his back, your leg slipping over his beneath the blankets in search of warmth. the soft fabric of the white shirt he’d changed into earlier brushes against your skin, warm from sleep and smelling faintly of cedarwood and tea.

and god, the bastard was warm.

firm beneath your touch too, broad shoulders relaxing slightly the second you curl fully into him with a sleepy little sigh.

you knew he was awake. you could tell by his breathing, it wasn’t the same comforting slow that soothed you once the day came to an end.

for a moment, neither of you said anything, pride still clawing at your insides. then came the soft shifting of sheets before nanami turned toward you, your forehead brushing against his chest as his strong arms came to cage you in instinctively, one settling around your waist while the other tucked beneath your head. his chin rested atop your hair with a quiet exhale, pulling you into his warmth. 

your fingers curl weakly into the front of his shirt, face pressing deeper against his chest despite yourself. somewhere above you, nanami hums softly, entirely too aware of the fact that you were the one to cave first.

an inevitable outcome.

“interesting,” he murmurs into your hair, sleep roughening his voice. “what happened to hating me?”

you grumble something incoherent against him.

“mm?” he asks, entirely too pleased with himself. “couldn’t quite hear you love.”

your brows pinch immediately. “still hate you.”

his chest rumbles faintly beneath your cheek at that, amusement subtle but absolutely there. absolutely nanami.

“so, you admit defeat?”

you tilt your head up just enough to glare at him through the dark. “i told you. don’t say anyth—”

you were going to argue. save whatever was left of your pride.

except your words barely make it out before he tips your face up just enough to cut you off with a slow kiss, warm and unbearably smug beneath the blankets.

any and all insults died in your throat as butterflies began to bloom low in your stomach, your leg still hiked around his waist while his warmth slowly melted the last stubborn pieces of your pride away as your lips firmly molded against his own, a soft sigh escaping you. one of spite, obviously.

you could feel the faint curve of amusement against your lips when your annoyed little huff melts into him anyway — the exact outcome the two of you had been stubbornly dancing around all day out of pettiness and “spite.”

nanami pulls away from you before resting his thumb on your lower lip. “there you are love,” he murmurs softly against your mouth, breath mingling with yours: entirely too pleased with himself.

“63 seems perfectly fine to me, no?”

he only watches as your expression softens in real time before giving the faintest nod — mentally noting the effect he had on you.

“mm,” he murmurs. “thought so.”

what a horrible, horrible man you married.

Today, as you sit against the headboard and stare at him, your habitually empty face gazes upon him with an odd sort of disgust. He breathes, slow and deep, dreaming.

Do you know what 'Kenjaku' means?

For the Buddhist, it is a lasso which ropes stray spirits. The catching and binding of souls. To save them.

Sometimes, when the room goes eerily quiet, and when the wind whistles silently through like it's begging to be noticed, and when his heartbeats slows into relaxation...you can see something erratic in nature trying to escape. His bones appear to move beneath flesh. And his heart rate spikes up again, bumping and bumping about by his lungs. And he shifts, struggling against his slimy, pale skin. And his lips quiver, as if trying to mumble.

Suguru Geto tries very, very hard to mumble. And when you look so horribly upon the man before you, Suguru looks back somehow, you know he can, underneath all that flesh, and heart, and skin, and lips, and he tries very, very hard to escape.

A soul.

Caught.

Waiting to be freed—

"You stare relentlessly."

You continue to blink your eyes at him. The movement beneath his skin has been subdued. You are alone with its shadow.

"I wish you would die."

Kenjaku huffs out a laugh, opening his eyes to see you, the polite frown of distaste on your mouth as the words leave your tongue. He blinks too, testing. He pats the bed softly, encouraging you to lie and sleep with the beast. He looks very much like Suguru when he does that, their expressions so very close in nature.

Still. Not quite close enough.

You let out a slow breath, hand resting over his before it squeeeezes, just shy from being too tight of a grip. "I wish I could take your brain...and feed it to the immortal birds that have watched you sin…time and time again." You tap his hand, sliding it upon his face and reaching for the stitch marks across your old lovers forehead. Your voice lowers to some sweet whisper, something breathy that doesn't exactly reach that dead skin of his. "Would you let me?"

"You know, I could eat you whole—"

"I've been asking you to. Haven’t I?”

He makes a perverted face, one that is tender in impossible sorts of ways. He takes your wrist without a need for strength, kissing along it gently. His lips are cold and dry, but they look like Suguru's in the winter time, when you'd begged him to wear chapstick or lick your Burts Bees off of your lips. You wonder if the body next to you remembers that too, like he seems to remember everything other virtue and vice from before. You wonder if he thinks about that pomegranate smell, or the sticky feeling of your lipgloss remnants. The memory is somewhere very deep in the back of his mind, and very close in the forefront of yours. The memory, like everything else of fate, has kept you both miles apart from each other.

"Do you imagine him when you ask me?" His tongue glides along the warm and lively vein of your forearm—he is jealous, you think, of this warmth, and these veins, and the fact that you breathe differently than he does. His breathing is rehearsed. It is fake, a lie. Yours is necessary, almost dangerously so. Yours is very easily taken away, especially when he bites down softly upon the skin of your bicep. "Do you imagine his head between your thighs—"

"I hate you."

"The bites against your neck—"

"Kill yourself."

"The way he ate your home cooked meals all those days he couldn't bring his weak body to stand from his bed—"

Your hands are quick to wrap around the man's neck, straddling him and staying firm, precise fingers curling into the soft and fragile skin that sits there, waiting so impatiently to dissipate and deteriorate from existence. Your face is blank again, it has been for years now, and you wait for the smallest sign of life that you know will never come. You use every bit of strength you have, imagining your fingers sucking into meat and muscle, tickling bone marrow and the thick liquid of blood. It makes your heart race like something terrible, like something very evil. And you had never been evil, you’d thought. But Suguru had never been evil either. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps he had been confused, hurt. Perhaps he had been overwhelmed with the suddenly volume of pointlessness that the world had to offer.

But never evil.

Kenjaku smiles.

He smiles so fucking lovingly.

His hands reach up to squeeze yours hips, rubbing softly upon your bare skin, nodding delicately. He looks like someone you know just then. Someone you loved very dearly, maybe too much. Suguru's face is looking up at you, you're staring at it and hoping that the life fades from his eyes despite the slow shattering of your heart in its cage. And Kenjaku knows that, he always knows who's loved and who isn't. The ones who are loved are much more fun, he'd once admitted, the ones who are loved fight more. But there is hardly any fight left in this dead man's soul, hardly anything left of his at all. Still, that expression, something about it freezes you up. Your fingers loosen without meaning to.

Somehow, even with your body atop of his, and your hands at the arteries of demise, he seems to have the upper hand.

Well, how do you kill a body that's already dead anyway?

There really is no point in crying, and yet, it's almost impossible not to. He raises himself into a seated position, pulling you into his cold arms, and shushing. This particular movement frightens you, it always does, because your nights always seem to end like this. He coos against your temple, rubbing your back and trapping you into his embrace, humming softly to calm you. The tune he hums is familiar, a song that he probably shouldn't know, but does anyway. And rocks you from side to side, one hand slipping beneath your shirt for some sort of skin-to-skin, and the other pressing your head into the crook of your neck to stop you from crying any longer.

And it's working, you think you're more upset that it actually works on you.

The world is ending because of the man beneath you, and here, he's holding you like a baby, and you're letting him, because what else can you do?

Kill him?

No.

Not only because you can't.

But because his eyes are someone else's.

"Why won't you just die?" you manage to sputter into his chest, squeezing at your now wet shirt. "Please, just let him die. You’re ruining his body. You’re dirtying him up. Please. That's all that I'm asking—I'd do anything, anything you want if you just let him go." You lift your head up quickly, wiping your face like a toddler so that your eyes aren't blurry, so that you can look at him clearly. "You can have my body. You can have my brain instead—you said you liked being able to make children! You said—God, your fucking womb envy—you said the boy you created, how spectacular it was, how extraordinary! You could use me! You could use me all you want—hell, I'll kill myself now and let you do it right here!"

"Stupid child—"

"I'm not stupid!" You shove at his chest despite his firm and steady grip on your arms, trying to free yourself like some rabid animal. "I'm not stupid, you're a thief! You took him from us, from me! Take me! Me, please, me, take me and release him! You don't need him anymore, I know you don't need him. I'm just as good as him—I can be perfect for you! I would do anything you ask, without fighting, without resistance. I could be perfect."

Kenjaku shakes his head and it shuts you up almost entirely. "Dead people are perfect. No resistance at all."

"Suguru resists—I've seen him resist—"

"And you see it less and less everyday, don't you?" He tilts his head at you, brows in question. His hands slide up to reach your face, holding your head in his palms gracefully and then with that same firm and serious caress. "Do you know what I really need from you, little dove?" He holds your shaking head, forcing it to nod. "I need you...to stay right here. And to stay for a long time."

