Rules:

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

this is so good i keep coming back to it

A Family Picture [Yandere Vash x Reader]

Title: A Family Picture [Yandere Vash x Reader]

Synopsis: Vash always wanted a family. 

Word count: 2000ish

notes: yandere, possessive behavior, toxic relationship, pregnant afab reader, babytrapping

You thought you had known what it felt like to be shocked. 

You were shocked when you came home from school one day to find your aunt in your house, with a sad but patient smile on her face, and the news of your parents death in a shootout on her lips.

You were shocked when you found out that the man you’d been flirting with all afternoon was Vash the Stampede, quite literally the most infamous man (if he could be called a man, technically speaking) on the planet.

But this? This goes beyond being surprised or shocked. This is something you were not expecting, ever, and it feels like you’ve been held upside down and shaken for a good long while. And then some.  

“Miss?”

The doctor’s voice cuts unpleasantly through your shaking thoughts and you stare at him, feeling your gaze barely registering as you blink and blink and try to understand.  

“Thank you,” you murmur, and the paper in your hands crumples as you grip it tightly and rush to get dressed. You ignore the doctor’s request for a follow up, and his remark about bringing the father in for a consultation as well.

That thought made you chuckle, bitter and breathy, as you hurried out the door of the office. Christ. You couldn’t bring the father into the doctor. Not unless you wanted to get surrounded by scientists, at best, or locked away in some lab at worst. 

You had to get home. And then what? You didn’t know. 

All you know right now is… you would have to tell Vash. There was no way around it. 

You were pregnant with his child.

Keep reading

also: what happened to the anon who told me they were going to request heaps? I have one request from them and am having trouble on writing for it.

Anon if you’re reading this, please send in more requests for me to work with!!! I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you or anything!!

Actors on Actors | Toji Fushiguro

pairing: actor! toji x actress! reader

genre: interview style, slightly suggestive on toji's part

note: ah shit here we go again

📊 Video Stats

10M views | 350K likes | 40K comments

Convincing Toji to do this interview was as hard as his team had expected. 

The man was extremely private, always giving short answers on red carpets but they were more than enough to feed his fans. Coupled with a confident smirk of his and a proud display of the scar on his lip, the man knew he had people swooning for him. 

However, he wasn’t fond of interviews. It was evident in the way he leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, a bored look on his face and only answering when the question pertains to his character only. 

Other than that, you couldn’t get a single word out of this man.

When you heard that you were invited to be on an episode of Actors on Actors, you were both excited and nervous. Talking about yourself wasn’t your favorite thing in the world, but you loved getting to know other people in the industry and bonding with them over shared experiences.

What you don’t expect is to read Toji’s name on the paper. 

“Toji?” you turn to your manager with a look of disbelief on your face. “Fushiguro Toji?”

Your manager gives you an apologetic look. She could see the anxiety brewing inside of you, and you have to place a hand over your heart to calm your nerves. 

Talking to that man was the equivalent of talking to a brick wall. There was no way this was going to be a good interview—and who thought of pairing the two of you together?

The tall, broad shouldered man sits in his changing room with the same paper in hand as his eyes land on his name. His makeup artist catches the glimpse of a smirk on his face before Toji turns to his manager.

“That’s the pretty one, right?”

His manager chuckles before placing a hand on Toji’s shoulder. “The one and only.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

The interview is off to an awkward start. At least from your part. 

You feel small under the gaze of such an intimidating man, putting a leg over the other and pulling down the hem of your short dress to hide as much of you as possible. That doesn’t stop Toji’s shameless gawking as the two of you shake hands.

“I’m (Name), nice to meet you.”

“‘course I know who you are,” the words roll of his tongue smoothly and he watches as you purse your lips, dropping your gaze. “Fushiguro Toji”

“Very pleased to meet you.” You finally let go of his hand but you could’ve sworn that his hand lingered on top of yours a bit longer. 

When neither of you decide to speak up first, you let out a nervous chuckle while Toji turns to the filming crew with a playful smirk.

“This is fun,”

“I mean…” you trail off, smoothening the fabric of your dress. Again, his eyes land on your thigh and clear your throat.

“I’m…a really huge fan of your work.” your voice is small as you confess your admiration for his work in the industry. “I’m always amazed by your ability to get into character so quickly.”

“Watched some behind the scene footage?”

You were caught.

“Maybe…I mean it’s there!” You laugh and fortunately for you, Toji does as well as he nods. 

“Sure it is. I could say the same about you—” he gestures towards you with a genuine smile. “Great work, it’s rare to see someone so passionate in the industry nowadays.”

“Oh,” you wave your hands. “It’s-it’s nothing, I just really love acting.”

Toji braces himself forward with his elbows on his knees. “How old were you when you thought of giving it a try?” 

Your back straightens up under his gaze and you avoid his eyes as you think of a response. “I was about 6 or 7 when my parents would pull out a camera during Christmas and record me recreating scenes from movies like The Wizard of Oz and The Shining.”

“The Shining?”

“I was a weird kid,” you laugh when you see the look of shock painting his features. “But yeah these two were my favorite movies of all time.”

“That’s interesting, cause in a way I can see you getting into movies like that at a young age.” 

“Really?” 

Toji really likes the glint in your eyes. 

“Mhm,” he nods as he leans back in his armchair. “Like I said I’ve seen some of your work and–” he raises his hands. “I’m a fan.”

You drop your head shyly, silently thanking him for the amount of compliments he was throwing your way. This was honestly going better than you expected, but you knew it was time to ask him questions. 

“Can I just say,” you gesture towards the man. “Your recent work absolutely blew my mind—I mean, the entire movie was just amazing but your role. Wow, just wow.” 

Toji bows down his head when you clap for him, chuckling when you go the extra mile by pretending to bow down for him. 

“That role, was it difficult to get into such a state of mind? I’ve seen many actors—including myself, who needed a much needed break from everything after a certain role. Was it the same for you or were you able to detach yourself from the role easily?”

Toji gives it a thought, taking in the fact that you had crafted this question so carefully unlike any other interview he’s ever been on before. 

“After we finished shooting, I cut off contact with most of the world for about three months straight. I moved out of my neighborhood and into an area where it was just me, the mountains and the sound of birds.”

 Toji proceeds to explain how the role was mentally taxing, how the idea of going back and doing promo for the movie seemed like a huge roadblock he needed to get over. But after lots of therapy and some much needed time off, he was able to get back on his feet. 

“I’m glad that you feel better now, the industry needs good actors like you.” You admit and Toji leans back in his armchair again with a knowing smirk.

“I could say the same about you.”

The interview proceeds smoothly, with the two of you asking each other questions back and forth. After fifty minutes, the interview comes to an end and you get up to share a well deserved goodbye hug. 

However, Toji’s arms linger a little longer around your waist and he whispers something in your ear that’s facing away from the camera.

“You look good by the way.”

Guys, the mics are still on!

🗨️ Top Comments

💬 [somethingsgottagive]: DID YALL SEE THAT (6k likes)

💬 [somuchtosay]: this entire interview is just toji flirting with her im losing my mind (5k likes)

💬 [onehastogo]: ive never seen him this down bad omg??? (7,3K likes)

💬 [theboyismine]: this is the most talkative ive ever seen toji am i sensing smth (1.8K likes)

💬  [sweetnsourchicken] replied to  [theboyismine]: THAT HUG???

💬 [alltheavocadoes]: THE THING HE WHISPERED???(923 likes)

💬 [albumoftheyear]: oh the internet is on FIRE (508 likes)

💬 [cmontryme]: someone check on me ive shipped them for the longest time (392 likes)

💬  [sweetnsourchicken] replied to  [cmontryme]: without a single interaction is crazy

💬 [cmontryme] replied to [sweetnsourchicken]: i’m crazy

2025 © all works belong to @slttygeto. do not repost, translate or steal any of my works.

Touch (and be touched)

💌Yandere!Tomura Shigaraki x F!Reader💌

3.3k words

Summary:

After meeting someone immune to his quirk, Shigaraki discovers that it’s nice to touch and be touched. TWs for: Noncon | Rape, Molestation

Tags:

1/3 plot 1/3 feeling u up 1/3 smut, shigaraki grabs the whole tiddy!, noncon, short plot, i don’t know when this fucking takes place in the manga, and i cba reading again to find out! Use your imagination, readers emotions are not potent in this and it is suggested she has a delayed reaction, shigaraki’s skin condition is treated with respect and is mentioned briefly, safe but nonconsensual sex

From this ask

(A/N): this reminds me so much of how i used to write it’s uncanny. like the same formula and shit. oh well, it’s a pretty good formula for yandere fics what can i say 🤷‍♀️ 

———

You first meet him at the store.

It’s an unconventional place to meet a villain, however, you don’t exactly realise he is one at first.

You both need to look at the same aisle. It’s late, you just want to run this errand and be done with it all so you can go home and collapse in bed. Someone over the speaker says that it’s closing in ten minutes. Great. You still can’t find your usual lipgloss, it’s the last thing you wanted, you’re almost out of it -

That man has been standing awkwardly behind you for the past five minutes. He’s been so quiet that you assumed he walked off but turning slightly means you can see him in your peripheral vision. Oh dear. Your fatigue has made you impolite.

“I’m sorry, did you want in here?”

You awkwardly take a step back.

“Ye-ah,” He rasps, also appearing to feel awkward. “Do you work here?”

It would make sense to think that. You’d been rummaging through the makeup section for the past five minutes. It doesn’t help that your t-shirt is the same colour as the worker’s polo shirts.

“No, but I usually shop here, so if you need to find anything…”

Keep reading

Discipline

this is a fic that I wrote for @hypnoswrites's birthday! (tho I was a bit late in getting it done😅)

please keep in mind the tags on this one

Morel x female!reader

Warnings: yandere, kidnapping, dubcon, drugging, abuse, dehumanization, stockholm syndrome, victim blaming, Morel is not very nice in this fic

Word Count: 12.1k

The sound of creaking wood.

The heady smell of sea salt.

The steady rocking sensation as the world around you was being moved back and forth, back and forth. Consistently. Endlessly.

You groaned, pressing your face into the soft pillow as you yearned for more sleep. You were exhausted, after all. After all that effort, all that planning and carrying out that plan of yours – it had taken up a lot of energy, mentally and physically. So after all of that, you deserved to take a break, to reward yourself, even if it was a reward as simple as sleeping in just a bit longer. That wasn't so much to ask for, was it?

No, it wasn't.

Feeling the way your arms were stretched out above your head, you found that it'd be more comfortable if you brought them back down from where they sat on the pillow. In fact, you wanted to turn over, as you found you didn't quite like the way you were laying on your front. Intending to turn to your side, you pulled your arms down.

Or rather, you tried to.

Something stopped you. Something that was wrapped around both of your wrists that kept your arms from moving freely and held them in place above your head.

That was strange.

That feeling increased when you attempted to move your legs to shift to your side, as you found that your lower half was in a similar state: something soft but firm had been wrapped around your ankles that kept your legs attached to the bed and spread wide.

Why? What had happened to you?

A chill suddenly ran through you, hitting your exposed skin and running down the length of your spine.

…… Were you naked? What the fuck-

The creaking of wood sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of waves splashing against a solid surface.

For the first time since waking up, you snapped your eyes open to look at where you were.

……..

This was Morel's room.

…. No.

No no no no no no no no no

Why were you back here? How had you been caught? Why the fuck were you back here?

Straining your neck to look over your shoulder, you were horrified to see that you were correct in what you had been wondering earlier: you were naked, and a further look at your ankles and wrists confirmed that the reason why you couldn't move them was because they had been securely attached to the bedposts, leaving you vulnerable and helpless.

Your breath began to come out in short bursts as you started to struggle against the bindings. You shouldn't be back here. You couldn't be back here. Not after everything. After all you had done to escape him, to escape the prison that was his boat while he kept you around just so he could have something to fuck when he was in the mood.

No, that wasn't a life you wanted to live anymore. That was why you left. That was why you escaped him.

Sweat was beading on your skin as you pulled at your wrists, attempting to slip your hands through the bindings so you could get away for good this time.

I need to leave I need to get out of here before he comes back -

A hand came down to grab the back of your neck and you froze.

The touch of that hand was cool in contrast with your heated skin, and the intent you felt as you were grabbed seemed to resemble a warning. A promise that if you continued as you were, something bad was going to follow. Something that you wouldn't like at all.

Relaxing your arms and legs, you cautiously looked up at the figure that had laid their hand on you.

It was one of Morel's smoke soldiers.

White, expressionless eyes stared down at you, all the while they kept their grip firm on your neck, the cold mist that made them up seeping into your skin. They must have been in the room and you hadn't even realized, you thought to yourself. You were too disoriented and shocked by your unexpected predicament to notice that they were even there.

Several uncertain moments passed as they held your gaze, their hand still wrapped firmly around your neck while you watched them, waiting for what their next move would be.

What Morel would make them do.

You remained still – as still as you were able to, at least. You couldn't help the way you trembled as you stared at the soldier that continued to hold you, but surely that wouldn't be an issue. The fact that you had stopped trying to escape the bindings should be something that would make the soldier happy – that would make Morel happy. If Morel was happy then things were good, you remembered.

Though when you considered what you had done to Morel to escape him, it likely wouldn't be that simple of a solution.

Eventually, the soldier let you go. Though not quickly, as they chose to slowly release their grip on you, letting you feel the pressure on your neck gradually dissipate before releasing you completely. Even then, their hand didn't leave you, as they chose to run their fingertips down the length of your spine, mapping out every bump and curve of your back softly before they reached the flesh of your ass. They pressed their hand more firmly against you there, causing you to gasp in surprise and a sense of indignity. They continued to hold your gaze after that, still squeezing you as if daring you to protest, to give them a reason to lash out at your disobedience.

As much as you wanted to do that, as much as you wanted to scream and yell at that thing, at Morel, to let you go…… Now wasn't the time.

A few moments later, the soldier pulled away completely and stepped back, crossing their arms as they seemed satisfied with your submission. That was when you allowed yourself to let out a shaky breath of relief.

As you settled further on the bed and slowly breathed in and out, you found that your mind felt clearer.

Their cool touch had been what you needed. Despite hating the way they grabbed you, it had helped your mind to calm down, reminded you that you couldn't brute force your way out of this and that you needed to think. Take a deep breath and use your head.

Start with what happened, you told yourself. How did things go so wrong that they turned out like this?

Breathing in through your nose, you closed your eyes as you went back to what you'd been dealing with over the past few months; a period of time that felt like an eternity after being taken by Morel – no, not taken. That word didn't accurately describe the gravity of what he'd done.

He'd kidnapped you.

The man that you had thought was a good guy, and a single star Hunter, no less, had snatched you away from everything you'd known just to keep you locked up on his boat, pretending that the two of you were a couple in a loving relationship and that you were his wife who was always there at the end of every day to welcome him back with open arms. A role that you had vehemently refused to play.

