Livliv

Nothing.

You could see nothing, and you could hear nothing.

Everything was deadly quiet.

Your breathing was even and still, gradually growing rapid with fright. Why couldn’t you see? Why couldn’t you move your hands?

Thud. Thud.

The sound of heavy footsteps came from behind you, accompanied by the sound of someone breathing right beside you.

The footsteps ceased… and there was only the sound of breathing. Your head turned helplessly towards the noise, but to what avail? You could not see…

“Why are you here?” A grave voice asked, “Confess.” And then a loud banging sound behind you that made you jerk forward, but you were held back by whatever was tied around your arms. From the brief sensations, you discerned you might be on some form of chair, and your wrists were bound to the chair behind you with handcuffs.

“You can’t fool anyone, speak.”

You had no idea what was going on. What could you have done that got you here? At most, you’ve crossed the road in restricted areas, but surely that was not serious enough to be abducted like this.

A hand grabbed your shoulder, squeezing it painfully. “Speak,” repeated the person. “You want me to jog your memory, hm?” The loud banging noise came again, this time from your front.

“Were you accomplices to the terrorist?”

“What?”

“Don’t act foolishly, we already know everything.”

The treatment continued, forcing you to admit to something, which you would have had you any idea what this man wanted from you. You were confused, disoriented… terrified. Then that man said he’d leave. You heard the door.

Minutes went by, until…

Steps again? You curled in the seat, afraid the man returned, but this time whoever spoke had a different accent, a different pitch. It must not have been the same man. Had there always been two people?

“Tell them… tell them the truth,” A man’s voice… whiny. A bit theatrically whiny, you noted. “He won’t spare us if you won’t tell him, say what he wants to hear.”

You jerked forward, but you were still bound in place. “I don’t know what that man wants from me… I’d confess had I done something, but I don’t know what it is I’m accused of!”

“You don’t know? He didn’t tell you? It’s about the terrorist. You worked with him… He knows it already.”

What terrorist? You had no idea what these people were on about. But you were frightened, and anything was better than nothing.

“I don’t know who… what’s his name, the terrorist?”

“I can’t tell you; he’ll do worse things to me.” He crawled over, clinging to your leg. “Please tell him what you did. Spare me…”

You only now realised you had no idea what connection this man had to anything, so you drew your leg away.

“Please, Y/N, be merciful!”

“Who are you… You work for the terrorist? You want to shift the blame to me? How do you know my name?”

“No-no, I don’t work for Mr Gruber.” He suddenly shrieked, and loud, rapid steps approached.

“You rascal, you know the terrorist and this one here? You’re deep in shit now. That’s half a confession by now.”

There was a chase, based on what you could hear, and by now you were thoroughly terrified. You would rather lie a confession, because whoever this Interrogator was, he wouldn’t accept the truth, which was that you did not have ties with the culprit.

You confessed. You followed up every single one of the questions with whichever answer the Interrogator wanted, only to know what was happening. Pleased at last, the set of steps belonging to the one asking the question moved behind you, then you felt your arms released, handcuffs removed. Then he removed the blindfolds, and you could see where you were.

At first, it hurt: the sudden light, the emptiness of the room, everything overstimulating you.

Then you saw him… the man who had been asking questions. A tall man with a stoic expression – unreadable, standing with his arms crossed in front of you. He did not let any emotion show, and that was making him eerie.

“How vile… that you should work with the likes of Hans Gruber.” The man spoke, starting to circle your chair, his fingers tracing across the back of your seat and shoulders. “Hm, he chose well…”

Sharply, your head was yanked back by the hair, and his mouth was on your neck, sucking a mark and then dismissing you just as roughly.

You turned your head in shock to look at him, standing from the chair and starting to back away. Fast.

He made no attempt to catch you… He stood there, expression unreadable as you tried to back away more and more. Then your back hit something. Before you could turn, your wrists were caught by a set of strong hands and wrapped around yourself – in a very twisted and forced hug from behind.

“Good girl… You told them the truth, hm?”

You recognised the voice, even though now it sounded like mocking rather than that whiny begging from before. You tried to squirm away, but to no avail; the man had an iron grip on you and was almost amused by your attempts to leave.

“Hey, hey… no need for this now, you already told him everything, right? What, you’re not scared of me, are you? I helped, remember?” He was mocking you. “Come on, you told him you work for me… so why should you be scared now… your boss would never harm you.” He grinned by your ear as you finally escaped and tried to run from him, only to be caught by the Interrogator this time.

“You recognise him, don’t you? You admitted to it. Why are you running from him now? He and I must have a word with you.” Then he held you still as Hans approached you, with the same sheepishly mischievous gaze you saw as you ran from him.

The two men had you kneeling between them, both demanding your attention. They had removed their lengths outside their trousers and were stroking themselves eagerly, expecting you to replace their hand. You tried to give it to them both, but neither was satisfied; both wanted to be the one whose mouth was on. Despite having two hands, you only had one mouth, so you could not give them both the same level of interest, no matter what you did.

For a little while, your mouth would be sucking down on Hans. Just as he seemed to get pleased, your head would be yanked away by the Interrogator, who would take you to his side to suck him, the men exchanging you like you were their toy.

You were their toy.

By now, they were both fully erect with no more need for preparations, only using you to amuse themselves due to your frightened look and servitude towards them. How willingly were you submitting to them? But you had no other way around it – they were two, and both had more power over you than you could fathom.

Your mouth was on the Interrogator when Hans removed himself from your hand, groaning, mockery gone from his voice.

“Enough of that,” he called, and you tried to look at him, but the Interrogator held your head in place.

“Not yet, I am not done.”

Hans had gone away for what felt like a few minutes, while you continued to give the Interrogator your undivided attention. Your fingers wrapped around the base of his cock, your lips on his tip to tease him before you’d take as much as you could of him in your mouth. His hand moved to the back of your head, forcing you to take more each time, greedy.

Then Hans returned, and you stole a passing glance. You noticed he had removed his suit jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt. The man signalled the Interrogator and, in an instant, he stopped and removed himself from your mouth as well.

“Get up, follow,” Hans instructed, pointing at the chair you were previously bound to. As you looked to see where he was pointing, the Interrogator had forcefully shoved down your trousers and knickers, placing a kiss on your ass.

“You won’t be needing these,” Hans explained; the Interrogator pressed himself against you from behind, making you feel his erection pressed against your ass.

“Go sit.”

You did.

Hans and the Interrogator exchanged glances, then Hans smiled as if he was onto something you were not, then came over and knelt in front of you, forcing your legs open. The Interrogator came, helping Hans with this, forcing your legs to remain open as he stared down at you, no word spoken, just his piercing gaze that moved from you to Hans, who was feeling his beard.

Then Hans delved in, his mouth on your cunt, licking a long stripe with his tongue flat between your folds. He lapped at your arousal, which, despite the situation you were in, had not failed to occur. You were dripping, and as Hans felt your juices on his tongue, a low rumbly groan escaped him.

One hand he kept on your thigh, although that was not necessary because the Interrogator had your legs locked in place, and his other hand down to his erection, stroking himself.

Then the Interrogator spoke.

“Describe what she tastes like; she might want to hear.” He spoke, drilling through you with his eyes.

That made your cunt throb and clench against Hans’ tongue, who disliked the interruption. He just stared back at the Interrogator.

“Don’t interrupt, unless you want me to interrupt when your turn comes.”

He meant it when he said they’d be taking turns. When Hans had had enough, he waved the other man down, while they swapped places, this time Hans being the one to hold the other man’s legs open.

You were doing the best you could do, refraining from giving them the satisfaction of a reaction, of an orgasm. You did not want to come off as a whore who enjoyed this – although you did. The situation was dire, but they were doing marvellously in eating you out. The Interrogator was doing a fantastic job.

Hans had been more focused on his enjoyment, being sloppy about it. The Interrogator was locked on getting that orgasm from you. You weren’t sure if it was for your sake or his own ego. You suspected his need for control was the reason why he was going to such lengths.

Both his mouth and fingers worked together, and unlike Hans, he paid attention to each subtle change of your body, the increasing breathing speed, the squirming, the whining. He noted them and pushed what he had been doing in an effort to intensify those reactions and force an orgasm out of you.

His mouth was abusing your clit, and his fingers were following the rhythm until you started to show signs of your orgasm approaching. The signs were so obvious, the jerking of your hips was too intense for even Hans to notice as his grip on you had to tighten to keep you open for the other man.

“Stop fighting it, if you don’t give in, he’ll do it again until you finish, trust me – this guy is worse than me.” Hans mocked, and the Interrogator replied with a snarky grunt, causing Hans to roll his eyes and shut up.

When you came, the Interrogator did not stop; in fact, he continued to guide you through it, but not from any charitable intention. Far from it, he wanted to see how far he could push your body, for how long he could control these reactions from you. He got off seeing you helpless because of him.

Then the two men drew back again, leaving you shaking and trying to recover while they admired you, but they were not done just yet. Neither of them had cum yet, and that was unacceptable, so Hans came over, pulling you by the shoulder to stand up again.

“I can’t… not yet. I am tired.” You argued, but Hans just raised his brow at you, motioning the Interrogator to come over with a subtle movement of his head.

The other man came and held you standing, his chest against your back, his arms around yours, forcing you to stand, despite how weak your legs were. Hans towered over you from the front, sliding his hand down to your thigh, then moving it up around his hip, securing it there while his other hand gripped his own erection.

You braced yourself for it, trying to look away. The Interrogator punished you, biting on the exposed side of your neck, and you had to turn your head towards Hans again to stop the other man from biting you.

Hans Gruber had guided himself inside you, pushing up into your body, without giving you a second to adjust. You were lucky enough that the Interrogator made you cum because that made you sufficiently wet to be able to take Hans without flinching too much.

Hans then grinned at you, leaning his head against yours, pecking your lips in the form of mockery. “I am the nice one, remember?” He licked over your lips languidly. “He won’t warm you up.”

Warm you up? For what –

Then you felt it. The Interrogator removed one hand from you and reached down between your bodies, gripping his erection and pressing it against your butt. Your head tried to turn, but this time, Hans bit you, licking over the bite.

“No, he doesn’t want to be watched. I do. Eyes on me, okay?”

You whined, tensing your body at the realisation of what the Interrogator wanted to do, but Hans felt it too, scoffing.

“You are not helping your case, doll. Relax, or else it hurts more.”

You did your best, but how could you when that imposing size was pressing against your ass, forcing its way inside you, little by little, while Hans was already in you, still, stretching you. As the Interrogator pushed himself inside you, you leaned forward and hugged Hans to distract yourself from the ache, which made him let out a surprised little sound.

You were sure the men were smirking at each other, but you did not care…

Luckily, once the Interrogator had been inside you, he was nice enough not to fuck you right away, just move you against his chest again, while Hans was the one to abuse your cunt with greedy, desperate thrusts, burying himself as deep as he could inside you, unbothered by the fact he could feel the other man’s size instead you too.

The Interrogator began to move only when your ass completely adjusted to him, and even then, the thrusts were slow, monotone in rhythm. He did it to add more movement and drive you crazier. As for him, your reactions were what aroused him.

Hans continued fucking into you, with one hand holding your thigh up, the other holding your jaw. The Interrogator’s hands had also moved, one arm around you – holding you up, the other squeezing one of your breasts.

The first to cum was Hans.

He removed himself from you and pulled your head down to take him in your mouth and suck him as he spilt his seed down your throat. The Interrogator took the opportunity, seeing you bend over now, and his hands moved to your hips, holding them as he suddenly roughed his pace – fucking your ass properly this time.

He was not playing around anymore.

It took all your strength not to accidentally bite down on Hans due to how hard the Interrogator was working behind you.

Then it was that man’s turn too. He did not pull out – he had no reason to. He finished inside your ass, giving it a hard smack before both men pulled out of your orifices. You were caught from falling by the Interrogator, who dragged you over to that chair.

Hans Gruber and the Interrogator dressed themselves, leaving you there to catch your breath as they seemingly discussed something. Then the Interrogator left, without giving you a second look, while Hans approached. He placed one forceful kiss on your mouth, grinning.

“Good girl.”

His hands ghosted over the silky skin of her back as he watched himself disappear and reappear from her stretched cunt. Slick mixed with blood pooled at the base of his cock in a ring, and the sound of her whimpers reached his ears through the thick metal of his helmet. The feeling of her tightness was so inviting, so hypnotizing, he felt possessed. He didn’t even mean to finish inside of her, he’d have to pay extra for that. 

From the incense heavy room he found himself standing at the edge of an enigmatic forest, encircled by black rock. An ethereal silence enveloped the scene, leaving him with an eerie sense of detachment.

His eyes shifted as he looked up on a pool of steaming water, obscured by the thick veil of steam, he saw her. The woman he’d been with on Tattooine so long ago. She struggled, her words lost in the hissing steam as her trembling hand gently grazed her belly. And there, in the midst of the dream's uncertainty, he witnessed the miracle of life itself—a whisper of cells coalescing into a fragile existence, pulsating with an otherworldly vitality.

Yet, the serenity was short-lived. The gentle whisper transformed into a nightmarish wail—a blood-curdling scream that tore through the tranquility of the woods. It was a scream of agony, of despair, and it emanated from her trembling lips. Her lips, soft and inviting, the same ones he'd yearned to kiss that night when he had ventured into the pleasure house.

The piercing screams grew louder, echoing through the dream, a symphony of suffering that filled the air with torment. As he watched her agony unfold, he was jolted awake, his head colliding with the unforgiving overhead storage. The sudden transition from the surreal to reality left him momentarily disoriented.

In the dimly lit living quarters of the Crest, Grogu, the young green child who had become an unexpected but cherished presence in his life, cried out from his sling, hanging above Din's bunk.

With a heavy sigh, the sound reverberating through the vocoder in his helmet, Din rose to his feet. The aging joints in his knees protested as he reached out to comfort the child, his gloved hands gently lifting Grogu from the nest of makeshift fabric.

"I know," Din murmured softly, his voice a quiet rumble as he cradled the child in his arms. "You saw it too, didn't you, kid?" Grogu, with his large, expressive eyes, gazed up at Din with a mournful look and reached out, tiny green fingers brushing against the Mandalorian's helmet. 

After the tumultuous events that had reshaped his life, Din Djarin had never allowed your memory to occupy his thoughts. Amidst the whirlwind of reuniting with Grogu, aiding Boba Fett, and playing a pivotal role in the reclamation of Mandalore, you had become little more than a faint blip on his radar—a passing connection that had provided a brief interlude of solace in the midst of his relentless journey.

But now, as he cradled Grogu in his arms, looking into the innocent, sorrowful eyes of the young child, he couldn't deny the awakening of something deeper within him. It was a sensation that transcended the confines of his dreams, a connection he felt as profoundly as the vivid dreamscape that had woven itself into his consciousness.

The realization slowly dawned upon him: you were more than just a fleeting memory. You were an integral part of the enigmatic tapestry of his life, and the threads of fate had woven your presence into his destiny in a way he had never expected.

Breaking free from his reverie, Grogu's tiny green form squirmed wildly in Din's arms, his latent Force abilities propelling him away from the Mandalorian's grasp. With agile grace, he leaped and bounced his way through the ship's cramped quarters, a small but energetic whirlwind of curiosity. Din could barely react before Grogu vaulted into the cockpit. 

Din's boots thudded on the ladder's metal rungs as he followed the young one up into the cockpit. A chorus of wild babbling reached his ears, punctuated by the frenzied pressing of buttons on the navicomputer.

"Don't touch that!" Din exclaimed, a hint of exasperation in his voice, his heart racing as Grogu's tiny hand hovered perilously close to the power reset button. He couldn't help but be wary of the mischief the child could unleash.

The young one looked up at Din with eager eyes, babbled something incomprehensible, and tentatively touched the screen. Din cocked his head, his tinted visor reflecting his curiosity. With a resigned sigh, he walked over to the console and entered a code to initialize the navigation system. "Is this what you want?" Din asked, studying Grogu.

In response, Grogu emitted a single, distinct "Patu" sound, his tiny fingers now reaching for the code panel. Hesitating only momentarily, Din bent down, lifting the child to eye level with the buttons. Grogu began to press a sequence of buttons, his small, green hands navigating the controls with surprising precision. Din's eyes widened slightly, his thoughts racing.

"You know where she is?" his voice came out raspy. Grogu completed the sequence, and his innocent gaze met Din's as the navicomputer diligently calculated the numerical sequence. After a few moments, a series of beeps indicated the successful completion of the calculations. Din turned to read the result, the Aurebesh characters on the screen spelling out "Kith."

"It's in the Baxel Sector of the Outer Rim," Din murmured, his voice tinged with a mix of anticipation and uncertainty, as he looked down at the child now resting contentedly in his lap. Grogu gazed up at him, then shifted his gaze to the navicomputer.

With a reluctant sigh, Din pressed a sequence of buttons to engage the hyperdrive. Whether he liked it or not, the path ahead was clear. He had to check on you. As the ship surged into hyperspace, a nagging voice in the back of his mind whispered that this journey was far from ordinary.

—

The path up to the Mountain of Mothers was a grueling journey, especially with your feet swollen and aching. It wasn't just a hike; it was a trial, a test of endurance to prove the worthiness of those seeking parenthood. The heavy pack you carried pressed on your lower back, making each step a test of your will. Normally, the pack was shared by the "Irrit" or father, but "Illa-ishi" or lonely mothers like you were compelled to carry it alone. The remnants of those who hadn't made it to the Mountain of Mothers were marked by the skeletons you passed on the way up.

The lower pool of the mountain lay two days away, and the upper pool required an additional five days of journey. Yet, something in your heart told you that this child would be with you in two days. As you followed the ascending trail, you crossed paths with an "Illa" or mother, accompanied by her Irrit. He bore their pack with pride, walking just behind her. It was a sight that warmed your heart, a testament to the culture you held dear.

"Noona" or baby was the foundation of your beliefs, the embodiment of the life you and your "Manna" or partner created together. Reaching the Mountain of Mothers and returning with a child was the highest honor, a symbol of worthiness.

The Illa halted on her descent and, with an air of pride, revealed her noona, wrapped in the family cloth. "Noona asa illa-ini!" (it’s a girl) she declared with joy, unveiling a beautiful baby girl. You couldn't help but smile down at the tiny noona and the Illa who showed her off with such pride.

“Noona asa mala ta Illa a Irrit,” (baby is worthy of her mother and father) you responded with the customary blessing, bowing your head in reverence. The mother and father returned the bow, acknowledging the blessing. However, the mother's eyes soon drifted to your belly and the heavy pack that weighed you down.

“Asa Illa-ishi?” she asked softly, her face clouding with sadness. (Are you a lonely mother?)

Summoning all your strength, you fought back the tears that threatened to well up. With your head held high and a tender hand resting on your belly, you spoke resolutely, "A illa-ishi."

I am a lonely mother.

—

The journey through hyperspace had indeed stretched far longer than Din had anticipated. A full day had elapsed since that haunting dream, leaving him with the unsettling sensation of being trapped in some unseen, cosmic rotation of time. However, that ceaseless ticking eventually brought them to the end of their journey as the ship dropped out of hyperspace in front of a smaller, mysterious planet, its surface adorned with sprawling waters and lush forests. As he guided the ship into the planet's atmosphere, the Mandalorian noticed a stark absence of the usual signs of civilization—no traffic control, no spaceports, not even a refueling station. The setting felt eerily reminiscent of the world of Sorgan.

Din hovered uncertainly in the atmosphere, his mind racing. Grogu, seated in the co-pilot's chair, played with the mythasaur skull around his neck, seemingly unfazed by the situation. As Din stared at the green child, he let out a sigh and rested his head against the back of his chair.

"Now what…?" Din muttered to himself, his voice carrying the weight of uncertainty. Closing his eyes, he tried to recall the details of the dream, seeking any hint or clue that could guide their search.

In his mind's eye, he saw you, your form shrouded in mist and glistening with sweat. The dress you wore clung to your figure, the fabric a soft white-grey that accentuated your curves as you breathed heavily. His brow furrowed in concentration. There was water, almost like a waterfall, surrounding you, with black jagged rocks supporting your form. Your feet were immersed in milky water, reminiscent of a hot spring.

Din's eyes snapped open. A hot spring. It wasn't much to go on, especially for a planet that could potentially be dotted with such natural wonders, but it was a lead worth pursuing. His hands sprung into action, deftly pressing a sequence of buttons that initiated a signal, a ping to any electronic communication device on the planet's surface.

Grogu's focus shifted from the mythasaur skull to the Mandalorian, the child's curious gaze following Din's swift movements. Din soon located the nearest signal on the planet's surface, and as he brought the Razor Crest lower, he was struck by the intensity of the landscape. Towering thick trees covered nearly every inch of land, a vast, unspoiled wilderness that stretched out as far as the eye could see. The planet's terrain was marked by colossal mountains that sliced through the canopy of green like serpents in water, their peaks jutting out in sporadic bursts.

It was a breathtaking and untamed landscape, like nothing Din had ever witnessed. His gaze scanned the vast expanse below, tracking the signal as he searched for a suitable place to land the Crest. Finally, he spotted it—an elevated landing pad erected above the treetops. It seemed to be a small station, but it was a potential refuge for refueling and gathering information, a step closer to finding you

"K1 to RC 4577, you are clear to land at dock 7," a thickly accented voice echoed through the Razor Crest's comms system, providing the coordinates for their landing.

"RC 4577 to K1, recieved," Din responded, his gaze shifting to meet Grogu's eyes. The Mandalorian leaned over to offer a piece of advice to the child, "Always be kind when you land; most landing bay employees often know the most information." Grogu looked at Din, his large eyes brimming with understanding, and he babbled something that Din accepted as an acknowledgment.

With precision, Din guided the Razor Crest toward its designated dock and gently brought the ship to the surface. As he withdrew his hand from the control lever, he noticed a subtle tremor in his own fingers. It had been a long time since he had felt such a physical manifestation of emotion, not since he had lost Grogu to Moff Gideon.

In response to the tremor, Grogu cooed softly and reached out for his protector. Din's gaze locked onto the child, his trembling hands cautiously reaching out to embrace him. Grogu instinctively placed his tiny hands on either side of Din's helmet, offering comfort and connection. A sense of relief washed over the Mandalorian, and he exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The small hands on his helmet made a soft "plink" sound that resonated through his interior comms.

"Thanks, kid," Din murmured, his voice laden with gratitude, but his words unable to fully convey the depth of his feelings.

Exiting the ship, Din carried Grogu in his sling, the child's presence providing a grounding force amidst the uncertainty that lay ahead. A young mechanic in worn-overalls approached, his basic broken but comprehensible. "Need refuel?" he asked, to which Din nodded in acknowledgment. The mechanic, unfazed by the Mandalorian's helmet, started toward the fuel hose.

"Hot springs?" Din inquired, his voice barely audible above the wind that whipped violently across the landing pad. The mechanic turned, his eyes reflecting confusion, but Din simply nodded and reached for his credits, preparing to tip the young man for his services. Glancing around the landing pad, he spotted a few other ships—a transport vessel and two cargo ships.

The pad itself had clearly seen better days, and the gusts of wind whipped violently across its aged metal surface, causing a tumultuous symphony of sound. At the front of the landing pad stood a small rectangular building, featuring one set of large bay doors. It seemed to be the station's main structure. Adjusting Grogu in his sling, Din began to make his way toward it, his steps determined.

The small building served as a cover for various ships, a mix of those dusted and covered with the weight of time, and others gleaming with newness. Inside, a modest diner and café shop hummed with activity, a few patrons engaged in quiet conversations. At the front, an older man sat at a makeshift desk, engrossed in the workings of a peculiar-looking computer. As Din approached, the man stood abruptly, his enthusiasm palpable.

"Hello, traveler! Welcome to Kith!" he greeted with a giant smile. "I am Don Mai, the residing Mayor. We are humbled by the presence of a great warrior such as yourself!" With a reverence that bordered on adoration, the old man bowed deeply.

Din suppressed the urge to laugh, already forming an opinion of the enthusiastic mayor that he made a mental note to tell Bo Katan about later. Before Din could utter a word, Don Mai thrust a paper pamphlet into his hands, his speech transitioning into a rehearsed spiel about Kith's culture and history. 

"Kith has a rich culture and even more intense history! Women from all over the galaxy come to experience the Mountain of Mothers and—"

“The Mountain of Mothers?" Din interjected, his tone cutting through the mayor's ramblings.

Don Mai's eyes widened slightly, and he cleared his throat. "Well, the Mountain of Mothers has been around since the dawn of life on our humble planet, and its springs offer—"

"Hot springs?" Din interrupted again, his focus unwavering.

"Uh, well, yes, you see, the springs offer—" Don Mai began once more, but Din's impatience grew apparent.

"Where?" Din's voice was firm, demanding answers without the unnecessary embellishments.

Don Mai huffed, "The Mountain of Mothers is the largest mountain range on Kith. You should've seen it from your ship. If you take the elevator down to the planet’s surface, there is a speeder rental that can take you to the base of the range," the old man explained, his tone slightly deflated by Din's lack of interest in his detailed lecture.

Din places the paper pamphlet in a storage pocket on his bandolier as Grogu watches closely. 

“And the elevator?” Din asks not looking away from the old man. 

"To the left of the fuel pump on the landing pad. Just remember to pay your respects to the Gods as you visit the—"

The old man's voice dwindled into the background as Din walked away from the building and back onto the landing pad. He made his way to the fuel pump and, as instructed, looked to the left to find a rickety-looking elevator, seemingly manually operated. The metal showed signs of rust in various spots, and the wire pulley appeared to be in need of greasing. The flooring of the elevator was a grate that revealed the ground thousands of feet below. Grogu emitted a series of frightened squeaks and coos as Din hesitantly stepped onto the grating.

"I know, kid… let's just... get down there," Din muttered through gritted teeth, steeling himself for the precarious descent.