His fingers tap against your cheeks as he stares across your face, examining the figure before him. You have always fascinated him, he always says that and means it. You wouldn't know why, he'd always seem to leave that part out, but he'd kept you around when you had no real plans of leaving. And he frequently sat before you, just to watch, just to explore and inspect.

"I have...ideas," he grins. "Plans. For this new world. We're not so sure what it'll look like, with all the useless monkeys gone, and humanity at its absolute highest potential. But I think we will need more experimentation."

He lifts one finger to press against your heart, his nail creating a faint line upon your skin. It burns, just slightly, before he reels it back, sighing. "This...intrigues me. Yours specifically. I would like to know more about it. Without...ripping it out of your body and seeing for myself."

He smiles again. "Yet."

The room is silent again. Cold, and gross, and void of life in every way possible. You suppose to only actually living thing is you, and even that part seems to dwindle. Kenjaku tries very hard to keep you going, keep you in tact, but he never really has the same affect as Suguru used to. His trying is often in vain.

And yet. You're still here.

Living with some ghost.

"You'll sleep." He nodded demandingly, lifting you up and placing you beside him, burying you both beneath the covers. He places his palm against your chest, where your heart still beats fiercely, lying down comfortably beside you. "You'll give me one more day."

He always says that. Your nights always ends like this.

How many days had it been?

He drifts off into slumber at the sound of your steady breathing.

You wait patiently for Suguru to poke out from beneath him. To replace the figure next to you.

But it's just a ghost.

well hello friends :)

more of my jjk stuff because the third season hurt me terribly.

there will be more parts because I really like this sort of plot line, but they will most likely be the same length and may alternate between the reader's past relationship with suguru and her current "relationship" with kenjaku. let me know if you guys are liking this idea!

tags: @maavro @iloveme46 @leonotlara @mikaiswolfsbane

iii.

Riding on the back of a dragon is petrifying. 

Maybe it was dumb for Y/N not to have realized that this was how Harry would transfer her from this cave to the next. There is no saddle fixed to his back as there would be on a horse, though there is a spot where the hardened spikes and scales protruding from him are arranged in a perfect Y/N sized spot. She’s unsure if this spot existed on Mitch, or, even if it had, how Mitch had kept her on his back without her flying off the moment they took air. Did he just keep a hold of her in his hand/paw? How did he not accidentally drop her or something? Thank god she hadn’t woken in the middle, or she might have passed right back out. 

Their solution for this is rope. One long, woven tightly around Harry’s front legs, crisscrossing in front of and then behind his neck, and then threaded around her body multiple times. She hadn’t seen Harry shift into a dragon, nor had she seen the complicated maneuvers it must have taken for Mitch to wrap the rope around his large body. His mate helped Y/N limp out of the cave, around the side of the mouth of it, where there’s a long stretch of land that was perfect for dragons to shift. It was like a huge platform for them, and Y/N doesn’t know if it’s man-made (dragon-made?) or if it was just naturally like this. She also finds that they are on the side of a mountain, about halfway up, and she’d never really cared about heights until right now, so she tries not to look. 

What she does look at is a vision she hasn’t seen for a while. Not since the very first time that they met, Y/N had yet to see Harry in his dragon form again until right now. Only, instead of purple eyes glaring at her with distrust and disdain, they appear softer, more appeasing. His head is following them as they walk, before he tips it down near her, huffing a big breath that billows the fabric of her thin night gown. Mitch had packed up her clothes and boots to finish drying at Harry’s cave in a neat little sack. Y/N giggles a little at Harry, though her stomach still twists being so close to him in this form. He looks so menacing, even though he’s giving her what she could only describe as puppy dog eyes right now. She longs to reach out and touch him, explore this side, but she thinks maybe it can wait until they’re alone. She doesn’t want to take any more of his friend’s time.  

Mitch places her on his back and scales up the side of Harry’s form with the rope he’d tied to him. He sits Y/N in the space at the top, below where his neck stops and his body begins, and works on twisting the ropes around her waist, over her shoulders, and around her thighs. It creates a harness, and Y/N has a difficult time moving in it, which would normally make her claustrophobic, but in this case, she’s just fine with it. She’d rather not have too much wiggle room on a dragon, especially when she has no idea how long she’s going to be on him and how high up they’d be.

Still, even with the fear stuttering through her heart, she feels an odd sense of ease. It’s smothered in her distress about flying, sure, but beneath the muck of that — knowing that it is Harry she’s with makes her feel better. Being close to him, after so long being separated, brings a different sort of comfort. Her hands run along the grooves of his scales, and the heat he emits pushes away any of the cold that she’d been experiencing before. Dragons are all warm. Y/N found this when, after being pressed close to the two others, even in a slightly damp nightie, she was not shivering down to her bones as she’d been before. But Harry is extra warm right now, like he’s doing it just for her rather than it being his normal body temperature. Maybe that’s just due to his size, but Y/N chooses to believe it’s because he wants her warm.

“I will follow close behind,” Mitch tells her, “To help you dismount at his cave.” He assured her, “Lean close to his body and hold on tightly. We have not experimented with riders very much, so if you were to fall, I will catch you.” A low growl rumbles below her, the vibrations of it sizzle throughout her legs, and Mitch breathes out a gentle laugh, “But Prince Harry will not allow this to happen.”

Y/N swallows thickly, gripping the ropes in front of her tightly, “Uh, yes, okay,” she nods, “Thank — thank you. I’m very nervous.”

“Don’t be,” he pats her shoulder, “You are in good hands, he’s a very safe flier.”

Still, as Mitch jumps off, Y/N’s heart is thundering hard against her sternum. It almost threatens to crack with the intensity of it. Harry lifts from where he’d been sitting, straightening out his legs and Y/N’s whole body moves with him as the muscles shift in his back. He shakes his body out once, like he was getting a feel for his bones, his appendages, and the small, but still extra mass atop of him. His wings straighten out, and Y/N sees that the skin between each phalange is an even thicker membrane than she’d realized from before. 

After he stands, it feels as though he’s giving her a moment to collect herself, before he stretches his wings further, flapping them once, twice — the movement of them and the wind it generates causes the branches on the trees nearby to waver. The third flap, Y/N feels them move, and Harry is walking — or more so trotting- toward the edge of the mountain. Her stomach drops when they first begin to free-fall, before a fourth, strong flap of his wings cuts through the air and raises them. Y/N couldn’t help it when she screamed, her hands burning from how tightly she gripped onto the rope and flattened herself close to Harry’s body. She would be embarrassed by the sound later on, but for now, she can only focus on the fear coursing through her. 

She is pressed so close to his body that her cheek strokes against his scales. Part of her wants to try and look, and the other part of her thinks it’s best to stick close to him down here, where she is. At this angle, his neck blocks the wind and snow that would be battering at her face. The movement of his muscles beneath his scales can be felt, too, and she can only imagine what it must look like as his wings flap and glide with the wind. Distantly, she can make out the sound of another dragon nearby, and she knew if she felt brave enough to turn around and look, she’d see Mitch flying close by. But she couldn’t bear the thought of doing anything but keeping her eyes fixed tight and clutching onto the rope with one hand and Harry with the other. 

It isn’t as turbulent as she would have thought it’d be. Y/N imagined being jostled and thrown around, like the first time she’d ridden in a buggy as a child over rocky hills and dirt roads. This is much smoother, despite the wind, and therefore, if not for the popping of her ears and the sound of wind, then she might not notice she was in the air at all. She’s unsure of how long they are in the air for, before she finds the courage to peek her head up a little higher. When she looks ahead, it isn’t so bad – it’s dark, so she can’t see much but the following snow and the clouds. However, when she chances a look down, she feels her stomach drop again, so she lowers back closer to Harry with a squeal. There’s a little, rumbled sound that comes from him – Y/N would say it was a laugh, if she didn’t know any better. 

They fly for what feels like forever, but she isn’t sure if it actually was, or if her nerves extended the time. Y/N guesses she’s never been to Harry’s cave before, so she has no idea where it is in relation to where she used to meet him in the forest. Maybe it was quite far? Or maybe her mind was playing tricks on her? It was hard to say. All she knows at this point is that she can feel the descent in all of her organs, as Harry tilts forward and down while her ears pop again. She will be more than grateful to get on the ground again – or, at least, as on the ground as she could get when they would undoubtedly be on the side of a mountain. 

She keeps her eyes closed until there’s the distinct sound of paws on land, the huff of a dragon, and the jostling of her body as he lands. When she finally peeks open to look around, she finds that –yes, they are on the side of another mountain. Y/N can just barely make out the mouth of the cave before Harry steps too far forward for her to see. She finally cranes around to see Mitch also landing, then turns back ahead – as curious as she is to see them transform from one form to the other, she’s worried that he’ll be naked or something. Plus, it kind of feels like something personal – like something she should ask to see before seeing it. 

