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disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ dd:dne. heavy disclaimer for dark content. mentions of sexual exploitation. mentions of prostitution and canon typical violence. fluff (if you squint). angst. psychological trauma and ptsd. pet play dynamics. attempted SA (not by Finnick). MDNI.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Finnick Odair x fem!snow!reader
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ You know what they say, it gets worse before it gets better. Comment, Like and Reblog
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[I] | [II] | [III] | [IV] | [V] | [VI] | [VII]
It had been almost a year since that night.
They had settled into an easier rhythm over the months. The sharp, jagged edges of their arrangement had worn smooth with time and proximity, like stones tumbled in a stream. Finnick had become a lot more lenient as the weeks turned into months, the strictures of the rules loosening until they were more like guidelines—suggestions, even—rather than the ironclad commandments the stylist had presented on that first, terrible night.
He still expected her to greet him at the door when he returned home, still expected her to wear what he chose for her, still expected her to address him as Master. But the punishments had grown rarer, the corrections gentler, the demands on her time and body less frequent and less rigorous. He had discovered, somewhat to his own surprise, that he didn’t enjoy hurting her. That the dark satisfaction he had anticipated, the vengeful pleasure of making a Snow pay for the crimes of her family, had never materialized. Instead, there had been only guilt, and shame, and the sick, hollow feeling that he was becoming exactly the kind of person he had spent his whole life trying not to be.
So, he had stopped. Not all at once, not completely, but gradually, deliberately, pulling back from the edge he had been teetering on. The reports he submitted to the parliamentary oversight committee were works of fiction now—elaborate constructions of suffering and discipline that bore almost no resemblance to what actually happened in the apartment. He had learned to craft the language of punishment without ever raising his hand, to describe bruises that didn’t exist and tears that had never fallen. It made him feel dirty, but in a different way than the violence had. Less immediate, more insidious—the slow corrosion of integrity, the quiet death of the man he had once wanted to be.
But it kept her safe. It kept her with him. And that, he had come to realize, mattered more than he had ever expected it to.
As time passed, the rules governing her daily life had evolved to fit their strange, unconventional arrangement. She was required to perform her duties as a pet only when Finnick was physically present in the apartment. When he was away—at the Senate, at meetings, at the endless functions and hearings that consumed so much of his time—she was permitted to do as she wished within the walls of the apartment. She could read the books on his shelves, watch the entertainment programs on the wall-mounted screen, wander from room to room in whatever clothing, or lack thereof, she found most comfortable. The apartment, which had once felt like a gilded cage, had become something closer to a home. A strange, unconventional home, perhaps, with its golden cage in the corner and its collection of collars in the bedside drawer, but a home nonetheless. She had made it hers in small, subtle ways—a throw blanket draped over the back of the sofa, a small pot of herbs on the kitchen windowsill, a photograph of Tigris and Lucia on the nightstand. Her presence had seeped into the walls, into the furniture, into the very air he breathed. Finnick couldn’t imagine the apartment without her anymore. Didn’t want to.
The practicalities of their life had settled into a routine as well. Cleaning was handled by a staff that came every other day—silent, efficient people who never looked at her twice, who had clearly been instructed not to ask questions. Finnick trusted them about as far as he could throw them, but they were discreet, and in the Capitol, discretion was the highest form of currency. Meals were more complicated. When he wasn’t around, food was prepared off-site and delivered to her—containers of carefully portioned, nutritionally balanced meals that she would reheat in the microwave and eat alone at the small table in the corner of the kitchen. When he was home, however, he cooked. It had started as a practical necessity—he had learned to fend for himself during his years as a victor and the kitchen was one of the few places in the apartment where he felt genuinely competent—but it had become something more over time. A ritual. A small, daily act of care that he never commented on and she never questioned.
Of course, even then, the rules applied. She would still have to eat from the dog bowl at the side of the kitchen island, positioned on an elevated stand where he could look down and see her while he sat on his stool and ate his own meal from a proper plate with proper utensils. The bowl was ceramic and expensive—he had insisted on that, had refused the cheap plastic thing the stylist had tried to give him—etched with a simple pattern of waves that reminded him of District 4. She ate from it without complaint, kneeling on the cool tile floor, her fingers wrapped around the edges of the bowl, her head bowed over her food. It was demeaning. It was dehumanizing. It was exactly what the parliament wanted.
But she never went hungry. And he always made sure her portions were generous and that the food was warm, and that she had another bowl of water within easy reach. Small mercies, perhaps. But mercies nonetheless.
Y/n didn’t mind the arrangement. That was the truth of it, the uncomfortable, complicated truth that she had stopped trying to untangle months ago. She knew it could have been so much worse. She had seen the way the counsellor from District 6 looked at her, had heard the proposals that had been made in the parliament chamber, had imagined the kind of life she would have ended up with if Finnick hadn’t stood up and volunteered to take her. A brothel. A kennel. A series of hands, anonymous and cruel, taking and taking until there was nothing left. Compared to that, this was mercy. This was grace. This was more than she had ever dared to hope for.
And Finnick, she had discovered, was not a bad man. She had been prepared for cruelty—had braced herself for it, had armoured herself against it, had repeated her small, internal mantra until it became a kind of prayer. A small price. A small price. A small price. But cruelty had not come. Or rather, it had come, briefly, on that first night, and then it had receded like a tide pulling back from shore, leaving behind something she hadn’t expected: kindness. Patience. A strange, hesitant tenderness that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her.
In her isolation—her long, quiet days spent alone in the apartment while Finnick attended to the business of the Republic—he had become something she hadn’t anticipated. Not just her keeper, not just her master, but company. Good company, even. She looked forward to the sound of his key in the lock, the smell of whatever he was planning to cook, the low, familiar cadence of his voice as he told her about his day. She had learned to read his moods—the subtle shift in his shoulders that meant he was tired, the slight furrow of his brow that meant something at work had gone wrong, the soft, almost imperceptible smile that meant he was glad to see her. She had learned to anticipate his needs, to adjust her behaviour to suit his emotional state, to be what he needed her to be without being asked. It was survival, at first. A continuation of the training the stylist had drilled into her. But somewhere along the way, it had become something else. Something that felt almost like caring.
He didn’t hurt her unless she had broken a rule and the rules had become so few and so flexible that breaking them required genuine effort. Even then, the punishments were mild. Finnick hurt her because he had to, because the reports required evidence, because the oversight committee would grow suspicious if there were no marks to document when they sent their doctors for monthly check-ups. But she could see how much it cost him. Could see the way his jaw tightened, the way his hands trembled, the way he would hold her afterward, whispering apologies she had never asked for.
Most of his reports to the committee, she had learned, were fabricated. Exaggerated. Carefully constructed lies designed to make her suffering look exponentially worse than it actually was. He had told her this himself, one night, his voice low and conspiratorial, his fingers tracing absent patterns on her bare shoulder. I write what they want to read, he had said. Blood and bruises and tears. It keeps them satisfied. It keeps you safe. She had nodded, had thanked him, had pressed a kiss to his chest and felt the steady beat of his heart beneath her lips. She didn’t know if she believed him. Didn’t know if she could afford to believe anyone. But she wanted to. And that, perhaps, was its own kind of danger.
Finnick treated her with a care she hadn’t expected, hadn’t known how to ask for, hadn’t even known she deserved. He didn’t just use her sexually and then leave her to tend to herself, the way she had imagined her life would be. Instead, when he was doing paperwork—sitting at his desk in the corner of the living room, surrounded by stacks of documents and reports and the endless administrative detritus of the Senate—he would have her sit on his lap. She would curl against his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her body warm and pliant against his. And while he read and signed and initialed, his hands would wander across her body with a kind of absent, proprietary ease. A squeeze of her breast. A stroke of his fingers across her core, just to remind her that he was still there. Still thinking about her. Still wanting her. The touches were never demanding, never urgent, never the prelude to something more. They were simply... there. A reminder of the connection between them. A small, physical acknowledgment of the strange, tangled bond they had formed.
On difficult days—days when the Senate had been particularly brutal, when the memories had risen up and threatened to swallow him whole—she became something else. Something more. He would hold her, then, not with desire but with desperation, his arms wrapped around her so tightly that she could barely breathe, his face buried in her hair, his body shaking with the effort of holding himself together. She would let him. Would stroke his back, his hair, his shoulders. Would murmur soft, meaningless sounds of comfort. Would be a doll for him to hold, a source of warmth and solidity in the cold, chaotic dark of his mind. She didn’t mind. She had never minded. Being used for comfort was so much better than being used for pain.
And sometimes, in the quiet moments between—in the early mornings when the light was soft and golden, in the late evenings when the city had gone still and silent—she almost forgot why she was here. Almost forgot the collar around her throat, the cage in the corner, the rules still technically in effect. Almost forgot that she was a Snow and that Snows paid for their crimes and that none of this was real. In those moments, she was just a woman. And he was just a man. And the space between them was filled with something that felt almost like peace.
The sharp ring of the doorbell shattered the quiet like a stone thrown through glass.
Finnick’s head snapped up. Y/n curled in his lap, his fingers buried in her heat, his mind drifting through the fog of memory and sensation. The sound was jarring, unwelcome, a violation of the fragile peace they had built together. He looked toward the door, his expression shifting from soft to sharp, from present to alert. His body tensed beneath her and she felt the change immediately—the way his muscles coiled, the way his breath caught, the way his hand withdrew from between her thighs with a reluctance that spoke louder than words.
He fixed her babydoll with quick, efficient movements, pulling the thin fabric down over her breasts, smoothing the wrinkles from her shoulders, adjusting the straps so that she looked decent—or as decent as someone in sheer lingerie and a collar could look. His fingers lingered for a moment on the silver tag at her throat, as though checking that it was still in place, still visible, still marking her as his.
Then he tapped her cheek. Gently. An almost affectionate gesture, if affection and ownership could coexist.
“Back to the cage, sweetheart.”
Y/n whined at the withdrawal—a small, involuntary sound that escaped her before she could stop it. She had been warm and comfortable and safe in his lap, his hands on her body, his attention focused entirely on her. The interruption felt like a cold wind blowing through a half-open window, chasing away the warmth, reminding her of the reality they both tried so hard to forget. But she didn’t argue. She never argued. She simply nodded, slipped off his lap and crawled across the living room to the golden cage in the corner.
The door was already open. She crawled inside, settling onto the thin mattress, drawing her knees up to her chest, making herself small. The plushies—the ones he had never removed, the ones she had grown strangely attached to over the months—were arranged around her, soft and familiar. She reached for the worn fox, the one with the button eyes and the stitched smile and clutched it to her chest. Through the bars of the cage, she watched Finnick walk to the door. Watched him smooth down his own clothes, run a hand through his bronze hair, compose his face into something neutral and unreadable. He didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t. If he looked back, whoever was on the other side of the door might see her, and if they saw her, they might ask questions, and if they asked questions—
He opened the door.
His face hardened the moment he saw who was standing in the hallway. The neutral expression he had been cultivating hardened into something colder, sharper, more guarded. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His shoulders squared, as though bracing for a blow. Every line of his body radiated tension, dislike, a carefully banked fury that she had learned to recognize over the past year.
It was the counsellor from District 6.
The man whose name Finnick had never bothered to learn. The man who had proposed the brothel. The man who had laughed about kennels and suffering and the proper way to break a Snow. The man whose face Y/n saw in her nightmares, whose voice she heard in the dark, whose hungry eyes she had felt on her skin even from across the parliament chamber. His name escaped her, if she had ever known it. But she didn’t need a name to feel the cold, slithering dread that curled in her stomach at the sight of him.
He was smiling. Of course he was smiling. A wide, genial smile that didn’t reach his eyes, that sat on his face like a mask poorly fitted. His gaze swept past Finnick and into the apartment, searching, probing, looking for something—or someone.
“Senator Odair,” the counsellor said, his voice smooth and warm, the voice of a man who had never apologized for anything in his life. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
He knew he was interrupting. That was why he had come.
Finnick did not step aside to let him in. He stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance with his body, his hand still on the doorframe, his expression carved from stone.
“What do you want?” he asked. No pleasantries. No pretense of welcome. Just the question, flat and cold, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
The counsellor’s smile widened. If he was offended by Finnick’s tone, he didn’t show it. He was too practiced for that, too polished, too skilled at the art of smiling while his eyes did something else entirely.
“Can’t an old colleague drop by for a visit? It’s been almost a year, Senator. I thought I’d check in. See how you’re doing. How your... ward is doing.” His gaze flicked past Finnick again, searching the shadows of the apartment. “The committee has been very pleased with your reports, by the way. Very thorough. Very... detailed.” He lingered on the last word, letting it hang in the air between them. “But you know how it is. Paperwork only tells part of the story. Sometimes, you need to see things for yourself.”
Finnick’s hand tightened on the doorframe. His knuckles went white.
“You’re not authorized for an inspection,” he said. “There are protocols. Procedures. You can’t just show up unannounced and demand—”
“Demand?” The counsellor laughed, a short, barking sound that echoed off the walls of the hallway. “I’m not demanding anything, Senator. I’m simply... offering my services. As a colleague. As a friend.” He leaned in slightly, dropping his voice to something almost confidential. “The committee has been talking, you know. About expanding the oversight. Adding new members. New perspectives.” His eyes glittered. “I’ve put my name forward. And I thought, before any official changes are made, I might take a little... preliminary look. Just to get a sense of how things are going.”
Finnick said nothing. His face had gone very still, very pale. Behind him, in the cage, Y/n pressed herself against the back wall, clutching the stuffed fox so tightly that her fingers ached. She could hear every word. Could feel the weight of the counsellor’s gaze even though he couldn’t see her. Could taste the fear rising in her throat, bitter and metallic.
“I’m sure you understand,” the counsellor continued, his smile never wavering. “It’s nothing personal, Senator. Just business. Just making sure that the Republic’s justice is being carried out properly.” He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly. “You wouldn’t want anyone to think you’ve gone soft, would you?”
The word hung in the air like a threat.
Finnick stared at him for a long, terrible moment. Then, slowly, deliberately, he stepped aside.
“Fine,” he said, his voice flat. “Come in.”
The counsellor’s smile widened into something almost triumphant—a predator’s grin, all teeth and no warmth, the expression of a man who had been waiting for this moment and intended to savour every second of it. He stepped across the threshold without waiting for a second invitation, his polished shoes clicking against the hardwood floor of the entryway, his broad frame seeming to fill the space in a way that felt invasive, almost suffocating.
His eyes were already moving, already searching, sweeping across the apartment with the quick, efficient hunger of someone cataloguing evidence. He looked for the cage first—his gaze darting to the corner of the living room where the golden bars caught the light—and then for the collar, for the leash, for any sign that Finnick was doing what he was supposed to be doing, what the parliament had mandated, what the counsellor himself had advocated for so passionately in that chamber nearly a year ago.
The lights switched on with a sharp click, flooding the room with harsh, unforgiving brightness. The sudden illumination was jarring, almost disorienting, chasing away the soft shadows that had made the apartment feel almost cozy just moments before. In their place came stark reality—every surface visible, every corner exposed, every secret laid bare. Y/n flinched at the light, her body pressing instinctively backward, scooting closer to the far end of the cage until her shoulders touched the cold metal bars. She didn’t dare move. She simply made herself as small as possible, drawing her knees up to her chest, tucking her chin down, trying to disappear into the shadows that no longer existed.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Or perhaps that was just her imagination—her body’s primal response to the presence of a threat, the cold that crept into her bones when danger was near. She could feel the counsellor’s attention like a physical weight, pressing against her skin, searching for weaknesses, for vulnerabilities, for the cracks in her armour where he could insert his questions and his judgments and his hungry, hungry eyes.
The counsellor looked around the room with the slow, deliberate attention of a man who had all the time in the world. His gaze passed over the bookshelves, the sofa, the kitchen island. And then his eyes locked onto Y/n.
He grinned.
It was not a kind grin. It was the grin of a collector who had just found a rare specimen, a hunter who had finally tracked his prey to its den. He walked toward her cage, his footsteps slow and measured, each one a small, deliberate punctuation mark in the silence of the room. Y/n could hear the soft click of his shoes against the floor, could smell the heavy, cloying scent of his cologne—something dark and spicy, the kind of fragrance men wore when they wanted to be noticed, when they wanted to leave an impression. She did not look at him. She would not look at him. Looking at him would mean acknowledging his presence and acknowledging his presence would mean inviting whatever came next.
He hummed in satisfaction—a low, pleased sound that vibrated through the air like the purr of a large, dangerous cat. Then he turned away from the cage and walked to the couch, lowering himself onto the cushions with the casual ease of a man who believed every room he entered belonged to him. He stretched his arms along the back of the sofa, crossed one leg over the other, and settled into the space as though he intended to stay for a very long time. On the table in front of him, he placed a white cardstock bag—the kind that came from couture clothing stores, the kind with embossed lettering and silk ribbons and price tags that could feed a District family for a year. The bag crinkled softly as he set it down, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense silence.
Finnick followed him into the room, his movements stiff and reluctant, his eyes never leaving Y/n. He didn’t sit. He stood near the edge of the sofa, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw tight, his expression carefully blank. The counsellor’s presence had turned the apartment into a stage and on that stage, Finnick knew he was expected to perform.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” the counsellor said, his voice rich with satisfaction. He gestured vaguely toward the cage, toward Y/n still huddled in the corner, toward the collar gleaming at her throat. “You’ve done well, Senator. Very well. The reports don’t do it justice, you know. Seeing it in person—” He shook his head slowly, his smile never faltering. “There’s nothing quite like it.”
He paused, letting the words settle. Then he tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly, and looked at Finnick with something that might have been expectation.
“Mind bringing her out, Senator?”
Finnick hesitated. The pause lasted only a heartbeat—maybe two—but it felt like an eternity. He could feel the counsellor’s gaze on him, measuring him, weighing him, searching for any sign of weakness, any indication that he had gone soft, that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing. The reports had been lies, elaborate fictions designed to satisfy the committee’s appetite for suffering. But the counsellor wasn’t here for the reports. He was here for the truth. And the truth was sitting in a cage in the corner of the living room, wearing a collar and a babydoll and the marks of Finnick’s hands on her skin.
Slowly, Finnick nodded.
He looked at Y/n. His sea-green eyes met her pale blue ones across the room, and in that brief, wordless exchange, something passed between them. Not an apology—there was no time for that, no space for that kind of vulnerability in front of an audience. But acknowledgment. Recognition. A silent promise that whatever happened next, they would face it together.
He whistled. The sound was sharp and clear, cutting through the silence like a blade. Two notes—a call he had used a hundred times before, a signal that she knew as well as she knew her own name.
“Come.”
Y/n obeyed. Of course she obeyed. She had been trained to obey, had been conditioned over months of careful, incremental pressure to respond to his voice without thought, without hesitation, without the luxury of choice. She crawled out of the cage on her hands and knees, the soft carpet rough against her palms, the cool air raising goosebumps on her bare arms. She did not look at the counsellor. She did not look at anyone. She kept her gaze fixed on Finnick, on the floor in front of him, because looking anywhere else would mean acknowledging the man on the couch.
She reached Finnick and knelt at his feet, her knees settling into the familiar divot they had worn into the carpet over months of repetition. Her hands rested on her thighs, palms flat facing down. Her head bowed, her chin tucked, a few strands from her braid falling forward to curtain her face. She could feel the counsellor’s eyes on her—heavy and hot and insistent—and she had to fight the urge to flinch, to shrink, to curl into herself and disappear.
The leash. She had almost forgotten the leash. It was attached to her collar, as always, the silver links cool against her skin, trailing behind her like a serpent’s tail. She reached up, took the end of the leash in her mouth—the metal was cool and faintly salty against her tongue and held it up for Finnick. The gesture was practiced, automatic, one of the many small rituals that had become part of their daily routine. She didn’t think about what it looked like. She couldn’t afford to think about what it looked like. She simply did what she had been trained to do and waited for whatever came next.
The counsellor watched the entire performance with rapt attention, his eyes tracking every movement, every gesture, every small, submissive signal. When Finnick took the leash from her mouth, the counsellor let out a low, appreciative sound—half laugh, half sigh—and shook his head slowly.
“Remarkable,” he murmured. “Absolutely remarkable.”
He rose from the couch. The motion was sudden, unexpected and Y/n felt her body tense instinctively as he approached. She could see his shoes in her peripheral vision—polished black leather, expensive, the kind of shoes that had never walked through mud or snow or the blood-soaked streets of a district in rebellion. He stopped a few feet away from her, close enough to touch, close enough to smell, close enough to make her skin crawl.
His gaze raked over her body. She felt it like a physical touch—a slow, invasive examination that left no part of her unobserved. He looked at the collar first, of course, at the silver tag, at the way the leather sat against her throat. Then his eyes traveled downward, across the thin fabric of her babydoll, across the curves and hollows of her body, across the marks that decorated her skin like dark, blooming flowers.
The reddened mark on her cheek was the most visible—a bruise from a punishment a few minutes ago, a reminder of a rule broken, a correction administered. But there were others too. Purple-red marks on her neck, the shape of teeth and lips and the desperate press of a mouth. Handprints on her waist, faint but still visible, the ghost of fingers that had gripped her too tightly the night before. A constellation of small, intimate injuries, each one a story, each one a secret.
The counsellor’s eyes lingered on the marks. His smile widened.
“She misbehave?” he asked, gesturing toward the bruise on her cheek.
“No.” Finnick’s voice was smooth and steady, betraying none of the tension coiled in his shoulders. “It’s routine.”
The lie slipped out effortlessly, polished by months of practice. But the counsellor didn’t need to know the details. The counsellor needed to see evidence of suffering, of discipline, of the harsh justice the parliament had demanded. So Finnick gave him what he wanted. A lie wrapped in a single word. Routine.
The counsellor hummed thoughtfully, his gaze still raking over Y/n’s body, cataloguing every mark, every bruise, every small evidence of use. He seemed particularly fascinated by the marks on her neck—the bites, the bruises, the places where Finnick’s mouth had been the night before. His eyes lingered there and his smile took on an edge that made Y/n’s stomach clench.
“You’re going too easy on her, it seems,” he said at last. The words were light, almost conversational, but there was something beneath them—a criticism, perhaps, or a test. He was probing, searching for weaknesses, looking for any indication that Finnick wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing.
“She behaves well.” Finnick’s answer came quickly, perhaps too quickly. “I have no reason to punish her beyond what’s required.”
He realized, even as he said it, how it might sound. Too lenient. Too soft. The kind of response that would raise questions, invite scrutiny, draw the committee’s attention to places he had worked so hard to keep hidden. He scrambled to correct himself, to add the necessary edge, the required harshness.
“It took her a long while to recover from the last time,” he continued, his voice dropping slightly. “The bondage session. The one I documented in last month’s report. She was... difficult for weeks afterward. Slow to respond. Hesitant. I had to scale back the intensity to rebuild her conditioning.”
The counsellor’s eyes lit up with interest. “Ah yes. The bondage thing.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial. “I read that report. It was fascinating.”
He put emphasis on the last word, drawing it out, letting it hang in the air between them. The way he said it—the way his tongue lingered on the syllables—made something shift in Y/n’s chest. A cold, slithering discomfort that started in her stomach and spread outward, through her limbs, through her fingertips, through the fine hairs on the back of her neck. She shifted on her knees, an involuntary movement, a small attempt to escape a sensation she couldn’t quite name. The leash clinked softly as she moved, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
The counsellor noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything.
“But enough about reports,” he said, straightening up and turning back toward the couch. His voice had shifted back to something lighter, almost cheerful, as though he hadn’t just been describing her suffering with the quiet satisfaction of a connoisseur discussing a fine wine. “That reminds me—I didn’t come empty-handed.”
He gestured toward the white cardstock bag on the table, the one with the embossed lettering and the silk ribbon. The bag sat there like an offering, pristine and expensive, utterly out of place among the shadows and the silence and the fear clotting the air.
“I got you this,” the counsellor said, his smile widening. “Consider it a gift. A token of my appreciation for all your hard work, Senator. And for hers, of course.” His eyes flicked to Y/n, still kneeling on the floor, still not looking up. “I think you’ll find it... suits her.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. The bag sat on the table, waiting, its contents a mystery that none of them wanted to solve. Finnick stared at it for a long moment, his expression unreadable, his hands hanging loose at his sides.
He didn’t want to open the bag. Every instinct screamed at him to leave it untouched, to shove it back into the counsellor’s hands and tell him to take his gift and his threats and his lecherous eyes and get out of his apartment. But the counsellor was watching, and the counsellor had friends on the committee, the kind of friends who could make life very difficult for someone who didn’t play along. And the committee had the power to take her away. To revoke his custody, to reassign her to someone else, to hand her over to the very people Finnick had been trying to protect her from.
So Finnick reached for the bag.
His fingers closed around the silk ribbon, smooth and cool against his skin and he began to pull. The bow came undone with a soft whisper, the ribbon sliding through his fingers like water, pooling in his palm before slipping away entirely. The white cardstock bag crinkled as he reached inside, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense silence of the apartment. His fingers brushed against something soft—fur, expensive fur, the kind that whispered of luxury and excess, of designers who catered to the whims of the wealthy and the perverse. The texture was almost hypnotic, silky and thick, the kind of fur that begged to be touched, stroked, buried in.
He pulled the contents out slowly, deliberately, letting them unfold in the harsh light of the apartment. The fabric—or rather, the object—caught the glow from the windows and threw it back in soft, golden highlights, illuminating every detail with merciless clarity.
It was a tail.
A long, fluffy tail, luxuriant and full, made of fur so pale and golden that it seemed to glow from within. It was almost the exact shade of Y/n’s hair—that pale, spun-gold color that reminded him of sunlight on water, of wheat fields in late summer, of everything beautiful and fragile and doomed. The tail was attached to a plug, smooth and curved and gleaming, made of some dark, polished material that looked like glass but was probably something else entirely. Something designed to be inserted. Something designed to be worn. Something designed to turn a woman into a creature, a pet, a thing.
Finnick’s jaw clenched. The muscles in his temples pulsed. His fingers tightened around the base of the tail, and for a moment—just a moment—he thought about snapping it in half. About throwing it across the room. About grabbing the counsellor by his expensive collar and hurling him out the door and into the hallway where he belonged.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. So, he stayed there, frozen, the tail dangling from his hand, and waited for the counsellor to speak.
“It even vibrates.” The counsellor’s voice was rich with satisfaction, as though he had just delivered the punchline to a particularly clever joke. He leaned back against the couch cushions, his arms spread wide, his smile wide and gleaming. “There should be a remote in there somewhere. Small thing—gold-plated, very discreet. Fits in the palm of your hand. You can use it to control the intensity, the pattern, the duration.” He paused, letting the words settle. “I thought you might appreciate the versatility. The options.”
He gestured vaguely toward the bag, still sitting on the table, its contents half-visible in the crinkled opening. Finnick reached inside again, his fingers brushing against a small, cool object—metal, smooth and weighty, about the size of a walnut. He pulled it out and turned it over in his palm. A remote, just as the counsellor had described, gold-plated and gleaming, with a small button on the top and a sliding switch on the side. It looked expensive. It looked obscene. It looked like exactly the kind of thing the counsellor would think was appropriate.
“I mean, she’s your pet, after all,” the counsellor continued, his voice light, almost jovial. “It would only make sense for her to have a tail. A proper one. Something to match the collar, the leash, the aesthetic you’ve cultivated.” His eyes drifted to Y/n, still kneeling on the floor, still not looking at him. “Don’t you agree?”
Y/n stared at the tail. Her pale blue eyes were wide, fixed on the fur and the plug and the implications she couldn’t quite bring herself to process. She swallowed—a small, audible sound that seemed to echo through the silent room. Her throat moved beneath the collar. She could feel the counsellor’s gaze on her, heavy and expectant, waiting for her to react, to protest, to give him the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. She simply knelt there, her hands resting on her thighs, her body trembling almost imperceptibly, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Finnick had tried a few sex toys from the collection the stylist had given him on that first terrible night. Not many—most of them still sat in their original packaging, untouched, gathering dust in the back of the closet. But a few, the less intimidating ones, the ones that didn’t make his stomach turn just to look at them, had made their way into their shared life over the past year. He had used them on her only when she was a willing participant—never by force, never by coercion, never as punishment. There was a difference, he had learned, between wielding power and sharing intimacy and he had tried very hard to stay on the right side of that line.
Finnick was considerate, yes. That was the truth of it, the uncomfortable, complicated truth that Y/n had stopped trying to understand months ago. He was kind in ways she hadn’t expected, hadn’t known how to ask for, hadn’t even known she deserved. He was kind when he cooked for her, when he held her after nightmares, when he whispered apologies for pains he hadn’t caused. He was kind when he touched her—not just during sex, but in the quiet moments between, when his hand would find her back or her shoulder or her hair, and he would simply rest it there, warm and solid and present.
But given how she dressed—or rather, how little she dressed—it wasn’t really possible for Finnick to keep his hands off her. The lingerie, the babydolls, the sheer and the lacy and the barely-there confections that the stylist had provided were designed to provoke, to tempt, to invite touch. And Finnick, despite his best intentions, was only human. He would crave her physical presence the way other people craved food or water or sleep. He would reach for her without thinking, his fingers finding her waist, her thigh, the curve of her breast. And often, that casual touch would devolve into something more—a kiss that deepened, a grip that tightened, a slow, luxurious unravelling that left them both breathless and tangled in the sheets.
Y/n didn’t mind. She had stopped pretending to mind months ago. The truth—the secret truth that she kept buried beneath layers of conditioning and submission and the careful performance of obedience—was that she looked forward to it. To his hands on her body, to his mouth on her skin, to the way he said her name when he was close, soft and broken and almost reverent. Finnick cared for her pleasure as much as his own—more, sometimes, spending what felt like hours learning the topography of her body, mapping every point, every place that made her gasp or arch or cry out. He was attentive, patient, generous in ways that surprised her every time.
And not just that. Finnick Odair was an extremely handsome man. The entire Capitol knew it—had known it for years, had commented on it in breathless whispers and scandalized gossip columns. His copper hair, his sea-green eyes, the lean, powerful lines of his body, the easy grace of his movements. He was the kind of handsome that made people stop and stare, that made photographers follow him down the street, that made other men clench their fists with envy and other women fan themselves with their programs. And Y/n, trapped in this apartment with him day after day, night after night, had not been immune to that beauty. She had noticed it, catalogued it, appreciated it in the quiet privacy of her own mind.
They were compatible. That was the word she had settled on, after months of trying to find the right one. Compatible. Their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, like keys in locks, like two halves of something that had been broken and was now being carefully, painstakingly reassembled. The sex was enjoyable—more than enjoyable, if she was being honest with herself, which she rarely allowed herself to be. It was something she looked forward to, something that made the long, empty days bearable, something that reminded her that she was still alive, still human, still capable of feeling something other than fear and resignation.
So when she looked at the tail—at the fur and the plug and the implications—her first reaction was not horror. It was curiosity. And perhaps, somewhere deep beneath the layers of training and submission, a small, secret thrill.
But she didn’t show that. She couldn’t. She kept her face blank, her body still, her eyes downcast. She was a pet. A possession. A thing to be used and displayed. And things didn’t have opinions about the accessories their owners chose for them.
“Of course,” Finnick said. His voice was tight, controlled, a thin veneer of civility stretched over a core of cold, hard fury. His smile was just as tight—a brief, mechanical curving of his lips that didn’t reach his eyes, that looked more like a grimace than an expression of gratitude. “I’ll be sure to try this later. Thank you for your kind gift.”
He said the words like a script, like a performance, like something he had rehearsed in his head a hundred times before. Thank you. Kind gift. Try it later. All the right phrases, all the appropriate responses, none of them genuine, none of them real.
He bent down and placed the tail back into the bag, folding the tissue paper around it, tucking it back into the white cardstock as though he could bury it, hide it, make it disappear. The bag crinkled as he closed it, the sound sharp and final.
The counsellor’s smile faltered.
It was a small thing—a brief flicker, a momentary dimming—but Finnick caught it. The man had been expecting something else. A demonstration, perhaps. A performance. He had wanted to see Finnick insert the plug into Y/n’s body, had wanted to watch her squirm and gasp, had wanted to use the remote himself, to play with her like a toy. The realization made Finnick’s blood run cold, then hot, then cold again. The counsellor hadn’t brought the tail as a gift. He had brought it as an excuse. A pretext. A way to insert himself into their private world, to witness something he had no right to witness, to touch something he had no right to touch.
Before the counsellor could suggest anything—before he could open his mouth and voice the obscene idea that was clearly forming behind his eyes—Finnick picked the bag up. His movements were quick, decisive, the movements of a man who had spent years learning to anticipate danger and act before it could strike.
“I should go put this with the others,” he said. He gave Y/n a look—a brief, meaningful glance that said stay as clearly as if he had spoken the word aloud. Then he turned and walked toward the bedroom, his footsteps steady and unhurried, betraying none of the urgency churning in his chest.
The bedroom was dim, the curtains drawn, the only light coming from the small lamp on the nightstand. Finnick crossed to the bedside table and set the bag down, the white cardstock stark against the dark wood. He stood there for a moment, his hands braced on the table’s surface, his head bowed, his breath coming in slow, deliberate waves.
He pulled the tail out of the bag again. The fur spilled through his fingers, soft and silky, almost hypnotic in its texture. He held it up to the light, turning it slowly, watching the way the pale golden strands caught the glow from the lamp and threw it back in soft, shimmering highlights. Regardless of who had given it to him—regardless of the man’s motives, his cruelty, his hunger—the tail was beautiful. There was no denying that. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the materials luxurious, the design elegant in its simplicity.
Just like her, he thought, and the thought came unbidden, slipping past his defenses before he could stop it.
He imagined it. Her. The tail attached to her body, nestled between the soft curves of her backside, swishing behind her as she crawled across the floor. He imagined her pale blue eyes—those beautiful, haunted eyes—looking up at him through her lashes, her full lips parted, her cheeks flushed. He imagined the way her body would move, supple and pliant and eager, the tail swaying with every shift of her hips, every arch of her back. He imagined reaching for her, his hand closing around the base of the tail, tugging gently, watching her gasp and arch and press back against him.
It was a pleasing thought. Disturbingly so. The kind of thought that made him question himself, his motives, his desires. The kind of thought that blurred the line between protector and predator, between keeper and user, between the man he wanted to be and the man he was afraid he was becoming.
But now wasn’t the time for such thoughts. The counsellor was still in the living room. Y/n was still kneeling on the floor. And every second he spent in here, lost in his own head, was a second he wasn’t watching, wasn’t protecting, wasn’t standing between her and the man who wanted to tear her apart.
He put the tail back into the bag, shoved the bag onto the nightstand and walked back toward the living room.
What he saw there made his blood boil.
The counsellor had moved from the couch. He was standing behind Y/n now, his broad body looming over her kneeling form, his hands wrapped around her leash. The silver links were pulled taut, the collar pressing against her throat, forcing her head back at an uncomfortable angle. One of his hands had clamped over her mouth—his fingers splayed across her lips, his palm pressed against her teeth, muffling the sounds she was trying to make. His other hand held the leash, tight and controlling, keeping her in place.
And his nose was buried in her neck.
He was smelling her. Inhaling deeply, his eyes half-closed, his expression one of almost obscene pleasure. His lips were pressed against her skin, just below her ear and he was breathing her in as though she were something rare and precious and forbidden. Y/n was flailing wildly—her arms and legs thrashing, her body twisting and jerking, trying to escape his grip. But he was too strong, too heavy, too present. Every movement she made only seemed to tighten his hold, to press him closer, to drag his mouth across her throat.
She wasn’t screaming. She couldn’t scream. His hand was over her mouth, muffling everything, turning her cries into small, desperate whimpers that barely escaped his fingers. But her eyes—her pale blue eyes—were wide and wild and filled with a terror that Finnick had never seen before. Not in the parliament chamber. Not on that first night. Not in all the months since.
This was different. This was real. This was happening now, in his apartment, in his home, to someone who belonged to him.
“Get your hands off her.”
Finnick’s voice was low. Quiet. Almost calm. But there was something beneath it—something cold and sharp and utterly without mercy—that made the counsellor freeze mid breath. His eyes snapped open. His grip on the leash loosened slightly. He turned his head, slowly, deliberately, and met Finnick’s gaze.
For a moment, neither man spoke. The air between them was thick with tension, with violence barely restrained, with the kind of hatred that didn’t need words to be understood.
Then the counsellor smiled. It was a thin, brittle thing, the smile of a man who had been caught doing something he shouldn’t and was trying to brazen it out.
“Just getting a closer look, Senator,” he said, his voice light, almost teasing. “You know how it is. A man gets curious. Wants to see what all the fuss is about.” He released the leash—it fell to the floor with a soft clatter—and stepped back, raising his hands in mock surrender. “No harm done.”
Y/n collapsed forward as soon as his grip loosened, her body crumpling onto the carpet, her hands flying to her throat, her breath coming in great, heaving gasps. The collar had left a red mark on her skin—a thin line of angry, abraded flesh where the leather had dug in. Her whole body was shaking, violent tremors that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, somewhere primal and uncontrollable.
“The purpose of your visit is achieved,” Finnick said, his voice low and steady, each word sharpened to a razor’s edge. His sea-green eyes never left the counsellor’s face, tracking every micro-expression, every flicker of emotion, every subtle shift in the man’s posture. “I suggest you leave. Unless, of course, you want me to tell the committee that you dared to trifle with an asset that doesn’t belong to you. That you violated the terms of my custody by interfering with the rehabilitation of a parliamentary ward.”
He paused, letting the words sink in. The threat hung in the air between them, heavy and toxic, a challenge wrapped in the language of bureaucracy. The committee had strict rules about how assets were to be handled, who was permitted to interact with them, what constituted acceptable behaviour. The counsellor knew this. Everyone knew this. And what he had just done—the hands on her leash, the hand over her mouth, his nose buried in her neck—was a violation so blatant, so inexcusable, that even his friends on the committee would struggle to defend him.
“She’s my property,” Finnick continued, his voice dropping even lower, becoming something almost intimate. “My asset. My responsibility. No one—no one—is allowed to touch her but me. Not the committee. Not the parliament. Not you. Do you understand?”
The counsellor’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. His face, usually so florid and confident, had gone pale. For a moment—just a moment—a flash of terror flickered in his eyes. Not fear of Finnick, not exactly, but fear of what Finnick could do. Fear of the reports he could file, the testimonies he could give, the doors he could open. The counsellor had built his career on alliances and favours and the careful cultivation of power. One accusation of misconduct—one whiff of scandal—could bring it all crashing down. But then what did he expect doing something like this?
He smoothed down his jacket with quick, jerky movements, his fingers fumbling slightly at the lapels. He adjusted his cuffs, pulling them down over his wrists, hiding the hands that had touched her. He straightened his tie, cleared his throat and reassembled his composure piece by piece, like a man rebuilding a wall that had crumbled around him.
“I’ll see myself out,” he said. His voice was steadier than Finnick had expected, though there was a slight tremor beneath the surface, a vibration that hadn’t been there before. He walked toward the door, his footsteps deliberately slowed, as though the pace could somehow erase what had just happened. “Thank you for having me, Senator. It was... educational.”
He didn’t look back. Didn’t glance at Y/n. Didn’t meet Finnick’s eyes, cold and hard and watching his every move. He simply walked to the door, opened it, and stepped through, pulling it shut behind him with a soft, almost apologetic click.
The sound seemed to echo through the apartment, reverberating off the walls, the windows, the golden bars of the cage. And then there was silence—the heavy, suffocating silence that follows a storm, when the wind has died and the rain has stopped and all that remains is the wreckage of what came before.
Finnick crossed the room in three strides. The adrenaline was still surging through his veins, demanding action, demanding violence, demanding that he run after the counsellor and finish what he had started. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Because Y/n was still on the floor, still shaking, still trying to hold herself together with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. He dropped to his knees beside Y/n. His hands reached for her, gentle despite the fury still burning in his chest, and he pulled her into his arms, drawing her against his chest, pressing her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
She was trying to speak, trying to form words, but all that came out were small, broken sounds—whimpers and hiccups and the wet, choked noises of someone who was fighting not to fall apart.
“Shh,” Finnick murmured against her hair. His lips brushed her temple, her cheek, the place where her pulse fluttered rapid and fragile beneath her skin. “Shh. I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
He rocked her gently, a slow, soothing motion, the kind of movement meant to calm a child after a nightmare. His hand stroked her back in long, steady passes, tracing the curve of her spine, the ridges of her ribs, the soft place at the base of her neck where the collar still rested. He could feel her heartbeat against his chest—too fast, too hard, a hummingbird’s wings trapped in a cage of bone and flesh.
“I didn’t—” Y/n’s voice was barely audible, muffled against his shirt, cracked and broken. “I didn’t tempt him. I didn’t—I swear, Master, I didn’t do anything. He just—he just grabbed me and I tried to pull away, but he was too strong, and I—”
“Shh,” Finnick said again, more firmly this time, his hand moving from her back to her hair, threading through the pale gold strands, cupping the back of her head. “I know. I know you didn’t do anything. This wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”
Finnick held her tighter. His arms wrapped around her like a shield, like a fortress, like the walls of a city under siege. His eyes fixed on the closed door, the place where the counsellor had disappeared, the place where the threat still lingered like a poison in the air.
His mind was already racing.
The memory made something dark and possessive coil in Finnick’s chest—not the cold, dissociated fury of the arena, but something hotter, more primal, more personal. He had spent a year learning to care for this woman, learning to protect her, learning to see her as something more than a punishment or a responsibility. And the counsellor had tried to take her. Had touched her. Had put his hands on Finnick’s property as though it were his right.
No, Finnick thought, his jaw tightening, his teeth grinding together. No one touches what is mine.
He thought about all the ways he could keep her safe. The security systems he could upgrade, the protocols he could put in place to ensure that no one ever entered this apartment again without his explicit permission. He thought about the reports he would file, the complaints he would lodge, the accusations he would whisper in the right ears. The counsellor had friends on the committee, yes, but Finnick had allies too. He could fight back. He could make the counsellor regret ever crossing this threshold.
He thought about the lines he was willing to cross. The rules he was willing to break. The laws he was willing to bend until they snapped. He had spent a year playing by the committee’s rules, submitting false reports, performing cruelty he didn’t feel. But the counsellor had shown him that playing by the rules wasn’t enough. That the rules were designed to be exploited, that the people in power would always find a way to take what they wanted, that the only real protection was power itself.
He thought about all the things he was willing to destroy. The counsellor’s reputation. His career. His life, if it came to that. Finnick had killed before—in the arena, in the war, in the dark spaces between where survival demanded things that couldn’t be taken back. He had killed to protect himself, to protect others, to protect the fragile hope of a better world. And he would kill again. He would kill him—the counsellor—with his bare hands if he had to. Would wrap his fingers around the man’s throat and squeeze until there was nothing left but silence and the sweet, simple satisfaction of knowing that he would never touch Y/n again.
None are allowed to touch what is mine, he vowed to himself, the words settling into his bones like a prayer, like a curse, like a promise carved in stone. No one. Not ever. I will burn the Capitol to the ground before I let anyone else put their hands on her.
He didn’t know when he had started thinking of her as his. Truly his. Not just his responsibility, not just his ward, not just the asset the committee had assigned to his custody. But somewhere in the past year—in the quiet mornings and the late nights, in the meals he cooked and the tears he wiped away, in the moments of intimacy and the moments of simple, companionable silence—she had become something more. Something he wasn’t ready to name. Something he would kill to protect.
Y/n’s breathing was slowing now, the gasps softening into something steadier, more regular. Her fingers had loosened their death grip on his shirt, though she still clung to him, still pressed herself against his chest as though she could burrow inside him and hide from the world forever. Her tears had tapered off into the occasional sniffle, the occasional shudder, the small aftershocks of a body that had been pushed to its limit and was slowly, reluctantly, returning to itself.
Finnick pressed a kiss to the top of her head—a soft, almost unconscious gesture, the kind of thing he would have been embarrassed to acknowledge if anyone had been watching. But no one was watching. There was only the two of them, and the silence, and the closed door, and the weight of everything that had just happened.
“I’m so sorry,” Finnick murmured again, the words soft as a prayer, steady as a promise. “This won’t happen again. No one’s going to hurt you. Not while I’m breathing.”
Y/n didn’t answer. She simply pressed closer, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, her body finally beginning to relax, finally beginning to trust that the danger had passed. The collar still gleamed at her throat, the silver tag catching the faint light, the words Property of F. Odair seeming less like a brand and more like a shield.
╰ ┈➤ A/n: That counsellor needs to DIE fr fr. Finn bust out the trident honey, it’s been collecting dust for far too long.
Best part about being the Decepticons darling is if you want something, besides your freedom, they'll give it to you.
Oh, your favorite snack got canceled? Not anymore. They have several factories dedicated to making it now.
They decided to hire a bad director for a new movie in your favorite series? That direction is no longer alive. What―
"Soundwave rid project of nuisance. Means: Laserbeak. Outcome: director no longer a threat to production."
Soundwave is VERY passionate about the human media you consume. It's probably best not to complain about anyone too specific... even jokingly.
And with yandere Megatron you get scary warlord privilege. You roll up to McDonald's in someone's alt mode and hear their icecream machine isn't working. Megatron turns into a gun and threatens them through the drive-thru window. You awkwardly sit there as a floating sentient gun shoots several minimum wage workers. You feel bad.
He transforms into his root mode and places you on his shoulder as he threatens the McDonald's, his fusion canon pointed at it.