Din's hand gripped the elevator crank tightly, his patience stretched thin as he began the painstakingly slow descent. Halfway through, he had to switch arms, the anger at the archaic contraption bubbling beneath his calm exterior. It was unusual for him to get frustrated with inanimate objects, but this elevator was testing his resolve. After what felt like an eternity, the elevator reached the bottom of the landing pad. With a forceful yank, Din opened the rusted gate, stepping onto soil that felt surprisingly soft underfoot, reminiscent of the sands on Tatooine, albeit less yielding.

The area below was like a forgotten tourist hub, the shops standing silent and forlorn, each manned by a lone shopkeeper who stared into the emptiness, boredom etched across their faces. It was a desolate sight, a place trying to be lively without the visitors to make it so.

Walking further, Din noticed a row of rusted speeder bikes, the rentals. His heavy boots left imprints on the sponge-like earth as he approached. A few of the shopkeepers stirred from their boredom at the sight of the silver-clad Mandalorian passing by.

Reaching the speeder rental, Din was met by an old Aqualish man, the grey of the hair surrounding his face telling tales of years of service.

"How much?" Din asked, his voice reflecting his growing impatience.

"Fifty credits," the Aqualish garbled back.

"Thirty-five," Din countered, his tone firm as he shifted his weight to one side. Grogu cooed softly from his sling, his wide eyes observing the bartering process.

The Aqualish nodded in agreement and walked away to retrieve the speeder keys. 

As Din adjusted Grogu in the sling to access his credits, he caught sight of a couple approaching from the earthen road. The man carried a hefty pack on his back, and the woman cradled a baby in her arms. The pride in the man's eyes was evident as he helped his wife walk toward the shops.

"Noona asa mala ta Illa a Irrit!" the shopkeeper, an elderly woman across the street, shouted at them. The couple bowed softly in acknowledgment as they continued walking. Every shop they passed echoed the same foreign phrase, and Din watched with curiosity. Upon reaching the elevator, the man removed his pack, fashioning a makeshift seat for his wife as he started cranking the elevator back up to the top of the landing pad.

The sound of a throat clearing broke Din's concentration. The Aqualish man stood, hand outstretched, waiting expectantly for the payment. Din sighed inwardly, realizing he had been lost in his thoughts. He paid the credits and received the keys to the rusted speeder. Adjusting Grogu in the sling, ensuring the child was safely nestled in his lap, Din ignited the speeder and set off down the only trail leading out of the market.

The only path to the Mountain of Mothers.

— 

The pain in your swollen belly intensified as you stood at the base of the last incline leading to the lower pool. The journey had taken a heavy toll on your body, leaving you exhausted and in constant discomfort. Your feet were swollen, your hips ached, and everything hurt, but the cramping in your abdomen was what worried you most. The night before, you had barely managed to rest, opting to lie on the soft ground without bothering with your bedroll. Restlessness had plagued you throughout the night, and now the cramping made it clear that your time was approaching.

Today would be your last day on this arduous journey. The lower pool was just above you, but the pain in your body seemed unbearable. You knew it was all part of the gods' plan for you, but you never expected the pain to be this intense.

As you struggled up the final incline, a sharp pain ripped through you, and you stumbled. Your pack felt impossibly heavy, and your breaths came short. Beads of sweat formed on your brow as a wall of rock loomed ahead of you. 

"Itta non a dashi," (I will not die here) you whispered defiantly, mustering the strength from the deepest part of your being. As your emotions surged, you felt the baby shift within you. With renewed determination, you regained your balance, placing a loving hand on your swollen belly. 

The next incline lay ahead, one of the most challenging parts of the journey. You could see evidence of past mothers who had slipped or stopped, their bones scattered in the crevices of the rock. For Illa-ishi, like yourself, the task was solitary, without the help of an Irrit to assist with the ascent.

You stood at the base of the rocky cliff, gazing up at the tantalizing promise of the lower pool. The rhythmic thunder of the waterfall beyond the peak urged you forward, swirls of steam rose into the air, a tantalizing promise of the lower pool just a short climb away.

Thankfully, the rugged rock face bore shelves that made the treacherous climb more bearable. Growing up you heard tales of a time a century past when an Irrit, a kind-hearted soul whose manna, a young woman, could not walk. In a display of unwavering determination and love, he took chisel and hammer in hand, carving these sturdy, stone steps into existence. With these ledges, he could secure her safely to his back and ascend the daunting precipice so she could birth their child.

Taking a moment to catch your breath, you surveyed the ascent before you. The harsh sun beat down, casting long shadows across the rocky surface. Determination burned in your eyes as you figured out the best plan of action. With a surge of resolve, you slipped the heavy pack from your sweat-covered body, feeling an immediate relief as the oppressive weight fell off you and onto the gritty dirt below.

With your pack discarded, you dragged it to the base of the wall where the first of the man-made shelves jutted out, a mere foot of space cut into the unforgiving rock face. Despite the fatigue gnawing at your muscles, you carefully planted your foot on the ledge, finding just enough space to stand. Bending down carefully you pulled the pack onto the ledge beside your feet. Your birthing gown, gauzy and light, provided a surprising ease of movement. Once you’d made sure the pack was secure you looked up and examined the next shelf. It was a little high of a stretch but you gripped the wall above to steady yourself, your gown billowing slightly with the effort.

Your hips protested with each movement, but the primal instinct to survive drowned out the pain. With staggering determination, you raised your leg, using the hold of the wall to leverage yourself onto the rock shelf to the left. Your arms, weary but unyielding, lifted your body until you were safely on the shelf.

Taking a moment to collect yourself, you glanced back down at the last shelf, now below you. Gathering remnants of your strength, you reached down, hands trembling slightly, and lifted your pack with both arms onto the shelf beside you. Only one more shelf remained, higher up and to your right, a final obstacle before hauling yourself onto the top of the cliff. 

After a short rest, you locked eyes with the next shelf, determination burning in your gaze. With a swift motion, you reached up for a gap in the wall to get a grip. Sliding your right hand into the sharp crevice, you pulled with all your might, grunting with effort as you lifted your right leg onto the shelf, which was higher than the last. But in that moment of triumph, a sudden jolt of pain radiated from your lower back all the way to your fingertips, and you lost your hold, a gasp ripping through you.

Stumbling backward, you were saved only by your pack, which you used for leverage to steady yourself. The contraction was fierce, so intense that it was only when you absentmindedly touched the dress covering your belly that you realized you'd sliced your palm on the unforgiving rock. Scarlet red stained your gown, creating an almost perfect handprint. Oddly, you felt no pain in your hand, your senses consumed by the tightening in your abdomen, which worsened with every passing moment.

“Issa non a tishi noona..” (its not time yet baby) you groaned out in pain, your voice strained and breathless. Your eyes clenched shut as you tried to endure the relentless waves of agony.

You stood trembling on the shelf of the wall for a good minute or two before the contraction finally subsided, leaving you panting and exhausted. It was then that the sharp sting in your hand dominated your senses. You examined your hand, the crevice in the wall had sliced deep, and you could see the gash, making your stomach turn uneasily.

Reaching into your pack, you found the medipack, fingers trembling as you carefully opened it to retrieve the gauze and a bacta spray. With great care, you held your injured hand out in front of you and applied the bacta spray to the gash, wincing at the initial sting. Then, you gently wrapped the gauze around the wound, ensuring it was secure. The sharp pain began to dull as your trembling hand capped the spray, carefully returning it to the medipack. 

With a sigh, you straightened up, taking a moment to regain your composure. The pain in your hand was no longer the foremost concern, and you couldn't let it distract you from the task at hand. You knew that each moment counted in this climb, and you needed to find the safest route to reach the next shelf.

Reassessing the situation, you examined the uneven rock wall before you, trying to identify the most secure handholds and footholds.

An idea crossed your mind and it could be great, or the worst idea ever and you could fall to your death but you were determined. You carefully maneuver around your pack and push it closer to the end of the shelf. You carefully placed a leg on the pack and then another, standing precariously on your pack which provided you almost a foot of extra height, you used the wall to steady yourself. You prayed to the Gods and reached with your right hand for the crevice that had so rudely marred your hand. Finding more traction with the gauze you confidently pulled yourself extending your right leg so your foot found purchase on the shelf. A victorious smile crossed your face as you then pushed off your pack with your left leg and hoisted yourself onto the shelf. A quiet laugh left your lips as you clung to the wall you were now facing. 

Looking to your left, you bent down carefully to grab your pack. This shelf was a lot shorter, jutting from the wall maybe only eight inches. You had to precariously grab your heavy pack with one hand and quickly cram it under your left leg to prevent it from plummeting to the ground below.

You were so close now that you could feel the cool mist from the water above, and the deafening roar of the falls filled your ears. Perched roughly 15 feet above the ground, you took a moment to catch your breath. You dared not look down, fearing that it would disrupt your balance. Instead, you pressed your belly tightly against the rock wall in front of you, your heart pounding with both exertion and anticipation.

After a brief moment of rest, a surge of adrenaline coursed through you. This was it, the final leg of your treacherous journey. You had one more pull, one last push, and you would reach the lower pool, your goal within your grasp. But you also knew that a single mistake could lead to a disastrous fall, a fate you couldn't afford.

Taking a deep breath, you raised your arms above your head, your palms resting on the ridge above. With utmost care and precision, you hoisted yourself up, quickly placing both feet on your pack. The pack provided just enough height to get your elbows onto the smooth rock above. You pulled with every ounce of strength you had, feeling your belly scrape against the unyielding stone as you lifted.

Luck was on your side, as your feet managed to find a foothold through the worn leather of your boot. This newfound leverage allowed you to push yourself up, resembling a sea lion clambering onto a rocky outcrop. With sheer determination and the last vestiges of your strength, you quickly pulled your right leg under you and pushed yourself onto all fours on the smooth rock face. Your heart raced, your hands and knees trembling from the exertion, but you had made it. You had reached the final stretch of your perilous ascent, and the pool ahead awaited, a shimmering reward for your indomitable spirit.

A sob escaped your lips, a surge of emotion you hadn't anticipated as the reality of your accomplishment finally caught up with you. You had done it. You had managed to make it to the lower pool, and the inviting, milky-warm waters beckoned to soothe your weary body. Steam swirled around you, creating an ethereal atmosphere as you lay there, taking in the moment.

Rolling onto your back to face the sky, you watched as a giant silver ship soared high above the mountain. Your eyes followed it for a brief moment before it disappeared into the vast expanse of the blue sky. Tears welled up and trickled down your cheeks, their salty warmth mixing with the refreshing mist from the pool. You felt the gentle movements of the babe inside you and couldn't help but smile through your tears.

"Noona...we made it," you whispered in basic, your hand tenderly caressing your belly. The connection between you and the life within you was stronger than ever, a bond forged through this incredible journey.

After some time, you stirred, realizing that you needed to retrieve your pack. With some effort, the pack proved easier to handle than your own weight combined with the growing life inside you. You unzipped the pack and reached for your bedroll when another sensation, different from the earlier contractions, radiated through your core. This time, it felt like pressure, a clear sign that the moment you had been anticipating was drawing near.

After finding the bedroll, you took a moment to survey the area for a suitable spot to lay it down. The relatively flat rock surface encircling the spring was a dark black, a stark contrast to the frothy blue of the hot spring's waters. The ancient, tranquil pool was surrounded by old, tattered bedrolls, some empty, while others still held the silent remains of Illa-ishi who hadn't been as fortunate as you.

You sighed softly, the weight of the past and the solemnity of the place pressing down on you. You knew what lay beneath the surface of this hot spring – the resting places of those who had undertaken the same treacherous journey but hadn't emerged victorious. Out of respect for their memory, the people of Kith never dared to touch the remains. Instead, they left the bones where they lay, allowing them to become one with the planet's core, a final return to the world from which they had come.

Gently, you found a clear space amidst the bedrolls and laid down your own bedroll. It felt strange to rest among the remnants of those who had gone before you, but you also understood the significance of this place.

It was believed among your people that the Mountain of Mothers was the handiwork of the divine God of Kith, a deity whose love for his wife, Illa-ishi, was as vast as the universe itself.

Illa-ishi’s womb had cradled life for what seemed like an eternity and her body bore the weight of years, while her heart bore the burden of unbearable pain. Witnessing his beloved wife suffer, Kith, with his divine hands, crafted a pool at the mountain's base. Its waters held the promise of relief, a balm for Illa-ishi's agony.

While Kith labored tirelessly to raise the Mountain of Mothers, Illa-ishi, driven by a desperation born of unending torment, embarked on a solitary climb up its slopes. With each step, she ascended toward the heavens, seeking solace that seemed perpetually out of reach.

At the pinnacle of her journey, amidst the tranquil waters of the divine pool, Illa-ishi's child was born. Yet, there was no cry of life, no breath to fill the air. In a heart-wrenching moment, the lonely mother, overcome by despair, embraced the waters that had promised relief. She allowed herself to be consumed, seeking peace in the depths of the pool.

Kith, returning to find his wife and child lost to the pool’s embrace, was consumed by an anguish that eclipsed the stars. In his sorrow, he performed a deed both divine and sacrificial. In a resolute act, he harnessed the remnants of their life force, infusing it with the very essence of his divine being, and breathed life into the creation of the upper pool atop the Mountain of Mothers. 

This upper pool, borne from his profound sacrifice, was destined to be a reward for those who completed the arduous journey together. It was a testament to the strength of unity, the enduring love that bound families and lovers, and the rewards that awaited those who surmounted the trials of life.

Yet, even in the splendor of his divine creation, Kith's sadness consumed him. He recognized the fundamental truth that Illa could not always survive, and that Noona may not always breathe. And so, the first pool, at the mountain's base, remained untouched, preserved as a sanctuary of rest and respect. A place where Illa-ishi, and Illa could find solace amidst the beauty of the Mountain of Mothers, where the waters whispered stories of love and sacrifice, and where their weary spirits could find respite beneath the endless expanse of the starlit sky.

In history there was only one illa-ishi who succeeded in birthing a breathing babe at the first pool, and she had birthed an evil so strong it was said to last generations. 

You knew your heart, and you knew your babe. You had come here to rest.

—

The hike was hard. Din was breathing heavily under the weight of his armor and the burden of Grogu, who looked around the desolate landscape with a sad curiosity. How many skeletons had they passed? What kind of place was this? Why were you here? The guilt gnawed at him with each step he took. Why had he even gone to seek out pleasure from solitude in the first place? He thought back to that night… 

The night was dark and heavy as Din sat alone in the dimly lit corner of the cantina in Mos Eisley, his thoughts consumed by a yearning for Grogu. The scorching sands of Tatooine outside were a harsh reminder of the precious time he had spent here with the child and Peli Motto. They had been moments of sanctuary, where the galaxy's chaos seemed miles away.

Nearly a year had passed since he'd entrusted Grogu to Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, a decision made with the best intentions. But that choice had left a void within him that he could hardly bear. Sleepless nights had become his constant companion, and the craving for both rest and peace had grown unbearable. And yet, he found himself agreeing to help Boba Fett in the midst of a brutal war, a commitment that seemed at odds with his desire for tranquility.

But in that cantina, he made a solemn decision. He had to seek out Grogu one last time, he had to give Grogu the chain mail that he had made for him. Just, as a way to protect him nothing more… He ran his fingers over its cool surface, a gesture that silently conveyed his unbreakable resolve before he pocketed the beskar. 

As the night deepened and the alcohol flowed, he realized he had indulged in more Corellian Whiskey than he should have, knowing he needed a clear head for the journey that awaited him. But the whiskey's burn was a welcomed distraction, a temporary escape from the overwhelming pain of missing Grogu.

In the midst of his solitude, the cantina's atmosphere began to change. A group of scantily dressed women, draped in silks and adorned with gold, entered the establishment. They moved with grace and charisma, engaging patrons in conversation, flirting, and distributing holochips for a nearby pleasure house. Din snorted at the thought. When was the last time he even had time to fuck anything but his palm? 

When was the last? He wondered trying to think back over the years since he’d acquired the responsibility of caring for Grogu. 

Years. Actual, years.

In his inebriated state, Din found himself clutching the holochip, his steps unsteady as he navigated the narrow streets of Mos Eisley towards the establishment advertised on the chip. He had given in to a reckless impulse, fueled by a desire to escape the pain of missing Grogu, and a fleeting sense of excitement at the prospect of companionship, even if it was just for one night. The weight of the impending war, as Boba Fett had described it, loomed in his thoughts, and he couldn't help but wonder if this might be his last moment of solace.

Entering the dimly lit and shady establishment, he was met by a greasy, overweight man berating a young child. The sight of the child sent a wave of unease through him, casting a shadow over his already troubled conscience. What kind of place was this, where children were exposed to such depravity?

"Not for sale!" the greasy man barked at Din, as if reading some unsavory intent in the Mandalorian's eyes, he shielded the child, pushing her back behind a tattered curtain.

“I wasn’t…” Din’s words faltered, the very thought of such exploitation sickening him to his core.

But the foreman, undeterred, eyed Din up and down, his gaze lingering on the gleaming beskar armor. “You’ve got money, I’ve got girls,” the man said, his voice oozing with a repugnant confidence.

Din struggled to find the words, his thoughts a jumbled mess, still reeling from the shock of seeing a child in such a place. He stumbled, his voice faltering.

The foreman, undeterred, went on, "I have a girl who just became available. She's not been with anyone, you'd be lucky to find a deal like her on this side of Tatooine." He reached into a box of hologram pucks, selected one, and placed it on the desk. Activating the hologram, he presented it to Din.

Din's gaze fixated on the static image, his eyes locked on the visage.. Strangely, he felt a deep pull within him, as if your image was both familiar and enigmatic, stirring emotions he couldn't quite place.

"How much?" Din's voice, though filtered through his modulator, held a heaviness, a mix of curiosity and longing.

"Four thousand credits," the foreman stated, avarice evident in his words.

“Four?” Din repeated, incredulous, his disbelief met with a dismissive glance from the foreman. “How much does she get?” he demanded, his tone sharp and unwavering.

The foreman's look turned defensive, his response sharp, "Two thousand. My girls are lucky to get any at all."

Din's resolve hardened, and he leaned in, his voice taking on a threatening edge that he usually reserved for bounties. "I'll pay six thousand, and she gets four thousand."

The foreman's eyes widened, momentarily caught off guard, but a vile smirk soon crept across his face. "Deal. Right this way, sir," he beamed, all too eager to make the transaction.

The foreman led him through a maze of dimly lit hallways filled with disturbing moans and an overpowering, artificial perfume that hung heavily in the air. The cacophony of voices from behind the closed doors was a haunting reminder of the grim reality of this place, and the perfumed scent was a failed attempt at masking the despair that lurked within.

At the end of the corridor, the foreman unlocked a door and gestured for Din to enter. "I'll send her in," he grunted, closing the door behind Din.

Din stumbled into the room, the alcohol coursing through his veins, muddling his thoughts. He took in his surroundings, finding himself in a chamber that seemed a stark contrast to the rest of the establishment. A makeshift bed of luxurious pillows lay on the floor, richly woven tapestries hung from the ceiling, creating a semblance of privacy. Incense burned intensely, casting a hazy atmosphere, a chair rested by the door infront of a towering golden-framed mirror that rest to the right. 

This must be a more expensive room, he thought, his mind reeling with the absurdity of it all. He couldn't help but question himself, wondering what he was truly doing here, and if this was the way he wanted to fill the void left by Grogu.

As the room's fakely lavish atmosphere weighed upon him, the door behind him swung open gently. He turned, his movements slow and heavy from his armor, to see you enter. Your form was meek, draped in a light blue silk garment that covered more of your body than the women he had seen in the cantina. Gold metal accents adorned your wrists, ankles, and neck, casting a subtle glow in the dim room.

Din's breath hitched as he observed you, his gaze tracing your figure from your feet to your face. Your flushed face and the nervous way you looked down at the floor beside him made it clear that you were unfamiliar with this line of work. He saw you absentmindedly running your index and middle finger along the material of your flowing skirt.

He couldn't explain it, but something about your vulnerability, the innocence you still carried despite the circumstances, touched him. For a moment, he entertained the thought that the foreman had lied about your experience, but as he watched you in silence, he knew that the greasy man's words were painfully accurate.

Din shifted slightly, causing your gaze to snap to him quickly. His visor concealed his expression, but his body language spoke volumes. He observed for another moment, considering his next move. Slowly, he began to remove his gloves. The process was deliberate, one finger at a time on the right hand of his glove, until he was able to pull it off, revealing his bare hand. His eyes never left yours as he started to work the other glove off, the tension in the room growing palpable.

Your gaze drifted from his visor to his hands, watching intently as the gloves came off. As soon as he removed the gloves, he walked to the chair by the door and set them down gently. Your gaze followed him as he approached, your hand never leaving the doorknob the entire time. It was as if you were waiting for him to make a move, to confirm the fear that had taken root in your heart.

Din stopped a few feet away from you, his gauntleted hand hanging by his side. There was something in his stance, a subtle softening in his normally rigid posture that made you feel he might not be the threat you initially perceived.

He straightened as he turned to face you, extending his tanned and calloused right hand as a peace offering. It hung there in the space between you, a bridge across the vast divide that had separated your worlds. The look you gave him that night pierced through his then-buzzed haze, and as your gaze moved from his visor to the palm of his outstretched hand, you ever so softly smiled.

Your hand moved slowly, with a slight tremble, as you placed it in his. Maker, it was so soft, so... loving. In a way, it reminded Din of his mother's hands. He remembered the feeling of her hands on his face when she would kiss him on the top of his head or brush his hair back. It was a memory buried deep, one he rarely let resurface in the harsh reality of his life. 

He watched you, unknowingly holding his breath, as your eyes flitted from his hands back up to his visor.

That night was almost eight months ago, and in the span of those months, the galaxy had shifted beneath Din Djarin's feet. He had fought with Boba Fett, gotten Grogu back, found his covert and embarked on the perilous journey to reclaim Mandalore and his Mandalorian status. The weight of leadership, the responsibilities, and the relentless pursuit of his beliefs had clouded his thoughts, leaving little room for anything else.

As he walked through the dense forest, the guilt that had been gnawing at him grew ever more oppressive. He'd been so preoccupied with his own mission, his people's future, and the legacy of Mandalore that he hadn't even spared a thought in your direction. He had foolishly assumed that the foreman would handle any potential consequences of their night together, perhaps naively believing that you would choose to remain silent. However, what if you hadn't told the foreman? What if you carried something precious from that night, a part of him he was yet to know about? He had neither your name nor any means of contact, and that realization weighed him down like a camtono of beskar. 

With every step, the burden of his guilt pressed down upon him, and he mentally berated himself for not knowing your name or sharing his. He deserved this guilt, for in his quest to rebuild his world, he had unintentionally left a piece of himself behind. If you were pregnant, how were you supposed to find him in the vastness of the galaxy? He couldn't shake the thought that he might be a father, and yet he had no way to reach out to you.

Lost in thought and oblivious to his surroundings, Din hadn't even realized that he'd strayed from the trail until a blood-curdling scream pierced through the forest's silence, shattering the walls of his introspection. His eyes darted ahead, and the only thing he saw beyond the thick undergrowth was a rocky precipice. Steam rose from somewhere below, and the scream, unmistakably human, sent a chill down his spine.

— 

After doing your best to set up a makeshift camp amidst the unforgiving terrain, the contractions began to increase in intensity and frequency. Drenched in sweat, your body ached with fatigue, and desperation for the comfort of the hot spring surged within you. In your birthing gown, you summoned every ounce of strength to embark on the journey toward the soothing waters.

With slow, measured steps, you made your way to the spring, determined to find solace amidst the throes of labor. The contractions continued to grip you, and you fought to maintain your composure, focusing on deep breaths as you moved closer to the source of relief.

As you neared the milky waters, the soothing sound of the waterfall dumping cool water into the far end of the pool filled your ears. The natural geothermal heat emanated from the earth beneath the water, warming the fresh, chilly stream. You gingerly lowered yourself to the spring's edge, wincing through the persistent contraction that clawed at your strength.

With immense effort, you managed to sit on the edge of the pool, your feet dipping into the perfectly warm water. A sigh of relief escaped your lips as the soothing waters enveloped your aching limbs. Slowly, you eased yourself into the warm embrace of the spring, its shallowness just deep enough for you to sit comfortably, your head above the waterline.

The warmth cocooned you, providing the much-needed respite your weary body craved. In the midst of your struggle, the hot spring became a sanctuary, a place where the pain of labor met the healing balm of nature, and for a fleeting moment, you found solace amidst the turmoil, embracing the precious gift of warmth and comfort in the midst of the wilderness.

You had lost track of how long you sat in the soothing water, your fingers pruning as the serene ambiance of the hot spring washed over you. Contented sighs intermittently left your lips as you found a momentary respite from the relentless contractions. The world around you seemed to blur as the hot spring cradled you in its gentle embrace.

But all too soon, your tranquility shattered like fragile glass. A pained cry tore through the rocky landscape. Your eyes shot open, searching for the source of the distress.

Your gaze darted towards the rugged ridge you had labored to climb mere hours earlier. Two voices reached your ears, one male and one female, carrying on the wind. Panic surged through you as you observed a hand ascending the top of the ridge. Your heart quickened, and you realized there were people approaching, their presence entirely unexpected.

With haste, you sprung up from your spot in the spring, water cascading off your birthing gown as you clambered to the edge of the pool. 

A man, seemingly oblivious to your presence, ascended the ridge, a pack strapped to his back. He reached the flat rock and extended his hand below him. Your bare feet met the cold, rough surface of the gravely rock as you hurried over to the edge, your heart heavy with empathy for the woman in dire need. Down below, on the third rock shelf, you saw a woman, her face contorted in pain, tears streaming down her cheeks, and her birthing gown stained with the evidence of her struggles.