So she turns again and looks ahead, straightening her back and trying to shake out the nervous jitters that had been bombarding her body. Harry is shaking his head too, though that is more so to get the snow off the top of it. It’s cute – he kind of reminds her of a puppy, like this. Less so, when he turns his head, and she can see one of his eyes peering at her. Y/N can only return his gaze with wide eyes, feeling a little like she might be dreaming. Now that the initial fear of a dragon ride has begun to fizzle, the throbbing in her ankle is far more potent. 

Mitch scales up the side of Harry again. He smiles at her gently, “Was it nice?” He inquired, carefully working on the knots that bound her, “Not too scary, right?” 

“It was horrifying,” she answered honestly, “Very scary, my heart feels like it might pound straight from my chest.” 

Harry grumbles, shaking his head again, knocking the snow off his head. If they had stood below him, it probably would have felt like snow flurries over them; that’s how much had already accumulated. The wind was blowing in more weather, meaning that it would only get worse and worse outside. She thinks that’s why Mitch works so quickly to get her back on his back, sliding down Harry’s side with the ropes that had been binding her to his body. Y/N expects him to kneel so she can crawl off the top of him, but instead, he keeps her on his back and walks her toward the mouth of the cave. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept a sock from you. Prince Harry will be able to replace it.” 

“My sock?” Y/N’s grip around him is tight, though he is quite sturdy – she doesn’t foresee them going down, but one too many piggybacks that have ended in her following on her bum has her paranoid, “Why?” 

“I will need to trek to town, but I have never been. Harry says Christopher should be told what happened so that he may alert others, but in a less “dragon” version of the story.” 

Y/N doesn’t know what he’ll say, but she’s glad that he may take care of her job and Niall until she can get back, as far as alerting them goes. That way, Y/N wasn’t completely M.I.A., and she wouldn’t have to explain why she disappeared then reappeared with an injury the following day. Especially because Y/N helps her neighbors often throughout the week, and with the weather as bad as it is, people will be wondering where she’s gone. 

Mitch drops her off at the mouth of the cave, just outside the snow. It looks dark and murky inside, and a cold breeze brushes past the opening, making her shiver. It is odd to her that they force themselves to live in these conditions when they could build themselves large homes, most likely with relative ease, considering how strong they are. She knows they’re warm, but is inhabiting a cold, dark, dank cave really necessary to combat that? Where does he even keep all of his pants? When she peers inside, she can’t see much – a faint glow further in, but that’s about it. Her feet are bare against the icy, hardened floors, and when Mitch holds out the sack of her clothes, she wonders if there will be a place to rest them. Hell, will there even be a place for her to rest, even? Or would Harry need to gather supplies to make her a bed? How did he sleep? And if he were royalty, would he live with more wealth, or is it different for dragons? Is he royalty in name alone or in class as well? 

Y/N isn’t sure. Right now, she’s wondering if it would be rude to ask Harry to fly her home, but she thinks if she did, he’d be thrown into a panic. Plus, they need to talk – that’s why she went through all of this trouble anyway, wasn’t it? That’s why her ankle throbs, and there’s a bone-deep chill that has her teeth clicking together, echoing through the cave. It’s why she waits patiently at the front, holding her clothes, giving a small, subtle bow to Mitch, and telling him thank you a hundred times before he leaves. Even if she’s still upset with him, they would be having this talk because the cozy comfort of her cottage on a snowy day had been forfeited for it. An ankle that wasn’t throbbing and a body that wasn’t aching had also been forfeited so that they could get to the bottom of this. 

If she asked to go home, he’d probably drop her off and run, so she’d bear through the icy cave for it to happen.  

She doesn’t have to wait long. Y/N hears the sound of wings again, which she assumes is Mitch. There’s no sound, however, when Harry transforms back into his human body. One second, she’s hugging her own body, shivering, trying to get a hold on her teeth that click and clack and threaten to bite the tip of her tongue off if she moves it too close – then the next, Harry is at her side. There must be loincloths somewhere out there because he isn’t cock out coming toward her, covered just enough, before he opens his arms and holds her tight to his body. 

And as angry as she is with him for avoiding her – for leaving without a word – she melts into his body. She’d lie and say it was for survival if questioned about it, but . . .well, who the hell was going to question her? Y/N lets her cheek mash against his chest and listens to the thump of his heartbeat that lulled her to sleep every night he stayed with her. His arms are protective around her, like two warm blankets wrapped around her body. His hair is a little damp where it hits her forehead, from the snow, but she doesn’t mind.  

Mitch had looped a scarf around her head before they’d left his cave, and Harry very carefully ran his hands over it, flattening it down. He peels away from her to cradle her face in his hands, his palms feel huge against her – it’s probably the same effect as when she does this to dogs or cats she finds ambling around the village. Did Harry view her as a pet to him? He strokes her face with his thumbs, either cheek, and gazes at her like. . .like something. She isn’t sure. She feels as though she’s seen this look once before, when she was a child, but she couldn’t put a name to it, or a place. All she knows is that it makes her heart feel too big for her chest, pushing against the ridges of her ribcage. 

“You’re injured,” he murmurs, as if she didn’t already know, looking down at her ankle, “You mustn’t walk on it. I will carry you.” 

“Really, that’s unnecessary, you can just – oh!” Harry picks her up without hesitation, but she’s carried much like a bride. One arm is resting below her knees, and the other is wrapped around her shoulders. And in the shuffle, Y/N squealed and looped her arm around his neck to feel more sturdy. Harry turns his face away from her, purses his lips, and a thin stream of fire leaves his mouth before he lights a torch fixed against the wall. Then, she watches with absolute delight and awe as the fire carefully beeps and bops around from torch to torch on either side. It must be enchanted in some way, or Harry is doing it with his fingers. She isn’t sure. Despite him being a dragon, she forgets that he can use at least some degree of magic, especially since he hasn’t made her float around in quite a while. Actually, he could have been making her float right now, but instead, he holds her tight to him, like she’s something precious. 

The deeper they walk into the cave, Y/N notices a shift from the dark, icy feeling she’d been experiencing at the mouth of it. Further in, it’s warmer, the lights are brighter, and the space seems more lived in. Y/N is confused at first by the decorations, but she soon sees that they are similar to the things that hang in Christopher’s store. Fabric banners, paintings, statues – all things that Y/N had wondered where they went when he was through with them, imagining that his house was full and overcome by a thousand pieces of artwork and trinkets, she sees that they’ve been given to Harry. 

Nothing besides the lantern holders is fixed to the wall, but the artwork is propped up against it, all different shapes and sizes, some things she could make out, and some she couldn’t. There were paintings of dragons, though, of jewels and riches, of wisteria flowers and fields large and wide open. Huge bodies of water with towers that have blinding light flickering from the top. There are wisteria vines looped and woven around the stone, stalagmites, and stalactites. Some bundles fall out of vases propped on tables of different shapes and sizes. There wasn’t necessarily a method to the decoration, Y/N finds, that everything just seems to be placed haphazardly, like there was a space and he decided to fill it. But it brings life to the cave that Y/N thinks otherwise wouldn’t be there. It’s what she would imagine a zany wizard’s magic shop would look like, if wizards existed (maybe they do – or maybe it’s just witches – or maybe it’s just dragons, who knows). 

What does surprise Y/N is the large bed that sits, looking odd and a little out of place in his cave. There’s a mattress, a bedframe that seems to be made of sheets of stone and rock, and even a base to it, something that Y/N’s own bed at home doesn’t have. The material of the blankets looks opulent, better than anything she’s ever witnessed in her life, and they look new. Where her own sheets and covers are threadbare with time and usage, these look brand new, unused – why does he have these? She’d imagined Harry snuggling up in a nest or finding a tree to perch in. Hell, she’d even just thought perhaps he always sleeps among the wisteria flowers as she’d found him before.  

So why does he have a bed like this? Y/N wants to ask him, but he’s bringing her to the mattress and resting her gently on it. He instantly starts to strip her, and Y/N gasps, grabbing her nightie, “Hey!” 

Harry stares at her, confused, tilting his head, “It is still damp,” he explains, “Do humans not catch illness in conditions like these? I must lay these out to dry with the rest of your clothes.” 

Embarrassment trickles down her spine, “Oh,” she replies, then lets go and lets him strip her. Y/N doesn’t know what she thought – Harry was a dragon, sure, but he wasn’t a prick. She doesn’t think he’d expect to be able to sleep with her after disappearing, especially when he knew from Christopher that she wasn’t happy about it. She’s just feeling on edge, nervous, she’s in pain – and now she feels a bit nervous under his gaze, as he peels the clothes off of her and leaves her bare. 

Harry doesn’t seem concerned with it, however. Despite how cold it is, the bedding is warm (maybe it’s enchanted?)And when he pulls the blankets over her and loops a smaller blanket around her shoulders, covering her breasts, she is toasty. Even though her jaw clicks with a chatter every here and there, she feels quite comfortable. She watches as Harry starts another fire in a pit that sits in the center of the room, a circle carved into the cave floor with rocks that surround it, wood filling the center. He lays her clothes carefully, stretching them out, placing her shoes closer to the fire.  

