I Just Like Yanderes And Monsters

extras:

҉　- main story canon compliant piece.

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

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

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

Even back then, you knew it was a joke. Not a promise. She just wanted you to cheer up. She wasn’t agreeing to be a spinster with you. 

Still, when she called you with the news, something broke within you. 

“-He’s great! He’s so great!” Her voice crackles through the phone. “I’ve never met someone so kind and gentle. And his face! He’s so handsome. It was love at first sight.” 

She excitedly tells you how they met, how he’d tapped her shoulder in the library, asking if she knew where to find a book. She’d only seen a glimpse of his badge, his name, and then the rest was history. 

The more she talks, the more you sink. You could almost imagine what she looked like as she spoke. Her cheeks would glow with a warm pink. There would be a sparkle in her eye that makes her look younger. It was so selfish of you to drown in misery when she’s so happy. She’s your closest friend. She deserves better than someone so jaded. 

You’re glad she isn’t here in person. You don’t want her to see how bitter you feel. 

You close the hole in your heart with cement and faux delight. 

“He sounds great,” you hear yourself say. 

“When can I meet him?” 

❤︎

You’ve never seen someone so tall before. 

He wasn’t dressed to stand out. The simple, black coat drapes perfectly against his lean figure. His hair is coiled into an elegant bun, showcasing his neck and black earrings. His face is sharp and edged with beauty. 

Unmei tugs him over, looking at him with bright, glimmering eyes. Love. You can see the truth stamped right on her face. 

She slides into the seat across from you. He mirrors her. The whispers and noises within the cafe hush their voices a bit. 

And yet, you can hear his voice clearly. Low and gentle. 

“Did I say it right?” Geto asks right after he says your name. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Unmei flushes. 

You spot the expensive watch hanging off his wrist as he reaches over to shake your hand. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” he says. 

“Change,” his purple eyes murmur, “the end of it all.” 

The next hour passes with small talk and introductions. Unmei is the main talker, with Geto adding something in every so often. They work well together; you quietly observe, sipping on watered-down iced coffee. They fit. Pieces of a puzzle. Made for each other. 

They are soulmates, after all. 

“-It’s why I wanted you to meet him so bad,” Unmei tells you when you finally tune in again. “You two are so similar! It’d be nice to have all of us hang out sometime.” 

“That would be nice.” Geto nods along before directing his gaze at you. “Perhaps you could bring your own soulmate, too.” 

Your throat tightens. Unmei blanches. You can sense her about to redirect, but you figure it’s best if you bite the bullet now. 

“I don’t have one.” You tell him, forcing your voice to sound light. 

It takes a second for people to understand what you’re telling them–that you’re one of those. You wait for Geto to get that shameful look of pity everyone gets the moment you tell them. You’ve spent years like this, but it never stops stinging. 

No pity. No sympathy. 

He leans forward. His eyes sharpen. 

“Really?” 

You shrug, avoiding his gaze to sip on your coffee. You can still feel his eyes prickle on your skin even after Unmei changes the conversation. 

Hours later, she texts you: sooo what’d you think????

You write exactly what she wants to hear.

He’s perfect for you:) 

❤︎

Your second interaction with Geto happens without Unmei. 

Some days, you liked to wander: turn your brain off, stroll through random shops, admiring the various knick-knacks you could never justify the price enough to purchase. Today, your feet led you into a small bookstore. 

The door alerts to your presence with a cheery jingle. The man at the front spares you a lukewarm smile as you trek into his store. The smell of paper and ink greets your nose. It’s a cozy place. Quiet, a stark contrast to the bustling city just outside. 

One of your favorite authors recently published a new book. You weren’t sure if this bookstore had it, but you told yourself it wouldn’t hurt to check. You scanned the rows and shelves, drifting around the store to see if you could spot it. 

You were so distracted, you didn’t notice him until you quite literally walked into him. 

Hands reach out to steady you. Firm but gentle. You look up as a bundle of apologies is ready to spill from your lips. They die once you look into sharp purple eyes. 

Geto smiles when his hands release your shoulders. 

“Careful there.” 

You reanimate at his voice. You step back, mindful of how close he was. 

“Sorry,” you tell him, “I–I didn’t see you.” 

“I could tell.” His grin widens, and you sheepishly glance down. 

“This is a very welcome coincidence,” he continues, “I didn’t know you liked literature as well.” 

You helplessly shrug, trying not to show your discomfort. It wasn’t that you didn’t like Geto. He seemed like a nice person, but you were not ready at all for a one-on-one interaction with your friend’s new boyfriend. 

“Yeah,” you say when the silence gets too long, “I was just here to see if I could find something in particular…” Just then, your eyes drift up. 

You catch the title just then. It’s sitting quietly on the top shelf, leering at you. If only you’d found it sooner, it seems to goad at you; you wouldn’t be stuck in the most awkward situation in the world. 

Geto catches your gaze. He glances up at the book. 

“Is that the one?” He asks. 

You nod. He reaches up and lifts it from its respective spot. You expect him to hand it over immediately, but he seems more interested in examining the cover. 

“That sounds interesting.” He comments before handing it to you. “Would you recommend it?”

“I haven’t read it yet.” You admit. “But I’m a big fan of the author.” 

He hums in acknowledgement. That’s when you notice his own stash of books he had tucked under his arm. 

“You’re a horror fan?” You ask.

“Not particularly,” he admits. “I just wanted to branch out. My friend is a huge horror fan. These were mostly his recommendations.” 

You nod. “Unmei also likes horror. The genre at least.” You blab on. “Back when we were in high school, she’d force me to watch all sorts of slasher movies, and then she’d get so scared she’d beg me to let her sleep over.” 

On those days, you’d wake up to her snoring all over your pillows. Later, when you teased her about it, she’d laugh it off with red all over her face. 

Those days were tinged with nostalgia–back when it was just you and Unmei.  

You expect Geto to appreciate the snapshot of his soulmate’s past. That’s why he’s making small talk with you in the first place, right? To get to know her better.

Something flickers across his eyes. It was barely a moment before his face changed to deep sincerity, but you caught it. 

Boredom. 

You were stumped. How could someone be so blatantly uninterested in their soulmate? Or maybe it was you he couldn’t care less about? Or perhaps you just imagined it entirely? 

You feel like you should confront him about it. 

“Sorry,” you say instead, “ I need to head out now.” 

“Of course.” He immediately steps aside to let you pass through the cramped shelves. 

You expect that to be the end of it, but you can hear his footsteps behind you. 

You almost considered abandoning your book entirely, just so you could escape the bookstore. Instead, you flash a tense smile at the cashier, who beams back. 

“Find everything okay?” He asks. 

“We did,” Geto tells him cheerily. He stands right next to you. You can almost feel the coat he wears brush against your shoulder. 

Sometimes you wish you weren’t so nonconfrontational. Maybe you would’ve fought a bit more when Geto casually plucks the book from your loose grip, placing it on top of his own stack. 

“All together, please.” He tells the cashier, before he turns to you. “I got it.” 

“No, it’s fine.” You’re finally able to speak up. It’s too late. The man is already grabbing the bag and saying his regards to the worker behind the counter. He holds the door open for you. 

You meekly thank him. 

“I can pay you back.” You immediately say. 

Geto shakes his head. “It’s fine. Think of it as a gift.” He hands your book into your twitching hands. “A token to the start of a good friendship.” 

You had this bad habit of feeling indebted to someone if they paid for you, to the point where you would bend backwards for them if they asked. 

Something tells you that being in that situation with Geto is a terrible idea. 

You still accept, thanking him as sincerely as you can. 

“That reminds me.” Geto continues, pulling out his phone. “We should exchange contacts. We do share a favorite person after all. It would be wise to keep in touch.” He tells you with a steady grin. 

Your stomach flips. You don’t want to. You genuinely don’t want to. 

But the book is heavy in your hands. 

When Geto offers to walk you to the station, you finally gather the courage to decline. You thank him repeatedly for his kindness, slipping away before he can coax you into doing anything more. 

He was nothing but polite to you 

Kind even. 

But there’s something so horribly wrong about Geto Suguru. 

—

Geto and Unmei moved fast. 

They became an official couple one week after they met. Two months later, Unmei moved into his place. 

They moved fast, as most soulmates do. After all, if two people are destined to be together forever, why wait? Why not get the hard part over with first so you can enjoy forever more? 

At least, that’s how you saw it. 

The party was subdued but extremely upscale. Geto’s apartment was something else entirely. Luxurious floors with open spaces. When you looked outside the spotless glass, you could see the glimmering lights of the city far beneath your feet. 

You felt like you could fall through the glass and crash into those lights. You’d shatter into a million pieces, twinkling like the stars above. 

“Would you like another drink?” A voice asks. 

You glance up. Nanami Kento’s eyes remain on you. You suddenly remember what you were doing. 

You look down at your cup—just water. You were driving home tonight. “I’m fine, but thank you.” 

Nanami nods, taking a swing of his own cup. The amber-colored liquid swirled around the glass. 

Out of all of Geto’s friends, you think you liked Nanami the most. He was quiet, straightforward, polite, and a complete gentleman. He was one of you, you later found out—someone with un inked wrists. When Unmei dragged him across the room to ‘keep each other company’, you thought it was another one of her schemes. 

Well, it definitely still was her scheme, but you didn’t mind it too much. Nanami was good company. He was much more preferable to Geto’s other friend. The tall one with blue eyes and white hair. The one that kept staring at you like he knew something you didn’t. 

“So how do you know Geto?” You ask.

His lips thinned. You almost smile. 

“Old classmates.” He tells you. “He, along with a couple of others, was in the grade above me.” 

He seemed exhausted even thinking about it. You wonder how wild his upper-level students were.

“What about you and Unmei?” He asks after a bit. 

You hide your smile behind your glass. 

“We were practically raised together.” You start. “Attached at the hip, ever since we were kids.” 

You two used to plan your weddings together. She wanted her kid to marry yours. Every day you were at each other’s houses. Every weekend was slumber parties and sleepovers. 

When kids used to mock you for not having a name, she was the one who defended you. She was the one who chased off bullies and wiped away your tears. 

She’s been in your life all your life. You can’t remember a time she wasn’t. 

“Hm,” Nanami comments, “you two sound close.” 

“We are,” you agree, even when you can taste the uncertainty on your tongue.

She stood a little way away. Unmei looked borderline unrecognizable from the one you knew just a few months ago. Her hair was pushed up from her face, a stark contrast to the looser hairstyles she used to prefer. Her dress was sleek and glamorous. She probably wore hundreds of dollars on her wrist. She blended right into the elite group she was currently laughing with. 

Nanami keeps talking about something. You hum along, unable to take your eyes off of her. You keep watching until you can’t anymore. 

Sometime later, you find yourself on the balcony. The murmur of the crowd has dwindled behind you. It’s cold, you didn’t bring a jacket. There are goosebumps littered across your arms, but you don’t want to go inside yet. You’re not sure if you can continue looking at Unmei as she changes into something you can’t reach anymore. 

There it was again. That bitterness. The guilt washes it down all over again. 

Footsteps. Someone takes their place right next to you. At first, you think it’s Nanami’s attempt to restart the conversation. 

Geto leans over the railing, watching the city below. 

“It’s a pretty view, isn’t it?” He asks, voice gentle and soft. “It’s a huge reason why I bought this place.” 

You flex your fingers. The air suddenly gets colder. 

“Yeah.” You give, listening to the muted sounds inside. “It’s beautiful.” 

That’s the truth. The city lights twinkled and buzzed with life. Part of you wanted to sit there and count each one. You might be stuck there for years. 

“It’s even more beautiful in the mornings,” Geto continues, “there’s a gentle fog that covers the city, and the horizon is this pale pink. I really hope you see it one day.” 

You shift, a bit uncomfortable by the confession. You’re sure he doesn’t mean anything by it. 

“You have a lovely home.” You finally say. “It’s very beautiful. I’m sure you're ecstatic to share this with Unmei.” 

A genuine smile lifts your face as you think back to the times Unmei gushed about meeting her future soulmate. She’d planned everything: the house, the car, the dog. You’d sat there quietly, listening, just happy to be in her life. 

“I bet you must have waited years to finally meet her.” You tell Geto as you admire the view. “You’re a very lucky man.” 

You expect a laugh. You expect a bashful acceptance. 

“I never wanted to meet my soulmate, initially.” 

For the first time in the conversation, you truly look at Geto. He’s staring right back. His purple eyes are darker in the dim lighting. They’re almost a muddy brown. 

“When I was younger, I had a grim opinion of soulmates.” His jaw tenses. You catch the movement. “The idea of having someone I was tied to by fate used to sicken me. It felt like control. It felt like something cosmic wrote out my future, and I was entirely helpless to it.” 

You can’t pull your eyes away. Whatever you were hearing, no matter how jarring, felt honest. You were drawn to it–a bee to a flower.

“I think now, I’ve mostly changed my mind.” He shrugs. “The bond isn’t truly control. Rather, it’s a path, guiding us to something far more desirable.” 

You blink. What could you say to that? 

Thankfully, Geto doesn’t let you fluster for long. He steps ever so slightly closer. It’s already too close, but you can’t move. You’re stuck in your spot. Paralyzed. 

“And, if anything.” He leans down, voice suddenly hushed. “I’d consider you the lucky one.” 

“Me?” 

He smiles. Amusement laces his lips. Long fingers reach for your arm. He slowly turns your hand, showing your blank, un-inked wrist. 

“Yes,” he tells you, “this is truly lucky.” 

You see it then. It flashes right across his purple eyes. 

Jealousy. 

It’s so hateful, it nearly makes you panic. You stumble back, out of his hold. The meeker part of you urges you to run. As far as you can. Run before–

“Are you alright?” 

Concerned sincerity etches across Geto’s face as he reaches out to stabilize you. Hands press on your shoulders before they slip away. 

You avert your gaze. 

“I’m fine.” It’s too sharp. You force yourself to soften your tone. “I guess it’s a little chilly out.” 

Geto barely wastes a moment. He slips off his jacket and settles it onto your shoulders before you can protest. His cologne clings to the leather. The smell of sandalwood and cinnamon. 

“Keep it.” He stops you when you try to take it off. “Stay out here and enjoy the view a bit more. It’s truly breathtaking.” 

You watch as he slips back inside, playing the perfect host to his guests. The air is still cold, but you can finally breathe again. 

Later that night, Suguru gets on one knee and proposes. 

Unmei says yes. 

❤︎

There’s a way to reject the soul bond. You’ve seen it happen exactly once in your life. 

You were fourteen, watching from the stairs as your mom comforted your next-door neighbor. She was one of the unlucky ones. Her soul bond was filled with nothing but rage and possession. You could see the evidence of it on the bruises on her soft skin. The swelling black eye. 

She kept mumbling something of how sick she was to be tied to him. How she’d rather have no soulmate than one so vile. Your mother kept hushing her, insisting on calling the police, letting her stay the night. 

She’s not listening. It’s like she’s in a trance as she rises on two shaky feet, drifting towards the kitchen. You find yourself following. 

She pulls out a knife, and your mother screams when she digs into the ink on her own wrist. 

She stopped bleeding before the ambulance arrived. There’s a gigantic smile on her face the entire time she’s talking to the paramedics. 

You’ve never seen someone look so free before. 

❤︎

Planning a wedding takes time and money. It’s a good thing that Geto is swimming in the latter. 

The restaurant is upscale and practically swathed in elites. You feel very much out of place with your dress that probably wasn’t even worth the cheapest thing on the menu. Geto assured you plenty of times that this was his treat. Ever since the proposal, you’d been swamped in wedding preparations. This dinner was supposed to be a thank you. 

Tonight is a celebration of two people. 

You, the maid of honor. 

And Gojo, the best man. 

The two of you sat across from the engaged couple. Unmei was beaming the entire night. The ring was glistening on her finger. You’ve seen it all over her social media, not to mention the hours she spent gushing about how perfect the ring and the proposal was. 

But you remembered she hated cluster rings. She used to call them tacky. And she’s told you her perfect proposal over and over again. She’s always wanted it somewhere outdoors, where they’re alone and surrounded by nature. 

The complete opposite of how Suguru did it. 

“I can barely sleep.” Unmei gushes to you while the two men continue their own conversation. “The wedding is still two months away, but I can barely sleep.” 

You give her a comforting smile, taking another sip of your water. Dinner was already eaten, but you hadn’t tasted a single thing. It felt like cement sludge down your throat. 

“I bet that’s normal,” you say, “It’s your day. You should be excited.” 

“Most nights I just dream about flower arrangements.” She frowns before she sits up again. “Shit, the flowers. Please tell me you—“

“Don’t worry, I already booked the florist you were talking to,” you immediately coddle. “Everything is going to be perfect.” 

She visibly relaxes, leaning back in her seat. “Only because you’re here.” She tells you. “I only got this far ‘cuz of you, y'know that?” 

You smile. Her face brightens. 

“Oh!” She exclaims. “Are you planning on bringing anyone? Someone special?”

The two men gradually quieted. You arch your brow. 

“Probably not,” you say, “besides I’ll have a lot of stuff to do on the day of. I won’t have time for a date.” 

“What about bringing Nanami?” She pipes up. “I’m sure he can entertain himself while you’re busy.” 

Someone’s gaze stings your skin. You ignore it. 

“Why would I bring him?” 

She scoffs. 

“Don’t act like that.” She chides. “I saw how into you he was at the party. Please tell me you got his number.” 

You did. And you two text every now and then. Non-soulmates are rare, so even if you don’t end up in a relationship, it’s nice to keep in touch. 

“Nanami?” Geto echoes, finally making it known that he was eavesdropping. 

Unmei turns to him with a smile. “I introduced them a while ago. Aren’t they just perfect for each other?" 

‘Is she saying that just because neither of us has soulmates?’ You try not to feel so harshly about it. 

Geto smiles, but it lacks any warmth. 

Gojo turns to you. 

“I didn’t know you met Nanami?” He sports a wide grin. Almost like a sneer. 

You shrug. “We talked for a bit sometime back.” 

“I feel bad for you. I know I’m not supposed to talk crap about my juniors, but that guy is so boring.” He rolled his eyes. “He was even worse in high school, if you can believe that.” 

“I didn’t think he was all that bad.” You counter. 

“Ah, I get it.” Gojo nods. “You’re into the quiet, studious type of guy.” 

You shift in your seat. “It’s nothing that dramatic.” You respond. “He was just really nice.” 

“Hm.” Gojo takes a swing at his glass. “I guess I see wedding bells in your future, then.” 

“Satoru.” 

Geto’s voice is clipped. His eyes have shadows. Gojo puts his hands up in an ‘I surrender’ motion. There’s a lazy smile on his mouth. The atmosphere is so strained that even Unmei’s smile weakens. You take another sip of your water. You really wish you’d ordered something stronger. You had no idea tonight would be this tense. 

Unmei quickly turns the conversation to something else. She brings up more wedding plans. The rest of the night is spent ignoring the elephant in the room. 

Sometime after that, you and Gojo end up outside the restaurant, alone. Unmei and Geto are still sorting out the bill. You spot them lingering inside. Unmei is talking animatedly to a waitress. Geto is scrolling on his phone. 

You don’t have much in common with Gojo, and you’re happy to keep the silence as the two of you wait. He, however, doesn’t seem to share your thoughts. 

He leans over as you watch the engaged couple. 

“So, how long do you think they’ll last?” 

You glare up at him. He grins. 

“That’s not funny.” You immediately rebuff. “Why would you say that?” 

Satoru shrugs. 

“C’mon, you can’t say you’re the tiniest bit doubtful they’ll stay together, right?” 

You shake your head.

“They’re soulmates,” you respond. Their companionship was written in the stars from the start. They are a certainty. “It’s tradition.”

“Soulmates don’t always stay together,” Satoru says, “and Suguru isn’t one for tradition.” 

You say nothing. Gojo only takes it as a sign to pester you further. 

“Wanna make a bet with me?” 

You narrow your eyes at him. 

“I’ll bet all the money I have that they’ll break up right before the wedding.” He thinks for a moment. “Maybe on the day of: Suguru loves being dramatic.” 

Your lips curl into a sneer. 

“I thought you were supposed to be Geto’s friend?” 

What kind of person bets their friend’s relationship will fail? 

“I am his friend,” Gojo argues. “I’m only saying this ‘cuz I know him so well. No offense to your bestie, but she’s not his type.” 

“No.” He tilts his head, studying you. “He prefers someone a bit more…docile.” 

You shift, trying to hide your discomfort underneath his gaze. 

“They’re coming out.” You watch as the couple shifts closer. “Please don’t tell them you’re betting they’ll break up.” 

Gojo laughs. 

“Aye, captain.” 

❤︎

Unmei stumbles into your apartment at 1 am. 

You’d forgotten you’d given her a spare key. When you woke up to muffled footsteps and murmurs, you thought someone was robbing you. The influx of emotions you felt as you rushed out with a baseball bat, only to discover your friend draped across your couch. 

Your very drunk friend draped across your couch. 

“Unmei?” You shake her shoulder. 

She barely moves. You do it again. She finally groans. 

“Hi.” She rasps out. Her throat is groggy with exhaustion and alcohol. 

“How…” You try to find the proper words. “How did you get here? Did you drive?” 

“Uber.” She murmurs. “Sorry…I…sorry. Didn’t–didn’t wanna go back. Didn’t wanna see him.” 

Her words are stilted, but you think you’re starting to get the picture. 

“Did you and Suguru get into a fight?” You ask gently. 

She laughs. It sounds bitter. 

“You have to talk, to fight.” She tells you, and you want to press her on that, but she’s talking again. 

“Suguru’s sad you don’t like him.” 

“What?” You lean closer so you can hear her properly. 

“Suguru–” She snuggles deeper into your couch”--he’s sad you don’t like him. Why do you not like him?” 

“I like him.” You try to smile. “Of course, I like him. Why wouldn’t I?” 

Her eyes are open. The way she stares at you makes your defenses weaken. 

“I don’t know, Mei.” You eventually respond. “He’s always rubbed me the wrong way. I…I just find him a little weird.” 

You want to tell her about the strange quips Geto’s made. The stuff Gojo said at the restaurant still eats at you. You want to tell her all of those things. 

Unmei doesn’t let you. 

She sits up so fast, you’re almost worried for her. You’re about to tell her to be more careful, but then you notice the look in her eyes. 

Spiteful. 

It’s directed solely at you. 

“Are you fucking joking right now?” She spits out. “My soulmate is going out of his way to be nice to you, but you’re calling him weird?” 

You have to back up as she stumbles to her feet. Her words are slurred and hard to decipher, but the intent is as clear as day. 

“He doesn’t even like you.” She rants. “Why would he? For fuck’s sake you don’t even have a soulmate, and now you’re calling mine weird? You’re jealous. You’ve always been jealous of me, and I’m so sick of doing charity work.” 

You blink. It feels like your heart’s been torn in two. 

“Unmei…?” It’s the only thing you can even think to say to someone who you thought loved you. Tears well in your eyes. 

Unmei knows how sensitive you are about soulmates. She always knew. As bad as your fights got in the past, it’s the one line she hadn’t crossed. 

Until now. 

She realizes what she said. Unmei slumps almost immediately, fully breaking down. 

“I’m sorry.” She blubbers. “I–I’m so sorry, I just.” 

You push aside your feelings as you always have to accommodate hers. She buries her face in her hands. Her shoulders shake. When you wrap your arms around her shoulders, she easily leans into your warmth. 

“I shouldn’t have said that.” She sobs. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” It’s not. “You’re having a bad day. Just sleep it off, okay? We can talk in the morning.” 

She says nothing as you leave her on the couch. Minutes later, you return with a blanket, gently settling it over her still body. 

“I saw him with another girl today.” 

You freeze. Unmei stares blankly at the wall. 

“He barely talks when we’re alone. He never talks. I don’t even know why I followed him, but I saw them together. They got into his car.” Her voice cracks. There’s a muted voice in the back of your head to comfort her. 

You don’t move. 

“I don’t know what they did. I…I just don’t know. That’s part of his job, right? Sometimes he takes his clients out to dinners and stuff.” 

She looks up at you. “And–and everything’s so different when we’re alone. He’s so much warmer with you. Whenever we plan something, he’s always asking if you want to come along too. I just don’t get it.” 

The apartment is quiet. Distinctly, you can hear a clock faintly ticking somewhere. 

“Do you think he’s cheating?” You ask. 

“Do you think he would?” Unmei asks right back. 

You think of being honest. You think about telling her you genuinely don’t know. Then, you remember the anger in her voice just minutes prior. The hurt is still fresh on your mind. It’s instinct to cower and placate after you’ve been burned so harshly. 

Just like always, you tell her exactly what she wants to hear. 

“Of course, he’s nice to me.” You hear yourself say. “He probably feels bad for me.” Because you have no soulmate.

“Unmei, you don’t see the way he looks at you.” Does he ever look at her? 

“He can’t stop talking about you.” You can’t remember a single conversation you and Geto had about her. 

“He loves you. I’m sure of it.” Are you? 

A shy smile creeps up on her face. You can feel yourself shatter. 

“Really?” She asks. 

You settle beside her, squeezing her fingers. 

“Trust me.” Words feel like sand on your tongue. “You are going to make each other so happy.” 

She’s smiling. You think you’re smiling too, but you’re not sure of anything anymore. 

She closes her eyes again. You sit there for a few minutes. When you think she’s asleep, you get up to leave, but her voice stops you. 

“I thought she was you.” 

“You what?” You ask. 

She nuzzles the blanket closer to her face. 

“The girl. I thought she was you, but she wasn’t. She looked like you. It was the weirdest thing.” 

You think she’s about to say more. She doesn’t. 

The next day, Unmei acts as if nothing had happened. She’s laughing and talking during breakfast. You still think about what she said, hours after she left. 

❤︎

The week before the wedding, you finally decide you no longer want to be friends with Unmei. 

You don’t hate her, you could never hate her, but it’s clear you might’ve valued your friendship differently than she did. 

You don’t think you want to boycott the wedding entirely. It’d taken months to plan. The money was already spent. You don’t want to ruin her big day. 

But you don’t think you’ll be taking her calls as frequently. You don’t think you’ll drop everything for her anymore. 

For now, you just want a bit of distance. 

Now that you’ve decided to no longer prioritize her, your life is slowly becoming easier. Instead of doing everything yourself, you’re delegating tasks to the other bridesmaids. You actually make time for yourself instead of fizzing with nerves by the phone, wondering when she’ll call you to her side. 

