Your Yandere Works Are IMMACULATE 😍 If You See Me Spam Liking Your Works, No You Didn't 🙈

In the Black Widow’s Nest (Henry Creel x Reader) 🕷️Chapter 1🕷️

*GIF not mine*

Summary: 

Prince Henry of the Creel Dynasty is finally in search of a wife, and in the spirit of courtship, King Victor has invited young royalty from all neighboring kingdoms to vie for his hand. But with so much royalty introduces the need for many more maids in the castle than usual.

Enter: You.

You're nothing but a servant in his home, an intruder in his prized library, and an utter nuisance in his mind. But then you survive his attack, and in an unexpected way nonetheless. That makes you... interesting. 

You've caught his eye---congratulations! Now, you must deal with the consequences of loving a heartless prince in a world where far worse things lurk in the castle than dirty garderobes.

A/N: All i ask is that u imagine henry creel’s evil face on jace wayland’s body that’s it that’s all u gotta do, the fic will do the rest. this may or may not be a series, i do have a few ideas for it (but let it be known begging will not speed up the process). one final comment: henry creel hot. Hope you enjoy!

Word count: 4328

Amongst the cobwebs, the dust, and the black widows, in the abandoned royal library surrounded by the scent of mildew and what once was and is no longer, a pair of eyes watched your every move. Like two frozen fingers poking into the back of your skull, the gaze ran chills down your spine and tightened the muscles in your shoulder blades.

Every move you made was stiff. Despite the season outside being spring, winter had found perpetuity within the four towering walls. There were no windows nor any lit chandeliers; the only light was provided by the brass candlestick that had been forced into your hand before you were thrown into the library, with the promise of being released after ten hours or at the the sight of one hundred spotless, unblemished bookshelves—whichever came first. 

Decidedly, you had three hours left. 

The candle was almost completely diminished to a pool of wax, and the flame on its wick had long weakened and begun flickering. You suspected one last breeze would leave you in complete darkness and at the mercy of whomever was watching you from the shadows. No matter how many times you weaved in and out of the bookshelves that stood at twice your height, five parallel rows of grimy mahogany stacked with fading leather spines, you could not escape the unmistakable feeling. 

This person had not made a sound when they had entered the room. There were no new footsteps tracked in the dust layered on the floor aside from yours, and you had not even heard the twin doors creak open as they had when you entered. You couldn’t hear them over your own breathing and certainly not over the pounding of your heart. 

With every precarious flick of your feather duster over the worn titles, the clouds of your efforts mingled with those of your own exhales. You kept your gaze low, eyes focused on only the task in front of you with the hope—artificial hope—that if you did not disturb them with your own attention, they would eventually remove theirs from you. 

Time trudged by as you shifted from bookshelf to bookshelf, the clogs on your feet scraping the hardwood floors. You kept a wooden chair in tow, collected from one of the tables arranged in the center of the room, and dragged it in closer to the nearest bookshelf, clambering atop the seat and lifting onto your toes to dust the top row of books. The cobwebs were thickest here, spiders having been left to their lonesome far too long and creating their own colony. 

You could barely reach and dusted blindly, allowing the length of the feathers to do most of the work as you ignored the cramps festering throughout your calves. A soft gust of wind floated past and tousled the flyaways at your brow, and as you purse your lips to blow them back and out of your lashes, the room flickered and fell into darkness. 

The candle had finally gone out. 

You squinted and hissed a curse under your breath, your gaze snapping to the outline of the table, where you could barely make out the bowl of wax and nothing more. Just my luck, you thought as you withdrew your feather duster from the bookshelf top. You would have to retrieve a new taper from one of the maids’ closets, though you sincerely doubted the head maid would be all too pleased with your explanation.

Excuses, excuses, you could imagine her barking at you, ire swirling in her small, black eyes. Candles don’t just go out on their own.

“She’ll probably just set my hand on fire and lock me back in here,” you grumbled, huffing as you grabbed the backing of your chair to dismount. A faint tickle on the back of your hand drew your attention. “Hell will freeze over before she—”

Spider.

You yelped, a blasphemy falling from your lips as your clogs slipped on the polished wood seat. Your back hit the ground first, a pained shock shooting from your tailbone up to where your head smacked against the ground with the whiplash of your fall. 

White sparkles lit up your vision, and you sputtered out a cough, not bothering to blink them away. An ache throbbed at your lower back, pulsing at the same wavelength as the ringing in your ears and drawing a groan from your lips. An odd smarting festered up your spine, not unlike a chill. 

Carefully, you slumped back, your head resting against the hard floor and your legs straightening out. You didn’t want to get back up; you didn’t want to move. For a few moments, you let the pain overcome you while you wheezed for breath, choking on the dust that had become unsettled by your fall. It rose and hung in the dark air around you, blurred and wavering with your heartbeat. 

For a few moments, you forgot that someone had been watching you. 

And you certainly didn’t want to know where the spider had wound up. 

The smallest vibration of light footsteps trembled underneath your fingertips, and a sharp pain shot through your skull. Light, blinding and bright and excruciatingly insistent, is all you can see when the vibration stops and some glowing form hinges over you. 

“Not dead,” are the words you think you hear, husked in a monotonous, low gravel and feeding into the loud hum in your head. It’s muffled between the blood pounding in your ears and the hazy confusion that had begun to fog over your mind. 

“Not yet, at least.”

You licked your lips, eyes fluttering closed, then open, then closed again. “What?” you mumbled breathlessly. 

The glowing form dims, gradually painted by an orange hue. When metal thuds on wood, you guess it must be a candle joining your pool of wax on the table, and before long the presence hovers over you again. Tree sap swarms where the scent of mildewed books had been lingering, and, in a cruel twist of fate, you hazard a guess that this is one of the courtiers the head maid had shrilled about avoiding at all costs. 

Or worse—a member of the royal family. 

But how? And why? None of them would ever idle about in a damp, endlessly cold library. The smell bordered on revolting, half of the volumes were wrinkled and illegible, and you couldn’t walk two steps inside without grime caking your face and clothes. Not to mention, the spiders. Disgusting, horrid spiders. 

Black widows, if the head maid was to be believed. 

The wintry library would never be home to festivities of the upper class, not even the occasional unsolicited rendezvous. There were dining rooms and bedrooms and poor, innocent gardens for all the horrific things they did to one another; entire wings dedicated to the sybaritic tendencies of royalty. 

But this man before you—oh, how otherworldly he was. 

You could believe that he had been the one watching you with how his eyes pierced you in this moment, a being such as him the only one capable of having a tangible effect with a single glance. 

You took in his sharp cheekbones, the soft slope of his nose, his slate blue eyes. His face was haloed by mussed, golden hair, and two pale pink lips set against each other as a look of disinterest with ease. His entire appearance, from his lithe figure to the way his eyes dragged over you, exuded a superiority that had been trained to perfection. 

Staring at him felt like drinking a sweet wine, far too indulgent and alluring to ever be truly satiated, and yet you know all too well it would be condemning to keep on as you are. You know this man has a rank heavens above yours; his skin, tanned and unblemished, has never felt the dust and dirt that encompasses you every day, and his body has never held your scars.

In your muddled daze, you imagined barreling headfirst into damnation for acquainting with this handsome being. Whether he be a marquess or a lord or, God forbid, even a duke, being seen in such close quarters with him was strictly forbidden, especially with the royal prince’s season for courting beginning in a week. 

And then you felt yourself spiraling—you imagined him curling over you, his deft fingers sliding underneath your nape, tracing the curve of your scalp and feeling for injury. You imagined his eyes warming pleasantly as he found you safe and unharmed. You imagined he gave a damn. 

But he didn’t. He never would. 

His hands fell to his hips, the loosely fitted, half-unbuttoned white tunic he donned exposing more toned skin while he glowered down at you.

He certainly wasn’t going to wax poetic about your welfare. 

“No blood.” His head tilted to one side slightly, blond tufts of hair following suit. “And thankfully no mess. I’d have hated to invite yet another servant in here, even if it was to drag your body out.”

A shiver tore through your spine, and you had the most horrible feeling that if you died somehow in this moment, no one would bat an eye—especially not the man before you.

His voice had that regal lilt, the one you could have never gained in your small village outside of the castle. You’d only ever heard it on a few of the higher-ranking maids—certainly none of the girls you had been hired with had such accents either—as well as some passing royalty on your first few days of traipsing the castle with a guide. His voice was deep and raspy, as though he spent his days either growling out orders or not speaking at all. You wonder if that was how he found it so easy to watch you mutely.

Feeling entirely too vulnerable, supine as you were, you brace your hands against the floor and writhe your way into a sitting position, head swimming with vertigo. Bile rises in your throat, and you press your eyes closed, tight, waiting out the wave. The idea that dragging your gaze away from him had played a part in the nausea tickles the back of your mind. 

He watches, seeming somewhat interested, as you struggle.

Once, in your small village, a wolf had snuck into the farmer’s fields. You remember watching from your doorway that morning, the sun barely risen, as the wolf tackled a single lamb and began eating it alive. 

The blood coated its paws and muzzle. Bones crackled with the snapping jaws. Even after the lamb had stopped squealing, the hunger in the wolf’s eyes never quite seemed satiated. 

Something in the man’s and the wolf’s gazes made them indistinguishable to you in that moment. 

The cruel sneers and jeering laughs of the royals you’d seen so far could only contain so much antagonism. This man was cut from a different cloth. 

His body, all relaxed muscles and agile limbs, had a vigorous, agitated thing running within the veins of his arms, sleeves rolled to the elbows; the cruelty in his mien was something you had only ever encountered in wild animals. 

Panic chills the sweat on your brow. Laboriously, you wrench one hand on a bookshelf, hoisting yourself up despite the blaring pain climbing up your spine, and onto your feet. You can feel the weakness in your knees the second you try to take another step, the defiant outcry of your mind and body as you try to move, but the man is so close. The warning sirens in your mind wail. 

A hand grapples around your free wrist, insistent and rigid. 

“Stop.”

You flinch, and your first instinct is to twist away and run. His grip is iron-tight, though, and without much resistance, he spins you back to face him. Frantically, your eyes once more swallow up his bronze, toned skin in the shadows of his candle, waiting for a strike. 

In return, the weight of his gaze bows your shoulders, fostering an urge to find a corner and curl up until you can’t anymore. Something you can scarcely identify flickers through his blue eyes. He’s staring at your wrist, locked in his, and then he’s staring at you, his lips tight and his face hard as stone. Like before, you can feel him searching you, taking note of your every move. 

He’s scrutinizing you like a bug, uncertain of just how and in what way to crush you under his heel. It’s the way he had when his gaze was all you knew about him, and you have no trouble imagining yourself splatting underneath his boot. 

But a sound rings in the distance, drawing your attention away from him entirely. 

Ringing. Ringing like church bells. Ringing like the clang of the metal clapper striking tarnished ocher and rust. The kingdom’s clock tower made the same sound. 

A chime, maybe.

Or a knell. 

But you were almost positive that sound couldn’t be heard so far away, crammed deeply within the towering castle walls. Especially at its volume. 