Afterward, he frets over her. Y/N thinks he’s going to crawl into bed beside her, but he grabs pillows and goes beneath the opposite end of the covers. He lifts it just enough so that he reveals her injured foot, still wrapped, and he plucks it up delicately and rests it carefully on top of two pillows. Harry strokes the pad of his finger along the injury, gently, a small frown over his mouth. 

“Explain to me how this happened.” Y/N would have considered it an order if not for how gentle his tone was. He rests a soft hand against her shin, mindful of where the throbbing begins like he can almost sense the borders of it. Close without being too close, and the comfort of his being near feels nice. 

She cleared her throat, “I spoke to Christopher last night,” she explained, “Or, I suppose, it was a few hours ago. He explained some things to me, and then took me to gorge on high-dollar wine and foods.” Harry’s brows were furrowed, but he was nodding along, encouraging her to continue, “When I returned home, I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to see you. Since you’d left, I had all these questions, and I was just so angry at you before. After hearing what I had, I decided I wanted to hear it from you instead, so I got dressed, and I went to seek you out.” 

Y/N readjusted against the pillows she lies against – she’s still sitting up quite a bit, just at a slant. Harry twitches like he’s going to fluff them behind her back, but she holds her hand out, making sure he stays where he was. If he got any closer to him, she probably wouldn’t be able to think. Would just want to snuggle against his chest and sleep well for the first time in what felt like ages. But they needed to speak before they did anything. And Y/N needed to let him know that just disappearing in the middle of the night hurt her, it really did. 

“Um, I take the same sort of path to find you, but you always find me first, usually. With everything covered in snow, I got confused, so I think I got turned around a bit and lost. I slipped on a rock and tumbled down into a stream, cracked the ice with my body, then got all wet. I’m thankful Mitch was there, but at first I thought he was definitely going to eat me,” Harry growled low, in his chest, and with her uninjured foot, she nudged against his thigh, “Hey, that’s fair though! He didn’t know who I was. You were quite mean when I first met you, too.” 

“Still,” he huffed, “He should have scented me on you.” 

“How could he when you disappeared without a trace, huh? You haven’t been there to – to make me smell like you at all.” 

Harry gets quiet. He lacks the bravado that he usually carries himself with, shoulders slumped, and features pulled into something unsure and worried. This does appear like the dragon that may have been asking Christopher every time he visited if Y/N was doing okay. Like the dragon that probably dropped off the jewels to have him turn them into necklaces and bracelets, divulging his inner thoughts and stressors, then disappearing back to brood and pout in his cave. 

“What happened?” Y/N pressed, sitting up a little straighter, “I had thought. . .maybe it was stupid of me to have thought, but I’d imagined we were much closer than that. I’d let you in my home, in my bed – I let you split my thighs whenever you wanted, and made sure you were fed, but then you just. . .you just left. Without saying anything. And left me a stupid little note,” she huffed, getting worked up thinking about it, “You’d made me feel like I worked in a brothel. Like I was no more than a warm body to you. But maybe I was, I just wish you had told me –” 

“You weren’t! You aren’t –” he grips her leg a little tighter, shaking his head, leaning forward, “You – this – what glows between us is so much more than that.” 

“Then explain to me,” she demanded, frowning, “Explain why you left.” 

Harry’s frown is deep, his face twisted up in something confused and distressed. Christopher was telling the truth – it must be difficult for him to articulate what he’s feeling. For someone who would probably be content communicating in grunts and growls, to ask him to explain intricate feelings might seem a little mean, honestly. But she can’t help but need to know – she has to know. There’s no way around it. Not if she wants any sliver of peace in her life. 

His touch, which had previously become a little rougher at the mention of Mitch scaring her to start, softens once more. It’s careful; gentle against her skin, and still so warm. His lips, flushed red from canines digging into the flesh in thought, open and close several times before he can think to start. Y/N is patient though – she’s never been very patient before, in her life, but she thinks she can be patient for this. Even though every passing second of silence makes her want to vibrate from her bones. 

“I have always had very complicated and complex feelings towards. . .people, outside of my family.” He began, though he stared off at one of the cave walls, like it might have an explanation carved into the mineral, “Both dragons and humans. I discovered from a very young age that it is quite difficult to decipher what people truly feel for you when you’re in a position higher than them. If they were kind, merely to save face. If they were mean out of envy, or if there was truly something to my personality that was unworthy. It never made much sense to me – none of it. So it has always been far easier to shut everyone out – to be by myself, and exist harmoniously alone, with the wisteria, the trees, the comfort of my cave.” He begins to draw delicate loops into her skin, “I’ve never felt love that wasn’t familial in my childhood. I don’t even know what it is supposed to feel like, loving someone outside the realm of blood relation. Even my betrothed, before her murder, I didn’t love her. I felt fond of her, but there was no love – at least, not how anyone has ever described it to me.” 

He takes a small, deep breath, “The love I feel for Mitch is brotherly. What I feel for Christopher is something close, I believe – it’s a fondness that runs deeply, for as long as we’ve been in one another’s lives. But with you. . .with you, it is much more intricate and delicate. I am – I am unsure if dragons are capable of being fated mates with humans. I’ve never read any literature about it; I’ve combed through all of my writings and teachings here, and have even flown home to see if there was anything that was kept, but I continue to come up short. It is said in this world, you are created as a whole, then cleaved in two, destined to roam the world, finding your missing half. There’s no sense that this whole would be half dragon and half human. Why would it even be possible?” Y/N doesn’t know if the question is rhetorical or not – he genuinely seems to be asking, like he wants an answer – like he thinks, maybe, for some reason, she might have it – but she remains silent. 

“It is no grandiose thing, finding your mate. You just know, when you see them – can feel it deep in your marrow. There’s this pressing urge and desire to provide for them, to be near to them, to protect, claim, and mark them. So when I met you, I. . .I am always distrustful of humans. The scent and sight of you when I was in such a vulnerable state put me on edge, but when I heard your voice – when you got closer to me, when your hands just barely grazed my leg, it felt. . .weird to me. Buzzing, tingling, something beyond anything that I’ve ever felt before. And after you left, it was all I could think about.” 

Y/N couldn’t help but cut him off then, “But you kept sending me away?” She reminded him, “Remember? At the start, you wanted nothing to do with me.” 

“I wanted everything to do with you,” Harry stressed, frowning, “With this-this tiny human, clearly scared but not scared enough to leave me hurt and stranded. Who fussed at me for growling, even while her hands shook. Telling me that she wasn’t clever enough to be a trickster, that you just wanted to help me. I almost went crazy – I think I might have. The little strip of cloth smelled so much like you, I slept with it near my head, even after I removed it, covered in blood.” His face glows pink like he hadn’t necessarily meant to admit that, and he pauses for a second to collect his thoughts before continuing, still dragging his claws in careful circles around her leg, “I thought maybe after some time these feelings would unleash me, but they refused, even two months later when I brought you my repayment. And with that, I had settled in myself that this was enough as well. To see you one last time. To see if it felt as. . .as it had before.” 

Y/N’s brows crinkled, “Did it?” She pressed. 

Harry nods, “It felt even worse. Like I needed to be with you all of the time.” 

“I’m just confused, because you were so–you were so mean! You used to throw me out of the forest, even, but you wanted to see me all the time? Dragons make no sense.” 

He smiles gently, despite her fussing, and nods again, “I know,” he tells her, “It just didn’t make any sense to me, is all. Christopher is one thing – he is a human I’ve known since he was a little child, and our relationship is primarily transactional in nature. But you felt different, and it scared me. I thought maybe, if I pushed you away, then I’d eventually forget these confusing feelings and continue as I wished. But you always came back, no matter how rough I was with you. And then my heat. . .” 

“My body is not typically responsive to others, both in and out of heat, though during it is much worse. I’ve had my fair share of offers to help me through it by courtesans and the like, but I couldn’t stomach it. The scent, the stimulation – all of it was too much for me. It always has been, no matter whether male or female dragon, I rejected their advances and suffered through the brunt of it alone. Then you came, with your basket of pies, smelling so sweet, touching my horns, and I had never so badly wanted to bed someone more. My teeth ached to bite into your throat, my knot was throbbing at the base of my prick, and the desire to take care of you in all ways was so intense that I could no longer ignore it. But I was courting you, and you were receptive, and in a state like my heat, that was really nice, because there were no trivial thoughts then. All my thoughts were directed toward you and only you; that was all.” 

“But when it ended, and I woke up, and the haze of it had settled – I was so embarrassed. I hadn’t discussed anything with you prior, and it felt like I had taken advantage of your kindness, and I–I still wanted you. The guilt weighed heavily on my body that I hadn’t explained anything to you beforehand. I didn’t even know if you felt it too, what I was feeling – if that’s why you kept coming back to me. Then I’d worried maybe you were, and I’d practically preyed on you without you knowing, and I got myself so worked up that I had to leave.”