You can finally breathe again. 

But old habits die hard.  

I need you. Please come.

Unmei texting you in the middle of the night wasn’t a huge issue. But she never sends you this type of message. Formal, short, panicked. 

You stare at the words, reading them over and over again. You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this again. 

But what if she needed you? 

You’ve been to Suguru’s apartment a few times after the party. It was mostly to pick stuff up or help Unmei. There’s usually a lively atmosphere with warm lights. 

Tonight, as you tap on the door, you can’t help but notice how cold the atmosphere feels. 

He doesn’t leave you waiting. Geto opens the door with a pleasant smile on his face. His grin widens when he locks eyes with you. 

“Come in.” Geto pulls the door back. 

You hesitate, but eventually you step in. Not much has changed since your last visit. There are fresh flowers in a vase. Something’s cooking in the kitchen. Still, the apartment feels emptier, somehow. 

“I wasn’t expecting you.” Geto smiles. “This is a pleasant surprise.” 

You give an awkward smile, shifting your weight. 

“I’m sorry, I won’t be here for long,” you tell him before shifting your gaze to the bedroom, “Is she in there?” 

Geto tilts his head. 

“Are you looking for Unmei?” He slowly asks. 

When you nod, he shakes his head. 

“She headed out for her bachelorette party hours ago.” 

For a moment, you thought you misheard him. 

“Her what?” 

“Her bachelorette party. I’m so sorry, I assumed you were with her. It’s why I was surprised you showed up.” He admits sheepishly. 

“Bachelorette party.” You repeat. 

She told you she didn’t want a bachelorette party. She called it a cliché. And now, when you decide to put your feelings aside and reach out, you find out she left you in the fucking dust as she enjoys her night. 

You were so fucking done with her. 

“Right.” Your throat feels tight. “Ok, then…I should go.” 

A firm hand on your shoulder stops you from walking out the door. Geto stares at you with an empathic frown on his face. 

“You shouldn’t leave like this.” He urges. 

You try to pull away. His grip barely budges. 

“Geto, it’s fine–” 

“You should eat something at least. It’d be rude to send you away after you’ve been such a good friend to my fiancé.” 

That stung even though you know he didn’t mean it like that. 

“Okay.” You relent. “Just for a bit.” 

He smiles. 

“Oh, and call me Suguru from now on.” He suggests. “I think we’re close enough to drop the formalities, right?” 

Suguru manages to get you to sit at the dining table. It was already set for two. A little while later, he comes back with two plates and a bottle of wine. 

The food smelled delicious, but it tasted like ash in your mouth. You couldn’t find it within yourself to enjoy it. Betrayal made everything taste like nothing. 

You don’t consider yourself a drinker, but Geto manages to refill your glass twice throughout the night. 

Eventually, Suguru acknowledges the elephant in the room. 

“Did you two fight?” 

That actually made you laugh. It’s harsh and bitter. You gulp down the last of your wine. 

“No,” you say, “I just didn’t fall to her feet this one time.”

That’s all you were for her. Not a friend. Not a companion. You were just some pet she could keep at her side. Bark when she said bark. Sit when she said sit. Roll over when she said. She was treating you like a dog who forgot a trick or two. You feel so pathetic. 

You’re so upset, you have to stand up. Suguru only watches you pace back and forth. 

“I’ve put up with her bullshit for months, y’know?” You don’t think you’re talking to him at all. You’re just ranting. “Whatever she wanted, I got her. I’ve spent hundreds of hours planning her perfect day with her. And yet, the one time I give an opinion, she immediately blows up at me and–and says all this awful shit, and I have to forgive her.” 

Suguru rises with you, blocking your path. You look up at him. He’s blurry from all the tears in your eyes. 

“She’s stressed with the wedding,” he tries to console. “I’m sure she isn’t trying to do any harm.”

You shake your head. Somehow, you find yourself sitting on the sofa. Suguru’s joined you. You can still taste the wine on your tongue. You’re drunk. You’re erratic. You’ve stopped giving a fuck. 

“What about the stress she’s putting me under?” You argue back. “I tried to be a good friend to her, and she constantly treats me like garbage. And it’s all because I don’t have a soulmate? When has that ever mattered for her?” 

Unmei had always protected you from anyone who mocked you for being incomplete. Other. She was your shield. 

You can still remember her voice ringing through your head. The hatred. You’ve always been jealous of me, and I’m so sick of doing charity work. 

You bury your face in your hands. 

“All I ever wanted to do was be there for her.” You sob into your fingers. “Why is she shutting me out like this?” 

You wanted to go back to how things were months ago. Back when you had someone so close, it felt like having a sister. Back before–

Suguru gathers your limp form in his arms. The scent of sandalwood and cinnamon overwhelms your senses. 

“You poor thing,” he coos, and you melt into his calming words because you’ve never felt more alone in your life. “It must have been so very hard on you.” 

You don’t know how long you sit there, snuggled into his chest, crying your heart out. It feels like minutes pass before your tears stop flowing, and your breathing slows down. 

He pulls you away from his chest. You follow. You’re still heartbroken, but now you’re embarrassed for crying on your best friend’s fiancé’s shoulder. You look up, opening your mouth to apologize. 

Suguru’s lips meet yours. 

It’s barely a brush. You feel his fingers caress your cheek before you pull back. 

“What are you–” your voice dies in your throat “What–” 

“You want to feel better, don’t you?” He asks, voice terrifyingly gentle. “I can help with that.” 

Your mouth opens and closes like a fish. When he tries to touch you again, you jump up. 

“I didn’t…I never…” Your mind is spinning. You don’t know what to say. 

“She’s your soulmate.” It’s the only thing you can think to say. “How–how could you think of doing that to your…”

Suguru tilts his head. 

“We both know how stubborn she can get.” He speaks slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. “Look at how much you do for her. You are constantly bending over backwards. Aren’t you tired of doing all this charity work? Don’t you want someone else to take care of you for a change?” 

Something clicks in your mind. 

Charity Work. Unmei’s words, but that didn’t sound like her at all. 

It sounded more like something Geto Suguru would say. 

“It’s you.” Something cold splashes across your spine. “You’ve been putting a wedge between Unmei and me for months.” 

He’s tried separating you from her as soon as he walked into Unmei’s life. All this time, he was speaking cruelties into her ear about you, manipulating her, turning her against you. 

And Unmei fell for it because she thought her soulmate could never hurt her. 

Suguru stands up. His smile is gone. You’ve never seen him like this before. You’ve seen him upset, bored, amused. This is different. 

Every emotion on his face is gone. It’s like he’s stone. 

He calls your name. It’s a warning. You don’t heed it. 

“No, no,” you hiss out, “I don’t know what sick game you’re playing, but I’d never break her heart like this, no matter how angry I am at her. I’m not like you.” 

You start for the door. You needed to find Unmei. Fuck the petty fight. Fuck everything. You needed to find her and explain everything to her so that things could return to normal. 

You never make it to the door. 

There’s a harsh grip on your wrist. Before you can even struggle, you’re flung back against the couch. You collapse on top of the stiff pillows. 

Suguru’s quick to cage you in. Within moments, he’s trapped you underneath him. A hand reaches up to trap both of your wrists. His body is right in between your legs, pressing himself right up to you. 

You kick. You scream. A hand clamps down on your mouth. 

Suguru waits patiently as your rebellion tapers out. You lie underneath him, panting and utterly defeated. 

A tear trickles down your cheek. He wipes it away, adoration at his fingertips. It makes you sick. 

“I really wanted our first time to be romantic.” He sighs, genuinely sounding disappointed. “I spent the entire day planning our little date. And then you had to get all hysterical.” He clicks his tongue. 

“I think you’re spending a bit too much time with my fiancé, Dear.” 

You flinch at his words. He grins. 

“At the same time, I can’t say I’m not happy with how the night ended.” He releases your mouth. You prepare to yell again. “You can scream if you want to, dear. I’m sure you’d like the whole floor coming by to watch me fuck you. I don’t mind an audience.” 

Horror rushes down your body. 

“What do you mean?” Suguru says nothing, leaning back to release his tie. “Geto-Suguru,” you beg. “You can’t really mean that. You can’t do this. What about Unmei? What about your soulmate?” 

“I thought I told you this already.” He wraps the tie securely around your wrist before considering you. 

“Soulmates are paths, guiding us to our true destination.” 

He presses his forehead to yours. You lay there, utterly helpless, staring into his purple eyes. 

“Through her, I was able to find my true other half.” He confesses. “Someone that perfectly fits me.” 

If he were another man, if he had another name, you might have fallen in love right there. 

But this man has your friend’s name written on his wrist, and it makes you want to vanish into the Earth. 

He rises back up with a grin. 

“What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart.” 

You’re shaking your head as he reaches down for your shirt. It’s pulled off of you within moments, revealing your bare flesh. Your skin trembles against his fingers as he explores the skin on your stomach, pushing his hand up until it reaches the bottom of your bra. 

Your tits are exposed to the cold air as he grabs them. Curious. Exploring. Nausea builds in your stomach. 

“You should relax, love.” He urges as his hand travels down. “You could make yourself sick from all that crying.” 

He acts as if he cares for you, even when you know he couldn’t care less. You can feel his heat pressing up against your thigh. It’s a blunt foreshadowing of his true desires. 

The silk against your wrists tightens every time you move. The wine isn’t helping either. You feel sluggish, almost feverish. You lie there, completely limp, watching as he picks at your pants. They don’t have much of a fight before he’s dragging them off your body completely, leaving you with just your cotton panties. 

The cold settles on your bare thighs. A large hand settles on your upper leg. He squeezes. You jolt. 

Suguru’s kissing you again. It’s harsher than the first time. More teeth, like he intends to swallow you whole. He squeezes your chin, keeping you in place so he can continue to devour you. For a moment, you debate biting his tongue off, before you quickly bat it away. The thought of him getting violent, even worse, terrifies you. 

But how could he get worse? 

He pulls away with a satisfied sigh. The hand on your thigh lifts to your clothed slit. You don’t realize you’re wet until his fingers slip underneath your panties. 

There’s a slight hitch in his breathing. 

“Is this for me?” You can practically taste the victory in his voice. “How sweet.” 

A few moments later, your panties are torn away, too. Your legs are tangled with the thin cloth, leaving you utterly defenseless as he spreads your thighs apart. 

“No,” you’re telling him. “Don’t–No, no–” 

He hushes you with a quiet whisper, and then his mouth is on your pussy. 

Your thighs immediately fall onto his shoulders as he ate you out. There was a rhythm to it. His tongue lapped at your slit before curling at your clit. Immediately, you reacted. Your thighs flexed, threatening to clamp over his head. Something hot coiled in your belly as he sucked on your pussy. 

Your protests eventually gave way to sharp gasps and whines as he continued to tongue-fuck you. You think you’re still crying, but its interrupted by another toe-curling mewl. You don’t have the ability to hold them in. They force themselves past your lips and into the frigid air. You could feel Suguru smile against your clit. You’re so wet you’re probably dripping all over the couch, but you think Suguru couldn’t care less. 

He lifts you up by the hips. You let out a yelp as he crams his tongue into your hole, drinking the entirety of you. 

“That’s it.” His voice is muffled by your pussy.  It’s slurred. Drunk. “Lemme’ hear you.” 

You obey, helpless to do anything else. Your mind is swirling with self-hatred as you feel yourself approaching the edge. You can’t do anything to stop it. Your hips move by themselves. Your pussy clenches. 

Your orgasm was a tiny hitch before you completely came apart. Suguru keeps you there, latched onto your clit like a man starved, until you finally come down from your high. 

You lay there, panting, completely spent. Suguru rises from his spot in between your legs. He wipes at his face, never taking his eyes off of you. 

The kiss he gives you is terrifyingly soft. Almost sweet. You can taste yourself on his tongue. He gently holds your chin like you’re the most delicate thing in the world. 

If you closed your eyes, you could pretend it’s anyone else. Not Suguru. Not your friend’s fiancé. Not her soulmate. 

But Suguru doesn’t care about you enough to let you have that fantasy. 

“Look at me.” 

His voice is too soft to be demanding, but the order is clear from his tone. 

Slowly, your eyes drift back open. 

Suguru stands over you as if this were his rightful place. You can see his cock, fully unfurled from his pants. The mushroom tip has a bead of glistening, white pre-cum as he slowly aligns it to your battered pussy. 

You think the worst part is his eyes. 

Soft. Gentle. He stares at you the way no one else has. 

Love. 

You want to cry again, but you think you’ve run out of tears. 

His nonchalant demeanor is cracked. His pupils are flared with lust. He grunts when he slides his swollen tip across your folds. Pussy juice is smeared all over his cock as he does it again and again. 

“I’ve waited so long for this.” He sighs, and you don’t think he’s talking to you. “No one is taking this away from me.” 

Not even you. 

You should be grateful he cares enough to be gentle. His cock is huge, big enough to split you at the seams if he wanted to. You still he lowers himself into your hole. Immediately, your walls flex, squeezing his cock. 

Suguru growls and bits his lip. It’s clear whatever control he has left, he’s only holding it by a hair. 

It’s almost a relief when he fully sheathes himself inside you. He nearly collapses, face ducking into the crook of your neck. Your toes curl when he hits a spongy spot inside of you that nearly makes you see stars. 

“Fuck.” He hisses, voice sharp. “That’s it. That’s it. Just take it.” 

It’s an unsteady pace. Brutal, almost mind-breaking as he continues to fuck himself into you. You can hear his ragged breathing in your ear as he drives himself deeper and deeper into your cunt. You can barely keep up with the motions. Your thighs shake with the momentum. 

You think you’re saying something, and then your mind is wiped clean with another thrust. It’s an endless cycle of torturous pleasure. 

“Suguru–I–I can’t.” You’re blabbering. “I can’t, I just can’t–” 

“You can.” He urges back, fingers reaching down to rub your clit. You arch, back lifting up from the pillows. “I know you can, darling. Look at that. Look at you. Look at how well you take me.” 

“This was how it was always meant to be.” You can’t decipher the tone of his words. Your mind is too preoccupied with the feeling of your pussy wrapped around his cock. “You were practically made for me.” A broken wail passes out from your lips. He laughs. 

At this point, you think he’s too far gone to even know what he’s saying. 

“I love you so much, darling.” He leans back into your neck, biting down on the flesh. “No one can take you away from me. You are all for me.” 

At least, you hope that’s the case. You can’t bear to think his words have a semblance of intent. 

Your mind goes white as you cum on his cock. Your eyes roll back, your back arches up like a bitch in heat as you fall off the edge. Your pussy milks him, clamping down hard as you ride your high. 

There’s a moan in your ear before something hot pumps into your pussy, painting your insides with white. There’s so much, even with his dick still plugging your cunt, some still manages to leak out, dripping down your ass. 

He takes a shaky breath, and then he’s kissing you again. That same delicate touch he loves to take after he breaks you. You can taste the festering love through his lips and tongue. You let him, too exhausted to fight back. 

You think he’s saying something. You can’t hear him over the throbbing in your head. The tone he uses is soft as lips press against your temple. 

And then, his cock slips out of your ragged cunt before slamming back in all over again. 

❤︎

Mei<3 Missed Call(23)

‘Where are you’ 

‘Where are you’ 

‘Please dont do this to me’ 

‘I’m begging you’ 

‘I love you so much’

‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done’ 

‘Plase don’t do this to me’

‘He’s my soulmate, why would you take him from me’ 

‘Please don’t do this to me’

…

‘You’re just a selfish slut. Take him then. See if I care.’ 

Ever since you woke up, all you could do was stare at Unmei’s texts. You’ve read them over and over. 

The words never change. Each line cuts you deeper than before.

You’re no longer on the sofa. Sometime last night, Suguru must have moved you. You sit up on a luxurious king-sized bed with silk sheets. Your body is aching and sore. There are marks all over your body. 

The man who made them sleeps peacefully right next to you. 

You’re still naked. It hurts to move. All what you can do is read Unmei’s texts over and over as you wipe away the sharp tears trickling down your cheek. 

The curtains of Suguru’s bedroom are open. It’s early morning. The beginnings of a sunrise creep over the horizon. Buildings are obscured by a light fog, and you can barely make out the outline of the city. The sky is illuminated with pinks and light oranges. It’s the prettiest sight you’ve ever seen. 

You don’t notice he’s awake until Suguru’s muscled chest presses against your back. You flinch as his head settles into the crook of your neck. He inhales your scent. 

“I told you, didn’t I?” He murmurs against your skin. “It’s a beautiful view. You’ll get to see this every day, from now on.” 

You don’t bother batting him away. You just stare down at your phone. There’s no new message from Unmei. She blocked you hours ago. 

Fingers pluck your phone from your loose grip. Suguru adjusts himself, wrapping an arm around your waist as he sifts through her panicked messages. He clicks his tongue. 

“Never expected anything more from her.” He sighs before he tosses the phone in the mess of blankets. He kisses your neck. “She’ll probably come by today. Hopefully, she’ll move out without much of an issue.” He remarks casually. Dully. Complete disinterest. 

Why? You want to ask him. Why you? Why would he–why would anyone–hate you enough to do this? 

But then, you remember the look of love he gave you as he rammed his cock deeper. You don’t know how you’d be able to hold yourself together if you saw that again. 

For the sake of your sanity, you ask: 

“What did you tell her?” 

Suguru’s fingers curl around your stomach. You can hear the slightest hint of irritation in his breath. 

“Nothing.” He eventually confesses. You want to yell at him, call him a liar. You don’t get the chance. 

“She must have felt the bond sever.” 

You notice it, just then. 

The wrappings on his wrist. 

Your heart is pounding in your chest as you grab at it. Suguru lets you unravel his work, silently watching each layer of gauze drop away. 

It’s ugly. The skin is raised and irritated. It will probably leave behind a scar. 

Not a single trace of Unmei’s name is left on Suguru’s skin. 

You want to scream, but your voice is frozen in your throat. 

There’s another kiss on your cheek. Suguru grins. 

“See?” He tells you adoringly, lovingly. 

He’s danced with you. Drunk with you, faced Lyonel for you, been awkward around you and now he’s here in all his fleshy abundance, redefining the shape of your face with his. If this is not the fucking moment when he finally kisses you, you are ready to swear men off forever. Given the scornful library of fiascos you probably should, but then oh—

He smells like sweet, needy sex and his mouth tastes of it, and his hands feel like it too when you can clearly tell he’s trying to invent a polite way to grope your ass. You lose the plot of it faster than you should. Maybe it’s the drinking, or the relief of finally finding somewhere to go after spending so long gathering speed. But he transforms in your hands: from Duncan, the friend who’s been made untouchable by one act of cowardice and a ton of compelling arguments to be, to this. A man who has spent the whole evening orbiting you, hot, sweet and eager, and then insisted on walking you home so hard you ended up wrapped round him like a snake and eating his face off in the street.

It does not feel like you talking anymore when you say, “Take me home.”

Take me to your bed, says the part of you that never got to say it to dainty men of culture, and Dunk reacts in the clean, immediate way you always knew they never would. Like wanting you has mass to it, and he happens to possess the strength to carry it.

He keeps kissing you all the way to his door. The key takes him two tries and a muttered curse. While he fumbles in his pocket, he presses you to the wood just so he does not have to set you down, and your legs tighten on his waist because there is no sensible reason not to. The door gives. For a second your back is free of pressure. Then there is pressure again, because Dunk only gets as far as the tiny hall before flattening you again, this time to plaster.

Something drops off him there. He forgets he is meant to be boyish and shy. His hands go under your dress and roll it right up to your waist with a haste that makes you gasp into his mouth. He answers by kissing you harder.

His hallway is narrow enough that you could straighten your legs and touch the opposite wall with your feet. It smells of what boys consider homely: washing powder, old building and man. His hands are enormous. They span more of you than seems fair. One keeps you pinned high and close by the backside of your thigh, the other slides over your knickers and stays there, stunned for a moment. He makes a noise then, breathy and a touch too high to come from someone this broad, and you feel it more than hear it.

You are not thinking about the morning. You are not thinking about friendship or the consequences it’s going to suffer if he takes those knickers off you. For one second you are thinking about your shoe and where it went in all of this, but the rest has gone watery at the edges.

Meanwhile, Dunk is caught between being polite and sliding the gusset aside, or being brutal and ripping the lace clean off. Any would allow him to join the good citizens of Ireland who’ve already seen your fanny. He goes over the things he knows girls like: they like their fancy uncomfortable lingerie. They like it when he shows the strength off but remains gentle. And most importantly: they like when he goes down on them. Which is brilliant, because he likes eating them out and Dunk appreciates when elements in the universe compliment each other.

All fevered with possibilities, he mutters, “Up, up,” and hikes you higher with both hands under your butt until your back skims up the wall. You’re so pliant he could throw you, so you just let him, while he slips down and out from between your kisses. He takes your thighs, sets them over his shoulders, and lands face to face with his beloved area. There, he opts for the latter: hooks a finger over the small patch of cloth that only pretends it’s covering anything and goes back to what seems to have been working, which is kissing.

Gone, is an understatement. He’s lost. He’s so missing the missing persons poster has stopped depicting him accurately and always gets one feature off. Under his mouth, your pussy feels less like a part of a body than the whole point of one. Hot, swollen, slick already and getting slicker by seconds, and there is nothing more joyful in life than thinking this is for him. It gives way and resists in turns. His tongue keeps finding one texture, then another: the inside of the lips, soft and smooth, the wet seam between them where you taste wildest, and then the firmer knot of nerves that makes your thighs lock him in the world’s filthiest and best sensory deprivation chamber. Robbed of sight and hearing, Duncan focuses on what’s before him—licks broad at first, seals his mouth on you, then narrows and gathers every ounce of steadfastness to not smile when your hips twitch and try to climb his face.

With the quiet around him, he gets greedier. Hums into you without thinking and feels the vibration come back through your cunt. One hand has wedged itself under the lace pulled at your hip, the other is fully devoted to kneading your ass cheek and proving he can fit all of it into a palm. He squeezes and rubs and stretches it until it spills over his shoulder and turns his skin molten over the shirt. Your weight feels lovely on him. It grounds him into the blessed nothingness. There are moments where he nearly forgets who exactly is attached to the thing in his mouth. It is just him and the pussy, and the increasingly urgent sense that the things have, for once, arranged themselves properly.

Then your fingers twist into his hair, and you let out a shuddering breath that seems to have been held this entire time. “Dunk!” you choke, and the room comes back around him. He returns to his body, and once more curses Raymun for making him wear the ‘good jeans’. They’ve already been tight in the crotch without the currently raging boner, and he can’t even press it into you.

The more awareness he regains, the worse everything starts to look. He licks his lips and it helps little to nothing, only gets more of you onto his tongue. Duncan looks up, all solemn, and mumbles, “Sorry.” You stare down, flushed and nearly naked, being so goddamn pretty in all of this he almost forgets what he’s apologising for. Then, he remembers. “I didn’t even ask you.”

You start laughing. The unpretty, full cackle appears, active and helpless, and Dunk’s heart grows so large at the sound it nearly bursts his chest because it is the very same cackle he heard two years ago in a pub. Then, he notices there are tears in your eyes. “Put me down so I can kiss you,” you say.

He has no intention of letting you touch the floor this evening. All things considered, this is going great because you have not, and in Dunk’s superstitious mind the connection forms immediately. From this point forward the floor of his apartment is lava to girls, and he is carrying all of them from the doorstep straight to bed. Then, he corrects himself, because the only girl he wants here is you. Then, he calculates, briefly, how achievable that is long-term and decides the wiser course might be to lock this in by moving out entirely and finding a flat with a new floor.

Then, he looks at you again and finds you staring, a little stunned, while he’s apparently been doing maths with his face. “Right,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

He unhooks one leg from his shoulder, then the other, and lets your body slide through the loop of his arms until he is holding you by the waist. Your toes flex and search for purchase on his feet but cannot reach, so they tickle his shins instead. He holds you tighter for it, returns to the business of kissing, and starts walking you towards the bedroom.

A brief practical worry cuts through him on the way there: the state of the room. Duncan has only the haziest memory of what he left out this morning, but the shortlist is bad enough—socks, half-drunk cups of coffee, sweaty gym clothes flung over the chair. So he makes a quiet, desperate decision to keep you busy enough not to notice any of it.

He lays you flat on the bed and goes straight for your neck. Sucking, kissing, licking, biting a little. He inhales the scent there and hopes the future holds at least one visit at your place so he can sneak off to the bathroom and inspect whichever shampoo or shower gel or lotion or other complicated thing girls use to smell like boy dinner makes you smell like home to him.

To his surprise you are just as eager. At one point you bite his lower lip hard enough that he backs out with a sharp breath and the both of you land on your sides, face to face.

You frown some. “I’m sorry—” Your fingers touch his lip. “Was that too hard?”

Your leg is thrown over his waist and Ireland’s best pussy is currently pressing into Dunk’s groin. “Oh, fuck—” he grunts, because the truth should be told. Then he shakes his head. “No. No, it wasn’t.” He swallows. “Can I take your clothes off?”

Your face changes in that quick, bright way his already-drunk brain could get addicted to. “Yes,” you say, and then, with a glance down at his shirt, “Can I take off yours?”

He nods and sets your hands to his shirt like he is helping you find the start of something. The pair of you undress each other by rough agreement. He reaches behind you and finds the zip of the dress. Gets it down. Palms the back of your bra and becomes convinced he is hallucinating, because the fucking thing is smooth.

You catch the look on his face halfway through undoing the shirt and giggle. Abandon his chest for a second to show him: the bra unclipping at the front. Once it gives, though, you hold it in place and wait for his hands to take over.

He is absolutely astounded. “I didn’t know they could do that,” he says.

You grin. “You wouldn’t believe how crazy knickers can get.” Then, you get back to his buttons.

While Dunk is busy unwrapping your tits like they are a godsent gift, you try to hide that you are holding your breath as more and more of his chest comes into view. It is entirely unwise, invented, and put on by this man to act shy in daylight when this is what he has been wearing under those plain P.E.-teacher shirts.

He has two large pecs that would absolutely qualify as tits, though you will never call them that in broad daylight. They look firm to the eye, but when he shifts onto his side they crease a little and feel plusher under your hands than they have any right to. There is hair everywhere a person would hope for it, as if somebody drew him up with a practical little map of where to touch. On his chest it is neither sparse nor bushy, just enough to make him look unfairly, devastatingly ordinary in that area. The colour runs darker than the hair on his head, though it still leans red before brown. Lower down his belly softens, and there the hair thickens at the edge of the waistband, which, to your delight, is under disastrous strain.