"You will procure the icecream for my conjux or you will suffer eternal termination!"
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ dd:dne. angst. prolonged captivity. mentions of experimentation and canon typical violence. yandere themes. megs is a freak but pretending not to be one (smh). pet play dynamics. dubcon. humping.not proofread by the current me. MDNI.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Yan!Megatron x fem!human!reader
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ This is a very old piece i wrote on Valentines’ day for the lovely @avantlilies I’m team Optimus all the way but Megatron do got me feeling some typa way especially with this particular scenario in mind. Comment, Like and Reblog
Y/N pressed herself into the farthest corner of her cage, the cool glass against her skin as a persistent, unwelcome kiss. Her eyes, heavy-lidded and vacant, stared out into the endless, sterile hallway beyond. Time had become a meaningless concept almost like a thick, suffocating fog she couldn’t see through. There were no windows to the outside world here, no rising or setting sun to mark the passing days just the perpetual, harsh, artificial glow of the Decepticon base’s lights. It could have been weeks or months since she was first brought here, the distinction felt increasingly irrelevant.
Her fingers moved with a life of their own, instinctively twirling the collection of rings that adorned them. They caught the light, gleaming softly against the oppressive cold. One, in particular, caught her attention—a chunky silver band, one made from his own metal. The thought of him, of the cruel smirk that so often played on his lips, sent a fresh, violent wave of disgust coursing through her veins. It was a visceral reaction, a tightening in her chest and a bitter taste in her mouth. With a surge of anger that felt both empowering and exhausting, she began to yank at the jewellery. Ring after ring was pried from her fingers and thrown with a satisfying clatter against the glass floor. Her hands then flew to her neck, fumbling with the clasp of the layered necklace he’d given her, before ripping it off and hurling it after the others. The metallic sounds echoed in the silence, small rebellions against her gilded prison.
The outburst left her feeling hollow. She stared at the scattered jewellery, glinting accusingly on the transparent floor and felt the last of her energy drain away. There were still more pieces adorning her—earrings, bangles on both wrists—but the thought of removing them felt like a monumental task she simply couldn’t undertake. Instead, she pushed herself up from the cold floor and crawled towards the only source of comfort in this place: her “bed.”
It was a crude nest, really. A pile of soft, synthetic furs piled high in one corner of the enclosure. It was a small mercy, provided not out of kindness but out of a practical need to keep her alive and somewhat comfortable, a stark contrast to the glass and cold metal that comprised the rest of her world. The cage itself was more of an elaborate enclosure, designed with the floor plan of a small, minimalist studio apartment. There was a berth, a small washroom and a food dispenser that was restocked every time it ran out. But every single wall, from floor to ceiling, was made of clear, reinforced glass. It was a deliberate design, allowing any passerby, any Decepticon, an unobstructed, clinical view of her every move, her every moment of despair. It was, she thought bitterly as she curled into the furs, like being the main attraction in a very sophisticated, very horrifying hamster cage.
The Decepticons ran cold, their base a constant, low-level freeze that had seeped into her bones. Over time, she had become somewhat accustomed to it, her body adapting to the unending frigidity. But acclimation was not the same as acceptance. She would never like this cold, just as she would never accept the metal hand that had placed her here. She closed her eyes, the scent of the furs filling her senses and perhaps for a few precious, oblivious hours, she could let the warmth lull her into a dreamless sleep.
She was just beginning to succumb to the gentle embrace of exhaustion, her body finally relaxing into the furs, when the sound shattered the silence. Clank. Clank. Clank. The heavy, rhythmic footfalls of metal against metal echoed through the corridor, each step a thunderous announcement that sent ice water rushing through her veins. He was back.
Y/N’s eyes flew open for just a fraction of a second before she squeezed them shut, her heart suddenly pounding so violently she was certain it would be audible throughout the entire base. She pressed herself deeper into the pile of furs, burrowing beneath them as if they could somehow make her invisible, make her cease to exist. Her fingers clutched at the soft material, knuckles whitening, as she desperately slowed her breathing into what she hoped was a convincing imitation of sleep. Please, she thought, the word a silent prayer to any entity that might be listening, please just let him pass by. Let him have better things to do tonight.
The clanking grew closer, louder until it stopped directly outside her glass prison. The silence that followed was somehow worse than the sound—a heavy, expectant stillness that pressed against her eardrums. She could feel it, that familiar sensation of being watched, of those burning crimson optics studying her through the transparent walls. Her skin crawled.
“Won’t you greet me, pet?” The voice that cut through the silence was exactly as she remembered—gravelly and mechanical, like grinding stones filtered through a vocoder. It rumbled through the very metal of the floor, vibrating up through the furs and into her bones. “I know you aren’t asleep.”
The words were along sing-song and despite every ounce of self-control she possessed, a visible flinch rippled through her body. Damn it. Slowly, with the resignation of someone approaching their own execution, she peeled one eye open and peeked over the edge of the furs.
And there he was. Those blood-red optics were fixed directly on her, twin points of malevolent light, glowing with an intensity that seemed to pierce right through her. Even through the glass, even at this distance, the weight of his gaze was suffocating. The rest of his face—if it could be called that—loomed behind those optics, all sharp angles and cruel design. The pointed metal crest atop his head, the severe lines of his faceplate, the jagged armour plating that covered every inch of his massive form—together, they created something that belonged in humanity’s most dystopian nightmares. He was a monster given form, a demon forged from steel and hatred.
And then there was the sheer size of him.
Even if kneeling or crouching, she couldn’t quite tell which position allowed him to peer into her enclosure at this level, he still towered over her confinement like a skyscraper looming over a sidewalk. She had done the math before, had spent sleepless nights calculating the impossible gulf between them. Y/N was a reasonably tall woman by human standards. She could look most men in the eye, could hold her own in a crowd. But here, now, staring up at Megatron? She was a Barbie doll placed in the palm of a five-year-old child. Perhaps even smaller. Her entire body would fit into the palm of his hand with room to spare. He could close his fist around her and she would simply... cease to exist. No struggle, no resistance, just a wet smear on grey metal.
Y/N slowly pushed herself up from the furs, her movements deliberate and careful, like someone approaching a wild animal who could bite at any moment. Her thumb ran over the inside of her finger, where she would twirl her rings from, a pointless habit born of nervous habit and forced herself to meet those eyes.
“Welcome back, Lord Megatron.” The words came out flat, drained of all inflection. Not quite disrespectful, she had learned better than that but offering him nothing. No warmth, no fear, no satisfaction at his return. Just empty words falling from numb lips.
Megatron hummed in response and the sound was something she felt more than heard—a deep, resonant rumble that vibrated through the glass walls of her enclosure, through the metal floor beneath her feet, through her very ribcage. It was the sound of a predator acknowledging its prey.
“Come out,” he commanded and there was no question in his tone, no room for negotiation. “I wish to see you.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. See you. Not talk to you, not check on your welfare not ensure you’re comfortable. See you. Because that’s what she was to him—a thing to be observed, a possession to be admired, a pet to be summoned at will.
But Y/N knew better than to disobey. She had learned that lesson early, had the bruises and the memories to reinforce it. So she rose fully from the furs, her bare feet silent against the cold glass floor, and walked toward the exit of her enclosure. The door, a seamless panel of reinforced glass and metal, remained closed until Megatron willed it otherwise. A soft hiss escaped as it slid open and she stepped through into the corridor beyond.
The walkway outside her cage was perhaps the most terrifying part of this nightly ritual. It was a narrow plank of metal, just wide enough for her to walk without fear of falling but with absolutely no railing, no safety net, nothing to catch her if she stumbled. The drop on either side was at least twelve feet down to the base floor below—not enough to kill a human outright perhaps, but more than enough to break bones. And broken bones in a Decepticon base, without access to human medical care, might as well be a death sentence.
The plank was positioned at approximately the height of Megatron’s chest. When she reached the end of it, she found herself standing at the edge, looking out at the vast expanse of his torso armour, the complicated mechanics of his frame rising before her like a cliff face of metal and menace. And there, waiting for her, was his hand.
She had done this before. She knew the routine. But knowing didn’t make it easier—didn’t make the terror any less acute as she looked at those massive fingers, each one longer than her entire arm, capable of crushing her without effort. They were cold, always cold, the metal radiating that same chill that permeated the entire base. But they were also, she had learned, impossibly gentle when Megatron chose. Not out of kindness—she was under no illusions about that—but because damaged possessions were useless possessions. He kept her alive and unharmed for the same reason a child might keep a delicate toy in its original packaging.
Y/N took a breath, steadying herself against the wave of dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her and stepped off the narrow plank into his waiting palm. His fingers curled slightly around her, not grasping, not yet—just a gentle enclosure that reminded her, as if she could forget, that she was completely and utterly at his mercy. She stood in the centre of his palm, her arms wrapped around herself for what little warmth and comfort they could provide and forced herself to meet those optics.
“Yes, my lord?” The words came out steady, at least. She had learned to control her voice if nothing else. Inside, her heart was racing, her mind frantically cataloguing every possible reason he might have summoned her tonight. What did he want? What new game had he devised? Recently, his sense of entertainment had grown increasingly perverse, twisting into directions that made her stomach churn with dread. Just last week, he had mentioned in passing—casually, as if discussing the weather—that one of the Decepticons had discovered something called “humans performing interesting tricks” on something called the internet. She hadn’t understood what he was talking about, hadn’t wanted to understand, but the way his optics had gleamed with curiosity had sent ice through her veins. He had said he wanted to see her do it as well, whatever “it” was and she still didn’t understand why a being of his power, his age, his infinite capacity for destruction, would have any interest in watching a human perform tricks like some kind of circus animal. But she had learned long ago that questioning him was not an option. Her role was to exist, to obey and to survive. Nothing more.
For a long moment, Megatron simply looked at her as if examining a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope. The silence stretched between them and Y/N felt her muscles tensing with every passing second. What was he waiting for? What did he see when he looked at her with those terrible red eyes?
“You aren’t wearing the adornments I gifted you.” His voice was low, almost contemplative, but there was an edge beneath it that made her blood run cold. “Why?”
Before she could respond, before she could even process the question, one of his talon-like fingers moved. It traced a line from the base of her throat, down between her collarbones, following the path of her sternum all the way to the bottom of her abdomen. The touch was impossibly light for something so massive, so sharp—the barest whisper of cold metal against her skin—but she felt every millimetre of it like a brand. Her entire body went rigid, every muscle locking into place as she pressed her lips together so tightly, they hurt. She would not react. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her flinch, of watching her squirm beneath his touch. If he pressed down any further, even slightly, that razor-sharp talon would slice through her skin like tissue paper. She had seen what Decepticon weapons could do to human flesh. She had nightmares about it. But to him, this was just a game—a way to pass the time, to amuse himself with the fragile little creature he kept in a glass cage.
Her mind raced, scrambling for an explanation, for some excuse that might placate him. But what could she say? That she had thrown them across the room in a moment of despair? That the weight of his gifts, the constant reminder of his ownership, had become unbearable? That she had wanted, just for a few hours, to feel like herself again instead of a doll dressed up for her captor’s amusement? No. None of those words would ever leave her mouth. They would be met with punishment, with cruelty, with lessons designed to break her of such rebellious thoughts.
“I’m sorry, Lord Megatron.” The words fell from her lips automatically. She offered no explanation, no excuses, no desperate pleas for understanding. She had learned that trying to explain herself, trying to prove her innocence or justify her actions, was a fool’s errand. He didn’t care about her reasons. He didn’t care about her feelings or her thoughts or her desperate need for even the smallest shred of autonomy. All he cared about was obedience and when obedience failed, he cared about punishment. It was better, so much better, to simply apologize, to accept whatever came next and to endure. Explanations were just an invitation for him to drag out the process, to dissect her words and twist them into new reasons to make her suffer. Forgiveness—if such a concept even existed in his cold, merciless spark—was not something she could earn. But she could, perhaps, minimize the damage by giving him nothing to work with.
The talon continued its slow path down her body, tracing the curve of her waist and she stared straight ahead at his chest armour, refusing to look down, refusing to watch the instrument of her potential death moving across her flesh. Her breathing stayed shallow and controlled, her expression carefully blank. Inside, she was screaming. Inside, she was counting down the seconds until this ended, until he grew bored and returned her to her cage, until she could curl into her furs and pretend, just for a few hours, that none of this was real.
He hummed in acknowledgment, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through the metal of his palm. The sound was casual, almost dismissive, as if her apology had been noted and filed away with all the emotional weight of someone acknowledging a minor inconvenience. But his actions told a different story. The talon that had been tracing idle patterns against her skin paused at her waist, finding the elaborate chain that rested there.
The waist chain had been one of his more intricate gifts—multiple layers of delicate metalwork, each one connected by dozens of tiny tassel-like chains that cascaded down her hips like liquid silver. It was, ironically, the closest thing she had to actual clothing in this place for Megatron somehow found it unnecessary to have to source clothing for her. The craftsmanship was exquisite, clearly designed by someone who understood human anatomy and aesthetics. She had hated it on sight. She had worn it anyway because wearing it meant not being punished, meant surviving another day.
The blade of his talon pressed against it now and for one horrible moment, she felt the metal of the chain bite into her skin through the delicate links. Then, with absolutely no effort at all, he sliced through it as if it were made of paper rather than reinforced metal. The chain separated cleanly, falling away from her body in two pieces, and she watched in helpless horror as it slipped from his palm and plummeted toward the floor far below.
The sound it made when it hit was deafening—a tremendous crash of metal against metal that echoed through the cavernous space like a gunshot. Twelve feet of drop, maybe more and the delicate chain had struck the floor with enough force to send pieces skittering across the metal surface. Y/N flinched violently at the noise, her entire body seizing up and she found herself curling into a ball almost instinctively, her arms wrapping around her knees, her head tucking down as if she could make herself small enough to disappear entirely. It was a pathetic posture, she knew, the posture of a prey animal trying to hide from a predator but she couldn’t help it. Her body remembered what her mind tried to forget—that she was fragile, breakable and completely at the mercy of a being who could end her existence without a second thought.
When she finally uncurled slightly, she became acutely aware of what remained. The earrings still dangled from her lobes and the bangles still circled her wrists. But the chain was gone and without it, she was infinitely more exposed, more vulnerable—which was, she suspected, entirely the point. Megatron had never explicitly stated his fascination with her body, had never sat her down and explained that he enjoyed toying with her, manipulating her, watching her react to his touch. He didn’t need to. The way his optics lingered on her, the way his fingers found excuses to trace her skin, the way he positioned her and posed her like a living doll—it all spoke volumes. She was a curiosity to him, a fragile organic creature that he could bend and shape to his will. Her body was like pliant clay and she had no say in how he chose to mould it.
“If you do not want them, I won’t make you wear them.” His voice dripped with false benevolence, the words wrapping around her like silk hiding steel. “After all, all beings prefer their natural state, no?”
The taunt landed exactly as intended. Her stomach twisted with regret, with the sickening realization that her small act of rebellion had given him exactly what he wanted—ammunition, an opening, a reason to remind her of her place. She wanted to explain, to defend herself, to make him understand that it wasn’t about rejecting his gifts but about needing a moment of being just herself, just Y/N, instead of his pet, his possession, his plaything. But she kept her mouth shut, anything she said would be twisted, used against her, turned into another reason to make her suffer. Silence was her only shield and it was a pitifully thin one.
His finger hooked around her neck then, not squeezing, not yet—just a single massive digit curling beneath her chin and lifting, forcing her to raise her head and meet his gaze. Those crimson optics burned into hers and she saw something flickering in their depths that made her stomach churn. Amusement? Anticipation? The look of a cat playing with a mouse it had already decided to kill?
She felt movement then—a strange, unsettling sensation against the skin of her throat. She looked down and her breath caught in horror. The metal of his finger was moving, shifting and flowing like liquid mercury, separating from his digit and wrapping itself around her neck in a thin, flexible band. Her hands flew up immediately, her fingers scrabbling at the substance, trying to pull it away but it slipped through her grasp like water, like smoke, like nothing she could hold onto.
“No—” The word came out as a gasp, high and terrified. “No, please, no—”
The metal solidified.
It happened in an instant—one moment it was flowing, fluid and the next it was rigid, a solid collar clamped around her throat, cool and unyielding against her skin. And then it began to tighten.
The pressure was immediate and terrifying. Her airway constricted, the flow of air cut off as the collar compressed her windpipe. She choked, gasped, her hands flying back to her throat to claw at the unyielding metal but her fingers found no purchase, no weakness, nothing she could use to free herself. Her vision started to spot as panic and lack of oxygen warred for dominance in her brain. Tears streamed down her cheeks, hot and desperate, as she thrashed in his palm, her body convulsing with the instinctive need to breathe.
Above her, Megatron watched.
A grin spread across his face—slow, pleased, devious in a way that transformed his already terrifying visage into something truly nightmarish. His optics gleamed with satisfaction, with the pure, uncomplicated joy of watching something suffer. This was entertainment to him. This was amusement. Her choking, her tears, her desperate thrashing—these were the highlights of his evening, the payoff for whatever boredom had driven him to summon her tonight.
Her lungs burned. Fire raced through her chest, her throat, her head, as her body screamed for air that wouldn’t come. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision, expanding with every passing second. She was dying. She was actually dying, here in the palm of his hand and he was smiling.
“Lord Megatron—” The words came out as a choked whisper, barely audible, squeezed past the crushing pressure at her throat. “Please—” Another gasp, another desperate convulsion of her lungs. “I’ll do anything—”
Her vision was darkening now, the edges closing in. “Spare me—”
The word was barely a breath, barely a thought, barely anything at all. And then, just as she felt herself slipping away into the darkness, just as her body began to go limp with acceptance, the pressure eased.
Y/N coughed, the sound ragged and wet as air finally, blessedly rushed back into her starving lungs. She doubled over, one hand braced against the cool metal of his palm, the other clutching at her throat feeling the metal collar cold against her skin. Her chest heaved with desperate, greedy breaths, each one burning as it rushed through her abused airway. Spots still danced before her eyes, black and white fireworks that pulsed in time with her hammering heart. She couldn’t think, couldn’t process, could only exist in the overwhelming relief of being able to breathe again.
Megatron shifted his hand, the movement casual, almost nonchalant, as he adjusted her position. His massive fingers nudged her upright, forcing her spine straight, her head up. She complied automatically, too weak, too shaken to do anything else. Her body felt like it belonged to someone else—distant, numb, disconnected from the terror that had just consumed her.
“Starscream showed me something intriguing the other day,” he said, his voice carrying that same casual, conversational tone as if he hadn’t just come within seconds of ending her life. “And I should like to see it first-hand.”
The words washed over her like water over stone. She heard them, registered them on some basic level but their meaning slipped away before she could grasp it. Her mind was still elsewhere, still trapped in that moment of suffocation, still reeling from the brush with oblivion. She nodded—she must have nodded, because that’s what she always did when he spoke, that’s what survival demanded—but the gesture was automatic, meaningless, a puppet jerking on strings she couldn’t see.
She didn’t realize when he pulled up the hologram. One moment there was nothing, and the next, a screen of flickering blue light materialized above his forearm, casting strange shadows across his metal plating. She didn’t realize when the sound started playing, either. It took several seconds for the noise to penetrate the fog in her brain, to filter through the static of near-death and make itself known.
When it did, her blood turned to ice.
Moaning. The sound was unmistakably moaning—high-pitched, breathy, rhythmic moaning that could only come from one source, one activity. Her eyes snapped into focus, darting to the holographic display and what she saw there made bile rise in her throat.
The video showed a woman. She had the same hair colour as Y/N—the same shade, the same length, falling around her face in a familiar manner. Her build was similar too, the same general proportions, the same curves and angles.
Y/N’s stomach lurched as the woman on screen began to move, began to writhe against a pillow clutched between her thighs, began to make those sounds, those horrible, obscene sounds that echoed through the cavernous space and seemed to bounce off every metal surface. The woman’s face was contorted in an expression of exaggerated pleasure, her eyes half-closed, her mouth open in a perpetual O of manufactured ecstasy. It was performative, theatrical, clearly intended for an audience but that somehow made it worse, not better.
Y/N stared at the hologram in horror, her mind racing to catch up with what she was seeing, what this meant, why he was showing her this. Her vision had cleared completely now, the spots faded to nothing, leaving only the sharp, sickening reality of the images playing out before her eyes. The woman on screen shifted position, grinding against the pillow with renewed vigour and a fresh wave of nausea crashed over Y/N like a physical force.
Why? The question screamed through her mind, desperate and disbelieving. Why does he want to see that? Why is he showing me this?
It wasn’t the first time Megatron had made her do something that bordered on the sexual. She had told herself, again and again, that it didn’t mean anything—that he was an alien robot from another planet, a being with no understanding of human conventions, no regard for the boundaries and taboos that governed organic society. When he touched her in ways that made her skin crawl, she told herself it was curiosity. When he positioned her body like a doll, arranging her limbs in poses that felt wrong in ways she couldn’t articulate, she told herself it was aesthetics. When he made her strip for his inspection, examining every inch of her flesh, she told herself it was clinical, scientific observation of a superior being studying a lesser life form.
She had told herself these things because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate. The alternative was that he knew exactly what he was doing. The alternative was that he understood, on some level, the significance of his actions—and simply didn’t care.
But this. This was different. This wasn’t clinical observation or detached curiosity or the awkward fumbling of an alien who didn’t understand human norms. This was deliberate. This was calculated. This was him seeking out human sexual content, choosing a video featuring a woman who looked like her and bringing it here to show her. This wasn’t ignorance—this was intention. This was the thing that finally, irrevocably sealed and stamped the truth she had been trying so desperately to avoid.
“Remarkable creatures, humans.” Megatron’s voice drifted down from above her, almost academic. “So fragile, so brief and yet you devote so much of your limited existence to... this.” One massive finger gestured toward the hologram, the movement casual, dismissive. “The pursuit of physical sensation. The simulation of pleasure. The recording and sharing of such private acts for the entertainment of strangers.”
His voice cut through her spiralling thoughts like a blade and she looked up to find those red optics fixed on her with an intensity that made her want to disappear. There was something in his gaze that she had never seen before—or maybe she had seen it and simply refused to acknowledge it. Interest. Appetite. The look of someone who had just discovered a new form of entertainment and was eager to try it for themselves.
The moaning continued from the hologram, filling the silence between them with its obscene rhythm. Y/N’s hands trembled at her sides. Her throat ached where the collar sat. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s always known. And there’s nothing you can do to stop him.
He paused for a second and then continued,” I wondered if these... performances... were accurate representations of human intimacy. I wondered if the sounds were genuine, the reactions authentic, the pleasure real.” Megatron tilted his head, the gesture eerily human despite the alien features. “And then I wondered something else. I wondered if you made those sounds.”
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Y/N felt her face drain of color, felt her stomach drop as if the floor had suddenly vanished beneath her.
“You are so quiet, my pet,” Megatron observed, his voice soft now, too soft—and that was somehow worse than his usual commanding tone. “Even when I touch you, even when I push you to your limits. You flinch, you tremble, you cry, you curl into yourself—but you do not make those sounds.” His finger reached out again, tracing along her jaw with impossible delicacy. “I find myself... curious. What would it take, I wonder, to make you vocalize? What would it take to hear those sounds from your lips?”
The hologram changed again, this time showing something even more explicit—acts Y/N had seen before and some even done with previous partners but all of them were humans and never forced. Not like this at least.
“I have decided to conduct an experiment.” Megatron maintained his calm tone, as if he were discussing a scientific procedure rather than the systematic destruction of her last remaining shreds of dignity. “You will recreate these... performances... for me. Here. Now. In my palm.”
Y/N’s head snapped up, her eyes wide with horror. “I—I can’t—”
“You can,” he corrected gently and the gentleness was somehow more terrifying than any threat he could have made. “The question is whether you will. And whether your reluctance will require... encouragement.”
The collar around her neck tightened once again and panic rose in her eyes. Her lungs still burned with the phantom need for air that had been denied her just minutes ago. And somewhere in the depths of her fractured mind, a small, broken voice whispered the only truth that mattered anymore. Survive. Just survive. Whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, just survive.
Y/N closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were empty. “Yes, my lord.” The words fell from her lips like stones into still water—flat, lifeless, creating ripples that spread outward and then vanished as if they had never been. She didn’t recognize her own voice. It belonged to someone else, some other woman who had never existed, some hollow shell that wore her face and spoke with her tongue but contained nothing of her inside.
Megatron watched. Those crimson optics studied her with the detached fascination of a scientist observing a specimen, of an artist examining a canvas, of a predator savouring the moment before the strike. He said nothing, offered no acknowledgment of her compliance, no reassurance that her surrender would be rewarded. He simply watched and his watching was its own form of violation.
Then the metal beneath her began to change.
She felt it before she saw it—a subtle shifting of the surface under her thighs, a rearrangement of molecules that sent tiny vibrations through her skin. Looking down, she watched in horrified fascination as the smooth metal of his palm rippled and flowed like liquid mercury, reshaping itself into something new. When the movement stopped, a raised ridge stood before her—perhaps twelve inches long, six inches wide, covered in evenly spaced bumps and ridges that caught the harsh artificial light and gleamed with cold promise.
Her stomach clenched. She knew what this was. She knew what it was for. And knowing didn’t make it any easier to accept.
With trembling legs, she mounted the ridge. The motion felt surreal, dreamlike, as if she were watching herself from outside her own body. She positioned herself over the raised surface, her hands bracing on either side of the hump for support, her knees sinking slightly into the cooler metal surrounding it. And then she felt it—the press of cold metal against her most intimate place, the sensitive flesh of her core making contact with those ridged bumps and a shiver raced down her spine so violently that her entire body shook.
The cold was shocking. Not painful, not exactly but so intensely present that she couldn’t think past it. It seeped into her, through her, making her acutely aware of every point of contact between her flesh and the unyielding metal beneath her. She sat there, frozen, unmoving, her mind desperately trying to convince her that this wasn’t happening, that she would wake up any second now in her furs, that reality couldn’t possibly be this cruel.
But reality was exactly this cruel and she didn’t wake up.
Megatron’s talon traced along her spine, the point so sharp she felt it dimpling her skin without quite breaking through, the metal so cold it left a trail of goosebumps in its wake. The sensation was electric, overwhelming—a jolt that travelled from the base of her skull all the way down to the tips of her toes, making her arch involuntarily into the touch she simultaneously craved and despised.
“Move, pet.”
The command carried the weight of his absolute authority. This was not a request. This was not an invitation. This was an order and she had already learned the consequences of disobedience.
Y/N swallowed deeply, her throat working against the lump of shame and despair that had taken up permanent residence there. She closed her eyes again—just for a moment, just long enough to gather what little remained of her courage—and then she began to move.
Her hips rocked back and forth, a tentative, hesitant motion that barely qualified as movement. The ridges beneath her shifted against her flesh, the bumps catching and releasing in a rhythm that was entirely her own. But then something changed. The ridges themselves began to move—not independently but in response to her motion, shifting and undulating to match the pace she had set. It was as if the metal had become alive, had learned what she needed before she knew it herself and was now determined to give it to her whether she wanted it or not.
The sensation was maddening.
For the past several months—how many? she had lost count—she had felt the touch of no one but Megatron. His hands, his fingers, the talons tracing paths across her skin. But those touches had always been clinical, possessive, the explorations of a collector examining a prized possession. They had never been intimate. They had never sought to please her. Her body had been touched but never satisfied, acknowledged but never fulfilled. And in that time, denied any outlet, any release, any moment of private indulgence—because when was she ever truly alone? when was she ever unwatched? Her desires had built up like pressure in a sealed vessel, growing and growing with no way to escape.
She would be lying if she said she hadn’t noticed. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t felt the ache, the longing, the desperate need for something, anything, that might provide relief. But survival had consumed her every waking thought. Staying alive, staying sane, staying one step ahead of the monsters who held her captive—that was all that mattered. Her desires, her frustrations, her needs had been pushed aside, buried so deep that she had almost forgotten they existed.
The metal beneath her hadn’t forgotten.
The first whimper escaped before she could stop it—a small, pathetic sound that seemed to come from somewhere outside herself. She clamped her lips together, embarrassed by her own weakness but the damage was done. The sound had escaped and had been heard and noted and filed away for future reference. And now that the seal was broken, more sounds followed. Tiny whimpers, barely audible gasps, the softest moans that she tried desperately to stifle even as her hips continued their involuntary rhythm.
She was moving faster now, her body betraying her in ways she couldn’t control. The ridges and bumps seemed to have learned her completely, anticipating every shift of her weight, every tilt of her pelvis, providing exactly the pressure she needed exactly when she needed it. It was as if the metal itself had become an extension of her own desires—desires she had never acknowledged, never explored, never even fully understood.
Then she felt it again—that familiar flow of liquid metal, that terrifying sensation of her prison reshaping itself around her. Before she could react, before she could even process what was happening, bands of solidified metal clamped around her thighs. They locked into place with soft clicks, pinning her to the ridged surface beneath her, holding her in position so that she couldn’t stop moving even if she wanted to.
And she did want to. Part of her—the part that was still her, the part that remembered who she used to be—screamed at her to stop, to fight, to resist this ultimate violation. But her body kept moving, kept grinding, kept chasing something she didn’t want to want. And her mind, already hazy from the sensory overload, already broken by months of captivity, couldn’t muster the strength to fight back.
Her hand moved without conscious direction, snaking down her body until her fingers found her clit. The touch was electric—her own flesh against her own flesh, familiar and strange all at once. She began to rub, small circles that built on the sensation from below, that added another layer to the overwhelming assault on her senses. Her other hand flew to her mouth, pressing against her lips, trying desperately to stifle the moans that were building in her throat, trying to maintain at least this one small shred of dignity.
But the moans kept coming, muffled but audible, escaping around her fingers no matter how hard she pressed. And above her, watching with those intense crimson optics, Megatron smiled.
“Remove your hand. I want to hear those sounds.”
The command cut through the haze like a blade and Y/N’s body responded before her mind could catch up. Her hand fell away, dropping to her side as if burned, leaving her completely exposed to whatever new torment he had devised. But something was different now. The ridges beneath her—those strange, textured surfaces on his palm that she had barely registered before—they didn’t stop moving when her hand withdrew.
If anything, they grew more insistent, more deliberate, pressing against her most sensitive places with an accuracy that couldn’t be coincidence. She gasped, her hips jerking involuntarily as the sensation built, as the friction intensified, as she felt herself climbing toward something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in months.
It wasn’t enough. It was maddeningly, frustratingly, achingly not enough.
Her body moved on its own, chasing the sensation, grinding against the textured surface with increasing desperation. Her spare hand found its way to her breast, fingers curling around the soft flesh, squeezing and kneading in a rhythm she couldn’t control. The touch was clumsy, inexperienced, nothing like what she actually needed—but it was something, anything, to add to the overwhelming stimulation building between her thighs.
“Mmmh... more.” The words escaped her lips before she could stop them, slurred and breathy and utterly unlike her. “Meg... I want more...”
A laugh rumbled through the metal beneath her—deep, resonant and unmistakably amused. But there was something else in that sound, something she had never heard from him before. It wasn’t the cold, cruel laughter she was used to. It was warmer, richer, almost... pleased. The surface of his palm grew warmer beneath her, the metal conducting heat in a way she had never experienced in all her time in this frozen base.
Megatron didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. Something changed.
The ridges didn’t just move anymore—they vibrated. A low, thrumming pulse started beneath her, building in intensity until her entire body was shaking with it. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever felt, a deep, penetrating vibration that seemed to reach places she didn’t know existed. Her hips moved faster, driven by forces both internal and external, the mechanism of his palm guiding her movements with terrifying precision.
“Aah, Megatron...” His name fell from her lips like a prayer, like a curse, like something she had no right to speak. “Hmm, yes... Almost there. I—”
Her fingers against her clit, rubbing in faster, tighter circles as the vibration beneath her pushed her higher, harder, faster than she could have believed possible. The sensations built and built, coiling in her belly like a spring wound too tight and she was dimly aware of her own voice growing louder, more desperate, more wanton with every passing second.
And beneath it all, she heard something else.
The rumble of his machinery, yes—but also something more. Hisses from whatever gears and pistons were creating this incredible sensation. And beneath that, soft, growling sounds that she realized, with a jolt of disbelief, were coming from him. From Megatron. Low in his chest, rumbling through the metal of his palm and into her very bones—sounds of pleasure, of enjoyment, of something that looked horrifyingly like arousal.
He was enjoying this.
Not in his usual sadistic way—not the cold satisfaction of watching her suffer, not the cruel amusement of pushing her to her limits. This was different. This was visceral, primal, genuine. The warmth of his palm, the precision of his movements, the sounds escaping his vocalizer despite himself—all of it pointed to a truth so disturbing that her mind tried to reject it even as her body hurtled toward release.
Megatron, the tyrant, the destroyer, the most feared being in the galaxy—was getting pleasure from this. From her. From watching her fall apart in his palm.
The realization should have horrified her. It should have disgusted her, should have shattered whatever fragile composure she had left. And in some distant corner of her mind, it did—she could feel the horror waiting there, patient and inevitable, ready to consume her when this was over.
But right now, with the vibration building against her core and her body coiling tighter and tighter toward something she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to—something she desperately needed even though every rational thought screamed that this was wrong, this was degradation, this was exactly what he wanted—there was no room for horror. There was no space in her mind for shame or fear or the sickening realization of what she was doing, who she was doing it for, why she was here in the first place.
There was only sensation.
Only the relentless pressure building low in her belly, spreading outward through her limbs like liquid fire. Only the desperate climb toward release, toward that peak she could sense but couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t quite grasp no matter how her body arched and strained against the massive fingers that held her so carefully, so precisely in place. Only the overwhelming, all-consuming need to finally, finally let go—to stop fighting, stop resisting, stop pretending she had any control over what was happening to her body.
She was so close. So achingly, torturously close. Every nerve ending in her body felt like it was on fire, sparking and singing with sensation that built and built and built with no release in sight. Her hands gripped whatever they could reach—one of his fingers, the edge of his palm, anything to anchor herself as the world narrowed to this single point of contact, this single source of pleasure that she hated herself for wanting.
“Haaa... Megatron... please...”
The words escaped her before she could stop them, before she could even register what she was saying. Her voice was wrecked, desperate, stripped of everything except raw need. She didn’t recognize it as her own.
“I’m so close... please...”
She didn’t know what she was begging for. Didn’t know if she was begging him to stop this torment, to end the exquisite torture of being held on the edge of release without being allowed to fall. Didn’t know if she was begging him to continue, to push her higher, to give her what her body craved even as her mind recoiled from the implications. The words came from somewhere beyond thought—from the primal core of her being that cared nothing for dignity or defiance or survival. From the place that just wanted to feel.
Her hips bucked against the vibration, chasing it, needing it and a sob tore from her throat—half pleasure, half despair. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, sliding down her temples and into her hair. Her entire body was trembling now, caught in that endless moment between building and breaking, between control and chaos.
And then, through the haze of sensation that consumed her, she heard his voice.
Low. Rough. Altered in ways she couldn’t quite identify—ways that made something deep in her primitive brain sit up and take notice, even as the rest of her was drowning in pleasure. There was a rasp to it, a gravelly quality that hadn’t been there before. A tension that spoke of... what? Interest? Appreciation? Something else entirely?
“Then take it, pet.”
The words rolled over her like thunder, like permission and command woven into one irresistible package. They were exactly what she needed—the final push, the last piece of the puzzle, the thing that unlocked everything she had been holding back.
Her body shattered.
The orgasm crashed over her like a wave, like a tidal wave, like everything she had been holding in for weeks and months and a lifetime finally breaking free all at once. Her back arched off his palm, her head thrown back, her mouth open in a soundless cry that only resolved itself into a scream as the pleasure crested and broke and swept her away. Her entire body convulsed, muscles clenching and releasing in rhythms she couldn’t control, couldn’t begin to understand. Sparks danced behind her closed eyelids. Her hands clenched into fists, nails biting into her palms hard enough to leave marks.
For one eternal moment, there was nothing else. Nothing but the sensation. Nothing but the release. Nothing but the overwhelming, undeniable truth of her own body responding to stimulus in ways she had never experienced before.
And then, slowly, agonizingly, she came back to herself.
The vibration had stopped—she didn’t know when, didn’t know if he had turned it off or if she had simply stopped being able to feel it through the intensity of her release. Her body was limp, boneless, sprawled across his palm like a ragdoll discarded by a careless child. Her breath came in ragged gasps, each one a struggle, each one a reminder that she was still alive, still here, still trapped in this nightmare.
Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy and the first thing she saw was him.
Megatron loomed above her, his massive form blocking out the harsh lights of the corridor beyond. His crimson optics were fixed on her with an intensity that made her shiver despite the lingering haze of pleasure still fogging her thoughts. There was something in his gaze that she couldn’t read—something new, something that hadn’t been there before.
Curiosity, yes. That was always there. Amusement, certainly—she had no doubt that such obscenity was entertaining to him. But there was something else, too. Something that looked almost like... satisfaction. Like the expression of someone who had just confirmed a hypothesis. Like the look of a collector who had just acquired a particularly rare and precious specimen.
“How utterly captivating,” he murmured and the word was soft, almost reverent.
Y/N closed her eyes again. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Couldn’t bear to see whatever new calculation was forming behind those burning red optics. Couldn’t bear to face the truth of what she had just done—what she had just become—in the name of survival.
But even with her eyes closed, she could still feel him watching. Still feel the weight of his attention pressing down on her like a physical force. Still feel the aftershocks of her release trembling through her exhausted body.
Y/N lay limp in his palm, her chest heaving, her skin slick with a fine sheen of sweat that cooled rapidly in the base’s perpetual chill. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Could only exist in the aftermath, floating in a space between exhaustion and horror that felt almost peaceful in its emptiness.
But peace, she had learned, never lasted long in Megatron’s presence.
“You will do that again.”
The words were not a question. They were not a request. They were a statement of fact, delivered with the same casual certainty as someone observing that the sun would rise or that gravity would hold. Y/N’s eyes opened slowly, reluctantly and she found those red optics still fixed on her with that new, unsettling intensity.
“Again,” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper, cracked and raw from screaming. “You want me to—again?”
“I want to understand,” Megatron corrected and there was something almost scholarly in his tone now. “The first time was... informative. But one data point is insufficient for meaningful analysis. I need to observe the phenomenon repeatedly, under controlled conditions, to truly comprehend what I am witnessing.”
He shifted his hand slightly, adjusting her position with the same care someone might use to reposition a delicate instrument. “You will rest first, of course. I am not without... consideration for your limitations.” The word consideration dripped with irony and she knew—knew with sickening certainty—that this was not kindness but practicality. A broken toy was useless. A dead pet provided no entertainment.
“When you have recovered,” he continued, “we will begin again. And again. Until I have gathered sufficient data to satisfy my curiosity.” His optics narrowed slightly, the devilish glow intensifying. “Or until you are no longer capable of continuing. Whichever comes first.”
The threat hung in the air between them, unadorned and absolute. Y/N felt something inside her crumble—some last remaining wall of denial, some final bastion of hope that this was a nightmare she would eventually wake from. This was not a nightmare. This was her reality. This was her life now—a specimen to be studied, a pet to be played with, a toy to be used until she broke.
“How long?” The question escaped before she could stop it before she could think better of drawing attention to herself. “How long will you... study me?”
Megatron’s head tilted, the gesture almost contemplative. “An interesting question. The answer depends on many variables.” He began to move, his massive form shifting as he carried her away from the corridor outside her cage, deeper into the base. Where was he taking her? She had never been anywhere but her enclosure and this small area just outside it. The unknown terrified her almost as much as the known.
“How quickly I satisfy my curiosity. How long you remain... functional. Whether your responses continue to evolve in interesting ways.” His voice echoed off the metal walls as they passed through corridors she had never seen, past doors and hatches and machinery whose purposes she couldn’t begin to guess. “And, of course, whether any of the other Decepticons develop an interest in participating in my research.”
The last words landed like a physical blow. Other Decepticons. The thought of being passed around, studied by multiple pairs of optics, subjected to the same experiments by beings even crueler than Megatron—Starscream’s mocking laughter echoed in her memory and she shuddered violently.
“That possibility seems to distress you.” Megatron’s observation was detached yet possessed a streak of sick amusement. “Why? They are my subordinates. If I chose to share my findings with them, it would be a compliment to your uniqueness. A recognition that you are worthy of broader... attention.”
“Please.” The word was barely a whisper, barely a breath. “Please don’t.”
He stopped walking. The sudden stillness was almost worse than the movement—it meant she had his full attention, meant he was considering her plea, meant she had just revealed another weakness he could exploit.
“Please don’t what, pet?” His voice was low and almost dangerous. “Please don’t share you? Please don’t let others witness what you just did? Please don’t let anyone else see you come apart on my hand, screaming with pleasure you claim not to want?”
Each word was a blade, precise and cruel. Yet couldn’t meet his gaze, couldn’t do anything but stare at the metal of his palm beneath her and pray—to what, she didn’t know—that he would show mercy.
“Why should I deny myself the pleasure of watching their reactions?” Megatron continued, and she could hear the smile in his voice even without seeing it. “Imagine Starscream’s face when he realizes that the fragile human he dismissed as insignificant is capable of such... fascinating responses. Imagine Soundwave’s analysis. Imagine Shockwave’s scientific interest.” He paused, letting the images sink in. “You could be more than just my pet, little one. You could be a resource. A tool. A subject of study for the greatest minds among the Decepticons.”
“No.” The word came out stronger than she expected, fuelled by desperation. “No, please, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll let you study me however you want, just—please don’t give me to them. Please don’t let them—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t articulate the horrors her imagination was already conjuring. She had seen how the other Decepticons looked at her when they passed her enclosure—some with curiosity, some with disdain, some with an interest that made the hair on the nape of her neck stand even through layers of reinforced glass. If Megatron shared her recordings with them, if he opened the door to their involvement in his “studies,” she would cease to be a person entirely. She would become a communal resource. A toy. A thing to be passed around and used and broken and discarded.
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Megatron understood.
Something flickered in those crimson optics—not quite sympathy, never that, but acknowledgment. Recognition of her fear and the source of it. He had seen that look before, probably countless times, on countless faces across countless worlds. The look of someone facing a fate worse than death and begging for any alternative.
Without a word, he began walking back.
The journey back to her enclosure was brief but interminable, each of his massive strides carrying them closer to the only safety she had in this nightmare—a glass cage that had once felt like a prison but now seemed like a sanctuary. When they reached the narrow plank that led to her door, he set her down with a gentleness that would have been almost tender if she didn’t know exactly what he was capable of.
“Then you will have to make yourself indispensable to me.”
The words were simple but they carried the weight of a life sentence. She forced her head up, forced herself to meet those optics even though every instinct screamed at her to look away, to hide, to make herself small and invisible.
“You will have to prove that your value to me exceeds the value of sharing you with others.” His voice was calm, measured, as if he were discussing nothing more consequential than a business transaction. “You will have to give me reasons to keep you for myself.”
Reasons. She had to give him reasons. Had to prove herself worthy of being his alone—his possession, his property, his pet—rather than being passed around like a communal plaything for an entire army of monsters. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She was fighting for the right to remain captive to one being instead of many. She was begging to stay in a cage rather than be thrown into an arena.
“I won’t disappoint you, my lord.”
“I know you won’t, pet.”
╰ ┈➤ A/n: I’m sure by now y’all have realised the kinda freaky shi i do be into 😔😔🙏🙏 Also y’all CANNOT convince me that starscream isn’t a freak.
oops i genuinely didn’t see when @evyyy77 tagged me </3
ummm does this count as caine or bubble??? if it’s bubble i’m so screwed i could NOT put up with him for so long. if its caine then it’d probably be fun as long as he’s not crashing out like in episode 8
@vs-vapor @ilovebugs99 @caine-the-chair-smacker @alastormooseboi @zekehasarrived @kreechurthecrazykat + open tags :3
also @the-voices-speak cause i wanna be annoying /silly
Nyx: “Depends on if OCs count, cause if so that’s literally just my sona in a mafia family. If not then that’ll be interesting cause it’s both Griefer and Hatred Builder man from Blocktales.”
@sentient-car-hell @dearlycervine @smartdreamer @dragonkilatness @strawberry-hii @skillfullymoltenbehemoth @fuckingmonsterjammed @temmie-temmie and those who see it and want to join
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ slight angst. slight fluff. implied age gap. NONCON. drugging. somnophilia. yandere themes. oral (f!receiving). spit. Dex is a delusional pervert but wbk. thighfucking. pwp. MDNI
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Yan!Benjamin Poindexter x fem!reader
a/n*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ So this is set in the same universe as my fic, Devil in Disguise though it is set a bit before it. Comment, Like and Reblog
Dex was settling into the familiar rhythm of his nightly routine—the kind of ritual that kept the chaos at bay. Dinner was eaten at the right time, finished without delay. He washed the plates with methodical care, wiped each one dry and placed them back in their exact spots. Everything had to be perfect. His eyes swept across the living room, scanning for anything out of place. It was, as always, immaculate.
He walked toward the wall to switch off the lights when he heard it—a small, muffled thud. Not against his door but the one next to his. Then another. Dex paused, listening. The sound was soft but insistent, like something—or someone—knocking rhythmically from the other side of the wall. He opened his door and saw her: Y/n, his neighbour.