Y/N’s pout is still present on her lips, “I – that really hurt me, Harry,” she admitted, “I wish you had just spoken to me, is all. I would have understood more than you’d thought I would have, you know? And instead, I just spent all this time angry with you and upset with myself for being so easy for it. I felt so –” her face feels hot, “I felt really safe with you there, yeah? I had never slept so peacefully, and in the winter no less. I was happy and cozy, and my feelings for you had proliferated into something. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something. And then you just up and left.” 

Harry, for the first time since they started this discussion, moves. He slides off the side of the bed onto his knees – Y/N is confused at first, until he drops down into a full bow. Her eyes grow wide, “Hey, get up –” 

“I’m so sorry,” he apologizes, and it sounds so desperately sincere that it slices right through her heart. His forehead touches his knuckles, “I mean this, from the bottom, the middle, and the top of my heart. With all of me that lives and breathes, I will never be able to express how much I regret leaving as I did. The thought of causing you any distress, to make you question how much I want you, or what I want you for – makes me feel ill. I will spend every day trying to make it up to you, if you’ll allow me to. I’ll give you anything – my jewels, my cave, my mind, my body – anything.” 

She feels – Y/N doesn’t know how she feels. To have this dragon prince bowing before her, in a position she doesn’t think Harry would ever allow himself to be in front of anyone, is beyond anything she could even begin to comprehend. Her face is still flushed and warm, she feels embarrassed to have someone doing this in front of her, and she leans forward out of the pillows, “Harry, stop it,” she reaches her hand out, “Come on, get back in the bed.” 

Harry lifts his head, his gaze meeting hers from the floor, “For some, this may seem shameful,” he tells her, “But I would gladly do it in front of anyone, if it proved to you my sincerity. I’ll fly you to my parents and bow before you in front of them. I’ll take you to the middle of town when all of the humans are at their busiest in the center of it, and bow before you there. I’ll fly you from place to place to place, all over this world, to prove my devotion and my gratitude and my apologies. I’m so sorry.” 

It’s a lot – it’s more than anyone has ever done in an apology to her, if she ever even receives one at all. She thinks that the most anyone has apologized for hurting her feelings is a quick, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” and that was about it, before stalking off and making her feel like she was the silly one for being upset. But it seems as if the knowledge of this is genuinely devastating to him. Y/N feels a pull in her chest – a clawing ache, like his affliction is her own. Is this what it means? Y/N isn’t sure. Had he just put it in her head? But there was something she’d always felt with him, part of the reason why she just couldn’t leave him alone. 

“I understand,” she nods, holding out her hands, “Harry, I do, I understand you’re sorry, and I’m trying to accept it, but please get back on the bed.” 

He does – he crawls back on, only instead of going back to her foot, he moves to sit at her side. He still leaves a healthy amount of space between them, like he doesn’t want to push an unknown boundary. Y/N musters the strength of her upper body to scoot closer to him, using one hand to grip his bare thigh. Her fingers dip into the muscle, and it gives easily – he’s not tense at all. At his most open and vulnerable. She thinks, if she’d ask, he’d roll over and expose his belly to her. 

With her other hand, she slides her knuckles against his, slotting their fingers together and squeezing, “If – if you really have feelings for me, then we need to be able to communicate. Even if it’s hard – I don’t want the only time you’re able to open up is when you’re in your heat, okay?” 

Harry’s eyes are all over her face, like he’s trying to soak in every little cell that makes up her face. He looks so soft, his gaze falls to her mouth, then goes back to her eyes, locking with her and nodding, “Yes,” he tells her, “When we – if we accept these feelings for each other and revel in the bond, then we will feel each other, even more than we do now. Our moods, our emotions – that will make it a bit easier for me to understand you, and vice versa. But if the ultimatum is being vulnerable and open with you, or not having you at all, then I will give you my heart and every thought in my mind easily.” Then, he squeezes her hand, “Do you. . .do you accept my feelings for you?” 

Y/N smiled gently, “Yes.” 

“And, perhaps. . .well, do you have – do you feel something for me? Maybe this bond is one-sided? That’s – I fear that, because I don’t understand the details of this, but I will respect it, and your wishes. Is the Niall boy the one who has your heart?” 

Her face screws up, “The only thing Niall has of mine is my last nerve,” she clicks her tongue, “I like you, Harry, that’s why I was so upset when you left me.” Harry pulls her hand up to his mouth, lacing kisses over the back of it, dotting her knuckles before rubbing it against his cheek, “And I’d be interested in understanding this bond with you. I want to be with you, and – and I don’t want to be apart again, like that, ever.” 

Harry smiles, his dimples peek out from their hiding spots on his cheek, and his teeth gleam even in the low, firelight of the cave. Y/N thinks that if he presses her hand any closer to his face, it will melt into his body, but she can tell that he’s feeling everything just as deeply as she is right now. Maybe even more than she could, since he understands what it’s like to be fated more than she did. Y/N doesn’t know what it all means, or what to really make of it, but what she does know is that she’s never been calmer and more content in her life. Outside of her cottage, probably hundreds of kilometers deep into the forest, injured in a cave with a dragon – and she’s felt safer than she has in weeks since he ran off. 

She wants to kiss him. There’s something that plucks at her insides that encourages it, especially with how he’s looking at her, like she had just hung the moon and the stars for him. Like she’d constructed his cave for him. Like she’d been placed on this planet to complete him. Y/N leans forward and presses their lips together carefully, gently, in something tender and soft. Harry freezes for a moment, and Y/N worries that she made the wrong move, before his jaw tilts and he experimentally reciprocates, pushing back. 

Y/N doesn’t stay long, letting the peck linger for a couple of seconds before pulling back. She looks all over his face, eyes darting around to see if there was any hesitation or regret that warped his features. Instead, she’s met with a very moony-eyed dragon, whose scales speckle parts of his skin as they did during his heat, and his horns sit on his head. As if he’s letting himself relax fully, the more animal parts of him are revealed. 

“Was that okay?” She asks gently, and Harry hums, nodding happily. 

“It was so soft,” he murmurs, lifting his free hand fingers to his lips like he was remembering it, “I – have only had my lips pressed once with another's and it felt nothing as soft and tender.” He squeezes her hand again, leaning forward, “Can we do it again?” 

Y/N giggles, nodding, and he initiates it this time with a smear of his lips against hers. There’s less hesitation this time; he’s more urgent, and he fits her bottom lip between his. It’s with the soft exploration of a first kiss. Y/N doesn’t remember hers at all, but she wonders if he’ll remember this. If he’ll think about this next month, the month after, the year after. Will he look at it fondly? He’s warm against her, his lips are wet, and they’re soft too, but he’s acting like hers are as soft as he’s ever felt. 

Harry is the one who delicately licks her mouth. He is careful about it, so he has some idea about kissing – she’s unsure how, and she’d find it out later, but right now, all she can focus on is him. Y/N opens her lips and lets him lick inside, their tongues touch, and it’s wet, soft. Harry holds her side of her face, but Y/N is the one who has to tilt his head and lace her tongue with his. Harry picks up on it quickly, massaging their tongues together, and he tastes better than any man she’s ever kissed before. 

He’s careful, his hand leaving her cheek and sliding his hand to the back of her head, and holding her against him. He suckles at her bottom lip tenderly, his fingers slip through her hair, threading the strands, and the gentle skim of his nails sends goosebumps down her arms. Harry kisses slowly, leisurely, like they have all the time in the world – and maybe they do. They stay attached until her lungs burn with the need to breathe, and she has to pull away. But Harry chases after her, following her lips, letting them touch for a second before Y/N laughs again, putting her hand in front of his mouth to stop him. 

A grumble rumbles through him, “I have to breathe, you know?” She teased him, shaking her head, “You’re–you learn fast.” 

“I like that – I like that a lot. I want to do that more,” he murmured, “Can we do that again?” 

“Yes,” she replies, “But I think I need to sleep. And my ankle – it hurts a little – oh!” 

Harry moved quickly, all but jumping off the bed and going to a pot that was near the fire, “I’m sorry,” he was carefully pulling the lid off the pot and bringing it to her bedside, “I meant to do this when you came in, but I was distracted by you.” He stops and grabs a piece of cloth as well. Harry goes to the end of the bed, flips the cover again, and exposes her leg. 

Y/N is unsure what he’s doing, but she knows that whatever it is, as soon as he brushes the substance from the pot onto her ankle, the throbbing almost instantly soothes once it hits her skin. Y/N breathes out a sigh of relief, relaxes into the pillows. “Oh, that’s – that’s really nice,” she smiles, her eyes closing for a moment, then peeking open to see Harry wrapping her ankle again. Then he leans forward, presses a kiss to her knee, and then covers her leg again. 

Harry crawls up to her side again, only this time, instead of kissing her breathless, he fluffs her pillows and then looks like he’s about to leave the bed again. Y/N reaches out and grabs him, frowning, “Where are you going?” 