When you drag the shirt off him properly his shoulders come free hard under your fingers. His forearms are dusted with golden-orange fuzz. He has nice hands too—large, long-fingered, with leaner nails than you would expect on a man built so much for blunt force. You only get a brief look at them while you fight the sleeves down his arms, because the minute they are free they come straight back to your boobs and he is already too far gone kissing your neck to notice any of the ogling.

He does, in the end, manage to get everything off you. The bra goes first under his amazed hands, then the dress in a tugging blur, then the knickers, which he treats with an attention almost touching considering what they went through ten minutes ago.

You repay the favour by going at his jeans with a little too much enthusiasm. Your fingers fumble at the button, drag at the zip, get bold, and he hisses once through his teeth. “Sorry,” you whisper, giggling.

“Careful, girl,” he says, half laughing, half wrecked. “I’ve plans for that.” From there he takes over, pushing the denim and the underwear down his hips and off with no more patience than you have. When he drops onto his back his cock springs free, fully hard, and slaps against his stomach.

For a second you can only look. He has the girth of someone’s wrist, easily, and lying like that the crown reaches nearly to his belly button. The distance between that and his pubic bone is a long one, because everything on Duncan is long. His arms. His legs. His fingers. Even his toes, which you find yourself staring at while he kicks the socks off with a graceless little scuffle that somehow only makes him more attractive.

Then, he rolls back onto his side and the weight between his legs drops in front of him and drags on the mattress. The scale of him staggers your thoughts. He is pretty there, too. Good-looking on every inch of him. If you were less drunk and less prone to gagging, you might have asked him to let you just play with it for a while. A small fright cools your spine for a blink: where is that going to fit, exactly?

A blink later you tell yourself you are drunk enough, which is near enough the same thing as brave, and get back to kissing him. You swing a leg back over his hip, and he answers by planting both palms on your ass like that is their dedicated place.

You wrap yourself round him and let the broadness of him do half the leg-spreading work for you. He fits there heavy and wanting, nudging and jerking between you both every time you tug his hair or catch his lower lip with your teeth. The sounds he makes keep changing shape—breaths, little groans, the odd swallowed swear—as if none of them are adequate to the fact that this is actually happening.

His hands get confused as to where to settle. Butt, waist, back, then butt again. He is trying to climb further into it through kissing. When your hips shift and the head of him drags against you, he lets out a rough breath and murmurs into your mouth, “Christ, girl. I’ve wanted you fierce.”

That gets you in the chest a little. You pull back to see him. His face is flushed all over. His hair is a mess under your fingers. He looks pretty.

“Do you—” you start, then have to stop and take a breath because he keeps kissing at your jaw. “Do you have a condom?”

Dunk’s movement hiccups, as if his whole kissing ability just malfunctioned. He gives one confused little peck to the corner of your mouth like he’s hoping that might count as an answer while his body seems to lose structural confidence under you.

“Uh—” he says. Another peck. Then, fully blushed: “I… I don’t think so.”

“Why?” you whine, and it is more a question for the cosmos than for him. For whoever sits up there and is currently cracking up at the fantastic joke of two people getting wasted enough to finally go for it, and forgetting the technicalities. “Why?” you ask again, and this time it’s for Duncan.

Dunk goes abashed so quickly it hurts to watch. “I—I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t really…” He swallows. “I don’t really do this much.”

Something in you gives at that. Not because it is tragic exactly, but because it sounds so plain in his mouth. I don’t have one night stands that often. 

He bites his lower lip. His eyes drop. You watch his lashes fan down—long, straight, lying flat against his cheek for a beat when he blinks. Then he looks back up, careful, and his pupils shrink from nebular to slightly enlarged. “D’you want to stop?” he asks.

No, you absolutely don’t. Practically crying from between the legs for him, and he’s weeping too, you realise, when his tip nudges the inside of your thigh. Instead of answering, you kiss him to stop that crestfallen expression from blooming across his face and wedge your nails so deep into his bicep he groans. He whispers your name to remind you there are still issues to resolve in this arrangement.

“N-no,” you say, letting your leg fall off his hip and trapping him between your thighs. “Just… let’s regroup.”

Dunk gasps. He likes thighs when they are soft like this. Likes hips with those useful little dips to hold onto, and buttocks with enough weight and hang to mould into his hands. He enjoys, obtusely, being wanted to the point where recklessness gets to win over sense for once. The only thing he would want more is to bury himself inside you, even if it were only half his cock. But if fucking your thighs is the next best thing you have pointed him towards, he is not about to complain. In fact, some sober future version of himself can sit down later and thank whoever needs thanking.

You are slick enough for him to slide freely. Tight enough that he can pretend, a little, that he has been let in. He holds your ass to angle himself better and keeps moving, dragged half by want and half by the pressure of you closing on him. Aside from the fronts of his legs and the underside of his belly losing contact with you on each thrust, the rest stays fused together. Your tits flatten to his chest. Your mouth and nose crush into his face. Your arms are locked round his neck.

He can tell the shape of you exactly from the way it frames his length. Still, he wants eyes somewhere else in the room. Wants to look. Wants to see the head of his cock spreading your pussy lips wide and dragging itself through you, from clit, through slit, to perineum and back. His balls tighten at the thought. 

“Jesus, lass,” he breathes into your cheek. “Look what y’do to me.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, goes back to the shallow push of it, then breaks again just enough to look at you. “Is tha’ good?” he mutters. “Tell me. Tell me what y’want.”

“Yes,” you say, thighs cinching on him by way of proof. “Fuck, yes—” Your voice goes softer, more broken. “I want—I want—”

Then you reach behind yourself and press your fingers flat to his underside. Dunk starts nudging at your entrance. Slows down. “Lass,” he rasps, his eyes searching your face. “What’re ye doin’?”

“What if we just—” You swallow. Drag him slower through yourself until the tip catches on the seam and every thrust he tries and fails to withhold becomes a shallow knock. “Just the tip—I want you to—”

Dunk squeezes his eyes shut so hard his eyeballs hurt. “Luv—” he chokes out, and even to himself it sounds like begging.

He can feel the promising warmth of you on him. The grip you’d have on him. He wants, with every ounce of his body, to just sink and drown and never breathe again if it means breathing without you anywhere near him. He tries to calculate risk, but can’t. Forgets, fully, what might happen, aside from himself dying if he doesn’t just fuck you.

“You’ve to tell me,” he says. “You’ve to tell me to get out, aye?”

All you can hear yourself thinking is please never get out of me. Please stay inside. Please, just hold me through it.

“Yes,” you say. Then again, when the tip stretches you wide open. “God, yes—”

You stay there a second. Breathe in the air Duncan has released from his mouth. Try to be good and keep it shallow enough for this to remain, somehow, explainable to Rowan when you tell her what you’ve done. But you start feeling so hollow it becomes unbearable. Soon, your muscles, dulled by alcohol and a bunch of other baffling things, adjust. Soon, your cunt simply begs for more of him. Soon, you are bargaining with yourself: he’s good, he doesn’t fuck that often. He’s for sure clean.

And most importantly, It’s not so easy to get pregnant nowadays. In your fuck-drunk brain, you manage to convince yourself it is not merely difficult but outright impossible. You cannot remember exactly how old you are either—thirty-one or two, less or more. What comes on the other side of that is absolute certainty: even if everything goes wrong, the only consequence will be the crushing shame of getting this worked up over a man you are still not entirely sure is into you unless he has consumed horse-tranquillising amounts of lager.

Duncan stays infuriatingly still while your hips wrestle with his size. You huff and breathe loudly and hair is sticking to your forehead, and by vicinity, his too. Your leg comes back to its favourite place across his hip bone. Bent in the knee so you can hook it over him and bring him closer. He groans for it, winces a little, and says, “Christ, girl, you’ll end me, so you will.”

“No-no,” you say. Take his cheeks into your hands and look him deep in the eye as you sink. “No ending.” An inch. “Just a little—” Another inch. “Just a little bit of fucking. Slow—”

It has to be slow. Your mind is already galloping into some deranged scenario where you are unbreakable and Dunk is thrusting into you hard and fast from behind, telling you sweet things in that thick voice of his so you can take it better. For now, though, slow. You stretch around him in small increments, and the terrible emptiness gives way to a gentle, euphoric fullness. By the time he is halfway in, you can almost breathe deeper. The pair of you look at each other as if some lucid parts still mean to communicate what a dreadful idea this is, only to lose to the parts made of want.

“Slow,” Dunk says, knowing exactly what he’s doing and enjoying every forbidden bit of it. He stares at you with eyes wide open and holds. Stays there, utterly still, treating slow as motionless, and the heat starts skittering all over his skin when you answer his needy throb with a vicious little clench. It nearly knocks the sense out of him. He swallows hard, keeps one hand braced at your hip and the other behind your back, and tries not to fuck up the good thing by losing his mind completely.

“Easy, lass, easy,” he says. “Fuck, let me jus’—”

He draws back a little. Not far. Only enough to feel the drag of you sending all of his nerves ablaze. The pressure of you seems to go straight through the body and find him somewhere lower and more basic than flesh. When he eases in again and feels the same resistance give, your mouth opens on a breath that lands hot on his face, and he has to shut his eyes for a beat.

“That’s it,” he mutters. “Tha’s it, luv.”

He does it again. Out a little, back in a little deeper. The rhythm wants to run off with him, but he keeps it on a short lead. Your hands are on him everywhere—shoulders, neck, hair, whatever bit of him seems nearest to hold—and each small reaction you give comes back through his cock magnified. A flinch. A sigh. The way your hips try to meet him even while the rest of you is still learning to live around the burn.

Dunk is used to things feeling tight. What he is not used to is the extra layer of meaning this comes with. That it is you round him. You, who have spent two years doing innocuous things in his proximity and making a meal of his mind with them. Laughing. Leaning over a table in a top cut too low for the peace of anybody present, because he is only a man. Brushing his forearm in passing, because he is a man who yearns. Sneezing, even, because he likes it when girls lose control of their bodies for a second. He prefers it when he is the one making that happen, but with you that had always been filed under impossible wishes, and he had taken what he got.

Now he wants everything greedy and domestic and unwell. To kiss you more. Eat you out again. Play with your hair. Study the nape of your neck properly and maybe leave a mark there small enough to show only when you wear your hair up. He gets so deep into the fantasy of keeping you here, of making sure you never touch the floor, that he does not quite register how deep he already is until you moan his name.

“Dunk!”

He comes back hard. Feels himself buried nearly to the hilt and suffers the oppressive sweetness of it. You are so fucking good round him. “Ah—sweetheart,” he coos, and kisses you because there is nothing else to do with that much feeling.

Your hips start seeking more. Rolling, nudging, trying to drag it out of him. Then your mouth starts going too, and that does him nearly worse. “You’re so deep—fuck, you’re so deep,” you breathe into his cheek. “Please don’t stop. Please—” comes next and then finally, “I want you so bad. I’ve wanted you so bad.”

Duncan’s breathing picks up from it. He had thought things could not get more dangerous than this. They can. They do.

Soon you are grinding into him in earnest, both of you slick with sweat, your mouth open against his, and he starts to fear the inevitable, but doesn’t dare to stop. He’s just fearing.

“That’sit,” he slurs, wrecked. “Talk t’me. Jesus, girl—”

When you come, you might as well have him punched to the gut. “Yes, yes, yes—” spills out of you in shuddering fragments, and you get so impossibly narrow around him his vision blurs. Through it he sees your eyes roll back until there is too much white in them, grotesque and strange and, to Duncan, the sexiest thing he has ever seen in his life. He prays to his drunk brain to keep the memory. Keep this. Keep your face. Keep the sound of his name mangled in your mouth. Keep the way your body clamps down on him like it has decided he belongs there.

His balls go from low-hanging to high-strung and he knows he has exactly a millisecond to pull out. But the distance his cock has to travel between being inside and outside is too much. Everything’s too much. He comes with a broken sound, loud enough to embarrass him in any other life. His whole body seizes round it. Shakes with it. You have told him nothing beyond how good he feels, and that, apparently, was not a clearly enough signposted get out. He feels it draining him while he is still inside you and the realisation lands in the same instant as the pleasure, ruining nothing and improving nothing and simply making the whole thing worse in a new direction.

He wrenches himself out that millisecond too late. The last of it spills hot across your inner thighs. “Shite,” he mutters at once. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—”

“Shh,” you murmur, still shaking yourself. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sure we’ll be okay. It’s alright, Dunk.”

You kiss his forehead. He has half a mind to gather you close and never let any harm touch you again, though he is aware with some fairness that he is currently the harm in question.

“Ah, fuck, that was—” you start.

“Reckless—”

“Incredible,” you whisper. “And reckless. We’ll be alright. We’ll be—”

You sound as if you are trying to convince the room as much as either of you. Dunk stares at you, pulverized and sweaty and still half inside the aftershock of it, wanting very badly to believe you simply because you have said it.

The thought of yours remains unfinished. Somewhere around be your voice trails off and your face begins to loosen. Dunk watches it happen in real time: the faint effort to remain lucid, the last stubborn little hold of wakefulness, then that lovely spent-melt sleep has been waiting to lay over you all along.

He winces inwardly, because he knows well enough what becomes of cum left to dry on skin, and yours is currently wearing a fair bit of his. Still, he does not dare move you. Anything that needs to be done can wait. Your head is resting on his arm and he does not mind that in the least. If anything, it is useful. It confirms you are real.

So he gives himself over to watching. Your jaw slackens. Mouth falls open just enough to make him wonder whether you are going to drool on him. He decides he would not mind that either. He keeps watching until his own lids grow too heavy to negotiate with, and the weight of his limbs settles further into the bed and into you.

Sleep is a black hole. You crawl out of it with that terrible phantom of vomit on your tongue, the kind that really wanted out at some point between Lyonel’s place and wherever you are now, and never got to leave. Your head is split. Your mouth is begging for a toothbrush and enough Listerine to send you straight back to being blind drunk. Your stomach is empty and growling. The rest of you—trapped.

When you open your eyes, the shape beside you is inconspicuous at first. Only large. Then he comes into focus, and the first thing your brain offers up is a rush of joy so immediate it nearly feels chemical. What exactly for—you being here, him getting home safe, the sheer fact of him—you do not know.

Then, awareness starts seeping back in. The night returns in vignettes. Dancing. Drink. The pavement tipping softly under your feet. One shoe gone missing. His shoulder under your middle. His mouth on yours in the street. Your mouth on his. His teeth flashing when he laughed. Hands. Your dress. The hallway. His voice. After that the details begin to smear again, not gone exactly, but too warm and close and bodily to look at head-on with a hangover this sharp.

You look down. Your face is pillowed on his arm. You are on your belly facing him, goddamn naked, with one leg caught under the enormous weight of his thigh. Duncan is asleep on his side, snoring a little through parted lips. In sleep he looks younger. Not smaller—nothing available to him suggests smallness—but younger in the face. Morning light lays the freckles bare over his nose and cheeks. There are lines at the corners of his eyes you only notice like this. They come from smiling or crying or both, and because your head is in its current state you nearly burst into tears over that alone.

He looks like a boy. A very large, naked, ruined-looking boy. And you are trapped in bed with him.

It is perfectly clear that you’ve had sex. And even if it wasn’t, the soreness between the legs would make it clear. What is less clear is the route by which you arrived there. You cannot remember it properly enough to trust yourself. You do not know who started it. You do not know how far it went before one of you suggested the rest. You do not know how drunk he was, whether he knew what he was doing, whether he knew who he was doing it with. Half of you hopes he did not, because there would be mercy in that. The other half would be heartbroken if that were true.

You know enough about Duncan not to picture him as some seasoned practitioner of one-night stands. The same, mortifyingly, goes for you. This is out of character in a way that would be funny if it were happening to somebody else. Instead it is happening to you, and Raymun is probably proposing to Rowan right about now, and Rowan will surely say yes, and soon your oldest friend will have crossed decisively into a life where she is paired off and chosen and occupied, while you remain what you have apparently always been: a woman with good copy, bad timing, and just enough loneliness in her to do something catastrophic with one of the very few decent men who ever decided to stay in her life, even as friends.

Because that is what the panic says this is. A terrible mistake that could cause damage to more than just you and him.

You lie very still, and think with mounting horror that you may have used the closest thing to a legend-level good person in your life to mute the sound of your own solitude for one night. That, if true, is vile. That, if true, is exactly the sort of thing you would never forgive in somebody else.

So: you ease yourself out of the prison of him with the care of somebody dismantling a bomb and trying not to be sentimental about the wiring. His thigh lifts off yours with a slow, reluctant drag. His arm comes free from under your face. You pause twice for no better reason than that the bed is warm and he is warm and your body, traitorous thing, is not at all convinced leaving is the correct administrative choice.

The room looks worse in daylight, which helps. Clothes in small disasters. Cups. The soft indecency of other people’s sleep. You gather your things, moving with the ugly, overcareful delicacy of a hangover.

Then you notice the drying crust high on your thigh and nearly smack yourself in the forehead.

Well. At least he pulled out.

Putting a little black dress, a plunge bra and yesterday’s mangled knickers back on the next morning ought to be a rite of passage belonging to a younger, more recoverable version of you. Even better late than never does not make it less sour. Never would, in fact, be considerably better. Especially after thirty.

You find one shoe by the bed and the other in the hallway, a little crushed and without much faith left in its own shape. Your phone, by some mercy, still has five percent battery. The clock says it is not even nine, which explains why you feel less like somebody who has slept and more like somebody who has been run over at low speed for several continuous hours.

You order a cab. Ten minutes of walking home outside looks like it would be punishment in excess of the crime.

While you wait, you stand in his hallway with one hand on the wall and the other clutching your phone, and try very hard not to think. The app pings. Your driver has arrived. You go back for one last look anyway.

Duncan is still asleep, peaceful in a way that feels unfair. He has a face that makes forgiveness seem structurally possible in the world. Maybe he remembers more than you do. Maybe he wanted this. Maybe he will wake up and be glad to find you here.

Before you can lean properly into any of that nonsense, the driver starts calling with offended persistence. You answer. Duncan stirs at the sound, only a little, but the jump of panic it sends through you is useful.

“I’ll be right out,” you whisper, and leave as quietly as you can.

In your sleep you’ve heard mutters. Him, speaking under his breath, the low foolish murmur he keeps for beasts. You’ve wondered often whether he talks to every living creature because that is simply his way, or because you will not give him words and he must spend his somewhere. You’ve heard him soft-spoken before, just never towards you. When you wake, it’s with strange hope. You reach for that softness like an idiot and it shatters as soon as you see him. Confirmation comes next as your loose chest and your bare legs.

To you, it’s written plainly. Now he knows, so he ought to deliver you to where you came from. A knight with the truth in hand. A woman on the road in borrowed shape. There is only one end to that tale and it points backwards. Home. Fathers. Bargains. Hands closing. Doors shutting. The fear of it breeds such fury you need no mirror to show you how ugly you’re turning. Good. Better fury than tears. Better to bare your teeth at him than let him see you beg.

If he had only been stern, you could have endured it. Nobody welcomes being made into a fool. If he had only been kind, you might have cried—you haven’t even noticed your foot blackening. It’s the self-righteousness in him that sends your words into slurs and your body into an upright stance. I had every right, he says and it turns him, in your frightened mind, from careful travelling companion into every man who has ever assumed authority over your body.

And you know damn well that without him you’d most likely have become eternally cold and your teeth would never rattle again. But gratitude cannot get a foothold because shame and fear are louder. He has seen. He is angry. He speaks as if he may decide what is done to you.

The second layer is the anger itself. To you, it comes from the entitlement of someone who’s never had to despair over taking up space in the world. It prompts you to spit every nasty thing your head supplies, because all else was swallowed for weeks. It’s gone now. Every time you’ve held back from telling him he’s pretty and saved it for the never, you’ve been sure the never wouldn’t come. Well, it has arrived and you have nothing left. Things you wouldn’t have assigned to him a day ago sound alien in your voice. You hate the sickly rasp in it. You hate having to fight him nearly naked. You hate that he looks at you with concern because it makes you feel small. You yell so you don’t cry, because crying would be death to your cause. You mock him, because that’s the only blade you’ve got. You haul mud at him, because you have no blade.

You see, for the first time, what this man is like stripped of sweetness, and it is all your doing. You hate too that it captivates you. As though anger shrinks him to something more touchable. Shows you there is wildness in him, something for you to tame.

Before this he had been timid. Respectful. Now, the anger helps him find the petty human edge, and you like it. It’s exciting, that spark. That one you hate as well, because falling in love means falling.

When his arms reach for you, you curl your hands into fists so you will not grab him by the neck and kiss him. When he catches your shoulders, you brace because otherwise you will grab him by the neck and kiss him. When he comes through the last of it and lays hands on you proper, you strike because otherwise you will grab him by the neck and kiss him. His strength is infuriating. It goes on and on. Shows you with humiliating clarity where you would be in a true fight with someone his size: nowhere at all but where he put you.

Then he closes around you in earnest and panic gets mixed through the want till you cannot sort one from the other. You kick because you cannot bear to be held so close and so easily, weak and known through at last. You writhe because his body makes a prison too natural to him. You hiss and spit and stamp because there is nothing to reach for and no decent pride left to you. His whole body thrums against yours.

You want free of his hands. You want to wound him. You want him.

So you kiss him, and—oh, Gods.

He changes under your mouth. The force of him stays the same; the anger goes molten. Want takes its place so fast the words fuck me rise near to the back of your teeth. He tastes of it. Smells of it. Holds you so hard the strength of him bleeds between you, and he is kissing you back before your own madness has time to cool. His mouth is hot and eager and clumsy in a way that goes through you like pity’s crueler cousin. You think, wildly, whether anyone has ever touched him with tenderness enough to teach him better. Whether he would know what to do with gentleness if it were offered. Whether he would like your fingers in his hair. Whether he would cling. Whether he would mutter against your skin. Whether he would spend in you. Whether he would want holding after.

Then, his palm spreads between your shoulder blades and your legs almost answer, wanting to climb him, but despair gets there first. You bite him because you do not know how to stop yourself without stopping him. You bite him because if he keeps kissing you like that you will forgive him everything. You bite him because you do not know how to live inside this much affection with nowhere safe to put it.

Next thing you know, you land on your arse hard enough to knock the breath up short in your chest. With each slow blink he is farther away. Walking, hunched and steadfast, toward the stream. “Dunk,” you whisper, but your throat has tightened too much for it to come out proper. Then your eyes sting. You hide them in his dirty bedroll and it almost undoes you. The smell of his sweat makes you cry harder, makes you think this is the last of him you will have. It hides your face well enough, but sharpens the knowing too: you have just ruined the one good thing that has happened to you.

Tears run out of you till your body feels dried of them. Once, between sobs, you could swear you hear a scream, but the trees swallow it whole. The fire threatens to die down, so you feed it a log too large for it and think for a moment you have killed it, till it kindles back up again. Mouth stinging and eyes swollen, you beat the dust from Dunk’s bedroll and lay it closer to yours than he would ever place it himself.

When he comes back it is dusk. You watch the sky bruise purple and wither to the grey-blue that says the sun has gone to the hells, and it makes the flame burn orange as fresh-cut fruit.

He stomps. Drags himself uphill. The shape of him stays in shadow till the fire finds him and paints him warm again. He looks worn out, tired to the bone, and like a man done in by female whims, he does not spare you so much as a glance. That is new. The anger from before you could have met blow for blow. This quieter thing, this care with which he keeps himself from looking at you at all, hurts worse. It makes you feel the damage in full. He drops to his place and turns his back on you, shut and cautious as a door barred for the night.

“Dunk,” you say. Try to—the first one comes out mute. “Dunk,” you say again, louder this time, all phlegmy rasp, and still he does not stir. “Ser Duncan.”

“Hush,” he says. “Sleep now.”

“But—”

“There’s naught to mend,” he says, while all you can see are the broken bits requiring mending exactly. “Sleep the rest of the fever off. Tomorrow we get back on the road.”

Sleep, he says. You do, brittle with it. Lie on your back and stare up into a sky pricked through with endless white points, with that faint pink glittering spill dragged across it. Beside you Duncan rasps heavily. Hums. Tosses and turns. When you glance over to see whether he is awake after all, his eyes are squeezed shut so hard the lids nearly swallow the whole length of his lashes. He looks in pain. Your palm itches to rest on his forehead and see whether your fever has passed into him through the mouths.

Dawn finds you as it always does: cold first, then angry with yourself for whatever small comfort you denied yourself the night before. You curse under your breath for not dressing back into all your layers. The air bites. Your fingers ache. Still you wake before him, as usual, and turn to look.

He is not soft in sleep this time. His face is all drawn tight with strain. The bedroll has bunched itself round him in a hard knot, and under the collar of his shirt a dark patch of sweat has spread. His hair sticks damply to his forehead. Again you want to touch him. Again you do not.

“Dunk?” you say. “Are you all right?”

He drags in a breath. “Mm. Jus’—” One hand comes up to wipe across his face. “Too warm.”

For one half-moment he sounds almost like himself, still caught on the lip of waking. Then you watch his mind catch up. It happens plain. The softness leaves. Whatever had slackened in him goes back under lock. By the time he opens his eyes proper, the distance is there again.

“Pack,” he says. “We’ll eat on the road.”

You sit up on one elbow. “Will you speak of yesterday?”

His mouth pulls into absence of expression. “Preferred it when you weren’t so set on speaking.”

It hurts. You let it hurt. Some part of you thinks it is no more than you earned.

You dress back into every piece of yourself and find the old shape sits wrong now. Shirt, binding, leather, gloves, neck-cloth. Each thing goes on like a lie you have already been caught in. You pack in silence, lash your things to the horse, and trot after him when he sets off.

He hardly stops the whole day. Once to water the horses. Once to piss. That is all. Whenever you try to speak, he picks up the pace and rides a little farther off, as though distance might do the work of deafness. You keep your jaw clenched round all the things that do not get said. You are certain there are people in this world you have hurt worse than Duncan, but none of them has taken to hating you half so briskly as him.

