19+ Only | DNI if younger

The first course went fine. He didn't look at you. Spoke to the Cavallone representative with one-worded responses as he focused more on the red wine in his hand.

By the second course his eyes found yours from across the table as his nostrils flared ever so slightly while his gazed like a predator locking onto prey.

You held his gaze. Took a bite of your risotto, and looked away first on purpose because you knew it would infuriate him.

It did.

You felt the weight of his stare on the side of your face for the rest of the course. Heavy and unblinking. The Cavallone representative tried to engage him in conversation about territory lines and Xanxus answered without moving his eyes from you.

By dessert, his chair had scraped back.

"We're done here," he announced to the table.

"But the negotiation isn't--" the Cavallone man started.

"Done." People scattered as he started reaching for his holster, but you stayed seated, finishing your wine, pulse slamming in your ears.

The dining room emptied until it was just you and the sound of his footsteps coming around the long table.

He braced both hands on the arms of your chair and leaned down until your faces were inches apart.

"You think I don't know what you did?"

"I organized a nearly successful dinner. You're welcome."

"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it." One hand left the chair arm and found your thigh under the table, gripping it through your dress hard enough to make your breath catch.

"You've been sitting across from me for two hours wearing something that's made me think of everyway to get all those pieces of trash out of this room."

"Sounds like a personal problem honestly." You shrugged.

"It's about to be your problem." He pulled your chair out from the table with you still in it, the legs shrieking against floors before kneeling between your legs, pushing your dress up your thighs and placing his mouth against your skin.

Your hand found his hair and gripped as his jaw dragged up your thigh.

"Every curve," he muttered into your skin. His fingers dug into your hips. "You sat there looking like this, smelling like this--"

"Like what?" You ran your fingers through his dark hair and felt his breath stutter.

"Like you belong to me and you wanted every person to know it."

"Did it work?"

He bit your inner thigh and you arched off the chair, but his hands caught your waist and pinned you to your seat as his mouth continue trailing upwards.

"Get upstairs. Now." he ordered.

"Make me." you said instinctually before instantly realizing that was the wrong thing to say to a man like him... or perhaps the right things depending on who you are.

He stood and hauled you up with him and your feet barely touched the floor before he had you against the dining room wall, one hand flat beside your head, the other gripping the back of your thigh and hitching it up against his hip.

His body pressed yours into the plaster before his mouth crushed yours. Your hands grabbed the front of his suit jacket, pulling him closer. His tongue found yours and you groaned into his mouth.

He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against yours with open eyes bore into yours from an inch away.

"Upstairs," he order again.

"Then carry me, if you can." you taunted, testing your luck.

Heat ignited behind his eyes as he curved both hands under your thighs, and lifted your full weight with surprising ease as your legs and arms wrapped around him as he carried you up the villa stairs with his mouth on your throat the entire way.

The bedroom door was kicked open, kicked shut, and locked before he dropped you on the bed and looked down at you with unmistakable want.

"I waited two hours," he said. "Don't expect this to be quick."

TYL!Superbia Squalo

You were trapped in a moving vehicle with Squalo on a four-hour drive back to Varia headquarters, and had applied the pheromone spray at the last rest stop despite knowing that the AC was broken.

So when windows came down and hot summer air flooded the car, the breeze carried everything you were wearing straight towards the driver's seat.

For forty minutes he said nothing while he white-knuckled the steering wheel, silver hair whipping in the wind.

You watched the countryside blur past and pretended to be fascinated by olive groves while your heart tried to hammer through your ribs, before you lurched forward after he shifted the gears too hard.

"You changed something," he said bluntly.

"Hmm?"

"At the rest stop. You put something on. Don't play dumb."

"I freshened up, is that a crime?"

"FRESHENED--" The car drifted and he corrected hard. His hand left the wheel and raked through his hair making the car drifted again.

"Hey--Eyes on the road!" you yelled, gripping the grab handle above.

"Don't tell me where to look!" But his eyes were already on you. Dropping to your bare legs in the passenger seat, the sundress bunched at your thighs, the seatbelt cutting between your breasts.

The car drifted a third time and a horn blared from behind and he snapped back, cursing at them.

"I wouldn't have bothered with this pheromone spray if I knew you'd end up killing us both!" you screeched, both hands gripping the handle now.

"VOIII--We wouldn't die in traffic!"

His grip on the steering wheel flexed, released and flexed again as he kept intentional attention to the road.

The car was filled with silence for another 5 kilometers as the olive groves gave way to grassy hills as the sun began its decent down.

Throughout all of this the wind kept carrying your scent towards him in waves before he pulled off the highway without any signal or warning, driving down a narrow road flanked by stone walls until the car was hidden from the road.

He threw it into park with the engine still running.

"Get out."

You did, and so did he.

He came around the hood in four strides and his hands grabbed your waist and your back hit the passenger door as his face dropped into the curve of your neck and breathed you in.

"You knew," he said against your throat. "You knew the wind was blowing that shit directly into my face while you pretended nothing was happening."

"Was something happening?"

His mouth pressed against your pulse and your knees buckled with a gasp, though his thigh shoved itself between yours in time to keep you upright against the car.

Your hands found his hair and you twisted your fingers into it and pulled his head back to see his eyes were both furious and desperate as they looked at you.

"Then why did you wait forty minutes?"

"Because I was doing 145 on the A3 and I have some self-preservation even though you were trying to destroy it!" His hands slid down to your hips as his body pressed between your legs, catching your gasp with his mouth.

As expected, his kiss was not gentle, and his hands were everywhere. Grabbing your thighs, pulling your hips, sliding up your sides beneath your sundress.

"This dress. This stupid fucking dress. Do you know what it's been doing to me since this morning?"

"It's just a sundress."

"On you it's a weapon." His mouth found your collarbone and bit down, making your back arch into him as his hips jerked forward as a mix between a groan and a curse escaped him.

"Do you know how long I've wanted this?" he continued. "Since the day you walked into the Varia mansion and told Levi to go to hell and didn't flinch when even I yelled at you." His forehead against yours. Silver hair curtaining both your faces.

"My legs were shaking the entire time though." you confessed.

"They're shaking now too." His hand slid down your thigh to prove it. He kissed you again but slower this time, hand cupping the back of your neck.

"We still have three hours of driving ahead if us," you murmured against his lips.

"Forget the drive." He pulled away and opened the back door.

"Get in before I lose what's left of my mind."

You climbed in and he followed. The door slammed and the car rocked on its suspension while highway traffic streamed past none the wiser.

TYL!Belphegor

You were thirty thousand feet in the air and had six hours left to go.

The Varia jet was small for a private aircraft, two rows of leather seats facing each other with a narrow aisle and a cockpit door that stayed locked. Outside the windows there was nothing but black sky and the occasional blink of a wing light.

Belphegor sat across from you with his boots on the seat beside your thigh and his tiara reflecting the overhead reading lamp. He'd been bored since takeoff and someone (you) was going to suffer for it.

You had the mission dossier open in your lap, reading over the intel on the target, floor plans and extraction routes.

The pheromone spray had been applied in the bathroom in a moment of poor judgment.

Because you were going to spend six hours in a sealed metal tube with a man would and has killed people for fun, and you had voluntarily made yourself the most interesting thing in the cabin.

"Ushishi, you keep reading that over and over, I think you got the details down." he said.

"I'm just being thorough."

"You're stalling. The prince can tell." His boots shifted, boot toe nudging your thigh. "What are you nervous about?"

"I'm not nervous."

"Your breathing hitched when the cabin doors shut." He tilted his head, blond hair shifting across his hidden eyes. "Being trapped in a small space with me would make most people would be nervous."

"I'm not most people though." you stated plainly, flipping through the dossier.

"Ushishishi. No. You're not." He pulled his boots off the seat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin in his hands. The distance between your faces halved.

"You're also not wearing whatever you're wearing by accident."

Your grip on the dossier tightened. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Recycled air." He tapped the vent above him. "Everything circulates. The prince has been breathing you in since the wheels left the ground and it keeps getting stronger because your pulse is elevating your skin temperature and the compound is volatilizing faster."

"You know a lot about pheromone chemistry for a prince."

"The prince is a genius. I know a lot about everything." He stood. The cabin was narrow enough that standing put him directly over you. He braced one hand on the headrest behind you and leaned down and inhaled near your jaw and his grin dissolved into something open and hungry.

"Six hours," he repeated, quieter now. "Of sitting across from you in a locked cabin while that smell gets into everything. My clothes. My hair--"

"Sit down and put your seatbelt on Bel."

"No."

You grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled. He came down into the seat beside you willingly, knees hitting the leather, and the dossier crumpled between you as he pulled it free and tossed it down the aisle without looking.

"We need tha--"

"The prince has it memorized. Target is on the thirty-second floor, extraction is the southeast stairwell, and the security rotation changes at 2 AM." His hand found your jaw and tilted your face toward him. "Now stop talking about the mission."

"What should I talk about instead?"

"Nothing." He swung one leg over yours and settled into your lap facing you, knees bracketing your hips, light enough to hover but close enough that every shift of the plane's movement pressed him against you.

His hands slid into your hair and gripped, making your head tip back as his mouth found the underside of your jaw.

"Five hours and thirteen minutes left," he murmured against your throat. His hips rocked forward and your hands flew to his waist and grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. "The prince intends to use every single one."

"We have a mission briefing to finish."

"We already finished it, remember?" His teeth sunk into your next below your ear and you whimpered, biting your lip.

"Ushishishi." His mouth hovering over yours. "The prince knew you'd sound like that."

"You did not."

"Genius, remember?" He kissed you and grinned into it as your hands slid under his shirt and up the bare skin of his back. He shuddered against you and bit your lower lip.

The plane hit a pocket of turbulence that pressed him harder into you.

"Five hours," you breathed against his mouth.

"Five hours." He repeted, his eyes were just visible through the curtain of blond hair. Completely fixated on you. "You sealed yourself in a metal box with a prince who wants to devour you, I hope you've realized this."

"Better yet, I planned for this."

"Ushishishi, perhaps I've found my princess after all~" He grinned as his mouth dropped back to your neck.

TYL!Dino Cavallone

The restaurant was one of those 'if you know you know' the kind of place that didn't have a sign outside. You had to know the door, and Dino knew every door in Naples worth knowing, and this one led to a candlelit room with eight tables and a chef who came out personally to explain each course.

He made the reservation a week ago. Told you to wear something you felt beautiful in and sent a car for you just as you finished getting ready.

You applied the pheromone spray in the back seat. Throat. Chest. Inner wrists. The driver kept his eyes on the road and you kept your eyes on your trembling hands and by the time the car stopped you smelled like a woman with intentions.

Dino stood when you walked in, showing you old-fashioned courtesy that would have felt performative from anyone else. He was wearing a dark suit with no tie, and the top button undone.

"You look stunning." He said as he pulled your chair out, fingers grazing your shoulder.

"You clean up well yourself."

He hummed and sat across from you, pouring you a glass of wine from a bottle already breathing on the table, and smiled at you over the rim of his glass.

The appetizer arrived, something with burrata and figs and a drizzle of honey that he insisted you try first. You ate and talked. He told a story about Romario getting lost in Milan that made you laugh hard enough to cover your mouth.

Midway through the story, his words slowed.

He blinked. Picked up his wine, smelled it for a moment before shaking his head and set it down without drinking. His eyes moved from your face to your neck to your--he quickly looked back up, catching himself.

"S-Sorry... Where was I?"

"Romario and the taxi driver."

"Right. He..." Dino paused and inhaled. His hand found the edge of the table and gripped. "He took the wrong--I'm sorry, can I be honest with you right now?"

"Always dear."

"I have completely lost track of that story because something about you tonight is making it difficult to sit on this side of the table."

Your wine glass stopped halfway to your lips. "Something about me?"

"You smell..." He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they were heated and stripped of their earlier charm. "Irresistible." he said plainly, although it was obvious he had something else in mind.

"It's a pheromone spray. I put it on in the car" you confessed, fingers fidgeting with the edge of a napkin. "Is it too strong? I can go wash it--" he cut you off.

"In the car." He laughed once as his hand left the table to raked through his hair. "You sat in my car and put on something designed to--And then walked in here and let me tell a story about Romario while I--"

"While you what?"

"While I've been staring at your neck for the last six minutes fighting the urge to put my lips on it."

A waiter approached but Dino held up a hand without looking away from you. "Apologies, we need a moment." he requested, as the waiter vanished.

Dino moved, walked around the table and crouched beside your chair so his face was level with yours. His hand rested on your knee beneath the tablecloth and brought his mouth was close to yours..

"I want to stay... I want to order the main course and has a civilized evening with his love, but..." His thumb moved on your knee, tracing circles that widened up your thigh. "Tell me you want to stay and we'll stay."

"What if I don't?"

His hand stilled on your thigh and he bit the inside of his cheek as he looked at you for moment before he stood and pulled your chair back, taking your hand. The two of you walked to the front where the head host stood with professional composure.

"The main course is on its way shortly, signore--"

"Serve it to your staff tonight. On me." Dino placed a fold of bills on the podium without counting. "The wine too, all of it. Our compliments to the chef."

He looked at the money. Looked at Dino. Looked at you and gave a knowing smile.

"Of course, signore. Buona serata [good evening]."

The car was already there waiting. He opened your door and you slid in, and he followed instead of walking to the other side. His hands cupped your face immediately after the door closed and kissed you deeply, giving into the urge he had been fighting back earlier.

Your hands grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him closer while his palms slid down your neck to your chest, groaning against your mouth as his other hand found your thigh and squeezed.

"Home," he said against your lips. Then louder, to the driver. "Home. Now."

"How far?" you breathed.

"Twenty minutes."

"That's a long time."

His mouth found your throat, teeth grazing your skin as his hand traveling from your thigh to the curve of your hip, pulling you half into his lap in the back seat. "Then I'll keep busy."

Back at the restaurant, the kitchen staff split a four-course meal among themselves with a bottle of wine that cost more than their monthly rent while the chef raised a glass to the empty table.

TYL!Byakuran

Byakuran sat cross-legged on the white couch in his private quarters at the Millefiore base, marshmallow bag in his lap, with the television playing an old re-run he wasn't really paying attention to.

You stood in the doorway and your courage almost failed. The pheromone spray felt like a cheap parlor trick in front of a man who seemed to know more than he cared to admit.

"You're hovering~" He didn't look away from the screen. "Come in or don't, but the doorway thing is very cute."

"I came to bring the recon summary."

"Mmm. Put it anywhere." He popped a marshmallow into his mouth and chewed for a moment before stopping. His eyes slid to you and sharpened with an intense flicker of focus.

"Actually, I want you to come sit with me."

You sighed and sat on the far end of the couch and he smiled at the distance finding it cute. "You smell different tonight." he stated, keeping his attention on you.

"A-Ah, must be my new lotion."

"Liar~♥︎" He said sweetly, setting the marshmallow bag aside and unfolded toward you on his hands and knees.

"Byakuran what are you--"

"Shh. I'm investigating." He reached you. One hand braced on the cushion behind your head, the other landing on your bare knee where your skirt had ridden up. He leaned in until his lips hovered below your ear, closed his eyes and breathed in slow.

"Pheromone compound," he murmured. "Synthetic musk. Italian, probably. Applied quite generously and recently at that." His eyes opened. "Applied for me, I take it?"

"What makes you think it's for you?"

"Because I've seen every version of how tonight plays out, and in all of them you end up exactly where you are right now." His hand slid up from your knee, trailing along the full curve of your thigh, fingers pressing into the flesh with slow, curious pressure. "I wanted to save us about twenty minutes of pretending this time around."

He pushed you back against the arm of the couch and settled over you. His weight was deceptive, all lean muscle pressing you down into the cushions, and his thigh slid between yours and your breath caught and his smile returned but hungier.

"Mmm. you like this. You like the way I'm looking at you right now."

"Looking at me how?"

"Like you're the most interesting thing in any reality I've ever touched." His mouth found your neck and his tongue traced the line of your pulse while hand mapped the curve of your hip and stomach. "And you are, every time, without exception ♥︎"

Your back arched when his teeth grazed your ear while his hands slid beneath your shirt. His palms were flat on your bare skin as his fingers spread across the plush of your waist with a slow, possessive grip that tightened when you pulled his hair harder.

"You're trembling," he whispered against your neck. "The spray isn't doing that to you though, just me."

"Y-Your ego is staggering." you stumbled out, making him laugh.

"Tell me I'm wrong." His mouth moved up to yours and kissed you deeply as his hand found the back of your neck and held you there while his other hand continued its slow exploration beneath your clothes, tracing every line, dip and curve.

He broke the kiss just far enough to speak against your lips. "I knew you were coming tonight. Before you decided, before you picked up that little bottle... I knew."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Lots of things about me don't make sense." His mouth trailed down your throat, following the scent trail with focused attention. "You'll get used to it. Or you won't. Either way I find it cute."

"Do you just find everything cute or something?"

The playfulness in his expression flickered to something genuine as his thumb traced your jaw.

"Not everything," he said quietly. "Not even close. Just you. For longer than you'd believe if I told you."

You pulled him back down by the open collar of his shirt and kissed him and felt him smile against your mouth and then felt the smile dissolve when your hands found bare skin beneath the fabric and your nails dragged down his back.

His composure cracked and a soft sound left him that was surprisingly unguarded as he pressed his face into your throat where the spray was strongest.

"The recon summary--" you breathed.

"Was never why you came here." His grin came back. Sharp and fond and devastating. "And we both know that."

TYL!Gamma

The pool table was his. Well, not officially. It belonged to the Giglio Nero estate and anyone could use the game room on the second floor. But everyone in the family knew that after 10 PM the room belonged to Gamma, who spent his late evenings running strategy drills against himself.

You asked him to teach you how to play last week and he looked at you for a long moment with those steady eyes before telling you to come by Thursday at ten.

It was Thursday at ten and you stood in the hallway outside the game room with the pheromone spray drying on your skin and the distinct awareness that you were about to enter a small room with a man you've been pinning after for months now.

The door was open and he stood at the far end of the table chalking a cue. He glanced up when the door creaked wider.

"You're on time."

"You said ten."

"Most people keep me waiting though." He held out a second cue. You took it. Your fingers brushed his and he held the contact a fraction too long before releasing. "You've never played?"

"Nope, not once."

"Then we'll start with stance." He moved behind you and the room somehow felt even smaller now. "Feet shoulder width. Lean forward. Plant your bridge hand flat."

You leaned over the table and the cue wobbled in your grip as his hand landed on your hip to adjust your angle and stayed.

"Flatten your back and drop your elbow." His voice came from directly above your right shoulder. Close enough to feel on your skin. His chest wasn't touching your back but the heat of it was there.

His hand on your hip tightened. Released. Tightened again.

"Your stance is still off," he said, but it sounded like he was talking about something else.

"Show me then."

He stepped in, flush against your back as his arm came alongside yours and his hand covered your bridge hand on the felt and his chin hovered beside your temple. You felt him inhale once through his nose and then stop breathing entirely.

Three seconds of absolute stillness.

"Hit the cue ball," he said. His voice had dropped into a register that made your fingers want to curl against the felt.

You struck. Missed everything. The cue ball rolled pathetically into the side cushion.

"Again." He hadn't moved. His hand left yours and settled on your stomach, adjusting your posture, palm flat against the curve of it. His fingers spread. His thumb traced a slow arc beneath your ribs.

"Gamma, that's not helping my aim."

"Your aim isn't what I'm thinking about right now." His mouth was beside your ear. "What are you wearing?"

"I... might have accidentally put on a pheromone spray instead of my normal one." you winced, waiting for a lecture that never came.

"And you wore it here. Tonight. To a private lesson..."

"...Yup, sounds about right." you could feel the heat of embarrassment warm up your face.

Before you could create distance, his hand pressed harder against your stomach, drawing you back against his chest. You felt his mouth find the junction of your neck and shoulder as his lips parted.

"I was going to teach you to play," he said against your skin. His other hand came down on the table's edge beside yours, caging you between his arms. "I had a full lesson planed. Stance, grip, angles, follow-through."

"We can still do that."

"No." His forehead dropped to your shoulder. You felt his breathing fracture against your collarbone. "I have been trying to be professional around you for weeks. And you just undid all of it in ten minutes."

"Tell me you did it on purpose," he said into your shoulder. "Tell me you walked in here tonight wearing that for me and not because you actually wanted to learn pool."

"I did it on purpose."

"Good." He lifted his head. Took the cue from your hands and set it on the rack behind him without looking. When he turned back his hand caught your jaw and tilted your face up toward his . "Then we're done with the lesson." he said before kissing you.

Your hands fisted in his shirt while his hand found the back of your thigh and hitched it up against his hip as he pressed forward making the pool balls behind you scatter with a crack.

He pulled back, breathing hard and place his forehead against yours.

"I'm going to clear this table," he said.

"Of what? The balls?"

He looked at you and the corner of his mouth twitched. He swept his arm across the felt behind you and everything rolled and clattered and dropped into pockets and the green surface was empty.

Then his hands found your waist and lifted you onto it.

"That's better," he said, and stepped between your thighs and kissed you again.

Reborn (Adult Form)

He knew before you sat down, glancing up from his espresso as the corner of his mouth moved one millimeter. Which for Reborn, was the equivalent of any other man falling out of his chair.

"You're late," he took a sip from his cup.

"Two minutes."

"Late's late." His eyes tracked a couple walking past on the cobblestone street, purposely not looking at you. "Order something."

His gaze slid over to your wrists when you waved towards the waiter and ordered a cappuccino. Ah, so that's where you applied... He choose not to mention it yet, which was worse than confrontation as it meant he was in this for the long game.

Your cappuccino arrived and you drank in silence as the afternoon sun fell across the small table between you, making his fedora cast a shadow over his eyes.

He finally broke the silence, "How's your drink?"

"Fine." you mumbled from behind your mug as you people-watched.

"You seem tense."

"Not in the slightest, what gave you that idea?"

"Your pulse is visible in your throat." He still wasn't looking at you. He raised a finger to signal the waiter for another espresso. "It's been elevated since you sat down. Which means either you're afraid of me, which we both know you aren't, or you're waiting for me to react to something you did before you arrived."

Silence.

"I'm not going to react," he said. "Not here at least."

Your stomach tightened. "And... why not?"

"Because we're in public. Because I have a reputation. And because whatever you're wearing is designed to weaken impulse control and I refuse to give you the satisfaction." His second espresso arrived. He wrapped his fingers around the cup without drinking. "I will, however, tell you what's going to happen next."

"Go on." You looked at him from the corner of your eye.

"We're going to finish our coffee, I'm going to pay and we'll take a walk three blocks north to the hotel I'm staying at..." He paused, took a sip and set the cup down. "Then I'll let my impulses slip."

Your cappuccino nearly felt from your grasp.

"You missed a spot, by the way." He finally looked at you. "Behind your left knee. I can tell because you crossed your legs to the right when you sat down... you were thinking about every step before you got here, weren't you?"

"You're insufferable."

"And observant." He stood and dropped a bill on the table before he offered you his hand. "Shall we?"

You walked three blocks in the Florentine sun with his hand on the small of your back while he pointed out architecture, mentioned a restaurant he liked and asked about your week and behaved with such control that by the time the hotel room door closed behind you, you were barely ready for the shift in tone.

He removed his fedora and turned to face you.

"Now," he said, voice stripped of any pleasantries. "Come here and let me work."

His hands caught you by the hips and spun you so your back pressed against his chest, as his mouth landed on the spot behind your ear. The sound you made made him exhale audibly against your skin like he was holding that breath the entire walk here.

"Let's see if I can find all the places you've applied that spray... Hm, here." His lips traced down to your neck while his hands slid forward across your stomach, pulling your body back into his, fingers pressing its give through the dress. "Here." His mouth moved lower towards your chest. "And here." His knee nudged into the back of your right knee and you buckled, although he caught you with ease and laughed quietly against your shoulder.

"Y-You knew about the spray whole time," you managed.

"I knew before you even sat down." He turned you to face him while he cupped your jaw and kissed you once before he pulled back. "The world's greatest hitman, remember? Nothing gets past me." His thumb stroked your cheekbone. "Especially not you."

He kissed you again and the restraint that had held strong finally broke.

Fon (Adult Form)

He invited you for tea three days ago with a handwritten note that was slipped beneath your door. Thursday evening, his residence, tea and meditation. You pressed the note flat against your chest and stood in your hallway with your heart hammering against your chest.

Thursday came and you sprayed the pheromone on your throat and wrists, dressed simply, and drove to his home before your nerves failed you.

He met you at the door with a soft smile. "Thank you for coming. Please," he moved to the side to permit you entry.

The tea room opened onto a garden that had a low table with two tea cups and a cast-iron pot already steaming. You knelt across from him and he poured your tea with steady hands before pouring himself a cup.

You both drank and enjoyed the tea as you both discussed one another's lives, forgoing unsavory details regarding work.

By the second cup, his pour began to waver with a tiny tremor in the stream. He corrected it instantly, but his eyes lifted to yours and lingered one beat longer than required.

"Shall we meditate?" he said uncharacteristically sudden, fully aware pouring a third cup would reveal his personal affliction.

"Are you--I mean, sure. Yes. Lets!" you agreed, setting your concern aside, momentarily forgetting the spray.

He moved the tea equipment to the side and gestured to the cushion beside him rather than across from him and you shifted around the table and knelt at his side.

The reduced distance meant every breath you took now would waft the spray directly toward him.

"Close your eyes," he said. "And breathe from your center. Let everything quiet."

You closed your eyes, straightened your spine, and focused on your breath the way he taught you in previous sessions. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

The garden sounds filtered in: Cicadas, a distant fountain, the rustle of leaves.

His breathing beside you was measured and perfectly timed.

You did your best to match your rhythm to his and felt your shoulders drop and jaw unclench as the evening settled around you both like water.

Minutes passed. Five, maybe ten before his lips were pressed to the curve of your neck without warning. He was right where you applied spray most to, and the shock of it jolted through your entire body.

Your eyes flew open. "Fon--"

"Keep your eyes closed." His voice against your skin was barely above a whisper. "Please."