“I was going to keep watch on –” 

“Lay with me,” she demands, “I want you to lie with me.” 

Harry pauses at first, like he doesn’t know what to do, but then listens. He crawls into bed with her, and he snuggles into her side, looping his arm around her waist and pulling her in close without moving her leg too much. The warmth seeps into her bones, her body melts into his hold, and for the first time in so long, she feels complete and utter peace as she snuggles in close. She tilts her face into his chest, and the skin of her cheek presses flush against him. 

He dips his head into her hair and breathes in deep, “I’ve missed you so desperately,” he murmured, “Sleep well, my little human.”

                                                               .                         .                       .

Living in the cave is nice for a while. 

Harry definitely makes it comfortable, and with the snow, she would have been stuck indoors anyway. Actually, rather, she would have been forced out in the icy cold to help out her older neighbors. Or she would have trekked to see Niall, who whines and cries about the weather, and never has any meals or food prepared for the start of it. All of that while trying to sort her own stuff out – it’s hard, but she doesn’t mind being helpful. Even if she’d like to enjoy her snow day as well, considering the bakery would most likely be closed. 

But here, in this cave, Y/N doesn’t have to do much of anything. She wakes when her body stirs her (or when she notices Harry has left the bed) and goes to sleep when her body asks for rest. Y/N is always waking to food, either already made or being prepared; soups with delicious broth and high-quality meats and vegetables made by fire and stone. She’s kept warm, not only by Harry’s body heat, but by expensive garments – clothing that she would have never wished to have had for herself (Harry explains to her that they are his sister;s, who – admittedly – had sent him with troughs of her clothes in case he ever decided to marry as a gift to his partner, if a woman was who he chose; Y/N also learned that his sister doesn’t enjoy the loin cloth way of life). The fabrics were durable but still pretty, and Y/N felt nice in them, even if she was just lounging around a cave. 

He helps her get in and out of clothes, he feeds her by hand if she’ll allow it – hell, even when she wants to take a drink, he brings the brim of a mug to her lips instead of handing it to her. One would think she’d broken her hand, with how little Harry makes her use them. The most he’ll allow is when she wants to touch him, trace her fingers through his hair to scratch at his scalp, loop her hands around his own to squeeze and hold, or when she pokes and prods at his biceps, his chest, his belly – all the soft and big parts of him. 

But that’s about it. Everything else, Harry takes care of. 

It was nice. Y/N thought that she’d hate to be waited on hand and foot, but she thinks that she deserves it a little bit. Not only for how hard she works for everyone else on a day-to-day basis, but because she thinks this was Harry’s way of expressing his apologies and making it up to her. She likes being doted on; she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that, especially when the chances to be doted on are few and far between. Y/N enjoys it, especially when the person doting on her makes her insides squish and twist and tingle and glow. 

They kiss a lot, too. Harry was obsessed; once they finally shared one. Y/N learns that he’d really never kissed anyone, but he did use to watch people (she called him a creep), so he would know what to do when the time came. Dragons have brothels, too, it turns out, so he knew the general mechanics of it; he’d just never tried so himself. He never wanted to, he told her, and the time someone had kissed him before it had caught him off guard. 

“It was someone I did my classes with,” he told her flippantly, “And it was an accident. They thought I was someone else, high on peyote root. Afterward, they begged me not to hang them – it was not much for a first kiss.” 

Harry always wants to kiss her. Murmurs against her mouth how soft her lips are, compliments the taste of her tongue, licks against every little part of her he can reach. He flickers at her palate, against her teeth, sucks her tongue, and moans against her while he does it. Y/N thinks, if she let him, he would kiss her for hours. Sometimes she thinks that they’re just about close enough to an hour as is, with how bruised her lips feel, worn and tingly from where he’d been pressed against her. Harry’s are always flushed bright red and bitten, slick with spit. When she needs a break to breathe, he busies himself with her throat, whispers proclamations of devotion against her skin, and promises to never leave her again. He purrs the whole time, too, like he couldn’t be more pleased and content, like a happy cat.

He still whispers how sorry he is to her when they’re snuggled in bed for the night. 

Harry takes her outside often, too. He prepares her warmly for the cold and only starts letting her limp beside him when she’d explained that if she didn’t use her leg at all, her muscles would wither and lose strength. Still, he all but demands that she lean her full weight into him, and he takes most of the pressure off of her injury. The first time she’d left the peaceful and dimly lit cave, it had been a shock to her senses. Not only how cold and windy it still was, but how bright. She’d grimaced against the sunlight at first, hovering her hand above her eyes to block some of it out so she could see better. The cave sat rather high up on the mountain, several kilometers higher than what appeared to be some of the tallest trees she’s ever seen. It felt weird to be seeing the tops of them, but it was beautiful – all covered in snow. The world below them was untouched by man or dragon, it seemed – just nature as is, covered in a blanket of crystals that sparkle and bounce light off the ground. 

Mitch comes by once too. They don’t meet him deep inside the cave at all – Y/N believes Harry had said something about it being their “nest” and how it was improper for another dragon to enter it – so they met him toward the entrance as well. He returns her sock, brings a couple of her garments, and tells them that Christopher has been notified. 

“He said he would come up with something quickly,” Mitch told them, “Some story he would conjure about a cousin.” 

So work was taken care of at least, and nobody would think that she was rotting away in her cottage either. They’d know she was gone, so there’d be no stress, and hopefully no explosive reunions in the middle of the village when they see her again. It would give her at least a little time until she could walk entirely on her own with a slight limp. 

In the meantime, while Harry pampers her like she was royalty and pulls out a book of ancient dragon texts about soulmates and soul bonds. Y/N can’t read it because it was in whatever dragon language that Harry speaks. He reads some of it to her in his language, with his dialect, and Y/N can’t even begin to understand or describe it. But it sounds pretty, and there are noises and letters she thinks she couldn’t make with her own mouth, no matter how hard she tried. He explains everything they read, after a full paragraph at a time. Y/N is trying hard to pay attention, but she gets distracted by watching his mouth move. 

When Harry describes his knot, though, Y/N doesn’t get distracted at all. 

She remembers it so vividly how it pressed against her. How it felt when it was snuggled between her legs before he emptied his load all over her. It was crazy to her that she had been so close to actually getting it, but Harry had never taken the plunge and actually fucked her with it. But she wanted it – she seriously did, so bad, no matter how much he told her it would stretch and hurt and burn. After that, she knew it would feel good. Hadn’t she been made for him, after all? That’s what he keeps telling her. 

She knew that he was worried, though. Was well aware of how absolutely nervous Harry had been about actually fucking her. She’s shocked that they’d gotten through his heat, content on licking between her folds and grinding against the mattress for most of it. But now, she knows. Now, she’s well aware that Harry has never slept with anyone at all before. 

He’d explained it himself per Y/N’s request, scratching at the nape of his neck and looking extremely bashful. It’s cute how pink his cheeks get when he discusses it. Y/N can just barely make out that reddened hue when he tells her, “I’ve never knotted anyone before,” while his gaze darted everywhere but her own, “Everything else I was okay with doing, to release steam, but I always thought that maybe I would. . .I would save my knot for someone. I know it’s embarrassing.” 

“That’s not embarrassing,” she tells him, legs crossed on the bed – this is the first time she’s been able to sit like this, now that moving her leg doesn’t hurt so badly, “Not at all! It actually makes sense why you were so hesitant to give it to me, then.” 

Harry didn’t agree, however, with big eyes as he shook his head, “What? No! I wanted to give you my knot so badly. Just – when I found out you were human, I was too worried. I’m telling you, there hasn’t been much research on Dragon/Human relationships, and I worried that my knot would be far too much for that little hole to handle.” 

He’s not intentionally speaking dirty, she knows that, but even in his earnestness, the words sound absolutely filthy. Y/N squeezed the cover at her sides, looking at him with a tilted head, “You know, humans push babies out of there, don’t they? And the size of a baby's head, I think, is bigger than your knot.” 

“But they are in pain,” he worried, shaking his head, “I didn’t want to hurt you. I still don’t.” 

And here’s the thing – Y/N needs him desperately. Not hurt her, or anything, but to fill her up. To let his knot catch at her entrance and stretch her out – she knows it would feel like a lot, maybe even too much, but it’s something that she craves deep down. She wondered if this was due to the bond or if she was just a pervert. She didn’t want to ask Harry just in case he told her it was the latter.  But after he told her, she felt significantly empty – and then she realized that in the time he’s left, she also hasn’t even thought of touching herself. Her insides are all pent up, so the thought of being the first person  Harry has ever knotted sends her spiraling into incredibly filthy thoughts.  