At first.

But as more time passed and you realized that he really did have the power to keep you where he wanted, you chose to change your strategy. You told yourself then, just as you had only moments prior, that you couldn't brute force your way out of this terrible, terrible situation.

The only way you could get away from Morel was to be smart about it.

Coming up with and executing a plan to escape from Morel had been stressful and time-consuming. It had required you to build up a lot of good will beforehand, to make him think that you were accepting of the idea of staying with him and were no longer interested in returning to your old home. Being inexplicably over eager for his affections would've raised his suspicions, so it needed to be done over time.

That was why, gradually, you had stopped shying away from his touch and let him hold you if he wanted. You would engage in conversation, going from giving one-word replies to actively engaging with him. You even did some normal couple stuff together, having nights where you cooked together, watched movies and listened to music. Like little date nights aboard his boat.

Morel was ecstatic by the change in you and clearly believed that his efforts were finally paying off. Which was what you needed. Getting away from him hinged on him being so trusting of you that he kept his guard lowered, that he didn't suspect that you would try anything this late in the game.

Unfortunately, getting him to be completely convinced of that meant that you needed to sleep with him.

That was where you found yourself on the night of your escape: in the bedroom, bouncing up and down on Morel's cock while he was laid out on the bed beneath you, his hands tightly gripping your hips and his eyes full of awe as he watched the way you moved on top of him. He drank in the sight greedily, watching your breasts that moved every time you slid down on him before turning his gaze to your wet pussy that engulfed his length completely. The man was genuinely happy that you'd asked to be on top, taking it as further confirmation that you were content in being with him.

That was good. Even though you were fighting down bile that rose to your throat every time the ridges of his cock hit a spot inside of you that caused a pleasurable shudder to run through you, it was good that he was happy. If he was happy with you, surely that meant that he trusted you. You were counting on that. Counted on him being so distracted by this new attitude of yours that he wouldn't think to question the action you would take after.

Your escape started after your coupling had ended; after Morel came when he felt you shuddering on his cock, after you pressed your face against your chest to prevent yourself from showing any signs of how truly disgusted you were by the feeling of him filling you, after he placed hands on you, stroking your hair and running down your back while he kept his dick inside of you.

After composing yourself, you waited a few moments as you pretended that you were enjoying his touch before you lifted your head back up, catching his attention with a bright smile on your face.

“Want something to drink?” you asked sweetly.

Morel smiled back as he answered “sure.”

The satisfied look he had on his face while you left the bedroom made you wish you could punch him and have the hit actually hurt him. It pissed you off – the way he lay there with his hands behind his head, a picture of contentment, a feeling that he certainly didn't deserve to experience after he'd kidnapped you.

But as much as you wanted to hit him, escape was the better option for the long term. That was what you had told yourself as you entered the kitchen.

And when you pulled out two glasses and a carton of juice, you cast only a single nervous glance towards the bedroom before lifting up a paper towel roll and pulling out the small packet that you'd placed inside of it earlier. After filling up both glasses with juice, you opened the top of the packet that you'd constructed out of a spare piece of paper and emptied the contents into one of them.

When the concoction of crushed up sleeping pills and juice was thoroughly mixed together, you made your way back to the bedroom.

When you handed him the tampered juice, you didn't even look at him when he began to drink, too worried that even a single glance would be all he needed to realize that something was amiss. After months of sneaking around behind his back and grinding up those pills in secret, you couldn't let all of that work go down the drain because you couldn't act normal for a bit.

He ended up drinking a little over half of the glass you'd given him, and after you both set them on the small bedside table, Morel pulled you into his arms again, throwing the sheets back over the both of you as he made you cuddle with him.

“I really love you,” he murmured, “you know that, right?”

“I know,” you said, waiting a moment before you added “I love you, too.”

Your soft-spoken reciprocation of his feelings was enough to earn you a kiss as he pulled you up to lock his lips with yours. Just like everything else that night, you had forced yourself to go along with it, kissing him back gently. Somehow that show of love felt more disgusting than the way you had let him fuck you.

You pulled away from the kiss as you settled your head back onto his chest.

“I'm tired,” you murmured.

“Me too,” he answered, his hand going back up to stroke your hair while he added “we can continue in the morning.”

“I'd like that,” you told him.

Morel looked back at you again, smiling brightly as he took in what he perceived to be a content look on your face. With that, he reached over to turn off the light in the room, but he couldn't resist placing one last kiss to your forehead before he settled down for the night.

The man was capable of being so sweet and caring; he probably could've had any girl he wanted. So why the hell had he gone and kidnapped you?

It was a question you didn't think you were going to get an answer to, but hopefully it would be the last time you would lie in his bed thinking about it.

You couldn't say how much time passed before Morel was out of it completely. You only felt that the pills were taking their intended affect when you heard the sounds of his steady breathing and felt when his grip on you had loosened a bit.

After slowly inching your way out of his loosened grip and hitting the light switch, you stared at him. Morel didn't react when the lights came back on, and when you pushed at the arm that had been laying of you, it felt more limp and lifeless than you were expecting.

Still, better safe than sorry.

“Morel?” you spoke, your voice barely over a whisper.

No response.

When you tried again, at a volume that surely would have roused the sea hunter from the hold of sleep, your heart beat heavily against your chest as you saw no reaction.

It worked.

It worked it worked it worked it worked

Morel was in a deep sleep and he wouldn't be up for hours. Only hours, but still, it was the biggest head start you would ever get.

And as you stood from the bed to collect the things you would need when you returned to shore, the rest was history.

Even though something had gone wrong since you had ended up back here, you felt a small sense of pride upon revisiting your escape. You'd managed something that seemed like it should've been impossible, after all. And while before all of this had happened you probably would've been horrified at the thought of drugging someone with sleeping pills, things were different now. Morel deserved much worse than being knocked out soundly for several hours.

But after all of that, how had he caught you?

You closed your eyes as you tried to remember what had happened after.

Getting off the boat had been something of an ordeal, as the waters had been choppier than you had anticipated. But you had managed to get to shore using a life jacket and doggy paddling your way to the nearby shore. From there, you had walked along a road you had come across. You were slower than you would have liked due to how much of your energy had been spent escaping the boat, but the important thing was that you kept moving. Even as night turned to day and the sun slowly rose over the horizon, you kept walking, reminding yourself that every step you took was adding the distance between you and Morel, making the possibility of you being recaptured less and less likely.

Or so you had thought.

But how had that happened?

A friendly motorist had pulled up in front of you at one point, and upon seeing how exhausted you were, they had offered you a ride to a town that was several miles away. You had accepted, and subsequently fought to stay awake during the car ride as the passenger's seat felt like a godsend after the way your muscles ached from both the swimming and the walking. And after that……

You'd made it a few days away from him. By hitchhiking and sleeping when and where you could, you got further and further away from the shoreline that led to the open sea, further and further away from what you considered to be Morel's territory. You chose to approach friendly looking people who were driving away from that direction and avoided the police, worried that if you went to them with your story, they wouldn't believe you if you said that a Hunter had kidnapped you. Or maybe they would, but they would decide that it was better not to make an enemy of the Hunter's Association and instead deliver you back to him.

Regardless, you did pretty well for yourself, as to make it a few days running away from a Hunter as experienced as Morel was something to be at least a little proud of.

But that didn't matter now.

Somehow, he had caught you, and you could only guess that it had happened during a time where you had been sleeping, as you had no memory of him confronting or capturing you. You were caught and were now back in the place where you had started, and the chance of escaping a second time seemed like it would be impossible.

When you thought of that, you wanted to cry.

But you held back your tears. The soldier was still in the room with you, still watching you. You knew enough about Morel's smoke creatures to know that there was some sort of mental link that they shared, and Morel was no doubt watching you even now, keeping an eye on you even when he was away.

Things weren't going to be easy from here, but you could get away again. It would take time – even more time than you had taken to convince Morel that you were happy with him, but another opportunity for escape could happen again.

It needed to.

Your tumultuous thoughts were put to the side when you heard something other than the creaking of the boat and the lapping of the water:

The sound of the door that led to the outside being opened, followed by footsteps.

In an instant your eyes were open, and you were staring at the door to the bedroom as you heard the footsteps descending the small flight of stairs that led to the boat's interior, becoming louder as they came closer and closer to where you were.

You knew who it was. The soldier wasn't reacting and was keeping its gaze firmly on you. If the source of those footsteps had been anyone who wasn't meant to be there, the smoke creation would have been on them in an instant. The fact that it remained where it was told you that it could only be one person.

And when those footsteps stopped just in front of the door and you heard a familiarly deep voice sigh ever so slightly, it acted as a confirmation that you didn't really need, but you tried to steel yourself regardless.

The door to the bedroom opened, and in the doorway stood a single figure.

Morel.

A very upset-looking Morel whose frown only deepened when he saw the way you looked at him. Stepping in and closing the bedroom door with his foot, he walked forward until he was standing next to the bed, his hands in his pockets as he looked down at you. It was hard to tell where exactly his mind was with the way his sunglasses hid his eyes, but there was a very prominent sense of dread that was building up in the pit of your stomach.

You were in for it.

And since this was the furthest you had ever gone to try and get away from him, you were terrified at what sort of response he was going to have.

Agonizing moments of silence passed as you waited for him to speak, the only sound that you could hear being the waves that lapped against the side of the boat. He likely hadn't wasted any time in taking you back out into the open ocean once he got ahold of you again. And now after getting as close as you had in escaping him, it would be a long, long, long time before you would have even a remote chance of leaving again.

Then Morel spoke.

“You can be really unbelievable sometimes, you know.”

While the expression on his face remained impassive as he said that, the anger in his voice was undeniable. There was also no denying how tense his form was, the rage within him that was currently being restrained. In all of your time with him, you had never made him truly upset. You had annoyed him – you had caused him to snap at you when you begged him one too many times to let you go, but even in those instances, it would blow over quickly. He would push for you to apologize; when he got what he wanted he would apologize himself, and then he would move on from it, letting those small incidents go as he was more interested in obsessing over you.

This wasn't going to be one of those times.

Morel continued, “I'm not going to lie and say that I've been perfect during our time together, and I understand that you still have some reservations about all of this, but after all that we've been through, all of the progress that we've made – you really went and drugged me? You wanted to get away from me so badly that you went that far?”

You shouldn't say anything to him. Even if you were to apologize, it wouldn't be received well. He must've figured out that you had planned this far in advance, must've found the little paper envelope you had fashioned that had held the crushed up pills. He must've figured out that the entire reason you had asked for the sleeping pills was just so you could use them on him.

No amount of apologizing was going to make this any better for you, so it was smarter to stay silent.

Except you couldn't bring yourself to do that.

“I want to go home,” you muttered sadly, tears already starting to prick the edges of your eyes.

“You are home,” said Morel.

“No, I'm not,” you answered, “this place could never be a home for me. Not after you kidnapped me.”

He had the audacity to sound exasperated when he said “that again? I told you – it's for your own good. If I keep you here, you're guaranteed to be safe whether I'm around or not.”

“I didn't ask you to keep me safe. I didn't ask for any of this,” you protested.

“I know, and that was why I needed to take you, because you're so stubborn that nothing I said was going to convince you,” Morel said plainly, “I hate to say it, but you don't know what's best for yourself. That's why I needed to step in.”

That statement of his sent a red-hot rage flooding through you, and you clenched your hands into fists as you stared up at him in disbelief, daring him to continue to spout his nonsense justifications.

He did just that as he said “the world is a dangerous place, far more dangerous than you even know. I tried to leave you where you were for a bit – I really did, but it was a constant worry at the back of my head. I worried over you so much that it was affecting me when I was doing my job. I even slipped up a few times and got hurt because of it. And it's all because you're so weak and helpless. Anyone or anything could kill you without much effort. That was why I would get so distracted: if something like that happened while I was away and unable to protect you, I knew I'd never forgive myself.”

You hated that you could tell that he wasn't mocking you, not intentionally. The man genuinely saw you as some weak little thing that needed someone looking out for them, and he had brought it upon himself to take that role that he thought you needed.

Bastard

“So that's why I did what I did,” Morel continued, “and I'm not going to apologize for that. Not when all I want is to keep you safe.”

“….. Bullshit.”

You felt Morel's gaze grow darker as he stared at you, saying “what's that?”

“…. That explanation is bullshit and you know it. None of this is being done for my sake,” you said.

“Everything about this is being done for your sake.”

“No it's not. Even in that stupid explanation of yours, all you could focus on was the way you felt and what you wanted. You didn't like worrying over me because it affected you negatively, so you locked me up to put an end to that, because you couldn't be fucking normal and trust that I'd be okay. Because for someone like you, capturing a person and treating them like a pet is easier than respecting that person's autonomy. As long as you get what you want, nothing else matters, right?”

“Plus, keeping me as your pet came with the added benefit of you being able to fuck me whenever you wanted. Must be pretty good for someone who doesn't view others as being people,” you spat out.

Morel's mouth was set in a hard line and his jaw barely moved as he said “it's nothing like that.”

“How is it not?”

“I care about you.”

“You treat me like an object and you claim to care about me? Really?”

“That isn't true. I don't treat you like that.”

“You kidnapped me and locked me up,” you said.

“Because I'm protecting you,” he countered.

“You aren't!” you insisted, “you're just using that claim as an excuse to justify keeping me with you!”

“It's not an excuse. I love you.”

“Stop lying!”

You managed to get those words out with more force than even you were expecting, and it seemed to surprise Morel enough that he didn't speak while you said “there's no part of you that can genuinely love and care about me if the fact that I'm suffering in this place doesn't matter to you!”

“You're being taken care of. You're hardly suffering,” Morel scoffed.

“I am because I fucking hate this place! I've hated every minute I've needed to spend on this stupid boat and all I want is to leave! I hate being here and I hate being with you! Every time you touch me makes me want to vomit and I wish you'd drop dead already!”

“….. You don't mean that.”

His voice was low rumble when he said that, and even in your current state, you were able to sense something dangerous within his tone. Under different circumstances, you would've backed off, would've at the very least quieted down until you sensed that he was in a better mood.

But right now you were emotional and upset over being brought back to where you started and being stripped naked and tied up, and all you wanted was to let out all of the anger and resentment that had been building up during your time here.

“I mean it. This place could never be my home. Trapped on some fucking boat every day all day – why the hell would I ever choose to be here? To be with you?”

You spat out that last part on purpose, which caused his brows to pinch together as his expression only grew more grim.

“I've been good to you,” Morel had the audacity to say.

“You kidnapped me,” you countered.

“I don't know how many times you want me to say that it was for your own good,” he replied, “you weren't being cooperative and I wasn't going to take a chance of something happening to you while I was away. It was the only option I had to ensure your safety and happiness.”

“Fuck you!”