You closed them but your hands trembled in your lap while his mouth moved slowly up the side of your neck. His lips parted and you felt the heat of his breath and the faintest graze of his tongue tracing your pulse and your head tipped sideways to give him more room.

"I have been sitting here..." he murmured between your jaw and your ear, "attempting to meditate while your scent dismantled every technique I knew."

"You could have said something." you sighed out, trying to keep your voice contained.

"That's what I'm doing right now." His hand found your thigh and settled there. "With your permission, I would like to contin--."

"Yes."

His mouth opened against your throat while his hand slid from your thigh to your waist and pulled you toward him. His other hand caught the back of your neck and guided your forehead to rest against his.

"I have meditated in silence for many years," he said, his eyes open now. "And I have never once been distracted. You should understand what it means that tonight I could not manage even ten minutes."

"What does it mean?" you whispered.

He answered by kissing you with the kind of focus he brought to combat and pulled your body against his, making you gasp into the kiss while he swallowed the sound.

Your hands pressed flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat hammering in complete contradiction to every serene thing about him. He groaned quietly against your mouth as his arm locked around you and dragged you fully into his lap. Your weight settled onto him and his hips rolled up against yours.

"I thought this was tea and meditation," you breathed with a smile.

"The tea's gone cold," His mouth pressed against yours again while his hands mapped the full shape of your hips, stomach, and thighs. "And I am no longer meditating."

"What are you doing instead then?"

His teeth grazed the swell of your chest above your neckline and your back arched, fingers twisting into his braid pulled it loose making his dark hair spill across his shoulders.

"Worshipping," he said against your skin, and proved it until the lanterns burned out.

Colonnello (Adult Form)

The movie was his idea, he showed up at your apartment with a pack of beer and an action film he swore was a classic before planting himself on your couch like he owned the place. He was out of uniform for once, wearing only sweat pants and a tank top because apparently he didn't 'believe' in sleeves outside of active duty.

Twenty minutes into the movie you excused yourself to the bathroom.

You stared at the pheromone bottle on the shelf. You bought it a week ago as a joke and hadn't touched it since. But Colonnello was on your couch with his arm stretched across the back of it... and the space next to him was pretty much your size...

And frankly, the beer had made you just brave enough to try it out. One spritz. Two. Four. That shouldn't be too much... right?

You walked back out and sat beside him, closer than before, tilting yourself into him. He adjusted without comment, arm moving from the couch back onto your shoulders with ease.

The movie continued, and he laughed at an explosion before taking another drink.

By the time the movie hit its climax, his attention was too divided to react to anything happening on the scene.

He drank his beer more slowly, arm on your shoulder shifting. His fingers that rested against your upper arm, began tracing an absent circle on your skin. His head turned just slightly toward you, away, then back again.

"You change your shampoo or something, kora?"

"No?"

"Hm..."

The movie kept playing and his hand moved from your arm to the side of your neck, fingers ghosting up and down it. You could feel his breathing change against your side, deeper, like he was rationing air.

"Something's different," he said again. Quieter.

"Is it bothering you?"

"Bothering me." He repeated it flatly. His hand left your neck, found your chin and turned your face toward his. The television threw blue light across his features. "No. It's not bothering me. Bothering is the wrong word, kora."

"What's the right word?"

He didn't answer with words. He answered by sliding his hand from your chin to the back of your head and pulling your mouth to his.

The kiss was hard and tasted like cheap beer. Your hand landed on his chest and felt the slam of his heartbeat and realized he'd been sitting there quietly losing his mind quietly for the past hour while pretending to watch explosions on screen.

He broke the kiss long enough to haul you into his lap. Your full weight settled onto him and he pulled you down with both hands spread across your back and groaned into your mouth like the pressure of your body was exactly what he'd been craving.

"You did this on purpose," he muttered between kisses. His mouth moved to your jaw. "Sat next to me smelling all sweet like this, waiting for me to break."

"How long did it take?"

"Too long, kora." His hands found the hem of your shirt. Slid beneath it. Palms flat against your bare skin of your stomach. He pulled back took in the sight of you in his lap with narrowed eyes. "I've been trying to keep my hands off you for weeks. Whatever you have on--It's killed the last of my self-control..."

"Good. Your self-control was getting on my nerves."

He laughed then flipped you onto your back on the couch and settled over you while the movie continued playing on behind him, forgotten. His mouth found your neck where he breathed you in between open-mouthed kisses that made your fingers dig into his shoulders.

"Weeks--" he said again against your throat. His hands slid up your sides beneath your shirt, feeling the curves he pretended he didn't stare at every time you walked through a room. "Every time you handed me reports. Every time you bent over that strategy table..." he suppressed a groan. "Weeks, kora."

"You could have said something."

"I'm a soldier. We maintain our position until the mission parameters change." His teeth grazed your neck while is hands tightened on your body, pulling you up against him. "And they have."

"--With a pheromone spray I panic-applied in my bathroom."

"While I sat out here like an idiot watching a movie I've seen six times." He lifted his head and you could see his grin. His was flushed, bright-eyed, wrecked but so happy with it you couldn't help but grin back. "I heard you counting, by the way. Didn't know why, but makes sense now. These walls are thin."

"You did not."

"Kora, I can hear a safety click from two hundred meters. You think I can't hear you muttering in there?" He kissed you again, slower this time while his hand cradled the back of your head and his body covered yours completely.

He pulled back and looked down at you with a serious expression

"I don't do relationships halfway," he said. "You need to know that. If this is happening, this is happening. I'm not a casual guy, kora."

"I know."

"Good." His thumb traced your lower lip. "Then stop looking at me like you think I'm going to change my mind."

The beer went flat on the coffee table. The credits rolled without audience. The screen went dark and the room went dark with it and somewhere in the quiet his voice found your ear.

"Best movie night ever, kora."

You agreed, even though either of you had seen a single frame past the 60 minute mark.

Skull (Adult Form)

He almost cancelled.

You knew because he texted you six times in the hour before showing up.

First that he was on his way. Then that traffic was bad. Then that maybe tonight wasn't great actually. Then that no, he was coming, sorry. Then a typo. Then a correction of the typo.

Skull de Mort, the Immortal Stuntman, Cloud Arcobaleno, was nervous about dinner at your apartment.

You took advantage of the extra time to prepare. You cooked pasta, opened some wine, changed into your dress and... stood in your bedroom holding a bottle pheromone spray like it was a grenade. Taking a deep breath in, you misted it down your chest before shoving the bottle back into your dresser.

The doorbell rang at 8:23PM. He was over 20 minutes late, which you were thankful for.

You opened the door and he stood there holding flowers. Grocery store flowers, still in the plastic with a price sticker, because while he didn't do things elegantly he did do them earnestly and that was always the thing about him that you loved most.

"These are for you! The nice ones were sold out. These are fine though, the lady said they last a week. I don't know if that's--"

"They're perfect Skull." You took the flowers from him and stepped aside, "Come on in."

His face flustered as he walked in adjusting sleeves he wasn't used to wearing.

He was wearing a button-down shirt, not his usual leather and purple and he looked so nervous your chest almost ached for him.

You put the flowers in water and poured two glasses of wine, handing him one. He took a sip and choked slightly and you watched the blush climb further up his neck while he tried to play it off.

"T-The pasta smells amazing!" he said, for once trying to get your attention off of him for a moment.

"Thank you."

"And you look--you're--I mean the dress is--" He gestured vaguely at your entire body with his wine glass and nearly spilled it. "Really, um."

"Really what?"

"Really making it hard to... remember how talking works."

You smiled and stepped closer, watching as his gaze dropped to the neckline of your dress... and you swear you saw his eyes nearly glaze over.

His wine glass landed on the counter with a clumsy thud, his mouth opened to apologize but then closed as his free hand reached toward you before stopping midair.

"Can I--is it okay if I--"

You took his hovering hand and placed it on your waist and he exhaled in relief.

Then his fingers curled into you and he stepped forward and dropped his face into the curve of your neck and he breathed you in as a sound between a whimper and a growl left his throat.

"What is that," he said into your neck, his voice dropping into a register you never heard from him.

"Just um... you know... pheromone spray."

"And you put it on... for tonight?"

"For you actually."

His teeth found your neck and he bit down, making your spine arch and the wine glass wobble on the counter as your hand fisted in the back of his button-down and pulled it untucked.

"I had a whole plan," he said, mouth moving down to the swell of your chest above the dress. "Dinner. Conversation. Be charming. Don't knock anything over. Don't screw it up." His hands slid down and gripped the thick of your thighs through the dress and lifted you onto the kitchen counter and stepped between your legs and looked up at you. His pupils were blown so wide there was almost no color left. "You destroyed my plan." he pouted.

"You were going to knock something over anyway."

He laughed then kissed you deeply, swiping his tongue against your lips. You let out a soft sigh and locked your legs around him while your hands slid up his chest to undo the first button his shirt, making him shudder against you.

"I'm not good at this," he breathed against your mouth. "I'm not smooth--Honestly I'm probably going to say something stupid and ruin the moment--"

"Then stop talking and keep kissing me."

He did and moved his lips down your jaw, across your throat and above your chest while his hands explored you with growing confidence, pulling you tighter against him every time you made a sound.

The pasta boiled over on the stove. He reached behind you and turned the burner off without lifting his mouth from your skin.

"Ngh, s-sorry, should we stop for dinner?" he murmured.

"Later."

"Thank god." He said all too quickly and grinned against your throat, pulling you closer.

a/n. Listen I love KHR, so when a friend ( @potator-tati ) asks for a KHR request, I take it and RUN--hence why this my longest piece yet. Hope you enjoyed~

"It's barely a scratch--"

"Sit. Down."

He dropped onto the cot and you pulled a stool between his knees and took his arm, turning it under the light. The cut wasn't deep but it was ragged, dirty at the edges and definitely not cleaned.

"Were you seriously going to wrap this and hope for the best?"

"I was going to disinfect it... Eventually. You just got here too fast." He winced when you pressed the antiseptic pad down, then tried to cover it with another grin. "Ow! Why are you being so rough with me?"

"Hold still and maybe I won't be." You leaned closer, blotting carefully around the wound's edge, and felt his free hand settle on your hip. His fingers curled into the curve there and squeezed.

"Mm, you smell nice," he murmured, trying to change the topic away from himself. "Like, medical-grade. New sanitizer?"

"Iodine."

"Sexy~"

You bit down on a laugh and lost, making his whole face light up at the laugh that escaped. You finished the last strip of adhesive and smoothed it flat with your thumb.

"There. Done. And next time you come to me first, Caelus."

He pulled you forward closing the space between you and tilted his chin towards at you. This close, you could see the scrape along his jaw you hadn't noticed before.

"Promise," he said, already lying. "But you gotta admit, you fixing me up? Best part of getting hurt."

"Do this again and I'll start charging you. Now look up idiot, I have bandage this one up too." you said grabbing his jaw and another antiseptic pad.

He just grinned wider and followed your every word.

Dan Heng - Imbibitor Lunae

It was Caelus who gave it away with a too-casual message at 2 AM.

'hey don't worry about anything, everything's fine, nobody's in the infirmary'

Which was exactly how you knew to go to the infirmary.

The lights were off and you hit the switch, finding him on the farthest cot, still half-transformed.

He wouldn't look at you.

"Caelus carried you here I take it," you said rhetorically.

"I asked him to."

"You asked him--instead of me?"

Silence. His jaw clenched as his arm trembled faintly, caught between forms, and you could see the laceration running from his shoulder to his elbow where scales had cracked apart, bleedingly sluggishly.

You pulled the stool over and sat. "Let me see."

"You were sleeping. I didn't want--"

"Dan Heng." You waited until he finally turned his head. His pupils were still slit, still luminous, and something ashamed sat behind them. "Let me see, please."

He extended his arm.

Up close the scales were hot to the touch, feverish, and he flinched when you cleaned between the fractured ridges.

You worked carefully and felt him tracking every movement of your hands.

"Does this form... bother you?" he asked quietly and too controlled for your liking.

You looked up. "Does it bother you that you married a doctor who wants to treat her husband's wounds?"

His breath caught and his hand uncurled from the mattress and hovered near your face, until you turned your cheek into his palm yourself. His fingered rested feather-light against your skin.

"I didn't want to be a burden to you," he said.

You pressed a kiss to his wrist. "You are the furthest thing from a burden. And I need you to stop deciding what I should and shouldn't help you will, especially when it's within my capabilities."

He closed his eyes and nodded without arguing on the matter further.

Jing Yuan

It started with the hallway.

The empty hallway more specifically, the one outside your office that was never empty because Jing Yuan's Cloud Knights walked through your doors on a constant basis.

Suspicious, you stepped out into the hall and caught two guards rounding the far corner at a pace that bordered on jogging.

Then Yanqing appeared out of nowhere, blocking your path with a bright, desperate smile.

"Have you eaten? You should eat. There's a new stall on the lower deck, amazing soup dumplings, I could walk you there right now--"

"Yanqing."

"--or we could spar! You said you wanted to learn basic guard stances, right? Great time to start. Right now. This very moment."

"Where is my husband?"

His face crumbled like wet paper. "...The south infirmary. Please-don't-tell-him-I-told-you."

You found Jing Yuan stretched across a cot with one arm folded behind his head. He was reading as blood seeped through the bandage on his thigh, and he had the fucking audacity to look comfortable.

He looked up and gave you a slow smile. "Ah... That was faster than I predicted. I had you arriving in ten minutes."

"You sent Yanqing to stall me?" you accused, immediately giving the young pupil up without hesitation... he would forgive you at some point.

"I sent Yanqing to buy time while the medic finished. Although it appears he crumbled under your interrogation." He turned a page. "I'll factor that into future strategy."

You pulled his bandage back without warning causing Jing Yuan to barely wince, but wince nonetheless.

The wound was deep, a clean blade cut through the outer thigh, and whoever had dressed it did an acceptable but mediocre job. You grabbed proper suture supplies and settled your hands on his leg, steadying yourself against the thick muscle.

"You should have told me."

"And interrupt your afternoon patients? I'm a general. I know how to delegate my own injuries."

"Clearly you don't, because these are terrible." You began working, ignoring how his hand drifted to your waist, thumb tracing idle circles like he was the one comforting you.

"You're angry," he observed.

"I'm married to you. The two are synonymous."

His laugh but his hand flattened against you and squeezed in silent apology.

Jiaoqiu

He was leaning against the counter with his shirt half-open, smoothing the final edge of a clean bandage over a burn across his collarbone.

Unfortunately for him, he couldn't sense you coming as you spent the last hour elbow-deep in antiseptic prep, and the sharp chemical smell had soaked into your skin, clothes and hair, overwriting your trace completely.

So when you pushed open the infirmary door, his ears twitched at the sound of the door.

"Whoever that is, I'm nearly finished. No need to inform my--"

"It's me."

His hands stilled. Those sightless eyes widened just a fraction before relaxing.

"My dear, you smell different today."

"And you would have used that to avoid me if I didn't."

You crossed the room and checked his work.

The dressing was flawless, the boarders were clean with proper cream applied underneath and not a single wrinkle in the adhesive.

You couldn't have done it better yourself, and that made it worse. Because the burn beneath was ugly, and he'd handled it perfectly in silence without you.

You flicked him on the forehead.

His ears flattened. "What was that for?"

"You know exactly what that was for." you folded your arms. "The dressing is perfect but that's not the point."

His tail curled around your thigh slowly. "I didn't see the need to call you over for something I could handle myself."

"You're one of the best medic on this ship and somehow the most impossible patient I've ever had."

His lips twitched. "Surely not the most impossible."

"You're right. I'm worse. Which is how I know every trick you try to pull." You caught his face in both hands. "Give me a heads up next time, even if you have it handled. I don't want to learn through word-of-mouth that you got hurt if it turns into something you can't handle...Deal?"

He turned his head and pressed his mouth against your palm, lingering there. "Deal," he murmured.

Moze

Feixiao's message arrived at 11 PM. Three words:

'He's being stubborn again.'

You didn't bother checking the main infirmary. Moze never used obvious rooms when he was injured, he treated them like compromised positions.

The first time, you found him redressing a stab wound in a supply closet. The second, behind a ventilation unit on the upper deck.

He rotated locations like escape routes. A year ago it might have worked, but you been married to him long enough to figure out how he thinks.

It didn't take long until you were in the maintenance corridor that had a faulty light.

He was crouched against the far wall, field kit open beside him, one hand pressing gauze to a wound below his ribs. His eyes locked onto you instantly, trying to figure out how you found him so quickly.

"Feixiao," he figured.

"Feixiao." You confirmed and knelt in front of him to move his hand aside. The laceration was deep, angled in a way that told you he'd twisted to avoid something worse. "This needs sutures Moze, not field gauze."

"It would have held."

"For how long? Two hours? Three?" You opened your own kit, the one you'd started carrying specifically because of him, and threaded the needle under the flickering light. "You can hide from everyone else, but you don't get to hide from me. You knew that when marrying me."

He was quiet as you worked. Your knees bracketed his thigh as your hand braced against his stomach for leverage, feeling the rigid muscle there shift with each controlled breath.

When you finished, you pressed the adhesive flat and looked up. He was watching your face with a tender expression you rarely ever caught on him.

"You found me in eight minutes..." he said.

"Yup, took me fifteen last time didn't it? Married to you, I'll surely keep getting faster. Like I said, you don't get to hide from me, because I'll find you regardless." you grinned.

Blade

You found him in the infirmary sitting on the edge of a cot with his shirt discarded on the floor. The wound across his torso had already begun knitting itself shut, tissue crawling over tissue, his body repairing what the mind had no interest in protecting.

He looked up when you walked in without any surprise or guilt on his face.

"It's already closing," he said, as if that ended the conversation, but it didn't.

"Shirt off the floor." You ordered and crossed over to the cabinet you kept stocked specifically for him.

It was full of antiseptics and dressings that had just crossed their expiration dates, still effective but not potent enough for a normal patient.

Nobody else in the ward was going to bother with them, but for a body that rebuilt itself regardless, nearly-expired supplies did the job fine and nothing went to waste.

You started the system three months into whatever this was, and he never once commented on it. But you knew he noticed.

"You're wasting your time," he said.

"I'm using supplies that are getting thrown out anyway on a man who tries to throw himself away every chance he gets. It's efficient." You knelt beside him and pressed the cloth to the wound's edge, hands steady despite the obvious irritation in your expression. "Who did this?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

His jaw tightened. The wound pulsed under your fingers, half-sealed already. "You don't have to keep doing this. I'm not him."

"And yet your script keeps sending you back to my door." You didn't look up. "And you keep walking through it."

Silence.

"You're stubborn," he said.

"I was stubborn when I married you the first time. Nothing's changed on my end." You smoothed the last bandage down, let your palm rest flat over the fading wound.

His hand came up and his fingers hovered near your cheek for a moment before settling back in his lap.

"I only come back because it's required of me... nothing more." he insisted, hand curling into a tight fist as he looked away from you.

Luocha

You restocked that shelf yourself yesterday. Fourteen vials of antiseptic tincture, eight rolls of compression linen, one jar of sealing salve.

Now you counted thirteen vials, seven rolls, and noticed that the salve lid turned off center.

You found him in the back consultation room, coat draped over a chair, sleeve rolled past his elbow. He treated the wound himself, it was clean and expertly dealt with. The gash along his forearm already neatly dressed.

He looked up when the door opened, and the smile arrived instantly. Pleasant and ever deflecting.

"You're up late," he said, as though he wasn't sitting in your office at midnight with blood drying under his cuffs.

"You used my salve." you crossed your arms, drumming your fingers.

"I'll replace it. I have contacts with three herbalists who--"

"Luocha."

The smile held, but something behind it shifted, knowing to be weary of that tone of yours.

You pulled the patient chair up and sat across from him, took his arm without asking and unwrapped the bandage. The cut was clean but deeper than his dressing suggested. He skimped on the sealing layer, enough to hold for a few hours, but not enough to heal properly in the long run.

"You cut corners with yourself," you said flatly.

"I wanted to be efficient."

"You wanted to not get caught." You redid the salve layer properly, twice as thick, pressing it into the wound with steady hands.

His free hand rested on your knee, fingers curling lightly against the curve of your thigh while he let you work.

"I didn't want to trouble you," he said quietly.

"You are the only healer I know who refuses to be healed unless it's during battle." You tied off the fresh bandage and held his arm in your lap.

His thumb traced along your knee. The smile that came back was smaller, more genuine.

"Old habits," he said.

"New rules." You lifted his hand and used his finger to point to the cabinet "My supplies." You moved his hand to point to himself "My husband." You made him point to himself again. "And my patient are my responsibility, in that order."

He laughed quietly and hummed to himself, letting you keep his hand in your hold.

"Must your supplies come before me?"

"Until you connect with those herbalists you mentioned, yes."

You felt Caelus go still for a half second, then he looked down at your joined hands like he only just noticed, and a slow helpless smile broke across his face. He turned it away quickly, but not quickly enough.

"I... hadn't noticed," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed.

"Liar." you teased.

"I mean--" He turned your hand over in his, studying your fingers like it was a puzzle he was trying to work out. "It just happens. I'm not doing it on purpose."

"Does that mean you'd stop if you thought about it?"

He looked up at you, actually considering it instead of deflecting. He was quiet for a moment.

"No," he said finally. "Probably not."

You squeezed his hand and he squeezed back immediately, his hand answering for him before he could with words.

"Well...good," you responded plainly, feeling heat bloom on your face.

He made a small, embarrassed sound and looked back out at the sky. His thumb started moving in slow circles against your knuckles, and you weren't sure he knew he was doing it.

March was still hovering throughout all of this, and you heard the distinct click of a camera shutter.

"March, I swear--"

"For the scrapbook!" she called, already retreating. "You'll thank me later!~"

Caelus exhaled a laugh through his nose. "She's not wrong."

"Don't encourage her."

"I like it," he said quietly. "I like...this."

You tucked your face against his shoulder to hide your grin. "Yeah, so do I."

Dan Heng - Imbibitor Lunae

His horns were always one of the last things to go, followed by the subtle scales on his skin.

They receded in slow tides downwards, iridescent, catching the light in ways that made you marvel at the sight. His breathing was ragged and his hands were shaking still from the earlier battle.

You reached for him, fingers finding his before closed around them in a firm hold, pressing his trembling palm flat against yours.

His pupils were still slitted when they found your face, unfocused, breathing more relaxed now. The scales along his wrist thinned, flickered, before dissolving against your skin

It took three minutes until his horns dissapeared against his head. You had counted before. Without your hand, it sometimes took closer to ten minutes.

Himeko was standing a few paces back when you finally looked up. She had her arms folded, watching as though she just confirmed a theory she had for a while now.

"Every time," she said simply.

Dan Heng pulled his hand from yours in that moment, as though he realized he had borrowed your time once again without asking.

"It helps him come back faster," you explained, although it came out more defensive than you intended.

"I can see that." Himeko's voice was gentle. "I'm not questioning it. I'm just noting that you also hold his hand when he hasn't transformed at all. At breakfast. On the Express. Walking through port."

The silence that followed was Dan Heng's particular kind, the sort that filled with everything he was choosing not to say. He flexed his fingers once, studying them like they belonged to someone else.

"It started... as a necessity," he said quietly.

"And now...?" you quietly asked.

He looked at you before looking back to his hands.

"Now I look for your hand without any reason."

You took his hand again and his fingers closed around yours immediately without any hesitation.

"Then stop letting go after," you told him.

He nodded once with a small smile and didn't let go of your hand again for the rest of the evening.

Jing Yuan

Yanqing fell into step beside you both somewhere between the Exalting Sanctum and the Alchemy Commission, matching Jing Yuan's unhurried stride with restless energy.

"Can I ask you something?" Yanqing said, directed at Jing Yuan but glancing at you.

"You may."

"Do you two ever not hold hands?"

You looked down. Your fingers were threaded through Jing Yuan's, resting in the space between you where your arms swung gently with each step. His grip was loose but certain.

You honestly couldn't remember reaching for his hand. It might have been at the door, although it could have been earlier.

"We take breaks," you offered.

"When?" Yanqing asked, genuinely.

Jing Yuan tilted his head as though this recollection required calculation. "I believe there was a Thursday perhaps."

"I'm being serious!" Yanqing said, mouth twitching. "The Cloud Knights are talking about it. Someone started a tally."

"A tally," you repeated flatly.

"Of what?" Jing Yuan asked.

"Consecutive days. The current count is forty-something."

You groaned. Jing Yuan looked delighted in the particular way that involved his expression barely changing at all, just the corners of his mouth tilting up.

"Tell them the real number is higher," Jing Yuan said. "Their intelligence-gathering needs work."

"You're impossible," you told him.

He hummed. His thumb traced a line across the back of your hand, idle and sure. "You chose this you know."

"I chose you. The hand-holding was your idea."

"And you've lodged no formal complaints yet."

"I'll lodging one now if you want." you shot back.

"No need." He brought your hand up, pressed his lips once against your knuckles without breaking stride. "Your complaint is already denied."

Yanqing made a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan and quickened his pace until he was several steps ahead. "I'm walking in front. I'm not watching this."

"Smart boy," Jing Yuan murmured. "I've trained him well."

You bumped your shoulder into his arm and he absorbed it with ease as he folded your hand more firmly into his.

Jiaoqiu

It started months ago after he lost his sight, your fingers become a compass he never asked for but never refused. At some point necessity turned into habit it, and neither of you acknowledged it.

The festival crowd hummed around you as Jiaoqiu steered you by scent for the last hour, pulling you through the lantern-lit streets with his tail swaying behind him. He stopped at a stall, ears perking forward.

"Here." He picked something up from the counter, a skewer of something glazed and fragrant, and brought it toward your mouth with his free hand. His other hand stayed locked in yours. "Try this. Open."

You leaned forward and bit. Sweet, smoky, the glaze cracking between your teeth. "That's really good."

"I know. I could smell it from three streets away." His thumb was moving across your knuckles. He did that when he was pleased. You didn't think he realized.

"Sooo," Feixiao said from behind you, "is tonight the night, or are you two going to hold hands for another six months?"

Jiaoqiu's ears flattened for a split moment before they righted themselves. "Feixiao. How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to watch you hand-feed her. Very platonic of you."