By evening he makes camp well away from you. Rolls his bed out at a remove that feels intentful even before you begin measuring it. He starts the fire, spits the rabbit, sets it over the flames, then walks off without a word. When he comes back he looks worn through again, some inward part of him scraped raw. He eats barely two bites, tips the wineskin high for longer than thirst calls for, burps with ugly force, and drops to his chosen place as if the ground has yanked him there. He says nothing. Before long he is snoring.

You lie awake listening to it and wondering what has wrung him out so thoroughly that half a skinsack of wine is enough to fell a man this large.

The next day repeats. He rides, you follow. The gap between you feels ceremonial. It could be disgust, could be resolve. Given the choice between the two, you would rather not name either. The whole of you has drawn so tight it feels there is nothing left to lose. At last you shout after him. He stops. You tell him the stream you’ve been following runs close again, that you need to wash some things, and surely you may stop a while. He looks at you long and cold, then nods and turns toward where the water hums.

When you are knee-deep in it, armour off, only linen left on, Duncan says, “We’ll need to find you somewhere safe.”

You look up. “What?”

“I’ve business to see to.” He does not look at you when he says it. “I’ll ride off a few days.” A beat. “After that,” he says, still working at whatever is in his hands, “we’ll speak. Of parting.”

Your hands stop moving. You look down at your foot, gone the sickly yellow of spoiled yolk. So he can no longer bear your company. You keep staring at your toes, warped in the water, praying your eyes will not worsen it. A tear forces out anyway.

Dunk’s at his wit’s end. At his strength’s end. At his body’s final gasp.

That kiss took him and shook him and wrung him through muscle and bone and other parts Dunk has no names for. When he heads for the stream his shoulders ache with the effort of pushing you off, and his cock is so hard he can barely call what he is doing walking. He gets no farther than the bank before tearing his boots off and stepping into the cold water clothed as he is. Then he lets himself drift in it, flat on his back like a corpse the current has not claimed yet, and screams at the sky. The rest of the day he spends drying in the sun, so when he comes back soaked through and sour with himself you do not ask why.

That afternoon Duncan has no notion how much more strength will be required of him to withstand your clumsy attempts at mending matters. In his head there is naught to mend. He desires no mending. Mending would mean speech, and speech would mean laying the wretched part of his nature out before you proper and waiting to see whether you flee of your own accord or finish the bloody work you started at his bottom lip.

Because that kiss has done more damage than any honest blow could. It found him where he is weakest. A mean little thing, angry and full of teeth, and still his body took it for mercy. He loathes himself for that worst of all. For the way he answered. For how quickly he turned. For being so starved of touch and so lonely in the marrow that one ugly bite of a kiss leaves him sweating through his bedroll till the ground beneath goes dark and ripe with it.

So he is scant with you after. Stern. When the spoiled blood rises in him at the first whiff of your scent, he cuts off the beginnings of your blabber by riding farther off. Just to breathe air that does not remind him what it was to have his mouth on yours and your body fighting his.

By the second day he knows there is no stopping what has already begun. Water mutes smell, so when you ask to stop by the stream he agrees to the whim of it. There he tells you he must go. For one short moment he thinks he might simply keep riding and not come back at all. Then the knight in him speaks where the rest has gone ragged. He hears himself promise the matter will be settled cleanly, cold if it must be, and in a way that leaves his honour standing.

You go strangely still with the shirt clutched in your hands. Duncan keeps his own at the water a moment longer than need calls for, wringing and rinsing and wringing again, though his eyes have gone sideways. You are looking down into the stream as if it has said something to you and you mean to hear the end of it.

His mouth asks before sense can stop it. His heart asks too. His head calls him ten kinds of fool. “What did you mean,” he says, “by ‘I’ve too much left to tell you’?”

You sniff once. It sounds as though the question has pulled you up sharp from someplace worse. “Guess you’ll never know now.”

Frown finds him at once. Rightly enough—how much more stupid can a man grow in two days’ time. “Beg pardon,” he says, bitterness making him stiff all through, “I’ll seek forgiveness forever for saving your life, m’lady.”

Your mouth pulls hard, as if he has gone and jabbed a bruise on purpose. “Do not call me that,” you say. “Not when you mean it like this.”

Duncan straightens a little in the stream, water dragging off the cloth in his hands. “What should I call you then? Boy? The name you gave me? What is your real name besides?”

You stare at him. Long enough to make him think you mean to keep that too. Then, at last, you tell him. The name sits in the air between the two of you, small and real and too pretty for the road.

“It’s pretty,” he says dimly, souring himself. He looks back down to the shirt in his hands as if the water might take the foolishness out of his mouth for him.

You move first this time. “Why are you going?”

Because I cannot trust myself around you. He scrubs harder at the cloth. “I’ve told you.”

“I didn’t take you for someone to hold an eternal grudge.”

“It is you who won’t stop reminding me of the crime committed,” he says. “You can go about fooling another bastard then.”

“Gods, just—” Your hands drop. Then pick the shirt back up. You go at it with a vicious little scrub, jaw set, breath sharp through your nose. Duncan watches, waiting for the rest of the sentence as if waiting might wring it out of you. It does not come.

So he stands. Water runs off him in sheets. He throws the rinsed cloth onto the heap on the bank and, with the meanness of a boy-man already too far gone to be proud of it, drags his foot hard through the stream and sends a fan of water at you.

You go still as if burned. Then your face changes. “Oh, you are getting on my nerves,” you grunt, and fling water back at him with both hands.

It catches him across the chest and jaw. Cold. Petty. Deserved.

He answers. So do you. In two breaths’ time the stream has become a poor ugly battlefield, all slaps of water and stumbling feet and shirts forgotten in the shallows. There is no play in it. No flirtation. Only temper. You are quicker than he is and meaner with your aim. One splash gets him square in the eyes.

“Ah—Seven hells—” he grunts. Lunges blindly where you were a blink before and finds you by luck, by sound, by scent, by the little cry you let out when his hands close at last. You buck against him with slippery fury and sharp elbows.

“That’s not fair!”

“Cease this writhing,” he grunts, blinking stream-water out of his eyes. “You’re worse than ten cats to hold.”

Your palm shoves at his face. Wet and furious and small. “I did not plan this to hurt you!” you snap. “I’d no idea if you were decent at first.”

It stops him cleaner than a kick would have. For one beat the stream keeps moving round his legs and neither of you does anything at all. A second later he hears you screaming.

“Why are you leaving me?”

Duncan looks down. You are bound tight to him. One arm round your waist. One hand at your neck. Your heart is going wild under all that wet cloth and bone, beating hard enough that he can near feel the shape of it through his own forearm. There is water on your face and more than water in your eyes.

He loosens his hand. Not enough to lose you. Enough to know the difference. “Because—”

The breath he takes to finish his sentence gets drowned in the sound of a thunder. The growl of it rolls close over the hills. Both your heads turn by the same instinct. The light has changed without either of you marking when. Everything round the stream has gone dimmer, flatter, with that waiting look the world gets just before a storm breaks proper.

Duncan swears under his breath. “We need shelter,” he says. You keep staring up at him as if the rest of the answer is still owed. “It’s near evening,” he says, more roughly. “And you’ll not spend another night in rain if I can help it.” He lets you go then, fully. The place where your body was in his arms stays hot.

“There’s no inn for miles,” you say.

“Aye.” Another peal of thunder. Nearer.

He wades for the bank and snatches up the wet heap of clothes. “Then we’ll find a roof that isn’t an inn.” There’s no need in looking back to see if you follow. He can hear you doing it. That has to be enough.

After that he rides hard and with his eyes peeled for anything the shape of shelter. The rain begins in earnest before long. First a scatter, then a sheet. It drives at his face and soaks the horses dark. Thunder keeps pacing them from one side of the sky to the other. Duncan leans low over Sweetfoot’s neck and keeps searching.

Then you go past him. Quick on that little horse of yours, shirt plastered to your back, head bent to the weather. For one miserable instant his heart drops. He thinks you have had enough of him at last and picked this very moment to flee where he cannot very well chase and hold you to account through storm and failing light.

Until he sees where you are headed. A low black shape hunched beyond a field gone to muck. Half a house beside it, walls standing where the roof has not. And farther off, a barn, dark and sound enough at first glance to keep rain off flesh and horseflesh both.

By the time he reaches you, you are already in the yard, sliding from the saddle. No word for him, only action. Duncan takes that gladly. You both get the horses into the stalls between. Thunder stamps and tosses. Chestnut keeps shuddering. Sweetfoot blows hard through her nose. Duncan rubs them down as best he can with the edge of his cloak and gets what tack he may off before the storm worsens. Your hands move quick beside his, clumsy only from cold.

When the beasts are settled, he enters the main room of the barn after you. The hay in it has gone wet with humidity and dry with heat so many times it gave its gold to light grey. You push dripping hair from your face and say, “Take the wet things off before you worsen.” And then, as if your own words oblige you equally, you begin doing the same.

Duncan goes rigid. You have got as far as dragging your breeches down over your boots when fury catches him by the back of the neck. He wheels half away from you and grits, “You stay. I ought to go.”

You laugh at him, full mad from strain. “Have you lost your wits entirely? Whatever has you so cold at heart ought to wait through this weather.”

So you know he’s rotting. The look he gives you then would flatten lesser creatures. It only makes you wetter round the mouth with irritation. “It is you who is witless,” he says, “if you mean to keep me here.”

In his turning, he catches you throwing your hands up. “Duncan!”

He has got as far as the door. Rain beats the roof in a thousand hard little fists. The wood is wet, the straw old, there’s mould in the beams and Duncan can smell all of it. Your scent pushes itself through the others and takes him and holds him. Behind, Duncan can hear your fast breathing over nature's hiss. As though you were the largest thing in here, while in fact, you are the smallest. Your boots shift on the packed earth and he knows you’ve taken a step after him.

Before you can reach him, he snaps. “What do you know of this?” His fist beats the damp-rotten planks of the door. “You know naught of it!”

Rainwater drops off the hem of your shirt and he hears it joining the pool of a puddle under your feet. There’s a pause. Cautious, you say, “I don’t. I don’t—but I see you hurting and it rubs me wrong! What is it?”

He puts one hand on the doorpost and bows his head to it a moment. It is cool. His skin is not. Heat has him by the spine, but the gut and the roots of his teeth. He’s close to retching with it. Shirt sticks between his shoulders. Every place the wet has touched him feels coarse with it. He should have gone sooner. Should have left you in some holdfast with a whole roof and a locked door and a woman old enough to cuff sense into you. “An affliction,” he says thickly.

Your waiting he can feel at his back. “What kind?”

“The sort wants me alone.”

“And what is to be done for it?”

He turns fast enough for the barn to be pulled sideways with it for a blink. You stand three paces off with your hair damp at the temples, mouth parted and hands empty and hanging uselessly at your sides. The sight steals his patience outright.

“What is to be done,” he says, “is I leave before it takes hold proper.”

“What takes hold?”

“Must you have every bit said plain?” he scoffs.

“Yes!”

It is a cursed way of yours—to be frightened and stubborn alike. Duncan wonders if this is courage or merely temper, and if it is temper, he thinks that you ought to have it dulled. He grips the heel of his hand into his eye till the vision blanches.

“I’ve the breeding curse,” he tells you, twisting, as if the words taste of something sour. “There. Have you enough?”

You stare at him, all unwitted. The rain keeps drumming. Somewhere in the farters a bird flutters and settles again. He can see you trying to fit the thing into what you know of the world. Some old wives’ tale. A fable, a whispered country warning. A shape of danger that has no name and one that you’ve ostensibly never touched.

“What does that mean?” you ask.

He drags a hand through his hair. “It means I’ve a fever in me that doesn’t break clean. It means I’ll not be fit company. It means I need to be gone from you before I do something I’d sooner cut my hand off than do!”

You let fear live on your face for a span of one breath. It bleeds off to something softer and worse. “What do you need?” you ask and it hits him so low and arduous he nearly bows with it. Nearly hates you for it.

“A mate,” he says. “Which I do not have.”

The stillness of yours makes him swallow and push on because there is hurt in him already and once a hurt starts speaking it wants to finish. “So I ought to be alone before someone like you feels compelled to take pity on me.”

Your brows pull hard together. “Pity?”

He sees the offence in you and knows he should stop there. Instead the sore place in him opens wider.

“Aye, pity. I’ve had it before.” His mouth grimaces terribly. “And disgust after. There’s always one or the other with men like me. A woman may be sorry enough to help the first of it. Then the rest comes and she learns better.”

You take a small step and move your arms. They’re rising towards him. “I’ve no pity for you—”

He answers by wrenching his neck forth. “I’d rather go fuck myself sore in a ditch,” he spits, “than stay and suffer someone who hates me forcing herself to kindness.”

Hurt clouds your face and you flinch as if he has struck you. Good, some foul little part of him thinks. Better this way.

Then you say, very fast and very raw, “I do not hate you.”

Dunk turns his back before he has to look at you again and see whether that is mercy too. “Best leave it.”

“I do not.” A step. One, then another. Straw whispers under your boots.

His eyes squeeze shut. “Do not come near me.”

Insolent as ever, you keep coming. Flippant. Brazen. Disrespectful, he’s busy thinking when your hand touches his shoulder. Light; barely there. He jerks under it as if the place has burned through cloth. He has been touched by women harder than that, bolder than that, with clearer purpose than that. None of it has crumbled him the way this does.

“Ser Duncan,” you say. “Duncan.”

It sobers him from the ire. He blinks, and finds his manners back amongst all the dust. “Beg pardon,” he mutters. “I ought to—I ought to go.”

Your fingers tighten in his shirt. Small grip. Desperate one. “Dunk.”

It near buckles his stomach, the name said like that. Without mockery and a single fever-mad scrap of possession, you say it as if it belongs somewhere softer than either of you has let it belong.

“It is not pity,” you murmur. “It is not.”

He laughs once, breaking halfway out. “You loathe me one hour and offer me your body the next. What should I call that?”

You move him round, slow enough to let him stop you if he means to, but he does not mean to. He only stands and sways where he is, hands opening and closing at his sides like a fool’s, until he’s facing you and he learns the hunch has taken him so low you’re almost level. Storm-light from the door catches your face in pieces. Wet lashes. Mouth bitten sore. A smear of dirt near the chin. You look half-wild yourself—not pretty in the way court songs would have it. Better than that. Real and roughened and staring at him with more heart in it than he knows what to do with.

“I’d kiss you too,” you tell him. “Without fists.”

All of the four eyes drop where they oughtn’t—his to your mouth, yours to his fanning lids. You know he’s looked and you know he’d want to, but save him the misery of admitting.

“Here,” you whisper. Take his hand and against your skin it’s hot as iron and twice as clumsy. You put it to your chest where your body’s beating fit to crack itself. “How’s this hatred to you?”

Your collar stretches open under his fingers. Palm large enough to span you sternum to clavicle, he lets himself just feel it a second. The thud of you under—hard and fast and alive and wanting. The cold of your skin strikes him next. He frowns down at it as if the thing were a wound.

“You’re freezing,” he says. Starts rubbing warmth into you before he knows he has chosen to. Over your breastbone, then higher, then both hands on your shoulders, thumbs working. The care unmakes him faster than lust. He bows his face close and breathes against your temple. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Embraces you whole and inhales the scent off your wet hair. Earth sits there, dark soil with potence in it. Summer rains that make the air smell fresh. Zeal that needs to be coaxed out.

He feels you making a sound and wrapping your arms round his waist. “Don’t leave me. I want to help,” you say.

His head lifts. Your face is so close it fills his sight with bits of you again. He counts the clumps of your lashes and watches the pulse in your throat. “What do you know of coupling, girl?” he asks, and the word girl snags in his mouth. “If you’re inviting me, not much, I reckon.”

“Enough to flee home and pretend to be a boy,” you say.

The answer leaves him bitter and tight in the face. He sees more in it than you meant to show, perhaps. Or exactly what you meant. Either way it puts another grief in him.

“How is this not pity, then?”

Your hand comes up slow. You touch his cheek with the backs of your fingers first, as if gentleness is a creature likely to startle. Dunk goes still under it. There is too much of him for stillness to look natural, so he bears it looking like effort instead. Great effort.

Then, you rise a little on your toes and put the smallest kiss on his mouth. It is nothing like the first one—rid of teeth and spite. A careful press, as if you are laying something brittle between you and asking him not to waste it. His throat brews a pitiful sound for him, and Duncan means to make himself start gently. What he doesn’t want is to frighten you back out of your own bravery. Your mouth is cool from the rain and from being cold clear through so he makes sure to eat the cold for you. His hands stay at your shoulders, thumbs still when you’re shivering under them. He feels the way your breath jumps when he tips his head and comes at you again with a little more conviction.

By inches, he deepens. Heat has had him mean and restless all two days, clawing through his skin for a way out, but this part comes almost sweet despite it. Awkward too. Duncan has kissed before, but he has never kissed with this much tender mind to it. The wanting is all snarled up with the need not to scare you, not to break the strange bright thing that has appeared between one heartbeat and the next.

A hand slides from his cheek into his hair and Duncan shudders so hard the soles of his feet tingle. Your fingers tighten and tug and he hears himself whimpering.

“Ah—” He breaks on it. A sound small and shameful enough to make a lesser man pull away from it. He only comes closer. “You want me, then?”

You nod. Yank him. His chest comes to eclipse you. In his sullen mind he sees your thighs split open already, your arse warmed with the force of his hips, your mouth twisted in pain and eyes wounded, so he reigns himself back to here, where none of it has happened yet. He finds the back of your neck with his palm and holds there as if he can keep your head safe in it whilst he kisses you senseless.

The noise from you turns his blood over. “Gods.” His breath saws. “Gods help me,” Duncan mutters and goes at it harder.

Carefulness begins to flee. Not out of cruelty, but relief and long hunger. He has spent too much of himself holding back from the whole of life. The taste of being let in goes into his head like a hammer to a nail, and he finds himself in a dire need to touch more of you. His hand slides down your side, and he’s surprised by the difference between seeing the shape and feeling it. His devotion keeps giving way to greed: your waist first, then higher. Then lower again because he does not know where he is permitted and is trying to know without asking and failing badly at it.

Your fingers tighten in his hair. “Duncan,” you mutter.

He stops at the width of a whisper from your lips. The air he exhales runs over your face and comes back to him. His eyes shut, when he says, “Tell me.” Hoarse. “You ought to tell me.”

It takes you a moment to gather enough breath for speech, which apparently he’s kissed foolish out of you. The knowledge of that puts an odd little pride in his chest before shame follows after and stomps it flat.

“Yes,” you say.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, touch me.”

He rests his heavy forehead to yours and laughs, deranged. “You say such things to me now,” he hums, “and expect me to keep sense.”

His hand goes to your ribs and spans them near entirely. He rubs his thumb there over the shirt as if the bones under it concern him. Then, he gets back to kissing. The corner of your mouth. Your cheek. The line beneath your ear. Each place slower and more saturated with your scent than the one before, while the rest of him has gone taut as a drawn rope. Restrain frays him, shakes through him.

He feels your palms at the laces near his throat and shudders again. “Girl,” Duncan warns.

You look at him, straight on. Rain-light and dusk and straw-dust have made your face into something soft enough to kneel for.

“Tell me if I’m wrong,” you say.

He swallows and lets his jaw work under your eye. “You’ll not be wrong,” Duncan says. “Only mayhaps sorry.”

But sorry you are not yet. The first knot pulls loose and he makes himself blind again. The second one goes easier. The cloth parts under your fingers and his throat opens to sight, then the notch below it where he’s damp with sweat. You touch there with one finger only, curious and light. He flinches as if struck.

“No one’s touched you kindly,” you say as if it’s a thought that was not supposed to be spoken at all.

His eyes open at that, feeling naked by half already. He sees a shadow walk your features and it tells him you’ve been touched kindly seldom yourself. “Some have tried,” Duncan says. That is all.

You do not press him and he doesn’t press you either. You only lay your palm flat over the hard beat in his chest, and kiss him again. He gives way with a sound that seems dragged up from much deeper than the throat. His arms close around you in earnest—one at your back, the other under your arse before he thinks better of it. He lifts you with absurd ease and sets you on an old hay-strewn ledge. It puts your face level with his. Puts the breadth of him right between your knees.

Sorry you will be, he thinks. Draws back a breath. “I ought to tell you,” he says, forcing the words through a mouth gone clumsy. “Before anything more. I’ve a—” He grimaces. Starts again. “When it takes me foul, I swell after. Too much. You understand?”

Your brows pinch. He can see you trying to make proper sense of it, and his face heats darker. “At the… root,” he mutters, furious with himself for having to say it. “Like a knot in a rope. It can hurt if you’re not ready for it. Hurt a good deal.”

You stare at him another beat, then nod once. “All right.”

Your patience is a blade drawn hot from the forge to him. He puts a hand on the wood beside your hip. The other cannot stop touching you. It has taken to your knee as if it belongs there. Broad, kneading palm, soaking the cold in you and trying to work it out. “You ought to send me off,” Duncan says, and drops to his knees between your legs. The boards shudder under the weight of him.

From there, his eyes travel over your face and now he’s certain it is worth kneeling for. He’s humbled by it and he’s asking and promising at the same time and does not know how to do either without his whole body getting involved.

“Still time,” he says.

“For what?”

“For you to think better.”

His knuckles pale where they hold your knee. Your eyes sweep him, thorough, and he realises you’re humouring him. “I have thought better,” you say then. “This is it.”

It catches him somewhere he’s sure is visible. His head bows a moment, while the want in him goes darker and fuller. Alongside it there’s care and Duncan chooses it. To not rush you or crowd you. To stay where he is till you are the one who moves first, and he hopes you can see it in him.

Then, your fingers find his cheek and he turns his face to the touch at once. A little. Involuntary enough to get hurt with your tenderness.

“Oh,” you say, thumb on his chin.

His mouth twists. “Do not make a marvel of me.”

“You are one.”

The answer lands in his throat and fails to make it farther. He kisses the inside of your knee instead, because his mouth must go somewhere. A kiss awkward and too warm, and open by half, and so earnest your legs quake some. Then another, higher. Then one on the other side, because fairness lives in him alongside the instinct to break pretty things like you.

He finds your boot with the free hand and frowns at it when it won’t come off with just a tug. “All these damned buckles,” he grumbles, then smiles all helpless when you laugh above him. It’s a sweet honest sound, a kind of laughter he hasn’t heard from you yet. So he grumbles some more. 

The boots come off with less cursing than before, though not no cursing. The shirt is next, so he stands and fists the hem into fingers stiff with hope, because hope does stranger things to a man’s hands. He lifts it only after looking to your face and finding leave there. Your arms rise. The cloth goes over your head and your skin blooms with gooseflesh at once. Dunk’s eyes do not know where to settle and for once it is not embarrassment in him but too many places wanting to look at once.

“Seven be good to me,” he says, reaching for the binding. He unwinds the cloth and watches how every loosened pass lets another breath into you. By the time the last of it comes away you are both breathing harder. Duncan sets it down beside him as if it might bruise from rough handling. And then, he just looks.

He wonders, dimly, if a creature like you knows anything of shame at all because to him, it shouldn’t. Then, he notices the smallest twitch at your arms, like you’re fighting the urge to cover yourself and finally decide to live through it. He’s puzzled as to whether it is your choice entirely or if his face has changed so strangely you let him have it.

“Have you done this before?” you ask, breaking the silence.

His mouth goes crooked. “Mm.”

There’s a childish frown to your brow. Duncan would think it jealousy if his wits were gone entirely. Two urges fight in him—one to tell you each of them made him regret he’s alive, the other to say nothing at all and watch you simmer with it a little.

“With many?” you ask.

He blinks. Takes immense joy from the tightness in your face when he rules to make a show of thinking on it. “No,” he says finally.

You huff an adorable puff of air through your nose. “How many, then?”

He goes back down. Looks up to you and rubs the back of his neck. “Enough to know I ought not be on my knees talking when there’s this before me.”

That ought to satisfy you. It does not.

“Were they kind?”

The question leaves your mouth and hangs there naked with the rest of you. Duncan stills. His hand, halfway to your thigh, closes empty.

“Some,” he says after a while. “Some not.”

You look down. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“That they were not.”

It alters him whole. The shape of your words, the tone of your voice, the look on your face. Still no pity in it, but kinship so total Duncan near presses his face into your belly and begs you to let him put a baby in you so you’re his and with him for the rest of his miserable days. His hunger somehow gentles at the edges. Instead of disgracing himself like this, his hand lifts that dumb broken foot of yours and brings it to his mouth. “I am here now,” he says against your skin.

The barn goes quieter after that. You put your hand in his hair again. He exhales through his nose, lets your foot free, and opens his mouth against you in a way that seems to make your back arch before you’ve decided on it. His hands follow the movement, one spanning your waist, the other settling warm in the hinge of your thigh at the ready.

He kisses lower by inches, inept and long-suffering as he ought to be. Learns this foreign country by touch and mouth, from your navel to the hollow beside your hip. It makes him pause and look up as if he has found something improbable there.

“Do not stop,” you whisper, guiding his head where he’s most scared to go.

A hot line is drawn with his tongue. Your knees fall wider and he grunts a sound into you that makes him think lowly of himself. He tries to go slow where it matters and rough nowhere, though the wanting in him has reached such a pitch his hands tremor in the fingers. You’re wetting for him. Get warmer still. You’re warm for the first time he remembers and it’s all his doing and he makes certain every inch of him keeps asking and that is the shape he takes.

“Here?” he asks, fingers brushing but not yet parting.

“Yes.”

His head drops. Forehead rests against the inside of your thigh for one heartbeat, while he braces to go under. Then, his mouth and hands learn you at once.

The taste of you he assigns to what kindness tastes like. He knows he’s artless and lacks polish, but he uses his body’s hunger and its steadfast build. Kisses you as if cunt were mouth, because the mouth he kissed with love and here love is owed more than anything else.

The only mean thing is your hands. They’ve nails to them that pinch his shoulder and scratch his scalp when his fingers stretch you. The pain of it rests sweet in him and goes down his stomach until his cock stirs and kicks under braies. When you gasp and try to close your legs he only holds you open with a murmur so rough it barely counts as language.

“That’s it,” Duncan slurs. “Aye. Give it ’ere.”

He lifts one palm off you to find your breast, as if he cannot bear leaving any part of you untouched. His thumb passes over the nipple and your whole body jerks. Duncan groans like he has been wounded.

“Sweet girl,” he says, astonished.