“Isa a happis” (I will help!) you called out, your voice resolute, your determination evident. You easily crouched down next to the man, extending your hand to the one who was suffering. She gazed up at you, gratitude filling her eyes as she grasped your outstretched hand.

“Ona tice!” (On Three!) The man standing beside you declared, his voice strong and determined. You locked eyes with him, sharing the gravity of the situation, and both of you prepared to pull the distressed woman to safety. With a shared resolve, he began to count down, and on three, you pulled the woman up with surprising ease, your muscles working in harmony to lift her to safety. 

Wide-eyed, she arrived at the top of the landing, blood staining her birthing gown, a visceral testament to the life that sought to enter the world. She cried out in agony, her body in the throes of birthing pains. Your attention shifted to the Illit, his face etched with desperation as he removed his pack, his hands trembling as he tried to assist his manna.

He grabbed her, his touch gentle yet urgent, realizing that there was no time to lose. Even as you watched, you could tell the baby was coming, the process inevitable now. The woman screamed, the sound echoing off the rocky walls, a symphony of pain and life in the midst of nature's raw beauty.

“Noona essa comesei ittina!” (the babe is coming now!) you urgently announce, your voice steady and commanding, as you motion for the father to cease his movements. He gazes at you, his eyes filled with a mixture of relief, gratitude, and sadness, the emotions palpable in the misty air.

Your own contractions, once so overwhelming, are now distant memories as you shift your focus entirely to the woman and her impending delivery. You position yourself between the woman's legs, and she leans back on her husband for support, the bond of love and trust between them evident in the way they clung to each other during this moment. 

With gentle but purposeful hands, you begin to move the gauze of her birthing dress out of the way, revealing the sacred space where the new life is making its entrance into the world. The sight fills you with a profound sense of awe and wonder, the beauty of life in its most raw and unadulterated form.

As you catch the first glimpse of the emerging baby, a smile naturally graces your lips, a radiant reflection of the profound beauty you are about to witness. You look up at the father, sharing a moment of unspoken understanding and connection as you prepare to assist in guiding their child into the world, an act of grace in the heart of nature's splendor.

“Noona essa comesei! Attari noona bassi?” (The baby is coming, the baby cloth?) you urgently conveyed to the father, the intensity of the moment hanging heavy in the air. He blinked, momentarily caught in the whirlwind of emotions before comprehending your words. With careful haste, he gently leaned his wife back, supporting her amidst the agonizing pains as he reached for his pack against the wall.

Desperation etched on his face, he hurriedly threw various items from the bag, scattering them around in his search for the baby cloth. Every passing second felt like an eternity as the mother cried out in pain, her body instinctively bringing forth the baby as your hand supported its head. 

Finally, after emptying the entire bag, the Illit father's shoulders slumped in defeat. His frustration boiled over, and he struck the rock wall with his fist, a primal cry of helplessness escaping his lips.

In the midst of this despair, you remained calm, your instincts taking over.

“Asa Passi! Attara noona bassi!” (In my pack! I have the baby cloth!) you shouted at the father, your voice carrying the urgency of the moment. With a quick motion, you pointed to your own pack, signaling where the much-needed baby cloth could be found. Your other hand remained cradling the head of the newborn, offering support and comfort to the laboring mother.

You ran a soothing hand over her leg as she summoned her last ounce of strength, pushing with all her might, and then, in a powerful moment, the babe broke free into the world. The father, having located the cloth meant for your own child in your pack, rushed over, his eyes wide with anxiety. You accepted the plain cloth from him, wasting no time in wrapping the baby in it.

The newborn lay still and silent, not letting out the expected cries that heralded a new life. A sense of despair washed over you, and you shared a helpless glance with the father, both of you fearing the worst.

The mother's wails of agony resonated in the rugged landscape, echoing the heartbreak of a life not granted breath. The anguish in the air was suffocating as she reached for her still baby, her hands trembling. With a heavy heart, you gently transferred the infant to the mother's waiting arms. 

She cradled her lifeless child, tears streaming down her face as she caressed the baby, whispering soft words of love and heartbreak. Her cries mingled with those of her husband as they shared the unbearable moment of loss.

Tears streamed down your cheeks as you tore yourself away from the heart-wrenching scene of the manna. You felt a surge of emotions, a profound sense of hopelessness, reminiscent of the day you had received the news of your own pregnancy. 

— 

The anguished screams pierced the rugged terrain, reverberating through the rocky expanse, and Din felt his heart plummet through the soles of his boots. Grogu, sensing the turmoil in the air, cooed softly from the safety of his sling, nestled beneath Din's protective hand.

Carefully and quietly, Din approached the edge of the rocky ridge, his heart pounding with trepidation. As he looked down into the precipitous drop-off, his eyes fell upon a scene that nearly froze his heart in his chest.

Down below, amidst the harsh and unforgiving black surface of the rocky cavern, he saw you kneeling, a stoic presence, between the legs of a pregnant woman who was hemorrhaging profusely. The woman's anguished cries filled the cavern, echoing against the unforgiving walls.

Din's eyes then shifted to a man, who appeared to be the woman's partner, desperately rummaging through a pack, panic etched across his face. You spoke urgently in a language Din didn't understand, the words punctuated by fear and sorrow. The man seemed to heed your words and swiftly abandoned his fruitless search, rushing over to another pack that lay nearby. The man retrieved a gray cloth from the second pack and hurriedly approached where you were crouched.

Din observed, his eyes transfixed, as you, kneeling on the rocky cavern floor, expertly assisted the pregnant woman. With a mix of awe and sadness, he saw you pull a beautiful, newborn baby from the crying mother, delicate and fragile in your hands.

His gaze lingered as you carefully, almost mournfully, opened the grey cloth. To his dismay, he recognized the symbol displayed on it – a mudhorn. It was the very same symbol etched onto his own pauldron, the only identifier that you could tie to him. He watched as you used the cloth meant for your child, his child, to wrap the now purple baby in the blanket with meticulous care.

Cries and sobs filled the air as he watched from his hidden spot on the high cliff above. His sounds were likely muffled by the nearby waterfall, but he felt Grogu pulling at him, desperate for attention. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to look away. He continued to watch, hidden in the shadows.

He observed as you struggled to stand, your belly full with his child, and as you respectfully walked away to what he could now confirm as your pack. He could see the pain etched on your face, the tears in your eyes, and he felt a pang of guilt deep within him. The weight of his past actions pressed heavily on his shoulders.

Din had done a lot of things he wasn't proud of; he'd walked a dark and treacherous path. He had hated himself when he handed Grogu over to the client for a camtono of beskar, but now, seeing you here, in this vulnerable moment, he hated himself more than he had ever thought possible. 

The symbol on that blanket, the mudhorn, was a reminder of the choices he had made and the lives he had affected. As he watched you cry softly, he knew he couldn't change the past, but he could choose a different path now, one that might bring redemption and peace.

— 

Hours passed by as the mother and her lifeless baby lay on the rocky outcrop. The father, now solemn and determined, prepared the pack for their descent. He spared you a thankful glance as he gently helped the mother stand, their shared grief connecting them. With cautious and uneasy steps, they began their descent down the cliffside.

The mother cradled her unbreathing babe, her heart heavy with loss, as she slowly made her way towards you. With some effort, you rose to your feet and met her halfway. Tears welled up in your eyes as she kissed your cheeks in gratitude.

“Illa-ishi, missa.” (Lonely mothers, sisters.) she said mournfully, her words heavy with the weight of shared sorrow. She placed a gentle hand on your belly, a silent acknowledgment of your pain. Overwhelmed by the emotions of the moment, you couldn't hold back a sob, and the two of you embraced tightly. In that moment, she became your sister in grief, and your shared loss bound you together in a way that words couldn't express.

As she and her husband began their descent, you watched them with a heavy heart. The blanket you had intended for your own child now wrapped around her lifeless baby, providing some small comfort in their time of mourning. 

Left alone once more, you couldn't hold back your tears as you watched the husband carefully guide his grieving wife down the steep cliff and out of sight. As they disappeared from your view, a profound sense of isolation settled over you, and you wept softly, your heart heavy with sorrow.

Returning to the healing waters, you couldn't help but notice that your contractions had inexplicably ceased. Confused but hopeful, you gently felt around your belly and were met with a delicate, reassuring movement from within. A smile, albeit a tearful one, graced your face as you carefully lowered yourself back into the pool, ready to embrace whatever destiny the Gods had in store for you.

The sun began its descent, casting a warm, golden glow over the landscape. From your elevated position, you had a perfect view of the sky as it transformed into a breathtaking canvas of purple, pink, and orange ribbons. As you smiled to yourself, entranced by the beauty of nature, an unusual sound suddenly pierced the tranquility of the moment, snapping your attention to the cliff edge. Your heart raced as you strained to identify the source of this unexpected disturbance, a sense of both trepidation and curiosity gripping you.

As if by magic, a form suddenly flipped up onto the solid ground level with the pool. A small, green being emerged, making noises that were nearly drowned out by the roar of the waterfall. Yet, an overwhelming feeling of joy washed over you as you beheld the sight of this tiny creature toddling towards you.

Driven by curiosity and amazement, you pushed yourself up and out of the water. Your birthing gown clung to your body as you moved, but you paid it no mind. Stepping onto the rock, you slowly rounded the corner of the pool to greet the small being.

To your astonishment, you realized it was a baby, with wide, innocent eyes and a furious babble. The baby lifted its tiny hands towards you, and you couldn't help but crouch down as best you could, your heart filled with warmth. "Noona?" you asked the little creature with a soft, amused laugh. In response, the tiny being gave you a toothy grin, and it made you laugh even more.

Your attention, however, shifted from the small being to a pair of gloved hands gripping the side of the rocky cliff. Your breath caught in your throat as you recognized those gloves, and heat rushed into your face. With wide eyes, you watched as a figure clad in silver beskar, a Mandalorian, lifted themselves effortlessly over the cliff face and stood there with an almost regal grace.

From your crouched position, you observed as the green baby waddled over to the Mandalorian and tugged on his shin armor. The Mandalorian, with his helmeted face turned towards the child, bent down to pick up the little one, and you couldn't hide the confusion that replaced your initial joy.

—

Din's eyes remained locked on your form as he swiftly pulled himself up onto the flat surface of the cliff. He saw you kneeling down, fingers outstretched towards Grogu, the shock etched across your face. But his gaze was drawn irresistibly to the wet dress that clung to your swollen belly, a stark reminder of your impending motherhood.

As he felt Grogu tugging at his shin armor, he silently bent down to pick up the child. Still, his eyes remained fixed on you, and he struggled to find the right words to explain this unexpected reunion.

“I... I had a dream,” he finally managed to say, his voice choked with emotion.

Your eyes softened, and he witnessed your composure crumbling before him. Your confused and shocked expression melted into a soft frown as tears welled up in your eyes. Before he fully registered it, his feet carried him closer, and he knelt down in front of you with Grogu still cradled in his arms. He placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, hoping to offer some form of reassurance.

"Please... don't cry," he implored softly, the tenderness in his voice evident. However, he watched as you recoiled from his touch, your reaction sharp and violent, like a wounded animal cornered in fear.

— 

"Don't cry," his voice was a gentle whisper from behind as he reached out to sweep your hair away from your face, tucking it behind your ear with his left hand. His thumb, soft and reassuring, brushed away a solitary tear that had collected in the corner of your eye, preventing it from descending down your cheek.

The cold, unyielding embrace of his armor pressed against your back, a constant reminder of his presence, as if he permeated every inch of the room. You lay face down on the makeshift bed within the opulent suite, placed there by him in silence. His helmet tucked against the back of your head as his right hand reached around the front of your body to work open your tight entrance. He smelled like musk, metal, and something floral.

You didn't know his name, and in truth, you knew very little about him. All you knew was that he had paid a considerable sum for your services and bore a mudhorn symbol on his pauldron. The hushed whispers from the other women in the establishment painted a picture of a bounty hunter, a formidable figure who held the favor of the new Daimyo. He was a source of fear and fascination, and the idea of him both terrified and intrigued you. But, above all, you craved freedom more than anything else, and this was a means to an end.

As the moments unfolded, you couldn't hold back the tears that escaped, mingling with a confusing mix of emotions. It wasn't bad; he wasn't unkind. In fact, you found him surprisingly polite. He had said nothing, just removed his gloves and led you to the makeshift bed, where he now pressed into your body from behind.

It felt fine, maybe even surprisingly good, but your stubbornness held strong. You were determined not to give the foreman the satisfaction of knowing you enjoyed the path you had chosen to earn your freedom. The thought of succumbing to pleasure and surrendering to the moment felt like weakness, and you clung to your resolve with unwavering determination.

However, as his fingers moved softly, so softly, you couldn't help but feel your resistance slowly crumbling. Each touch was skillful, and the sensations they evoked were impossible to ignore.

You could feel a pleasure building within you as he continued his careful thrusting into your tightness. His thick fingers curled slightly as his thumb worked your clit. His left hand rests by your head as he made sure to move any hair out of your face. You had no idea if he was watching you through his visor, but you had assumed so because he wiped your tears and told you not to cry. The build up turned into a tightness that needed to be released, he could tell by how hot you’d gotten under him and how your walls fluttered on his fingers. 

He felt a pride well up in him at the knowledge that he still had the ability to bring a woman pleasure but also that you’d finally relaxed enough to allow yourself to feel this. He closed his eyes for a moment just to focus on how your walls felt around his fingers, he willed himself to listen to your body. Upon each drawback of his fingers he worked to spread your tight cunt just slightly- three, four, five more thrusts of his fingers and he felt you tremble under him. 

His eyes snapped open, and he observed you biting your hand to stifle any sounds. He felt the flutter of your walls on his fingers as he stilled in order to relish in the feel your softness. He watched you come back from wherever you had gone in your high, his hand moving gently to caress the hand you had bitten, the teeth marks already leaving a faint purplish hue. As his thumb brushed over the marked area, he felt the slight tremor in your body, your vulnerability laid bare, and saw the glistening tears welling up in your eyes once more. 

“Don’t cry.” he said again before moving to sit back on his heels. He admired your form, the way the flame lit room made your skin look like silk. You were totally bare to him, he’d undressed you slowly and carefully placed your clothing next his gloves on the chair. He was still fully clothed save for the gloves he’d removed. He watched as your form began to stir, and he carefully placed a hand on your lower back to keep you down. You immediately complied. With a sigh he slowly ran his hand down your back to the curve of your ass and to the back of your thigh. He could see the slick from your arousal glimmering in the soft light. 

He could see everything, every intimate part of you, and yet he didn’t allow you the joy of seeing him. He couldn’t. 

You sat, staring at the wall ahead of you, the seconds feeling like hours, with him seated behind you. The situation was embarrassing, and you could only hope he wasn't disgusted. You had assumed he was finished with you after whatever had just happened, only to be gently pushed back onto the bed, not harshly but rather in a silent, pleading manner. After a moment, you heard him stir behind you, and you froze, your ears attuned to his every movement.

You heard a soft rustling of fabrics and buckles. He came to rest on you again, with his left hand resting by your left hand. His right hand gripped your waist as he shifted you back towards him. This position shifted you more so your backside was resting against his thighs while your chest was flush with the pillows beneath you. He was able to bend over you more like this so he comfortably rested on his left arm above you. 

His right hand left your waist and you felt the warmth of his hand in between your legs. You could feel the soft head of his hard cock turn to velvet as he ran it through your slick folds. You clenched the pillow underneath you as you braced yourself for the pain the other women had told you about. You felt pressure against your entrance and instinctively you tried to move away only to feel his hand move like lightning from between your thighs to your waist as he anchored you in place. 

He didn’t say anything just held you there as he slowly pushed the head of his cock deeper into your entrance. His grip once iron on your waist turned soft as his thumb brushed circles into the skin there. Slowly he sank deeper and that’s when you felt it, the sharp uncomfortable sting. You tensed under him at the pain and you felt him freeze above you. His left hand moved to grab your face beneath him, turning your cheek so he could see you. You looked over your left shoulder to peer up at him, his cold visor returning your gaze. You couldn't help the tear that fell as you clutched the pillows.

"Don't..." his voice was strained through the vocoder, and you knew he was holding back, for you.

—

"Do not say that to me!" Your pained and thickly accented voice ripped through the air as you swatted his arm away. The green child yelped softly at your sudden movement.

Din's eyes widened. It was the first thing you had said to him. You hadn't spoken a word that night. He recoiled from you in shame.

He watched as you cried, emotions swirling within him like a chaotic storm. 

"You shouldn't be out here," he managed to say as he stood abruptly, his words tinged with a mixture of concern and frustration. He glanced around, finally taking in the grim surroundings. Blood still pooled on the rocky ground where the woman had given birth earlier. Even worse, the remains of skeletons lay strewn about, their shattered bones mixed with the gravel under his boots.

"This is a graveyard, not a place for a woman in your condition to give birth," he grumbled, regretting the harshness of his words. The eerie desolation of this place was overwhelming, and he couldn't make sense of anything. The grim reality of death and birth intertwined in this forsaken corner of the galaxy was too much for him to bear.

Your face, your soft, beautiful, and glowing face looked up at him then. 

"This is where I am meant to be," your broken voice hit him right in the chest.

For a moment, Din just stood there, his helmeted gaze locked on you. Grogu stirred in his arms and he set the child down. His gaze shifted from Grogu to the pack leaning against the rocky wall, the very same pack he had seen a man carrying at the market, with his wife in tow. It was the same pack he had witnessed being carried by the man who was desperate, carrying his bleeding wife. The pieces of the puzzle began to click into place in Din's mind.

"Did you... carry that alone?" he asked, his curiosity piqued as he looked from you to the pack and back.

You huffed, annoyance coloring your features, and moved to stand. Din instinctively reached out to help you, but you swatted his hand away. You stood, resolute, and locked eyes with him through his visor.

"Yes. I am illa-ishi," you declared firmly, your words laden with meaning.

Din furrowed his brow, confused by the unfamiliar term. "Illa-ishi?" he repeated, the word alien to him.

Your cheeks flushed with embarrassment as you realized he didn't understand. "I am a lonely mother," you tried to find the right words that could translate to Basic.

He continued to stare, his helmet giving away nothing. You huffed in frustration and attempted again, simplifying your words. "I am alone." you finally settled on, hoping he would grasp the essence of your situation.

Din just stared at you, seemingly uncomprehending. You felt your cheeks burn with embarrassment, and the green child peered up at you, as if offering a sympathetic glance. Frustrated with the language barrier, you turned to walk towards your pack and bedroll.

As you began to walk away, Din's gloved hand gently gripped your upper arm, stopping you in your tracks. You shot an annoyed look back at him, silently demanding an explanation for his actions.

Din's gloved thumb moved soothingly circles on your arm, his gaze locked on you. He took a moment to search for the right words, his voice barely rising above a gravelly whisper.

"Is...is this mine?" he questioned, his words weighted with uncertainty, his voice low and husky.

Your eyes fixated on his hand caressing your arm, and tears welled up again, threatening to break free. You bit your lip in a futile attempt to hold them back, forcing yourself to look directly into the reflective visor of his helmet. You saw your own tear-streaked face in the cold, mirrored surface of the Mandalorian's armor, and it was a sight that turned your stomach.

"Yes. I've... never been with another. Only you," the confession tumbled from your lips, the words feeling strange and heavy in your mouth. Your body tensed, and you felt a sudden, sharp tightness envelop you, a contraction, your first since the bleeding mother had shown up. You gasp in agony as your knees buckle under you. 

"Dank farrik!" Din's initial worry had given way to frustration as he cursed under his breath. He reached out and grabbed you, his gloved hands steadying you gently while Grogu made a sad noise from his perch on the ground.

"We have to get you out of here. Is there a medcenter near here?" His voice trembled with desperation as he crouched down to meet your gaze.

"What?!" You hissed exasperatedly through the pain, your frustration and agony making you bristle.

"Medcenter!" Din almost yelled, and his eyes widened when you shoved him away.

"Issa noona ibaniss a plantissia ata mountina as illa! As illa a ma a iss!" you shouted at him in anguish, your words foreign to his ears but laced with undeniable determination. (My baby will be born on this planet, at the Mountain of Mothers, like my mother and the one before her!)

Din stood there, still as stone, as your scream washed over him. 

He looked at you, his gaze falling to your trembling hands, one of them wrapped in blood-soaked gauze. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to steady himself and regain control.

He was going about this the wrong way. You had climbed the treacherous cliff, your cloth bore the sigil of the Mudhorn, and your pack was identical to the ones the men had carried. You had a well-thought-out plan; he just hadn't been part of it.

With newfound determination, he approached you, taking careful, measured steps. Kneeling down beside you, he spoke softly, his voice filled with genuine concern.

"How do I help you?" he asked, his words breaking through the haze of pain that enveloped you.

You slowly looked up at him through your tears, your eyes locked onto his helmet. For a moment, you were at a loss for words, your mouth slightly ajar as you processed the situation. With a trembling hand, you pointed towards the spring nearby. "Take me there," you said softly, your voice heavy with the weight of your suffering. 

In an instant, Din's strong hands found purchase under your knees and behind your back, and he lifted you with great care, not wanting to cause you any harm. You flushed with the ease of him carrying you, a thought flickering across your mind of how much simpler scaling the cliff might have been if he had been there. But you dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, focusing on the immediate task at hand. You wrapped your left arm around the back of his neck and placed your right hand protectively over your belly, the hard surface of his armor uncomfortably pressing against your side as he carried you toward the inviting hot spring.

"I can go from here," you said in thick, broken Basic, attempting to wiggle out of his grasp.

Din regarded you, confusion clear in his eyes as he tried to understand. His gaze alternated between the steaming water and your face. "You want to go in the water?" he asked, as if seeking confirmation.

"Yes, I can go from here," you repeated, pushing against him with a touch of defiance. His grip tightened, surprising you with its strength, and you nearly yelped in response. Shooting him a displeased look, you tried to assert your independence.

"What, and let you slip?" he asked, gazing at you through his visor before looking ahead. "No." He had made up his mind, and there was no arguing with the Mandalorian's decision.

As you were lowered into the hot spring, the initial shock of the water's heat gave way to a soothing relief. Din was surprised by how inviting it felt, and he understood why pregnant women sought refuge in such places. The water enveloped his boots and rose just above his knees as he carried you into the pool. You held onto him with a newfound intensity as he descended, afraid that he might lose his footing. Your disbelief mixed with gratitude as you realized the extent of his support.

Finding solid ground beneath the water, Din gently released your knees, allowing your feet to dip into the warm embrace of the pool. His hand slid from your back to your waist, ensuring your stability, and he positioned himself behind you in the water. You stood just below his chin, and if he desired, he could easily rest his chin on your head. His right hand remained on your waist, his gloved fingers splayed out on your side, providing you with a reassuring and protective presence.

A powerful surge of emotion overcame Din as he felt the subtle movements of the life within you under his fingertips. He stood there, motionless and transfixed, as you faced away from him, both of you submerged in the comforting warmth of the spring. His eyes traced the contour of your back, the gentle rise and fall as you breathed, and then slowly, as if compelled by an invisible force, he found himself resting his forehead against the back of your head, his helmet touching your soft hair.

He grappled with where to place his left hand, uncertain of the right way to provide comfort. His gaze drifted downwards, fixating on the water where he saw your dress floating softly as it began to soak in the pool. Carefully, he moved his left hand to the small of your back, gripping the back of your waist with a gentle touch.

In the midst of his turmoil, a soft, barely audible sob escaped his lips, and tears welled up inside his helmet, tracing their way down his cheek. "I'm sorry," he uttered, his voice broken and full of guilt. It was a plea for forgiveness, an attempt to convey the overwhelming regret that consumed him. He clung to your form, feeling the life inside you, the life he had a part in creating and then abandoned. 

His wallowing in self-recrimination was shattered by the sound of your voice and the tender touch of your hand as it caressed his right hand.

Your back was cold against his hardwood desk, the same one you had just finished cleaning for him. Papers you just finished stacking were now scattered around your head and naked body.

There Victor was, standing between your legs, lifting your right one up to his shoulder and slowly kissing it, grazing his other hand up your thigh with a small squeeze as he does.

You were almost fully naked on top of his desk, just in you underwear at this point. Your clothes laying around the room after Victor eagerly undressed you just minutes earlier.

Victors kisses slowly got higher up your leg, crouching down the closer he gets to your inner thighs. Letting your legs drape over his shoulders as his face is now just inches from your clothed cunt.

Your hands moved down to his face, grazing his face as you looked down at him. He began placing small kisses to your clothed clit, feeling just a bit of his saliva seep through the fabric.

“Victor.. no teasing” you quietly pleaded. He continued to kiss at your panties though, occasionally licking at them with his split, snake like, tongue.

After a few sloppy kisses and long licks to your panties he finally pulls them to the side. The cooler air hitting your exposed skin, making you shiver under his touch.

“Please, Victor?” You pleaded. And he listened. His snake tongue began working slowly on your clit, licking it with an occasional suck.

Your grip tightened in his hair making him grunt lightly against you. “Fuck.. so good” you moaned, breathy and quiet. Victor didn’t even care to reply, he just wanted to please you for a bit longer with his mouth.

He brought both of his hands up, one resting on your thigh, lightly caressing it. The other moving to your cunt, lining up one of his big fingers with your entrance.

He pushed a finger in causing you to open your mouth and let out a louder moan at the sensation. Victor continued both motions of his mouth on your clit and his finger working inside of you, pressing against the sweet spot you loved.

It didn’t take long before you were begging for more “mmm Victor.. please I need more..” you moaned out. His head perked up, looking up at you.

“Yeah? I can give you more..” He replied with a cheeky smile as he stood up. He brought both of your legs with when he stood up, holding them up to his sides as they bent at your knee.

He moved his hands, letting you keep your legs up yourself, and began unzipping his pants. He pulled them down just enough for his dick to spring free, hovering over your exposed body.