The angry words continued to spill from your mouth as you yelled at him.

“You're so focused on what you want that you've deluded yourself into thinking I could ever be happy in a place like this!” you shouted, “you keep me on this goddamn boat so you can have something to fuck whenever you're in the mood, and then you run off to do your Hunter shit while I'm locked away on a floating cage! Nothing about this situation will ever make me happy and you're never going to be anything to me other than the worthless creep who kidnapped me and forced himself on me even after I told you 'no'!”

You paused after that, breathing hard as you looked up at him while the adrenaline rushed through you. It felt good to say what you really thought. To lay everything out there as it truly was, to shatter his delusional way of looking at what he had done to you.

It all felt good until it didn't.

When your breathing began to even out, the cold reality of the situation set in. The reality being that no matter what verbal lashing you sent Morel's way, you were still incredibly vulnerable before him, tied down naked to the bed he had made you share with him while he stood above you, stiff as a statue and with a stormy expression on his face.

He could always kill you, a voice in your head spoke. With the boat likely being out in the middle of the ocean, he could tie you down to something heavy and drop you in the water, and you'd be long dead before anyone found your body, if they found it at all.

Would that be better than spending another day with Morel?

You weren't sure what the answer to that question was, because Morel finally moved, pulling his hands out of his pockets in order to undo the belt buckle at his front.

What's he doing?

Panic began to grow in you as you watched him pull the belt off without a word, sliding it through the loops of his pants before it was dangling in his hand while a look of grim determination had settled on Morel's face. The air around you felt different and that confidence fueled by your own anger had died out as you returned to being his terrified captive.

“Wh-what are you doing?” you made yourself ask.

Morel straightened up somewhat upon hearing your voice, looking back to you.

“Ah, right,” he said, more to himself than to you, as if he had forgotten something.

Handing the belt to the smoke soldier, Morel stepped towards the bed as he now reached for his tie, undoing the knotted fabric with deft fingers as he stared down at you.

“I'm going to need you to open your mouth,” he told you, “I don't want you biting your tongue on accident.”

Looking at his tie and then back at him, you asked “you're gonna gag me?”

“Yeah.”

With that, he reached out with the tie in hand as he attempted to force it into your mouth.

“No!”

You yelled loudly as you twisted your neck, once again struggling against your bindings as you tried to keep that bit of fabric out of your mouth.

“Stop fighting me,” Morel growled as he grabbed a hold of your hair.

“No!” you yelled again, still struggling even when you felt the grip he had on your hair become even more tight and painful.

The red fabric was being pressed against your lips as he tried to force it into your mouth, and even though you clamped your jaw shut in an effort to keep it out, you already felt the way he was prying your mouth open.

Was it really a good idea to keep doing this? Any resistance from this point would mean a slimmer chance of escape at a later time. If you kept fighting, you were looking at needing to play docile for him for a long, long while until he trusted you again. The smart choice would be to accept what he was doing in favor of having him be at least a little pleased with you over how you were submitting to him. Because if he was happy, then his guard could be dropped once again.

That was a mantra you had repeated to yourself for several months, and you knew that you should listen to it. It was the smarter decision.

“You're only making this worse for yourself.”

The sound of Morel's voice cut into your internal thoughts while he continued to try to force the tie into your mouth, and upon hearing the anger in his tone, the way he felt that you, the victim, were somehow in the wrong –

It enraged you.

With nothing else at your disposal, you turned your head to face him and spat on him.

The shock on the Sea Hunter's face was evident, his anger dissipating for a moment as he stared at you in disbelief, no doubt able to feel the bit of saliva that had landed on his cheek as it slowly ran down his skin and reached his jaw.

Truthfully, a part of you was also surprised at that action; you'd never done something like that before.

But no one had ever made you as angry as Morel had before this moment, either.

You weren't able to ponder that line of thought for long, because shortly after, Morel's shock shifted into anger, his brows narrowing into a glare as he wiped your spit off of his face with his sleeve.

“Open your goddamn mouth,” he ordered.

Your response was to clench your jaw shut while you glared at him.

By that point, Morel clearly had enough.

Taking both hands to your face, Morel's fingers forced their way into your lips as he pried your jaw open. His tie was forced inside in a similar manner, even when you tried to push it out with your tongue or when you bit at his teeth. Nothing you did slowed him down.

A few moments after that, he was securing a knot at the back of your head, leaving your mouth unable to close as the tie had been used to gag you.

You were still struggling to escape and Morel was still radiating rage as he stood to his full height, glowering down at you from above.

“I love you a lot. I really do,” he spoke, “but I have my limits, and today, you've pushed well past them.

The soldier stepped forward, holding out the belt for him while their gaze never left your form. Taking the belt without looking, Morel silently wrapped the end with the buckle around his right hand, holding it tightly with his fist once he was finished. With that, he looked back to you.

“I want you to know that I'm not going to take any sort of pleasure in this,” he told you, “but you haven't left me any choice. You've made it clear that if I want you to learn anything from this, then I need to go to the extreme.”

Your heart began to pound in your chest as he approached the bed once more, this time standing in front of your exposed backside. He…. He wasn't going to….. Was he?

When he pulled the belt taut with both hands, tears began to well up in your eyes as you shook your head at him while your pleas were muffled by the tie in your mouth.

Morel gave you one last look before he spoke again.

“You made me do this.”

And with that, he pulled his arm back and brought the belt down on your ass.

The first time, you didn't scream. In fact, it felt as though you fainted for a brief moment as your mind went blank from the pain and all that came out of your mouth was a brief gasp as it felt as though the air was being forced out of you.

It was when he brought the belt down a second time that you screamed into the gag.

Tears filled your vision and your entire body reacted as your limbs once again fought at the bindings, and when that didn't work, you found yourself trying to press into the mattress in a desperate effort to escape the way the belt struck your sensitive flesh over and over again. It didn't matter that Morel and his creation were right there and would never allow you to step foot off of the bed – you weren't thinking logically. You just needed to get away.

But despite your best efforts, the bindings remained strong while you remained helpless.

The belt came down again.

The searing pain that ripped through you caused the veins in your forehead to bulge out as you cried out, your voice quickly becoming hoarse from how hard you were screaming. Sweat was beading up on your forehead as well while adrenaline was pumping through you, only adding to your efforts to escape from him.

It was just as useless as it had been every other time you tried to break free; there was no sign of the bindings loosening even slightly.

A pattern was beginning to emerge as he brought the belt down once more.

And then again.

And again.

And again.

The areas on your ass and upper thighs were soon all aching, every inch suffering from the force of his hits. With no more free skin to mark up, Morel began to hit you in the spots that had already been attacked.

The pain in those areas became worse the second time around.

You had long since lost count of how many times he'd hit you. You were only able to note when you felt your skin beginning to tear and you felt something liquid and warm dripping down from both your sides and the apex of your thighs.

You were bleeding, you realized. He was hitting you so hard that you were bleeding.

And he didn't care, as you felt the leather come back down on your aching skin and cause the pain to bloom in your body yet again.

Morel continued in a steady rhythm; he would hit you, pull back, wait a few seconds and then bring the belt back down.

Again and again.

Over and over.

No end in sight.

The sound of the belt moving through the air was seared into your brain. As was the sound it made when it came into contact with your flesh. The same could be said for Morel's determined grunts as he made sure not to go easy on you. Those sounds would likely stay in your mind forever and visit you with every nightmare.

And as for the pain……

All you could do was hope the memory of that would fade with time.

You were conscious for far too long. At a certain point you weren't really able to think. All you knew was the cycle of pain Morel was putting you through as the thick leather continued to come down on your damaged skin, making your wounds even worse in the process. You managed to be vaguely aware of the blood that decorated the sheets beneath and around your pelvis, just as you were vaguely aware of the spatters of blood that had managed to get onto the ceiling above you, flying off of the belt from the momentum of Morel's swings.

After enduring all of that for however long it truly lasted, it was a mercy when you finally passed out.

When you awoke, it was to a stinging sensation as something was being lathered on your rear. While not as bad as the pain you had gone through at Morel's hands, it was enough to wake you up, making you struggle again against the bindings you had fought so desperately against during the lashing. You were simply reacting again, the not-logical part of your brain trying to get away from what it knew to be a bad situation.

A cold hand came down to smack you on your injured flesh, causing you to shout in pain once again.

That woke you fully.

A glance over your shoulder revealed it to be the soldier that had hit you. They stared at you for a moment, as if warning you against fighting any further. When they were satisfied that you wouldn't, it went back to what it had been doing: tending to your wounds.

You strained your neck to see just how that part of you looked.

That was a mistake.

The skin of your ass and the upper parts of your thighs were covered both with bruises and bloody open wounds that stretched across your skin, some of which looked deep enough that you feared there would be permanent scarring. It would definitely be a long time before you would be able to sit down comfortably.

The sight caused the tears to well up in your eyes once again, and now without the gag in place to muffle your cries, you openly sobbed into the surface of the pillow. Your throat hurt, but you couldn't help it – what had happened to you was monstrous.

And Morel didn't care.

He had done all of that to you without remorse. He'd had the nerve to blame you for it before he'd gone through with the barbaric act, all because he wanted to teach you a fucked-up lesson.

In the midst of your sobbing, you glanced over your shoulder again, this time to glare at the soldier.

“I'll never forgive you,” you choked out between your scratchy sobs.

The soldier paused in their actions, turning their blank gaze over to you once again.

Morel was listening in. He needed to be.

“I'll never forgive you,” you repeated.

There was no verbal response from the soldier.

Instead, they spread more of the disinfectant that caused you to wake up, once again without an ounce of care, and your cries of pain echoed against the walls for what must have been the hundredth time that day.

The feeling that had been behind your fierce deceleration felt as though it was wavering. Whether or not your resolve had faltered too soon or too late was impossible to tell, as you couldn't tell just how long you had remained in your current state.

In the days following your horrible ordeal, you had been left with your limbs still tied to the bed. Every day of every hour, those bindings remained wrapped tight around your wrists and ankles, keeping you attached firmly without even the slightest bit of wiggle room, your arms and legs permanently stretched out. The only reprieve you got from that was when the soldier would allow you to use the bathroom, and at the beginning, it felt more like a punishment at first. As you had expected, sitting down was painful, and there were several times you returned to the bedroom a crying mess.

Every ounce of pain that ran through you only reminded you of what you had been through – what Morel had done to you.

At first, the anger from that brutal act only strengthened your resolve. How could he do this to you? How could he do such things and still claim to love you? He was a monster. You spat that out a few times, both at his creation and at him during the times he entered the bedroom. Morel ignored you and the soldier remained ever silent. When your words didn't draw any reaction, you went silent as well and kept your gaze averted whenever Morel entered the room for a fresh change of clothes. If he was going to ignore you, you could do the same.

You even told yourself that you were happy that he wasn't touching you, that it was better this way. For once, you were free from his incessant touch, his demanding need for you to give him the sweet kisses and the soft embraces that you had come to know that he craved from you. While his presence in the form of the soldier was still overwhelming, you told yourself that you had won if just for that fact alone.

At first all of it was easy.

As if the fact that he had kidnapped you wasn't enough, the pain that started in your backside that ran through you every time you sat down and the humiliation that came with every day you woke up tied to the bed reminded you of why you could never forgive him.

He was a monster and a brute who had done so many awful things to you that you felt there wasn't a good enough punishment for him to go through in order to make up what he'd put you through.

You would never forgive him.

But after what must have been weeks with nothing to do but listen to your own thoughts while you stayed firmly attached to the bed and listened to the endless creaking of the boat as it rocked back and forth, you found that it was harder to hold onto that rage.

And part of you felt pathetic for that fact.

There was only so much to focus on in that small area, only so much you could do while you were tied down. You weren't even allowed to feed yourself as the soldier was the one to do that, feeding you like you were an animal, and there was nothing you could do about it. If you tried to fight, they would take the meal away, a clear sign that told you if you wouldn't behave, then you wouldn't eat. After going several days with only being offered water, your desire to act up during mealtimes died down so as to ease the growing ache in your empty stomach.

Even then, the meals that were being offered were meager, but they were all you were allowed to have. That, combined with the little bits of movement you were allowed every day which caused your muscles to weaken, had your strength ebbing away bit by bit while your mind was having a hard time coping with the isolation and the minimal stimulation your brain was getting from the stagnant environment.

Your thoughts became less angry and more dismal. At first you were consumed by memories of your life before all of this, of what things had been like before Morel had torn you away from everything you knew. A life with family, friends, a dating life that could've been better and a job that you had really grown to enjoy, even if there was that one coworker who had a bad habit of oversharing everything. It wasn't perfect, but it was good, and it was mostly all you wanted.

And even if things could've been better, Morel didn't have any right to take you away from that.

Those times with your loved ones felt like a million years ago now, and more than once you found yourself crying tears of rage over how all of that was lost. All because of Morel's selfishness.

Thoughts like those had your resolve strengthening somewhat, and yet, it didn't feel like it lasted long. You were just so tired. You couldn't tell how many days had passed since all of this had started, even with your best efforts to try and count the meals you had gotten or the times that Morel entered the room.

He must have been sleeping on the couch in the main area of the boat, you thought to yourself.

What was the point in that?

Why wasn't he all over you? Why hadn't he nursed you back to health himself?

What was his endgame?

….. Was he tired of you?

“Are you going to kill me?” you asked him one day, your voice croaking out the question due to how little you had spoken.

Morel again ignored you, and nothing in his actions indicated that he was in any way affected by your question. His ever present soldier remained where they were, and there wasn't any change in their treatment of you after you asked that.

It should have angered you. That after having the audacity to kidnap you, he would then pretend as though you didn't exist.

But by the time you asked that question, you felt weak in both body and spirit as the true toll of the situation had begun to hit you fully.

It wasn't right.

Nothing about this was right.

But things were nicer when Morel was happy with you.

Even if it had all been driven by his own selfishness, having him hold you was better than the bindings that held you down. Having him regale you with stories of his adventures on the seas was nicer than the way he wouldn't even look at you.

And the feeling of his lips on yours was a better feeling than his belt hitting your ass repeatedly until you were bleeding.

As what must have been weeks slowly but surely passed, you found yourself wishing to go back to before the night of your escape. Back when things were good between you and your kidnapper. Back when he treated you softly and held you close in a way that felt secure.

That's stupid. He kidnapped you, you told yourself. You really think anything about that was good?

But another part of you didn't care. Things had been better before you escaped, and you didn't want this existence anymore.

You wanted to take it all back.

Your resolve to not forgive or speak to him broke soon after that, and for the first time in a long while, you tried to make conversation for the sake of your own sanity. You offered up apologies in between pleas for him to say something to you.

Morel didn't acknowledge your request.

Morel didn't acknowledge you at all.

That night you broke down sobbing as you feared that nothing about this could ever be fixed and that your current state was going to be the rest of your life.