So she does the only thing she can think to do. Y/N plans on seducing him. If he’s too worried about how small she is, then she’d start the process – she’d begin stretching herself out, and then he could take over afterward. She thinks that would be the easiest way to do it. Though she was starting to worry that she wouldn’t be able to fulfill her plan until she was back at home, considering Harry didn’t like to leave her alone for any amount of time, her opportunity arose one afternoon as the snow had begun to melt. Y/N had whined enough about wanting something sweet, and once Harry told her about these berries that grew where the wisteria do, even in the winter, even in the heavy snow – she pleaded with him to go get them. Though it didn’t take much pleading – she thinks she could ask Harry for a kidney and he’d figure out a way to give her one that day. 

Before he left, Y/N kissed him. It’s not hard to get Harry to kiss her – all she has to do is pucker her lips, and he melts into her effortlessly. They smear their mouths together, and Harry guides her through it, sliding their tongues alongside each other. He always gets hard when they kiss, but he treats the situation very delicately and doesn’t ask for anything. Y/N doesn’t know if he thinks he’s not allowed to, since she was upset or what, but she needed that to stop. Immediately, instantly, right freaking now. 

When he parted from her, a thin string of spit connected their lips in something filthy and sweet, before Harry licked it away, “Okay,” he murmured, “I must go now, Pet, I’ll be right back.” 

Y/N is always quite worked up after their kisses, so when he’s out of sight, and she sinks her hand beneath the blanket and up under her skirt, she isn’t surprised to find herself drippy and wet between her thighs. She allowed herself one little loop over her swollen button to make her toes curl before passing it to get to her hole, where Harry worried that he’d split her right in two. She has to remind herself a couple of times that this isn’t necessarily for pleasure right now, when she slipped two fingers in and started scissoring herself out and open. This position is not the best – her fingers aren’t anywhere near long enough to poke and push at the swollen button inside of her, either, though she does pass it by accident every so often. 

But it feels good, still. Maybe it was best she waited until she was so needy for it, because sliding in a third finger comes a little easier than she’d imagined. Her walls clench down, ridges and all, and she can feel herself leak around her knuckles. She could take his knot just fine – she remembers how it felt, against her, how big it was, and she thinks she’d be able to handle it. Look how well she was taking three of her fingers! She knew that she could take his fingers well, too, all thick and knobby. Harry could even stretch her a little more, if that’s what he wanted. Y/N could take it. 

A fourth finger, and Y/N is teething on the pillow. She didn’t want to be too noisy – the sounds would echo in the cave, surely, and she didn’t want to lure any unwanted attention toward her. Still, muffled whines wet the fabric of the feather-filled cotton when her hips start to rock down into her own fingers. The heel of her palm grinds against her clit, feeling even more swollen now than it had started, with practically her whole hand inside of herself.  And it was just enough stimulation that she could feel an orgasm tingling along the edges of her periphery. A buzzing in her toes, a hot coil in her belly, the point of no return when she knew that even removing her hand from herself would be a fruitless attempt – she would be cumming whether she wanted to or not. 

“What’s this?” Harry is at the side of the bed before Y/N could even realize he was inside the cave. Her scream echoes, and she clamps down around her fingers, having tipped over the edge, but her orgasm is effectively ruined by his sudden appearance, “I could smell your honey pot from outside of the cave. I thought I was making it up, but –” he rests the basket of berries down on the trunk beside the bed, then uses his other hand to peel the blanket off her body. His eyes darken when she’s revealed to him, and Y/N thinks she probably makes a perverted sight for sure. Dress rucked up over her waist, fingers tucked inside of herself, potentially a wet spot forming beneath her on the sheets below. 

Was he disgusted? Was he upset? He wasn’t saying anything but staring, and white knuckling the blanket he was holding to keep his view clear. Y/N feels breathless, chest heaving, and a little sweaty, “S-sorry,” she apologizes, though she doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. All she knows is that Harry staring at her feels like someone pointing a thin stream of fire at her body, carving its way around wherever they look, “I – uh –” 

“Do not apologize,” he slowly crawls into bed, at the foot of it, between her legs, “I missed you so much when you were gone,” he says, another moment of vulnerability and honesty, “And I missed her too. Saw you both in my sleep.” There’s something extra filthy about him referring to her vagina as its own entity, but it does something for her. Something filthy and amazing. Something that makes her mouth water. 

“I want you,” she admits, her tone urgent, spreading her legs wider for him, and Harry looks like he’s going to eat her, “Please? I want your knot, I know I can take it.” 

Harry’s hand grips the tender flesh of her inner thigh, squeezing tight, his nails dipping into the skin, “Here you go with that,” he murmurs, “My sweet little human, with her big aspirations. You want my cock, hm? So you stretched your tiny hole around your fingers? You think that’ll be enough?” 

“Then stretch me the rest of the way,” she slides her fingers out of herself, and she wonders what he sees when they leave – does she gape, even just a little, for him? A tantalizing hole for him to sink into? “C’mon, make it fit, I want you to make it fit.” 

Harry takes her wrist – she’s reminded once again how easily it would be for him to snap it in two if he really wanted – before pulling her fingers to his mouth. He licks and sucks on them like a man starved, all while dancing two of his fingertips along her folds, puffy and slick for him. They both moan at the same time when he dips two fingers in with ease, the stretch much more intense than when she had two of her own inside. His thumb meets her clit, and he swirls it in circles while his tongue weaves and dips between her fingers. Even when he’s done cleaning them, he drags his tongue down to the center of her palm, presses and sucks kisses there, too. He licks down to her wrist and lets the sharp point of his canine rest above her pulse point, keeping her pressed to his mouth, moaning loudly. His eyes gleam their purple, and Y/N is endeared that every time he’s horny like this, his eyes can’t help but look like stars. 

Hips rocking into the feeling, Y/N grabs onto the pillow above her head as she works them down against him. It feels good – so fucking good, and she moans when he slides a third finger in. Again, the stretch was more intense – he was just bigger than her, all over, his hands were massive. Even when he was fucking her with his fingers at home, two is usually where he would stop with her clit between his lips, sucking and pulling at it until she wet the bottom half of his chin. 

And when the fourth finger slid inside of her – Y/N cums. Unprompted, unwarned, it floods over her like she’d been thrown into water. Her legs tremble, her mouth falls open into a broken sound – she moans, and it probably isn’t the prettiest sound in the world, but Harry’s eyes don’t leave her, as she milks his fingers. Despite how often he made her cum while he was in his heat, each time he looked at her like it was his first time witnessing it. He uses his free hand now to frame her hips at first, then slide along her lower belly, “You cum so beautifully on my fingers,” he tells her, sounding drunk off her taste, “I want to devour you – eat you whole. You’re so cute, my little human, my honey pot.” 

“I’m ready,” she tells him, twitching and sensitive over his four fingers, “Please, I need to feel you inside, you made me wait for too long.” 

Harry pouts his lips at her, “I know, baby, I know. Poor little thing,” he carefully removed his fingers, and now she definitely thinks she gapes for him, if his eyes trained on her pussy is anything to go by, “I can’t believe I made you wait for so long. Pretty baby,” he sighs, removing the small skirt of cloth that had been covering him. His prick is tenting it beforehand, looking ten times bigger in comparison to the fabric. He looks even bigger than when she’d seen him last, somehow now swallowed by the sheer size of this cave, and this bed. Everything looks big in her cottage, sure, because it was not made for a dragon, but even in this big, open space, he still seems larger than life. 

He uses the juices that still cling to his fingers to slick up his cock. There’s already precum leaking from the tip, so the ruddy head glistens when the firelight hits it just right. Her mouth waters at the sight of it – she wonders how long it would take to convince him to let her mouth on it, the best she could. There was no hope that it would fit in her throat, that’s for sure, but she could try. Let her lips drag against it, suckle at the head, scrape her teeth against the sensitive skin, dig her tongue into his slit. Maybe she could mouth at his knot, too – would he like that? Would it make him buck his hips into her? Could he pop a knot just from that? There are so many things she must discover. 

But right now, she doesn’t want to break whatever bubble they’re in right now. He fists his hand around the thick base and uses his grip to tap his cock against her slit. The sound is soft and wet, a little “thwack thwack” that sends fizzles through her stomach. She’s sensitive, sure, but Y/N could go a couple of rounds without being completely overstimulated. So she knew she could handle this, even while her juices dripped from her last orgasm, slipping down between her cheeks, wetting her other hole. Harry has her legs up and spread, and Y/N helps out by getting her forearms snuggled behind her knees, pulling them to her chest.

Harry drags the head up and down her slit like he’s painting with it. Every so often, he’ll nudge the tip against his hole, and Y/N’s breathing hitches each time. Even that much feels good, though it’s like he’s teasing her. He dips the very tip in then leaves again, like he’s testing the waters. Dipping a toe into a hot bath, just to make sure it won’t scald him.  It’s the fourth time that he does it, when Y/N whines, hips twitching, but he keeps her held down with a sturdy hand over her hipbone. 