He moved one arm to hold up one of your legs and his other held his cock, lining himself up with your hole. “Please I need it..” you begged for him to slide it in already, yearning for the feeling of being full with him.

He slowly pushed in the tip of his cock, moving his other hand back to your thigh to hold it up. Leaning down to your face, he slowly pushed himself further into you.

You brought your arms up to wrap around his neck, your mouth falling agape as you felt his tip enter you. “Mmm fuck!” you moaned out, waiting for him to push in the rest of himself.

And he did so, pushing himself in slowly. You can feel how big he is, every vein rubbing against your walls as moves. “Look at that, baby”

Your attention went to his face then down to your stomach where he was looking. You can see the bump in it where his cock was buried inside of you. The bump moving up and down as he thrusted in and out of you.

“Ooh fuck! Victor you’re so big..” you moaned you, leaning your head back as he thrusted. Victor let go of one of your thighs and moves his hand to the bump on your tummy.

“Yeah… Feel me right there?” He asked, pressing down on the bump lightly as he continued his thrusts, now going quicker. “Mhmm yess I do!” You replied with a moan, moving your hips along with his to deepen the thrusts.

Victor moved his hand from the bump and up to your neck, wrapping his fingers around and squeezing, just hard enough for you to feel it.

You brought one of your own hands down to between your legs, slowly rubbing your own clit as Victor thrusted. Your eyes rolling back as your back arched up off of the desk.

“Mm Victorrr!” You dragged out his name “I’m gonna cum please..!” You don’t even know what you were pleading for but you needed to cum.

“Oh I know..” he replied in a breathy tone, continuing his thrusts harder than before. “God, me too baby”

You felt that familiar knot in your stomach tighten, looking down to see the bulge in your tummy still moving in and out. Rubbing your clit faster and faster until you came, yelling out whatever noises and moans you could as you did.

Victor was quick to follow, the thrusts working towards his own release acted as a carry through your own orgasm.

You raised the hand that was previously on your clit to the hand that was on your neck, holding his bigger wrist as he gripped your neck.

You could see Victor lean his head back with a low groan, soon after feeling him release inside of you, feeling each rope of hot cum fill you up.

He let out uneven breaths as he came down, looking down one last time to the bulge he leaves in your tummy before pulling out. Feeling his cum leak out of your puffy hole and drip onto his desk.

*+*AU where Micheal is more of an anxious bachelor sick of his cushy life and before Alex can really sink his claws into him, he meets us at a party! I may or may not have softened and nerdified his persona a bit too…what can I say, the man has shyboy potential ! Also fair warning, this is a bit of a slow burn, as there’s a lot of convo/dialogue leading up to the smut as the characters warm up to each other, so patience is key ;) *+*

borders: @pixopix

Tags: no use of y/n, mutual pining, makeouts, oral sex, blowjobs, p in v sex, coming inside

This is a complete waste of time.

The words were spelled out in big, blinking lights nailed onto a giant, obnoxious billboard resident in your brain as you stood amidst incessant chatter and drunken laughter. It’s a beautiful Saturday night and instead of catching some late night film or working on your personal portfolio, you’ve been dragged out of your apartment and into a cocktail dress and stilettos to some avant-garde, champagne drenched, art party in the exquisite back garden of some liberal millionaire.

Being a gallery curator, you’d think that this would be your scene, a lush habitat filled with fresh ideas and creatives ready for consumption. A feast of interesting conversation and flowing faces.

Not really.

As the years flicker and fade, familiarity imbues the senses and you start to realize that the same damn people show up to these things at the same damn places. Sure, there’s bound to be some changes in the mix, but there’s only so many people to meet, talk to, laugh with, kiss, and fuck in the art scene of breezy Los Angeles, California.

Which is why those lenses and sandy slick back caught your eye when they first passed you by.

Talking to some breakout, erotic film director, you’d caught the glance of gold in the corner of your eye — and when you found the chance to slip out of the thrilling conversation that was scoring pornography along the to rhythm of the relentless thrusting and moaning, took a good look at the mystery man.

He stood by the topiary display downing a large flute of Veuve Clicquot and chatting with an inky haired, asshole looking friend of his. You knew that guy. His name was Antonio or Angelo or something — every time a friend of yours gushed over his passionate lovemaking they had given you a different one. One glance at him and you could tell he was no good, the type to claim he gives great head, but instead leaves you unsatisfied and with a hundred dollar bill missing from your pocket book in the early hours of the morning.

His friend however, the blond, you had never seen before. He intrigued you. Something about his demeanor, the way he swallowed and sighed, trying his best to laugh like he felt secure with himself had you staring at him for an unusual amount of time.

He seemed shy.

The thought made you smile.

But then you looked at Mr. Jerkoff standing next to him again and realized that they were probably friends for a reason. Looks aren’t everything, for all you know Blondie could be the exact same wretched flavor as him. Suddenly tapped on the shoulder by a dear photographer friend of yours, you were whisked away into the millionaire’s mansion and Blondie fell away from your sight. For good reason, you thought. He was for sure an asshole in disguise and even if he wasn’t, you weren’t in the mood to find out tonight.

For the next hour or so, you sank down two sparkling flutes yourself and sat through endless conceited conversations about substance and momentum and whether they were present in the works of countless writers, artists, directors, and actors. All you could do was stand there and nod, motionless, like some aluminum droid, mindlessly complimenting mauve bangles and ivory cufflinks.

“What is up with you tonight?” Claire nudged you in the shoulder. She was one of those sickeningly gorgeous European models that seemed to pull off the boyish pixie cut so well. She was also the number that called you three times this afternoon begging you to come out tonight.

“I know I force you to come to these things, but usually you begin to have fun in spite of yourself an hour or so in. Tell me darling, what has got your panties in such a bunch?” she shook her head with a playful look.

You shrugged and played with the pearl earring hanging on your earlobe, “I don’t know…I’m feeling particularly dry tonight. Must be that California sand, gets to you sometimes.”

Claire rolled her eyes, “I have a feeling some parts of you have been drier than others lately.”

“You need to get laid.”

She giggled, putting a hand to your shoulder.

You shrugged her off, offended, “I do not!”

Claire laughed again and sipped her drink, she swallowed and calmly spoke.

“Alright. When was the last time you had sex?”

“Claire! This dame does not kiss and tell,” you wagged your head, putting your hands on your plum slip dress.

“Oh no, so it has been a while—why didn’t you tell me? I have this wonderful guitarist friend who I think you’d like. He’s a wonderful lay,” Clair smiled.

“By all means thank you Claire, but I just don’t feel like getting involved with anyone right now, nevertheless partaking in anyone’s seconds — no offense,” you explained.

“None taken,” Claire gave you a sweet look as she sipped more champagne.

“I just want you to have fun, spend less time shut up in that apartment of yours, you’re either always there or at the gallery. You do know that there are other places on this marvelous planet Earth of ours, do you?” she raised her eyebrows.

“I know, I know, and I am glad you push and shove sometimes, just…tonight is different. The only thing I can think of is my bed — in the most boring, mundane, sleepy way,” you added with a laugh.

“Oh well, I guess we all have those nights…so you’re off then?” Claire cocked her meticulously styled, messy head of hair.

“I think so,” you exhaled with a tense look of sorry…I tried? on your face.

“What a shame. Goodnight dear, get home safe,” Claire gave you a bittersweet look and hugged you. She smelled like sweet dates and decadent dark chocolate.

“Good night Claire. Call me tomorrow, we’ll have coffee,” you broke off from the embrace and waved goodbye.

Heading towards the exit by way of the front doors of the mansion, you realized that the greasy film director from earlier was standing by them, looking like he had more bubbles of champagne than red blood cells in his cardiovascular system. In some strange miscalculation of nature, he had taken a liking to you when you spoke to him and you knew that one look at you and he’d be pulling you into some perverted conversation thinly veiled as “small talk about what I do” that would begin with sticky fingers and end with a red hand print streaked across his stubbly cheek.

You sighed and made your way to the garden, hoping there was some back exit you could sneak out through. When it seemed like you were walled in by bushes and hedges sprinkled with colorful arrangements of wild flowers and half-naked, marble statues, you sat on the ledge of the giant water fountain in the center of the garden’s square and settled on waiting a couple of minutes there before checking if the perv had stumbled somewhere else.

Outside, there was a giant brick wall opposite the mansion thanks to the old town house over that the millionaire probably owned too. The free real estate was used to project films the whole night; the genre varied from event to event, but tonight you gazed at the hazy neon horror that was Argento’s Suspiria. You watched Stefania Casini attempt to claw her way out of a room filled with barbed wire as your lungs took in the fresh nighttime air. Ironically, the clean breeze hit you with the strange craving for a cigarette between your lips. Whole lot of good that’ll do you, you thought. You’d quit three weeks ago and would begin to feel tightly wound whenever the cravings would come over you, feeling like you might spring undone and punch somebody if spoken to the wrong way.

Trying to dispel the little naughty voices in your head telling you how easy it would be to stop by the nearest convenience store and buy a pack on the way home, you realized someone had sat down next to you.

It was Blondie.

He wiped the sweat off the bridge of his nose from beneath his glasses and dipped his hand in the cool water, rubbing the back of his neck with his wet palm.

You stole another glance at him, at his super fancy tux. He seemed to be wearing it like a paper doll would, devoid of any sort of originality and personalization like the other fashion “experts” here. It was very cookie cutter.

He must’ve caught your glance because he turned his head your way and spoke.

“Sorry, I just…needed to cool down with the fountain and this is the best spot to watch the film,” he said softly.

His voice surprised you; it had this sort of quiet precision as he spoke, nothing loud and obnoxious, and more so cool and fluid like the reflection of the fountain’s water splashed across his face. You met his dark eyes and gave him a polite nod, quickly turning your attention to the flickering film, trying to ignore just how handsome he was.

You stayed that way for a good minute or two, feeling awkward sitting next to him, but for some reason not wanting to get up and leave to go check if the exit was free.

Blondie laughed in a sort of scoff at the film and said, “God, pants were so tight back then, left nothing up to the imagination huh?”

You laughed back, “that’s the seventies for you.”

He nodded and reclined a bit, resting his hand on the ledge. You looked down and noticed it was pretty close to yours. His hand was large and a bit veiny, but looked very soft somehow, it was weird, but not as weird as how intently you were staring down at it. So much so that when a voice addressed you, you were startled.

“There you are!” laughed the film director.

“Aw man, I was looking for you everywhere. I really enjoyed our last conversation and was really spiffed when it was cut short,” he put his arms out — of course he had more alcohol in his clutch.

You looked up at him in dreaded shock, “oh! Hi there again.”

“Hey listen, there's so much I’ve got to tell you about my new film. It’s revolutionary. It’s tasteful of course, but also packed with action and just painfully sexy,” he scrunched his brows with thick finesse.

“How about you and me ditch this place and we can come watch it at my place? You'll be the first to see it, a totally exclusive sneak peek just for you gorgeous,” he grinned.

What the fuck!

You nervously grinned.

“Ah I’m so sorry, um—”

“Jackson,” he eagerly interjected.

“I am so sorry Jack, but um, I cannot go out with you tonight, I’ve got to wake up early tomorrow,” you shook your head politely.

“C’mon, I’ll get you out of bed early enough for whatever it is you need to do sweetheart. I know you’re just playing hard to get,” he winked and chugged his drink.

God you needed a fucking cigarette.

“No, I am not playing hard to get. I just don’t want to go back to your house Jackson,” you said a little more bluntly.

“Alright, then where do you want to go? We can ah, hop in my mustang and figure it out from there…who knows, we might not even leave the mustang if you know what I mean — I am open to anything you want baby, you just say the word,” he chuckled, face all flushed.

You glared at him and exhaled, opening your mouth to speak.

“—hey cool it okay? She clearly doesn’t want to be around you bud,” Blondie interrupted.

You turned your head over and saw that his focus was now on Jackson instead of the projection.

“Who the fuck asked you?” Jack scoffed.

“Look man, I don’t want any problems. I’m just trying to watch the film here but it’s pretty damn obvious that you’re making her uncomfortable,” Blondie shrugged.

“Oh yeah, did she tell you that? Are you her goddamn boyfriend or something?” he raised a thick brow.

“No, I can just sense that she may or may not be off put by your proposal to watch fucking pornography together at your bachelor pad, stud,” he mocked with a laugh.

“Yeah you think this is—this is fucking funny? Huh?” Jackson slurred, throwing his glass over his shoulder and letting it shatter across the stone flooring, causing some heads to look over and draw attention to the quickly escalating scene.

Both you and Blondie immediately began speaking, a plethora of “woahs” in unison that urged Mr. Porno Hot Head to calm down.

“No. No, see—this nerd mother fucker here thinks this is funny!” he yelled.

“I really don’t—” began Blondie.

“I’ll give you something to fucking laugh about!” he roared and yanked Blondie up by the collar, punching him square in the face.

You let out a yelp and popped up from your seat, yelling at Jack to stop. As you did so, Blondie unhooked himself from Jackson’s clutch and punched him back, making the man stagger backwards, clutching his eye. Blondie then took the opportunity to grab him by the shoulders and push his drunken ass into the water fountain.

You watched all of this happen in utter disbelief, frozen as you beheld the drenched drunk mess that was Jackson and the bleeding blond staring right at you.

“You should go, once he gets the water out of his nose and ears he’s going to be angry,” he breathed.

“But you? What about your nose?” you said, worried.

“It’s fine,” he replied, but hissed when his hand came up to touch it, lenses crooked and cracked.

“Oh god…here, come with me,” you said resolutely, grabbing him by the wrist.

And so you swiftly led him back inside the mansion and trekked through a labyrinth of people into one of the multitude of fancy bathrooms that wasn’t occupied for coke snorting or oral sex or any kind of sex for that matter.

Closing the door, you snagged a hand towel and ran it under warm water. Blondie took off his broken glasses and inspected them.

“Shit,” he frowned.

As he set them on the counter, you wrung the hand towel and turned around.

“I am so sorry about all this, your glasses especially,” you muttered, bringing the towel to his nose.

“It’s alright really, I don’t—fuck,” he swore at the pressure on his nose.

“Sorry,” you said coyly, lightening your handiwork.

“No, I really am very embarrassed. The whole reason I was sitting at the fountain was because that dumbass was standing by the exit and I was waiting for him to leave…didn’t think he was going to come find me while I was at it,” you scoffed, dabbing the blood away from his upper lip.

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s not your fault he’s an asshole,” he shrugged.

“I can’t believe I didn’t even feel him walk up to me,” you muttered.

“I was so…distracted.”

You gazed at his face, it was very close to yours now — in such a quiet, intimate setting too. Your eyes studied the way the cloth caught his lip as you cleaned the blood, the way it would lift up and momentarily expose some of his teeth each time.

Your eyes then met his, they were a grayish blue, a slate color. His eyelashes were unbelievably blond.

“Are you done?” you heard him say curiously.

“Oh,” you realized you had paused the wiping.

“Yeah you’re fine,” you sheepishly replied.

He nodded with a “thanks” and came to look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Now that the blood was clean he just had a red, tender nose. His hair was a little messed up too. Micheal tried to slick it back the way it was, exhaling and sticking a finger in his collar to loosen up his crumpled bow tie.

“Well, we should both probably call it a night now, I’ve got a feeling Jack’s stomping around looking for us leaving tiny puddles of water everywhere he goes,” he proposed, turning around.

“You’re right,” you smiled.

“—thank you by the way, um,” you raised a brow.

“Micheal,” he smiled shyly, leaning against the counter.

There it was again. That flicker of apprehension, the one that made you smile earlier. You gazed at him and crossed your arms, deciding to take a chance.

“You hungry Micheal? Let me buy you something to eat as an apology for your shattered lenses,” you offered, finding yourself holding your breath awaiting his answer.

Micheal met your eyes again and a look of ever so slight fluster came over his system, “um sure…do you like donuts?”

“Oh Micheal, you are speaking my language,” you dropped your arms and gave him a silly look.

Micheal smiled even wider and grabbed his poor glasses, putting them back on.

Dropping the bloody rag in the garbage can, you and Micheal exited the bathroom and practically bolted out the doors of that cursed mansion of horrors.

Unfortunately, you were in the richer part of town where all the late night shops weren’t within walking distance because God forbid Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags live within a mile radius of a Seven-Eleven.

“I’ll hail us a cab, but we’ll have to walk a little farther out,” Micheal said.

You nodded and followed him down the street to the less private areas of the gated community the mansion was located in.

“Don’t you have to let that friend of yours know you’re leaving?” you asked him, gripping your clutch and clacking your heels down the chilly sidewalk.

“Not really, he told me he didn’t want to see me at the end of the night, that my goal was to end up sleeping anywhere but my own bed,” he laughed in disbelief.

“Oh wow,” you replied, feeling validated in your previous asshole diagnostic of the guy.

“I didn’t really take it to heart by the way, that’s not what I’m trying to—hey, how’d you know I was with him tonight?” he questioned suddenly, turning his head over to you.

Pink bloomed across your face, not realizing you had given yourself away like that. Nervous laughter tumbled out of your mouth.

“I guess I had seen you earlier talking with him, jet black hair?” you cocked your head.

“Yup, that’s him. Did you know that he, Alex, practically forced me out here tonight? I was supposed to go this super formal, black tie dinner hosted by my boss for all his colleagues — and the guy fucking crashes the thing posing as my brother to hurriedly tell everyone that I needed to rush to the hospital to say my last words to my dying grandmother.”

“What the fuck, who does that?” you stifled a laugh.

“I know!” he grinned wildly at the pavement and held back a laugh too.

His eyes left the sidewalk and met yours.

You both stopped walking and broke into a fit of laughter, at how absurd the act was for you and at how well it seemed to work for Micheal.

Micheal sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “oh fuck, I can’t even believe it myself.”

“So is he a lifesaver, this Alex? Was the dinner really going to be that bad?” you asked.

Micheal put his hands in his pockets, “I don’t know…it’s all bullshit over there, where I work. I guess he thought I needed a break and brought me here.”

He looked back over to the glowing mansion in the distance, “to this surreal, eclectic, fever dream of a party.”

Micheal flicked his head back over to you, “did you know I saw a woman with a snake wrapped around her neck tonight? Walking around with it like nothing, like she heard boa constructor and decided to just ignore the last part.”

You grinned, “aw man, you mean Susie? She's such a treat.”

“Well I think Susie should exercise a little more caution having fangs so close to her precious pulse points,” Micheal quipped.

You began laughing really hard and paused to take a breath and speak, “shit, sorry you don’t know! Susie’s the name of the snake! The owner’s name is Cassandra!”

You continued to drunkenly laugh, bent over while Micheal simply stood there, smiling at you like an idiot.

“Oh god, fuck…I’m sorry,” you tried to catch your breath.

“You come to these things a lot don’t you?” he said.

“Yeah, I do unfortunately,” you smiled.

Micheal continued walking down the street.

“What do you mean by unfortunately?”

You followed him.

“I don’t know, I just get tired of all the theatrics every now and then. There are a lot of dear friends back there, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I just…”

“Need some divergence?” Micheal said, pushing the bridge of his lenses up and staring down at his dress shoes as he walked.

You gazed at his downturned side profile, “…yeah.”

He smiled at the concrete, “I get the feeling. It’s the same where I work. I’m a financial analyst over on Mid-Wilshire and all my best buds are there but, it’s like all day is just the endless drone of greenback lingo. Like, I get it’s our job but even at the bar after work or at somebody’s house for dinner, the only things these men can seem to talk about is money, money, money!”

Micheal tensed his brow, upset.

“I just feel like there’s more to life than dust busters and fine china and Christmas bonuses and diamond earrings.”

“…it’s just all too suburban,” Micheal sighed.

“I wish my life was a bit more suburban,” you shook your head.

“I come to these parties and see such a spectacular array of minds and hands, brimming with talent, with genuine artistic excellence,” you began.

Micheal eyed you as you spoke.

“And it’s all wonderful you know? I love art. I love consuming and taking in all types of media, talking with these people about the process behind that media and how they express themselves based on their participation in life and it’s beautiful. Everyone is so different.”

You let out a heavy breath.

“But then the fame and the money and the vices get to them and I see this…this deterioration of the soul, like the only things they can think about is being the best lyricist, the best artist, the best and biggest everything, not giving a damn about what tomorrow holds for them as long as they have a cocktail glass in one hand, a bottle of pills in the other, and a warm body in bed next to them through the night.”

You sighed and met his eyes as you both stopped round a corner, the night air so crisp. More and more light came into view as more street shop signs glowed around you, the noise of more and more cars whizzing by coming into ear.

“Looks like you and I are running into the same problems on opposite fields,” he smiled softly.

“Old money or new money, at the end of the day it’s still cold, hard cash,” you breathed a laugh back.

Micheal maintained eye contact with you as a look of something came over him. He suddenly glanced downwards at you and it's like he realized for the first time what exactly you were wearing. He noticed how you rubbed your own bare arms up and down.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Oh um, I’m good, don't worry,” you assured him.

“It’s the middle of October, you must be cold,” he raised a brow.

And suddenly, he was taking off his suit jacket and wrapping it around your shoulders, making a stupid grin plaster itself across your face.

“Thanks,” you replied, trying your best to not be overtaken with fluster at the oh so chivalrous act.

“Alright, now to find a damn cab,” he turned towards the street with a quizzical look and surveyed the rows of cars passing by, trying to catch a flash of yellow.

In the cab, more small talk was made — mostly about your job as a curator, what you were working on right now, if you made art yourself, and so on.

For some reason, tonight it felt like all the taxi cabs had undergone some sort of secret, world-wide renovation to make them ever so smaller, because you were acutely aware of how close you sat next to Micheal. Your knees even touched as you sat. Micheal himself had a hard time focusing with the smell of your perfume filling up the cab, your hand brushing by his on the pleather seats ever so often.

“Do you have a favorite art piece?” he asked.

“That is a loaded question, my friend — how dare you ask me that?” you nudged him, he giggled back.

You stared up at the water stained taxi ceiling, “umm, it changes with time, but tonight I’d say I’m rather fond of Klimt's Judith I.”

Your eyes flicked over to his and saw how he had no idea what you were referring to.

“It’s this painting of Judith from the Bible holding General Holofernes’ severed head after killing him to end his reign of tyranny, and it fascinates me because it has none of the bloody aggression of a Caravaggio depiction, for example. Klimt doesn’t even show the entirety of Holofernes’ head. It’s just Judith, looking straight at the viewer, wearing nothing but mesh fabric. It has a perverse air to it, like the violently erotic confrontation that Holofernes must’ve experienced as he tried to bed Judith, realizing his cruel demise was solely in fault to his own libido.”

Micheal examined you as you spoke, how your pupils bounced around the taxi as you seemingly left the space and entered some sort of other mental sphere, simply passionate over talking about art. The girls he knew never seemed to have that sort of spark in their eyes; they were more accustomed to telling the difference between authentic and knockoff hand bags than the difference between Art Deco and Art Nouveau.

He liked that about you. A lot.

“Hmm—libidos, cruel demises, dangerous women…did Jackson by any chance inspire this work to come to mind?” he teased.

“I don’t know—do you find me dangerous?” you caught his stare, grinning.

“I find you to be painfully passive, actually. God like a deer in head lights as it all happened,” Micheal scrunched his brows with theatrics, shaking his head playfully.

“Well it’s not everyday you witness a man get his exquisitely framed, delicate little lenses cracked plain down the sides right before your very eyes, I mean, has no one respect for such nonabrasive, dainty eyewear these days?” you shot back.

Micheal rolled his eyes, deciding to put an end to this silly tangent.

“Why does the name Klimt sound so familiar to me?” he remarked.

“He painted The Kiss!” you replied happily, eyeing his mouth, then his chin, then that Adam’s apple.

You cleared your throat.

“…if you’ve ever heard of it.”

“Ah yes! The yellow one with the two people,” Micheal smiled.

“I like that painting. I saw it once in a catalog and it seemed so…warm,” he added.

You nodded, understanding perfectly.

“What about you? Any pieces you're fond of?”

Micheal huffed out air.

“I’m less of a fine arts person and more of a film nerd,” he confessed.

“Makes sense, you were quite into that projection back at the party.”

Micheal nodded, remembering fondly of how much he liked seeing all those reds and purples splashed over the brick wall before he got rudely interrupted.

“Movies are cool, what can I say? I just like that for an hour or two, you can simply leave your life and submerge into the complexities of another's, completely unaware of what to expect…like, have you ever seen Psycho?” he cocked his sandy waves over to you excitedly.

“Oh God yes,” you furrowed your brows.

“The fact that the main actress — umm Jane, no, Janet Leigh? The woman who’s been plastered all over the posters and the promotions and everything just dies half way through like that? The initial motive, the driving force of the plot for the movie, the goddamn stack of cash? — simply chucked into a swamp by Bates and never talked about again!” he shrugged wide eyed and grinning.

“And the fourth wall break at the end? Brilliant!” he laughed all tipsy and squinty-eyed.

You laughed with him back. God his laugh was great.

It was so…warm.

Coming to a halt, the cab jolted and you arrived at the donut shop. The place was a cute little number, a mom-and-pop shop you knew stayed open late into the night after countless drunk escapades with friends in the city.

Micheal paid the driver (seeing as you offered to pay for food, never the price of the ride there as he so cleverly mentioned when you resisted the act) and hopped out onto the sidewalk. He took your hand, helping you out of the cab, what with your outrageously pointy heels.

Once inside and under those sobering fluorescent lights, you both stared at the spotty glass display case, at the array of icing doused choices.

“Pick your poison Micheal,” you said, crossing your arms.

“How do they not have chocolate frosted? That’s like, the classic donut flavor,” he muttered, disappointed.

“I feel like that’s strawberry, but you’re right. They must be so popular they ran out.”

“Damn it. Well, what are you going to get?” he asked, finding that he hadn’t really tried many other donuts other than chocolate frosted — with no sprinkles of course.

“Hmm now that I’ve mentioned it, I guess I’ll do strawberry frosted,” you remarked.

“Alright, I’ll do the same,” Micheal replied.

Handing the tired cashier two bucks, you secured the goods and sat in a corner of the empty shop. The place had nice big windows you could see the city out of; at 12:30 am the usual suspects walked the streets, women in scantily clad clothes, men in tight pants, cars and cars driving by, most of them booming loud music that sounded slightly muffled through the thin glass panes.

Taking the donuts out of the paper bag, you and Micheal clinked them and each took a bite.

“So what’s the plan for those glasses?” you asked, muffled.

“I’ll get new ones, it’s not too much of a problem. I’ve got a warranty on these,” Micheal replied, chewing.

“Better safe than sorry, I like it,” you nodded.

“That’s my motto I guess,” he sighed, inspecting his donut.

“Do you not like it? Seems pretty reasonable to me,” you shrugged.

“I like being safe. It’s what makes sense to me. But sometimes I find myself feeling wrapped too deep within myself — know what I mean? I just have this fear that I’m going to miss out on something important because I’m so busy worrying about what might happen,” he put down the donut and looked at you.

“Well, if you’re saying you aren’t spontaneous or courageous I’d have to call you a liar because here you are, punched in the face and eating donuts with a total stranger,” you teased.

The dissatisfaction left Micheal’s face and he smiled, realizing you were completely right. His mind brought him back to Alex, his “goal” for the night. Micheal thought it was completely superficial, giving him a “come on” kind of look, how could he even do that with a person he barely knew? But here he was now, in the blink of an eye, chatting and tasting the strawberry on his tongue as he talked to this mystery girl about the things he liked — that she liked back!

A very pretty girl too.

He couldn’t stop looking at the way his jacket hung on her shoulders, what previously touched his skin was now kissing hers.

Fuck Alex and his machinated “goal.” This was so much better, and he didn’t even really need to try, he just did what he thought was right — scratch that, what he felt was right.

“You have a point,” he replied happily, bringing the donut back up to his face and taking a big old bite.

You had a little bit of a reflection too while you ate. Micheal seemed nothing like an asshole; not judging a book by its cover must’ve backfired on you this time. If only you had gotten to know him earlier in the night like you wanted to, then maybe Micheal would’ve evaded Jackson’s fist.

And it was all because of that wild friend of his.

“By the way, how’d you meet that friend of yours, Alex, if you don’t mind me asking? With that story you told me earlier I can’t imagine you simply befriending him in a normal way,” you inquired, taking another bite.

Micheal let out a soft laugh, “well I don’t think you’ll believe me if I tell you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you smiled, intrigued.

“Because it’s kind of the exact same thing that happened tonight,” he said with a shy laugh, his focus on the chipped, wooden table.

You let out a short, loud “ha!”

“What? Did you also save Prince Charming from an evil Ogre?”

“No! He saved me!” Micheal brought his head up and laughed hard.

“Some tall dope was being rude to his girl at the bar and I was just sitting there — the girl had come in earlier looking upset and I tried to be nice to her, buy her a drink. Anyways, she calls me a drip, the man tells me to take a hike, and fucking slams my head against the bar when I didn’t immediately bolt out the door when he said so,” Micheal explained.

“He might’ve broken my glasses and my nose if Alex hadn’t dramatically shattered a beer bottle against the counter and threatened the guy to back off,” he added.

You swallowed, “wow, now that is a story to tell, film worthy.”

“I know right,” Micheal grinned. This grin was new. It was looser and a little electric.

“I’m surprised you didn’t learn your lesson there, Mike. Seems like chivalry only leads to pain in your experience,” you quipped.

Mike. An hour into meeting the guy and you’d already nicked his name. Figures you realized you’d liked him more than you expected based on said evidence — and the way you kept on staring at those canines bite into the baked flesh of the donut.

“Are you saying you wanted me to do nothing? Leave you with that creep? Jesus Christ, if anything I had to intervene cause his slurred sweet talking was getting in the way of my movie time,” he laughed.

“No I’m only joking,” you smiled, “I’m glad you stood up for me and I’m glad we met each other.”

“You’re a nice person to talk to Mike.”

Micheal smiled as he finished his donut, licking the frosting off his thumb.

“You too. I never thought I’d meet someone I have stuff in common with at that place. I’ve been having a great time with you, really.”

As you finished your donut, an air of awkwardness waved over the table that seemed to whisper, “what now?”

Micheal tapped the table with his finger. He didn’t want to call it a night just yet, but didn’t want to impose himself on you. God, this is exactly what he was talking about. That dormant worry that plagued him from his toes up to his sandy head of hair took hold of him and suddenly, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

You stared at his moving finger and decided to speak before your brain could catch up and yank the words back into your mouth.

“I’d like to go to the Seven-Eleven across the street to buy some cigarettes. Do you want to come with me?”

Micheal’s finger froze.

“Let’s do it.”

Your heart thrummed a little with excitement, wholly ignoring the fact that you’ve given up your clean streak solely for this blond boy. You’d never done anything like that before. They’re usually never worth it.

He seemed different though.

You hoped he was different.

Across the street, the glass doors of the Seven-Eleven slid open. You and Micheal laughed up a storm walking inside.

“I did not say that!” you cackled defensively.

“Oh sure. The best concert you’ve been to is Billy Idol, I wonder why…the man is practically having sex on stage every night!” he laughed, running his hand through his hair again. Every time Micheal did so, his waves slowly lost their neat, gelled look, gaining a new air of tousled confidence.

“What I’m trying to say is he has stage presence.”

“He’s got a presence alright, and it’s dripping in sweat and hormones,” Micheal replied, putting his hands to his neck as he unclipped his pesky bow tie. He put it in his pocket as he broke off for a bit to go take a look at the post card rack.

Rolling your eyes, you walked up to the counter and asked for some Marlboro Lights. As the man behind the counter turned to grab you a pack, your eyes flicked over to the display on the counter top.

Condoms.

You felt Micheal return and stand behind you, which made you more nervous than it should have. A sudden urge to come right home and go right to sleep came over you, feeling very meek and very aware of your every move and breath — of his body right behind you. You paid for the cigarettes and immediately began to paw at the package.

Walking back outside, you opened your clutch and pulled out your old lighter — which you should’ve gotten rid of in the first place in case something like this ever happened. Leaning against the brick of the liquor shop next door, you plucked out a cigarette.

“You smoke?” you glanced his way.

Micheal scratched his neck, “I’ve been trying to quit, actually.”

You scoffed, “Me too. Three weeks right down the drain with this one.”

You wiggled the fresh cigarette in your hand.

“What?” Micheal tensed his brow and leaned away from the wall.

He suddenly grabbed it out of your hand and tossed it away.

“Hey! What was that for?” you whined.

“You’ve been clean three weeks. I’m not letting you lose all that progress on my watch,” he said, passionately.

You gaped at his face, half baffled.

That wave of anxiousness sparked at the store counter fussed within you. You could feel the buzz in your finger tips as you held the shiny carton. The wrapped smoky bliss was right there and you really wanted that hit.

You eyed the carton in your hands and contemplated.

A few seconds passed by and as you kept staring at the package, you heard Mike’s voice again.

“I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I shouldn’t have done…that…”

He trailed off as you began to walk away from him.

Not taking your eyes off the carton, you made your way over to the Liquor store dumpster and chucked the carton in.

Micheal eyed you as you did this and kept his gaze on you as you made your way back.

You turned your focus to his face and words began to spill out of your mouth.

“I’m going to say this right now because I really regret throwing those cigarettes away and now I have all this anxious adrenaline running through me and it’ll help me say all this because I don’t think I would without it but I really like talking to you and I think that we should see each other more after this like maybe go on a date or something if you’d like so we can talk more about art and movies and music and you can show me your new glasses when you get them and afterwards I’ll buy you a chocolate frosted donut,” you rambled, staring at how the yellow streetlight made Micheal’s hair glow like he grew golden thread from his scalp.

Micheal took in your words and when you finished, stared at his jacket on your body again. He missed seeing your bare shoulders. He wanted to see that smooth skin again, the one that made up your arms and hands — but if you wanted to keep the jacket on because of the cold, he supposed that was alright too. What he really did want though, was to spend the entire night with you, just doing whatever you desired to do. All he wanted was simply you, laughing alongside him on a chilly night in L.A. Michael realized his face was growing closer and closer to yours and paused a small distance.

“I’d like that very much,” he said quietly.

You stood simply frozen, overtaken with nerves, wishing you had a cigarette on your lips, wishing you had Micheal on your lips.

Wait. That sounded so much better.

You let out a breath and tugged his shirt collar forward, letting your mouth meet his.

Micheal closed his eyes and felt your face press against his sensitive nose, your lips so soft. That perfume of yours came back around again to fill up his head and just when he was about to slide his hands around your waist, you broke away and let go of his collar.

You wiped your mouth, “sorry.”

He laughed, “what?”

“Don’t be sorry,” he adjusted his lenses.

“But I just can’t help feeling like I shouldn’t have done that,” you replied.

“Why not?” he asked.

Silence.

“I don’t know,” you said.

More silence.

Micheal looked at you and softly laughed once more — and this time, the worry didn’t seem to come to him.

He picked up where he left off and wrapped his arms around your waist. He pulled you close against him, kissing you soft and gentle, like if he squeezed or pressed too hard you’d simply disappear somehow in his arms.

For a moment you forgot where you were. All that was real was his hands running up and down your back and his nose, lips, and chin pressing against yours. Your hands crept to his neck and further upwards to explore his head of hair. It felt softish, still a little stiff from the gel.

You broke away once again, but still remained in his embrace. You spoke to him, cheek to cheek.

“I saw you at the start of the party and really wanted to talk to you, I feel stupid now for not doing so.”

Micheal kissed your cheek.

“I saw you too, sitting on that fountain. Truth is I didn’t have to sit that close to watch the film,” he grinned.

You gazed at the scuffed brick wall and grinned too. Resting your head on his shoulder, you whispered.

“Would you like to see what color bed sheets I own?”

Micheal gazed out onto the street and flicked his eyes upwards towards the sky. The stars glittered bright, littered and scattered across the midnight blue like a shattered piece of glass.

“I don’t think I’ll be focusing much on the bedsheets really,” he murmured in response.

And you stayed that way for a second, simply hugging in the middle of a poorly lit, breezy sidewalk between a Seven-Eleven and a liquor store, the donut shop across the road — and it was so much better than the stuffy extravagance of the millionaire’s back garden.

The time between leaving that liquor store sidewalk and hopping out of the cab at your apartment was simultaneously a blur and the longest fifteen minutes of your life.

Once you finally hailed a cab, you both got in and didn’t speak too much on the ride there. You simply rested your head on Micheal’s shoulder, his hand crept over and cupped your knee. It was soothing, hearing the steady hum of the engine, the wheels turning and turning, rumbling against the road, the radio playing the pop station just barely audible, a certain old synthy track by The Cars.

“Why’d you stop smoking?”

A sigh.

“I used to smoke all the time when I was feeling anxious at the office. I would slip out and smoke Marlboro Reds outside till my head stopped hurting, though it only really made me feel worse. It got to the point where my boss noticed and asked me where I was going all day. I tried to stop for a while after that but couldn't really bring myself to. It wasn't until some end of the quarter party that I was puffing on this big cigar with so many people around me doing the same and…I don’t know, I just realized what I was doing, and where I was and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I had to excuse myself and run to the bathroom to go puke in the trash can. After that, I couldn’t really stomach the smell and taste anymore, I still crave them sometimes though despite it all.”

His hand began stroking your knee ever so softly. Your fingers came down and placed themselves atop his. His hand flipped upwards and intertwined its fingers with yours.

You kissed his shoulder, leaving a small maroon mark on his crisp, white dress shirt.

“Yeah, looks like I’ve been there too…the cigarettes smile, but never seem to help.”

Into the apartment building and to your room, the air of sleepy silence from the cab fizzled away and a slinking tension was built upon slowly, with every step taken, with the push of the elevator button, the turn of the latch and the lock of the door knob.

You flicked on the lights and there your apartment was, quiet and serene. It was one of those warmly decorated studio flats with more plants than there were places to sit down. The high rise ceilings gave way for many things to be hung on the walls — photographs, prints, paintings, sconces etc. The place was picturesque late eighties artsy, with all of the playful spark of a Patrick Nagel but none of the sleazy slickness accompanied.

“This is really nice,” Micheal remarked, looking around.

“Thanks, would you like anything? A drink? I think I have some red wine,” you replied, speaking a little quickly. It’s been awhile since you had someone over of this sort.

Micheal nodded, simply standing there, not sure what to do with himself. Once you urged him to, he sat on your brown leather sofa and exhaled, closing his eyes for a bit, running his fingers through his hair and taking off his stupidly expensive cuff links, letting them clatter on your coffee table.

When he opened his lids you were handing him a fancy looking glass of wine. You placed your glass on said heavy, golden coffee table and took off Micheal’s suit jacket, laying it neatly on the couch’s arm. You grabbed your glass back and settled next to him on the leather.

“It’s the cheap stuff I have to admit,” you smiled.

“Oh good,” he flashed his whites back.

As soon as you slipped the blazer off, Micheal took in the shine of your skin and hair in the dim lighting of the room, the cut of your dress, how the silk wrapped and hung on your skin. You looked radiant. He suddenly felt really, really warm in this room and incredibly grateful Alex barged into his work event like a madman, hysterical and devastated.

“Can I tell you something?” Micheal said after taking a sip.

You nodded, tasting the sweet bite of the wine yourself.

“I feel like we’ve been talking to each other all night and it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. I thought that just talking to you till morning is something I’d be happy to do, but I’ve realized now that I would be lying because I don’t really feel like talking anymore…especially since you look beautiful in that dress and it’s making me pretty nervous,” he said quietly, putting the wine glass down on the coffee table.

“Oh…” you said, barely audible, lost in his gaze.

He gently pulled the wine glass from your hand and also set it on the table. Then he closed in on your body and kissed you. Micheal put his hands on your head and met your mouth again and again, seemingly never wanting to stop, Christ, he could just melt into you if he could.

You did have to momentarily pause though, in order to pluck his splintered glasses off his head, God forbid a piece of glass pops out.

“Sorry,” you softly laughed, setting them on the table between the wine glasses.

Micheal only smiled back with those squinty eyes of his and pressed himself against you harder when he resumed his kisses, laying you down on the couch. His mouth wandered past yours, trailing his lips to your jaw downwards. You closed your eyes and felt your breathing pick up, his tongue so warm on your neck.

As Micheal licked and kissed there, your hands explored his body like his did yours. Timid finger tips across his starched cotton back up to the nape of his neck into his hair. Michael's hands ran down your ribcage into the dip of your waist, past the curve of your hips — you could tell he really wanted to touch you all over, but held back a bit in doing so.

Micheal’s mouth returned to your lips as you hugged his body closer to yours, wanting as little space between you as possible. His kisses turned a bit more desperate as you rolled your hips up into his, creating a sort of friction that felt incredibly pleasurable. Micheal’s pulse ran hot, the way your body moved against his, rubbing him in just the right ways.

His breaths thickened, letting a moan or two slip out and he joined in, starting to grind down into you, quickly losing all sense of hesitation in where his hands wanted to go. You felt the palm of his hand cup the weight of your breast, pulling the fabric there downwards and exposing your nipple.

Micheal took it into his mouth, making your breath hitch as he kissed and sucked your sensitive flesh — the act was so sweet in the most erotic of ways.

You pulled his blond head back up and smeared your lips against his, eager hands quick to begin unbuttoning his shirt. Once you finished, you quickly spread the fabric and pulled it out of the tuck in his pants, slipping your hands underneath the shirt, up to his smooth shoulder blades.

Micheal’s hand crept down your thigh and hiked up your dress, giving him the clearance he needed to slip a hand between your legs and caress you through your underwear.

You moaned into his mouth, shifting your hips with pleasure against his touch. God his strong hand felt amazing, you broke off his mouth to quickly speak.

“Micheal—” you breathed.

“Yes?” he responded, equally breathless.

“Do you want to take this to the, um bedroom?” you asked.

“Yes—um yeah,” he said quickly, huffing out a laugh.

You smiled.

“Sorry, awkward question I know.”

“And here I was thinking I was about to have couch sex for the first time,” he teased back.

“It’s not too bad really, though a bit restrictive with positioning, and the clean up isn’t very fun.”

“I see, bedroom it is then.”

You gave him a quick peck and he let himself up off you, allowing for you to lead him by the hand to your bedroom.

Now at the side of your cozy bed, laid fresh with black satin sheets, Mike pulled your body back into a passionate kiss. His hands fumbled around your back, till he found the zipper of your dress and pulled it downwards. One thing led to another and there he was, meeting your mouth sweetly as you lay beneath him on the mattress, his hands all over your newly exposed skin, just in your underwear and heels.

Micheal found that he couldn’t really think about anything else other than you right now. The way your hands dug in his hair, your mouth meeting him so good, the small sounds of want you let out as he touched you all over. He longed for more of you, this handsy makeout wasn’t enough by a long shot, and he felt himself begin to act on this growing desire as he shoved his sleeves up frantically, kissing you like he wouldn't wake up tomorrow.

Micheal brought your calves up on the bed so your heels made contact with the sheets and your bent legs caged his body, his mouth beginning a hopeless trail down your figure, each kiss sparking something dangerous within him, giving him more and more confidence as he dedicated himself to giving you everything he had within. It was like that worry that wrapped him up tight, unraveled in your presence, simply melted away when your breath mixed with his.

You felt that wet path of his down your neck to your cleavage, further past to your abdomen, then, to just an ever so slow, tantalizing lick and kiss to your pussy, still in your lacy, thin panties.

You eyed him and let out gasps and moans as he teased you, incredibly turned on. You watched as his golden head of hair cocked to the side and kissed your inner right thigh, trailing small presses of his lips up your leg as he lifted it upwards. He then unbuckled your strap and removed your heel, discarding it to the carpet by the bed — and he would never admit this, but in a perfect world, Micheal maybe wouldn’t have minded if the heels had stayed on…

“This is so sexy…” you said, fascinated.

Micheal smiled and kissed your ankle, “you like it?”

You nodded, lost in his face, “God, you are so handsome.”

Blushing and a tiny bit embarrassed at what you said, Micheal only made the red on your face deepen as he took off your other heel and replied with a silly, “thank you baby, I try.”

Now barefoot and your left leg in the air, Micheal resumed his incessant kissing down your calf and thigh. It seemed harder and harder to breathe as he got closer and closer to your center, your clit just aching to have contact with that perfect mouth of his.

His lips jumped from your thigh to your abdomen as he hooked his fingers on your panties’ waistband and slid them off your body, raising himself upwards to fully slip them off your legs.

And there was something about that very image, the one of Micheal—shirt completely unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up and blond waves a mess from making out with you—spreading your thighs apart and eyeing your sex, your flushed, wet pussy with such a lewd hunger, that made your heart fucking race like it never had before.

“Oh fuck,” you moaned, throwing your head back on your sheets as he brought his head down and began to eat you out.

Micheal licked and sucked you between the legs in such a viscous, seductive manner that it was almost like he was making out with your pussy. The way his nose brushed your clit as he dipped his tongue into you, lapping at you endlessly like a canine in desperate need of water, coming to suck on your clit so good it had you loudly expressing your approval up at the ceiling.

A hand of yours crept up to caress his head as he got you off, your brows tense as your eyes came back to watch him. An intrusive thought of him doing the very same act crossed your mind, but one of him with his glasses still on, fogging up the lenses as he moaned into you, kissing you hopelessly between the legs.

It was so goddamn attractive, you genuinely considered somehow sneaking back into the living room to go steal them back.

Micheal felt himself strain hard against his pants, your moans and whines filling up his ears, your taste so wet on his tongue, dripping down his chin, his hands around your thighs, your flesh so soft in his fingers — God, he was so hard from it all he almost started grinding on your bed sheets to find some relief.

He pulled his mouth away and slipped two fingers in you, easily sliding them in with the mess of slick and saliva that covered your pulsing cunt.

“Fuck. Mmmmicheal, oh my—” you moaned desperately, absolutely enthralled by the way he fucked you with his two digits, caressing up into that sweet spot every time.

“That feel good?” he asked as if it were nothing, pecking a kiss to your thigh.

“—holy shit,” you squeaked, coming to grip his glinting, watched wrist as he fingered you, making you soak the bedsheets with graphic, scandalous noises.

Micheal didn’t stop however, he continued to finger you and simply brought his head back down, figuring he might as well take you all the way — despite a desperate need of his to sink himself deep inside you. The man wasn’t selfish though, he could wait just a little bit more.

Your nails clawed at your bed sheets, your breathing feverish and your moans ceaseless. Edging closer and closer, your jaw tilted up higher and higher.

“Mike please don’t stop I’m going to—,” you squeezed your eyes shut and your whole body tensed as you orgasmed. You felt your hips automatically roll upwards, a loud moan escaping your lips as bliss spread through your body in pulsing waves. Micheal kept himself on your pussy as you rode it out, not stopping till your body grew weak and fell limp.

As you caught your breath, you felt Micheal pull away from you and stand up at the bedside. He licked his two fingers clean and wiped his mouth, proceeding to slip off his shirt, swiftly unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. Kicking his shoes off, he knelt back on the bed and caged your entire body with his.

He gazed down at you, you gazed up at him.

“I love the way you moan,” he whispered.

“I love the way you look between my legs,” you breathed back.

“Let me taste you,” you added, slipping a hand downwards to palm him through his tight, grey boxers.

His brows tensed and he let out a soft, pleasured exhale of a moan.

“Fuck, I might not last if you do,” he grinned.

“I mean, we have all night…” you smiled.

“So you don’t have to wake up early tomorrow?” he raised a sexy, teasing brow.

“Are you seriously bringing that asshole up in the middle of sex?” you laughed.

“Sorry, sorry, mood killer I know,” he scoffed with a grin and brought his head down to nuzzle and kiss your neck.

“Let’s get back to that oral offer of yours, I’m very interested you know,” he muttered, smiling against your skin.

“Well then I’d suggest laying that pretty head of yours down on my pillows,” you replied, staring up at the ceiling with utter contentment. God Clair was completely right, you thanked her endlessly right now for making you come out tonight. She deserved a new, impractical handbag and the best of gossip sessions with an exquisite, steaming cortado, free of charge, tomorrow.

Some shifting of sorts happened and now Micheal lay on your glossy sheets, in nothing but his fitted boxers, his dick print very visible through the fabric.

And judging from the looks of said anatomical print, the good Lord in the heavens above blessed him well.

You kissed his lips, breaking off for a beat to lick your hand and slip it downwards into his boxers. Stroking him slowly, you felt how Micheal groaned into your mouth, running a loving hand through your hair, nimble fingers quickly unhooking your bra. You raised yourself and discarded the garment, aiming your oral focus down Michael’s abdomen, but not before a lick or two of his nipples, which made him blush terribly — he’s never had a girl do that to him before, he’s not sure he can ever go back.

Pressing kisses to his golden happy trail, you took off his boxers, adding them to the pile of clothes on the carpet, clearly not necessary for the occasion.

You licked a stripe on his thigh and Micheal’s cock twitched, just begging for attention. Hands on his hips, your tongue gently trailed up his length, finishing with a tiny kiss at the tip. Micheal let out a stifled moan at this unbearable teasing — something small, impatient, and incredibly horny.

You put a hand around the base of his dick and brought him within your mouth. As you sucked him off, you could hear Micheal’s mouth loosen, like he no longer cared if he sounded pathetic, your hot, wet mouth feeling too good for him to continue giving a fuck.

“Shit—mmfuckbaby, oh fuck,” he groaned, his chest rising and falling fast as he received the incredible pleasure that was your tongue dragging across the slit of his tip.

You moaned alongside him, his cock so big in your mouth. You broke off from him and pressed a thick, wet kiss to his flushed tip, stroking him up and down as you caught your breath.

Micheal was utterly enamored. The way you looked between his legs, smudged lipstick and darkened, sex drunk eyes as you slobbered on his cock made him genuinely incapable of waiting any longer.

“Please let me fuck you,” he breathed in a way that lacked way too much dignity, brows tense.

You smiled at this oh so romantic request and brought your body upwards into his embrace, him eyeing your lips, all kiss swollen and damp. Micheal yanked your face and crashed his mouth against yours, kind of turned on at the fact that they were just sucking him off, is that weird?

Breaking off his lips, you spoke, “mind wearing a condom?”

A grin so electric it could shock you dead flashed across his face, “not in the slightest.”

With a reach of your hand into your nightstand drawer and a tear of the teeth by Micheal, he was wrapped up and ready to go.

“How do you want me?” you said, a little meek.

“What do you prefer?” he asked, honest to God not giving a fuck just as long as he could see that pretty face of yours as he slipped himself inside.

“I guess I like missionary,” you replied, that familiar sensation of fluster coming to take hold of you again, feeling boring all of a sudden.

Micheal wrapped his hands around your waist, “not a fucking problem, sweetheart.”

He laughed at that stupid response and so did you, giggling harder as he manhandled you into said preferable position.

And so now you lay beneath him once again, head propped up by a pillow of yours as your silky sheets hugged your naked body, letting out lewd moans as he kissed and sucked on your bare breasts.

“Mmm—Micheal I’d really…really like to see you again after this,” you breathed out.

He brought his head up and kissed your cheek, “I’d really, really like to see you again too.”

“Good,” you giggled.

Micheal pressed his forehead against yours, grinning, “good.”

He brought a hand down to help bring himself within you. As he pushed himself inside, you both closed your eyes, sighing at the pleasure of being so deliciously close together.