It chimes again, and you slam both hands to your ears, heart pounding. It’s deafening. You can’t breathe, and you can barely see, still tangled up in the man’s eyes. They’ve grown so cold and strike you so much harder your teeth begin to chatter. 

“No,” you whisper, though you’re not quite sure what you’re protesting. “Please.”

His pale lips turn red as he smirks, and every angle of his face sharpens into focus. The room fades into black and white. Musty bindings and rotting pages no longer invade your nostrils. It’s like your brain is shutting off each sense one by one so you can take in more of him. 

And you can’t seem to look away. 

No. 

By the third chime, you can barely feel the pain that had been radiating through your body, and the release is almost blissful. Beckoning. You’re swathed up in the tranquility, ears stuffed with cotton and head buzzing in the silence. When your whole body starts rocking back and forth, waiting for another agonizing chime, your knees begin to feel like rubber, suddenly too malleable to stand upon.

A fourth chime, earsplitting. 

They buckle. 

You snap your hands forward in a panic, yelping when you stumble.

All your senses return as fast as the pinch of a needle. Blood roars in your ears, and soreness floods your every limb. It’s like trying to squeeze into clothes that have become too small and completely ripping the seams—all the sights, the smells, the feelings overload your brain too quickly, causing it to swell and split open. 

Your only lifeline is a radiating source of heat, and you cling to it so hard you're half afraid you might smother it. But when your embrace tightens, so too does your grip on reality. You can almost unscramble your own thoughts again—all the curse words you’ve ever known combined with prayers to the heavens above. Giving yourself into refuge becomes second nature, and you burrow further into the cradle of warmth.

A jolt runs up and down your back, and your skull feels cracked in two. 

But the eerie quiet of the library registers anyway. The chiming is gone. 

Blissful silence remains, only occasionally pierced by your gasping breaths. You want to nuzzle deeper, the warmth firm and solid, as the simmering underneath your skin wanes, yet there seems to be no space left that your form hasn’t already curled into.

“What just happened?” Your voice wavers, and it echoes back so loudly that you flinch. 

You can’t see a thing. The dim outlines of the room fuzz and blend, and if you weren’t standing on your own two feet, you wouldn’t have been able to tell up from down. But the chill still nips at your skin. The library hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed but you. 

But there’s no explanation for the bell-ringing, the sensory overload. It must have all been in your head; it feels like any second now, your ears are going to pop and reality will flood back in. You’re alive. But whatever had just happened was as close to death as you could have imagined—

A breath away from becoming nothing. 

So what stopped it?

Even more—what started it?

The questions slipped your mind the second you heard the library door creak. The pitiful sound allowed the entrance of sunlight directed by the hallway’s window, and the stiffness of your bones crackled at the thought of even more warmth. You felt half-thawed and left for dead, save for the fount of heat caught in your white-knuckled grasp. 

You went still. 

Heat. 

Heat in the library. 

That had to have been one of the most preposterous realities you had imagined since you had first stepped foot in here seven hours ago—and you had raked through your mental fantasies quite thoroughly in that time. 

Carefully, as though jaws might snap at you from the darkness, you withdrew your arms from the motionless frame and craned your head upward. 

Dear God. 

The man was even more beautiful when washed in distant sunlight. Heart-wrenchingly so. More alluring when his hair glowed golden, combed back waves ending neatly at his nape. More potent when his gaze speared yours, his arms limp at his sides, elbows brushing the backs of your hands at his waist. 

Terribly heady.

Five seconds passed before you caught on to your ill deed, and his white tunic fluttered from the speed at which you pulled away from him. When his slender fingers twitched in tandem, you could only assume that, had you waited another second, he would have grasped your wrists so tightly the bones would have snapped. 

How could you? Oh God, this was it. It’s all over. 

You’re seized under his watchful eye, his face washed over with rage, or vexation, or downright disgust at your entirely-too-close, worthy-of-execution contact. 

Certainly, it could not be the wonder you had initially thought it was. 

That was just not possible. 

Impossible. 

Maybe. 

“YN!” 

You jump when the library’s twin doors slammed open, a crotchety, accented voice rattling against the shelves. The clomping of two clogs no different than yours—though, possibly better polished—thunder towards the pair of you, located by your and his candlesticks, stained brass and glossy gold sitting side by side on the oak center table. 

The head maid—Miss Miriam Swinebottom, which, in your humble opinion, was evidence that fate did in fact understand the concept of justice—was a woman of an angular, acidic countenance. Two beady eyes sunk deep into her skull like snakes nestled within a tumbleweed, and she had the capacity for two emotions: disappointment and fury. With a distaste for all things insouciant, the skeletal woman wielded the newly hired maids like an army of rats; she sent all of you scuttling over every inch of the castle and cleaning until your bodies were slow and stiff as though submerged in deep water. 

And you had no doubt that, the second that gaze fell upon you, she was out for blood. The terror that began pulsing in every nerve was no different than when you had first noticed the foreboding air around the blond man. You were not going to get out of this without a scratch. 

Miss Miriam took in you first, but not for long. Soon enough, both of you, as one incriminating sight, were being ascertained. 

You knew what she saw. 

One of her new maids, no better than the grime beneath her shoe, inches away from a royal. 

Unseasoned in the ways of the castle, naive to the new problem you’ve just sprouted, a true simpleton for what you’ve done. You. 

You, with unsteady eyes and flushed cheeks, his shirt unbuttoned, blond hair tousled. 

Fresh meat. 

Dead meat. 

And you hadn’t even done anything. 

You stumble back another step and hesitate to make an excuse. Words, you’d learned, were no better than handing Miss Miriam a switch. Best stay silent and pray for mercy.

Or, rather, for a quick recovery. 

Curiosity slips out of your hands, and you sneak a glance at the man. 

He’s wicked all over again. Somewhat unimpressed by the turn of events, he appears, but the emotion mingles with a strong sense of antagonism no nobility can seem to restrain. You’re only half-glad looks can’t kill. Miss Miriam would be worse off than six feet deep by now. 

To your surprise, she does not snatch you away with promises of a beating. She doesn’t get a step closer. 

Instead, the head maid folds into a low curtsy, then rises back up, bowing her head. “Your Highness.”

You tense at her actions, mind falling blank. 

No. He couldn’t be. 

Your Highness? Your Highness?

But as his gaze trails away from her and back to you, his face abruptly void, you can only stagger back another step, knees giving way into a curtsy as you copy Miss Miriam.

Waiting.

He is.

His Royal Highness, Crown Prince of the Creel Dynasty.

And here you had been, none the wiser, completely ignorant to the danger you’d just placed yourself in. 

For a long, excruciating moment, nothing happens. He does not touch you, nor does he move. The only sound filling the room is bated breath and whispering winds. 

Prince Henry. The prized catch of all the kingdoms. Aristocracy who’d never even scoff at a servant like you were here to court him. 

And you’d been so close—you could still feel the ghost of his warmth under your fingertips. 

A huff perks your ears, but you bite your tongue, waiting. He moves, one slow footstep at a time, nearing you with his polished, leather boots. You watch them as they grow closer. 

You watch them as they hesitate in front of you.

And then you watch them as they pass, each thump of leather against hardwood further and further away until there’s no doubt he has left the library. 

The older maid hitches a second longer before she rises, spitting your name like bile. “YN.” Her footsteps thunder toward you, and you barely have time to straighten before she has an iron grip on your upper arm, hauling you out of the room. 

“You had such a simple task. Clean the library and get out.” She grits her teeth, eyes flaring. “No one has used it in a decade, and yet what do I find but a dusty library and you. You, whoring yourself around the prince. And you said you weren’t a wench before I hired you.”

  She leads you down the castle’s marble hallways, dim from the setting sun yet well-lit by the sconces lining the walls. No matter how much you stumble and grunt, she drags you after her into the servants’ wing, swiftly finding the maids’ hall and barging you through the doorway. 

The room falls silent when the door slams shut, and while no crowd gathers, you are certainly the center of attention to the maids awaiting attending dinner. Stomachs are rumbling, but you have no doubt they would rather feast their eyes on this spectacle first. 

Tears pinch at the bridge of your nose. You can’t cry; you didn’t want to be one of the maids that cried. Those that did were in the latter half of the new hires who were younger than you. And you weren’t a little girl anymore. 

No crying. 

But, oh, you were scared when Miss Miriam paraded you in front of the others, hissing warnings and threats of punishment for girls who did what you had done. 

“-traipsing herself around in front of a most respected royal.” Black, burning eyes latch back onto you. “Tell me, YN, what did you think would happen?”

You flinch. 

There’s no point in looking to others for help. You don’t know them well enough to have friends. It’s been three days, and only one name has stuck. 

But you know it’s a sea of pity, disappointment, and nervous movement flowing back and forth. 

“It,” your voice cracks, and you pause, blinking rapidly. Another older maid, same regal accent, same strict demeanor, same gaze hissing you deserve this you deserve this you deserve this, approaches from behind. “It was an accident—”

You reel back into her waiting arms with a yelp. A stinging burn lances at your cheek, and if you hadn’t seen Miss Miriam’s bony hand fall back to her side, you would have thought she’d slashed open your cheek with an average kitchen knife. 

A seasoned backhand. Was there anything worse?

Miss Miriam stepped back, her appearance leaning more towards irate than strictly furious. She turned away from you, searching the walls of the dormitory. Though you had never seen it before, it hung on the wall with a single nail and a small, looped string on the handle.

A riding crop, yet you had the distinct feeling it had never been used on horses before. 

“No,” you plead when swift fingers begin untying your garment backing. “Please, it—it was an accident!” You try to yank away, but the crop swings at your head. When you lurch back, the fingers resume and Miss Miriam simply tilts her head. 

Dread claws up your throat. The edges of your vision begin contracting with your heart beat, while a shrill voice in your head begins screaming to run, to get out, to escape. Cold air assaults your bare back, and when you feel the tears begin to fall, the maid spins you around, presenting the stripped canvas of flesh to the others. 

“Let this be a lesson to you all, girls,” Miss Miriam announces. “This is not a whorehouse. You are not here to prostitute yourselves to royalty. You will not even look at them.” Her voice directs towards you, “They will certainly not look at you.”

You scream when the crop comes down, the white walls blurring, and the skin of your back wails at the betrayal. 

The tears don’t stop for hours.

Masterlist    Next

Nail Polish and Peer Pressure (Bakugou x Reader)

*GIF not mine*

Summary: You just wanted to paint your nails in his room, but Bakugou always had to throw a hissy fit. No matter; revenge can take many forms. 

A/N: Google searched “asshole synonyms” for this. I ain’t sorry. Not my best work, but I really wanted to write something, so please enjoy!

Word count: 1220

        “Hey, YN, thanks for the badass nail polish. It’s super manly!”

       “Of course Kirishima!”

       That ticked him off. Even his best friend had gotten his nails painted by you. The whole class was now writing, tapping, and gesturing with their painted nails however they could, and it was all thanks to your seemingly endless supply of that toxic shit. Bakugou was sick of it. 