She had moved in a few months ago, a young law graduate with a smile that seemed to carry its own warmth. They had developed a friendship of sorts—casual, unspoken, but present. On her first day, she had knocked on his door with a plate of homemade cookies, calling it a “first impression offering.” Dex had accepted them without saying much but he remembered the way she laughed when he muttered a stiff thank you. She was sweet. Warm. There was a natural gravity to her that pulled Dex in without effort, without warning.
There was something about her that felt untouched by the darker corners of the world—something pure and kind in a way that made Dex both trust her and keep his distance. Just the other day, she had brought him dinner, claiming she’d “cooked too much.” But Dex knew better. The portion was perfect. The ingredients were good—expensive, even. The cooking itself felt deliberate, almost tender. It wasn’t leftovers. It was a gift wrapped in a sweet lie and he had accepted it anyway.
He had noticed her on his morning runs, too. She was always kind to the street vendors, patient with the elderly, gentle with stray animals. Once, he saw her hold her umbrella over a dog tied to a leash outside a supermarket, standing there in the rain until the owner came back. Dex hadn’t meant to follow her. That’s what he told himself, at least. It was just a coincidence that he happened to see her on his morning runs. Never mind that he started lacing up his running shoes the second he heard her door click shut. Never mind that he mentally tracked which days she went grocery shopping and suddenly found himself in need of eggs and bread.
He was good, though. He kept his distance. He didn’t make things obvious. He had his north star—someone he’d found years ago, back when he was barely holding on, at a suicide helpline. Julie. Her existence had been the anchor in his worst nights. But lately, something had shifted. The compulsive pull to reach out to her had begun to fade. Sure, he had still visited Julie a couple of times over the past few weeks, but it was different now. Less desperate. More like checking in on an old lifeline rather than clinging to it.
Maybe things were finally looking up.
The past weeks had been rough—Fisk was out again and that alone was enough to tighten the screws on Dex’s composure. But even so, he had managed to make it home every other night. The walls in his apartment were thin in places and through one particular seam in the plaster, he could hear her humming from the other side. It was sweet. Calming. As if that small, quiet sound could set things right in the world or at least in Dex’s.
“Y/n?”
Dex stepped out cautiously into the dim hallway, the door clicking shut behind him. The overhead light was flickering again—it had been for weeks—but even in that unsteady glow, he could see her clearly. Y/n was wearing clothes he had never seen on her before. A silvery dress that would have sat just above her knees if it hadn’t ridden up her thighs, clinging to her like second skin. Fishnets ran the length of her legs, one strap of her dress slipping carelessly off her shoulder. Her hair was dishevelled, falling in tangled waves around her face and her makeup—usually so neat, so controlled—had smeared across her cheeks and eyelids like watercolour in the rain.
She had gone clubbing. That much was obvious.
Dex hadn’t pegged her as the type. She always seemed so steady, so warm in that quiet, domestic way. But she was young. It made sense. And yet, seeing her like this—vulnerable, unguarded—stirred something unfamiliar in his chest. Not judgment. Not concern, exactly. Something softer. More dangerous.
“Dex?” Y/n slurred, her voice thick and slow. Her eyes squinted hard, as if trying to focus on him through a blurred, spinning daze. She pressed one hand flat against the wall and took a few wobbly steps in his direction, her heels clicking unevenly against the floor.
Dex watched her sway and immediately closed the distance between them. His hands hovered just above her sides—close enough to catch her if she fell, far enough to pretend he wasn’t touching her at all. He didn’t want to assume. Didn’t want to overstep. But the way her knees buckled slightly told him she was seconds away from collapsing.
“Hi,” she said and then she grinned—so wide her eyes squeezed shut, crinkling at the corners. There was something childlike in it, pure and sweet. She smelled of sweat and cheap alcohol and the faint floral perfume she always wore. It should have been off-putting. Dex didn’t care.
“Hello, Y/n,” he said quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Had a fun night?”
“Uh huh.” She nodded enthusiastically, the motion making her stumble forward another step. He steadied her without thinking, his palm barely brushing her elbow. “So fun,” she added with a giggle, then her face fell into an exaggerated pout. “But you know… I can’t find my keys.”
Dex felt something warm uncurl in his chest. She looked so utterly ridiculous and so utterly adorable at the same time—her smeared eyeliner, her fallen strap, her bottom lip jutting out like a child denied dessert. His fingers twitched at his sides with the urge to reach out, to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, to touch her properly for once. He didn’t.
Instead, he tilted his head toward the purse still dangling loosely from her arm. “Did you check your purse?”
“Of course I did.” Her indignation came out sharp and slurred all at once. “You think I’m a five-year-old?” She huffed and began digging through her bag with aggressive clumsiness, nearly dropping the contents out twice.
Even her anger was adorable. Dex smiled to himself and reached over. His fingers slipped past hers into the purse and came out with the keys in one smooth motion. The silver glinted under the flickering light.
Y/n stared at him as if he had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Her mouth fell open. “H-how did you—” she sputtered, her cheeks flushing pink beneath the smeared remnants of her makeup.
He held the keys up between them, jingling them once before unlocking the door and for a moment—just a moment—he let himself imagine what it might be like to be the person she came home to every night, “A good magician never reveals his tricks.”
Y/n huffed and stumbled past him into her apartment. She made it exactly six steps before collapsing onto the couch. “Collapsing” wasn’t quite right. Neither was “falling.” Sprawling was the word, though even that felt too graceful for what she’d just done. Her legs hooked over the backrest, her head dangled off the edge of the cushion, and her arms splayed out like a starfish washed ashore. Her dress had ridden up on her hips, but she didn’t seem to notice—or care.
“Thanks, Dex.” Her voice floated toward him, muffled by the couch cushions and her own exhaustion. “Don’t know what I’d do without ya.”
She threw up a peace sign without lifting her head, two fingers waggling vaguely in the air. It should have been ridiculous. It was. Dex stood in the doorway, one hand still on the frame, telling himself he should leave. This was her space. Her mess. Her night.
Against his better judgment—the same judgment that had failed him more times than he cared to count, Dex stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Let’s get you to bed, hmm?” He kept his tone soft, unhurried. Like coaxing a stray cat out of the rain.
Y/n groaned in agreement, then swung her legs off the backrest with a clumsy flourish. She sat up, briefly, before her torso swayed like a tower of blocks in a light wind. “Hmm,” she murmured, her eyelids drooping. “Bed sounds nice.”
She tried to stand. Her knees buckled immediately. She tried again, planting both palms on the couch cushion and pushing upward with the determination of someone trying to lift a car. Her legs refused to cooperate entirely, folding beneath her like wet paper.
She looked up at Dex from her failed crouch, her bleary eyes wide and almost lucid for a moment. A sheepish expression crept across her smudged face—part embarrassment, part plea.
“Do you need help getting up, Y/n?” Dex asked carefully. He wasn’t sure if he was sparing her further embarrassment or adding to it just by asking. Either way, the question hung between them like a held breath.
“Yeah,” she whispered, then added something indistinct—something about her legs betraying her, about how she used to do gymnastics as a kid, about how this was humiliating. Most of it dissolved into mumbles.
Dex reached for her outstretched hands and pulled. Nothing happened. He pulled harder and for a terrible moment, he worried he might pop her arms out of their sockets like wings off a doll. She was heavier than she looked, or maybe just dead weight in a way that had nothing to do with mass.
So, he leaned closer. He slid his arms under her armpits—the same way you’d lift a child out of a shopping cart or pull someone from shallow water and hoisted her upward in one steady motion. Her body sagged against his for a brief second, warm and smelling of too many things at once, before he adjusted his grip.
“I’m not a child,” she whined, her forehead bumping against his shoulder. But she didn’t resist. Didn’t push away. Her fingers curled loosely into the fabric of his shirt as if holding on to the last solid thing in a spinning room.
Dex carried her to her bedroom. Her legs dragged behind them like boulders, her bare feet skimming the floor, her heels abandoned somewhere in the living room. He nudged the bedroom door open with his hip and set her down on the edge of the bed as gently as he could manage—like placing a broken thing on a shelf, hoping it might hold together a little longer.
Her body was hunched forward, her head bowed low as if the weight of the night had finally settled on her shoulders. She wasn’t looking up. Her hands lay limp in her lap, fingers occasionally twitching like she was trying to remember how to move them. The dim light from her bedside lamp caught the curve of her cheek, the tangled mess of her hair, the small smudge of lipstick near her jaw he hadn’t noticed before.
Dex didn’t speak. He simply lowered himself to her level, bending one knee to the floor so his eyes could meet hers—or at least so she wouldn’t have to lift her head any higher than she already couldn’t manage. The carpet was scratchy beneath his knee, but he didn’t move.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, sunshine?”
The nickname slipped out before he could stop it. He hadn’t planned it. Hadn’t rehearsed it. But it felt right in his mouth—warm, almost tender, like something he’d been holding back for weeks.
Y/n blinked at him, slow and dopey, and offered a sleepy smile. “Can you get me my night suit? It’s purple and has blue flowers on it.”
Dex nodded once and rose to his feet. He crossed the small bedroom toward the closet, his footsteps muffled by the scattered clothes and discarded shoes on the floor. When he pulled the closet door open, a faint sweet scent drifted out—something soft and floral, the kind of fragrance that clung to skin and sheets and memory. Tucked in the corner, he spotted a small wardrobe perfume packet, the kind meant to keep clothes smelling fresh. It smelled almost exactly like her perfume. Of course it did.
His hand moved before his mind could catch up.
His fingers traced over her clothes—blouses hung on thin velvet hangers, folded sweaters stacked neatly on a shelf, a few dresses she wore to work. He felt the softness of the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, thinking back to seeing her in some of these. The cream-colored cardigan she’d worn the morning she brought him dinner. The green blouse she had on when she laughed so hard, she snorted. The grey hoodie she threw on for late-night grocery runs.
He opened the drawers next, searching for the night suit she’d described. And then his breath hitched.
It was her underwear drawer.
Most of them were cotton, simple and practical, in soft colours: blue, pink, yellow, lavender. Some had minimal patterns—tiny polka dots, thin stripes, a small bow stitched into the centre of the waistband. These were the kinds of things he might have expected. The kinds of things that felt safe to see.
But then his gaze drifted to the far end of the drawer.
Lace.
Delicate, intricate patterns in fabric so thin it was almost wispy. Sheer enough that looking at them felt like crossing a line he hadn’t known he was approaching. Blacks and deep reds and a shade of midnight blue that reminded him of the sky just before dawn. His fingers grazed the edge of one—lace cool and light against his skin and images flooded his mind before he could stop them.
Y/n was a beautiful woman. No doubt about that. She was young and sweet and her smile was as good as her figure. Dex didn’t mean to look. He swore he didn’t.
But how could he not?
How could he not notice when she knelt down to retrieve something from under the couch, her back arching just so, the hem of her dress riding up? How could he not notice when he was up on a ladder fixing something on her roof and she looked up at him, and from that angle, he could see straight down the loose neckline of her shirt? How could he not notice when he sat in the dark in his car some nights—watching, just watching, not stalking, he told himself—and she forgot to draw her curtains and started changing, her silhouette moving behind the glass like a story he wasn’t meant to read?
He didn’t mean to look. Truly.
But what could he do when she was offering so freely? She didn’t know she was offering. That was the problem. That was the part that gnawed at him late at night, the part that made him feel like something was rotting beneath his ribs. She was just living her life. And he was just watching.
“Did you find it?” Y/n called out from the bed, her voice sleepy and slurred.
Dex snapped back to the present like a man waking from a trance. His hand withdrew from the drawer as if burned. He spotted the purple night suit with blue flowers, folded neatly at the opposite end of the drawer, far from the lace and snatched it quickly. He didn’t look back at the rest. He couldn’t.
He walked back to the bed and placed the night suit gently on her lap, careful not to let his fingers linger.
“Here,” he said, his voice quieter than he intended.
“Thanks, Dexie,” Y/n muttered, her voice thick and drowsy. Her fingers found the straps of her silvery dress and began to push them down her shoulders without a second thought—casual, unguarded, as if he were furniture rather than a man standing three feet away.
“Whoa—Y/n.” Dex’s eyes went wide, his body jerking backward like he’d been shocked. His hands flew up to his face, palms pressing over his eyes with more force than necessary. He wasn’t trying to be a hero. He was trying not to look like a creep. “I’ll wait in the living room.”
Y/n responded with something unintelligible—a hum, a mumble, maybe the beginning of a protest that dissolved before it reached her lips. Dex didn’t wait to find out. He turned on his heel and walked out, closing the bedroom door behind him just enough to leave a sliver of deniability.
He stood in her living room, hands shoved into his pockets, jaw tight. The clock on her wall ticked loudly. Somewhere in the building, a toilet flushed. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. Nothing like the thunderstorm happening inside his chest.
A few moments later, her voice floated through the crack in the door. “Dex?”
He straightened. “Yeah?”
A pause. Then, quieter. “Could you help me with the… thing? In the back.”
Dex closed his eyes for half a second, exhaled through his nose and walked back in.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to him. Both straps of the dress had slid completely down. Her fishnets were gone—he spotted them crumpled on the floor near the foot of the bed. Her hair had been swept to one side, exposing the elegant line of her neck and the long stretch of her bare back.
The dress had a small decorative corset at the back—silver ribbons laced through fabric loops, purely for show, the kind of detail you added when you wanted something to look delicate. Beneath it, a zipper ran from the bottom of the corset down to the small of her back. The laces were half done. Or maybe she had simply given up.
Dex felt the urge immediately—a pull so physical it was almost painful. The desire to touch. To run his knuckles slowly down the ridge of her spine. To press his palm flat against her warm skin and feel the subtle shift of muscle beneath. To trace each vertebra like a promise.
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
Not because he didn’t want to. God, he wanted to. But because he couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk letting his urges show. Couldn’t risk shattering whatever fragile, unnamed thing had grown between them over these past few months—the cookies and the borrowed sugar, the dinners she claimed were accidents and the morning runs that absolutely were not.
So, Dex did what he had trained himself to do. He compartmentalized. He focused on the task. He worked the silver laces loose with careful, deliberate fingers, trying his hardest not to brush against her skin. The ribbons slid free one by one, and then he gripped the tiny zipper pull and drew it down in one slow, steady motion.
The zip ended right at the base of her back. Right where the curve of her spine met the gentle dip above her hips.
She had dimples there. Small, symmetrical indentations just above the curve of her backside. Soft. Deliberate. As if someone had pressed their thumbs into warm clay and left a permanent impression.
Dex stopped breathing.
His hands hovered in the air behind her, trembling almost imperceptibly. The urge surged again, hot and sharp and entirely unwelcome. He wanted to grab her waist. Wanted to press his thumbs directly into those dimples. Wanted to feel the way she might arch into him or pull away. And Y/n was a vocal person in general, he had noticed that months ago. She let out small squeaks and sounds whenever anything happened. When she dropped a spoon. When she stubbed her toe. When she reached for something on a high shelf. Simple things. Ordinary things. And so Dex found himself wondering—in the half second of silence before he pulled his hands away—what sort of sounds would she make if he pressed down on those dimples while buried deep inside her?
The thought arrived fully formed, devastating in its clarity.
He swallowed hard. Stepped back. Said nothing.
“Thanks, Dex,” she whispered, already pulling the nightshirt over her head and shimmying the dress down beneath it. The purple fabric with blue flowers swallowed her whole, hiding every inch of skin he had just been imagining.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” Dex said, rougher than he intended and didn’t really wait for a response.
He walked to her kitchen, the floor cool beneath his feet and stood at the sink with his hands braced against the counter. He filled a glass without really seeing it. His reflection in the dark kitchen window stared back at him—hollow-eyed and hungry, ravenous for something that had little to do with food.
In all honesty, he needed to get away. Horrible, sinful thoughts plagued his mind like locusts, devouring every quiet field of restraint he had spent years cultivating. He wanted her. Not in the soft, romantic way people wrote about in books. Not in the candlelight-and-whisper way. He wanted her the way a starving animal wanted a meal—messy and desperate and without grace.
He walked back from the kitchen, the glass of water cool and sweating in his hand, and handed it to Y/n. She took it with both palms, cradling it like a small animal, and drank half of it in one long, unsteady gulp. Water spilled down her chin but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You know, Dex?” she began, her voice quieter now, the earlier slur fading into something more worn. “Whenever I get drunk, for some reason I keep waking up in the night from weird dreams. At odd times. And then the fucking hangover the next day.” She let out a breath that was almost a laugh but not quite. “I hate it so much.”
There was something raw beneath her words—a weariness that wasn’t from the alcohol and had everything to do with the months before it. She gestured vaguely toward the vanity in the corner, where a packet of makeup wipes sat next to a tangle of hair ties and an empty coffee mug. Dex grabbed them without being asked and placed them within her reach.
In truth, Y/n hadn’t gone clubbing because it was something she particularly enjoyed. The noise. The crowds. The press of strangers’ bodies in the dark. None of it was really her. But her college friends had been in town, old faces, old memories, old versions of herself and she had joined them for a night out. Told herself she owed them that much. Told herself she owed herself a break.
Her brother Matt’s passing hadn’t been particularly easy on her. That was an understatement so vast it was almost insulting but she didn’t have better words for it. After all, he was the only family she had left. Some days, the grief arrived like a wave—predictable, crashing, receding. Other days, it was just there, a low hum beneath everything, the way you only notice the absence of silence when someone points it out. She had spent a lot of time moping. That was her word for it. Moping. When she wasn’t working, she was drifting through her apartment in old sweats, eating cereal for dinner, staring at walls. Foggy and Karen helped only so much. They meant well—they always meant well—but they had their own lives, their own grief, their own versions of Matt to carry.
Having Dex around was what really made the difference.
She hadn’t expected him. Hadn’t planned for him. He was just there one day, a quiet presence on the other side of the wall and then he was there at her door with a tool she’d asked to borrow and then he was there on the stairs with groceries and then he was just… there. Always there. A bright presence even on her dark days. Helping her with little things. Fixing her sink. Changing her lightbulbs. Noticing when she had looked down and showing up with something warm. He wasn’t loud about it. He didn’t make her feel like a burden. He just existed in her orbit, steady and constant, like he had decided somewhere along the way that she was worth being near.
Sometimes, Y/n thought Dex felt like a guardian angel. Not the kind with harps and halos. The rougher kind. The kind that showed up with calloused hands and said very little but stayed when she needed someone to.
“I have chamomile tea,” Dex said, his voice pulling her back to the present. “It helps with sleep.”
Y/n looked up at him. Behind the lingering daze in her eyes, something else flickered—conflict. She had already taken so much from Dex. His time. His attention. His small kindnesses. She couldn’t ask for more. It wouldn’t be right. The thought sat heavy in her chest, guilt curdling beneath her ribs.
Dex saw it. He always saw it. And before she could open her mouth to refuse—to say something polite and self-denying about not wanting to be a bother—he spoke again.
“I’ll make some for you.”
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an offer. It was a statement, delivered with the quiet finality of someone who had already decided and wasn’t interested in debate. He turned and left before she could say anything.
Back in his apartment, Dex moved through the familiar motions with mechanical precision. He grabbed a clean cup from the cabinet, then a box of chamomile tea bags from the shelf beside the coffee canister. His kitchen was small and immaculate—everything in its place, no dishes in the sink, the counter wiped down to a shine. Order. Control. The only things he could reliably manage.
He brought everything to the kitchen table, poured hot water from the kettle into the cup and watched the tea bag steep. The liquid darkened slowly, amber bleeding into clear. Steam curled upward, fragrant and mild.
Given how much she had drunk, the tea alone probably wouldn’t be strong enough. Chamomile was gentle. Soothing, yes. But against the kind of hangover she was describing, the kind that came with fragmented sleep and strange dreams, it might not do much more than hydrate her.
His eyes drifted across the table to a small orange bottle. His sleeping pills. He had just gotten the prescription refilled yesterday. The bottle sat there, innocent and unassuming, a dozen small tablets inside waiting to do what they were designed to do.
Perhaps that would help?
The thought arrived quietly, almost reasonably. She said she struggled with sleep. The tea alone might not be enough. Just one pill crushed into the cup, she wouldn’t even taste it. She would sleep deeply. No weird dreams. No waking at odd hours. She would wake up groggy, maybe, but better than she would have otherwise. It would help her.
A voice in his head started to build the case, calm and logical and terribly persuasive.
He shut it down promptly.
No. He couldn’t. It wasn’t right. The words felt flimsy even as he thought them, but they were true. He wasn’t an animal. He couldn’t do something like this. Not to her. Not to Y/n. She trusted him. She didn’t know about the other things—the morning runs that weren’t coincidences, the nights spent watching her window, the drawer of lace he had no business opening. But she trusted the version of him she knew. The one who brought her tea and fixed her sink and had dinner with her.
That version of him would never drug her.
But it would help her. Didn’t she just say she struggles with sleep? Didn’t she look exhausted? Didn’t she deserve one night of real rest?
The voice returned, softer this time, almost gentle. Dex stared at the orange bottle. His hand hovered over the cup of tea, the chamomile scent rising around him like a question he didn’t want to answer.
Dex crossed the hallway with the cup, the warmth seeping through the ceramic and into his palms. The door to Y/n’s apartment was still open, exactly as he had left it. Either she had been too tired to get up and close it, or some small, trusting part of her had left it ajar just for him.
He stepped inside and found her in the same spot as before, still perched on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t moved. Her shoulders were slumped, her bare feet pressed flat against the floor as if anchoring herself to something solid. She looked smaller somehow. Less like the warm, radiant woman who brought him cookies and more like someone who had been carrying something heavy for far too long.
Dex walked over and extended the cup toward her. Steam curled up between them, carrying the gentle, honeyed scent of chamomile.
“Something for your head,” he said quietly.
Y/n looked up at him, her eyes still glassy but softer now—less lost, more grateful. She wrapped her fingers around the cup and murmured a thank you that seemed to cost her nothing and everything all at once.
She lifted the cup to her lips and took a slow, careful sip.
The warmth spread through her immediately—not just in her throat or her chest, but deeper, like sunlight bleeding through frost. The chamomile was rich and soothing, a quiet contrast to the sharp, chemical burn of the alcohol she had been drinking all night. She could feel something in her begin to loosen. Not just her muscles, though they softened too. It was the weariness—not just of the day, but of the week, the month, the long and lonely stretch of months before that. The kind of exhaustion that lived in her bones, that she had stopped noticing because noticing would mean admitting how tired she really was.
And then, slowly, strangely, it began to dissolve. Not disappear entirely, nothing could do that, but fade into something lighter. A strange weightlessness, as if the tea had reached into her chest and untied a knot she didn’t even know she had been holding.
Her eyelids grew heavier. Her breathing slowed. She took another sip, then another, until the cup was nearly empty.
Dex watched her in silence. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. He simply stood there, a few feet away, his presence steady and unfaltering. When she lowered the cup and let her hands fall into her lap, he stepped forward and gently took it from her. Their fingers brushed again. Neither of them acknowledged it.
“Close the door behind you when you leave,” Y/n said, her voice soft and drowsy, already half-muffled by the pillow she was turning toward. “I don’t really want to get up.”
Dex nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes had already fluttered shut, her body curling into the mattress like a cat finding warmth.
“Of course,” he said.
He walked to the door, pausing for just a moment to look back at her. The faint rise and fall of her shoulder beneath the purple fabric. The way her hair fanned across the pillow. The peaceful stillness on her face—something he had rarely seen before.
Then he stepped into the hallway, pulled the door closed behind him, and stood there in the dim light, holding her empty cup, wondering if he had just done something good or something terrible.
Back in his own apartment, Dex tossed and turned in his bed, the sheets twisted around his legs like restraints. He punched his pillow into a different shape, then another, then gave up entirely. Sleep was a foreign country tonight and he had lost his passport.
He tried to push the thoughts out of his head. Tried to drown them with logic, with restraint, with the memory of every good thing she had ever done for him. The cookies. The dinners. The way she smiled at him like he was someone worth smiling at.
He couldn’t do it. He shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t go so far.
Even if every single bone in his body told him to. Even if the urge had settled into his marrow, into the spaces between his ribs, into the quiet corners of his mind that he usually kept locked. Even if the thought of her, soft and trusting and utterly unaware, sent a current through him that felt less like desire and more like destiny.
He should let her be.
The drugs would have kicked in by now, a voice sounded in his head. Smooth. Reasonable. Almost kind. She’s not going to wake up. Not for hours. Not until the morning.
She trusts you, another voice fought back, sharper and more desperate. You shouldn’t do this. You can’t do this. Not to her.
But she’s asleep. The first voice returned, patient and persuasive. She wouldn’t even feel a thing. After all, you’ve been so nice to her. You’ve been there for her. You’ve helped her. You’ve protected her. You deserve this.
Dex sat up in bed, his heart hammering against his ribs. The room was dark except for the moonlight cutting through the blinds. His hands were trembling. He didn’t know if it was from restraint or anticipation.
He thought about the door. Since he had closed it, opening it again wouldn’t be an issue. She hadn’t asked him to lock it. She hadn’t told him to stay out. And deep down, somewhere beneath the alcohol and the weariness and the weight of everything she carried, she must have known. She must have left that door open for a reason. She wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t want him to come in. Not really. Not at some level. Even she must recognize what it is that she truly needs.
The thought tasted like poison and honey all at once.
Dex swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He didn’t turn on any lights. Didn’t put on shoes. Didn’t allow himself a single moment to reconsider. He simply walked to his front door, opened it and stepped into the hallway.
Her door was still closed from when he had left it. He turned the knob slowly, silently and slipped inside.
The apartment was dark and still, wrapped in that particular silence that only exists in the small hours of the night. No traffic. No neighbours. No hum of appliances. Just the soft, rhythmic sound of breathing coming from the bedroom.
The door to her bedroom was open.
Dex stood in the doorway for a long moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. Y/n was lying on the bed exactly where he had left her, except now she wasn’t sitting up. She had collapsed sideways across the mattress, one arm flung above her head, the other resting limply over her stomach. She wasn’t even tucked in properly. The purple nightshirt with blue flowers had ridden up her stomach, the shorts too exposing the soft curve of her thighs. Her legs were tangled in the duvet, one foot dangling off the edge of the bed.
The sleeping pills had acted faster than he had anticipated. They had pulled her under before she could gather the energy to arrange herself properly, to pull up the blankets, to close the curtains. She had simply fallen where she sat and the drugs had done the rest.
Dex’s gaze travelled over her slowly. There were still remnants of makeup on her face—smudged eyeliner beneath her closed eyes, a faint stain of lipstick on her lower lip, patches of foundation that the wipe had missed entirely. Her hair was a wild mess, tangled and flattened on one side, sticking up in soft tufts on the other. She looked young like this. Younger and more delicate. Vulnerable in a way that made something twist painfully in Dex’s chest.
He remembered something then. A passing comment she had made weeks ago, over breakfast—the time she had claimed she cooked too much and invited him to share. She had been rubbing at her chin, complaining about a breakout and she had said, almost offhandedly, that she broke out horribly if she slept with makeup on her face. My skin just freaks out, she had said with a laugh. It’s like it knows I’ve been lazy.
Dex turned away from the bed and walked to her vanity. The surface was cluttered—bottles and brushes and small glass jars, a hairbrush with strands of her hair still caught in the bristles, a necklace she had forgotten to put away. He found the micellar water easily enough, a clear bottle with a blue label and a round container of cotton pads beside it.
He brought them back to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. It dipped slightly under his weight and he froze for a moment, listening. Her breathing didn’t change. Slow. Deep. Unconscious.
He checked anyway. Leaned close to her face, watching for the flutter of her eyelids, the twitch of her lips, any sign that she might surface from the darkness. Nothing. Her chest rose and fell in a steady, unbroken rhythm. Her mouth was slightly open. A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek.
She was dead unconscious.
A small smile tugged at the corner of Dex’s mouth. Not a cruel one. Not triumphant. Something softer, more private—like the smile of a collector admiring a rare and precious thing that no one else would ever see.
He poured a small amount of micellar water onto a cotton pad until it was damp but not dripping. Then he carefully pulled her upper half toward him, sliding one arm behind her shoulders and lifting her just enough to reach her face. She was limp in his grip, heavy with sleep, her head lolling against his forearm. The warmth of her body seeped through the thin fabric of her nightshirt.
With feathery light touches—so gentle, so tender that anyone watching might have mistaken it for affection—he began to wipe the makeup from her face. Slow, circular motions across her forehead. Soft swipes along her cheekbones. Delicate dabs beneath her eyes, careful not to press too hard. He turned her chin slightly to the side and cleaned the residue from her jaw, her nose, the corners of her mouth.
She didn’t stir. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t make a single sound.
Underneath the makeup, layer by layer, Dex could see how tired she truly was. The faint purple shadows beneath her eyes. The slight pallor of her skin. The fine lines at the corners of her mouth that hadn’t been there in the photos on her walls—the ones of her and brother, brighter and untouched by grief.
But there was something else there too. With the tea in her system and the pills pulling her under, her face had softened into an expression he had never seen on her while awake. Peace. Not the forced kind, the I’m-fine smile she wore like armour. Real peace. The kind that came from a deeper rest than sleep alone could provide.
Dex set the used cotton pad aside and looked down at her. Clean-faced. Quiet. Completely at his mercy.
She had never looked more beautiful.
He stayed there, still for a moment, her head cradled against his arm. Her breath warm against his skin. The apartment was silent. The world was asleep. And Dex was exactly where he had wanted to be for months—close enough to touch her, close enough to keep her, close enough to do whatever he wanted.
He knew of her brother’s passing. It had happened a little before he had met her—just a few months, maybe less. The timing was something Dex had turned over in his mind more times than he cared to admit. A part of him—the part he tried to keep buried beneath layers of routine and restraint—was quietly, shamefully thankful. Because her brother’s, Matthew was his name if he recalled correctly, death had left her broken. Fractured in ways that didn’t show on the surface but that Dex could sense the way a shark senses blood in water from miles away. And that brokenness had left room for him. Room to step into the spaces Matt had once occupied. Room to pick up the pieces, one by one and make himself indispensable.
It had made it easier. Easier to insert himself into her life. Into her daily routine. Into her mornings and evenings, her grocery runs and her quiet nights in. And now, into her bedroom.
For the most part, she had come to him willingly. That was the truth Dex clung to, the rope he wound around his knuckles whenever the guilt threatened to pull him under. She had offered herself to him willingly—the cookies, the dinners, the smiles, the thank you’s. She had invited him in. She had left the door open. She had asked for his help, again and again, as if she trusted him with something more than just a borrowed tool or a fixing hand.
Just like now. Even unconscious, even drugged, even utterly incapable of consent—she had brought him here. She had called out for him. She had let him in. She had handed him the keys, in every way that mattered.
Dex pushed the thought aside. Or rather, he reshaped it into something he could live with.
The micellar water had done its work, wiping away the last traces of the night. In the faint light of the night, filtered through the thin curtains and softened to a pale silver glow, Dex could see her clearly. Not the version she presented to the world. The real her.
He traced the ridges and contours of her face with his eyes first, then with his fingertips. Featherlight. Barely there. The gentle slope of her forehead. The delicate arch of her brows. The soft plump of her cheeks, still flushed with the last remnants of alcohol. The impossible length of her lashes, dense against her skin, fanned out like tiny wings. And then—his touch hovered, hesitated, then descended—the fullness of her lips.
Dex’s attention had often gone to them. In the hallway. Across the dinner table. Through the thin walls when he heard her laughing on the phone. They were so pretty. Soft-looking. Unfairly pink even without lipstick. And kissable. God, they were kissable in a way that had haunted his quieter moments, that had slipped into his dreams uninvited and overstayed their welcome.
He wondered what it would be like to actually kiss them. To press his own lips against theirs. To feel them part beneath his, warm and yielding. To hold them with his own, gently at first, then harder, until he had tasted everything she had to offer.
But would she really kiss him? Knowing the kind of person he was? The things he had done? The person he was becoming?
The questions arrived like cold water and Dex shoved them aside. Because now—now, with her unconscious and pliant and utterly his—she wouldn’t mind it. She was sweet. So sweet. And surely, after all he had done for her, after all the times he had been there, after all the times she had said “thank you, Dex” in that soft, grateful voice, after “I didn’t know who else to ask” and “couldn’t do it without you” with that sweet voice and sweeter smile—surely, all of that added up to something. Surely, one would assume she wanted it too. Why else would she do all that? Why else would she look at him like that, speak to him like that, invite him into her life so completely?
She wanted it. She just didn’t know it yet. Or maybe she did. Maybe deep down, beneath the grief and the exhaustion and the walls she had built, she had always known. And she had been waiting. Waiting for him to finally take what she had been offering all along.
“You’re so sweet for me, doll,” Dex murmured, his voice barely above a breath. He caressed her cheek, his thumb sweeping across the soft skin just below her eye. She was so incredibly sweet. And now, so incredibly pliable under his touch. Limp and warm and utterly unresisting. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t frown. Didn’t open her eyes. She simply lay there, breathing softly, her lips slightly parted, her body completely surrendered to the darkness he had given her.
Dex leaned closer. His heart was pounding now, a heavy, insistent rhythm that seemed to fill the entire room. He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, could smell the faint traces of her perfume mingled with the chamomile and the lingering sharpness of alcohol. His hand slid from her cheek to the back of her neck, fingers threading gently through her tangled hair.
And then he kissed her.
It started softly—a brush, a whisper, a question she couldn’t answer. Her lips were warm and slightly chapped, tasting faintly of the tea he had made her and the liquor she had drunk hours ago. The sensation was unlike anything he had imagined. Beyond euphoric. Electric and devastating and entirely, utterly consuming.
But soft wasn’t enough. It was never enough for Dex.
He pressed harder, his mouth moving against hers with increasing urgency. She didn’t respond, couldn’t respond and somehow that only fuelled the fire burning low in his gut. He was chasing a high now, the same way he had chased so many other things in his life, the same way he had chased her. His lips parted hers and he deepened the kiss, tasting her properly for the first time.
A small amount of drool had pooled at the corner of her limp mouth, escaping past her slack lips. Dex noticed it immediately. And then, without hesitation, he lapped it up—gladly, hungrily, like ambrosia. Like something sacred and forbidden all at once. The faint saltiness of her, the warmth of her breath, the complete and total surrender of her body beneath his hands.
He pulled back just slightly, his forehead almost touching hers, his breathing ragged. His thumb traced her lower lip, slick with their combined moisture.
“See?” he whispered, his voice low and thick. “You wanted this too.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
He stayed there, his lips smiling against hers after drinking her in like a man dying of thirst. The world outside her bedroom window shifted—the moon creeping across the sky, the wind picking up and then dying down again, the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city. But Dex noticed none of it.
“Poor baby,” Dex cooed, his voice dripping with a tenderness that felt almost obscene in the quiet darkness of her bedroom. His hand drifted from her cheek, fingers tracing a slow, deliberate path down the column of her neck. He could feel her pulse there—steady, unhurried, completely unaware of the predator tracing circles against her skin. “You must be so frustrated.”
His hand curled around her neck, not squeezing—not yet—just resting there, palm against her throat, feeling the gentle vibration of her breathing. The weight of it. The intimacy of it. He could kill her right now, he realized. It would be so easy. One hard press, one sustained grip and the light behind her eyes would flicker out forever. But that wasn’t what he wanted. Death was final. Death was boring. He wanted her alive. He wanted her aware. He wanted her to know, eventually, that she had always belonged to him.
“That’s why you went clubbing, didn’t you?” His voice dropped, losing some of its honeyed warmth, hardening at the edges. “To forget. To drown yourself.” He thought about her in that silvery dress, the one now folded neatly on the chair in the corner. Thought about her pressed against strangers on a crowded dance floor, bodies grinding, hands roaming, men leering at her. His grip on her neck tightened—just a fraction, just enough to make her breath hitch slightly in her sleep. “Pressed against men who want only one thing from you?”
The thought of her dancing against strangers sent a spike of cold rage through his chest. It was irrational—he knew it was irrational. She didn’t belong to him. Not yet. Not officially. But in his mind, in the deep, possessive place where logic never ventured, she had belonged to him from the moment she had knocked on his door with that plate of cookies. The thought of anyone else touching her made his vision narrow, his jaw clench, his fingers twitch with the urge to commit immense violence. He wanted to find every man who had looked at her tonight, every man who had breathed the same air as her and kill them. Slowly. Thoroughly. One by one.
He didn’t blame her, though. Not really. He told himself that as he forced his hand to relax, as he reminded himself to breathe. She was grieving too. Her brother’s death had hollowed her out, left her raw and searching for anything to fill the void. The clubbing, the drinking, the desperate need to feel something other than loss—it wasn’t her fault. She was broken and broken things made poor decisions.
But she had him. She had him. So why did she feel the need to do that? Why wasn’t he enough? Why did she have to go out and offer herself to the world when he was right here, waiting, patient, devoted?
Dex exhaled slowly, pushing the anger down into the place where he kept all his sharp edges. It didn’t matter now. She was here. She was his. And tonight, she would learn what that meant.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, his thumb stroking the side of her throat in soothing circles. “I’m not mad. Not really. I understand. You’re hurting. You’re lonely. You needed something I haven’t given you yet.”
His smile returned, softer now, almost playful. Almost dangerous.
“But you’ll have to make up for it you know,” he said, his voice lilting with false sweetness. “You had your fun tonight. Dancing. Drinking. Letting strange men look at you.” His hand slid lower, trailing down her chest, over the thin fabric of her purple nightshirt. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the cotton, the gentle swell of her breasts beneath his palm. “I deserve some too, yes?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. She couldn’t give one. Not that he cared for it now anyway.
His hand settled over the curve of her breast and for a moment, he simply held it there. The weight of it. The softness. The way it fit perfectly against his palm, as if it had been made for him. Dex’s breath caught in his throat. The moral part of his conscience—the voice that had once whispered warnings, that had once reminded him of right and wrong, of boundaries and consent—had drowned in his desire long ago. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard it clearly. Maybe the day he met her. Maybe earlier. Maybe it had always been a weak and flickering thing, easily extinguished.
He had never touched her like this before. Sure, there had been occasional accidental touches—a hand on her lower back when he guided her through a doorway, fingers brushing hers when she handed him a cup of coffee. Times when he had caught her from falling, his arm wrapping around her waist, his hand landing just at the curve beneath her breasts. But he had never actually held them. Never allowed himself to cross that final line.
Until now.
His fingers traced the outline of her breast through the fabric, slow and exploratory. Then his thumb found her nipple, already slightly peaked from the cool air of the bedroom and began to circle it. Softly at first. Then with more intention.
He felt it happen. The way her body responded to his touch even in sleep. The way the sensitive peak hardened further beneath his thumb, pressing against the thin cotton like it was reaching for him. A small, surprised sound escaped Dex’s lips—half laugh, half groan of pleasure.
“Oh?” he said, genuinely delighted. He circled again, watching her face for any sign of awareness. Nothing. Just that deep, drugged sleep. But her body knew. Her body was responding instinctively, as if some primal part of her recognized what it wanted even while her mind was trapped in darkness.
He was absolutely loving this. The way her nipple tightened under his touch. The way her breathing changed—not waking, but deepening, as if her body was sinking further into sensation. The way she lay there, completely vulnerable, completely at his mercy, while her own flesh betrayed her.
“You like this,” he said, not a question. A statement. A discovery. He chuckled softly, the sound low and warm and utterly devoid of innocence. His fingers rolled her nipple between them, gently at first, then with more pressure. He could feel it stiffen further, pebbling against his fingertips like it was begging for more. “Don’t you, doll? Even asleep. Even with the pills. Your body knows what it needs.”
A part of him wished she was awake. Not a large part—the larger part was too busy enjoying the reality of her beneath his hands—but a part, yes. He wished he could see her face. Wished he could watch her brows knit together in that way they did when she was concentrating, or confused, or feeling something she couldn’t name. Wished he could hear the soft sounds that would escape from her lips—little gasps, tiny whimpers, the kind of sounds she probably didn’t even know she made.
He wished she would say his name.
Dex.
Not as a neighbour. Not as a friend. But as the man touching her, the man making her feel things she had never felt before. Breathless. Needy. His.
Dex’s hands moved with a deliberateness that belied the chaos simmering beneath his skin. He lifted her shirt slowly, not because he was hesitant but because he wanted to draw out the moment. Savour it. Commit every second to memory the way a thief does to the contents of a vault before emptying it.
She hadn’t been wearing a bra. Of course not. Given the make of the silvery dress she had worn to the club, the way it cinched and draped and clung to her like a second skin, she wouldn’t have needed one. The dress had done all the work, holding her in place with architecture and intention. So why would she bother putting one on now? Why would she fumble with straps and hooks in her drunken, drugged state when she could simply fall into bed as she was?
Dex was grateful for that small mercy. Her small mercies.
He didn’t wait for any fanfare. There was no drumroll, no hesitation, no last-minute check of his conscience. That part of him had gone quiet now—muffled beneath the weight of want and the thin, fragile justification that she had brought him here. She had asked for his help. She had trusted him. She had left the door open.
He dove in.
His mouth latched onto her stiffened peak with a hunger that startled even him. The heat of her skin. The soft give of her flesh beneath his tongue. The way her body remained utterly limp and unresponsive—no arch of her back, no sharp intake of breath, no hand threading through his hair. She was asleep. Deeply, chemically asleep. And that silence, that absence of reaction, should have given him pause.
It didn’t.
He could taste the salt on her skin—the faint residue of sweat from the club, from the dancing, from the long night that had drained her. Beneath that, something else. A taste that was so uniquely hers that Dex knew he would recognize it anywhere, even blindfolded, even decades from now. Sweet. Subtle. Intoxicating in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol.
Her skin was so soft under his lips and teeth. Softer than he had imagined and he had imagined it, more times than he cared to count. In the dark of his own apartment, with his hand wrapped around himself and her name a whisper on his lips, he had pictured this. But the reality was sharper. More vivid. More dangerous.
He felt the animal urge rise up from somewhere deep and primal—the need to sink his teeth in, to mark her flesh, to claim her in a way that couldn’t be washed away with soap and water. He wanted to taste the iron tang of her blood on his tongue, to leave behind a bruise that would bloom purple and blue across her skin, to brand her as his in the most primitive way possible.
But he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. Not now.
He couldn’t leave a mark on her skin that she might notice later. A bruise on her chest would raise questions. A bite mark would be impossible to explain away. She would look in the mirror whenever the drugs finally released their grip and she would see something she didn’t remember earning. And she would start to ask questions. And questions led to doubts. And doubts led to distance.
Dex couldn’t afford distance. Not after he had come this close.
Still, the thought lingered. The secret thrill of it. The idea of her waking up with marks on her body—tender, unexplained, mysterious—and having no idea how she got them. Would she run her fingers over the bruises and feel a shiver she couldn’t explain? Would she stare at herself in the bathroom mirror, turning this way and that, trying to piece together the fragments of a night that refused to come into focus? Would she wonder, even for a moment, if she had done something she didn’t remember?
Dex smiled against her skin. The thought was almost as sweet as the taste of her.
Y/n wasn’t a prude. Dex knew that much. He had watched the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention—the quick, shy glances across the hallway, the way her eyes lingered on his hands when he fixed something for her, the slight flush that crept up her neck whenever he stood too close. She wanted him. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not in words she could speak aloud. But the body didn’t lie and Dex had spent years learning to read the subtle language of bodily reactions.
He had also spent years learning other things. Tricks he had picked up at the bureau. Skills that blurred the line between investigation and violation. He told himself, at first, that he was just trying to find common interests with a friend. That stumbling across her internet search history, even the private ones, the ones she had cleared and deleted and thought no one would ever see, was an accident. A byproduct of curiosity. A harmless peek behind the curtain.
But all pretence was dropped now. There was no point in lying to himself anymore. Not when he had his lips around her, not when he could feel the soft weight of her other breast against his palm, not when every rationalization he had ever constructed had crumbled to dust beneath the weight of what he was doing.
What use was pretence when he had his mouth on her like this? When he was licking and sucking like there was no tomorrow, like the world outside her bedroom window had ceased to exist and all that remained was the two of them—one conscious, one unconscious, one taking, one giving without knowing?
His hands kneaded her breasts with a rhythm that was almost tender, thumbs circling her nipples, fingers pressing into the soft swell of her flesh. He could feel her heartbeat beneath his palms—slow and steady, undisturbed by his ministrations. The drugs had her in a deep sleep, the kind that drowned out everything. She wouldn’t feel this tomorrow. Wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t know that his hands had been here, that his mouth had been here, that he had helped himself to what she had offered so freely.
His lips moved further down, pressing open-mouthed kisses along her torso. The dip of her sternum. The soft plane of her stomach. The delicate ridges of her ribs, each one a note in a song only he could hear. He lingered at her navel, breathing her in, feeling the subtle rise and fall of her belly beneath his cheek.
She was so still. So quiet. So utterly, devastatingly his.
Dex kissed lower still, his hands sliding down to grip her hips, his thumbs pressing into the soft flesh just above the waistband of her shorts. He could feel the heat radiating from her, could smell the faint, musky scent of her and for a moment—just a moment—he closed his eyes and let himself pretend.
Pretend that she was awake. That her hands were in his hair, pulling him closer instead of lying limp at her sides. That the sounds he was drawing from her were moans of pleasure instead of the soft, unconscious breaths of a woman who didn’t know she was being touched.
But pretending was dangerous. Pretending was how you lost yourself.
Dex opened his eyes and looked up at her face—peaceful, blank, empty. And then he lowered his mouth again, because the truth was simpler than the fantasy.
She didn’t need to be awake for this. She didn’t need to want it. She just needed to be here.
