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Adrian wasn’t a sentimental man. 

He walked the tightrope of psychopathy with a grace that most sane people lacked entirely. He didn’t flinch when he took a life, when he hurt someone, when someone hurt him. That lethal indifference to the conditions of his physical body let him do what he did, let him keep the streets clean. He’d take a bullet if he had to. Would kill a kid happily if Peacemaker couldn’t manage it. Anything for the cause, anything to ensure justice was carried out. 

He wasn’t sure if he was someone who felt love in the way others felt it, but he felt an equivalent. When you stripped him down to bare bones and organs, there were names carved messily on his heart just like anyone else. People who had managed to win his disgustingly solid loyalty, his devotee tendencies. Chris had been the first, then John, and now you. 

You hadn’t meant to put your name there, hadn't even realized he’d handed you the knife until the wound was already bleeding. You were nobody special, certainly not someone capable of dismantling an alien race. You were just a friend of a friend, someone who existed in quiet pockets of solitude and occasionally visited Emilia when you knew she was nearing an edge. That’s how it started, how he’d cemented himself as an irreplaceable aspect of the life you now shared with him. 

You worked a job that normal people worked, being different from them only in the tremendous weight of your worry. Your co-workers weren’t dating the deranged defender of their homely city - that was just a you thing. Your co-workers weren’t completely consumed by the possibility of a criminal getting the better of their partner, of having to see headlines about it, of having to watch people celebrate it. 

You were. You could barely breathe with the gravity of it sometimes. 

When the butterfly threat had been neutralized, you were thrilled to have Adrian go back to thieves and dealers. It wasn’t ideal, but he loved it, and you loved seeing him fulfilled. More importantly, he could handle those threats. He made it look easy with how equipped he was for it

Post 11th Street Kids, you and him had managed weeks of peace and domesticity. Nothing deadly hung over your heads anymore, just quiet nights and shared laughter over the absurd headlines being written about him. It was perfect, and it was calm, and it was yours. Something the two of you had all on your own.

After Chris tasked your lover with helping him clean up the corpse of his doppelganger, you knew that time was over. Something new was starting, and at the core of Adrian’s involvement was, yet again, Peacemaker. 

You never liked him much. You’d been excited to meet him after hearing the man you love speak so fondly of him. How he was a legend, how he was a role model, how they were best friends. After you’d met him, though, you saw the acidic truth that Adrian’s dedication wasn’t always reciprocated. In this case, it wasn’t even respected. 

You’d tried your hardest to voice it, to tell him what you’d felt, what you’d seen. How it seemed like Chris enjoyed him only as long as he was useful, only for the purposes he could serve. He’d looked heartbroken before you even finished talking, so you stopped. You cleaned it up, said Peacemaker just wasn’t your kind of person, but that Adrian was his own man. If he valued the friendship, that was what mattered. You showed your distaste through pointed stares and flat tones whenever you saw him, letting his pleasantries rot in the air like neglected fruit. 

Chris had been the cause of your first fight in months. Something entirely too burdensome for such a late hour. He’d called for Vigilante a little after 9, saying that he needed something in the other dimension, and he wanted backup for it. You told Adrian that the request was ludicrous, that not only was it late, but that it wasn’t his problem. Whatever strife the helmet-clad asshole was dealing with was something of his own doing. He should stay, go to bed, stop running to Chris’ every beck and call. 

He slammed the door on the way out. You went to bed angry. Something you both had promised never to do. 

The door didn’t slam on his way back in. He shut it gently with the hands of a man who’d lost a battle. His footsteps dragged, presumably staining the floor of your holy place with inevitable sins of the outside. It woke you up immediately, the irregularity. He didn’t walk like that. He didn’t open things like they’d yell at him if he pressed too hard. He entered spaces as he was, grand and malevolent. It made you nearly question his identity, question whether or not it was him who’d just walked into the bedroom. His breathing was audible for a moment, sounding like his lungs were shaking the oxygen out instead of fondly pushing. 

You sat up when it was clear he was standing still, waiting for something. The room was dark, but light from the window made him decently visible to eyes that had been in darkness for hours. You saw his lips part, as though he was trying to speak, but he just couldn’t. 

The sheets were parting around you before you even registered you were moving, allowing your legs to straighten as you stood up. You moved over to his slouched form, all the accumulated rage from before dissolving into nothing but cold air. Was he hurt? Why wasn’t he saying anything?

“Woah, hey.” His neck was craned down, eyes drooping cruelly to the floor, like he couldn’t bear the sight of you. Your hands burned with the heat of his flushed face, tilting his head back up to eye level. “What happened?” 

The second he felt the heat of your fingers, the warmth of life, he collapsed into you, forcing you on to the wrinkled sheets of your shared bed. His arms wrapped around you like a ravenous snake readying the prey for consumption. His forehead met your shoulder, nearly crushing you with how close he pressed himself. His cheeks were wet, he’d been crying. 

That put the fear of God in you. Adrian Chase didn’t cry. 

“Saw you die over there.” You were surprised at how cohesive his speech was, although slurred and thick with bottomless horror. His arms gripped tighter, somehow. Like he was trying to tuck you inside his chest to stop the ending he’d seen. “I saw you in the street and some guy just…” 

You didn’t have words that could properly convey the hurt radiating off of him. You weren’t equipped to talk him off this particular ledge.

You put your hand on the back of his head, wrapping both your arms harder against him. Reassurance felt wrong, and comfort felt unreachable with how shaken he was. He could clearly tell you were still alive in the world that was his, but it seemed like he couldn’t digest it. Like your voice, and your smell, and your presence wasn’t enough to stop the fact from slipping through the cracks in his heart. 

“I’ve just been sleeping, Adrian. I’m okay.” 

You said it as softly as you could, not wanting to shatter the stillness of the air. He nodded against your chest, but he still shook like he was watching what happened play on loop. 

“I know.” 

You sunk your head down slightly, kissing the side of his head and further messing up his curls that had puffed from the exertion of his outing.

You felt his hands find home on your hips, pushing his fingertips into the pliable flesh in a very specific way. Something he only did when he was needy, when he was aching for the intimacy of being taken, of being seen. 

His name slid through your barely parted lips, a warning in the softest degree. He was mourning, barely holding himself together enough to tell you what happened. You didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want him to do this and then regret in the morning. 

“Please, I know. Just need to feel you.” 

You went to object, truly. Some vague declaration of his ill mind, his sleep deprivation, his grief. The start of it met his ears both irrefutable and insignificantly. It didn’t matter what you’d almost said, because the latter half died off at the first roll of his hips. The attire you rested in every night was made of thinner material than the clothes you wore during the day, making it that much easier for him to catch you at just the right angle. 

A heavenly groan fled from his lips, settling as a tiny vibration against the skin of your neck. Your hands were gripping him tight. Tighter than anything that could be covered by the guise of comfort. 

This was greed. Something mindless and insurmountable found only in the childish grinding, in the shameful moisture once again flowing from his glossy eyes.

“Fuck - just like that. Just need this.” His head stayed put against the crook of your collarbone, as though you could shield him from whatever sights were hidden behind his eyelids. “Don’t even wanna be inside you. Just need you close to me.”  

Sounds you’d never heard yourself make were pouring mercilessly out of you, not even encroaching the territory of the man above you. He was pitiful, exhaling whimpers so sharp and so wonderful that they could have sliced your skin on impact. It was a magical thing to hold him like this, to be someone so deep within him that this was the result of seeing someone with your face fall victim to circumstance. 

He was evidently hard now, and you swear the material of his suit was even rougher when felt through more layers. It’s solid and it’s perfect. The friction of his pumping hips burns you in a way you’d never anticipated, licking stripes of smooth fire up the length of your spine. 

“You’re too good for me. ‘m sorry I need you so much.”

You couldn’t think properly enough to interject, simply resorting to shaking your head in disagreement. The pressure of his evident bulge made you continuously clench around nothing, made your inhibition pour out of your ears like soap. You could feel evidence of your own arousal soaking through your underwear. You needed him just as bad, just as carnally.

“But I really fucking do. Couldn’t live without you. Wouldn’t want to.” 

He was so strung out that his sentences were bleeding into each other, wobbly and coarse. He was certain of only one thing - you. Your state wasn’t proving much better, head dizzy and fingers tight in his hair. The rhythm you’d managed to find with him was innate, as though your body knew what his was doing before it’d even been considered. It felt so fucking good that you didn’t know how to be with him, didn’t know how to be anything in that moment except whatever he chose to make you. 

“Couldn’t live without you either, Adrian.” 

If someone had heard an isolated recording of that response, they would most likely assume you were inebriated. Some type of alcohol or laughing gas making your words loopy. Devoted, even. Like someone who’d found the keys to the universe. 

And being there with him, it felt like you just might have. 

“Shit -” 

You could tell he tried to warn you, tried to tell you that he was done for. He didn’t manage to get the cautionary remark out of his mouth, breathing one of the prettiest noises you’d ever heard into your neck like he was sealing a secret into you. Branding you with the time he’d cracked open before you, with the time you’d held his fragments in place. 

Maybe in the other world you were gone. A speck of dust to be blown away amongst all the other extinguished life. But here, you were his. 

And he was yours. 

The mutations hadn’t always been apparent. 

A bio-weapon mishap during the second world war had birthed the haphazard case file for a new oddity that dumbfounded scientists had dubbed Enhanced Genome Activity Disorder. The fallout of a genocide attempt had instead paved way to soldiers with increased strength and agility. They heard things they shouldn’t have, smelt around spaces like dogs, and itched at their gums when their canines started bulging. 

It had turned them rabid, way back when. The perfect pack to sick on enemies and the perfect way to build a reputation as a nation with feared strength. It worked flawlessly, for a short while. Their elasticity was greater than ever seen, bouncing back from non-lethal bullet wounds like they were paper cuts. The men were almost always found in high spirits, somehow alright with the hand they’d been dealt.  

Word spread about the impacts, and long before anyone could stop it, most of the planet was nearly unrecognizable. The weapon was gaseous, distributed across nations and consequently contracted like a world-wide wound that had been subdivided like something ethical. It was poison, above anything else. 

But it was progress. 

And so it was done. 

It wasn’t apocalyptic by any means. Many of the EGAD-affected men tore each other apart on the battlefield before they could reproduce. Some were inherently immune to the infection, staying perfectly human in the face of mass transformation. 

The studying came after the war was won. The remaining boys were moved to sites of examination, confined to the behaviors of a beast and the treatment of something lower than man, something lower than monster. 

The history of such brutality was preserved and peddled out to every sophomore textbook in the country. Every person knew vaguely what had been done back then. They knew vaguely that EGAD still got diagnosed once in a while; though, it was rarer than Halley’s comet and it was seen more as a handicap than anything revered. Anything respected. 

They taught you the classifications and buzz words as monotonously as any other atrocity done in the name of victory. Alpha, omega, heat, rut, bond. The lesson required a permission slip and a content warning but it was done as an honor to the hoards lost to the madness. It was a topic that made the students squirm, awkward glances and stupid jokes thrown out into silent classrooms in hopes of drawing attention away from the breeding patterns of the beings that had carried the nation to security. 

It was simply one of those necessary evils. Most were happy, and purely homosapian. The gene was massively recessive, hardly a thought anymore with how unlikely it was to present as generations continued. 

It’s why, upon learning that the attending for your new place of education had presented, it made you a little nervous. It wasn’t out of judgement, or pity, or any other condescending trend of superiority that people with EGAD often got stuck with. It was just new. Something unfamiliar. 

Modern medicine had come a long way for those who lived with such a thing, and ferocity was a thing of the past. Scent neutralizer was sold over the counter in huffable sticks, suppressants were an easy oral tablet and an even easier prescription. But tales of old were still smeared on present day perceptions, as hard as you tried to push against it. 

He wouldn’t have gotten so high up if he was anything but capable. There was absolutely no threat, no reason to feel fear. 

The fact didn’t stop your hands from shaking as you stood in scrubs with three of your peers. It was primarily first-day jitters, but looking around, you couldn’t refrain from attempting a guess on who it was. You wondered greatly which busy man in doctor’s uniform had lived his life with such elevated abilities. 

There was no way for a human to spot it, lacking visibility or clean identifiers. You’d only know him by name, by reputation. 

He was the last to join your pre-shift huddle, every spilled introduction doing nothing to quell the anticipation you felt waiting for your curiosity to be sated. The senior residents explained the layout, the hierarchy, what your roles were as students. You seemed to be the middle child in your group of amateurs. The youngest was a prodigy and the eldest was your usual path as a med school attendee. 

Not that it mattered. This position was a unifier, nobody above and nobody below. The four of you were there to learn. 

Which sounded easy enough, but as the final piece of your ER puzzle took his place, you understood it might be a little bit more challenging that you’d been betting on. 

As he entered the building, before anyone else had noticed him do so, you took a chance to watch. It was creepy, and most likely unprofessional, but he had a way about him that called you to witness, called you simply to observe and marvel. 

He stopped for a second not far from the entryway, eyes moving jaggedly over bustling crowds. He didn’t seem particularly determined to find anything, more of a slightly confused onceover of his environment. You saw him inhale, his chest remaining expanded as he stood straighter, intentionally halting the exhale like he had a point to prove before he could release the oxygen. His hand was reaching into the pocket of his unzipped jacket at the same time, calmly tugging a small object from the inside of it. You saw him pop the top off and bring it to his nose, breathing it in with a slight recoil. 

Must have been a scent stick. You’d heard how foul they were. Wonderfully effective, but foul nonetheless. His shoulders slackened again, his rigid demeanor fading into something more friendly. Then he was walking over. 

He spoke with an aged voice and a preppy spirit. It seemed to reverberate, bounce around your ears like your brain wanted it to absorb slowly, wanted to savor it. His name was Dr. Robinavitch - Dr. Robby - and he was thrilled to see so many new faces. 

It was a quick break once he got there, promising each of the students that he was going to have a one-on-one meeting with you to properly speak. He’d find you at some point in the little pockets of reprieve he’d get every once and while. 

Aside from that, the shift was beginning. And that was that. 

You felt tiny flecks of shame kicking up in your stomach, twisting around the nerves that were already alight with the new-kid syndrome you got from being here. You’re sure you weren’t the first to acknowledge that Dr. Robby was attractive. Knew you weren’t, if the handcuffed old woman spewing mildly homophobic remarks was anything to go off of. 

Whatever was happening beneath your skin just felt off. Visceral, in a sense. Something you could feel deeper than the few unwelcomed butterflies that chittered close to your ribs. When his voice had sounded out, it’s impact was a meteor crash to the flat terrain of your well-maintained serenity. His entire presence was nearly a disturbance, rather than an assurance of peace. 

And his cologne. You could smell it as soon as he’d gotten close to you all. It seemed just strong enough to be too much. You felt your face crease a bit as it entered your orbit, looking around slightly to be met with nothing but undisturbed faces. It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, just overbearing, just there. 

It was remarkable how layered it was. A lot of mens’ perfume seemed to smell distantly similar to each other, but his was as unique as you’d experienced. Something tinged with campfire smoke and thunderstorms, before delving into something richer, something sweeter. It was addictive, in it’s own right. Masculine without being obscenely manly, softening in the center notes. 

It made sense that his coworkers would be used to it, but the students were just now being exposed. Surely they all were as surprised as you were. Maybe they just had better self control. 

He’d seen that look, unbeknownst to you. Watched the way your features had coiled against your will, watched the way you tried immediately to set yourself straight. 

Shifts at The Pitt were already long enough to nip at peoples’ heels, to test the limits of their sanity. 

He had a feeling this shift was going to be the longest one yet. 

You’d had a similar inclination at the beginning of the shift, and the hunch had proved impressively intuitive. 

The end was dawning as real as the sun set, fifteen grueling hours of initiation that had challenged the very beats of your heart with how much gore it had to offer finally settling down. Throughout the day, you’d watched Dr. Robby pull the respective newbies off to the side for no more than five minutes, engaging in a hushed conversation and then waving them back to work. You’d been waiting patiently, watching him scurry around in search of anyone aside from yourself. 