       It all began a couple days ago, when the blond and you were hanging out in his own room.

                               ###

       “What the hell is that smell?” Your boyfriend sniffed the air with distaste, looking over from the computer he had been playing on. There you were, sitting on his bed with a bottle of polish precariously balanced on one thigh. The other leg was a makeshift surface on which you painted your nails maroon. 

       “Seriously?”

       “Seriously what?” you asked obliviously.

       “Get that nasty shit off my bed before you spill it!” he demanded, spinning around in his chair to face you. He glared at the bottle you innocently gestured at him.

       “What, this? You’re really that scared I’m gonna ruin your precious sheets with a little nail polish? C’mon Katsuki, I’m not that clumsy.” He scoffs at your obvious lie and raises a brow at you. You purse your lips and roll your eyes, giving in. “All right fine, you’re right! But I’ll be careful, I swear.” Following your plea, you throw out your best weapon imaginable: puppy dog eyes. 

       It was ineffective.

       “No, now close that shit before the stench becomes permanent.” He turns back to his computer without another word and returns to his game. 

       “Fine,” you stand up and walk over to his door, awkwardly trying to open with your elbows since your fingers weren’t exactly dry yet. “Then I’ll go do this elsewhere.”

       “Fine.”

                               ###

       Since then, you’ve been painting everyone in the class’s nails, even the guys. Just three days ago he had walked in on you adorning Deku’s hands with emerald green in the common area. Jealousy was his initial reaction, as all he could see was the small twerp’s hands near your lap as you giggled. Then it got worse to see his fingers resting on your thighs while you chatted and laughed together. 

       “YN!” Bakugou had shouted at you. You glanced up with wide eyes from your task, then recognized the look in your boyfriend’s eyes.

       “Oh calm down, Katsuki. It’s not like you were gonna let me paint your nails.” Bakugou almost exploded at your tone. “Besides, Izuku was just wondering what all the fuss was about. There’s nothing wrong with wanting pretty nails.” Those words combined with the fact that you had called that loser by his name pushed the blond over the edge. He was slowly being driven insane.

                               ###

       “Hey YN, some girls at the mall yesterday totally complimented my nails. Thanks again!” the bubbly gravity girl spouted. Bakugou’s arm tightened around your shoulder at the praise, and he snarled at the sight of disembodied hot pink nails floating into the classroom. 

       “I absolutely adore the sparkles you gave me, YN. You’re a goddess!” Aoyama praised next, twirling around and waving his hands in front of yours and Bakugou’s faces before dramatically falling into his seat. This was ridiculous. 

       Everyone, and he meant everyone in the classroom except for him had painted nails of all colors. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” the miserable future hero muttered as he watched Todoroki pass with red and white nails. “I’m gonna hurl.”

       He missed the smug smirk that grew on your face, and you swiftly kiss him on the cheek before separating and returning to your own desk just as the bell rang. 

       It was only a matter of time.

                               ###

       Deku stood over the bruised and beaten blond, shoving his painted hands in front of his face while laughing victoriously. “Well, well, well, looks like I finally beat you, Kacchan,” the green-haired boy boasted. Bakugou only groaned in pain on the hard asphalt of the street, unable to move as the bruises began to darken. 

       “I guess you could say it was all thanks to these,” he continued, flashing his emerald nails near Bakugou’s two black eyes. “Tell YN I’m grateful-”

       Bakugou sprang up from his bed in a cold sweat, gasping and feeling his body for any bruises, only to come up clean. “It was all a nightmare,” he groaned, ducking his head miserably into his hands. “This is fucking stupid.” And yet, why did he want to go to your room now? The pupil-burning red digits of his alarm clock told him it was too late; it was midnight. But he didn’t care. If Bakugou had one more stupid nightmare over fucking nail polish, he was going to lose it. 

                               ###

       “YN!” Who the hell? “YN, open up! Open the goddamn door, YN!” Your boyfriend. Of course. Checking your phone, you moaned at the time while slumping off your bed and onto the floor, worming your way to the entrance an enraged blond currently stood behind. 

       “Did you bring me food?” 

       “What? No-”

       “A stuffed animal?”

       “No! I-”

       “Then why in the goddamn fuck are you here at-” you whip open your door and glare into his crimson eyes, “the asscrack of dawn?” Your menacing whisper was challenged with a raised brow.

       “It’s only twelve.”

       “It’s only bedtime,” you mocked with a sneer. “What do you need?”

       “You need to paint my nails.” Oh, oh this was good. Who needed prank TV shows when you could have all this? You disguised your victorious expression by dropping your head and groaning dramatically. Sweet, sweet revenge was near, and you could almost taste that salty bitch. 

       “Fineeee. But wash your hands first.” He tried to object, but you cut him off with a wave of your hand. “I’m not painting over your crusty-ass sleep nails.” 

       “The fuck are ‘sleep nails’?” your blondy grumbled under his breath, but nonetheless made his way over to your bathroom. Trembling excitedly after watching him walk away, you swiftly texted the class group chat you had made a week ago with great news. 

You: U guys can remove ur nail polish now. Bakugou finally gave in ;)

Kaminari: Thank GODDD, I’m done with this yellow crap on my fingers

Kirishima: Me too, but at least we’ll finally get to see Bakugou with girly nails

Mina: Man, I’m gonna miss my pink sparkles!!

You: It’ll be worth it, trust me

       You set your phone down just as Bakugou turned off the lights in your bathroom, but the buzzing of notifications continued. 

       “What asshole is texting you at midnight?”

       “Probably the same kind of knucklehead that would yell at me through my door at midnight.”

       He scoffs before flopping down onto your bed beside you. “Whatever, let’s just get this over with.”

       “Wonderful.” Your eyes twinkle wickedly as you open your nightstand drawer, displaying a wide array of nail polishes even a rainbow would be jealous of. “So what color were you thinking?”

Lovesick (Garou x Reader)

*GIF not mine*

Summary: You have a cold, but Garou doesn’t know that. All he knows is that you wanted him to stay away, and that was something he could never do when it came to you. 

A/N: Part two of strangling writer’s block cuz I gotta. This one’s a little not great, but nonetheless I hope y’all enjoy!

Word count: 1145

        The living room was finally clean. You had just picked up the last of the tissues and washed your soup bowl in the sink when the door to your apartment opened. 

       “Hey baby, I’m here,” Garou announced, kicking off his shoes and closing the door. 

       “That’s great, but don’t come near me.” You hugged the blanket around your shoulders tighter and reclaimed your place on the couch.

       “What?”

       “Don’t come near me,” you shrugged, grabbing the TV remote and turning down the volume so the two of you could talk. You hugged a pillow to your chest and sniffled once more, not an uncommon action throughout your stuffed up day, but Garou panicked at the sound. Were you crying? Were you okay? Oh God, did someone hurt you? Did he hurt you in some way? He just didn’t know.

       “Why?” his voice was small and constricted, “Did I do something wrong?” You gave him a confused look before sniffling and wiping your nose while looking away. Crap, he did do something. And he was supposed to remember it too!

       “No, I’m just-”

       “YN, I’m sorry if I hurt you in some way.” Now that he thought about it, Garou had been spending many nights out in the city, leaving you alone at home. There were days where you had wanted him to go out to the movies, or cuddle in your apartment. Domestic times where he had completely ignored you just to hunt down a hero. 

       “No, Garou, it’s not anything like that-”

       “I swear I never wanted to hurt you, YN!” he exclaims, panicking as he takes a seat on the coffee table in front of you. Your brows furrow and your sneer confusedly at him. What the fuck was his problem?

       “I know, Garou, but seriously-” His yellow eyes, normally glowing with the thought of hero-destruction, were now dark and watery. Every breath he took seemed to rattle his whole frame while he desperately watched your every move. 

       “YN, I love you so much. Please don’t do this,” he whimpered, grabbing one of your clammy hands and holding it against his face. He knew you didn’t want to be near him, and maybe you wanted him to leave. He had left you alone for too many nights, chasing something fruitless while you supported him dutifully. Garou didn’t know how he could manage without you. 

       “What are you talking about? Do what?” you asked bewilderedly. You shifted your hands out of his grasp and held his face, running cold fingers over the worried lines of his forehead. 

       “I know I’m not a hero, but please don’t leave me.” Maybe you were like everyone else, and wanted him to be something better. He had wanted to become the strongest man his whole life, and he thought maybe one day he would get there, with you by his side. 

       “Garou, I would never-” Garou had a decision to make. Yes, he loved you, more than anything in the world. But he had so many people to prove wrong. 

       “I’m sorry, YN, but I can’t change for you. I’ve chosen this path.” Garou loved you dearly for the do-gooder you were. Always working studiously, keeping your head down and laying low in society. He was the complete opposite, and he had to accept that. 

       “I know, Garou!” You tugged him closer by his face and looked deeply into his eyes. You weren’t scared of a lot of things, but your boyfriend was a serious overthinker. His mind ran circles around most others, and he was always thinking on another level. While some were worshipping the heroes, Garou was worried about the villains. Their lives, their journeys, everyone’s journeys.  He was just so different from what you knew, so every time his mouth opened, it served to confuse you even more. What the hell was he rambling about?!

       “YN, please stay by my side. I want to be near you-” Fuck it.

       “I’M SICK YOU DUMBASS!” The sheer volume of your frustrated shout caused Garou to flinch harshly in your grip. Your neighbors were going to hate you, but that was a problem for future you. Right now, you had a mind-boggled boyfriend to deal with. “That’s why you can’t come near me.”

       “Oh.” That’s all he could come up with. Well this is awkward. You fall back into the couch behind you and sigh heavily, rubbing your temples from the oncoming headache. The white-haired man on your coffee table sat with wide eyes watching the floor and hands running anxiously through his hair. No blood to rub in this time, buddy. That’s a shame. “... lovesick?”

       Oh my God.

       “No.” Your voice is congested and flat as you utter the word, and it finally clicks in his head. He snorts humorously and crosses his bulky arms. 

       “I told you you shouldn’t have pet that stray cat while it was raining out.”

       “It looked so sad!” you whine nasally.

       “Yeah, and look how that worked out. Now you’ve got a rabies shot and a sickness. You’re on a roll.” 

       “Shut up before I sneeze on you.” 

       “That’s not very nice,” Garou simpered. He pats your head while standing up and grabbing a new box of tissues sitting on your kitchen counter. He didn’t care if you were sick, he was going to cuddle his girlfriend whether you liked it or not. Crashing down on the sofa next to you, he sat the box in his lap and grabbed the remote while swiftly wrapping his arm around your shoulder and tugging you into his side.

        At first, you wanted to spare him, but he was too warm, and the hand that gripped your shoulder a tad too tightly told you he needed a little comfort after the conversation that had just gone down. You give in with a sigh, dropping a hand on his sturdy thigh to draw random patterns while you lean your head on his shoulder. Smiling tenderly at the act, your boyfriend’s lips brush your forehead before his attention returns to the droning TV.

       “I think I’m getting a headache.”