And she was. She would be.
Dex’s fingers found the waistband of her shorts. He paused for a moment, his thumb tracing the elastic edge, savouring the ordinary intimacy of it. This wasn’t the silvery dress or the lace from her drawer. This was the real her. The unguarded her. The her that only emerged when she thought no one was watching.
He pulled her shorts down slowly, carefully, lifting her hips just enough to slide the fabric over her curves and down her thighs. She didn’t stir. Her legs remained limp and heavy, offering no resistance, no assistance. Dex took his time, peeling the shorts away from her skin inch by inch, until they cleared her feet and he could set them aside. He folded them once, neatly and placed them at the bottom of her bed. Old habits. Everything in its place.
Then he spread her legs.
Not roughly. Not hurriedly. Just enough to make room for himself, to create the space he needed to do what he had been imagining for months. Her knees fell open without a fight, her body still deep in that chemical slumber, utterly indifferent to the hands arranging her like a doll.
Dex moved down the bed, positioning himself between her thighs. He lowered his face until he was inches from her sex, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her, close enough to see the delicate dampness already gathering at the fabric of her underwear. And then he pressed his nose against her—directly against her, through the thin cotton and took a deep, slow breath.
The scent of her flooded his senses. Sweet and musky and unmistakably, devastatingly her. It was intoxicating in a way he had never know. His head spun. His eyes fluttered half-closed. For a moment, he forgot where he was, who he was, what had brought him here. There was only her. Only this.
He pulled back with a huff of a laugh—soft, almost disbelieving. His heart was pounding, his lips parted, his breath coming faster than it should. He felt drunk. Drunk on her, on the power of having her like this, on the sheer, staggering reality of what he was doing.
“Oh, darling,” he muttered, his voice thick and low, barely more than a whisper. “You’re fucking perfect.”
He meant it. Every word. In the light filtering through her curtains, with her legs spread and her chest rising and falling in slow, steady breaths, she looked like something painted. Something sacred. Something made just for him.
Dex leaned down again, this time using his teeth. He caught the waistband of her underwear and tugged it downward with careful precision. The fabric slid over her hips, down her thighs, past her knees, until he could pull it free entirely with a flick of his head. He held it in his hand for a moment, soft and warm from her body and felt the urge rise like a tide. Pocket it. Keep it. Take a piece of her home with him, a secret souvenir that no one would ever know about.
But he knew that wasn’t the wisest decision. She might notice. She might count her laundry or find it missing, or wonder where her favourite pair had gone. Small details could unravel everything. So he put it aside with the shorts, adding it to the small pile of her clothes at the bottom of the bed.
His hand found her calf, warm and smooth beneath his palm. He pulled her toward him, bending her leg at the knee and settling her calf against his shoulder. The position was intimate, almost loving—the kind of hold a lover might use, not a predator. Dex liked that. He liked the blur.
He began with her calf, pressing soft, lingering kisses along the curve of her muscle. Little pecks at first, then longer ones, his lips dragging against her skin. He licked a slow stripe from her ankle to the back of her knee, tasting the faint salt of her, the lotion she might’ve applied, the simple, human warmth of her. She tasted like nothing and everything. Like a woman. Like something he always wanted and didn’t realise till this very moment.
He travelled downward, his mouth finding the delicate skin of her inner thigh. This was softer, more sensitive, more vulnerable. He could feel the heat radiating from her core, could smell her more intensely here and it drove him forward like a compass needle finding north. He pressed open-mouthed kisses to her thighs, alternating sides, working his way up and then down again, never quite reaching where she might want him most. Not yet. He was taking his sweet time.
And then he licked her—long, slow stripes along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, from knee to groin and back again. Her skin was almost velvety here and he could feel the fine hairs rise beneath his tongue. She was so responsive, even in sleep.
A part of him wanted to leave a mark. Not the kind she would see immediately—not on her neck or her chest or anywhere obvious. But somewhere subtle. Somewhere she might not notice for days, if ever. A small, secret bruise that would fade before she found it, but that would exist just long enough to satisfy something primal in him. A claim staked in flesh. A signature carved into her skin without her knowledge.
He lifted her leg higher, tilting it to expose the back of her thigh—a spot that was hard to see on oneself, hidden in the crease where thigh met buttock. Dex pressed his lips to that hidden patch of skin and sucked. Gently at first, then harder, drawing the blood to the surface, leaving behind a small, dark blossom that would bloom purple by morning. It was small. Subtle. She might not notice it for days and even if she did, she might dismiss it as a bruise from dancing, or from bumping into furniture, or from any number of innocent accidents.
But Dex would know. He would carry the memory of putting it there.
A small groan escaped Y/n’s lips—soft, almost indistinct, more breath than sound. Dex froze instantly, his mouth still pressed against her thigh, his entire body going rigid. His eyes darted up to her face, watching for any sign of consciousness. A flutter of eyelids. A furrow of brows. A shift in breathing.
Nothing. Her eyes remained closed. Her face remained slack. The groan had been reflexive—a response from a body that was still asleep, still drugged, still unaware. But it was a warning. A reminder that sleeping pills rendered a person unconscious, yes, but not entirely unresponsive. He still had to be careful. He still had to pay attention.
Maybe I’ll alter the dosage for next time, he thought, the idea sliding into his mind like a key into a lock. A little more. Just enough to ensure complete stillness. Complete silence. Complete surrender.
He paused at the thought.
Next time?
Would there be a next time to this?
Dex looked up at Y/n, lying in her bed like something out of a painting. Her hair had spread across the pillow in soft waves—like a halo, he thought, though the comparison felt almost blasphemous given what he was doing. Her lips were parted, slightly swollen from the kisses he had pressed to them, still glistening with the moisture he had left behind. Her shirt had bunched up above her breasts, the purple fabric with blue flowers now slick with saliva in places. And then further down—to himself, positioned between her legs, close enough to feel the heat of her, close enough to see the way her pussy glistened in the low light, wet and ready and his for the taking.
She couldn’t do a thing to stop it. That was the thought that settled over him like a blanket, warm and heavy and suffocating all at once. She couldn’t push him away. Couldn’t say no. Couldn’t even open her eyes. She was completely, utterly, helplessly at his mercy.
And all of it was so easy.
So why wouldn’t there be a next time? Why would he stop at one night, one taste, one fleeting moment of possession when she would wake up tomorrow with no memory of any of it? When he could do this again and again, refining his approach, learning her body, claiming more of her each time? When she would continue to thank him, continue to trust him, continue to invite him into her life because she had no idea what he was doing in the dark?
Dex smiled against her thigh, soft and private and deeply, terribly satisfied.
There would be a next time. There would be many next times.
This was only the beginning.
“You’re not getting rid of me so easily, doll.”
The words came out low, almost a growl—not threatening, but possessive in a way that surprised even himself.
Dex spread her legs a bit more. His knees pressed into the mattress on either side of her thighs and the bed dipped under his weight. She shifted slightly—an unconscious response, or maybe not so unconscious after all. The drugs had done their work, but somewhere beneath the surface, some part of her knew he was there. Some part of her had been waiting for this.
He leaned over and kissed her again.
This kiss was different from the ones before. Messier. More animalistic. The careful restraint he had shown earlier—the featherlight touches, the tentative press of lips had burned away, leaving only the raw hunger beneath. He let his saliva pool on the underside of his tongue, let it gather and warm, and then he parted her lips with his own and let it drip down into her mouth. Into that soft, waiting, pliable space that she had opened for him without resistance.
She didn’t choke. Didn’t gag. Her body accepted what he gave her the way it accepted everything else tonight—quietly, completely, trustingly.
Dex tilted her head up with one hand cupped beneath her jaw, adjusting the angle of her throat so the saliva would slide down naturally. So, she would swallow it without thinking, without waking, without breaking the fragile spell that held her in that twilight space between sleeping and waking. He watched her throat work reflexively, a small, involuntary motion that sent a jolt of satisfaction straight through him.
Good girl, he thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. Not yet. That word was for later, when she was awake enough to hear it, when she was ready for it.
His length had been stirring in his pants from the second he had first put his hands on her from the moment he had lifted her shirt and seen the soft swell of her breasts, bare and unguarded. But now, with his body pressed between her legs and the taste of her still fresh on his tongue, it was straining harder against the fabric of his sweatpants. Demanding. Insistent. The ache was almost painful, but he ignored it. This wasn’t just about him. Not yet.
“Let me get a taste of you first,” he murmured against her lips, pulling back just enough to look down at her peaceful sleeping face. “Then you’ll have your turn, hmm?”
He patted her cheek gently—two soft taps, the kind of gesture that was almost affectionate, almost tender, if you didn’t know what was coming next. Her head lolled slightly to the side, her lips still parted, her breathing still slow and even. Dex moved back down her body, trailing his hands along her sides as he went. He could feel the ridges of her ribs, the soft dip of her waist, the flare of her hips.
Then he buried his face between her folds.
The first breath was always his favourite. The musky scent of her filled his lungs and he felt something in his chest unlock. He had imagined this so many times, in so many lonely hours on the other side of the wall. But imagination was a pale shadow of reality. Nothing compared to the warmth of her, the wetness that had collected there as a natural physical response but Dex accepted it as proof. Proof that her body knew what her mind could not consciously acknowledge. Proof that even in sleep, even drugged, even unaware, some part of her wanted this. Wanted him.
He licked up a slow stripe from her entrance to her clit, savouring the taste of her on his tongue. Sweet and sharp and utterly intoxicating. And then he felt it—a hitch in her breathing. Small. Barely perceptible. A tiny catch in the rhythm of her chest that might have been nothing, might have been a dream, might have been her body finally beginning to respond to what he was doing.
Dex paused, lifting his head just enough to look up at her face. Still asleep. Still peaceful. But there was something different now—a faint flush creeping across her cheeks, a slight furrow between her brows, as if her body was trying to surface from the darkness and her mind was holding it back.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly, his breath warm against her most sensitive skin. “I’ll make sure you enjoy it too, sweetheart.”
He spread her folds apart with his thumbs, exposing her completely to his gaze and his mouth. The dim light from the window caught the slickness of her, the way she glistened like something precious pulled from deep water. She was ready—so obviously, undeniably ready—waiting for him in a way that made his mouth water and his restraint crumble to dust. This wasn’t reluctant. This wasn’t tolerance. This was acceptance.
And then he lowered his head again.
He lapped at her like a man starving. No—that wasn’t quite right. A starving man eats with desperation, with urgency, with the fear that the food might disappear before he’s had his fill. Dex wasn’t afraid of that. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was right here, spread open beneath him and he had all night.
It was something less civilized than a man. Something older. Something that existed before manners and restraint and the careful masks people wore in daylight. Something hungry and single-minded and utterly without shame.
His tongue moved in broad, flat strokes first, covering as much of her as he could in one long, slow pass. He wanted to taste all of her—not just the center of her, but the edges, the folds, the soft skin of her inner thighs where her scent clung so preciously. Then he tightened his focus, his tongue circling in smaller and smaller spirals until he was tracing the delicate bud of her clit with the tip, teasing her with the promise of more.
Then came the quick flicks—fast, rhythmic, relentless.
Her hips twitched. Involuntarily at first, a small jerk like a muscle spasm. But then again and again, a stuttering rhythm that matched the movements of his tongue. She wasn’t waking. Not yet. The drugs still held her in their soft, grey embrace. But she was close. So close. Dex could feel it in the way her body was beginning to respond, beginning to surface, beginning to remember that it was capable of pleasure even if her mind was still adrift.
Her breathing grew faster. Shallower. Her chest rose and fell beneath the rumpled nightshirt, the purple fabric with blue flowers shifting with each quickening breath. The rhythm was no longer the slow, steady tide of deep sleep. It was more tumultuous now—uneven, catching, stuttering in her throat like she was trying to say something but couldn’t quite find the words.
Dex groaned against her, the vibration of it traveling through her flesh like a current. And then he felt it—a subtle shift beneath his hands. Her back arched. Just slightly. Just the barest lift of her hips off the mattress, pressing herself closer to his mouth, seeking more of what he was giving her.
That’s it, he thought, the words forming clearly in his mind even as his tongue never stopped moving. There you are, sunshine. Come for me.
He doubled his efforts. Licking and sucking and devouring her with a focus that bordered on religious—not the quiet, solemn kind, but the ecstatic, crazed kind. The kind where you lost yourself in the act of worship. His tongue pressed flat against her clit then curled, then flickered in patterns as if he had learned from hours of study and practice. Not on her, of course. Not until tonight. But he had made a study of pleasure, the same way he had made a study of her. He knew what he was doing.
The taste of her flooded his mouth—sweet and sharp and complex, like something that couldn’t be reduced to a single flavor. It dripped down his chin, warm and slick and Dex realized with a jolt that he was making a mess. A beautiful, obscene mess. But a mess nonetheless.
He pulled one hand away from her thigh and slid it beneath his face, cupping his palm under his chin to catch what was falling. He wouldn’t let any of her drip onto her sheets. Couldn’t. She would notice that in the morning—a stain she didn’t remember making, a mystery she couldn’t solve. And while Dex enjoyed mysteries, he preferred the ones he could control.
He gathered what had collected in his palm and brought it to his lips, slurping it up with an audible sound that seemed too loud in the quiet room. The taste was even more concentrated now, warm from his skin and he closed his eyes for a moment just to savour it.
Then he looked back at her.
Her face was still slack with sleep, but there was something new there now. A flush across her cheeks. A slight parting of her lips. Her brows were drawn together in the faintest furrow, as if she was dreaming of something intense, something that was pulling her toward an edge she couldn’t see.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his voice rough and low. “Still asleep and already falling apart for me. You have no idea what you look like right now. No idea what you’re doing to me.”
Dex felt his length strain almost painfully against the fabric of his sweatpants—a dull, insistent ache that had been building since the moment he first stepped into her apartment. It was asking him, even begging him, to act. To provide himself some relief. To finally have his share too. The need thrummed through his veins like a second heartbeat, hot and demanding and growing harder to ignore with every passing second.
He looked over her sprawled beneath him, bare and beautiful and completely surrendered. Tasting her like this was delectable, yes. The sweetness of her, the way her body responded even in sleep, the soft sounds she made without knowing she was making them. All of it was everything he had dreamed of and more.
But he wanted more. Not just more of her body, though God knew he wanted that too, wanted to bury himself inside her until neither of them could remember their own names. No, what he truly wanted was more warmth. More of the personality that had drawn him in and made him stay. The way she laughed at her own jokes. The way she hummed while she cooked. The way she looked at him sometimes, like he was more than just a friend.
He wanted her to open her pretty eyes. To say his name in that sweet tone of hers—not slurred with alcohol or thickened by drugs, but clear and conscious and meant just for him. He imagined it so vividly that he could almost see it: her eyelids fluttering open, her gaze finding his in the dim light, a slow smile spreading across her face as she reached up to cup his cheek with her warm palm.
“Dex,” she would whisper, her voice still rough with sleep but already full of that particular tenderness she reserved just for him. “Take me.”
The fantasy was so real, so achingly close, that Dex had to close his eyes for a moment and steady his breathing.
Taking what he had taken so far—the kisses, the taste of her, the intimacy of touching her while she slept—was still within the bounds of his twisted morality. But weren’t first times supposed to be well planned? Magical? The kind of memory you carried with you for the rest of your life, warm and golden and untouched by regret?
Surely he couldn’t take that away from her. He cared far too much for her to do that.
Dex had it all in his head already—had been building it for weeks, in fact, in the quiet hours when he couldn’t sleep and the walls between their apartments felt too thin and too thick all at once. He saw it perfectly: the bed covered in rose petals, deep red against the white sheets. Scented candles flickering on every surface, casting soft shadows across the walls. Soft music playing from somewhere just out of sight. And Y/n lying in the center of it all, looking up at him with that shy blush on her cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes shining with anticipation and trust.
That was how it was supposed to happen. That was the memory she deserved.
If he wanted this relationship to last and God, he did, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life—he had to build it properly. On a foundation of intention and care, not haste and hunger. He had to prove to her that he was worth the risk she was taking, that he could be the man she needed him to be. The man who brought her dinner when she was sad and fixed her sink when it leaked and planned first times with rose petals and candles and music.
He imagined what it would be like to be in a real relationship with her. Not just stolen moments in hallways and carefully orchestrated coincidences. Something real. Something lasting.
Him coming back from work, exhausted and frayed around the edges, and her greeting him at the door with a kiss and a question about his day. The simple domesticity of it made his chest ache. Or him preparing dinner in the kitchen while she sat at the counter, still in her work clothes, telling him about her day at the law firm—crappy clients who didn’t appreciate her, firm partners who were being annoying, a paralegal who kept microwaving fish in the breakroom. The mundane details of a shared life. The small, beautiful ordinary moments that added up to something extraordinary.
It was all he wanted. All he had ever wanted, really, though he hadn’t known it until she moved in next door with her cookies and her smiles and her quiet, persistent kindness.
Dex looked down at her unconscious form—so peaceful, so trusting, so completely unaware of the war being waged inside him. He smiled, small and soft, and reached out to brush a strand of hair from her forehead.
“I won’t take you yet, darling,” he said quietly, the endearment slipping out as naturally as breathing. “Not like this. You deserve better than this.”
His body screamed in protest, his length still straining against his sweatpants, demanding attention he wasn’t ready to give. But Dex had spent years learning to ignore his body’s demands. Years of discipline and control and putting one foot in front of the other even when every fiber of his being wanted to run in the opposite direction. He could wait a little longer.
“But we still need to do something about this, hmm?” He looked down at the obvious bulge in his pants and let out a soft, rueful laugh. The situation was almost absurd—here he was, hard and aching, kneeling between the legs of the woman he wanted more than anything and he was choosing to walk away.
Almost.
Dex shifted his weight, settling back on his heels. His hand hovered over the waistband of his sweatpants and he glanced at Y/n’s face one more time. Still asleep. Still beautiful. Still completely unaware.
He wouldn’t take her. Not tonight. But that didn’t mean he had to leave empty-handed.
“It’ll be quick. I promise.”
The words were meant for her, but also for himself—a reassurance whispered into the quiet darkness of her bedroom, an anchor to keep him from drifting too far into the depths of his own hunger. Dex pressed a kiss to her forehead, soft and almost reverent, before shifting his attention to the task at hand.
He reached down and grabbed both of her legs, his hands firm around her calves. Her skin was warm and smooth beneath his palms and he lingered for just a moment, savouring the feel of her. Then he crossed her legs at the ankles, one over the other, and pressed them together tightly. The position held her thighs flush against one another, leaving no gap, no space between. With one hand, he kept them pinned in place, his grip firm but not painful. With the other, he slid beneath her waist and lifted her hips just enough to slide a pillow underneath.
The angle was better now. More deliberate. Her hips tilted upward slightly, her thighs pressed together in a perfect channel of warmth and softness. Dex adjusted himself between her legs, his breath coming faster now, his heart hammering against his ribs like a caged thing.
He pulled down his sweatpants first, the fabric pooling around his knees. Then his boxers followed, tugged down just enough to free himself. His length sprang forward, red and weeping at the tip, the evidence of his need glistening in the dim light. He had been hard for what felt like hours, had been fighting the urge to act since the moment he first touched her. Now, finally, he let himself breathe.
He took himself in his hand, his fingers wrapping around his shaft, and guided himself between her thighs. Right above her sex. The placement was deliberate, precise—close enough to feel everything, close enough to pretend, but not close enough to cross the line he had drawn for himself tonight. Had he thrusted just a little lower, just a fraction of an inch, he would be buried inside her right now. The thought sent a jolt of electricity through his spine and he had to close his eyes for a moment to steady himself.
A part of him felt bad for doing this. A small part, buried somewhere beneath the layers of want and need and justification. It whispered to him in a voice that sounded like guilt, like shame, like the ghost of the man he used to be before he started down this path. This isn’t right. She trusted you. This isn’t what she meant.
But what could he do? Benjamin Leonard Poindexter was an animal of need after all. He had spent so long denying himself, so long keeping his distance and playing the role of the good neighbour, the helpful friend, the safe pair of hands. And now that he had her—now that she was here, warm and soft and willing in the way that mattered most—he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop.
He began to move.
At first, his thrusts were slow. Experimental. He pushed his length between her thighs, feeling the press of her skin against his on all sides. The friction was exquisite—the warmth of her, the softness of her, the way her thighs hugged him like they had been made for exactly this purpose. He could feel his own juices gathering at his tip, spreading between her legs with each pass, mixing with the evidence of her earlier arousal. The combination was slick and hot and utterly intoxicating.
His pace quickened almost without his permission. His hips snapped against her thighs in a rhythm that was less human and more instinctual, the kind of motion that came from somewhere deeper than thought, somewhere primal and raw. The sound of skin slapping against skin filled the room, sharp and rhythmic, punctuated by the low, deep grunts that escaped Dex’s throat with every thrust. Beneath it all, a wet squelching sound, the unmistakable noise of liquids gathering and shifting between their bodies.
He was almost like a rabid dog now—mindless, driven, consumed by the singular need to chase his release. He had told her it would be quick and he hadn’t been lying. His control was fraying at the edges, unravelling with every pass of his length between her thighs. He just needed this. Needed to feel her. Needed to feel himself get a taste of what he had wanted for so long. Even if it wasn’t everything. Even if it was only this.
Dex looked down at her face, searching for any sign of awareness. Her eyebrows had knit together slightly, a small furrow appearing between them. Her fingers twitched at her sides, just barely, just a flutter of movement, as if she could feel what he was doing somewhere distantly, somewhere in the fog of a dream she wouldn’t remember in the morning. The sight of it sent a fresh wave of heat through him.
She can feel it, he thought, wonder mixing with hunger. Some part of her knows.
He imagined what she might be dreaming. Perhaps she was running through a field, or falling from a great height or standing at the edge of something she couldn’t name. Perhaps she was dreaming of him—of his hands on her body, of his mouth on her skin, of the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t watching. He hoped so. He wanted to live in her dreams the way she lived in his waking thoughts.
“Just a little more,” Dex muttered, his voice strained and breathless. He quickened his pace, his hips pistoning between her thighs with increasing urgency. The wet sounds grew louder, obscener, mingling with the creak of the bedframe and the ragged rhythm of his breathing. His grip on her legs tightened, his fingers pressing into her skin hard enough to leave marks that would fade by morning.
He was close now. So close. The pressure built at the base of his spine, coiling tighter and tighter with every thrust, threatening to snap. His vision blurred at the edges, narrowed to the small space between her thighs where he moved in and out, in and out, chasing something that felt less like pleasure and more like salvation.
Just a little more.
With a sound that was half groan, half scream—something torn from the deepest part of his chest, raw and unrestrained—Dex let go.
The release crashed over him like a wave, white-hot and all-consuming, stealing the breath from his lungs and the strength from his limbs. His seed spilled between her thighs first, hot and thick, coating the soft skin where he had been thrusting moments before. Then, with each subsequent pulse, it spurted onto her stomach—stark white against the expanse of her belly, catching the dim light like something almost beautiful. The final strings shot higher, landing on her chest, her collarbones, the delicate hollow of her throat. A few stray drops marked the underside of her chin and Dex watched them with a kind of dazed fascination, as if he were observing something happening to someone else.
His eyes were screwed shut for the duration of it, his face twisted in an expression that hovered somewhere between ecstasy and agony. Every muscle in his body had gone tight, locked in the final throes of his peak, and for a few suspended seconds, the world outside her bedroom ceased to exist.
Then he felt movement.
Small. Subtle. Barely there. But unmistakable.
His heart dropped.
Dex’s eyes flew wide open, panic flooding his system with ice-cold adrenaline. He looked down at her face, really looked, and saw that Y/n’s eyes were half lidded, her lashes fluttering as if she were trying to surface from deep water. Her lips were parted and she was indistinctly murmuring something, the words too soft and too slurred to make out. Her fingers twitched again, more purposefully this time, and for one terrifying moment, Dex was certain she was waking up.
No. Not yet. Not now.
A wave of panic rose in his chest, hot and suffocating. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs, could hear the rush of blood in his ears. His mind raced through possibilities—what would he say? How would he explain? The tea, the pills, the position she was in, the evidence cooling on her skin. There was no innocent explanation for any of it.
But then he noticed her eyes.
They were dazed. Unfocused. The glassy, wandering gaze of someone who was still caught somewhere between sleep and waking, not quite in either world. She wasn’t looking at him so much as through him, her pupils dilated, her stare unfixed and dreamy. She wasn’t fully conscious. Not yet. She was hovering on the edge, teetering between the darkness he had put her in and the light she was trying to reach.
Dex swallowed hard and forced his hands to stop shaking. He reached out and placed his palm gently against her cheek, his thumb stroking the soft skin just below her eye. The touch was tender, almost loving—the kind of gesture that could mean anything, depending on who was watching.
“Go to sleep, sunshine,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing, the same tone he might use to calm a frightened animal or lull a child back to bed. “You’re okay. Just go back to sleep.”
Y/n hummed softly—a sound that might have been agreement, might have been acknowledgment, might have been nothing more than the involuntary vocalization of a body too drugged to form words. Her eyelids, which had been struggling to stay open, finally fluttered closed. Her breathing deepened again almost immediately, her body sinking back into the mattress as the pills reclaimed their hold on her.
Within seconds, she was under again. Deep, unconscious, unaware.
Dex let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding—a long, shaky exhale that seemed to drain the remaining tension from his shoulders. His heart was still racing, but the panic had begun to recede, replaced by something colder and more calculating.
That was too close, he thought. I really need to alter the dosage next time.
He had calculated carefully—had measured the pills, had accounted for her weight and her alcohol consumption and her general tolerance. But he hadn’t accounted for the possibility that the physical stimulation might pull her toward consciousness. His thrusts between her thighs, the sounds he had made, the sheer intensity of his release—any of it could have been enough to disturb the fragile equilibrium of her sleep.
He couldn’t afford another close call like this. Next time, he would crush an extra half tablet into her tea. Just to be safe.
Dex slipped out from between her thighs carefully, slowly, so as not to jostle her more than necessary. He set her legs down on the bed one at a time, arranging them in a position that looked natural rather than posed. Then he stood up and surveyed the scene before him.
The mess was considerable. His seed gleamed on her skin in the low light, stark and damning. The sheets beneath her were damp in places and the pillow he had placed under her hips had shifted during his exertions. He needed to move quickly. Quietly. Methodically.
Dex grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on her nightstand and set to work.
He wiped the stains from her skin with almost feather-light touches, dabbing and cleaning with a gentleness that belied the urgency thrumming through him. He was careful—so careful—to not disrupt her sleep. Each swipe of the tissue was measured, deliberate, designed to remove the evidence without causing enough sensation to rouse her. He cleaned her stomach first, then her chest, then the delicate skin of her collarbones. He wiped between her thighs last, pressing the tissue into the crease where his seed had pooled, absorbing as much as he could.
When he was finished, he inspected his work. Her skin was clean again, free of any visible traces of what had happened. The only signs were the slight dampness of the tissues in his hand and the faint, musky scent that lingered in the air—something that would dissipate by morning or that she would attribute to her own dreams.
Dex paused for a second, the balled-up tissues in his fist and felt a sharp pang of regret.
I should’ve taken a picture, he thought, wincing internally. At least one. Just to remember.
The image of her lying there—his seed cooling on her skin, her face peaceful and unaware, her body still warm from his touch—was already seared into his memory, but a photograph would have been different. Tangible. Something he could look at later, in the quiet of his own apartment and remember exactly what he had done to her.
He shook his head slightly. It’s okay, he told himself. You’ll have more turns. This wasn’t the last time. This was just the beginning.
He disposed of the tissues away from her, so that she wouldn’t find it. Then he returned to the bed and began the process of clothing her again.
His movements were almost clinical now—efficient, detached, the same methodical care he might use to fold laundry or arrange dishes in a cupboard. He pulled her nightshirt back down over her torso, smoothing the purple fabric with its blue flowers over her stomach and chest. He adjusted the duvet, pulling it up to her chin, though he deliberately left it slightly rumpled. Not tucked in as properly as he would have liked. He didn’t want everything to look too perfect. Too arranged. If she woke up and found herself swaddled like a child, she might wonder. She might start asking questions.
A little imperfection was natural. A little mess was expected. And Dex needed everything to look exactly as it should when she opened her eyes in the morning.
He stepped back and looked at her one last time. Curled beneath the duvet. Hair spread across the pillow. Lips slightly parted. Peaceful. Untroubled. Completely unaware of everything that had happened while she slept.
A sweet, satisfied smile spread across Dex’s face—the kind of smile that belonged on a man who had just received exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted it. He walked to the head of the bed and stood over her for a moment, drinking in the sight of her.
Then he reached down and traced his knuckles slowly, gently, down the side of her face. From her temple to her jaw. From her jaw to her chin. The touch was almost reverent, like a prayer whispered against her skin.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you,” he said softly, his voice barely above a breath, “now that I’ve tasted you.”
The words hung in the darkness, unanswered, unheard.
Dex straightened up, turned away from the bed, and walked out of her bedroom. He left the door slightly ajar, the way he had found it, and made his way through her silent apartment to the front door.
He stepped into the hallway, pulled her door closed behind him, and stood there for a long moment in the flickering light. Tomorrow, she would wake up groggy and confused. The drugs would leave her head thick and her thoughts sluggish, the kind of morning where coffee tasted like necessity rather than comfort. She would lie in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together the fragments of the night before. The club. Her friends. The walk home. And then—maybe—a flash of something else. Tea. A familiar voice. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Dex, did you come over last night? I can’t remember much.
He could already see the words in his mind, could already hear the tentative confusion in her voice. And he would reply with something gentle. Something reassuring. Something that sounded like the good neighbour, the helpful friend, the safe pair of hands she had come to rely on.
You had a rough night. I brought you tea. You fell asleep. I hope you’re feeling better.
No lies, exactly. Just omissions. Just the careful selection of which truths to tell and which to keep folded away in the quiet corners of his memory.
She would thank him. She always thanked him. That was the thing about Y/n—she was grateful to a fault, appreciative in ways that made his chest ache. She would thank him for the tea, for checking on her, for being the kind of person who looked after her when she couldn’t look after herself. She would never know how much more he had given her. How much more he had taken.
And life would go on.
The routine would continue. The morning runs that weren’t coincidences. The borrowed sugar that wasn’t really borrowed. The dinners she cooked too much of, the ones she claimed were accidents, the ones he accepted with a quiet smile and a plate carried back to his own apartment. The walls between them would still be thin, and he would still hear her humming from the other side, and she would still be sweet and warm and utterly unaware of the hunger that lived just a few feet away.
Only now, Dex would carry this with him. This secret. This memory. This proof—cooling on tissues he made sure to destroy, imprinted on his skin, seared into the back of his eyelids—that she was his in ways she didn’t even know. That she had been his for longer than she would ever understand. That she would continue to be his for as long as he wanted her to be.
He returned to his apartment, seeing the bottle of the pills and the piece of paper and hammer he had used to crush the pills. He would clean it in the morning, when the light was better and his thoughts were clearer. His sweatpants went into the hamper. His shirt followed. He stood in his bathroom for a moment, washing his hands, watching the water swirl down the drain, and wondered if any part of her would remember the weight of his hands on her skin.
Probably not.
He climbed into his own bed, the sheets cool and crisp and perfectly folded against his skin—the way he always left them, the way he needed them to be. Order. Control. The small rituals that kept the chaos at bay. The mattress welcomed him like an old companion and he settled into the hollow he had worn into it over months of restless nights.
But tonight was different.
The silence in his apartment was absolute. No hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off. No distant sirens bleeding through the walls. No faint whisper of traffic from the street below. Just the quiet. Deep and still and complete, like the inside of a held breath.
And the memory.
It played behind his eyelids in vivid, relentless detail—the warmth of her skin, the taste of her on his tongue, the soft hitch of her breathing when his body had pressed against hers. The way she had looked in the dim light, sprawled across her bed, trusting and unaware and so utterly, devastatingly his. The memory was a living thing now, coiled in his chest, warm and possessive. It would keep him company on nights when sleep came hard. It would sustain him through the long, patient work of making her his in truth.
And beneath it all, the slow, steady beat of his own heart—calmer now than it had been in weeks. Months, even. The perpetual hum of anxiety that had lived in his ribcage for as long as he could remember had quieted to a whisper. The sharp edges of his thoughts had softened. For the first time in a very long time, Dex felt something that might have been peace.
There she was. His true north star.
For years, that title had belonged to Julie. The voice on the other end of the suicide helpline, the anchor that had kept him from drifting into the abyss when everything else had fallen away. She had helped him—there was no denying that. Watching her from afar had talked him down from ledges he didn’t even know he was standing on, had given him courage to hold onto when his own mind had turned against him. But even then, even at his most grateful, Dex had known the truth. Julie had been a necessity. A lifeline thrown to a drowning man. He had reached for her because there had been no one else.
But Y/n was different.
Y/n was choice. Deliberate and warm and so impossibly sweet that sometimes Dex wondered if he had imagined her into existence. She cared for him directly—not out of obligation, not because it was her job, but because she wanted to. He saw it in the way she looked at him across the hallway. In the way she even remembered how he took his coffee. In the way she said his name, soft and familiar, like it belonged in her mouth. She didn’t know everything about him—not yet atleast—but she knew enough. And she had stayed anyway.
She was the light at the end of a truly dark tunnel. The tunnel that had been his life for as long as he could remember—the years of scrambling and surviving, of pushing people away before they could leave, of telling himself he didn’t need anyone when really he was terrified of needing and losing in equal measure. But Y/n had walked into his world with her warmth and her smiles and her quiet, persistent kindness and something in him had shifted. Something had unlocked.
She was his now.
Not in the way the world would recognize—not yet. There were no rings on fingers, no shared last name, no public declarations of belonging. The neighbours didn’t know. Her friends didn’t know. Even the well-meaning remnants of her brother’s life, had no idea that the man next door had laid claim to something they didn’t even know was vulnerable.
But she was his nonetheless.
He had tasted her. Had felt the warmth of her against his lips, had swallowed the sounds she made without knowing she was making them. He had touched her—everywhere, everywhere—had learned the geography of her body the way a cartographer learns a new country. He had claimed her in the only way she would allow, had marked her as his in a language only he could read.
And he would have her again. And again. And again.
Not just her body—though that, certainly, again and again until he had memorized every response, every sound, every shudder and sigh. But her attention. Her time. Her trust. The small, precious currency of her daily life that she had been handing him in increments without realizing what she was paying for.
Each time he would pull her a little closer. Each time he would bind her a little tighter. With every cup of tea, every fixed appliance, every morning run that wasn’t a coincidence, he would weave another thread into the web that held them together. Until the day she finally opened her eyes and saw what had been in front of her all along. Not a neighbour. Not a friend. Not a helpful hand. But him. Dex. The man who had been watching, waiting, wanting, from the very beginning.
And on that day, she wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t flinch. She would look at him with those sweet, trusting eyes and she would say his name the way he had always wanted to hear it. Because by then, there would be nowhere else for her to go. By then, he would be the only thing holding her together.
Dex smiled into the darkness.
It was a slow smile, unhurried and deep, the kind of smile that lived in the bones rather than on the lips. Satisfied. Full of promise. The smile who waited a long time for something and had finally, finally taken the first real step toward having it.
On the other side of the wall, Y/n slept on. Her breathing was soft and even, her body curled beneath the duvet, her face slack with the particular peace that comes only from deep, chemically assisted unconsciousness. She was dreaming of nothing at all—no monsters, no memories, no premonitions of the man who had been in her room just hours before. Just the warm, empty darkness of a sleep from which she would wake with a headache and a void where her memories should have been.
And in his own bed, Dex slept better than he had in years.
No dreams troubled him either or if they did, he didn’t remember them in the morning. What he remembered was the warmth coiled in his chest, the satisfaction settled into his being, the quiet certainty that something fundamental had shifted. He had crossed a line tonight and he had done it without hesitation. Without regret. And he would do it again.
The walls between them were thin.
But the bonds he was weaving were thicker. Stronger. Unbreakable.
Dex closed his eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, he let himself fall asleep without fighting it.
╰ ┈➤ A/n: I fear I Chekhov’s gunned myself with the back dimples and didn’t follow through 🫠🫠 Also this man pmo so bad istg i cannot with him—
Idk why but I see snow!reader’s lingerie looking kinda like Layla’s dress in buffalo 66
(I just watched buffalo 66, good movie but I hate Billy)
Oooh now that you point it out, yeah, I can totally see it. Just a bit more sheer and lacy. (Tho seriously, Layla’s whole aesthetic in the movie was so on point—the blue eyeshadow and everything.) In my head, the face claim for snow!reader is Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones S1, those sad puppy eyes especially. Parts of her are also based on young Tigris, particularly that one line from TBOSAS about her having “a sweetness, a vulnerability that invited abuse.” And there’s a bit of Louis XVII in there too, innocence caught in the middle of a political conflict.
(For those who don’t know, fic in question: Gilded Lily)
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ dd:dne. heavy disclaimer for dark content. mentions of sexual exploitation. mentions of prostitution and canon typical violence. physical abuse. psychological trauma and ptsd. allusions to smut. dubcon. pet play dynamics. dubcon. MDNI.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Finnick Odair x fem!Snow!reader
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ This is easily the most angsty and darkest chapter of the fic. Please read at your own discretion as it deals with some really heavy topics. Comment, Like and Reblog
Comment to be added to taglist
[I] | [II] | [III] | [IV] | [V] | [VI] | [VII].
When Finnick finally returned home, the apartment was exactly as he had left it—frozen in time, suspended in that strange, heavy silence that follows a moment of decision. And there, on the floor, still kneeling in the same spot where he had left her hours ago, was Y/n. She hadn’t moved.
The soft blue lace of her lingerie seemed almost ghostly in the dim light filtering through the windows—the city’s perpetual glow, cold and indifferent, casting long shadows across her bare shoulders. Her hair, once styled into elegant waves, had begun to loosen, strands of pale gold falling across her face like whispered secrets. Her hands rested on her thighs, palms up, fingers slightly curled, the posture of someone who had been trained to wait and had learned, through repetition and punishment, that waiting was all she was permitted to do. Beside her, untouched, unlifted, unbuckled, lay the collar Finnick had dropped there before walking out the door. The soft blue leather gleamed dully in the half-darkness, the silver tag catching the light and throwing it back in small, sharp flashes.
Property of F. Odair.
The words seemed to mock him from where they lay.
Finnick closed the door behind him, the heavy mahogany clicking shut with a soft finality that echoed through the quiet apartment. He stood in the entryway for a moment, his hand still resting on the cool metal of the doorknob, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. The lights he had left on earlier, now seemed too bright, too harsh, their edges blurring and pulsing in a way that made his temples throb. He had drunk too much. He hadn’t drunk enough. Somewhere between the fourth glass and the fifth, the world had gone soft at the edges, losing its sharpness, its clarity, becoming something, he could almost pretend wasn’t real.
He crossed to the wall panel and began switching off the unnecessary lights, one by one, until only the faint glow from the windows remained and the single distant lamp in the hallway that he had forgotten to turn off. The darkness settled around them like a blanket, soft and forgiving, hiding the corners of the room, blurring the lines between what was real and what was merely possible. In the near-darkness, the golden cage seemed less imposing. The briefcases seemed less threatening. And Y/n, still kneeling on the floor, seemed smaller somehow. More fragile. More like a girl and less like a symbol of everything he had learned to hate.
Finnick walked toward her. His footsteps were slow, deliberate, the soft pad of his bare feet against the carpet the only sound in the room besides the distant hum of the city and the whisper of his own breathing. She did not look up as he approached. Her gaze remained fixed on the floor, on a point approximately three feet in front of her, just as the rules had prescribed. Her posture remained perfect—back straight, shoulders back, hands resting lightly on her thighs. She had been waiting for hours and yet she showed no sign of discomfort, no indication that her knees ached or her back protested or her mind had begun to wander through the dark corridors of fear.
Finnick stopped in front of her. Looked down at the crown of her head, at the pale gold hair falling across her face, at the curve of her neck where the collar would soon rest. Then, slowly, he lowered himself into a squat, bringing himself to her level, his sea-green eyes level with her bowed head. He could see the fine tremor running through her body now—the way her shoulders shook almost imperceptibly, the way her fingers twitched against her thighs, the way her breath came in shallow, controlled sips. She was terrified. Of course she was terrified. Anyone in her position would be terrified.
He reached out and picked up the collar. The leather was cool and smooth against his palm, supple from whatever treatment the stylist had applied to make it soft against the skin. He turned it over in his hands, his fingers tracing the edge of the silver tag, reading the words engraved there even though he already knew them by heart. Property of F. Odair. His name. His claim. His responsibility. The weight of it settled into his chest, heavy and cold, like a stone dropped into deep water.
He unbuckled the collar. The leather strap parted with a soft click, the buckle swinging open, the silver catch gleaming in the dim light. He lifted the collar, brought it toward her throat and paused with his hands hovering on either side of her neck. He could feel the heat radiating from her skin, could see the pulse fluttering in the hollow of her throat, rapid and shallow like a bird’s heartbeat.
Finnick slid the collar around her throat. The leather settled against her skin like a second layer, cool at first, then warming rapidly to match her temperature. He pulled the strap through the buckle, adjusted it to fit—not too tight, not too loose, just enough to be felt, just enough to remind her it was there—and pressed the clasp closed. The soft click of the lock engaging seemed to echo through the silent room. The leash, still attached to the collar’s front ring, slid between his fingers like a silver serpent, its fine links cool and smooth against his skin.
There, he thought. It’s done. She’s yours now. Officially. Legally. Inscribed in silver and sealed in leather.
It made him sick.
“You know I have to hurt you, right?”
The words came out before he could stop them—low, rough by the whiskey and the weight of everything he wasn’t saying. He hadn’t meant to ask. He hadn’t meant to give her the opportunity to respond, to acknowledge, to participate in her own destruction. But the question had escaped anyway, rising up from some place deep inside him that still believed in choices, still believed in consent, still believed that the person on the receiving end of pain deserved to know it was coming.
Y/n stilled.
Her whole body went rigid, frozen, as though someone had poured ice water into her veins. The fine tremor that had been running through her shoulders stopped abruptly, replaced by a stillness so complete it seemed almost unnatural. She didn’t look up. She didn’t speak. But after a long moment—a breath, a heartbeat, an eternity—she nodded. Slowly. Once. A small, jerky motion that seemed to cost her more than it should have.
She knew her place. She had always known her place, even before the parliament had voted, even before the collar had closed around her throat. She was a Snow and Snows paid for their crimes in blood and silence and the slow erosion of everything that made them human. She knew exactly what was going to happen to her—had known since the moment she stood up in that chamber and offered herself in exchange for Lucia’s safety. The stylist had explained it to her, in clinical, euphemistic terms, during the preparations. The rules had been read aloud to her, line by line, while she knelt on a cold floor and tried not to cry. She knew what Finnick was supposed to do. She knew what the parliament expected. She knew that her body was no longer her own, that her pain was no longer private, that every mark, every bruise, every tear would be documented and submitted and judged.
And she would let it. She would let it all happen, would open herself to whatever they chose to do to her, because this was the only way she could atone for the sins of her family. This was the only way she could ensure Lucia’s safety. Tigris had come to see her before the stylist took her away for preparations—had slipped into her holding cell in the middle of the night, her spotted face creased with worry, her golden eyes soft with something that might have been pity or regret or love. Tigris had taken her hands, had squeezed them tight, had promised that Lucia would now be her ward. That Lucia would be granted mercy. That Lucia would grow up in a world without collars and cages and the slow, systematic destruction of everything that made a person whole.
This is a small price to pay, Y/n had told herself, over and over, as the stylist measured her for lingerie that left nothing to the imagination. This is a small price to pay, she had repeated, as they painted her face and styled her hair and taught her to kneel without trembling. This is a small price to pay, she had whispered, as the collar locked around her throat for the first time and explained that she would never remove it, never touch it, never question it.
She repeated it now, silently, as Finnick squatted before her with something dark and troubled in his sea-green eyes. A small price. A small price. A small price.
Don’t think about it too much, Finnick told himself, the words forming in his head like a mantra, a prayer, a spell meant to ward off the creeping horror that threatened to overwhelm him. She’s a Snow. She’s that man’s granddaughter. She’s the enemy. She’s not a person. She’s a symbol. She’s a punishment. She’s a responsibility. She’s not a person.
He tried to believe it. He tried to let the words sink into his bones, to harden his heart, to turn her from a trembling girl into an abstraction, a problem to be solved, a task to be completed. Perhaps it would be easier if he stopped thinking of her as a person. Perhaps it would ease the repulsion he felt—the revulsion at what he was about to do, at what the parliament expected him to do, at the role he had been assigned in this grotesque theatre of vengeance. Perhaps if he could look at her and see only a Snow, only a symbol, only a vessel for the pain of a nation, then his hand would not shake. Then his stomach would not turn. Then he could do what needed to be done without losing the last fragments of himself that still felt like something other than a monster.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her. Don’t think about any of it. Just do what they expect. Just give them what they want. Just survive.
He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his lids was soft and forgiving, a temporary refuge from the sight of her kneeling before him, the collar gleaming at her throat, the leash trailing across his fingers. He focused on his breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and tried to empty his mind of everything but the simple, mechanical motions of what came next.
Then he opened his eyes.
And she was looking at him.