Standing in the corner, the soldier watched you impassively.

Sometime later, there was a change in the awful routine you'd been forced into.

That evening, Morel came into the bedroom as he always did, and you anticipated that he would grab his nighttime clothes and immediately head back out without sparing you a second glance, as was typical.

Morel didn't do that, however.

Instead you were caught off-guard when he approached you, standing at the spot at the top of the bed and reaching out to grab at the bindings. He was untying them, you quickly realized. Your eyes widened as his calloused fingers undid the bindings around one wrist, loosening it until he was able to slip your hand out of the fabric before he turned his attention to the other.

What was happening?

Your heart pounded in your chest as you laid there silently, unwilling to do anything without his explicit permission for fear of Morel changing his mind and tying you back up again. When he had finished with your wrists and walked down to undo your ankles, you remained where you were, not even daring to push yourself up to look at him.

He would tell you when to move.

Which he did, though not verbally. Once he had finished freeing you completely, the Sea Hunter grabbed you by your arm and hauled you up to your feet, and without giving you even a second to recover from the way you had abruptly changed positions, Morel began to drag you out of the bedroom.

You had no choice but to comply, following behind him on unsteady feet while you tried not to bump into either him, the doorway or the walls. With one last glance back you saw the soldier following behind you, their eyes trained on you as always.

Once more you asked yourself what was happening, but you were still unwilling to ask that question aloud.

Morel pulled you into the main area of the boat, a room that you hadn't been in since the night you escaped. Your eyes went to the part of the kitchen, finding the exact spot where you had been standing when you had tampered with the juice you had given him. Where you had, in his mind, betrayed him to the worst degree.

Upon reliving that memory, you felt a pain in your rear. The marks from the way he had beaten you came alive on your skin. It was probably just stress pain, as your wounds had long since healed up. But that didn't make the ache lessen in any way. Nor did your nerves calm down as Morel dragged you towards the couch.

After he had settled down, Morel pulled you onto his lap after, his hands holding onto your hips while he stared at you. He still wasn't saying anything, so you followed his lead and remained silent as you stared back nervously. Feeling awkward, you ended up using your hands to steady yourself on his shoulders.

He remained silent.

The smoke soldier remained as a constant presence at the doorway.

And you remained tense, your muscles coiled up as you waited for something to happen. But you could only wait for Morel to say or do something.

Because something was going to happen; you were sure of it. Whether it would be good or bad for you remained to be seen.

You kept your hands on his shoulders, your fingers clenching and unclenching at the fabric of his shirt while you waited for him to speak to you, to explain what was going on. Maybe things would go back to normal? After everything you'd been through now, you wanted to go back to the way it was before you had run. Because even if you hated being his captive, even if he still used you how he wanted with little regard for your own feelings, at least there was a semblance of love to be found. Morel was gentle with you, he was kind to you. He went out of his way to do things for you that he thought you would like, would surprise you with little gifts that he felt suited you, or he'd cook you meals that he knew were your favorites.

That version of Morel, the one that doted on you and held you softly, was nowhere to be found. Instead, the man whose lap you were sitting on only continued to stare at you coldly, his mouth still set in a frown and and his eyes watching you from behind his sunglasses.

You didn't want to speak. Doing that felt like a bad idea, like all you would do was earn another round of punishment for yourself if you dared to do or say anything without his express permission. Waiting for his command was the smarter option, the safer option.

So you sat, still staring at him with uncertainty while you were unable to help the way you squirmed beneath his gaze.

Then Morel once again broke the silence, not with words but with action, as he moved his hands away from your hips, leaving you to hold yourself up on your own as he began to undo the buckle of his belt.

Seeing that had your heart rate increase on seeing that.

Was he going to hurt you again? Why? Had you done something else wrong? Or was this simply a continuation of your punishment?

Every part of you wanted to run and barricade yourself in the bedroom, but you made yourself stay still as you stared on helplessly. Running would only make it worse, you told yourself. Just stay still.

Even when he pulled the belt out of the loops of his pants and gripped it in one hand, you forced yourself to stay where you were.

Still remaining silent, Morel placed the belt next to him on the couch as he reached down for the button and zipper of his pants, the sound of the zipper teeth pulling open echoing loudly in your head.

You made yourself sit there, even when he shoved his pants and boxers down in order to pull out his semi-hard length.

Then, for the first time in a long, long time, Morel spoke to you.

“Touch it,” he ordered.

“……”

Somehow it hadn't been obvious when he was undoing his pants of what he wanted. Even though you were staring at him the entire time, your mind hadn't truly been taking in what was happening. As such, you found yourself shocked at the order, and you couldn't help but open your mouth as you began to form a question.

“T-touch-?”

“Did I say you could speak?”

You snapped your mouth shut, fearful of angering him. Again.

Morel stared down at you through the lens' of his sunglasses, waiting impatiently for you to do as he had told you while also having no concern for your distress that was once more slowly building as you remained still on top of his lap.

“I'm not going to repeat myself,” Morel told you.

His words brought you out of your stupor. If you didn't do what he wanted, he'd give you back to the soldier and make them tie you up to that bed, wouldn't he? You would only see him in passing and all you would have was the creature made up from his abilities. Always by your side. Always impersonal, never offering any sort of kind or loving touch.

Letting out a shuddering breath, you pulled one of your hands off of his shoulders and placed it on his cock, wrapping your fingers around his length. Then you began to stroke him.

The interior of the boat was quiet as you ran your palm up and down his dick, and the air around you felt stuffy. Dense. Like you were slowly being suffocated. You took in a big gulp of air as you increased your pace, trying your best to put your all into pleasing him despite how tired your muscles felt already.

Maybe he would appreciate that.

Maybe this could be the first step in him forgiving you.

You don't need forgiveness from him. He kidnapped you.

Shaking those thoughts away, you continued, watching as his cock hardened until it stood erect in your palm, a bead of precum sitting at the tip as you worked him over, bringing your other hand down in order to use both on him.

You must be doing something right, otherwise he wouldn't be aroused like this. Even if the setting still felt suffocating to you and not arousing in the slightest. The air still felt heavy and grim.

Maybe he likes seeing you at his mercy.

…… You didn't like that thought, and you again banished it from your mind as you continued, determined to keep your focus solely on pleasing him. All the while Morel sat there with his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at you.

It sure didn't feel like he was enjoying this. It felt like he was still pissed off at you.

Just don't hurt me again, you begged silently. You can lock me back up, but don't hurt me anymore.

By that point your hands were becoming slick as you kept rubbing them up and down Morel's length. His precum was dripping down from the tip of his cock, and the stickiness was getting in the areas between your fingers as you rubbed him harder. You focused your touch on the veins that ran along his cock, areas that you remembered were sensitive, areas that you hoped were having the same effect on him.

But it was impossible to tell with the way he kept staring at you.

“Stop.”

Your hands stilled as soon as he spoke, and you stared up at him nervously,

“How wet are you?” he demanded to know.

You blinked.

“Um…..”

You didn't want to answer, because you didn't feel aroused at all and you felt worried that he'd be upset by that.

It turned out that you didn't need to answer as he sighed, saying “I should've figured.”

He sounded annoyed.

Feeling compelled to apologize, you opened your mouth to do just that, but you stopped, remembering how he didn't like it when you tried to speak earlier. So your shut your mouth yet again as you waited for him to speak once more.

“Whatever. You'll ride me anyway.”

Then Morel's hands were on your hips again, and he hoisted you up so you were on your knees above his length. He then readjusted his grip so he was holding onto the globes of your ass while the tip of his cock brushed against your pussy lips.

And then he held you there, waiting for you to sink down onto him, regardless of whether you were ready for him or not.

I don't want this, you thought to yourself as you stared down between your legs, at the cock that you didn't feel prepared for.

I don't want this at all.

Morel's fingers gripped tighter on your ass and this time, the pain that ran through you wasn't an echo of what he had done to you that night when he caught you.

What you wanted didn't matter right now.

So you squeezed your eyes shut as you lowered yourself down.

It hurt.

The stretch felt like too much and you wanted to pull off of him, but you forced yourself to go down further and further. Tears were now pricking at the edges of your eyes and your knuckles had paled from how hard you were gripping at his shirt, but you didn't stop or pull away even when your senses were screaming at you to do so.

At least it's not as bad as the belt.

Thinking that helped a little bit.

You were able to sink down to about the middle of his cock when you paused, taking in a deep breath before you began to pull upward, waiting until his head was all that was inside of you and then sinking back down again. Morel didn't make any indication that he objected, so he must have been pleased.

Except he still didn't show any signs that he was enjoying this.

He still seemed angry.

So you continued with uncertainty, still feeling fearful even as the stretch became more comfortable and you were able to take in more of him until you were able to hilt him inside of you fully. Even when you were able to move faster as you bounced on top of him, nothing about it felt like things between the two of you were mending.

And evidently what you were doing wasn't enough, because Morel took it upon himself to force you to go faster.

Grabbing you by your hips, the Sea Hunter began to move you, plunging you up and down on his length at a pace that you weren't capable of in your current weak state. The room was soon filled with the sounds of your bare thighs hitting his legs while you let out pained groans and sudden shrieks whenever he handled you a bit too roughly, and all you could do was hold onto him for dear life.

Morel wouldn't have done that before.

He had always been attuned to your discomfort, being able to sense when something was wrong and stopping before you would get the chance to tell him to. He'd even agreed to you saying 'no' to certain acts when you cited that they made you uncomfortable. And even when he was lost in a haze of lust, he was never so lost that he continued to seek his pleasure without thinking of you and his desire to make you happy.

You hadn't thought of it before. You had been too focused on using sex to get him to lower his guard to realize how nice he was being to you. The man was so sweet and caring; he probably could've had any girl he wanted, and he picked you.

And how had you repaid him?

And could things ever go back to normal?

“I'm sorry.”

You breathed out those words, and immediately, Morel came to a stop, his hands still gripping your hips hard and his cock still buried in your cunt. You felt their gazes on you, of both himself and the smoke soldier that had stayed in the doorway. Tears began to run down your cheeks as you began to sob out more apologies, your voice becoming more and more choked with every syllable you forced out.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

You couldn't tell how your many apologies were being received – even if your vision wasn't blurry with tears, you couldn't bring yourself to look at him. For some reason, you felt ashamed, and it was all you could do to keep yourself upright while you forced more apologies to fall from your mouth.

“I'm sorry.”

The boat creaked as it moved against the waves.

“I'm sorry.”

The soldier's gaze remained ever present on your back.

“I'm sorry.”

Morel still said nothing while you sobbed on top of him.

The next apology of yours caught in your throat, and though you were unable to speak, you clenched your fingers tighter on his shirt, hoping that he would still understand what you wanted to say, how remorseful you truly were over your actions.

If we could just go back to the way things were, I'd be fine.

You weren't able to process how wrong that thought of yours was.

Because Morel chose then to respond.

Lifting one large hand to cup your cheek gently, Morel moved your head up so you were looking at him. And with a gentleness that you hadn't felt since the night you ran away, he brushed away the tears on your cheek as he murmured to you softly.

“Shh. Don't cry,” he said to you.

That just made your tears flow harder, and you couldn't help but grab at the hand on your cheek with your own, pressing his palm against your skin in the hopes that he wouldn't pull away. Not that you would be able to stop him if he really wanted to let go, but your desperation for his soft, gentle touch drove you to try anyway.

You felt elation when Morel not only chose not to pull away, but went and wrapped his other arm around you as he pulled you in, holding you close to his chest. Immediately, you wrapped your arms around him in response, nuzzling your face against him. When was the last time he had held you like this? The night of your escape? Regardless, it felt like it had been years since the last time this had happened, and you didn't want to let him go.

Morel sighed as he buried his face in your hair.

“I'm really happy to hear you say that. I was worried you would never come around,” he said softly, “I don't know what I would do if you stayed that way. If you still couldn't see things from my point of view.”

Morel moved his hand to the back of your head in order to stroke your hair as he continued “it's been a tough few weeks, and I know I wasn't good to you during that time, but it was necessary. You get that, right?”

You nodded.

Morel let out a sigh of relief as he said “that's good. I'm glad you understand.”

His other hand began to run up and down your back as he said “and I hope you'll also understand why we can't immediately go back to the way things were. I'll need to keep you on a bit of a leash for a while. That means you can only go topside when I say so, and I'm going to keep using my ability to watch over you.”

“But it won't be forever,” he added, “just until we've rebuilt the bridge between us completely. Understand?”

You nodded again as you let out a soft “I understand.”

He sniffled when you said that, which caught you off-guard.

When you pulled your head back up to look at him, you were surprised by what you saw:

He was crying.

Moments ago he'd been glaring at you; he hadn't allowed for any other emotion other than anger. But now…… Now tears were streaming down his face as he looked at you with an expression of sheer relief.

“Good. That's good, sweetheart,” he said, leaning down to place a kiss on your head. He then held you tightly, his tears landing in your hair as he declared “these last few weeks have been hell for both of us, but we're going to come out of it stronger, I know it.”

You hummed in agreement as you nodded, reciprocating his embrace as you held him back.

This isn't right, a small voice at the back of your head protested. How could things have been hell for him? How could he hurt you over and over and say that he was affected negatively by it? How could he have the gall to make it seem as though he had also suffered?

Shut up, you told yourself. Just shut up and stay quiet. He wants to love you now, so take it.

The alternative is being tied to the bed.

You held him tighter, your shoulders trembling slightly from the warring emotions within yourself.

Morel noticed as he asked “what's wrong?”

You shook your head.

“I just missed this,” you answered softly.

On hearing that, a soft smile graced Morel's face.

“I did too,” he admitted, taking a brief moment to wipe at his tears with his sleeve.

When he then moved your chin up in order to pull you in for a kiss, you didn't protest.

The smoke creation of his that had been a constant presence dissipated as Morel began to readjust you, slowly moving you so you were laying back on the couch, his cock buried in you the whole time as he took his place above you. He pulled away from your lips in favor of covering your neck with kisses as he gently caressed your sides with soft strokes that soothed you. Your hands came up to grasp at his shirt again, to which he chuckled.

Taking one of your hands into his, he kissed your fingers before asking “are you ready?”

You nodded.

Morel began to thrust into you once more. This time, his movements were softer, not as forceful as moments ago when he had been taking what he wanted from you. The stark contrast to the change forced a sob to escape your throat, to which Morel shushed you gently as he wiped away the remainder of your tears.

Then he pulled away and pressed his face into the crook of your neck, sighing contentedly.

“Welcome home,” Morel whispered.

don’t forget to follow these angels!!! hehe they’re on instagram now shower them with love please 🥰💛

Title: Till The Water Boils Over Or The Frog Drowns.

Pairing: Yan!Gojo x Reader x Yan!Geto (JJK).

Word Count: 5.8k.