       “Because you had that stupid-ass mental tsunami earlier,” you mumble, nose sniveling while you snuggle further into Garou’s side. 

       “Or maybe it’s because you got me lovesick.” He waggles his eyebrows at you before pressing a wet kiss to your cheek. Pushing his face away gently, you groan and smack his chest to distract from the heat growing on your face.

       “Shut up before I hack on you.”

“dude” but like romantically

Waking Him Up to Tell Him You Love Him (Haikyuu!! Fake Texts)

(Libero and Wing Spiker Version) Part 2

A/N: part 2 with Konoha even tho I don’t know his character👀 the pictures just don’t freaking fitttt

Nishinoya, Tanaka, Goshiki, and Kyoutani

One Sorry Idiot in a Tree (Bakugou x Reader)

*GIF not mine*

Summary: After Bakugou saw you “flirt” with Kirishima, he wasn’t very happy with you. Gee, I wonder what you could do to make him forgive you. On a completely unrelated note, did you know there was a tree outside his window?

A/N: Just some more writer’s block killin’, don’t mind me. Got this idea from @otpdisaster​ with this prompt. Hope you like it!

Word count: 2305

        It began with small pebbles.

       Dink.

       Dink.

       After twenty minutes of that, you ran out of rocks. Now, you scaled the tree next to the dormitory building of Class 1-A like Rapunzel’s prince, prepared to get Bakugou’s attention by any means necessary. A branch, not exactly sturdy-looking, but enough, extended out perfectly to your boyfriend’s window. Before you tapped on it, you grimaced at the sight of the small cracks you had left in the glass from rock-throwing. 

       Oops.

       The night was cold but the full moon provided enough light for you to koala-climb your way across the tree branch to his window, hanging on for dear life whenever it swayed in the wind. The bark made indents in your hands from you gripping it like no tomorrow, but you were desperate to speak with him. Finally, you made across enough to reach out with one trembling arm. 

       Tap tap.

       “Why did he have to live on the fourth floor?” you mutter to yourself shakily, knocking on the glass once more before pulling back and clinging to the tree as evil winds from Satan himself tried to blow you up and away. So… guess I have a fear of heights now.

       At last, the curtains covering Bakugou’s window were ripped away as the blond glared out into the night, only for his eyes to widen in surprise.

       “YN?!” he exclaimed. Or at least you think he did. The thickness of the building muffled his words, so it was actually more like “Mphfmpfhmlpfhf?” He was now enraged and shouting at you through the pane, eyes glaring furiously in true Bakugou fashion. He was about ready to throw hands, approaching your form with heavy stomps you could hear from all the way outside, but he… you know, couldn’t reach you. 

       Throughout this whole fiasco, you were chuckling under your breath while watching him like a wild gorilla in a zoo enclosure. Then suddenly, Bakugou’s expression saddened and he withdrew from the window, sitting on his bed and just staring at you with arms hanging motionlessly at his side. You figured he was bummed he couldn’t beat the shit out of you when you were swaying back and forth on a forty-foot tree. You puffed a warm breath on the glass and reached out with a trembling hand, shakily writing “r u ok?” backwards. 

       Bakugou’s brows furrowed as he read the note (you wrote the “k” wrong) before scoffing and hissing words at you. Either he hadn’t figured out you couldn’t hear him, or this was his last push for you to learn how to read lips. Either way, you were over it. You shook your head and pointed to your ear, only to scream in fright when you lost balance and almost dropped to your chilly, forty-foot death. Bakugou jumped up from his bed and sprinted toward you, his palms slamming against the glass barrier while he shouted your name in a panic. 

       You, on the other hand, prayed to every god above and under the sun while you swung back and forth, hanging upside down and hugging the tree branch tightly to your chest.

       “Oh, son of a bitch, thank God!” you laugh in relief before wiggling yourself upright on the thin, outstretched bark. Bakugou’s forehead slapped against the window as he sighed thankfully, his breath causing the pane to fog. He caught sight of this and wrote you a message with a clenched jaw. 

       “R u ok???” In his haste, he had forgotten to write it backwards, and you giggled at the sight before nodding. He narrows his eyes at you and flips you off. You laugh and do the same while straddling the tree branch, clouds streaming from your mouth every time you breathe with the chilly temperatures. 

       “Goddamnit it’s freezing out here,” you mumble, teeth chattering. Normally, you would hug yourself and rub your arms up and down to gather warmth, but right now… no. Never. Yes, you were the idiot who climbed a tree to ask her boyfriend for forgiveness, but you weren’t the idiot who died falling out of a tree after climbing it to ask for forgiveness. Stupidity was your style, but dying stupidly was just pitiful. 

       Ever so slowly, you scooched your way down the branch, holding in a breath as it dipped with your weight while you reached out to write another message. “I’m sorry.”

       The blond read the note while a muscle in his jaw twitched. His arms hung limply at his side once more, but his hands still curled into fists at the words. With glowing, scarlet eyes, he snarled at you and plumped down into his spinny desk chair, fingers gripping the arm rests tightly.

       “At least he didn’t close the blinds yet.” Your chest fills with hope and you smile gently, wiping away the old message and drawing a new one.

       “I didn’t mean to piss you off.” 

       Your brain hurt from the amount of effort you had to put into writing that whole spiel backwards, but he was worth it. Your fingers turning blue? Yeah, that was kind of a problem. You blow hot air on the one hand before transferring and blowing on the other, watching and waiting for Bakugou’s reaction as you do. 

       His eyes run over the note once, then twice, then one more time until you realize he’s actually watching your form and rolling his eyes. Still, the blinds remain open, and you whisper a “Yes!” Extending your arm once again, you write another message. 

       “I love u.” You sketch a heart along with it, although it looks more like a fat, seated camel thanks to your trembling hands. 

       The message, however, still pleases the furious boyfriend, and you’d like to think he had whipped out his phone and taken pictures of you to remind himself on a terrible day that you loved him dearly. You know, rather than the less desirable, more realistic theory that he was going to blackmail you with it later and present it to his friends.

       “Oh, fuck you, dickhead!” you shout at the window, shaking a middle finger at him as emphatically as you can. Shit, why aren’t there any other physical gestures of hatred? My finger’s getting cold. It was getting more of a work-out than the rest of your hands, so you supposed you couldn’t complain too much. With Bakugou as your boyfriend, you were surprised your middle fingers didn’t have six-packs by now.

       Ooh, speaking of six-packs.

       The blond cackled in his room while reclaiming his seat, the motion causing his shirt to fly up slightly and reveal- Jesus fuck. Who gave him permission to have that?

       Shaking away the distraction, you give him a sarcastic smile and laugh before writing one last time. 

       “Ok, so do u forgive me?”

       You lean back and huff, waiting for his response while he assesses the message. At last, he purses his lips and rises slowly from the chair. The light glowing from his room pushed away the darkness around you enough for you to inspect your bluing fingers while you waited for a response. 

        Inside the warm, toasty building, Bakugou scoffed at your trembling form. That didn’t stop the fond smile from growing on his face, but maybe, just maybe you deserved it this round. Ah, fuck it. His eyes glinted when he came up with the perfect message.

       “Yes, I love u too.” 

       However, halfway through drawing this on the slightly-chilled glass that froze his precious fingertips, your form disappeared from his peripheral vision. 

       What.

       Bakugou’s face turned into pure panic when he spotted the cracked, jagged edges of a broken tree branch in your place. 

       “Oh shit! YN!” 

       Your boyfriend charged down the stairwell, loud curses trailing behind him in echoes as he busted ass down the steps. At last, the door was in sight as he blasted through it and out into the dark night, setting off the occasional explosion to light up his surroundings. Then he spotted your form, silent and unmoving next to a broken tree branch. 

       “YN!” the blond roared, sprinting towards you at break-neck speed and dropping on his knees next to you. Your eyes were shut and your lips were barely open, releasing small puffs of air every few seconds. Still, you didn’t make a sound, even when Bakugou patted you anxiously on the cheek. 

       “YN wake up, I swear to God.” You didn’t respond. He fell back on his knees and reached up to his scalp, hands digging in and yanking on the strands frustratedly.

       “Fuck, YN, please!” 

       Nothing. Tears pricked his eyes.

       “Come on! I forgive you, just please come back!” Your eyes peeled open at that and you let out a snort. 

       “Seriously, I have to fall out of a tree to get you to forgive me? You’re kind of a dic- foof.” Any air in your lungs was forced out as Bakugou snatched up your cold body and held you close, squeezing you tighter and tighter with every passing second. It was warm at first, so you relaxed into it, but then it started to feel like a strangling.

       “O-kay,” you choked out, patting his back, “I yield, I yield.” He held you impossibly closer just one more second and your eyes almost bulged out of your head before he leaned away, glaring at you with damp cheeks. 

       “Don’t ever do that again.” 

       “Do what? Flirt with Kirishima or fall out of a tree?”

       “Both.” He avoided your tender gaze and tensed up when your hands palmed his cheeks, wiping away any and all stray tears. 

       “Okay,” you whispered. “I promise.” 

       “Good.” He pushed away your grasp and rose up off the ground, glaring at his feet while holding out a hand. “Now come on. Your hands are fucking icicles.”

       You scoff. “Yeah, no thanks to you, dipwad.” Nonetheless, you accept his offer and stand up, cringing at his white-knuckled grip on your hand while he leads you into the dorm building. 

       “I didn’t ask you to scale a fucking tree to beg for forgiveness,” he grumbles.

       “I didn’t ask you to get all jealous and mopey after I asked Kirishima for a pencil!” you counter.

       “You didn’t ask for a pencil, you asked for his wood!” You can’t help but snicker at the memory.

       “Hehe, yeah. You should’ve seen how red his face got, too! Especially when I reached over and stole it.” You smack your knee while wheezing with laughter. “He looked so fucking scared!” 

       “It’s not that funny.” Bakugou shook his head and rolled his eyes. Your hands were so concerningly blue that all he could focus on was leading you back to his room.

       “-and his face was all like, ‘Oh shit!’” Your amused howls echoed throughout the dorm halls before stopping suddenly as the smile dropped off your instantly serious face. “I think the cold is getting to me.”

       “Yeah, no shit,” Bakugou grumbles, kicking open his door and slamming it shut after tugging you inside. “Strip.”

       “Excuse me?”

       “You’re excused. Now strip.” Your brows furrowed and you smacked his chest lightly. 

       “Listen up, pervert. I’m not stripping for you or anyone el- O-okay.” Mid-sentence, Bakugou had whipped out his trump card on you. Now, he stood shirtless and pantless in the middle of his room, giving you an expectant look. My man is hella ripped. You gulped while eye-fucking him. You wished there was no eye.

       “Who’s the pervert now?” he smirked, taking a seat on the far end of the bed so his back faced you. “There, I’m not looking. Now strip.” 

       To be fair, you knew there was some logic to his words. There was something about having to be completely nude, or at least in drier clothes, when someone was trying to fend off hypothermia. You didn’t care to think too much about it. Right now, your herculean boyfriend was demanding you to hop into bed (partially) naked with him. You weren’t always stupid. 