Her pale blue eyes—those strange, light eyes that had haunted him since the parliament chamber—were fixed on his face with an expression he couldn’t quite name. There was fear there, yes, and resignation, and a kind of weary acceptance that made his chest ache. Her gaze held his, unwavering, and in that moment, she was not an abstraction. She was not a symbol. She was not a Snow.
She was a person. A person with pale blue eyes so similar to his eyes—to the eyes of the monster who had destroyed so many lives, who had turned Finnick into something broken and reshaped and sold. Those eyes had watched him from across the room during Capitol parties, had followed him with cold curiosity, had lingered on his body in ways that made his skin crawl. Those eyes had belonged to Cornelius Snow too, the man who had taken Johanna apart piece by piece, the man who had designed arenas specifically to prolong suffering, the man who had looked at innocent women and seen nothing but meat to be consumed. Eyes of a monster and eyes of a wolf.
And now those same eyes—or eyes so like them that it hardly mattered—were looking at him with something that might have been trust.
Something inside Finnick snapped.
His hand moved without realizing it—a flash of motion, too fast to track, too sudden to stop. His palm connected with her cheek with a sharp, sickening crack that seemed to echo through the silent apartment. The impact jarred his wrist, sent a shock of sensation up his arm and left behind a burning sting in his palm that he knew would linger for hours.
Y/n let out a sound—a wet, startled hiccup, more surprise than pain at first—as she fell sideways, her body crumpling beneath the force of the blow. Her hands shot out to catch herself, her palms slapping against the carpet, her hair falling across her face in a pale gold curtain. She didn’t cry out. She didn’t scream. She simply lay there, half-curled on the floor, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps, her whole body shaking now with a tremor he couldn’t stop.
Finnick stared at his hand. At his palm, already reddening from the impact. At his fingers, still curled slightly, still ready to strike again. Something dark had glazed over his eyes—a film, a veil, a dissociation that separated him from what his body was doing. He could feel himself pulling back, retreating into some distant corner of his mind where the sounds were muffled and the images were blurred and nothing could touch him. It was a familiar place, this inner fortress. He had built it during his years as Snow’s plaything, had reinforced it during the war, had retreated to it countless times when reality became too heavy to bear.
But even from that distant watchtower, he could see what was happening. He could see his hand raising again. He could see it coming down on her skin—her shoulder, her arm, the side of her ribs—each impact producing a soft, wet sound that seemed to come from somewhere far away. He could see her body jerking with each blow, could see her trying to curl into herself, to protect her vital organs, to make herself as small and unappealing a target as possible.
Instinctively, her hands came up to cover her face—a primal response, the body’s desperate attempt to shield what was most precious, most vulnerable, most easily broken. Her fingers splayed across her cheeks, her palms pressing against her forehead, her arms forming a protective cage around her head. She made herself small, made herself compact, made herself into something that might survive if only the blows would stop.
Finnick’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. His fingers curled around the delicate bones, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb, the warmth of her skin, the slight resistance as she tried instinctively to pull away. His grip tightened. Squeezed. He could feel the bones shifting under his fingers, could feel the soft tissues compressing, could feel the fine tremors running through her arm as she tried not to fight back.
She whimpered. A small, soft sound, barely audible, more breath than voice. Tears formed in her eyes—pale blue eyes, so like his eyes—and began to spill down her cheeks, tracing silver paths through the soft makeup the stylist had applied. She didn’t sob. She didn’t beg. She simply cried, silently, her body shaking, her breath hitching, her wrist still trapped in his grip.
Finnick looked at her. At the tears on her cheeks. At the reddening marks on her skin. At the collar still gleaming at her throat, the silver tag catching the light, the words Property of F. Odair seeming to glow in the darkness.
He thought of the counsellor’s words. If they decide you’re not making good use of her, they’ll remove her from your custody.
She thought of Tigris’s promise. Lucia will be my ward. She will be safe.
He thought of his own hands, and all the things they had done, and all the things they were doing now. And he kept squeezing.
“Stop crying.”
The words came out sharper than he intended—edged with irritation, with frustration, with something that sounded almost like contempt. Finnick heard himself speak and didn’t recognize his own voice. It belonged to someone else, someone harder, someone who had been hollowed out and filled with something cold and unfeeling. He stared down at Y/n, still half-curled on the floor, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, and felt a surge of something hot and ugly rise in his chest.
Why was she crying? It was barely anything. A few open-handed strikes. A wrist squeezed a little too tightly. Nothing compared to what he had endured in the arena, in the Capitol, in the dark rooms where Snow’s associates had paid for the privilege of putting their hands on him. Most people—most survivors—had been forced to endure pain infinitely worse than this. What he had given her would barely leave a bruise. By tomorrow, the redness would have faded to a faint yellow and within a few days, it would be gone entirely, leaving no trace behind. And yet she was crying as if he had broken her bones, as if he had torn her apart and left her bleeding on the floor.
But that was it, wasn’t it? That was the heart of it. Her privilege. Her soft, sheltered life in the Snow mansion, where the worst pain she had ever known was probably a stubbed toe or a paper cut. She had never been forced to build endurance the way district children had. She had never learned to bite down on a leather strap while someone carved into her flesh. She had never been taught to dissociate, to float above her body, to become someone else entirely while her physical form was being used and discarded. She had never had to develop calluses on her soul.
The thought should have brought him satisfaction. Instead, it only made him angrier.
Y/n nodded at his command—a quick, jerky motion, her chin dipping toward her chest—but she couldn’t make herself stop crying. The tears kept coming, welling up from some deep, overflowing reservoir inside her, spilling down her cheeks and dripping onto the carpet. She tried to blink them back, tried to swallow the sobs that kept catching in her throat, tried to compose her face into something neutral, something obedient, something that wouldn’t provoke him further. Her breath came in short, hitching gasps, each inhale a battle, each exhale a surrender. She pressed her lips together until they went white, until the taste of copper filled her mouth, but still the tears fell.
Stop. Stop. Stop, she told herself fiercely. You’re making it worse. You’re making him angry. Stop crying. Stop being weak. Stop—
Finnick’s hands shot out and curled around her throat.
The contact was sudden, unexpected—his fingers wrapping around the column of her neck, his thumbs pressing against her jaw, his palms warm and slightly damp against her skin. He didn’t squeeze, not yet. He simply held her, his grip firm enough to keep her in place, to force her to look at him. The collar shifted against her skin, the leather creaking softly, the silver tag tapping against his knuckles.
Y/n’s eyes flew to his face. She looked at him through a veil of tears, her pale blue gaze meeting his sea-green one, her expression a mixture of fear and confusion and something else—something that might have been understanding. Her throat moved beneath his hands as she swallowed, the muscles working against his palms, her pulse fluttering rapid and fragile against his fingertips.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. The certainty that had propelled him through the past few minutes—the dark, dissociated certainty that had allowed him to raise his hand and bring it down, over and over—had evaporated, leaving behind nothing but confusion and dread and a sick, spiraling sense of unreality. Should he have stopped? Should he have continued? Should he hit her again, harder this time, to make up for the hesitation? Should he let her go and walk away and pretend none of this had ever happened?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore. The ground beneath him seemed to shift and crack, threatening to open up and swallow him whole.
His grip loosened on her throat. His fingers slackened, his palms pulled back and then his hands dropped away entirely, falling to his sides like dead weights. He released her as though her skin had burned him, as though touching her had been a mistake he couldn’t take back.
Finnick turned away. His gaze drifted to the windows—the floor-to-ceiling glass that dominated the far wall of the living room, offering an uninterrupted view of the Capitol skyline. The city sprawled before him, a glittering expanse of lights and shadows, beautiful and rotten, indifferent and eternal. He stared at his reflection in the dark glass—a pale, hollow-eyed stranger with copper hair and sea-green eyes that seemed to belong to someone else. He didn’t recognize himself. He didn’t know who this man was, standing in this luxury apartment, putting a collar around the throat of a woman who had been given to him like a gift.
This isn’t me, he thought. This isn’t who I am. This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t—
Behind him, he heard Y/n gasping for breath. The sound was wet and ragged, her lungs struggling to pull in air after the pressure on her throat had been released. She was lying on the floor a few feet away from where he stood, her body still half-curled, her hands still trembling, her chest heaving with the effort of breathing. The soft blue lace of her lingerie seemed obscene in the dim light, a mockery of beauty, a costume for a role she had never auditioned for.
Finnick looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Fine, rapid tremors travelled through his fingers, his palms, his wrists, as though his body was trying to shake off something that had latched onto him from the inside. The skin of his right palm was still flushed from the impact of her cheek, a faint pinkness that would fade by morning. His fingernails were clean, his knuckles unbroken. There was no blood on him. No evidence of what he had done except the memory, already beginning to blur at the edges and the marks already blooming on her skin.
Then the images came.
They flashed through his mind without warning—not memories, not quite, but fragments, shards, pieces of a life he had tried so hard to bury. The parties, first: chandeliers and champagne and silk-draped rooms where the air smelled of perfume and sweat and something darker. The hands that had touched him, countless hands, grabbing and groping and claiming. The faces that had hovered above him, their features blurred together into a single, monstrous mask of hunger and satisfaction. Then the arena: blood-soaked sand, the screams of dying children, the weight of a trident in his hands, the knowledge that he would have to kill again and again and again just to see another sunrise. Then Snow’s mansion: the cold, sterile rooms where he had been taken after the parties, where he had been made to kneel on hard floors, where a collar had been locked around his throat and he had been told to smile for the cameras.
The images came faster now, overlapping, bleeding into one another, until he couldn’t tell where one memory ended and another began. The laughter of Capitol guests mingled with the screams of tributes. The taste of champagne mixed with the copper tang of blood. The quiet of his apartment—the silence he had always treasured, the silence that meant he was safe, he was alone, he was no one’s property—filled with noise, with voices, with the terrible symphony of his past.
He could hear them. All of them. Snow’s cold, measured tones. The counsellor’s ugly laugh. The stylist’s honeyed voice. The hands that had held him down, the mouths that had whispered filthy promises, the eyes that had watched him and seen nothing but a body to be used.
Stop, he thought. Stop. Please. Make it stop.
But the voices only grew louder.
Finnick curled into himself. His shoulders hunched forward, his head dropped, his arms wrapped around his torso as though he could hold himself together through sheer pressure. His breath came in short gasps, each inhale a battle, each exhale a surrender. Tears formed in his own eyes now—hot and sudden, blurring his vision, spilling down his cheeks in a way that felt foreign and wrong. He hadn’t cried in years. He had forgotten how. And yet here he was, sobbing silently in his own living room, a few feet away from a woman he had just hurt, a woman who bore the marks of his hands on her skin.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. The words were barely audible, more breath than sound, spoken to no one and everyone. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I don’t want—”
He didn’t know what he was apologizing for. For hurting her? For losing control? For being exactly the kind of person he had spent his whole life trying not to become? The words tumbled out of him in a broken stream, each one dissolving into the next, until they became nothing more than a string of syllables, meaningless and desperate.
This isn’t who I am, he told himself, but the voice in his head sounded less certain now. I’m not like them. I’m not a monster. I’m not—
But he had hurt her. He had raised his hand and brought it down on her skin, had felt the impact travel up his arm, had watched her crumple and cry and beg without words. He had done exactly what the counsellor had wanted him to do. Exactly what the parliament had expected. Exactly what Snow had done to him, over and over, until the memory of it had become a second skin he could never shed.
The spiral worsened. The abyss beneath him yawned wider, darker, hungrier. Nothing seemed able to drag him out of it—no rational thought, no comforting memory, no flicker of hope. He was falling, and falling and falling, and there was no bottom to catch him, no ground to break his descent. Just the endless dark, and the voices, and the knowledge that he had become the very thing he had once sworn to destroy.
And then he heard a soft voice call out to him.
“Master?”
The word was tentative, almost questioning, as though she wasn’t sure she was allowed to speak. It cut through the noise in his head like a blade through fog—not silencing the voices, not banishing the images, but creating a small, clear space in the centre of the chaos. A space where something other than horror could exist.
Finnick felt a soft touch on his hand. Light, barely there, the brush of fingertips against his knuckles. He looked down and saw Y/n’s hand resting on his—pale and slender, the fingers slightly curled, the nails bare and clean. She wasn’t gripping him, wasn’t holding on, wasn’t trying to restrain him. She was simply touching him, making contact, letting him know that she was there.
He looked up. Met her eyes.
Y/n was crawling closer, her movements slow and careful, her body still trembling from the aftermath of his hands. The bruises were already beginning to form on her skin—faint shadows on her cheek, darker marks on her arm where he had grabbed her, a hint of purple blooming at her collarbone. Her cheeks were tear-streaked, her makeup smeared, her hair a tangled mess of pale gold. She looked broken. She looked ruined. She looked like someone who had been hurt and was choosing to approach her abuser anyway.
“I know you have to do what you have to do,” she said, her voice soft and hoarse from crying. She paused, swallowing, wincing slightly as her throat moved. “I—I don’t blame you for it.”
She crawled closer still, until she was kneeling beside him, her shoulder almost touching his, her breath warm against his arm. Her hand remained on his, not squeezing, not pulling, just resting there like a small, fragile anchor.
“You’re not them,” she whispered, as though she could hear the thoughts screaming in his head. “You’re not like them. I know you’re not.”
Finnick stared at her. At the bruises already beginning to bloom across her skin—purple and blue shadows that marred the soft, pale perfection of her body. At the tears still clinging to her lashes, trembling there like dew on a spider’s web. At the collar around her throat, gleaming softly in the darkness, the silver tag catching the glow from the windows and throwing it back in small, sharp flashes. Property of F. Odair. The words seemed to burn in the air between them, an accusation and a confession all at once.
She reached up and took his hand. Her fingers were warm and slightly damp from her tears, her grip gentle but insistent as she guided his palm toward her face. He let her, too shocked to resist, too exhausted to pull away. His hand moved through the air as though guided by strings, weightless and disconnected from the rest of his body, until his fingers made contact with her cheek.
The skin there was soft. Warmer than he expected. And slightly swollen beneath his palm, already tender from where he had struck her.
“It’s okay,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, each word a small, fragile thing that seemed to cost her more than it should. Her pale blue eyes held his, unblinking, unwavering. “You can hurt me. You can use me. I deserve it.” It’s a small price to pay.
Finnick’s features twisted in pain. His brow furrowed, his lips pressed together, his jaw tightened until the muscles stood out in sharp relief against his skin. Something cracked open inside his chest—a fissure, a fault line, a wound that had never fully healed and was now bleeding fresh. He stared at her as though seeing her for the first time, as though she were a riddle he couldn’t solve, a language he couldn’t speak.
Why was she doing this? Why was she encouraging her own abuse? Why was she offering herself up like a sacrifice, pressing his hand to her bruised cheek, whispering words of absolution he hadn’t asked for and didn’t deserve? She should have been hateful. She should have been resentful. She should have been spitting venom, clawing at his eyes, screaming for help that would never come. That was what he expected. That was what he understood. That was the language of survivors—the language he spoke fluently, the language of anger and resistance and the desperate, clawing fight to remain whole.
But she wasn’t giving him that. She was giving him softness. She was giving him forgiveness. She was giving him permission to hurt her and somehow that was worse than any accusation she could have levelled.
Y/n was close to him now. Too close. He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, could smell the faint, floral scent of whatever products the stylist had used on her hair and body—something sweet and delicate, like night-blooming jasmine, utterly at odds with the violence that had just passed between them. Her breath fanned across his lips, soft and warm, carrying the faintest hint of mint. Her body was curled beside his, her shoulder pressed against his arm, her hip brushing against his thigh. She was a source of heat in the cool darkness of the apartment, a small, living flame that seemed to draw him toward her despite every instinct screaming at him to pull away.
Finnick’s body buzzed with the warmth of the alcohol still swimming through his veins. The whiskey had dulled the sharpest edges of his thoughts, had smoothed the jagged fragments of his memories into something almost bearable. But it had also lowered his defenses, had loosened the tight hold he kept on his impulses, had blurred the line between what he should do and what he wanted to do. His head felt thick and heavy, his limbs loose and uncoordinated, his judgment clouded by the pleasant, numbing fog that had settled over his brain.
His eyes traveled down her body.
He didn’t mean to look. He told himself he didn’t mean to look. But his gaze slipped from her face—from those pale blue eyes, from the bruises—and began to drift downward. Down the milky column of her neck, where the collar rested against her throat. Down the curve of her shoulder, bare and smooth in the dim light. Down the swell of her breasts, barely contained by the soft blue lace of the lingerie, rising and falling with each shallow breath. Down the narrow span of her waist, the flare of her hips, the long, elegant lines of her legs, bare from mid-thigh to ankle.
She looked so beautiful in this light. Almost ethereal. The soft glow from the windows caught the pale gold of her hair, turning it into something that seemed to glow from within. The shadows played across her skin, accentuating the curves and hollows of her body, the subtle architecture of bone and muscle and soft, yielding flesh. Her bruises stood out in stark relief against marble of her skin—dark flowers blooming on a field of snow, evidence of what he had done, what he was capable of.
Johanna had been right. She did look like an angel. A fallen one, perhaps. A broken one. An angel with bruised wings and tear-stained cheeks and the collar of a slave around her throat.
Finnick’s hand rose to her cheek. The same hand that had struck her. The same hand that had wrapped around her throat. Now it cupped her face with something approaching tenderness, his palm moulding to the curve of her jaw, his fingers threading into the soft hair at her temple. The warmth of her skin against his palm was almost shocking—a reminder that she was real, that she was here, that this was happening. He almost flinched at the contact, almost pulled away, almost retreated back into the cold, safe distance he had maintained between them.
But he didn’t.
The voices in his head didn’t quiet. They were still there, a low, constant murmur at the edge of his consciousness, whispering fragments of memory and fear and self-loathing. But they didn’t grow louder either. For the first time in hours—perhaps for the first time in years—they seemed to recede, to retreat, to give him a moment of blessed, fragile silence.
Finnick was too tired. Too tired of pretending. Too tired of being civilized, of holding back, of burying his feelings beneath layers of charm and politeness and carefully constructed composure. Too tired of smiling when he wanted to scream, of nodding when he wanted to argue, of taking the high road when every fibre of his being wanted to burn it all down. Too tired of being the survivor, the victor, the senator, the man who had overcome unimaginable horrors and emerged whole on the other side. He wasn’t whole. He had never been whole. He was a patchwork of scars and coping mechanisms and desperate, fragile strategies for making it through one more day.
And in this moment, in the dim light of his apartment, with a woman kneeling beside him and offering herself up like a sacrifice, he simply let go.
He cupped her face with both hands now—his palms warm against her cheeks, his fingers threading into her hair, his thumbs brushing across her cheekbones. He could feel the tears still wet on her skin, could taste the salt of them in the air between them. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t flinch. She simply looked up at him with those pale blue eyes, waiting, accepting, surrendering to whatever came next.
Then he smashed his lips onto hers.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t tender. It was raw and desperate and almost animalistic—a collision of mouths, a clash of teeth, a hunger that had been building for longer than he wanted to admit. He kissed her like a drowning man gasping for air, like a starving man reaching for bread, like someone who had been touched without his permission so many times that the only way he knew how to touch was to take.
There was something in him that wanted to consume instead of be consumed. To touch instead of being touched. To be the one holding someone down instead of the one being held. For years, he had been on the other side of this equation—had been the object, the target, the body to be used and discarded. He had learned to dissociate, to float above himself, to become someone else entirely while his physical form was being violated. But he had never learned to want it. He had never learned to enjoy it. He had simply learned to survive it.
But this—this was different. This was his choice. His desire. His hunger. And for once, he didn’t want to hold it back.
He pushed her down to the carpeted floor. The motion was sudden, almost rough and she let out a small, surprised sound against his mouth as her back hit the soft fibres. He followed her down, his body pressing against hers, his weight pinning her to the ground. The carpet was thick and soft beneath them, muffling the sounds of their movement, cushioning the impact of his knees and elbows as he settled over her.
He hovered above her, his body a cage around hers, his chest against her breasts, his hips pressed against her stomach. She was so small beneath him—fragile and warm and impossibly soft. He could feel her heartbeat through the thin lace of her lingerie, could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse against his chest, could feel the way her breath hitched and stuttered with every movement he made.
One of his hands caught both of hers, his fingers wrapping around her wrists, pinning them above her head. She didn’t struggle. She didn’t resist. Her arms stayed where he put them, her hands open and palm-up, her fingers slightly curled. She looked up at him through the tangled fall of her pale gold hair, her eyes wide and luminous, her lips parted and slightly swollen from his kiss.
His other hand began to trail down her body.
Slowly. Deliberately. He let his fingers trace the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat, the hollow at the base of her neck where her pulse beat rapid and fragile. He let them drift lower, across the soft blue lace covering her breasts, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric, feeling the way her body arched slightly toward his touch even as she made herself small and still. He let them trace the outline of her ribs, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, until his hand rested on the bare skin of her thigh, just below the hem of the lingerie.
She trembled beneath him. Her whole body shook like a plucked string still vibrating after the note had faded. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t close her eyes. She kept them fixed on his face, watching him, waiting for him, accepting whatever he chose to give her.
Finnick looked down at her and felt something crack open inside him. Something he had kept locked away for a very long time. Something that might have been hope, or might have been despair, or might have been something else entirely, something he didn’t have a name for.
He wanted to consume her. He wanted to devour her. He wanted to lose himself in the warmth of her body, the softness of her skin, the surrender in her eyes. He wanted to forget—forget the arena, forget the parties, forget Snow’s cold smile and the counsellor’s ugly laugh and the stylist’s honeyed voice. He wanted to be someone else, if only for a few minutes. Someone who took instead of being taken. Someone who chose instead of being chosen for.
So he stopped thinking. Stopped questioning. Stopped trying to be good.
He lowered his mouth to hers again and let himself fall.
╰ ┈➤ A/n: Both y/n and Finnick deserve a hug so bad 😔😔 they’re like wet kicked stray kittens at the side of the road and someone please put them in a lake house away from the capitol’s bs 🙏🙏
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ dd:dne. heavy disclaimer for dark content. mentions of sexual violence. mentions of prostitution and canon typical violence. physical abuse. angst. psychological trauma and ptsd. pet play dynamics. MDNI.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Finnick Odair x fem!Snow!reader
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Okay so ngl the first part did better than I expected and here's the next part. Also please lemme know your thoughts cuz I’d love to hear em. (and so i know y’all don’t hate me) Comment, Like and Reblog
Comment to be added to taglist.
[I] | [II] | [III] | [IV] | [V] | [VI] | [VII]
“I’ll take her.”
The words hung in the air, simple and absolute. No explanation. No justification. Just a statement of fact.
Johanna stared at him as though he had grown a second head. Katniss’s eyes widened, her lips parting in surprise. Tigris leaned forward, her golden gaze sharp and searching. Even Y/n seemed frozen, her pale blue eyes locked on his, her lips trembling slightly.
The counsellor from District 6 scowled, his face darkening with something that might have been disappointment or rage. “And why should you—”
“Sit down,” Finnick said quietly. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. There was something in his tone—a cold, flat authority—that silenced the objection before it could fully form. He turned to face the parliament, his hands resting on the back of his chair. “I am a victor. A senator. A man who has served this Republic since its founding. I have given my blood, my body, my sanity to the people of Panem. If anyone here has earned the right to make this decision, it is me.”
He looked at Katniss. She held his gaze for a long moment, searching his face for something—motive, perhaps, or hidden cruelty. Whatever she found there made her nod slowly, reluctantly.
“The motion is amended,” Katniss said, turning back to the chamber. “Y/n Snow will serve her sentence in the custody of Senator Finnick Odair, subject to parliamentary oversight. All in favour?”
The vote was closer this time. But it passed.
And Finnick sat down, his heart pounding, his hands steady, his mind already spinning with the weight of what he had just agreed to do.
That evening, Finnick returned to his apartment alone, the weight of the day pressing down on him like a physical thing. He had barely registered the drive back—the familiar streets of the Capitol blurring past the soft hum of the electric engine doing nothing to quiet the noise in his head. Now he stood in the middle of his living room, still in his formal clothes, pacing a slow, restless path from the windows to the fireplace and back again.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to expect. He had volunteered to take custody of Y/n Snow on impulse—a split-second decision born of something he couldn’t quite name. Disgust at the counsellor from District 6, perhaps. A flicker of recognition when her haunted eyes had met his. Or maybe just the memories that he didn’t want to recall. Whatever the reason, the deed was done. The parliament had voted. And now she was coming here. To his home. To his care.
To his cage.
His stomach turned. He resumed pacing.
The doorbell rang at precisely seven minutes past eight. The sound sliced through the heavy silence of the apartment, making Finnick’s shoulders tense. He crossed to the door in four long strides, pulled it open and found himself face to face with a ghost from a life he had tried very hard to forget.
“Senator Odair.” The man’s voice was smooth as poisoned honey—warm on the surface, cloying underneath, with something sharp and unpleasant lurking just below. He was a former stylist from the Hunger Games, one of the ones who had dressed tributes for the cameras, who had painted smiles on frightened children and called it pageantry. His hair was silver-grey and swept back from a narrow face. His suit was immaculate, tailored to within an inch of its life. And his smile, wide and white and utterly insincere, never quite reached his eyes.
Finnick gave him a small, tight nod of acknowledgment. Nothing more. He had learned long ago that men like this fed on warmth; the best defence was to offer none at all.
“I’ve brought the goods,” the stylist continued, undeterred by Finnick’s cool reception. He clapped his hands twice—a sharp, theatrical gesture—and two assistants emerged from the shadows of the hallway, moving with the practiced efficiency of people who had done this many times before. One carried two large briefcases, sleek and black, their handles gleaming. The other wheeled a hanger rod, the kind used by couturiers to transport gowns to fashion shows. But these were not gowns.
Finnick’s eyes travelled slowly along the rod, taking in what hung there. Lace. Silk. Leather. Straps. Cutouts that revealed more than they concealed. Pieces of fabric so small and so strategically placed that they could barely be called clothing at all. Some were transparent. Some were trimmed with fur. One appeared to be made almost entirely of gold chains linked together by tiny rings, designed to cover nothing and accentuate everything. His jaw tightened. His hands curled into loose fists at his sides.
“Now for the fun part,” the stylist said, his voice rising with theatrical excitement. He gestured over his shoulder. “Bring her out.”
Y/n stepped forward from behind the assistants, where she had been standing, waiting, in the shadows. She was wrapped in a simple white robe, the kind hotels leave folded at the foot of the bed, belted tightly at her waist. Her hair had been styled into soft, cascading waves that fell past her shoulders, catching the light from the hallway fixtures. Her face was bare of heavy makeup—just a touch of gloss on her lips, a hint of colour on her cheeks, a subtle smudging of shadow around her pale blue eyes to make them appear larger, more luminous. The stylist had designed to highlight her features rather than transform them. She looked younger than her years. More vulnerable. More breakable.
The stylist beamed. “I took my artistic liberties with this one,” he said, as one of his assistants stepped forward and, with a single, practiced motion, untied the belt of Y/n’s robe.
The white fabric parted and fell to the floor in a soft heap.
Finnick’s eyes widened. His breath caught somewhere in his throat. She was wearing a lingerie set the colour of a summer sky—soft blue, almost ethereal, made of delicate lace and whisper-thin silk that clung to every curve and hollow of her body. The bra was sheer, the underwear cut high on her hips and the entire ensemble seemed designed to flaunt rather than conceal. Her body was completely on display, from the slender line of her neck to the gentle flare of her hips to the long, elegant length of her legs. She was beautiful in every sense of the word but it wasn’t something that would help her now.
Without a word, without meeting his eyes, she sank to her knees on the floor in front of him. Her hands rested palms-up on her thighs. Her head bowed slightly, exposing the curve of her neck. The posture was practiced, precise—she had been taught this, rehearsed it, probably until her knees were raw and her back ached. The thought made Finnick’s stomach churn.
“We’ve done her makeup in a softer look, as you can see,” the stylist continued, apparently oblivious to—or delighted by—the horror spreading across Finnick’s face. “To accentuate her natural features. I’ve also taught her some basic tips so she can do her own face in the future. Hygiene, maintenance, all of that. She’s a quick learner. So very eager to please.” He said the last part with a smirk that made Finnick want to break something.
The stylist glanced at his lead assistant, who stepped forward and opened one of the black briefcases with a soft click. Inside, nestled in a bed of dark velvet, lay a singular collar—matching the soft blue of the lingerie set exactly, the leather supple and gleaming, the buckle polished to a mirror shine. Attached to it was a silver leash, fine-linked and delicate, the kind one might use for a small dog. The assistant opened the second briefcase as well, revealing more collars in different colours—black, red, white, deep green—some with matching leashes, others with chains, still others with small padlocks and tiny, delicate bells.
“The outfit sets are complete with matching collars and leashes,” the stylist said, reaching into the first briefcase and lifting the blue collar out with something like reverence. He held it out to Finnick like an offering. “Some sets include additional accessories as well. Muzzles, cuffs, blindfolds. I included a few ‘training aids’—nothing too severe, of course, just the basics. Reward markers, correction tools, that sort of thing. All very humane.”
Finnick stared at the collar in the stylist’s outstretched hand. It seemed to pulse in the low light, the silver accents catching the glow of the city beyond the windows. He reached out and took it on instinct, his fingers closing around the cool leather, and the weight of it—the finality of it—settled into his palm like a stone dropped into still water. His head was spinning. His thoughts were a jumble of images: the arena, the Capitol parties, the hands that had touched him without permission, the collar he himself had worn once, briefly, as part of a “costume” for a private event he had never been able to fully forget.
He looked down at Y/n, still kneeling on his floor, still not meeting his eyes. The soft blue lace of her lingerie seemed almost beautiful in the dim light. Almost innocent. Almost like something a person might choose to wear.
But she hadn’t chosen it. None of this had been her choice.
“I went for a nice ‘puppy chic’ aesthetic,” the stylist said, breaking into Finnick’s thoughts with his chipper, commercial tone. “Personally, I would have preferred ears and a tail—to really sell the concept, you understand—but I kept it intentionally plain. Neutral. A blank canvas, if you will. I thought you might want to customize her in the future. Add your own touches. Make her truly yours.”
He smiled again, that wide, empty smile and gestured to his assistants. They began moving the hanger rod into the apartment, positioning it near the corner where the golden cage now stood—a detail the stylist’s eyes lingered on with professional appreciation. The briefcases were set down on the coffee table, their contents waiting to be unpacked. And Y/n remained on her knees, motionless, her breath shallow and even, her pale blue eyes fixed on a spot on the floor in front of her.
Finnick looked at the collar in his hand. Then at the cage. Then at the woman kneeling before him, wearing clothes that weren’t really clothes, her body already beginning to tremble from the effort of staying still.
“Leave,” he said quietly.
The stylist blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Leave.” Finnick’s voice was soft, but there was no mistaking the command in it. “All of you. Now.”
The stylist opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and closed it again. He snapped his fingers at his assistants and they filed out of the apartment with the quick, nervous energy of people who had just realized they had overstayed their welcome. The door clicked shut behind them.
Finnick stood alone in his living room with a collar in his hand and a woman at his feet.
He did not move.
He did not speak.
The door had barely clicked shut behind the stylist and his assistants when a soft knock sounded again. Finnick’s shoulders tensed. He had been standing in the same spot, the blue collar still clutched in his hand, Y/n still kneeling motionless on the floor before him. The silence between them had been thick, charged with something neither of them seemed willing to name.
He crossed to the door and pulled it open. The stylist stood in the hallway, his smile somewhat diminished but still firmly in place, like a mask that had cracked but not yet fallen.
“Apologies, Senator,” the man said, reaching into the inner pocket of his immaculate suit jacket. “I nearly forgot the most important part.” He withdrew a folded sheet of heavy parchment—creamy white, edges gilded, the kind of paper used for formal invitations or legal documents. It was covered in elegant, looping handwriting, the letters so precise they might have been printed. “The rules. For your reference, she is already aware.”
Finnick took the paper without a word. The stylist lingered for a moment, clearly hoping to be invited back inside, then thought better of it. He offered a curt bow and retreated down the hallway, his footsteps fading into the soft hum of the building’s ventilation system.
Finnick closed the door and leaned against it, the parchment crackling softly in his grip. He could feel Y/n’s eyes on him now—not staring directly, but watching from the corner of her vision, her pale blue gaze tracking his every movement. She was still on her knees, still in that soft blue lingerie that left nothing to the imagination, still trembling almost imperceptibly. The white robe lay in a heap where it had fallen, a puddle of fabric on the expensive rug.
He unfolded the paper and began to read.
RULES AND PROTOCOLS FOR THE CUSTODY AND MAINTENANCE OF Y/N SNOW
As decreed by the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Transitional Justice, in consultation with the Office of Senator Finnick Odair and the former Grand Stylist’s Guild of Panem.
ARTICLE I: GENERAL CONDUCT
1. The ward (hereafter referred to as “the asset”) shall address Senator Finnick Odair (hereafter referred to as “the Master”) as “Master” at all times when in private quarters. In public settings, she shall address him as “Senator” unless otherwise instructed.
2. The asset shall speak only when spoken to, unless granted explicit permission to do otherwise. Permission may be granted verbally or through a non-verbal signal to be established by the Master.
3. The asset shall maintain eye contact only when invited to do so. The default posture requires her gaze to be directed at the floor, at a point approximately three feet in front of her position.
4. The asset shall stay on all fours at all times and rise only when commanded. She shall remain in whatever position she has been placed until explicitly released or redirected.
ARTICLE II: APPEARANCE AND GROOMING
1. The asset’s appearance shall be maintained at all times to the satisfaction of the Master. This includes, but is not limited to: hair styling, makeup application, skincare, nail care and body grooming.
2. The asset shall wear only such clothing, undergarments, accessories and collars as the Master provides or approves. She shall not alter, remove, or replace any item without direct permission.
3. The collar issued to the asset shall remain affixed at all times except during bathing, medical examinations, or when the Master removes it for specific purposes. The asset shall not remove her collar under any circumstances.
4. The asset shall maintain a body weight within ten percent of her current measurements. Weekly weigh-ins shall be conducted by the Master or his designated proxy.
ARTICLE III: DOMESTIC DUTIES
1. The asset shall greet the Master at the door upon his return to the residence. The greeting shall be performed on her knees, with her head bowed, until the Master acknowledges her.
2. The asset shall be responsible for the cleanliness and organization of the Master’s personal quarters, including but not limited to: making the bed, laundering garments, dusting, vacuuming and the proper storage of all personal effects.
3. The asset shall prepare and serve all meals and beverages consumed within the residence, according to the Master’s preferences and dietary requirements. She shall not eat or drink without the Master’s explicit permission.
4. The asset shall retire to her designated sleeping area (the cage) no later than 10:00 PM each evening, unless otherwise instructed. She shall not leave this area during the night without permission.
ARTICLE IV: PHYSICAL CONDUCT AND RESTRICTIONS
1. The asset shall not touch the Master without his explicit invitation. This includes incidental contact, reaching, leaning, or any other form of physical approach.
2. The asset shall not touch herself for purposes of pleasure or comfort without the Master’s explicit permission. Any violation of this rule will result in immediate corrective action.
3. The asset shall not leave the residence without the Master’s accompaniment or written authorization. Any attempted departure will be treated as escape and referred to parliamentary authorities.
4. The asset shall surrender all bodily autonomy to the Master upon request. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to refuse physical contact, the right to privacy and the right to determine her own schedule.
ARTICLE V: BEHAVIORAL STANDARDS
1. The asset shall not speak of her former life, her family, her status as a Snow, or her crimes except when directly questioned by the Master. Questions shall be answered truthfully and without embellishment.
2. The asset shall not express negative emotions—including anger, resentment, sadness, or frustration—unless the Master explicitly requests such expressions. The expected demeanour is one of cheerful compliance.
3. The asset shall not cry except in response to physical discipline or when explicitly permitted. Unauthorized crying will be considered a behavioural infraction.
4. The asset shall thank the Master for any punishment she receives, recognizing that such correction is administered for her improvement and the maintenance of order.
ARTICLE VI: CORRECTIVE MEASURES
1. Infractions shall be addressed according to a tiered system:
Minor infractions (tone of voice, slow response, imperfect posture): verbal correction and a period of kneeling on a hard surface.
Moderate infractions (failure to complete a task, speaking without permission, improper grooming): removal of privileges (warm meals, soft bedding, etc.) and/or physical correction not exceeding ten strikes.
Major infractions (lying, attempting to hide violations, disrespect toward the Master, attempting to remove the collar): confinement to the cage for an extended period, restriction of food and physical correction by a method of the Master’s choosing.
2. All physical correction shall be documented and submitted monthly to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee.
3. The asset shall maintain a log of her own infractions and punishments, to be reviewed weekly by the Master.
ARTICLE VII: ENRICHMENT AND REWARDS
1. The Master may grant rewards for exemplary behavior, including but not limited to: extended freedom of movement within the residence, choice of clothing, preferred foods, time outside the residence, or physical affection.
2. The asset may earn the privilege of sleeping outside the cage by demonstrating sustained compliance over a period to be determined by the Master.
3. The Master may, at his sole discretion, grant the asset temporary relief from any of these rules, for any period of time, for any reason. Such relief shall be documented but need not be justified.
ARTICLE VIII: FINAL PROVISIONS
1. These rules take effect immediately and remain in force until such time as the Parliamentary Oversight Committee orders the asset’s release or transfer, or until the Master formally relinquishes custody in writing.
2. Any ambiguity in these rules shall be resolved in favour of the Master’s interpretation.
3. The asset shall sign a copy of these rules, indicating her understanding and acceptance. Failure to sign does not constitute grounds for non-compliance.
Finnick read the document three times. Each pass made his stomach sink a little deeper, his jaw tighten a little more. The language was cold, clinical—bureaucratic euphemisms for something that looked, sounded and smelled like ownership. Asset. Master. Correction. Maintenance. They had packaged the destruction of a human being in legal jargon and presented it to him on gilded paper.
He looked up from the parchment. Y/n was still kneeling, still waiting, her pale blue eyes now fixed on his face. She had seen him reading. She knew what the document was—probably had been shown a copy earlier, probably had been made to sign something similar in triplicate before they ever brought her here. There was no surprise in her expression, no curiosity. Just exhaustion. And that same haunted, hollow look he had seen in the parliament chamber.
Finnick dropped the collar next to her—a small, careless motion that sent the soft blue leather tumbling onto the rug beside Y/n’s kneeling form. It landed with a whisper of sound, the silver leash pooling next to it like a fallen serpent. He did not look at her as he stepped past. He did not acknowledge the way her breath hitched, the way her hands twitched as though she wanted to reach for it but knew better. He simply walked, his footsteps heavy and deliberate, carrying him away from her and toward the door.
His shoes were still by the coat stand where he had kicked them off earlier. He bent down and pulled them on with rough, impatient movements, not bothering to lace them properly. His phone was on the kitchen counter—he snatched it up. His car keys were in the bowl by the entryway—he grabbed those too. And then he was out the door, the heavy mahogany closing behind him with a soft, final click, leaving Y/n alone on the floor in her soft blue lace, surrounded by briefcases full of collars and a list of rules she had now live by.
The hallway stretched before him, empty and elegant. The lift arrived with a soft chime. Finnick stepped inside and let the doors close, leaning his forehead against the cool metal wall as the car descended. He could deal with this. He would deal with this. But not now. Not tonight. Everything was too much—the weight of the parliament’s decision, the stylist’s leering smile, the list of rules folded in his pocket, the collar he had just dropped on the floor like an offering he was not ready to make. He knew what he had volunteered for. He had stood up in that chamber and spoken the words with full knowledge of what they meant. But watching it unfold—seeing it made real, made tangible in lace and leather and card stock, was a horror in its own right. The kind of horror that settled into your bones and whispered that you were no better than the monsters you had helped to overthrow.
The garage was dimly lit, smelling of concrete and exhaust. Finnick walked to one of the cars the Republic had provided him—a sleek black sedan, powerful and silent, the kind of vehicle that had once belonged to Capitol elite. He slid into the driver’s seat and sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel, his breathing shallow, his mind racing. Then he turned the key and pulled out into the night.
The city lights flashed past his windows in streaks of gold and silver and electric blue. Billboards towered overhead, advertising luxury goods and entertainment complexes, their bright faces beaming down at the empty streets. The Capitol had rebuilt itself quickly after the fall—too quickly, some said. The scars were still there if you knew where to look: the cracked facades, the empty lots where buildings had been razed, the occasional memorial wreath tied to a lamppost. But for the most part, the city glittered on, indifferent and eternal, as though the rebellion had been nothing more than a brief, unpleasant dream.
Finnick drove without direction, his hands guiding the wheel automatically while his thoughts churned. The flashing lights did nothing to ease the chaos in his head. If anything, they made it worse—each flicker and glow a reminder of the world he had chosen to live in, the world he had helped to build, the world that had just handed him a woman on a silver platter and called it justice.
He needed a drink.
The establishment he finally chose was one of the few reserved for government officials—a private club tucked away on an upper level, inaccessible to ordinary citizens. The doors were heavy and dark, manned by security officers who nodded in recognition as Finnick approached. Inside, the space opened up into something almost beautiful: a high ceiling hung with crystal chandeliers, walls panelled in warm wood, soft amber lighting that made everything look golden and safe. People laughed and talked in clusters around small tables, their voices blending together into a low, indistinct hum. The noise blurred at the edges, becoming something almost soothing—a white noise of human connection that Finnick could hide inside.
He made a beeline for the bar, a long polished stretch of mahogany manned by a bartender in a crisp white shirt. Finnick slid onto one of the leather stools and caught the bartender’s eye.
“Strongest thing you have,” he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw by something he couldn’t name.
The bartender raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. He reached for a dark bottle on the top shelf—something amber and expensive, the label written in a language Finnick didn’t recognize and poured a generous measure into a crystal glass. Finnick took it, raised it to his lips and downed the entire thing in one long, burning swallow.
The liquid seared a path down his throat, settling into his stomach like a small, controlled fire. He set the glass down with a click and stared at it for a moment, waiting for the warmth to spread, for the sharp edges of his thoughts to soften. They didn’t. Not yet.
“Senator?” The voice came from his left, smooth and familiar in a way that made his spine stiffen. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Finnick turned his head slowly. The District 6 counsellor was sliding onto the stool beside him, his broad frame barely fitting into the space between the bar and the next seat. He was dressed in civilian clothes now—a dark jacket, an open collar, his face flushed with whatever he had been drinking before Finnick arrived. His smile was wide and genial, the smile of a man who believed he had won something important.
“I thought you’d be spending the night getting to know your whore better.” The counsellor’s voice lingered on the last word, turning it into something almost obscene. His eyes glittered with a mixture of envy and amusement. “Must be nice, having a Snow on a leash. The rest of us have to make do with memory.”
Finnick’s jaw tightened. He could feel the muscles in his neck corded with tension, could feel the urge to say something sharp rising in his throat like bile. But he swallowed it down. He had spent years learning to keep his composure in the face of men like this—men who smiled while they dug their thumbs into old wounds, men who mistook silence for weakness and politeness for permission. He would not lose control now. Not here. Not over this.
The bartender appeared again and Finnick gestured for another pour. The amber liquid filled his glass a second time and he downed it just as quickly as the first, feeling the burn layer itself on top of the previous warmth. His head was beginning to feel looser now, the thoughts inside it moving slower, like fish swimming through honey.
“Yes, well,” he said at last, his voice carefully neutral. He shrugged, a small, dismissive motion that he hoped conveyed indifference. “I have time.”
“Of course, Senator. Of course.” The counsellor raised his glass in a mock salute, the amber liquid catching the chandelier light and throwing small golden reflections across his face. He took a slow, deliberate sip, his eyes never leaving Finnick’s. “And make sure that one suffers. Properly, I mean. None of this soft-handed, lenient treatment I’ve been hearing about from some of the more sympathetic members of parliament.” He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to something almost confidential, as though he and Finnick were old friends sharing a private joke. “If I had it—that creature, that Snow bitch—I’d make sure it paid off its debts in one weekend. One long, hard, memorable weekend. By the time I was done with it, there wouldn’t be anything left but a husk.”
He laughed. It was a thick, ugly sound—the laugh of a man who had fantasized about this moment for years, who had lain awake at night imagining all the ways he could hurt someone smaller and weaker than himself and who now believed he had been given permission to make those fantasies real. The sound grated against Finnick’s ears like broken glass, setting his teeth on edge.
Finnick’s hand tightened around his glass. The crystal creaked softly under the pressure, a thin, warning sound. Another fraction of force and it would crack—would shatter in his grip, sending shards slicing into his palm, drawing blood that would mix with the whiskey and drip onto the polished bar. He wanted to let it break. He wanted to feel the sting, the pain, something physical to match the fury coiling in his chest. But he didn’t. He forced his fingers to relax, one by one, until the glass sat safely in his palm once more.
“I prefer to draw out suffering,” Finnick said. The words came from somewhere dark and hollow inside him—a place he didn’t like to visit, full of old angers and older griefs. He didn’t mean them. He wasn’t a sadistic person; he had never taken pleasure in the pain of others, had never understood the particular cruelty that seemed to come so easily to men like the counsellor beside him. But the war had changed him. The war had reached into his chest and rearranged his insides, leaving behind a stranger who looked like him and sounded like him but sometimes acted in ways he didn’t fully understand.