Micheal closed the gap between your mouths as he brought himself in and out slowly, sinking deep in your pussy. You gripped him by the shoulders, feeling the desperate moans that would fall out his mouth into yours as he thrusted gently within you, easing you into taking his cock.

Your hands slid up the curve of his neck to his head, caressing his sandy hair, tousled and wild from those manicured hands of yours. He broke off your mouth ever so slightly and sped up a bit, fucking you in a way that had your hopeless moans teasing his lips with your breath.

“Feel good baby?” he breathed,

You nodded, “mm yeah—fuck, you feel so fucking good.”

Micheal brought his head down to passionately kiss your neck, breath hot with arousal.

You couldn’t stop moaning, the way his dick kept hitting you in just the right spot had you utterly enthralled, lovesick to the finest, filthiest degree.

Wrapping your arms around his back you whispered, “harder baby.”

And boy did Micheal oblige.

He dug his face in the crook of your neck and began to slam into you, muffling his loud moans into the satin. Your whines lost all their precision with this delicious sensation, the one of his dick driving into your cervix so damn good every time — now you sounded desperate, a new layer of ferocity in your voice, gripping onto him and squeezing your eyes shut in pleasure as they fought rolling upwards.

Your nails raked his bare back, loudly begging in his ear not to stop.

Micheal lifted his head up and swiftly met your lips once more, mumbling an “oh baby” on the way there.

He was fully atop you now, a strong grip on your body, skin to skin, as he fucked you senseless — and it was like the man was in his element now, a complete one eighty from timid Blondie earlier in the night. It’s not like you didn’t expect him to be good, but fuck was he great in bed. Micheal would slow down and slip a hand to your clit as he stretched you out. He’d meet your lips in a messy, nasty way and murmur things in your ear amidst your devastating moans like:

“You like it when I touch you like this?”

“God louder baby, fuck—give it to me.”

“Mmyeah that pussy’s so wet for me, honey.”

Then he’d put that slippery hand on your thigh and prop it up higher, resting his sweaty nose on your cheek and pounding into you like a rabid animal in heat. Here he’d become less verbal but not quieter in the slightest, grunts and moans filled your bedroom instead, along with the sounds of your pleading and the bed creaking of course — your very own private, perverse symphony.

When it seemed clear you were about to cum for the second time, you tilted your features to the side, trying to bury your face somehow in your pillow because it felt too good and you didn’t know what else to do.

A hand came up and coaxed it back center.

“Look at me baby, I want to see you.”

You met his loving, slate eyes.

“I’m going to cum again, Micheal,” you sobbed, turned to a whiny, shaking mess in his arms.

“That’s okay, pretty girl — c’mon, cum for me,” he panted.

“…okay,” you gasped, brain completely fogged over with that gorgeous cock of his inside you.

He kept on, fucking you good and with a hand back down on your clit till you were crying out and arching your back again. Micheal felt you tense up around his dick and let out a dirty “fuck,” not stopping despite your shifting body, euphoria flooding you in all your fleshly facets.

Micheal was very close himself too, his heart raced with a disgusting sort of want that only comes around moments when one is about to cum; God he could just devour you at this very second, kiss you and fuck you till there was nothing left. He put an arm around your neck, and the other under the knee joint on your leg, pinning you wide open so he could penetrate you faster and faster till he finished.

You tried to swallow, maybe catch your breath while you dug your nails into Micheal’s bicep and shoulder caging your head, but nothing could really remedy the pure bliss that was this wholly hedonistic act of love. Still coming down from your orgasm, you pushed out fierce sounds of pleasure, letting your verbal gratification mix with Micheal’s — who fully let go five thrusts ago, moaning like a whore into your neck, nothing really mattering to him but your gushing, warm pussy around his throbbing, stiff cock.

He came with a few more devastating thrusts and an even more devastating moan, slowing down gradually till he didn’t have it in him to push himself inside any longer. Mike gently let go of your leg as he caught his breath, closing his eyes and resting himself in the crook of your neck, his arm still around it. You gazed lazily up at the ceiling and brought a hand up to stroke his sandy head. He let out a small sigh at the act, kissing your skin as a thank you. You both stayed that way for a restful minute, plain breathing filling up the once lust ridden atmosphere.

Michael brought his head up and gazed at you.

He said nothing, just stayed looking at you and something came over his face, made him glow.

“What?” you smiled.

Micheal huffed out a laugh and kissed you, meeting your lips light and sweet, like a chocolate frosted donut.

He broke away and said something low and sincere.

“I feel like that painting right now.”

“Which one?”

“The Kiss.”

You grinned so hard it hurt.

“Really?”

“Yes. I feel warm and yellow and hopelessly enamored with the girl in my clutch.”

“Shut up,” you giggled.

“No I will not, I am but a poet speaking from the heart — let me speak!” he proclaimed.

“You work in finance, Micheal. Now, please stop flustering me! You’re reaching the point of serious medical intervention,” you laughed.

“Alright, alright wouldn't want you to faint on me,” he flicked his eyebrows up

Cleaned up and laying next to Micheal under the sheets, nothing but underwear on for both parties, you both gazed up at the ceiling.

“You know what I wish I had right now?” you spoke out.

“A cigarette,” you both said in unison.

Micheal sighed, “me too.”

“Well you did it Micheal,” you professed, turning to face him.

“Did what?” he inquired, meeting your gaze.

“You met your goal, here you are in a bed that isn’t yours for the night. Alex would be proud.”

Micheal laughed in disbelief, “ah fuck him. He’s kind of an asshole.”

“Really?” you said, all sarcasm.

“But I am glad I’m here, in your bed at one in the morning,” he added with a yawn.

You smiled, shifting an arm to caress his hair.

“You know I almost didn’t come to that party tonight, thought it’d be a waste of time.”

Micheal played with your pearl earring, “that’s funny.”

“It’s like fate dragged us out of the house, from opposite corners of the city.”

“Serendipitous,” you agreed.

Micheal nodded, understanding perfectly. He let go of your earring, “listen…I have another dinner I’m invited to next week by a colleague of mine…and I’d really like for you to come with me maybe. I feel like I might get politely complimented to death and it’d be nice to have someone to actually talk to…”

He met your eyes with caution, a bit of worry slipping back into his face.

“Oh babe I’d love to go — but only if I get to pick out what you’ll be wearing, add some life to that horribly stiff suit you sport.”

“What? I thought the suit was what sold me!” he replied, feigning offense.

“No. What sold you was your passionate feminist attitude, taking hits in the face for the female counterpart Mike — and those cute little glasses too,” you lightly tapped his nose, wishing they were actually there so you could steal them away and he could let out a boyish laugh, trying to snatch them back.

“Ah I see…you’re very welcome by the way. I’ll take a punch for you any day — hey, that rhymed! I’m telling you I am a verbal artist of the very finest — goddamn it I did it again!” he laughed uncontrollably.

Good God you needed this man as far away from you as possible; you rolled your eyes.

“You free tomorrow?”

“I’ve got a thing with my brother, but in the evening yeah.”

“Do you want to stay locked in my apartment the whole night and catch a movie? I’ve just rented Wild at Heart and am dying to watch it.”

“I can’t think of anything else that I’d rather do,” Micheal smiled squintily.

“Although, let’s watch it at my place. I’ve got a fantastic sound system,” he said because of course he did.

“Sounds great,” you closed your eyes and lazily smiled, “we can order something, you’ll pay of course, then we’ll watch another lynchian masterpiece, have a drink or two to end the night...”

Micheal shifted closer, grinning, he spoke slow and smitten, laying an arm around your bare back.

“You’ll sit next to me, maybe hold my hand, then I'll kiss your neck and put my other hand somewhere else and then we’ll have to pause the movie and—”

“Go to sleep before you give yourself another hard-on Micheal,” you laughed, eyes still closed.

Micheal ceased his smooth talking, giving you a peck on the lips and an “all right.”

“Night,” he said, shifting to sleep behind you as you turned your body outwards to face your artisanal night stand.

“Good night,” you replied.

You clicked your metallic table lamp off.

“By the way, I know you’d be way too invested in the film to do that mid way through watching. I think you’d fuck me as soon as the credits roll.”

A laugh.

Fingers hovering over the grey keyboard, computer screen staring back at you blankly, both left untouched for the past hour. Eyes darting between the digital clock reading 10 PM, then back toward the blank filing sheet, mind fuzzy with exhaustion, no longer capable of producing another sentence.

Arriving at headquarters minutes before eight, carpooling with your husband as you do every morning, smiling to yourself, remembering the small makeout session you'd had in the parking lot. Exiting the car, not parting until the elevator reached John's floor, fighting not to playfully smack his butt as he stepped off.

Teeth releasing your bottom lip as the recent memory fades, eyes wandering to your desk's phone, floating to the name 'Kiriakou'. Body buzzing to hear his voice again, not having heard it since dinner, calling John over the phone as you both ate in your offices, simulating your rare face-to-face dinner nights. Groggily plucking the phone from its home, pressing the button next to his name, hearing the immediate ring.

"Hey, Hon," he answers, hearing the smile on his face even as John's voice matches the fatigue you feel.

"Hi John," you respond, a smile blooms along your lips, heart fluttering at the man's sweet voice. Head resting against the phone, as if cuddling him close.

"Is there a reason you're calling?" He asks, tiredly, hearing the clacking of keys in the background.

"Do I need a reason?" you ask, playfully nipping at the man.

"No," he softly laughs.

"I wanted to hear you, and I miss you." You soften, body fully turned away from the computer.

"I miss you too," he says, voice turning you into mush. Not having seen him since lunch, grabbing your lunches in the cafeteria together.

Imagining how tousled he looked, inviting your bottom lip back between your teeth, pained with how far he was from you in that moment. Legs folding together under the desk, creating pressure between them, arousal feeding off his voice.

"I want to see you," you say, lips touching the phone, shoulders curling in, elbows resting atop the desk.

"I know, one more hour," John comforts, as he does most late nights working at headquarters.

Sighing into the phone, foot bouncing impatiently, thighs squeezing tighter together. Exhaustion washing away, awakening the nerves that call for him, fingers itching to dive down.

"Are you finished yet?" he asks, knitting your brows together as your mind snaps, realizing what he'd meant. Glancing toward the neglected work shining brightly back at you, arousal disappointedly shimmering within you.

"Yeah," you respond, closing out the tab with your free hand.

"I still have thirty minutes, then we can go home," he says, sounding much closer to the phone speaker, no longer hearing him type.

"Okay," you say, zoning out on the clock at the corner of the computer screen, thinking of a way you could have your husband before stepping onto the front porch of your home.

"I love you," John says, gaining you back from a sea of fantasies.

"I love you too," you respond, looking away from the screen.

"Bye, mwah," he says, ending the call with a kiss.

"Mwah, bye," you kiss back, setting the phone back down, ending the call.

Resting back into your chair, thighs still squeezing, screaming for you to call him back, to feed their insatiable hunger. Sighing instead, standing up from the chair, beginning to gather your things. Turning off the computer, placing your bag on top of the desk, reaching out to turn off the lamp. Hand stopping mid-air as an idea sparks within your mind, causing a grin to grow upon your face.

Continuing to turn off every light in your office, grabbing your bag off the desk, then exiting, closing the door behind you. Cannibalizing the thought of John between your legs, his fingers kneading away at the space, selfishly clouding your thoughts.

Walking down the hall, path illuminated by the lights of most of your coworkers' offices, working late into the night, knowing you'll see them bright and early the next day. Hearing the faint sound of keyboards passing by, eyes glued to the closed elevator doors. Stomach fluttering, pressing the button, running through the sloppy plan of slipping through his floor level just to end up at his office.

Pausing your thoughts as the elevator arrives, doors opening, allowing you in. Quickly pressing John's floor, face burning with anticipation, staring at the floor number that slowly ticks down. Ears perking at the soft ding, it announces, hurriedly escaping as the door opens.

Cooling your flushed cheeks with the backside of your hand, walking down the hall, listening for footsteps. Not needing confrontation in your state of mind, struggling to get the idea of John fucking you, hard, atop his desk, out of your mind. Sadly, a rare occurrence in your beautiful sex life, knowing if it weren't for John's carefulness, you'd have feverish memories to look back on about every nook and cranny in headquarters.

Weeding your way through the empty halls, shoulders dropping, stress dripping off them as your surroundings become more familiar. Visiting John's office on a few occasions, none as significant as this one. Skin buzzing, bathing in the light of his office. Stopping in front of the door, peeking through the large window, seeing only a silhouette of your husband through the half-open blinds, sat, hunched over his computer.

Grasping the cold door handle, carefully pushing it down, not wanting to spook the man. Slowly opening the door, eyes locking onto the scenery of your husband. Cheeks pushing up with a closed-lip smile, heart warming at the tuffs of his dark hair, stressfully thrown about, lamp illuminating his whole body that's intently sucked into the work before him.

Fingers halting above his keyboard as John looks up, door halfway open before his eyes catch you, quietly spying on him. A laugh escapes you, quickly closing the door behind you, eyes falling back on the man's and the adoring smile that lines his lips.

Setting your bag down by the door before happily shuffling over to John, whose arm opens, welcoming you into a side hug. Hand resting on your lower back, wishing it would travel down the short length to your ass.

"You're early," he comments as you guide his head up, allowing you to plant a kiss on his cheek.

"I couldn't wait to see you," you respond, planting another on his lips.

"I just need to finish this, then we can go," he says, attention falling back on the computer screen, taking back his arm from around you.

Fighting not to bite your bottom lip at the loss of his warm, focus growing more on the keyboard, the sound of it birthing a selfish desire within you. Standing behind John, both hands resting on his shoulders, snaking down the length of his chest, head resting on the right of his.

Quietly accepting your affection, though more out of concentration for the work your eyes bore jealousy into. Kissing John's temple, swiftly creating a path down the side of his face, savoring his warm skin against your lips. Winning the one-sided war for his attention, hearing a light laugh leave John.

"What are you doing?" he asks, head tilting slightly to the side.

Not answering, lips cherishing the soft lobe of his ear, pulling a light moan from his lips, granting you another victory. Continuing the tango down to the skin of John's neck, craving the surface of his collarbone, slowly working off his jawbone into the soft, thin skin of his neck.

Lips sucking on skin as they separate, wanting John to hear every single one as he feels their warm touch. Throat unable to distinguish the air needed by your lungs from the moans produced by your vocal cords, vibrating against John's skin, causing moans to spill from his lips, only for them to cease. Inhaling as a hiss through his teeth, removing your arms from his chest, keeping them in his grip, turning in his chair.

Eyes locking, eagerly soaking in the sight of each other, quickly, John pulls your arms in, releasing them only as your lips connect. Cupping his cheeks, devouring the simple taste of him as he holds the sides of your body.

Shifting closer in between his open legs, lifting a knee, lightly pushing against the growing tent of fabric. Earning a groan, muffled by the hard kiss you give his lips, leaning deeper into him. Fingertips dig into your sides as his back presses against the chair, groans growing louder as your knee draws along the outline of his hardening cock.

Beginning to twitch under you, prompting his hand to find the underside of your angled thigh, lifting, then leading it and your body away from him, breaking the heat between you. Releasing your thigh with a small squeeze, hand flying to your hips, keeping you in his hold until balance finds you again. A smile of satisfaction blooms along your lips, watching John's face as it conveys the nerves within his cock, slowing their spin to the edge. Staring into each other's eyes, catching your breath, attempting to move back in, only for his hands to harden, stopping you.

Studying the man as his eyes flicker over your body, legs flexing together, causing a small shiver to flow through his body. Snaking his hands down the length of your body. Stopping at the opening of your pants, body buzzing at the feel of his thick fingers undressing you. Ears perking at the sound of your pants' button popping open, nerves electrifying with each notch of steel your zipper passes over. Sighing as John's fingers hook into the hem of your pants, looking up at you as he pulls your pants down.

Nose skimming the surface of your stomach as he kisses it, creating a trail of his own down to the hem of your underwear, wishing but knowing he wouldn't be bold enough to pull them down with his teeth. Biting your lip at the passing thought, moans muffled in the tight space as John's fingers pull them down, pooling at your ankles before stepping out of them.

Granting the office's cool air a second to chill your aroused skin, John's hands no longer gripping fabric, hearing the hiss of his chair lowering before John's big hands take a hold of your hips, bringing you closer, then diving in. Hands flying to John's head and shoulder, squeezing them as his lips and tongue lapping you up, savoring the taste of you as if it were his first cup of morning coffee.

Back hunching, chest falling forward, catching yourself with the arm connected to his shoulder, finds strength. Teeth releasing your bottom lip, allowing moans to billow out, only to be snuffed out, your mush of a mind finding clarity as to where you are and who sits behind both walls of John's office. Unthreading your hand from his head of hair, clasping it over your mouth, leaving your eyes to roll back, conveying the flood of pleasure he drowns you in.

Gasps caught in your neck, halting the traffic of sharp inhales passing through your nostrils. Tightly closed lips separating from your palm, as confidence to maintain a low volume grows with the weakness of your jaw. Head rocking side-to-side at John's tongue, swirling, tending to all the right places. Lips sucking, messaging the wet skin, surfacing memories of the nights of your honeymoon.

"John, please," you breathily beg, needing more than just a wet piece of him. Hand falling to rest atop his head, curling in, softly gripping strains of his dark head of hair.

Hearing your plea, only to grow hungrier from it, fingers now participating in the feast. Hand leaving his head once more, lips pinning against your palm, head tilting back. Feeling your nerves spin, energy fighting to burst within them, worshipping John's existence in them.

Hand slipping from your lips, pleasure growing as moans play an orchestra from your vocal cords, lips partially dampen them, allowing them to sing loud enough for John to hear.

"Please, please, please," your lips mindlessly mumble, fingers atop his shoulder starting to grip the fabric of his white button-up. Fueling John's hunger, feeling his hand find its way to the underside of your thigh, squeezing as he lifts it, allowing your foot to rest atop his thigh.

Legs tempted to close at their state of open vulnerability, moans pitching as nerves begin to pinch. Teeth biting down onto the wet surface of your bottom lip, cutting off moans from echoing within the office walls, back curling as you cum on his tongue.

Head falling back, vision blurring as your eyes fight not to close. Warmth bursting throughout your body, pleasure giving every atom in your body purpose, reacting to John's gluttonous consumption of the soft tissue between your thighs. Grinding your orgasm to ride out atop his tongue and lips.

Body shivering above him as overstimulation creeps in, causing whines to sound from your bitten lips, body beginning to slump forward. Nails digging into John, forcing the man to part with your swollen skin that clenches for his return.

Hands resting against both of your thighs, locking with John's dark brown eyes, nearly losing yourself in their ocean of lust. Eyes flickering down to watch the string of spit, attached from his bottom lip to you, break, surfacing the forgotten need for the fullness of his cock within you.

Shakely inhaling a much needed breath, feeling, watching John's hands for the bottom of your vision, sliding up to their home on your hips. Eyes greeting yours as they come back to him, keeping his gaze on you as John's hands guide you. Patience with the jellyed state of your legs, stopping once your body meets the edge of his desk.

Shifting you to turn around, one hand snaking up to the center of your back, nudging you forward. Hands resting flat atop his partially clean desk, dodging notes laid about. Rather than hearing your husband leap up from his chair, you feel the soft peaking of his lips, trailing up from your left ass cheek. Taking his time to cherish each inch of skin, kissing up the length of your back, allowing him to rise from the chair.

Stopping at the middle of your back, standing tall, connecting his lips back onto your neck, though not as attentive, hearing the clanking of metal. Thighs pressing together at the sound of his belt being undone, sending sensitive slivers up your spine, his hand falls back onto.

The open flaps of his pants ticklingly press against the skin of your ass as the head of John's cock enters you. Hand pressing you down further, chest nearly resting atop your husband's desk, allowing more of his cock to slide into you. Moans escaping both of your lips as exhales, bodies slumping forward at the new spark of pleasure, leg desperately rising to the edge of his desk, needing more of John's length.

Nerve fibers energetically throbbing as John's cock fills you full, dulling your mind, swirling with overstimulation. Hands run up and down your back, stilling inside you, treasuring each inch of your wet walls wrapped around his cock. Clenching around him, orgasm still pulsing within your muscles, not allowing John to be certain he wouldn't cum seconds into fucking you over his desk.

Hands gripping the sides of your body as John's hips gain confidence, beginning to rock, pulling sighing moans from both of your lips that are then stumped out by your teeth, quieting them to hushed gasps. Resting fully onto your husband's desk, unable to find strength, body to blissfully absorbed by John's cock. Face lying flatly against sheets of paperwork, rocking hips, transforming into stable thrusts. Body attempting to slump forward further, even as it's pinned to the desk, loud moans stretch within your throat, fighting to be heard by John's ears.

Yelping out as your ass burns, ear and office walls echoing with the sound of John's hot palm smacking the skin of your right ass cheek. Landing another, then another, the last one landing on your left cheek. Hand soothing over the irritated skin before gripping your hips, stabilizing his thrusts once again.

Lips moving with incoherent curses, letting noises of delight escape, creating a song with his breathy moans, singing from behind you. Cock twitching within you, enlivened by the melody. Hearing the desk groan as his thrusts grow rough, teeth and throat no longer capable of damming the sound of your pleasure.

Moans pouring loudly from your lips, echoing off the walls of your husband's office, though hurriedly quieted by his hand. Pelvis pressing against your ass and back, driving his cock deeper in you, thrusts having not ceased at his reach over. Head forced to tilt back, eyes following, rolling back into their hot sockets.

Thighs aching, pinching on the desk's edge, John's pants button and zipper cutting into skin as his pelvis closely impales against your ass, sending prickles of pain up your neck. Ears filling with John's moaning, making out the symbol of your name, encouraging another orgasm to swell within your body. Getting so far on his cock, prompting your hand to feverishly fly down, working hastily between your legs.

Moans forced through the crack of John's hand as other slaps your ass, becoming harsher with each one that's delivered, pushing you closer to the edge. Stopping as you cum, body melting into the desk, only able to gasp as a heat surges through your body. Eyes vibrating, vision blurring as they water, throat pinching.

Brows furrowing, body tensing, riding out the divine state of your body on John's rough thrusts. Climbing to his own orgasm at the view of you squirming with overstimulation atop his desk, moaning mumbles of his name.

Groaning loudly close to your ear, sending shivers down your spine, cock twitching before it leaves your body. Hearing the lubed strokes John gives his cock, moans exploding from his lips as warm ropes of cum fall onto your ass that buzzes with pain. Hand detaching from your mouth, hold your hips, wincing at John's thumb pressing into your cheek.

Both catching your breath, nerves pulsing waves throughout your body as you come down. Remaining atop your husband's desk, ears picking up the sound of John tucking himself away, belt reclasping, then opening one of his desk drawers, opening, shuffling for something, then feeling a rough, papery surface touch your ass. Whining with pain as John gently wipes his mess from your ass, finishing with a soft peck to both of your cheeks.

Slowly sitting up from the desk, seeing as John throws the cum stained napkin away in the small office trash can. Leaning against the desk, waiting for your balance to show itself, watching as John moves to your piles of clothing.

Walking up to you, kneeling, unfolding your underwear, stretching it for your leg to simply step into. Turning to the side, resting one of your hands on John's shoulder, stepping back into your underwear with the help of your husband. Sliding the thin fabric up your legs, fingers being mindful of the red skin of your ass, releasing its elastic hem.

Silently preparing your pants, helping your leg through the long pant leg, patient with your jelly legs. Hand reaching out to John's cheek, cupping it lovingly as he buttons your pants, which he had unbuttoned. Looking up at you, a smile blooming on his plump lips that meet yours once he stands up.

Kissing your lips, breaking as you yelp with pain, John's hand having given your ass another light slap. Eyes growing wide at his own action, staring at you, whispering, "Sorry, I forgot."

"Just get your stuff, John," you sigh, lightly laughing at his flushing cheeks. Wanting nothing more than to leave the small, humid office, smelling of sex and sweat.

Planning out the night further in your mind, needing a much needed shower once getting home that you'll pull John into joining. Washing the day's stress and sweat away, then feasting on some takeout, you both picked up on the way home. Finishing out the night in bed, handing John the bottle of lotion, enjoying the relief of your cheek burn.

Hello, I hope you enjoyed if there is any grammar mistakes or misspellings sorry about that feel free to let me know in the comments, have a great day/afternoon/night!

♥ mx-pastelwriting does not consent to their fanfiction being copied, copied & credited, translated, used in videos and/or audios, screenshotted, used in AI.

With the job market at an all-time low, and hitting your fourth month of unemployment, you were searching for ANY means of extra cash. So when you heard about a paid medical study, you were all in.

Looking for volunteers willing to test new wellbeing vitamins. Compensation will be offered in exchange for daily examinations for 1 month post-treatment.

Interviews weren’t getting you anywhere, so why the hell not?

——-

Paperwork complete, hospital gown on, and you’re waiting for the doctor to come in. You expected a decent amount of disclaimers, as experiments call for all sorts of liabilities, but an hour worth of documents?? Especially for something without concise side effects, it felt ridiculous. But there was one clause that caught your eye: “full willingness to participate”.

Vitamin T’s intended purpose is to increase the patient’s body mass, improve their reflexes, and increase their cognitive abilities. Therefore, numerous tests will be required of each patient during the study to determine results for each category. The patient must be willing to endure their doctor’s requests without rebuttal. If the patient feels unwell or unwilling at any point of a test, they can press the provided emergency call button for an immediate break.

Though strange, it was reassuring enough to know you’d always have access to the emergency button. It felt strange giving up all autonomy to a stranger….and somehow it gave you a bubbly feeling in your stomach. What could cause someone to be pushed far past their limits? Where did they even get these doctors from?? And would they be understanding if I asked them to stop?

A knock on the door interrupted your thoughts, as an older, tall man creaked open the door. Dark black eyes peeked in. The man wore a strange set of goggles pushed back on his forehead, and had a wide, crackled smile to reveal crooked teeth. He was so tall, in fact, he had to duck under the door frame to make his way in and shake your hand.

“I’m Dr. Victor Gideon” he said, as you reached to shake his chapped hand “it is such a pleasure to meet you.”

Standing in front of him felt like you were a stalked prey. He had broad shoulders that felt encompassing. The dark clothes felt threatening, especially for a doctor. His height alone was enough to make anyone feel helpless. But contradictingly, his hushed, cooed voice soothed your nerves.

“Please, darling, take a seat. Do tell me if it’s uncomfortable. I fear you’re one of the first patients I’ve had for this trial, and I want to give my mice top notch care.”

You blinked for a second, did he just refer to you as a lab rat?? What could be made of this guy? His physique and snakeskin clothes screamed ‘shady’, but his dark eyes just kept drawing you in with a warm feeling. Male doctors never seemed to be a great fit for you, always talking over you and blaming anxiety for half of your symptoms. But Gideon felt different. He spoke gently, but not in a way to infantilize you. You didn’t want to get your hopes up, but for once, it felt like he truly cared for you. Victor seemed crazy into medical stuff, that’s for sure, but maybe he’s more of an antisocial genius kinda guy.

“Today will be very simple, as I don’t want to overwork you on your first day. My patients must uphold their energy in order to withstand the trials, yes?” He stretches latex gloves on, grabbing syringes and vials out of a nearby cabinet.

What kind of vitamin is pitch black?? Your eyes widen a bit as you watch him set the tray next to your left arm.

“Don’t worry, darling, I know seeing the equipment can be a bit scary. But I already know that you’ll do wonderful for me.” He traces his fingertips up your forearm, his eyes glimmering once finding a prominent vein. Your heart flips in your chest. Nerves? Or maybe you just haven’t been touched in a while. Unemployment means no money for dates, after all.

“I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s do some vitals first, shall we?” Victor connects a heart monitor to your index finger on your other hand, claiming he wants to measure any heart rate changes during the vitamin shot.

The machine steadily beeps.

“I will, however, conduct a breathing test before giving you this….vitamin. There is always a risk of allergic reaction when taking any new substance, and we can’t have that, can we, little mouse?” Pulling the goggles over his dark eyes, he still grins at you, trying to make light of the situation.

Victor hands you a large tube strapped to a computer with a candle animation. “I’m going to have you take a deep breath for me, and exhale into the tube. I know it’s a bit elementary, but the candles on the screen will extinguish the more you blow. Do you think you can blow them all out for me?” Sitting forward in a nearby chair, observing you closely, he still grins at you.

“I’ll try my best!” you say, giving him a shrug. “Excellent. I’ll count you down.” He leans back, beginning a countdown as you wrap your lips around the tube. You swear you see his tongue dart over his lips as you do.

Heart monitor picks up speed.

“Three, two, one, breaaaaathe out”.

Sometimes your heart picks up from a bunch of deep breaths, right?? Nothing too unusual for the monitor to go off, you tell yourself.

Heart rate returns to normal, and breathing test comes back normal.

“Atta girl. Excellent vitals, just as I expected.” The doctor claps his hands together and moves to begin administering the vitamin shot. His fingers grace your wrist, tracing up your left arm again, searching for that beloved vein. Although this time, he’s looking you in the eye, trying to ease you into the procedure…and perhaps study your reactions.

“Do you have a history of fainting when receiving shots?” You shake your head no in response. His thin lips spread back into a grin. “You might just be the perfect patient for me, little mouse. I feel so lucky to have struck gold so early into my studies.” Victor keeps a firm but gentle hold on your arm as he fills a syringe with the other. Although both of your arms are restrained by medical equipment, right hand still having the heart monitor, you can’t help but feel calm in the strange doctor’s presence. He has a way of talking you down. Distracting….or….maybe just soothing you……with his words. 

“You’re going to feel a sliiight pinch, but don’t worry. I’ll count you down real nice and slow. You got that, darling?” Four unreadable, reflective lenses stare back at you, yet you can’t help but nod in agreement. Nevertheless, you still grip the emergency call button in your alternate hand in case your pain tolerance wimps out for this shot.

“Take another deep breath for me. Breathe in……three….two……exhaaaale….aaaand you’re done.” You only feel the tender padding of a cotton swab as he treats your injection site. “Good girl! not even a twitch from you.”

Heart monitor picks up speed.

Not even a pinch?? This man is so gentle that even receiving a shot is a breeze.

With another passed breathing test, you’re kept in the room for about an hour. Of course, every 15 minutes he insists on a check-in. “Is my patient is holding up well without me, hm?” A nod earns an excited grin from the man. “Beautiful.”

An hour gone by, and there’s no bad reaction to be found. “Yeah no, I feel great. I mean, no different than normal so I guess that’s good!” “That is wonderful to hear, my darling!” He exclaims, hurriedly approaching you to disconnect you from the machinery. He leans down, tall frame towering over you as he reaches for your wrists, pinning both to your armrests at once.

Heart rate picks up.

Victor halts and turns his head towards the monitor “Hmm. An increased heart rate. Not unusual, but a bit unexpected.” He leans down further to make eye contact with you through his goggles. “You’d tell me if you were uncomfortable….wouldn’t you?”

Heart rate picks up faster. His mouth still hanging open. 

“I’d want nothing but for you to feel your….hmm…” faces six inches apart, staring under his brow as he keeps pressure on your wrists. “….your absolute best” your heart rate stays high, but he refuses to back off until you’re completely honest with him.

“Well, uh… that’s what the emergency button is for, right?” Your voice wavers a bit as you raise a brow in response. Victor reaches up to push his goggles back onto his forehead. His black eyes trace across your face….down to your lips….across your shoulder….down your arm….past the emergency button in your palm, to settle on admiring where he has you trapped at the wrists. A small scoff leaves his lips at the sight.

He takes a steady inhale….”I suppose so.” Victor backs off, pushing down on your wrists to leverage himself up. He has to be at least 8 ft tall, now that you’re seeing him up close. He takes gentle care, lifting your left hand into his palm to unstrap and remove the equipment from your wrist. His hands had to be twice the size of yours.

“As I mentioned before, today is easy for you” his eyes fixated on your hand in his. “Receiving Vitamin T is the extent of today’s procedure, and you will be able to rest in the sleeping quarters until tomorrow morning.” He sets your hand in your lap before picking up your alternate hand.

“Tomorrow will require a full physical examination. Sometimes patients show the vitamin’s effects very quickly, others take a week or so.” He sets your other hand in your lap atop your previous one, his thumb lingering to rub gentle circles on your knuckles before continuing.

“Depending on the results from the physical, I may or may not administer more demanding tests. So, if I may show you to your dorm, you can start resting up for tomorrow’s big day.” He offers you his hand to help you out of the patient chair, then resting it on the small of your back until you reach your room.

——-

A snake has no interest in the chase. No legs, no claws, no particular hurry. The mouse, meanwhile, has all the nimble attributes that the snake lacks, and yet, when confronted by the reptile, none of them play to its advantage. The snake strikes. Swallows. The mouse doesn't escape the belly of the beast. It only exhausts itself believing otherwise.

Our mouse wakes first, the snake nestled out of sight.

The ceiling is white with decorative moulding around the edges. One light bleeds over everything and leaves nowhere for the eye to rest. She lies there blinking into it, breath reverberating loud in her ears.

Her head jerks as her eyes scrunch, an attempt to abolish the grogginess. Plastic shifts against her skin and she frowns. A strap tugs in her hair. Cool air rushes over her lips in a relentless stream, and she slowly understands: the soft mechanical hush she woke to is oxygen. Forced into a mask, sealed over the lower half of her face.

Her chest seizes.

"What the-"

The words dissolve against the plastic. She tries at once to tear the thing off.

What rises in place of her arms are two dull metallic clunks, one on either side of her, pain rattling through both wrists instantly. She freezes, then yanks harder in disbelief, and the metal answers with the same certainty.

No.

She tries to sit up before the thought is even finished.

A hard band slams into the front of her neck and hurls her back down so suddenly that breath leaves her in a muffled bark. The room flashes at the edges as she lies there winded, mask hissing, eyes fixed stupidly on the ceiling in complete disarray while her lungs fight for rhythm.

She swallows and lowers her eyes as far as she can to catch a glimpse of stiff leather arced across her throat. Not tight enough to choke while she's flat. But lift her head and it becomes punishment in an instant. The angle has been chosen for her. Stillness imposed.

Her body reports itself to her in sickening fragments.

Wrists bound, straight at her sides. Ankles fixed. A broad strap over her waist. Another over each thigh. Something across her upper arms holding her open to the table with a thoroughness that is, above all else, exposing.

With a murmur of dismay, she jerks against all of it at once.

Useless. Leather and metal protest. Her joints burn. The table gives a pathetic little rattle. The restraint at her throat warns her the moment panic drags her head upward. Every part of her meets resistance. Nothing gives.

"What - what the fuck?"

She writhes like a fish hauled onto a deck; blind and completely graceless, wrenching first one wrist then the other, arching as far as the waist strap allows. A paper-thin gown shifts around her, dragging over her skin, twisting under her thighs as she moved.

A gown?

Is she- she's wearing a hospital gown.

She can't remember putting a gown on.

No - she didn't put it on. Someone else did. Someone removed what she was wearing and put this on her instead, arranged her arms at her sides and legs open and positioned her throat under a… a collar and-

"Oh my God…"

The chill of the room settles whether or not she's wearing anything underneath the gown immediately, the air finding every inch of bare skin beneath the thin fabric.

Her eyes dart from side to side.

She makes a sound of pure revulsion and writhes again, getting nowhere, achieving only the humiliation of trying.

Her stomach pitches. Her vision blurs with the effort and she's forced to stop. Dizzy, feeble, eyes glassy.

Think. Fucking think. Where are you?

Her mind reaches for an answer and closes on useless splinters: A reception desk. Blues and greys. White flowers in an ornate vase, a few petals just beginning to brown at the edges. A corridor. A waiting area. The anxious crawl of watching the slow turn of the minute hand.

Then… there's a gap. She can't recall the in between: why was she in this building in the first place?

And on the other side of the gap? Running.

Heavy footsteps behind her that didn't feel the need to hurry.

A voice- soft, cultivated - unbearably calm - saying something she can't recall. Her name, maybe. Or only you know you shouldn't be here.

She'd hidden, she remembers that much. Thought the coast was clear. Then pressure. Hands. No, one hand. Feet scrambling for the floor. Smudged vision, and finally… nothing.

She tries to turn her head a fraction to the right, limited by the strap across her throat.

A stainless-steel trolley. Cabinets. A metal stand-

An IV bag draped over a hook.

Colourless fluid, half full. Tubing descending from it. She follows it down.

Down.

Down.

To the tape at the crook of her arm.

Every muscle locks. Even the panic pauses, curdled into something almost numb. She stares at the needle vanishing under her skin and feels her heart rise hard against the bruised front of her throat.

"Fuck. N- no." she grits, uselessly waggling her arm as if she can detach the tubing by doing so.

Saline, she hopes wildly. Or sedative. Or something already working its way through her while she woke up too late to stop it. How long has it been dripping? How much is already in her? What is it doing to her?

She begins to thrash again, harder. "C- come on-" Her wrists rattle the restraints. Her ankles jerk. The needle tugs in her arm- the very specific and downright horrific sensation of something fixed inside a vein- and she screams for help.

The mask devours the sound.

She tries again. No one answers. Only the white noise from the immaculate room, completely indifferent to her struggle, and the relentless hiss of air forcing itself over her face.

She bucks upward and chokes herself on the collar again, coughing, fighting for breath she's already being force-fed. Tears spill into her hair as she frantically eyes around for an escape route. The IV line quivers. The bag above her hangs in perfect calm, drop by measured drop at a time.

A shudder tears through her.

She squeezes her eyes shut hard enough to ache, fighting for the surface with blind panic. The lights smear red through her eyelids. Her mouth opens beneath the mask on a ragged gasp.

Her head rolls as much to the side as it can; she tries to steady her breathing as the sudden onslaught of what can only be described as fevered fatigue pulls her under. Whatever is dripping into her arm is no longer abstract. It has sudden weight. Intention. It is doing something to her.

Her body. Made available to whatever this is. She wants to vomit.

The dreary sensation fades, and as soon as she feels herself regain enough strength to open her mouth, she attempts to shout:

"Let me- let-" It sounds like a grunt, wrist clicking with the force of movement. After a huff, she tries again. "Let me out!"

Nothing.

"Fucking let m-" She barely hears the latch of the door click, but the sight of it opening in her periphery has her stop so abruptly the enraged plea tears out of her unfinished.

Her mind refuses the monster's scale for one stunned beat as he enters. He doesn't fit the proportions of the room- he… alters them, rather. The cabinets seem to shrink, the trolley recedes, the table beneath her suddenly narrow as a plank.

He steps through the doorway with unhurried elegance: not the jerk and drag of brute force that his size constitutes, but the calm of something that already knows its prey is held in place. The flaked pattern of his coat catches the overhead lights in scaled flashes as he moves, cracked and glossy, and beneath the collar the visible skin reveals itself in pale, marbled planes- greyed, chemically altered, settled into a texture that belongs to no ordinary man.

Like the subject of an autopsy that'd been torn apart and stitched back together.

Something about the sight of him tugs at a memory. At a specific quality of unease that she's felt before- she… is almost certain she has felt it before, looking at- A corridor? Someone in a long coat, maybe, someone she was supposed to-

A doctor. She was here to see a doctor. Wasn't she? Or - someone had sent her, or she'd come for - she wasn't sick, she doesn't remember being sick, so why would she-

And suddenly, the fragments of memory fade.

She blinks back in to focus on a cluster of mismatched lenses, making up a visor covering the upper half of his face, like the compound eye of something that was never meant to be human.

What remains visible is enough to make her mouth tighten in nauseous fear.

She jerks against the straps again, eyes fixed on him. They can't not be. Her wrists snap. Her ankles kick once, uselessly. The mask over her face fills and un-fills with the damp fog of her own breath.

He stops at her side and looks down.

Her brows waver… no. She swears she recognises him, or… something about him. Her mind claws at itself to remember - to try and numb the panic with some sort of orderly thought. It won't come.

His head tilts.

The following silence does more damage than speech could have. It makes her hear herself fully: the mechanical struggle of oxygen through the mask, the wet catches in her breathing, the small whimpers she can't stop making into the plastic. She is hideously, irreversibly vulnerable under the scrutiny of his lenses. Frightened. Opened up by panic into pure reflex.

There is something equally serpentine to his stillness as there is his outward appearance.

He comes closer, removing a pair of dark leather gloves, which he discards onto the trolley. His hands are enormous. Rings crowd the fingers: dull gold and silver bands, thin chains cascading from knuckle to wrist, dark stones, weighty enough to make every motion look ceremonial. A snake eye. The overkill would make her laugh if she were in any other predicament.

She breathes shakily as she tries to scramble away on the table- knowing it's hopeless. Her shoulders dig into the surface. The waist strap holds her flat. The collar checks her before she can turn her head fully away. He watches with grave attention.

Then, finally:

"You're making quite the racket."

She stills in a sudden jerk.

There it is again.

Soft.

Cultivated.

Unbearably calm.

She knows that voice.

He reaches toward her and she flinches so hard she nearly chokes herself again. His hand pauses in the air beside her face- not out of concern, but observation. As if the recoil itself is worth seeing clearly.

Gold catches amongst black when he speaks. There’s the faintest click when he closes his jaw on the last word. The sound goes through her. The dissonance between his voice and appearance continues to run through her like ice water.

He lays two fingers against the side of the mask where she’s dislodged it with her struggling. She whimpers, wide, watery eyes straining to watch the path his fingers take. The touch is almost courteous; adjusting the seal, settling the plastic more firmly over her mouth. The cold of the leather travels through it and into her skin. She twists away and he withdraws at once, simply finished.

“Get-off m…mfh-fuck-”

The protest never fully forms.

Something drops through her again with terrifying suddenness, as if a trapdoor has opened beneath her. Her body gives a sharp, this time involuntary jolt. Her breath snags. The room lurches. Another wave of chemical heaviness pours through her so fast it feels almost violent, dragging at her limbs, at her neck, at the backs of her eyes. Her head falls back against the table before she can stop it.

“There's no need,” he says, words elongated by a small smile forming on his cracked lips, “to distress yourself further.”

Her vision whites out at the edges as goosebumps crop up all over. For one sickening second her pupils roll uselessly upward and all she can do is endure the sensation of herself being pulled under by something already inside her.

“Oh God…”

The words come out as a groan, warm and blurred into the plastic.

She swallows and nearly gags on the effort. “My head…”

When she forces her eyes open again, he's looking at her throat.

Her violent little seizure of disorientation seems not to interest him in the least, except as confirmation of an expected result. His lenses remain angled toward the bruising above the restraint.

The creature's bare fingers move to her neck.

The touch is light enough to tickle as it grazes just above the hard edge of the restraint. Her whole body locks instantly. Every muscle seizes and her next breath catches halfway in. He traces the bruising with his thumb, following the shape of the marks with thoughtful precision that reads less like remorse than assessment - a craftsman noticing an imperfection in his own workmanship.

“Cosmetic damage,” he regards the bruising. “I am sorry about that. Your escape attempt meant I had to replace grace with efficiency.”

Her brows knot as the memory slams back into her skull: a long, grey corridor, a flickering light; his hand closing around her neck; the floor going out from under her. She’d clawed at his wrist. That's right - she can see the scratches. The light had smeared and thinned out as pressure built behind her eyes, and beneath it all the unhurried patience of his grip, squeezing her relentlessly out of consciousness.

Escape. She tried to escape him. This place - what is this place? Why is she here? Again, questions fly at her in droves. She can't pick one to focus on.

“I’m also sorry that I was unable to make your acquaintance properly at your interview."

He stops and reads her face quickly, thoroughly, without particular sentiment. The horror on it. The confusion underneath that. Something shifts in his expression; "Oh. I seem to have forgotten my manners."

Interview? Did she come here for an… interview?

"Doctor Victor Gideon." A pause that feels curated. "I'm the Director of this facility. Among other things."

That name tugs on the finest sinew in her brain. She recalls it vaguely, though context eludes her. Her lips open and close in failed attempts to retort or question the Doctor. He inhales and keeps speaking.

"You were recommended to us very highly. Marvellous references, given your lack experience. I had been looking forward to meeting you under…" his gaze travels over her; she swallows - "more favourable conditions, Ms…"

He lets it hang. She blinks. Nursing experience? Did she… apply for a job here?

An… interview. Yes- that she remembers. The waiting room. The white flowers with their brown-edged petals. Curiosity walking her somewhere it shouldn’t have. She'd wandered down a corridor and seen… something. Something frightening - morally corrupt - she - she can't remember what.

And he’s watching her, patient as anything, waiting for the rest.

Ms… her name. He wants her name.

The memory of his hands on her throat decides it. She’ll give him the name. Perhaps compliance will be her saviour. She opens her mouth-

She- wait. It's- Ms… miss… Mrs? No. Miss-

Her name. She knows her name. She's known her name her entire life, it's… it's-

Fuck.

What's her name? She tries again, harder. Someone calling it, the way it looks written down, anything-

Gone. Gone. It's gone.

Her eyes go wide.

No. No, that's not-people don't just-you don't just lose your own-

But she has. She has and she can't get it back and she doesn't know how long it's been missing and-

She looks at him.

He hasn't moved. He isn't waiting with any urgency. Victor Gideon watches her search, and at the corner of his mouth there is something- not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one, perhaps. Loaded and cocked. The expression of a man waiting to confirm his findings before popping the champagne cork.

The tears spill again. Her face crumpling and pulling in ways that feel hideous and she can't stop any of it.

"W-what did you do to me?"

Her eyes move. One corner of the room, then the other. She tries for it harder, like yanking on a jammed door, only yielding the same result.

He watches her search, frantic irises twitching side to side as one hand rises to the edge of the mask. He eases it from her face and the cold air of the room hits her lips and she sucks in a breath. He asks again, mildly, cracked lips creaking into a wider smile:

“Your name?”

She opens her mouth, the softness of his voice compelling her body to work against her mind.

“I- ” The word strains out, mouth dry from the oxygen. “I can’t- ”

She tries. She really tries, like the letters are sat on the tip of her tongue, some syllable, maybe? But it fizzles away the moment she grasps a vowel and she can’t get it back and he is fucking standing there holding the mask and looking at her and she heaves and sobs and rattles herself against the restraints again-

"What the fuck did you do to me?"

She shouts it through her teeth this time, voice cracking upward; spittle flying, the ugly overflow of someone with nothing left to lose.

He doesn't answer. He sets her mask aside and lets her burn through it - the crying, the pulling, the shaking - watching with that same level attentiveness. When it leaves her spent, gown twisted, throat raw, he lays one hand on her hip.

His head tilts. Almost sympathetic.

The nausea this provokes is its own kind of torture.

Before she can make a haphazard attempt at shaking him off, a third chemical tide rolls in without warning and her body suffers an inward collapse, the fight draining out of her once again. She lies there blinking slow, too hollowed out to do anything about the weight of his hand, or the unhurried squeeze he gives her through the thin gown.

"Don't touch me." she slurs, head rolling away. Another lazy sob moves through her like a hiccup.

Something amusement-like shifts in the rhythm of his exhale and she grimaces hard through the smog.

"You're disgusting," she mumbles, the words arriving before she can weigh them, loose and slurred from whatever is in her blood. "You're a disgusting, ugly, fucking freak-"

His hand goes still.

The room's quality changes, the air pulled taut as the ringing in her ears subsides. He leans down slowly, until his withered lips are level with her ear. She smells him again: a sweet-rot beneath the antiseptic, threading up into her sinuses and curdling there. Then - clack - his teeth, beside her ear, the sound of something turning a thought over.

Her shudder rattles the restraints.

His hand glides from her hip to her chin. The scaled texture of his skin drags against her as he tips her face toward him, inspecting with clinical remove. She stares up at him, chest unsteady - and then his fingers settle lightly over her mouth, not covering, just resting there. He is close enough that she can see, through the fog and the fear, his lower lip. The slow, almost idle movement at its centre as he wets it.

A tongue. Split. Forked, even. She retreats further into the table, lips humming around a wet whimper as he smooths his fingertips over them.

"I have awarded you with some… autonomy."

The words settle with dreadful calm. His fingers stay where they are, roughened skin against her lips, and something moves through her that she cannot immediately account for - not the dizziness, but something warmer and deeply unwelcome, a loosening in her limbs. She clamps down on the awareness and refuses to think about the deep shiver that comes from the contact.

"That isn't a decision," he says, one lens contracting faintly as his gaze presumably moves over her face, "I have taken lightly."

His fingers are still on her lips and she is - she is letting them, that's the thing, her mouth has softened against them and her eyes have gone heavy and there is a warmth spreading from the contact that she is leaning into rather than away from and some distant, dwindling part of her registers all of this with quiet horror.

"Why-" The friction of her lips against his fingers interrupts the word, sending a shiver clean down her spine. She swallows. Tries again. "Why am I here?"

His head tips. The visor clicks.

"You were asked to wait," he exhales. "You chose not to." His fingers don't move from her mouth. "You walked a considerable distance into an area of this facility that you had no clearance for, saw a project of mine that was not for general viewing, and now, you must reap the consequences."

She stares at him, chin trembling. The fog merely thickens. She can't find the memory. She can lamely recall something wrong, something that made her stomach drop - but the content has gone, dissolved into whatever is being drip-fed into her blood.

"I… I don't remember." Her lips move against his fingertips as she says it, and the sensation makes her breath catch audibly. "I don't - I can't remember what I saw, I don't know what it was. If- if you let me go I won't - I won't say anything, I won't tell anyone, I don't even know what I'd-"

The sentences are coming apart. Somewhere behind them she can hear herself crying, or almost crying, the words breaking at their seams as a grunt escapes her that is neither grief nor want but some horrible compound of both. Her body hitches. She shakes her head, keeps shaking it.

"Please." Barely a word. "Please, I don't remember-"

His jaw closes. Gold catches the light between his lips, a slow, grinding press of them together as he listens to her fall apart. Then his thumb moves and wipes the wet from her cheek. His hand cups around her jaw. His thumb returns to her lips.

"You came here for a role, yes?" His voice is even. Almost kind. "You sent an application. You attended an interview. You wanted… a purpose."

His thumb presses, gently, at the centre of her lower lip.

"That's exactly what I'm going to give you."

"No." Against his thumb. Barely sound, mostly breath. "No, no-"

Her eyes close.

She'd meant it as refusal, though the word loses its edges each time it passes over his skin, worn smooth by repetition until it means almost nothing. Until it means the opposite. Her lips move around it and the friction is - she swallows - the friction is there, present, insistent, and her body is treating it as something to lean into rather than away from and she hates herself distantly for it.

You have hands. You have teeth. You have - do something, do anything -

His thumb presses, just slightly, at the bow of her lip.

The thought dissolves.

What replaces it isn't courage or strategy. It's warmth. It's some terrible perverted satisfaction of being the sole object of his attention - all that stillness, all that mass, all that unhurried focus directed entirely at her. Her body receives it like a moth to a flame.

"No," she tries again. Quieter. To herself.

"I've spared you from a forgettable fate," he says. "You'll grow to see that."

She swallows against his fingers. Feels the movement travel through her jaw, her throat, down.

Stop.

Stop. You have to-

Do something. Right now. Do something, fucking do-

Her teeth bite down on his finger before she's decided if the potential outcome is worth it. He hisses - the first uncontrolled sound he's made. His hand snatches back and whatever passed for pleasantness on the visible portion of his face recedes.

He says nothing. He turns from her, and moves to the steel trolley. She can hear him but not see him, the clinking of glass, the soft sounds of preparation, and the not-knowing what for is its own particular horror.

"What are you-" Her voice comes out smaller than she means it. "What are you doing?"

"The concentration of this dose," he says after a sharp inhale, teeth barely parting, "appears insufficient."

She sees it in the corner of her eye when he turns. Fine point catching the light. A fresh needle; a syringe filled with an amber-tinged liquid.

"No." The word falls out of her, though far more alert this time. "No- what is that, what is- please, I'm s-sorry - I don't- please-"

He crosses to her without hurry, deaf to all of it. One large hand finds the side of her head and turns it with complete authority, baring the side of her neck. She tries to wrench away and he simply waits, holding her in place until she runs out of strength, then tips her back to the angle he wants.

She is still pleading when he brings the tip of the needle to her skin.

"I just want to go home-"

He pauses beside her, mouth down-turned in displeasure.

"And where is home?" he asks, a touch of spite amidst the never-ending gentleness.

The pleading stops.

He's robbed her of her name. Her home. Her age. Knowledge of her profession - her fucking body. Her glassy eyes flit desperately, overworked tear ducts beginning to sting.

His lens catches the light as he watches her draw blanks, and she understands with horrible clarity that he already knew she'd be unable to answer. That he asked because he knew. Salt in the infected wound.

He tips her head to the side and she whines through clenched teeth as the needle breaches her skin.

It hurts.

She hisses and tries to jerk away from it and can't, and then it's done, his thumb pressing briefly to the site before he withdraws.

For a moment, nothing.

No name. No home. No way back into herself, and now something foreign is moving through her blood.

She closes her eyes. Tears dribble sideways into her hair as she sobs.

And a sudden warmth kicks into her.

Not a ripple, or a soft rolling wave - a flood, instantaneous, no warning, jaw and chest and fingertips all at once like a spark to gasoline.

"Nghh-" She grits, muscles contracting, body seizing as her back arches against the surface.

A fever, she thinks, when thought returns. Allergic reaction. She grasps at sensible, treatable things while he moves away toward the trolley, setting the syringe down with a click.

"So." He turns, unhurried. "You'd like to know what you've been administered with?"

She says nothing, lying gasping, high-pitched ringing drowning out anything but her own pathetic grunts. Her heart has picked up its pace dramatically.

"This particular compound works - and I'll keep this simple for you-" he moves to the monitor behind her head, consulting it briefly, "- a little like a key in a lock. It finds a particular door in the brain, and opens it wide. Wider than all the other surrounding doors."

"What's hah- ppening t-me?" Her voice is thicker than she'd like, growled out through clenched teeth.

"Most of what the brain does quietly in the background - keeping competing impulses in check, telling you when you've had enough of something - that all gets very..." he considers, "Quiet." A page turns. "What's left tends to be singular."

Tendrils of warmth have found her collarbone as the pain begins to slowly subside, heat creeping slowly into her sternum, lower lower lower - she swallows thickly against the tide.

Singular?

"What?" She repeats, cringing against the ringing in her ears.

He looks at her, irritation subsiding as he appears almost thrilled that she's asked.

"The majority of subjects I've worked on-" a brief pause, something almost wistful in it, "-have wound up violent. Not aggressive in the ordinary sense. I mean truly, comprehensively violent. The need to cause harm becomes the only thing they're aware of wanting." He rounds the foot of the table, glancing at her with the mild interest of someone checking on a slow-cooking joint of meat. "They lose interest in food, in shelter, in self-continuity. All of it reorganises around that sole drive to cause harm."

She understands. Distantly, through the warmth, she understands. A person reduced to damage. Endlessly. No self remaining.

"What the hell…" she whispers, more to the ceiling than to him. Tears continue to track sideways into her hair.

"Others-" he moves again, his footsteps a soft orbit around her, gesturing loosely with the pen as he speaks; an idle, almost theatrical little wave, "- have been consumed, I suppose you could say, by hunger. The part of the brain that registers fullness simply - stops. They eat until-" A brief pause. "Well. Quite far past the point of reason." He doesn't sound troubled by this. He sounds faintly bored. "Rather inefficient outcome, all things considered. Wonderful for security, though."

She swallows. That can't be her fate. Surely.

"No… no no no-" the words roll lazily out of her mouth, slurring together, before compiling into an untidy grunt. She clocks it and clears her throat; her tongue thick and heavy - taking up an ounce too much effort to form into shape.

Her mouth has gone very dry and the warmth has migrated; abdomen hitching, lower still, somewhere she doesn't want to follow it and she thinks: it's going to pass, it's going to pass, it's-

He comes to stand at her side. "There is a third category." His voice drops slightly. "I've only seen it once. But it was certainly…" He tilts his head. "Memorable."

She squeezes her eyes shut, head turning the fraction the restraint allows as she whimpers. Get me out. Get me out get me out get me out - she is so hot, unbearably fucking hot, and the cloth is dragging against her body and she can't finish her… her thought-

"Think of a thermostat," he says. "Cranked up to its limit and left." Two fingers press flat against the side of her throat, just above the restraint where her pulse thuds violently beneath her skin. She has to swallow against the sudden tightness in her throat, eyes pressing shut while she waits for her own composure to return to her like a carelessly tossed boomerang.

"Your heart is the thermostat," he says, as if he noticed nothing. Her pulse drives up in pace, his fingers pressing a fraction harder into her skin. She stutters a breath through gritted teeth, her shoulders shifting in a failed attempt to get him off of her.

He ignores it, taking mental notes instead. "Eventually, the body runs hot. The mind simply… follows." A pause. He notices a sheen developing on her forehead and focuses on the details affirmed to him through the red feed he can see through the cameras. "The need for closeness. For contact. For a particular relief the body is designed to seek in its most primitive state." He says it simply, clinically, as if explaining a weather system. "The subject in question found the unfulfilled state quite distressing. Continuously. He became very single-minded about solving it."

She knows… oh god, she knows exactly what he's describing. She can… feel it.

The word arrives fully formed and she wishes it hadn't: aphrodisiac. Because that's what this feeling is, isn't it - that's the only word that fits the sensitivity crawling across her skin; the unbearable drag of the material against her torso, the way her nipples have stiffened despite the heat, because of the heat, and she grits her teeth against the friction of thin fabric and tells herself firmly that it means nothing and her body informs her, with equal firmness, that it disagrees.

"Of course," he continues, turning a page, "My hope for you, my dear, is that you'll surpass all three. That you'll help further my own understanding of my master's grand design." A small pause. He inhales deeply. "But, if the compound takes you in another direction entirely - well. I told you I'd find a purpose for you. Like I have all my other experiments."

His master. Purpose. The words catch. There's someone above him. Someone for whom this room, this table, whatever is colonising her inside and out right now is merely groundwork. She tries to follow it: who, and what 'design', and what does 'surpass' even m-

Her eyes roll back against her mind's control.

The heat arrives again in its totality, burning every half-formed thought clean away. She feels an answering dribble of slick ooze its way out of her and she shudders; Her back presses into the table. Her fingers curl. Something surfaces from below language, below self - purpose - she thinks again. Purpose, purpose, purpose - to be used, to be held, to be filled, to be- to be- to be-

"Whatthefuck…" she slurs again, psyche sucked back into a relative sense of normalcy. A cold current cuts briefly through the heat and she feels how wet she is. "No… no no what's happening to- ugh-" What does this mean. What does it mean for her body, for whatever remains of her mind, for the blank space where she used to be? Sweat beads at her temple and rolls.

Purpose.

He moves to her arm without announcement, peeling the tape, withdrawing the IV needle. His fingers rest on her forearm as he works, a whimper shuddering from her mouth at the sensation. It should hurt. Feel uncomfortable at least, though…

She looks at his hands despite herself.

The rings first - golds, silvers, heavy, ceremonial on broad knuckles. Then the chains, fine ones, running from ring to wrist, catching the light in flashes. Then his skin against hers. Pretty, she thinks, vaguely. The colour of it.

His posture. The breadth of his shoulders. The slow roll of his jaw as he takes her in, the creeping, blackened scarring traversing lower lip, throat, chest and stomach; the buckle of his belt leaving the rest to the imagination. He's completely at ease in his own considerable body in a way that sets off a pulsing between her thighs. She wrenches her gaze back to the ceiling with a sound she hadn't meant to make - small and entirely mortifying.

Her lips are parted. Her eyes have gone to somewhere below his belt, heavy-lidded, wet at the corner. A slow drop gathering there that she hasn't noticed.

She hasn't noticed anything.

"Oh," he says softly. "You're overheating." She can't argue with him; her face is burning and her skin is damp and she is acutely, miserably aware of every inch of herself in a way she has no framework for.

"I'm not-" The sentence starts and falls apart. She tries again. "This is- isn't-"

"Mm?" He sounds genuinely interested.

He circles to her other side and takes her jaw in one hand without preamble, tilting her face toward the light. His fingers spread against her cheek, and she swallows thickly at the sensation of his thumb pulling her lower eyelid down, the other hand parting her lids wider - clinical, impersonal, a mechanic checking oil levels.

Her pupils, he notes, have pulled tight despite the dim of the room. The veins at her temples and throat have darkened, grey threading through the skin like something surfacing, mirroring the darkening whites of her eyes. They twitch in their sockets like a hyperactive Newton's cradle, cataloguing exits, finding none, returning to him with something that is equal parts resentment and helplessness.

"It seems you haven't been able to help me further my research as I'd hoped."

She exhales when he releases her; rough, ragged. Her breathing has developed a rhythm entirely out of her control, a small grunt escaping with each shift of her body against the table, each involuntary movement she can't stop making. The sounds embarrass the part of her still capable of embarrassment. That part is getting smaller. His fingers rest briefly on the edge of the table beside her hip. "But I'd be a fool to discard a specimen as interesting as you."

She blinks sweat from her eyes. Specimen. That's what she is. A thing to be prodded and poked. To yield results.

And yet… she opens her mouth to nothing more than a shuddered breath. The thought of protest… dissipated into nothing.

Her hands flex in the restraints. Not pulling, but open. Reaching.

He steps behind her head.

She tilts back to find him - an involuntary crane of the neck, throat bared, eyes searching upward - and he looks down at her with totally composed attention, unhurried, taking his time.

She is magnificent, is the thing. Writhing and wanting and completely undone, every defence stripped back to this - this singular, animal need completely drowning her in mere minutes. Hair plastered to her temple. Chest heaving, the wet cotton clinging to every contour, translucency leaving very little to the imagination.

Victor has never had a preference over types of human form, but he must admit… her whole body flushed and trembling and reduced to a single frequency…

"You really are quite a beautiful creature."

He says it the way someone might comment on a well-made piece of furniture. Appreciative. Detached. His hand rises and she tenses - but he only smooths the damp hair from her forehead, fingers drawing it back from her temple with a slowness that is almost tender.

Her eyes roll back at the sensation.

Such a catastrophically small thing to have her hair pushed away, and her body treats it like absolution - a full-body shudder moving through her from crown to ankle, her spine arching fractionally against the waist strap, a breath leaving her that she has no control over whatsoever. The ceiling blurs. She is aware, distantly, of how she must look. She struggles to care.

He withdraws his hand.

A small broken whimper chasing after the loss of four fingers and a lukewarm palm shudders out of her before she can think about it, her head turning toward where his hand was with the blind instinct of something that has decided, without consulting her, what it needs.

She turns her face back to the ceiling immediately.

Think. You need to-

Need- I- need need needneedneedneedneedneed-

Hands. She wants his hands on her. The rings, the chains threaded delicately from knuckle to wrist - she wants them on her skin, wants them everywhere, wants them solving the problem her body has become, and the wanting is so specific and so constant it crowds out everything else trying to exist in her head. She forgets to look away. Her tongue wets her lip.

Something moves in the visible portion of his face - a fractional pause, a thoughtful twist of the lips - before composure reasserts itself. "Progressing nicely."

The praise - if you can call it that - punches her core-deep. She can't stop it. She swallows against her watering mouth.

More, more, more, something inside her screams.

The cold air finds the inside of her thighs and the gown is soaked through and she writhes against the table anyway because the alternative of lying still is just as unbearable. The friction is nothing. Nowhere near enough to quell the answering throb in her cunt. She grunts.

Then another.

"Pl-" He watches her try. "I- ngh-"

A subject in this state requires maintenance, he thinks, and a good Doctor should be nothing if not thorough. He reaches down and smooths the hair from her face. His thumb following the line of her cheekbone.

Every nerve ending she has relocates to those two square inches simultaneously. Her body reorganises itself around his thumb, toward it, and a sound comes out of her, low and broken, and she can't locate shame anymore - that particular door, it seems, has closed. Her eyes flutter.

When they find him again he is still watching, with the quality of a man whose hypothesis is proving correct. His thumb moves to the corner of her mouth. Wipes it, without comment, without cruelty. Just - tending.

She turns her head - languid, barely an inch, all the restraint at her throat permits - and her mouth finds his thumb before either of them has quite decided it should. Lips parting against the pad of it.

He looks at her.

The hips first - jerking in small, useless increments against nothing, chasing stimulation the restraints have made categorically unavailable to her. Then her eyes, blown so wide the grey of her iris is barely a ring, and within the white the vessels have turned - he takes this in, this time several degrees past clinical - deep grey, branching like frost across glass. The compound moving through her at a rate that is, objectively, remarkable.

She is remarkable.

He turns his thumb and sets it against her tongue.

The sound she makes around it is immediate and involuntary and another small seeping of warmth leaks from between her thighs, her whole body shuddering with the inadequacy of it, the pathetic gorgeous insufficiency of just this, just a thumb, just the barest offering of contact - and she takes it. Works at it. Eyes half-lidded, hips still rolling their useless rhythm against the table.

He lets her have another moment.

Then he removes his thumb, smoothly, without apology, and moves to the foot of the gurney.

"C- mmm- b- back-"

The words scrape out through clenched teeth, barely words at all, more the shapes of them. She tries again and loses the thread halfway, her tongue failing to find the consonants, the urgency in her chest outpacing the machinery of speech entirely.

He- I need- come- please come- please-

The thoughts arrive in fragments, sparks without a fire. There is a word for what she wants and she can't find it but it doesn't matter because her body already knows, has known for some time, is making itself extremely clear on the subject. Dignity goes next - she feels it go, feels the last thread of it pull loose - and then there is only the wanting, filling every space where everything else used to live.

She strains upward against the throat restraint to see him.

The collar bites down. She chokes, eyes watering with the strain.

Through the lenses he takes his time. The goosebumps risen across her thighs. The sweat at her throat, her temple, pooling in the valley between her breasts. Her fingers, rendered useless, clenching and opening and reaching for stimulation that isn't there, utterly stripped of strategy.

He bends over her, his huge frame arching across the foot of the table, palms settling flat against her thighs - one hand spanning each easily. His head turns in consideration.

Every nerve migrates to the surface of her skin as his palms land on her thighs and it detonates outward - a full-body shudder, a broken groan torn out of her before she can swallow it, her hips lurching up toward him with an urgency that has shed every last pretence of dignity.

His knuckles roll the gown up.

Up.

Up.

The fabric drags across her hypersensitive skin and she whimpers continuously through it, a thin wail, barely human. Up more, until his thumbs find wet on either side of her inner thighs and the contact there - just his thumbs, just the margin of his hands against the most sensitive skin she has - makes her vision white at the edges.

He stills.

The forked tongue emerges. Slow. Idle. Tasting the air.

His tongue. The thought arrives filthy and urgent and stripped of anything resembling romance - she wants it on her, in her, wants those thick fingers where his thumbs are, wants to be opened up and solved like a problem, wants it crudely and immediately and with a desperation that would horrify her if she had the capacity left to be horrified. She bucks against the restraints.

He lifts one hand and holds it under the light.

His thumb glistens.

"Fascinating," he says softly, to no one, or to himself, or to the room - the murmur of a man who has found what he was looking for. He reaches up, un-clips the visor, and lifts it.

His eyes are yellow.

Not amber, not hazel - yellow. Bright and depth-less and split through the centre by a pupil that contracts as the light hits it, narrowing to a fine dark vertical line. He looks at his thumb.

He lowers the visor back into place and turns his attention to the gown, nudging it up another inch. His gaze drops. Tracks the spreading damp on the table's surface beneath her, the dark pooling of it against the material.

"Viscosity's thinning," he murmurs, almost to himself, rolling the slickness between thumb and forefinger with the detached curiosity of a man assessing a culture sample. He considers it under the light.

Then he hooks the string of it onto the tip of his tongue.

Both tips.

The visor clicks back into place. His hand returns to her thigh, and he strokes - just the cleft, the crease where thigh meets groin, the heel of his palm barely grazing where she needs it most - slowly, with the patience of something that has never once in its life been rushed. Watching her. Learning the topography of what undoes her, cataloguing each twitch and shudder with those yellow eyes cycling behind the lenses.

He is hungry. It has crept up on him with a particular stealthiness. His jaw shifts. He says nothing about it.

She writhes into his hand. Tries to angle her hips. Fails.

"W-" Her brow furrows with the effort of it, teeth gritted, some last misfiring synapse insisting on language. "Want- I- in-"

The rest dissolves. She gives up on it. Her eyes are wet and wild and she means every stupid, crass, nonsensical syllable of it.

He reaches up a touch with one hand. One finger. He trails it, feather-light and entirely unhurried, along the inside of her knee - and she jolts like she's been struck, a full-body shudder rippling through her, a wretched mewl tearing loose. A trail of drool leaks down her chin, and a fresh burst of heat spreads across her chest as she stares at him, wordless sounds uselessly hummed behind gritted teeth.

Something crosses his face as she wails out in frustration. The glimpse of a cruel smile when he speaks: "What is it you need?"

The humiliating nature of it rattles around her near-empty head, but doesn't really set deep into her bones until he draws back, a wet string of her own arousal following his fingers until it snaps and falls back onto her thigh in a display that she could only describe as disgusting.

And still, she wants to beg. She tries to beg; touch me touch me touch me - no please attached, no logic, just animal insistence of a body that has been pushed past the threshold of asking nicely. The need for him to put his fingers inside her is all-consuming, but when she reaches for the words she needs there's nothing there.

The inability to voice it butchers her completely.

She can't answer him. There's nothing in her to answer with. She's all fever and static and the mindless, snarling insistence of need, her body twitching against the restraints with no agenda beyond more.

He doesn't appear troubled by the silence. He reaches beneath the table, finds a latch, and kicks something loose beneath it. The surface tilts - lurches upward - until she's nearly vertical, suspended several feet above the floor.

And still he towers over her.

Her breathing splinters into shallow, lurching bursts she can't regulate, can't slow, can't do anything with at all. Her eyes screw shut - hard enough that her vision blooms white behind her lids, and even that sharp bite of pain routes itself straight down to her drooling cunt.

Then a knuckle snakes between her slick slit and nudges just shy of her clit. Her eyes burst open.

"I can subdue your symptoms-" His lips form something approximating a thoughtful pout. He leans in, waiting.

The whimper that leaves her is involuntary and pathetic and she is far past caring. Sweat tracks downward along her skin in thin, cool lines, and her eyes judder trying to hold focus on his face.

His hand comes up. Grips her chin and tilts her up to him.

"If just for a moment."

At that, he slides a thick digit knuckle-deep into her with no friction whatsoever. A groan tears out of her - low, sprawling, almost bovine - as it curls up and into her.

Large. Deep. Beginning its slow, methodical assault on yielding tissue while his other hand holds her head steady, as though she were something that might otherwise loll and drop.

She shudders. Swallows. Her eyes roll upward to find his face and whatever lives in her expression could only be described as thanks - abject and humiliating in its sincerity.

And still. Still. She feels cavernously, arduously empty. Her hips have begun to wriggle as much as the strap allows - pathetic hitches, entirely beyond her authority - as though she might coax him deeper through sheer animal persistence. As though her body believes, in its gutted and graceless wisdom, that if she just angles right, shifts just so, she might finally feel full.

She doesn't feel full. She grunts angrily up at him. More more more.

The mouse's body is at war with itself, eyes and mouth and cunt weeping, stomach turning before she feels herself suck in a second finger as he grins and offers its tip to her. Her mouth falls open wider as she's pried apart even more, head lolling forward into his hold. Drool cascades from behind her teeth, over his fingers, her chin, his wrist; he doesn't flinch. Behind the red-tinted viewfinder, his eyes move.

The interface sweeps down the column of her throat, tracing the dark tributaries that have begun threading further beneath her skin. The compound has been busy.

The lens zooms. He watches the tissue respond in real time; the flush, the swell, the involuntary muscular contractions that she has absolutely no jurisdiction over - his chest tightens in satisfaction and he snarls against an ectothermic stirring in his cock.

His fingers curl inside her.

The darkened veins at the juncture of her thighs web outward like ink dropped in water, the capillary spread following the heat of her perfectly, pooling where she's most engorged. The Doctor watches her body pull at him - greedy, reflexive, structurally incapable of doing otherwise - and, as the researcher in him persists, his mind drifts briefly to the male subject.

Restrained in the isolation ward. Same compound, the only other subject thus far with the same response. Different enough that the interaction could produce something entirely novel - or catastrophic.

Would the virus recognise itself across two hosts? Would it adapt if they… bred? Accelerate, perhaps?

The particular thrill of a variable he hasn't yet been able to control. She rocks her hips against his hand and he watches the veins shift with the movement and thinks: perhaps that's the next phase. Lock the dogs in their cage and let nature take its course.

He laughs, quiet, into his own shoulder. Takes a long, steadying breath.

Her cheeks bulge between the gaps of his fingers. His others work her without pause - measured, rhythmic, drawing her closer and closer to what she wants.

Needs.

Her entire soundscape collapses down to two things: the swell of her own pulse loud in her skull, and the repulsive schlck, schlck, schlck from between her thighs.“Yes,” He leans in, leather creaking as he lowers himself to her level, mouth finding the space beside her ear, and with a menacing tenderness; the voice he reserves for findings that excite him; he continues. "I think I know exactly where to put you."

His thumb rolls repeatedly against her clit as his teeth click together in thought. "Somewhere you'll be very well utilised.” He inhales in satisfaction at the thought. “I’m sure you’ll do beautifully."

To her, gutted and graceless and drowning in chemical pleasure, the positive buzzwords feel like a hand extended in the dark. Beautiful. Utilised. Her rotting brain takes what it needs and discards the dark architecture of her fate entirely. It's enough. It's more than enough to make the first swell of ecstasy surge through her.

Her mind blanks entirely - white, static, nothing - her mouth slack and frothing behind his fingers, jaw working uselessly as her body conducts itself without her.

She clenches. Deep, involuntary, the muscle seizing around him as though her body has made a unilateral decision to never let go.

Then the Doctor slithers a third finger into her.

Her fists clench and she screams through a closed mouth. Her teeth catch the meat of her own cheek until she tastes blood. The stretch registers as too much, unmistakably too much - and her body bears down on it anyway, greedy and clenching and squeezing him in tight, rhythmic pulses that she has absolutely no authority over as another climax builds before the latter is barely over.

The line between too much and still not enough dissolves entirely. His fingers hook with fervour now - the only concession he's made to anything approaching urgency. He watches her with great attention as he does so.

The froth at the corner of her mouth, in particular. Something about it delights him. Pupils blown so wide the hue of her irises is barely visible, the whites gone dark and webbed with burst vessels, her skin pulled grey by the dark veins threading up toward her throat.

Victor Gideon is a master of anatomy. He knows exactly what he's looking at; he can name every vessel, every nerve cluster, every involuntary response firing beneath her ramshackle surface - the knowledge makes him wet his lips.

She is beautiful. Extraordinarily so. He may be a man of science, but even he can appreciate the artistry of a person stripped entirely of pretence.

He files the observation. Keeps his fingers moving. Watches her near-inhuman arousal dribble downward, adding a sheen to his rings, to the table's surface, coating her inner thighs as she sputters and trembles against him.

The second climax hits her like a current - her whole body seizing, spine arching rigid, every muscle locking at once before releasing in a cascade of violent, uncoordinated shudders. Her throat works against the leather cuff, choking herself on her own momentum, eyes rolled back and streaming.

He observes this for several moments longer than necessary.

Then he removes his fingers.

The sound she makes is unhinged - a keen that pitches upward into something that could shatter glass, her hips lurching after him, hands straining against the cuffs, every restrained limb suddenly and furiously committed to the project of having him touch her. Her jaw works - mm - m-p - MHM - feverish, mangled almost-words dissolving before they can form, her tongue refusing to cooperate even now, even in desperation, even as she jolts and strains against the restraints with everything she has left.

He shushes her, almost absently, and reaches beneath the table to find the latch. The surface drops back to horizontal with a mechanical thud. She jolts against the restraints at the movement and tries to reach for him, inconsolable, her body staging a full revolt against the absence of fullness.

He steps away from the table. Holds his hand up to the light, inspecting it with intrigue- tilting his wrist, watching the way it catches on his skin as he makes his way over to a cabinet.

"You'll have plenty to keep you occupied shortly." A needle catches the light as he uncaps it. "But you need to rest. Conserve your energy." A pause, almost thoughtful. "This is a considerable physiological transition. Your body has a lot of work ahead of it."

The needle finds her neck once more.

The never-ending heat doesn't extinguish as she's injected with the sedative he's prepared - it merely softens at the edges. Blurs. The feral, clawing insistence of her body begins to recede like a tide pulling back from shore, and in its wake comes something thick and dark; a near irresistible lull of sleep.

Her brain has gone dark. Offline. It offers nothing.

Her body has never been more awake in her life.

This is her whole existence, distilled. Not a reduction - but a revelation.

She has been whittled down to her most essential function and there is nothing left of her that mourns what's been carved away. She is heat and moisture and the mindless, devotional hunger of something that has finally, finally been shown by the Good Doctor exactly what it was made for.

.・。.・゜𓆙・.・𓆙・゜・。..・。.・゜𓆙・.・𓆙・゜..・。.・゜𓆙