His avoidance wasn’t personal. Logically, it couldn’t be. But, unwillingly, you were a bit jealous. And even more frustrated at yourself for being jealous. 

In addition to the newfound emotional illness, you were quickly succumbing to the physical manifestation of the same such qualms. The entire ER was hot, a vapor slurry of excreted body heat in a tightly packed chamber. You felt the heaviness of it like a stamp spanning your skin, inky and pronounced. The back of your neck was damp with sweat, only worsening hours ago when the victims of PittFest started filing in. 

It hadn’t been a massacre, but it’d felt like one. The young souls you’d lost wandered the walkways amongst the injured bodies waiting on your willing hands. And you felt it. You felt everything. 

The lights glared back at your squinting eyes in a way they weren’t supposed to. The friendly, tough-but-gooey charge nurse had a voice that you’d liked when your shift had started, but now couldn’t listen to for more than a minute or so. All things capable of overloading your system were doing just that. You were as sensitive as a live wire, fraying and sparking in any given direction like you’d never handled anything before. It was nearly embarrassing. 

And the ER was so hot. Your body felt boiled, like if someone cut you open, you’d be well done inside, solidified and steaming from the slow broil. 

That smell had been the only thing keeping you tethered. Right when you felt your feet brush the precipice of a meltdown, it had a way of finding you, curling around you like sentient plumes of smoke. It’s like it sunk into you, pushing back at the impending feeling of overwhelm. It was so alarming, because you’d hardly even met the man, and he was at least a quarter-decade older than you, but it was so safe. 

Even when he was halfway across the grounds, that cologne would creep back to you. It was a wonder that nobody had complained, nobody had even questioned what thing was so strong that it could withstand the grime-filled hallways of a hospital. But not a blip was said, not a single displeasured remark was uttered, so you let it happen. You allowed it to be what it was. 

Quietly, though. A personal and one-sided tie to the man who would pass by you, look at you, and then look away as though that would undo what he’d just done. 

The limited finalities known about the brain were known to you. You’d liked biology in school. You understood chemicals, pheromones, comfort. On whatever subconscious or subatomic level it chose to appear on. That scent was sturdy, masculine, authoritative. 

Fatherly, in a slightly gross way that made your head spin too much to dwell on. 

You doubted you’d been the first flaccid creature to find a forced serenity in something so domineering. It was assuring to have an anchor when all you did was bend around things. You could mold yourself to it, could latch onto it. And, consequently, latch onto him. Just a little, just enough to be ashamed about it. 

You could nearly feel the night air on your tongue when he’d called your name. Your scrubs had been returned, normal clothes draped over your slumped figure. When you turned around, his state was much the same. 

Your heartbeat grazed lightly at the back of your throat. He looked so cozy. Simplicity wrapped in a pair of jeans and the same unzipped jacket. Domesticity painted on each individual fiber of fabric, a faux-paternal promise of invincibility, of something you could melt right into. 

It was warm, something that should have been entirely unappealing to the fever-stricken form you were approaching. It just wasn’t, somehow. In the same impossible way you’d felt him all day despite never feeling him before. 

He asked for you to hang back a minute for the check in, nodding sideways in the direction of the stairwell. The thought of dragging your stiff legs up stairs was unbearable. But he’d asked. So you walked. 

It was two floors up, him shortly saying that it was under renovation, that nobody ever came up here. Then he said nothing else until the trek was over. Until you were face to face, surrounded by solid walls and semi-transparent tarps dangling from the ceiling.  

The silence sliced through you without hesitation, malevolent in nature and crushing in execution. You were alone with him. He’d forced you to be alone with him and he wasn’t saying anything. That scent was so strong up close. You questioned for the nth time how anyone ever managed to stay away from him when he smelled so good.

You didn’t shy away from the eye contact he held, looking frightened into the split galaxies pooling in his irises. You were confused. He was expectant. 

He finally sighed, a long exhale triggering the end of whatever bridge he’d been building in the quiet. 

“You broke my scent stick.” 

It hadn’t even been close to what you’d thought he was going to lead with. You swallowed your nerves in search of clarity.

“What?” 

The few times you’d managed to stare at him without him staring back, he’d been clawing the thing out of his pocket and huffing it like it was the one thing that could save him. It certainly hadn’t seemed broken. He’d even stopped recoiling after the second or third hit, needy enough for the salvation that it didn’t bother him anymore. 

He reached carelessly into his pocket, pulling out the capped container and holding it like it was worth nothing. To him, it probably was. Inexpensive and indefinitely needed. 

“There’s only about twelve doses in these things. Had this one for years. Never had to use it much before today.” 

His voice wasn’t harsh, but it was missing the soapy kindness it’d held this morning. You’re sure the shift had taken most of that with it, but part of you feared it was your fault. His tone remained soft in the center, just hardened a bit around the edges. It wouldn’t have been anything noteworthy if it’d been anyone else, but something about the fact it was him, it made you want to fix it. Made you skittish. 

You almost apologized in response to what he’d said, but he didn’t let you. He kept speaking. 

“I don’t mean to be blunt, but individuals with EGAD are required to notify their employers about it. There are rules for an alpha/omega dynamic in the workplace. Especially for ones in your,” he took a breath in, his jaw tightening in alliance with the action. “...condition.” 

Confusion lined your face, creasing the malleable parts and drilling down into the immovable ones. 

“No - I -” You weren’t even sure what to say in a situation like this. He was so sure. He was telling you this like you’d say sorry for the inconvenience and solve an already solved problem. “I don’t have EGAD. Why would you think I have EGAD?” 

You were close enough to be able to watch his eyes soften, slackening in a sympathy-filled stare that adults gave children when they saw good intentions get caught up in insufficient expression.

“Is that a joke?”

Your own eyes widened in defense when he said that. 

“Of course not, no. I really…I don’t have it.” 

You could feel your head shaking back and forth in tune, moistening your eyes and weakening your knees. Halfway through your rebuttal, you felt the churning inkling of a cramp in your stomach, marching quickly towards full pain by the time you’d stopped talking. 

It felt like fire. Like the heat you’d been baking in all day had finally found your interior. You leaned your back against the wall, finding it unnecessary to use your dwindling strength to stand straight if you didn’t have to. 

“Okay.” 

HIs voice was quiet, and you watched his whole face soften this time, shifting something deep in the core of you. Like a sand dune caving in at the sight. 

“Well, you’re visibly woozy, and you’re sweating. You feel hot, yeah?” 

You nodded as an answer. He’d put his obsolete scent stick back in pocket not long after he’d taken it out. You’re really wishing he hadn’t. That haunting smell was all over you, all over everything. It seemed like it amplified the cramp, amplified the craziness you felt.

“You’re in heat. Textbook. And I can -” He stopped himself, opting for something less personable. “Alphas. We can…we can smell it. When it happens.” 

He clenched his hand once, reaching up to drag it along his jaw in what looked like an attempt to keep control in his grasp. “Been trying to drown you out all day - it’s just,” he shook his head, inhaling and regretting all over again, “it’s not working.”  

The denial seeped in like infection. You’d never shown signs, never exhibited any behavior that would hint towards this diagnosis. Most people with EGAD knew before they hit double digits. 

“No,” your eyes watered as you whispered out the word, more pleading than stating. “That’s impossible. I’d know. They would have seen it. No.” 

As your panic increased, he painted tiny reassurances over your rejections, and it helped. It soothed you like aloe on a sunburn. And that was bearable. Robby was comforting to everyone. He was meant to be, he was the overseer. That didn’t make it true. That didn’t mean anything.

But then he moved closer. An infinitely small step in the gaping void between you and who you thought you were. It didn’t even look intentional, but it happened. 

And it hurt. 

The pain in your stomach turned from a low smolder to the mean drag of a knife over every fleshy bit inside you. You felt a wave of heat roll over your shoulders like a volcanic tsunami, plunging every salvageable bit of you into ash thick enough to block out the sun. And it all went down. Just the faint promise of his proximity made you wetter than you think you’d ever been. You felt yourself soak straight through your underwear, your skin sweaty and breaths heaving. 

He felt that shift too, closing the distance to help stop you from slipping down the wall. 

“Hey. I got you, kid.” His hands held your face, keeping your line of sight strictly on him. It was impossible to move down when he was up. As horrifying as this realization was, you didn’t want to be apart from him. Even if it was by a few feet. 

He sounded as strung out as you felt, but his touch felt like a lifeline. A sinking ship failing to rescue a screaming sailor, simply enjoying the process of conjoined drowning instead. 

And the name. So unabashed in it’s depravity. He shouldn’t be calling you that. He wasn’t anything to you, wasn’t your protector. This whole thing was most likely his fault, and he had the audacity to infantilize you. But it kicked around like it meant something. It felt like everything. 

You heard yourself wheeze out something akin to a whimper, half at the pain, half at the feeling of disgusted arousal pricking it’s way down your spine. “Hurts-” 

Your cheeks were proudly housing your tears now, some dripping off your chin and some pooling in the long dip between his thumb and his pointer. It only served to smear the salt back across your face whenever he wiped fresh ones away. Nothing had even happened yet, and it felt so raw. 

His scent felt fused to your cells at this point, bone-deep and blade-sharp. It lined your chest cavity and festered out to wherever it could reach. It was the most divine undoing, tainting the world with the smell of heat and home. 

“I know it does, I know.” He spoke so soft. Like you were something so precious, so worthy of gentleness that he wouldn’t dare muddy the waters with any more brazen tones. “I can make it better,” his breath was warm and minty against your lips, and you nearly sobbed at the proposal. “Want me to make it better?” 

His face was so close that, when you nodded as vigorously as you did, your mouths brushed against each other. 

“Please.” 

It was as desperate as you’d ever sounded, but at this point, you were far too gone to care. Your entire being felt like a knot waiting to be untangled by his calloused hands. 

It was the last thing he registered before submerging himself in the sullied ocean of hormones and haze that was slowly filling up the unused floor of the hospital. The kiss was etched in totality, the clash of your teeth and the taste of your tongue instantly too addictive. It felt too much like forever, like something he’d never get over. 

He pushed harder into it, harder into you. The unyielding force of him silenced the searing in your stomach momentarily. Your body was bracing - happily, at that - for what was now set in motion. 

His hands were gone from your face, fingers gripping the pudge of your hips and tugging them forward. He wanted you as close as he could get you, unhinged in his mechanisms and bordering on barbaric in the way he maneuvered you. The eager press against him allowed his cock to slot right against the place you needed, hard as stone and leaking pearly drops beneath the denim confines.

The feeling forced noises out of both of you, a minuscule sound barrier settling between your lips for just a moment while they separated. You and him were back together before you could comprehend the departure. 

He knew, buried very deep, back with the sane part of his mind, that he shouldn’t be doing this with you. He was old enough to be your father, and this was a bad thing he was doing. This was evidently your first heat. Instead of being something sacred, something rare to be shared with someone you loved, your new boss was going to fuck you in a dilapidated, in-repair floor of your workplace. Twice your age, he also bore twice the responsibility. And he didn’t care about any of it. Not when you were half-mad and humping him like you’d die without it. 

“Nowhere in the hospital I could run to without smelling you.” You whined when he broke the kiss, his face moving down beneath your ear, inhaling right where most EGAD patients had an extra scent gland. “Could have fuckin’ killed that guy in triage for how he looked at you. My pretty girl, hm?” 

He didn’t even look at you while he said it. You felt his hand swallow the side of your neck his head wasn’t on. It was like he was trying to box the scent in, trying to hoard you close to his open maw, trying to eat you alive. 

He sounded like he’d lost the ability to filter out what he should be saying and what he shouldn’t, just speaking as it came and disregarding the possibility of rejection. As if you’d reject him. As if you could. The ownership made your lips part, your thoughts slur. You weren’t just pretty, you weren’t just a girl, you were his. It cued another one of those molten waves to crash over you, and even though it hadn’t been a sincere prompt, you nodded anyway. 

A confirmation. You were his. At least as long as you were here. 

You felt the exhale of a slight laugh against your neck, the feeling grazing a knuckle up each divot of your back. You got goosebumps from it, more evidence of the begrudging submission you were melting into. 

“Yeah? My pretty omega?” 

You would have nodded again, but he moved quicker than your dragging conscience could keep up with. The hand on your neck moved up to your face, stained with tear tracks and spit. He squished your cheeks in, just enough to make your lips pucker a little, just enough to be degrading, and nodded for you. Just a slight up and down, the perfect blend of arrogant and elegant. A gesture of control and nothing more. 

You made a noise you’re positive had never left you before, needy and primal and most likely putrid to anyone on the outside of whatever was happening. It was the signal he needed, though. A similar expression leaving him before he moved back up, mouth meeting yours somehow even rougher, even better. 

Your hands fumbled for the button on his jeans, coherent enough to know it was the thing you despised most in the world. The one thing keeping you from him. 

He was much less patient, opting to rip your pants at their seams instead of fussing over buttons or zippers. You’re sure you would have been angry if it’d been any other time, but now, you were just happy they were off. You couldn’t care less about the scraps or where they ended up. He tore the pathetic, saturated excuse for your underwear away all the same. 

You felt the sting in your stomach whip around again, pounding like a drum behind a brick wall. There were nerves somewhere beneath the need, but they couldn’t be accessed anymore. Just felt, considered, and ultimately deemed irrelevant. 

When you’d undone his button and fly, the both of you were grabbing and pulling at the fabric, pants and boxers lowering just enough to allow him freedom from the material. And you got why he was cocky. Flushed at the tip, and leaking, and pretty. Genuinely pretty. You should have guessed. You thought the rest of him was pretty, too. 

You hardly got to stare, maybe a millisecond of uninterrupted marveling before he was pulling your leg up around his hip and sinking in. 

“Thaat’s it, kid.” He slurred the syllable, patronizing and ruined and gruff. It made you clench, made him groan. “That’s it” 

“Robby-” 

Without the inhibition of fabric, your arousal was dripping down your thigh in opaque droplets that he hated seeing go to waste. But he couldn’t focus on that. He couldn’t focus on anything but the feel of you. 

You were much the same. It didn’t take much for him to bottom out, the moderate burn of the stretch lessened severely by how wet you were. It felt like seeing color for the first time, like the feeling of winter-chilled air in your lungs. It was such a vibrant feeling. Your neck eased, your head thumping against the wall as his forehead rested on your covered collarbone. 

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He whispered it, the words seeping into the fabric of your shirt like something sacred. It felt sacred, felt special. “D’you feel better?” 

“Yes -” The exclamation balled in your throat as he pulled out, stopping with only his tip nestled inside you, and pushed right back in. Your back arched from the wall, leg tightening around his waist. “Feels better.” 

It did feel better. He repeated the motion, building a rhythm that was slow enough to let you feel every textured bit of his drags, his coarse hair rubbing perfectly against your clit every time he’d thrust all the way back in. The pain that had been so debilitating at the start of this was echoing out and rebounding back slightly less at the same pace he was moving. It all hurt enough to be significant, to add to the pleasure he was giving you. 

You’d never been so sensitive. Your sensory input and your emotions felt stripped bare,and all your nerves were taking after them. Each time he pushed back inside you felt consumed by it. Entirely and completely, like you could feel it in your throat. He brushed over spots that you’d never touched, reached depths that made your hands tighten around his shoulders just so you didn’t make your palms bleed. And he took it. He moaned at the pressure, at the carnal feeling of being so lost in someone that you hurt them and it only fans the flame. 

You felt the buildup too quickly, too intensely to be ready for it. You felt your internal tides pull back like all your lifeforce was being yanked back into that same volcanic tsunami. You could do nothing to stop it. You could do nothing but hope he’d be there to swim through it with you. 

You felt something happening to him, too. Felt him almost swelling, his movements feeling tighter each time his cock pushed back into you. You’d been familiar with most of the EGAD breeding specialities. It wasn’t all that different to average people, just heightened, feral. This you were unsure of. 