“Shhhh,” he coos, “Just feeling you, Sweetheart,” he murmurs, continuing his movements. Harry does it at least three more times before he finally sinks more than just the very tip in. Y/N feels herself stretch around the head, her walls giving way to make room for him. Her mouth falls open, but no sound leaves her as he moves, slow and steady inside of her. Y/N had worried he’d tease her some more, go in and out until she properly begged, but he graced her with this. Sunk down to the root, until the clear swell of his knot stopped him. The growl that leaves him rumbles through both of them, while he feels Y/N’s cunt squeeze and milk around him while she accommodates his size. 

He’s big – he’s really fucking big, she’s known that, but feeling it is ten times different. Harry has stretched her further than she’s ever been stretched before, and it’s mind-numbing. Not painful – there’s a little, subtle burn that she feels, but nothing that truly hurts. Her fingers dig into her own thighs, and finally, a small but guttural sound leaves her throat. At the risk of sounding cliché, it feels like a part of her was just clicked right into place. Maybe it was the bond, or maybe she was just worked up – she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. She just knows that it feels good and right, more right than she’s ever felt being with anyone before. 

Harry starts to move his hips, subtle rolls at first that grow bigger and bigger the more time that passes. Y/N swallows thickly around the spit in her mouth to stop from drooling, but it gets more and more difficult the more he moves. The little patches of scales show again, his horns sit pretty on top of his head. Watching the muscles in his body ripple and shift as he rocks into her is doing something to her head. He’s so big everywhere, it makes her feel so small, and safe, and horny – it’s very confusing. She needs him to fill up all her spaces, keep her full 24/7. 

“You’re so tight,” he shivers, pulling one leg away from her grasp and straightening out, holding it against his body. Her ankle rests right at his face, and he mouths at the bone, letting his tongue drag against it, “So warm and tight. You fit me perfectly, baby. I should have fucked you sooner. Should’ve made you mine right in the forest, the first time we officially met in this form. You would’ve liked that, wouldn’t you?” She moans, nodding, reaching with her now free hand to grab at him, her fingers digging into his side. Harry grinds inside of her, pulls back, and fucks in hard, creates a pace that makes it hard for her to think, “A big, mean dragon bullying his cock inside of your cunt. Would’ve made you whine and cry on it. Fucked you so good that you’d have asked me to take you back to my cave right then and there, huh, baby?” 

Y/N feels a little delirious, with every buck of his hips, his balls are big and swollen, slapping against her bum. His knot is getting bigger; she can feel it every time it pushes up against her hole. Her head spins with the need for it, her toes curl when he drags his teeth against her calf, “Yes, yes, yes,” she agrees, a yes for each thrust, and Harry chuckles, warm and low; it tickles her insides. 

“Yeah, I should’ve,” he keeps going, growling when she starts to clamp down on him – another orgasm is building rapidly, “With how this pussy is sucking me in, you would’ve gone with me so easily. Sweet baby, it feels so good, doesn’t it? To finally have your cunt stretched how it was meant to be? You’re my mate,” Y/N moans, “Made for me. Made to take this big cock – made to me filled up and plugged with my fat knot. I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he grabs her breast, kneading it with his left hand, getting her nipple between two of his knuckles so he could pinch it in between, “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll keep you so full that you’ll never have to ask for it again.” 

When Y/N’s orgasm washes over her, she cries out. Her back arches, and Harry drops her leg so that he can press their fronts together. He connects their lips, swallowing all the sounds that leave her, muffled against his mouth as he groans in kind. That’s when she can feel it, truly, the way he starts to grind into her a little harder, more sure. The swell of his knot catches at her stretched hole, but he really has to focus, readjusting her hips, stretching her thigh, all while chasing his own high. Y/N can feel herself leaking around him, almost like her body is trying to aid him in getting it inside (she really was made for him). 

It pops through, and while she expects Harry to growl, instead, he gives a whimpered sound. It matches her own as she feels it swell the rest of the way inside of her, locking into place. Harry bites down into the juncture of her neck and shoulder; she’s pretty sure he pierces the skin at least a little bit when she feels the warm drip of her own blood sliding past his mouth. The throbbing inside of her is intense, strong, like his cock would be kicking and bucking with each shot of cum he’s unloading. He soothes the bite with his tongue, sucking and kissing at the skin while he keeps rocking his hips, grinding into her until she’s all twitchy and her hips mix between bucking toward and away from him. 

As they catch their breath, Harry purrs. It’s become one of her favorite things, she thinks – it makes her feel extra cozy, warm, and soft all over. Their chests heave together (or, more like, Y/N’s chest heaves and Harry’s stretched on top of her so his goes up and down with hers), and she realizes only when Harry’s tongue drags up the corner of her mouth that she’d been drooling. He presses his lips to hers but only briefly, like he knows she’ll need the chance to get air in her lungs (he’s gotten much better at that – giving her little breaks), before he looks at her shoulder, where he bit. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, nuzzling just below the bite mark, “I bit too hard.” 

“Don’t apologize,” she wraps her arms around him, her fingers finding his hair again as they always do. It’s soft, untangled, the curls are pretty – one day she’ll ask him if she can braid it, “I like when you bite. Like when you’re a little rough.” 

He giggles, against her, “My little masochistic human,” he kisses over the bite mark, “We’ll be locked together for quite a while. Let me know if you are uncomfortable, and I’ll try my best to ease it.” 

Y/N is warm under him. She’s cozy, and she’s full of him. Her ankle doesn’t hurt, her mind is at complete and utter ease – she’s very happy. She doesn’t know how she could be uncomfortable at all. 

Instead of answering, she nuzzles closer into him, “I love you,” she tells him, feeling soft and content, but she actually didn’t mean to just let it out like that. What if that was too soon? Her heart dropped to her stomach when she tried to back track, “Or, wait, is that too much to say? Is – do dragons – is this normal or –” 

“I love you too,” he answers softly, and she feels him throb inside of her again, “More than I could ever describe to you.” 

                                                               .                              .                             .

“Thank god, you’re back!” Niall exclaimed when Y/N walked through the door of the bakery, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I missed you, and your stupid rambles, and your food. It’s too hard to keep this place running by myself, and everyone is like ten times nicer to you than they are to me, have you noticed?” Y/N laughed, shrugging her coat off her shoulders, “Are you okay? How’s your cousin? Did the horse leave any underlying damage?” 

She’d forgotten that Christopher was told to make a story as to why she wasn’t around while she was with Harry. Y/N had been gone for about a week and a half, so she supposes it would make sense for him to give a reason she’d need to be gone that long. And to have left in the middle of the night too. With her neighbors, she would probably keep up the ruse, but with Niall, she found no need. 

“Oh, that was a lie,” she told him, then pointed outside, “I went out in the snow to go confront Harry, but then I slipped and hurt my ankle. His dragon friend took me to his cave, then I rode on the back of Harry to his cave when he came to get me, and I’ve spent my time away being rehabilitated with dragon herbs and medicines.” She explained, all while she switched into her apron, “Christopher just told that lie so nobody would be wondering where I was.” 

Niall blinks at her a couple of times, brows raised, “Oh! Wow, okay, um – wow – well, did you and the dragon make amends? You seemed sort of out of sorts when he left before. I figured you two were fighting.” 

The doorbell dings brightly, but instead of an early customer, it is Harry who walks in. He is in bright silks today, dressed head to toe in the way you’d assume a prince would be. “We are no longer fighting,” Harry answers for her, “We are mates now.” 

“Wow, mates? Like – like how wolves are or –” 

“Mates how dragons are,” Harry replied, and he came close to Niall, wrapping one arm around him and pulling him into what Y/N assumes was supposed to be a hug but looks more like a chokehold, “You are important to her, so now you are important to me. If anything brings you distress or discomfort, tell me, and I’ll see to it accordingly.” 

Niall wheezes, “Oh, wow, thanks, I-I really appreciate it.” 

“Perfect. Now, make me a pie filled with meat again, it was quite good.” 

Y/N giggled at Niall’s wild gaze when he stepped behind the counter to get to work. Harry slides up beside Y/N, nuzzling into the side of her face, “I will eat this pie, then I will go bother Christopher. Is there anything you want me to do today? I will force Christopher to show me if I’m unsure how to achieve it.” 

She shook her head, “No, I don’t have anything, but – do you think you could walk me home after work?” 

Harry smiled softly, “I’ll carry you home after.” 

                                                           .                         .                        .

In the summer, Y/N had never seen a dragon before – she had never even known them to truly exist – but now, in the winter, she has one sleepy, content, snuggled against her side in her bed, purring because she said that she likes it. When she rolls over to face him, he’s already got one eye peeking at her questioningly, “Is sleep not coming easily to you?” He inquired, mildly threatening, like he’d force the sand man himself to come bring Y/N sweet dreams. She never thought a love this sweet would find her. 

“No, I’m just – happy, is all,” she answers, “Just enjoying this cuddle with you.” 

Harry’s purrs increase, and the hand looped around her waist pulls her even closer. He rubs the tips of their shoes together sweetly before responding.