"I was sharing food. It's polite."

"All while still holding her hand. You hold her hand whenever she's around." Feixiao stepped around to face you both. "You even did so through that entire Seat of Divine Foresight briefing last week."

"She was nervous."

"She was asleep."

You choked on the skewer. Jiaoqiu's mouth twitched, caught, and the tips of his ears flushed darker than usual.

"My question stands," Feixiao continued, grinning. "Are you making a move tonight, or not?"

Jiaoqiu turned toward you with a composed expression, but his fingers shifted in yours, lacing them tighter.

"That depends," he said quietly, "on whether she wants me to."

The festival noise filled the pause. You squeezed his hand once. Twice.

His ears lifted. "Understood." he confirmed to himself, squeezing your hand back.

Moze

"Fourteen steps and neither of you has broken contact. That must be a new record." Jiaoqiu teased.

Moze's hand tightened around yours out of reflex, as though something he thought was hidden got dragged into the open.

You stopped walking and Moze stopped alongside you. Jiaoqiu was leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, ears angled toward you both, tail curling with amusement.

"How did you even--" you started.

"Two sets of footsteps falling at the same rhythm, close enough to share a shadow. You don't need sight to figure out something that obvious." he smiled. "Moze, you're usually quieter than this. She's thrown off your gait."

Moze said nothing, jaw set. His hand had not let go of yours, which you suspected was the loudest thing he had ever done in front of another person.

"It's not a problem," you said, because someone had to speak.

"I never said it was." Jiaoqiu tilted his head. "I think it's sweet. The most feared Shadow Guard on the Luofu, walking around holding hands like a schoolboy on a festival date."

"Jiaoqiu." Moze's voice was flat, but the warning came through clear.

"I'm leaving, I'm leaving." Jiaoqiu pushed off the pillar, still smiling, and passed you both. His tail deliberately brushed your arm as he went.

The corridor was quiet again and Moze exhaled through his nose.

"You can let go," you told him. "If that made you uncomfortable."

He looked at you. His expression gave almost nothing, but his hand stayed in place.

"No, I prefer this." he said.

You smiled, nodded and started walking again and he matched your step, firming the grip he had on yours.

Fourteen steps became twenty. Then forty. He did not let go at that number continued increasing.

Blade

You were sitting on the floor of a safehouse and Blade was beside you, back against the wall with his eyes closed. Your hand had found his twenty minutes ago and he let it happen.

Kafka walked in without knocking.

Her eyes dropped to your joined hands and stayed there. The smile that crossed her face was slow and curling.

"Oh~" she said. "Is this a new development?"

Blade's hand was gone before she finished her sentence. He pulled it back like your touch had burned him, fingers curling against his own thigh, jaw tight. He didn't look at you.

Kafka tilted her head. "Did I interrupt something?"

"No," Blade said.

You grabbed his hand back.

You did it hard, with an angry huff that came out louder than you meant.

Your fingers locked around his and pressed them flat against the floor between you. He went rigid as he stared at your hand on his.

"Stop doing that," you said.

"Doing what."

"Pulling away every time someone sees. Like you're something I should be embarrassed about. Or it is the other way around?"

The silence was heavy. Kafka leaned against the doorframe, watching, and for once she did not fill it with something clever. Even she knew when to leave a wound alone.

Blade's voice came out rough. "Don't be foolish" he said in regards to your last remark. "... Regardless, you should let go."

"No."

"I'm not--" He stopped. Started again. The words sounded like they were being dragged out of him. "This isn't a part of my script."

"Well that sucks for you, but your script doesn't get to decide that for me."

He looked at you as bewildered as you're ever seen him be.

Your grip tightened and his hand turned slowly, until his fingers threaded through yours and gripped hard until his knuckles were taut.

Kafka exhaled quietly and slipped out the door.

Luocha

The market in Cloudford had been busy enough to justify standing close.

At least, that was the excuse you had been using for the last hour, but it was wearing thin, because the crowd had thinned out ten minutes ago and your hand was still in Luocha's.

He hadn't mentioned it. He carried his bag over one shoulder and held your hand with the other as he examined dried herbs at a stall with composed focus.

You were studying a display of ceramic bowls when the stall owner, an older woman, looked between you and Luocha and smiled.

"Your husband has good taste," she said, nodding toward him. "He always picks out the best ginger root I have. You're lucky, keep a good hold on that hand of his."

You opened your mouth to correct her, but Luocha spoke first.

"She's too kind to admit it, but she's the one who spotted this stall the first time we came through." He set the ginger on the counter and reached into his coat for payment, his other hand still holding yours, steady and uninterrupted. "I just followed along."

The woman laughed while you stared at him. He didn't look at you, but the corner of his mouth lifted enough to confirm that he knew what he had done.

You waited until you were three stalls away before pulling him to a stop.

"You didn't correct her."

"Correct her on what?"

"She called you my husband."

"Did she?" He said as though it was unremarkable news about the weather. "I must not have noticed."

"You notice everything, you wouldn't let a detail like that slip by."

He turned toward you and adjusted his grip on your hand, lifting it slightly to press his thumb into the curve of your palm.

"Perhaps I simply didn't find it worth correcting."

Your breath caught but he started walking towards the next stall with you in tow.

"That's fine. That's okay." His voice stayed level. "You don't have to stop it. We're just gonna sit with it. Breathe in through your nose for me. Slow. Like you're smelling something cooking."

A broken laugh punched out of you. "That's--that's stupid."

"Yeah, probably." He grinned, and something about the complete lack of panic on his face made your chest loosen by a degree. "Do it anyway. In through the nose. I'll count."

He counted to four. You barely made it to three before your breath hitched.

"Good. Now hold it--two, three--and out through your mouth. Slow. Like you're cooling soup."

"You're making everything about food," you whispered, but you exhaled. Shaky. Long.

"It's working though, isn't it?"

It was. Not all at once. It wasn't like flipping a switch. But round after round, his quiet counting filled the spaces where the panic had been screaming. He never reached for you, never crowded you. He just sat close enough that his knee bumped yours and counted.

When your breathing finally evened out, he tilted his head back against the cabinet.

"Better?"

You nodded, throat raw.

"Cool." He bumped your knee again on purpose this time. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

Sunday

You hadn't meant for him to see like this.

The observation car was typically empty at this hour. You chosen it precisely for that reason, curling into the window seat with your arms locked around your middle and your breath coming in bursts that you couldn't control no matter how hard you pressed your palms against your own ribs.

Then his reflection appeared in the glass.

He paused, reading the scene with those careful, calculating eyes, and when he stepped forward it was with the deliberateness of someone who understood that sudden movement could make everything worse.

"I'm going to sit across from you," he said in a quiet announcement, giving you the chance to refuse. When you didn't, he lowered himself into the opposite seat and folded his hands in his lap. "Tell me five things you can see."

Your jaw clenched. "I know--I know the grounding technique, Sunday. It's not--"

"Indulge me."

"The--the stars," you managed. "Your gloves. The lamp. My reflection. The cup on the table."

"Good. Now match your breathing to mine. Watch." He inhaled, slow and visible, letting his chest rise so you could track the rhythm. "In for four counts. You are not dying. Your body believes you are, but you and I both know it is mistaken."

You followed him. Messily at first, but his gaze never wavered.

"Out for six. Longer than the inhale. Let the exhale carry what your body no longer needs."

"You make it sound so simple," you said, voice cracking on the last word.

"It is not simple. But it is possible, and that distinction matters." He leaned forward just slightly. "Again. With me."

Breath by breath, the rhythm he built became a structure you could lean against. He did not touch you. He did not fill the silence with reassurances that would ring hollow. He gave you a framework and trusted you to use it.

When the shaking stopped, Sunday sat back and regarded you with an expression that held no judgment. Only recognition.

"There we go, much better." he said quietly.

Gallagher

When your hands started trembling around your glass at the bar and your breathing went tight and quick, he was already moving.

He didn't come around the counter. Instead, he set a clean towel down, placed a glass of cold water on top of it, and slid both toward you with two fingers.

"Drink that. Small sip. Just one."

"Gallagher, I'm fine, I--"

"You're not, and that's all right." His voice was low, bar-volume. The kind of register that didn't carry past the person it was meant for. "Small sip. Cold water can help reset whatever's in your chest, trust the bartender."

You took the sip. The cold hit the back of your throat and your next breath came a fraction deeper than the last.

"Good," he said, and leaned both forearms on the counter so he was closer to your eye level. "Now. Breathe in for me. Nice and slow, like you're trying not to fog up a window."

You tried. It stuttered.

"That counts," he said simply. "Out through your mouth. Take twice as long breathing out as you did breathing in. I'll keep time."

He tapped his thumb against the counter in a slow, even rhythm. Not loud. Just enough to feel the pulse of it through the wood if you pressed your fingertips down. You did, anchoring yourself to that tiny, steady beat.

"Good. Again. You're doing the hard part already, which is just staying put instead of running."

"How do you know that?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.

"Because I've wanted to run a few times myself." He said casually. A fact, plain and. "Take another sip. Then we'll go again."

You drank. You breathed. He tapped.

Slowly, the panic thinned and quieted.

Throughout all of this, Gallagher looked at you the way he looked at anyone else sitting at his bar. Mind you, he would keep the bar open for as long as you needed it (or him), but that was beside the point.

Aventurine

"Oh no you don't. Eyes on me."

His voice cut through the static in your skull. You were sitting on the floor of a Penacony hotel corridor with your back against the wall and your chest caving in on itself, and Aventurine was crouching right in front of you, one knee down, head tilted.

"I can't breathe," you choked out.

"You can. You are. Badly, sure, but that's fixable." He pulled a coin from his pocket, the gesture so automatic it had to be habit. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger. "Watch this. Don't look anywhere else."

He flipped the coin. Caught it. Flipped it again.

"Every time it goes up, you breathe in. Every time I catch it, you breathe out. Simple odds. Even you can't lose this one."

"That's--a terrible way to--"

"Better than nothing, plus you just talked back to me, which means your brain's already coming back online." The grin he gave you was sharp, designed to provoke exactly the irritation that would pull you out of your own spiral. He flipped the coin again. "In."

You breathed in.

He caught it. "Out. Slow. Make it last."

Flip. Catch. Flip. Catch. Your lungs followed the arc of gold in the air, and each round loosened something behind your sternum ever so slightly.

After a minute he stopped flipping and just held the coin still. "Better?"

You nodded, pressing the heels of your hands against your wet eyes. "Sorry. I don't know what--"

"Don't." The word was quick but not harsh. He sat down beside you, back against the same wall, close enough that your shoulders were nearly touching. "Don't apologize for a body doing what bodies do."

Something in his voice shifted when he said it, but it was gone before you could try to understand it further.

He pressed the coin into your palm and folded your fingers over it. "Keep it. Next time it happens and I'm not around, flip it yourself. Give your brain a job and it'll stops eating itself alive."

You stared at the coin. "Does that actually work?"

"Got me through more nights than I'll ever tell you about." He stood and offered you his hand, easy as anything. "Come on. On your feet, gorgeous. The floor's no place for either of us."

Dr. Veritas Ratio

He seen it before during exams where students would freeze up with their eyes glassing over and chest locking up. He learned through repetition that the worst thing you could offer a person in crisis was vague comfort, and the best thing you could offer was information.

So when he found you hyperventilating in your office, he didn't ask if you were okay. He pulled a chair directly in front of yours, sat down, and spoke.

"Your amygdala has triggered a sympathetic nervous system response. Adrenaline is flooding your bloodstream. Your body believes it is under threat, but there is no threat here. You are going to override the signal manually. Nod if you can hear me."

You nodded, fingers digging into your thighs.

"Good. Exhale first. Your lungs are over-inflated right now because you've been gasping. Push the air out. All of it."

"I c-can't just--"

"You can. You've exhaled approximately twenty thousand times today without thinking about it. Do it once on purpose. Out. Now."

You pushed the breath out. It came rough and too fast.

"Again. Slower." He held up a hand, counting down from six with his fingers. You watched each one fold down and matched your exhale to the count.

"Now inhale through your nose. Your diaphragm should expand, not your chest. If your shoulders are rising, you're breathing wrong."

"You're so--you're so intense right now," you managed, half laughing, half crying.

"I will be whatever produces results." He said flatly and kept his hand raised where you could follow it. "Again. Exhale--Six... Five... Four..."

He walked you through like a lesson plan. Repetition after repetition, correcting your form with the same blunt precision he used for everything, until your hands unclenched and the room stopped tilting.

When it was over, he leaned back and studied you. "I take it you're feeling better now?"

"Yeah." You wiped your face. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Practice the technique so you can do it alone next time." A beat. "Though... I will be available if you can't."

He said the last part quieter, and you almost missed it. Almost.

Argenti

There was a choked sound from around the corner of the garden terrace, barely louder than the fountain.

Anyone else might have mistaken it for laughter or dismissed it as wind, but Argenti knew better.

He came around the column and found you sitting on the stone bench with your arms wrapped around yourself, rocking slightly, each breath shallow and desperate, never quite filling your lungs.

He knelt, lowering himself to one knee on the stone like he was performing an oath, placing himself below your eye line so you wouldn't have to look up.

"I'm here. May I take your hands?" he asked, waiting for your permission.

You shook your head, pressing your palms harder against your own arms.

"Then I will stay right here." There was no hurt in his voice. "Listen to me. Only to me. Can you feel the stone beneath you? It's solid. It's holding you."

"Argenti, I feel like I'm dy--ing--"

"You are not dying. I would not allow it." Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous, as if a knight could fight off a panic attack with a lance. But the fierce certainty in his face made something in your chest stutter and catch.

"Breathe with me. I will go first." He inhaled, deep and deliberate, letting you see the rise of it. Then he exhaled through parted lips, slow, measured. "Follow when you're ready. Not a moment before."

You watched two of his breaths before you tried. Yours crumbled on the way out.

"That was brave," he said. "Again."

"Don't call it brave, it was barely anything--"

"It was everything. You tried when every part of you was screaming to give in. That is the definition of courage."

Your next breath lasted longer. Then longer still. He stayed on his knee the entire time, never rushing you, never standing, matching every inhale and exhale with his own like a patient mirror.

When the shaking finally stilled, you uncurled your fingers. He didn't reach for them. He waited. And when you extended your hand yourself, he took it gently and pressed his forehead to your knuckles.

"See?" he murmured. "You've won the battle."

Boothill

He wasn't built for this. That was the problem.

Not the finding-you part. Boothill could track trouble across a crowded room like a hound on a scent, and the second he spotted you pressed into the corner of the cargo hold with your chest heaving and your eyes blown wide, he was already crossing the floor.

The problem was what came after.

"Hey. Hey now, look at me. You're all right, you're--" He stopped and clenched his jaw before rolling back on his heels.

The first thing every damn guide said was breathe with them, and his lungs hadn't worked like that in a long time. How the fudge was he supposed to demonstrate something his own body had forgotten how to do?

"Boothill," you gasped, grabbing his sleeve. "I can't--it won't--"

"I know. I got you. Just--hang on." He covered your hand with his. Metal pressed over your knuckles, cool and steady. His eyes darted, thinking fast the way he did in a firefight when the plan fell apart.

Then he pressed your palm flat against his chest.

Not where a heartbeat would be. Lower. Where the mechanical pump that kept him running hummed in a slow, constant rhythm. A vibration more than a sound.

"Feel that? That's my tempo. That's what keeps this whole mess of wiring and bad decisions ticking. Match it. Breathe in when it pulses. Out in between."

"That's not--"

"Yeah, I know, I ain't exactly a textbook example." His grin was crooked and a little too tight at the edges. "Common, just work with me here. In on the pulse."

You focused on the hum under your fingers. Your first breath in was ragged. The second was less. The third almost matched the rhythm.

"There you go." His voice dropped, rougher than before. "Atta girl. Keep going."

"Why does this work?" you whispered, your forehead dropping against his collarbone.

He was quiet for a beat. His hand came up to rest on the back of your head.

"Because it's the one thing about this body I can count on." He said it like a joke but you heard it more as a confession. "Figured one of us ought to."

You breathed against the hum of him until the panic bled out and all that was left was the steady, mechanical proof that he was there and not leaving.

"You good?" he asked eventually.

"Getting there."

"Good enough for me." His thumb brushed the back of your neck once. "Take your time. I ain't exactly run on a schedule."

a/n: Having gone through this during my vacation, I wanted to provide a friendly PSA that breathing is key during these scary moments✨

"Stop doing what?"

"The thing with your shirt." He caught the ball one final time and sat up, looking directly at you so plainly honest it almost felt rude. "You keep pulling at it. You've been doing it ever since you got on board."

Heat flooded your face. "It rides up."

"Okay--so let it ride up then if that's how it wants to fit."

"Caelus--"

"I'm serious." He swung his legs to the floor, elbows on his knees, leaning toward you. "You know what I see when your shirt rides up? You, that's what I see. You keep trying to hide yourself even though I like every single bit of you."

You stopped breathing.

He kept going. "Your thighs? Incredible. Your arms? I think about your arms... kind of a weird amount actually. And your stomach--okay, I know you hate your stomach, you told me once and I've been mad about it ever since--but I love it. I love how you look. All of it. Not in spite of anything. Just... I don't know, all of it."

The tears hit before you could form a single word.

His face went from earnest to panicked in a heartbeat. "Wait--no, that was supposed to be a good thing, I was trying to--"

"It is a good thing," you choked out, pressing both hands over your mouth because your whole face was crumpling. "You can't just say stuff like that."

"Um I can and I will? Frequently? Starting now and continuing forever?--I mean you said is was a good thing sooo not seeing the problem now."

You laughed through a sob and he crossed over and pulled you against his chest, arms folding around you completely, chin on top of your head.

"Every bit," he repeated against your hair. "No exceptions."

Your hands fisted in the back of his jacket and in that moment, you believed him.

Dan Heng

You didn't realize he was watching.

You stepped out of the shower and caught yourself in the narrow mirror of the Express bathroom, still dripping. And you done what you always did, turned sideways, sucked in, looked at every place you felt that your body curved too far or took up too much space, pinched your hip, pressed a hand flat against your belly and frowned.

The door was open a crack. You hadn't noticed.

Dan Heng didn't bring it up right away. That wasn't how he worked. He waited until the had enough context, and then mulled over his words carefully before expressing them.

It came three days later on the observation deck, his shoulder near yours in the dark.

"You hold yourself like an apology," he said.

You blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The way you stand. The way you sit. You fold inward, make yourself smaller." A pause. "...You don't need to do that."

"Dan Heng, I--"

"I've read about this. The way one's body image can affect their view of themselves..." His voice stayed low, controlled, but something underneath it pressed against the edges. "While I know my words won't change this... You should know that I find nothing about your body that requires correction. Your shape, your frame, the way you feel when I--" He stopped. Reset. "I notice you. More than I'm comfortable admitting. And everything I notice, I've wanted ever since."

The air between you went very still.

"You can't mean that," you whispered.

His head turned and his eyes found your in the dark and the look in them was so utterly certain, that your chest caved in.

"I don't say things I'm unprepared to stand behind." he stated plainly.

The first tear fell and you looked away fast, jaw tight, trying to swallow the whole thing back down. His hand found your wrist. Not pulling. Just circling it, thumb against your pulse.

"Don't turn away from me," he said quietly. "Not for this."

You broke. A sound tore out of you that you'd been holding for years.

He drew you into him and pressed his mouth to your temple, letting yourself go through the motions until your breathing finally settled.

Welt Yang

He was sketching.

You grew used to him drawing at odd hours, pencil moving in that patient, deliberate way of his. He sketched the Express. He sketched planets from the window. He sketched Stelle mid-argument and March pretending not to pose.

You hadn't realized he was sketching you until the page fell open on the parlor table while he was making tea.

It was your profile from three nights ago. You were reading, legs tucked beneath you on the bench, one arm resting across your middle. He drew every curve with an incredible amount of care. The roundness of your cheek. The line where your thigh pressed full against the cushion. The place where your shirt gathered at your waist.

Nothing hidden. Nothing minimized.

"Welt." Your voice came out strange. "Why did you--"

He set down two cups and looked at the open page without embarrassment. "Because I wanted to remember how you looked in that light.ing"

"But you drew--" You gestured at the page, at the body on it, at all the parts you would have erased. "You drew everything."

"Yes." He sat across from you and adjusted his glasses. "That was the point."

"I don't look like that though."

"You look exactly like that." He said steadily without hesitation. "I have spent a long time learning to see what's actually in front of me... And what is in front of me is someone worth capturing accurately." He turned the notebook toward you. "Every line here is something I admire. I would not have drawn it otherwise."

You stared at the page and your vision blurred.

"I--sorry." You pushed the heel of your hand against your eye. "That's--no one's ever--"

"Then you have been around remarkably unobservant people."

A laugh jumped out of you, broken as he reached across the table and folded your free hand between both of his, thumbs running slow across your knuckles.

"I will draw you as many times as it takes," he said, "for you to see what I see."

Gepard Landau

He practiced what he was wanting to say to you.

You knew this because Serval told you, barely containing her glee, that her little brother had been pacing her workshop for half an hour muttering to himself with your name constantly in the mix.

"I don't know what he's planning," she said, "but I haven't seen him this wound up since his promotion ceremony."

So when Gepard appeared at your apartment that evening, still in full Silvermane regalia, standing at a posture that was somehow even more rigid than usual, you had some warning. Just not enough.

"I need to speak with you," he said.

"O...kay?"

"It has come to my attention--" He stopped. Started again. "I have observed that you--no. That isn't right either." He pressed his gloved fingers to the bridge of his nose. "I had this memorized."

"Gepard, are you alright?"

"You hold your coat closed when you walk beside me," he said, blunt and suddenly. "You cross your arms in public. You apologize whenever we sit close together and... last week you told me you were surprised I wanted to be seen with you and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since."

The hallway was very quiet.

"I am not skilled at this," he continued, and a flush was climbing his neck above the armor collar.

"I speak more easily about strategy and defense than about--but you need to hear this from me directly. Your body is not something to apologize for. It is--you are-" His jaw worked. "When I see you, what I feel is not obligation or charity. It is desire. It is admiration, and I will not stand by while you convince yourself otherwise."

Your hand came up over your mouth but it was too late. The sound that escaped was small and fractured and completely beyond your control and Gepards composure crumbled instantly.

"Was that--did I say it wrong? I can start over. I prepared a second version just in ca--"

"A second version," you repeated, half-sobbing, half-laughing.

"Serval said my first draft was too formal." he admitted, unknowingly exposing his sisters lie to you.

You grabbed the front of his breastplate and pulled him into to kiss him. He made a startled sound against your mouth and then his hands found your waist over your coat, thumbs pressing into the give of you through the fabric.

"Was that... acceptable then?" he asked when you pulled back, slightly dazed.

"And then some," you said still crying but with a smile.

Sampo Koski

It started with the worst pick-up line you'd ever heard.

"Are you a Silvermane Knight? Because you've got me under arrest and I'm not even mad about it~♥" He leaned across the market stall with both elbows down, chin in his hands, grinning at you with zero shame.

You walked away, but he showed up the next day.

"Did it hurt when you fell from the upper city? Because you look divine--and slightly illegal."

"Go away, Sampo."

Day five. "I've been to a lot of places on this planet. Frozen wastelands, underground tunnels, several rooms I was not welcome in. And the most stunning view is standing right in front of me buying groceries."

Day nine. "You must be an artifact from before the Eternal Freeze because you are a treasure and I'd like to claim you for my personal collection."

Day twelve. "Is your name Penacony? Because you're a dream come--wait, that one wouldn't make sense unless you've been. Hold on, let me--"

"Why are you doing this?" You finally turned on him, bags in hand. "Every day, Sampo. Pick-up lines. At me. Is this a new bit or something?"

"A bit!" He clutched his chest as though pained. "She calls it a bit."

"Look at me." You gestured at yourself--all of yourself, the full obvious picture. "You don't use lines like those on someone who looks like me unless it's a joke."

His grin vanished like a curtain yanked sideways to show the bare wall behind it.

"That," he said, "is the dumbest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I once had a man try to sell me my own shoes."

"Sampo--"

"Who told you that? Who put that idea in your head?" He stepped forward. "I've been showing up to this market every day like a fool because you're gorgeous and I'd rather have you roll your eyes at me for 10 minutes than not have your attention at all."

Your bags hit the ground as your vision blurred.

"Wait, no--Shit." His hands fluttered. "That was supposed to land smooth, that was supposed to be--"

"You're so stupid," you managed, crying fully now in the middle of a Belobog street market.

His face softened as the corner of his lips turned up. "Yup. I'm the absolute worst, now come here already will you?"

You did, and he wrapped himself around you, petting your hair as you soaked his shoulder with your tears.

"Okay--I realize the timing isn't great, but is it safe to say you wouldn't say no if I asked you out to dinner now?" Fortunately you couldn't see the grin on his face, or you might have smacked it.

Luka

You were sitting on the bench in the training area, stretching out a cramp, while pulling at your workout clothes the way you always did after you exercised, making sure nothing was clinging in the wrong places or showing too much of what you didn't want seen.

Luka noticed and dropped onto the bench beside you. His mechanical arm hung loose between his knees while he caught his breath.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Uh, yeah sure. What's up?"

"When you train--and you train hard, I've seen it... do you feel strong?"

You considered your answer a moment before nodding. "During, yeah. Sometimes."

"And after?"

You didn't respond, but your hand was already at the hem of your shirt, tugging.

"Yeah." He nodded slowly, like you confirmed something he already knew. "I kinda figured." He flexed his mechanical arm. "You know how long it took me to stop hiding this thing?"

You looked at him surprised.

"I used to keep it covered constantly. Sleeves, wraps, whatever I could find. Because I figured people saw it and saw weakness." He turned his hand over, looking at his metal fingers. "Took me a while to understand that this arm is part of what makes me capable."

"That's different, Luka."

"Yes and no..." He turned to face you. "I watched you move, your body can do incredible things. You're powerful. Your legs, your core, the way you throw your weight behind a hit... but then you finish and you start hiding again like none of your effort counts because of your shape."