“What’s -” The heaviness of your breath, along with the way he was mouthing along your neck, made it increasingly hard to speak. “What’s happening?”

 “You’re ok.” That tone, and the scent, and how close you were made it so impossibly difficult not to trust him. There was gray in his beard, and his voice was like honey, and you couldn’t make yourself not believe him. “You’re a big girl. You can take me.” 

And you agreed. You could take him. You would do anything in this moment if he wanted you to. If it meant he’d keep fucking you. 

It didn’t take much longer for you to cum around him, an ushering moment of finality to the most painful awakening imaginable. You didn’t get a chance to warn him, didn’t get a chance to do anything aside from squeeze your eyes shut and sob out a fractured version of his name that made him groan into your neck. You tipped him over the edge, a punishing warm spill of him being trapped as he enlarged. It was like a lock, stretching you beyond what you were prepared for. 

It made your jaw drop, so full it was indescribable. Good and pure and somehow completely untainted in the midst of every filthy thing that had occurred. His teeth dragged over that spot below your ear, razor-sharp and pin-tipped. 

A part of you begged for it. Some quiet, banished cells that held no shame and abided only by basic biology. But even though you were far from sobered, you knew he couldn’t do that yet. 

“No,” you rasped. You hardly even knew him. Just that he smelled like every indulgence you’d ever craved and looked like serenity. “Don’t…don’t do that.” 

He exhaled over the spot, kissing the spot so solemnly it could have made your legs give out if you weren’t so plastered to him. 

He accepted it, as apprehensively as one could accept any unsatisfactory thing. There’d be time. There’d be more times like these. Lust-drunk and nature-driven. It’d happen eventually. 

That was one knowledge you mutually shared.  Bond.

The black hand was a mark of death. 

It was a point of no return for the recipients. A threat that had proven unbeatable.

And one had just been stamped over your name. Painted pretty on a greeting card and dropped in your mailbox as if it didn’t signify the end. 

You thought about calling him. About hounding anyone who would listen just to get the words out of your head. You knew why, you knew who. You knew every in and out of what had brought this on. Still, you hadn’t expected the mafia.

The Peaky Blinders could sweep street urchin dust easily under the rug, or conquer a power hungry Irishman and his measly influence. That was nothing. That was lightwork. 

This was suicide. Clean-cut and pre-determined. Inescapable. 

Calling wasn’t enough. It was too insincere for something so heavy. You and Tommy were far from ideal. Most days you barely functioned at all. But, you’d made a vow to grit your teeth and get through him. You’d made a vow to be his. And above all your frustration, your pride sat sure and steady. 

Your love for him, too. Whatever it meant to love Thomas Shelby. 

The large doors of the Arrow manor felt unfamiliar, though they were still technically yours. You’d been staying elsewhere for a while, bored into madness by the solitude and sick with worry over his constant bartering. The walk through the halls felt like punishment, like it was costing you something vital every second you wandered the space that was meant to be warm. That you were meant to be home in. 

You found him in the bedroom, agonizingly tracing the hedges at the front of the house with his eyes. He held whiskey in his hand, the bronze of it deep and devastating through the clearness of the glass. You didn’t drink much when alone. You’d almost missed the sight. 

When he turned, the glimmering lapis of his irises nearly knocked the balance out of your knees. Thomas Shelby was never shocked, never caught off guard.

But, in this moment, he looked lost.

Your presence was so unexpected that, for a second, he thought he’d imagined you entirely. It gutted you quietly, that he was so sure you’d given up on him. Your exhaustion and your anger had been a storm, an argument, time spent away. But it’d never been finality. It had never been a conclusion. Not to you, at least. 

“I got a black hand.” 

His face didn’t shift with surprise, didn’t morph in any way at all. He only nodded, all knowing and omnipotent like the prophetic bastard he was at his core. 

“You’ll be protected.” The tired rasp of his voice drew your attention to his rolled sleeves, the slouch of his shoulders. “I’m dealing with it.” 

You hummed, the absoluteness of your disbelief twinging the air with a bitterness that was reminiscent of the air just before you’d left. 

“Dealing with the Italian mob?” 

“We managed one Changretta.” The incident was a sour one. The place where this ordeal had begun. “Polly says our odds are favorable.” 

The predictions of Polly Gray were unforgiving, and as far as the Shelbys were concerned, were to be treated as inherent truth. Still, the facts were cold and glaring. This was a threat of immeasurable damage. 

“Polly’s been wrong before. Your men are outnumbered.” 

“Polly’s the only fucking hope I’ve got.” He raised the cup that he’d yet to finish, trying to chase the fear he was choking on with the burn of familiarity. “What do you suggest I do, eh? Let them come? Let them kill us?” 

You sighed, finding the exchange almost humorous with how unchanged he remained. How unwilling he was to bend for anything or anyone. Most people couldn’t see past the calm he projected, couldn’t get a peak past the stoicism. But there were cracks. Obvious cracks to anyone who knew him like you did. To anyone who saw him. He was a brilliant man, and an enviable leader. 

But he was a scared person. That’s what it all boiled down to in the end. 

“You look like hell, Tommy.” 

He flinched ever so slightly at the sound of his name in your mouth. It looked like it hurt, like it was the kind of ache that felt so good it nearly made you relinquish your life. 

“‘Course I look like hell.” He poured the last swig of that ambrosial mahogany past his open lips like an emphasis of his surrender. “I’ve got Italian gangsters breathing down my neck and I’ve been sleeping in an empty fuckin’ bed for weeks.” 

His dragging steps led him over to the aforementioned piece of furniture, collapsing into a seated position on the foot of it. You felt the urge to touch him burn the nerves of your fingers. You wanted to comfort him, wanted to be there like you always were.

It was just different. Though petty and seemingly insignificant now, still different. 

“Why did you come?”

In full honesty, that question didn’t have a solid answer. A part of you feared they’d already gotten to him, as nonsensical as that was. You’d wanted to see how much it was taking from him, to have such a colossal rapture stewing just beyond his sights. You suppose you needed a gauge on how empty he was, how much your choices had siphoned the life from him. 

And, deeper than that, you’d just wanted to see him. 

“Black hand’s a big fucking deal. Would you rather I called?” 

He was looking up at you, the depth of the grandiose blue that stained his irises still endless, still so full of effortless persistence. It was something you loved about him, how stubborn he was, how evidently he wore it if you knew how to read him. His emotion was always stirring in his eyes, always present. It was forced to congregate there, being denied entry to any other inch of his face most of the time. Many didn’t even know he could smile, could be content. 

Your expression was as sturdy as his was stone, a connection of pure will, pure endurance. It was never a competition with him, just a tether. That was what your relationship was. A repetition, a pattern. Changing shape over the years but never changing ideology. You were one of the only people he couldn’t command, one of the only people he didn’t want to command. 

“No.” His hand ran itself over the other in a method that looked self-soothing. Something he did when his fingers pulsed for the heat of a cigarette. He didn’t reach for one, though. You hated when he smoked in the bedroom. “It’s good you came.”

And, as if he couldn’t help himself, he spoke again. 

“It’s good to see you.” 

Tommy, contrary to what the masses believed, was quite an affectionate man. In his own quiet, discontented way. What should have been common courtesy was essentially the highest honor you could get from a Shelby. It wasn’t right by any means, but when you loved one, it felt like being given Heaven itself to hear such an emotional line. 

The appropriate response didn’t wander over to you, didn’t make itself known at all. You stood opposing him with nothing of value to say. You missed him too, of course you did. But he hadn’t cracked. Not yet. 

You couldn’t either. 

“It’s late. You should stay.” He watched you shift back and forth, the stillness of the room festering into the muscle of your legs, jostling them in a way that forced fidgeting. “Not safe to be driving at night with them after us.” 

“They’re after you and Arthur more than anyone. I think I’ll manage.” 

He stiffened just a little at the denial, squaring his shoulders a bit and tilting his head at you. 

“Well,” He nodded briefly, as though settling on a thought. “You can stay of your own volition or I can have Frances slash your tires. Up to you.”  

Your eyebrows raised at the proclamation. Something among the endless list of things he’d missed in your departure, your intolerance. 

“Christ.” The image of beautiful, wrinkled Frances wielding something sharp enough to cut your wheels in her marbled sewing fingers was nearly humorous. Less so when you looked him over, when you saw how serious he was. “Don’t you think blackmail’s a little below your pay grade, Tommy?”

Your gradual outrage made him smile a bit, amused by his ability to pull the right strings, to prod the soft spots of your armor. 

“It’s my company, love. I make the fuckin’ pay grade.” It was half full of humor and half full of sincerity. He wasn’t particularly good at comedic inflection, but he could do wit like no one else. This wasn’t really either of them. This was just arrogance. Just truth. “It’s for your own good.”

You scoffed, sarcasm bleeding an infectious homicidal inkling into the ice of your stare. It wasn’t full, though. He could see the fondness lurking somewhere beneath the glaciers. The comfort that the overbearing familiarity brought. 

“Fine. Spare Frances the trouble.” 

You’d never do anything at her expense. Tommy wasn’t cruel to those he thought useful, but he’d make her do this. You could see it in his posture, hear it in his voice. 

“I’ll sleep in the guest room.” 

It was the most silent shove of his hand, the most discreet and unknowing prompt you could muster. You should have moved, should have cemented your words with intention. With walking away. But you didn’t.

Couldn’t. 

The exhale he breathed was long, heavy with something burdensome. He stood up, shrugging lightly. 

“If you want.” 

It was the predecessor to something far grander than you were prepared for. He moved forward, and still, you stayed put. His walk was slow, a practiced ease in his steps that read like a man time bent around. He was right in front of you before long. So close that his air was yours, that the heat of his body permeated your personal space. It was reminiscent of more passion-filled times, the delinquent days of your relationship. 

It simmered, warming the spot that sat so deep within your stomach, only he had ever managed to reach it. 

“Sleep with the maids if you feel inclined. But, when that clock hits twelve,” 

He gestures to the gift on the wall, something bestowed to him as a sign of gratitude. It had always seemed significant to you that he’d chosen to put it in the space you two shared. Not in his office, or somewhere easily on display, but somewhere his.

“I’m leaving this room, and I’m comin’ to find you. No matter where you end up.” 

It was inexplicably difficult to maintain your indifference when he spoke like that. When he looked at you with such a ravenous ownership. That ring he’d put on your finger bound you to him in a way that even you didn’t know the full specifics of. Just that it did. Just that you were his, even in your mild bouts of self actualization. Even in the times you didn’t want to be. 

“What if I don’t want -” 

“Don’t fuckin’ start. You want it.” 

His tone was low, ushered out of his mouth and into the open arms of your awaiting ears. The words bounded back and forth in your head, echoing like they were something holy. 

“Could go years without seein’ you and I’d still know what you needing me looks like.”

Each syllable was like a knife, pierced between the bones of your ribcage and crooked just the right way, just enough to snag your heart. It felt like trying to breathe underwater, like anything you were pulling in just stayed. No exchange, no oxygen, no life. Just him. Just the absolutely incinerating feeling of standing so close. 

“Tell me,” You could practically feel your ears perk, your pupils dilate Ready to answer whatever he was asking of you. “When you were sleeping in Ada’s spare bed, did you miss this?”

You had.

You’d missed it more than you’d anticipated. The warmth, the comfort. The want. The cold had been bone-deep most nights. Torturous.

“Did you touch yourself thinking about how good it is when you’re not being difficult?”

The callout was staggering, air crawling into your lungs with such an immense stutter that it should have been impossible. He was so shameless. Always cunning and always aware of his own footsteps bypassing where the limits sat. Thomas Shelby didn’t have limits. 

He’d practically said it himself. He made the limits. Others just followed them. 

And, due to the seemingly permanent vacancy of where your oxygen was meant to be dispersed, your speech came out quiet as a whisper. Fully saturated and essentially dripping with all the pent up desire that had been forced to bubble unaccompanied for weeks. It was barely there at all, something silent for only the two of you to bask in. 

“Fuck you, Tom.” 

That was the line that reeled him in, made him close the distance. His mouth tasted like high-end whiskey and the cruelest purgatory. Somewhere you’d always end up no matter how hard you fought against the tide. 

An indecent noise sprung from the confines of your aching chest, dissolving into the kiss of the man you could never manage to free yourself from. He gave you one of his right back, gruff and aged. It was heavy with a mass you related to, something that’d been brewing. 

He spun you, forcing your steps to walk you the short distance back to the bed. He pushed you down, the impact making you bounce slightly. It loosened the tension you’d been carting around in the time spent alone. That newfound space prompted a brief laugh to leak from your open lips.

He raised his eyebrows, but a hint of a smile twisted wryly at the corners of his taunting expression. 

“Happy now, eh?” The last bit of your legs were extended, hanging a little off the bed. He got on top of you regardless, stooping down to be just barely touching his nose to yours. “Thought I made you miserable.” 

It had been a sentence of great regret. Something you’d said in a fleeting moment of exaggerated agony and a need to hurt him. 

As if you could. As if you’d ever want to. 

“You do.” You ran your hand beneath the sagging button-up, feeling his skin like you were clinging to life itself. Like he was your tether to anything fulfilling. “But I said yes, didn’t I?”

The strangling weight of your wedding band seemed heavier in the moment. A molten reminder of the claim he bore on you. The signal that others should bow their heads if you were near. Treat you like they would him. 

Surely you’d always known what you’d agreed to. 

Some wordless alignment punctured the airflow, lowly satisfaction blending into the frequency. You could hear his smugness even with nothing to punctuate it. It just seeped from him, like he was made of it. 

His nimble hands were rushing to get your clothes off, garments being stripped away without time to savor it. This was carnally driven, eagerness lining each and every button undone, every waistband yanked down. You aided the attempts, tugging at the cursed coverings until, eventually, they relented, baring the man you’d promised yourself to and leaving you just as undressed. 

Unprotected, more so. Nothing to hide behind anymore. 

He didn’t prolong the point, didn’t give any time for hesitancy. Tommy was never a man with inhibition. He moved with intention, moved like he knew where each step would land.

He was much the same as a lover. 

You felt the head of him trace up and down a few times, the minimal beads of his pre-cum warming the weeping parts of you. You’d forgotten the mess, forgotten the little shock that ran up the length of your spine when it hit you what was about to occur.  

Then, he was pressing in. Slow, easy, and life-ruiningly good. 

It hurt in the most rewarding way. The way that made it clear you’d feel it tomorrow, the way that was a consequence. It’d been weeks with nothing, and now he was giving everything. You feared for a moment that your body wouldn’t be able to adjust at all. That it would be too much, too deep. Too specific of a feeling. 

But he’d made it work. He always did. 

And when he started moving, your hand shot up to the hardened flesh of his bicep, squeezing like a warning. Like a life raft. Like it could save you from the sensation of being whole again.

Every precise drag in and out of you felt like carving a promise into the wood of a sacred tree. You could feel him everywhere, so far within you that your heart seemed to readjust it’s beating to match his pace. 

His hand came up, interlacing tenderly with yours and pinning it beside your head. It was a disgustingly intimate display of affection. Something that proved the verbal frigidity of the constant bickering didn’t represent the connection, didn’t win the fight against the pure devotion that the two of you held like an oath. 

The love won out. It always won out. 

A specific thrust had him perfectly on that special spot. It felt like fireflies in your head, nothing but a pleasant buzzing as your eyes shut, back arching slightly on reflex. 

“Ay, look at me.” 

The words were engraved into your jaw, his lips trailing kisses on any skin he could get to. You stared up at him, hazy and crestfallen from the way he gazed at you. 

“You pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll have Arthur drag you back here by your fuckin’ throat. You hear me?” 

“I’d like - mm -” Your attempts to match his authority with some semblance of your own was outpaced immediately by the perch of his fingers on your clit. The pattern they found was signature, one that sent you reeling every time. “Like to see him try, Tommy.” 

Your words were barely audible over your breathing, approaching an edge so strong that it almost scared you. The combined stimulation of all that he was doing was too fast, too consuming after the streak of celibacy you’d been on. 