       After tossing your clothes into his laundry basket near the door, you slipped under the covers and poked him in his sturdy back. Are back muscles a kink? Shit, those temperatures out there had really messed with your head. Or maybe it was the fall? He got the message and joined you under the blankets, his arms instinctively wrapping around your frozen waist and pulling you close. You sigh and nuzzle into his warm chest, relaxing easily thanks to his body heat. Finally having a moment of clarity, you decided to apologize. 

       “I really am sorry for pissing you off like that.” You stared deeply into his eyes while nervously picking at the bedsheets. 

       “It’s okay.” 

       “It was pretty romantic when I climbed that tree for you, though, wasn’t it?” Bakugou sighed and tugged you closer by your cold hips. 

       “Yes, yes it was-”

       “I knew it!” you shouted, wiggling next to him in bed with victory. 

       “Shut up over there!” Kirishima shouted from next door. Your eyes widened with shame.

       “Sorry!” you shouted back before groaning and running your hands down your warmed face, peeking out from in between fingers when Bakugou released a small chuckle. The noise was deep and melodic, and you were addicted to it the instant you heard it.

       Yes, you were an idiot. And you would gladly stay one if you got to end every day with that laugh in your ears. 

       You were his idiot.

Could I please request a one shot of Garou meeting up with a childhood friend? Said childhood friend grew up to be an freelance assassin to financially support their younger siblings, and proven to always be freakishly strong such as hugging a younger Garou too hard one time to the point they broke a rib. Sorry if this is too long or doesn’t meet qualifications, I don’t know where to find the rules list😅

Ah it's all good bc there's no rules list, we just go with the flow here, i'll write it if i wanna write it, but you can submit anything to my inbox

cute idea for sure! I just hate writing overpowered readers with garou. In my opinion it's so much cuter when the reader is implicitly weaker so much to the fact that he feels the need to go overboard protecting them. I'm all about dodgin them mary sues😤

one idea for this tho abt the broken rib is that garou totally feels the need to prove she isn't as strong as him anymore. "Hug me, do it. I can fucking take it, I swear! HUG ME!" and like he's causing a scene in the frozen aisle of a grocery store or some shit. Some grannies walking by are all like "well don't just stand there, hug that poor boy!" and yn is just like "garou ur a fuckin dumbass"

totally get the freelance assassin drift tho, I love those plots i just can't write em worth shit :( i just imagine that for this fic garou had no clue that yn grew up to be like that, so he feels extremely proud that she goes against status quo like he does, but also deep down he's scared that she'll be in danger so he'll start following her on jobs.

once she gets contracted to hunt and kill the hero-killer (i hope that's garou's name i totally forgot), and while garou is following her YN is just running in circles looking for this bastard only to feel a pair of eyes and disappear into a bathroom where garou can't follow. When he tries to find her he hears the click of a gun and turns to see YN aiming at him. when she sees his face, tho, she sudddenly can't breathe. cue ANGST

Yn and garou avoid each other, both feeling betrayed at the other's secret lives a lil bit, but also ashamed to be caught. Finally, garou shows up one night while yn is tucking in her siblings and she whispers to him that she has to do it--for them.

garou's hand would slip into hers, and she squeezes it

fin

hi its the anon who requested the second part and aHHH!!! im so happy omg ily its so well written and the ending omg just pERFECT SJSJSJSJ

Asjskfh thank you so much🥺💜 I’m so glad you liked it, and I’m happy I got to end the soulmate au on a high note😌👌

I just read the guppy love (shouto) oh my it was just so cute sfsedfergdidridtjr anyways are you planning to make a continuation? *silently egging author-chan to qwq* anyways your writing is phenomenal as always!! Please take care of your health and stay safe ily uwu)/❤❤✨

Akfjfjidkd I’m so glad you like that one🥰 definitely one of my favorites and though I don’t exactly have any ideas for a sequel, it’s definitely near the top of my lists for fics I need to write a part 2 for!

I’m so happy you like my writing🥺🥺 and u stay safe too💖💜

What's in a Virtue (Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x Reader)---Part 3

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

Gaz wants you, but the hotel bar you work at has rules; when a bartender calls dibs, all others have to back off. It’s how the peace is kept, and as the new girl just trying to rack up some savings, you’re not willing to rock the boat.

But Gaz doesn’t take kindly to you avoiding him, and he’s never been one to beat around the bush. From confessing his love on the first night you met to shouting your name seven times from across the bar, he’s not letting you off the hook that easy. Not when he’s seen the proof that you’ve fallen just as hard for him.

A/N: mwahaha, and they said it couldn't be done. those who doubted me shall gaze upon my very first (and perhaps last) complete series! Victoryyyyy! I hope you enjoy!

Word count: 8374

Part 1 Part 2

   You’re pretty sure you didn’t hear him right. 

You’ve got morning-after brain, and his chest is so hot and adamant behind you, and his breath is right next to your ear. Plus, your stomach is growling with a pit only chocolate-chip pancakes and white peach oolong can fill. 

And he’s doing that tracing thingy again. G. A. Then what?

R. Maybe.

And that leads you to think you might’ve just maybe heard him correctly, because why the hell is he drawing his last name on your hip so brutishly that it twinges? 

“Um.” You stiffen. “What.” 

Not really a question. The way you say it, it comes out more like you don’t want to know the answer even if you really did ask. 

Kyle groans that long, gruff way, husked past his vocal cords and throbbing a path through your entire body. “Look, I get it.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Just let me… ah, fuck, I know it sounds ridiculous, love, but hear me out.” He moves away, giving you space to think while he leans against the counter and grips the edge, tight. 

“Wait,” you hold up a hand before he can start talking again, because you need a minute. Several minutes, actually. A whole assload of minutes to comprehend the suggestion he’s just thrown at you. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you serious?”

This is probably just what Kyle’s morning-after brain is like. It makes stupid, sudden suggestions that he just blurts out on a whim with no regard for how it’ll land. In all fairness, you doubt it’s ever done him wrong before. Even in a regular headspace it’d be hard to tell him no. 

Never mind that he’s shirtless, and that his broad shoulders eat up the space of three cupboards, and that his gaze is doing that thing again—that unfair thing where he towers over you but can still make you feel like he’s kneeling, dips his head so those pleading irises look up at you. 

“Dead serious, love.”

There’s an air about him that’s resolute, despite it all. He’s tender but stern, decided and confident in his conclusion. He’s shedding his clothes and skin, leaving himself belly-up for you to bite. 

“Kyle…”

“Too soon?” He doesn’t even look hurt. Just expectant. 

You shrug helplessly. “Yes? Very too soon, don’t you think?” You spin around, fiddle with the pancake mix but don’t open it. The mug you’ve microwaved for your tea is probably cool at this point, and you try to turn that into your biggest problem of this morning. 

Not the special forces sergeant who lives life at three-hundred miles an hour, exuding such a new energy in here that you can’t remember the basics. It’s the morning after, and as beautifully new as Kyle is, like the stretch of new blue jeans, he’s not threadbare enough in here yet. Too tight, sucking the air out of your own home and leaving you all prickly and sweaty and nervous. 

And he wants you to move in with him? Right now? This soon?

It’s easy, when you turn your back to him and lob your hand towards the microwave handle, to pretend that your biggest problem can be amended in minutes. 

Because now, despite that itchiness of Kyle’s gaze on your face, your biggest problem is that you haven’t even begun to steep your tea. That’s a huge deal. You’re supposed to do it seconds after the microwave beeps, pull the mug out and let the steam soak into the tea bag that you swing for a bit, always have to watch the foggy-air disruptions back and forth. Then you steep it, let the water grow murky for ten minutes as you cook the rest of the meal. Add sugar, an ice cube because you’re scared it’ll burn your tongue like the first time, and stir while you pour syrup on your plate. 

You’re horribly set in your ways, so much so that you hate—actually hate—the newness Kyle’s thrust upon you. It took him twenty-four hours to upset everything. 

Well, not everything. Just you. While you feel fresh out of the box, everything around you has been preserved in mundanity. 

If you took two rights and a left from this building, you’d find a sandwich shop owned by a short man with an orange cat. If you went two floors up, you’d find a pack of graduate students; one more floor, and you’d see Mrs. Beverly and her purse dog. If you went into your living room, finagled with your window a bit, the shutters would close in a perfect angle so that the sun falls on your couch but doesn’t glare on your TV. 

You know it takes you twenty-seven minutes to get to work in the morning right after you brush your teeth. It takes you fourteen minutes to walk home after you clock off. Thirty more minutes to order food and settle in, Netflix the pinnacle of your night before you nod off in a tank top with exactly three holes and short shorts you’d bought under the duress of a busted AC.

You have milk and eggs both two days away from expiration in your fridge, along with old Chinese takeout. You have books with crackled spines and ruffled pages on your bookshelf, and a muddy stain on your entryway carpet from two days after you’d bought it. A bedroom unruly and unbidden, clothes strewn everywhere.

You could envision it all, see it all because you knew it all. Have known it all for the months that this place has been your home and you’d begun working at the hotel bar. You could have the rest of your life mapped out by tomorrow if you really wanted to. It’d be safe. Predictable. Boring, in that average way you’ve always known. None of it would be moving by so fast that you wouldn’t get a break to think of the consequences. 

None of it would make you feel like you’re reaching new heights by jumping off cliffs, taking big, stupid risks that wind up working all the damn time—and solely because Kyle makes them work. Because he runs seven steps ahead of you and lays out the golden carpet for you to step on, telling you it’s okay to keep pushing forward.

The phone calls, the talks, his touch and voice. All of it closing in on you, molding you into something fresh and unseen. 

But that’s just it. It’s still just you who’s changed. 

Not Kyle, who’s certainly been like this his whole life. Who’s used to making snap decisions that have an impact, gotten so damn used to doing that that he carries it with him now. 

And it’s not Mariano or his cat Garfield, or the ham and swiss you get on Fridays. It’s not Jared and Samantha, both of whom play Mario Kart after writing another page in their theses. It’s not Mrs. Beverly and Chloe, or Jeanne, or your family or friends you haven’t texted in a while. 

Only you. 

You’re stripped to your marrow, neurons and fibers spilling all over the place because—oh hell—you’ve grown too big for all this. Kyle’s had you melting and flowing fast and sharp since he first showed up in your life, and you’re moving too fast to feel out that old stagnancy. 

But there’s an ugliness that lives inside of you too, that hates how uncomfortable every little step forward is, even if you can’t stop taking them. 

It’s exposing. You feel naked, but not in the new, comfortable way Kyle’s helped you discover by virtue of his longing. More naked like school nightmares and too-small bath towels. Naked like someone’s going to douse you in lemon juice and salt any second to watch you writhe. 

“Kyle.” Your hand’s still propped on the handle. The microwave beeps again, impatient. “Last night was—God, it was amazing.” You open the door, pull out the mug despite how lukewarm it’s grown. “Best I’ve ever had, by a long shot. But…”

“But what, love? You’re scared?” His voice is barely above a whisper, and you’ve no doubt he’d watched your mind run and run circles around itself, and had had enough time to form an argument of his own. “It’s too much? A lot to ask? I think that too, love, but we’re running out of time.” He rises to his full height, and you try not to shy away at how much space he takes up when he’s grim and serious. 

He’s massive, bigger when he’s panting over you, sleek hips pressing down, suppressing your twists and jolts. He’s gotten better at trapping you, too. It’s intimidating. Thrilling, in better circumstances.

You can’t think straight anymore. He smells like pine all over again, and looks it too. 

“Come back with me to England. We’ve got bars—bars I can bother you at. We’ve got universities for second chances. I’ve got a flat with plenty of room, plenty of money to—”

“Kyle, please.” The whine rips from your throat, and you drag two hands over your face. 

In the corner of your vision, you don’t miss the way he stiffens and swallows a bit. But then he says your name through choked sigh, and rasps, “I know it sounds fuckin’ crazy—I feel like a bloody fool saying it out loud. But I don’t want to lose this, and I can’t keep comin’ back here to start us from scratch every few months.”

You don’t know what to say to that, can’t stop bobbing your mouth open and closed, trying to find those useless words that might explain what’s holding you back.

Something like, It’s only been three months.

Yes, but Kyle knows that too. And he still wants you. 

You don’t even really know him.

Sure. But what was there to learn that he wouldn’t offer you on a silver platter?

It’s going to fall apart. It always does for you. Months will pass, and he’ll realize he made a mistake. He’ll kick you to the curb, and you’ll be back to square one. 

A coaxing palm cradles your cheek, and a warm thumb prods over your lower lip, both of which make you flinch out of your thoughts. Kyle tips your head up, up, up until you’re looking at him, brown irises gentle and luring.

“I can see it, you know. That cruel little brain of yours is whirring so loud it’s makin’ me nauseous.”

Your eyes fall closed, and you reach up, grapple at Kyle’s wrist, massage the tender spot at its center. “I’m sorry.”

He inhales, ragged and slow. Exhales, blowing past your flyaways. “For what, bunny?”

You continue to caress the baby-soft skin of his wrist, marveling a bit at how different it feels from his rough fingertips, from his scarred thighs, his bruised back. “I need… time. A little bit to think. Consider things.”

The last thing you wanted to do was tell him to leave. You felt like an idiot for even implying that space from him was the something you needed right now. You know the silence will swallow you whole when he’s gone. 

“You want me to go?” he breathes out, and his face crumbles. Likely, he didn’t want to leave. He could barely be goaded out of your bed, and now this? 

Kyle looks like he wished he hadn’t asked, hadn’t said anything. Those mournful brown eyes slip to the counter, where your mug and pancake box sit, then back to you, to your eyes and nose and lips. 

Your lips. He prods at the bottom one, like he can’t help it. The caress slows to a stop when he pinches his eyes closed and tips forward, dropping his forehead to yours. “But I don’t wanna leave, love,” he mumbles. “Scared if I do, you won’t let me back.”

You don’t think you could ever keep him out. Not out of your house, and not out of your head. But your brain feels unspooled and uncollected, and all that’s left are too-sweet cotton-candy wisps that can’t quite latch onto anything. 

“I…”

Don’t want you to leave either.

I want you to stay. I want to move in with you. I want every night to be like last night, and every morning to begin like ours did.

I want it all to be ours.

Your hands rise up and brush against the dips and swells of his chest. Goosebumps blossom under your touch. 

“Kyle, you know this isn’t goodbye. It can’t be. I need you to tell me you understand that.”

He sighs again.

“I know, love. I know that.” His thumb wanders over the arch of your cheek. “I’m used to all this, with you. All the pullin’ away and coming back.” He chuckles bitterly, a bit breathy. “It’s just so fuckin’ hard this time ’round.”

Your chest feels like it’s split open, gaping and pouring out. But your mind, or what’s left of it, knows you need this. You need the separation from him, deserve time to think through all he’s offering, all you could barely repay him for in return. 

The debt between the two of you is yawning. But if you gave in and told him yes, all you’d be left with is uncertainty. 

Not even a man as perfect as Kyle can make up your mind for you. 

“One more kiss before you go?”

He takes you up on it before you can say any more. 

His lips are a harsh press against yours, bruising enough to leave them puffy for hours. He kisses to consume, to swallow you up and spit you out wanting more. 

Gentlemanly as Kyle can be, there’s not a glimpse of it to be seen now. He’s not playing fair, at the moment. 

He hooks a finger under your chin and holds you steady, keeps you close and running out of air as he slips past your defenses, the hot, wet press of his tongue on top of yours. It’s instantly dominating before you have a chance to fight.

And then he’s toying with you, kneading you back into the fray with long prods and swipes, his stubble from the morning a heady friction on your skin. He’s playing and caressing and devilishly stroking needy whimpers from you, fingers dancing along your skin, drawing circles on your skin and whines from your throat. That dangerous tongue of his performs another sweep about your mouth, then slips back. Kyle begins worrying at your bottom lip, teeth digging in so harsh and quick —

—and he tears away from you so abruptly that you gasp, can’t even see straight. Suddenly you’re cold and alone, panting and losing your balance without Kyle’s sturdy form keeping you upright. 

You only realize what had happened when you hear a rustling from your bedroom. Kyle reappears seconds later, avoiding your gaze as he zips his jacket up over his bare chest, legs and hips clad in last night’s jeans. 

Subconsciously, you pick at the neckline of the black cotton tee you’re wearing—his shirt, one you guess he doesn’t want back before he leaves. “You don’t want your—”

“Don’t take it off—not yet, yeah?” He meets your eyes for the first time in two minutes, and there’s little brown left to them, all dilated pupils and a consternated furrow. Even his lips, wonderfully swelled, are tugged into a small frown. “Keep it on f’me. I’ll come back for it when you’re ready.”

But you don’t know when that’ll be. How could you possibly make an unbiased decision when the damn thing still smells like him and you can’t forget that ravenous look in his eyes when he’d first found you in it?

Kyle’s hovers near the door, hand tight around the knob like he can’t quite figure out how to open it again. He glances back at you over his shoulder, lets himself take you in, take the entire scene in. He even looks back at your bedroom, where the sheets are rumpled and need to be washed. Then he settles on you one last time, jaw set, muscle feathering a bit.

“Call me. Text me. Anything, darling. But don’t you dare forget about me.”

The door closes with a slam.  

~~~~~~

The first day, Gaz is sure it’s fine. You need time to think, and that’s okay. He can handle that. He’s handled it multiple times.

And, yeah, when he’d gotten back to his hotel room, he had to sit for a moment, staring at the wall. Had to replay that whole night all over again. 

Then again. 

He did the same thing with that morning, reimagining licking the sweat off your thighs, sliding up and burying his face into your stomach, pawing at your body wherever you’d get the loudest. Replayed the feeling of your supple palms and soft fingertips—every inch of you was so damn soft, fleshy and yielding in his hands—wandering over his cheeks, his lips, his scalp. 

Fucking beautiful. Every goddamn second of it. 

Gaz, that first day, tries not to linger too long on how it’d ended. 

So stupid of him to bring that up. Suggest for you to move in with him when obviously you both functioned at two vastly different paces. 

Isn’t it ridiculous that he can’t even bring himself to think it’s crazy? He can’t find it in him to say no, that’s bullshit, because who are you and why the hell did he ever think moving with a woman he’d only known for three months was okay—desirable, even?

So bloody desirable it almost crossed that line and became imperative. 

He spends that night checking his phone, wondering if you’ll call him again, borderline tears and needy like yesterday.

That was his favorite aspect of yours so far—when you needed him, you needed him badly. You needed him while you choked back gasps and almost-sobs. You needed him while you breathed a little sigh of relief at the sight of him and jumped into his arms. You needed him with that first kiss, shy and tentative, but trying your best to imitate reckless abandon—until he taught you properly. 

He’d spent that whole night watching you be shocked at yourself for how badly could want him, all confused and flushed when you’d noticed your fingers digging into the buttons of his trousers. A little stunned “o” formed on your lips when you’d dug your nails in, body trembling with exhaustion, and still begged him for more. Kyle, please. More.

Gaz only convinces himself to take a shower for the night when the thoughts become too much. He almost trips over his own feet in a mad scramble when he sees his phone flash, only to find a notification for an update. 

He goes to sleep in a sour mood. 

The second day goes about the same. He wakes up late in the afternoon (because, due to your midnight upset, he was still on his Middle-East sleep schedule), spends way too much time remembering and staring at his phone, waiting for a buzz or a ring. Eats his dinner and drinks in a deathly silence. 

Because silence is unnerving to him now. You’ve changed that much in him. Every second spent in lonely quiet feels like a waste of his time. 

But you don’t call. And you don’t text. 

You don’t do any of it for the next three days. 

Gaz wallows even worse. He gets antsy, goes to the hotel gym and sprints on the treadmill, because he knows if he runs outside he’ll find himself at your place. He goes to stores, buys himself another black t-shirt, same size and brand as the one that you’d worn, that’d cinched in at your waist and flared out to capture your hips and thighs. 

He wanders into the bookstore next door and finds a few of the ones he’d spotted on your bedroom bookshelf whenever you’d tapped out on him. He flits through a few pages, eyes catching on the naughty words, and reads through for… wistful entertainment, at least. 

Research purposes, at most. 

And Gaz chuckles to himself, winking at the girls that try to wander into the section inconspicuously. The same ones who surely have as good a poker face as you, and who immediately vacate the area at the sight of an invader. 

It would be more fun if it was you he was teasing. Same pink ears and face, same eyes avoiding contact at all cost, fingers fidgeting at the hems of your sleeves.

A longing ache floods his chest so directly and intensely that he has to take a second, breathe and set down the book so he can center himself again. That same flood of cognizance about his situation hits him when he’s on missions, when the victims’ sobs finally get to him or he looks too long in the eyes of a dead man. 

Like he’s yanked to the surface after hours underneath the tide, and the sun shines so brightly his eyes burn. But he’s seeing and feeling everything he’d shoved deep down, knows exactly what led him to this moment. 

Gaz doesn’t go out much after that. 

Not the next day, or the day after that. Not even the next two days after those. 

It’s around this point that he wishes you would just put him out of his fucking misery. He’s so tired of thinking of you before he goes to bed, dreaming of you, then waking up to phantom touches all over his body. He’s driving himself up the walls trying not to call you, break into your house and just steal you back to England anyway. 

Patience. Son of a bitch—patience. God, you strung it out so thin with him that it could snap like a rubber band and hurt you both. 

It’s midnight of the tenth day of no contact with you that Gaz’s finally got his sleep schedule under control, and he’s twisted up in the sheets, body caked with sweat. 

Well, actually, he’s in Prague.

He’s rapidly approaching a target in a dusty, dark alleyway. Just before they turn the corner and get into public view—can’t let that happen, have to maintain cover—Gaz wrestles them away from the glow of the streetlamps and back behind a dumpster, kicking away their gun while he wrenches a biceps around their neck—

But it’s your voice ringing through the air. Your pleas and sobs pierce his conscious too late. Your neck snaps so loud he flinches, and all the while his mind is screaming no, no this can’t be right. She’s not the target. She’s never the target. 

Gaz scrambles away, tearing off the sheets and rolling out of bed. 

Jesus Christ.

He has to see you. 

After that, just needs to make sure. Needs to check that you’re still in tact, your sweet neck not cracked and limp, eyes not dim and silenced. 

He rises to his feet and can’t find his Goddamn socks anywhere. A yellow glow from the window lets Gaz catch himself in the mirror at the perfect moment, and he can see the thick sheen of sweat that covers his body head to toe. 

You deserve better than that. Better than a sweaty, desperate man with no patience pushing his way into your house and demanding an answer, a single word, fucking anything from you. 

Even a nod or a shake of your head would settle his poor heart. The damn thing aches in his chest all the time now. 

Gaz slips into the bathroom for a quick, cold shower, stubs his toes against the not-wide-enough walls of the tub several times, and ambles out a bit slower and far more jittery than he’d gone in. 

He’s shifting a pair of pants up his not-yet-dry legs when he spots it. 

A dim flash from the hotel nightstand, where his phone is plugged in. 

Gaz freezes.

Surely it’s not…

Well, it might be…

But he’d been gone for not even five bloody minutes; that’s not even fair!

Suddenly, he’s kicking off the pants and hurdling over the bed, buck-naked and scrambling for his phone.

No, no, no, no, no, no, NO.

But yes. It’s a voicemail from you. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds, and he wasn’t there for any of it. 

He presses it with wide eyes and a heaving chest, and something stabs him, hard, cruel, and swift right in the center of his gut when he hears your voice. 

“Wow, I’m getting deja vu.” You laugh, but it’s empty and short. “I’m really hoping you didn’t sneak off to a mission without telling me. That would, uh…” Your tone grows dreary, even as you huff another laugh. “That would really suck. But I’m sure I deserve it.”

You thought he’d leave you?

You can’t see him, and he knows that, but he still shakes his head, brow furrowed because no, no, no, he would never do that to you. Damn that evil brain of yours. 

“I just… um, I just had a dream, though. Wanted to tell you about it. It wasn’t even bad so, like, I don’t even know why it woke me up.” Some shuffling, and a sniffle. “Well, I mean I do, but… okay, fine, I’ll just tell you. 

“It was pretty lame. Nothing big, but I was hanging out in an apartment—a flat, you might say—which is a stupid name for an apartment, but you Brits don’t even know what chips are, so whatever. I’ll let it go. 

“Anyway, I was sitting on the couch kinda bored, and then you came in. Came back, really. It’s like that background knowledge thing you get in a dream, where you only know exactly what’s going on the moment it happens? But you were back from a mission, and I had dinner and a hot bath ready, and you…”

Another sniffle. Gaz hovers over the phone, waiting for those seconds to dwindle down, needing to know how you felt when the message ended so he could call you and be…well, be whatever the fuck you needed him to be in that moment. 

“I don’t know. We were about to kiss, and then I woke up and you weren’t even there and I just…hated that. The idea of that. Of you not being there when you could’ve been. And knowing that the only reason you weren’t was because I was being so stupidly stubborn.”

You sigh, then, and get too quiet for him to hear without crouching closer. “Kyle, if you still want me even at all after this, I…” You suck in a long breath, and he hears that little hitch at the back of your throat. “I need it to be slow. Slower than what it’s been. Especially if… if it’s gonna be the same apartment. I’ve never had anything like this before. Never felt it. And I’m scared of, well, all of it, honestly.

“But I’m more scared of never taking that chance with you. And you’ve been commuting to my home, my country all this time, so… you know, maybe it’s time I reciprocate. Reciprocate a lot of things.”

Then someone knocks on his door.