Astonished he remains, when you show him what a body like yours can do. How it seeks and guides him, how you know where pleasure lives and present the route to him. Steady him with a tug to his roots and take from him. Half of your weight rests on his face, and your hips move and you take his fingers deeper, and his nose and chin are smeared with you all over. He stays where you tell him to and feels the end come on you hard with your hand turning cruel in his hair, and the knowledge he’ll be cruel to you soon enough if this is how tight you can get.

You push him off when he goes too far with wanting to be good. He slides his hand out of you and rests it idly on his thigh, denying himself another taste of you. Down there, he can see the cloth round his legs dampened in the crotch and the outline of his cock throbbing in the rhythm of your breathing.

Your palm coaxes him to look up. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and is ashamed of the gesture at once. You laugh weakly, and tell him, “Come here. Come back up.”

Before he’s fully straightened, you catch his face and kiss him. Lick yourself out of him. The wood creaks. His hands do not know how to settle, so you help him by putting one on your waist, and one on your breast. He nearly stops breathing.

“Tell me,” you say, rubbing his cheeks. “What hurts. What helps.”

Duncan closes his eyes. “All of it hurts,” he says. Hides in your shoulder for a beat. “You help.”

Saying it costs him dear, but he cares not. You see him, all this broken mountain of a man, and want him all the same. And being wanted eases him greatly. Not gaped at, or treated like a curious little rabid dog to tame and play with, but wanted. He feels almost loved with you around him like that, and he’s never even touched the almost with the others.

“All of it?” you ask.

He nods once. Opens his eyes. His hand leaves your waist and presses flat to his own chest, then lower, as if the body there is some beast he means to hold in place by force of palm alone.

“It starts under the skin,” he says. “Then in the blood. Then there is no place left in me that sits easy.” His mouth twitches, ugly and ashamed. “And now I’ve gone and had my mouth on you besides. That has not helped.”

You almost smile. Almost. The strain in him seems to cure you of it. “Tell me what to do.”

“You say that as if there is some decent order to these things,” he laughs, feeling his ears burn. His gaze drops to your body and catches there, held. “I told you what comes after. The hurt of it.”

“I remember.”

“You remember the words. That is not the same.” His jaw works. “If I take you, I’ll be rougher than I mean. Even doing my best. And my best is not always clever.”

You reach for the hand he has braced against his own middle and pull it away. He comes unwillingly, like a horse checked on the bit. When his palm lands on your thigh again the heat of it makes you jump.

“I would rather have your best,” you say, “than somebody else’s clever.”

That catches him wrong-footed. Duncan lets his face open with it in a way that’s almost boyish if there were not such strain all through him. Then he bows over you sudden and heavy, unable to stay upright with that much feeling in him. “Seven hells, girl,” he says into the hollow of your neck. “Do not say things to me I’ll remember all my life.”

You put your arms round him as if there’s nothing else to do. He has his size settling over you piece by piece. Shoulders first. Then chest. Then the careful weight of his hips held off by effort. He shudders once when your hands move over his back.

“Dunk,” you hum.

“Mm.”

“Take it off.”

He stills. “My shirt?” he asks after a beat and melts when you chuckle.

“All of it, if you like.”

It turns out he can afford one more strangled, brief laugh. He pushes himself off you and gets at his laces with hands gone youthful in their artlessness. When he fumbles, you help. The shirt opens, parts from skin. Then he drags it over his head and throws it somewhere blind.

Your hands fly to his chest at once. Fingernails brush through the coarse hair on it, then move lower where his belly is soft enough to move when he breathes. You touch lightly but he feels it as if you were touching the deeper make of him. He sucks in a sharp breath. “No one’s taught you manners at all,” he mutters.

“You’ve just had your mouth between my legs.”

“Aye.” His hand closes on your wrist and keeps it where it is, spread flat over him. “And still I say it.”

You bring the palm lower. He catches it before you get far. “Easy,” he says. “Easy, or I’ll spend before I’ve got into you and die of shame.”

The coarseness of it makes heat flash through your features afresh. He sees it happen and goes dark with glee for one bare second before the guilt comes back overtop. Strange how often those two things live so close in him.

He undoes the rope-for-belt one-handed. Kicks free of the rest with less grace than speed. By the time he stands before you naked he feels as though there is no room left in the barn for anything but you and him. His cock drags hot and heavy and furious with neglect over his thigh and when your breath hitches at the sight, Duncan backs out into slightly crestfallen. “There,” he says, gaze down, fixed on a speckle of dust. “That’s what I meant.”

When he looks back up it is too late. Your eyes have gone already, taking in the thick weight of him, the flushed strain in it, the root he’s warned you of swelling. He turns his face aside as if he expects revulsion on viewing alone. Instead, you reach and his whole body flinches.

“Do you mean it?” he asks.

“I mean it.”

So he lets you put your hand around him. Careful, because you are not witless after all. He grunts through his teeth and drops his forehead to your shoulder, every inch of him going tight. “Don’t finish me yet,” he says.

“Would that be so terrible?” you ask, thumb parting him gently at the slit.

“For pride, aye,” Duncan says and smiles anyway. His hips move, helpless as a struck thing, and the drag of him through your palm makes him grunt out an ugly animal sound much like the ones he makes when he’s all alone. “Enough, girl. Enough,” he says. “I am sick with wanting you already.” He comes closer and sets a palm to your face. “You tell me stop and I stop.”

You nod.

“That easy.”

You nod again.

His thumb strokes once under your eye. “Say it with your mouth.”

“Yes,” you whisper.

A shadow of impatience goes through him at the smallness of it. “Yes what?”

“Yes, Duncan.”

He shuts his eyes briefly as if the sound of his name in your mouth is another blow to a body taking too many already. The wanting in him deepens and so does the tenderness. His hands find yours to guide you off the wooden ledge. “Turn round,” says the instinct in him. “Only if you will,” says Duncan. “Only—”

You hop off and turn before he can finish, which wraps a fist round his gut and holds, tight. Your back comes to his chest. He gathers your hair over one shoulder, exposing the nape of your neck. Stares at it some and feels the itching in his gums to clamp hard and mean on it. Then, his mouth finds it with teeth blunted. The first kiss there is almost chaste. The second less so. By the third, he’s breathing into your skin like a man trying to survive on the scent of you.

The shadow that sits on his nature whispers into his ear to bend you over and take you raw. His boyish heart beats its fist against his ribcage and tells him to keep you instead, and wins.

One arm wraps round your middle. The other hand slides over your belly, up between your breasts, then back down again because he cannot seem to settle. Every path he takes teaches him something and inflames him for having learnt it.

You go slack for him. That simple. That willing.

He tightens his hold before he remembers himself. His hips rock against the curve of your backside, helpless as a struck thing. “There you are,” he mutters, half to himself. Lifts you until your toes barely touch the tops of his feet and walks you both deeper into the barn. He sits on a hay bale with your arse pressing his cock and his arse getting scratched by dried grass.

His knees part and spread your thighs with it. You wriggle on him and Duncan can feel every part of you go alert at the head of him pressing your entrance.

“Wait,” he says, hearing the change in your breath. “Easy. Let me set you.”

He gets a palm between your legs, slicks you once more till your body softens again. Your head lolls back with a blissful sigh. “You said you’d be rougher with me,” you murmur.

“Not inside you yet,” Duncan says, lining himself up. Once that’s done, he uses both hands on your hips, broad and steady. You seem to be lost for words then. Tighten around him before he’s barely through the threshold. “That’s it,” he says. “Take what you can. I’ll mind the rest.”

The angle is cruel and he knows it, but remains solemn in it. First press uses up all the wit in his thick brain, and he’s taken over with it. With heat and pressure and the blunt tightness of your body that fights him for its dear life but its owner has enough mercy to tell it otherwise.

You clutch his forearms and whine out, “Dunk—”

Duncan freezes behind you the instant your cunt resists. “I know.” His voice sounds pulled through gravel. “I know. Little by little.”

When you swallow and nod, he tries to give you that. Little by little. The crown of him works in and your body clenches as if to throw him out again. He waits, breathing hard, bracing through it with his eyes blinking slowly.

“That’s it,” he says, cuddling his nose into the back of your neck. “Curse me if you need.”

He’s certain you almost do—can hear your lips shaping around it and choosing not to speak in the end. Instead, you drag air into yourself and he answers with one more. Then a little more, each inch won by patience. His thighs tremble and sweat with the labour of not being a bastard and a beast, fingers bite your hips and ease, bit and ease again. He wants to drive upward into you. Knows that you know it and hopes the fact that he does not you read as unbearable tenderness he carries for you.

“So much,” you whisper.

Duncan’s mouth twitches despite the state of him. “Aye. Sorry,” he says knowing how absurd the apology sounds right now, with half his cock inside you and the rest of him quaking with want. Laughter bursts out of you, bright and weak and disarmed, and loosens something in you. Your body changes round him. Takes him deeper and stranger, and Duncan swears softly into your shoulder.

“There,” he says. “There you are.”

When he is finally seated enough to stop shaking quite so badly, he stays. Breathes with you. Mouth keeps seeking your neck because it’s hard to keep all that strain in his body without somewhere to pour it. One hand leaves your hip to spread over your belly, feeling where he is inside you as if he cannot believe the truth of it any other way.

“Can you bear more?”

“Yes.”

He tests the answer with one small thrust. You make a sound he feels thrumming from your ribs to his chest.

He stops again at once. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yes,” you tell him honestly.

Duncan goes stricken.

“And keep going.”

He bites you to stop himself from groaning like a mad man. Shudders and sweats some more. For a moment he only breathes, rough and uneven, trying to gather enough sense to move without undoing both of you. Then his hands settle again on your hips and he just accepts the tremor in them as a thing that happens with you. “As you wish,” he says, voice gone hoarse as old leather.

Slow still. Slower than his body wants. The first few strokes seem timid on so large a man, but the angle makes each one count. He gets to know the places in your body that he has no names for and feels where he’s making you sore along the whole span of his cock. He’s sorry for it, and keeps going. Graceless, and you are too, and thank the gods for that, because grace would have ruined it. 

He lets small words flee his mouth unattended. Once your name. Once sweet girl, because if you aren’t sweet he doesn’t know what is. His chest expands with a new kind of breathing. Fuller and calmer amongst the storm of it all. He has a mate. She knows him shortly and likes him enough to suffer through it knowing the suffering doesn’t end with just him grunting over her. In itself, it is the kindest thing that’s ever happened to him and Duncan doesn’t let his thoughts get ahead of themselves and dream bigger things than this.

It makes him band you tight with his arms across your middle. He leans over you so his chin settles into the crook of your shoulder and lets his hips roll a notch deeper. Another sound breaks from you at that, and it does for his patience what your laugh did before. He finds a truer rhythm, lets himself get lost in it if only for a second. Closes his eyes again. Your hand comes to his head and scratches the back of it. Duncan shivers like a horse under the brush and drives deeper by accident.

“Dunk—!” you yelp. And this time you do curse him. “Fuck!”

“There,” he says, half dazed with it. “That’s better.”

You tighten around him and loosen and accept him, near making him spill right then and there. Then again, when you whisper, “More.”

“Aye,” he says and obeys in the same instant. Moans as though you’ve struck him in the stomach. He works his hips hard into yours, breathing audibly, and goes back to palming your belly where his body distorts your womb. The shape he has, he gives to you. The strength he has in his legs, he gives to you. His breath spills over your skin, and that is yours too.

You start to answer him with your body. Your hips push back for more. He catches the movement at once and nearly loses himself over it.

“I’ll breed you tonight, girl, you know that?” he says. “Or try, at least, before I die while you keep doing that.”

You make a laugh of it, breathless and broken. Duncan’s next thrust lands harder for hearing it. His apology follows close behind.

“Sorry. Sweetheart, sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Aye.” His teeth graze your shoulder. “And I’ll keep saying it.”

The rhythm has him fully now. Steady and increasingly rough with need. He tries to keep some gentleness in it for you. It remains there in pieces: the hand on your belly easing the force when your body tightens, the kisses at your neck, and the way he keeps listening for hurt in every sound you make and for the no that is yet to come. The rest is all appetite and strain.

He has no idea how he’s got you there, but knows you are close. Your mouth becomes unrestrained. He doubts he’s said fuck as many times as you have today. In the sensing of it, he finds the place he’s learnt with his tongue and brings his fingers to it. “That’s it,” he says. “Let it come. I want you mine, girl. Let it come.”

He thrusts. “Duncan—” Thrusts again. You near hiccup on it, go so tight around him fire spills hard and burning in his gut. He follows you suit, holding fistfuls of your flesh and jerking with it and spending hard inside you as he dreamed having. Pulse after pulse he feels the weight being taken off his sack and for each one he grunts out sounds that are neither knightly, nor fit for company.

His eyes go shut. One laboured breath goes through him from throat to heel. He braces. For the thickening. For hurting you. For his body turning further monstrous and needful inside yours. It comes with a life of its own and to Duncan it feels rightful to do so, natural and inevitable, and he hates it all the same. The primal part of his heart wants his seed locked deep in you, the other—the soft one, the valorous one—contemplates ripping himself apart just so he can spare you.

You gasp so quietly he barely hears it. “I’m sorry,” he says, as earnestly as he can, holding you still. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

Your body goes so rigid and taut he knows damn well the pain is difficult for you to bear. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

“Stay,” you whisper, though the word breaks in half. “Keep still.”

He folds over you. One arm locked around your middle. A hand trembling at your jaw as if he might somehow soothe the ache from your face alone. His head hangs so low the cheek he presses into your neck. Knot settles by degrees, each one dragging another involuntary tremor through the both of you, till at last his body seems satisfied with its own trap and the movement dwindles out of him. He hums against your throat, battling the guilt over how impossibly good it feels to be locked with you.

After a while, it comes back to him that it’s raining. The wetness of it seems to soak through the barn wood to his skin. He’s holding you so fiercely, you tap his arm once.

“Dunk?”

“Mm.”

“You may let go. I shan’t run.”

At that he gives the tiniest shake of his head, cheek still pressed to you like a tired child’s. Duncan makes no sound grand enough to call crying, only a rough broken breath and then a second, but his face stays hidden in your throat and the wet keeps coming. Every part of him is repentant with it except the part too tired to care.

You turn your head as far as you’re allowed. “Dunk. You’re crying.”

He goes rigid. “Leave me that much pride,” he mutters.

“No.”

The answer is so quick it startles him into a small breath. You turn further still and wince for it. He lifts his head, opens his arms from around you to let you. Watches the strange face on you as your palm comes to cup his jaw. Another slides into his hair. You stroke it once. Then, because there is no wit left in either of you and because tenderness has outrun shame by miles, you crane your neck up and lick the salt that is not yours from the corner of his eye.

He lets out a laugh so cracked it hurts more than the tears did. “What sort of girl are you?”

“One that doesn’t want you crying over shame if there’s no shame to be had.”

“You’ve no idea—” Duncan starts, and stops himself. He doesn’t know how to tell you that you’ve opened his chest wide. That he’d rather die next time than go through this without you now that he’s been given the sort of girl like you. “It eases,” he says instead. “The pain of it. In a bit. Only have to wait it through.”

“So we wait.”

“Aye.”

Your knees have begun to tremble with the awkwardness of the position. Duncan feels it and swears under his breath.

“Easy. Easy.” Very carefully, he shifts the both of you. The knot makes that difficult and your hiss at the first movement tears another apology from him. Still he manages it in the end, inch by stubborn inch, till you are lying on your side on the bed of straw with his chest to your back and his arm around you.

This close, with the violence spent out of the weather and his own body quieting under stages, the tenderness he has for you keeps bleeding out. He keeps touching you in little absent ways—a thumb at your wrist. Knuckles over your hip. His mouth at the nape once more, softer now.

“Did I hurt you overmuch?” he asks.

“You hurt me some.” His hand stills. Stubborn creature, you twist again, and he has to rise on one elbow to indulge you. Satisfied with obedience, you brush his split lip with your fingertip. “I bit you some.”

“Aye,” he says. “Vicious little thing.”

After another little while his breathing evens. The trembling leaves him by strips. The knot remains, though less punishing now than before, more an anchored fullness than a fresh assault. Duncan senses the same easing in you.

“What now?” you ask. Your hair is full of straw grass. Face softened and tired.

He paints a circle round the ball of your shoulder with his thumb. “Now I lie here till my body remembers how to behave.”

“And after?”

He goes quiet. Thinking. Wary all over again. “I’ll go hot again,” he says. “But you’ve quenched the worst.” Shame roughens his voice. “Enough that I can go and do my business elsewhere.”

Your mouth frowns and you give him one impatient huff. “What else do I have to take,” you ask, “so you understand I want you?”

It leaves him staring. No one’s ever put anything quite so plain into his hands before and he should have half a mind to suspect a trick in the plainness of it, but doesn’t. “You said you were sore,” he says.

“I am.”

“And still you—”

“Yes,” you say. He’s grateful that after blinking and opening his mouth uselessly, you decide to spare him the struggle and mutter, “You can put your mouth to me again. That helped.” Dunk stares some more. You roll your eyes, his insolent sweetheart. “How long?” you ask. “How long are you like this?”

Duncan drags a hand over his face. “Till the moon shrinks or gathers by the width of my little finger. Thereabouts.”

You frown. “Two-three days.”

“Aye.”

“And you would go away now for two-three days?”

His eyes search yours, still wary in spite of everything. “Are you not letting me?”

You hold his gaze. The whole barn smells of rain and spent heat and the old straw under your bodies. He has gone very still waiting for the answer.

“I forbid you,” you say, and Dunk could weep with it.

You do not know half of what you agree to or want in the instant of agreeing. When angry, he’s truly frightening. Large and trying to shrink himself into something you can’t touch and something you most likely can’t hurt. For misleading him into believing the affection is disdain you can only thank your foul mouth and short temper, you think bitterly.

But then, Gods—he shatters under one touch. One tug of his shirt. One palm on his shoulder placed there with hope, and he looks at you bracing for vileness where there isn’t one. A breeding curse, he tells you. A sickness to the blood that makes him animal and selfish. You’ve heard some and met none like him. He speaks of himself as if he were the most egregious man walking the sullen earth while all you see is a knight cut to be one and a boy you wish to cradle and kiss and save from this misery.

He kisses like he believes it’s the last kissing he’s going to be given. Up close he seems larger, made all over from the same blunt earnest substance that built him elsewhere—thick wrists, square shoulders, neck gone tight with swallowing. Pale as milk in the storm-light. His hair is coarser than you imagined. Strands of it keep working loose and hanging over his brow when he kneels and mouths at your legs. You have the stupidest wish to smooth it back.

Once, the old fear of being opened against your will rises and breaks apart because he does no taking. He keeps asking. His gaze makes you feel seen in a way that has no mockery in it. His appetite is held on a very tight rein.

There’s hurt in being split by him. Plenty. Again and again, it hurts and you let your body take it and hone it into something stranger. His effort of holding back is visible through every second of it, so you let yourself accept the too much. Tell him outright he’s hurting you and then tell him brazenly to keep going, and that look on his face then is the one you will carry to the grave. Hunger and astonishment and the wreck of gratitude. You’ve never been wanted so openly and by someone who’d stop if you told him to. You know that with certainty stronger than fear. The knowing of it lets you bear more and makes you want him more in return.

When he says he’ll breed you or die trying, you nearly come from his words alone. He follows after you like a dog and makes all those sounds you’ve wondered if he’d make if you tried hard enough. They spill from his opened throat, shameless and loud. You love him most in that instant.

Then, the knot takes hold by inches. The place where it has fixed you together burns and aches and feels impossible, and still some feverish part of you thrills at the sheer finality of it. Duncan, caught inside you with all his body’s ugly need made plain is the most gorgeous thing to you. He soothes you through it, too. The endearment catches you by surprise nearly as much as the pity in his voice for your hurt. He sounds more miserable over causing it than you feel under it. That alone makes you gather him in harder.

When he refuses to ease off you silently, the knowledge lands soft and terrible. He is not holding you there because he fears you fleeing. He is holding because he cannot yet bear the parting. Under your touch he goes still in a way you know means feeling too much rather than too little.

You steal all of it from him. The strength from his muscles, his sweat, his seed, his tears, and still he disbelieves that you want him. He wants to go alone again, and you cannot stand it so fiercely, you nearly go furious with it.

“I forbid you,” you tell him, with as much authority as you can gather while being twisted on some old barn’s floor.

His face changes in stages. First disbelief. Then a kind of startled softness. Then something darker and more dangerous, because you have just spoken to the deepest, crudest part of him in a language it understands too well.

“Girl,” he says, raw.

“Do not ‘girl’ me.” Your voice is tired, sore, stern with it all the same. “You do not get to flee into hedges and holes in the ground after making me take all this on faith.”

Duncan’s brows go up a little. “Making you?”

“You heard me.”

His hand on your middle tightens by instinct, then eases again before it can bruise. “You’ve a brave mouth all of a sudden.”

“I have had it all along. You simply would not stand still to hear it.”

That earns you the smallest, strangest ghost of a smile from him. It vanishes at once beneath the strain in his face.

“You do not know what you’re forbidding.”

“Then tell me.”

“There will be more of this.” His voice drops. “More need. Less sense. I may be more ashamed after. More sorry while it’s happening and no less set on it for that.”

You listen as if he is listing weather to you. When he has done, you say, “All right.”

Duncan actually lets out a little breath of temper. “That is no answer.”

“It is mine.”

He stares another moment. You can feel him wanting to argue, wanting to save you, wanting to be saved from the wanting altogether. The effort of all three shows in him plain.

At last you lift your hand and put it to his face. His eyes close. No resistance in him to that any longer.

“You are not leaving me in a barn to go suffer by yourself,” you say, quieter now. “I will not have it.”

“Will not have it,” he repeats, the words almost foolish in his mouth.

“No.”

He opens his eyes. Looks at you long, as if trying to find the pity there and failing.

“What if I ask proper?” he says.

“You may ask.”

“What if I beg?”

Your thumb brushes the split in his lip. Mind plots a thing despite yourself.  “I would like the sound of it and still say no.”

That finally pulls a real laugh from him, though it breaks with weariness halfway through. He bows his head once, beaten in some tender, unlikely way. “Seven save me,” he murmurs. “You mean it.”

“I do.”

Duncan studies you another little while, then lowers his forehead to yours with a heaviness that feels like surrender. “Then stay I shall,” he says. “Just do not say that now, and then think better when I’ve gone and worn the skin off your patience.”

“My patience is fine.”

“It is not. I’ve seen you with a glove.”

That draws a laugh out of you, unbidden. Duncan goes still at the sound, the corner of his mouth pulling with something faint and dazed, as if laughter from you is still a thing he half believes he imagined once. His hand moves over your belly and lower in a restless, thwarted pass. He doesn’t test the luck further—just goes down onto hay and nuzzles into your hair and sighs deeply. A great deal of man to lay quiet at another’s bidding.

“There,” you say, content. “Better.”

“There,” he echoes and you could swear the bastard is grinning. “Very fearsome.”

“Mock me again and I’ll bite you harder.”

“Gods preserve me,” he says, eyes closed and head tipped back onto straw so when you turn yours you can gape at him as openly as you please. The spent strain has loosened something in his face. He looks younger for it. Younger and used through in a way that makes you want to keep him again. This is what he’s supposed to look like after, you think. Not the frightened, frazzled thing he was back when you first found him. Malleable in a way that doesn’t make him weak. Mouth soft at the corners and heat coming off him in waves, while the knot eases by slow increments.

The deep, strange pressure gives up some of its iron. His body mellows further, as if some inward grip has at last begun to unclench. When he slips free of you, the absence startles. Your body had wrapped itself round the burden of him so fully that the leaving feels wrong for one curious instant with the sensation of some important weight being stolen. A small upset sigh leaves you.

“I mislike it too,” Duncan says, making you smile into your palm.

Then, he shifts. Lifts onto all fours and you get to see him, hanging heavy between the legs and reaching as low as his mid-thigh. He’s milked all over, the skin on the base shiny and reddened from when blood has made him girthier, hairs on his navel and circling the root damp and disturbed with moisture, sticking to him wildly. He comes awkward and stiff to kneel between your hips, and leans.

You prop yourself on elbows. Your knees draw closer with the effort of it, and Duncan’s shoulders stop them from closing. He stares right at the apex of your thighs and murmurs, “Gods, but you’re pretty.”

Before you can throw any of his own abashed modesties back at him, he leaches farther down. Splays himself flat on his belly and brings his hands to you again. One palm holds you in the crease of the thigh while the fingers of the other gather what you have lost of him and press it back inside.

“Keep me, girl,” he says. “I’ll give you all I’ve got. Which is not much,” he adds, sheepish. Then he looks up at you with those round child’s eyes and says again, “Jus’ keep me.”

Your mouth goes so dry the yes doesn’t make it out. You beg him with gaze alone, and he understands at once. Climbs back up on his arms and legs and lands braced above you, rubbing his nose along yours. “Hallo,” he says, very softly.

The foolishness of it breaks something tender in you. “Hallo.”

A kiss. A proper one, free of fever-struck taking and half-mad gratitude. Just lips on lips and kind tongues. It turns out he has sweetness enough for ten men when there is nobody in him trying to outrun shame. He kisses as if he has time now. As if he means to acquaint himself with every corner of your mouth by patience alone.

“There’s my girl,” he murmurs, half to himself.

Warmth climbs into your face. “I am not your girl.”

His eyes drift shut briefly. “No?” It’s fond enough to make argument feel useless.

He presses another kiss to the corner of your mouth. Then your cheek. Then the place beneath your eye where the skin still feels tight with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “For the fever. For the shouting. For the foolishness of me.”

“You were not the only fool.”

“Aye, but I am the larger one. It stands to reason I should answer for more of it.”

That earns him a little smile. Duncan sees it and his whole face alters round the sight.

“You frighten easy,” you murmur.

“So would you, if your body did half the ugly things mine does.”

You touch his lower lip where your teeth broke it. “I did that.”

“You did.”

“Sorry.”

His mouth turns against your fingertip. “I am not.” Then, the weight of him settles itself on you until air puffs out through your nose, and he stays. Rain ebbs overhead and you wonder how much time has passed between him snarling at you and him nuzzling his cheek between your breasts. How a person so big can feel so breakable where you have him.

You let him rest. Yourself, too. Against your thigh where he lies the beginnings of him wake again. Your fingernails scratch his head once. “Dunk.”