Some warning chipped the bottoms of your teeth, scraped by on the way out of your mouth, but he didn’t accept it. He kept his motions consistent, coaxing you over that edge with quiet praises and promises of reform. It was like a trebuchet, hauling you into an orgasm so complete that it made your vision white for just a beat, made your fingers somehow tighter on his arm. 

He was the much same, letting go of the most stunning noises you’d ever heard, searing the soft flesh of your shoulder as he exhaled them into you. It was the kind of closeness that remade you, carved new indents that only one person could ever fit into. 

Him. You’d been reduced and rebuilt over and over to be a vessel for him. For all you felt for him. 

He didn’t pull out, didn’t move in a way that even suggested he was going to. He just stayed as he was, conjoined and completely fused. Even as his cum started to leak out around where he was softening, he didn’t budge. He simply ran his hands over the skin he’d been separated from for too long, simply existed in a rare moment of solitude with you. 

Thomas Shelby was an affectionate man. Especially when he could show it like this.

Adrian didn’t know how to listen. He was a pro at creating falsehoods in his mind and acting on them as if they were reality. The split hadn’t been a mutual one, sure. He hadn’t even registered that the words you’d uttered weeks ago were meant to hold finality. That it was meant to be the end.

The relationship hadn’t been long enough to scar permanently, but it was long enough for the absence of it to cut deep. Long enough to have exchanged I love yous and for you to practically suffocate when he didn’t come home on time. That was what prompted it, the unknowing. Rationally, it was better to sever that connection with your own scissors than have it be sawed in half by one of the many unruly villains he was determined to beat. You couldn’t handle him dying while your heart was still beating in his hands. You couldn’t lose yourself to the constant chance his heroism would kill him. 

You’d told him this a couple times, to which he responded simply by saying ‘I don’t have heroism. I just hate criminals.’ Which, in his defense, was true. It was fair to say you probably smoothed his edges a bit in your mind. Painted his fondness of the slaughter into something prettier, something noble. But, ultimately, you did love him. And he clearly felt something equivalent to love for you. 

It’s why he kept showing up, even when you’d told him he needed to take his clothes back home. It’s why you didn’t shut your curtains at night, knowing his red visor and ruddy heart were just out of sight. It’s why you couldn’t find it in yourself to refuse him when he was waiting to follow you upstairs. 

Your apartment building wasn’t a big one, housing your one bedroom between four walls that seemed to soak up any light available and leave nothing for the people in it. You returned your keys to their rightful spot, keeping away from Adrian even as he practically buzzed with the need to be close. It was something you’d grown in tune with over the months you’d been with him. He was an energy source all on his own, vibrating like a tuning fork that frustratingly could only ever sync up with your frequency. Meeting him for the first time had felt like some sort of cosmic collision. Now, you were stuck in the endless expansion of the hit, never satisfied but always somehow destructive.

“Why are you being so weird lately?” He was mildly frustrated, but the itchy sequins of confusion embroidered his voice more than anything. You’d broken up with him almost three weeks ago, and it’d probably been longer since you touched him. Since he’d gotten to touch you. 

He had a specific affinity for touching those he cared about. He was rather indifferent to physical means of connection when it came to strangers. Anything from handshakes to sex was nothing he liked much when it was unfamiliar people. But, for those he carried close, he craved it. Bad enough to never have the words for it the few times he’d tried to explain it to you. It was deep in his bones, that need. For whatever reason, that intimacy was practically written into his DNA, and he’d been deprived for weeks. 

You sighed. Not angry, or tired, but gutted. Your will was blowing thinner by the day like sand dunes in a tornado. Your body mourned the loss of his reverent affection, and your entire being ached from how badly you missed his trailing, his presence. The people he worked with often chastised his spouting of incorrect animal facts, but you never minded. You liked his voice, liked the way he sounded interested and proud when he got to tell people things. You’d kill for the commonality of it given the current state of the two of you. 

“We broke up, Adrian. I’m not being weird.” 

His glasses slid down a bit with the creasing of his eyebrows. The way his face scrunched in confusion was something you used to love about him. You still do, in honesty. Just less openly now. 

“We didn’t break up.” The distance between the two of you felt even more vast as his voice grew slightly panicked, like he couldn’t believe you would even think about that possibility. “We had that really fucking heavy conversation a couple weeks ago, I took my shit home, and then we were supposed to talk. You’ve just been avoiding me and acting like I’m gonna kill you if you even look at me.” 

“You say that like it’s far-fetched.”   

“You’re not a criminal.” He said it like the fact it was. Though, it didn’t make the knowledge that he’d killed people for less than a prolonged look any easier to bear. “You told me you loved me.” 

“I do love you.” It wasn’t past-tense. It wasn’t a life already lived. It was here and now, a time where you’d loved him for months and would continue to love him for months after. You loved him to the point where you couldn’t, to the point where it tore you apart. 

“Then why haven’t I touched you in weeks? You know, normally I would love to be living like Peacemaker but this is some serious Harcourt shit you’re doing. It’s fucking killing me.”   

“You think it’s not killing me?” He wasn’t a stupid man, but he did have a hard time comprehending certain emotions, especially when they were being felt by others. “I’m happy you like what you do so much, truly, I am. But, whether you’re out killing petty criminals or fighting aliens for A.R.G.U.S., I’m still here, Adrian. I’m still wondering if you’re bleeding out somewhere or if I’m ever gonna see you again. And I can’t do that. It’s been killing me for months. Do you get that?”

The rant spilled from your lips like wine, bubbling out in a flow of velvet words that had been sitting amongst the shredded remains of your sanity. It was everything you’d been saying to him in your head since you’d left him, just far less elegant. Moisture pricked the corners of your avoidant eyes, not feeling like you could look at him without breaking. 

The impact of his shoes on the ground sounded out, burning a path directly toward your sulking form. He came close enough you could feel that buzzing again, his innate navigation that somehow always led him right back to you. The smell of his soap crawled slowly into your personal space, bickering with the air molecules until they departed and all you were left with was him. In your lungs, in your heart, in front of you. 

“You don’t get to break us up just ‘cause you’re scared. That’s stupid.” The tone of his voice was so low, brassy and signature. It was something so uniquely blended that only he pulled off, and the familiarity hit your knees like a hammer, nearly buckling them with the impact. “We’re like fucking…penguins, you know? They mate for life.” 

You’re sure he could have said more. You’re almost certain that you should have said something. But his stupid animal fact and that godforsaken drugstore soap that was too overtly masculine and somehow still obscenely fitting for him was far too intoxicating to think of something to say. 

You pulled him forward to close the remaining gap, tiny and unbearable. Kissing him after neglecting him for so long felt like the first breath after being resuscitated. Like all the life you could ever need sat sturdy and infinite in the soft ruggedness of his lips. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. His hands were on you immediately, like it burned not to have them on you, even over your clothes. His shoulders slumped a little, looking like the weight of not touching you was so heavy that he was stiff with it, and now he was relieved of that burden. The both of you made similar noises of euphoric relief, quiet and involuntary. It was a simple acknowledgement, conveying everything from ‘I’m sorry’ to ‘this feels heavenly.’

He kept you practically chest-to-chest after he pulled away, preferring there to be no physical distance, but knowing human bodies had their limits. His lips brushed against yours as he spoke so softly you barely caught it.

“Does this mean I can bring my clothes back over here?”  

His lips were warm as they touched the back of your fingers. 

The pose was vaguely childlike. Your hand was clasped over his mouth, the both of you crouched behind a worn sofa. It had been a reflex as the sound of the door opening had radiated throughout the space like a bomb wave. It was the sound of danger, of getting caught, of not going home. 

Of course, that wasn’t entirely fair. This was your house, in a way. Chris had needed something from the other version of you, something she wasn’t willing to give him. Playing his role as the Chris who was meant to be in her world didn’t work, so he’d asked Adrian to infiltrate and steal it from her privacy. You didn’t want him to go alone, so you went along. The two of you weren’t suited up, figuring violence would only make things worse than Chris had already made them. That’s why you could feel his mouth against your hand. That’s why the closeness felt deeper than normal. 

The lights were off in her house. The moonlight was draped elegantly over the shadowy depths of the night sky. It was a cold night. The kind that made breathing a bit crisper, movement a bit stiffer, yet your doppelganger walked in burning. She was giggly, clearly a little tipsy, and walking forward with her head turned around. She moved without purpose, like her destination loomed behind her and she was waiting for it to catch up. 

Your eyes widened as you peeked out. She was dressed up, light and careless as the good times carried her inside without judgement. You looked pretty. A thought you rolled around in your mouth sometimes but never quite absorbed like you were doing right now. It wasn’t in the clothes or your face or the way you were moving. It was more innate than that, like you were just made of it - light, beauty. It just flowed, unabashed and unquestionable. 

You looked to the side, almost embarrassed at the thought of him seeing you this way, even if it wasn’t the you he was acquainted with. It felt too intimate, too hidden. Whatever state she was in wasn’t one you felt he should see, not in the state of the two of you. You were in love with him, undoubtedly so. And he was in love with his job, liking that you were a part of it. This wasn’t professional, or cordial. This was just you, messy and grinning and raw.

He didn’t notice your worry, he was staring at her. 

At you. 

The door was shut gently a minute later, clasping fondly as it’s hinges met and it’s lock was snapped into place. He was here, too. As present in the moment as you were, both in and out of where you should have been. 

Now he was looking at you, eyes ripping away from the hole they’d been burning into the woman wearing your face.

“I told you not to leave your jacket in the car.” He walked amongst the dust and memories that clearly lined the walls of your house. It was familiar, something he evidently did often. Like he was part of the house itself. “You always get cold.” 

“How am I wrong for assuming the restaurant will be warmer than the fucking winter air?” 

You were laughing as you said it, and he had a look in his eyes as he joined you that nearly made your heart stop from where you were spying. They were glistening, practically. Pooling with a warmth you’d never been given in your world. 

“I mean, I could kill the manager if you wanted. Write a message with his blood telling them to make it warmer.” You think, from your vantage point, that he was doing a bit. It’s hard to tell with him. 

“Jesus, Adrian. You’re not Manson.” You say it with love evident on your face, the words oozing through the cracks of your easy smile. “The manager’s probably not even a criminal.” 

“Making my wife uncomfortable is a crime of the highest order.” 

Both you and Adrian had been tuned in until that point. You were practically synonymous in the snapping of your necks towards the other. You’d both heard it clear as day. 

Wife. 

“Your order, maybe. The law doesn’t care about restaurant thermostats.” 

The two of you watched as he moved closer to you. He walked so casually, not hesitating to enter your space, not flinching when he wrapped his arms around your shoulders. Your back leaned against his front like an instinct, like something practiced. 

“C’mon. Let’s go to bed. You’re gonna be groggy tomorrow.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

It was the most horrifying thing to watch happen, truly. This glowing, giddy version of you turned around and kissed the man you were gut-wrenchingly infatuated with. And he kissed her back like he’d been waiting to all night. 

It was a short, fleeting thing. Some quick prompt of affection before you trudged up the stairs, headed toward the room that - presumably - you shared with him. He was close behind, making insignificant conversation and sinking deeper into the space. It was baffling how, without even turning on a light, they’d torn your entire foundation into nothing but shreds. Loose shards of soul-crushing assumption that had been the only thing keeping you upright for months. Gone in minutes. 

You didn’t look at him. You didn’t say a word. You just walked into the kitchen and picked up what Chris had sent you here for. You guessed he was similarly rattled, as he didn’t fight you for the dignity of completion, of being the one to appease Peacemaker. He simply waited by the door. He simply followed you out. 

“Are we seriously not gonna talk about what we just fucking saw?” 

As soon as the portal gateway was sealed, and you were both safe in Chris’ hallway, he spoke. It was as if a spell had been broken. Like he was waiting until he was sure it was real, until you were back in the world you belonged in. 

“Why should we?” 

He gawked at you. “Are you serious?” His hands waved about for a second, as if acting out his own confusion or trying to somehow fling his frustration at you. You heard the start of multiple different sentences before he finally settled with one. “We were married. You fucking kissed me.” 

“I didn’t do shit, Adrian.” You sighed out, exasperated and alarmingly in need of someplace quiet to lick your wounds. The life you’d seen looked so peaceful, so perfect. So full of him and full of love. It made you feel like you’d gargled thorns, like your stomach was hollow. “Chris’ entire family is alive over there. You wanna talk about that, too? It doesn’t matter. It’s not our world.” 

You walked over to the aforementioned man’s dining table, dropping the object onto the surface. He wasn’t here tonight, saying something about needing to do something in a town over. Old scars, old stories. Ends that needing tidying. You hadn’t asked about it. 

He followed you just like the other him had. Obedient and speedy, needing to keep pace. He walked like it hurt him to be far from you. 

“Of course it matters. We literally saw ourselves.” He looked like he was close to pacing, practically spilling pure energy into the tiny home. “We’re married in the world where everything is better. That doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“Chris only said everything is better over there because his family is alive. That doesn’t actually mean everything is better.” You still hadn’t looked at him. You didn’t think you ever would again, in honesty. It would be unbearable having to see the absence of that fondness he held for you over there. Of having to see he clearly could love you, he just didn’t. “Yeah, we’re married, but maybe…I don’t know, fucking Hitler is still alive or something. 

“That’s what you’re going with?”

“What do you want me to say, Adrian?” 

“Fuck, dude, just something about it. You won’t even look at me.” 

You finally do look at him then. Ever the spiteful person, you can’t let him hold that over you. Even if it physically hurts to meet his eyes.

“I’m not saying anything because there’s nothing to say. It’s not us. It’s not our house, or our lives, or our world. They’re strangers. They’re just strangers who’re married. No different than people we’d pass on the street.” 

You said the words with the intention of hounding him, of driving home your indifference to what you’d experienced. But, the words cut so deep you felt your eyes start to water as you spoke. Being caught in a lie was embarrassing, but being caught this red-handed would be crippling. You wanted to look away. You told your eyes to look down, to look up, to look anywhere that wasn’t his pleading gaze. You couldn’t manage it. 

“It didn’t mean anything to you?” 

The air seemed to swirl around you, shifting into something much heavier, much more sincere. This wasn’t what you were used to. Adrian was abrasive at times, honest to his core, and irrefutably optimistic in his own sinister way. He was hyper and loyal and he had a smile that was like hope incarnate. He was never lost, never still, never serious. 

He never looked at you like this. Like you held the power to crush him. Like even if you did, he’d be satisfied sticking to your fingertips.

You tried to inhale, lungs feeling like they’d been punctured. Like the air was good for nothing except leaking back out.

“Did you want it to?”

He laughed a bit, exhaling a breathy symphony of all the bittersweet agony that’s inevitable when you’re longing for someone. You recognize it immediately. You’ve heard it countless times in your own flimsy giggles, in your own voice when you speak to him. 

“Well, it meant something to me. So…” He trails off for a moment, rubbing a hand over his jaw in a way that’s so uncharacteristically shy that it nearly makes your knees buckle. “I guess I was hoping, yeah. That it would mean something.” 

Your heart was beating so frantically and so hard in your chest that it drowned out the sound of Chris’ clock ticking, of the buzzing of the lightbulb as it lit up the room. All you could hear was the evidence of what he was doing to you. 

He spoke again, quiet and almost afraid. Desperate. “You’ve never thought about it?” 

You weren’t even sure if you were blinking at this point. Or breathing. He refused to break eye contact, and you didn’t know if you had the strength to do it even if you wanted to. You could have cried at the unfolding, at the reveal. The harrowing rasp of his voice made it sound like he needed you to have thought about it. Like he thought about it all the time. Like he needed to not be the only one. 

You don’t know where the words came from, but they poured out messy and nearly silent, like they’d been swallowed and regurgitated over and over throughout all the times you failed to tell him how you felt.

“I’ve thought about it.” 

His eyebrows tilted up just slightly, relief flooding his face in a wave so grand that it was impossible to subdue. You loved that about him, how visibly he felt things. 

“Yeah?” It was whispered, such a slight ripple in the burning atmosphere that you could have missed it if you weren’t watching him so intently. “What do you think about?”    