The violence had been the first sign. Small things, at first—a door slammed a little too hard, a glass thrown against a wall, a fist driven into a pillow until the feathers burst out like snow. Then bigger things. Shouting matches with people who didn’t deserve his anger. A broken nose in a bar fight he couldn’t remember starting. The way his hands would shake sometimes, not from fear, but from the effort of holding back, of not reaching out and grabbing and squeezing until something gave way. His psychiatrist—a soft-spoken woman with kind eyes and an endless supply of patience—had called it PTSD. A natural response to unnatural trauma. A brain trying to protect itself by staying alert, staying angry, staying ready for a threat that no longer existed.
But Finnick sometimes wondered if it was simpler than that. If all those years of smiling, all those years of spreading his legs for people he despised, all those years of choking down his rage and his disgust and his shame—if that anger had been pooling inside him like water behind a dam and the war had simply been the crack that let it start to leak out. Perhaps the psychiatrist was wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t the trauma making him violent. Perhaps he had always been this way, deep down and the trauma had simply scraped away the nice, polite veneer and revealed what had been there all along.
He didn’t like that thought. He tried not to dwell on it. But sometimes, late at night, it came to him unbidden, whispering in the dark.
“It makes sense why they gave it to you, given your history and… experiences.” The counsellor’s voice dripped with false sympathy, his head tilting to the side in a gesture of mock understanding. His eyes glittered with something that might have been curiosity or cruelty or both. “I mean, you understand the, ah, logistics of the situation better than most. The training. The conditioning. The—what did they used to call it? Ah yes. The breaking in.”
Finnick’s blood turned to ice. He knew exactly what this man was implying. He knew because he had lived it—had been forced into the same role the counsellor was now gleefully describing, sold to the highest bidder, passed from hand to hand like a piece of meat. President Snow had put him on a leash, both metaphorical and literal, parading him at parties, lending him out to favoured allies, using him as both a reward and a warning. There had been nights Finnick couldn’t remember, mornings he wished he could forget, hands that touched him without permission, mouths that whispered things he had tried desperately to bury. The collar around his throat hadn’t been soft blue leather with a silver tag—it had been cold metal, unyielding, a constant reminder that he owned nothing, not even himself.
The memories were ones he wanted to bury so deeply that no shovel could ever reach them. But they had a way of surfacing at times like this, rising up through the dark water of his consciousness like drowned things returning to the light.
“But I mean, look at it.” The counsellor shook his head slowly, his gaze turning speculative, almost dreamy. He wasn’t looking at Finnick anymore. He was looking somewhere else—somewhere in his own mind, where images of Y/n Snow danced behind his eyelids. “That body was made to be ravaged. You can just tell, can’t you? The way it moves. The way it stands. All that elegance and poise, just waiting to be stripped away.” He took another sip of his drink, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “I wonder how it looks under all that pomp. Under all those fancy dresses and designer gowns. I bet it’s even better than we imagine. I bet—”
“Don’t.”
Finnick’s voice was quiet. So quiet that, for a moment, the counsellor didn’t seem to hear him. He kept talking, kept musing, his words growing more explicit, more graphic, as though the alcohol had loosened something in him that should have remained tightly bound.
Finnick set his glass down on the bar with a soft click. He turned on his stool, slowly, deliberately, until he was facing the counsellor fully. His sea-green eyes were flat and cold—not the warm, charming eyes he wore for the cameras, not the haunted, weary eyes he wore when he was alone. These were the eyes of someone who had killed before and would kill again if pushed far enough. The eyes of a survivor. The eyes of a man with very little left to lose.
“I said don’t,” Finnick repeated. His voice was still soft, still deceptively gentle, but there was steel beneath it now. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
The counsellor’s smile faltered. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, as though he were trying to find a response that wouldn’t make things worse. His eyes darted to the side, gauging the distance to the door, the number of witnesses, the likelihood of intervention. “Her?” he said at last, his voice light, almost playful, as though he were testing the waters. “Oh, we’re using pronouns now? I thought she was just—”
“I said don’t.”
Finnick turned on his stool fully now, squaring his shoulders, planting his feet on the brass rail that ran along the base of the bar. He didn’t stand. He didn’t need to. The weight of his presence was enough—the reputation that preceded him, the stories people whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear. Finnick Odair. The Capitol’s darling. Snow’s favourite. They say he’s killed more people than anyone in the rebellion. They say he’s not quite right in the head. They say you don’t want to be alone with him when he gets that look in his eyes.
The counsellor must have heard those stories too, because he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly in his thick neck. His smile had disappeared entirely now, replaced by something that looked almost like unease.
“You got what you wanted,” Finnick continued, his voice low and even, each word placed like a stone in a wall. “The vote passed. She’s in my custody, not yours. Whatever fantasies you’ve been entertaining—whatever you’ve been picturing when you close your eyes at night—you can put them away. All of them. They’re not going to happen.”
He paused, letting the silence stretch between them. The noise of the club seemed to fade, the laughter and conversation receding until all that remained was the space between two men and the weight of everything unsaid.
“You don’t get to touch her,” Finnick said. “You don’t get to look at her. You don’t get to talk about her. Do you understand me? She is not yours. She was never yours. And if I ever hear you speak about her like that again—if I ever hear your voice in the same sentence as her name—I will make you regret it.” His voice dropped even lower, barely above a whisper. “And believe me when I say that I know exactly how to make someone regret things. I learned from the best.”
The counsellor’s smile flickered, dimming at the edges like a candle caught in a draft. For a brief, fleeting moment, something ugly surfaced on his florid face—a flash of anger, perhaps, or the sting of humiliation. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened, and for an instant Finnick saw the man beneath the politician’s mask: someone petty and vengeful, someone who would remember this moment and nurse it like a grudge, someone who would look for opportunities to pay back the slight. But the counsellor was a politician first and foremost and politicians learned quickly how to swallow their true feelings, how to choke down the bile of wounded pride and smile through the bitter taste. The mask slid back into place with practiced ease.
He raised his hands in mock surrender, palms out, fingers spread, his expression shifting to something almost jovial. He leaned back on his stool, putting a few inches of distance between himself and Finnick, and let out a chuckle—a sound that filled the space around them but never quite reached his eyes. Those eyes remained cold, calculating, already cataloguing this encounter for future reference.
“Fair enough, Senator. Fair enough.” He signalled the bartender with a snap of his fingers—a gesture that made Finnick’s hackles rise and ordered another drink. The bartender poured quickly, efficiently, and the counsellor wrapped his thick fingers around the fresh glass, raising it in a small, sardonic toast. The amber liquid caught the light, throwing tiny golden pinpricks across his knuckles. “To your new ward, then. May she serve you well. May she suffer well. May she give you everything you need to keep those parliamentary reports satisfying.”
Finnick did not raise his glass. He did not acknowledge the toast. He simply stayed there, his body still, his gaze fixed on the polished surface of the bar. The amber liquid in his own cup caught the light of the chandeliers above, refracting into small pools of gold and honey that seemed to shift and dance with every subtle movement of his hand. The noise of the establishment washed over him in waves—the laughter, bright and brittle; the clinking of glasses, sharp as little bells; the low, indistinct murmur of conversations he was not part of, would never be part of, could not bring himself to care about. He felt very far away from all of it, as though he were watching himself from a great distance, through the wrong end of a telescope. There was a man at the bar, a man with sea-green eyes and copper hair, a man wearing an expensive suit and a carefully blank expression. But that man seemed like a stranger. That man seemed like someone Finnick had known once, a long time ago, and had since lost touch with.
“But don’t go easy on her.” The counsellor’s voice cut through the fog, sharp and insistent. He had leaned in again, his shoulder almost brushing Finnick’s, his breath sour with whiskey and something else—triumph, perhaps, or spite. “You still have to submit reports each month. The Oversight Committee will be watching. They’ll be reading every word, scrutinizing every detail. And if they decide you’re not making good use of her—if they think you’re being soft, being lenient, being anything less than what they expect—they’ll remove her from your custody.” He paused, letting the weight of the words settle. Then he smiled, slow and unpleasant, his teeth yellowed and uneven. “And of course, I always have a spot free in my kennel. Just in case. The offer stands, Senator. For whenever you tire of her. Or whenever they tire of you.”
He clapped Finnick on the back—a hard, patronizing smack between the shoulder blades that made Finnick’s entire body go rigid. Then he slid off his stool, straightened his jacket and walked away without another word, disappearing into the warm amber crowd like a shark slipping beneath dark water. Finnick watched him go, watched the other patrons part around his broad form, watched until the crowd swallowed him completely and there was nothing left to see.
Then he turned back to the bar and stared at his reflection in the dark wood.
He should go home. He knew he should go home. Y/n was still there, still kneeling on the floor where he had left her, still wearing that soft blue lace, still surrounded by briefcases full of collars and a golden cage and a list of rules she had to follow. She would be waiting. She had been trained to wait. She had probably been waiting her entire life—for permission to speak, for permission to move, for permission to exist in spaces that were not already occupied by someone more powerful than herself. The thought of her there, alone in his apartment, her knees probably aching against the hard floor, her arms probably trembling from the effort of holding the same posture for hours, made something twist inside his chest. Something that might have been guilt. Something that might have been pity. Something that might have been the ghost of an emotion he had tried very hard to not feel.
But then again, the thought of walking back into that apartment—of crossing the threshold and seeing the cage in the corner, the collars laid out on the coffee table, the woman kneeling in submission—made something else twist inside him. Something darker. Something he didn’t have a name for and didn’t want to find. The weight of it pressed against his ribs, made it hard to breathe, made his hands shake slightly as he reached for his glass.
So he stayed.
He ordered another drink. The bartender poured without comment, his face professionally neutral, his eyes carefully averted. Finnick wrapped his fingers around the fresh glass and lifted it to his lips, letting the liquid burn its way down his throat, welcoming the heat, the sting, the temporary numbness that spread through his limbs like slow poison. The club continued to hum around him—the laughter, the clinking glasses, the low murmur of people who had never worn a collar, never knelt on a cold floor, never been sold to strangers by a man in a white rose-scented suit. They laughed and talked and pretended the world made sense and Finnick sat among them like a ghost at a feast, unable to join in, unable to leave, simply there, taking up space, breathing air, existing.
But the counsellor’s words lingered in his head, burrowing into the soft tissue of his thoughts like parasites. If they decide you’re not making good use of her, they’ll remove her from your custody. I always have a spot free in my kennel. The threat was clear, almost naked in its transparency. If Finnick failed to perform—if he failed to hurt her, to use her, to make her suffer the way the parliament wanted—they would take her away and give her to someone else. Someone like the counsellor. Someone with hungry eyes and wandering hands and a kennel waiting in some dark corner of his estate. Someone who would not hesitate, who would not flinch, who would do all the things Finnick’s conscience screamed against.
She would be removed from his custody if he didn’t use her. If he didn’t hurt her the way they wanted.
The thought made him sick. His stomach churned, his throat tightened and for a moment he thought he might be sick right there at the bar, in front of all these laughing, talking, pretending people. The whiskey sat heavy in his gut, a leaden weight that seemed to grow heavier with each passing second. He set his glass down before he could drop it, before his trembling fingers could betray him.
But then—insidious, unwelcome, creeping in from the shadows of his mind—another voice spoke. Not the counsellor’s. Not the bartender’s. Something deeper, something older, something that had been born in the arena and raised in the Capitol’s pleasure houses. The twisted, war-bruised part of him that he tried so hard to ignore. The part that had learned to survive by any means necessary, that had learned to smile through pain, that had learned to hurt before being hurt.
Or perhaps it’s the alcohol, he thought, grasping for an excuse, for any explanation that wasn’t the truth. Just the alcohol. Just the whiskey talking. Just the exhaustion and the memories and the weight of everything pressing down.
But the voice persisted, soft and insidious, whispering in the dark corners of his consciousness. She has to suffer. The parliament demands it. The Oversight Committee will be watching. They’ll read your reports. They’ll check for marks, for evidence, for proof that you’re doing what they couldn’t do themselves. If you don’t give them what they want, they’ll take her away. And if they take her away—
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.
Because he knew, with a certainty that sat like stone in his chest, that his hand would be much kinder than the others. Whatever he did to her—whatever the parliament demanded, whatever the reports required, whatever dark thing the counsellor expected—it would be gentler than what awaited her in that kennel. Finnick had been hurt. Finnick had been used. Finnick knew what it felt like to be held down by hands that didn’t care, to hear laughter while he bled, to wake up in strange rooms with no memory of how he had gotten there. He would not wish that on anyone. Not even a Snow.
So maybe, the voice whispered, maybe this is mercy. Maybe this is the kindest thing you can do for her. Take her. Use her. Hurt her just enough to satisfy them. And keep her safe from everyone else.
Finnick closed his eyes. The chandeliers blazed orange against his eyelids. The noise of the club faded to a dull roar. And somewhere, in the dark behind his eyes, he saw Y/n’s face—pale and trembling, her pale blue eyes fixed on his, her lips parted around words she hadn’t been allowed to speak.
He opened his eyes. Finished his drink. Set the glass down with a soft click.
╰ ┈➤ A/n: As for the references, some of ‘em were from handmaid’s tail and also the horrible treatment of Louis XVII after the French Revolution. And how he was given to a person who was named his guardian by the Committee of Public Safety.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ jungkook x fem!reader x eunwoo (slight jungkook x eunwoo)
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Okay so I wrote this a while back and gave it a quick revamp. I don't write for kpop very often but here's smth ig. Comment, Like and Reblog
The clinking of crystal glasses formed a delicate, percussive backdrop to the soft, melodic laughter that wove through the crowd. The air itself felt opulent, thick with trails of expensive perfumes and colognes that drifted through the room beneath the warm, golden glow cast by the grand chandeliers. Their light spilled across the polished marble floor, illuminating the swirl of designer gowns and tailored suits in a scene pulled straight from a gilded magazine. Waiters, as efficient and silent as worker bees in a well-ordered hive, navigated the sea of guests with practiced ease, their silver trays balancing delicate hoer d’oeuvres and flutes of chilled champagne that caught the light with every subtle movement.
“Jungkook, for the love of all that is holy, stop tugging at your collar,” Y/N murmured through a fixed, professional smile, her own words barely slipping past her lips. Without looking, her hand darted out to swat his away as he yanked at the stiff fabric for what felt like the hundredth time that evening. “I am not your personal stylist and I refuse to keep fixing that thing again and again.”
Jungkook’s jaw tightened as he fought the urge to roll his neck, the starched shirt feeling more like a straitjacket than formalwear. “I’m just not used to it, all right?” he grumbled, his voice low with barely concealed discomfort. “It’s stuffy, it’s suffocating and why, in this day and age, did I have to wear a fucking tie? It’s a medieval neck-noose.”
“If the decision had been left to him,” Eunwoo interjected smoothly, not even bothering to look at Jungkook as he adjusted the cuff of his own impeccably fitted sleeve, “he would have likely graced this black-tie event in one of his beloved oversized t-shirts or perhaps one of those... compression shirts he seems to so like. Very on-brand for a gala, very fashion-forward.” His tone was polite, almost pleasant but the snark dripped from each syllable like honey from a thorn.
“I cannot deal with this tonight,” Y/N exhaled, the sound a mix of exasperation and weary resignation as she smoothed the fabric of her elegant dress, a silent prayer for patience on her lips. This was one of the primary downsides of having her two idiot coworkers double as her best friends— they required constant, exhausting babysitting. In truth, Eunwoo was perfectly capable of handling himself with grace and wit, he was a master of social navigation. The problem was Jungkook, who seemed to operate with the sole purpose of provoking him, a chaotic force that necessitated her constant supervision lest their bickering escalate into a full-blown scene.
“I am going to go mingle and speak with the potential investors for the upcoming project. It is literally my job tonight. Behave yourselves. I mean it.” She shot them both a sharp, pointed glare that could have cut glass, waiting until she received Eunwoo’s subtle, acknowledging nod and Jungkook’s dramatically exaggerated raising of his hands in mock surrender before she turned on her heel and disappeared gracefully into the glittering crowd.
With a steadying breath, Y/N gracefully navigated through the clusters of conversation until her gaze landed on her first target of the evening: Kim Taeyeon. The woman stood near one of the marble pillars, a flute of champagne barely touched in her hand, her presence commanding despite her relatively petite frame. Dressed in a sleek navy-blue gown that spoke of sophistication and confidence of someone who knew her worth down to the last decimal. In her late thirties, she had already built an impressive portfolio that made her a legend in their industry—a name any company would kill to have associated with their brand. She was notoriously difficult, often described as standoffish by those who had the misfortune of approaching her unprepared. But Y/N had dealt with her before and more importantly, she had won. If she dared to boast, she might even say she was the only one in her entire department that the woman genuinely tolerated.
“Miss Kim. Good evening.” Y/N’s voice was warm but professional as she approached, careful not to startle the older woman.
Taeyeon turned, her expression settling into its usual stern mask, the kind that had made grown executives stammer through presentations. But then something shifted—the corners of her mouth softened, just slightly, curving into a small, knowing smile. “Y/N. Good evening. Tell me,” She said, her tone laced with dry amusement, “What scheme did your idiot boss send you to convince me of today?”
Y/N felt the corner of her own mouth twitch, both at the accurate assessment of her superior and at the rare moment of almost-teasing from Taeyeon. “It isn’t a scheme, Miss Kim. More so a project,” she corrected gently, her smile widening with genuine enthusiasm. “One I worked on myself, actually. From the ground up. And I genuinely think it’s something that would interest you.”
“Oh?” Taeyeon’s perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched upward, a mixture of curiosity and skepticism dancing in her sharp eyes. She was not a woman who wasted her time or her considerable fortune—on things that lacked substance or value. That was precisely why she cherry-picked her projects with meticulous care. Her stamp of approval was more than just a signature, it was a golden seal that made any project ten times more reliable, more desirable, more likely to succeed. Investors, small and big, followed her lead like ducklings after their mother, trusting her instincts implicitly.
With a deliberate motion, she glanced down at the delicate watch gracing her wrist, the diamonds on its face catching the chandelier light. “You have two minutes to pitch it to me,” she announced, her voice leaving no room for negotiation. Then her eyes lifted back to Y/N’s and there was something almost like encouragement hidden in their depths. “Do your best, Y/N.”
Y/N straightened her shoulders, feeling the weight of those words. Two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds to convince one of the most formidable women in the industry that her project was worth not just investment, but the invaluable weight of the Taeyeon name. She took a quiet breath, organized her thoughts like neatly stacked papers and began speaking.
“Hmm. Interesting.” Taeyeon’s eyes lingered on Y/N for a moment longer when she was done, as if she were mentally filing away every word that had been spoken. Then, with a slight pursing of her lips and a single, decisive nod, she delivered her verdict. “Have the finer details sent to my personal assistant by Monday. I... will consider it.” And just like that, as smoothly as she had arrived in the conversation, she turned and glided away, disappearing into the crowd like a phantom in navy-blue silk.
The moment Taeyeon was safely out of sight, Y/N felt her carefully constructed composure crumble like a sandcastle meeting the tide. Her shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly and she released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Goodness, she thought, pressing a hand briefly to her racing heart. That was stressful. That was absolutely, utterly, bone-meltingly stressful. She needed a moment. She needed air. She needed—
“Champagne?” a voice offered from her left, smooth as honey and warm as summer.
Without looking, without thinking, Y/N’s hand reached out and accepted the proffered flute, her fingers wrapping around the cool stem as she worked to collect herself. She brought the glass to her lips, ready to take a much-needed sip—
“You look very pretty tonight, Y/N.”
The words, spoken with a familiar, teasing lilt, snapped her out of her daze instantly. Y/N’s head whipped to the side, her eyes widening as they landed on the face attached to that voice. The champagne sloshed dangerously in its glass as her grip faltered for just a moment.
“Mingyu?” The name escaped her lips in a breathless rush, disbelief colouring every syllable. “No way. Long time no see.” A grin, genuine and giddy, spread across her face as she took in the familiar sharp jawline, the mischievous sparkle in his dark eyes, the way he stood with that effortless confidence that had always drawn her in. Without a second thought, she wrapped her free arm around him in a half-hug, the kind that was too familiar for mere acquaintances but too brief for something more. They pulled back and she found herself still smiling, memories of late-night study sessions and stolen moments flickering through her mind like an old film reel.
Mingyu had been a friend from college, one she’d shared a complicated, on-and-off something with that had never quite found its footing. Then internships had happened and jobs and life had swept them in different directions until they’d lost touch completely. She hadn’t expected to ever run into him again, let alone here, of all places.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here!” She exclaimed, genuine surprise in her voice. She had pored over the guest list at least three times before attending, memorizing names and faces, doing her due diligence. His name had definitely not been on it.
“Well,” Mingyu rubbed the back of his neck, a boyish gesture that hadn’t changed since their college days, “I wasn’t supposed to, initially. But my father asked me to substitute for him at the last minute.” He shrugged, as if attending high-profile galas in place of his father was just another Tuesday for him.
Ah. There it was. The reason his name hadn’t appeared on any list she’d studied. Mingyu came from new money—the kind that had been carefully cultivated over a couple of generations, invested in all the right places at all the right times and was now reaping benefits so massive they could barely be quantified. His family didn’t just attend events like this; they owned pieces of them.
Y/N almost lost track of time talking to him. The minutes fizzled away like bubbles in warm champagne as they fell back into their old rhythm, trading stories and laughing at inside jokes that had somehow remained fresh despite the years apart. Mingyu had always been easy to talk to, dangerously so—the kind of person who made you forget that the world existed beyond the small bubble of conversation you shared. He was recounting a particularly embarrassing story about their disastrous attempt at cooking together during finals week when his expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
“Hey, Y/N?” His voice dropped, the teasing lilt replaced by something more measured. “I don’t mean to intrude and correct me if I’m wrong, but...” he tilted his head subtly in a specific direction, “that guy over there has been staring at us for the past ten minutes. Like, not subtly. At all.”
Y/N followed the direction of his discreet gesture, her eyes scanning the crowd until they landed on a familiar face. Jungkook. He stood near one of the tall windows, a half-empty glass of something amber-coloured in his hand and his gaze was fixed on them with an intensity that made her pause. There was something in his eyes—a look she didn’t quite recognize, one she couldn’t remember ever seeing directed at her before. His jaw was tight, his posture coiled like a spring under too much pressure. He almost looked angry. No, not just angry. There was something else beneath the surface, something that bordered on dangerous and it sent a confusing flutter through her chest.
“Oh!” Y/N’s face brightened with realization, dismissing the strange tension that had momentarily gripped her. “Come on, let me introduce you to him. That’s Jungkook, one of my coworkers—well, one of my best friends, really. You’ll like him.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed Mingyu’s hand, her fingers wrapping around his as she tugged him through the crowd, weaving between clusters of guests with ease.
“JK!” she called out as they approached, her smile wide and genuine. “I want to introduce you to someone.”
Jungkook’s eyes dropped to their joined hands for the briefest moment, something flickering across his features before settling into a carefully neutral expression. He acknowledged her with a slight tilt of his head but his gaze slid past Mingyu as if he weren’t there, offering no greeting, no nod of recognition. Just silence, heavy and pointed.
Undeterred—or perhaps oblivious—Y/N pressed on, gesturing enthusiastically toward her companion. “This is Kim Mingyu. He’s an old friend from college. We go way back.”
Before Y/N could say another word, Mingyu stepped forward with that charming grin she remembered so well, the one that had probably worked on countless people over the years. “Come on, Y/N. ‘Good friend’? You’re really underselling me here.” He chuckled and Y/N found herself rolling her eyes instinctively, her hand coming up to smack his shoulder in that familiar, affectionate way she’d done a hundred times before.
“Shut up,” she laughed but there was no real heat behind it.
It was in that exact moment that Eunwoo materialized behind them, seemingly out of thin air—because of course he did, because the universe clearly had a sense of humour tonight. His expression, usually so carefully composed and politely detached, hardened the instant his eyes landed on the stranger standing with such easy familiarity next to Y/N. His gaze flickered down to their still-intertwined fingers then back up to Mingyu’s face and something cold settled behind his eyes.
“You two seem close,” Eunwoo commented, his voice deceptively light, the kind of tone that sounded pleasant on the surface but carried something else underneath.
Y/N nodded, a smile still playing on her lips. “Well—”
“We are,” Mingyu cut in smoothly, effortlessly, his grin widening as he glanced down at Y/N with an expression that held just a little too much warmth, a little too much history. “At least, we used to be.” His eyes lingered on her for a beat too long before lifting to meet Eunwoo’s gaze, then Jungkook’s. “Though I wouldn’t really mind going back to it, if I’m being honest.”
The air around them seemed to thicken.
Jungkook’s jaw tightened visibly, the muscle jumping beneath his skin as he forced his lips into something approximating a smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. Not even close. Both he and Eunwoo knew—of course they knew. Y/N had spent countless late nights at the office, during post-work drinks, during those rare lazy weekends when they all crashed at someone’s apartment, spilling stories about her college years. They knew about the adventures. The misadventures. They knew about the boy she’d had an on-and-off thing with, the one who had made her laugh and made her cry in equal measure.
They knew exactly who Kim Mingyu was.
And neither of them, for entirely different reasons, was happy to see him standing here now, looking at Y/N like he had every right to step back into her life and pick up exactly where they’d left off. As if that wasn’t salt rubbed directly into an already stinging wound, the live band shifted their melody. The upbeat tempo that had filled the ballroom moments ago dissolved into something softer, more intimate—a classic waltz, the kind that demanded proximity and promised romance. Couples around them began to pair off, drifting toward the dance floor like leaves caught in a gentle current.
“Oh, Y/N, this is so our song!” Mingyu’s face lit up with boyish enthusiasm, his eyes sparkling with the memory of countless college nights that Jungkook and Eunwoo hadn’t been part of. Before Y/N could respond, before she could even process the implication of those words, his hand was around hers, pulling her toward the growing crowd of dancers.
Y/N stumbled forward a step, surprise flickering across her features but she didn’t refuse. She didn’t pull away. If anything, there was a softness in her expression, a nostalgic warmth that made Jungkook’s stomach turn. As Mingyu guided her onto the polished floor, she glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes finding Jungkook and Eunwoo where they stood frozen near the window. Her lips formed a quick, apologetic “sorry”—silent, hurried, sincere—before Mingyu spun her around and she disappeared into the sea of swaying couples.
Jungkook’s hands curled into fists at his sides, his knuckles whitening with the effort of restraint. The muscles in his arms tensed, coiled like springs and before he fully registered what he was doing, he took a step forward. Then another. His vision had narrowed to a single point: the back of Mingyu’s head, the way his hand rested on Y/N’s waist, the easy confidence in his posture as he led her across the floor. Jungkook didn’t know what he intended to do—march onto the dance floor and physically separate them? Challenge Mingyu to something stupid and primal? He didn’t care. The impulse was there, hot and urgent, demanding action.
“Jungkook.”
Eunwoo’s voice was low, controlled but it cut through the red haze like a blade. His hand shot up, palm flat against Jungkook’s chest, not pushing but blocking—a subtle, firm barrier. “This is not the place.” His words were measured, each one deliberate, carrying the weight of someone who understood exactly how much damage could be done in a single unguarded moment. “Look around you. Investors. Media. Your boss’s boss is standing twenty feet away. You make a scene now and you don’t just ruin your night—you ruin hers.”
Jungkook’s jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth might crack. His breath came in short, sharp bursts through his nose and for a long, agonizing moment, he didn’t move. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to ignore the warning, to give in to the fire licking at his insides. But Eunwoo was right. God, he hated when Eunwoo was right. Slowly, incrementally, he forced himself to still, though his hands remained balled into fists at his sides, trembling with suppressed energy.
On the dance floor, Mingyu and Y/N moved together like they’d been doing this their whole lives—which, Jungkook realized with sickening clarity, they probably had. Mingyu’s hand rested naturally on the small of her back, guiding her through turns with finesse. Y/N’s head was tilted back slightly, her smile bright and genuine as she laughed at something he whispered near her ear. Her dress swirled around her ankles with each spin and for a moment—just a moment—she looked carefree in a way Jungkook rarely saw her at work events. It was beautiful. It was devastating.
Jungkook watched and his gaze was like fire—all scorching heat and consuming intensity, burning with an emotion he couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine too closely. Every laugh that fell from Y/N’s lips was another log on the pyre. Every touch, every glance, every familiar ease between them stoked the flames higher.
Beside him, Eunwoo watched too. But where Jungkook burned, Eunwoo froze. His expression remained perfectly composed, almost serene, but his eyes—his eyes were something else entirely. They were pure icy coldness, the kind that could freeze a person solid from the inside out. He observed Mingyu with the detached focus of a predator studying prey, cataloguing every gesture, every smile, every perceived slight. His posture was immaculate, his breathing even but behind that placid facade, something dark and sharp was taking shape.
How dare someone like him just whisk away Y/N like she was his? The thought echoed in both their minds, though it manifested differently in each. For Jungkook, it was a roar of possessive fury, a primal need to reclaim what felt threatened. For Eunwoo, it was a cold, calculated assessment—a recognition of threat and a silent vow to neutralize it, preferably without getting his hands dirty. They stood there, fire and ice, watching the woman they both cared for spin gracefully in the arms of someone who had no right to hold her.
Y/N returned to where Jungkook and Eunwoo stood, this time alone. Mingyu had been pulled away mid-conversation by an urgent work call—something about a deal that couldn’t wait, accompanied by profuse apologies and a promise to find her again before the night ended. She watched him disappear into the crowd, his phone already pressed to his ear before making her way back through the crowd of guests toward her two friends.
The moment she was within a few feet of them, she could sense it. The air around them felt different—charged, heavy, thick with something unspoken that settled in her chest like a stone. Jungkook wouldn’t meet her eyes, his gaze fixed somewhere over her shoulder at a point that apparently required intense study. Eunwoo’s smile was in place, because it was always in place, but there was a tightness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Y/N noticed, because Y/N always noticed, but she made the conscious decision not to say anything. Not yet. Not here, surrounded by people who didn’t need to witness their private dynamics playing out like some poorly scripted drama.
The rest of the event continued as intended. Y/N threw herself back into work mode, approaching more investors with the practiced ease of someone who had learned to compartmentalize long ago. Eunwoo accompanied her for several of these conversations, his presence a steady anchor at her side, his contributions to discussions always perfectly timed and impeccably phrased. He kept the polite smile firmly in place while talking to potential partners, charming and disarming in equal measure. But the second they stepped away from a group, the moment it was just the two of them navigating between clusters of guests, that smile would drop—just slightly, just enough for her to notice if she was paying attention.
And she was always paying attention.
Meanwhile, Jungkook busied himself with networking, though “busied himself” was a generous way of putting it. He had been nagged into socializing by their superiors, ordered to make connections and charm potential collaborators. He moved through the crowd like a man fulfilling an obligation rather than engaging in an opportunity, his interactions brief and transactional. Every few minutes, Y/N’s eyes would drift toward him, hoping to catch his gaze, but he was always looking elsewhere. Always conveniently turned away. Always just out of reach.
At one point, between conversations, Y/N found herself alone with Eunwoo near the bar. She studied him for a moment, taking in the carefully neutral expression, the way his shoulders held just a fraction more tension than usual. Concern bubbled up inside her, warm and genuine and before she could overthink it, she reached out and touched his hand.
“Eunwoo,” she said softly, her voice barely audible over the ambient noise of the ballroom. “Is everything okay? Are you not feeling well?” Without waiting for an answer, she lifted her hand and pressed it gently to his forehead, the way she might check a child for fever. The gesture was instinctive, intimate, born of years of friendship and casual physical affection.
Eunwoo felt something shift inside him at her touch. The rage that had been simmering beneath his composed exterior began to quiet. Of course. Of course, no matter who came, no matter who tried to insert themselves into her life, his sweet girl still cared for him. Still worried about him. Still reached out to check on him first.
He captured her hand gently in his own, his long fingers wrapping around hers with a warmth that belied the coldness in his gaze just minutes ago. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, then released it. A small smile curved his lips—not the practiced, professional one he wore for investors, but something softer, more private. It still didn’t quite reach his eyes but it was real in its own way.
“We’ll discuss this when we get home, hm?” he said, his voice low and soothing, the kind of tone that had talked her down from countless panics over the years.
Y/N didn’t understand—not really, not fully—but she nodded anyway. She trusted him. She trusted both of them, even when they were being inexplicably strange and moody.
The hours crawled by. Jungkook didn’t speak to her for the rest of the event. Not once. Not even when they passed within feet of each other. It almost felt as though he was actively avoiding her, creating distance with every step and the realization stung more than Y/N wanted to admit. She caught glimpses of him across the room—talking to strangers, nodding along to conversations, his expression carefully blank but whenever she tried to approach, he was already moving in another direction.
Finally, Y/N made the executive decision that they were leaving early. She had accomplished what she needed to accomplish and more importantly, whatever was festering between the three of them needed to be addressed before it grew worse. She gathered Jungkook and Eunwoo with nothing more than a look, the kind of silent communication that developed between people who spent nearly all their time together and they made their excuses and slipped out into the night.
The car ride home was suffocating in its silence. No music played. No one spoke. Even the usual background hum of the engine seemed louder than usual, filling the void where conversation should have been. Y/N sat in the back seat, watching the city lights blur past the window and felt increasingly unnerved with every passing mile. Her mind raced through possibilities, trying to identify what she had done wrong, what had shifted, why Jungkook wouldn’t even look at her.
When they finally reached their floor—the three apartments on the same hallway, with Jungkook and Eunwoo sharing the larger unit next to Y/N’s smaller one—Jungkook punched in the door code with more force than necessary and stormed inside without a word. The door didn’t slam, but only because he caught it at the last second, a restraint that seemed to cost him physical effort.
Y/N moved to follow him instinctively, her feet carrying her toward the door but Eunwoo’s hand on her arm stopped her gently.
“I’ll deal with this,” he said, his voice calm and steady, the anchor in the storm of her anxiety. “Y/N, you go freshen up. Take your time. You can come by once you have.”
Y/N looked at him, searching his face for something—reassurance, answers, anything. What she found was Cha Eunwoo at his most characteristic: composed, controlled, utterly reliable. He really did have his way of reassuring people, she thought dimly. Even when everything felt wrong, his presence made her believe it might eventually be right again.
She nodded slowly, reluctantly, and turned toward her own door. Behind her, she heard Eunwoo slip into the apartment she had just been barred from and she was left alone in the hallway with nothing but questions and the echo of a night that had gone so strangely wrong.
Y/N didn’t take long to change. The moment she stepped out of the shower, her mind had been a storm of confusion and unease, each passing minute amplifying the questions that had no answers. She had dried her hair hastily, pulled on the softest pair of cotton shorts she owned and one of her oversized shirts, well in truth, one of Jungkook’s shirts that she stole. The grey one that had seen better days but felt like a warm hug and stood barefoot in front of their door, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird desperate for escape. The rhythm seemed to accompany her spiralling thoughts, each beat echoing the what ifs and maybes that circled endlessly in her mind. She raised her hand to knock, hesitated, then forced herself to follow through before she could talk herself out of it.
The door swung open and Eunwoo stood before her.
He had changed out of his suit, now wearing simple grey sweatpants that hung comfortably on his lean frame and a plain white t-shirt that somehow, inexplicably, still looked effortlessly put-together. It was infuriating, really—the way he could emerge from a high-profile gala, deal with whatever emotional turmoil had transpired between him and Jungkook and still look like he had stepped out of a carefully curated editorial spread. Y/N was fairly certain he would look impeccable even if he were crawling out of a dumpster and the unfairness of that thought almost made her smile despite the tension coiling in her stomach. His expression was carefully neutral but there was a softness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Jungkook’s in the shower,” Eunwoo said quietly, his voice low and soothing as he leaned against the doorframe. His arms crossed loosely over his chest but there was nothing defensive in his posture. “To cool down. Figure out what he actually wants to say instead of whatever storming off was supposed to communicate.” He shrugged, a hint of something almost amused flickering across his features.
Y/N huffed a soft laugh despite herself, some of the tension in her shoulders easing at the familiar dynamic. Eunwoo stepped aside, gesturing for her to enter, and she moved past him with the easy familiarity of someone who had done this a hundred times—because she had. Their apartment was as much hers as her own at this point, her presence so frequent that she had her own designated spot on their couch, her preferred plain black mug in their cabinet and a drawer in their bathroom that had started with a spare toothbrush and somehow accumulated an entire collection of hair ties and skincare samples over the years.
She settled onto the couch without asking, tucking her feet beneath her as she reached for one of the throw blankets draped over the back and she pulled it into her lap more for something to hold onto than for actual warmth. Her fingers worried at a loose thread as she watched Eunwoo lower himself into the opposite corner, tucking one leg beneath him with the graceful ease that seemed to characterize his every movement.
“So,” she said, her voice carefully light, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or am I supposed to guess?”
Eunwoo’s gaze met hers, his dark eyes studying her with an intensity that made her want to look away. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured, deliberate. “He is upset. We both were. Are.” He paused, choosing his words with the careful precision that was so distinctly him. “I won’t speak for him—he’ll tell you himself when he’s ready. But I think...” He trailed off, something flickering behind his dark eyes. “I think tonight forced us to confront things we’ve been very good at avoiding. Both of us.”
Y/N’s fingers stilled on the blanket. “What kind of things?”
Before Eunwoo could answer, the distant sound of water stopped running somewhere in the apartment. The sudden silence that followed was deafening, punctuated only by the faint hum of the refrigerator and the rapid beating of Y/N’s heart. Footsteps approached from the hallway—heavy, deliberate, each one seeming to echo in the charged air between them.
And then Jungkook appeared in the doorway.
His hair was still dripping, rivulets of water trailing down his neck and disappearing beneath the towel slung carelessly around his shoulders. He wore nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants that hung dangerously low on his hips, the waistband riding just above the sharp cut of his pelvic muscles and his torso was completely bare— glistening with residual moisture, every line of muscle defined under the soft glow of the apartment lighting.
Y/N had seen Jungkook shirtless before. Countless times, actually. It was impossible to avoid when she spent as much time at their place as she did, when they had movie marathons that stretched into early mornings and lazy weekends where dress codes simply didn’t exist. But somehow, tonight was different. Tonight, the sight of him like this made her stomach flutter in a way she didn’t quite understand—a confusing, traitorous flutter that she immediately tried to suppress.
Usually, his face would crack into that familiar, warm smile the moment he saw her. The one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, softer, like the boy she had grown so close to over the years. But tonight, his expression was anything but warm. It was carefully neutral—too neutral, the kind of deliberate blankness that suggested he was working very hard to keep something contained. And beneath that careful surface, Y/N could see it: anger simmering like lava beneath thin crust, threatening to burst through the cracks at any moment.
Y/N rose from the couch slowly, the blanket slipping from her lap and pooling on the floor unnoticed. She took a couple of steps toward him, closing the distance until she was only a few feet away, close enough to see the way his chest rose and fell with each breath, close enough to catch the faint scent of his body wash mingled with something uniquely him. She tilted her chin up slightly to meet his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by whatever was brewing behind those dark eyes.
“Okay,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. “So, what is this about? What’s going on with you tonight?”
Jungkook’s eyes searched her face for a long moment, as if looking for something—answers, maybe or confirmation of some suspicion he’d been nursing all evening. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, raw, stripped of all the playful banter and easy affection that usually coloured his words.
“Do you like that guy?”
The question hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. Y/N blinked, momentarily thrown by the directness of it. Of all the things she had expected him to say—accusations about her behavior, frustration about being abandoned at the gala, even anger about some work-related slight—this hadn’t even made the list.
“What guy?” she repeated, confused. “You mean Mingyu?”
Jungkook didn’t respond, didn’t nod, didn’t do anything to confirm or deny. He just stood there, watching her with those intense eyes, waiting.
Y/N shook her head slowly, her brow furrowing as she processed the question and everything it implied. “He’s... nice,” she said carefully, choosing her words with the same precision Eunwoo often used. “He’s nice and we have history, but he’s just an old friend. That’s all.” She paused, something shifting in her chest as she looked at Jungkook—really looked at him, at the tension in his shoulders and the vulnerability he was trying so hard to hide. “Honestly? I doubt I’ll even stay in touch with him after tonight. Whatever we had was a long time ago and it’s not...” She trailed off, then met his eyes directly. “I don’t care about him, Jungkook. Especially not if caring about him comes at the cost of upsetting you and Eunwoo. That’s not even a contest.”
The words were true. Painfully, achingly true.
Because for all the good things Mingyu was—charming, successful, familiar—there were the bad things too. The way he had let their connection fade without a real conversation, without closure. The way his attention had always felt conditional, dependent on her being at her best, looking her best, performing her best. Sure, he was passionate about certain things, but his passion had never extended to truly seeing her—not the way Jungkook and Eunwoo did.
They saw her. All of her.
They had seen her at her lowest—sick and feverish on her bathroom floor and Jungkook had carried her to bed while Eunwoo made soup and called in sick for her the next day. They had seen her at her worst—throwing a tantrum over a work project gone wrong, yelling and crying and being utterly irrational and they had just sat there and taken it, waiting patiently for the storm to pass before pulling her into a group hug that made her feel ridiculous and loved in equal measure.
They had seen her at her most vulnerable—the night her father was rushed to the hospital with chest pains and she had been too sick herself to drive there, too weak, too drained to do anything but slip to the floor and sob. Jungkook had driven her anyway, wrapping her in blankets and propping her against the passenger window, while Eunwoo had called the hospital every twenty minutes for updates because she couldn’t stop shaking long enough to dial. They had sat with her in that sterile waiting room for hours, taking turns holding her hand and fetching terrible vending machine coffee, never once complaining about the sleepless night or the missed work or the way she kept apologizing until Jungkook finally told her to shut up because that’s what friends were for. And then the late-night confessions about her fears, her insecurities, the parts of herself she tried to hide from the world and they had never once made her feel like she needed to be anything other than exactly who she was.
They didn’t mind when she showed up at their door at 2 AM because she couldn’t sleep. They didn’t mind when she ate the last of the snacks without asking. They didn’t mind when she rambled about nothing for hours or when she needed silence for days. Their care for her was genuine, unconditional, woven into the fabric of their daily lives so deeply that she sometimes forgot what life had been like before them.
And she cared for them the same way. More than she cared for anyone else, if she was being honest with herself. More than she had ever cared for Mingyu, or any of the other people who had drifted in and out of her life over the years. They weren’t just friends, they were family, in every sense of the word—the family she had chosen, the family that had chosen her back, the family that made her believe she was worthy of love exactly as she was.
The realization settled over her like a warm blanket as she stood there, looking at Jungkook’s tense face, feeling Eunwoo’s presence behind her on the couch. These were her people. These were the ones who mattered.
Jungkook was silent for a long, suspended moment, his dark eyes searching hers as if weighing every word she had just spoken. The air between them grew thicker, charged with something unnameable. Then, slowly, his eyelids fluttered closed—just for a second, just long enough for Y/N to notice the way his jaw tightened, the way his chest rose with a deep, steadying breath. When his eyes opened again, there was a sense of finality settling over his features, a decision made, a line crossed in his mind that there would be no coming back from.
And then he moved.
He closed the gap between them in a single stride, his damp body radiating heat despite the water still cooling on his skin. His hands came up to cup her face with a tenderness that seemed almost at odds with the intensity burning in his gaze—large palms cradling her cheeks, fingers threading into the hair at her temples, thumbs brushing softly against her cheekbones. Y/N froze, her breath catching in her throat, surprise washing over her in waves so powerful she thought she might drown in it.
And then it happened.
Jungkook crashed his lips onto hers.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t tentative or questioning or any of the things a first kiss between friends might reasonably be expected to be. It was messy and hungry and desperate, a collision more than a kiss, as if he had been holding himself back by a thread and that thread had finally snapped. His mouth moved against hers with a ferocity that stole her breath, letting every single bit of frustration and desire and longing he had been holding back for God knows how long pour into the space where they connected. It felt like he wanted to devour her, to consume her, to pour years of unspoken feelings into a single moment because he simply couldn’t hold them anymore.
Y/N’s hands flew up on instinct, her fingers curling around his forearms where they framed her face. She wasn’t pushing him away—she couldn’t, didn’t want to—but she needed something to hold onto, something to anchor herself in the storm of sensation overwhelming her senses. His lips were warm and insistent, the slight roughness of his skin contrasting with the softness of his mouth and she couldn’t keep up with his pace, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, her mind growing cloudier and more dazed with every passing second. The world narrowed to just this— Jungkook’s hands on her face, Jungkook’s lips on hers, Jungkook’s body so close she could feel his heart pounding against her chest.
When he finally broke the kiss, they were both panting, breathless, their foreheads pressing together as they gasped for air. Y/N could feel the water still dripping from his damp hair, cool droplets landing on her heated skin, contrasting with the warmth of his breath fanning across her face. Neither of them spoke. There were no words adequate for what had just happened, for the shift that had occurred in the space of a single kiss.
“You have no idea,” Jungkook whispered, his voice rough and raw, so quiet she almost missed it, “how hard it is.” He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes and the vulnerability there made her chest ache. “How hard it’s been. Watching you. Wanting you. Not being able to do anything about it.” His thumb traced the curve of her cheekbone, a gesture so tender it made her heart stutter. “Let us take care of you, Y/N. Please. Let us show you what you deserve.”
“Jungkook, I—” she started, her voice coming out shaky and uncertain, the words tangled somewhere in her throat.
Before she could finish, she felt it—a warm hand hooking gently under her chin, guiding her face away from Jungkook’s. Her gaze shifted and there was Eunwoo, standing so close she hadn’t even heard him approach. His dark eyes were soft but serious, studying her with that familiar intensity that always made her feel like she was the only person in the world worth looking at. His hand remained beneath her chin, light but present, a grounding point in the chaos of her swirling thoughts.