He lifts his head. “You are looking at me like you mean trouble.”

“I do.” You nod. “Get on your back.”

Duncan shifts with a grunt. All that largeness unspools over the straw and boards till he lies sprawled with one forearm shielding his eyes a moment. His chest rises, heavy and open. You can feel his attention on your skin even through the hand over his face.

You look at him and think: so this is what a giant felled looks like.

“Do not stare at me so,” he mutters.

“You stared enough at me.”

“I could some more.”

You smile and put a hand to his wrist to reveal him. Duncan lets you do it. That is the marvel. He lets you and looks up and gets back to touching you and every touch says mine a little, though he has not the boldness to say it again with his mouth.

Like this he’s breathtaking and it’s something you can never tell him in abundance. Too broad for grace, too weathered for prettiness. Hair wild and skin satin with dampness. The flesh of his belly loosens now he’s on his back, soft enough to look warm. His thighs spread without elegance. All of him laid plain. You yearn to take advantage of that honesty before it thinks to gather itself up again, so you swing a leg over and straddle his middle.

He sucks in a breath so hard his whole body answers it. “Girl—”

“Hush,” you tell him. Settle carefully, because despite all his size he looks for one endearing beat as if he might bolt from the force of being looked at and mounted in one movement. His hands come asking again.

“You are trouble,” he says.

“Yes.”

“And pleased with it.”

“Yes.”

He scowls. “I can stop you still,” he says, though the words have a shape of a hope he would hate you to call.

“Can you?”

Duncan considers the question with pained sincerity. “No.”

You smirk. He watches your mouth through it and grows harder under you by visible degrees. The sight gives you a mean little thrill. You shift your weight on purpose, slow enough to feel him strain.

“Careful,” he says.

“Of what?”

“Of me.”

You lean down enough that your hair falls round his face and the world narrows to the two of you under its curtain.

“I am,” you say. “Why do you think I’m going slow?”

Duncan’s eyes close for one beat. Open again with the look of a man trying hard not to beg before he has been made to. You kiss his chest first because it is there and because you have wanted to since the first day by the stream. The little sound he makes belongs to a much younger man. You keep going. One broad side of him, then the other. His hand goes into your hair in pure need, no thought to where it belongs or what it looks like. Fingers careful by force of habit and blundering from feeling.

“You can come higher than that,” he says after a while, shy.

“Can I?”

Duncan’s mouth twists. “You know you can.”

You rise just enough to look at him. “Then ask.” He stares. The rain has weakened to a far hiss. In the quiet, his breathing sounds huge. Yours too. “Ask,” you say again.

Colour lifts under his skin. His eyes sharpen with it. Pride and want pull at him from opposite sides till you almost pity him. “Do not play with me overlong,” he whispers.

“Beg me,” you say, with a stare so dead your cheeks sag with it.

One hand covers his face again. “You wicked little thing.”

“That is no begging.”

He drags the palm off and glares up at you with all the seriousness in the world. The effect is spoiled entirely by the way his chest keeps rising harder and harder under your hands. “You know what I want.”

“Say it.”

His lips part. Shut. Part again. The struggle in him is so plain it almost feels unfair. Almost. “Put your—” He stops. Starts over, glaring still. “Put yourself here.” His finger points to his mouth. “Put yourself on my face.” The words come out like stones hauled uphill.

You hold his gaze another beat just to see what it does to him. It does plenty. Then: “Good,” you say sweetly.

Duncan’s eyes go half-mad at the praise, but when you finally move his hands know what to do. They help without seeming mean to, guiding your thighs and settling your knees. When you rise over his mouth at last he turns his head once and presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh so cordial it steals the air from you before any true touch has begun.

“Dunk,” you whisper. He answers by pulling you down.

His hands leave all gentleness behind in that first moment, then find it again a second later. The hunger in him outruns manners. His mouth does not. He learns with it as he learned with touch before. A broad sweep of tongue. Gawkish eagerness. He settles in as if this, at least, is a labour he was born understanding.

You put a hand to his shoulder. The other goes into his hair. Duncan groans under you and the sound goes straight through your spine. You had not thought a man beneath you could feel so in command. Yet he does. Great body sprawled in the straw. Mouth working with grisly devotion. Hands spread wide at the backs of your thighs like he means to keep you there forever.

“Fuck,” you gasp. He gives you no speech in answer, only doubles his effort as if praise were instruction.

The pleasure comes quicker this time. Your body knows him already. Every motion of his mouth says take, take, take, and every answering tremor in you says yes. You rock against him before shame can catch up. Duncan’s hands tighten. One comes off your thigh long enough to press flat over your belly, feeling the muscles straining there. The touch is so absurdly intimate you go weak with it.

He feels the weakness. Holds you steadier. Works you harder.

When you try to drag back just to keep from spilling too soon, he follows. It is half blind and wholly determined. His hair is a wreck under your grip. Breath comes fierce and wet and loud. If he could speak, you think, he would say give it. Since his mouth is otherwise occupied, his whole body says it for him.

So you give it. Let your legs shake around his head and your palm drive his face into you so hard he chokes a little. He drinks it all as if it were owed. When the worst of it passes and you’re trembling too hard to sit straight without outright smothering him, he eases you down his body, but never off himself.

You come to rest against his chest. His mouth is wet, face looks stunned and pleased and a touch dazed with triumph. You brush his cheek with two fingers. He kisses them once. Then, you feel him under your thigh.

Still hard. Harder, if anything, for what he has just done.

You lift yourself enough to look down between your bodies. His cock lies hot against his belly, flushed darker now and lifting with the blood stumbling through it. The sight of him like that after your weight on his face turns your mouth dry. Duncan watches you watching him and goes very still.

“Do not be cruel to me,” he says.

That is exactly when cruelty would have been easiest. You know you could leave him there and he would suffer it because he thinks he deserves suffering from you if pleasure comes in the same hand. Instead you put your palm round him and feel the whole of him jolt under you.

“S-seven fu—” he strains. Your hand lifts before he can lose his wits entirely. You raise yourself and line him up with a care that is no innocence and all intent. Duncan lies under you and understands too slowly what you mean to do. Then he understands.

“Girl—”

“Hush.” You set the head at your entrance and hold there. His jaw tightens with the effort of not thrusting up.

“Now beg me,” you whisper, and feel yourself slickening with it.

He looks at you as if the asking might kill him quicker than the rut. For one heartbeat he says nothing. Pride holds. Barely. Then your hand shifts on him, only a little, and the last of its poor thinness buckles and he becomes humble all over again.

“Please,” he says. His eyes shut once, hard. Open, darker than before. “P-please,” he mouths, and this time the word drags. “Girl. Wee thing. Have mercy.”

To you it’s a blade heated white driven through the very essence of yearning. You ought perhaps to be frightened of teasing a man like him. Instead the thing that rises first is a wild, astounding fondness. He is trapped on the precipice. Spent and near another spending. Sweating. Trying to stay inert while all of his muscles pull him forth. You hold him poised there one moment longer only to feel the full violence of his want shake through him. Then you sink. It shrinks you to a single breath.

The size of him feels impossible at once. You lower by inches and still he keeps going, hot and broad and stretching you till your thighs quiver with the struggle of bearing him. Too much of him. Not enough of him. Through the pain, promise of pleasure threads and under it something opens.

“There,” Duncan gasps, throat tight with it. “Gods. There.”

You mean to go slowly. You do, for a moment. Your hands brace on his chest. His heart pounds beneath, huge and wild. Every inch you take changes his face, and the power of it goes to your head. So does the sight of him sprawled and yielding, all that heft gone obedient.

“Look at you,” you murmur.

Duncan’s eyes open at that. They are feral enough to frighten. “Do not mock me now.”

“I’m not.”

He believes you, because he has to. Because from his body’s speech it seems like he would not survive disbelief. His touch runs over you, heels of his palms and big thumbs roughened by reins and weather and all the life he has lived without gentleness enough in it and he looks too naked to live under a roof with rain pounding it and no priest to witness it.

You rise. Sink again. Learn the drag of him from above. The angle gives you a strange new mastery of it. You can feel where he catches hardest and where your body opens sweetest. He lets you have it for longer than you expected he could. He lies there and takes what you do to him with gratitude and torment painting his face.

“Again,” he says once, before shame cuts him off.

You smile a little and give him exactly that. Harder this time. “There now,” you say. “You can beg proper after all.”

“Cruel,” he says. “But it sits on you well enough.”

It warms you lower still. You keep riding him, a little mean with the delight of seeing how thoroughly he can be unmanned. The discomfort becomes something you await. A bright harsh pull that reaches right through the pleasure and makes its home there. They run together like fish in the water when they’re too fast and sparkling and you can’t tell whether it’s one or two or plenty of fish tricking your eye.

He has ache written all over his face. On Duncan it only makes him more himself. More touchable. More yours for this little span, and it makes you feel less alone in the world. The knowing that both of you have to suffer some to gain some.

Your body lifts, and he holds it by the waist. His hips begin their answering. Two stronger strokes to remind you the power under which had felt so conquered, never was. He’s only been still because he chose to.

You put a hand to his chest to steady yourself. “Easy.”

He tries; you can see it. The effort shows in the cords of his neck, the tight set of his mouth, the way his fingers spread hard enough over your hips to leave their shape. The blood in him has gone too bright. The need too deep. When you sink down on him again and linger there, wringing another helpless sound from him, the last of his chivalry gives way.

“Come here,” he says. Low. Dangerous.

You ought perhaps to listen. Instead, the insolence rises so fast you do the opposite. Lift almost clear and hold him in the wanting of the next descent.

Duncan’s whole body arches under you. “Gods damn it.” It snaps right there. He sits up with a force that makes you yelp, both arms wrapping round you tight. The barn tilts while boards sigh under sudden shift. Then, your back hits them and Duncan is over you, the vast heated storm of him blotting out the dim light.

Through a startled gasp, you stare at him. He sees it and breathes hard through his nose. A flash of shame cuts his face in half, and abashed like a boy that lives in him, he tells you, “You should not have done that.”

“Mm,” you hum. “Because you asked nice?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“And I’m done asking nice now.”

Where fear ought to appear, there is little. It runs hand in hand with a hotter thing and neither lets go. Inside you, a pulse answers all through your middle, like hot iron poured into a mould. On the back of this worry thrill rises strangely, borne up by the helplessness of his action and the fact that this great man menaces you while shaking in the arms because of what your body is doing to his. Whatever claws at him, he’s still making sure he is welcome. His forehead nearly touches yours.

“As before,” he says, voice scraping. “Tell me no and I’ll hear it.”

You put a hand to the side of his face. His skin burns under your palm.

“No,” you say, and watch him hollow out for one terrible blink before you finish. “Do not stop.”

He sucks his lip between the teeth and the split you gave him almost opens anew. Relief rattles his chest. He kisses you hard, and the next thrust comes with all his control stripped down to what is necessary to keep from harming. Gentleness of real kind, made of strength leashed as tight as it will go and still threatening to break.

He rides you into the boards with a rhythm that belongs more to his shadow self than to any choice in him. Still, you can feel how much he’s holding back. It lives in the tremor of muscles beside your head and the rough checks of his breathing and the way his strokes end on the edge of something wilder before he pulls back by force. The hand at your thigh keeps trying to open you wider. One at your jaw keeps at your face in case it gives him something your words won’t.

“Duncan—”

“Yeah,” he says. “Take it. Take it from me.”

Your legs tighten round him. The hurt has changed shape. Turned molten. Every place he touches lights. Every place he does not touch begs to be next. You cling because there is nowhere else to put what he is making of you. His hair sticks damp to your face. The vein in his neck beats under your mouth when you turn and kiss there. Being with him is the first thing that has felt right in days upon days.

“You are driving me out of my head,” he says against your skin. You would answer if you had breath enough. It feels good enough to become unintelligible from actual peak. You’re just trapped there, exist there, where your mind and heart confuse themselves and the only thing that exists clearly is the rapture of being taken.

He goes without warning beyond one broken “f-fuck,” and the sudden brutal deepening as he drives home and spends with a groan that sounds wrung from his marrow. His whole body goes through a succession of hard bright shudders and then a deeper one that leaves him near limp. Then comes the shaking. Twitching. Mouth opening at your throat, perplexed. He floods you and in the wake of his spending comes the swelling again.

It shows you where the peak has been all this time. Gets through you like a warm knife. Fullness, so astounding and grand it should unmake you, but puts you back together instead. Your belly thrums with it and it spreads warmth all over you until your fingers feel strangers to your palms. You come so hard on it, a sound you’d never make in daylight leaves you. You have no idea how torn you must look when Duncan mistakes pleasure for pain and answers with such care you could near weep yourself.

“Don’t hate me. Don’t hate me,” he says. “I’m sorry. Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t—” You gasp. “I never do.” Then, you weep yourself. Tears push out with violence so unbearable you have to bring a palm to your face. You hate them at once, the weakness of them and the mumble when your breath snags and starts breaking wrong.

Duncan stops moving. Then all his care changes shape. He eases down close, slides one arm under your shoulders and tugs your hand off your eyes with the other. Patience over force. When you resist, he only waits you out, breathing against your hair, till your strength gives over.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Hey now.”

You squeeze your lids shut.

His mouth finds your cheek. Open kisses, gathering your salt just as you gathered his. He kisses one eye, then the other, then the corner of your mouth where your face has gone gnarled from trying not to sob.

“Stop,” you tell him—it only makes the weeping worse. A wail gets out of you, ugly as anything, and Duncan hushes you at once and gathers you closer.

“Hush, wee thing,” he says. “Hush now.”

You’re bawling. Everything comes together, from the past and the present and future that’s going to be miserable if lived without him, and being held through it opens the flood wider. He keeps his mouth to your face and you can feel how hard he’s trying not to lose his senses. Keeps taking the tears as if he can lessen them by sheer stubborn attendance.

“Does it hurt so much?” he asks. “Girl, tell me. Does it?”

You shake your head.

He frowns against your skin. “Then what is it?”

You drag in a breath and it breaks in the middle. Another sob takes the first words with it. At last you manage, “You spoke of parting.” His hand stills. You swallow and feel all sorts of scorn for the fresh wetness that comes with the saying of it. “B-before. By the stream.”

Duncan lifts his head enough to look at you. The storm-light is gone thin now, the barn all dark boards and damp straw and the little wash of moon seeping through the cracks. His face in it looks wrecked and bewildered.

“If you keep being sweet like this,” you say, and your voice goes ugly on the last words, “I won’t—I won’t bear it when it c-comes.”

He gapes. Gasps with surprise so bare it hurts to watch. “You said,” he begins, slow, as if stepping into deep water, “you said you’re not my girl.”

“I’m n-not.”

Duncan waits. 

You drag your wrist under your nose, furious with yourself, and glare at some point over his shoulder because looking at him feels worse. “I do not want to be anyone’s girl.” His jaw works once. “I want—”

It feels larger than your mouth.

“What?” he asks.

You make yourself look at him. “I want you—” you say. “I want you to be my man, though.”

Duncan understands at once. You watch it happen. Going into him clean and taking root because possession is a tongue his body learnt before speech ever got wise enough to shame it. His eyes darken, but the face gentles around the darkness of them.

“Aye,” he says, wisest he’s ever been. “You can be my moon then.” His thumb strokes under your eye, not wiping anything, just spreading it. “My whole world. Not just a girl.”

Inside you, your heart stitches itself back together. By his hands—neat, careful work delivered with large, honest fingers. Then, your man looks at you as if you’ve hung the moon and were it in the same breath, and says, “Now you may tell me all the things you meant to.”

So the rendezvous just continues.

It was a usual day for him, he was at your house, something he'd do when Maki went off on missions, but you were extremely nervous for some reason today. You usually are, but something was off about today.

The way you'd instinctively placed your hand over your tummy when he thrusted hard? It wasn't normal, he'd also noticed that your period was late, which yes, he keeps track of for some reason.

He got off the bed, taking advantage of your absence since you went to the bathroom, he scurried through your home before he reached where the trash bin was placed, and there it was.

A pregnancy test, in the middle of the trash.

A positive pregnancy test.

You were pregnant.

Yuta was just done fucking you a few minutes prior, but still the blood rushed to his cock, he could feel himself getting hard underneath his boxers, he felt genuine butterflies, immediately rushing back to your bedroom and caught you stepping out of the bathroom, only with your oversized tee on. He smiled, pulling you into a hug.

“I can't believe I'm going to be a dad! How long did you know it for??” He asked, expression elated, the complete opposite of yours as you felt dread overwhelm your body.

He wasn't supposed to know.

“I uh— what?” You tried playing dumb.

“I saw the kit in the trash, how long did you know that you were pregnant for?” He questioned again, staring into your eyes.

Fuck.

“Yesterday.” You answered.

“And you didn't tell me? I'm upset.” He pouted, “Though it must be because you were planning to surprise me right? I'm sorry if I ruined it.” He beamed, pushing you onto the bed.

“uh I no— I don't—” You didn't know what to tell him, but could only watch as he took off his boxers once again, his cock springing up, you could almost feel like it was thrumming with excitement.

“I cannot believe I'm actually going to become a dad, this is surreal!” He smiled, lining up his cock with your entrance. You panicked, head spinning as you shook your head, his excitement felt pressuring and you were suffocating.

“I'm— I don't want it!” You blurt out which made Yuta freeze dead in his track.

“What?” His voice was low, his eyes loosing all the light from the prior excitement.

“I don't want it. I'm not keeping the baby, I was going to get rid of it— urgh!” Your words were cut off by Yuta shoving and ramming his cock into you with no warning, fully sheathing himself inside.

“Did I fuck you stupid? Or are you saying things that don't make sense?” He questioned, tilting his head to the side slightly as his hips move slowly. “You don't want the baby?” He asks, and you nod.

“It doesn't matter, you're keeping it.” He says dismissively, your eyes widen in disbelief.

“But i—”

“You are carrying my heir.” He cuts you off, emphasizing the word 'heir' with a thrust. “My heir, the one that could inherit my clan after me. I cannot have you making selfish decisions.” He wraps his hand around your throat.

“Besides, how can you be so cruel and deny our baby?” His other hand splays over your lower abdomen. “The baby that is a proof and symbol of our love?”

Love?

You wanted to scoff.

“Anyway, you're not getting rid of it.” He concludes. “Don't even think of sneaking behind my back, you do not want to face the consequences.” He warns you sweetly before continuing to thrust into your warm cunt.

You lay there, staring at the ceiling as you contemplate everything.

You wish you hadn't returned to the sorcerer world.

Time flew by pretty quickly, and with each and every month, your belly continued to grow. Explaining to the others felt shameful, having to make up excuses about a one night stand and a deadbeat fling since you couldn't actually reveal the truth, especially to Maki.

“Hey, if you don't mind, can I ask you a favour?” Maki all of a sudden on one fine day suddenly decided to ask you something, it came out of nowhere.

“Yes, sure, what is it?” You replied, hand stroking your full belly, it became a habit now.

“It's something extremely personal, and the thing you need to know before that is the fact that... Yuta is impotent.” She begins.

“What?” You were genuinely caught off guard.

“I know it seems like a shocking thing, we tried for a child for a few months prior to your arrival but— it never really ended up anywhere, and when we went for a check up recently, it was confirmed that he had issues, I think it's a combination of infertility and erectile dysfunction.” She revealed, venting all of her frustrations.

You just remained there in shock, there was no way Yuta was having any issues, you know very well.

“Since— oh it might be too much to ask, and it's totally up to you— he was the one that suggested this— but, your child doesn't have a father right? Is it alright if we adopt it? Obviously you'll still be the mother but the kid will carry the 'Okkotsu' name. The decision is yours, no pressure.” She finishes slightly fumbling her words.

“I will think about it.” You mumbled.

You were snapped out of your thoughts when Yuta pinched your nipple, causing you to gasp. Your breasts were even more sensitive now, followed by the annoying soreness as your body adapted to pregnancy.

“What are you zoning out for?” Yuta asked from behind you, hand sturdy on your waist helping you balance yourself on all fours.

You felt his cock deep inside you, twitching in arousal, your walls had become even more sensitive because it burnt so blissfully everytime Yuta would enter inside you.

'Impotent my ass.' You think.

“Ah, is it what Maki said to you?” He guesses correctly, and you slightly turn to look at him. “Yeah, I lied.” That was all he says before pushing inside you again, causing a choked moan to leave your mouth.

His hands massaged your breasts gently, you felt relieved when he did so, letting out a sigh of pleasure as he continued to thrust deep into you. His hand then slipped downwards, stroking the protruding belly gently.

He leaned over, wrapping both his arms around your waist while his drilles his cock into you. “I love you so much.” He whispered against your ear and kissing your shoulder.

You let out a whimper at his affection. You hated the fact that he could be so loving and despicable at the same time.

He rutted into your hole faster, hitting your cervix since he went deeper and deeper, the shaft rubbed against your sweet spot actively, making your buck your hips into him to hit the spot harder.

The consistent effort made you cum immediately, a gasp left your mouth as you felt the pleasure blind you, making you see white, your walls quivered around his cock, milking him since it seems as if he too arrived at the same time.

He pulled out slowly, making sure you felt each and every drag of his cock from within your walls, and watched as it leaked out of you. Reminded him of the time he first saw the same sight months ago back in that building.

You both had come so far.

Metaphorically and literally.

Though he wasn't done yet, he switched positions immediately, grabbing you by your arms, lifting you up and settling his head between your legs.

He didn't waste anytime, mouth latching onto your clit and he sucks and laps your folds, you grip at his hair at the sensation, trying to stay balanced on your thighs so you don't suffocate him since now you had extra weight added on.

But he did not care, pulling you down and flushing his face against your cunt, he gasped in bliss as he suckled, tongue twirling around your nub before he dragged down to your hole— his cum was still leaking out from you,

He slurped it all up, swallowing your mixed juices and groaned in satisfaction at the taste, you felt embarassed, face feeling hotter as every minute passes on and the obscene sounds that surround the room and pass into your ears.

It was nasty, the slurping, the licking, and the whimpers he was letting out made you drip even more, it was practically like a waterfall down there, and Yuta? He was swallowing it all up like a man dying of thirst.

He pressed his tongue flat, catching everything before he swallowed it, his teeth grazed your sensitive bud slightly which made you twitch and pull up and away from his face, but he grabbed onto your thighs, pushing you back on his face.

It made a familiar sense of pleasure bloom in your lower abdomen again, one final lick and you were coming undone.

A choked moan left your mouth before you bit your lip, your toes curled in pleasure as you pressed down onto his face, panting really hard as you rode his face to come down from your high. You move over after a minute or two, finding his face wet and shiny with all your juices. He gives you a small smile before getting up and pressing a kiss to your mouth, pushing the mixed essence into you as well.

After that, he cleaned you up and cuddled you to sleep, stroking patterns onto your belly as he caressed it gently, all the love in his eyes and face buried in your neck, basking in your scent and warmth.

You had agreed to Maki's- or rather Yuta's proposal, not like you had any choice anyway, and Yuta became the dad who stepped up in the eye of others.

Being there for the childs birth, supporting you emotionally and practically just acting like a sweet father publicly, Maki found child-raising tiring whenever she tried helping out, and just left it to you both to deal with the kid.

Yuta went all out, loving and spoiling the baby as you recovered. You couldn't deny the fact that Yuta was a great father.

And now you were watching as Yuta strolled around the garden of his traditional house with the babe in his arms while you sat alongside a few housekeepers and people who worked for him, they were currently tending to you.

“Master is really treating that child as his own, he has such a kind heart.” One of them says and you look down, fidgeting with your fingers, throat closing up since you didn't know how to reply.

Yeah, of course he is, because that is his own child.

He stills and stares. You have your cloak thrown round you and the hood half up, all that cloth and leather making you into a bundle of angles by the fire, but your hands are bare for once. For a moment, before the buckskin comes back on and seals everything shut, save for the face.

Long hands. Quick when they are warm enough for it. Not soft hands, neither. He has seen the nicks over your knuckles, the little white seam near the thumb where some old cut healed badly, the dark half-moons of cold under your nails on mornings like this. You keep the rest of yourself put away as close as any maid in a sept, though no maid ever rode so hard or slept with boots so near to hand. High throat, gloves, sleeves, hood, all of it. Even in heat you do not loosen much. A queer little habit, he had thought at first. He lingers on it more than he means to.

You are quiet too. Unlike Ser Arlan, who used to get drunk and chant and dance round the fire in naught but his tunic till he fell over face-flat, arse-out. Dunk misses the noise, sometimes. The menacing joy of Arlan’s madness. Your silence is sparing and words seem to cost you something.

He’s had near a month of your company and still knows the sound of your boots in the leaves better than the sound of your voice. He tells himself he is looking now for no more reason than that you are there and awake before him, and because a man will always look hardest at what is least shown to him. Yet his eyes go where they always go of late: to the bend of your head over some small task, to those clever palms worrying laces and buckles, and the patch of skin at your wrist when your sleeve rides back and you are too cold to mind it quick enough.

Mild things. Fool things. Still they have grown familiar in him. Stranger than that, he cannot rightly call to mind how the road felt before there was another pair of footsteps with his. Another shadow across the fire, another body breathing on the far side of camp. Ser Arlan had been dead only a little while when he first took to riding alone, yet those days seem barer to him now than all the long years before him.

Under his eyelids, it replays. He meets you just after one of his bouts has wrung him near empty. Duncan has taken himself off beneath a great elm and let the storm break over him, too dazed to ride farther, sore to the bone and fever-hot in all the thick places of him. His size turns against him at such times. More muscle to cramp, more skin to burn, more weight to drag once the worst passes.

The rain comes a mercy. It beats the heat from his face and neck, soaks his tunic through, turns the ground beneath him to cool mud. He might have slept there longer if Sweetfoot, good girl that she is, had not started at the thunder and pulled free.

You are leading her back by the reins when he finds you, or else when the horse finds him first and you after. A boy, Dunk judges, from the swagger you wear and the smooth face that has never yet wanted a razor. Squire’s armour, cloak plastered dark with rain, hair tucked out of sight. Sweetfoot comes willing with you, which is recommendation enough in itself. Dunk thanks you, rough and short for ignominy of the state you have seen him in, and you nod as if there were nothing strange in a half-sick hedge knight losing horse and wits in the same afternoon.

You might have parted there. Only when he asks where you are bound, it turns out your road and his run one and the same a good ways on.

“D’you mind a companion?” Dunk asks.

Your eyes are on him. He shifts his weight. “I’m a hedge knight. Carrying on after Ser Arlan of Pennytree’s passing. I was his squire. He knighted me—” He puts a hand to his chest, then thinks that foolish and lets it drop again. “I can build a fire, hunt a bit when there’s aught to catch, and keep watch well enough. Might be of some use to a—”

He breaks off, not knowing what to call you. Squire, mayhaps. Some lordling’s boy run lean on the road. Or just one more hard little scrap of a lad with no business being out alone.

A look askance. “You ill?” you ask after a beat. Your voice is softer than the sight of you proposes.

Dunk scrabbles for something to say that is neither lie nor truth entire. “N-no. Just worn some.”

“Fine,” you say. That is all. His hand, held out for yours, stays where it is a moment before Dunk takes it back.

Right before that, well. Dunk knows what he is, though the world has a dozen names for it and half as many fool notions besides. Old women mutter of moon-pull and bad blood and such. Dunk knows only the misery of it. He feels it coming when he does and dreads every hour till it has done with him. It burns him through, leaves him sore, stupid, and mean with the ache of it, and cursing his own good nature for not being the sort to toss silver at a whore and use her to help himself. Make her his for a moment, if only by that queer bit of business that comes after he spills—his cock swelling thick in the girth, hard and ugly as a bruise, more than any soft flesh could welcome easy, he reckons, and fouler still when it has nowhere to house itself, which is most times.

He was taken pity on twice. Once, before he knew any better, there was a barmaid at a place so mean and low he cannot now call the sign to mind. Sweet-faced girl, broad in the hips, easy with a laugh, and kind to him for no reason that he could see beyond that he was young and big and grateful for a smile.

Dunk had thought it was Ser Arlan’s ale turning in his gut that night. Thought the heat in him came of bad drink and worse stew, and the way his skin would not sit right on his bones.

She kissed him first. He remembers that. The surprise of it and how hard he answered, near ashamed of himself even then for wanting so fast and so much. She took it for flattery, and opened for him. 

Her thighs spread on their own. Her shirt unlaced and yawned open round her waist because she wasn’t bothered to shrug it off completely. He kissed her ineptly and wedged himself between her legs, gasping like he’s dying and there was a kind of death ahead of him but not the ending kind. It was the boy in him dying so the man in him could learn the burdens.

Her mouth, full of blissful sounds, called his name and him a pretty boy, and soon enough Dunk felt his relief coming like it was going to shred the skin off him, and he came grunting like a man. Then came the rest.

The odd growth, thick and merciless, too much all at once. Her face changed under him. Hurt first. Then confusion. Then something worse, as if he had played some sly trick she had not agreed to. Dunk frightened at that near as badly as she did. He got off her in a clumsy rush when he finally could, with apology and no sense to it, and left before she could speak plain on what he had done. After that, when the feeling came over him again, he took himself off alone. Better the hedges, better the mud, better to sweat through every loathsome hour of it by himself than have a person look at him like that again. Ser Arlan never marked the pattern, or else did and had no mind to ask where his squire vanishes to. He was drunk more often than not, and kept the boy at arm’s length even sober.

Only once after did someone stop him on his way to the trees. That was near a tourney, when Ser Arlan lay foxed in a ditch and Dunk had a horse to see to, arms to polish, harness to mend, and that old sick feeling already licking up his spine. He thought he had hidden it well enough. Kept his hands to himself. Spoke to no one. Ate little. Sweated plenty.

Still a woman older than him caught him at it, one who had been about the tourney grounds long enough to have an eye for all sorts. Not pretty in any way songs bother with, but handsome yet, with smart hands and a plain face that did not waste kindness on cooing.

Dunk tried to shake her off out of politeness. Said no, stumbled over it, went red as a beet. She only looked him over and told him there were three more like him inside the lists already, and if he meant to suffer in the hedges like a kicked dog, that was his own foolish business, but he need not think himself cursed for it. A mutual favour, she called it after, and mayhaps it was.

She knew what to do with him in ways he had never guessed a body could know. Told him plain to stop fretting. Told him where to put his hands. Bent for him because she thought he would like it, and he hated how right she was. Talked him through the worst of it in a low voice that made him burn harder. Told him to take her, keep her, stay where he was once his body had fastened and would not yet let go. Most of all she did not flinch. Not at the size of him, not at the force of it, not at the animal part after.

When it was done, Dunk was sick with shame for how much ease there had been in submitting to it, and sicker still for wanting every bit of it again. Yet he learnt something there all the same. That he was no lone monster hatched wrong under a bad moon. Only rare, perhaps. And blind in the matter, for he could no more tell one of his own kind at a glance than name every bird in a rookery. Since then he has borne it mostly by himself, same as before. Only now he knows what it is he is bearing, and that there are bodies in the world that would welcome such foulness, though he cannot think on it long without feeling mean for wanting one.

Ser Arlan gave him a clout to the ear and a smack across the head for disappearing during a tourney, and for once it felt like a welcome reprieve from all the thoughts in Duncan’s head, which otherwise are not too many.

So, right before that—the horse and the meeting—Duncan has done what he always does. Taken himself off where no one need look at him. The linen on his back is sweat-soaked before the storm breaks, and when he fists himself it is with contempt more than want. His cock throbs and jumps in his hand. Set right enough to Dunk’s eye, though only because Ser Arlan had long since spoiled his measure for such things.

First he sits with his palm clamped round the root and breathes through the shudder of it. Spits on himself for want of a better thing, and even that comes thick and tacky, not near enough to cover him fully. The skin of him is so little used otherwise that Duncan hisses when his calluses catch at the crown. He slides a thumb through the slit and winces to find the half-moon under his nail gone dark with wet. He shuts his eyes against the sight and waits for the next throb to pass through him, hard enough each time to make him feel for one foolish moment as if his heart has dropped there instead and means to beat itself to death.

There is a brief moment, usually, when Duncan forgets where he is and what he is doing. His not-too-many thoughts prove useful then, because it is easier to find a thing in a mind that is not all clatter. There, he fishes for images to ferry him through it and make it as sweet as bile can be sweetened. He thinks of that first girl then, her thighs and her mouth, and her hair between his fingers when he leans over her. He imagines her unfrightened. Imagines her with the voice of the woman from the tourney, saying good, calling him a lovely lad, telling him he is bigger and feels better than any man she has ever had before. Then she says fuck me harder, because not all parts of Dunk are innocent. He wishes, ardently, that there were a body with him he could touch and kiss during, and hold onto after, instead of shivering alone and wiping the cum from the creases of his belly.

He comes like he is fighting it, because he knows what follows. The skin drawn over the knot shines with the strain. The swell steals so much blood it leaves him woozy, and for a moment he can do nothing but sit and breathe and wonder whether the others like him are fated to the same loneliness, the same loveless wanking in the dirt. Then the thunder breaks, and the rest is history.

“To hells with it,” you mutter at the glove.

Dunk opens his eyes. He is back here. His first thought is to help, and his second knows better. Weeks on the road have taught him that much. You would rather climb for your own apple than let him pluck it down for you, and rather wash alone in a freezing stream than suffer so much as his back turned nearby. He tries not to mind it. Tells himself he does not. A man may have company by accident and still not be wanted close.

“Wait till your hand warms,” he says instead. “I’ll put more wood on.”

Dawn brings you the usual misery: stiff bones, clattering teeth and cold that gets into the joints and sits there mean till even drawing breath feels like work your body resents. You wake with your shoulders locked and your fingers curled stubborn into your palms, as if they have spent the night trying to hide from the rest of you. For a little while you lie still under your cloak and hate the world in a quiet, practical way. Then you get up before it can wake him. 

The fire takes sulky. You crouch over it, feeding it patience and little else. No point knocking wood about and rousing Duncan before there is warmth enough to justify it. Sparks catch at last in the old ash. The faintest orange stirs. You hold your hands near, close enough to know how little help there is to be had. The cold has you viciously this morning, a deep kind. It seems to freeze thought midway to action. Your body feels half-stalled with it. Even the glove in your hands turns contrary, fingers of leather refusing fingers of flesh. Makes you angry before the day has properly begun.

The lace slips. Your hand trembles. You mutter at it under your breath and glance back: he is still asleep then, or near enough. This is the only time you can look at him plain.

Duncan softens in sleep. That is a shocking thing about him, and the one you keep discovering anew. Awake, he is size and rough usefulness, made of shoulders and knees and hands too big for neat tasks till suddenly they are not. Sleeping, the strain goes out of him. The lines pressed into the corners of his eyes smooth themselves fine. His mouth, so often set stupidly brave or awkward with whatever thing is about to come out of it, rests easy. Even his lashes change under your eye. In the first blue light they are colourless as old straw. Then the embers wake and a little warmth finds his face, and there it is again—copper-brown hidden in them, as if he keeps small hoards of summer in ridiculous places.

You look too long. As usual.

The first time you saw him the softness sat wrong, as if he was wrung down into it. He had looked beaten half to death by storm or fever or both, mud to the thighs and rain flattening him into the earth like the world meant to reclaim him. Sick to the gut, you had thought. Or foxed on bad wine. Too big to be thrown there with such obvious want of strength. Men that size are not meant to look used up. There had been something ill-bred in the sight of him—some private ruin brought out into the open. His horse found you first, and then he did: all long limbs and soaked wool and that face, honest as a church wall and twice as weathered.

You had helped because there was no sense not to. That is what you told yourself then. A skittish horse was worth helping. A man in no fit state to keep hold of one, too. And he had taken the help, which surprised you more than the rest. Most men would have put pride before sense. Duncan had shame enough for three men in that moment, you saw that at once, but not so much he would let it kill him.

When it turned out you were headed the same way, he had asked—offered—you still do not know which it was, only that he stood there with his heart beating plain in his throat and his hand held out and his size bent inward, trying somehow to make itself smaller for your sake. That was the moment you should have thanked him and gone the other road. Instead you stayed.

Useful, you told yourself after. He is huge. He can swing a sword. He can lift what needs lifting and frighten off the sort of men who see a small traveller alone and start counting the ways to profit by it. All true. Only not the whole truth.

There was something in him that snagged at you. Beyond gentleness exactly, though there is that. Not beauty either, though the gods know that part has grown into a nuisance. Something exposed. A queer sense that he had been found in a moment when he ought by rights to have been hidden away from every eye, banked up somewhere warm, tended and tending in turn, not left to stagger with rain in his face. You had no words for the feeling. Still have none. Only that the sight of him had struck you as wrong in a way that made you want to cover him up, and that wanting frightened you nearly as much as he did.

The fire gives a soft spit. Behind you, Duncan stirs.

And there—you can feel it before he says a word. A fact of him waking, entering the air like another weather. Your own body answers with its usual treachery: a jump low in the gut, a tightening through the chest, the sharp foolish wish to look again when you should be busy with the glove and the fire and all the other safe things in front of you.

He is both easy to be around and not. Keeps the distance as if it is no strange thing to travel with someone and never brush nearer than need requires. Fills the silence with tales of Ser Arlan who, by your reckoning, sounds half old fool, half madman, and not overburdened with kindness beneath either. It leaves you wondering whether he knighted his squire at all, if what Duncan had of him was mostly clouts to the ear, hard ground for a bed, and a head full of cobblers about honour. It explains a good deal besides—why he is so used to want of warmth in other people that he takes your hums and grunts for proper company and your silences for no insult at all.

Truthfully, even the sound of his voice is hard to bear. In the mornings it comes rough with sleep, hoarse in a way that’s too intimate. Private as a sort of sound that belongs to lovers or people who wake in the same bed more than once. His lips smack before he fully wakes. Sometimes he talks in his sleep, and most of what comes clear enough to catch are apologies of one sort or another. After drink, he snores. In a cheap inn room he snores louder still, and it warms something foolish in your chest to hear it and know he is comfortable for once—right alongside the irritation of his endless insistence on hedges and ditches when there is a roof to be had.

Such trouble to have about for a woman driven by dreams unfit for her and all the stubbornness of an ox to see them through. You remind yourself daily, past counting, that you are on the road to learn and flee the fate of a brood cow, not acquire all manner of fuzzy feelings for an alleged knight and certain overgrown boy-man.

“Wait till your hand warms,” Duncan rasps. “I’ll put more wood on.”

With that he sets about rising from his bedroll, not half so stiff as you. You watch him lengthen and broaden through the chest when he takes his first full breath of the day, and with it comes an audible exhale, deep and manly and dragged up from the throat. You reckon it smells of sleep and catch yourself wondering absurd girl things, like what it would be to have it wash over your neck.

There’s an odd ritual with him: thinking things first, only so you can never say them. They want out all the same, so you catalogue them for the never when you might be able to tell him.

Wait. Do it for me. Lace it for me. Touch my hand and forearm and tie it up, or better still, hide my hands in yours and breathe on them in a cradle, the way mothers do for children frozen stiff.

All you say is, “Mm.”

He comes round the fire half-awake, consisting of creak and wool and big careless palms that are never truly careless, and he crouches to feed the embers. The simple business of it should be equally simple to watch—it is only a man with kindling in his hands. Just Duncan, rough-haired and sleep-marked, pushing life back into the morning. Yet your thoughts go running, tripping over one another for the privilege of never reaching your mouth.

His hands first. Always some woe with them. Too big, you think, till they are not. Thick fingers made for reins and hilts and hauling wheels from ruts, and then he does some neat quiet thing with the wood: sets the pieces just so, shields the spark with his palm, coaxes the little flame up without smothering it, and you have to look away as if the sight were vulgar.

Which it is. Not the fire. The competence. The ease of him. The fact that he can be blunt force one moment and then mend a strap finer than you can, set stitches neater than some wives, talk a beast through skittishness as if it were a child with bad dreams. You do not trust men who surprise you kindly. It feels like the start of losing ground.

The fire catches better under his hand. Heat licks a little nearer. You ought to be grateful, and you are, in the stupid furious way one is grateful for rescue one did not ask for and badly wanted all the same.

Then, he looks at you. Worse than merely a glance—one of those horrendously plain Duncan looks that land full on a thing and stay there till he has done thinking about it. You lower your eyes to the glove and hate that you have done so.

“What?” you ask.

His brow goes a little pinched. “You look pale.”

I am pale, you think. I am cold. I am trying not to think about your mouth. I have slept badly for a month because every time you breathe near me my body takes it for an omen. You have no idea what pale is.

You say, “It’s morning,” which might have passed for wit in a warmer person. From you it comes out flat as a shut door, and your stiff shrug doesn’t help it in the slightest.

Duncan only squints at you harder, as if daylight were not explanation enough. “You’re shivering,” he taunts.

I have been shivering since birth. I shall die shivering and be buried with my teeth still trying to knock sense into one another. “It’s cold.”

A pause. The fire pops between you. He reaches for another bit of wood, snaps it across his knee, lays it on. Show-off, a mean inward part of you says, though the uglier truth is that the ease of it makes something in your belly turn over.

“You were warmer yesterday,” he says.

Intolerable. And that only adds to your plate—being watched so carefully that he can tell yesterday from today when there isn’t much difference at all. Being taken for a boy is work that can never be set down. It lives in the wrists, the throat, the way you sit, sleep, take food, laugh, reach, swear. The reserve is labour, and harder one the more he stares.

On that list, bathing is too. It is another matter entire. Privacy has little to do with it by now, or not the sort Duncan likely thinks. From his face the first time, you reckon he took it for prickliness. Some weird little road-boy habit. A desire to be difficult for the pleasure of it, and you let him think so. Better that than the truth, which is nastier and far less simple.

For you, washing is campaign work. Strategy. A thing to be won by inches. Knowing where he is, where his eyes are not, what can be got off and on again quickly, how much river-water your body can bear before the cold takes your wits out at the knees. Every bath asks something of you: keep your shirt close, turn half-away, be quick with the laces, never bend wrong, never let wet cloth cling where it ought not. Never let your voice go soft with the shock of cold. Never look hurried, because haste breeds notice, and notice is death to such arrangements as yours.

When it came to a point, he had meant nothing by it. “I’ll keep watch, if you like,” he’d offered. Useful and decent.

“No.”

Your refusal came quicker than you could dress need as preference. It made him stop and look at you in perfect stillness that carried no asperity, nor offence, only a yawning question to explain yourself.

“No need,” you had added, and managed to make that no better. “I’d sooner wash alone.”

A perfectly ordinary wish, save for the way you said it, as if he had proposed something filthy rather than pragmatic. Heat prickled your neck and shuddered you down to the heels at him seeing it prickling and, being Duncan, mistaking it likely for sullenness or shame of the common, harmless sort.

“Aye. All right,” he said after a beat, and stepped back as if you had put a hand to his chest.

You washed in misery. Half crouched in the shallows with your jaw rattling and your wet shirt trying to cling traitorously where it ought not. One arm forever at your chest and the collar, at the fall of the cloth. Your skin tightened to the chill till you felt skinned alive by it. The body becomes all edges at such times. Shoulder first, then wrist, then the small hard points of yourself you pray no eye ever learns too well.

When you came back, Duncan was sitting with his back turned broader than a door and his eyes very firmly on the horses. So he had kept watch after all. Only in the one shape you could bear.

Once, you let yearning get the better of you. Only once, and that was enough to make a coward of your conscience for days after. He had gone to the water in the heat of afternoon, stripped with the same blunt brightness he does all things, and waded in as if his body were no more notable than a horse’s flank.

You saw him in pieces first. A pale back between the reeds. One broad shoulder. The blunt jut of an elbow. Then all of him. Naked as day and near white in the sun, like some overgrown fae thing dragged out into the honest world by mistake. His hips flexed when he bent, catching the light on the curve of them like a dint in beaten metal. Enormous thighs. Great square shoulders broad as a barn door. Flesh enough through the belly to wrinkle when he moved, and sparse hair fuzzing his chest so fair it nearly vanished unless the light struck right. Torso with tits that would have made many women envious. His back kept its muscles for certain turns and certain light; otherwise it only looked what it was—large. All of him large. So large it made something feeble in you go warm. Your cheeks heated where you crouched hidden like a creep, and your legs crossed of their own accord in the grass.

He had stumbled on the pebbles coming out, too. That was where the wanting turned tender. The size of him had been plenty. The nakedness more than enough. Still, it was the graceless ordinary part that stayed. Him hissing under his breath when the stones bit his feet, scrubbing water from his face with both hands, blinking round as if the world had never once thought to look at him. You had turned away then, too late by far, sick with guilt and with the stirring need for him taking a seat on you.

A blink. You huff at him. Scramble up so soon blood rushes down your body in a wave so ice-cold your toes become numb. What you’ve meant to only think comes out. “Maybe I was warmer,” you grunt. “Maybe not. What’s it to you—oh—”

The meadow tilts before you have so much as taken a proper step. For one instant you think the chill has won entirely at last, driven you hollow as a reed. Then the opposite declares itself. Beneath the frozen shell of you there is heat, rank and sudden, boiling up from somewhere deep enough to feel borrowed. Your joints flare. The fire jumps sideways, and the ground with it.

You pitch forth. Duncan catches you before your face can find the ash. One moment there is earth and fire and indignity rushing up together, the next there are his arms, quick as a gate swung shut. He makes a rough low sound and hauls you back between his knees so your shoulders come up against his chest.

His body is a wall with a heartbeat in it. It receives you whole: his thighs bracket yours, one arm bands hard across you under the ribs, the other at your shoulder, holding you with an ease that makes your own weight feel paltry and treacherous. Fever makes a mock of distance, and suddenly there is no guessing left in size. He had always looked vast. Like this, kept in the cradle of him, you feel the full measure of it. There is so much Duncan to lean against that your body seems to go loose with relief, as if it has found something built to bear it.

“You’re burning,” he says. Not alarmed yet, only plain with it. “Since when?”

“I don’t know.” The answer sounds thin to your own ears. You stare up at him, or where he ought to be, his face blurring and swimming at the edges. There is so much heat in him it seems wasteful not to reach for it. Your palms nearly lift, wanting his cheeks, his throat, any part of him that might give itself over warm. Instead he lays the back of one hand to your forehead and sucks in a breath.

“Fever,” he mutters. His palm goes from your brow to the back of your neck, lower then, finding the sweat under your layers. His frown deepens. You can feel it without seeing it proper. “We’ve to cool you down,” he mutters, “get these things off you and see what the fever’s made of.”

A whine of protest catches in your throat. “No.”

“Yes.”

You try to twist away and manage hardly anything. His hold changes into a firmer thing, one that means he has handled frightened animals and relentless burdens and knows the shape of resistance well enough.

“Do not fight me,” he says, and there is something new in his voice, steel under all the sleep and roughness. “You’ll kill yourself for foolishness, and I’ll not have it. Do you hear me? I do not want a dead boy on my hands.”

Boy.

That ought to help. Instead it hurts strangely.

“I can’t die yet,” you whisper. Your eyes glass over. The world keeps slipping. “I’ve too much left to tell you.”

His arm tightens, involuntary as breath. “What d’you—”

You do not hear the end of it. Darkness comes up soft and black and merciful, and takes you before the sentence can.

Dunk’s seen stubbornness in humans and beasts alike, and in himself only when he believes it truly matters. Which is seldom where other folk put the weight of things. They’ll make a whole fight of pride, of manners, of who stood where and who said what sharp. Dunk has no great use for such things.

He had let your own stubbornness pass for the same sort—filed you away as distant, odd in your habits, close with yourself and no real harm in it (only a small one in him). Now though, the distance can cause absence, and this is where Duncan draws a line, because now you seem weak and innocent enough to him for the knight to step up. Whatever anger you mean to hold after, whatever secrets you think worth keeping, he will have you living first.

He takes your bedroll back out and spreads his own atop it for thickness. The grass underneath has a spring to it that will do little good, though it feels better than bare ground. He lowers you there as careful as he can, flat on your back, then bunches a burlap sack under your neck to lift your head a little. Your lashes flutter. Mouth moves.

“Duncan,” you mumble.

“Hush now. Wee thing, hush. Don’t spend.”

Your head turns weakly at the sound of him. He gets more wood on the fire first, enough to make a steady heat of it, for there will be a soaking through before the day is done and he will have to get you dry after. Then he goes to Thunder, takes the blanket from his back, and brings it over ready. Your sack comes next. He rummages through with quick, guilty hands and finds what looks nearest clean—a shirt, a spare pair of hose, a piece of linen.

Then, the stripping. He goes for the gloves first. The laces are mean with cold and your fingers lax inside them. His own hands shake some from hurry and vexation. On the second knot he mutters, “Bugger you,” under his breath and gets it loose with his teeth. One glove. Then the other. Your hands spill out damp and chilly, the knuckles blanched with it.

Your boots next. He has to brace your calf under one arm and tug. The first comes with a wet little sound. The second fights him harder. When it gives, he sees the bruise spread across the top of your foot, brown with old blood, ugly as rot under the skin.

“Seven hells,” he says. “How long have you been walking on that?”

You say nothing. Your breath runs shallow and quick.

He gets the cloak from under you with a gentle wrench and sets it aside. The leather comes after. Buckle at the throat. Straps at the side. His fingers know harness and tack well enough; even shaking, they find the order of things. He works you out of it inch by inch, lifting your shoulders, drawing the weight free. Your body lolls with every touch of his hand, and each time something in his gut drops lower.

By then your shirt is soaked through and sticking to you in ways that turn Dunk queasy with the knowing of it. He reaches for the hem already half-certain, and that half-certainty nauseates him worse than surprise would. Suddenly it hits him how stupid he has been. A dozen little things his mind had taken for other things because he had let it. Your soft face. Your round mouth. The smallness he had put down to youth. Your weirdness over bathing and dressing and every small touch between. All of it there to be read, and him reading every bit wrong.

He pauses with the cloth in his fists, feeling his gorge lift. Then, he pulls the shirt up.

No boy.

A woman. And a grown one.

Dunk stares, sick with the force of his own stupidity. He had looked straight at you for weeks and seen only what he had been told to see.

He sits back on his heels with the linen bunched in his hands and feels the whole road behind him shift its shape. Relief hits first and strange with it, quick as light under a door. So there was a reason. So all your flinching and distance and refusals had a body to them after all. Then the hurt comes up hard behind it. A lie this large. Carried under his nose for four weeks and more. The old sore place in him opens; one that says people keep truths from him because they take him for slow, or simple, or too oafish to spot what is before his face.

“You stupid little wretch,” he mutters, voice gone rougher still. “Insolent thing. You ought to have said. You ought to—”

You do not hear him. Your head rolls weakly on the sack. Sweat beads along your lip.

Dunk swallows all the rest.

The binding has to come off. He fumbles with the knots, cursing them too, cursing you, cursing the day, until at last it loosens enough for him to unwind it. The cloth peels back slow, and what it has held down rises dark-pressed and marked with its pattern, skin ridged where the weave bit deepest. Gooseflesh prickles you all over. The cold has tightened you, made you firmer to the eye.

Dunk is a man that denies himself, but a man all the same. Hidden things gather force in hiding. Beauty does too. He stares a beat in a kind of dumb astonishment, then lets his knuckles graze the side of your ribs as if they might tell him what his eyes have missed all this while. Pressure is under the surface and he tries to not indulge it. How in Seven hells did this escape him. You draw one thin, freer breath even insensible, and that alone steadies him to the work.

He reaches for the water. There is no art to him beyond what any man on the road knows. Cool the body. Shade the head. Get the wet things off. Keep the breathing easy. He soaks the strip of cloth and wipes you down as decent as he can—forehead first, then throat, under the jaw, the wrists, the hollows under your arms where the heat gathers fiercest. The cloth comes away warm almost at once. He rinses it and does it again. Your skin flinches under the touch though your eyes stay shut.

“All this and walking on a bruised foot besides,” he says, quieter now. “Madness. Pure madness.”

He dries what he can with another scrap, gets the clean shirt over you with clumsy care, lifting you by the shoulders to work the sleeves through. The blanket from Thunder he tucks round you after, close but not smothering, leaving room for the heat to leave. The damp rag goes on your brow. Another at the back of your neck. He pours a little water onto his fingers and wets your lips when they dry.

Lingering. This is the most you have ever let him touch of you, though letting has nothing to do with it now, and the thought sours in him even as his hands stay careful. For one beastly moment he wonders whether he ought to be so gentle when you have hurt him plain. He goes about with his heart beating out through his ears to every soul he meets, and still you did not trust him. Not to do what? To force himself on you? To laugh in your face? To turn you off the road? The more he thinks on it, the more cross he gets. When he blinks and looks down, he finds his thumb rubbing across your mouth, as if to quiet words you are not saying.