~~~~~~

Kyle never directly told you which hotel room he was in. But when he’d kicked his pants off and you’d watched them soar over your bedroom floor that night you’d called him over, you’d laughed into his kiss at the sight of his wallet, his key card, and some loose change rattling across the floor. 

The next morning, you’d picked it all up while he was in the bathroom, where he was hopefully not glaring at the impulsive hickey you’d given him. You’d snagged his t-shirt for yourself, some womanly, possessive part of you wanting to squeeze yourself into his clothes, whether it would fit or not. You’d felt like a damn fool crammed into it—until Kyle saw you for the first time, and the look he gave you made your stomach clench. 

You’d organized the rest of his things onto your dresser, only eyeing the room card, and the number sharpied on the back, passively. 

Room 428. 

You knocked on the door now, pulse thump-thump-thumping against your eardrums. 

An “Oh fuck” was muffled and low through the door. 

It didn’t sound like you’d woken Kyle up, and you admit that you’d been seriously considering the fact that he might’ve left for a mission while you were in AWOL mode. A bit of luck, really, that it was actually him, still here after ten days of radio silence. 

But you’d know that gruff, British grumbling anywhere, and your body began to tremor. Small, at first, in your fingertips and toes. Then your knees felt a little loose as time went on and all you could hear from Kyle’s end was quick footsteps and the snap of fabric. By the time the door whipped open, your every breath came out stumbling, like waves over jagged rocks.

And Kyle…

Oh. 

Oh, Goddamnit. 

Ten days was too long for both of you. 

Because Kyle, for all his effortless handsomeness, was a wreck. Untidy stubble’s laid claim to his jaw and throat, and his lips look bitten raw. Deep-seated crescents curve under each eye, lined and dark and angry. He’s draping himself against the door with the black curls on top of his head in complete disarray, and watching you with a low-lidded gaze. 

Gaunt, worn, weakened. Like the life has been drained out of him. 

But it’s still Kyle. There’s a phantom of his old self in his form now, a tautness to his shoulders and neck, slight bend in his knees, vigilance in his whiskey eyes. You’ll have to reel his spirit to the surface.

Looking at him now, though, it hurts to think you’re the one who’d done it to him. So damn hard to believe that he takes absences of you like shots to the heart. It’s lovely, to be so wanted by Kyle Garrick. 

Harrowing, too. 

There’s a learning curve to holding his tender heart in your hands and trying not to squeeze it too hard, too often, but you get the feeling you’ve been treating it like a stress ball. You forget that he keeps himself at this rough idle for you. That he always carries soft, warm feelings all the time, and lets them fester behind the velvet steel of his abdomen.

“Did you get my voicemail?”

He nods a little. 

“So you heard that I…?”

Another nod. 

The air is thick and straining with his silence. All he is right now is two eyes watching you and ten long fingers flexed against the door, features bordering on unreadable. 

But there’s yearning. There’s always that fierce yearning with Kyle.

You lean a little closer, don’t quite know whether to be disturbed or flattered at how his nostrils flare when he suddenly sniffs. 

Then he hums, low and deep.

“Peaches,” you mumble, recalling months ago, a staunch memory of his words about your perfume. 

“Tha’s right, bunny,” he mutters. His fingers peel off the door before he lurches toward you, a lovely swoop in your gut when he hauls his arms around your waist, tilting his face to yours. He takes another sniff, this one nestled against the top of your scalp. “It’ll smell like peaches.”

When Kyle takes a step backward, his arms remain iron-stiff around your back, dragging you with him. Step for step for step until you’re in his hotel room, kicking his door shut with the heel of your shoe. 

His hand rises and sweeps back the hair stuck to your neck, already slanting his lips over your pulse point, teething at the skin. “My flat,” he whispers. Then he scoops up your jaw, tilts your head to the other side and reattaches his mouth to the next indent in your throat. “My bedroom.” Another readjustment of your head, aligning himself just below your chin, your head tipped all the way back, blurry, blissed-out eyes locked on the ceiling. “My sheets.”

“Kyle.”

His fingertips dig in hard enough to leave purple dots against your lower back. “All of it’ll smell like peaches. Like you.”

You pry him off with a tugging grip at his damp hair, only slightly intrigued by the water droplets that you now notice litter his skin. 

A bit too busy trying to think back to why you’re here, outside of getting his hot mouth all over you again, to try and care about something so minor. 

There’s an indignant huff against your bobbing throat before he draws back. Kyle looks damn near put out by the fact that you hadn’t let him keep sucking distractions into your skin, and his teeth bare slightly when he grumbles, “What is it, love?”

Lest you forget Kyle first and foremost loves to grope at the plush of your thighs, he does so now, mindlessly, detrimentally to your train of thought. “There’s—there’s so much to figure out, Kyle.” Your words are more like a sputter, wild spilling past your teeth. “There’s getting my stuff there, and passports, and visas. Things that take more time than how long we’ve known each other.”

The golden gleam of his smirk almost takes you out of commission. One second he’s bitter about his mouth and the lack of your skin against it, the next he’s pulled back far enough to meet your eyes dead on, confident like he knows you inside out. 

“Bunny, when you first started to walk, did you go ’round asking everyone what running felt like instead of trying it?”

You… don’t know what that means. Like at all. 

And you’re fairly certain you wouldn’t be able to figure it out even if you weren’t exhausted from four-hour sleep and the wandering of calloused fingers. 

“Kyle—what?”

The deep timber of his chuckle floods your ears like spools of silk. It’d almost be mean if it wasn’t the same playful laugh he used to give you from across the counter, one hand on a drink, the other reaching for yours, and if he hadn’t done it with little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. 

“I just mean…” he pauses and strokes at your thighs a little slower, “that all of this has felt so bloody natural. Like I’m made to be doing this. Like I’m learnin’ how to walk all over again. And you…” One hand departs, rises and encompasses your cheek, thumb swiping over its swell. Kyle’s features soften. “Love, you make me want to run so badly.”

Your hands fist against his chest, but you know he can still feel the quivering that’s begun. That slowly showers over your body, tip of your skull down to the bottoms of your feet, electrifying and frightening.

You say his name again, startled at how much you want him. 

He’s not wrong. Not even close. Being with him is like warm sweaters, or old socks, or scuffed shoes. Things that always just fit.

But it’s new, these butterflies frenzied in your stomach, this chain reaction of shivers and sparks of pleasure and licks of sweet heat. 

New, and timeless. Confusing, and so damn easy. 

“I’ve got connections, love. And so much time for you. All the time in the goddamn world.” His hips press into yours, and once more, he begins to sway.

And, once more, you follow suit.

“And there’s bars aplenty in England, love,” Kyle whispers the words against your forehead. “If that kickin’ little mind o’ yours feels like it has to repay me—pain in my arse, but I’d let you do it. Even though I wouldn’t mind it if you could just sit in my apartment and look real pretty. That’s always on the table for you.”

“Definitely off the table, Kyle.”

“All right, all right, fine.” He peppers kisses over your face. “So long as you’re there each time I walk through that door, yeah?”

~~~~~~

Gaz can smell it from the hallway. 

The heavy scent of chocolate and those pretty candles you love to light, along with a lingering hint of peach. The door to his flat towers, ominous and contingent, like if he doesn’t open it now, any second it’ll slip away and he’ll be back on the field, gunsmoke thick in his eyes and throat. 

Coming home is always a little hard.

 He’s unwinding vertebra by vertebra, trying to fracture himself into small enough pieces to fit through the door. And there’s the crotchety stiffness of his limbs, too long for these halls, too sturdy for a scene soft as this. 

Gaz shoots for quiet and hits dead silence when he twists the knob. Slips through the doorway and takes in this little fault he’s discovered in reality, phenomenon he’s kept under wraps for the past year or so. 

Because entering the pocket dimension of his flat is nothing short of ascendant. Every damn time. 

The air in here is velvety smooth and warm. Not unbearably, for July—it almost feels like the warmth of a sweaty palm still interlaced with his, making his body all syrupy slow. The lights have been dimmed and everything in view from the doorway is more shadow than actual features. London, like the determined sadist it is, is gray and drizzly outside each of his wide-open windows, helping none with his search.

That is something he’d had to bargain for—open windows. Gaz doesn’t mind the subpar reward any creeper might receive peeking into his home, but you weren’t as convinced. The task to win you over had become almost insurmountable when he’d grown too greedy in the living room and you, with eyes only barely comprehensive over his shoulder, locked gazes with an elderly woman across the way and screeched.

But he’d won, and it seemed you honored your promise now. 

Speaking of you, he doesn’t even spot you the first look-around. Even as his nerves meld into the sleek familiarity, panic splices through his gut when he glances once, twice, then thrice around. You’re not running toward him like he desperately wishes you would. You’re not hovering over the kitchen stove, or digging through the fridge. You’re not even curled up in the window seat, sipping on a steaming mug. 

Gaz knows he was quiet, but he didn’t know he was too quiet. 

It becomes increasingly obvious that you’d had plans to greet him. 

Because not only is his favorite meal still sitting over the burner, and the kitchen’s covered in dirty dishes, but you’re lounging on the couch, plush thighs crossed one over the other with a book in hand, clad in fantastically sparse lingerie of frilly black lace that leaves meager gaps for his memories to fill in.

With a stuttering breath, he fills the gaps in tight. 

Your lazy fingers scrape at the corner of a page, then you flip it with a bored sigh, shifting a little by hooking your heel over the top of a sofa cushion, splitting your legs wide so he can see—

His pack drops to the floor with a thunderclap of noise. 

Your body jerks all at once, a quick shriek splitting the viscid atmosphere in half. 

Your wide, prey eyes latch onto his while you grapple at your chest, book having been launched halfway across the carpet. “Kyle, you son of a—could you have been any quieter? What the hell?!”

He barks out a laugh. The potency of your voice saying his name is already swimming through his mind, and he reaches back and closes the door while you rise to your feet. “Sorry, love. Next time I’ll just crawl through the window, yeah?”

“Fuckin’ may as well have,” you grumble, adjusting the stringy straps of your bra. Your skin is all blank and pale right now from months of his absence, white space where amaranthine marks should be. 

Four months. The longest the two of you have been apart, and every step you come closer that heady scent of your perfume prickles its way up his spine. 

“My sweet little bunny, precious love of my life—what have you been up to, hmm?”

Your hands slot on your hips, and you pout up at him. The build-up of energy crackles all over his skin the longer you stand so far away from him, but you’ve still settled for a lecture instead of a kiss. “Well, I had this whole plan where I’d feed you and bathe you, and then we’d fuck like rabbits, but I guess that’s out of the question now.”

Gaz snickers, the abject disappointment raw on your face. “How is that out of the question?”

“Timing’s off and you ruined the whole sexy vibe I was aiming for.” You fold your arms, and Gaz shamelessly drags his gaze down from your face. “You really suck, you know that?”

His lips part in that effortless grin you so easily drag out of him. “So sorry, love. If you come over here, I’ll be sure to apologize quite thoroughly.” Gaz lifts his arms, holds them out and gestures his fingers enticingly. “I’ll have your forgiveness in a matter of seconds.”

Your expression’s all stubborn and prickly, but you sway forward a little anyway. “I…” You grunt and stomp toward him, let him wind his entire body around you, and relax a little when his palms massage and dig into your shoulder blades. “I really did have everything planned,” you mumble into his chest, fingertips all twisted up in the back of his shirt. 

Gaz is starting to get an idea about what’s going on. 

Only about half the candles are lit throughout the flat, the majority of which are near the bedroom. The bathroom light is still on, door opened a crack, but there’s unpacked bath bombs strewn about like you gave up halfway through. Even the kitchen is more messy than usual after the nights that you cook. Only half the pots and pans look actually used, the rest an anxious jumble of utensils and ingredients he knows you didn’t need to make chocolate-chip pancakes alone. 

It looks like you were distracted. So very terribly disturbed by something that you could only commit half a mind to all your ideas. 

With him, you’re rarely left to your own devices for this long, and it shows. 

Gaz can see it, feel it, and practically smell it all over you. Despite his embrace and what should be relief about his return, the muscle and tissue all over your body are pulled taut, bowstring-tight and ready to pitch forward at any second. 

He hums, feels the tension in your spine only grow as he draws little circles against your skin. “I know, love. I see it. Candles, and the dinner, and the bath.” He kisses your forehead, grins wider when all you do is huff and puff. “Did so well. I know it’s hard.”

It only serves to wind you up more. “I’m supposed to be the one massaging and calming you. Feeding you and taking care of you after your mission. This is…” you hiss a curse, nails scraping at his waist now. 

“S’okay. I’ve been through this hundreds of times.” His fingers dance a little lower, teasing that arch in your back that you curve a little harder against him. “I know exactly what you need, bunny. Sort you out so you can get back to your plan, yeah? Just need you to let me take care of it.”

“I don’t…” you shake your head. “I don’t know why I just—I mean, all of the sudden it’s you, and I can’t—”

You fall silent so fast when he shushes you, presses a too-short kiss to your lips. Already, he can feel the verve traveling through your very bones. He lets his words brush along your lips when he repeats his promise. 

“Know jus’ what you need. Let me handle it.”

~~~~~~

You’re straddling his thighs with a fork in hand, watching in a satisfied stupor as the plate balanced on his chest rises and falls at a rapid pace. 

Sticky, flushed, and sated all over, you saw off another sliver of pancake and hold it up to Kyle’s lips. He accepts it greedily, lets his head knock back against the headboard with a euphoric, close-lipped smile. 

He hadn’t been… wrong. 

Which is to say, you’d somehow managed to get yourself so worked up in his absence that the second he returned, all you’d wanted to do was jump his bones, sans any of the prelude you’d planned.

A warning would have been nice, now that you think about it. Anytime around four months earlier when he’d first begun preparing you for his absence without you even knowing it, would have been superb. 

Instead, he’d let it fester in you, like he’d planted himself a gift, fruit ripe for the plucking at a later date. 

You want to be mad. 

Can’t quite bring yourself to, though. 

A bit too… preoccupied. 

There’s still sweat dripping at Kyle’s temples when he cleans off the plate, hands still squeezing in distracting patterns around the meat of your thighs. 

“Fucking delicious, love.” He laves his tongue at the corner of his lips. “My two favorite meals.”

“You’re horrible.” You scramble off him unsteadily, trying to keep both you and the dishes in your hands balanced. “I should get a bar of soap for that mouth of yours.”

Kyle laughs first, then groans, swiping his hands down his face. “If you’d said that shit in the barracks, love…” he calls after you, tutting in the distance while you deposit the plate in the sink. You almost trip on your skimpy lingerie set from a couple hours ago while stumbling your way back to the bedroom. 

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” You raise a brow at him even as you tug on his arm, drag him out of the bed and down the hall. 

After it all, Kyle had insisted you keep up the plan. Didn’t want that guilty conscience of yours to fester and, even worse, those pancakes to grow cold. He’d poked at your cheek, voice slurring a little from exhaustion as he whispered, “Gotta stay awake, love, or your li’l rabbit heart’ll feel all sad tomorrow.”

So you’d rolled off the mattress and made the trek back through the apartment, and, admittedly, you started to feel guilty about the mess you’d left during your hazy planning earlier. 

You recalled trying to think of ways you could impress Kyle but not being able to think clearly after slipping on the lacy panties; too caught in imagining how he’d tear them off to really notice how half-baked the rest of your plan was. 

And how all you could think about was him serving you, which really wasn’t fair. It’d been over a year since you’d started living together, and when he went off on missions, it was an unspoken promise on your end that you’d welcome him back in calm and comfortable ways. 

His first few missions had been just that—romantic kisses and big, sweeping arcs of hugs; slow dances around the living room and the kitchen, sweet, bubbly champagne with dinner. 

All you’d managed this time around was half-assed pancakes, lacy panties, and a cold bath that you hadn’t been patient enough to finish prepping. 

You remember that you hadn’t even been exhausted today. The opposite, really. You’d been buzzing from head to toe the moment you got his call, mind too frantic to ever really stick to your old habits. 

Kyle kneels down beside you outside of the tub, three bath bombs encompassed in just one of his absurdly large hands. The other is curling your hair around a single index finger. He’s patiently busying himself by touching you, playing with some part of your body or other like he’s always done. 

One morning he’d had an absurd obsession with your left heel, and he’d nipped at the tendon out of sheer curiosity. 

You’d almost kicked him square in the face. 

But he gets new little obsessions with you all the time. Each day, he’s poking and investigating at a different part of your body, and he always—always—has to feel it against his teeth. 

And you let him. Even now, as he hinges his jaw around your shoulder. 

A true adventurer, unafraid to explore with all that he is. Wants to discover every little thing in a million different ways. 

You lean forward and wrench the faucet off, then pat at Kyle’s cheek. “Bath bombs, please.”

When he thunks them in the water, the air in the room floods with lavender and chamomile. The tub’s still fizzing purple when he clambers in and hauls you in after him, slowing your descent into his lap just enough that only a bit of water dumps over the edge. 

A long, drawn out sigh ruffles the loose hairs atop your scalp. Kyle’s hands sweep all the way up to the underside of your breasts, then way back down to the middle of your thighs, back and forth, back and forth. For the most part, you try not to move, try to let the aches melt away with the heat.

You drop your head back into the crook of Kyle’s neck and shoulder, tipping your face a bit to look at him. 

Everything’s fuzzy. Pleasant. Legs and arms weighed down by gratification, gut slick with sated heat. And your heart thumps wild and proud, bum-rushed red and gold. Natural and gleaming. Normal and perfect. 

“Can we stay like this forever?” Kyle asks again, a lifetime later. You’re only one year wiser when you nod yes, of course, how else would we be?

He burrows you deeper against him, trying to meld your skin into his because it’ll never be close enough. Touching and bruising and biting only mollifies it, this wonderful new appetite only Kyle can feed. 

It’s crumbs of food, or the tiniest sips of water. 

Or spare oxygen.

Kyle hunches over you, hard body slipping against yours. Soughs, like you hit just the spot. 

“Can’t believe you kept gettin’ away from me before all this. Tested my patience so bloody much to get here, bunny.”

You smile, tilting your head and pressing a tender kiss to his cheek. “It’s your best virtue, Kyle.”