TW: No Curses AU, Dub/Con -> Non/Con (Revoked Consent), Fem!Reader, Oral Sex, Unprotected Sex, Kidnapping, Financial Abuse, Psychological Abuse, Infantilization, Spanking, Unbalanced Power Dynamics, and Forced Codependency. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

It started the day Satoru first introduced the concept of ‘time out’ to your relationship.

He was immature and you were stubborn. You loved him, but without Suguru’s even temper and calming presence, sparks tended to fly in a way that left you at each other’s throats. With your arms crossed over your chest and your eyes narrowed, you’d watched him sigh, roll his eyes, and storm out of your shared bedroom, slamming the door behind him. You gave yourself a second, then another – sucking in a shallow breath and shutting your eyes, talking yourself through all your usual cool-down methods. You were supposed to go out, tonight, to a restaurant you and Satoru had both been talking about for weeks. You still had about an hour before Suguru was supposed to get home, before you were all supposed to leave together. It wasn’t a good day to fight, even if you knew Suguru would smooth everything over as soon as he got home.

When you were done, you moved to the bedroom door. One hour was plenty of time to talk things out. One hour was plenty of time to kiss and make up, even if you would hold a grudge for a—

You pushed gently on the door. It didn’t budge.

You tried the knob. It turned, but the door still didn’t open.

You pressed your shoulder into the wood, shoving with more force than you ever should’ve had to use. Something shifted – a chair slotted underneath the handle, Satoru’s back leaning against the other side of the thin wood – but didn’t give.

The frustration you’d only just managed to suppress resurfaced immediately. Still pressed against your side of the door, you called out, attempting to keep your tone soft, light. “Satoru? Baby?”

 The sweetness in his voice was equally artificial. “I’m right here, angel.”

“I—I think the door might be jammed.” You tried the knob again, rattling the metal for emphasis. Satoru only hummed in response, and you grimaced. “Are you gonna let me out, ‘toru? I really don’t have time to be—”

“Ninety minutes.”

“…ninety minutes?”

“Ninety minutes,” he repeated. You could practically hear the smirk in his voice. “After that, we can check and see if you’re still feelin’ so bratty.”

You were almost thankful there was a door between you. If it hadn’t been there, you might not have been able to stop yourself from throttling him. “Satoru, I really don’t have time to—”

There was an obnoxiously loud hum, the sound of footsteps moving down the hall. You groaned, resting your forehead against the cool wood. Whatever. He was being petty, again. You could do ninety minutes. And, even if you couldn’t, he’d probably be back in ten, tail between his legs and pouting for your attention.

You quickly resigned yourself to passing the time as quickly as possible. You laid face-down on your bed, bemoaning your taste in men and picturing all the ways you could break up with Satoru, once he let you out. You scrolled through your phone, spamming Suguru with half-coherent messages and memes from the very depths of your camera roll. You re-organized your closet, sorting your clothes by color and alphabetizing your shoes. You managed to read a full page of one of the bulky historical fiction novels Suguru kept on the bedside table before deciding you’d be better off breaking up with both your current boyfriends.

You checked the time when you were done, and discovered that you’d managed to kill a whopping fifteen minutes.

God, you were so fucked.

Only half-consciously, you gravitated back to the door, slumping against it. You opened your mouth, ready to call out to Satoru and say whatever you had to say to get out, but another voice cut in before you got the chance. “Baby?”

Suguru. He must’ve gotten back early. You let out a shallow sigh, letting your head fall forward in relief. “Right here,” you said, making no effort to hide your exasperation. “Can you open the door? I think ‘toru blocked me in.”

His deep chuckle was muffled, but still clearly audible. “I’m afraid I can’t. He’s still pretty mad, couldn’t stop talking about how you copped an attitude with him.” There was a pause, a shoulder being rested against the other side of the door. “I think he mentioned something about a dress?”

You were glad he couldn’t see you – he would’ve hated the way you grimaced at the reminder. “It’s a nice restaurant. I wanted to dress up a little, but he’s just so immature, and when he saw the dress I wanted to wear—”

Suguru cut in. “The red one, right?”

“Yeah, with the window on the chest.” You sighed. “Please, Suguru? I really don’t want to spend the next hour of my life locked in my own bedroom.”

Another laugh, this one more stifled than the first. “He just knows how pretty you’d look, babe. Probably doesn’t want anyone else to find out how beautiful our partner is.” When you didn’t respond, he added, “Didn’t he just buy you somethin’ brand new? He can’t complain if he’s the one who picked it out, right?”

You pursed your lips. He had – a pure ivory dress, a little shorter than mid-thigh and sleeveless, not exactly conservative, but not meant to show as much skin as you usually preferred to. It’d come with matching gold jewelry, and you’d politely accepted the gift, kissed him on the cheek, and stashed it under your bed to rot. It wasn’t ugly, nothing so expensive could be, but it suited Satoru’s tastes, not yours.

“I don’t know,” you muttered, trying to soften the harsher edges of your distaste. “You know how Satoru is. Everything he picks out is just so—so him.”

“I’m starting to think you both might be causing problems.” You kicked the base of the door, but Suguru didn’t indulge your outburst with acknowledgement. “Just try it on, alright? If it’s that bad, we can always go without him.”

It took another minute or so of condoling, but soon enough, you were slipping into Satoru’s gifted dress, cursing as you struggled with the tiny, finicky zipper and smoothed wrinkles out of abused silk. You pulled your fingers through your hair once before returning to the bedroom door and knocking defeatedly. As if to add insult to injury, the door swung open in an instant, a smiling Suguru waiting on the threshold.

“See? Absolutely gorgeous, as always.” He leaned forward, cupping your cheek. You let his lips brush over your forehead before pulling away. Thankfully, he wasn’t cruel enough to draw it out any longer – his hand falling to yours and taking it up, tugging you gently towards the living room. “Satoru’s going to forget he was ever mad at all as soon as he sees you.”

You didn’t bother responding, only slumping against his side and letting him guide you forward. Distantly, you heard Suguru calling out to Satoru, but you were already busy – too occupied promising yourself that this would never, ever happen again to care what either of them was saying.

You would, of course, be wrong.

~

Barricaded doors quickly became a weekly inconvenience. You and Satoru fought often (never intensely and never for very long, but often), and he owned the apartment – meaning, despite all your whining, you couldn’t exactly tell him that his doors couldn’t all lock from the outside. Your ‘cool-down sessions’ (Suguru’s words, not yours) lasted anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple of hours, and Suguru was always the one to let you out. When you couldn’t be locked up and left to stew, Satoru would take it upon himself to leave the apartment – if only for as long as he thought it would take for you to forget you’d argued at all. You got used to it quickly. It wasn’t fair, you didn’t enjoy it, but you got used to it. You’d always had more patience than you really should’ve, when it came to Satoru’s antics.

And then, Suguru started showering with you.

Finding time to spend together was an ever-present obstacle in your relationship. Satoru alternated sporadically between planning lectures and grading papers late into the night to rolling his eyes at the concept of due dates and dulling out extra credit on a whim, and trying to guess if Suguru would be free was a pursuit in futility – his sermons were scheduled, but he was almost always being called out on some mysterious errand on behalf of one of his countless, faceless apostles. You didn’t work at all, but you went to school, and you kept yourself busy. You’d never be as busy as Satoru and Suguru, but you did your best to keep up with them.

Currently, you were basking in the afterglow with Suguru, your head resting on his chest and his arms wrapped loosely around his waist. Satoru was already gone, rushed off to some early-morning lecture, but Suguru didn’t have anything to do, and you—well, you could miss a lecture or two if it meant spending time with him. And, even if you couldn’t, it was hard to imagine tearing yourself away from the feeling of his calloused fingers tracing aimless patterns into the small of your back, of his lips pushing warm, open-mouthed kisses into your shoulders, your collarbone, your throat. His hands drifted to your hips, grip tightening ever-so-slightly, and you felt a raspy groan reverberate against the side of your neck, Suguru pulling you close as he—

“Save it,” you said, drawing back. He pouted and you grinned, pecking the corner of his jaw and sitting up, letting his sheets pool around your waist. “Just for a few minutes – I feel gross.” A full groan, this time. You laughed, combing his disheveled hair back and pressing another kiss into his forehead, this one lingering just a beat longer than the first. “You’ll survive a shower, Suguru.”

You felt him shift underneath you. Before you had a chance to pull away, he was sitting up, his arms still around your waist – keeping you messily laid across his lap. “I’ll come with you.”

“You’ll wait your turn.” And then, when he only hummed in response, “I’m being serious. Somebody in this relationship has to wash their hair every now and then.”

His face was already buried in the crook of your neck, and he was moving toward the edge of the mattress with your body still tucked against his chest. He was planning on carrying you, presumably. Sometimes, it felt like if it were up to Suguru, you’d never walk anywhere on your own again. “I know.” His voice was still raspy with sleep, his usual articulation weighed down by the fatigue that came with a morning spent in bed. “I’ll help.”

“That’s really sweet, but—” You strung your arms around his neck as he stood up, taking you with him. “—I think I’ll be alright on my own, Suguru.”

For the first time all morning, his eyes flickered open, wandering idly in your direction. He held your gaze for a beat, then another.

Finally, the edge of his lips quirked upward – the sly, knowing grin you’d fallen in love with soon painted across his lips. When he spoke, it was in a tone to match, all confidence and cloying, calculated sweetness. “No.”

You faltered, at that. “…no?”

“Don’t wanna be away from you for that long,” he mumbled, by way of explanation. “Whatever you need to do, I’ll take care of. Don’t want you to have to worry your pretty little head over anything.”

You tried your best to laugh, but it was a weak effort, better left unacknowledged. “I don’t know how I feel about my boyfriend offering to, I don’t know, shave my legs or something.”

He only soldiered on, as if you hadn’t said anything at all.

~

You felt Satoru’s hands on your waist first, then his chest against your back. His mouth found the curve of your throat as if by instinct, teeth grazing against a bruise Suguru had left in the same spot the day before. You felt him lean against you and dropped the knife you were holding onto a nearby cutting board, bracing yourself on the edge of the counter to compensate.

You glanced over your shoulder as his head bowed, face soon buried in the dip of your shoulder. He must’ve just gotten home – he was still wearing his sunglasses, only the first three buttons on his shirt undone. You grinned, twisting around just far enough to kiss the top of his head before turning back to your ingredients. “Rough lecture?”

“Grad students,” he muttered, the dread in his voice plainly audible. “One more fucking extension request, and I swear, I’ll fail the entire class.”

You hummed, letting him sink further into you. You might’ve let him stay there, too, if one of his hands hadn’t fallen to your ass while the other slipped underneath your loose shirt. Before he could creep upward, you jabbed an elbow into his chest. “Keep it in your pants. You still smell like a college campus.”

Of course, he didn’t budge. “But I missed you,” he whined, as shameless as he was clingy. “I had to leave so early, and I was stuck in my office for so long, and I’m gonna die if I have to wait any longer. Is that what you want? For me to die?”

“You could always go to Suguru, if you’re that insatiable.”

“But I want you.” You felt a thumb slip below the waistband of your sweatpants (or, Suguru’s sweatpants, technically – he’d been unbearable unless you were wearing his clothes, recently) and batted his hand away. Your efforts were, predictably, unsuccessful. “Please, baby?” And then, after a beat. “You don’t care about dinner more than you care about me, do you?”

You felt something delicate inside of you falter, crack, then fall apart entirely. It was strange – how long you could nurse a wound without acknowledging it existed at all. “It’s not that, I just—” You stuttered, then stopped entirely. You deflated underneath Satoru’s weight, and as if in response, he held you that much tighter, keeping you as close as you could be, lest he carve open his chest and force you into the open cavity. “I… I guess I feel like I haven’t really been doing a lot for you two, lately. You pay all the bills, and Suguru goes out of his way to take care of me, and there just… It makes me feel kind of useless.” You tried to punctuate the confession with a smile, a laugh, but both were hollow beyond the point of recognizability. It would’ve been better if you hadn’t tried at all. “You get it, right? I just—I don’t want to be the only one not doing anything.”

There was a beat of silence. You felt Satoru settle against you, his chest pressing into your back before he pulled away, detaching from you entirely. You sighed, letting yourself relax.

And then, just as suddenly, you were off of your feet and in Satoru’s arm, one tucked under the bend of your knees while the other supported your back. You managed a stammered, half-coherent protest, but if Satoru was listening, he wasn’t bothered.

He carried you out of the kitchen and into the living room, your half-finished recipe forgotten in favor of dropping you onto the nearest couch and kneeling over you, already pulling on the collar of his shirt. “Sounds like our baby’s been thinkin’ too much.” He was grinning, his glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose. “Let me put a stop to that.”

You opened your mouth, but you didn’t have time to respond. His mouth was already crashing into yours; swallowing down anything you might’ve said and replacing it with a breathy moan, a haze over your conscious thoughts.

You didn’t bother trying to talk your way out from underneath Satoru, again.

~

You couldn’t breathe.

It took you a moment to realize what was wrong, another to put together why. You felt the blunt tip of Suguru’s cock hit the back of your throat as Satoru’s chest pressed into yours, the latter pressing the air out of your lungs while the former forced you to choke what little was left up. Satoru had set a relentless pace; his thrusts brutal, his tempo erratic, his hips crashing into yours with enough force to bruise. Two of Suguru’s thick, calloused fingers were lodged between your body and Satoru’s drawing quick, precise patterns into your clit, while both of Satoru’s hands were wrapped around the underside of your thighs, keeping your knees pinned to your chest, your body folded in half and pressed into the mattress. They’d always been taller than you, with Suguru kneeling by your head and Satoru looming over you, they both seemed so much bigger. They both seemed so, so much stronger than they ever had before.

You couldn’t breathe. The lack of oxygen was already rushing to your head, already replacing your sense of logic with a shrill, panicked buzz. Your body hurt everywhere they touched it, the warmth pooling in your core and arousal left behind by previous climaxes not enough to dull the sharp sting of Satoru’s nails against your skin, not enough to soften the harsh edge of the grin you could only barely see spread across Suguru’s lips out of the corner of your eye. It was a struggle just to move your jaw, and even then, any sounds you were able to make were borderline incoherent – your little chants of ‘red, red, red’ so stifled and so garbled by Suguru’s cock that you couldn’t have blamed him for not hearing you at all. It was only when you tried to pull your head back that his eyes fell away from where Satoru’s cock was fucking into your dripping cunt and to your face, tears of distress already beginning to prick at the corners of your eyes. You let out one more panicked cry, hoping beyond hope that he’d be able to see the fear in your expression and know something was wrong, but that grin you had loved so much only widened, sharpened. “Like that, princess?” You felt his free hand on the top of your head, fingers carding through your hair while the patterns being pushed into your sensitive clit sped up, intensified. “Faster,” he cooed to Satoru, his voice laced with something vicious and mocking. “If she can still cry, she can still fuck.”

He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. Suguru just liked to be mean in bed, and Satoru liked to indulge him. That was the only reason they were doing this to you, that was the only reason Satoru listened; leaning that much more of his weight onto as his cock beat against the walls of your cunt. “Fuck,” Satoru muttered, as Suguru’s cock twitched against the roof of your mouth. “Got tighter when you said that. Is that what you want? For me and him to fuck you unconscious?”

This time, you didn’t try to pull back, you jerked – lurching out of Suguru’s hold, drawing back until you could gasp and pant and fill your aching lungs. “Red,” you half-choked, half-cried. “Red, red, stop, too much, I can’t—”

Satoru cut you off with a throat groan. You felt his form tense against yours, heard a shameless moan spill past his lips, and suddenly, it was like you’d forgotten how to breathe entirely. “Too close for that,” he muttered, his lips close enough to ghost over the shell of your ear. “You can take it for me, angel.”

You couldn’t, but you didn’t have time to tell him that. You opened your mouth, but all you could seem to spit out was a keening, pitiful whine as you felt something deep in your core pull taut and snap, as your cunt clenched around him and you came undone on Satoru’s cock for the nth time. At the same time, he went stiffed above you, forcing his hips flush with yours and filling your abused pussy with something thick and searing. The feeling was alien, strange. You could’ve sworn he said he would wear a condom, tonight.

It felt like you laid there for a small eternity – trapped under Satoru’s limp body, Suguru still petting idly through your hair. You stared unblinkingly at the ceiling until, days later, Satoru pulled himself upright with a raspy grunt, turning to Suguru. You were vaguely aware of his head being lowered into Suguru’s lap, moving to finish the job you hadn’t wanted to, but that seemed distant, unimportant. The room was too small, too closed-off. You weren’t getting enough air. You were too warm. You were too small. You—

You needed to leave.

Your body was on the edge of the mattress before your mind could make the conscious decision to move. You were shaking, despite the damp humidity clinging to your skin, but you tried to ignore that and focus on getting your feet underneath you, on fishing Satoru’s shirt off the floor and pulling it over your head. You’d need pants, too, and your wallet – maybe you’d still have a little cash stowed away, something from before Satoru insisted you start carrying one of his platinum cards. You’d spend the night in a hotel, or better yet, rent a car – get out of Tokyo altogether. You had a friend who lived outside of the city – or, you used to, at least. You couldn’t remember the last time you talked to someone other than Satoru and Suguru.

You made it to the doorway before Suguru called out. “Going somewhere, princess?”

You froze, but didn’t look over your shoulder. You could barely stand. You needed to go. “I just—I think I need a little air.”

“Give us a minute. Me or ‘toru should go with you.” There was a lull to his voice, an airiness just barely audible over the slick, sloppy sound of Satoru’s mouth moving over his shaft. You could remember admiring that about him, once, constantly thinking about how lucky you were to have such a cool, confident boyfriend. Right now, though, it was hard to think of his unfaltering composure as anything but inhuman. “It just wouldn’t be safe to let you—”

“I need air,” you repeated, because it was true, because you did. Little, black spots were already starting to dot your vision, and it felt like someone was trying to wrap their hands around your throat and squeeze. “I… I think I might be gone for a while, too.”

For all his tenderness, Suguru didn’t sound very concerned. “How long?”

“A couple hours,” you tried, and then, much more quietly, when he let out a disbelieving hum. “…a few days?”

This time, Suguru didn’t have to say anything at all. Leaning against the doorway, Satoru’s cum still dripping down the inside of your thigh, it took less than a minute for you to crack on your own. “I think we… I think I might need a little space.”

There was another beat of silence, occupied only by a soft groan from Suguru, the sound of noisy swallowing from Satoru. Finally, he sighed. You didn’t dare to look, but you could picture him shaking his head, smiling as he rolled his eyes. Acting as if you’d just said the stupidest thing in the world. “What do you think, Satoru? Have we waited long enough.”

“—too long.” Satoru’s voice was hoarse, breathy. In your peripheral, you could see him dragging the back of his hand across his lips as he raised his head. “We’ve had everything ready for months, now.”

That was all Suguru needed to hear. He turned back to you, letting his head lull to the side. “Come back to bed, won’t you, princess?”

You didn’t respond. What little air you still had hitched in your collapsing throat as you attempted to move forward, only for a hand to catch your shoulder and hold you in-place. It was Satoru – now standing less than a full step behind you. He didn’t bother with a warning before wrapping his free arm around your waist and dragging you into his chest and off of your feet. You made a weak effort to thrash, to squirm, to dig your nails into the forearm laid over your midriff, but Satoru didn’t make a sound, didn’t let you go, only hauling you back to where Suguru sat on the edge of the mattress. You shouldn’t have felt as betrayed as you did. They’d both always been able to pick you up and throw you around like a kitten, being carried from place to place by its scruff. It was always only going to be a matter of time before they stopped listening to your half-hearted protests entirely.

“Over the knee,” Suguru said with a sort of flippant, beckoning gesture. “I want to make sure we get off on the right foot.”

Wordlessly, unceremoniously, you were dropped face-down into Suguru’s lap – his thighs pressing into your exposed stomach. Satoru lowered himself to the floor in front of you, sitting cross-legged and reaching out, cupping your face delicately. More out of reflex than anything intelligent, you tried to push yourself up, but a hand on the small of your back was enough to keep you paralyzed. Sometime between the doorway and the bed, the shaking had gotten worse. You doubted you’d be able to keep your legs underneath you, anymore. “Twenty-five,” he announced – an executioner reading out his victim’s sentence. “Fifteen for trying to leave us, and ten more for not listening to me. Does that sound fair, Satoru.”

“So mean, Sugu’,” Satoru whined, but you could already see a crooked smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. “The poor thing doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

“Which is why we have to make a strong impression. I want her to know there’ll be consequences for misbehavior.” You felt his hand drifting up the length of your spine, lingering on the sensitive junction between your shoulder blades. “Twenty-five, okay, princess? I’m going to need you to count for me – if you lose track, we’ll have to start over.”

“Suguru, ‘toru, I don’t—I don’t understand what—” You were cut off by a sudden, bruising blow to the plush of your ass – all force, no friction. It took you a second to realize that it was Suguru’s hand, another to consciously acknowledge that he’d spanked you. Like you were some bratty toddler. Like he wanted to hurt you.

It took another lash to know you out of your spell-bound state and send a keening, pitchy cry spilling past your lips. The tears you’d managed to hold back minutes ago were back in full-force, dripping down your cheeks and pooling on your chin, accompanied by the occasional sniffle or ragged sob. Suguru hummed, but any sympathy he might’ve had remained unexpressed, hidden behind a thick veil of strict impassivity. “I need you to count. I know it’s hard, but it’ll only get more difficult if you don’t cooperate.” He paused, clicked his tongue. “We’re still on one. Are you going to be good, or do I have to get the belt?”

“Hurts, Suguru, you’re hurting—”

Another blow, this one to the back of your thighs and twice as harsh as the first two. Meekly, you mumbled a weak “…one.”

You couldn’t see past your own tears by the fifth strike, and by the tenth, you were sobbing openly. Each blow leaves your skin burning and your ass pulsing, but despite everything, he was far from brutal. His pace was measured, precise, and he was strategic – careful to never abuse the same spot to the point of numbness. After the fifteenth, you sniffled and forced yourself to raise your head, meeting Satoru’s eyes and silently pleading for his pity, for his help. Rather than empathy, you found a glassy stare and his hand in his lap, pumping idly over his cock. A few hours ago, you could picture yourself teasing him for not being able to go a full minute without someone touching him, even himself. Right now, the sight alone was enough to make bile rise into the back of your throat.

His thumb ran over your cheek, his palm settling under your chin and tilting your head back. “Don’t give me that look. This is twice as gentle as he’s ever been with me.”

By the time it was over, you were near-inconsolable, every number followed immediately by a string of distorted gibberish, a disjointed plea for him to stop, or be gentle, or let you go. You laid limp across Suguru’s lap as he drew slow, tender patterns into your abused flesh, every little touch sparking a new kind of pain, dragging another ragged sob up from somewhere deep and visceral in your chest. He was talking to you, cooing sweet nothings, but you couldn’t hear him. You didn’t want to hear him. You wanted to leave.

But, you couldn’t, and even if you’d had the strength to try, you wouldn’t have gotten very far. You hadn’t seen him move, but at some point, Satoru must’ve left the room. When your crying began to wane and you could bare the thought of opening your eyes, you found him standing in front of you, holding a glass of water in one hand and three white pills in the other. “Open up,” he said, drawing out each syllable for a beat longer than he really had to. “It’ll help with the pain, promise.”

You pursed your lips, grit your teeth, but Suguru’s thumb pressed into a fresh bruise and fear immediately overwhelmed your sense of caution. Suguru took precious seconds to reposition you – drawing you up by your shoulders to straddle his thigh – and Satoru’s hand found its way back to your cheek, his thumb tapping your bottom lip and slipping onto your tongue as you, reluctantly, opened your mouth. The pills were first, allowed to sit on your tongue until their bitterness reached the back of your throat, then the water, poured sloppily enough for the excess to spill out of the corners of your mouth. The reaction was instantaneous – a wave of nausea, then fatigue, your eyes immediately too heavy to keep open, your body too distant to justify attempting to control. You went slack, falling against Suguru, and he chuckled, bowing his head.

The last thing you felt was his mouth against your throat before everything went numb.

~

You woke up hours later, tucked into a bed that wasn’t yours and in more pain than you’d ever felt before.

Shock and terror startled you into consciousness before you could so much as attempt to fade back into blissful oblivion. You tried to curl up, to make yourself as small and as safe as possible, but your leg caught on something – a leather cuff, discovered after throwing the sheets that’d been laid over you to the side. A shackle, lined in velvet and sitting loosely at the base of your ankle, a silver chain connecting it to an unseen point underneath the bed. You gave it another tug, just to check, and unsurprisingly, it refused to budge. You choose to look away before the pit quickly opening up inside of your chest could deepen any further.

Instead, you turned your attention outward – to the rest of the bedroom. It wasn’t the one you shared with Satoru and Suguru, or the undecorated guestroom Satoru had semi-converted into a home office. The walls were a pale pink, the shelves already stocked with stuffed animals, fairy lights, jewelry boxes that (knowing Satoru) were no doubt filled to the brim. You weren’t wearing Suguru’s shirt anymore, either. Your blood ran cold as you glanced down and found yourself in a pastel blue nightgown – all lace and silk and frills no one could ever hope to actually sleep in. You didn’t know whether to be disgusted that they’d re-dressed you while you were unconscious, without your permission, or thankful they hadn’t waited until you were awake enough to try and stop them.

Seconds seemed to move in thick, dripping clumps. You couldn’t be sure how long passed until your disoriented stillness was interrupted, but by the time the plain, white door (a neat row of undone deadbolts visible above to the knob) swung open, Satoru stepping through with Suguru following shortly behind him. Automatically, you started to move towards them, but caught yourself, pressing you back into the headboard and crossing your arms over your chest, as if that gave you any kind of authority. As if there was any authority you could have, chained to the floor in the bedroom of a pre-schooler.

“You were beginning to worry us,” Suguru started, sitting on the foot of the bed. “But, then again, our little princess was always a delicate one, wasn’t she?”

You stiffened, bristled. You opened your mouth, but closed it as Satoru draped an arm over your shoulders, collapsing next to you. “Here,” he said, holding something out. “Suguru wanted to make you ask, but I’m not that stingy.”

 You attempted to shift away from him, but Satoru had never made things that easy. He clung to you that much tighter as your eyes fell to his hand, finding—

A cup.

A sippy cup, pink and plastic and decorated with little, glittering clouds.

The nausea was immediate, nearly overwhelming. You wanted to vomit. You wanted to throw it across the room. You wanted to do anything but accept it, but your throat was bone-dry, a steady throbbing already begging to root in the back of your skull. Wordlessly, you snatched it out of his hand and (with more than a little strain) pulled off the lid, drinking as quickly as you could. Satoru’s nails scraped against your bicep, but neither of them commented.

Suguru waited until you were finished to go on. “You’ll get used to it, after a few weeks. It’s really not that different from our prior relationship, just a few aesthetic changes ‘toru and I thought a—” He paused, grinned. “—softer environment might suit you.”

“We can be more honest now, too.” Satoru sounded too giddy, too happy. “Those last couple of days practically killed me – having to watch you leave the apartment, acting all independent n’ shit. This way, there won’t be anything stopping us from keeping you all to ourselves.”

A beat passed in silence. It took you a moment to realize you were supposed to say something, and another to actually open your mouth, to find your voice when all you wanted to do was shrivel up and shut your eyes. “I don’t really understand what’s going on,” you muttered, like that would make it true. Like enough stuttering, simpering obliviousness would be what made them change their minds. “When are you going to let me go?”

Beside you, you heard Satoru try and fail to suppress a breath of a laugh, and Suguru’s grin only seemed to widen.

Title: Domesticated.

Commissioned by the very lovely, very inspired @elsecrytt.

Pairing: Yandere!Satan x Reader (Obey Me).

Word Count: 7.0k.

TW: Dub/Con & Non/Con, AFAB!Reader, Reader Is Straight Up A Bad Person In This One, Toxic Relationships, Semi-Public Sex, Bondage, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Coercion, Prolonged Grooming, Mentions of Blood and Violence, Slight Stalking, and Obsessive Behavior. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

You were the first one to find Satan.

It wasn’t difficult. You’d been around long enough at that point to know that the birth of a demon was a strange, spontaneous thing; loud and wild, often accompanied by pillars of flame and always violent enough to leave the earth scarred in its wake. While his brothers fell from paradise like stars displaced from their heavens, you followed the cloud of smoke rising from the wasteland that made up the Devildom’s outskirts, tracked the scent of cedar and ivy and sulfur until you found him, seething in a crater of his own creation, freshly charred feathers still littered around him as he lashed out blindly, his aggression without a target but no less volatile for its aimlessness. He was bare save for the ash smeared across his pale skin, and you could make out a lashing tail behind him, a pair of curling horns sprouting from his waist-length hair, a pair of cat-like pawed feet he’d grow out of in a few weeks – all the same shade of black as the obsidian that surrounded him and tipped with a green you could only compare to the color of toxic waste, to the kind of emerald shine an insect might wear to let you know it was venomous. Every part of him practically glowed with rage. If you’d been aware of which throne he would take after he and his brothers found their footing in their new realm in that moment, you would’ve thought it was fitting.

In short, he was beautiful. Awe-inspiringly, breath-takingly beautiful.

And you were never the kind of person who could resist beautiful things.

Carefully, with dampened footsteps and a preference for the shadows, you edged closer to him, never letting Satan leave your peripheral. You were still a hundred or so feet away when he snapped toward you, pointed teeth already bared and curved talons poised to attack. You couldn’t be sure how lucid he was, but whatever happened to be running through that empty mind of his, it wasn’t enough to stop him from snarling at you, from hunching his back and digging his claws into the ground and charging, intent on tearing anything he saw apart before his anger could cool. Elation overwhelmed you. You felt the corners of your lips curl upward as he lunged, your heart practically beating through your chest as his lithe body streaked through the flame-tinged moonlight, as you took in the rabid creature that would be your end. There were sixty feet between you, then forty, and then—

And then, something dark and terrible descended from the clouded sky, tackling Satan and pinning him to the ground. Lucifer, you discovered, once the dust cleared and you could make out his face, his wings (lesser by two and painted the color of impurity, you noted with a not inconsiderable sense of satisfaction). You didn’t wait for him to notice you. Slipping back into the shadows of the wasteland, you stole one more glance toward Satan only to find his attention still fixed on you, unwavering despite his new guardian. Your eyes met his, and without hesitation, you spared him a smile. Of course, he didn’t return the gesture, but you didn’t mind.

You slipped into the night, already dreaming of the day you’d see him again.

~

By the second time you got so close to Satan, he’d already gained a reputation of his own.

You couldn’t say you weren’t proud. His anger cooled in the months after his conception, and he found a place among his brothers who, in turn, established themselves in the Devildom’s admittedly lax hierarchy of power and pleasure and all the many things that thrived when given reprieve from the harsh light of the sun. You kept your distance. As greedy as you were, you knew better than to get involved with people who knew better than to get involved with you.

Instead, you watched from the crowd as Satan grew into his rank, as the more untamed parts of his demonic nature fell away and he came to resemble something… cleaner, something less animalistic. You didn’t care for the change, but still, you kept track of him. What could you say? Even polished, he was still a gem worth keeping an eye on.

Your dutifulness was rewarded, too. Or, that was what you told yourself, at least, as you picked the lock on the door of the lecture hall where he’d thrown his latest fit, where it’d taken Mammon and Beelzebub’s joint strength to restrain him. You let your fingertips graze past overturned tables and side-stepped the shattered remains of shattered chalkboards and wooden chairs, taking in the proof of his untamed rage as you approached him. He’d been restrained, left to fester in his wrath until he was calm enough to deal with properly. Silver chains adorned with hundreds upon thousands of archaic runes kept him bound to a marble pillar near the center of the classroom, his arms trapped against his side and his more demonic features still on full display, much to your delight.

Despite having been on his own for a few hours, now, his rage had yet to die down. His fangs were still bared, his claws still biting into his own palms, his thorned tail still lashing back and forth behind his back like that of some starving wildcat, agitated that its quarry had been taken away. He only had a fraction of the wild radiance you’d been so captivated by during your first encounter, but still, you found yourself grinning. Even diluted, he was still beautiful.

This time, you didn’t have to mind your distance. You came to a stop less than a full arm’s length in front of him, ducking slightly when the point of his tail made a jab at your throat. “It’s alright, princess,” you started, keeping your voice low, your tone light. Like you were trying to soothe a wild animal – which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly not what you were doing. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just wanted to see that pretty face again.”

He really was so unlike he had been, the first time you’d met. There was a flicker of recognition in those burning eyes, a slight change to his posture. He pressed his back against the pillar, squaring his shoulders as his rabid snarl dulled into a thin scowl. His tail continued to thrash and writhe, but he didn’t try to go for your throat again. “I don’t need your help.”

“I wasn’t going to make an offer.” His eyes narrowed, and you held his piercing gaze for a second, then another, before allowing your attention to drift lower. Surprisingly, his uniform hadn’t been damaged during his rampage, only displaced; his shirt missing a few buttons where he’d torn at the collar, the jacket he always let hang open pushed so far back, it now threatened to fall from his shoulders altogether. What you were looking for lied lower, though – in the unnatural creases and unusual tautness of his pants. It was a common (albeit, no less embarrassing) side-effect of supernatural creatures giving into their true nature, especially for younger demons who never learned how to control their more primal instincts. He probably knew that, but you doubted he knew how to take care of it, just yet. Especially with his older brothers still learning how to handle their own sinful impulses. “I mean, I would be willing to give you a hand, if you need one,” you went on, nodding to his painfully hard cock. “But, if you’d rather seethe and growl in an empty classroom until one of your brothers comes back for you…”

You held up your hands, moving to turn on your heel and leave him alone with his anger, but Satan’s eyes widened, straining against his bondage as he lurched forward, practically drooling at the first hint of fresh blood. “You… you can do something about that?”

The muted excitement in his voice gave away his eagerness, his desperation. You let out a breath of a laugh, taking half a step closer, testing the boundaries before trying to catch such an active spark in your hands. When he didn’t immediately lunge at you, you brought a hand up, cupping his cheek and running your thumb over his jaw. “Of course,” you said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. As if he was the foolish one for being stupid enough to doubt you. “But only if you ask me to. I’m not going out of my way to help someone who’s going to tear my throat out as soon as I’m done.”

And, even then, you could’ve been persuaded to lay back and let him have his way with you if he begged prettily enough. Luckily, he was already distracted, already leaning into your touch and staring up at you with a new kind of reverence. He couldn’t have known he was doing it – his pride wouldn’t have allowed him to. As far as you could tell, this was all instinct. “Do it.”

You sighed, shaking your head. “You’ll have to do better than that, princess.”

He was quiet for a moment, then another. “Please,” he spat, finally, as if the word burnt his tongue. “Please, help me get rid of it.”

“No one’s going to want to do anything with you if you use that tone.” And yet, you stepped forward, resting one hand on his shoulder while the other dropped to the tent in his pants, to his cock. You ground your palm against his shaft through the thick material, and Satan grit his teeth. He didn’t know much, but he knew enough not to debase himself so willingly in front of you. “You’re lucky I’m such a bleeding heart. Otherwise, I would’ve left you here to suffer minutes ago.”

You watched him try to fight it, clenching his eyes shut as he braced himself, putting more effort into limiting his reactions now than he’d ever spared for his temper tantrums. With deft hands and saliva already pooling below your tongue, you shifted his pants down just far enough to free his cock – hard enough to press into his stomach. Like everything else about him, it was beautiful – pale but not ghastly, visibly veined but not overly defined, the head tinted a deep shade of pink you didn’t know you’d held such a fondness for, before you saw it on him. It was already leaking, too – pearls of precum dripping down his length and smearing against your skin as you wrapped your fist around the shaft and pumped lazily, playing indifferent to the way he bucked and writhed underneath you. “This,” you started, slowly, “is called a handjob. You can do it yourself, too, but it’s not as good. You’ll probably just end up making it worse.”

You swiped your thumb over his leaking tip, and he gasped, pressing himself flush against the marble pillar. You heard his restraints rattle and tightened your grip just enough to distract him, to give him something better to think about than getting away. “Pay attention, ‘cause you’re going to have to return the favor. That’s how this kind of thing works – I help you, then you help me.”

He nodded, sucking in a shaky breath. He wasn’t the brightest thing you’d ever come across, but he still might’ve proven himself to be a dutiful-enough student. “A h-handjob.”

“Good boy.” You teased the head of his cock by way of reward, then ground the heel of your palm into his base as a punishment for making you wait. When you were sure the lesson had sunk in, you took to jerking him off in earnest, taking on a pace just on the brink of satisfying and drinking in the little, stuttering moans that dripped past his lips in response. When his legs started to buckle, you worked a knee between his thighs and slotted your chest against his, staring up at him with as much adoration as someone like you could lend to something like him. You felt his cock twitch in your hand, heard his breathing turn raspy and shallow, and without warning, you pulled away, removing yourself from him completely.

He let out a desperate whine, the embodiment of pitiful. With an airy chuckle, you lowered yourself onto your knees, letting your hands fall to his waist. “This one’s a blowjob,” you muttered, just barely loud enough to be audible. He might’ve been a mediocre student, but you were an excellent teacher – always striving to fill curious minds with as much applicable knowledge as you could. “Some people call it oral sex, too. You’ll like it even more.”

His voice was so weak, so prone to cracking and breaking that in another world, it could’ve been cute. “…sex?”

“We’ll get to that later.” You pressed a fleeting kiss into his hip. “Just pay attention to me, for now.”

He really was lucky to have you. Anyone else might not have been able to handle how roughly he thrust into your mouth as soon as you’d taken the leaking head onto your tongue, might not have been willing to put up with his insatiable desire to bury himself in your throat – unaware or uncaring of your desire to breathe. You were patient, though, and strict, eager to swallow him down as deeply as you were able to before pulling back, pinning his hips down, and running the flat of your tongue up the sensitive underside of his cock. Whatever well of self-control he’d been using to bite back his pathetic little noises had clearly run dry. He moaned unabashedly, throwing his head forward and shuddering. His tail lashed out, his body determined to protect itself where his mind was unable to, but you didn’t pull away as it curled around your arm, didn’t waver as its curved thorns shredded your sleeve and sunk into your skin. Rather, you groaned around him, savoring the pure heat dripping down your arm, the way his agony seemed to drive itself under your flesh and make a home there. It was an overdue paradise, one that paled in comparison to what you could’ve had if Lucifer hadn’t interrupted you on that first night. You tried to treasure it all the same.

You fell into a steady rhythm quickly, no longer in the mood to tease him. You kept your eyes open as you bobbed your head, fixed to his flushed cheeks, his pained expression, the way he couldn’t seem to decide whether he wanted to shrink into himself or struggle against his restraints. “Stop, I—” He cut himself off with another moan, a quick jerk of his head to the side. As if there was anything he could do to hide from you, in a state like this. “There’s something wrong with—”

“You’re going to cum,” you corrected, pulling off of him just far enough to speak. With your lips still pressed against the head of his cock, you added, “That means you want me to keep going.”

If he had any mind to protest, he wasn’t able to put his complaints into words. Instead, all he managed to spit out was a fractured sob as you felt him throb against your tongue, as he came undone in your mouth. You milked him for all you had, pumping a fist over his shaft as he clumsily fucked your throat, his inexperience shining through once his inhibitions had been thoroughly pushed to the wayside. When you were sure you’d gotten everything out of him that you could, when your senses had been overwhelmed by the heady taste of him and the proof of your labor sat heavy in the pit of your stomach, you drew back, pushing yourself to your feet and taking in what you’d done to him. He was a mess, his face red and damp with sweat, emerald scales visible just underneath the collar of his shirt. With a slight smile, you fished something out of your pocket – a small, silver cage that you’d liberated from a succubus’ locker about an hour prior, when you heard Satan had lost his temper yet again. It fit the base of his cock as if it’d been made for him – pressing flush against his skin as it snapped into place with a satisfying click. When you were done, you pushed a kiss into the corner of his lips before stepping back.

 “When that starts to get uncomfortable,” you started, grinning. “Come and find me.”

You didn’t give him a chance to protest before slipping away, leaving him panting and half-dressed for someone more tender-hearted to take care of.

~

He made it three weeks before seeking you out. An impressive lapse, considering he’d been hard again by the time you left that classroom.

This time, you made an effort to keep your distance. No more trailing behind him as he walked with his brothers or standing on the outskirts of the crowd as he picked a fight with yet another low-ranking demon – no, what he needed from you now was separation, the time it would take for him to think to look for you in his peripheral and then, later on, to convince himself the pleasure you could give him was worth the blow it’d deal to his ego. You’d started to lose hope by the time bridged the gap at one of Lord Diavolo’s frequent balls, thrown to celebrate Satan and his brothers ascending to the rank of Avatar. No one could seem to remember there ever being a rank by that name before their arrival, but legislation was for the Celestial Realm. Citizens of the Devildom were always more than happy to sample their prince’s generosity, regardless of the occasion.

You’d just finished slipping a stunning silver ring off of a witch’s finger and onto your own when he found you, red-faced and visibly out of breath, as if he’d just run from one side of the castle to the other. You grinned, moving to speak, but he clearly didn’t have an interest in whatever you might’ve said; taking hold of your arm and dragging you out of the main ballroom by way of greeting. You made no effort to resist. Struggling was for people who wanted to run, people who’d lost control and needed to be somewhere else. You, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine being anywhere but here.

You let haul you down a dimly lit hallway and through a simple wooden door – almost meager, by the prince’s standards. It was a storage closet, as far as you could tell, the shelves stocked with miscellaneous supplies and the light limited to what little could flood through the gaps between the doorframe after Satan slammed it behind him. You didn’t mind it, but you would’ve preferred something a little brighter. You would’ve preferred to have him on a podium, underneath a spotlight, where you could see every last inch of his perfect body. You would’ve preferred to have him on a stage, posed to your preference for the approval of an eager audience. You’d always been charitable, like that.

But, you couldn’t linger on how you would’ve liked him when you already had him right in front of you. As soon as he’d ensured you were alone, he was scrambling to find your hand in the darkness, to press your palm into the outline of his throbbing cock and whine ­– a sound it’d taken him minutes to make, the first time you were alone together. “I can’t take it off, and—and it hurts.” His speech was frantic, disjointed, prone to slipping and tripping over itself between coherent words. You couldn’t imagine how he’d spent the past few weeks. Even his brothers would’ve noticed something was wrong, if he was always this worked up. “The cage burns when I touch it, and it won’t stop leaking—”

“Ah, ah, that’s enough.” The saint that you were, you chose to put him out of his misery sooner rather than later. “Why don’t you show me the problem?”

At that, he froze up, his neediness momentarily overwhelmed by pure, unadulterated shame. His fangs caught on his bottom lip as he looked away from you and towards himself, his hands shaking ever-so-slightly as he brought them to the button of his adorably uncharacteristic dress pants. His brothers must’ve picked out his clothes – partially, at least. You didn’t know whether to be amused or endeared by the fact that he wasn’t quite ready to make decisions for himself, just yet.

Under your instruction, he stripped quickly, the pieces of his suit falling away until he was left exposed in front of you, dressed only in your last gift to him. Speaking of – his cage was… stranger than you’d remembered it bring, the silver bars pulsing with a dull violet glow. A lasting enchantment, you figured. You should’ve expected as much from something you’d snagged from a succubus, those freaks.

You ran a finger over the curved spine, taking a long moment to appreciate the craftsmanship before you turned your attention back to the source of Satan’s suffering: his cock, already hard and, like he’d said, already leaking. You probably should’ve been more selective when it came to how you restrained him. The flesh of his shaft strained painfully against the bars of his cage, the tip already drooling enough pre-cum to smear on your palm and pool on the floor in between his legs. The poor thing looked nearly suffocated – pale and ever so slightly discolored, sensitive enough to twitch and send a rough shudder up the length of Satan’s spine as you ran your thumb over what little of the underside remained exposed. He only had himself to blame, really. If he’d only swallowed his pride and come to you earlier, he wouldn’t need your help so badly now.