By then the gut-wrench has settled properly in him. It sits low and stern. Part fear for you. Part anger. Part the new knowledge of your body under his hands, and the shame of having learnt it this way.

Dunk sits and looks at you. “You wait till you wake for this,” he says. “I’ll have words out of you if I have to drag them one by one.”

Your mouth moves again. He leans in before he can help it. “My Duncan,” you murmur.

He stills. Fever has pared your voice down to almost nothing, but that little scrap of it catches under his ribs and stays there. His hand plants by your head. For one moment he lets himself have the nearness of you and bends till his face rests to yours, cheek on cheek, close enough to breathe you in proper. The sickness is thick on you, sharp with sweat, yet under it your own scent runs steady. He knows it. Has known it these weeks past on wool, river-water, the inside of your gloves, and let it pass without once understanding why he liked it.

He drags in a breath and lets it out against your skin. “Don’t you dare die,” he says to your cheek, rough and low. “Not before I’ve told you off.”

For the rest of the time, Dunk exists in a purgatory of thought and touch. You have a body on you that would be perfect to quench him when he is taken by his own sort of fever. Kinder than his hands. Kinder than the others he has had too. He is reminded of it every time your mouth parches and the linen pales on your forehead. The whole of the last month has rewritten itself in his head.

He’s compressed with it—feels the ire in him fermenting, changing shape fast from exasperation through outrage till it lands in the sore scorn of hurt. The cycle closes and opens again. He keeps the cloth damp. Coaxes a little water into you. Watches for the fever to break. Thinks too much. Looks too much. Feels guilty for that. Gets angrier because guilt and hurt tangle badly in him.

Then the sickness eases a little. He knows it first by the change in your scent, the sweet acrid tang of fever giving ground. There comes a shift in your breathing after, and then the flutter of your eyelids. Dunk braces, though when you move at last he finds something in his chest lighten. He comes nearer.

At first your face is soft with waking. Then it twists. You gasp and sit bolt upright, kicking the blanket off as your eyes drop to yourself. “What have you done?” you rasp.

His mouth goes hard. He looks down between his legs where he’s sat on bare ground, wedges his heel into dirt, and mutters, “Kept you living.”

Your hands fly to your chest, grasp the shirt. You pull at the collar and peek under, where Duncan knows you will find nothing but skin. He watches your face move through shock to horror to repulsion and, like a plague, it infests him too. “You undressed me,” you say, right when he is already more fixed on your ingratitude than on how frightened you must be.

“Aye. You were burning through your clothes.”

“Without my leave!”

Duncan stands so abruptly his knees creak. Furious, though he does not know with what exactly. With how oddly you are behaving. With the fact that your voice is raised at him when he has done nothing wrong, and it is all you that did the wrongs. “You were near witless with fever,” he tells you, his throat straining not to shout outright.

You stand too, clench your jaw, and bark, “You had no right.”

He takes a step forward and straightens, letting his size hold him up rather than undignifying himself with screaming. “I had every right to stop you dying.”

Your face twists. “Bastard.”

“Aye!” And there he loses hold of himself. You are ungrateful. Half-naked, saved by him, and ungrateful, speaking to him as if he were some dog that had fouled your shoe. The fever seems to have passed its worst work, but you are still witless. Weak too. Your chest heaves unevenly and your thighs tremble beneath you as if anger alone is keeping you upright. Duncan knows trembling thighs on a woman from other times, and the thought sickens him with its own untimeliness. After it comes one of Ser Arlan’s old lessons on what a man does with insolent little things such as yourself. Before the hand he imagines can fall and meet flesh bent over the knee, his voice raises instead, full-force, and he’s spitting onto his own face. “That bastard hauled your boots off, found you walking on a foot black as rot, cooled your skin, changed your shirt, and sat by whilst you sweated half the fever out. You may curse me now only because of that!”

“I did not ask you to touch me.”

“No,” he says. “You only lied to me.”

Your eyes sharpen. “What?”

“You heard.”

“I was sick,” you say, eyes down.

Duncan lets out a hard, hollow breath. “You were lying long before that. You think this some little thing. A jest. A queer road trick,” he says. “It is not. You travel with a man, sleep by his fire, take his food, ask his sword between you and trouble, and say nothing of what you are. I ought to have known. I gave you no cause to mistrust me.”

“Mistrust you?” you say, and the weakness in you only makes you more ferocious. “What should I have done? Told you plain, and then what? Trusted in your good knight’s heart? Let you take me by the hair and drag me back where I came from?” The shape of your voice turns his knighthood into mockery, and the rest of it goes where you must know he will feel it most.

Dunk jolts at that. “No.”

“No?” You laugh once, grisly and breathless. “No sermon? No noble duty? No returning stray women to their proper stalls?”

“I’d not have dragged you anywhere,” he argues.

“How would you know what you’d do?”

“I know myself.”

“You know yourself.” Your voice goes sharp as flint. “You do not know what it is to live in a body men think they may use. You do not know what it is to have no road open that does not end in someone else’s hand shut round your neck. You do not know what it is to be a woman. You do not even know what it is to be ordinary.”

“Aye,” he says, bitter as gall. “With that you’re right. I know little enough of ordinary.”

And some of the little he does know sits wrong in him now. Any other man he has known would have let anger carry him simpler. There would be shouting, mayhaps a shake, mayhaps worse. Instead here he stands feeding both of you through the quarrel—keeping your fever from climbing, taking your spite, feeling the hurt of it and, to his own disgust, something hotter mixed through. The danger of that turns his stomach.

“I hope you’re proud of it,” he says. “A fine feat. Fooling a big thick oaf like me. A badge to pin up somewhere.”

“You fooled yourself,” you tell him. “Saw what suited you.”

All right. He can bite a little too. “What is this then?” he says. “Some woman’s fancy? The boy they meant for you not to your taste, so off you run with a head full of nonsense and lies for every man you meet?” Then, he turns his back on you as if that might keep his temper in bounds.

You grunt and take a step. “Say it again, Dunk.”

“It is Ser Duncan for you.”

Something cold and slimy strikes the side of his neck and dribbles under his collar.

“Ser Duncan.”

“You insolent wen—” He wheels round and the word dies as another handful flies. “Ah—” Mud catches him across the jaw. He throws up a hand against the next. “Enough. Get back under the blankets, you stupid—cover yourself, else you’ll be sick again.”

“Make me!” you screech, feet sliding in the grass. “You undressed me just fine.”

He gets through the barrage by brute patience more than grace. One throw he ducks. Another bursts against his shoulder. A third spatters his chest in brown streaks. You are backing away all the while on those wonky legs, fury holding you up where strength cannot. The shirt swings long on you, catching between your thighs as you stumble. He spares it one glance, then sees your muddy feet about to tread straight onto his bedroll and takes one long step in.

His hands close on your shoulders.

Your fists hit him at once. Dirty and small and bitter all the same. They land in his chest, his arm, once at the point of his neck. Each one finds him sore already. He ought to hate that. He does hate the shame of answering to it. Blood jumps in him, quick and humbling. The old bodily knowledge comes up with it, foul as warning: heat beginning where no heat should be, his skin too tight, his temper turning bright and blinding. Duncan feels the start of it and recoils from the feeling even whilst it is his own.

“Stop it.”

You do no such thing. You strike again, breath rattling in your throat, and he gives over trying to catch your wrists one by one. He closes his body round yours instead. His arms shackle yours and pin them to your sides, gathering you in till you cannot swing proper. Still you fight. You stamp at his feet. He grunts when your heel catches bone.

“Cease.”

“Let me go!”

“Not till you’ve got hold of yourself.”

You writhe against him. The closeness spreads in him like bad drink. He feels every point of contact too keenly. Your ribs working. Your knees knocking his. The weight of you shifting in his arms. A feverish woman and a quarrel ought to make for pity, anger, common sense. Instead his body gives him this. A hateful stirring low in him, the threat of ache and solitude and pain if it takes hold. He huffs once through his nose, effort cloaking disgust.

“I do not understand you,” he grates.

What comes next hits him worse than any fistful of mud or otherwise bared hand could. Your brazen mouth on his. A contemptuous little jest of a kiss, yet he takes it like a haggard fool. Your lips are softer than they look. Your tongue, nowhere near as bitter as he had expected, and the worst of it is that he knows now he has been expecting it. He stammers into it. His whole body staggers and unwinds and mistakes it for kindness where there is none, only because he has gone so starved for a touch like this. Starvation makes an idiot of him. The places you struck burn brighter. Unaware of it, he cinches you in tighter. Crowds you. Devours you.

Until you decide to devour him back.

Teeth, cruel and sharp, sink in his lower lip and clamp until he tastes blood. Duncan feels like he’s been set on fire. His body’s logic is crude and opportunistic. It tells him to bite your tongue off and claim it for his own. He is at the point of real hurt when he realises he is holding you so tight your chest has no room to rise. The knight steps back in.

He shoves you off and you go down hard on your arse. Your lips are reddened with him. Even when he shuts his eyes he is not rid of the sight. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, turns, and walks toward the stream.

He realised it a little too late, because by then, he was already inches deep inside you, trapping you between him and the wall while he rutted into your cunt from behind. Hips moving frantically and slapping against your ass while your hands were held back tightly with just his one hand while the other roamed across your body freely.

“Yuta— what the fuck are you doing?” You questioned, trying to push him away, to break free from his grasp, a useless attempt, especially when he's much stronger than before. You could barely believe he was the same person who lost to you in practice sessions multiple times back in school, he's so different now, his strength was undeniably overpowering.

Yuta had no idea what he was doing either, he felt compelled by this raw, primal urge to keep on going, and for once, he listened to it.

He muffled your protests with a kiss, his free hand moving up to your throat and pulling you back against him as he twisted your head to the side so he could access your lips before slipping in his tongue into your mouth. He moaned into the kiss, feeling his chest burn with excitement and arousal. He should've listened to his gut from the start. He shouldn't have worried about you finding him a creepy, it shouldn't have mattered anyway, but it probably did back then because he was much softer before than he is now.

His younger self wouldn't be able to comprehend or take in the fact that his future self would ever fuck you against your will in the hallway of an abandoned building after defeating a grade two curse.

He bites your lower lip, the kiss was rough yet passionate, as if he's trying to make up for the lost time but also preventing himself from losing complete control. He wanted to consume you, devour you completely, mark you, bite you, fuck you hard, make you cry, grope you, scratch you, breed you, all at once like his primal instinct was screaming, if he could merge you into him— he definitely would.

You let out a soft cry of sorts at the pain when he bit your lip, his eyes widened, concern illuminating in them before he let go of your bottom lip, sucking on it and giving it a few soothing licks.

His chin rested on your shoulder as his hand left your throat and slid down to grope your tits all while he thrusted from behind.

“I'm sorry for that.” He apologized for biting your lip and then pressed a soft kiss to the back of your shoulder. He closed his eyes to immerse himself into the feeling how your body felt in his hold, your squishy breasts acting like a stress ball for him and your warm cunt wrapped around his hard cock sent shivers up his spine. The ridges gripped onto his shaft tightly, as if it's trying to milk him.

He drowned out the 'no's' 'you cant be doing this' 'stop' that slipped from your mouth, treating it like a background noise as he relished in the way you felt instead, besides, you probably didn't mean it anyway, because if you did, your cunt wouldn't be leaking right now and clenching around his cock.

He opened his eyes again, pressing soft kisses from your shoulder to neck. His hand that was groping your breast slipped down to the between of your legs, his ring and index fingers parted your pussy lips while the middle finger flicked against your clit, which caused you to rut your hips back, pushing against Yuta, taking in him entirely the point you felt his tip hit your cervix.

You yelped when you felt him hit it, immediately retreating your hips forward as your thighs ached and threatened to give up.

The stimulation to your bundle of nerves felt like pure ecstasy, you felt shame coursing through your veins along with the pleasure, and then you winced, letting out a hiss followed by an 'ouch' when you felt a sharp object dig into your fold. You looked down to see what it was. Yuta stopped rubbing when he heard your hiss, his gaze following yours.

The ring on his finger was digging into you uncomfortably, the small but protruding jewel likely hurt the sensitive tissue. Yuta withdrew his hand, bringing it up to his face and staring at it for a moment.

You thought he would stop now, maybe come to his senses that he was a married man, it still wasn't too late to uphold the sanctity of marriage right?

No.

Yuta uses his thumb to twist the ring, pushing it off from the base and up to the tip before taking it off his ring finger and tossed it away.

Your mouth slightly opened in shock at the action, you turned to look at him, he just gave you his sickeningly sweet signature smile before he tightened his hold around you and returned his fingers to your clit, rubbing it once again.

You bit your lip, head falling forward again as you shut your eyes, you were so sensitive down there and his fingers were working like magic as he kept a steady pace with his hips. He kissed the shell of your ear, before resting his head on your shoulder again.

He rubbed your clit faster as his desperation increased every second, you felt the heat pooling in your belly at the sensation, letting out soft gasps at his doing. You panted, trying to regulate your breathing as you watched his hand move at an inhumane speed.

The feeling of him hitting your gspot while he stroked your clit pushed you over the edge. You felt the build up in your lower abdomen, it only took one more stroke and one final thrust for the tightness in you to snap, sending electrical waves of pleasure all across your body, your cunt pulsated around his cock, you felt yourself lose balance and almost fall, but Yuta held you tight. Your thighs quivered as your high began to settle.

He felt your walls flutter around him, contracting and clenching around him due to your high, he gasped at the sensation, eyes slightly rolling back into his skull as he shut his eyes before he gripped your hip, sloppily thrusting into you before he came inside.

He muffled his moan by burying his face into your neck, finally setting your hands free from the tight grip he had since the beginning as he now wrapped both his around your waist, pulling you flush against him while his face and his cock remains buried into you, his cock shoots up his white spend into you, filling you up.

“Fuck, I always wanted to do this.” He whispered, panting heavily as he caught his breaths.

“I love you.” He confessed, pressing a kiss your forehead before he pulled himself out, biting his lip when he saw his cum leak out of you. Fuck. He cleaned you up, fixing you and himself up before he grabbed you and left the building.

Maki and Panda have also just returned from dealing with the curse on the other side of the building.

“Phew, that was a tough one, I didn't know it would escape that way.” Maki commented annoyedly, before she looked at you.

“Are you okay?” She asked you, and you stared up at her, guilt filling your chest, causing you to bite your lip nervously.

“She's fine, just taken aback from fighting the curse, her skills have gotten rusty after the break.” Yuta covered up, giving Maki a small smile.

Maki nodded before her eyes caught the empty space on Yuta's finger, where the ring was supposed to be.

“What happened to our wedding ring?” She questioned, raising an eyebrow, which made you tense up. Yuta stared at his hand, before he answered.

“Ah. I must've lost it during the fight.”

Continuing to stare out the ship's window, at the stars and the blackness of space you had grown to love, you heard Grace's steps disappear further into the ship. Now that you were alone, now that your main mission was complete and Rocky was so far away, your mind finally had the time to wander to the pressing matter you had been ignoring for days.

You were out of suppresents.

It was only a matter of time before Grace noticed. From the moment you met him on that aircraft carrier, you knew he was an Alpha. Just from the smell of him alone, having to fight everything inside your biology to preen and obey. The same thing happened when you met Stratt, but you were good at fighting it, good at hiding it. A lifetime of practice could make you good at anything.

There weren't many omegas in any scientific field that you knew of. Those jobs were usually taken up by betas, those in Earth's culture who didn't seek power and weren't reserved to caretakers. But you knew what you wanted. Knew what you were good at and what you wanted to study, so you worked hard. Got your degree. Learned to hide everything about you that made you an omega. And maybe that made you lonely, but it also got you on the most important space travel mission in Earth's history - so you weren't being picky.

But now, your hands were shaking in a way only you could notice. Your face felt hot. It was only a matter of time before your heat started. The suppresents had held it off for so long, when you were on the aircraft carrier and the entire time you were awake on the Hail Mary.

It was going to be bad.

"Does it smell like pancakes to you? Man, pancakes sound so good!" Grace called, and you followed his voice silently into the lab where he was looking at a whiteboard. "So, I've triple-checked my calculations for travel to Rocky's ship and put it into the navigation computer. Should take us about fifty days. You ready for me to switch off the centrifuge and get going?"

All you could bring yourself to do was nod, a weight forming in your gut that wasn't good at all. Now that you were off the suppresents, you could really smell his pheromones. Grace's brow furrowed as he looked at you for a second, and you wondered if he had figured it out already. That you were an omega on the precipice of a heat. But then, all he did was turn around and head towards the ship's pilot seat.

Okay. That would give you enough time to gather what you would need. Water, food, rope, a blanket, and an extra set of clothes. Before you could control yourself, you snagged one of Grace's dirty shirts from the pile by his cot and threw it into the bathroom along with the rest of your stuff. It was going to be a cramped couple of days, but it was what needed to be done.

The centrifuge stopped and the gravity was gone; your feet left the ground as sweat began to form on your brow. The ship was moving now, towards Rocky, to save him. But that was the last thing on your mind.

When Grace pushed himself into the bunk room, you didn't give him time to say anything.

"Here are the facts right now. I'm an omega, and we are officially out of suppresents." You drifted towards the bathroom door, Grace staring at you with wide eyes and swallowing thickly. "Whoever packed the ship didn't think I needed that many, apparently. I'm about to go into heat, so I'm going to go into the bathroom, and you are going to lock the door."

"W-What?" he stuttered, hands clenched around the doorway.

"Under no circumstances do you let me out. No matter how much I beg or whine or cry. Do not let me out," you finished, already breathing ragged.

Grace whispered your name, and you bit back a moan. "I can't do that to you."

"Trust me, already ran through every scenario. This is the only option."

The only option where the mission remains top priority. The only option where you could still look him in the eye after. The only option that wouldn't ruin whatever was between you and Grace.

It was certainly more than friendship, out here with no one else around for so long. But it wasn't the relationship that an alpha and an omega should have. Alphas and omegas were not colleagues. They were not friends. This was better. For everyone.

"I can't - " he started, but you interrupted him.

"Please, Grace. Please."

You backed yourself up into the bathroom, prepared to close the door. The muscle in Grace's jaw ticked for a few seconds, then he nodded. The door shut and locked with a finality that made something inside you ache.

Hours later, Ryland was in the lab white-knuckling a table. He thought he wouldn't be able to hear you in there, but it didn't work. If anything, your moans and cries were amplified to him with the distance. And so were your pheromones. That sugary sweet pancake scent called to him. Screamed for him to make you feel better, to make the pain go away, to fill you up with his knot.

He groaned at the thought, gripping the table harder as his cock strained.

Ryland wasn't like this. He was able to control his urges. Many of his coworkers didn't even know he was an alpha. He was that good at controlling himself, that good at hiding it. Alphas weren't scientists or teachers; they always strived for something more. Something with more power, more control. But he didn't need all of that to be satisfied. He didn't need power. He didn't need a little omega writhing under him.

Geez oh Pete, he thought with a loud sigh.

When you made your confession before he locked you in the bathroom, he could have sworn you were a beta. Guess you were good at hiding, too. A strong surge of your pheromones entered his nostrils, and Ryland practically growled. Without meaning to, before he even knew what he was doing, he was palming at himself through his jumpsuit.

"Ryland!" you cried from the bathroom, and his head snapped in your direction.

The last time you called him by his first name was when you both nearly died getting that sample from Tau Ceta. And in all that time you had been locked inside the bathroom, you never said anything intelligible. Just whimpers and shouts and moans.

He knew, somewhere deep inside, that this was his alpha taking over. Something he had never allowed before. But he had also never been around an omega in heat before. So when he pushed himself through the various rooms to get to the bunks and the bathroom, he didn't even know what he was doing until he was there. Nose practically pressed to the metal door keeping him from you.

"Ryland!" you yelled his name again, this time through what sounded like tears.

Hand to the door, cold against his burning skin, he spoke lowly: "I'm here."

"S-Something's wrong," you whimpered.

His heart dropped. But he didn't want to open the door. He promised you. He needed to know this wasn't you trying to trick him.

"Like what?"

"I - I don't k-know."

"You're a scientist. Breath - think."

You took a few loud, steadying breaths. "My heart rate is...Irregular and fast. And - And nothing I do is helping anymore."

He gulped, trying to push from his mind's eye the image of you with a hand between your legs, trying desperately to get yourself off. Thinking for a moment, he came to a terrible conclusion.

"How long were you on those suppresents?" he whispered.

"Oh, God," you gasped in realization.

Suppresents of any kind had consequences if someone was on them for too long. Infertility. Pregnancy complications. The first heat off of them becoming deadly if the omega doesn't mate. Ryland bit his lip, fist connecting with the door quietly. There was only one way to fix this. It could ruin everything. But he couldn't just let you sit there by yourself and let you die. Just like he couldn't let Rocky die when the Taumeba started eating the Xenanite. He always considered himself a coward, but maybe he was braver in more of aspects than he thought.

"Is it okay - " He took a breath and started again. "Is it okay if I come in?"

"I can't..."

"To rip off our good friend from another planet," he said, smiling to himself despite the situation. "Ryland fix."

You laughed from the other side of the door. "Ryland fix."

"Yeah. I've got what you need."

He heard your breath hitch, and that was answer enough for him. With a twist and a shove, the bathroom door was open. His mouth practically watered at the sight, his cock leaking into his boxers.

You, floating in the middle of the small room, completely bare from the waist down. Eyes blown out and watery. Sweat floating around you in droplets. His shirt clutched in your hand. Your pussy glistening.

Panting hard and fighting a groan at the sight of him, you watched Ryland push off from the doorway and catch you in his arms. You sighed at the contact, at his soothing pheromones finally filling your lungs to the fullest. You curled into him on instinct, face tucked into his neck and fingers clutching the front of his jumpsuit. His large hands ran up and down your spine and you burrowed into him further, feeling the safest you have ever been in your life.

"Alpha," you whispered.

And Ryland stiffened. Clutched you harder, pushing his hand into the small of your back and you felt the full extent of his desire brush against your stomach. You gasped, pulling your head back to look up into his face. He was already looking at you. Hungry. Dark. More calm than you had ever seen him.

"Say that again," he mumbled, long fingers brushing damp hair from your face. "Please."

"Alpha."

He kissed you then. All-consuming and starving and clumsy. It was nothing like what you thought a kiss with the doctor would be like. You pictured awkward and almost missing your mouth and apologizing right after. But there was no apology in this. No awkwardness. And he certainly did not miss. He claimed you with his lips, with his tongue, with everything. He devoured you, and you melted right into it. Let him have all of you that he wanted.

Both of you made quick work of his clothes, freeing him just enough to release his cock. Hard and aching and leaking from the tip. You swallowed when your eyes caught on the fat ring at the base. His knot. Your body screamed for it. But at the back of your mind, the part that was still you, didn't know if you would be able to take it.

Ryland distracted you with his fingers brushing through your folds, making you gasp and dig your nails into his shoulders.

"Gosh, you're so wet," he whispered.

When the pads of his fingers caught on your clit, you whimpered. Let him circle it a few times, let him kiss down the column of your throat and suck at your pulse point. But your heart felt like it was going to beat right out of your chest. It pounded in your ears. In your fingertips. Behind your eyes. The more he played with you, the less you could take.

"Ry - alpha, p-please," you breathed, fingers in his hair. "I - I can't. I need..."

"Sorry. Sorry. I know what you need." He glanced around the room, at your bodies floating in zero gravity. "How're we gonna do this?"

The best option, after a lot of maneuvering, was this: Ryland, wedged between the base of the toilet and the wall with his legs, pulling you down on top of him. Not the sexiest image in his head. Not what he really wanted to do. But it was the best you were going to get. So, he got into position, put his hands on your waist, and started to guide you.

"There you go. Almost there," he encouraged as you wrapped a hand around his base to help him inside you.

Unintentionally, he was sheathed to the hilt in one thrust. You choked on your next breath, hands shooting out to hold onto his shoulders to help keep you from floating away. Ryland's heart shattered at the sight of you on top of him. Blissed out. Eyes half lidded. Mouth hanging open. Your chest heaving. He could see the imprint of himself in your lower belly, and it made him growl - already able to picture your belly swollen with him in a different way.

"You okay, little omega?" he asked quietly after a few moments.

"D-Don't call me that," you replied despite the smile on your face.

"Alright." He knew well enough what you meant. You worked hard not to be demeaned for what you were. "You okay, my omega?"

You keened at that, hunched over him as you started swivelling your hips as best you could. "Please."

He knew what you meant. Using all those muscles he was still unsure he always had, he lifted you up and then brought you back down onto his cock. You cried out, already begging him to go faster. Ryland felt amazing. He filled you in the best way, the plush tip of him hitting that spot inside you that made you see stars every time he brought you down to meet his hips.

It didn't take you long to be on the edge, after so long trying and failing to get yourself there. You were wound up tight. With one last hard thrust, you were gone. It hit you like a freight train, a scream crawling its way from your throat as you writhed on top of Ryland.

He gripped you all the tighter, moved you faster, as he pressed his face into your chest and breathed, "Fuck, shit, wait - I'm - uh - "

Ryland spilled inside you with a whimper, hot and all-consuming and you sighed in relief. But then you felt the nudge of his knot against your entrance, and you threw your head back with a whine.

"Ry...Can't..." you gasped as his knot continued to push inside.

He looked up at you, hands sliding up to cradle your ribs. "Yeah, you can, omega. You were made for this. Made for me."

When his knot finally, finally, settled inside you, you let out a strangled little sound. You wriggled and breathed, trying to adjust and take it. Ryland just hummed, pressing a hand to your belly where he could feel his knot. He released his legs, knowing that he was secure inside you, and the two of you floated into the middle of the room, tangled up in each other.

"Does it hurt?" he questioned quietly.

"No," you replied, just as soft. "Feel...Feel so full. So...Happy."

He cocked his head. "Happy?"

"That it was you. I don't think I'd want anyone else to be my alpha."

"Do...Do you want that? To be mine?"

You smiled and cupped his cheek. "Back on Earth, before this - I would have chosen you. I choose you now."

You fell asleep like that. Curled into each other. Suspended midair. His knott locking you in place. A bite mark on each of your necks. Together.