He didn’t say it to tease, or to lambaste. It wasn’t glazed with the arrogance you’d expect from such a titillating line. He was really asking, need tinting the edges of his voice like the most addicting vignette 

The little distance that sat between the two of you hadn’t been anything noteworthy at the beginning of this ordeal, but now it was the only thing you could focus on. He was close enough that he could reach out and touch you if he wanted. He was close enough to surely feel how painfully he made your heart thump. 

“Tell me.” 

You hadn’t genuinely expected him to want a narration of your fantasies. You didn’t even know if you’d be able to force the words out. You’d thought about everything with him - movie nights, dinner dates, waking up together. That blissful domesticity you’d seen in the other world had practically been a play-by-play of every shameful dream you’d ever had.

“Please.” 

Jesus Christ. You’d always sort of assumed he’d be a beggar, but hearing the plea seep out of his mouth like he was dedicating his deepest wish to you was something else entirely. 

“I think about us living like we did over there.” Your words were mumbled, filled with inhibition and slight confusion on whether or not you were imagining all of this. “Coming home from missions together and…slow mornings, date nights. Sappy shit, I don’t know.” 

The self-consciousness wrapped around your throat like a noose, making it impossibly difficult to choke your speech out. It felt like standing on needles, like purposefully breaking your arm. The only thing that made it bearable was him nodding along as you spoke, trancelike and involuntary. His eyes were glossy, and his pupils were so engorged that they forced the hue of his irises asunder, looking more black than anything else. 

“I think about it too. About us.” 

Your lips parted as your chest heaved. You still couldn’t force your eyes away from his, sealing something sacred into existence with each second you maintained the stare. Breaking it would be breaking the connection. Breaking the possibility. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

It shouldn’t have floored you the way it did, really. It just seemed surreal to be hearing him say it after spending so long praying he would. It made you stumble, made you stupid.

“What?” 

“I mean, I really want to fuck you. I just thought asking to kiss you fit the moment better.” 

That made your chest stutter, eliciting the tiniest gasp from you. The saliva in your mouth felt as solid as cement, like you could suffocate, like what he’d said was going to suffocate you. You knew how Adrian viewed sex. Less of a physical reprieve and more of a lesson in bonding. And that almost made it worse. He wasn’t saying he wanted to do this because he needed it and you were here. He was saying he wanted to be close to you. He wanted to be as close as he could physically get, wanted to be inside of you, wanted to be one in the same. The knowledge was so hot it burned, searing it’s way through your stomach and biting at the tips of your fingers. 

It was that fire that made it impossible to stand still, that pushed you forward to close the gap. It was an impulsiveness you’d never expressed before. Something that manifested within you only right now and only for him. Only out of the sheer need to feel him in all the ways you’d been imagining for months. 

The small noise that he made when your mouth met his was almost pornographic. It wasn’t loud, or exaggerated, but it was so perfect and so erotic that it seemed as though it should have been a part of a script. There was certainly no way something that gruff and that full of certainty could be a reaction to you. 

The momentary control you’d seized by being the one to kiss first evaporated as quickly as it’d been bestowed. The notion of making out with the man of your dreams while in Chris’ house was a little gross and felt almost like you were wronging him, but Chris had done worse than this to people better than you, so you didn’t focus on it. 

Your back hit one of the mortifyingly bland walls, and you hadn’t even realized you’d been moving until you realized you couldn’t anymore. One of his large hands was holding your jaw, while the other was on your back, using the leverage to hold you as tight as possible to his torso. He kissed hard, but achingly slow. Like he was trying to break you open, trying to see inside. 

When his tongue grazed yours, your throat tightened, a small sound slipping through the shrinking muscles. It triggered a response from him, too. Like he found it so pleasant that he couldn’t help it. Like he’d been waiting for it.

“I can feel it on my lips when you moan.” From how directly you were pressed against him, you could feel how hard he was through the inky denim of his jeans. It didn’t feel real being there, so intertwined with him. It didn’t feel real that it was you making him feel this way. “You sound really pretty when you do that.” 

He sounded as dazed as you felt, and you wondered if his head was swimming as much as yours was. It nearly started to spin as he started nipping your neck, soothing over the pinch by suckling at the tender skin. 

You hardly felt cohesive, mumbling out a ‘thank you’ that was definitely not the right thing to say.  

It made his shoulders shake in a slight laugh, only lasting a second that fled the space before it could linger too long. “You’re welcome.” 

You took him being slightly distracted by his dedication to your neck as a chance to touch him. You’d thought about doing it for so long that really having the opportunity to felt terrifying. He was so sturdy, defined in all the places you were soft, skin taught where yours ebbed and flowed. Your hands went under the hem of his shirt, fingertips resting on his sides, tracing his skin forward until you could sprawl your palms against the wall of his abdomen. He was so warm, so definite. It felt like worship, in a way. Like you were absorbing the holiness of some ancient statue, like he was holy. 

His stomach tensed at the contact, and you felt him pull away from the crook where your collarbone stretches into your shoulder. “Fuck - stop.” 

You yanked your hands away like he’d burned you, holding them a few inches away from his body in a way you hoped was disarming. “I’m sorry - I didn’t mean -” 

“No, it’s me. I’m, like…really fucking hard right now. I think I need to go because if you keep touching me, I’m gonna cum in my pants.” 

The declaration burned like hot coals had joined the blood circulating your body. You felt it everywhere, echoing in your head and ricocheting out to wherever it could reach. A jolt of panic zapped your nervous system at the suggestion of going.

“Go?” You didn’t recognize your own voice as it sounded out. There was a hideous desperation darkening the clarity. You didn’t sound respectable, didn’t sound like the person you knew yourself to be. You sounded exactly as you felt - completely strung out with need. “Why can’t we just…”

You hated the trailing off. You hated how carnally shy you were when it came to him. You were a grown adult, fully capable of just asking another adult who was clearly into you if the two of you could have sex. Other adults did it all the time. This didn’t feel like you, didn’t feel like who you were. Yet, it was all you could muster.  

“Yeah, yes. I really want to, I just - you know, I didn’t wanna push you.” 

“No, no pushing. I want to. I really want to.” It was rushed, just as obscene as it’d been minutes ago when this had started. The look in his eyes hadn’t diminished, only grown brighter. It’d been a modest smoulder before, now it was blazing in the glass pools of his irises. “Please, I swear.” 

You watched something shift, like gears on a bike switching to make it up a steep hill. Maybe it was the begging, maybe it was your hands returning to their rightful spot on his body. You didn’t care what it was because it got him kissing you again, got him grinding against you in a way you were certain you’d never get to feel anywhere outside of this moment. 

He broke away from the kiss but didn’t move off of your lips. “Not gonna fuck you on the wall. Angle’s shit. You won’t feel it right.” 

He had pulled you from the wall and started walking you backwards before he’d even been done talking. It was an explanation more than anything else, a justification on why he was steering you away from the sacred pocket of heat you two had created.

Chris’ couch was tattered, and the cushions were stiffer than they should have been, but that was all irrelevant in the current moment. He lowered you onto them like you were something saccharine, something silky and delicate that he couldn’t afford to drop. The weight of him on top of you was heavenly in an indescribable way, so different from the feeling of him in front of you.  

You felt his movements get quicker, more rushed as the wire coiled tighter, as he got more pent up. You were much the same, undoing his belt and button in a hurried attempt to get his pants off. He mirrored you, frantically tugging your down the pudge of your hips, taking your underwear with them. 

“I’m sorry, promise next time I’ll eat you out. I just really need to feel you. Is that ok?” His hands pawed tenderly at the newly exposed skin of your legs, talking through heavy breaths and loving rolls of his hips. You were both bare below the waist now, and the feeling of him against you with no barriers made your whole body jump.

“Mhm.” Your stomach felt so impossible tight that you couldn’t unclench your jaw enough to let sounds through. The confirmation came from your throat, tumbling up and hitting your sealed lips, phasing through the blockage of your cheeks just to get to him. 

“Fuck, ok.” 

He leaned down to reconnect his lips to yours, pushing into you at the same time in a moment of absolute synchronization. It hit like a morphine tap, stealing any worry or pain you might have had and filling your entire being up with nothing but him. With how he felt. 

You hadn’t been prepped, not lacking the adequate lubrication but certainly lacking the warm up as he bottomed out. The stretch ached in the best way. A kind of ownership, of marking. You’d be sore tomorrow, you knew from the adjustment period alone. No matter how good you would feel in a few moments when he started moving, this part would scar, would linger. The thought of still being able to feel him in the morning made you clench, the both of you inhaling sharply at the feeling. 

“Holy shit - don’t do that.” 

“Fuck, ‘m sorry. Wasn’t trying to.”

His hands ran up and down the plush of your thighs, stopping once or twice to squeeze the fat of your hips. He didn’t try to rush it, just waited for you to tell him he could move.

And when he started to, he moaned. Loud, broken, and absolutely incinerating. You weren’t much better, digging your fingertips into his bicep like you were drowning and it was your only chance at survival. 

“You feel so fucking good. I can’t - why haven’t we done this before?” 

You made a noise under your breath and just shook your head. You didn’t know why. Uncertainty, instability, insecurity. Excuse after excuse could explain it if you wanted it to, but nothing felt as important as the feeling of him bucking up into you. 

His hand crept up under your shirt, and it made you tense for a moment. His hand splayed flat against the lower part of your tummy, smoothing his thumb over the softness of it. Nobody had touched you like that before, so reverent and devoted to the parts you were unsure of. 

“You’re so gorgeous. So gorgeous. I can’t believe you’re letting me do this.” He sounded half out of his mind, words getting slurred a bit like he was intoxicated. Like the feeling was that addicting. Like you were.

Then, the plane of his warm palm pressed into your stomach, making the feeling increase in a tenfold and making your eyes widen a bit at the intensity. 

“Fuck - Adrian -”

“No, ‘s okay, promise. Feel good?” 

He was practically whimpering at this point, driving himself as mad as he was driving you. It was bordering on too good, too perfect. The two of you fit together in a way that was suspiciously aligned, like this kind of connection was more of a necessity than a pleasantry. Like you were made for it. 

He halted the pressure temporarily to pry your hand off his arm, grasping your fingers and moving them down before putting his hand back where it’d been. 

“Rub your clit for me, ok? ‘m not gonna last. Need you to cum with me, please.” 

The added friction made your lips open in a small sob, not realizing how badly you needed it. You felt yourself clench around him again, making his head fall forward a little, jaw falling open. The sound he made was painful, the both of you wound so tight it hurt. 

The buildup fried the ends of your nerves, emanating across your entire body in what was surely something fatal with how intense it was. You used your unoccupied hand to pull his head down, needing to feel his lips, needing to be even closer than you already were. 

He came first, warmth scalding you from the inside out, tipping you right over the edge with him. It was a mess of hands and a mix of pathetic sounds that were exchanged and consequently swallowed and stored. You could have stayed like that forever. Happily, at that. 

You felt his mouth pressing pecks into any exposed bit of flesh he could get to, a sign of that same comfort that had been given so easily between the other versions of yourselves. It was a sign of light, of connection, of love. It was a beginning, you hoped. And, as he made no move to pull out of you, you felt fairly certain of that conclusion. You felt the movement of a chuckle from where he was laid on top of you. 

You couldn’t help but smile at the audibility of his amusement. You loved his smile, loved the sound of his laugh. You asked him, “What is it?”

“Peacemaker is gonna be so pissed we had sex on his couch.”

There was a monster in your village.

It’d been countless nights now of going to sleep and waking up to one more empty bed. One more father lost to the predatory tendrils that crept around the dusk, that populated what should have been a safe space. Nobody had the same story, but everybody had the same result. Another funeral for someone’s husband, someone’s father, someone’s son. 

It was clockwork. Always on time and always messy. 

Some patron, or preacher, or diligent civilian would find a horrid, crimson congregation of what could only be the last trace of a losing man. They’d find fear incarnate smudged across the tattered face of the dark’s latest victim. A body torn to shreds. A neck gaped wide for the world to look down upon. 

The town was collectively holding a breath, getting children home and tucked in before the sun even dared kiss the horizon. Nobody was patrolling. Nobody was looking for whatever was doing this. Everyone was focused on only one thing. 

Survival.

What was once a near given, something almost insured, was now constantly in jeopardy. The men lived in consistent contradiction, being scared for their lives while simultaneously being the protectors. Any one of them could be on the chopping block, could be the next family to lose it’s heart. And none of them knew how to deal with it. 

Your father chose to hoard your mother and you inside. The windows remained covered even in the day. The doors stayed locked. Every venture out of your four walls was necessity-driven and carried out begrudgingly. The risk was too grand, the loss too irreparable. It made sense. It was by far the most rational thing to be done. 

But it was hard to sleep once the outside grew cloaked. 

With nowhere to go during the day, the small room that had been designated to you became just about the only sight you saw. It blurred the different times into one barely comprehensible mush of dampening light. You laid down to surrender yourself to sleep, and the static tingles of restlessness would envelop you like a wave. Like it would kill you if it wasn’t listened to. 

You grew more concerned by the day that you’d simply die waiting for life to let you back into it. Or that, in the nonsensical approach of cowering over combating, the assailant would get to everyone. Only men were targeted now, but this nightmareish force would surely return to it’s hunger after the last one had been consumed. Would surely start taking the women. The children. 

The church was spouting warnings of the devil, of a rapture, of Hell itself making it’s way to the land of the living. It would have explained it, if you let it. Who but the devil could do something so inhumane, so ghastly? 

They didn’t know.

But you did.

Not the face, nor the body. You’d seen his eyes. Bright as a candle after lights-out, red as the blood he spilled. 

He walked the perimeter of your house like a sentient premonition, like a preceding calm before the catastrophe. He never got close enough to be deciphered, only to be perceived. He was like a ghost. Like something only there if you didn’t stare head-on. 

Tonight was no different. 

Your body was covered by a too-long nightgown and the unshakeable perspiration that came with Mississippi summers. You could see the scarlet glare way out in the tallgrass away from your home, scorching and unabashed, like the sun itself had split in two and crashed down at your doorstep. 

You felt marked by his presence whenever he visited you, engaging in odd staring contests and wondering if this was what the end felt like. If it was drawn out and premeditated. If he was only waiting for you to slip up, to give him an in. 

You wondered if you were simply wearing the shoes of all the people he’d killed. If he’d hunted them like he does you. If this was part of it. 

Normally, he’d stand so still that your mind began convincing you there was nothing there at all. He would just watch you, and you him. The most conniving bit of voyeurism in exchange for your labored breathing. In exchange for whatever he got out of this. 

Normally he would. Now he was moving.

It was so devoid of anything luminary that he stayed almost invisible even as his strides brought him closer to your window. The only indication you had were those two pin-pricks of illuminated evil growing larger, growing brighter. The impending doom was not impending any longer, it was here. He’d gotten tired of waiting, of stalking. The danger approaching was so Earth-shattering that it seemed to bend time. One moment a demon was shuffling through your front yard, the next brought a man just beyond the glass.

The dull light from your porch emphasized the shadows on his face. Even in the pitch black of a star-less sky, even with nothing but poor lamp light, he was beautiful. Unlike anything you had ever seen. His eyes weren’t even red when you could see him properly, they were more mirror-like. The glossy depth reflected that dim shine right back at you, like it was coming from inside. Like it was hiding just behind his irises. 

It felt like the oxygen solidified in your lungs, like all you’d ever cared for was a rug that he’d just yanked from beneath your feet.

He was smiling at you. As though he were a neighbor. As though this was commonplace. 

You watched his hand raise like you were watching yourself be sentenced to death. His fingers found the perch of the window, pushing it up. Your father had been promising to put a lock on it for months, never making it far down enough on his to-do list to actually manage it. 

So, it opened. The thing slid up without hesitation, like it belonged to him first and foremost. It offered your house to his venomous reputation, to his malevolence. 

You expected him to step inside. Your place was quaint. A chipped one-story that had enough scars and bruises to display the tale of your family. You and him were practically level. It would have been easy to enter, easy to kill you. He could get to your parents without breaking a sweat. 

But he didn’t move. He just stared, small grin draped across his lips at the frightened look you were wearing. 

“Bit irresponsible not havin’ a lock on this.” He patted the middle of the pane, emphasizing the item he was speaking of. “Anyone could just walk up n’ open it.” 

His accent was without a trace, something you couldn’t identify. He spoke like it was made to suit his words, his voice. It sounded old, an ancient and unprecedented sweetness completely saturating the cadence. He didn’t look old. It made you question how a creature of reckoning could have the face of a boy barely past his blooming. It made you question how he was a creature at all. 

“I don’t mean to scare ya’, miss. I’m just -” 

“You the thing killing our men?”

You didn’t have the slightest clue where the nerve to interrupt came from. Even so, you’d barely managed it. Your voice was hoarse as you forced it out, gritty and crisped at the edges. You hadn’t exchanged many words with the opposite sex when they were regular, just as your father requested. This was something different entirely. Having a guy at your window would be punishable enough without you entertaining the devil. You should have screamed, should have run out of the room.

You just couldn’t. 

There was something impossibly captivating about him, down to the most minute detail. His clothes were baggy and slightly mussed, like he wasn’t coming from somewhere defined. Like he didn’t have a home to go back to. Hell, maybe he didn’t. He’d probably be tucked away in it instead of terrorizing your town if he did.

He gawked for a moment, a quiet laugh of undiluted amusement following the expression. 

“Mighty big accusation to be throwin’ around.” 

You could feel the petrification seeping out to your stiff limbs, the sweat forming on your palms.

“I’ve seen you. Your eyes out in the bushes.” 

His face didn’t morph into one of agitation, or the retreat of somebody who just got caught. It stayed exactly as it was, full of some sort of omnipotent enjoyment. Like this was cute. Like this was part of it. 

“My daddy says the devil’s come for us.”

His head cocks to the side almost unknowingly, a scoff riding the coattails of his breath and dispersing once it hit the air. 

“Well, he says a lot. Don’t mean it’s true.” 

The sound of recognition momentarily drew your attention away from your fright, from the tremoured beats of your heart just below your pulsepoint. He spoke like the two were acquainted, like he knew the habits of your scuffed and weathered father. 

“He tell you the history of your village? The real one?” 

There was a tale passed around often about the early days of your tucked-away, little place. It spilled like wine tinted with poison, like something forged in agony too grand to speak of. Too wretched, too ungodly. 

Your father was mayor, way back when. Your home was barely older than he was, and he’d been king of it for a time. Under his rule, raiders and poorly-veiled conquistadors paid many visits, killed the animals, decimated the crops. Decimated the women worst of all. 

It’d been hell, clawing up and out of that muck. But your father had managed it. 

It was a story of nobility, of perseverance. It was usually dipped in sugar and shared with the young ones as a reason to remain hopeful, as a reason to remain strong. It was odd this stranger would know of your traditions, let alone know something you didn’t. 

He took your silence as an invitation to continue, to muddy the waters further. 

“Big man, your daddy. Likes to take credit where it ain’t due.” 

The easiness of his expression didn’t falter, but his eyes grew sharp. It wasn’t obvious, but the minor light made the rising sincerity all the more prominent. 

“He didn’t fix anythin’ back then, I did. I saw what those people were doin’ to the land, to the women, and I made ‘em go away. For a price.” 

His words were potent with impossibility. All of that happened over 40 years ago. He looked like he’d hardly scratched the surface of 29. He read the disbelief you clearly wore, and he continued despite it. 

“Your father was a rotten man. I won’t spoil your image of him, but he ain’t who he seems. I told him, before I did anythin’, no kids. No passin’ on the lineage. I wanted that blood o’ his to die with him.” 

This recounting of events was ludicrous, complete insanity. That truth didn’t stop it from frightening you. Evidently, he was a product of something otherworldly, something beyond the gripes of humanity. If he had made such a deal, you were the only thing out of place. 

You were the disobedience. 

“I warned him, told him I’d come back. ‘n he can blame whatever devil he wants. He knows it’s me, knows why it’s happenin’.”  

It made you wonder why he wasn’t trailing your father, why he seemed so determined to get to you instead of the man who’d yet to reap what he’d sown. It brought you to a nauseating conclusion, one you posed as a question in hopes of getting denial. 

“Are you gonna’ kill me, then? Is that why you’ve been out there?” 

The tremor in your voice made him laugh. When his lips split into a smile, you saw the pin-like tips of his canines. They were closer to a dog’s, or a blade. It was striking, and so startling that you felt the muscles in your abdomen tighten like he was already attacking you. 

“I was plannin’ on it, at first. Knew he’d hate to see his little girl become one o’ me.”

The notion of being changed - in whatever way he was talking about - was strangely dizzying. The thought of letting him turn you into something else, something ghastly. Something wicked. 

It pulsed with a warmth you’d never beared before. An accumulating wet feeling between your legs, a need for pressure. He stared like he knew, like he could sense it. 

“Then, I saw you. ‘n I figured there’s one thing he’d hate more.”

You weren’t really attuned to what he was referring to, just that the way he said it put you through the ringer. There was a slight rasp to his voice, something heady and burnt at the edges. Something lived, something manly. Your breath came in shorter bursts, the tips of your fingers tingling at the feel of the breeze that blew in. 

“What’s that?” 

You caught a peak of his tongue as it wet his lips, a short preface to whatever sin-soaked proposal was sure to spill out. 

“Why don’t you let me in, and I’ll show ya’?” 

The sentiment was odd. He’d opened your window, he was practically already inside with how scarcely it was lifted off the ground. It wouldn’t be hard to step in at all. If he’d done the things he’d claimed to, breaking into your home would be nothing. There was no reason he should be seeking permission, yet here he was. 

You were going to ask why, felt the inquiry sting the tip of your tongue with how eager it was to come out, but he beat you to it. 

“I wanna’ hear you say it.” 

It felt like you’d swallowed one of the big rocks that lined the poorly dug roads. You were betraying your dad. Betraying anyone who’d ever taught you anything, really. This was against every moral that’d been instilled in you, every speck of common sense swept right under the rug.

But it was mind-numbing. It silenced those rabid elder voices that cried for purity, for love. 

This was need. Something so innate it was nearly animalistic. It felt so mortal that you wondered if he could feel it too from so far above you, so far from anything earthly. 

“Um-” The acceptance got caught in your throat, paralyzed by the way he was gazing at you. Ravenous and morbid. Determined like a victor would be, like someone who’d already won. “Yeah, ok. You can come in.” 

It was meek, like your voice was atrophied. Whispered in spite of the buzzes of lighting jolting up your spine. You’d invited the devil in. You’d practically spit in the face of God. In the face of your father. 

You said a prayer to him in the racing crevices of your mind, regardless of your denouncement. It could very well be your final chance to do so.

His boots were caked in the remnants of mother nature, small twigs protruding from the mud crammed into the soles. It was staining the floor from where he now stood, fully in your space. Your hands shook at the sight of his full stature. He wasn’t all that tall, wasn’t all that big. He was just eerie, foreboding. What he didn’t have physically he made up for in energy, the sense of some lovecraftian foreclosure sitting on him more naturally than his clothes did. Like it was just a part of him. Like it was all of him. 

“In all my years, there’s one thing that never changes. You know what that is?” 

As he inched closer, the muscles inside your stagnant legs spasmed with the urge to flee, to get you away from here. Away from him. But you didn’t move.

“I’ve watched death roll off the backs o’ men like him, invincible as they are. But they ain’t fond of losing pretty things. Innocent things.” 

You didn’t clock it immediately, not with the waltz he was leading you through. He didn’t speak directly, didn’t say what he was thinking. It didn’t seem like an attempt to leave you unstartled, to keep you calm. It seemed like he simply knew he didn’t have to, like he knew you were already in. 

It scared you, how unshakable he was. How he spoke like he had your fate pooling in the creases of his palms. The town’s preacher often told the masses to look out for the devil in the little things, the simple pleasures. Surely, this being in your bedroom was far too complex to be pure evil. Surely there were layers to these things. 

“You said you weren’t gonna’ kill me.” You winced at the wobbling of your voice, the fragility of it. If you’d talked any quieter, the wind would have dissolved the words before he could hear them. 

“‘n I meant it.”

He was so close now. You could properly see the freckled spots of his face, places where the sun had bitten down or his skin sunk in. He looked human, for all that was worth. He’d had to have been something close to it at one point. 

The width of his hand lifted to cradle the side of your head. His fingertips were significantly cloud-like. Soft in a way you’d never felt before, even on yourself. He was dressed like a working man, like someone who earned his keep. His touch was ill-fitting, like the barely-sewn flesh of a newborn. Like something that’d been bleached and scrubbed over. Reborn. 

“There are other ways to go about takin’ innocence.” 

The intention behind the statement slammed into you mercilessly. It was enough to knock you clean off your feet had the sentiment been a tangible force. 

It was one thing to extend an invitation. It was endearing, almost. Like a tea party you’d have in your youth, something to be executed and consequently cleaned up.

Letting him in, into your home, into yourself. That wasn’t ladylike. That was something they’d take your head for. 

“Well, I’ve…” It was some hopeless last-ditch effort of warding him off. The brothels a town or so over housed women who knew what they were doing. Who’d discarded the need for marital binding, who’d be a better fit for whatever he was after. “I’ve never been with a man.”

His head shook as you finished, sure but short. A barely-there gesture that carried all his certainty in it. 

His eyes draped below your jaw, smoothing his thumb over your neck from where his hand sat. The prickly edge of something razor-sharp dragged along it. Something quick enough to end you where you stood if he so chose. 

“I’m no man, darlin’. Not for a long time.” 

You felt your lips part at the admission of guilt. You’d known, and he knew that you’d known, but something still shifted at the lack of care. At the lack of coverup. 

Something fizzed in the still pools of his irises, that same radioactive red making the slightest of appearances. It was like his entire form embodied, mostly human with a lick of evil tainting the color. 

“What are you, then?”

It almost hurt to speak with how piercingly tranquil the room was. It felt like you were interrupting something, like you were wiping away the salt circle that’d been poured to protect you. 

“Ain’t important right now. Technicalities and such.” You wanted to disagree, to shake your head, to voice your disapproval; but he was so gentle. His voice was like silk dragged across the tiniest fibers within your ears, reaching the depths of your brain. Reaching places no one ever had. “‘m just someone who can make you feel good.” 

Then, the final choice between Heaven and Hell, 

“You gonna’ let me?” 

You wanted to fool yourself into thinking it was a hard decision, but it wasn’t. Your destiny was predetermined. Had been since the first time you saw him lurking beyond the treeline. 

You gave a petulant nod, feeling that point dig just a little deeper, practically begging to break your most vulnerable skin. It made something deep within you churn rapidly, like a trapdoor swung open underneath your soul. If you focused on it hard enough, you could almost feel the blood that would drip, the life that would drain. 

And when he leaned in, you swore you could taste it, too. An herbal freshness coated the tastebuds on your tongue, as though he’d been chewing mint leaves to mask something metallic. It was strangely pleasant. It was soft, even. Warm in a way you hadn’t been expecting. 

That flavor pallet expanded tenfold when his tongue breached the seam of your joined lips. It was torturously slow, like he wanted you to feel it. Like he was savouring it. 

He moved the two of you as one unit, first sideways, then backwards, aiding your back in the feather-soft descent onto your bed. The house wasn’t empty. The risk you were taking was grand, the punishment of getting caught even grander. But he’d stirred something impulsive, something undeniable. You couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop him. Not even if you wanted to. 

His weight on top of you was like a gut punch, like a jigsaw piece locking into it’s place in the puzzle. There was a slight sound when his mouth left yours, the slick thrill of eager bodies not quite there yet. It added to the novelty, and you felt it ricochet down the rest of you. 

He left a sizzling trail down, stopping where that magnetic pressure had been earlier. Where you expected another slack-jawed kiss to be placed, you instead felt his head straighten slightly. His lips were a ghostly sensation now, hardly touching you but still making their presence known. You felt the tip of his nose, too. He’d aligned his face to fit in the crook of your neck, breathing in until his lungs hit capacity. 

It made you stiffen, partly with confusion, partly with a gross sense of submission. 

“God, darlin’.” The noise he made sounded like a wound, like it was tearing him open. “Can smell the blood pumpin’ through those pretty veins. Bet you taste just as fuckin’ sweet.” 

A rather pathetic sound of your own obedience slipped from your panting chest before you could stop it. You found yourself nodding a little, mind blank and hands grasping his shirt. 

He chuckled a bit seeing you answer something that had not been a question in any sense of the word. 

“Yeah?” He addressed you in the same cadence as the townsfolk addressed the communal dogs. The ones that were friendly enough if you had something to offer. “Yeah, sweetheart. I know ya’ do.” 

The tone of his voice was so low that it seemed to bypass any remaining defences you had, simply walking in and ripping all the warning signs off the wall. His hand was simultaneously pushing the hem of your nightgown up the expanse of your body. He let it rest on the pudge of your lower tummy, stopping right where the top of your underwear began. 

They were plain, old cotton - stretched thin by harsh washboards and years of wear - and utterly soaked. The gusset was stained multiple hues darker, a testimony to the alien effect he was having on your body. On you. 

You half-expected his voice to fill up with that superior tone again, to pin you down straight as the subservient mess he’d made you into, but it didn’t come. He just stared, eyebrows curving inward with a look that was pure famine. 

There was something else, too. Like pity, or remorse. Like he felt bad for all the people who never got to see such a marvelous thing. 

“Little sinner, you are. Imagine your daddy seein’ what you let a monster make of ya’.” 

The thought makes you whimper, both in pain and in some kind of degrading eroticism. You could practically feel the scalding judgement of all those who raised you, of God himself. But it was hard to think about them when you had him in front of you. You’d never understood temptation before, how people could be led so far astray.  

You saw it crystal clear now. 

His finger traced the sopping material from the outside, pushing that cooling stickiness back onto where it’d leaked out of. It would have been unbearably uncomfortable if not for the principle of it, if not for what it represented. 

Finally, after agonizing moments of snail-like movement, he hooked his finger under it and pulled down. Your underwear slid off bear legs without objection, revealing the part of you that was meant to be sacred to the humid night air. 

His index finger swiped through the puddle of your arousal that was reaching the point of overflow, a tiny gasp clawing it’s way out of your throat at the contact. You’d never even touched yourself there. Too thoroughly tangled in the words of God and the mess of men’s standards for wives that you’d never allowed yourself the chance. 

The first purposefully tentative circle he left on your clit brought your hands back to him, had your knuckles clenched so tight that they began to ache. 

“Mm-”

Your instinct had told you to say something - his name, most logically - but you didn’t have it; and your breath was stuttering each time it attempted to shake itself from your chest. So much so that it couldn’t come out coherently, just quiet starts of different pleas that never found their end. 

He slotted his face back in that crook, huffing the scent of your thrumming blood like you were a drug. At the same time, he slid his finger down, pressing into you so slowly it felt cruel. 

“Theeere ya’ go. Open up for me, darlin’.” 

Then, he was pumping. In and out, over and over. The rhythm raised every hair you had, frying away the ends of all your neurons one by one like there was no limit to this, like the two of you could exist here forever. 

His thumb kept the previously abandoned pace on your clit, the muscles in your abdomen feeling tight enough to burst. Something unfamiliar and unfathomably strong was coming quickly to what felt like a peak. 

He could feel you clenching on his fingers, constricting further in a way that must have defied what was physically possible somehow. He could see the slightly baffled tilt of your blissed-out face. But he didn’t want to encourage you. He wanted to force it, to see what it took to get you over. 

“Think I’m gonna’ have to kill him.” He’d said it so remarkably silent, walking the eggshells of the threat like speaking it too loud would wake you right up. “Wanna’ keep you. Can’t do that if he’s around, can I?” 

The edge you were on rattled like marbles beneath your feet, painting a film over the rational parts of your head that were screaming at you to fling yourself away from the demented arms of this stranger. 

You didn’t, though. Didn’t want to, in all honesty. Not when it felt this good. Not when it was so much easier to just nod, to just let him keep touching you. 

“How do you think he’d feel, hm?” You were so close. Enough to taste it, enough that it hurt. “Last thing he sees is his little angel choosin’ the thing he hates. Lettin’ him steal her away.” 

You’d never heard this level of debauchery, of shamelessness. 

“Lettin’ him fuck her knowin’ damn well he killed half her town.” 

That did you in. It was the most euphoric guilt you’d ever felt, such a horrific inquiry into what kind of person you were. 

He’d killed half of your town, and you’d gotten off to it. 

The arch of your back wasn’t high enough to hide all his past victims from your gaze, so you opted to squeeze your eyes shut, to ignore what was so blatantly in front of you. He was a monster, a murderer, and probably the devil himself come to wreak havoc on the Delta. He could have lied to you about your father, about the past, about all of it. In fact, he probably did. You were truly no different than those dogs wandering the grassy fields and scrounging for scraps. 

He had something to offer, so you were as friendly as could be. 

He’d killed half of your town, and you’re fairly certain you’d follow him anywhere. 

Clark Kent was a gentle giant. 

He was brazen, and pure as the sun itself. Often unaware of his own size and his own nobility, he was humble to his very core. You saw it more the closer he got to you. He was a rare type of kind, raised on chipped-nail farm work and the sore love of two mortals. 

That pure of a shine was hard to keep yourself away from. Especially when he insisted on taking up your space. 

You hadn’t intended to befriend the man; and, in a way, you hadn’t done much of anything. You’d been new to the Daily Planet a few months ago, sealing yourself into solidarity with nothing but the gut-wrenching drawl of initiation as company. The others were too established, the building too big. You could get your job done easy without any olive branches, without any exceptions to your armor. 

Clark hadn’t wanted it that way, though. So he stuck until you caved. 

The others had questioned his head-strong approach, his determination. It was way off for him. Uncharacteristically brave for their meek, Midwestern sweetheart. This sentient wall of a human - who once dropped his coffee because an elderly barista has dubbed him a ‘cute young man’ - had now attached himself to your side like a barnacle deadset on suckling the lifeforce from Daily Planet’s white whale. He patrolled like you paid him to, like he was some sort of guard dog. 

They said he was whipped, said it was endearing to watch. 

But he was just Clark to you. Squeaky-clean and remarkably jumbled with his words despite being such a good journalist. His nature was pristine in a way that made you jealous sometimes, in a way so whole. And he was keen to share it with you. Eager, even, to do whatever you felt you needed. 

Unlike most people who knew, he’d told you he was Superman. Scheduled, and completely on purpose. The first time he had to ditch you on the spot, he felt guilty to the point of nausea. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lie, he couldn’t leave, and he certainly couldn’t stop seeing you. 

He had to spill. 

It was a messy and stuttered confession, something that you laughed at before immediately sobering when he didn’t laugh with you. The proof had been just as messy, but it had been absolute. 

It didn’t feel surprising, the longer you dwelled. If there was one man who could pull it off, it’d be him. 

Regardless of his reputation, he was a man before he was a God. You’d seen his fear force him to the sidelines more times than you could count, seen his joy light up a room. You’d seen his hesitancy in damn near everything he ever did. He wanted nothing more than to be the golden boy; to be someone that people looked up to, that people wanted around. 

You think, in the little moments you let yourself analyze, that’s the reason that the almost sentiment sat so monstrously heavy between the two of you. 

There are many almosts when it comes to him. Times when he almost asks you out in a way that suggests more than something platonic, times when he stares so intensely at you it almost seems like he’s going to lean in, times where his hands almost wander when hugging you. 

You wouldn’t be truthful in saying you didn’t want him. But it was hard to comprehend a guy like that being able to mirror the depth with which you felt it. 

Your pride was quiet. That burdensome endearment stringing along the perimeter of your heart even quieter. Every squirrel he saved earned a silent cheer from you, every morning he brought you something to drink. 

He was your Clark. Even if he wasn’t fully yours, he was close enough to be. 

That’s why his floating semi-permanence outside your window pane is so worrying. That’s why it makes your heart drop. 

Clark has a stupid, signature knock he does without fail every time he visits you. He practically gets high on respecting your boundaries, on the fact you’re choosing to let him into your space. He doesn’t barge. He doesn’t prod. And he certainly doesn’t recklessly use his powers to hover like a voyeur fighting against exile. 

It’s dark enough to barely be able to see him, just making out the persistence of that blinding blue and red. You open your window before you think twice about it, fearing the worst but hoping for nothing. 

His feet settle against the floor like a deafening stop to a sentence you weren’t aware was being written. 

He looked sick. 

The same slab of indestructible skin and solid bones - who could forego breathing for an hour - was panting. His chest heaving like the lining of his lungs had shed, like it was just bare, pumping airbags hidden behind his ribs. There were streaks of punishing red on every inch of skin his suit allowed you to see. It could be misplaced as a rash - it certainly seemed like one - but it was deeper. It crawled along the ridges of his veins like it was in the blood itself, like it was part of him. 

You fired off questions, the typical what the hell happened and are you alright failing to cease his shaking, failing to get him coherent again. His eyes were glassy as they fought to take in every detail of a room he’d been in a million times. 

You watched him, albeit panting, inhale deep - almost purposefully. His body jolted, just slightly, at the influx of oxygen. A near untraceable, broken little sound cracked out of his dry lips. 

“Smells like you.” 

His voice was so strung out it sounded like a stranger’s. You didn’t even know it could dip to the octave it was at, didn’t know he could sound so tight. 

“What?” 

Your confusion was so palpable that it would be unsurprising if it manifested into a physical thing, if it joined this situation as a third party. 

“Could smell you halfway across the city - had to…I had to come. I’m sorry - ‘m so sorry.” 

You prompted him again, some pleading variation of your previous inquiries slipping from your weary lips. 

“Was chasing the Hammer. He hit - I got hit with something. Feels like ‘m burning - I can’t…feels like I’m breathing you in. Can feel you in my lungs.” 

You’d never seen anything be able to phase him like this. The brooding, aforementioned something smeared IcyHot directly at the base of your neck, your nerves eating you alive. He was in pain. What looked like lots of it, at that. 

Was this a Kryptonite something? A lethal something?  

“Ok.” The dull scrape of your voice was brimming with a petulant tremor. Your words were rushed, your thoughts fluttering around in circles before you could manage to organize them. “What can I do, Clark? What did he hit you with? Do you know?” 

His front teeth slid against each other in a weird, barely there clench. He looked like he was biting back a secret, like he hoped chewing on it would cease it’s expulsion. 

But for the first time, Clark wasn’t strong enough. 

“Need you to touch me.” That alarming moisture in his eyes only grew worse as tears started pooling, unshed yet unabashed. “Please touch me.” 

The immediate need for further elaboration rose in your throat like saliva accumulating before throwing up. He sounded almost drunk, which for him, was an anomaly of the highest order. You didn’t even know if it was possible, only that you’d never seen it. Only that he was a hero both in and out of the costume, and that you’d never seen him beg for anything. 

“I don’t…” God, it was hard to focus with him looking at you like that. “I don’t understand.”

You were forced to watch as his face scrunched, his lips parting to allow an agonizing groan to bypass his locked jaw. It was so severe it brought him to his knees, collapsing like a stack of cards facing up against the wind.

You followed him down, a reflex more than anything. Your hands laid flat on the sides of his head in an attempt to keep him semi-upright. Even that contact, the tiniest trace of connection, made the most pitiful little sob flee the confines of his mouth. It was deep, emanating more from his logo-clad chest than anywhere else. 

Then, those glassy eyes were peering into yours, far too close and far too level at this newfound angle. His body was still heaving with his onset inability to catch his breath. 

“I need you. So bad. All the time. This stuff’s making me -” He cut himself off to wince, like the pain crept up his back and swiped the words straight off his tongue. “I can’t be away - you can’t…you can’t make me go away. Need to feel you, sweetheart. ‘m sorry.” 

He was slurring his speech, borderline drooling at the warmth of your fingertips bleeding into his skin. 

At this point, the most shameful thing you had to admit was how horrifically attractive he was in this state, as deplorable as it made you. You felt the heat of it boil through your body, ending up as some molten singe between your thighs. His pupils consumed the entire pigment of his irises, leaving them practically black as they darted once between your eyes and your lips. It was like he could sense what he was doing, the effect he had. 

“No, it’s…you don’t have to apologize.” Your head shook softly in turn with you talking. His head followed yours as it moved, as though the light touch of your nose to his was something too precious to lose. “We can - uhm. I’ll help, if that’s what you want.” 

And, all questions of mortality be damned, he whimpered. Like a puppy who’d had his tail stepped on. 

“‘s all I want. All I ever want.” 

He was so close that it hurt. And, as you looked him over, you could see your pain paled in comparison to his. He was still breathing as though he was an aberage person running a marathon, placing his palm on the back of your hand from where it still sat on the side of his face. 

“Please let me kiss you. Please. Think about it everyday, everytime I see you. Please -” 

He sounded like he was at his capacity. Some ambrosial desperation pouring from him and ending directly in you, spiking your bloodstream with an inebriation you’d never felt before.

You were nodding from the first word he spoke. He didn’t even finish his spiel before he was surging forward, his lips slotting into the space between yours like they should have been there the whole time. It stole your breath in a way that felt intentional, as if he thought your oxygen would stay in his lungs better than his own.

He kissed surprisingly dedicated for a man so near the brink of insanity. It was almost languid, yet was simultaneously the kind where teeth bumped occasionally in acknowledgement of something uncontrollable. 

The noise that undoubtedly left you was lost beneath the whine that fell from Clark. The melting of his unwavering optimism and chivalrous charm into whatever this was felt radioactive. It felt like something you shouldn’t be witnessing, something completely unprecedented and hell-bent on destroying you. 

There was a flowing, saturated lava coursing through you. The man refused to part from your mouth, pushing himself forward until he was over you and your back was flat on the floor. His hands came up to fidget with the waistband of your pants, intending to pull them down but losing sight of his own strength. The shattered sound of fabric tearing at the seams was piercing, but the air was sharper as it’s coolness hit your bare legs.

“Gosh, sorry. I’ll buy you new ones, promise.” 

You didn’t know how to go about getting him out of his suit, but he didn’t let you focus on it. He repeated the process, the representative of Metropolis’ hope and the most popular beacon of light, left in tattered, sagging shreds. He stripped his body of everything but his underwear, skewed mind suppressing the conscious effort it took to appear as though he was a normal man with normal strength. 

He was a sight, to say the least. His devoted pledge to modesty meant you’d hardly ever even seen his collarbones, let alone all of him. The trace of whatever illness he had was evident, those same diseased, branching veins spreading everywhere the eye could see. 

But it didn’t matter. He was beautiful. Startlingly so.

Anyone could assume Superman would be a harrowing view, but this felt lovecraftian. Like you were staring at something far too grandiose for your feeble human brain to wrap it’s grimy hands around. Like he truly was a God, or at least something close to it. 

And he was choosing you.

It was too much. Too much and too good and too scalding to deal with. It made you start scrambling for your own underwear, pulling the darkened cotton down your legs quicker than you could realistically process. You were feeling a fraction of what he was feeling, and even that was unbearable. 

He mimicked your actions. It didn’t look like it was any thought of his, it just seemed like he deemed you above him. Like it was obvious he should be following your lead. It was you. 

You didn’t give yourself time to marvel at the statue-worthy physique he hid beneath sweaters and ill-fitting blazers. You were just touching, immediately and assuredly. Touching and guiding and absolutely preening at the edge you were currently walking, the dive you were about to take.

The heat of your hand around him and the feel of the fucking ocean between your legs had him groaning out, certain this was going to kill him. Certain he’d never be able to part from you once he knew you entirely. Once he knew you in this way. 

“Don’t you want me to -”

Prep, you thought, would be something a responsible person would demand. But you weren’t responsible right now, or even worried about the pain. Your stomach ached with the carnality of everything, with the weight of him on top of you. 

“No - just…just need you, Clark.” You were both panting now, disgustingly entranced by desires of the flesh and the conclusion that death would be imminent without the touch of the other. It felt almost biblical, like you understood every in and out of the word temptation now. 

Then, ever so carefully, the feel of him pressing himself inside just about did you in. 

The weight of him in your hand should have been a fair indicator that he’d be difficult to take, but you were nonetheless unprepared for the amount of full you were as he bottomed out. You could feel him everywhere. You could swear there was pressure on your ribs, in your lungs. 

“Holy - mm”

He couldn’t seem to pry his thoughts off the walls of his mind, couldn’t seem to get them out. Every failed attempt at a new sentence ended with a choked, lithe moan so pretty that, each time it happened, it made you want to bottle him. To keep those sounds safe and beaming in a jar.

After a moment, he pulled his hips up until he was barely in you at all, pushing himself back in with a thrust so smooth it forced a gasp from your parted lips. 

“Y’so pretty, honey. Wish you could see it.” 

The pace he started was much more accurate to the quick-beating hearts and fumbling bodies the both of you shared. It was fast, and deep, and it was messy in a way that should have been repulsive. 

But it wasn’t. Not with him. Never with him. 

It felt far too good to be anything but heaven sent. 

“Thought - mm. Thought about this moment forever. Think about you all the time, can’t stop myself.” 

Your fingers were turning his already weathered skin even more red from where they were digging in. The voice you heard exit your throat was nowhere close to your own, wispy and far too high-strung to be the put-together person you knew yourself to be. 

This was something else. He’d made you something else. 

“You do?”

He nods, the movement short-lived and slightly janky as he further descends into the solace you’re giving him. 

“Yeah, honey. I do. Think about -” The sentiment makes you clench, halting his speech in favor of another one of his devastating noises. “Think about how you’d sound. How well you’d take it. ‘s perfect. You’re perfect.”

His hand makes it’s way between the near indistinguishable proximity of your bodies, fingertips finding a matching pace on your clit in the simplest, most ground-breaking circles. It makes your back arch away from the ground, brings you that much closer to him. 

“Clark -”

“Let me make you cum, please. Wanna feel you, sweetheart. Need’ta feel it.” 

Something about the acidic hunger burning away any shame that could have found home in his voice sent you reeling. He was so desperate for it. 

For you. 

It was your end that tipped his off as well, clobbering over the same edge at nearly the same time. It was harmony, in an odd, complicated way. It felt inherently correct despite the murky origin, despite the questionable circumstances. 

He didn’t pull out, didn’t do anything aside from tipping his forehead forward, meeting your shoulder to allow himself the scent of your laundry detergent. You’d never even gotten your shirt off. 

It was a peaceful silence that stirred about the night-dimmed room. The kind you only found with him, with Clark. Your Clark.

And, hopefully, after tonight, your Clark.

The glare of hellfire would be nothing compared to the brightness of this room. 

You don’t remember getting here. You don’t remember where you last were at all, in fact. Just fragments of the cold on your skin, the sound of a door shutting. Your head pounded, memories brief and all tinted with the cruel blur of whatever had been done to you. 

You’d been kidnapped. You were tied up. 

You don’t know how you hadn’t noticed before. Your feet were on the floor, back against an oddly placed pole that interrupted the flow of the homely space. You could see the outside, hills covered entirely with snow that could rival the stark purity of an angel’s wings. It would have been pretty under different circumstances. The rope wrapped around your torso made it difficult to enjoy the view. 

You told your body to struggle, to test the knot knowledge of whatever assailant had dragged you here, but you couldn’t manage. It was petrifying, being stranded like this. It froze you solid, encased your limbs in a Resin so thick and so fearful that it paralyzed you. 

Maybe raiders had finally gotten into Jackson. Maybe they’d caught you off guard. Maybe you weren’t fast enough. Maybe this was where you died. 

You were quite certain this was where you died, actually. Until he walked in. 

Joel.

Opening the door infested with water damage and insect bites like this was normal. Like he had the right. 

You thought maybe he’d come to save you, for the most fleeting few seconds. You thought that maybe he’d seen you be abducted, that he’d followed you out and was here to take you home. But, he wasn’t moving toward the ropes. He didn’t look surprised. He wasn’t saying anything. He wasn’t even in a coat.

He looked casual. Comfortable. And it was so confusing that you couldn’t bring yourself to speak, either. You just let the silence stretch on, squeezing the biting air out of your deflated lungs with how heavy it sat on you. 

Until, after far too long without an explanation, he spoke. 

“I’m sorry about all the…” He waved his hand, grandly gesturing to the improvised straight jacket you were bound in. “theatrics. I told ‘em it was a bit much.” 

You tried to will your mouth open, to force out anything that would get you to the knowledge of what was happening. Each detecting nodule on your tongue felt tangible, like you were aware of each molecule in your body all at once. It was freezing outside, and inside wasn’t much better. You still felt too hot. Too overwhelmed. Too panicked. 

He looked over your face, undoubtedly registering how out of your mind you appeared. He exhaled in response, full of some burdened entitlement you couldn’t put a name to. 

“We monitor the birth rates in Jackson, you know that?” 

He watched you shake your head, frantic eyes doing their best to keep in line with his. 

“No, ‘course you don’t. No need for you to.” His voice wasn’t unkind. It held a softness that made it evident he carried at least some semblance of guilt about the situation. “Ain’t hard to keep up with. Only get a few every year. But we jot ‘em down, keep a record.” 

“Why does this matter?”

The information was so painfully irrelevant that it propelled you out of silence. It wasn’t the confident remark you’d hoped for, more of a pitiful retaliation that scraped the back of your throat as you rasped it out. It was something, at least. Better than where you were at. 

You heard the click of his tongue, the minuscule hiss of air through his teeth. It seemed like he was battling with the information, continuously sorting and restructuring how he wanted to respond to your question. 

“Well,” His fingers moved through the graying hair of his short beard. You didn’t know if it was a fidget or a function, but you watched. It was all you could do. “It’s been a few years now of nothin’. And the board’s agreed that we can’t wait for it to right itself.”

It felt like someone had taken a melon-baller to your stomach and completely hollowed you. Scooped out anything vital and left you as nothing but a sentient cavern. There was not a single positive thing you could infer from that sentence, nothing but the trace amounts of free will that had been there before this mass depletion. You didn’t know what he was thinking. You didn’t know what anyone had been thinking when they approved this. 

“You don’t mean…” 

He held your eyes unashamed, completely solid like a man who was doing something foretold. Something predetermined. A destiny fulfilled. 

“I do.” 

The calloused sting of tears lined the edges of your eyes. There was no way this was authorized. They couldn’t be serious, surely. This was lunacy. This was madness. 

“And, I know it’s…harsh. But it’s just gotta’ be done.” The rope scraped away at the thin flesh of your arms as you twisted them, trying to bring as much of yourself inward as possible. Some futile attempts at feeling fortified. Protected. “Won’t hurt none, I promise. I’ll get you ready for it.”  

“Joel,” The wobbling of your scrunched lips made the word slightly slurred. You’d spit it like the title was covered in venom, like it could be some sort of warning. “You can’t.”

Your throat was so tight that speaking was more painful than the restraints gnawing at your arms, but you bit back the scratch. You had to talk, had to be heard. Joel wasn’t unreasonable. Maybe he could be coaxed off this ledge. 

“You can’t do this to me.” 

As weak as your resolve felt, your voice was weaker. The statement had been sobbed through the thin veil of assertiveness you were trying your hardest to project. It wasn’t working. It had never been working. 

“I didn’t want it this way, sweetheart. Honest.” 

He wasn’t looking at you in a way that matched his words. There was no guilt stuck in the crevices of his sentence, no remorse. His eyebrows were creased like someone who should have been apologetic, but his eyes were something else. Full of something closer to pity, something closer to apprehension. 

It made you wonder if he even felt bad. 

“I wanted you the proper way, to take you on dates n’ all that. Whatever passes as datin’ now. Or at my age.” 

Your face must have twisted in response to the confusion coursing with the blood in your veins, because his expression hardened ever so slightly. He shook his head unprompted, starting on a new point. 

“Quit with the look. I’ve seen how you look at me. Everyone has.” 

It felt like he’d hit you, like he’d slammed his full strength into the side of your jaw. You hadn’t meant to be obvious. You hadn’t been aware he’d known at all. 

It was a small, passing crush on one of the Jackson elders. Someone who’d fought his way out of Hell and ended up in the same frost-bitten residence that you had. Maybe you’d stared at him too long sometimes, too noticeably. Regardless of any of it, your infatuation was innocent. 

This was anything but. 

“That gives you no right -” 

“I know.” He inched closer in a move that looked unintentional. Undetected. Just a man who wanted to prove he wasn’t a monster, wasn’t irredeemable. “I know it doesn’t. But I had to pick. It had to be someone, and I’ve wanted you, honey. Since the day you showed up.” 

The admission warmed you, as much as you hated it. You’d harbored your fair share of fantasies about the man in front of you. Things you’d keep private until you reached your end. Until you were buried, or undead. 

He made conscious progress toward you now, stepping purposefully past what you considered a safe distance away. He was close, invading your boundaries and doubling down on the fact he did as he pleased. 

“It doesn’t have to be bad. Just a bit unorthodox, ‘s all.” 

The task of holding the eye contact was tremendous. You felt your breathing border on heaves, air not reaching the places it should. His voice stooped, lowering as though spilling a secret. As though he was bartering. 

“I can make you feel real fuckin’ good. Anyone ever do that for you?” 

Your head shook in denial, both at the situation and as a response. You’d been born long after the cordyceps had stripped the word of it’s humanity. Long after the end. 

You’d learned what the concept of sex was through tattered anatomy textbooks and the sugar-coated, stuttered explanation from one of the people in your previous group. You’d never acted on any of it. You’d hardly even touched yourself due to how fast you were always having to run. Any downtime you ever found in the hands of the apocalypse was always spent sleeping, or recovering. Trying to keep your head on straight in the face of those wanting it bent. 

You never really kicked the indifference when you’d reached Jackson. You had urges like anyone else, damning ones. Things you didn’t know what to do with. So you hadn’t done anything.

Now, you had to do everything. He was offering everything. 

And it wasn’t repulsing you like it should. 

There was a quiet exclamation of some reactionary pain that leapt from him at the understanding you’d never been cared for. Not in the way he was talking about, at least. 

“That’s criminal, honey.” 

The names melted you, unfairly and entirely. It was an uncomfortable stickiness that filmed on top of your skin, sweltering and spreading quickly. You were wet. You could feel it like fire, like the most obvious and shameful thing to ever occur. 

“Now, I know I’m…older. But it ain’t a scary thing, what we’re gonna do. We’ll go slow.” 

You nodded at him. He was older. Significantly, at that. It was one reason among many why you never approached, why you never said anything. You didn’t want the sting of infantilization. The knowledge that he saw you as a child. 

He might have been old enough to be the father you never had, but you were old enough to make your own choices. Hearing him say it would have just hurt. It would have been unnecessary. 

“If I untie you, you gonna run?” 

You stared at him for a moment longer, letting the answer fight within the confines of your clenched jaw. It’s not like you were unsure of it, just unsure of your readiness to be the kind of person who declines that. The kind of person who wants to stay in something like this. 

“No.” It was barely uttered. A grief-stricken blip in an otherwise heated environment. “No, I’m…I won’t run.” 

The sigh he breathed was heavy with contemplation, expression softening by the smallest degree. Like he was praying you were being truthful, praying that you wanted to be here with him. 

His walking startled you, like you were expecting a refusal. He went around to the opposite side of the pole you were held to, shaking the ropes slightly as he fiddled with the knot. He successfully undid it after what was probably only sixty seconds, the binding loosening immediately. The air stung the indents on your arms, the injuries slightly peeled and evidently irritated from the grit of it. 

Once he was back in front of you, he was cringing at the sight. 

“I’m sorry about that.” He looked at you sincerely, the feeling of having a little more ground to stand on in terms of equivalence being odd. “Don’t know my own strength sometimes.” 

They weren’t excruciating, simply another flesh wound to heal from. Maybe another scar if they were deep enough. 

“I’ve had worse. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” 

He nodded. You stood still. He was probably waiting to see if you were going to book it, make a break for the door. You were waiting to see what happens when an arrangement of this caliber begins. 

“I’ll patch it up when we get back.” 

He cared. It was kind of sweet, in that sickly way that made your teeth ache.

“Alright.” 

You weren’t prepared for the awkwardness of anticipation. You didn’t know how to start what was inevitable. If he even wanted you to or if he was trying to push you somehow. Amplify the crash with a longer buildup. 

“I don’t - um…I don’t know what to do.” 

It was stupid, and it was embarrassing, but it made him smile. He laughed, small and hardly, but he did. It didn’t feel at your expense, didn’t feel malicious. It was light, frighteningly so. As if he hadn’t forced you here. As if these circumstances were average. Loving.

“S’ok.” 

He wrote off your skittishness with a penetrating warmth, with open arms. His head swiveled the tiniest bit, a gesture meant to move you. His voice was lined with air as he whispered his next command. 

“Come here.” 

It wasn’t strict, but it was sturdy. It drew you in like a beehive draws a bear, with the guarantee of pain imminent but a reward so sweet it was irresistible. The need undeniable. 

You were only a few strides away, but the trek to him stretched on. The nerves made your steps tremble, more of a fawn-like scutter than anything close to mammalian normalcy. It was pathetic, honestly. How quickly your intentions had turned. How willing you were for a man that had strayed so far from morality. 

Your fingers twitched with the urge to reach out, with the urge to touch. You didn’t know what that meant, though. You didn’t know what it meant to touch a man, to be touched by a man. Especially one so much older than you, one with genuine experience. It was such a plunge into unexplored depths that you’d forgotten how to swim. You were barely treading water. 

As if he was attuned to you, he took hold of your wrist, dragging it up until your hand sat splayed over his chest. Even through the soft clothes and the heated skin beneath them, you could feel the quick beats of his heart. It sounded like marching, like a race run by someone with something to prove. 

It was staggering, having that effect on him. You’re sure yours sounded much the same. 

His work-worn fingertips rose to press against your upper jaw, large palm swallowing the rest of it. He used it as leverage to keep your head straight as he leaned in, other hand resting on top of yours from where it monitored his heartbeat. 

And, as your lips finally met, it skipped. It was the smallest, most juvenile trace of instability beneath the machine role he’d been playing for decades. He’d surely put your hand there on purpose, as a chance to show you the soft spots he still carried. A chance to show his humanity.

The kiss didn’t stay hesitant. Not for long. 

Somewhere in the haze, both of your arms had risen to wrap around his neck, his hands planted firmly on your hips. He was moving, you realized; stepping forward like he was on a course, forcing your back to hit the pole you’d been restrained to only minutes ago. 

It should have been sobering, once again being put in the position where you’d felt fright so strong it made your eyes water, your organs plummet. It just wasn’t. Not when he was kissing like he wanted to eat you alive.   

Then, as unexpected as this whole ordeal had been, he was sinking. He fell to his knees far too quickly for an old man. You awaited the sound of regret or popping joints, but nothing came. He didn’t even seem to notice that there could have been repercussions, too entranced with the process of getting the fabric off your legs, of finding a point of access. The air swept across the warmth of your skin like the gentle hands of a lover. Kinder than his were as they swept the same. 

His were scuffed and bumpy from the countless years working blue-collar and fighting for his life. Not unpleasant in any way, just significantly different. Noticeably his. 

Being with someone so weathered was almost strange. The roughness it brought made you feel immeasurably smooth in comparison, like the contrast was emphasized by the physical contact. You’d never felt especially sloped, or soft, or small. 

Not until he looked at you like you were. Not until he touched you. 

His mouth trailed worshipping bits of heat over the uneven planes of your thighs, moving up until he met the space between them. And so unabashedly, despite the wriggling of your hips at the unfamiliar action, his tongue wet the scrappy cotton of your underwear. The slight pressure on your clit, even through the fabric, was enough to shake a gasp from your lips. Your jaw was jutted out, head tipped against the pole. 

He was starved, seemingly. Fingers so tight on the sides of your legs that he could have drawn blood if he really wanted to. He spilled quiet noises silkier than what was comprehensible with a mouth filthier than a sailor, a curse being groaned out at the small sample he got of your taste through the barrier. 

You felt his grip go beneath the waistband of his only inhibitor, tugging them down and leaving nothing left to conceal you. It was grossly vulnerable. Scary, even. To be seen in that way. You didn’t even know what that part of you looked like, nor what he’d expected it to. It was the rip of a tarp off a mystery, a grand reveal. One you had no gauge for. 

You tried not to hold your breath, or worry what he’d think. But immediately, he was inhaling. Painfully. Like he was viewing something so good that it hurt him.

“Ohh, she’s pretty, baby”

You felt it flood you instantaneously, that praise. You hadn’t registered the actual depth of your eagerness until that very moment. Having him compliment the most secret part of you did something inexplicable. You pulsed with it, like you’d found some new subgenre of life you never knew you’d been left out of. 

You felt the rumble of a whimper clobbering out of your throat like a clumsy kid knocking over a vase. It didn’t feel graceful, or elegant like you wanted it to be. But it was real, uncontrollable. It made him laugh. Just a brief impulse that rolled along his shoulders and moved them slightly. The unspoken response to your unspoken gratitude. 

“This might feel a little weird at first.” You could feel the faint and raspy heat of his breath right against you. So close it was agonizing. “Just tell me if we gotta’ stop, alright?” 

Your head fell forward in a nod, dazed and hazy at what he was about to do. 

“Ok.” 

You felt the sear first as he put his mouth to you. It was unreasonably hot, then wet, and then it was nothing but blissful. The swipe of his tongue over your clit with nothing to block it sent you reeling. Your hand found home in the withering gray of his tousled hair, grabbing on to the locks in what was probably too tight of a fist. 

He didn’t seem to mind, though. 

One of his hands slid up the length of your thigh, running the pad of his finger against the river flow of your leaking arousal. He detached his mouth at the same time he bottomed his knuckle out. The simultaneous loss of stimulation combined with the stretch and pressure made you keen. It hurt, in a way. But it was so good that it was nearly unbearable.

He’d broken off to mumble absentmindedly into the highest part of your upper thigh. You deciphered the words by pure feeling, barely hearing anything at all. 

“Sweeter than sugar, honey. Taste like fuckin’ sin.”

“Joel -”

His lips wrapped around your clit before you could finish whatever nonsensical thing you’d planned on saying. The sensation of him sucking nearly did you in by itself, but when he added another finger, you thought you were going to collapse. 

He scissored them in a way that stretched you, in a way that burned so delectably it should have been outlawed. It was the most tantalizing walk on the edge of something irreversible. Something he’d be taking from you forever. 

“Joel - ‘m gonna -”

“I know, kid. I feel you.” He had barely put any distance between his mouth and your clit, the vibrations feeling like a shock collar straight to your spine. “Don’t hold it, baby. I gotcha’.” 

His permission aided the fall over that cliff’s edge, but it was the kid that took your sanity once and for all. The grimy reminder of how many years he had on you, how wrong it was that he was doing this to you. To someone young. Far too young for him, far too young to be ruined like this. It was dizzying in the worst possible way. 

“Theere she is.” 

His fingers pulled out, leaving you chasing that full feeling for only a second before his tongue was pushing in, letting all you had to give run down his throat, letting it fuse to him in the most vile and titillating way he could. 

It was barely seconds before he was standing up, guiding you to the room where the bed was. Promises of more pleasure were uttered. Promises of connection so visceral he’d have no choice but to knock you up, so visceral you’d have no choice but to enjoy it. 

It was only in the rush that a thought struck you, invading the forefront of your mind with no other intention but to terrorize you. 

You’d been invited to a baby shower last month.