He wouldn’t need to prove that he deserved your help, after ignoring you for so many weeks.

“Poor baby,” you half-cooed, taking his face in your hands and pressing a lingering kiss into his forehead. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to take something so difficult so soon. I’m sorry for making you suffer, like this.”

Immediately, you felt him stiffen. You could only hope it was a habit he’d never grow out of. You couldn’t imagine a version of Satan who was driven by anything other than the ongoing, everlasting need to prove himself and, when that failed, tear down everything that could claim he hadn’t. “I’m fine,” he said, as if he hadn’t been on the verge of tears only a second ago. “I could take this and more, if I needed to. It’s just— you said I would need to find you, eventually, and I wanted to get it over with before—”

“That’s enough.” You were sure he would’ve gone on for the next century if you let him, but you weren’t really interested in what he had to say. Not while he was so put-together, at least. “Do you want my help or not?”

He might’ve been a bad liar, but to his credit, he wasn’t delusional. Shakily, he nodded, keeping his lips pursed and his eyes pleading.

“Is that all you’re going to give me to work with?”

“…please.” He was more hesitant than he’d been the first time, but not quite so acidic, not quite so aggressive. He was begging, now, and you could never seem to turn away those in-need. “I’ll do anything.”

You sighed, the gesture airy and drawn-out. Eventually, when it seemed like his already-tenuous patience was starting to thin, you let your touch fall away from him altogether. “Why don’t you get on your knees?”

His expression fell – not so much disappointed as he was confused. “How will that—”

“I have other things to do tonight.” An expectant smile, a nod towards the floor. “I can’t help me if you don’t help me too, Satan.”

The weight of his given name seemed to do the trick. Slowly, his movements stilted and reluctant, he lowered himself onto his knees, his eyes quickly falling away from yours and find a home in his lap. You were glad you’d chosen to wear what you had – making quick work of the sashing binding your robes together and discarding your panties while Satan watched out of the corner of his eye, too embarrassed to stare but too curious not to look. You were tempted to take him by the hair, to find something to wrap around his neck and pull it tighter and tighter until he was exactly where you wanted him to be, but you couldn’t let yourself be so selfish. You couldn’t let yourself forget to take care of him – even if you could justify putting it off until he’d taken care of you.

With little warning, you brought up a foot and ground the toe of your heeled shoe into the shaft of his caged cock. He hissed, throwing his head forward and shrinking into himself, shrinking against you; his chest pressing into your thigh as he bucked mindlessly against your foot, the lewd act coming to him more naturally than you ever could’ve dreamed. Now, you raked your fingers through his hair, jerking him upward and guiding his mouth to your cunt. His eyes widened, a surprised grunt slipping out of some vulnerable pocket of his chest, but you held him in place. “Remember what I showed you last time?”

He hesitated, but not for very long. There was a slight lapse, a pause as he tried to bridge the gap between your anatomy and his, but after a moment of scraping your dull nails over his scalp, of grinning down at him with as much love and patience as you could muster, he let his eyes fall shut and opened his mouth, his tongue darting part his lips and lapping tentatively over your slit. His next swipe was a touch more confident, and the same went for the one after that, and the one after that. A slight groan bubbled up from the base of his throat, his hands coming to rest on your thighs – his curved talons biting shallowly into your skin. You embraced the spark of pain without complaint. As if you had the heart to interrupt such a valuable learning moment.

It was slow work – as sloppy as it was messy, his enthusiasm barely managing to overshadow his inexperience. You couldn’t tell how much of it was on purpose, if he meant to grind the bridge of his nose against your clit, if there was any rhyme or rhythm to how he drew his tongue over your entrance, but it was savage enough, animalistic enough to draw a shallow moan from your lips, to earn the flattened edge of your heel ground against his cock. It took ages for his tongue to slip into you, the tapered point curling and probing against the walls of your cunt. He was lucky to have been born such a rabid creature, to have been gifted such a pretty face. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be worth a minute of your time.

It was a good effort, but it wasn’t enough. With a sharp jerk to his hair, you pulled him away from you and threw him to the ground, his pointed talons leaving a row of raised skin in their wake. With a startled expression and a fog over his eyes, he blinked up at you, barely bothering to try and push himself up before you brought your heel down on his chest and pushed him flush against the floor. “Stay down.” You flashed him a smile, trying to pretend you meant for it to be comforting. “Don’t you trust me?”

He didn’t answer. You didn’t wait for him to, shedding your robes completely and straddling his waist. His prep work had been… minimalistic, to put it kindly, but you’d never been one to back down from a challenge. You met his eyes, holding his half-lidded gaze as you wrapped your hand around his cock and pulled his cage away as easily as if it’d never been there at all.

You took slow, agonizing seconds to line him up with your entrance, rolling your hips to spread his precum over your slit. He let out a slight whimper, then managed to find his voice. “What… what are doing?”

“I think I’ve already told you about this one,” you said, your smile now genuine. “We’re going to make love, princess.”

In your own defense, you gave him a chance to protest, to complain, to throw you off of him and rejoin his brothers in the prince’s ballroom. You waited a second, then another, and when he failed to do anything more than stare up at you with that pleading expression, you lowered yourself onto him, only stopping when you were sure he’d bottomed out.

You were able to bite back your voice, but Satan wasn’t so skilled when it came to hiding his reactions. His body went stiff underneath yours, his eyes falling shut as a sinful moan trickled past his lips. You heard his breath hitch, felt his cock twitch, and then he was coming undone inside of you, likely marking the first time he’d cum inside of anyone, because of anything but your mouth. You couldn’t help but laugh, drinking in his fractured whines as you started moving, rolling your hips and grinding against him, riding him properly – not that he’d know the difference. “S-stop,” he managed, though little pained noises and blissful gasps. “It— It hurts—”

Overstimulation, clearly. It was amazing, how sensitive a demon so ferocious could be. “You’ll like it once you calm down. Just try to tough it out for me, alright?” With one hand on his chest, you let the other slip between your legs and to your clit, sorely neglected by his earlier guesswork. “I’ve made you cum… how many times now? Twice? I think I get to take a little something for myself.”

If he was capable of responding, he didn’t seem to think it was worth the effort. Instead, he only collapsed underneath you, his talons scraping against the stone floor and his point fangs biting at his own lips while you used his cock as your own, personal toy; as something to be played with but otherwise left on the outskirts of your consideration. While he might’ve been willing to fuck anything you put in front of him, you held yourself to higher standards, seeking out whatever made heat pool in your core and that aching knot in the pit of your stomach draw itself that much tighter with a refined sense of determination. You’d known how pretty he was, but there was a different kind of beauty to the way he looked writhing below you, to the pitiful sounds he made every time you clenched around him or moved in a way that threatened to milk his cock – still hard, despite his whining, still needy – dry. It was clumsy, little more than reflex winning over dower rationality, but he tried to move his hips in time with yours, to seek out the heat of your cunt whenever you threatened to pull away and abandon him completely. Not that you were going to. As pathetic as his sensitivity was, you weren’t much better – the anticipation you’d built up in his absence more than enough to make up for his inexperience. Your climax rolled over you in thick, lethargic waves, dimming the edges of your vision and pulling a raspy, vaguely humored gasp from somewhere deep in your chest. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. You’d make him keep going until he gave you something better, next time.

Tonight, though, you had better things to do than babysit. With a shallow inhale and a moment taken to compose yourself, you pulled away from him and pushed yourself to your feet. Satan let out a displeased growl, loud enough and deep enough to rattle off the walls of the storage closet, but you shut him up quickly, pressing the sole of your boot into his shaft and rocking with just enough force to leave him spilling ropes of thick, ivory cum on his stomach, the evidence of his depravity left splattered against the pale skin of his midriff and the dark leather of your shoes. He moved to grab your ankle, to keep you that much closer to him for that much longer, but you pulled back, straightening yourself and shrugging your robes back on while Satan watched you, his eyes glassy and his fangs bared. “Maybe, next time, you’ll be able to take the lead,” you wondered aloud, then laughed. “Wouldn’t count on it, though. I think you’re cuter when you don’t have to think for yourself.”

You could still feel his eyes burning into you as you slipped back into the castle.

~

He started asking you to meet him in the House of Lamentation, after that. You told him you didn’t have a problem with empty classrooms and storage closets, but he insisted. You weren’t surprised. Just as he was learning that he would have to be well-behaved for you, you were starting to realize that you’d have to be gentler than anticipated with him.

That’s what you were doing now – being gentle. The collar wrapped around his neck was loose and lightweight, the leash that connected his throat to your hand allowed to fall lax for the moment, at least until the next time he did something that you would need to. You’d even let him take charge, laying back while he buried his face between your thighs, a skill he was eager to hone after you admitted his natural talent left more than a little to be desired. He was making progress, too. He’d learned to bite back his pride while he lapped over your cunt and pushed aimless patterns into your clit, spurred on by every twitch and moan he could draw out of you. There was a pillow between his legs, something soft and pliable he could grind against while he took care of you, but the thin golden ring sitting at the base of his cock made sure he wouldn’t have his fun before you had yours. This one wasn’t enchanted (you’d been tempted, but magic could be fickle and you didn’t want to bring an arcane locksmith into your time with him), but it worked well enough, and he’d never really gotten the hang of taking care of himself. To be fair, that was something he didn’t have to learn. He had you to dote on him, and you weren’t going anywhere. Not for a few hours, at least.

His hand curled around your hips, spreading you open further as the tapered end of his tongue lavished your clit, his drool mixing with your slick and staining the inside of your thighs. You let your eyes fall shut, using your legs to pull him closer as you bucked into his mouth and used his tongue to nurse yourself through your climax, only letting him go when the first pangs of overstimulation began to set in. Even without your encouragement, he didn’t go far. You felt the mattress shift, sensed his body on top of yours, and then, his mouth was crashing into your own, his kiss all teeth and tongue and violent lust. Within seconds, you could taste your blood on his lips, make out the little, airy noises only partially muffled by your connection. You could—

Your fist was crashing into his cheek before you had time to think, to stop yourself. Your knuckles caught his jaw with enough force to pry him off of you and leave him on the floor, still sitting up but visibly folded into himself. You cursed under your breath, your eyes only flitting to the door once before you lowered yourself to the ground beside him. There was a half-hearted snarl, but it died in his throat as soon as you were close enough to cup his cheek. You let out a softened coo as you pulled him close, pressing a fleeting kiss into his forehead. “Ah, I know, I know.” Another kiss, this one to the bruise forming along his jaw. Your remorse, although left mostly unspoken, was genuine. Anyone would’ve mourned leaving a mark on such a beautiful face. “Are you hurt?”

“As if something like that would affect an Avatar.”

As sharp-tongued as he was defensive. You were thankful for his ego-serving tendencies in this moment more than most. With an airy laugh, you strung your arms over his shoulders and let him bury his face in the dip of your shoulder. “Just don’t surprise me like that again, alright?” And then, after he managed to nod, “I know you’re strong enough to take it, but it’d break my heart to see you get hurt. Because of something so trivial, especially.”

When he didn’t pull away, didn’t respond at all, you sighed. “Do you have anything to say to me?”

It was little more than a mumble, spoke just under his breath. “Thank you,” he paused, melted that much further into you, “for taking care of me.”

“Good boy.”

You left a few minutes later, dressed in one of his shirts and little else. For your own peace of mind, you decided not to think about how long it’d been since you’d seen him bury his teeth in anything aside from you.

~

Honestly, it’d been weeks since you’d seen his fangs at all.

You’d had this problem before. Ever the romantic, your idle mind tended to linger on what couldn’t be reclaimed, to drive you towards the pursuit of wild beauty despite knowing that truly untamed things couldn’t be found twice, let alone a few times a week, whenever the careful surveillance of his brothers lapsed and Satan could seek you out like some mangy, prowling predator, spurred on by the promise of relief. Really, you would’ve given up on him after that first encounter, after he failed to sink his claws into your neck, or—

A ragged grunt drew you out of your thoughts and back into the present moment, back to Satan where he hovered above you. You were in some shadowed tunnel of the catacombs underneath the House of Lamentation, tonight, and you’d been kind enough to let him take charge, to keep your thighs wrapped around his waist as he fucked into you like a trained mutt, rather than the wild animal you were looking for. The stone of the altar he’d laid you over was cool against your skin, his horns pleasantly calloused where your hands were wrapped around them, and yet, your mind still wandered, the feeling of his cock beating against the walls of your cunt numbed by your lack of interest. Satan was less unaffected, his eyes clenching shut as he buckled against you, burying his face in your chest as he pushed open-mouthed kisses into whatever he could reach. It was sickening, the thought that he might’ve wanted you to return such tender affection. It was sickening, the thought that he could be capable of being so banal.

His hips crashed into yours, and you felt his lips turn upward, his cock twitch inside of you. “I think—” A pitchy whine, a half-swallowed whimper. “I think I’m in love with you.”

God. You might’ve been starting to hate him.

You let your hands fall to his shoulders. “Down, boy.”

He shook his head, too lost in his own bliss to listen to you. You scowled, shoving lightly at his chest, attempting more to get his attention than to force him off of you. “Down. Unless you want me to assume you’ve forgotten how to be obedient.”

“I—I love you,” he repeated, and then again, “I love you.” One of your legs was forced over his shoulder, his chest pressed almost flush to yours – bending you in half in a way that would’ve been painful, if you’d been anyone else. You let out a throaty growl, marking the first time you’d stopped to his level, but Satan didn’t hesitate, didn’t relent, only bowing his head and letting his rhythm deteriorate into something less calculated, less taught. You would’ve been pleased, if you hadn’t been so angry with him. “We— We’re going to be together, and you’re going to be mine, and I’m going to be—”

You could see tears running down his cheeks, hear his voice shake from something entirely separate from pleasure or desperation. You cursed under your breath, dragging your nails down the length of his spine and clawing at his back with enough force to break the skin, but he didn’t seem to notice, didn’t seem to mind, to care, to notice.“I’ll be yours.” He sounded so pathetically determined, as he thought it would come true if he only spoke loudly enough, if he only fucked you desperately enough. He probably did. You’d never taught him any better, and you weren’t sure he had anyone else who would even know to try. “I’ll only be yours.”

You were struggling, now, thrashing underneath him, but he was still an Avatar, still ranks above any station you would ever be able to reach. He held you in a bone-crushing, heart-wrenching embrace; close enough for you to feel his heart beating through his chest, to pick up on the half-muffled sobs catching in his throat. He only pulled away to bring one of his hands up to your jaw, to hold you in place while he pressed his lips against yours in a kiss so soft and so gentle, you would’ve been tempted to call it loving had it not been so vile.

By the time he drew back, he was smiling, and you couldn’t seem to remember why you’d ever thought he could be anything but hideous.

“And you’ll never have to leave again.”