“You can tell us to stop,” Eunwoo said quietly, his voice smooth as velvet and just as soothing. “Right now. And we’ll forget this ever happened. We’ll go back to how things were and we’ll never mention it again. No pressure, no expectations, no awkwardness.” He paused, his thumb brushing once across her jaw before stilling. “But you have to tell us, Y/N. Because if you don’t, if you want this too, then we’re not going to hold back anymore.”
Y/N’s eyes flitted between them, her heart racing so fast she thought it might burst from her chest. Jungkook, still close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin, his expression open and vulnerable in a way she had never seen before. Eunwoo, calm and steady as always, but with something burning beneath the surface that matched the fire in Jungkook’s gaze. Both of them watching her, waiting for her, giving her the choice they had clearly been sitting on for longer than she wanted to consider.
“But—” Her voice faltered and she swallowed hard, trying to find the words for the question burning in her mind. Her gaze moved from Jungkook to Eunwoo and back again, silently asking what she couldn’t quite voice. How? When? Both of you?
Jungkook must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because something shifted in his expression—tension easing, a small smile cracking through the intensity like sunlight through storm clouds. It was the first real smile she had seen from him all night and it made her heart flip.
“You don’t have to choose, baby,” he said softly, the endearment rolling off his tongue so naturally it made her breath catch. “We have no problem sharing. Me and Eunwoo came to that agreement ages ago.” He glanced at Eunwoo, something passing between them—years of friendship, of understanding, of conversations Y/N had never been privy to. “We both want you. All of you. And we’re both okay with that. But only if you are.”
Eunwoo’s hand slid from her chin to cup her cheek, mirroring Jungkook’s earlier gesture and suddenly she was bracketed by them—surrounded by warmth and wanting and the impossible, overwhelming reality that her two best friends had just confessed to wanting her. Together.
“So,” Eunwoo murmured, his voice low and intimate, “what’s it going to be, Y/N?”
Y/N’s mind was a battlefield.
On one side, years of carefully constructed boundaries—the ones that kept her friendships safe, that prevented her from reading too much into lingering glances or casual touches, that maintained the delicate balance of three people who had somehow become each other’s entire world. On the other side, a truth so obvious now that it felt almost absurd she had missed it: the way Jungkook always found excuses to touch her, the way Eunwoo’s eyes followed her across every room, the way they both showed up without being asked, without expecting anything in return, simply because she needed them.
The kiss still burned on her lips. Jungkook’s taste, his desperation, his years of restraint finally shattering against her mouth. And now Eunwoo’s hand on her cheek, warm and steady, waiting for her answer with the patience of someone who had already waited forever and could wait a little longer if he had to.
But she didn’t want them to wait.
“I want it too.”
The words hung in the air for a single, suspended heartbeat.
And then the world exploded into motion.
It wasn’t even a second, barely a breath, before Jungkook moved. His arms wrapped around her with the kind of desperate impatient strength and suddenly her feet were leaving the ground, her body being lifted as if she weighed nothing at all. She barely had time to gasp before he was carrying her, his damp skin pressed against her through the thin fabric of her oversized grey shirt. The hallway blurred past in a rush of shadows and doorframes and then they were in Eunwoo’s bedroom—she recognized it instinctively, the faint scent of his cologne lingering in the air, the neatly made bed that was such a contrast to Jungkook’s perpetual chaos.
Jungkook threw her onto the bed.
Y/N let out an undignified squeak as her back hit the mattress, the soft comforter cushioning her fall as she bounced once before settling into the sheets. Her hair fanned out around her, her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat and she pushed herself up onto her elbows just in time to watch them.
Jungkook reached for the towel still slung around his neck and tossed it aside as if it meant nothing—as if the only thing that mattered was getting closer to her, removing anything that might possibly stand between them. Water still dripped from his hair and his eyes were dark with an intensity that made her stomach flip.
Eunwoo moved differently. Where Jungkook was all fire and urgency, Eunwoo was calm water—steady, deliberate, controlled. He approached the bed with the same careful grace he brought to everything, his eyes never leaving hers as he sat on the edge of the mattress. One hand reached out, long fingers tracing the line of her jaw with a tenderness that made her breath catch. He followed the curve from her chin to her ear, then back again, as if memorizing the shape of her, as if she was something precious and fragile and worth savouring.
Then he leaned in and kissed her.
And oh, it was different. So different from Jungkook’s desperate, hungry collision. Eunwoo’s kiss was soft and gentle, a slow exploration rather than a claiming. His lips moved against hers with a sweetness that made her heart ache, as if he was holding back—as if he was scared, somehow, that she might break if he let himself go completely. One hand cradled her face while the other braced against the bed and he kissed her like she was something sacred, something to be worshipped rather than consumed.
Behind her, she felt the mattress dip.
Jungkook’s arm snaked around her waist from behind, his chest pressing against her back as he settled into the space she created. His lips found her neck, that sensitive spot just below her ear that she hadn’t even known was sensitive until this very moment and ghosted across her skin with a lightness that made her shiver. He wasn’t kissing so much as breathing against her, his warm breath raising goosebumps along her throat while his arm tightened around her middle, pulling her closer, holding her steady.
Eunwoo continued to envelop her in his sweet kiss, his thumb stroking her cheek as he tilted her head slightly to deepen the connection. She was surrounded—Jungkook’s warmth at her back, his lips tracing a path of fire along her neck, his arm a band of security around her waist. Eunwoo’s gentleness at her front, his kiss a promise, his hand a reassurance. Between them, she felt wanted in a way she had never experienced before—not torn or divided, but complete. Whole. Like she had finally found the place she was always meant to be.
When Eunwoo finally pulled back, just barely, his forehead rested against hers, his breath mingling with hers in the small space between them. Behind her, Jungkook’s lips stilled against her neck, waiting, listening.
“Still okay?” Eunwoo whispered, his voice rough in a way she had never heard before—controlled, yes, but barely. The restraint was costing him. They were both holding back, she realized. For her.
Y/N smiled, small and real and certain, and reached up to touch his face.
“More than okay,” she breathed. “Don’t hold back. Not anymore.”
Something shifted in Eunwoo’s eyes at her words—a dam breaking, a decision made. And when he kissed her again, it wasn’t gentle anymore.
Jungkook’s mouth latched onto her neck with a hunger that bordered on desperate, his lips and teeth working in tandem to leave a trail of purple-red bruises across the sensitive skin where her neck met her shoulder. Each mark was a claim, a visible reminder that she was theirs now—no more dancing around feelings, no more pretending. His breath was hot against her skin, his tongue soothing over the tender spots before his mouth found another patch of untouched skin to mark. She could feel the slight scrape of his teeth, the way he sucked just hard enough to make her gasp and the sensation sent sparks cascading down her spine.
At the same time, Eunwoo’s hands began their own exploration, slipping beneath the hem of her shirt with a deliberate slowness that made her stomach clench in anticipation. His fingers were cool against her heated skin as they inched upward, tracing the curve of her ribs, the dip of her waist, mapping the landscape of her body with the same careful attention he gave to everything else. When his fingers brushed the underside of her breast, he paused for just a moment—a question, a confirmation—and something that might have been surprise flickered across his features when he realized she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
She had changed in a hurry, grabbing the first soft things she could find and it hadn’t even occurred to her to put on a bra. Not for them. Not when she was so comfortable around them. It was the kind of casual intimacy that had defined their friendship for years—the ability to show up in sweatpants and oversized shirts, to raid their fridge at midnight, to sprawl across their couch without caring how she looked. She had never thought twice about it.
His hand cupped her breast fully then, his palm warm against her skin, his fingers spreading to encompass the soft weight of her. He gave a tentative squeeze, testing, learning and Y/N felt her nipple hardening into a peak that pressed insistently against his palm. The sensation was electric, her body responding before her mind could catch up and she found herself arching into his hand without meaning to. A soft moan escaped her lips, swallowed almost immediately by Eunwoo’s kiss and she felt rather than heard the low sound of satisfaction that rumbled in his chest.
“My turn.”
Jungkook’s voice was rough, edged with an impatience he had been holding back for far too long. His hand caught her chin, tilting her face away from Eunwoo’s mouth and toward his own with a gentle but undeniable authority. Before she could catch her breath, his lips were on hers—not the desperate crash from before, but something deeper, more deliberate. He kissed her like he had all the time in the world now that he knew she was staying, but there was still that undercurrent of hunger, that barely restrained need that made her head spin.
One of his hands found the hem of her shirt and in one smooth motion, he pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. The cool air of the bedroom hit her bare chest all at once, a sharp contrast to the heat of their bodies surrounding her and she shivered but not from cold, but from the sudden exposure, from the way both their eyes dropped to take her in. She was laid bare before them, no barriers left and the weight of their gaze made her feel vulnerable yet oddly safe.
Eunwoo’s hands found their new home on the newly exposed flesh of her chest, his palms settling over her breasts with a reverence that made her breath catch. His thumbs brushed across her nipples once, twice, watching her face with that keen gaze he always wore—except now there was something darker beneath it, something hungry and possessive that she had never seen before. He was cataloguing her reactions, learning what made her gasp, what made her moan, what made her fingers curl into fists in the sheets.
Jungkook captured her mouth again as Eunwoo leaned down and she felt the wet heat of his lips close around one nipple at the same moment Jungkook’s tongue swept against hers. Her back arched off the mattress instinctively, a broken sound tearing from her throat only to be swallowed by Jungkook’s kiss. Her hands flew up, fingers threading into Eunwoo’s dark hair, not pulling him away and not pulling him closer—just holding on, anchoring herself against the overwhelming tide of sensation threatening to sweep her away.
Eunwoo worked her with devastating precision, his mouth hot and insistent as he sucked gently, then harder, his tongue swirling around the tightened peak before he tugged with his lips. His fingers found her other nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger in a rhythm that matched the movement of his mouth. He was watching her the entire time, his dark eyes fixed on her face, drinking in every flutter of her lashes, every bitten-off gasp, every involuntary arch of her body toward him.
She tried to speak—to say something, anything, his name or Jungkook’s or a warning that she was already so close to falling apart but Jungkook’s lips swallowed every sound, his tongue tangling with hers, his kiss growing deeper, more consuming. She was drowning in them, in the heat of their bodies bracketing her, in the relentless attention of Eunwoo’s mouth and fingers, in the way Jungkook held her face like she was something precious while his kiss stole what little remained of her composure.
She squirmed between them, her thighs pressing together in search of friction that wasn’t there. The sensations were too much—his mouth on her breast, his fingers on her other nipple, his lips claiming her mouth, his hands cradling her face. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be on fire and she was caught in the middle of it, held between them, nowhere to go and nowhere she wanted to be except right here.
“Please,” she managed to gasp against Jungkook’s lips, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking for. More. Less. Everything. Something. “Please—”
Jungkook’s fingers found the waistband of her shorts, toying with the elastic edge in a way that was both teasing and deliberate. His touch was featherlight at first, just the barest brush of his fingertips against the soft skin of her stomach, before his hand began to wander lower, inch by agonizing inch. The sensation was maddening, a slow burn that had her breath catching in her throat and her thoughts scattering like leaves in the wind.
Y/N broke the kiss with a gasp, her chest heaving as she struggled to recover the breath that had been stolen from her lungs. Her lips were swollen, tingling, still buzzing from the intensity of feeling his mouth on hers. She tilted her head back slightly, her eyes finding Jungkook’s over her shoulder and the look she gave him was almost pleading, wide-eyed and wanting and just a little bit overwhelmed, as if she was silently begging him for something she couldn’t quite put into words.
Jungkook took the opportunity without hesitation.
His fingers slipped past the barrier of her shorts, sliding beneath the fabric with a confidence that made her stomach flip. His hand moved slowly, deliberately, inching toward her inner thigh with the kind of patience that felt almost cruel. The pads of his fingers were slightly rough against her sensitive skin, calloused from years of guitar strings and gym equipment and the contrast made her shiver.
Then he swiped a single finger over her underwear and his smirk was audible even before she saw it.
“Fuck Y/N,” he murmured, his voice low and rough against her ear. “You’re absolutely drenched.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, a wave of embarrassment and arousal mingling so completely that she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. She could feel the evidence of her desire soaked through the thin fabric, could feel how wet she was even through the barrier of her underwear and the knowledge that Jungkook could feel it too made her want to bury her face in the pillow.
He hummed thoughtfully, considering his options. Part of him wanted to tease her—to draw this out, to watch her squirm and beg, to make her wait until she was practically sobbing with need. The thought was tempting, the idea of unravelling her slowly, piece by piece. But tonight, something else burned hotter in his chest. Impatience. Hunger. Years of wanting finally unleashed and he didn’t have the restraint to hold back any longer.
So, without warning, without giving her time to prepare, he dipped a finger into her slick folds.
Y/N’s breath hitched, a sharp gasp escaping her lips as he slid inside her with shocking ease. Her body welcomed him instinctively, her walls clenching around the sudden intrusion as pleasure sparked along her nerves like fireworks. But before she could adjust, before she could even process the sensation, Jungkook added another finger—pushing deeper, stretching her, filling her in a way that made her see stars behind her eyelids.
As if that wasn’t already too much, as if two fingers buried inside her while her two best friends loomed on either side wasn’t already threatening to undo her completely, Y/N’s body reacted on pure instinct. She tried to squirm away, to escape the overwhelming intensity of it all, her hips bucking against the mattress as she attempted to create some distance between herself and the source of all that pleasure.
But Jungkook held her close.
His arm tightened around her waist like a steel band, keeping her exactly where he wanted her. His fingers curled inside her, pressing against a spot that made her vision go white and his voice was low and dark when he spoke.
“You asked for it, sweetheart,” he said, and there was no teasing in his tone now—just certainty, just possession, just the unshakable truth of the moment. “So take it, hmm?”
Y/N whimpered in response, a desperate, broken sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest. Her mouth opened, whether to protest or plead she couldn’t say, but before any words could form, Eunwoo’s lips were on hers again—swallowing her sounds, consuming her whimpers, kissing her with a fervor that matched the chaos happening below her waist.
The kiss was all-consuming, his tongue sliding against hers in a rhythm that made her forget how to think. But even as he distracted her mouth, her body remained acutely aware of everything Jungkook was doing. His fingers pushed deeper into her heat, sliding in until his knuckles pressed against her entrance, filling her completely. He moved slowly at first, deliberately, watching her reactions with an intensity that bordered on obsessive—studying every twitch of her brow, every flutter of her lashes, every sharp intake of breath.
He wanted to learn her.
Every tilt of his fingers that made her gasp. Every change in pressure that made her arch her back. Every angle that made her nails dig into Eunwoo’s shoulders and her hips roll desperately against his hand. He was filing away the information like a scientist observing a particularly fascinating experiment. What made her tick. What made her twitch. What made her throw her head back against his shoulder and moan into Eunwoo’s mouth, her whole body trembling on the edge of something she wasn’t sure she was ready to fall into.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, Jungkook made a silent vow: before this night was over, he was going to learn exactly what made her scream his name.
Eunwoo broke the kiss just long enough to look down at her—flushed and panting and utterly wrecked beneath them both—and something dark and satisfied flickered across his usually composed features.
“Good girl,” he murmured, his thumb brushing across her swollen bottom lip. “Just like that. Let us take care of you.”
She could feel it building inside her—a slow, insistent coil forming deep in her lower belly, winding tighter and tighter with every relentless thrust of Jungkook’s fingers. The knot of pleasure grew more urgent with each passing second, each curl of his digits pressing against that spot inside her that made her see white behind her closed eyelids. Eunwoo’s mouth found her neck, lips and teeth and tongue working in tandem against the sensitive skin just below her ear and the combination was almost too much. The world narrowed to nothing but sensation—the stretch of Jungkook’s fingers, the heat of Eunwoo’s mouth, the weight of their bodies bracketing hers and the two men who had decided, finally and irrevocably, to claim her as theirs.
“I—I think I’m gonna—” Y/N mumbled, the words slurring together as her thoughts dissolved into static. She could barely form the sentence, could barely remember how language worked when every nerve in her body was singing with approaching release. She could feel Jungkook’s grin against her shoulder, could feel the way his fingers sped up slightly, intentionally pushing her closer to the edge.
And then, just like that, he withdrew.
The sudden emptiness was almost painful—a shocking absence where seconds ago there had been overwhelming fullness. Y/N’s hips bucked backward instinctively, chasing his hand, desperate for the contact that had been stolen from her. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and dazed and she let out a confused sound.
“Huh? Wha—?” she whispered, her voice small and lost, her body still trembling on the edge of a cliff she hadn’t been allowed to fall from.
Jungkook laughed—a low, dark sound that rumbled through his chest and sent a fresh wave of heat flooding through her. He brought his fingers to his lips, deliberately, making sure she was watching as he sucked them clean, tasting her with an obscene slowness that made her blush deepen to crimson.
“C’mon Y/N,” he said, his voice dripping with mock innocence, “you didn’t think the first time I’m going to make you cum is on my fingers, did you?”
Y/N felt the blush creep up from her chest to her neck to her cheeks, setting her entire face ablaze with embarrassment and something else—something hotter, something that made her thighs press together in search of friction he had denied her. She opened her mouth to respond, to protest, to say something, but no words came. What could she possibly say to that?
Jungkook’s gaze lifted, finding Eunwoo’s across the trembling curve of her spine. Their eyes met and something passed between them—an entire conversation conducted in a single glance, the kind of wordless understanding that came from years of friendship, of partnership, of wanting the same thing and finally having permission to reach for it together. It was as if they communicated telepathically, and in that instant, they both understood exactly what this meant. What came next.
Jungkook’s hands settled on her waist, firm and unyielding, while Eunwoo backed away—not far, just enough to give them space, just enough to watch. Y/N turned her head, looking at him wordlessly, her eyes wide and questioning. What are you doing? she seemed to ask. Where are you going?
But Eunwoo didn’t answer. He simply smiled, that enigmatic, knowing smile that had always made her heart skip, and settled himself at the head of the bed where he could see everything.
In response to her unspoken question, Jungkook grabbed her.
The movement was swift and sure—his hands on her hips, manoeuvring her body like she weighed nothing at all. Before she could process what was happening, she was on all fours, positioned like a common cat, her knees sinking into the soft comforter and her palms flat against the sheets. Y/n squealed at the suddenness, a startled sound that was half protest and half something else entirely, but the protest died on her lips as she quickly realized where this was going.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, anticipation and nervousness tangling in her chest until she could barely breathe.
Eunwoo shifted forward, reaching out to hook his finger under her chin. He tilted her face up, forcing her to meet his eyes, but he didn’t speak to her. Instead, he looked past her, over her shoulder, his gaze finding Jungkook’s. And then he smiled—not the kind, gentle smile she had seen a thousand times, but something else entirely. Something devious. Something almost wicked.
“Careful with her,” Eunwoo said, his voice smooth as a blade and just as dangerous. The smile looked so out of place on his face—Eunwoo, who had always been the kind one, the sweet one, the graceful one who held doors open and remembered her coffee order and never raised his voice. Looking at him now, with that dark glint in his eyes and that crooked smirk on his lips, he didn’t look any less than the devil himself. “We don’t want to break her on our first go, yeah?”
Jungkook rolled his eyes so dramatically that it was almost comical, though there was nothing playful in the way his hands gripped her thighs, pushing them apart to make room for himself between them. He settled into the space he had created, the heat of him pressing against the back of her thighs, close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, waving a dismissive hand in Eunwoo’s direction without looking away from her. “You ain’t gotta give me the talk now of all times. Look at her.” His voice softened, dropped to something low and sensuous as he reached out to trace a single finger down her spine, following the delicate ridges of bone beneath her skin. He whisked her hair to the side, pushing it over one shoulder so that the long line of her neck was exposed, so that nothing blocked his view. She shivered at his touch, a full-body tremor that started at her scalp and ended at her toes and a soft, involuntary hum escaped her lips. “She’s such a big girl. You can take it, can’t you, baby?”
The word “baby” rolled off his tongue like honey, warm and sweet and possessive and Y/N felt it settle somewhere deep in her chest.
“He asked you a question, didn’t he?” Eunwoo’s voice cut through the haze, sharp and expectant. He tilted his head, that same devious sparkle still dancing in his dark eyes, but his tone had shifted—now it carried the weight of authority, of expectation, as if he was scolding a disobedient pet who had forgotten its training. The shift sent a jolt through her, something between fear and arousal that made her stomach flip.
Y/N nodded, her throat dry, her voice caught somewhere beneath her racing heart. She swallowed hard and tried again, forcing the words past her lips.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice came out steadier than she expected, though still thick with need. “Yes, I can take it.” The words came to her like second nature, as if her body had always known what to say even when her mind was spinning.
Eunwoo smiled—slow, satisfied and thoroughly pleased with himself. The expression transformed his usually gentle features into something sharper, more predatory and yet Y/N found herself unable to look away. He reached down and pulled his sweatpants down in one fluid motion, revealing his length with an unselfconscious confidence that made her mouth go dry. His hand wrapped around himself, stroking slowly at first, then with more purpose, pumping a couple of times as he watched her through half-lidded eyes. The muscles in his forearm flexed with each movement and Y/N found herself transfixed, her lips parting instinctively even before he brought himself closer.
He held himself to her lips, the tip brushing against them in a teasing tap—once, twice, three times—smearing the glistening bead of precum across her lower lip like a promise. The taste of him was salty and faintly sweet, unfamiliar but not unpleasant and it made something deep in her belly clench with anticipation.
“Open,” Eunwoo said simply.
The word was quiet, almost gentle, but it carried an unmistakable weight of command. Y/N’s lips parted without hesitation, her jaw going slack as she obeyed. It wasn’t her first time doing this—she had been here before, had knelt for others, had learned the mechanics and the rhythms and the tricks of the trade. But this whole situation, with both of them surrounding her, watching her, wanting her, had made her mind so hazy that she could barely remember her own name, let alone the muscle memory of how to do this properly.
Eunwoo slid himself into her mouth and a low hiss of satisfaction escaped his lips—a sharp intake of breath that spoke of months, maybe years, of imagining this exact moment. Y/N slacked her jaw further, trying desperately to accommodate him, to take all of him into her mouth, but there was only so much her throat would allow. Her eyes watered as he pushed deeper, her tongue flattening against the underside of his length and saliva began to dribble down her chin—warm and messy and utterly obscene. Eunwoo’s hands curled into her hair, not pulling but holding, anchoring himself to her as she worked to take as much of him as she could.
Behind her, Jungkook shifted.
“My turn,” he said, the words directed at no one in particular—perhaps Eunwoo, perhaps Y/N, perhaps the universe at large. His voice was rough, strained, barely containing the hunger that was simmering just beneath his skin. She felt him move into position behind her, felt the heat of him against the backs of her thighs, felt the broad head of his length nudging against her slick, aching core.
And then he pushed himself in.
Y/N almost screamed.
The sound was muffled by Eunwoo’s length still filling her mouth, but the vibrations travelled up his shaft and made him hiss sharply through his teeth. His hand tightened in her hair, not painfully but firmly and he patted her cheek with his free hand—a gentle, almost soothing gesture that contrasted wildly with the circumstances.
“Easy, sweetheart,” Eunwoo murmured, his voice strained but still controlled. “Easy.”
But there was nothing easy about this.
Jungkook was huge in his own right—thick and long and stretching her in ways that made her spots dance behind her closed eyelids. But it wasn’t just him. It was both of them at the same time, filling every possible space, overwhelming every sense until she felt like she might possibly be out of her depth. She had said she could take it. She had meant it when she said it. But now, with Jungkook buried inside her to the hilt and Eunwoo’s length pressing against the back of her throat, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
Her pussy stretched around him, walls fluttering and clenching as they tried desperately to accommodate his impressive length and girth. She was dripping onto him—she could feel it, the wet evidence of her arousal soaking into his skin, easing his passage even as her body struggled to adjust. But Jungkook definitely wasn’t making things easier. He was thick, impossibly thick and every inch of him felt like a challenge she wasn’t sure she could meet.
Y/N looked up at Eunwoo, her mouth still full of him, but the message in her eyes was unmistakable: Help. Please. I’m drowning.
Eunwoo let out a chuckle—a genuine, surprised sound at how utterly ridiculous the situation had become. Here they were, the three of them, tangled together in a way none of them had ever imagined and Y/N was looking at him like a deer caught in headlights while his best friend was buried inside her. The absurdity of it all was almost too much.
“Jungkook,” Eunwoo said, his voice carrying that particular tone of measured calm he used when mediating disputes at work, “you might want to go easier on her. She’s, uh... having difficulties.”
“Difficulties?” Jungkook’s voice was strained, almost incredulous. “And I’m the one here who feels like my circulation is gonna be cut off by how fucking tight she is!” He shrugged behind her, the movement shifting his length inside her and making her gasp around Eunwoo. “You try fitting into something that fucking small and see how easy it is!”
Y/N’s eyes flashed. Even with her mouth full, even with her mind spinning, she clearly looked like she had a retort to that. Eunwoo, reading her expression, withdrew his length with a wet, obscene sound—a string of saliva still connecting her swollen lower lip to the tip of him, stretching and glistening in the low light before finally breaking.
The moment she was free, Y/N whipped her head around to glare at Jungkook over her shoulder.
“Had you prepped me better, this wouldn’t be happening!” she shot back, her voice hoarse but fierce, her chest heaving with exertion and indignation.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jungkook snapped back, his hips giving an involuntary thrust that made her gasp and her fingers dig into the comforter. “God forbid a guy wants the girl he loves to cum on his dick instead of his fingers! What a terrible crime! Someone call the police!”
“I swear to fucking God—”
“And are you two seriously fighting?” Eunwoo interrupted, his voice laced with disbelief. He shook his head slowly, his shoulders beginning to shake with barely suppressed laughter. “Are you both genuinely, actually fighting? Right now? In the middle of sex?”
The question hung in the air and both Y/N and Jungkook fell silent. Y/N felt the heat rise to her cheeks, a wave of embarrassment washing over her as she realized how absurd they must look—her, naked and on all fours, Jungkook buried inside her, both of them bickering like children over who had caused what inconvenience. Jungkook’s ears had turned a telltale shade of pink and he was suddenly very interested in studying a spot on the wall.
Neither of them said a thing.
Eunwoo’s laughter subsided into a warm, affectionate smile and he reached down to brush a strand of hair from Y/N’s flushed face. His thumb traced her cheekbone, gentle despite everything, and something in his eyes softened.
“Now,” he said quietly, “shall we try this again? Without the arguing?”
Y/N looked up at him, her heart swelling with something that felt dangerously like love. She held his gaze for a moment, then let her lips part—slowly, deliberately, invitingly. She tilted her chin up and opened her mouth, a silent offer, a wordless plea.
Eunwoo’s smile widened and he took the invitation.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of aching anticipation and careful adjustment, Y/N was able to take Jungkook fully. The initial stretch had been almost overwhelming—a burning pressure that had her gasping against Eunwoo’s skin but gradually, inch by agonizing inch, her body had yielded, learning to accommodate him in a way that felt less like invasion and more like completion. And then he started moving.
The first few thrusts were slow, deliberate, almost experimental, Jungkook testing her limits, learning the rhythm of her body just as he had mapped out the inside of her with his fingers. But then one of his hands slid from her hip, trailing around her waist until it pressed flat against her lower abdomen. His palm was warm and firm as he pushed down on a particular spot and suddenly Y/N understood why he had chosen to map her insides out first. Because now, with his hand applying pressure from the outside and his cock stroking against that same spot from within, he could feel himself hitting that perfect angle again and again. Every single thrust brushed against that bundle of nerves, sending jolts of electricity racing up her spine and making stars burst behind her closed eyelids.
Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, but Eunwoo was there to fill it.
He didn’t let up either. If anything, his pace intensified, his hands tangled in her hair as he used her mouth relentlessly, pushing deeper with every thrust of his hips. She could feel him at the back of her throat, could feel her body’s instinctive resistance and the conscious effort it took to relax, to open herself further, to let him in. He forced her throat to relax so she could take more of him and she obeyed because what else could she do? She was pinned between them—Jungkook behind her, driving into her heat and Eunwoo before her, filling her mouth until she could barely breathe.
She choked around his length, her throat bulging visibly as he thrust deeper and the sensation was so overwhelming that tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. But even as her body protested, even as her gag reflex triggered and her lungs burned for air, she didn’t pull away. She couldn’t. Every instinct screamed at her to keep going, to take whatever they gave her, to prove that she could handle this.
Jungkook and Eunwoo synchronized without a word—an unspoken rhythm that seemed almost choreographed, as if they had rehearsed this moment a hundred times in their minds. When Jungkook thrust forward, Eunwoo pulled back. When Jungkook withdrew, Eunwoo pushed deeper. They moved like two halves of a single entity, perfectly in tune and Y/N was caught in the middle of their harmony, a willing instrument played by two masters.
She could feel herself drawing closer to the edge, the coil in her belly tightening with every passing second. Her hips bucked involuntarily, desperate for more friction, more pressure, more of whatever it was that Jungkook was doing that made her feel like she was about to shatter into a million pieces. The only sounds that escaped her were choked gurgles and the wet, obscene squelching of their bodies moving together—no words, no coherent thoughts, just pure, animalistic sensation.
Some distant part of her brain, the part that hadn’t been completely drowned in pleasure, registered how embarrassing this might look. Her hair was a mess, tears streaked her cheeks, drool escaped from the corners of her lips where she couldn’t quite close her mouth around Eunwoo’s length. She was a wreck, completely undone and anyone walking in would see nothing but a woman being thoroughly and utterly claimed by two men who had no intention of letting her go.
But she didn’t have the time or the energy to care about how it looked. All that mattered was how it felt.
“You’re doing so well for us, darling,” Eunwoo muttered, his voice strained and breathless as he tapped her cheek gently—a surprisingly tender gesture given the circumstances. His pace slowed slightly, his hips stuttering as he pushed deeper, and the change in rhythm told her everything she needed to know. He was close. His release was building, his control slipping and even in her dazed state, she felt a surge of pride that she had brought him to this point. “That’s it. Just a little more.”
“I know, right?” Jungkook’s voice came from behind her, rough and gravelly with exertion. He punctuated every word with a thrust, slamming into her with a force that made her entire body jerk forward, pushing her further onto Eunwoo. “Look at how wet she is. Soaking my cock like it’s what she’s made for. Such a good little slut.”
The word should have stung. It should have made her recoil, should have triggered some defensive, indignant response. But instead, it washed over her like gasoline on a fire, igniting something dark and hungry that she hadn’t known existed. She whimpered around Eunwoo’s length, a desperate, needy sound that was swallowed by his skin, and her hips pushed back against Jungkook’s thrusts, meeting him with equal force.
Y/N’s mind was too dizzy to form a response, too clouded with pleasure to summon anything more than the most basic instincts. Her eyes fluttered shut, her lashes wet with tears, and she stopped fighting—stopped thinking, stopped worrying, stopped being anything other than a vessel for sensation. She could feel her own orgasm nearing, could feel it building like a wave rising higher and higher, preparing to crash over her and sweep her away.
She was so close. So close she could taste it.
And the two men who held her between them, who moved in perfect synchronization, who had claimed her body and her mind and her very soul in a single night—they knew it too. They could feel it in the way her walls clenched around Jungkook, in the way her throat relaxed around Eunwoo, in the way she surrendered completely to whatever they wanted to give her.
“Go on,” Eunwoo murmured, his voice a dark promise. “Let go for us, Y/N. We’ve got you.”
Jungkook’s hand pressed harder against her abdomen, and she saw white.
Eunwoo followed in suit, his composure finally cracking as he reached his peak. His hands tightened in her hair—not painfully, but with a desperate kind of grip that spoke of restraint barely maintained. A low groan rumbled from deep in his chest as he spilled himself deep in the cavern of her throat, the particular taste of him flooding her senses—salty and slightly bitter, warm ropes of release shooting down her throat in thick, pulsing waves. It was intimate in a way she hadn’t anticipated, the vulnerability of this act, the way he held himself above her with shaking arms and hooded eyes, watching himself disappear between her lips.
Y/n choked at the volume, her throat struggling to accommodate the sudden influx, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes from the effort. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t stop. Instead, she swallowed—once, twice, three times—trying her hardest to take every last bit, to not waste a single drop of what he had given her. Her throat worked around him as she swallowed and the sensation pulled another shudder from Eunwoo’s body, his head dropping as he rode out the last tremors of his release.
When he finally pulled back, his chest was heaving, his hair now dishevelled and falling across his forehead and there was something raw and unguarded in his expression that she had never seen before. He looked almost shaken, as if the intensity of what had just happened had caught even him off guard.
Jungkook was next.
His hips pressed flush against hers, the skin of his thighs slapping softly against the backs of her legs as he buried himself as deep as he could go. She felt him everywhere—the stretch of him, the heat of him, the way his tip kissed her cervix with every thrust, sending sparks of pleasure-pain shooting up her spine. When he finally came, it was with a guttural sound that was almost a growl, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to leave bruises as he spilled every last drop inside her.
He didn’t pull out immediately. Instead, he rocked against her slowly, lazily, coaxing out the last few drops, milking every second of contact before he finally withdrew. The absence of him left her feeling empty, strangely hollow, but that sensation was quickly replaced by something else entirely as he patted her sensitive, weeping folds with the flat of his palm.
She twitched with every pat, her body oversensitive and raw, each gentle impact sending jolts of electricity through her overstimulated nerves. Jungkook watched with fascination as she flinched and shivered beneath his hand, a grin spreading across his flushed face.
Then his gaze drifted lower, and something shifted in his expression—wonder, disbelief, a kind of primal satisfaction that made his eyes darken. There, just below her navel, was the faintest bulge in her stomach. A small, rounded swell from being so full of his cum, so thoroughly claimed and filled that her body had no choice but to show evidence of it. The slightest bit dribbled out from between her folds, pearly white against her flushed skin and Jungkook let out a bark of laughter that was half disbelief and half pure, masculine pride.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his voice rough and awestruck. He reached out to flick her swollen clit almost absently, making her twitch and gasp, a fresh wave of sensitivity washing through her. “It’s like my birthday came early.”
Eunwoo shook his head, a small chuckle escaping him despite his own spent state. He reached out to brush a strand of hair from Y/n’s sweat-dampened forehead, his touch impossibly gentle compared to everything that had just transpired. “Wouldn’t she be the perfect present?” he murmured, his voice soft with something that might have been affection, might have been wonder, might have been the beginning of something neither of them had a name for yet.
Y/n didn’t reply.
She couldn’t.
Not even a weak huff escaped her lips. Her tongue felt too heavy in her mouth, weighted down by exhaustion and the lingering taste of Eunwoo’s release. Her voice somewhere lost in the haze of pleasure that still clouded her thoughts. She lay there, limp and trembling, her body humming with the aftershocks of everything they had done to her.
And yet.
She didn’t know being used so thoroughly could feel so good. She had slept with people before—casual things, fleeting things, relationships that had started with promise and ended with indifference. But it had never been quite like this. Never quite so euphoric, so consuming, so completely and utterly transcendent. There was something about the way they handled her—not gently, not reverently, but with a kind of desperate hunger that made her feel wanted in a way she had never experienced. They didn’t treat her like something fragile to be protected. They treated her like something precious, yes, but also something strong enough to take everything they had to give.
And God, she wanted to give them everything in return.
“Let get a taste of her,” Eunwoo said, his voice casual despite the weight of the words. It wasn’t a request. It was a statement of intent, a simple declaration of what he wanted next.
Jungkook nodded without hesitation, already moving. His hands found her shoulders, gripping firmly as he pulled her back, rearranging her limp body like she weighed nothing at all. At the same time, Eunwoo grabbed her thighs, his long fingers wrapping around the soft flesh and pulling her toward him with an ease that made her head spin. The both of them manhandled her like it meant nothing at all—like she was theirs to position, theirs to move, theirs to use however they saw fit.
And honestly?
Y/n didn’t mind even a bit.
In fact, as she felt Eunwoo’s breath ghost over her inner thigh, as she watched Jungkook settle beside her with that satisfied smirk still playing on his lips, she found herself smiling—a small, secret, exhausted smile that spoke of surrender and satisfaction in equal measure.
She was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Jungkook tilted her head with a gentle but firm hand, angling her face toward his before capturing her mouth in a slow, lazy kiss. Unlike the desperate, hungry collision from earlier, this one was almost tender—his lips moving against hers with a languid rhythm, as if they had all the time in the world and he intended to use every second of it. His tongue brushed against her lower lip, coaxing her mouth open and she let him in without resistance, too dazed and overwhelmed to do anything but surrender.
Below her waist, Eunwoo buried his tongue between her swollen folds.
The sensation was electric, a jolt of white-hot pleasure that shot straight up her spine and made her entire body jerk. She was already sensitive—achingly, almost painfully so—still trembling from the edge Jungkook had pushed her to and then cruelly pulled her back from. Every flick of Eunwoo’s tongue against her oversensitive flesh sent sparks dancing behind her closed eyelids and her body twitched uncontrollably with each pass, caught somewhere between too much and not enough.
Jungkook broke the kiss just long enough to smirk, his lips brushing against hers as he spoke. “I can still taste you on her tongue,” he commented, his voice low and satisfied, as if he was sharing a particularly delicious secret. The words sent a fresh wave of heat flooding through Y/N’s cheeks, the implication sinking in—he could taste Eunwoo on her, could still feel the ghost of him on his own lips from the kiss they had just shared. The intimacy of it, the circular nature of what they were doing to her, made her head spin.
Eunwoo huffed a laugh against her pussy, the warm burst of air ghosting over her clit in a way that made her whole body convulse. A high-pitched whine escaped her throat, desperate and broken, and her fingers curled into the sheets beneath her, knuckles going white with the effort of holding herself together.
“Come on, baby,” Jungkook teased, his fingers still carding through her hair, his touch soothing even as his words pushed her closer to the edge. “You can give Eunwoo one more, right? You know you want to.”
Eunwoo’s eyes flicked up to watch her from between her thighs, his tongue moving languidly over her clit in slow, deliberate circles. He wasn’t rushing—he didn’t need to. He seemed content to draw this out, to unravel her piece by agonizing piece. His dark gaze held hers, watching every expression that flitted across her face, memorising every gasp and moan and whimper like precious artifacts he wanted to remember forever.
“ ‘S too much,” Y/N whined, her voice barely recognizable as her own. She could feel herself trembling, could feel the overwhelming pressure building again despite her protests. “I can’t. I can’t.”
But even as she said it, she didn’t try to stop him. Her hips rocked slightly, instinctively seeking more of his mouth, betraying her words with the language of her body. She wanted this—wanted it more than she could articulate—even as her oversensitive nerves screamed that it was too much, too intense, too everything.
“Can’t,” Eunwoo repeated, pulling his mouth away just long enough to speak, his lips glistening and his voice almost playful. There was a teasing lilt to his words, a knowing smile curving his mouth that made her want to both kiss him and smack him. “Or won’t?”
Y/N whined again, a frustrated, needy sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest. “Can’t,” she insisted, though even she could hear how unconvincing she sounded.
Jungkook’s hand moved from her hair to her cheek, his palm warm against her flushed skin, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn’t even realized had fallen. His expression was soft, almost tender, in stark contrast to the dark intensity burning behind his eyes. He cooed softly, the sound meant to soothe even as his other hand pressed her hips down, holding her in place for Eunwoo’s relentless mouth.
“Aww, it’s okay, baby,” he murmured, his voice dripping with false sympathy, the kind that knew exactly how worked up she was and was enjoying every second of it. “I’m sure you can manage one more. You’ve been so good for us so far. Don’t you want to be good?”
Y/n let out a sound that quickly dissolved into an incoherent string of curses and whimpers as Eunwoo’s tongue resumed its work, faster now, more insistent. The pleasure built and built, a wave gathering strength somewhere deep in her belly and despite being so spent—despite feeling like she had nothing left to give—she could feel another orgasm taking shape. The coil wound tight once more, threatening to snap and she knew, with a certainty that settled in her bones, that she wasn’t going to last much longer.
Her hips bucked against Eunwoo’s face, no longer trying to escape but chasing the sensation instead, every shred of dignity abandoned in favour of the pleasure he was giving her. Her moans filled the room, loud and unrestrained, and she stopped caring about who might hear, stopped caring about anything except the two men who had taken her apart and were now putting her back together in a shape she barely recognized.
“Please,” she gasped, though she wasn’t sure what she was asking for. More. Less. To stop. To never stop. “Please, please, please—”
The word dissolved into a scream as the wave finally crashed over her and she shattered beneath them both, fragments of herself scattered across the sheets like stars across a midnight sky.
Eunwoo lapped up every last drop with an unhurried reverence. His tongue moved in slow, deliberate strokes, cleaning her skin with a tenderness that belied the intensity of what had just passed between them. When he finally sat back up, Jungkook’s arms remained wrapped firmly around her, holding her upright against his chest as if she might dissolve into nothing without his support. Her body was still trembling faintly, aftershocks of pleasure rippling through her muscles like the last echoes of a thunderstorm.
Then Eunwoo leaned in and planted his mouth on hers.
The kiss was deep and searching, his tongue sliding against hers in a rhythm that felt both familiar and entirely new. It took her a dazed moment to realize what he was doing—sharing her own taste with her, letting her sample the evidence of her release. The flavour bloomed across her tongue: salty and slightly acidic, with an undercurrent of something earthier, more intimate. It should have embarrassed her. It should have made her want to hide her face. Instead, it made her feel claimed in a way she hadn’t known she craved, marked and owned and utterly seen.
When Eunwoo finally pulled back, his lips brushed against hers with every word, his breath warm and sweet despite what he had just tasted.
“All we need,” he murmured against her mouth, his voice low and certain, “is just the three of us.”
Y/N felt her lips curve upward before she could stop them, a slow smile spreading across her face like sunrise after a long night. The words settled into her chest, warm and heavy and true, and she realized with a start that she believed them completely. She didn’t need anyone else. She didn’t want anyone else. Whatever this was—whatever they were building together—it was enough. More than enough.
“Damn straight,” Jungkook said from behind her, his voice rough and immediate, lacking Eunwoo’s poetic restraint but carrying just as much conviction. Before she could respond, he had tilted her chin with one finger and stolen a quick kiss of his own—messy, hungry, over almost before it began. He tasted like her too, she realized dimly and the thought made her head spin.
The three of them sat there for a moment, tangled together in Eunwoo’s bed with the sheets twisted beneath them and their heartbeats slowly returning to normal. Y/N looked between them, her gaze traveling from Jungkook’s dark, satisfied eyes to Eunwoo’s soft, knowing smile and back again. Something bubbled up in her chest, light and fizzy and almost giddy, and before she could stop it, a coy little giggle escaped her lips.
“So,” she said, her voice still slightly hoarse, her smile turning mischievous, “I thought it was supposed to be the three of us. But technically, that was two on one.” She raised an eyebrow, letting the implication hang in the air. “Bit of a numbers imbalance, don’t you think?”
Jungkook looked at her for a long moment, processing her words. Then he shrugged, his expression shifting into something almost playful as he turned to meet Eunwoo’s gaze. “Why not?” he said simply, as if the idea had been sitting there all along, waiting for someone to say it out loud.
Eunwoo gave a small nod of agreement—barely a dip of his chin, but unmistakable. His dark eyes held Jungkook’s for a moment longer than necessary, something passing between them that Y/N couldn’t quite name. Understanding, maybe. Permission. Or perhaps just the quiet acknowledgment of two people who had loved each other in their own way for years and were finally allowing themselves to explore what that might mean.
Then Jungkook reached out, one hand cupping Eunwoo’s face with a gentleness that seemed almost out of place given everything that had just happened. His thumb traced along Eunwoo’s cheekbone once, twice, as if memorizing the shape of him and then he leaned in and kissed him.
Y/N watched, her breath catching in her throat.
There was something almost hypnotic about the sight—Jungkook’s intensity meeting Eunwoo’s restraint, fire and ice colliding in a kiss that was exploratory and tender and surprisingly sweet. Jungkook’s hand slid from Eunwoo’s face to the back of his neck, fingers threading through dark hair, while Eunwoo’s hand came up to rest on Jungkook’s chest, not pushing him away but not pulling him closer either just feeling. Just being.
A strange giddiness bubbled up inside her, warm and effervescent, as she watched her two best friends kiss for the first time. Somehow, impossibly, nothing had changed and everything had changed all at once. The three of them were still the same people who had laughed over takeout and bickered about movie choices and fallen asleep on each other’s couches a hundred times before. But now there was this too—this new layer, this deeper connection, this thing that she hadn’t known she needed until it was already hers.
Most people were lucky to have the people they loved and their best friends be the same person. Most people spent their lives searching for that kind of alignment, that perfect intersection of romance and friendship and trust. And here she was, not with one, but with two—two men who knew her better than anyone, who had seen her at her worst and stayed anyway, who had decided that she was worth the risk of changing everything.
When they finally broke the kiss, both of them looking slightly dazed in a way that made her heart swell, Y/n threw her arms around both of them as best she could. The embrace was awkward and lopsided and absolutely perfect—her left arm hooked around Eunwoo’s neck, her right draped across Jungkook’s shoulders, pulling them both close until they were a tangled knot of limbs and warmth and something that felt dangerously close to forever.
“I love both of you so much,” she said, the words muffled against Jungkook’s shoulder but no less sincere for it. “I love you. Both of you. I don’t... I can’t even...” She trailed off, laughing softly at her own inability to articulate what she was feeling. But she didn’t need to finish. They understood.