His real hand reached over and caught yours, pulling it away from your shirt. "But it does count. Your body isn't something to work around. It's the whole reason you're as strong as you are."

The gym was silent except for a pipe dripping somewhere distant.

"You...really see that?" you whispered.

"Every time you walk in here." He said with a grin. "And I wish you could see it too because the view from where I'm sitting is pretty unreal."

You pressed your face into your hands and your shoulders shook and he pulled you sideways into him so your head was against his shoulder, and pressed his mouth to the top of your head.

His cock dragged along your walls at an almost torturous pace, stretching you open so perfectly with every deep, lazy thrust. He savored the way your soft curves trembled beneath him, how your plush thighs squeezed around him, and the little gasps you made each time he ground against that sweet spot of yours.

"Easy now, sweetheart," he murmured against your neck, voice low and warm with that signature grin. "No need to rush... I could stay buried in you like this all night."

His hand roamed appreciatively over the soft swell of your stomach, squeezing gently, then moved up to cup one of your tits as he kept up his unhurried rhythm. The pleasure built gradually, wave after wave, until it became too much and your nerves felt raw, oversensitive from how long he'd been edging you like this.

"Shanks--nngh, please--it's too much," you whimpered, pushing weakly at his chest.

You twisted beneath him and started crawling away on shaky arms, trying to escape the overwhelming intensity.

A playful, husky chuckle escaped him.

Before you could get far, his arm wrapped around your waist and yanked you right back toward him and he pinned you down into the bed in one smooth motion and pulled your hips up high.

"Oh no you don't," Shanks laughed, voice thick with teasing affection. "You're not slipping away from me that easy."

He lined himself up and slammed his cock back inside you in one hard thrust, bottoming out deep. The sudden roughness made you cry out into the sheets.

His pace shifted instantly, no longer slow and lazy. He started pounding into you with powerful, relentless snaps of his hips, the wet slap of skin against skin filling the room. Your soft curves bounced and jiggled with every brutal thrust, ass rippling as he drove into your soaked pussy.

"Fuuuck, you feel incredible," he groaned, gripping your hip tightly, fingers sinking into plush flesh. "All warm and tight... squeezing me so good even when you're trying to get away."

You sobbed from the overstimulation, legs shaking hard, but Shanks kept you anchored in place. His hand slid under you to grope your stomach lovingly while simultaneously yanking you back onto his cock with each forward thrust.

He leaned over your back, red hair tickling your skin as he nipped at your shoulder.

"C'mon, baby... don't fight it," he teased breathlessly, voice still carrying that warm, cheeky tone even as he railed you harder. "I know you can take it. My pretty girl always does ♥"

He angled his hips to hit your sweet spot over and over, fucking you with rough, confident strokes. Sweat slicked your bodies as he kept up the intense rhythm, clearly loving how overwhelmed and messy you were for him.

Every time you tried to squirm forward even a little, he just laughed softly and pulled you right back, burying himself deeper.

"That's it... let me hear those pretty sounds," he praised, voice husky. "You're not going anywhere until I've had my fill of this perfect body."

Dracule Mihawk

Mihawk had you pinned beneath him in a deep mating press, his movements slow and precise as he rolled his hips.

His cock slid in and out of your creaming pussy with controlled depth, dragging against every sensitive ridge inside you. He watched your face intently with those sharp golden eyes as one large hand rested possessively on the plush swell of your stomach, fingers occasionally pressing down hard until he could feel himself moving inside you.

"You are trembling already," he observed quietly, voice low and composed. "Yet your body continues to pull me deeper."

The slow, intense rhythm had gone on for so long that pleasure had turned into overwhelming overstimulation. Every stroke felt like too much, your walls fluttering and twitching around his cock as tears gathered in your eyes.

"Mihawk, L-love--I need a moment--" you gasped, voice breaking.

You pushed against his chest and twisted away, managing to slip from his grasp just enough to roll onto your stomach. On trembling legs, you started crawling toward the edge of the bed, desperate for relief.

You could hear a quiet exhale from behind you before his hand shot out with lightning speed, fingers wrapping firmly around your thick ankle. With one powerful tug, Mihawk yanked you back across the sheets until he had you where he wanted again.

"Escaping me?" His velvet voice murmured, laced with subtle amusement. "How foolish."

He flipped you onto all fours and mounted you instantly with no warming and slammed his cock back inside you in one brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt. The sudden roughness ripped a strangled moan out of you.

Mihawk began fucking you hard, hips snapping forward with raw power and precision. Each punishing thrust made your plush thighs and ass ripple violently, your tits jostling beneath you while being pressed into the mattress.

"You will not run," he growled low, one hand fisting your hair to arch your back while the other gripped your soft hip hard enough to leave marks. He pulled you back onto his cock with every forward drive, his balls tapping at your clit, stimulating you even further.

Your body shook uncontrollably from the overstimulation, but Mihawk showed no mercy. He railed you with deep, devastating strokes, angling perfectly to hit that sensitive spot inside you without fail.

"So soft and warm around me," he murmured, voice strained yet still controlled. "Yet so greedy. You can take more of this."

He leaned over your back, teeth sinking sharply into your shoulder as he pounded harder. Sweat glistened on your skin as he kept you locked in place, refusing to let even an inch of distance form between you.

Every time you tried to crawl forward even slightly, his grip tightened and he dragged you right back, impaling you deeper on his thick cock. His breathing grew heavier against your neck, but his rhythm remained relentless and dominant.

"Stay," he commanded quietly, voice rough with lust. "You will come again for me like this. I want to feel you fall apart while I take what is mine."

Mihawk's intense gaze burned into you as he continued, wringing every broken moan and shudder from you with masterful control.

Donquixote Doflamingo

Doflamingo lounged back against the headboard with a lazy grin while you straddled him, riding his cock with exhausted rolls of your hips.

Your thighs burned as you ground down on his cock, barely able to do more than slow, tired circles. Sweat glistened on your body as your tits bounced with each weak movement. He watched you with amusement, hands resting behind his head like he was enjoying a show.

"Fufufu... getting tired already?" he teased, voice low and mocking. "Keep moving, little dove. I want to feel you work for it."

The overstimulation had crept up slowly. Your pussy was swollen and hypersensitive, every grind sending sharp sparks through your exhausted body. You couldn't take any more.

"Doffy... I can't--" you whined with a hiccup.

You tried to lift yourself off him, but your shaky legs gave out, impaling yourself again by accident. Desperate, you slid sideways and started crawling away across the large bed as your body quivered with each movement.

"Oh? You think we’re done here?"

Thin strings shot out instantly, wrapping tightly around your wrists, ankles, and waist. With a sharp tug, Doflamingo dragged you right back across the sheets like a helpless puppet, flipping you onto your back in front of him.

"You're not finished yet~" he sang, grinning wide.

More strings lifted your legs high, spreading your thick thighs obscenely wide and folding your knees toward your chest. He used the strings like marionette wires to lift you off the bed and over him, before dropping and impaling you on his cock in one brutal motion.

You screamed as he filled you completely.

No more slow grinding, he was over that. He immediately started fucking you with vicious, upward thrusts, using the strings to slam your body down onto his cock in perfect time with his hips. Your whole body bounced with every savage impact.

"Fufufu! Look at you," he laughed breathlessly, eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure behind his glasses. "All spread open and helpless on my cock. This is how I like you best."

The strings kept your legs locked wide and high, completely controlling your movements as he railed you mercilessly. Every hard thrust punched deep, the wet slap of your bodies loud and filthy. He used another set of strings to pinch and tug at your nipples while one teased at your swollen clit.

"Struggle all you want," he growled, voice thick with lust. "These strings aren't letting you go anywhere until this cunt is ruined."

He brought you down harder with the strings, impaling you deeper with every snap of his hips. Your plush body jolted violently as he fucked you like a toy, his grin never fading.

"Cry louder for me," he demanded, laughing darkly. "I love how you tremble when you're overwhelmed. Such a perfect little plaything~♥"

Doflamingo kept you suspended and spread, strings digging into your soft flesh as he pounded upward without mercy. He was lost in the thrill of controlling every inch of your pleasure, dragging out your overstimulation until you were a broken, dripping mess.

Charlotte Katakuri

Katakuri had you in his lap, facing him as he guided your movements with his hands on your hips as his massive cock stretched you wide while he rolled his hips upward in shallow, measured thrusts. 

Even in the heat of it, his expression remained mostly composed, though his eyes softened with rare affection as he watched your body move against him. Your tits were pressed warmly against his broad chest while your stomach squishing against his abs with every slow grind.

"You are doing so well," he praised, voice low and steady, almost soothing. "Taking me so deeply..." although he was barely half way inside of you.

But the long session had pushed you past your limit. Pleasure had turned into overwhelming overstimulation as your pussy fluttered and clenched uncontrollably around him. Your thighs shook violently against his sides.

"Katakuri--I’m so full--I can’t take much more of this…" you breathed through gritted teeth, looking at where the two of you remained connected.

You pushed against his chest and slid off him, stumbling across the large bed, desperate for a moment to recover.

His right arm transformed into flowing mochi and the sticky, flexible substance stretched across the distance and wrapped firmly around your waist and thighs. With a gentle, controlled pull, he dragged you back toward him, the mochi gently but inescapably binding your soft body.

"No, not when you need this as much as I do," he said calmly before he flipped you onto your back and loomed over you. 

More mochi extended from his shoulders, wrapping around your wrists and pinning them above your head while another thick strand looped under your knees. He folded your thick thighs high and wide, spreading you completely open.

Then he pushed his cock back into your pussy with one powerful thrust, burying himself completely unlike before. The sudden pressure of your body adjusting to his full length ripped a loud cry from you.

His pace turned more rough and demanding as he used his strength to slam his hips forward as though trying to get himself even deeper than he already was.

The mochi held you perfectly in place, keeping your legs spread wide and your arms restrained. Despite the roughness, his touch remained protective, almost reverent as he watched your reactions closely.

"You are so soft and warm," he growled quietly, voice strained but still composed. "So perfect like this... overwhelmed and full of me."

With his size it was impossible not to brush your sweet spot with each movement, making tears spill down your cheeks as your body shook hard in his restraints, but Katakuri did not relent. 

"You feel incredible when you squeeze around me like this," he praised, leaning down to press a surprisingly tender kiss to your forehead even as he pounded into you. "Let go. I will hold you through it."

His thrusts grew even harder, the bed creaking loudly beneath you both. He kept you completely trapped in his embrace, refusing to let you escape the pleasure he was determined to give you.

"I want to feel you come apart again... my beautiful, soft girl."

Katakuri's intense gaze never left your face for long as he drove into you relentlessly, using his mochi to keep you locked exactly where he wanted while he chased for your release.

Crocodile

Crocodile had you bent over the edge of the bed with your upper body pressed into the silk sheets as he took you from behind.

His cock stretched you open with each deep, controlled thrust, the weight of his body keeping you pinned. One large hand gripped your soft hip while his golden hook rested against the plush curve of your ass, cool metal teasing your heated skin. 

"There we go... just like that," he drawled, voice low and smug. "You're going to take every inch until I decide otherwise."

The long, unhurried pace had pushed you into dangerous territory as every slow drag of his cock made your nerves scream as your legs shook beneath him.

"Fuck~♥” you swore, gripping the sheets below you. “I’m getting too sensitive, show a bit of mercy Croc--" you plead died with a moan as he hit your sweet spot dead on.

You clawed at the sheets and tried to crawl forward unsuccessful, unable to pull yourself off of his cock in your frantic attempt for relief.

"Mercy? From me?"

Sand suddenly burst from his left hand, swirling around your waist and thighs, stopping you in your attempt to get away.

"You're not going anywhere until I've had my fill," he growled smugly.

Before you could recover, his hook slid around the front of your neck and pulled you upright onto your knees, pressing your back flush against his chest. The curved metal rested firmly under your chin, keeping you arched and trapped.

"Pathetic thing," he laughed darkly into your ear. "Begging for mercy while this greedy cunt keeps sucking me in."

He immediately started pounding into you, hips snapping upward hard and deep. Your soft body jolted violently in this new position, tits bouncing wildly, plush stomach shaking with every brutal thrust.

His free hand reached around to roughly grope and squeeze your tits, pinching your nipples hard while his hook kept your neck secured against him. The new angle let him drive even deeper, hitting that sensitive spot even harder than before.

"Look at these tits bouncing for me," he growled smugly, voice thick with lust as he kneaded and slapped the soft flesh. "So perfect... made to be played with while I take you how I want."

You moan loudly from the overwhelming overstimulation, but Crocodile only fucked you harder. The sand around your thighs kept your legs spread wide as he railed you relentlessly from behind.

"You don't get to run from what you asked for this morning, remember?" he growled, voice rough with lust. "You said it yourself that this body is mine to use... and I'm nowhere near done with you."

Every powerful thrust made your body ripple. His hand continued mauling your tits, tugging your nipples and squeezing the plush flesh as he pounded upward without mercy. The hook under your neck kept you perfectly displayed and helpless.

"It's like you were made to be fucked like this."

He kept you locked in the kneeling position as his low, mocking laughter mixed with your broken cries as he dragged out your overstimulation, clearly savoring every tremble.

Caesar Clown

Caesar had you on all fours while he fucked you with steady, rhythmic thrusts at a brisk consistent pace, each one perfectly angled as he continued his 'experiment' that had already been going for well over 2 hours. 

His dug his fingers into your hips while he observed every twitch and moan, constantly fine-tuning his movements like the dedicated scientist he was.

"Shurororo~ Yes! Look at those beautiful reactions!" he cackled. "Your pussy is clenching so perfectly around me.--Such excellent data!"

This relentless pace he kept up for more than sixty minutes had completely destroyed you. Your nerves were fried raw from the extended session as he exploited every sensitive spot.

"Caesar--ahh--it's too much, I can't handle it anymore--" you begged, voice shaking and desperate.

You lunged forward and tried to scramble away for any relief from the overwhelming intensity.

"Oh no you don't! You're not ruining my experiment!"

Thick pinkish aphrodisiac gas suddenly burst out from Caesar's body, flooding the air and filling your lungs. The gas hit your senses instantly, making your skin burn hotter and pussy throb with desperate, aching need as your mind grew foggy with forced arousal.

Even as you felt overstimulated, the gas made you crave him even more.

Before you could crawl another inch, Caesar's fingers wrapped around your waist and yanked you back hard. He dragged your body right back to him, flipping you onto your back with a wide grin.

"Shurororo! That's it--breathe it in deeper," he cackled, eyes gleaming with chaotic delight. "My special aphrodisiac will make you need my cock even more~"

He slammed his cock back into your pussy, forcing a loud, broken moan from your throat. His pace instantly became fast and punishing as he started fucking you erratically.

Your tits bounced with every thrust while the aphrodisiac gas continued pouring into the room, making every sensation feel electric and unbearable.

"You feel that? Your body is begging for me now!" Caesar groaned, voice whiny yet dominant as he pounded into you. "Look at you trembling and dripping... so insightful!"

He leaned over you, his hands pinning your wrists to the bed.

"Trying to crawl away from me? How rude!" he laughed breathlessly. "Now you're going to cum until you can't think straight. All thanks to my genius gas~"

The mix of his rough, frantic pounding and the overwhelming aphrodisiac left you sobbing and moaning uncontrollably as your body burned with desperate need.

Caesar kept you trapped beneath him, fucking you like a madman lost in his favorite experiment. Which he was, to be fair.

"This cunt is going to milk me dry while you lose your mind for me."

Buggy

Buggy had you on your stomach with his cock buried deep inside you as he fucked you with frantic, desperate thrusts.

His torso floated above you while his hips slammed against your ass, driving his cock into your creaming pussy. You were filled to the brim and dripping messily with both your releases, the obscene wet sounds loud with every thrust.

"This is the best pussy in the Grand Line, I swear!" he moaned loudly, voice cracking.

"I can't--Buggy Baby--I need a second--PleEEase" you gasped, voice breaking.

You started crawling forward, trying to escape his relentless cock.

A high-pitched, whimper tore out of Buggy the moment he felt your pussy pull away from him.

"Wait--no! D-Don't leave me like this!"

His floating upper body zipped forward and pushed down hard on your shoulders, forcing your plush body back onto his thrusting hips. At the same time, his detached hands floated around to your front, greedily grabbing your tits and roughly pinching and tugging at your sensitive nipples.

"Mmmph--fuck, you feel so good~♥" he whimpered. His head floated beside yours, capturing your lips in a sloppy, messy kiss, tongue pushing deep as he drooled into your mouth.

You tried to crawl away again, pushing forward with a broken sob, which Buggy matched.

"Nooo--come back!"

His cock suddenly detached completely, staying buried deep inside your dripping pussy and continued to thrust on its own with frantic energy.

His full body, save for his cock and hands, quickly reassembled behind you as sat back on his knees, eyes wide and glassy as he watched you.

His detached cock, now free from his hips, started ramming into you even harder and deeper than before, with no body to restrict the motion, allowing it to piston wildly and reach impossibly deep with every stroke.

"Fuuuck--look at you," Buggy moaned breathlessly, voice trembling as he watched your soft body writhe and jolt in pleasure. His floating hands continued twisting and pinching your nipples. "You're losing it... shit, you look so hot like this."

He stayed back and watched greedily, biting his lip as his detached cock slammed into you relentlessly, pushing more of your mixed releases out with every thrust. His hands kept tugging and rolling your nipples as he took in every tremble and broken moan you let you.

"J-just a little more, baby, please..." he begged, voice. "I can't stop yet... you look too perfect taking me like this ♥"

Even as his own body shook from overstimulation, Buggy remained fixated on the sight of you falling apart for him.

Smoker

Smoker had you bent over his wooden desk with your tits and stomach squished against scattered documents as he fucked you from behind.

His cock stretched you with every heavy stroke, the desk groaning under the intensity. Two cigars burned between his teeth, smoke lazily drifting through the room while the windows were already completely covered in a thick white haze for privacy.

"Always so damn needy," he grunted, one rough hand gripping your plush hip as he drove into you. "You're making a mess of my desk... again."

The relentless rhythm had quickly pushed you into overstimulation. Your pussy throbbed, hypersensitive and twitching around his girth with every deep drag.

"Nngh~♥ W-Wait--slow down, my body can't--eeii!--handle this--" you gasped in broken pieces.

You pushed your hands against the desk and tried to crawl forward, desperate to escape the intense pleasure flooding your body.

"You're not going anywhere," he grunted.

A single hand wrapped around your waist and pulled you back against his hips, burying his cock deep inside again in one motion.

That was the only warning you got before he started fucking you harder, hips snapping forward, making your body rippled wildly against the desk. Then he leaned over you, smoke curling from his mouth as he spoke against your ear.

"Keep trying to crawl away and I'll clear the smoke from that window, press you right up against the glass and fuck you there instead.--Let every marine outside see how well this slutty body takes my cock."

The threat made you clench hard around him.

Smoker let out a surprised, rough groan, his hips faltering for a moment.

"Shit... you just got tighter," he muttered, sounding both annoyed and smug. "You really like that idea? Heh, you filthy girl."

He immediately picked up the pace, pounding into you with deep, brutal strokes. Thick smoke tendrils slipped under your body, one pressing firmly against your swollen clit while another teased your nipples, adding sharp stimulation while he railed you.

"Making such a mess..." he grumbled, gripping your hip tighter. "and dripping all over my reports... yet still squeezing me like you want me to follow through on that threat."

You sobbed into the desk from the overwhelming sensation, his gruff words ringing in your ears. Your legs shook violently, but Smoker kept you pinned in place, refusing to let you escape even an inch.

"Stay right there," he ordered. "--Or I'll live up to my word, it's your decision."

You dug your nails into his back hard enough to leave more marks, and he yelped but grinned wider before dropping down against you. His chest pressed against yours, stomach to stomach, his weight resting on yours.

"I hate you," you said.

"You literally just screamed the opposite of that."

"Well I take it back."

"No takesies backsies. I have witnesses."

"WHO? We're alone."

"The plushie collection in the corner, obviously."

You grabbed his face and kissed him to make him stop talking, and it actually worked for a few seconds.

He pulled back with his lips still buzzing against yours, eyes bright and filled with adoration it made your ribs ache.

"Hey." His voice dropped. "You know I'm not laughing at you, right?"

"I know."

"I'm laughing because I'm happy." He clarified anyways. "You make me so stupidily happy and sometimes my brain just doesn't know what to do with that, so." He gestured vaguely. "Teakettle."

Your throat went tight. You pulled him down and pressed your forehead to his, your nails tracing soft lines along the scratches you'd already left.

"Cute teakettle," he corrected in a whisper.

"I'm going to kill you."

"Mmm, do that later. Let's nap first." He burrowed into you again, arms tightening with his nose pressed against your cheek. "You're my favorite pillow, you know that?"

You didn't say anything. Just held on. Nails in his back, heart in your throat.

He was asleep in two minutes.

Dan Heng

The room had gone quiet except for breathing.

Yours was still catching up but his had already settled within minutes, even now, even after all of that.

You would have found it irritating if you weren't so thoroughly spent.

He was still on top of you, holding some of his weight on his forearms, but enough that you felt pinned in the best possible way, his chest against yours, his hips still slotted between your thighs. Your arms were looped around his back. Your nails hadn't moved from where they'd dug in during the last few minutes, still pressed into his back in little crescent-moon clusters.

You loosened your grip slightly. "Sorry. Did I scratch you up again?"

"Yes." He said it like he was confirming the weather.

"Does it sting?"

"A little."

"Sorry."

"Don't be." His mouth was near your ear. "I could feel every time you got close... Your hands always tell me before your voice does."

Okay. Your face was on fire, but okay.

Your nails dragged a slow, absent path down the center of his back, and you felt his stomach tighten against yours. A controlled reaction from a controlled man.

"Like that?" you asked, and your voice came out braver than you felt.

He pulled back just enough to look at you. His lips were slightly swollen, eyes carrying that unguarded look he never let anyone else see. He studied you beneath him, flushed, full-bodied, breathing hard, still clinging to him like you'd dissolve if you let go.

"Close, try again..." he said quietly, and you dragged your nails from his shoulders to the small of his back.

His eyes closed and his hips pressed forward on reflex, the sound you made from that was embarrassing and involuntary yet you didn't care at all as his forehead dropped to yours.

"This is going to be a problem if the others find what you've left on me..." he murmured. But he was smiling, barely, just the corner of his mouth, and he didn't pull away.

Your nails dug in again without a word and cycle repeated.

Welt Yang

He rolled onto his side facing you, but you hadn't allowed the distance to last. You pulled yourself into him and hitched one thigh over his hip, arms circling his torso, your nails settling into his back like they'd been doing all night. Little half-moon marks layered over longer scratches.

His back held a map of every moment he made you lose your composure, which had been often.

Welt's arm draped over your waist as his thumb traced idle shapes against your hip.

"You're quiet," you said.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About the fact that you're still digging your nails into me yet I have no desire for you to stop."

You laughed and he watched with a particular expression that looked almost bewildered.

"I miiiight have gone overboard," you admitted. Your fingers walked gently across a raised scratches along his ribs. "You're going to look like you lost a fight."

"I did lose. Happily." His voice had dropped into that used-up, unhurried tone that made your brain go static. "You were saying things toward the end. Do you remember?"

Heat flooded your face. You remembered. You wished that you didn't.

"No."

"Liar." He was smiling now, laugh lines deepening. "You called me da--"

"If you finish that sentence I will smother you with this pillow."

"...Noted, I will refrain." He pulled you closer so that your whole body was flush against his before he kissed your forehead, then the bridge of your nose.

"For the record," he said against your skin, "I liked hearing it. All of it. Every sound you tried to hold back annnnnd every one you couldn't."

Your nails bit into his back again like a reflex, a response your body gave before your brain caught up.

His breath stuttered. Just once. Just loud enough for you to hear it.

Gepard Landau

He hadn't said a word in two minutes.

You were starting to worry. Gepard laid over you, forehead resting against your shoulder, one hand braced beside your head, and he was breathing hard. Your legs were still wrapped around his waist with your nails were buried in the planes of his back.

You lost your sense of restraint somewhere around the third time he made you finish before he did.

"Hey." You loosened one hand and touched his hair. Damp at the temples, sticking up in three directions. "You okay?"

He nodded against your shoulder. Swallowed hard enough that you heard it.

"Gepard, words please."

"I'm--yes." His voice came out wrecked. Completely wrecked. Captain of the Silvermane Guards, steady and unshakable, and you had taken him apart with your bare hands. "I'm okay... just need a minute."

You bit your lip against a smile. "Take your time."

He exhaled long and slow, then finally lifted his head. His face was flushed all the way past his ears. His eyes were glassy and half-focused and looked at you with nothing short of abdoration.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asked.

"No."

"You're sure? Near the end I wasn't--I lost track of--"

"Sweetie." You cupped his face with both hands. "You were perfect."

He closed his eyes, and a muscle in his jaw clenched. When he opened them again they were suspiciously bright.

"Don't you dare cry," you whispered.

"I'm not crying."

"Your eyes are wet."

"That's--I don't--" He dropped his face back into your shoulder. His voice came out muffled and indignant. "I just didn't expect it to feel like that."

Your nails traced slow, tender paths across the marks you left on his back. He shivered under your hands, and his arm slid beneath you, gathering you against his chest.

"Next time," he said quietly into your neck, "don't hold back."

Your heart tripped. "I wasn't though."

He pulled back. Looked at you. A slow, disbelieving smile broke across his face--shy and proud.

"Oh," he said.

Sampo Koski

"So are you going to let go, or have you decided I'm your personal scratching post permanently? I mean either way, I'm flattered."

Sampo's grin was audible. You didn't need to see his face to know exactly what it looked like--smug, flushed, extremely pleased with himself. He was propped over you on one elbow, his free hand tracing a lazy figure-eights on your hip, and he hadn't stopped talking since the two of you finished.

Your nails were still embedded in his back, and not gently either.

"You're the one who hasn't moved," you pointed out.

"Why would I? The view from here is incredible." His gaze dropped slowly and deliberately and you yanked him down by the shoulders before he could make it into a whole production.

"Shut up."

"Make me," he winked.

"I already did. Twice."

That actually stopped him for a second before he leaned into you and laughed against your neck.

"Fair point. You absolutely did." His teeth grazed your jaw. "Though I'd argue the second time more of a collaborative effort."

Your nails raked a fresh path down his spine and his back arched, pressing himself even closer, hissing lightly at the sting.

"You keep doing that," he breathed, "and we are not getting sleep anytime soon."

"Promise?"

His head came up, eyes blown wide, hair a disaster, that infuriating mouth hanging slightly open. He lifted himself up and stared at you beneath him--all flushed and equally marked up and completely uninterested in letting him go.

"Oh," he said softly. "Oh, you're going to ruin me for anyone else aren't you?"

"Thought you liked that."

"I love it. That's the problem." He kissed you messily, grinning into it, one hand sliding under the curve of your lower back to pull you up against him. You arched into it and your nails found new terrain along his shoulder blades.

He groaned into your mouth.

"Ruin away," he murmured. "I'll send you the bill."

Luka

His forehead rested against yours, eyes still closed, his breath still finding its way back to even. The mechanical arm hummed faintly where it was braced beside your head. His other hand was curled around your waist, thumb tracing absent circles into your skin.

Your nails were still in his back. You were gentler toward the end, but you left real damage earlier, long lines raked between his shoulder blades, clusters of crescent moons along his ribs.

Every time you shifted your fingers now, his breath would catch just slightly.

"You good?" you murmured.

He opened his eyes and looked at you like you had done something miraculous to him.

"Yeah." His voice was rough. Lower than usual, stripped of its bounce. "Really good."

You dragged your nails lightly up his spine and he exhaled through his teeth, dropping his head to brush his lips on your collarbone.

"Those are gonna be there for a while," he said against your skin. Almost like he was confirming it to himself rather than complaining.

"Does it bother you?"

He pulled back enough to look at you, the flush on his skin went all the way down his neck, and his red hair stuck to his temples in dark wet streaks. He looked your face, your swollen mouth, the marks he left along your neck that you hadn't noticed yet--and smiled.

"Nothing about us bothers me," he said it plainly.

"Luka--"

"I mean it." His thumb stopped its circles. Pressed flat, holding you now.

"Stay tonight," you said.

"Wasn't planning on going anywhere." He grinned, lopsided but a little overwhelmed still. He kissed the corner of your mouth. Then your jaw. Then the spot below your ear that made your fingers spasm against his back.

"There," he murmured. "Found it again."

"Found what?"

"The thing that makes you hold onto me tighter." He pulled back just far enough to look pleased with himself. "I've been keeping track."

Your nails dug in and he laughed against your skin, staying exactly where he was.

That got the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He stood without warning, hauling you up with him, and you stumbled into his chest with a surprised laugh. The room went dead silent seeing this, as every Varia officer suddenly found something fascinating to stare at on the far wall.

He walked and you kept up only because his hand hadn't left your neck, steering you through the corridor, up the stairs, all the way to the heavy oak door of your shared quarters before he shouldered it open.

You grabbed his tie before he could deposit you and turn around and yanked him forward, although he barely moved as his eyes dropped to your face.

"Stay~" you giggled.

"I wasn't leaving." he lied.

"You were going to go back down there and brood in your chair for another three hours." You pulled the tie again, walking backward, drawing him in. "I know you."

He kicked the door shut behind him and the lock clicked.

"Yeah." His voice was low, stripped of its usual bite. He looked at you standing there flushed and stubborn in the low light. "You do."

His mouth found yours before you could say another word.

TYL!Superbia Squalo

"VOOOIII! How many of those have you had?!"

You held up four fingers. Then reconsidered, and held up five.

"Oh, for fucks--sit down before you fall down!" Squalo grabbed your elbow as you swayed on the barstool, silver hair swinging as he whipped around to glare at the bartender. "Who kept serving her?!"

The bartender, a civilian contractor who clearly had not signed up for Varia-adjacent terror, went pale and backed into the liquor shelf.

"Squalo." You tugged on his sleeve. Then tugged harder. "Squalooooo."

"WHAT."

"You look really pretty tonight~♥" you curled a lock of his hair around your finger.

That shut him up for approximately one and a half seconds before he looked away from you to hide any evidence of a blush. "You're drunk."

"Drunk and correct." You leaned your full weight against him, arms looping around his waist, face buried in his chest. He stiffened, not because he minded, you'd been married long enough to know that, but because half the Varia was watching with open glee.

"Get off me. We're in public."

"No."

"That wasn't a request!"

"Carry me upstairs and maybe I'll let go." you grinned.

"I'm not--you can't just... dammit, FINE." He ducked down, got an arm under your knees, and swept you up like your weight wasn't a factor. You shrieked with delight as he stormed toward the staircase, face burning red, bellowing at anyone who so much as glanced their direction.

"EYES FORWARD OR I'LL CUT THEM OUT OF YOUR SKULLS."

He kicked open the bedroom door and set you on the bed with more care than his expression suggested. You kept your arms locked around his neck.

"Let go."

"Come here."

"I just carried you here, woman, what more do you--"

You kissed him. Messily and off-center, tasting like cheap prosecco. He made a strangled noise against your mouth and braced one knee on the mattress, his free hand fisting in the sheets beside your hip.

When you pulled back, he was breathing hard. That pretty face his flushed all the way to his ears.

"Door's still open," you whispered.

He walked back a few steps and slammed it so hard the frame cracked.

"Happy?"

"Getting there." You pulled him down again and he went down willingly this time.

TYL!Belphegor

"Ushishishi."

That laugh had been following you for the last twenty minutes. You sat at the end of the banquet table with your chin in your hand, cheeks hot, fourth cocktail mostly gone, and made a point of not looking at him.

"The princess is sulking."

"The princess wants to leave." You pushed the glass away and finally turned. Belphegor leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, crown tilted, grin already in place.

"Bel, I'm tired. Take me upstairs." you offered your hand towards his.

"Hmm. Ask properly."

You narrowed your eyes. "I'm your wife, dipshit."

"And I'm a prince." He tilted his head, blond hair shifting. "Rank supersedes marriage. Those are the rules." he shrugged.

"Those are your rules."

"Ushishi. Exactly."

You stood up, wobbled, and caught yourself on the table. His grin didn't waver, but he was beside you in two strides. A knife appeared between his fingers out of nowhere, flipping idly as he offered you his other arm.

"The prince will escort you. Since you're clearly incapable of walking in a straight line."

"How romantic."

"Royalty doesn't do romance. Royalty does obligation." But his hand settled on the curve of your waist as you walked, thumb tracing a slow circle against your hip through the fabric. The corridor stretched long and dim and his boots clicked an easy rhythm beside yours.

He opened the bedroom door and you turned, grabbing the front of his shirt, pulling him across the threshold.

His grin stretched wider. "Oh?"

"Get in here."

"The princess is bold tonight." He let himself be pulled, one step, two, until the door clicked shut and his back was against it. You pressed all of your weight against his lean frame and his chin dipped. Even behind that curtain of hair, you could feel his gaze on you.

"Tell me what you want." His voice dropped, the laugh finally absent from it. "Be specific."

"You. Now. Consider it another one your obligations."

He reached behind him and locked the door.

"Ushishi. Granted."

TYL!Dino Cavallone

You were leaning sideways on the couch when Dino found you, and his reaction was as predictable as the sunrise.

"Oh. Oh no, honey, how much did you--here, don't lean like that, you'll fall off the--ack!" He tripped over the coffee table reaching for you.

The head of the Cavallone family, beloved by many, undone by furniture yet again. Romario, standing by the doorway, pinched the bridge of his nose and looked away.

"Dino~" You reached for him as he caught himself on the armrest. "Dino, I want to go to bed."

"Yeah, okay, that's probably a good idea." He straightened up and pushed his hair back, that apologetic smile already forming. "Can you stand? Here, take my arm."

You took his arm. You also took the opportunity to lean your entire body into him, cheek against his shoulder, arms wrapping around his.

"Sorry," you mumbled into his jacket.

"For what? You're allowed to have fun." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head as he guided you toward the hallway. His stride slowed to match yours, patient with every uneven step as he looked back. "Romario, we're done for the night."

"Of course, Boss."

The walk upstairs took twice as long as it should have. You kept stopping to nuzzle into his neck, and he kept laughing though flustered, gently steering you forward.

He got the door open with one hand and walked you to the edge of the bed. "Okay, let me get you some water and--"

You grabbed his jacket and pulled causing him to stumble forward with a surprised yelp as he catched himself over you, one hand on the mattress, the other on your hip.

"Stay."

"I was just going to get you--

"Dino." You looked up at him, flushed, stubborn, still holding his collar. "I don't want water, I want you."

His ears went red and his smile became less composed. He exhaled, long and slow, and let his forehead rest against yours.

"You should really have some water..."

"I will, after we're done."

He sighed. "I suppose that's as close to a compromise as I can hope for."

TYL!Byakuran

He had been watching you all night as you finished your sixth marshmallow cocktail, which was his fault as he had them made specially, and the room was doing a gentle spin.

"Bya... kuran." you slurred.

"Hm?" He appeared beside you with half-eaten bag of marshmallows in his hand.

It was midnight at a Millefiore gala and the man was snacking on sugar.

"I'm calling it."

"Already? But the party is so fun." He popped another marshmallow into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "You haven't even tried the cake yet."

"If I try the cake, I will fall over."

"I'd catch you."

"Yeah, after my face falls into it... And after laughing on top of that." you murmured, smacking his shoulder lightly.

His smile widened a fraction. "Maybe. Maybe not. You'll never know unless you do it." He offered you a marshmallow and pouted when you pushed his hand away.

"Take me to our room. Please."

"Since you asked so nicely." He set down the bag, licked sugar off his thumb, and offered you his arm.

The hallways of the estate were empty. Your heels clicked unevenly and he matched your pace without comment, humming something tuneless as you leaned into him.

He opened the bedroom door and you stepped through, turned, grabbed the front of his shirt with both fists, and hauled him inside.

His eyebrows lifted. The smile stayed, but something behind it sharpened. "Oh my~"

"Shut the door."

"It's already shut. Didn't you notice?" He looked down at your hands on his shirt, then at your face. "You're flushed."

"I'm tipsy."

"You're also pretty."

That stalled you for a second. He used it and stepped forward, closing the gap until your back met the edge of the dresser.

"What do you want?" he asked, and for once the playfulness thinned out, leaving just the question and his eyes on you.

"You. Without the audience."

"Done." He kissed the corner of your mouth first, almost delicate, then caught your lips fully, and the taste of marshmallow dissolved into something much better.

TYL!Gamma

You glared at your empty glass for past ten minutes but Gamma had only noticed four minutes ago from across the room. You knew because he lit a fresh cigarette, which was what he did when he was deciding whether to intervene.

Intervention arrived in the form of a hand on your shoulder and a flat voice above your head.

"Okay, time to go."

"I'm fine." you insisted, swatting his hand off.

"You've been staring at that glass like it insulted you. You're done." He took it from your hand and set it on the bar without looking. "Up."

"You're so bossy."

"You married bossy. Let's move."

You stood, and the floor tilted. His arm came around your waist instantly, pulling you against his side. He didn't make a production of it, he just adjusted his grip and started walking.

The cigarette stayed between his lips as he navigated you through the thinning crowd. Stairs. Hallway. Door. He fished the key out with one hand, the other still anchored on you, and shouldered it open.

"Bed. Water on the nightstand. I'll be back after I finish--"

You grabbed his sleeve and he stopped. The cigarette bobbed.

"Come inside." you asked.

"I need to check the perimeter for--"

"Gamma." You pulled harder, stepping backward into the room. "The perimeter can wait."

He looked at you. Looked at the steel grip you had on him, took the cigarette from his mouth, crushed it in the hallway ashtray without breaking eye contact, and stepped inside.

The door closed and locked as he stood there, back straight, watching you closely.

"You planned this." he realized.

"I had four drinks and an impulse. That's not a plan."

The ghost of a smile appeared and vanished as he crossed the room and caught your jaw in one hand, tilting your face up.

"Impulse, huh." His voice was low and close. "Lucky me."

Reborn (Adult Form)

You switched from wine to whiskey an hour ago and that had been a tactical error on your part. The jazz club was winding down, smoke curling under low amber lights, and you were propped against the bar with your lower lip pushed out.

"That face isn't going to work on me."

You pushed it out further.

Reborn stood beside you in a black suit, espresso in hand even though it was midnight and regarded you with the calm appraisal of a man who had never once been outmaneuvered by anyone, least of all his own wife.

"I want to leave." you requested.

"Then leave."

"With you, Reborn."

"Ah." He took a sip. "You could have led with that."

"I could have--But I'm four whiskeys in which have compromised my communication skills"

He set the cup down and adjusted his fedora as his eyes traveled from your flushed face to the way your dress curved over your hips.

"Compromised," he repeated. "That's one word for it."

"Are you going to help me or just stand there being handsome and unhelpful?"

"I can do both." But he offered his arm, and when you took it, he pulled you close, hand resting on the full curve of your waist. He walked you out without a word to anyone.

The hotel corridor was quiet. He unlocked the door, held it open, and you grabbed the lapel of his suit jacket and yanked him through.

One eyebrow rose. The fedora tilted.

"Bold."

"You like bold."

"I like competent. Bold is a bonus." He pushed you against the now-closed door and leaned down with his mouth hovering just above yours, close enough that you could smell espresso and gunpowder.

"Hm, you're still pouting," he murmured.

"Fix that then."

The corner of his mouth curved. "Yes, ma'am."

Fon (Adult Form)

The tea house had been converted for the reception with paper lanterns strung between wooden beams and low tables crowded with guests.

You miscounted your cups of sake, which easy to do when they were so small and kept getting refilled, and now you sat with both hands around an empty cup, cheeks burning, quietly refusing to admit you overdid it.

Fon knelt beside you with a soft smile.

"You're rather flushed."

"It's the lanterns. They're very... warm-colored."

"The lanterns." He smiled fondly, not wanting to tease you intentionally. "Of course."

You turned the cup over in your hands. "I think... I'd like to go to bed, if that's okay."

"Of course, let us go then." He rose and offered both hands to help you stand.

You took them and he drew you upward, absorbing your unsteadiness like a current as you wobbled.

"Lean on me if you'd like."

"I... don't want to be an inconvenience." you hesitated.

"You are my wife." He said it as though that answered every possible objection. His arm came around your back and you pressed into him, your head finding the curve of his shoulder.

He guided you through the corridor with unhurried steps. The night air came through the open screens, cool against your skin as his thumb traced a slow line along your shoulder as you walked, rhythmic as breathing.

The bedroom door slid open under his hand and stepped aside to let you through. You took his hand and softly pulled him in with you.

He followed your lead without any resistance and slid the door shut behind him with his free hand while his other hand held yours tighter.

"You've been patient all evening," you said.

"I'm always patient."

"I know. But I'm not." You squeezed your hand lightly in his hold. "Please stay with me."

He studied your face for a long, quiet moment. Then he raised one hand and brushed the hair from your temple, fingertips trailing down to your jaw, tilting your chin up.

"I believe you may have missed it when I implied..." he trailed for a moment. "That I was coming with you, not simply dropping you off."

Colonnello (Adult Form)

The military fundraiser had free beer. That was their mistake. Your mistake was trying to keep pace with a man who spent years drinking with soldiers, which meant by your sixth bottle you were gone and he was merely cheerful.

"Kora! You look like you're about to slide off that chair."

"I am fine."

"Says the one who put the wrong name on the raffle ticket twenty minutes ago."

"...That was a stylistic choice, in case anyone else had the same name."

Colonnello laughed as he leaned back in his chair. His dress shirt was rolled to the elbows, with his blond hair pushed off his face, looking like the kind of man recruitment posters wished they could manufacture.

You set your bottle down with both hands and looked at him dead on. "Take me home Nello."

"We're staying upstairs. Hotel, remember?"

"Then take me upstairs." you corrected.

"Can you walk?"

"Colonnello."

"It's a real question, kora! Last time you said you could walk after drinking and you zigzagged into a coat rack and almost took out a waiter."

"That coat rack was in a stupid location."

He grinned, stood, and crouched with his back to you. "Hop on."

"You're not serious."

"Yep.--Hop on."

You climbed onto his back because you knew there was no point arguing at this point.

His hands hooked under your thighs and stood with ease as you locked your arms around his neck, and he carried you through the lobby at a stride that suggested he could do this up a mountain in full gear.

Which he had done to prove a point, hence your lack of arguing this time around.

"You good up there?"

"You smell like beer."

"So do you, kora. We match!"

He took the stairs even though the elevator was right there definitely to show off to you and shouldered open the hotel room door once the two of you reached it.

He bent to let you slide off onto the bed but you didn't release your arms.

"Kora, you gotta let go so I can--"

"Nope." You pulled, hard, and he toppled back onto the mattress with you. He let out a surprised bark of laughter, catching himself and rolling over to be above you and your legs hooked around his waist.

"Oh," he said, grin shifting into something more focused. "That's how it is."

"That's how it is." you repeated.

"Good. I was hoping you'd say that, kora."

He kissed you as though this was another point he intended to prove, and honestly, you were happy to let him.

Skull (Adult Form)

"Nobody at this table has said a single nice thing to me all night. Not one!" This complaint had been broadcasted approximately nine times in two hours.

The other guests, a scattered collection of underground figures who stopped registering his existence around complaint three, carried on without blinking.

You rubbed your temples. Six cocktails. You had six cocktails because listening to your husband campaign for acknowledgment required chemical reinforcement.

"Skull."

"I pulled off a triple backflip on a motorcycle last week. Triple! Do you know how many people can do that!? Me, I can! And did anyone here even--"

"Skull."

He turned, eyeliner smudged from an earlier dramatic episode you mercifully missed during a bathroom break, and his face toggled from grievance to full undivided attention in half a second.

"What's wrong? Are you okay? You look flushed. Are you sick? Do you need air? Should I get--"

"I want to go to our room. Now, before I dissolve into this chair."

Everything about him changed in that moment. His shoulders set back with his chin lifted. It was the posture he pulled out whenever he was handed a mission he could actually complete without getting drop-kicked across the venue by a former colleague.

"Done! I've got this, come on." He rounded the table and offered his hand with a flourish that was absurd yet completely sincere. You grabbed it, pulled yourself up, and leaned against him.

He stumbled a half-step but caught you properly on the second try.

"I've got you. Okay? Right here. Not going anywhere."

He steered you through the crowd with his arm locked around your waist, shooting looks at anyone who glanced your direction, expressions he clearly believed were threatening. They were not.

After a side quest of going to the wrong floor, and going down the wrong hallway, he finally got the two of you to your hotel room. He fumbled with the keycard twice before the green light clicked, and by then you were already fisting the collar of his jacket.

"Wait at least let me get the--"

"Inside. Now." You hauled him through the doorway and he yelped, tripping over the threshold, catching himself against you as the door swung shut behind him.

"You--right now? You actually want--"

"We are literally married Skull."

His face went red from the piercings down. All that restless bravado condensed into something more controlled.

"Y-Yeah." His voice cracked once. He steadied it. "Yeah. We are."

Then he kissed you like he still couldn't believe his luck, and you kissed him back until he believed it.

His lips were dry, a little rough, tasting faintly of tobacco, and they didn't pull away. If anything, they pressed against your, firm and unhurried, like he planned this from the get-go.

You broke off with a sharp inhale.

"I--wasn't aiming there."

"Yeah, I know." He dragged his thumb across his bottom lip, eyes half-lidded and locked on you. The bag was still dangling from his other hand like he forgot it existed. "But I was."

"You turned your head on purpose!?"

"My intuition's never steered me wrong." He dropped the bag into your hands and stretched his arms over his head with not a trace of guilt on his face. Just that easy confidence he wore like a second coat. "What? You think I'm gonna just let you kiss my cheek like I'm your teammate? Nah."

"Enjin, you can't just--"

"Already did." He tapped his own mouth twice with one finger, grinning now, wide and bright and entirely self-satisfied. "And you kissed me back for a full three full seconds before you panicked, so let's not act like I committed a crime here."

Your face burned. "It was not three seconds."

"It was four, actually. I was trying to be nice"

"You're impossible."

"And you're in denial." He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and rolled it between his fingers. "I crossed the district for a pastry because you wanted it. You leaned in to kiss me because you wanted to. We both know what this is. I'm just the one who stopped pretending first."

You opened your mouth but nothing came out.

"Yeah," he said, reading your face like a map. "That's what I thought." He tucked the cigarette back and stood, closing the distance you put between you until the bag was the only thing separating your chest from his. "So stop overthinking it. I'm not."

"Since when?"

"Since a while ago. I just have better timing than you." He tapped the bag in your hands. "Eat. I didn't walk forty minutes for you to let it go stale while you argue with me about our feelings for each other."

Tamsy Caines

"You've got flour on your face, hold on."

You reached up to brush it away, then tilted in to press a light kiss to his cheek. He'd been helping in the kitchen all afternoon, sleeves rolled, calm and methodical, doing things like organizing the spice shelf and wiping down surfaces nobody asked him to clean. It made your chest ache a little, how quietly reliable he was.

He turned his head at the last second.

Your lips met his. Soft. Closed. Perfectly still.

For a moment neither of you moved. His eyes stayed open, watching yours from inches away, and there was something in them you couldn't quite decode. Not surprise. Not discomfort. It was as though he had known this was coming before you did and had been waiting to see how you'd react to your own impulse.

You pulled back, hands flying to your mouth.

"That was supposed to be your cheek, I swear!"

"I know." His voice was the same measured tone it always was. He reached out and gently pulled your hands away from your face, holding them between his. "You don't have to cover your mouth. Nothing happened that shouldn't have."

"Y-You moved your head."

"I did." He said it plainly, as though talking about the weather.

"Okay... but why?" you asked, hesitant of his answer.

He took a few beats to consider your question, which made your stomach sink before he began tracing his thumb in a slow line across your knuckle.

"Because I have been watching you aim for my cheek for weeks now," he said. "And every time, I think about what would happen if I just turned. So today I stopped thinking about it and try it."

"Tamsy..."

"You can be upset with me." His expression maintained its faultless calm, but his grip on your hands tightened a degree. "But I won't pretend it was an accident. That would be dishonest, and I don't want to be dishonest with you."

He watched you with total, unbroken focus and a tenderness that caught you off guard.

"I--um... O-Okay, I guess?" you said quietly.

He smiled and it finally reached his eyes.

"Okay," he echoed, and let your hand go.

Bro Santa

"Bro, seriously, thank you for carrying all of that. You didn't have to."

He was still catching his breath, arms full of supply crates he'd insisted on hauling alone despite you and three other supporters offering to split the load.

You went up to kiss his cheek, it was something you had done a handful of times before because found it adorable how he always got flustered.

He turned to say something, and your mouth caught his in that exact moment, causing the crates to hit the ground with a crash.

His hands flew out to the sides like he'd been electrocuted, palms open, fingers spread wide. His lips were chapped and warm and they stayed frozen against yours for a moment before you stumbled backwards.

"Oh no. Oh no no no, I'm so sorry, I was going for your--"

"No, that's--It's completely... You don't need to apologize, that was my fault--I'm sorry, are you okay, did I--" He was talking over you, both hands now raking through his loose hair, face flushed from his jaw to his ears. The crates were scattered at his feet and he hadn't even glanced at them.

"Bro."

"--I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing, I'm the one who kissed you."

"Right.--Right, yes. That happened." He pressed both palms flat against his own face and took a deep breath. When his hands came down, the blush was still there, furious and blotchy, and his eyes were looking everywhere except directly at you.

"Are you... okay?" you asked.

"Just processing." He bent down to pick up a crate, fumbled it, caught it, stacked it wrong, and then just stood there holding it against his chest like a shield. "That was my first."

"Your first kiss!?"

"No! My first--" He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "The first time I didn't really want to apologize for being selfish."

The crate was still clutched to his chest. He looked at you for exactly one second, then looked at the ground, then up, then back at you.

"Could we..." he started, and his voice cracked to his own horror. He cleared his throat. "Could we maybe do that again. On purpose. When I'm not holding supplies."

"Yeah," you said. "We could do that."

He nodded and picked up the rest of the crates, but his blush didn't fade for the rest of the afternoon, and you caught him twice pressing his fingers to his mouth when he thought you weren't looking.

Gris Rubion

"Good work today. All of you."

Gris was wiping down his hands with a rag, post-mission grime streaked across his forearms. The other supporters had already filed out toward the showers, but he stayed behind to finish logging the cleanup report.

You stayed behind too. Partly to help, but mostly because watching Gris work in focused silence had become one of your favorite quiet indulgences.

"You should've gone with the others," he said without looking at you. "You did more than your share out there."

"So did you."

"That's the job." He shrugged and pulled his cap off, running a hand through his hair before he turned away from you.

You crossed the space between you, and aimed a quick kiss at his cheek for job well done, a thank you for watching out for Follo when that beast flanked them, and thank you for a dozen things he'd never take credit for.

He turned his head to ask for your help, when he found your lips pressed firmly to his.

For one suspended moment he was perfectly, completely still, and you could feel the tension in his jaw like a wire pulled taut before he pulled away.

"I was going for your cheek, I swear!" you squeaked, feelings your face heat up.

He stared at you, eyes held steady on your face with the same unshakable composure he brought to everything, but a muscle in his jaw twitched once.

"Okay," he said simply, letting out a small sigh.

"Okay? That's all you're going to say!?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the floor for two seconds before coming back to you.

"You missed," he said.

"I know. You moved."

"I did." He uncrossed his arms. "I didn't realize you were coming in that close. If I'd known, I would have stayed still."

"So that I would kiss your cheek." you clarified.

He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and a faint streak of color appeared across the bridge of his nose.

"That's not what I said."

The silence between you suddenly felt different. He picked his cap up off the table, turned it over in his hands once, and put it back on. Tugged the brim low.

"I would have stayed still so it would last a bit longer." He adjusted the brim again. "On purpose next time, though... If you wanted to try again."

Follo Tunito

"Follo, your goggles are cracked."

"I know, I know, I'll fix them later." He was sitting on a crate outside the supply depot, hat in his lap, trying to retape the handle of a broom that had snapped during cleanup following a mission.

The mission had gone fine but Follo had tripped during a critical moment, and now he was trying to be useful in every possible way to make up for a failure that only he was still thinking about.

"Hey." You crouched in front of him. "--You did good today."

"I tripped."

"And then you got back up and threw a beast twice your size into Riyo's path so she could finish it."

He didn't look up. His eyes stayed fixed on the broom handle. "Anyone could've done that." he muttered.

"Anyone didn't. You did."

His hands stopped moving and he sat there holding the broken broom and the tangled tape, looking as though he wanted to believe you.

You leaned in to give his cheek a quick kiss before he could move away from it, but he turned to look at you instead.

His eyes went huge feeling your lips on his, and the tape roll fell out of his hand and bounced off the crate onto the ground.

You jerked back. "Sorry. I was--"

"Going for my cheek. Yeah. I figured." His voice came out strangled. Red swept up from his neck, blotching across his cheeks and all the way to the tips of his ears. He grabbed his cap from his lap and put it on, pulled the brim low, as if that could hide any of it.

"I'm sorry," you said again.

"Don't be." He said it too fast. Then caught himself. His hands gripped his knees. "I mean. It's fine. Things happen. People lean in and other people turn and it's just, you know, geometry. Physics. Angles."

"Are you explaining my accidental kiss with... math?"

He pulled the brim of his cap lower. Then lower. The hat was practically covering his eyes now. "I-I just need a minute because I was already having a hard time being around you today and this is not helping."

"A hard time?" you quirked a brow.

His fingers curled tighter. Under the cap, you could see him chewing the inside of his cheek.

"And now you kissed me and I liked it and that's terrifying because I'm going to find a way to convince myself I don't deserve it by tomorrow morning, and I really don't want to do that this time." He finally looked up. "So if you meant it, even by accident, could you maybe just tell me that?"

"I meant it."

He exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since the moment your lips touched his.

"Okay." He nodded. Then nodded again. "For the record, I'm not going to be normal about this for at least a week."

"Take your time."

August Stilza

"Turn left. LEEEEFT. Your other left!"

"That is my left, August."

"Then your left is wrong." He was circling you with a strip of measuring tape slung over one shoulder, pins in his mouth, hands moving fast as he tucked and adjusted the prototype uniform he made for you. His headphones were blasting something loud enough for you to hear from where you stood. Every few seconds he'd yank them down to bark an instruction, then shove them back up.

He paused at your shoulder, tugging a seam, and frowned behind his orange lenses.

"I cut this panel wider on purpose and it's sitting exactly right. See, EVERYONE told me broad construction wouldn't work for this silhouette. Everyone was wrong. I was right. As usual." He flicked the fabric with his finger like he was praising it. "Look at that drape. Perfect."

You looked down at yourself. He'd been at this for two days, barely sleeping, and the uniform actually fit you like nothing ever had before. Every curve accounted for, nothing pulling, nothing pinching.

"You really put a lot into this," you said.

"I put a lot into everything I design." He stepped around to face you, adjusting something near your collar, and his face was suddenly right there.

You leaned in and aimed for his cheek.

He turned to spit a pin into his hand.

Your mouth hit his directly.

He inhaled the remaining pin.

What followed was ten seconds of him coughing, doubled over, pounding his own chest while you grabbed his arm in panic. The pin came out. He straightened up, eyes watering, face blazing red, and pointed at you.

"DID YOU JUST KISS ME ON THE MOUTH."

"I was going for your cheek, you turned your head--"

"I ALMOST DIED AND IT'S BECAUSE YOU KISSED ME AND I THINK THOSE TWO FACTS ARE EQUALLY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW." He yanked his sunglasses off, wiped his eyes, and stared at you with outrage, his ears were violently red. "Why would you do that while I had pins in my mouth.--Who does that?! There are PROTOCOLS."

"It was a thank-you kiss, August. For the uniform."

"ON THE MOUTH?!"

"I told you, I was aiming for your cheek."

He pressed his palm flat over his lips and held it there.

"Okay," he said behind his fingers, muffled. "I need you to leave my workshop."

"Are you mad?"

"No. I need you to leave because I need to think about this for the next six hours and I can't do that with you standing there." He put his sunglasses back on, crooked, and turned toward his worktable. "Come back tomorrow. I'll be normal by then. Probably. No promises."

Zodyl Typhon

"You haven't eaten yet today Zodyl..."

"Irrelevant." He didn't lift his eyes from the map. One finger traced the border route, the other hand flat on the table. The lantern between you made his purple eyes look like bruises.

You set the plate beside his hand anyway and he ignored it. You had been doing this for three weeks now, bringing him food, and getting silence if not a two-worded acknowledgment.

Everyone else was asleep and you were tired. He wasn't. He was never tired, and if he was, he would never admit it.

You stood to leave, and something in you just moved without consulting your brain first. You leaned down to kiss his cheek. Quick. Thoughtless. The kind of thing you'd do for anyone burning themselves down over a table at midnight.

He turned to look at you, hearing your move back towards him, and your lips hit his mouth.

He didn't move. His lips stayed exactly where they were, cool and still, and his eyes held yours from an inch away with zero readable expression.

You pulled back fast. "I didn't mean to do that."

"I know."

"And then you turned and--" you were over-explaining your actions in fear for your life.

"I did." He straightened to full height, and his coat shifted around his shoulders, yet his face continued to give you nothing. "Why were you trying to kiss me at all."

"Because you've been at this for nine hours and someone should--"

"No one should anything. Not with me." He cut the sentence clean.

"Well... maybe I just care about you...?"

The silence that followed was heavy, like something had been set on the table between you that he hadn't anticipated. He looked at the metaphorical plate you'd brought. Then at you. Then at the plate again.

"Inefficient," he said.

"What!?"

"A kiss on the cheek communicates gratitude. What you did communicates something else entirely and I don't think you meant to say it..." His eyes found yours again. "You should be more careful about what you tell me without words."

"And... if I'm not careful?"

He sat back down and picked up the food you left with his free hand and bit into it without ceremony.

"Then I'll remember it," he said, "and I'll use it against you."

"Is that a threat?"

"Go to sleep, you're too tired for this conversation to have its intended meaning."

Bundus Begalkeit

"Scoot over, old man."

"There it is again. Old man." He shifted on the rock without complaint, making room for you. The purple lantern at his hip threw strange light across the deep lines in his face. "One of these days I'm going to start believing you."

"You ARE old."

"Forty-four. That's seasoned at worst. Old is when things stop working." He flexed his prosthetic arm and grinned. "Everything still works."

You dropped onto the rock beside him and crossed one ankle over the other. This had become the routine. Every night after camp went quiet, you found Bundus at whatever edge he'd parked himself on and joined him for a bit of idle chatter.

"Quiet tonight," you said.

"Just as I like it." He tipped his hat back and looked out at the dark stretch of ground ahead. "Most people fill silence because it makes them nervous. I think silence is where the honest things live."

"You like everything."

"Not true. I dislike rushed conversations and people who lie about small things." He glanced sideways at you. "You don't do either. That's why I like sitting with you."

Smiling, you leaned over to kiss his cheek goodnight as he turned to adjust his pattern, and your lips caught his in full.

His eyebrows rose to the hat brim of his hat when you jerked back.

"Going for the cheek weren't you?" He looked at you directly. "Well--"

"I'm sorry--" you interrupted.

"Give me a second to finish what I was saying." He set the lantern down and rested his hand on his knees and took one long breath through his nose. "You just made my chest do something I genuinely did not expect and--"

"Bundus..." you interrupted again, causing him to sigh. He took off his hat and held it close to himself.

"Let me be frank" He turned to face you fully. "You sit here every night. You bring food when I'm on watch. You call me old man like its a pet name. Now this." He pointed between your face and his. "Is this kindness... or is this something different?"

"Something different... I think."

His hand came down on your knee with a nod.

"Good," he said. "Because I've been saving this spot every night and pretending I wasn't hoping you'd show up." He squeezed once, then let go. "Same rock tomorrow?"

"Same rock tomorrow." you confirmed.

He used his free hand to push the straps of your dress down your shoulders and worked the fabric lower, exposing your tits before bunching the rest of it around your waist for easier access. His caressed you tenderly, thumb brushing over your nipples until they hardened under his touch.

"Bruno...please."

"So impatient," he teased warmly. He slowly freed his cock and rubbed it gently between your slick folds, coating himself in your arousal. "Although I love how ready you always get for me."

He pushed inside you with one smooth, deep glide. "AhHh--Bruno!" you moaned, back arching as he stretched your pussy open.

He groaned softly, looking at where you were connected. "Perfect--Mm, you always feel incredible." He started with long, lazy thrusts, rolling his hips in a way that made your toes curl. Your soft curves bounced gently with each unhurried stroke while he kept your wrists pinned above your head.

"Look at you," he whispered lovingly, "taking me so beautifully. Your pussy flutters around me every time I go deep..." He angled his hips to brush that sweet spot inside you with every slow thrust. "I could do this for hours... just listening to your pretty little moans."

"Nngh please Bruno-- ahh! It's so good--♥!" you gasped, voice trembling with building pleasure.

He kept the pace sensual and steady, never rushing. His free hand continued exploring your body with softs touches, squeezing your tits, stroking your waist and hips, drawing more desperate sounds from your lips. His own soft, breathy moans mixed with yours as he savored every second inside you.

"Stay right there for me," he murmured, voice thick with affection. "Let me love you properly, amore."

He continued those deep, rolling thrusts, keeping you pinned and pleasured until your moans grew louder and more desperate.

Leone Abbacchio

One second you were yanking him down by his hair into a rough kiss. The next he had both your wrists slammed against the headboard, pinned with an iron grip.

"You scratched me," he yelled, glaring at the red mark on his chest.

Before you could answer, he shoved the hem of your dress up roughly around your waist and yanked your panties aside. He took hold of his cock and slapped it against your pussy a few times, teasing you cruelly.

"Leone--"

"Brats don't get to talk." He thrust into you with one brutal snap of his hips. "Fuuuck Leo--nngh!" you screamed, eyes rolling back.

"So fucking tight," he growled, setting an erratic pace with hard, fast, almost angry thrusts that made your entire body jolt violently underneath him, tits jiggling as he fucked you without mercy, wrists still trapped above your head.

"You like being pinned down like this don't you?" he taunted, voice rough. "Getting your cunt wrecked by someone you pissed off?" He leaned down and bit your nipple hard, before soothing it with his tongue. "Your pussy is creaming all over me... pathetic."

"Ahh!~♥ Fuck, please--hardeeer!~" you sobbed, legs shaking.

"Harder?" He laughed and slammed into you even more savagely, hips snapping with raw power. "You're always such a desperate whore when I hold you down." The wet, filthy slapping sounds of skin on skin filled the room as he drove deeper, grinding against your clit with every brutal thrust.

"Nngh no I'm-- ahh!" Your voice broke into loud, broken cries.

"Don't you dare fucking cum yet," he growled, tightening his grip on your wrists. "Not until I've used this pussy how I want." He kept pounding you mercilessly, silver hair messy, sweat dripping down his chest, filthy words pouring from his mouth the entire time.

"Pathetic. But you love this, don't you?" he mocked with a smirk tugged at his lips.

Only when you were shaking and nearly unconscious did he finally let you tip over the edge, still thrusting hard through your climax to keep you awake.

Doppio

You had been play-wrestling on the bed with him, until Doppio finally caught both your wrists and pinned them above your head. His face hovered over yours, flushed and breathing hard.

"Got you!" he panted triumphantly.

Then he froze, suddenly realizing how your plush thighs were spread around his hips, your chest heaving, and his cheeks turned bright red.

"Oh... wow," he whispered.

"Yeah, wow." you breathed. "I like this, don't let go. Not yet."

His fingers tightened nervously at first, then with more confidence when he saw the way you looked at him. He quickly pulled your shirt off and tossed his own aside, eyes wide as he took in your body.

"You're so pretty," he said, almost in awe. His free hand shyly explored you, cupping your tits, sliding over your soft stomach gently. "I've thought about this so much... is that okay?"

You arched into his touch and he whimpered. He freed leaking cock from the confines of his pants and rubbed it against your pussy with shaky hips.

"Can I? Please?" he asked, voice cracking.

At your nod, he pushed inside you slowly, gasping loudly as your tight heat enveloped him. "Mmn, Doppio--!" you moaned, back arching.

"Nngh! You're so warm and soft inside," he whined, eyes fluttering. "It feels way too good..." He started thrusting in eager uneven strokes, fast and needy, like he couldn't hold back. Your soft curves jiggled with every frantic roll of his hips while he kept your wrists pinned above your head.

"Doppio--! AH--Yes!" you cried out, smiling through your moans.

"You're squeezing me so much," he panted, voice high and desperate. "I can't stop-- Your pussy feels so good--I love how it sucks me in." His thrusts grew faster and deeper, his free hand gripping your waist as he buried his face in your neck, whimpering and moaning sweetly against your skin.

"Feels so good--I'm gonna lose my mind," he babbled, hips snapping eagerly. "You're so perfect--So wet--I want to stay inside you forever! ♥~"

He kept thrusting with enthusiastic, loving energy, never letting your wrists go, his cute desperate sounds mixing with your louder moans until both of you were lost in pleasure.

Diavolo

There was no buildup to it, You were standing by the window one moment, and slammed against the wall by Diavolo the next. His massive hand pinning both wrists above your head while the other gripped your throat.

"You spoke out of turn in front of my subordinates," he said, voice ice-cold.

He ripped your clothes off with zero patience and his eyes burned as he pulled out his heavy cock and lifted you effortlessly, forcing your legs around his waist.

"You wanted my attention?" he growled. "Then take it like you earned it."

He thrust up into you brutally, burying every inch in one savage stroke. "Mmmph--Dia!" you choked out.

"Silence," he snarled, but kept going. He slammed you against the wall with every snap of his hips, causing your tits to bounce as hard as they were able to while he fucked you with terrifying intensity.

"This pussy is mine," he hissed against your ear, grip on your wrists bruising. "I own every inch of you. Say it while I ruin you."

"Fuck!--I-It's yours! All yours--Only yoursss ♥" you moaned brokenly, voice cracking with every devastating thrust.

Diavolo's pace was unrelenting, hips driving up harder. "Louder," he demanded, teeth sinking into your neck. "I want to hear how a defiant little slut sounds when she's impaled on my cock." He angled his thrusts to hit deep and brutal, grinding against your most sensitive spot without mercy.

You could only answer with loud, sobbing moans as he fucked you senseless against the wall, never once letting your wrists escape his iron grip.

He carried you to the bed without pulling out, throwing you down and immediately resuming his ruthless rhythm. "What a slut," he growled, staring down with dark satisfaction. "Falling apart so easily. Pathetic... yet you take me so well."

His thrusts grew even harder, more possessive, like he was trying to brand himself into you. Low, dangerous groans escaped him as he drove deeper, claiming you completely until your screams of his name filled the entire room.

Risotto

He had been watching you all evening. Not obviously, but you felt those red and black eyes on you the entire night. The second the door locked, he moved.

He caught both your wrists in one massive hand and spun you around, pressing your front against the wall. He pinned your wrists high above your head, his towering body caging you in from behind.

"You've been testing me all night," he said roughly. "And don't think that I didn't notice how you wore nothing underneath this dress all evening."

His free hand shoved the hem of your dress up over your hips, confirming what he already suspected, that you were completely bare underneath.

He took out his cock and rubbed the fat head along your soaked folds, teasing you open before he thrust in with one powerful stroke, burying himself to the hilt.

"Risotto--ah fuuuahhck~♥" you moaned, cheek pressed against the cool wall.

He started fucking you with long, heavy thrusts, each one driving you up onto your toes as your ass rippled with every snap of his hips.

His free hand came down hard with a sharp, loud smack on your ass, the sting blooming hot across your skin.

"Mm," he hummed quietly.

Another firm spank landed, then another, perfectly timed with his deep thrusts. The mix of his cock stretching you open and the sharp impacts made your knees buckle.

"Stay still," he commanded when your hips tried to push back.

You moaned louder as he fucked you harder, his hand continuing its assault, leaving your ass burning. Every time your pussy clenched around him, he rewarded you with another hard smack.

"Eyes forward," he ordered when you tried to glance back.

His pace stayed devastatingly controlled, deep and punishing, while his palm kept coming down on your reddening ass. The wet sounds of your bare pussy taking his cock mixed with the sharp crack of skin on skin.

"Good," he said lowly, landing a particularly hard spank as he drove deep.

Your soft body jolted between him and the wall as he kept your wrists pinned high above your head the entire time, dominating you completely from behind while his free hand continued delivering firm, stinging slaps.

"You wanted this," he murmured, almost too quiet to hear, as his thrusts grew faster and more urgent.

Proscuitto

He was pacing the hotel room, tie loose, clearly at the end of his patience. You stepped in front of him, kissed him hard, and pushed him toward the bed, but he turned the tables instantly, grabbing both your wrists and slamming them above your head into the mattress as he loomed over you.

"Ah-ah, tonight we are doing it my way," he said sharply, eyes narrowed.

He stripped you efficiently, your shirt, skirt, and panties gone in seconds. His free hand explored with sharp precision, pinching your nipples, tracing your curves, then sliding between your thighs to spread your slick folds.

"Already this wet when we've barely done anything?" he scoffed, though his voice had grown husky. "Embarrassing."

"Prosciutto--"

He freed his flushed cock and rubbed the head firmly against your pussy before thrusting inside. "Ahh f-fuck--" you gasped sharply, back arching high.

"Watch your mouth," he growled, but his hips had already started moving with sharp, rhythmic thrusts that hit deep and precise every single time. Your soft body bounced beneath him from the force as he kept your wrists pinned firmly.

He angled his hips and drove against that sensitive spot inside you relentlessly. "Do you feel how perfectly you take me? It's like this cunt was made to squeeze my cock."

"Nngh--! Ahh--! Please--Proscu-oouuuu~♥" you moaned loudly, legs shaking around his waist.

His pace was relentless but controlled, every thrust calculated to drive you higher. "You can do better than that," he demanded, leaning down to bite your collarbone. "I want to hear exactly what I do to you." His free hand gripped your thigh, spreading you wider as he thrust harder, faster, the wet sounds of your pussy filling the room.

"Prosciutto I'm--I'm going to--" Your moans turned into broken sobs as pleasure coiled tighter.

"Don't hold back," he hissed. "I want you screaming my name."

He kept thrusting, pushing you closer and closer to the edge with every perfectly aimed stroke until you were trembling violently beneath him.

Melone

"You wore that on purpose, didn't you?" he said from the foot of the bed, eyes devouring you. "That neckline... the way it clings to your breasts. You knew I'd be staring."

"Maybe I did." You propped yourself on your elbows. "What are you going to do about it?"

Melone crawled over you instantly, catching both wrists and pinning them above your head, his grip was surprisingly strong as he pressed them firmly into the pillow.

His moved his free hand slid down your body, pushing the hem of your dress up around your hips. The easy access made him groan softly as he dragged his mouth down your throat, sucking hard at your pulse while grinding his clothes cock against your panties.

"So needy already," he whispered, voice trembling, although it wasn't clear if he was speaking about you or himself. He shoved your dress higher, bunching it around your waist, then pulled your panties aside before his fingers spread your dripping folds, circling your swollen clit before sliding two fingers deep inside you, curling them slowly.

"Ahh--mmm, Melone!~♥" you moaned loudly, snapping your thighs tightly around his hand.

He teased you relentlessly, pumping his fingers while his thumb worked your clit until you were trembling and begging. Only then did he free his cock and hold one of your thighs open so he could rub his head along your slick entrance, teasing you one last time before pushing inside you slowly, stretching you open inch by inch.

"Nngh--! So tight... so hot~♥" he groaned, eyes fluttering. "Your cunt is gripping me perfectly ♥"

He started thrusting in varying rhythms, deep and exploratory, then quick and shallow, chasing every moan you made.

"Listen to you," he panted, voice breaking. "Moaning so beautifully when I hit right here--" He angled his hips and drove against that sensitive spot, making you cry out sharply.

"Fuck.. your pussy keeps fluttering around me." His pace turned frantic, hips snapping with growing desperation. "This is exactly what you wanted, isn't it? Wearing this dress... giving me such easy access. Admit it, you wanted me to pin you down and breed you."

Illuso

You were on your back on his bed when Illuso caught both your wrists and pinned them above your head with one hand. His other hand tilted your chin upward, forcing your gaze to the large ceiling mirror.

"Look up," he commanded softly.

You did and you saw your body spread beneath him, thick thighs parted around his hips, wrists trapped in his grip, chest rising and falling rapidly. Illuso knelt between your legs, dark hair falling forward, watching you watch yourself.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Your ridiculous mirror," you muttered.

"Look again." His free hand slid down your body while you watched from above. He pushed your shirt up and off, then dragged your bottoms down, exposing you completely. His fingers traced over your tits to the generous flare of your hips.

"There," he murmured. "See how beautiful you look when I touch you?"

Your face burned. "T-This is embarrassing."

"This is art." He pulled out his cock and rubbed the leaking head along your soaked folds, teasing your swollen clit. "Eyes on the mirror. Don't look away."

"Illu--"

He pushed inside you in one smooth, deep thrust. "SsssoO~♥" you moaned loudly as he stretched your tight pussy open.

"Nngh... fuck, look at that," he groaned, staring up at the mirror. "Watch how perfectly your cunt takes me." He began thrusting in slow, deliberate strokes, hips rolling with sensual control. You saw your curves bounce and ripple beneath him with every thrust while he kept your wrists restained.

"See how your tits move when I drive in deep?" he whispered, voice dripping with appreciation. "The way your thighs tremble... how your stomach quivers. You're stunning like this."

"Nngh--AhHh!" you cried out, unable to stop watching the erotic sight above you.

"Keep your eyes open," he ordered, thrusting harder, angling to hit that perfect spot inside you. "I want you to see what I see. How your pussy grips me... how your whole body responds when I fuck you like this." His pace quickened, the wet sounds of your bodies echoing

"Mmm, your expression is so beautiful when you're full of me," he panted, eyes locked on the mirror. "I could watch you take my cock forever."

He never released your wrists, forcing you to watch every thrust, every moan, every tremble in the mirror until you were shaking and crying out his name.

TAG LIST: @disturbyakuya

"Most people haven't watched you wince reaching for every bottle today. Lie down."

He threw himself face-first onto the bed with enthusiasm and you climbed up beside him, swinging one leg over to straddle his lower back, your full weight settling onto your knees. He groaned loudly before your hands even made contact.

"Shanks, I haven't even started yet."

He shrugged. "I'm pre-enjoying it."

You decided he didn't need a warning before you started and pressed down on the space between his shoulder blades. The groan that came out of him was raw and deep, nothing like his pre-enjoyment one. "Fuuuuuuck, baby.--Yeah, that's the good stuff."

It became clear to you that years of one-armed swordsmanship and casual brawling had turned his muscles into a landscape of neglect. You dug your thumbs along the ridge of his spine in slow ascending circles, and every ounce of tension left his body at once.

"Do you ever actually take care of yourself?" you asked, leaning your entire bodyweight into a knot near his armed shoulder that felt like a buried stone.

"That's what I have you for," he mumbled, words already dissolving into the pillow.

You shook your head, smiling, and moved lower. His back was a map of old battles he laughed about at dinner but clearly still felt. Your knuckles rolled along the tight bands above his hips and he shifted beneath you with a sound that heated your face.

You kept going anyway, thorough and unhurried, tracing every abused muscle from neck to tailbone before pulling his arm toward you and working down from shoulder to fingertip. Each scarred knuckle uncurled as you rubbed the calluses smooth.

Minutes passed. His breathing had gone deep and rhythmic, red hair spilled everywhere like a tide.

"Hey Shanks... You awake?"

Silence. He was out like a light.

Dracule Mihawk

"Take your coat off."

Mihawk studied you from across the room, those hawk-gold eyes of his followed each movement as you set out oil and cleared the floor.

"I have no injuries requiring attention..."

"Three days of nonstop training and you haven't loosened your grip on that sword once. Your forearms are doing the talking your mouth won't. Coat. Off. Now."

A beat of silence. Then, without breaking eye contact, he undressed with meticulous precision, each garment folded and placed down with care.

He somehow made even this feel like a duel he intended to win on composure alone.

He laid face down on the arranged blankets, and every line of his body remained perfectly rigid. You knelt beside him, laid both palms flat between his shoulders, and met exactly what you'd anticipated, refusal to yield in every fiber of his back.

"Y'know, breathing would help."

"I am breathing."

"You're rationing air. Breathe out, all the way."

He complied, and you rode that exhale down, driving your thumbs deep into the muscles at the base of his skull. One finger beside his head twitched. Nothing else. But you learned his body language by now, and that twitch was practically a shout.

You used your forearms next, pressing them flat along the broad planes of his back and rolling forward with your full body behind each stroke. The man was corded steel from neck to hip. You found each place where the tension had fossilized and bore down without apology, patient and relentless, matching his stubbornness with your own.

When you finally gathered one forearm into your lap, his fingers were locked as if he was still gripping his sword. You pressed both thumbs into his muscles, working from elbow to wrist in slow passes and felt the his grip loosen by a degree. His hands were large with long fingers, and you gave each one your attention until his hand rested open against your thigh.

"You are..." He paused for long enough that you thought he might not finish. "...remarkably persistent."

"Learned from the best. He carries a giant sword and stubborn as a mule in his own way."

His eyes remained closed, but the corner of his mouth shifted by exactly one millimeter.

Donquixote Doflamingo

"Fuffuffu, and here I thought tonight was going to be boring."

He was sprawled across the couch, legs stretched to the length of it, feathered coat fanning out behind him in every direction. The grin hadn't left his face since you made the suggestion to massage him. If anything, it got wider.

"I'm going to need you to take this seriously for once in your life."

"I take everything seriously. Especially entertainment."

"Shut up and strip 'Mingo, I won't ask again."

He stood, and the full absurd height of him unfolded until you were craning your neck. His coat dropped first, its pink feathers pooling on the floor. Then his shirt. He made a show of it, rolling his shoulders, turning so you could see every carved line of his torso. Performing even though his audience was just you.

He dropped onto the bed stomach-first with enough force to bounce the mattress. His chin propped on folded arms, sunglasses still perched in place.

"There, happy? Now impress me."

You straddled his lower back and your thighs barely spanned the width of him. The terrain ahead was almost absurd, acres of taut muscle that seemed to go on forever. You placed both palms flat on his shoulders and drove downward with everything you had.

The grin flickered.

"That all you've go--"

Your elbow found the snarl of tension beneath his left shoulder blade and ground into it with a slow, merciless rotation. His sentence died and his teeth ground together. Through his locked jaw came one tight exhale that he absolutely did not want you to hear.

You smirked seeing his body ever so slightly. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"...Just keep going bitch."

His attempt to mock you landed on deaf ears as your fists tracked up his spine, pressing into each groove. Your thumbs then carved channels through the bunched muscles of his neck. When you shifted lower and dug into the knotted bands along his ribs, his fingers twisted the sheets into white-knuckled fistfuls.

"For a bitch I seem to be doing a good job at unravelling you, no?" you said as your palms swept across his lower back.

"Get over yourself." he muttered, voice stripped of its usual venmon, sunglasses slid halfway down his nose. You lifted them off and put them on yourself.

"Mmm, no.--Also, these are mine now."

It was fortunate you were his favourite, otherwise you'd be dead by now.

Charlotte Katakuri

He almost refused. But his shoulder had been bothering him all day, and he knew you caught him rolling it when he thought nobody was looking.

"For me?" you asked quietly, the concern in your voice made his walls crack immediately.

He held your gaze for a long breath, then lowered himself to the floor without a word. A standard bed couldn't hold and you prepared for this, layering every spare blanket into a pallet wide enough for him. He settled face down, arms folded beneath his forehead, and the sheer scale of him made the room feel small.

You climbed onto his back like scaling a hillside. Your knees bracketed his spine, your full weight was barely anything to him. The muscles under your hands felt less like a body and more like building. Dense, enormous, and reinforced.

"Where does it hurt the most?" you started.

"It... doesn't hurt."

"Katakuri, I know what I saw earlier, don't lie to me."

He paused. "...Between my shoulders."

You found it immediately. A knot the size of your fist buried deep in the thick muscle that connected his neck to his shoulder. You stacked both thumbs on top of it and bore down, letting gravity and your entire body feed the pressure. His ribs expanded in a long, uneven breath, and the exhale that followed came out with hesitance.

You stayed there until the knot surrendered, then moved outward across the vast terrain of his back, driving your elbows into the places your hands couldn't reach deep enough.

He was silent through most of it, but his breathing kept betraying him, catching in small places when you found pain points he'd been tolerating for too long.

"Everyone relies on you," you said, working your fists along the muscles above his hips. "Who do you relies on though?"

No answer. But one massive hand drifted back and found your knee. His fingers curled around it and stayed, thumb resting against the curve of your leg.

The tension left him in layers as you continued massaging him, like peeling back years of standing guard.

"You can come me for help sometimes," you told him. "I'm not going anywhere."

His grip on your knee tightened once. Brief and deliberate.

That was his answer and it was enough for you.

Crocodile

The office had gone quiet hours ago. His pen moved across documents with mechanical precision, but you'd noticed his shoulders creeping higher and higher toward his ears over the last hour. A tell he'd never admit to having.

"Come with me."

"No."

"That wasn't a question." You walked to the desk and planted both hands flat on the papers he was writing on. "You're turning into a gargoyle. Your neck will be a lost cause if you sit here for another hour."

His pen stopped, heavy-lidded eyes lifting to meet yours, and for a moment you thought he'd dismiss you entirely. But something in the way you held his gaze must have landed, because he set the pen down and followed you without speaking.

His shirt came off behind the closed door, and he laid face down on the mattress like he was submitting to a medical procedure.

You took your place beside him and pressed your fingers into the column of his neck. Granite. Absolute granite from skull to shoulder, every tendon was pulled so tight you could have plucked them like strings. You braced one hand against his shoulder and dug the thumb of the other deep into the muscle below his ear, dragging downward.

Nothing. Not a sound or even a twitch. The man could take a cannon blast without flinching, so you hadn't expected this to be easy anyways.

You laid both your forearms flat across his upper back and leaned forward, letting your full body become the tool, rolling slow and heavy from his shoulders toward his spine. Something deep in the tissue gave way with an almost audible release, and his breathing changed. Just barely. A fraction slower on the exhale.

"Finally found it," you murmured.

"Found what."

"The part where your body finally admits it's human."

He said nothing to that, but didn't argue either, which from Crocodile amounted to a admission.

You kept working, mapping the topography of old damage across his back. Healed fractures. Scar tissue thick as rope. Places where the muscle had rebuilt itself around trauma and never quite learned to let go. You honored each one, pressing around it, coaxing the surrounding tissue to loosen its grip.

His hook rested at his side, motionless. But his remaining hand, curled beside his head, had gradually opened as you worked your way down his spine.

"Every now and then," you said while continuing your work, "you could just tell me when something hurts."

A very long silence.

"...This is enough for now."

Your lips twitched and you pressed a kiss to the back of his neck and his breathing told you he'd finally, grudgingly, let go of the tension.

Caesar Clown

"Shurororo! What is happening?! Why are there candles?!"

He was orbiting the room at ceiling height, legs trailing into vapor, pointing at your setup with the kind of alarm usually reserved for a chemical spill. The pillows, the oil, the cleared table, all of it apparently constituted a threat to his scientific worldview.

"It's a massage. You need one desperately. Get down here!"

"I need nothing of the sort! My body operates at peak efficiency! Every cell is performing exactly as it--"

"You literally cried picking up a beaker this morning."

"That was an involuntary vocalization brought on by a temperature fluctuation!"

"Okay fine. It was a yelp, Caesar. A tiny, sad yelp. If you want your lackeys to hear it next time fine, if not, get on the table."

He materialized his full form with reluctance, landing on the floor and shedding his lab coat with the wounded dignity of a man being asked to surrender state secrets.

Beneath it, his frame was lean and hunched, the product of someone who treated his own body as an afterthought to his brain. He arranged himself face down on the table, still muttering about having his work interrupted.

You placed your hands on his upper back and felt the full scope of his neglect. His muscles had layer upon layer of tension from countless nights passed out over research notes in positions that would make a chiropractor weep.

Your thumbs pressed into the channels beside his spine and he made a noise like a teakettle releasing steam. High, involuntary, immediately followed by a fierce(?), "--I meant to do that."

"Of course you did hun."

You worked up towards his neck, where the muscles had shortened and bunched from perpetual hunching. Each knead drew another sound out of him, a squeak here, a sharp inhale there that he couldn't govern no matter how hard he tried. When you found a cluster of knots between his shoulder blades and pressed your knuckles into them with slow rotation, his fingers gripped the edges of the table and his forehead dropped flat against the cushion.

"This is," he started, voice cracking, "purely therapeutic and I am only allowing it because a healthy body supports a healthy mind and--"

"Caesar for fucks sake, just enjoy it."

A strangled pause. "...Fine."

You moved to his arms, where the muscles were wiry and perpetually clenched from pipette work and stirring and whatever chaos his hands got up to in the lab each day. His fingers fought you at first, but you coaxed each one open with patient pressure until his hands lay flat and still.

By the time you finished, his eyes were barely open. You brushed his hair off his forehead and his whole face turned toward your touch on instinct, chasing it without thought or pretense.

"Tomorrow?" you asked.

One eye cracked open. He tried to summon something imperious and landed somewhere closer to hopeful.

"I suppose I'll allow it, if it proves to improve my workflow."

Buggy

"No. Absolutely not. Nope. Not happening. I know what this is, this is a setup, you're going to crack my spine and I'll split into forty pieces and then who's going to put me back together, huh? WHO!?"

He'd been backing away from you since you mentioned the word "massage," both hands up, nose red with indignation, feet already lifting off the floor in preparation for a full aerial retreat.

You caught him by the wrist before he could float away.

"Buggy. Sit down, while I'm still asking nicely."

"I will NOT sit down! I am Captain Buggy, the genius, the legend, the future King of the Pirates, and I will not be manhandled into some--"

"You've been rubbing your own neck for two days and whimpering in your sleep."

His mouth opened then closed before pausing for a moment. "...I do not whimper."

"Try telling that to someone who you don't sleep with next time, maybe they'll believe you." You let your implication hang in the air without clarification.

He sat reluctantly on the edge of the bed, rigid as a plank, eyeing the bottle of oil in your hand like it contained poison. His outfit came off in stages, each piece removed with exaggerated caution, until he was bare from the waist up and looking at you like a man about to face execution.

"If anything detaches, that's on you."

"Noted, wouldn't be a first time. Turn around." Again, you let the implication hang.

It was a mystery if he was reading between the lines or not.

He obeyed, presenting you with a back that was carrying tension in places you didn't know tension could live. You settled behind him, your legs on either side of his hips, and pressed both thumbs into the muscles at the base of his neck.

The noise he made could only be described as a deflation. Every cubic inch of bluster leaving his body in a single, trembling exhale. His head dropped forward like someone had cut the strings holding it up.

"Oh~" he breathed. "Oh, that's...Mm!"

"Good yeah?"

"Don't let it go to your head."

You grinned against his shoulder and kept working. His muscles were a patchwork of strain and neglect, tight everywhere, tender in most places. You kneaded across his shoulders, pressing your chest against his back for leverage, and felt each knot pop and release beneath your fingers. He twitched and hissed at the sore spots but leaned into you rather than pulling away, his body betraying what his mouth refused to admit.

When you moved to his arms, things got complicated. Your thumb pressed too deep into his bicep and the forearm below the elbow detached entirely, floating gently upward. You caught it without breaking rhythm, tucked it against your lap, and kept massaging the upper portion.

"Sorry! That happens when I, uh--"

"I know. Relax. I've got it." You reattached the forearm and ran your palms down the full length, smoothing over the seam until his fingers uncurled. He watched you handle the disconnected pieces of him without flinching, and something in his expression crumbled quietly in a place he thought you couldn't see.

You moved behind him again and pulled him back until he was leaning against your chest, your arms wrapped around his middle, chin resting on his shoulder. His hand found yours and held on.

"That's probably enough for today, should we do this more often?" you asked, knowing that despite being together for a while now, he didn't totally believe your motives yet.

He simply nodded as he realized maybe--maybe, you liked him genuinely.

Smoker

He had been standing at the railing for over an hour, jacket open, two cigars burning low between his teeth, staring out into the ocean. You watched the way he kept rolling his left shoulder and decided enough was enough.

"Inside. Now."

He turned his head just enough to look at you sideways. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You've been grinding your teeth and favoring that shoulder since this morning. I set everything up already, so you can either walk in there with me or I can make a scene in front of your entire crew."

He recognized that arguing on this would cost him more energy than complying, so he bit down on both cigars, exhaled a thick cloud through his nose, and followed you below deck without another word.

His quarters were sparse. Military neat. You cleared the small table and covered it in folded blankets to give him somewhere to lie down. He eyed the setup, then you, then back at the setup.

"Cigars first." you stated, holding your hand out to receive them.

"No."

"Smoker, do you want me to scream? In your quarters no less? HR will be back on your ass quick, after you just got them to leave us alone."

He held your gaze for five full seconds before pulling them from his mouth and placing them in the ashtray near his bunk. The jacket fell next, then the shirt beneath it, revealing a torso built like a battering ram. Stocky and thick, packed so dense with muscle that you knew your fingers had their work cut out for them.

He dropped onto the table face down, arms folded tight beneath his forehead. He was rigid from scalp to heel. Braced, like he expected a fight to break out at any moment.

You started at his shoulders, pressing your palms flat against the broad caps of muscle and squeezing with slow, deliberate force. He held steady for the first few passes, giving you absolutely nothing.

So you changed tactics. Both thumbs stacked on top of each other, you found the gnarled mess buried deep in his left shoulder and bore straight down into it.

His breath left him in a rough, involuntary burst. His fingers curled once against his own forearm.

"There we go~" you murmured in satisfaction to yourself and kept the pressure steady until the knot began to lose its hold.

His lower back was a different story entirely. Everything he carried sat right there, locked into the thick columns of muscle on either side of his spine. You folded both fists and pressed them in, rolling upward with your full weight, and a groan came out of him so loud you swore it it vibrated the table.

"Not. A. Word," he said immediately.

"Damn, maybe HR's gonna come for me instead this time.."

"The hell did I just say?"

You bit down on your grin and kept going. When you finished, you sat on the edge of the table beside him. His eyes were still open, but barely, the permanent furrow between his brows smoothed for once.

"Feel better?"

He grunted, reached for his cigars, and paused. Then his hand changed direction and landed on your thigh and squeezed once as he exhaled smoke.

"...Yeah."

TAG LIST: @matronofthevoid

His hips shifted with one leg braced against the floor and your entire axis flipped so smoothly you didn't process the motion until your back was already sinking into the cushions with both your wrists gathered in one of his hands above your head. His free hand still held his report while his thumb kept his page.

He looked down at you with genuine confusion.

"Was that... were you trying to pin me?"

"What did it look like, Tsuna?"

"Honestly? I thought you tripped." he laughed softly, though it died short seeing your frustration.

He set his report on the armrest and resettled his grip on your wrists more deliberately, his thumb resting right against your pulse. He shifted forward and the full, focused weight of his attention landed on you in a way that somehow made your failed ambush worth it.

"Your hips gave it away. You lean left before you commit every time." His head tilted to study your face as your frustration began to ease. "Try dropping your center of gravity first and you might actually have a chance."

"Are you seriously coaching me right now?"

"Probably counterproductive, yeah." His eyes tracked from your face downward with absolutely no rush, and he settled more of his weight against you, enough to make your breath hitch. "Your heart is going really fast."

"Because I just got judo-flipped on my own couch!"

"I barely moved."

"That just makes it worse and you know it."

His forehead dropped to yours and he stayed there, breathing you in, thumbs still circling your pulse.

"Try again after dinner. I'll give you a head start."

"I hate you."

"Mm. Your heart rate says otherwise."

TYL!Hayato Gokudera

He was leaning against the kitchen counter scrolling through his phone when you struck, hooking your foot behind his ankle and shoving both palms flat against his chest.

His phone clattered to the tile and his back hit the counter's edge. You grabbed his wrists and bore down with your full weight, pinning them against the granite. Or so you thought.

Gokudera stared at you and you stared back, triumphant, before he moved so fast your vision blurred.

You suddenly found your cheek pressed against cool granite with both arms bent behind your back, his chest flush against your back.

"The hell was that?" he snapped, slightly out of breath. Not from exertion but from the adrenaline you just dumped into his bloodstream.

"It was a surprise attack! You're supposed to be impressed!"

"You knocked my phone on the floor. The screen better not be cracked."

"That's your concern right now? Really?"

His grip on your wrists tightened, then loosened, then tightened again, like he couldn't decide whether to let you go or keep you exactly where you were. His breathing was rough against the back of your neck.

"Who taught you ambush someone like that?"

"Nobody! It was spontaneous!"

"That explains a lot." His thumb dragged across the inside of your wrist, a distracted, possessive gesture he probably wasn't even aware of. "It was spontaneous and horribly executed."

"Let me up." you struggled against his hold.

"No."

"Hayato."

"You started this." His voice dropped, mouth somewhere behind your ear now. "You don't get to just launch yourself at me and expect me to--Ugh, what were you even thinking!?"

"That it would be fun!"

Silence. Then a rough exhale that fanned hot across your neck, and his forehead thunked against your shoulder like your stupidity physically exhausted him.

"Why do I attract idiots so much?"

"Is that a compliment?"

"...Sure, why not?"

TYL!Takeshi Yamamoto

You caught him mid-stretch in the hallway, his arms were overhead and his eyes half-closed in a yawn.

It was the perfect opening.

You rushed him low, wrapped both arms around his midsection, and drove forward with your legs, fully intending to take him off his feet and onto the floor.

Yamamoto didn't fall. He rocked back on his heels, absorbed the entire impact while smiling and looked down at you clinging to his torso.

"Oh! Are we wrestling?"

"We're supposed to be! Go down!" you continued to try and shove him over to no avail.

"Hmm, nah."

He peeled your arms open like you were a child hanging off a jungle gym, turned you, and dropped you both to the hallway rug in one fluid motion.

Your back hit the carpet and his knees bracketed your hips. Both your hands were pressed flat to the floor above your head with his fingers laced through yours like you were just holding hands and not actively keeping you immobilized.

He was grinning, completely unbothered.

"You gotta go for the legs sweetie."

"I put my entire weight into that though!"

"Yeah, I felt it! It was a good effort for your first try." He squeezed your fingers. "Solid impact. Seriously."

"Don't patronize me, Takeshi!"

"I'm not! You moved me like two inches. That's a lot, coming from the front." His head cocked sideways, dark eyes bright with a kind of delighted, overflowing energy. "Most people go from behind for a reason y'know."

"I wanted to see your face!"

His grin softened hearing that, and leaned down until your noses bumped.

"Yeah?" His voice came out easy but lower. "Well, you've got it now."

"...This backfired on me." Your eyes darted away from his as you felt your face heat up.

"Did it though?" He pressed your joined hands a little harder into the carpet, settling his weight just enough that your hips were completely locked. "Seems like you ended up exactly where you wanted to be."

"I wanted to be on top though" you huffed, still avoiding eye-contact.

"...Best two out of three after dinner?" he tilted his head.

Your eyes shifted to his with newfound determination. "You're on."

TYL!Ryohei Sasagawa

You waited until he was mid-rep on the living room floor, arms shaking through his four hundredth push-up of the evening, and dropped your full weight directly onto his back.

He didn't collapse. His arms locked, absorbing you without a single wobble, and he cranked out three more push-ups with you sprawled across him like a human blanket.

"FOUR-HUNDRED AND ONE! FOUR-HUNDREAD AND TWO! FOUR-HUNDRED AND--wait." He turned his head, one eye finding you over his shoulder. "When did you get there?"

"I've been here for the last three push-ups, Ryohei!"

"OH! I thought I was hitting my limit there for a moment!"

You scrambled to hook your arms under his and roll him sideways, throwing every ounce of leverage you had into the motion. He tipped due to loss of balance not your strength, and you lunged for his wrists the second his back hit the carpet.

You got one pinned. The other hand came up and simply placed itself next to the first, like he was trying to do you a favor. Which frankly, pissed you off more than anything.

"Am I down? I'M DOWN!--Uh, what happens next?" He looked completely stumped.

"You're supposed to struggle!"

"WHY WOULD I STRUGGLE? My wife is on top of me! This is the EXTREME opposite of a problem!" His face was flushed from the workout, white hair stuck to his forehead, chest heaving because of the small marathon workout he completed tonight. "Is this a new exercise? Are we doing a circuit?"

"This is not a circuit!"

"It could be though! Pin drills! Grappling cardio! We could add it to the morning routine!"

"I don't have a morning routine!"

"EXACTLY! This could be the start!" His pinned hands curled and his fingers wrapped around your wrists instead, reversing the grip completely without moving his arms. One sharp sit-up later and you were in his lap, legs splayed, his face inches from yours. He wasn't even trying. The man had simply decided to be upright.

"Your reaction time was incredible though. You picked the EXACT moment my stabilizers were engaged!"

"Thank... you?" Now you were the one confused.

"We're doing this every night! Tuesdays and Thursdays we add weights!"

"We are not doing this every nigh--"

"I'LL START MEAL PREPPING!"

He was already carrying you toward the kitchen, one arm hooked under you, free hand reaching for the drawer where he kept a truly alarming collection of containers.

20YL!Lambo

You crept up behind the couch where he was sprawled, one leg thrown over the backrest, scrolling through his phone with boneless laziness. Then, you vaulted over the armrest, straddled his waist, and slammed both his wrists into the cushion above his head.

Lambo kept a firm grip on his phone.

"Hm." He looked up at you, half-lidded, completely unimpressed. "You done?"

"I have you!"

"Do you though?" He shifted his weight with barely any effort, and the couch did the rest. The cushion sank under your knee, your balance vanished, and one lazy roll later you were wedged between him and the backrest with his elbow propped on your hip like an armrest.

He went back to scrolling.

"Lambo!"

"What? You attacked me during my free time. That's on you."

"You didn't even try!"

"Didn't need to." He locked his phone and tucked it into his back pocket without shifting off you. His cheek dropped against his fist, elbow still using your hip as a prop, and he regarded you with sleepy arrogance that only he could make this infuriating. "The couch did most of the work. You picked terrible terrain."

"I'm going to smother you with this throw pillow I swear to--" he interrupted you before you could finish.

"See, that's a better strategy. Shows initiative." His free hand found your thigh and settled there, thumb tracing an absent circle. "The pin thing, though? Sloppy. No base. You just threw yourself at me and hoped for the best."

"It works in the movies though!"

"Movies don't hire trained mafia members." He stretched slowly, pressing you further into the cushions. His mouth found the hinge of your jaw without any apparent urgency. "If you wanted to be under me you could've just asked."

"That is NOT what this was about!"

"Mm. Sure." Another lazy kiss, this one below your ear. "You wanna try again, or are you comfortable? Because I'm very comfortable right now."

"I'm... comfortable."

"Thought so."

TYL!Kyoya Hibari

He was standing at the window of his office, back to the door, reading something on his phone. You removed your shoes, controlled your breathing, and planned the exact angle of approach for maximum leverage.

You only made it two steps into the room before his hand closed around your wrist and the ceiling swapped places with the floor.

Your shoulder blades hit the hardwood, and Hibari's knee landed beside your ribs. One hand pinning your wrists overhead. The other still held his phone.

He hadn't looked away from the screen once.

Your lungs remembered how to work after about three seconds of silence.

"...How?"

"You breathe too loudly."

"I was holding my breath though!"

"Not well enough." He scrolled something on his phone, thumb moving with calm precision while his other hand kept your wrists flattened to the floor without apparent effort. "You also shifted your weight to your right foot before entering. The floorboard in the doorway has a specific sound."

"We've lived here for years and you've memorized the floorboards?"

The look he gave you could have frozen the sun. Except, and you learned to catch this over time, the very corner of his mouth was tilting up almost imperceptibly. It wasn't a smile by any means but it was a fracture his composure nonetheless.

"Why." He didn't phrase it as a question. He never did.

"I wanted... to see if I could pin you." you murmured in defeat.

"You couldn't."

"Well I know that now, thank you!"

He set his phone on the floor beside your head and transferred his full attention onto to you in a way that felt like stepping into a spotlight.

"Your approach was poor and predictable with no contingency if the initial contact failed..."

"Is this a critique?"

"It's a challenge." His knee shifted and his grip tightened by a fraction. He leaned down until his mouth was close enough that his words landed against your skin. "Come at me correctly next time."

"That implies there is a correct way though."

"There is. I won't be teaching you though."

TYL!Mukuro Rokudo

You had been planning this for a week. After all, catching the illusionist off guard was no easy feat. You learned his schedule over the years and knew he would be in the study at half-past nine, drinking his tea with both hands occupied.

You slipped through the doorway, crossed the rug silently, and brought both hands down on his shoulders from behind to shove him forward onto the desk.

Except your palms hit the chairback, and said chair was suddenly empty although his teacup sat on the desk, still steaming.

"Looking for someone?"

You spun. He was leaning against the doorframe you just walked through, arms crossed, looking at you like he knew your scheme since before you left the bedroom.

"How... long have you been standing there?" you squeaked out.

"Since you started tiptoeing down the hallway. You really must work on your stealth." He pushed off the frame with one shoulder, crossing toward you with steps that made no sound. "I'll give you credit, that was an adorable attempt at an ambush."

"Don't call my ambush adorable!"

"Would you prefer 'cute?' Or perhaps 'quaint?'" The chairback you were holding onto dissapated into air and your body met the edge of his desk as one of his hands collected both your wrists behind your back.

He done it all instantaneously before you could make sense of what was happening.

"I spent a week planning that."

"I know. You kept checking the clock after dinner. Very subtle." His free hand lifted, one finger tilting your chin up as his gaze traced your features with an attention that felt almost invasive. "Did you really think tea would keep my hands that occupied?"

"I--"

"I finished it ten minutes ago and refilled the cup as a prop." His mouth curved. "Strategy is about information, dear. And you have never once been able to hide anything from me, kufufu."

"That's not fair."

"No." He leaned in, lips brushing barely brushing yours. "It isn't. That's rather the point."

TYL!Spanner

He was under some half-built project, sprawled across the workshop floor, with only his legs visible from the knees down. You could hear wrench sounds and occasional muttering towards himself.

You took this as your opportunity to grab both his ankles and yank.

He slid out on the roller board, blinking up at you through his goggles, lollipop clicking against his teeth.

"Oh. Hey. Is it dinner time already?"

You ignored his question and dropped onto his midsection, pinned his wrists to the concrete on either side of his head, and pressed down. For one glorious moment, you had him flat on his back, completely immobilized, staring up at you with engine grease on his cheekbone.

Then he hooked one leg around yours, bridged his hips using the roller board's momentum, and reversed your positions. Your back hit the roller board and he settled above you, one hand pinning both your wrists overhead, the other pulling the lollipop from his mouth.

"Your weight distribution was actually pretty good. But the roller board's friction coefficient works both ways." He pointed at her with the lollipop. "You gave me a pivot point."

"I don't know what that means, Spanner!"

"Means the board rolls. Whoever's on top is less stable than whoever redirects the momentum." He said this the way other people said pass the salt. "You should've pinned me on the concrete, I wouldn't have had the leverage then."

"I'm not taking engineering notes right now, stop ruining the fun!"

"Why not? This is basically applied physics." His goggles had gone crooked in the reversal, sitting at an angle that made one green eye look bigger than the other. He pushed them up into his hair with his free hand, then looked down at you on the board beneath him. "...Huh."

"'Huh' what?"

"Nothing. Just--the board's rated for two hundred kilos... but we should be fine like this." He said it offhandedly, already somewhere else in his head, but his thumb was tracing your wrist joint with the same focused attention he gave delicate wiring.

"Was--Was that supposed to comfort me?! Geez, you're the least romantic person alive!"

"I'm on top of you on my workshop floor and I just I just tried to suggest something subtly to you. That's extremely romantic for me."

"...That's actually a fair point."

"I know. So... would you like me to keep me googles on or off for this."

TYL!Shoichi Irie

He was at his desk, hunched over a tablet, glasses reflecting lines of data, so deep in whatever algorithm he was untangling that a bomb could've gone off in the next room and he would have asked to keep the noise down.

You grabbed the back of his chair, spun it, seized both his wrists, and pinned them to the armrests.

Shoichi screamed.

Not a dignified shout. Not a startled gasp. A full, sharp, soul-leaving-the-body scream that sent his tablet clattering off the desk and his glasses halfway down his nose.

"WHAT-- WHO--" he realized it was you, though this did nothing to calm his panic. "WHY?!?!"

"It's ME! Your WIFE!"

"I KNOW BUT THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN THE ASSAULT!"

His chest was heaving and you could literally see his pulse hammering in his throat. You were still gripping his wrists against the armrests, so technically you had him pinned.

Victory.

Except Shoichi's panic response apparently included adrenaline.

Because he lurched forward out of the chair and the momentum carried you both sideways until you hit the floor next to the desk with Shoichi on top of you, one knee between yours, hands clamped around your wrists against the carpet.

He was still shaking from the cardiac event you inflicted on him.

"Oh my god," he panted, staring down at you with horrified eyes. "Oh my god-- Are you okay? Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to--my body just did that and--"

"Shoichi."

"I-- what?" He looked at his hands on your wrists, at his position, at the full picture of the situation. The flush darkened by three entire shades. "I... oh."

"Pretty impressive, actually."

"Really?--Augh, oh no--my stomach--my stomach's doing the thing--" His face crumpled with the familiar nauseous grimace that accompanied every spike of his anxiety. "Why would you do that? I was working! I--"

"Forget the tablet, Shoichi, look at me."

He looked at you, lower lip caught between his teeth, still hovering above you with his full weight barely committed, like he was terrified of pressing down too hard.

"...What's with that look?"

"You have me pinned to the floor. This is the hottest thing you've ever done."

The sound he made was basically the verbal equivalent of a blue screen--a strangled, vowel-heavy noise that ended with him dropping his forehead against your collarbone and staying there as his hands released your wrists to cover his own face in embarrassment.

TYL!Chikusa Kakimoto

He was on the couch reading with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, completely checked out from the physical world.

You approached from behind, slow and silent, reached over the back of the couch, and grabbed both his wrists to wrench them backward.

Chikusa's book didn't even close. He looked at your hands on his wrists the way someone might look at a mildly confusing grocery receipt.

"What are you doing." he asked flatly, still looking at your hands.

"Pinning you down!"

"From behind the couch?"

"I... yes?"

"This provides you with bad leverage." His wrists rotated out of your grip and caught your elbow, before he flipped you over the couch back with a precise tug that used your own forward lean against you. You landed face-up across his lap, legs draped over the backrest, staring at the ceiling.

He picked his book back up.

"Chikusa."

"Mm."

"What just happen?"

"You were off-balance. I redirected." He turned a page. His other hand was resting on your stomach like you were an armrest. "Your grip was too high on my wrists. Closer to the base of the palm would give you better rotational control."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"No reason, just correction."

You laid there, processing the sheer indignity of being flipped then furniture'd by your husband.

"Are you going to let me up?"

"You can get up whenever you want, I'm not holding you down."

He was right. There was nothing restraining you, but you stayed in place anyhow.

"...I'll try again later."

"You'll fail again later." he flipped to another page without a glance, making you roll your eyes.

"Wow. How supportive."

He lowered his book ever so slightly. "Use your hips next time. You have the clear advantage here but you're not utilizing it properly."

"Was... that a compliment?"

The silence that followed went on long enough that you thought he'd simply chosen not to answer.

Then, barely audible over the sound of another turning page, "No, just another correction."

TYL!Ken Joshima

He was standing at the open fridge, shoving leftover yakisoba into his mouth directly from the container, making sounds that could generously be described as feral.

And not in the hot kind of way, which was fine considering your objective.

You charged him from behind, locked both arms around his torso, and threw your weight sideways to drag him to the kitchen floor.

Ken hit the tile on his hip and the yakisoba container went flying, noodles scattering across the floor like sad confetti. You scrambled on top of him, grabbed his wrists, pinned them above his head.

His jaw was still working on the mouthful. He chewed. Swallowed. Looked up at you.

"The hell!?"

"I got you! You said I couldn't do it, but you're down!"

"You made me drop my food!"

"Forget the food, Ken, I got you!"

His nostrils flared as his eyes narrowed for a moment before his body bucked under you, and the reversal happened with a snarling, graceless, completely instinctive violence that sent you onto your back so hard it left you winded.

Both your wrists were crushed to the tile above your head in one of his hands. His face was inches from yours, teeth bared, breathing hard. A noodle was stuck to his cheek.

"You. Made. Me. Drop. My. Food."

Unfortunately, being your husband for too long made his intimidation tactics less than effective at times like these.

"You..." you paused, still catching your breath while trying to find the right words. "Have yakisoba on your face."

"DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT!"

His grip tightened, chest heaving against yours. He was radiating heat like a furnace and his pupils were blown wide in a way that made the accusation in his voice deeply unconvincing. "Who just tackles someone at the fridge? What kind of psycho--"

"The kind you married!"

That shut him up for a few moments before he exhaled a rough sigh.

"...You didn't even pin me down right, dumbass."

You quirked a brow. "You think that reasoning is going to stop me from trying again?"

His face was red and his free hand was braced beside your head, claws denting into the tile. "You wanna go again huh? Try it! 'Cause I'll put you down every time--"

"Ken honey, the noodle's still on your cheek."

He swiped at it furiously with his shoulder, refuseing to release either your wrists or his dignity, and glared down at you.

"...I'm reheating more yakisoba after this."

"After what, exactly?"

The glare faltered. He looked at his hand on your wrists, at the position, at the complete picture. The red in his face spread to his ears. You smirked.

"S-Shut up!"

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face said it!... Stop looking at me like that!"

Dr. Shamal

He was slouched in a patio chair outside the house, legs crossed at the ankle, cigarette between his fingers. His stubble was two days past respectable, shirt unbuttoned one notch past decent.

You came at him from the side, grabbed both wrists, and shoved him backward in the chair, planting your knee on one of his thighs and beared down on him.

"Ohhh~" He looked up at you through half-lidded eyes, mouth curving upwards. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Stop smiling--I'm restraining you right now."

"My wife just climbed on top of me unprovoked and you don't want me to smile? That's just cruel bella." He made zero effort to free his wrists. None. His hands stayed exactly where you'd put them.

"You're supposed to try and get me off of you!"

"Why? I chased women across four continents for twenty years and then married the one who actually caught me. You think I'm going to fight this?" His cigarette hand gestured vaguely at the full picture of you in his lap. "I'm not a total idiot."

"Shamal, I'm trying to--"

"Your knee's on my femoral artery, by the way. Move it a little to the left before my leg goes numb."

"Stop diagnosing while I'm trying to one-up you!"

"Can't help it." His eyes tracked your face with open unhurried attention. "Also your shoulders are tense, have been all week."

"I wonder why!"

"Probably because your husband leaves his clothes on the bathroom floor. That's fair. I deserve this." He still hadn't moved his wrists. The cigarette was burning down between his fingers, forgotten. "Go ahead. I'll stay right here and take my punishment."

"...You're taking all the fun out of this." you sighed, weakening your grip on his.

"Am I?" One wrist turned with ease and his fingers laced through yours. "Because from where I'm sitting, and I'm very much enjoying where I'm sitting, this is fun."

"I wanted to overpower you though." You were pouting now.

"You did. Look at me. I haven't moved a muscle." His free hand finally dropped the cigarette, then settled onto your thigh with easy confidence. "You know most people need professional training and experience to pin me down. You just needed to exist."

"That is the cheesiest thing you've ever--" you scoffed.

"I've said cheesier, just ask Gokudera how I talk about you when you're not arou--Actually, don't do that. Or you might actually kill me." His thumb traced a slow line up your thigh. "You can try again whenever you want. I'll lose every time."

[If you would like to be added to a tag list for khr, let me know!]

"I'm always awake love. I sleep in shifts, like a dolphin."

"You do not sleep like a dolphin."

"You don't know that." He still hadn't opened his eyes or acknowledged what was happening below his waist. You pressed your hand flat against his stomach, just above the sheet line, and felt every muscle there tighten at once. His breathing didn't change, which meant he was controlling it on purpose.

"Kisuke."

"Hm."

"Are you going to address this?"

"Address what?" He opened one eye, and looked down. "I'm a man in his own bed in the morning. Everything happening right now is within normal biological parameters."

"Normal biological parameters."

"Yup. Completely standard."

You dragged your fingers down from his stomach, tracing the line of hair below his navel, and stopped right at the edge of the sheet. Both his eyes were open now.

"Are you conducting an experiment now?" he asked, intrigued.

"Maybe."

"You don't have a control group."

"Don't need one." You tugged the sheet down an inch. His hand shot out and caught your wrist, but he didn't push it away. He just held it there, your fingers still pinching the fabric. You could feel him measuring your heartbeat.

"Your heart rate is elevated," he observed.

"And so is something else."

That managed to finally crack him as a grin pulled across his face, not the fan-hidden shopkeeper version but the one that showed his teeth and creased the corners of his eyes.

His grip on your wrist shifted and he pulled your hand under the sheet and pressed it against him and his breath left in a rush that he couldn't disguise as anything other than what it was.

"Okay," he said, voice stripped down to nothing. "Let's continue with this experiment, I'll follow your lead."

"First time for everything."

"Don't get used to it." But his hips were already lifting into your hand and his fingers were already in your hair and he didn't take the lead back for a long time.

Isshin Kurosaki

Something poked your lower back. You were half-asleep, curled on your side, and Isshin was pressed against you the way he always slept. His arm was heavy over your waist, his face was buried in your hair, and something was very insistently pressing against the base of your spine.

You shifted your hips backward, just to confirm. The pressure increased. Isshin made a sound into your hair that was halfway between a snore and a groan and his arm tightened around you.

"Isshin."

Nothing.

"Isshin."

"Mmrgh."

"You're poking me."

A long pause. Then his arm retracted and he rolled onto his back so fast the whole bed shook. You turned over to look at him and he was staring at the ceiling with a blank expression.

"That was... my knee," he said.

"That was not your knee and we both know it."

"It could have been my knee. You don't know the exact position of my knee at all times."

"Your knee is not in the middle of your body, Isshin."

He rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled a loud and long sigh. The sheet was doing nothing to help his case. You propped yourself up on your elbow and watched the flush run up his neck and across his ears until it almost reached his hairline.

"It's morning," he said into his hands. "This happens in the morning. It's a medical thing. I'm a doctor. I can explain the whole process if you want. Blood flow, hormones, there's a very boring diagram--"

"I don't want the diagram."

He spread his fingers apart and peered at you through the gap with his eyebrows raised. "What do you want then?"

You pulled the sheet down to his thighs in one motion. His hands dropped from his face. The flush had reached his forehead now and his chest was rising and falling too fast for a man who'd been asleep thirty seconds ago.

"Oh," he said quietly.

You swung your leg over him and settled in his lap and his hands grabbed your hips immediately, fingers pressing into your skin and jaw going tight as his eyes locked on yours.

"We don't have to," he started, and his voice cracked on the second word.

"I know we don't have to."

"The kids are--"

"At school. It's Tuesday."

He stared at you. You ground down against him slowly, and everything on his face rearranged. The embarrassment burned off and what was left was the version of Isshin that remembered exactly how to take charge of a situation.

"Right. Tuesday," he repeated, and his grip on your hips tightened and he sat up underneath you so fast your breath caught. His mouth was on your throat and his hands were pulling you flush against him.

Shinji Hirako

You woke up because Shinji was laughing in his sleep. Little huffs through his nose, his mouth twitching at whatever was happening behind his eyelids. He was sprawled on his back with one arm flung over his head and the other resting on his stomach, his hair wrecked across the pillow in every direction.

The sheet had migrated south during the night and was bunched around his upper thighs, which was how you noticed the situation before he did.

You watched for a moment. Considered being polite about it. Decided against it.

You poked him in the ribs. Hard.

He flinched, swatted at your hand, and didn't open his eyes. "Five more minutes, if the house isn't on fire, I don't care."

"The house might not be on fire, but your crotch is."

One eye opened. He looked at you. A slow, disoriented blink. Then he looked down at himself and the extremely obvious state of things, and the grin that spread across his face was completely unapologetic.

"Well good morning to me~" he said.

"You're not even a little embarrassed."

"Why would I be embarrassed? This is a compliment to you. You should be flattered."

"I've been awake for thirty seconds."

"And already making an impact. Look at you miss over-achiv--errrreee" He yawned while stretching his arms over his head, his back arching off the mattress, doing absolutely nothing to address or conceal himself.

In other words, he knew you were looking and intended on going you a full show.

"You're ridiculous Shinji," you scoffed.

"You're still looking though~"

"Kind hard not to."

That landed differently than you expected. His grin stayed but his eyes narrowed, and he turned on his side to face you. His hand found your hip under the covers and pulled you toward him until your body was flush against his and there was no sheet or distance between you.

"Hi," he said, face inches from yours.

"Hi."

"You wanna help me with this or you just want to keep pointing out the obvious?" his face was millimeters away now.

"What if I want to keep pointing out the obvious?"

"Then I'm gonna lose my mind, because I'm about as patient as you think I am." His hand slid from your hip to your lower back, pressing you into him, and his mouth grazed your jaw. "Which as we both know, is not much."

You hooked your leg over his hip and he groaned against your throat, performance be damned. His fingers dug into your back and his hips rocked forward.

"Oh, are we improvising now?" you said.

"Mm, shuddup."

"Just pointing out the obvious."

He pulled back enough to look at you with a heated look.

"Well," he said. "There goes my patience."

Kensei Muguruma

You woke up on your stomach with Kensei's arm pinning you across the lower back. He slept like a barricade, heavy and immovable, and most mornings you had to physically shove him to get enough room to breathe.

But this morning when you shifted against him you felt something firm against your hip, obvious and undeniable.

You turned your head on the pillow to see that he was still out of it. Face half-buried in the mattress, jaw slack, breathing deep. Kensei asleep was one of the only times his face fully relaxed, the permanent scowl smoothed out into something almost peaceful. You rarely got to see it.

Buuuuuut.

You also rarely got to see him at a disadvantage.

You pressed your hip back against him, slow and deliberate and his breathing hitched. His arm tightened across your back and you did it again, putting more weight behind it. A low rumble started in his chest, not quite a growl, not yet a groan.

"Keeeenseeei~" You kept your voice quiet.

His eyes opened. It took him about two seconds to register the situation, his jaw clenched and he pulled his hips back from you immediately, putting an inch of distance between his body and yours.

"Don't," he said. His voice was rough with sleep and something more heated.

"Don't what?"

"Don't make it a thing."

"I'm not making it a thing, it already it is."

You rolled over onto your side, facing him. His arm was still across you but his hips were angled away now, as if that single inch of space was going to save him. You could see the tension running through his shoulders, his neck, the way his hand had curled into a fist against the mattress.

Kensei embarrassed was Kensei angry, and Kensei angry was Kensei who wanted to put his fist through a wall. Or you, ideally.

You reached over and put your hand flat on his chest and he looked at it like you just placed a live grenade there.

"It's fine, Kensei."

"I know it's fine. I didn't say it wasn't fine."

"You're scowling."

"I'm always scowling."

You rolled your eyes, "You're scowling more than usual then."

His jaw clenched while you slid your hand down from his chest to his stomach, feeling every ridge of muscle contract under your palm before you traced the edge of his 69 tattoo with your thumb.

"You don't have to make it more of thing," he said again, quieter now, going with your logic.

"What if I want to make it more of a thing?"

He looked at you and his scowl cracked. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close enough. His hand uncurled from its fist and landed on your waist, gripping hard enough to dimple your skin.

"Then get over here," he said, "and stop teasing me about it."

You closed the distance and pressed yourself against him and felt him exhale like he'd been holding it since he woke up.

His mouth found yours, rough and graceless, and his hand dragged you in by the back of your thigh. Whatever control he'd been performing dissolved the second your hips met his.

Rojuro Otoribashi (Rose)

You woke to the sound of humming. Of course you did.

Rose was on his back beside you, eyes closed, one hand conducting an invisible orchestra above his chest, fingers moving through the air in slow arcs. The morning light caught all that blonde hair spread across the pillow and made it look like something out of a gallery.

He was composing again. Probably had been for an hour.

What he had not noticed, apparently, was the sheet.

It was draped across his hips in a way that made the whole situation extremely obvious, and he was either genuinely unaware or so lost in whatever symphony was playing in his head that his body had become irrelevant background noise. Knowing Rose, it could have been either or both.

You propped yourself up on your elbows and looked as he kept humming. His conducting hand swept through a crescendo and you reached over and laid your palm flat on his stomach, just below his navel.

The humming stopped.

"Oh, good morning love." he said, eyes still closed, voice carrying the faintest vibrato.

"Morning... Love? You have bit of a situation."

"I have many situations. I'm a captain and a musician. Situations are all part of my work"

You exhaled a long sigh, "Rose. Look down at yourself."

He opened his eyes, lifted his head, and looked. He paused. Then he let his head fall back against the pillow with a sigh that somehow managed to sound melodic.

"Ah, I see... Well. The body is an instrument, and instruments don't always wait for the conductor's cue."

"Did you just... compare your penis to a musical instrument?"

"Everything is music if you listen closely enough." But his voice had lost its airy quality, because your hand was still on his stomach and your thumb had started tracing a slow line back and forth below his navel.

His conducting hand lowered and came to rest on top of yours. Not guiding, not stopping. Just holding.

"You could ignore it," you offered.

"One could ignore a thunderstorm. One could also ignore a Beethoven overture... It would be a profound waste in both cases."

"You're always so dramatic."

"I prefer passionate." He turned his head on the pillow to look at you, his eyes were focus on you. "You're not moving your hand."

"No."

"Are you planning to move it somewhere?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whether you stop comparing yourself to a cello."

He laughed and his hand closed around yours and guided it down beneath the sheet.

His breath caught when your fingers found him, a sharp intake through parted lips, and his eyes fluttered shut and opened his mouth in a gasp, his free hand fisting the pillow beside his head.

Ryuken Ishida

You opened your eyes at 5:02 AM because Ryuken's side of the bed was still occupied. That alone was unusual enough to wake you. Most mornings the sheets were already cold by the time your alarm went off, his side made with military precision.

But today he was still here. Flat on his back, one arm across his eyes, breathing evenly. The sheet were pulled to his waist in that precise way he did everything, edges straight, fabric smooth.

Although it wasn't smooth enough to hide what was underneath.

You looked. Probably for longer than you should have. Then you rolled onto your side and said, "You're still here..."

"I'm aware." His arm stayed over his eyes. His voice was flat and clipped.

"And you're--"

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to." His arm came down from his eyes and he stared at the ceiling. His jaw was tight and a muscle in his cheek was working. He looked like a man trying to perform surgery on his own composure.

You slid across the mattress until your body was against his side. He didn't move toward you, but he didn't move away either. You rested your hand on his chest, over the pressed undershirt he wore to bed.

"It's natural, Ryuken."

"I'm aware of the physiology. I am a doctor."

"Then why are you acting like you've been caught doing something wrong?"

His eyes were sharp and guarded when he looked at you, but his pupils were wide in the low light. He held your gaze for a long moment, then looked back at the ceiling.

"I am not accustomed to... being seen like this."

The sentence landed in the quiet room and stayed there. You understood what it cost him. You didn't push it. You just moved your hand from his chest down to his stomach, slow enough that he could stop you if he wanted.

He didn't.

"You don't have to do anything," you said. "I can just--"

"Don't patronize me." But his hand had come up and closed around your wrist, and instead of pulling you away he held you there, fingers tight, thumb against your pulse.

You turned your wrist in his hold, laced your fingers through his and brought his hand to your mouth before kissing his knuckles, one at a time, and watched the muscle in his jaw finally release.

"Come here," you said.

He rolled toward you stiffly, but his hand found your waist and his forehead dropped against yours. You reached between the two of you and touched him through the fabric and his whole body jerked once.

Jugram Haschwalth

You weren't sure what woke you at first.

Jugram was sleeping beside you on his back, perfectly still, perfectly composed, even in sleep. His hands folded over his stomach and his hair arranged on the pillow as if he planned its placement before closing his eyes.

Then you noticed the sheet.

There was a subtle elevation across his lap that did not match the flat, controlled lines of the sheets on top of him. You blinked at it. You blinked again.

Jugram Haschwalth. The Grandmaster, the man who ironed his cape and aligned his boots at right angles before bed... was lying with an erection pressing against Wandenreich-issued bedding like a quiet act of mutiny against his own discipline.

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

His eyes opened suddenly, like a switch being thrown and immediately fixed them on you.

"Why are you laughing," he said.

"You well--um...drawn your bedroom sword it seems."

The silence that followed was profound.

His gaze held yours and then, with enormous control, shifted downward. He observed the situation the way he might observe a battlefield irregularity, with calm assessment and absolutely no visible reaction. Then he looked back at you.

"This is merely a physiological occurrence."

"I know what it is, Jugram."

"It requires no acknowledgment."

"And yet here it is. Being acknowledged."

His jaw tightened by a fraction and you rolled onto your side, closing the distance between you before resting your chin on his shoulder. You could see the faintest color along the tops of his cheekbones.

Jugram Haschwalth was blushing. It was so subtle that anyone else would have missed it entirely, but you had spent enough time studying this face to know what his neutral expression looked like, and this was not it.

"It'll pass," he said to the ceiling.

"What if I could help it pass faster?"

He went quiet as though he had been caught without a plan.

You laughed softly and put your hand on his chest. His breathing stayed even but his pulse didn't, you could feel it jumping under your fingers, and the contrast between what his body was doing and what his face was doing was almost unbearable.

"Jugram. Look at me."

He did, looking at you the same way a person looks at someone they still can't quite believe chose them back.

"You could ask," you said.

"I don't ask for things."

His hand came up from his side and cupped the back of your head. His fingers threaded into your hair and held there, firm and deliberate. He pulled you down and kissed you, and it was nothing like the rest of him. It was deep and his teeth grazed your bottom lip.

When you slid your hand down his stomach and under the sheet he inhaled against your mouth and his hips lifted to meet you before he could stop them.

Askin Nakk Le Vaar

You were lying on your side, half-awake, watching the early light cut a stripe across the bed, when you noticed the sheet was doing something architectural over Askin's lap.

He was flat on his back, one arm behind his head, the other resting on his stomach, still asleep. The sheet tented upward with a frankness that bordered on comedic.

You stared at it for a moment. Then you reached over and flicked it.

His eyes flew open. "Ow. What. Why."

"Good morning to you too babe."

He blinked, looked at you, looked down at himself, and then let his head fall back against the pillow with a groan. "Ah. Right. That."

"That," you agreed.

He rubbed his jaw and stared at the ceiling. "You weren't supposed to be awake for this part. I had a whole system. Get up, handle it, come back, make coffee, maintain the illusion of dignity."

"Illusion's gone, sorry."

"Yup. Completely shattered. Thanks for that." He glanced sideways at you, one eye half-open, that stray strand of hair stuck to his cheekbone. "I could still go handle it... Bathroom's right there."

"You could." you agreed again.

"That would be the reasonable thing to do."

"Absolutely."

"Or."

"Or."

"Or," he said again, quieter.

"Or," you said, and neither of you were finishing the sentence. His throat moved when he swallowed. Your hand was already on his stomach.

"Somebody has to finish saying it," he murmured.

"Ooorrrr I could just do this." You slid your hand below the sheet and his whole body went taut, his breath leaving him in a rush as his hand grabbed your wrist but not to stop you.

"That works," he managed. "--That works too."

He pulled you over him, both hands on your hips, and when you pressed down against him the sound he made was something he would have let anyone else hear. His mouth found yours, slow and unhurried, his thumb tracing the curve of your hip.

"You're so fatal," he murmured against your lips.

Bazz-B

You woke up with Bazz-B's leg shoved between yours and his arm pinning you to the mattress. He was taking up most of the bed space at a diagonal, his face mashed into the pillow and mohawk crushed flat on one side. He was still out, his breathing heavy and body was slack.

But something between your thighs was not slack at all.

His hips were pressed flush against your leg and the situation was extremely, undeniably, clear. You shifted slightly and felt it press harder and his hips rocked forward on instinct, a slow, unconscious grind that made your breath catch before your brain was fully awake.

You laid there for a moment. Considering your options.

"Bazz."

Nothing. His arm tightened around your waist and he mumbled something unintelligible into the pillow and pushed his hips forward again. Your teeth sank into your bottom lip.

"Bazz." You shoved his shoulder. He grunted but didn't wake up. His hand slid down to your hip in his sleep and gripped it and pulled you closer against him, which made the whole situation significantly worse. Or better. Depending on perspective.

"Bazz!" You pinched his arm hard enough to leave a mark.

His head jerked up. "What--W-What's happening--"

"You're grinding on me in your sleep you idiot."

He blinked. The disorientation lasted about two seconds before awareness caught up. He looked down at the position they were in, his leg between yours, his hips pressed against your thigh, his hand gripping your hip.

"That's not--I was asleep!"

"I know you were asleep. That's why I woke you up!"

"So... I'd stop?"

"So you'd do it on purpose."

He stared at you before his gaze dropped to where his body was still pressed between your thighs, then back up to your face.

"Yeah? Is that what you want." he said. Slower this time.

"You heard me."

His fingers pressed into your skin, pulling you tighter against him.

"If you're messing with me," he said, "I'm going to be pissed."

"When have I ever messed with you?"

"Constantly. All the time. It's like half our relationship."

You rolled your hips against his one slow, deliberate grind. The groan that came out of his throat was raw and his eyes went half-shut as his fingers dug into your hip.

"I'm not messing with you," you said.