Jungkook pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his arm tightening around her waist. Eunwoo’s hand found hers, their fingers interlacing like they had done it a thousand times before.
“We love you too, Y/n,” Eunwoo said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of years of unspoken feelings finally given voice. “We both do. We have for a long time.”
“Too long,” Jungkook added with a soft huff of laughter. “Way too long. We’re idiots, honestly. Both of us.”
Y/n laughed, the sound bright and genuine, and pulled them both closer. “Yeah,” she agreed, pressing her face into the warmth of them. “But you’re my idiots.”
╰ ┈➤ A/n 2.0: Also no hate to Mingyu. I love him and seventeen. I just needed a guy THE jungkook and cha eunwoo could get jealous of 😭😭
disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ dd:dne. heavy disclaimer for dark content. mentions of sexual exploitation. mentions of prostitution and canon typical violence. physical abuse. angst. psychological trauma and ptsd. mild smut. pet play dynamics. dumbification. dubcon. MDNI.
pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Finnick Odair x fem!Snow!reader
a/n *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ So every writer has a controversial fic in their career, this probably is mine (please don't show up with pitchforks in front of my house). This is set post mockingjay and establishment of the new Republic, this deals with very heavy themes and possible ooc for Finnick in this part. Comment, Like and Reblog
Comment to be added to taglist
[I] | [II] | [III] | [IV] | [V] | [VI] | [VII]
Finnick Odair’s path had never been an easy one and his work in the Capitol was no exception. As a senator representing District 4 and one of the most active and outspoken members of the fledgling New Republic of Panem, his days were a relentless cycle of council meetings, parliamentary hearings and the endless, suffocating tide of paperwork that followed each one. There were no Hunger Games to fight anymore, no arena to escape from—only the quieter, slower battles of governance, which often proved just as draining in their own way. And yet, Finnick knew he had no one to blame for his exhaustion but himself.
Katniss, practical and weary of the Capitol’s lingering shadows, had chosen to retire to the familiar shores of District 12, to the woods and the quiet life she had always longed for. Finnick, however, had decided to stay. It wasn’t only duty that kept him here, though that was part of it. There were other reasons—more personal, more complicated—that anchored him to this glittering, haunted city. But in the end, it was his choice. He had volunteered for this life. And he would see it through.
“That’s all for today, Susan,” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose. His voice was calm but there was a thread of weariness beneath it. His secretary looked up from her notes and gave him a small, knowing nod before gathering her things and slipping out of the room. Unlike most days, work had ended early. Not that it made the day any less tiring; the fatigue clung to his bones like salt spray to skin. But at least the evening stretched before him now, dark and open.
His car was already waiting outside the government building, engine humming softly in the cool Capitol air. He slid into the back seat and let his head rest against the window as the city blurred past in streaks of neon and shadow. He watched the lights flicker—advertisements, streetlamps, the glowing spires of buildings that had once belonged to the decadent and the cruel. He hated the Capitol. He had always hated it, even as a boy, even when he had been paraded through its streets as a victor, smiling for cameras that devoured his pain like candy. Back then, he used to return to District 4 whenever he could—to the salt breeze, the wooden piers, the honest, unpolished lives of the fishermen and their families. But as the years passed, those visits grew fewer, then rarer still. The sea began to feel distant, like something from a half-remembered dream. Now, the Capitol was all that remained of his waking life.
The car pulled up outside his building—a towering structure of glass and polished stone, elegant in the way old money often is. He stepped out into the cool night air and walked into the lobby, where the staff greeted him with practiced smiles and murmured welcomes. He returned them with a small, polite smile of his own—a reflex, nothing more—before stepping into the lift. The doors slid shut and he watched the numbers climb in silence. When the lift dinged open, he stepped into a long, narrow hallway, its floor covered in dark marble that reflected the soft glow of wall sconces. At the far end stood the only door: a grand, imposing thing of rich mahogany, polished to a mirror-like shine. The apartment had once belonged to a Capitol noble—a wealthy sympathizer of the old regime, someone who had turned a blind eye to the Games while hosting lavish parties on the upper levels of the city. Now, it belonged to Finnick. A trophy of a different kind. Not the first one he had been given anyway.
The lock clicked open with a soft electronic chime as Finnick pressed his thumb to the sensor. For a moment, he hesitated, his palm still resting against the cool metal of the doorframe. Then he pushed the door inward and stepped across the threshold into the quiet darkness of his home. The silence wrapped around him like a second skin—thick, immediate and deeply unusual. No soft steps padding toward him. No gentle murmur of greeting. Just the low hum of the city filtering through the reinforced windows and the distant whisper of the ventilation system. Without a word, he dropped his bag by the coat stand and kicked off his shoes, sighing audibly as his bare feet met the smooth, cool floor.
He stood still for a long moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. The apartment stretched out before him in shades of grey and shadow. The quiet was almost oppressive—heavy in a way that felt wrong, like a room holding its breath. He could hear his own heartbeat settling into a slower rhythm, could feel the tension in his shoulders beginning to unspool. But still, something was off. Something was missing.
He walked toward the living room, his footsteps muffled by the plush carpet. The only sources of light were a single distant hallway lamp, its glow weak and amber and the cold flickering of the Capitol’s night skyline pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city sprawled endlessly beyond the glass—a constellation of ambition and excess, beautiful and rotten all at once. Finnick paid it no mind. His attention was drawn instead to the far corner of the room, where a familiar shape waited in the half-darkness.
A cage.
It was a large one, ornate and unsettling in its beauty. The bars were gilded in gold that caught the faint light and threw it back in soft, fractured gleams. Inside, a thick mattress lay on the floor, a little over half the length of a standard human bed. Along the inner walls, were arranged a small collection of plushies: soft, childish things with button eyes and stitched smiles, their cheerful faces at odds with the cold metal surrounding them. And there, curled in the centre of it all, was her.
She was asleep. Or had been. Her breathing was slow and even, her body tucked into a loose curl on the mattress, one hand resting beneath her cheek. The soft glow from the city outside caught the curve of her shoulder, the pale line of her neck, the delicate braid of her light blonde hair swept to one side—exactly the way he preferred it. Even in sleep, she wore what he had chosen for her that morning: a sheer baby doll slip, translucent as morning frost, layered over black lingerie that left little to the imagination. Around her throat sat a matching collar, sleek and dark, with a silver tag that caught the light as she breathed. He didn’t need to read it to know what it said. Property of F. Odair. Attached to the collar was a silver leash, its end coiled loosely on the mattress beside her.
Finnick took a slow step closer, then another. He reached out and tapped his knuckles against one of the golden bars. The metallic rattle cut through the stillness like a bell. She stirred almost immediately—a soft, sleepy sound escaping her lips as consciousness pulled her back to the surface. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, then found his face in the dim light. Recognition struck her like a physical blow. She shot upright in a frantic scramble, her head connecting hard with the top of the cage with a sharp thunk that made her wince.
“Master, I—” Her voice was small, breathless, laced with panic. “You’re back? I didn’t hear—I mean, I thought—” She was already crawling out of the cage on her hands and knees, her movements hurried and ungraceful, the leash dragging behind her like a silver serpent. She knelt on the carpet before him, her eyes wide. There was little light in the room, but Finnick could see everything he needed to see: the fear pooling in her gaze, the trembling of her lower lip, the way her fingers twisted anxiously in the thin fabric of her slip. She was terrified. And she should be.
Finnick regarded her in silence for a long moment, letting the weight of his presence settle over her. His expression was unreadable—not angry, not cold, simply patient. As if he had all the time in the world. As if her fear was a slow wine he intended to savour.
“Why weren’t you at the door to greet me?” he asked at last. His voice was calm, almost gentle, but there was no mistaking the expectation beneath it. It wasn’t that he was offended or even particularly angered. It was simply a matter of duty. She had a role to play, a set of responsibilities she had accepted the moment she entered this arrangement. And tonight, she had failed in one of the most basic ones.
“I’m sorry, Master.” The words tumbled out of her in a frantic rush, her voice cracking at the edges. “I thought you’d be back later. You’re usually—I mean, work ended early today, right? I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I was waiting, I swear I was, but it got so quiet and I just—” She was trying to talk her way out of it, weaving excuses like thread through a loom, hoping to stitch together some version of events that would soften his response. Her hands were shaking now, clutching the fabric of her slip until the delicate material creased under her fingers. “I didn’t mean to, I—please, Master, I—”
Finnick bent down slowly, deliberately and took the end of the silver leash in his hand. The metal links chinked softly as he wrapped the length around his palm once, twice, until there was no slack left between them. Then he tugged. It wasn’t a hard pull—not yet—but it was sharp, sudden, enough to make her body lurch forward with a startled squeak. Her knees scraped against the carpet and she caught herself on her hands, her breathing gone shallow and rapid. A soft whimper escaped her throat as more excuses began to form on her tongue, her lips parting to let them spill out once more.
But Finnick was too tired for any of it. The day had been long, the meetings endless, the weight of the Republic pressing down on his shoulders like a stone mantle. He did not have the patience for a litany of pleas and justifications. He silenced her with a single look, a flicker of something cold and unyielding in his sea-green eyes and she closed her mouth immediately, her whole body going still except for the fine trembling he could feel traveling up the leash and into his hand.
“What’s my number one rule?” he asked. His tone carried a note of finality, the quiet authority of someone who expected an answer and would not ask twice.
“Always greet Master when he comes back,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. Her gaze had dropped to the floor, her lashes casting small shadows on her cheeks.
“And number two?”
“No excuses.” The words came out as a whimper, small and broken.
“And what happens to bad puppies who break rules?” Finnick tilted his head slightly, watching her. The city lights painted silver lines along the edge of his jaw, catching the gold of the cage behind her. He looked almost serene, almost pitying. But there was little softness in him tonight.
She was quiet for a moment, her hands bunching so tightly in the fabric of her slip that her knuckles went white. When she finally spoke, her voice was scarcely more than a breath, fragile as spun glass.
“They get punished.”
The silence that followed her words was heavier than any punishment Finnick could have spoken aloud. It stretched between them like a held breath, thick with anticipation and the faint, electric taste of fear. Y/n remained motionless on her knees, her head bowed, her blonde braid slipping over one shoulder to hang like a pale rope against the dark lace of her lingerie. She didn’t dare look up. She didn’t dare move. The only sign of life was the rapid rise and fall of her chest beneath the translucent slip, and the occasional tremble that coursed through her slim frame.
Finnick watched her for a long, deliberate moment. His thumb traced the cool links of the silver leash idly, back and forth, back and forth—a small, almost unconscious gesture that seemed to calm him while it wound her tighter. The golden bars of the cage gleamed softly behind her, their open door a silent reminder of where she belonged. The plushies inside stared out with their blank, stitched eyes, witnesses to whatever came next.
“Look at me,” he said finally. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the stillness like a blade through silk.
Y/n hesitated for only a fraction of a second before lifting her gaze. Her eyes were glassy, caught somewhere between terror and desperate hope. Tears had not yet fallen but they clung to her lower lashes like morning dew, threatening. She searched his face for mercy, for leniency, for anything that might soften what was to come. Finnick’s expression, however, gave nothing away. His features were carved in shadow and moonlight, beautiful and unreadable. He had learned long ago how to hide everything behind a pleasant smile. Tonight, he wasn’t smiling.
“You know I don’t enjoy this,” he said, and there was something almost tender beneath the words, almost gentle. “But you also know that rules exist for a reason. Structure. Order. Without it, there’s only chaos. And chaos—” He tugged the leash again, just a fraction, just enough to remind her of its presence. “Chaos is dangerous for little things like you. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered. A single tear slipped free and traced a slow path down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
“Do you remember the last time you broke a rule?” Finnick asked, tilting his head. The question was soft, almost conversational, but his eyes held her captive. “Do you remember what happened?”
Y/n swallowed hard. Her throat bobbed visibly above the collar. “Yes, Master,” she said again, her voice even smaller now.
“And did it help you remember?”
“Yes, Master.” A second tear joined the first. “I’ve never forgotten.”
“But you forgot tonight.” Finnick sighed, a long, slow exhale that seemed to drain some of the tension from his shoulders. He looked tired suddenly—not just physically, but something deeper, something bone-weary. The weight of the Capitol, of the Republic, of all the ghosts that followed him like shadows—it pressed down on him even here, in the sanctuary of his own home. He ran his free hand through his hair, the bronze waves falling back into place almost immediately.
“I don’t want to punish you tonight,” he admitted and the honesty in his voice was startling. “I’m exhausted, Y/n. I’ve spent the entire day listening to people argue about grain quotas and district tariffs and whether the train lines to Seven should be repaired before the winter. I’ve smiled at people I despise. I’ve shaken hands with men who would have watched me die in that arena and called it entertainment.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “I came home because I wanted peace. I wanted you. At the door. Where you were supposed to be.”
Y/n’s lower lip trembled violently now and more tears followed the first two, streaming freely down her cheeks. She didn’t make a sound but her shoulders shook with the effort of containing her sobs. Her hands had released her slip and now lay flat against her thighs, palms down, fingers spread—a posture of utter submission.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed, the words barely audible. “I’m so sorry, Master. I’ll do better. I promise. I’ll—I’ll never fall asleep again. I’ll wait by the door every single night, no matter how late, no matter how tired. I swear it. Please—”
“Shh.” He released his grip on the silver leash, letting it fall to the carpet with a soft clink. His movements were careful, measured—like someone approaching a skittish, frightened animal that might bolt at any sudden motion. Then, instead, he reached out and cupped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face upward so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. His thumb brushed slowly across her cheek, wiping away the wet tracks of her tears with a tenderness that felt almost cruel in its gentleness. His touch was warm, almost tender, a stark contrast to the sharp authority in his voice. “Don’t make it any harder for me, hmm?”
Y/n choked on a sob, her throat tightening around the sound until it came out as a strangled, broken thing. She tried desperately to blink back the tears that kept welling up despite her best efforts, her vision blurring and clearing in uneven waves. But she nodded—a small, jerky motion of her head, submission bleeding into every line of her body. She took a deep, shuddering breath, filling her lungs with the cool air of the apartment and forced herself to steady. Her hands unclenched from the fabric of her slip, then clenched again. She knew what was coming. She had known the moment she woke up to find him standing over her cage. And some part of her, the part that had been trained and conditioned and slowly reshaped, had already accepted it.
Finnick raised his hand. There was no hesitation in the movement, no second-guessing. It was clean, precise, almost clinical. His palm landed against her cheek with a sharp, ringing crack that echoed off the walls of the silent living room. The sound was startlingly loud—a single, perfect note of punishment that seemed to hang in the air long after the impact had faded. Y/n tried her best to stay upright, to hold herself straight and still the way she had been taught, but the force of the blow was a bit more than she expected. Her body twisted sideways, her shoulder hitting the carpet as she caught herself on one trembling arm. A soft gasp escaped her lips, more surprise than pain at first, before the sting bloomed across her cheek like fire spreading through dry grass.
Before she could recover, Finnick’s other hand found its way into her hair. His fingers tangled in the light golden blonde strands, fisting firmly but not cruelly and he pulled her back upright. The motion was neither gentle nor brutal—simply efficient, like a fisherman hauling in a line. She winced as the tension pulled at her scalp, but she made no sound of protest. Her eyes were wide and wet, fixed on his face with an expression that hovered somewhere between fear, pain and desperate, aching devotion.
“What do you say after this?” His voice was calm, almost conversational. As if he had asked her about the weather, or what she wanted for dinner. But his eyes held hers with an intensity that allowed no evasion.
“I’m sorry, Master.” Her voice came out raw and wavering, but she forced the words out one by one, shaping them carefully. “I failed my duty and deserve to be punished.”
It was the right answer. The only answer. She had repeated it so many times now that it had become a kind of prayer—a litany of guilt and atonement that she whispered to herself in the dark hours of the night. The words settled into the space between them, heavy and fragile all at once.
Another slap landed on the same spot. This one was softer, restrained, almost perfunctory. A reminder rather than a punishment. But still, Y/n whimpered—a small, wounded sound that escaped despite her best efforts to stay silent. The lingering tenderness from the first blow made the second one feel sharper than it actually was and her cheek throbbed in dull, rhythmic pulses. A tear slipped free despite her attempts to hold it back, tracing a hot line down her flushed skin.
“This is the last time that I’m letting you off this easy.” Finnick’s voice hardened slightly, the gentleness of before giving way to something sterner. He released her hair and instead raised his hand, tapping her forehead with the middle of his index finger—once, twice, three times, each tap landing with a light but insistent pressure against her brow. “You need to get it through that dumb little head of yours, hmm?” There was no cruelty in his tone, precisely. But there was no softness either. Only the flat, matter-of-fact authority of someone who had repeated this lesson many times before and was growing weary of the repetition.
Y/n nodded solemnly, her chin dipping toward her chest. She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing beneath the dark collar and murmured, “Thank you, Master.” The words came automatically now, ingrained so deeply that she no longer had to think about them. Gratitude for the correction. Gratitude for the punishment. Gratitude for the fact that he still cared enough to discipline her, to shape her, to mould her into something better than what she had been before.
Finnick studied her for a moment longer, his sea-green eyes roving slowly over her body with an intensity that made her feel like she was being taken apart and examined piece by piece. He looked at the reddening mark on her cheek, at the tears still clinging to her lashes, at the way her chest rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths beneath the translucent babydoll. Then his gaze drifted downward, catching on the silver tag that hung from her collar. The dim light from the city outside caught the engraved letters, illuminating them in soft, ghostly white: Property of F. Odair. He stared at the words for a long moment, his expression shifting through something unreadable—a flicker of possessiveness, perhaps, or satisfaction, or something darker and more complicated that he would never put into words.
Then, slowly, he exhaled. The breath seemed to carry something out of him—tension, maybe, or the last remnants of the day’s exhaustion. He cupped her face again, this time with both hands, his palms warm and dry against her tear-stained cheeks. He tilted her head up gently, forcing her to meet his gaze one more time. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but she didn’t look away. She never looked away when he asked her to.
Without another word, Finnick’s arm wrapped around her waist, his hand splaying across the small of her back. He pulled her closer, guiding her body between his legs as he shifted and sat down fully onto the floor, his back resting against the cold bars of the cage behind him. The metal pressed into his spine through his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he didn’t care. He drew her into the vee of his thighs, her knees bracketing his hips, her body flush against his chest.
He didn’t waste any time. One moment he was looking at her, studying her and the next his lips were on hers. The kiss was not gentle, but it was not harsh either. It was hungry, demanding, a claiming as much as a caress. His mouth moved against hers with a confidence born of familiarity and she responded instinctively, her lips parting beneath his, her body melting into his hold. His hands slipped under the hem of her babydoll, finding the warmth of her bare skin beneath. His palms were rough and calloused in places—remnants of a life lived before the Capitol, before all of this—but his touch was sure, almost reverent. He caressed her waist, his thumbs tracing slow circles against her ribs, then slid his hands higher, then lower, traveling up and down her midriff in a lazy, possessive rhythm. She shivered against him, caught between the chill of the room and the heat radiating from his body.
His hand moved up with deliberate slowness, fingers ghosting over her ribs before coming to rest against the soft curve of her breast. She let out a small, needy whine that seemed to travel straight through him and Finnick smiled against her lips—a slow, satisfied curl of his mouth that held no warmth, only possession. He could feel the rapid flutter of her heartbeat beneath his palm, the way her breath hitched and stuttered as he applied the slightest pressure. His fingers found her nipple through the delicate layer the lingerie bra, rolling it gently at first, then with a little more intent, just to watch her react. She never disappointed. Her responsiveness had always been one of her most endearing qualities—every touch, every whisper of sensation seemed to light her up from the inside, her body answering his before her mind could even catch up. Her hips twitched involuntarily and a deeper, more breathy sound escaped her throat, swallowed by his mouth.
Finnick exhaled slowly, feeling something shift within him. The tension of the day—the endless meetings, the sterile conference rooms, the weight of a nation pressing down on his shoulders—began to unspool, thread by thread, as her lips left his and began to trail down the sharp line of his jaw. She kissed her way lower, her mouth soft and warm and impossibly eager, pressing small, open-mouthed kisses to the column of his throat. She nipped at the skin just above his pulse point, exactly where he liked it, with exactly the right amount of pressure. Then she soothed the spot with her tongue, a practiced rhythm that spoke of long nights and careful instruction. She knew precisely where to kiss, where to bite, where to linger until his breath caught in his chest. She moved like a creature trained to perfection or perhaps one that had simply learned that her survival depended on knowing every inch of him.
His free hand drifted lower, brushing against the damp heat at her core through the thin lace of her panties. Even through the fabric, he could feel the growing wetness, the unmistakable evidence of her arousal soaking through. His fingertips pressed more firmly, circling lazily, and he felt her shudder against him.
“You’re so wet, puppy,” he murmured, his voice a low, velvet rumble against her hair. “Were you good while I was gone?”
“Yes, Master.” The words came quickly, breathlessly, pressed against the hollow of his throat between kisses. She sounded sincere. Earnest. Desperate to please.
Finnick hummed thoughtfully, his fingers continuing their lazy exploration, teasing at the damp fabric. “Then how are you so wet so quickly, hmm?” His tone shifted into something lighter, almost playful—a sing-song lilt that danced on the edge of mockery. There was amusement threaded through every syllable, the quiet confidence of someone who already knew the answers to the questions he was asking. “Are you sure you didn’t touch yourself while I was away? I know how desperate you get when you’re left alone too long.”
At that, Y/n straightened abruptly, pulling back just enough to look him in the eye. Her gaze was wide and imploring, the raw intensity of her need to be believed. Her lips parted as she shook her head with such fervour that a few strands of her braid came loose.
“Master, I would never,” she said, her voice steady despite the quiver in her chin. “No matter how desperate I get—no matter how much I ache, or how long the day feels—I always wait. I always wait for Master to come back so he can touch me. I would never break that rule. I promise. Please, you have to believe me.”
Finnick studied her for a long moment, his sea-green eyes unreadable. Then something in his expression softened—not with mercy, exactly, but with something that looked almost like approval. He tilted his head, his lips curving into a faint smile.
“My, my,” he said softly, almost affectionately. “You really are such a good puppy, aren’t you?”
She nodded eagerly, a small, hopeful sound escaping her throat. And that was all the confirmation he needed.
His hand moved with sudden, deliberate purpose. He shifted the damp lace of her panties to the side—just enough—and shoved two fingers inside her without any warning, without any preamble, without even the pretence of gentleness. Y/n let out a sharp, startled squeak, her entire body jolting as her hands flew to his shoulders for purchase. Her nails dug into the fabric of his shirt as her thighs began to tremble violently. She gasped, her mouth falling open in a silent O and Finnick watched her with hooded eyes as he began to move.
He pumped his fingers in and out of her heat with a steady, unforgiving rhythm—deep, deliberate strokes that left no room for doubt about who was in control. The sounds that spilled from her lips were obscene filling the quiet apartment like a confession. She was no longer trying to hide her reactions; there was no point. Her head fell back, exposing the pale column of her throat and the dark collar wrapped around it, her silver tag catching the distant city lights and throwing them back in fractured gleams.
“That’s what I like about you,” Finnick said, his voice low and nonchalant, as if he were commenting on something casual rather than the way she was falling apart around his fingers. He curled them suddenly, mercilessly, against a particular spot deep inside her—one that made her entire body arch like a bow and her head snap back even farther, a broken cry tearing from her lips. He smiled then, slow and satisfied. “You’re a dumb, dirty little pup. But you’re willing to learn. And you’re,” he curled his fingers again, harder this time, pressing and rubbing in tight circles against that devastating spot, watching her eyes roll back, watching her mouth hang open on a soundless scream, “so responsive.”
Her nails raked down his shoulders—sharp, desperate crescents of sensation that left pale trails blooming into red. Her thighs clenched tight around his hand, a reflexive, involuntary grip, as though she could anchor herself to him and keep from being swept away entirely. Her whole body bowed to the rhythm he set, arching and trembling and yielding all at once, a creature of instinct now rather than thought. Every breath she drew came in ragged gasps. Every muscle in her frame quivered with the effort of holding on. And Finnick simply watched. Patient. Unhurried. His sea-green eyes never left her face—the flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her lips parted around sounds she couldn’t suppress, the flutter of her lashes as she fought to keep her gaze on his. He controlled everything: the pace, the pressure, the very air between them. And she surrendered to it because surrender was all she had left.
Outside, the Capitol glittered on, indifferent and eternal. A thousand lights flickered across the night skyline—buildings that had once belonged to Snow’s allies, streets that had once run red with the blood of tributes, now polished and pristine and pretending at innocence. The city never slept. It simply reinvented itself, shedding old skins like a snake, forgetting as easily as it breathed. But Finnick did not forget. Even now, with her soft sounds filling the quiet apartment and the weight of the leash still coiled loosely in his free hand, his mind drifted backward. Not to the arena. Not to the ocean. Further than that. To the chaos that had followed the fall.
The old regime had crumbled like a rotten pillar, finally unable to support the weight of its own cruelty. Coriolanus Snow was dead. The rebellion had swept through Panem like wildfire and from its ashes, the New Republic had risen, still unsteady on its feet, still learning how to breathe without tyranny strangling it. The parliament had set to work immediately on two fronts: reform and the punishment of those who had committed crimes against the people. Tribunal after tribunal was convened. Names were dragged into the light. And among the accused, one name stood out not for what she had done, but for who she was.
Y/n Snow.
The prized granddaughter of the late President. Something of an “it-girl” in the Capitol’s glittering, poisonous social scene—though that phrase hardly captured the truth of her existence. She had worn the finest dresses, yes, silks and velvets that cost more than a District 12 family earned in a year. She had eaten the finest foods, had been photographed at every pompous event with her grandfather’s cold hand resting on her arm like a brand. She had smiled for the cameras, had recited the gracious, empty pleasantries expected of a Snow. But had she ever been free? Had she ever been anything more than a decoration, a prop, a pretty thing to be displayed and discarded at the former president’s whim?
“She should be executed!” The memory of that voice still echoed in Finnick’s mind—sharp, furious, a District 7 representative whose family had lost someone to Snow’s machinations. “Are we forgetting all that she did? She stood beside him. She smiled for him. She wore his jewels and ate his food and never once lifted a finger to stop any of it!”
The chamber had erupted into chaos, voices overlapping in a storm of anger and grief. Finnick had sat in his seat, silent, watching. He had seen the girl in question seated in the defendant’s alcove, her hands folded in her lap, her face pale as marble. She had not spoken. She had not defended herself. She had simply sat there, waiting, as though she had already been sentenced a thousand times in her own mind.
“I must remind you,” another voice cut through the noise—softer, but no less firm. Tigris. The former president’s own cousin, her face altered by years of self-inflicted surgeries, her loyalty to the rebellion unquestioned. She had harboured fugitives. She had fed the resistance. She had risked everything to help bring down her own family’s terrible legacy. “That my grandniece was used by that man to better his reputation. The girl had no part in the atrocities that he committed. She was a child—a pawn—no different from any other tribute paraded in front of cameras to make Snow look magnanimous.”
A murmur rippled through the parliament. Some nodded. Others scowled, unconvinced.
“And what of her brother?” A District 1 representative rose to his feet, jabbing a finger toward the defendant’s alcove. “Cornelius Snow knew. His list of crimes wasn’t short either—in fact, it was longer and more grotesque than most. Shall we pretend she knew nothing of that as well?”
Cornelius Snow. The name alone was enough to darken the room. Unlike his sister, Cornelius had been no decoration. He had been an active participant in the regime’s ugliest excesses—a notorious rapist and abuser, known for assaulting female tributes and district women alike with impunity. Rumour had it that he would take women from the districts in small groups, keep them in his private wing of the Snow mansion and use them for his pleasure until he grew bored. After that, they were either killed—silently, without record—or tossed out into the streets with nothing but the clothes on their backs and scars that would never fully heal. He had also served as a Game Master, designing tasks and arenas for the Hunger Games with particular sadism. The traps he created were not designed simply to kill, but to prolong suffering, to turn death into performance art. Few tributes who entered one of Cornelius Snow’s arenas died quickly. And none died kindly.
“He is dead,” Tigris replied, her voice cool but strained. “Cornelius is dead. His crimes died with him. Why do you want to punish a girl for her brother’s sins? For her grandfather’s sins? Y/n Snow was kept in that mansion like a caged bird. She was rarely let out unless Snow needed her for his schemes—a smile here, a wave there, proof that the Snow family was civilized, cultured, worthy of power. She was not given a voice. She was not given a choice. She was as much a prisoner as any tribute.”
The chamber fell silent. Finnick remembered the weight of that silence—how it pressed against his ears, how he had shifted in his seat, how his gaze had drifted back to the pale girl in the defendant’s alcove. She had finally looked up, just once, and her eyes had met his across the room. There was no defiance in them. No pride. Just exhaustion and something else—something that looked almost like relief. As though she had been waiting, for years, for someone to finally see her for what she was.
Not a predator. Prey.
“Then what do you propose?” another voice asked. “We cannot simply let her walk free. A Snow is a Snow. Her name alone is a weapon.”
The chamber erupted again before Tigris could form a reply. Another man shot to his feet—a broad-shouldered counsellor from District 6, his face flushed with the particular righteousness of someone who had waited a long time for vengeance and could taste it now on the back of his tongue. His voice boomed across the hall, carrying a rawness that silenced the murmurs around him.
“I suggest we make a whore of her. The way her brother and grandfather did to so many of our sisters and daughters.”
A ripple went through the room—shock, yes, but also something uglier. Approval. Men began thrumming their hands against the heavy wooden tables, a low, rhythmic drumming that built like thunder before a storm. The counsellor, emboldened by the response, pressed on, his words growing sharper, more vicious with each syllable.
“Put her in a brothel. For any man to fuck as they please. She wants to atone for her family’s crimes? Fine. Let her do it in the only fucking way she knows how. The Snows took our bodies for generations. Let theirs be taken in return. That’s justice.”
“Mind your words, counsellor.” Tigris’s voice cut through the din like a blade—low, dangerous, barely contained. Her features twisted into something almost feral, her golden eyes glinting with a cold fury that reminded everyone present that she, too, had once been a Snow. That she had turned against her own blood at great personal cost. That she had earned the right to speak. But her voice was drowned almost instantly beneath the rising tide of agreement—the thrumming of hands, the shouted approvals, the ravenous sound of a crowd that had found its scapegoat.
Y/n did not look up. She couldn’t. Her eyes remained fixed on the polished floor, tracing the patterns as though it might open up and swallow her whole. How could she lift her gaze? How could she meet the eyes of people who had already decided she was a demon to be exorcised, a stain to be scrubbed away? They did not see a girl, raised in gilded captivity, fed poison disguised as privilege. They saw a surname. They saw a symbol. They saw all the pain the Snow family had inflicted and they wanted to return it tenfold. There was nothing she could say. Nothing she could do. Her words would be ash in their mouths before she even spoke them.
Beside Finnick, a familiar figure shifted in her seat with an exaggerated groan. Johanna Mason—former victor, former tribute, former prisoner of the Capitol’s darkest chambers—rolled her eyes so hard it was almost audible. She had suffered more at Snow’s hands than most people in this room could imagine. Her family had been slaughtered. Her sanity had been stripped and rebuilt into something jagged and sharp. And yet, even she seemed weary of the bloodthirst filling the chamber.
“Ugh. I can’t believe this,” she muttered, loud enough for half the row to hear. Then, without waiting for a response, she leaned forward, tapped her microphone with a fingernail and began to speak.
The parliament fell silent the moment her voice cut through the noise. Johanna Mason had that effect on people. She was not beloved—she was too raw, too honest, too sharp-edged for that but she was respected. Feared, even. Because she had survived things that would have broken anyone else and she had emerged not softer, but harder. An axe honed by fire.
“Why can’t we just kill her and put the other one in the Capitol Hunger Games?”
A murmur rippled through the chamber. The “other one.” Lucia Snow. Y/n’s younger sister, barely fourteen years old, still a child by any measure. She had been found hiding in a servant’s quarters during the fall of the mansion, trembling beneath a bed, clutching a tattered stuffed fox to her chest. Unlike her older sister, Lucia had never attended the galas. Never posed for photographs. Never been paraded on her grandfather’s arm. She had been kept hidden—some said because she was shy, others because she was illegitimate, others still because even Snow recognized that one innocent granddaughter was useful, but two was a liability. Now, she sat in a separate holding cell, her fate tied inexorably to Y/n’s.
Johanna, of course, had her own reasons for suggesting the Capitol Hunger Games. She had been one of the loudest voices advocating for a reversal—Capitol children in the arena, district children as spectators. An eye for an eye. A taste of their own medicine. But Katniss had refused to endorse it and without the Mockingjay’s blessing, the proposal had died stillborn.
Y/n looked up.
For the first time since the proceedings began, she raised her head and let her gaze sweep across the room—the rows of representatives, the judges, the spectators, the victors, the rebels. Her face was ashen, her eyes red-rimmed, but there was something else there now. Not defiance. Not pride. Something fragile. Something more desperate.
“Please,” she said, and her voice cracked on the word. “Please, no. I—I’ll do it. Anything. Whatever you want. Just don’t—”
“Silence, girl.” Tigris’s voice was sharp, but there was something beneath it—fear, perhaps. Or pity. She knew what her grandniece was about to do and she knew it would not help.
But Y/n shook her head, a small, frantic motion. Her hair came loose, strands of pale blonde hair falling across her flushed cheeks. She was trembling visibly now, her whole body vibrating with the effort of staying upright.
“No. I know I am at fault. I know that my ignorance came from a position of privilege that most people my age were never granted. I know that I ate while others starved. I know that I smiled while others screamed. I know all of it.” Her voice grew stronger as she spoke, though it never lost its tremor. “And I will pay for my family’s crimes. For all of them. For my grandfather’s. For my brother’s. Even Lucia’s share. Please. I accept whatever punishment you see fit. Just don’t harm her. She is a child. She didn’t know anything. She never even left the west wing. Please. Please grant her mercy.”
The chamber fell silent. Not the angry silence of before, but something deeper—a held breath, a collective pause. People had expected arrogance. They had expected a Snow to scream, to curse, to demand better treatment. They had expected pride, defiance, a refusal to bend. They had not expected this. A broken girl, offering herself up like a sacrifice, asking only that her sister be spared.
Johanna rolled her eyes again, though there was less venom in it this time. More exasperation. She didn’t like being made to feel things. She leaned back into her microphone, her voice flat and tired.
“Okay, so what will it be? Whore or death? Cast your vote.”
The chamber moved to vote before Tigris could refute, before anyone could call for a recess, before cooler heads could prevail. Paddles rose. Counts were taken. Voices called out yea or nay. And through it all, Y/n Snow stayed in her alcove, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed on the floor once more. Waiting.
In the back of the room, Katniss watched it unfold. Her hand found Peeta’s under the table—his warm, solid, scarred fingers interlacing with her own. She didn’t like this. None of it. Her jaw was set, her grey eyes stormy. She had not fought a war, had not killed Coin, had not sacrificed so much, only to watch the new government turn into the old one by another name. But she was one voice among many and the people wanted vengeance. They would accept payment only in blood.
She had suggested house arrest with monitoring. Life imprisonment. Even exile. Each proposal had been voted down with increasing hostility. The parliament had decided that mercy was an insult to the dead. And that was the horror—and the boon—of democracy. Once the mob decided on something, innocence became subjective. Truth became flexible. Justice became a word you used to dress up revenge in nice clothes.
Finnick sat beside Johanna, his expression unreadable. He had not voted yet. His hand hovered over his paddle, his gaze fixed on the her. She looked so small from here. So fragile. Like a bird that had flown into a window and was still trying to understand how the sky had betrayed it.
The vote was cast. The numbers flickered across the large screen at the front of the chamber—a cold, digital verdict that carried the weight of a life. Death had been swift and brutal, a simple matter of a firing squad or a hanging, a clean end to a dirty legacy. But the other option had won. Not by a landslide, but by enough votes to matter. Enough to seal her fate. Enough to condemn her to something far worse than death in the eyes of those who had cast their ballots.
“Whore” had beaten “death” by a margin of seventeen votes.
“I knew it.” Johanna shook her head slowly, a bitter, knowing smile twisting her lips. She didn’t bother to hide her disgust—not at the decision itself, but at the predictable hypocrisy of it. She turned to Finnick, her voice low enough that only he could hear over the murmurs rippling through the chamber. “Of course they’d pick that option. Have you seen her? Looks like a fucking angel, that one. Golden hair, doe eyes, that whole innocent, untouchable thing she’s got going on.” She gestured vaguely toward the defendant’s alcove, her hand slicing through the air with dismissive disdain. “Who wouldn’t want to put their hands on her? They’ve been thinking about it for years. Now they’ve got permission.”
Finnick said nothing. He simply looked back at Y/n Snow, still in her alcove with her hands clasped in front of her. And Johanna wasn’t wrong. The girl was extraordinarily beautiful—the kind of beauty that stopped conversations, that made people forget what they were saying mid-sentence, that lingered in the mind long after she had left a room. She had what the Capitol commentators used to call “Snow features”: high cheekbones, a delicate jaw, skin that seemed to hold light rather than reflect it. Her hair was the colour of spun gold, so pale it was almost white in certain lights, falling in soft waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were pale blue—the colour of ice melting in spring or of a sky just before dawn. And her proportions were the stuff of classical sculpture: slender but not fragile, curved but not overstated, every line of her body suggesting grace and carefully cultivated perfection.
It was no accident. President Snow had ensured that whenever his granddaughter appeared in public, she was dressed in the most flattering garments imaginable—custom pieces designed to appeal to both men and women alike, to make her seem desirable and untouchable in equal measure. She was a tool of propaganda, a living symbol of the Snow family’s refinement and benevolence. Look, the Capitol could say. We have such beautiful things. Such civilized people. We are not monsters. We are patrons of beauty. We are worthy of power.
The thought made Finnick’s stomach turn. He had seen that same machinery at work in his own life—the way the Capitol had dressed him up, preened him, sold him to the highest bidder. The way they had made him into something desirable and then punished him for it. He looked at Y/n now, truly looked at her and saw that she was not staring at the floor anymore. She was staring at Katniss.
Tigris stood beside the Mockingjay, her spotted, weathered face close to Katniss’s ear, whispering urgently. Whatever she was saying, it seemed to be having an effect. Katniss’s expression shifted from grim resignation to something harder—something more determined. She straightened her shoulders, pulled her hand free from Peeta’s grip, and rose to her feet. The chamber quieted almost immediately. Even Johanna leaned back in her seat, arms crossed, watching with narrowed eyes.
“I acknowledge the decision of this parliament,” Katniss began, her voice steady and clear, carrying to every corner of the room. “On humanitarian grounds, however, I do not approve of it. What will make us any different from Snow if we do this? What separates justice from revenge if we stoop to the same tactics he used?”
“So what? We let her go?” Johanna interrupted, her voice sharp as shattered glass. She didn’t bother to wait for an acknowledgment before pressing on. “Just because she begged for her sister’s life doesn’t make her innocent. She’s still a Snow. Tears don’t wash that away.”
A chorus of voices rose in agreement—some from District 2, where families had lost daughters to Cornelius’s appetites; others from District 11, where Snow’s agricultural policies had starved entire communities; still others from the Capitol’s own reformists, who wanted every trace of the old regime scrubbed clean, no matter the cost. The chamber buzzed with anger, with grief, with the particular ugliness of people who had been hurt and were now lashing out at the nearest available target.
Finnick understood Johanna’s ferocity better than most. He knew what Cornelius Snow had done to her—not just the public humiliations, but the private ones. The ones that left scars on the inside. Cornelius had developed a “special liking” for Johanna during her years as a victor and whatever that had entailed, it had left her with a hatred so deep it could never be fully excavated. Unfortunately, in the absence of Cornelius—dead by his own hand during the fall of the mansion—that hatred had found a new home. Y/n was close enough. Y/n shared his blood, his features, his last name. And for Johanna and many more, that was enough.
This was a dangerous moment for Katniss and she knew it. The Mockingjay’s power had always been symbolic, not political. She could inspire but she could not command. If she appeared to sympathize too openly with Y/n Snow—a woman the people had already convicted in their hearts—she risked losing the fragile authority she still held. And yet, Katniss had never been one to back down from an impossible position.
“No,” she said, raising her voice over the noise. “I know that I alone cannot single-handedly overturn a decision taken by this body. I am one voice among many and I respect the will of the parliament even when I disagree with it.” She paused, drawing a breath, steadying herself. “So, I propose a condition. An amendment, if you will.”
The chamber settled into wary silence. Even Johanna stopped fidgeting.
“She will still be punished. The parliament’s decision will be carried out. But not in a brothel.” Katniss’s eyes swept the room, daring anyone to interrupt her. “She will be bound to the service of a single individual. One keeper. One master. Someone appointed by this body, subject to our oversight and approval. She will still serve her sentence. She will still atone for her family’s crimes. But she will not be passed from hand to hand like—like meat.”
She stumbled over the last word, her voice catching slightly. But she recovered quickly, her jaw setting in that familiar, stubborn line that had carried her through an arena, a war and the murder of a president.
Behind her, Tigris bowed her head in a small, grateful nod. The Republic had wanted her grandniece punished. The districts had wanted Snow blood. Tigris had wanted the girl saved. This was not salvation—not really—but it was something. A reprieve. A crack in the wall. She would take it.
“And who exactly will take her?” Johanna asked, her tone dripping with skepticism. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin propped on her hands, playing along for now. “Who gets the honour of owning a Snow? Drawing straws? Auction? Or should we let her choose her own master like some kind of twisted dating game?”
A few people laughed—nervous, uncomfortable laughs. Katniss’s expression did not change.
Before she could answer, the counsellor from District 6 rose to his feet. He was a broad, thick-necked man with calloused hands and a florid face, the same man who had first proposed the brothel solution. His eyes were fixed on Y/n with an intensity that made Finnick’s skin crawl—a possessive, hungry look that had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with lust and appetite.
“I’ll put my name forward,” he said, his voice thick with barely concealed eagerness. “I proposed the punishment. It’s only fitting that I should be the one to—to administer it.”
He smiled. It was not a kind smile. His gaze roamed over Y/n’s figure—the curve of her hip, the slender line of her neck, the way her hands trembled at her sides and Finnick felt something cold settle in his chest. That man would not keep her as a servant. That man would not treat her with even the barest shred of dignity. That man looked at her the way a predator looks at prey it intends to eat alive, slowly, savouring every moment.
Finnick wanted to believe the counsellor wasn’t a bad person. Perhaps, in another life, he had been a decent man—a father, a husband, a worker who simply wanted justice for wrongs committed against his district. But the glint in his eyes told a different story. It was the same glint Finnick had seen in the eyes of Capitol patrons who had purchased him for the night. The same glint he had seen in Cornelius Snows eyes when the man had looked at Johanna. It was the glint of someone who wanted to tear another person apart and call it punishment.
Finnick looked back at Y/n.
She was staring at him.
Not at the counsellor. Not at Katniss. Not at the floor. Directly at him. Her pale blue eyes—those strange, light eyes that seemed to hold whole worlds of sorrow—were fixed on his face with an expression he couldn’t quite name. It was haunted, yes. Sad, certainly. But there was something else beneath it, something that looked almost like recognition. As though she was trying to reach out to the version of him that existed in a dream long ago. As though she was asking him, silently, without words: Will you let them take me?
His breath hitched. His chest tightened. And suddenly, without fully understanding why, he was standing.
The chair scraped back behind him with a sound that echoed through the suddenly silent chamber. Every head turned. Every eye fixed on him—Finnick Odair, the victor, the senator, the man who had been sold more times than he could count, who had worn the Capitols chains and learned to smile through them. He stood tall, his sea-green eyes clear, his voice steady despite the hammering of his heart.
“I’ll take her.”
╰ ┈➤ A/n 2.0: I took a bunch of references from real life events and people for this fic and do let me know if you wanna know about it. And this Finnick is very ooc ik but it'll be explained better in the coming parts, trust.
So, uh something happened and now I've got a multi-part Hunger Games fic written and sitting in my drafts. It's Finnick Odair x fem!snow!reader, set post-Mockingjay in an AU where Finnick survives and becomes a senator in the New Republic. It's a dark fic with heavy themes. Any Hunger Games fans still out there? I know the fandom's been a bit dead lately 😔😔
people who read other people's fanfics and see themselves as fanfic writers' "customers" may be one of the most unpleasant people you'll encounter in fandom space.
as a fanfic writer, no, I do not write for you. I write for me. I just post my stuff online for people to read, but that's an act of kindness, it's not "me trying to please you". if you like what I write and if you support me and are kind to me, then I appreciate you. from the bottom of my heart.
but if you don't like what I write, that is fine too. that just means my works are not for you (well, they are for me, the writer. I write for my own enjoyment first and foremost), you can quietly leave, find something else to read. or, better yet, write what you want to read yourself.
you are not fanfic writers' "customers". you read their works for free because they're kind enough to share their works for free. you're reading someone else's hobby. if you keep being rude and entitled to fanfic writers, one day you'll end up with no fics to read, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
for the hundredth time, treat fanfic writers and fan artists with respect, or stay quiet.
And so, the woman dies. The woman dies so the man can be sad about it. The woman dies so the man can suffer. She dies to give him a destiny. Dies so he can fall to the dark side. Dies so he can lament her death. As he stands there, brimming with grief, brimming with life, the woman lies there in silence. The woman dies for him.
- The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda
