hii i saw that u write nsfw too! and i wanted to request a dazai x reader (it can be a scenario or headcannons, however you're more comfy with) in which dazai has an spank kink? assfssddd i swear im over heels for this man
it can be fem or gn reader, again, however you're more comfortable with, thank you for reading!
Dazai who loves to spank you....
Dazai, who doesn't mind putting up with your bratty attitude in public and chuckles when you snap at him, but also doesn't hesitate to bend you over his knee once you two are alone,
Dazai, whose favourite position is you laying across his lap, your ass raised and on display with your skirt flipped up, because of how utterly defenseless you are like this,
Dazai, who loves how responsive you are - the way you cry out every time his palm comes down on your ass, how you feebly kick your legs in protest and how your whole body jolts forward with the force of the hit makes his dick twitch with excitement,
and you honestly have no choice but to react this strongly, because, despite his rather lanky figure, Dazai isn't weak; his hits are harsh and sting awfully, especially since they're dealt with precision - you didn't seriously think of him as frail and fragile just because of his physique, did you? he was a mafia executive after all, you should've expected this to hurt -,
Dazai, who deliberately alters his rhythm every few minutes, only because it's much more fun to see you all tense, awaiting the next hit without knowing when it's coming,
and Dazai, who chuckles each time you wail and whine, your noises high-pitched and pleading as tears drip down your flushed cheeks, while he keeps you from squirming away with one hand placed on the small of your lower back or with a firm grasp on the back of your neck,
“Oh, love, look at you - crying already, and we're not even half-way done. What a shame, really; if only you wouldn't have been such a brat, I wouldn't have to do this. Oh? But what's this, belladonna? Don't tell me you're enjoying this.”
Him, smirking as he trails his fingers down between your legs, scooping some of your arousal up and caressing your wet folds, and, god, you can't help but tremble at the sudden touch, a moan leaving your lips,
and you're unable to stop your hips from grinding against his lap and your legs from spreading further apart, your arousal coating your own thighs and his fingers, and Dazai only laughs, the sound clear and mocking,
“You're truly getting off on this. That's really pathetic, love, you know? What a slut you are, so needy. Your cunt is literally dripping wet - you're getting my trousers all dirty. Well, at least I don't have to feel guilty about drawing this out more then, hm?”
Dazai, who only chuckles and mocks you when you beg him to stop because now, the ache is really setting in and you can do nothing but choke out sobs as his hands move to your ass to knead the soft giving skin, the gesture seemingly comforting but only serving to punish you more with how sensitive and raw your heated ass feels,
and, god, it's unfair that he chooses to interpret your pained whine as one of pleasure, but you can't bring yourself to complain when lithe fingers are suddenly spreading your cunt open, causing you to moan,
“My, you're basically sucking me in. Do you want my fingers that badly, hm? Ah, that's tragic, really. I doubt you've learned your lesson yet.”
and also Dazai, who keeps groping and occasionally slapping your ass after he's done with you, only to watch you grimace in discomfort as you force yourself not to whimper,
“Ah, belladonna, you should be thankful that I'm this merciful. This could have been so much worse; be glad I'm not using a paddle instead of my hand. Also, don't pretend you didn't enjoy this - I remember clearly that you've begged me to fuck you once I was done. You were so shameless about it, too - like a bitch in heat.”
notes: I LOVE SPANKING, this got a little long, but head full, many thoughts. also who isn't heads over heels for Dazai; he's just hot 🧡 ... i hope you like it!
[if you liked this, consider tipping me on ko-fi! it'd mean a lot!]
This is a Valentine’s Day Special chapter of my OC Keth'raal and his human companion 🩷 I miss Keth’raal dearly and I hope this chapter brings you some joy on this special day 🥰
“Oh… oh no,”
you mumbled, horrified at the sight of an enormous heart sitting right in the middle of your kitchen table.
It had been ten days ago when Keth’raal first noticed you casually, far too casually, looking up Valentine’s Day decorations.
You hadn’t planned on making a big deal out of it. There wouldn’t be guests anyway. Just him.
And explaining Valentine’s Day to him beforehand felt… wrong. Like it would ruin the whole point of the surprise.
So instead, you had found yourself scrolling through the internet late at night, looking for ideas that didn’t involve the usual heart-shaped everything and overpriced chocolates. Something subtle. Something different.
And yet, every single time your screen passed a heart-shaped plate, or pink confetti, or something painfully cliché, your eyes lingered.
You sighed at yourself more than once.
Hell, you even giggled at the dumb Valentine’s quotes you swore you hated.
“Roses are red, your clicks would scare my friends. But I’d still choose you, because you are the best.”
You scribbled it down on a Post-it note before you could stop yourself, sticking it on top of a book like it might escape otherwise. You stared at it for a moment, your fingernail scratching idly over the little square of yellow paper.
“Maybe I should just celebrate it normally,” you murmured to yourself.
That was when a soft creak sounded from the other side of the living room.
You snapped your head toward the sound, jolting up from the couch as panic hit you immediately. You grabbed the book you had stuck the Post-it note onto and pressed it tight to your chest, already halfway to your bedroom.
“AGH—!”
Your scream tore out of you as an invisible force caught the hem of your pajama shirt, yanking you backwards. Your feet left the floor for half a second before you crashed into a cold, solid chest, arms closing around you in an impossibly tight hug.
“Are you running away from me?”
The mechanical distortion of his helmeted voice sounded just above your head as he slowly materialized behind you. His arms draped over your shoulders, protective and heavy, while long, rubbery dreadlocks fell forward, half-burying your face.
You looked up and your heart stuttered painfully at the sight of his mask angled down at you.
“Hah,” you let out a very fake giggle.
Then you bolted.
You ducked just enough to slip out of his hold and made a break for your bedroom again—
“Oomph!”
The air left your lungs violently as you ran straight into another invisible barrier. You stumbled, nearly falling, before strong hands caught you once more. He materialized in front of you this time, fingers squeezing the fabric of your shirt as he pulled you closer, closer, until you were almost nose-to-mask.
“Na’kai.”
The word rolled out of him in a teasing, singsong tone you had never heard before. So rare and so unexpected, your eyes flew open in shock.
…or maybe excitement.
“Do you wish to be chased?” he murmured, drawing you in another inch. You could hear the faint clicking of his mandibles beneath the mask now. “I will chase you. But first you will tell me what is on that book you are holding.”
His head tilted, attention flicking to the book crushed against your chest.
A soft purr began to build in his chest, low, coaxing, almost persuasive.
Your limbs betrayed you first, going slack as your breath deepened. You leaned toward him without thinking, your forehead finally resting against the cool skin of his torso. You dragged your cheek slowly over it as you caught your breath.
Whatever that sound was, it wasn’t just a call.
It sank into you, warming your body from the inside out, tangling your thoughts until they scattered uselessly. There was only one thing left in your mind, one name echoing loud and relentless.
Keth’raal.
He was all that existed in that moment. Your focus, your need, your gravity. You wanted his hands on you again, wanted to disappear into their cold strength, breathe in that musky scent that was only his.
Your body leaned into him, already asking for more, even before you realized you had stopped trying to run at all.
“Keth’raal,” you breathed his name, your voice barely more than air as your lips pressed against his skin, right under where his heart was beating.
His grip tightened in your shirt, pulling you closer, making sure you couldn’t escape this time.
“Please, Keth’raal,” you whined, his name leaving your lips like a plea.
His body went utterly still.
His chest stopped moving altogether as you whispered his name one last time, the silence stretching so thick between you, it made your skin prickle. Then his grip loosened, one hand lifted, finding your face. His palm was cold against your skin as he cupped your cheek, tilting your head up until you had no choice but to look at him.
“Yes?”
The translator echoed softly through the mask, his thumb hovering, almost tracing circles against your cheek.
You breathed him in, eyes fluttering shut as you leaned into his touch. His other hand slid to the small of your back, drawing you closer until your sternum brushed his torso.
“You’ll never catch me,” you whispered.
And then you ducked.
You slipped out of his hold again, somehow escaping his grasp and that damn purr that threatened to melt you completely. You didn’t even know how you managed it. Only that adrenaline carried you forward as you sprinted for your bedroom.
You slammed the door shut behind you and locked it, your back sliding down the wood as laughter bubbled out of you, breathless and giddy from your little victory.
But that didn’t last long…
Keth’raal was already there.
Materializing at your side, towering over you, as if the door had never existed at all. Your eyes widened in pure shock as you scrambled to your feet, instinctively trying to bolt again.
Too late.
The door was locked. And his arms were already around you.
He grabbed you by the waist and hoisted you effortlessly over his shoulder. You burst into laughter, slapping at his back and begging him to put you down, though you both knew you were enjoying every second of it.
This was exactly what you had expected.
And you weren’t disappointed.
He tossed you onto the mattress, the bed bouncing beneath you as his hands closed around your wrists, pinning you down. You stared up at him, breathless, as he straddled you, one knee on either side of your torso, his shadow swallowing you as he leaned closer.
“You will either start talking,” he said, his raspy voice vibrating beneath the mask, grazing your ears, “or I will do the thing that brings you to tears.”
“No—no, please, not the tickling,” you squealed, already trying to squirm free, laughter building up as panic set in.
Because he knew.
He knew exactly where to press. Exactly how much. Exactly how to make you beg.
Even in play, he was a true predator, sharp, attentive, unfairly skilled. Reading you like an open book, every reaction written plainly across your body.
Almost unfair.
But not for him.
He was Keth’raal.
And in your eyes, he was so perfectly, devastatingly himself that you couldn’t deny him even this.
“Speak, Na’kai,” he encouraged, his mask resting against your forehead now as he spoke.
He knew how to do this. How to lower his voice just enough, how to make your body buzz with it. He had learned long ago, back in the lab days, how sound alone could calm you, steady your heart. And he had figured you out frighteningly fast.
But to be fair… you had done the same to him.
“Alright…” you sighed, closing your eyes and drawing in a deep breath.
“So… like Halloween. Or New Year’s Eve,” you began, your voice careful. “Humans have… more celebrations.”
You swallowed, keeping your eyes shut as if that would make it easier.
“And—” you pressed your lips together, hesitating.
You felt him shift closer instead. His mask nudging the side of your face, his breath heavy beneath it, warm enough that you almost imagined you could feel it through the metal.
“Well,” you continued quietly, “we have another one coming up soon.”
Your eyes fluttered open just as you felt his grip loosen, your wrists freed at last.
“Yeah?” he asked, curiosity obvious on his tone as his hand immediately returned to your face. His thumb settled against your bottom lip, holding it there while you looked up at him.
For a split second, the voids of his mask flashed red.
You weren’t sure if it was instinct or intention, but it made your thoughts stumble all the same.
With his thumb still resting on your lip, you spoke again.
“We sort of… celebrate love,” you murmured.
His head tilted.
“The feeling here?” His thumb traced slowly downward, from your lip to your chin, then lower, gliding over your throat until his palm settled against your chest.
You nodded.
And somehow, now that you had said it, breathing felt easier. Like the hardest part was already over.
Except…
You weren’t done yet.
“How do you celebrate love?” he asked then.
His palm spread wider over your chest, where your heart beat out of rhythm . His mask remained fixed on the rise and fall of your breathing, tracking it as his hand subtly moved with you.
“It’s silly, you don’t have to—”
“I do,” he interrupted. “Humans do it. So it’s important to you.”
“It’s not,” you chuckled, the sound small and unconvincing.
Because in all honesty… it was.
It mattered more than you wanted to admit. You had spent the whole morning looking at Valentine’s decorations, after all. You had been picturing it. Him, here, with you.
Who were you kidding?
“Fine…” you sighed, giving in at last. Being honest was a little easier than pretending again.
Besides, you never really knew when he would leave. Or when you’d see him again.
“So,” you began slowly, “we get heart-shaped decorations. We wear red, since it’s the color of love. We…” you hesitated. “…we exchange gifts.”
Your voice lowered, unsure, and your eyes refused to meet his mask.
Because there was something else. Something humans usually do on Valentine’s Day. Something you wanted, but didn’t know how to explain. Or if he would even want it.
“What else?” he asked quietly.
He had said it so calmly, as if he already knew there was more. Or maybe he was reading the way your pulse faltered, the way your breath caught when you avoided looking at him.
His palm left your chest and rose slowly to your cheek, fingers tracing your heated skin.
“You are turning red,” he observed under the mask. The translator carried the words more clearly than his voice, making you jolt.
“Does that mean you feel love?” His head tilted as he hovered over you, rubbery dreadlocks spilling over his shoulders like a river of ink.
“What?” you stuttered, your face burning now.
“You said it is the color of love,” he replied simply.
Damn it…
Every thought of his followed a clean, relentless logic. You couldn’t argue with him even if you tried, he was too precise, too thoughtful with every conclusion he reached.
“And embarrassment,” you blurted out, pressing the backs of your hands to your cheeks in a useless attempt to cool them.
“Aah.” His chest rumbled softly, the sound vibrating beneath you. “And embarrassment,” he repeated.
It sounded thoughtful.
It also sounded just a little too amused.
He slowly eased off you, finally giving you room to breathe. His hand never left yours as he helped you sit up at the edge of the bed, his grip tight. Then he lowered himself onto one knee in front of you, still holding your hand.
You couldn’t see his face, not behind the mask, but you were certain of it anyway. That cocky, wide grin. The one that always showed up when he thought he had you cornered.
You dragged a hand down your face, hoping, foolishly, that you could erase the heat in your cheeks, the frantic rhythm still drumming in your chest.
“So?” he prompted.
His thumb brushed softly over the back of your hand. You focused on that instead of his mask, suddenly far too aware of yourself to meet his gaze.
“We, uh…” You swallowed. “We show our love through touch. I guess.”
You clenched your jaw, then finally forced yourself to look at him.
He nodded once. Then again.
“How?” he asked.
Your heart kicked hard against your ribs, before it spiraled back into that wild, uncontrollable rhythm.
“It’s a human thing, you wouldn’t—”
“I learn fast,” he cut in.
There it was. The pride. You could practically see it in the way he straightened, chest subtly puffing out beneath the armor. And damn it, he wasn’t wrong. He did learn fast. Faster than anyone you had ever known.
Always adapting. Always reading you.
“Keth’raal…” you sighed. “Stop messing with me. I know you don’t want to do any of the human things—”
“Says who?”
He rose from his kneel in one smooth motion, suddenly towering over you. His armor caught the faint moonlight creeping through the window, metal shining softly in the dark. He looked even bigger like this, bigger than he ever had in the lab.
You weren’t sure you would ever get used to his true size.
His hand came down to your head, long talons gently scratching at your scalp, exactly where he knew it would make you melt. Your shoulders relaxed without you even realising it.
“Says who, Na’kai?” he repeated.
You smiled despite yourself, something shy and helpless painting your face. “Me.”
“Can I have a say in this?” he asked quietly. “Or will you pull another trick on me?”
His head tilted just slightly.
And your stomach dropped.
You knew what he meant. The lab. The lie. The moment you told him you would follow, but then shoved him out instead, forcing him to escape without you.
He would never let that go.
And if you were honest with yourself… neither would you.
“Keth’raal…” you said softly, your gaze dropping to the floor as guilt welled up in your chest.
He didn’t let it linger though.
His index finger curled beneath your chin, lifting your face gently until you were looking up at him.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly. The translator rendered the words rougher than the way they actually left him, stripped of the care in his voice.
You blinked up at him, surprised.
In all the time you had spent together, he still managed to surprise you with his gentleness.
With the way he read you without you ever needing to speak.
He felt you. How your body reacted, the way your breath changed, how your chest grew heavy whenever your thoughts drifted back to the lab. That memory never truly left you. The guilt nested there, quiet but constant, swelling around your heart no matter how much time passed.
And in that moment, he chose to apologize instead.
For bringing it up.
For even brushing against that wound, even playfully.
Keth’raal might have been an alien lifeform, born of pure violence and survival, but he was the most humane being you had ever known. Always willing to soften, to mend what hurt between you, especially in the moments that felt the most uncomfortable, the most fragile.
And that, more than anything, was what made it impossible not to love him.
“Then…” your lips turned into a small smile, “…you can have a say.”
He shifted then, moving around the bed before lowering his weight onto it. The mattress dipped beneath him (the new one you had bought after the last had very tragically not survived another incident, one you’d rather not think about right now.)
His hand patted the space beside him.
And you didn’t hesitate.
You crawled onto the bed and his arms opened for you as they always did, wordless and welcoming. You settled against him easily, your head finding its place over his chest, solid and strong beneath your cheek.
“So,” you began, voice softer now, “basically, on that day… you choose who you want to be your valentine. Someone you like a lot. You ask them, you get them a gift, something cute, or heart-shaped, and then you spend time together. Romantic time…”
You muttered the last two words, your index and middle finger tapping lightly against his stomach, firm under your touch.
He didn’t seem fazed in the slightest.
“And what does that mean for humans?” he asked.
His fingers mirrored your rhythm, tapping gently over your shoulder, talons grazing the fabric of your shirt, making your skin prickle wherever he touched.
“You know…” you said, swallowing. “We kiss and… we cuddle…”
You bit your tongue before you could say anything more.
“So you do not mate?” he asked and his fingers froze completely.
Slowly, you turned your head to look up at him, only to notice his shoulders moving. Just barely.
A low, sneaky laugh rumbled beneath the mask.
And just like that, the tension snapped between you, replaced by warmth, mischief, and that familiar, infuriating affection that only Keth’raal could pull out of you.
Your face twisted into a frown before you smacked his chest, the sound echoing in the room and that was what made him lose it.
His laughter burst free, deep and unrestrained, strange in the way it rolled from him yet endearing, muffled beneath the mask. It vibrated through his chest, through you and your irritation didn’t stand a chance against it.
The frown melted into a reluctant smile as you looked up at him, watching him enjoy himself far too much at your expense.
“Why are you asking if you already know?” you huffed, pushing at his chest.
He barely moved. Instead, he caught you and pulled you back, flattening you against him once more as if you weighed nothing at all.
“Why not?” he shot back, talons slipping into your hair, combing through it as he kept you pressed to his chest.
“So,” he continued, tone thoughtful now, “hearts. And the color red.”
It wasn’t a question, but it felt like one, as if he was double-checking the rules of this strange human ritual.
“Sounds like a ceremony of my kin,” he added with a shrug.
“And kissing,” you said, lifting your hand up to catch one of his dreadlocks where it brushed against your cheek.
“No.”
The word was quiet but demanding.
His hand closed around your wrist and you let go of the dreadlock.
“You do not touch me until that day.”
Your head snapped back in shock. “Valentine’s Day?!” you yelped. “That’s in, like, ten days!”
“Correct.” He sounded pleased. “Ten days are enough.”
Before you could even argue, his arms tightened around you one last time and then he let go.
You barely had time to process it before he straightened, grabbed his spear in one smooth motion and turned back only once.
“See you in ten days,” he said, the mask’s eyes flashing red.
And then he was gone, vanishing into thin air just how he had appeared.
“What the hell?!” you shouted after him, but the room was already empty.
You stood there for a moment, stunned.
…Well. You had never seen him this excited before.
Leaving you behind without hesitation to go, wherever it was he went when he disappeared like that.
You sighed, grabbing your phone again and scrolling with renewed determination.
“I’m getting the heart-shaped cupcake tray,” you muttered to yourself. “I don’t care.”
And ten days passed faster than you thought they ever could.
Almost every day, new packages arrived at your door, pink, red, heart-shaped, wrapped in glossy paper that screamed Valentine’s Day. Anything that looked like love, smelled like sugar, or felt vaguely ridiculous somehow ended up in your hands.
You didn’t even know if you would actually spend the day with him.
But you chose to believe you would.
And in the worst-case scenario… well. You would eat all the heart-shaped chocolates by yourself.
Had he ever even tried chocolate?
You had no idea what he would think of the decorations either.
Or your clothes.
You planned on wearing red and pink all day, colors that were definitely not you and that alone made your stomach flutter with nerves. Would he tease you? Stare too long? Pretend not to care and then care far too much?
By the morning of Valentine’s Day, your house smelled like cupcakes and warm chocolate fondue. Little heart decorations hung everywhere, subtle at first glance but unmistakable once you noticed them. On the kitchen counter sat a small heart-shaped box, on top of a handwritten letter.
The same silly quote you had come up with days ago.
You still weren’t sure what he would think of your gift. You only hoped he would understand its meaning, rather than its usefulness.
You were certain he had plenty of that vibrant, blue salve he used to treat his wounds. But this one was different.
This specific salve had saved his life.
Back in the lab, when everything went wrong and fear had driven your hands faster than your thoughts, that balm had kept him alive. It had cost you something, your hand never fully recovering, never quite able to close all the way again, but you had never once regretted it.
It was the reason he was still here.
So you took your time.
Carefully, methodically, using every proper tool you had as a biologist this time, you transferred the salve into a glass locket meant to be worn around the neck. The substance still glowed neon blue, cold and luminous, unchanged by time.
You chose a sturdy chain, thick enough not to snap easily. Something that could endure movement. Combat. Him.
Lifting the locket, you stared at it for a long moment.
The blue still shone the same way it always had, a reminder that nothing had truly changed.
And yet… everything had.
That balm no longer lived in a sterile lab or your trembling hands. Now it rested inside something delicate, something pretty.
A Valentine’s gift.
If someone had told you years ago that this would be its final purpose, you would’ve laughed.
But now, holding it between your fingers, you knew.
There was no other way it could have ended.
So the fourteenth of February was here and you could barely wait to get home.
Your shift wasn’t even that long, but it dragged on endlessly, every minute stretching thinner than the last. Because if luck was on your side, if the universe decided to be kind, Keth’raal might visit you.
On Valentine’s Day.
Keth’raal… on Valentine’s Day.
The thought alone made your cheeks heat, a smile tugging at your lips before you even realized it. One of your coworkers noticed, nudging you with a knowing grin and commenting that someone clearly had exciting Valentine’s plans.
You didn’t even bother denying it.
Your steps felt lighter on the walk home, quicker, almost impatient. Night had already fallen, the sky dark and scattered with stars and you found yourself glancing around instinctively, half-hoping, half-expecting to feel him nearby.
Your hands fumbled with the keys, excitement making you clumsy as you slid the key into the lock and twisted it open.
The kitchen lights were on.
“Oh my god,” you breathed, your smile blooming instantly, your cheeks already aching from it.
Your heart kicked up into a sprint as you hurried toward the kitchen…
And stopped.
“Oh…” you whispered, horror creeping in fast.
“Oh no…”
Your hand flew to your mouth.
Your kitchen table looked like it had been bathed in red and pink, slick, glossy, dripping on the floor. Something large lay at the center of it, heavy and wrong, and your stomach dropped as your eyes locked onto the shape.
You took a cautious step closer, your head tilting slowly as dread tightened in your chest.
It looked like a heart.
A massive, unmistakably real heart lay on your table.
“AH!” you screamed, whirling around as a hand landed on your shoulder.
“It’s me,” came his voice, soft, calm, even the vocoder gentle in its translation.
“Gosh—” you exhaled sharply, your breath shaky as you clutched at your chest. “You scared me.”
You turned to look at him, ready to ask about the massive organ lying on your table, your heart still hammering in your chest, your eardrums pulsing with it.
But you noticed his mask…
It was red.
Something thick and crimson dripped slowly down its surface and your hands snapped up to your mouth, muffling another scream before it could escape.
Oh my god. Oh my god. What have I done?
You had given him instructions for Valentine’s Day, and he had followed them far too accurately.
Red.
A heart-shaped gift.
A literal heart.
Oh my god.
You saw him tilt his head, that familiar motion he always made when you stayed silent for too long, when he was trying to read you and couldn’t.
Your eyes stayed fixed on his mask, your brows knitting together slowly.
“You don’t seem to like it,” he said at last.
The vocoder carried confusion beneath the words. Almost… disappointment.
“No, no,” you rushed out, shaking your head immediately. “It’s very—” you swallowed, glancing back at the heart on the table, then at the red still trailing down his mask, your brain short-circuiting. “It’s very… you.”
He tilted his head again, clearly not following.
“You know what?” you blurted suddenly. “This is all my fault. I am absolutely to blame.”
You stepped toward him before you could overthink it, hands grabbing onto his arms and pulling him flush against you, your own arms wrapping around his torso.
“I love it,” you said quickly, honesty tangled with disbelief. “Thank you.”
You held him tightly, your eyes squeezing shut as you forced yourself to breathe through your nose. He didn’t move while you clung to him, you were sure he wasn’t even breathing for a second.
Then a small laugh left your lips. Soft and shaky. Your face relaxed as you shook your head in disbelief, the sound turning into a quiet giggle against his chest.
“This can’t be happening,” you laughed, the words tumbling out of you.
“You’re laughing,” he said, still unsure, like this was definitely not what he had expected.
“It’s because you’re cute,” you said without thinking and his reaction was instant.
A deep rumble rolled through his chest, a low warning, like something primal and dangerous waking up in him.
“You brought me a heart?” you asked, finally looking up at him, your arms still tight around his body.
He didn’t step back.
Didn’t pull away.
He just nodded.
“It’s a huge heart,” you added faintly, glancing toward the table again.
He nodded once more, dreadlocks sliding over his shoulder with the motion, overly confident in his choice.
And even though he was three times your size, he let you squeeze him tightly, never protesting, never making a sound.
“It’s a trophy,” he said quietly.
Your eyes widened instantly.
“You hunted this thing?” Your voice lifted, excitement replacing the shock.
“Was it hard to kill?” You grinned, tilting your head up just enough to catch his mask looking down at you.
“It’s not my heart on the table,” he replied, his voice steady through the vocoder. “But it took me seven days to find it.”
“You… gifted me a heart.” you said softly. “On Valentine’s Day.”
Your smile faltered into something gentler, your brows knitting together with a bittersweet warmth.
You couldn’t quite believe it, a being like him, a menace to entire worlds, had softened. Had listened. Had taken a stupid human celebration of love and answered it in the most him way possible.
And somehow… it was perfect.
Even if it was dripping onto your floor.
That heart wasn’t just a trophy. It was a statement.
Macabre, yes — but the sheer size of it whispered something intimate, something unspoken.
This is how much you mean to me.
Your eyes lifted to his mask again as you slowly loosened your hold, but he didn’t let you drift far. His hands found you immediately, naturally drawing you back in as his arms wrapped around your shoulders, making you feel small again.
His skin carried a scent you had never noticed before, sweet, warm, alien. You nudged your nose into the inside of his elbow, where it seemed stronger.
“Red looks good on you,” he said, his throat working around the words before the translator followed.
“I can say the same for you,” you smiled.
Your index finger lifted, brushing over the rough surface of his mask, coming away stained with that red sheen. Slowly you brought it to your nose.
You could have sworn it looked like human blood, but it wasn’t. It hadn’t oxidised.
“It smells… sweet,” you murmured. “Like your skin.”
“It’s a fruit,” he explained, nodding toward the table. “From the same planet I hunted that— don’t!” His hand grabbed your wrist when you tried to taste it.
“I don’t know if it’s poisonous for you,” he scolded you, holding your hand up.
“I’m sorry,” you giggled. “It smelled too good.”
“I know,” he answered quietly.
Then he added, almost hesitantly,
“I recognized it had the sweetness humans like, so… I thought—”
Your breath hitched.
“You rubbed it on your skin?” you whispered, stunned. “On purpose?”
He had tried not only to dress in red, in his own savage, unorthodox way, but he had taken it a step further.
Perfume.
“My god…” you sighed, collapsing into his chest, burying your face there. “What am I gonna do with you?”
You hoped he wouldn’t catch the words, or the sweet desperation lingering with them.
But of course he could hear your heart, how it thundered against your ribs, loud and traitorous and desperate to be heard.
You had lost the game of hiding your feelings a long time ago.
Now you were just floating somewhere high, foolish and giddy, held together by his arms and the simple, devastating fact that he had loved you back in the only language he knew.
“I made you something too,” you said softly.
You left his arms, your steps careful as you hopped over the pool of red-pink blood staining your floor. You grabbed the heart shaped box, taking the neon blue medallion out and hurrying back to him.
He hadn’t moved an inch, simply waiting for you.
You lifted the medallion by its chain, letting it dangle in front of his mask so he could see it properly, the blue glow illuminating softly over his helmet.
“Is that…?” he hesitated.
“Yeah,” you nodded. “There was some left in the container. I had forgotten it in my lab coat. I kept it… to remember you.”
“Na’kai…”
Your given name rumbled from his chest heavily, as his hand reached for you. His thumb brushed gently over the scar on your cheek, the one that bound you together through blood and memory.
His thumb stayed there as you unbuckled the chain, lifting it carefully over his head. Your fingers grazed his nape as you tried to fasten it, the contrast between his cold skin and your flushed warmth sending a shiver through you.
His chest went still, as if he hadn’t taken a single breath since you reached for his neck.
Your fingers fumbled with the clasp, the height of him making this simple task suddenly impossible. After a few tries, you gave up, a breathless laugh escaping you as you dropped your forehead against his chest.
“I can’t do it,” you laughed softly, your fingers still resting at his neck. You could almost feel the slow, powerful pulse beneath his skin.
“Want me to help?” he murmured, so quietly even the vocoder struggled to catch it.
You shook your head, lifting your face to his mask.
“You think I can’t handle it?”
You meant it as a joke, but it came out breathless, your fingers still worrying the clasp as you stared up at him, daring him to believe you.
“Na’kai… you know I trust you.”
The syllables came out low and throaty beneath the mask, made audible only by how close you were to him. A deep purr began to build in his chest again, vibrating through his body and straight into yours.
Your lower lip caught between your teeth instinctively as your hands worked faster on the clasp, anything to finish before you completely forgot how to breathe.
“There,” you said at last, stepping back.
Relief flooded you as air finally reached your lungs again, your eyes lingering , the neon blue medallion glowing softly against the deep green of his skin, stark and beautiful.
He lifted a hand toward his chest, looking down at it, his talons clicking lightly against the glass.
“It’s like a reminder,” you said softly, voice catching just a little, “of what saved your life. And you can always have it on… you.”
The last word came out hesitant, almost broken, as you noticed him stepping closer, the way a predator moves when it doesn’t want to startle its prey.
His prosthetic arm lifted, cool metalbrushing beneath the raised line of your scar again.
The touch was careful, feather-light, tracing the old wound like it was something intimate instead of a mark of survival.
“You are my reminder,” he said, the words rumbling low from deep in his chest. “It is you who saved me.”
You blinked up at him, stunned. That simple confession hit like a quiet shockwave, unraveling you in ways you still weren’t prepared for.
Even now, after all these years of knowing him, he could undo you with just a handful of words. No flourish. No poetry. But plain honesty.
His touch lingered, the softness of it so at odds with everything else about him, his lethal, massive frame, his scars that mapped out battles won, his mandibles that could snap bone.
Yet here, with you, all of it softened. You could feel the change, the slow, conscious lowering of defenses he had carried for centuries. Like reinforced gates opening, just enough to let you in.
“Do you like it?” you whispered, fingers fidgeting with the medallion now hanging around his thick neck.
The neon blue glow caught softly against your skin, painting faint light across your knuckles.
He gave a single, slow nod. Then his massive palm settled against the back of your head, guiding you closer until your cheek rested against the cold, scarred plates of his chest.
You leaned in, breathing him in, that strange sweetness still clinging on his skin.
“So when you said ‘hearts,’” he rumbled, “you did not mean literal ones.”
There was real disappointment in his voice. His talons moved through your hair, tracing slow, absent patterns over your scalp.
You shook your head, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing out loud. A soft huff escaped him, maybe a sigh, maybe a growl, muffled slightly by the mask.
He took two steps forward, carrying you with him, your body still tucked inside the loose circle of his arms.
One hand lifted toward the ceiling, where the little heart-shaped paper lanterns swayed gently.
“Are these supposed to be the hearts?” he asked, sounding genuinely perplexed as he tapped one with the tip of his talon.
You nodded, lips pressed tight, shoulders already starting to shake.
He let out a longer, deeper sigh. The translator wasn’t needed this time, the exasperation was clear, the mild betrayal, the faintest edge of his wounded pride.
“You humans are unbelievable,” he muttered, voice booming louder under the mask, frustration making the words vibrate through his chest. “You take a perfect shape and you turn it into that?”
“So you don’t like humans?” you asked, smirking up at him, the tease obvious in your voice.
His head tilted down slowly, those glowing eyes of his mask locking onto yours.
One set of talons drifted up, brushing over the shell of your ear, tracing the curve before settling there.
“No,” he rumbled, “only my human.”
His fingers slid lower, grazing the side of your neck where your pulse fluttered beneath thin skin.
He stopped there, feeling the quick rhythm and you knew he could hear it, probably even smell the spike of heat in your blood too.
“So I’m yours?” You tilted your head just enough to challenge him, lips curving, daring him to back down.
But he didn’t. Of course not.
Instead he leaned in, the edge of his mask brushing the side of your face. Close enough now that you could hear the soft clicks and rolling guttural sounds he made beneath it, unfiltered, the real language he usually kept locked away from the translator.
“You think I would hunt down a creature and rip out its heart for any other human?” The words came out rough, but the tone underneath them was proud, sincere.
Before he could pull back, you turned your head, catching him there. Your hands rising, cupping the sides of his masked face, keeping him close.
Your lips brushed the thick, corded strands of his dreadlocks as you leaned in.
“So you’re saying I’m special to you?” you murmured, voice soft against the slick dreads.
His throat vibrated with a low, roaring sound you could easily mistake for a groan, before the translator even had a chance to catch up.
“So special,” he said, “I could take you back to my planet.”
Your fingers found one thick dreadlock, rubbing slowly along its length, feeling the strange, living texture under your touch.
“And what if I accept the invitation?” you whispered, lips still ghosting against the strands, your breath warm.
He froze for a second and then leaned closer, until his mask pressed gently against your temple.
“I’d take you right now,” he whispered back, the translator barely keeping up.
The words hung there between you, heavy and electric over your breaths.
“So I made all these preparations for nothing?!” you said, pulling back just enough to break the electric bubble that had formed around you.
Your voice came out louder than you meant, almost theatrical, like you were trying to shake off the sudden, syrupy warmth that had turned your limbs to liquid.
Your knees really had gone weak. The honesty in his earlier words still echoed in your chest, as he was asking you to go with him.
Again.
With that same steady certainty he had carried since the day you met.
“I’ll try whatever… that is,” he said, lifting one clawed hand to point at the heart-shaped tray you had just pulled from the fridge. Rows of pink-frosted cupcakes sat there like little sugar crimes against good taste. “If we indulge in the rest of your human festivities later.”
You narrowed your eyes at him, suspicious and already smirking.
“Which means?”
He tilted his head, the motion slow and purposeful, like he was choosing his next words.
“You need to teach me what humans do before the mating part.” His voice stayed nonchalant , except for the tiniest upward lilt at the end.
“Apparently they kiss. Cuddle. Share food. Stare at each other for long periods without speaking—“
“Okay—okay!” you burst out, throwing both hands up in mock surrender. You tried to laugh it off, even as heat climbed up your neck. “We do not need to narrate the entire courtship manual right now!”
He made that low sound again you knew by now was an amused sound. His broad shoulders shook once, twice and you knew.
He was enjoying this. Way too much.
Extra part 💕
“What is that thing anyway?” you asked, legs dangling off the edge of your kitchen counter as you scrubbed at the stubborn red smears on his helmet. The cloth came away streaked with vivid crimson and you wrinkled your nose at the faint, sweet-tart smell that clung to it.
“Xylos berry,” he answered. The medallion hanging against your chest hummed faintly, translating his clicks and growls into smooth, familiar words.
He sat opposite you on the other counter, too big for the space, his massive frame somehow making the whole kitchen feel smaller.
In one clawed hand he held a cupcake, turning it slowly, inspecting the swirl of pink frosting like it might bite back.
“I wanted to use red xenomorph blood,” he continued. “Finest red in the universe. Bright. Lasting.”
Your hand froze mid-swipe. “You would use xenomorph blood… so you could dress in red?”
He nodded once, content with his answer. Those green eyes of his, usually sharp enough to cut, went wide and soft for a moment, the perfect picture of innocence. Almost believable, if you didn’t know better.
“But it would melt your armor,” you pointed out, eyebrows rising.
“Exactly why I didn’t do it.” His mouth stretched into something dangerously close to a mocking grin, mandibles flexing just enough to show teeth. “You are dressed in red. I did not wish to be less festive.”
He lifted one talon and pointed it lazily at your red sweater, the gesture so absurdly humane that you had to click your tongue to cover the laugh building up. You shook your head, smiling despite yourself.
How did he do that? Sound lethal and look cute at the same time? It shouldn’t be possible. And yet here he was, several hundred pounds of muscle, scars, and killing instinct, pouting over holiday color coordination like it was a matter of honor.
“Okay, that’s the best I can do,” you said at last, setting the helmet down beside you with a soft clunk. The red was mostly gone, what remained looked more like faint berry stains than blood now. Good enough.
He slid off his perch without a sound, graceful as always, and crossed the small space between you in two slow steps.
Then he was there, settling between your dangling legs, cold armored plates pressing lightly against the insides of your thighs.
You leaned back on your hands instinctively, giving him room to crowd in, breathing in that lingering sweet scent of xylos berry still clinging to him.
“How may I repay the favor, Na’kai?” His voice dropped lower, the translator in the medallion doing the work as his actual speech sounded, raw clicks and rolling throat-sounds that vibrated straight through you.
His mandibles clicked softly, close enough now that you could feel the faint brush of them against your cheek. Warm breath ghosting over your ear.
You swallowed, pulse suddenly loud in your own ears. “I can teach you something,” you managed, the words coming out smaller than you intended.
Your gaze kept sliding—traitorously—to his mouth, to the slow flex of mandibles, the gleam of inner teeth.
He made a low, throaty sound, approval, hunger, amusement, all tangled together, and leaned in even closer.
One mandible grazed your cheekbone, his breath fanning hot against the shell of your ear.
“I’ve been told I’m a fast learner,” he whispered.
A shiver raced down your spine, your back arching slightly, out of your control.
You tried to focus on anything else, the coldness of the counter under your palms, the taste of sugar still in your mouth, the ridiculously huge heart still sitting on your table, but your eyes stayed locked on his mouth anyway, caught in the intimate rhythm of his breathing, the quiet clicks that felt like secrets meant only for you.
But you didn’t give him time to linger, to draw the moment out the way he so clearly wanted.
Instead you grabbed the chance, both hands cupping the sides of his masked face, fingers pressing into the cold, ridged edges where flesh met armor.
He made a startled, low click of surprise as you pulled him to you and pressed your lips to the soft inner curve of his mandibles.
The contact was strange and perfect all at once, warm, slightly textured skin that gave just enough under the pressure of your mouth.
You held him there for a second longer than you meant to, then pulled back just enough to watch his reaction.
His eyes, usually sharp and glowing green, had gone wide, pupils blown in what looked like genuine shock.
They darted between your eyes and your mouth, back and forth, like he was trying to solve a game that had suddenly rewritten its own rules. Speechless. Utterly, gloriously speechless.
“And that’s kissing,” you said, voice a little shaky, a little breathless. “For humans. I don’t know if you—”
You never finished the sentence.
His fingers, long, clawed and careful, threaded through your hair in one smooth motion.
He tilted your head to the side, exposing the long line of your neck. Then his head dipped and the flat of his tongue dragged slow and hot over your racing pulse.
Heat bloomed instantly over your skin, a burning trail that raced from the point of contact up toward your ear. Your breath snagged hard in your throat. Every hair on your body stood, the shiver that followed was violent, unstoppable.
His breath ghosted over the damp skin he had just marked, making the sensation loop back on itself until you were trembling in his hold.
He kept your head angled exactly where he wanted it, fingers still tangled firmly in your hair. Your eyes squeezed shut, fearing that if you open them this would vanish like smoke.
Because you had waited so long for something like this. For him.
Your heart kicked against your ribs like it needed to come out.
And beneath your palms, pressed to his chest, you could feel his own heartbeat, wilder, harder, completely out of rhythm. Like his body had forgotten how to stay calm and keep his coolness for once.
“Keth’raal?” you whispered, barely making a sound.
You were about to beg, to ask him to do it again, chase that burning line back down your neck, when movement caught your eye.
The heart.
The ridiculous, bloody trophy heart he had left on the table.
It was beating again.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
“Keth’raal!” You shrilled his name, horrified.
His hands left you instantly, snatching up the spear that always seemed to be within reach.
In one fluid motion, he drove the blade straight through the center of the heart, pinning it to the table with brutal force. Your wooden table giving up under the impact.
“What the actual fuck?” you yelped, scrambling to pull your knees up onto the counter, hands flying to cover your eyes. “Is it dead?”
“Should be,” he growled, voice tight with irritation.
You cracked your fingers apart just in time to see it give one final, aggressive throb and then… burst.
A massive puff of deep pink dust exploded outward with a loud, cartoonish pop.
You threw your arms up to shield your face, coughing as the rosy cloud settled over everything.
The kitchen. The counters. The floor. The ceiling. Every surface suddenly looked like it belonged in a fairy-tale, a fever dream coated in soft, iridescent pink that caught the light and threw it back in tiny rainbows.
Keth’raal stood frozen in the middle of it all, spear still embedded in your ruined table, shoulders slumped, head bowed in the most defeated posture you had ever seen on him.
Pink dust clung to his dreadlocks, dusted his armor, even frosted the edges of his mandibles like some ridiculous blush.
He looked… embarrassed.
In the most human way possible.
You stared for a second longer, then the ridiculousness of it all hit you.
A helpless giggle escaped your lips. Then another. Soon you were laughing so hard your stomach hurt, sliding off the counter on wobbly legs and crossing the pink-dusted floor to him.
You wrapped both arms around his waist, or as much of it as you could reach, and pressed your cheek to the cool, now-pink plates of his chest.
He hesitated at first, before his arms came around you in return, enveloping your body gently.
“You know what’s for sure?” you said between giggles, voice muffled against him.
He made a low, questioning rumble.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to believe my Valentine’s Day story this year.”
He huffed, a defeated chuckle.
“Next year,” he murmured against the top of your head, mandibles brushing your hair, “I will hunt something that stays dead.”
You laughed harder, clinging to him in the wreckage of your kitchen, pink dust still drifting through the air like the galaxy’s most ridiculous confetti.
And yet, it felt like the best holiday you had ever had.
a/n: Oh how I missed him 🤭 he’s always been a yearner but he makes me melt in this one 🙂↕️ the way he reciprocated the kiss??? 🫠 where do I sign up for that??
What did you think of this valentine’s special? I’m so excited to see you in the comments 🩷 I missed all of you and I’ll be back with more of the boys soon 🥹
Iroh and V have a small household. While Iroh grows veggies V helps her to take care of animals and he also hunts wild animals.
Wanna share a silly thing with you...
I was hasitating for a while where to place the bottles with milk. V usually milks cows and goats, but there's also a fun part of the life together of these two...
Iroh was in an awful state when V observed her and the babe from afar. She was too thin and too weak, looked almost like a ghost. And at the moment V started to take care of them the first thing he did was making sure both mother and daughter ate well.
If Iroh had not enough milk to feed the child before now there's too much of it.... Too much for one baby. It would be a big waste to throw it all away like a piece of trash. So Iroh decided to cook using her own milk... Yeah.... V loves it btw...........
Edit: I promise I'll draw a piece of meals Iroh cooks one day... I HAVE to
dᥡ᥉gꫀᥙ᥉เᥲ 𓏲ּ𝄢 why suguru’s wife is the best cook in the world!
ᥴꪮᥒtꫀᥒt ᥲᥒd ᥕᥲɾᥒเᥒg᥉ 𓏲ּ𝄢 fluff„ au with no defection„ convenience store meet cute?„ pov alternating„ geto x cashier!femreader„ classic “she gifted me cookies” trope„ about 11 y/o Mimi and Nana„ just go ahead and try to pry awkward!reader from my cold dead hands why don’t you„ slight emeto/discussion of unhealthy eating patterns„ a little blood but not gorey„ healing„ b-day boy geto!
᭙ᥴ 𓏲ּ𝄢 𝟝.𝟛𝕜
“My wife’s cooking for my birthday, actually.”
Like dominos knocking each other into collapse, Satoru, Shoko, and Kento’s heads all swivel to Suguru, their expressions falling in unison, curdling sour with something like distress and hope. Just a smidge of hope— hope that he’d slap his knee and nyuck nyuck them with a “just kidding!”
A silence lazes over the break room, Suguru seated at that little table against the wall looking on at his friends without an ounce of remorse. Prideful, even, at his statement. Everyone else who’s standing has gone still, their attention trained on Suguru, waiting for him to sike them out.
…oh he’s not. He’s still smiling. Oh god.
Even Yu’s ever-present puppy grin coin flips into a faltering press of teeth, sucking in a breath and murmuring out a painful, “oooh…”
Nanami clears his throat, the first to speak.
“Let’s not make her go through the trouble,” He found himself saying hastily, finger hooking to adjust his shirt collar in a rigid series of movements. “You should both relax. Besides, Gojo already offered to buy everyone dinner, it’d be rude to turn it down.”
Nanami? Concerned with disrespecting Gojo?? Suguru’s brows pull together and he glances towards the window minutely to make sure grass is still green.
Haibara’s quick to jump on that train, head nodding exuberantly as he claps his hands together— almost a pleading gesture. “Yeah! Let’s just all go out, chillax, grab a bite n’ few drinks and—“
“—HER FOOD TASTES LIKE HOW RARERAREMON LOOKS.” Satoru gags over Haibara’s placation, an overdramatic shudder causing him to spasm some weird little wriggle.
He squeezes his eyes shut, tongue lolling. “Guhhh, I feel sick just thinkin’ about it. There’s probably some curse out there manifested by fear of her cooking, blegh!”
Shoko pinches him, eyeing him disapprovingly with a scoff. “That’s not—“ True? “—the way you should say it.”
She shakes her head when Gojo poutily mutters something along the lines of we were all thinking it as he rubs his side, folding her arms as her lazily lidded gaze shifted to Suguru.
“Geto, I mean this as nicely as I can put it, because I love your wife more than you do.” She leveled dryly. “Girl can’t cook. Like, at all. Let’s give her a break and go karaoke.”
Nobody argues.
It’s probably not the feedback any husband wants to hear from his closest friends regarding his wife, but it’s not like Geto didn’t entirely expect this reaction.
He knows that— by traditional standards— you’re no critically acclaimed chef.
But in truth, he’s no critic either.
Suguru can’t remember exactly at what point his sense of taste diminished, it’s not one of those things you can pinpoint to an exact memory. It had to have been somewhere in his teens, just one day realizing his miso didn’t taste like miso.
No, now that he recalls, the taste of food had become the least of his concerns at that point, eclipsed entirely by the acrid sapor that was necessary for him to consume.
He used to take a bite, shift it around from one side of his mouth to the other, waiting for it. The comfort of a warm meal, of his most favorite indulgences to ground him. To remind him that just like everyone else he could still be pleased by something so simple. Food looked good, it smelled good. It looked familiar and weighed on a utensil like it was supposed to, but when it met his mouth he felt nothing. It mashed between his molars, diluted with his saliva and clung to the back of his throat like a weak perfume over the stench that was humanity’s worst.
Curses don’t go down like anything natural. They linger, make his body recoil on itself like anything that shouldn’t be inside it would. They coat his tongue, nestle into the soft parts of his mouth, make home in the cleaves of his teeth right near the gum. Smug and permanent. Kissing his taste buds like sulfur.
It’s not something he could ever rinse with water, brush raw, or floss away. They sat stubborn and stagnant as bristles scraped futilely, even when he couldn’t recognize the metallic tang of his own blood until he was spitting it into the cavern of the sink, ruddied foams of white swirled mockingly with a minty blue he imagined was spicy and fresh.
He used to gorge right after.
Shovel in as much as he could to overwrite the residue curses left. Salty, sweet, sour, savory, spicy, umami, bitter. All faint and trapped beneath the flavor of something wrong, until his stomach protested. A fruitless effort, he learned eventually.
It didn’t disappear all at once, but it eroded. Sanded down slowly, until the memory of eating and feeling sated afterward was more akin to something he’d read in a book than something he actually experienced. Rice became a warm weight on his tongue, soup eventually just heat that stung any open wound in his mouth. Salt? Meat was a texture, sweetness existed as a concept that Satoru indulged in constantly, and sourness only if it was aggressive enough to bite through the numb.
And then eating became mechanical. Habit instilled by repetition over days, and weeks, and months, and years— since when he was small and new. But in those days it became action without reward, cruelly melding with his newest habit of taking in curse after curse. Over days. Weeks. Months. Years. Meal and mission were one blurred definition, joint disgust.
But he’ll still eat. If not for fuel, then for the questions to stop.
“Suguruuu, h’ve you lost weight?”
“Woahhhh duuude, you’re thinnin’ out! You look like Nanami—”
“—Hey.”
“You all good?”
“You hungry? Did you eat yet?”
“You okay?”
Ate earlier. Heat fatigue. He’ll eat later.
It all came from a good place, he’s sure. But it feels more like probing fingers than an extended palm.
In a restaurant it was a performance, pretending to savor what he couldn’t remember he was chewing as friends around him still found space for those small, menial disappointments that had become myth.
“This is waaayyy too salty.”
“How many calories do you think is in this?”
“Ughhh, I wanted something sweet!”
“What’d you wanna order again, Geto?”
At his name, Suguru’s head lifted from where he’d been blankly staring at the menu— pages of symbols and pictures all running together that might as well be the same word printed in a threat.
EAT.
But there was Haibara, grinning and staring expectantly for his choice. He smiled, a stretch of lips rehearsed for moments like these.
“Choose for me. Anything’s fine.” Everything was a varying shade of tolerable. After a moment’s thought, he added, “something sweet, maybe.” Satoru would probably end up picking off his plate.
All of it made him acutely aware of his own charade, how far away he was from the people he was sitting right next to. People who’ve never tasted a cursed spirit, who were still human enough to eat, and enjoy it. Praise or complain about what was on their plates.
No matter what was sitting before him, on smooth ceramic or in his hand, on a fork, pooled in a spoon, between his chopsticks. All of it was beginning to provoke the same reaction within him.
Just gaping his jaw with the intent of filling his mouth with something rancid disguising itself in different textures and colors and ‘flavors’ was starting to make his gut churn. Lazy, nauseous rolls beneath his ribs, sloshing, trying to prod and rise up his throat in a rush as if to punish him a second time.
He didn’t feel particularly nourished anymore. Food sat like a pile of stones when he could remember to eat it and managed to keep it down. Every swallow was a mistake, absorption or meal, it didn’t matter. He dreaded both with exhaustion, with the heavy clarity that nothing good waited for him at the end of either one.
So what was he doing this for?
For people, non-sorcerers that would never know the cost or the day to day toll. Who would keep committing horrible acts under his protection, at the cost of his struggle and the lives of sorcerers around him.
There was no longer really a question of what he would eat, just the why.
Why was he doing this? For who?
You, of course, were none the wiser to the depth of this turmoil.
A dull clunk! reverberates throughout the aisle.
You muttered some curse under your breath as you dropped a can of soda, shiny red aluminum rolling beneath the shelf you were stocking. The last month or so had been a blur of hazy summer days with a persistent sun and by night even harsher fluorescent lights buzzing overhead with the sharp scent of floral disinfectant biting at your nostrils.
You’d been working a lot of nights at this little 24-hour convenience store, donning the hideously patchwork-colored polo shirt because you needed a summer job to keep you busy and rack up some cash. But sometimes you debated whether or not the ¥1,075 wages were more worth than lounging around in your fuzzy socks binging movies and shows to your heart’s content.
You mourned such as you lowered yourself to your hands and knees, one elbow digging into the grout between the cool tiles as you stretched the other below the shelf and— yeesh, maybe you really should clean under here instead of skipping it every few nights.
A couple frustrated grumbles escape you as you peered under, cheek hovering dangerously over the un-mopped floor and fingers groping just the air before the can, when the little ring ring! of the storefront door’s bell chimed. Beyond this shelf and the next’s, you see a familiar pair of socks and sandals lay foot on the doormat.
With a final stretch you graze the side of the can into rolling towards you, snatching it before it can stray again.
“Gotchya,” you mutter to no one as push yourself back to your feet and set the thing back on the shelf, fleetingly considering how shaken up it was. Someone was sure in for a surprise when they opened that.
Only then do you swing your head around the shelf to glance at the customer that had ambled in.
You’ve seen him here several times before, always at varying times of night during your shift. Tall, broad-shouldered, with deep ebony hair sometimes loose, sometimes loosely tied back with stubborn strands slinking out and crowding his temples. Head hung slightly downcast like keeping it upright was becoming too much an effort, white shirt hollowed a bit around his collar bones, as if it was a size or two too big. He’s handsome, don’t get it twisted, but every visit he just looks more worn.
The man’s narrow eyes befall the hot case, drift to the drink coolers, and then briefly to you.
“Welcome in,” you chirped automatically upon eye contact, like you always did after staring at him a bit too long (which happens often.) He muttered some noncommittal thanks with a nod before wading into the store, towards the refrigerated section.
Your interactions always followed a sort of formula.
He comes in, you welcome him, he wanders around the store for a while, and turns up with some items at register. There you make a little small talk that’s become increasingly less awkward, and you bid him a good night.
Which, arguably, is about the normal routine for any store regular, but you guess you pay special attention to him.
When you first noticed his visits he used to approach the counter bearing tons of snacks, a slurry of different flavors. Just a splurge of low effort indulgences that were pre-prepared, things you could eat and enjoy without really thinking much of it. You’d make a bad joke about it being one of those days that you felt terrible for making him pretend to laugh at, and send him on his merry way with handfuls of plastic bags.
But that was quite some time ago. Now his visits were more spotty, and he never brought more than an onigiri or nikuman to the counter. Maybe it was rude, but you wondered, from the looks of him, if he ever ate more than what he bought from here. It was like he showed up now only when he either remembered or was reminded by his body that he needed to eat at least something, and chose this sucky konbini for his collations.
You’re staring again, you realize when he finally chooses something that he doesn’t seem like he’s particularly interested in and starts walking towards the register.
“How’s your night going?” You blurt conversationally as he approaches, finding yourself behind the counter before he could beat you there. To which he hums.
“How it usually goes,” like usual, smiling a pull of lips that’s practiced. He places a pork bun on the counter. “Just this, please.”
As you ring him up, you sift through a catalog of mundane conversation topics to fill the silence between clacks of the cash register and rustling of coins. The weather maybe? Or how his troublesome egomaniac friend’s doing that he’d brought up in a couple past talks— him or that peppy kōhai he seemed to be fond of and worry over.
Somehow you find the gull to ask, “do you like cooking?”
You bite down on your tongue the second the question stumbles out your mouth. Hopefully it doesn’t sound as probing as you actually mean it to be. You can’t help it, really. Watching him meander around the store like a half rotted corpse so many times has really started twisting some anxious little knot behind your ribs. You suppose it’s a bit better than blurting out “who died?” or “are you okay??” like you really wanted to.
His glazed eyes slid up from the greasy quartz to your face, regarding you with the curiosity of an unamused feline. Okay, so today definitely wasn’t a small talk day. But he humored you still.
“Not often,” he admitted, in a blink his eyes on the counter again. “I suppose I don’t find the time to.”
“Ah.” Without thinking, you respond. Mostly because you know if you don’t, the conversation will die here. “I do. I mean, I’m trying to learn.”
Your cadence is crooked somehow, sounding like you meant to add something then lost the nerve as you spoke. The air feels as stiff as your holding your shoulders— with painful, unnecessary awkwardness that you’ve brought upon yourself. You’ve really got a knack for talking your way into a proverbial corner.
“I’m bad at it,” you add quickly, falling back on self deprecation to hopefully smooth over this situation. “Like, bad bad. Like burn water bad.”
His lips twitch, not into what you might call a smile, but the tightness behind his expression definitely eases a tad. When he blinks, interest flickers in the inky hues of his eyes. He huffs a breath through his nose.
“Is that so?”
You nod, a bit too eagerly, a whole lot relieved that he didn’t just push the steamed bun back across the counter and walk out the door to escape the situation— which you totally wouldn’t have blamed him for.
“Yeah. But it’s pretty fun. I think if I keep trying at it I’ll, like, get the rhythm down, y’know?” You prattle, fingers tapping at the counter as the receipt prints. When it does, you tear it and secure it over the pork bun’s packaging— no bag, because you remember he’s politely declined it in some previous visit, and slide it towards him.
“Even when it turns out bad, though, at least I can say I tried,” you continue like you’re talking yourself into that affirmation. “Like, it’s slop, but it’s my slop…plus I kinda need to cut down my spending, and it’s cheaper than take-out, sooo…”
He hums again, not particularly dismissive or indulgent. “I’m sure.”
You’re just saying “Yeah.” another one too many times when the bell jingles, signaling another customer walking in, the moment stretching thin.
“Well,” you default back to script, self-consciousness cresting on you ten times stronger now with some stranger milling about. “You have a good night.”
He looks like he hesitates a second, like he might apologize for something or explain himself or— god forbid— force you to make more awkward attempts at small talk. But mercifully, he turns to leave.
“You too,” he replies automatically, and the bell tolls again with his exit.
Without him realizing, his visits start taking an incline into earlier hours of the night, while the sky is still bruised purple instead of ink black. Sometimes you’re there, and sometimes you’re not. Absurdly when you’re not, he feels cheated, somehow.
When you are there, though, you talk. And he means that in a very one-sided manner.
You tend to talk a lot when you get nervous, but he doesn’t mind that about you. Rather likes it, actually, it’s nice. It’s like putting a few yen into a guarantee-win pachinko and watching the little marbles spill out tumbling over one another. He’d only ever have to say a couple words at a time, sometimes surprise you with a full sentence or two. He listens more than he responds, and you babble more than enough to fill in the spaces between without expecting too much of him, or ever questioning his purchases despite it being so painfully obvious you wanted to ask.
You regale him with tales of annoyingly ardent customers with expired coupons, how you have to poke a hole in the buns before you microwave them, because last week you found out the hard way when one exploded in the microwave. And of your cooking exploits— which admittedly, sound less than lackluster. Or dare he say plain disastrous, but you aren’t ever without a new story somehow.
When he jokes about paying respects to your poor kitchen that takes the brunt of your chef’s journey, you groan in embarrassment and press your fingers over your eyelids and palms over your burning face as you sputter something about how if you keep trying you’re bound to get better, practice makes perfect and all that.
Like he said, it’s nice. It’s cute. It turns into something similar to routine.
Until one day you produce a small, carefully wrapped box from under the counter. Your palms look tacky, like they have to peel away from the packaging when you set it down.
Despite your stilted motions and intense expression about yourself, you seem…proud? Or maybe just more anxious than usual.
“I made these,” you say too fast. It’s almost too easy to watch you and tell where you’re derailing from lines you’ve rehearsed in your head. It lightens the threat the cutely wrapped package on the counter between you imposes on him. “For you. Or I guess— I tried to make them. This batch looked pretty edible. I think, so, yeah.”
He stares at the box, something vile twisting low in his gut. Not hunger, but trepidation.
He should refuse it, and he knows that. Accepting it means performing, pretending to enjoy something he knows he can’t, to revisit the familiar hollow disappointment he so often did. He’d like to smile, deflect, retreat back into indifference.
But he doesn’t need to look at your eyes to read your thoughts.
You’re watching him with wide eyes he can feel like spotlights, your braced patience already half way to disappointment regardless of the way you're trying not to make it completely obvious. Like you already anticipated his rejection, convinced yourself you misread something or overstepped somewhere.
Distantly, the questions that’ve been gnawing at him for months loom overhead.
What was he doing this for? Why was he doing this?
“They’re cookies. You don’t have to take them. They’re kinda okay?” You blurt in a rush, not allowing his contemplative silence to settle lest you cave in on yourself completely. “I think I used tablespoons on accident when I was measuring the baking soda. Or is it baking powder?— whatever the one is that’s supposed to be in cookies. I hope.”
His hand moves before he has the chance to finish the thought.
The pads of his fingers brush the soft fibers of the cloth wrap, tracing where it creased at the corners.
“…Thank you,” he murmured quietly, and the look on your face is worth the wave of nausea gaining traction in his stomach.
You’re grinning like you’ve just been handed a passing grade you weren’t expecting, relieved and crooked. Like he’s doing something for you rather than you for him. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
He doesn’t eat the cookies right away. And honestly, didn’t plan to eat them at all.
He’d just dump them out, pretend he did, and tell you they were good. It’s an easy lie he tells himself, he’s practiced at it.
He cements the actions in his mind despite the way he walks through the streets with the box gingerly tucked under an arm.
At home he sets the box on the table as he strolls by it, and lets himself forget about it.
He showers, rinses the day off his skin until the water runs lukewarm and the sensation between clean and numb blurs. He changes, tries to tend to some things. Plants he needed to water, a surface he hasn’t dusted in awhile, texts that feel so burdensome to respond to. The trash isn’t full enough to take out. Nor are there dishes to be done in the sink.
However when he circles back around to the kitchen, the cloth clad cookie box is still there. A pop of color in the dim space, patient and unassuming on the tabletop. And he just can’t seem to distract himself from it, not when the image of you standing there behind the counter wringing your fingers that were so obviously riddled with little burns from hastily grabbing a baking tray, claiming that you’d made them for him was so fresh in his mind after hours. For him.
When he opens the cloth wrap, it’s out of guilt rather than hunger.
And when he opens the box he finds…cookies?
Objectively, they’re bad. Just looking at them he can tell— lumpy little discs that are darkened a hideous brown at the edges and a gooey, sickening pale in the middles. Chocolate chips are measured by heart and distributed by an oligarchal system, some ‘cookies’ with more chips than dough and some with none at all.
Everything about them looks wrong, and muddled, and…frankly a bit pathetic.
He exhales from his nose. You really, really tried. At least these ugly cookies don’t look at him like they’ll pretend to taste good.
As he lifts one to take a bite, he can almost see it: you overmixing, using the wrong measuring cups. Apron smudged white and puffed cheeks flour dusted too, frowning as your head whipped between a bowl and instructions, muttering curses directed towards whoever made their recipe blog ridiculously impossible to navigate, refusing to quit when the first batch failed.
When he finishes the cookie, and then another, terribly unique, simultaneously crumbly and goopy texture dissolving away in his mouth, they don’t taste good. I mean, duh, just look at the things.
But the putridness of curses that always so eagerly latched onto whatever landed on his tongue is white noise. There and constant, but not overwhelming for once. Sickness doesn’t even curl beneath his ribs. They taste just like everything else he’s eaten in the past several months, but there’s sentiment in them that makes them bearable, dulling the worst of the taste.
He ends up wrapping the rest up, slow and more reverent than necessary, and sets them aside. They stay where they are on the table, a visible and intentional reminder.
“I liked them.” Suguru graces you with a smile on his next visit. His clothes still hang a bit awkwardly but at least the darkness beneath his eyes is not so harsh, though maybe that’s because of how immediate his grin reaches them. Unpolished and wide, a kind of smile that made him look boyish. “They were good, you did a wonderful job.”
He really expected you to fluster under the praise, but much to his surprise you angle your head and squint, giving him a sideways glance. “…you’re lying.”
He sputtered, his eyebrows hiking up his forehead as he blinks. “I’m not?”
“There’s just no way you actually ate those!” You accuse with folded arms, incredulity tugging your bottom lip forward. “I tried one and even I thought they were bad, you’re so lying.”
“I’m not!” Suguru repeats again, this time his words filtering through a chuckle as he leans forward against the counter, elbows planted on the surface and palms loosely clasped. “I’m not lying. Believe me, you’d know if I was lying.”
His eyes drift a bit as he makes that statement. That’s a lie in and of itself. He thinks himself a fairly good liar.
Your eyes narrow though, so maybe you did catch on to that scant hint of arrogance. Maybe you truly would know if he was lying.
“I did like them. Please,” He drapes himself a bit more over the counter, lips spelling your name for possibly the first time since you’ve met him, and it sounds so pleading, too. A shock darts through your system, at his cadence, sure, but also because you completely forgot he even knew your name. That he cared to remember it from your first introductions months ago. (Later you’ll realize you’re very clearly wearing your name tag.) “You’ll make me more, won’t you?”
“…I mean— I guess.” You murmur, your nail digging at some worn price sticker that’s been stuck to the oily counter since forever, eyes bouncing from one corner of his face to the gauge in his ear to his shoulder and back again. Anywhere but his eyes. “I guess we’ll see how long it takes for my food to kill you.”
He smiles softly at that, and it makes you feel unchecked warmth everywhere under your skin. “We will, won’t we?”
It’s not that you held some miracle cure— you didn’t make rice taste like good ol’ bland rice again. Didn’t bring sweetness back to mochi. Didn’t take away the mildewed tang of curses. But you gave him a reason to want to keep trying.
Instead of laying awake at night dreading, am I going to have to eat again? How soon? He could close his eyes musing, Oh god, what’s she going to try to make next? Burnt or undercooked? Both?? a smirk ghosting his lips.
Because if you’re going to put in the effort to try to make a meal for him, just for him, the least he could do was try to eat it. And he’d like to wager he’s maybe the best at eating your food. If nothing else.
You’re worth the effort.
That’s why when he pushes himself up from the table and turns fully to his friends all gathered in the break room, his eyes are upturned in tight little crescents. Mouth curved in a sharp sickle of a smile that just really radiates love for his wife.
Love for his wife, and sinister intent directed towards whoever dares to oppose him.
“You’re all invited to my birthday dinner,” Suguru reasserts calmly, the tranquil rumble of his voice seeming to leer like a warning. “You’ll eat it, and you’ll like it.”
“Scary,” seems to be the telepathical thought that links Shoko, Satoru, Kento, and Yu. Suguru could be that way when he wanted to be.
So they all turn up on the 3rd of February to the Geto household's doorstep, knocking at 6:00pm sharp.
Mimiko stands there to greet them, a doll stuffed in the hollow of one elbow and other hand on the door handle. Nanako’s next to her, head craned down to the tablet between her palms, tip-tapping away at the screen and barely sparing them more than a glance. The collar of her shirt is hooked up over the tip of her nose, a makeshift mask.
What’s truly noteworthy however is the fog, billowing out the opening the door made, thick and stinking like something evil just died in this house.
“Dad let Mom into the kitchen. Again.” Mimiko monotonously supplies the explanation that’s really not needed, but it doesn’t fail in inducing a fresh wave of apprehensive terror anyway.
Though it deters them, it doesn’t stop the group from depositing their shoes near the door. They’ll still find seats around the table, try to smile and not cry when you dish out servings of what looks like the uncensored version of dubious food from some video game.
It truly is impressive how consistently borderline inedible your cooking is even after years. Endearing to some, dreaded by others.
“Sorry, it’s not the best.” You apologize preemptively before they even lift their utensils, but that’s not gonna make any of the ‘food’ go down easier.
Everyone still thanks you, Nanami and Ieiri maybe a bit better at feigning gratitude than Haibara and Gojo. Yu tries, honestly really tries to look appreciative, but he looks more like he’s just been issued a suicide mission and trying to put on a brave face about it.
Satoru meanwhile tosses his eyes dramatically, muttering “no kidding,” under his breath— right before hissing sharply. Under the table, Shoko and Kento have crushed all ten of his piggies.
The girls duck under the table when neither you or Suguru are watching to scrape their portions off their plates and into the gaping mouth of the worm curse wriggling around on the floor, weaving through table and chair legs.
And when you threaten everyone with cake wearing a gentle smile, Satoru starts praying. Not for grace to any god, but that maybe by some slim chance the aforementioned dessert might be store bought. (It’s not.)
But it doesn’t really matter that by the end of the dinner everyone is looking green around the gills or that Nanako is already plotting her and Mimiko’s secret take-out order later in the night.
Suguru’s happy. Sitting at the head of the table like he’s hosting a perfectly ordinary birthday dinner and not an active biohazard. The way he’s situated with lax shoulders and chin propped in a palm after polishing off a second serving of what everyone else could barely stand to stomach a first of, speaks of fondness. And a touch of smugness, somehow.
He seems perfectly content letting everyone else at this table battle their own digestive systems, like he doesn’t even notice it.
But when Satoru’s literally muttering his first prayers (since last year’s birthday dinner at least) under his breath, you can’t help but notice. You lean towards your husband slightly, grimacing a bit in concern as you whisper.
“It’s not that bad this time, is it?” You wince. “…too much salt?”
The warmth of his hand covers yours, and without hesitancy he affirms, “it’s perfect,” tone gentle and sure, infinitely appreciative. “Thank you.”
ᥲᥒ 𓏲ּ𝄢 geunyang pogihae eochapi— eat it up, eat it eat it uuuup! I super headcanon geto having dysgeusia or hypogeusia (or combo of the two?) so I hope u enjoyed and see my vision! happy late birfdai to the princess himself <3
late + not proofread + I’m sick if this sucked pls dont kill me im new gennnn ૮ ྀིྀ◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ ა but do not shy from sharing your thoughts, im eating the feedback like Geto ate those rank & stank cookies
V and Iroh sometime go out to hike mountains together. In the beginning V did it to make Iroh healthy and stronger, so she can stretch her limbs and get some fresh air.
But later it becomes their small ritual to have some private space only for two of them. In the mountains no one can see them but snowy peaks and pines.
They also visit hot mountain naturally-formed pools from time to time hehehe
Imagine: you're trying to explain to your yautja companion why you two can't be mates/why he can't take you to Yautja Prime, and he's just not...listening. Like at all.
You're standing there, arms crossed over your chest, serious face, and giving VERY good and compelling reasons why it can't happen. All while this dumbass is crouching in front of you, head slightly tilting to the side from time to time.
"...you can't...we can't! It's physiological impossible! I'm a human, for crying out loud! What do you think that will do to me?!"
The yautja's eyes are glued to your lips, remembering how they feel on him, and the purring coming from his chest almost drowns out whatever it is you're saying.
After a while he focuses back on you and cuts you off mid explanation...
"Kiss"
(One of the very few words he managed to quickly learn in your language lol)
You: 😑
Your yautja: 😗😀
😩
If he were a human man, I would be disgusted. But he’s not and I am soft-hearted. I couldn’t keep arguing against his desire for kisses.
·· Kinktober Day Four:
♡ Jinbe x Fem!Reader ♡
♡ Tags: Spanking, Impact Play, BratTamer!Jinbe/Bratty!Reader, Teasing, Established Relationship, 18+ MDNI
♡ Words: 728
♡ Kinktober Masterlist ♡ Read On AO3 ♡
₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊
A large, webbed hand came down and you cried out as it made contact with your ass cheek.
“P-Please!” You pleaded as you tried to wriggle out of Jinbe’s grasp. It was futile though as the strong fishman had you masterfully in his hold. His hand smacked your ass again, this time the other cheek.
“I gave you plenty of warnings.” His deep voice chided you and you let out a pitiful whimper as you hung your head.
Jinbe wasn’t wrong. He most definitely had given you plenty of warnings and then some. You had just decided to push your luck today, willfully ignoring what it could mean for you.
What was supposed to have been one of your typical training sessions with Jinbe had quickly gone awry when you kept teasing the big fishman by moaning provocatively while stretching or bending yourself into sensual poses when he asked you to assume certain positions. He had told you over and over to focus and get back to training, a deep blush across his face and voice stern, but you just had to keep going.
Eventually your lover had had it and, with a surprising growl, hoisted you up by your waist to carry you over to a bench in the gym and threw you over his lap. He had made quick work of pulling your workout pants down so your plump ass was on display for him while you babbled useless apologies to him.
Now were you at Jinbe’s mercy as his large hands kneaded your ass before slapping it again. You moaned at the sting, body jumping at the impact. Heat pooled in your lower stomach at being manhandled like this by him – Jinbe usually being on the kinder, gentler side. There were a few times though, like now, when he’d had enough of your bratty antics and showed you who’s boss.
Another smack and you felt your pussy gush, panties beyond soaked at this point. You pressed your lips together to suppress another cry, your hands clenched into fists. The precision of his powerful hands spanking your ass was impressive in its own right; the right spot every time and just enough force to keep it pleasurable but also toeing that line of punishing.
His big hands cupped your cheeks and massaged the fat of your ass, making your mouth fall open, a pathetic moan coming out of it. One of his hands then left your ass to rub two of his fingers along your clothed core. Your body shivered at Jinbe’s touch, and you tried to push your hips back to meet his fingers, but you were still trapped exactly as he held you.
“What happened to your attempts to escape?” He chuckled darkly and pressed his fingers against your covered clit. You gasped, melting at his skilled motions, and you felt a flush creep up from your chest to your face.
“J-Jinbe...” You stuttered out, trying to look over your shoulder at him. But then he swiftly removed his fingers and smacked your ass again. The sudden sting reverberated through you and it caused you to cry out once more.
As the slaps piled up, your ass only got increasingly sore but the kind of sore that made your toes curl and pussy throb.
You breathed deeply through your nose to ground yourself and Jinbe’s hands roughly kneaded your cheeks again. The way he pushed and pulled on the plump flesh spread your pussy just so, giving you an extra dose of pleasure.
Those deft fingers of his returned to stroking your folds over your panties again and the switch up threw you for a loop. Jinbe pressed against your entrance through your underwear, teasing your hole and you gasped loudly. It took everything you had to not start wriggling again since he’d just withdraw his fingers once more.
Sweat coated your skin as you felt your whole body burn and a small tremble worked its way over you. He was slowly driving you insane and you knew that he knew it too.
All this because you wanted to tease him to see what would happen. To see how far you could push his limits.
Did you regret your earlier actions though?
Another smack went across your ass and your eyes rolled back as you bit back a wanton moan.
[I can’t believe the time has come 🤭 I missed you guys so much and I know you missed Keth’raal just as much 💚 this is my gift to you, for always being supportive and kind to my works and even checking in on me when I was gone for a while. I love every single one of you!!! NOW LETS GOOO OUR BABY BOY IS BACK!!!]
“And I was starting to think you liked keeping me waiting.”
Your smile stretched wider than you thought possible, light flooding your chest until your whole body felt weightless, like the ground itself had let you go.
He appeared the way he always did, piece by piece.
A shimmer in the air.
A ripple of static.
And then he was there, crouched on the thick branch outside your window like the silent, lethal predator he really was.
The red laser dots faded from your face as he disengaged his invisibility cloak. He straightened slowly, leaning his massive frame against the tree trunk, arms folding over his chest. His head tilted in that familiar, assessing angle and you were suddenly grateful the tree was older than your entire town, anything younger would have snapped under him without question.
Night wrapped everything in soft shadows, your quiet neighborhood offering barely any artificial light, but the sky was clear and the stars were generous. Their glow skimmed over him, enough for your eyes to trace every line and shape.
He looked… bigger.
Broader shoulders.
Thicker muscle.
Taller, somehow, though maybe that was the distance, or maybe it was simply the memory of two years softening details you once saw every day.
His armor wasn’t the battered set from the lab anymore. This one gleamed, polished to a dark shine, perfectly fitted, meticulously cared for. It almost felt intentional, as if he had prepared, made himself presentable for this specific moment and the thought tugged a quiet smile from you.
You glanced down at your own clothes, still in your work attire, painfully plain compared to him.
His head tilted again, this time to the left. You mirrored it instinctively, a wordless greeting the two of you had never agreed on but somehow shared anyway.
His dreadlocks were longer now. Still no decorative rings and a few still ended abruptly where they had once been cut by the xenomorphs on the lab.
Somehow, the imperfection suited him. Made him more approachable like he always felt to you.
Your eyes drifted now, searching instinctively for that part of his body you really didn’t want to acknowledge.
The memory flashed uninvited, the lab, the panic, the xenomorph, the brutal snap of it all and your chest tightened. You had never really forgotten. You just hadn’t let yourself think about it.
You squinted through the dim light… and froze.
It wasn’t the same.
Before you could study it further, his gaze flicked to where yours lingered.
And then he shifted, tucking the limb behind his back, shoulders straightening just enough to hide it from view.
Your confusion melted into something softer, something like ache. He wasn’t ashamed of scars. You knew that. This was different.
“What are you doing?” you mouthed, leaning forward without even thinking, your body stretching over the windowsill like getting a few inches closer might somehow bridge the years between you.
But he stayed where he was.
“Are you not coming in?” you whispered, the tremor in your lips betraying you. Panic pricked the back of your throat, the fear that he might vanish again, cloak himself into nothingness and leave you talking to empty air.
Instead, his clawed finger lifted, pressing to the place where his mouth would be beneath the mask.
Be quiet.
The deja vu crashed over you hard, the memory of sterile lights, metal corridors, the two of you moving through shadows while he motioned you to hush, every nerve in your body screaming. You swallowed, shaking your head lightly as if you could dislodge the memory and drop it somewhere far away.
You frowned at him anyway, worry written all over your face,but you understood. There were humans nearby. And if he didn’t want to be seen, then he wouldn’t risk it.
You didn’t need to hear them. You trusted his instincts ten times more than your own.
You nodded, retreating slowly from the window so no one would look up and find you whispering at a tree like the neighborhood eccentric. You pulled in a breath and held it, your eyes refusing to leave him, reading every line and shape, still trying to decide whether time had warped your memory… or whether he truly had grown into something even more astonishing.
He looked impossibly huge, as if every muscle had thickened with the years and your gaze traced him in silent disbelief, like you were relearning the outline of someone you had never really forgotten.
But his body vanished the next second.
You blinked, stunned, every muscle ready to vault you out the window and call his name, when the floorboards inside your room gave a soft, protesting creak. He was already halfway in, using the window as if it were a doorway made for him.
He shimmered back into visibility, crouched low so his head could fit through the frame.
Your eyes went comically wide. You were sure you looked unhinged staring at him like that, but you couldn’t help it.
He had truly turned massive…
As if his body had gone through a second growth spurt, not just broader, but taller, more sturdy in a way that made the lab memories feel unreal. You had never truly known what a healthy Yautja was supposed to look like and now you knew for certain. The ones in stasis, drugged and experimented on, were shadows by comparison.
He looked better than anything your imagination had allowed you to picture. Every line cut with strength, muscles shifting beneath rough green skin. He straightened just enough to face you, chest subtly puffed, as if aware of how thoroughly you were studying him… and quietly inviting you to continue.
So you did. Your brain taking in the details with curiosity and something much more human layered beneath it. You rewrote your mental files, this is what a healthy Yautja looks like, a Yautja that thrives.
He was so changed it almost felt like meeting him for the first time.
Only the color remained familiar, that deep forest green, its tones fading and darkening like clouds drifting over trees. It was still beautiful. Just like the last time you had dared to let yourself study him through the glass you left him behind.
You swallowed, nerves fluttering, your gaze finally traveling to the thing you had been carefully avoiding.
And you stopped breathing.
He eased his right arm forward, lowering his head and you felt his hesitation sparkling through the air between you. The phantom of old pain. The quiet uncertainty about what you’d think.
But it was… stunning.
The prosthetic began higher than you expected, seamlessly cupping over the stump, then extending outward as if it had always belonged there. Strong. Shiny. Chrome kissed with shifting iridescent light. The shape mirrored his other forearm and talons perfectly, built for him and no one else. Beyond anything humans could design, as it didn’t replace his arm, but it became it.
The fingers flexed naturally and before you could stop yourself, you reached out.
Your hand slid into his.
He made a sound, that soft, confused rumble you remembered so clearly and the corner of your mouth curled into a quiet smile. For all the ways he had changed, that gentle hesitation remained.
You watched as metal threaded between your fingers.
“Can you feel that?” you whispered.
He gave a slight shake of his head, dreadlocks swaying.
But neither could you. Not really. Your hand twitched, the pads of your fingertips brushing the metal and you knew the motion was incomplete. It always would be. Another memory flashed in your mind, the slick of his blood, the desperate way you had pressed the balm into his open wounds, terrified, whispering to a body that might not survive.
You swallowed, forcing your fingers to tighten as best they could around his prosthetic, hoping the movement looked natural, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
So you reached for his other hand, the one that blood traveled in its veins, and wrapped your working fingers around it the same way.
It was cold, yet somehow the slow stroke of his thumb against your skin sent heat racing up your face, like standing too close to open flame.
Your gaze lifted.
His mask hovered between your joined hands, watching them, then shifting back to you, his head lowering, closing the distance so the two of you were level again.
And for the first time in two years, neither of you knew what to say.
“Are you okay?”
It was all you could manage, your voice small while your fingers stayed laced with his. You couldn’t look at his face, not yet, so your gaze settled on his chest instead, lips pressed tight to hold the nerves in place.
He gave a slow nod.
And you mirrored it, already starting to pull your hands back, the moment feeling too intimate, too exposed, but he caught you immediately. His grip tightened, drawing you forward until you were a breath away from his chest. You gasped at the closeness, your head tipped back, angling awkwardly just to find the dark plates of his mask looking down at you.
“Are you?”
The translator’s metallic voice broke the silence and your eyes flooded before you even realized it was happening. Your fingers squeezed his on instinct, clinging.
You hadn’t meant to break down. But nearly two years had waited quietly behind your ribs, and now they spilled out of you in tears you couldn’t stop.
He released one of your hands only to bring the back of his knuckles beneath your eye, brushing gently, gathering the tears that fell uncontrollably, before his hand lowered to cradle your jaw. His thumb traced softly beneath your scar, the scar he had given you that night, after you had fought beside him and slain a xenomorph on your own. You closed your eyes tightly, letting him touch there, letting him remember the scar, the memory it held and the trust it carried between you years after.
His head tilted, curiously.
“Are you sad?” the translator echoed.
You shook your head, a broken little laugh slipping out with your sob. He remembered. He remembered what tears meant. He had kept that piece of you with him.
“I’m happy,” you whispered, breath hitching. “Happy to see you again.”
Worry deepened in his body anyway. Both hands, metal and flesh, cupped your face carefully. He sank down onto one knee so the two of you were nearly level, as if it might make the tears easier to understand.
“I missed you so much.”
Your voice was barely there. You covered his hands with yours and finally, after all this time, you looked at him, at the familiar mask, scarred deeper now, yet still marked with old lines you recognized immediately.
“I can’t believe you’re really here.”
Every part of you ached to close the distance, to fold yourself into him, feel the rumble in his chest, the strange cold of his skin warming as he purred. But you stayed where you were, letting him choose how close this reunion should be.
“It took me longer than I thought to get to you,” the translator murmured through him, his thumbs tracing patient circles along your damp cheeks.
Another quiet sob slipped out of you, muffled behind a chuckle.
And you felt your body shaking as you waited for the inevitable.
Waited for that question you had always known might come. Why you sent him first, why you tricked him into freedom while you stayed behind. The guilt still stung, even if you knew you’d make the same choice again. Maybe because it brought you to this moment.
But the question never came.
“Why are you crying?”
The translator carried the words gently, softened by the low rumble that began to build in his chest, slowly melting into a purr. He remembered that also. He remembered crying, a human thing he didn’t need to keep and yet somehow he had.
He took your hand and guided you toward the bed. You sat carefully at its edge and he lowered himself again onto one knee in front of you. Like this, your eyes finally aligned.
His hand returned to your face, thumb brushing your cheek, the other settling at your nape.
“Keth’raal.”
His name slipped out before you could second-guess it. His thumb froze mid stroke. You swore even his breathing paused.
“Say it again,” the translator urged, demanding in the most endearing way.
Heat flushed up your neck. Your fingers drifted into his dreadlocks, tangling in the thick, rubbery texture. He leaned almost helplessly into your touch.
“Keth’raal,” you whispered, softer this time, like the sound belonged only to the two of you. You caught one strand and smoothed it slowly between your fingers.
The purr deepened. It rolled through him, then through you and your lungs finally let go of the breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.
“I waited a long time to hear you say my name.”
His voice rumbled beneath the translator rough and warm. His chest unlocked with the words and the air around him felt less tense now.
“I missed your voice,” he added, leaning slightly closer as your fingers continued to ghost through his thick locks.
“I missed yours.”
Your hand slid from his hair to the mask, fingers brushing the familiar tube. You paused, giving him the chance to refuse, to tell you not yet.
But he didn’t.
Instead, his hand left your cheek and covered yours, guiding your movements slowly. His fingers pressed lightly over yours, showing you how to disconnect the tube. The moment it released, the mask hissed faintly, a soft exhale.
Your heart hammered. The intimacy of the motion, him letting you do this, tightened everything in your chest.
You were about to see him again. And a strange fear sparked through the anticipation. What if memory had dulled him into something different? What if you had forgotten the exact pull of his mandibles, the precise depth of green in his eyes?
His prosthetic hand found your left one, placing it at the other edge of the mask, arranging both of your hands so you held the helmet together.
And then he stopped.
You both breathed. Slowly. Carefully. Your rhythms synced, the steady purr of his chest being the only sound in the room besides your breaths.
You stared at the mask, at him and the fear softened into something bright and trembling.
Excitement.
Because this time, there were no lab walls. No glass. No xenomorphs or humans to interrupt you. Just you and him.
“Are you sure?” you whispered.
He didn’t need the translator this time. The answer came from his chest, a low, short rumble that turned into a groan, an unmistakable yes.
You drew in a breath, bracing yourself and curled your fingers at the edge of his mask. You lifted slowly, searching first for the familiar curve of his mandibles. When they finally came into view, something inside you loosened. They were exactly as you remembered.
A soft laugh left your lips. His mandibles clicked and then his hands covered yours firmly, helping you ease the mask free.
It settled across your lap and your hands went straight to his face, finding the spaces behind his mandibles, gently angling him toward you.
But his gaze didn’t follow. His eyes stayed fixed on the mask in your lap, his shoulders pulled tight.
You took him in properly now. New lines. Healing marks. Ceremonial scars tracing his features. And beneath all of that, the deep set frown that refused to leave his forehead.
Without thinking, your thumb smoothed across the ridges of his forehead, as if you could erase what time had carved.
“Hey,” you murmured, your fingers slipping behind his mandibles, bringing his face closer. “You changed.”
It took a second, but then he finally looked at you.
His eyes were the same. That dark, forest-deep green. Except, there were flecks of yellow now, catching the light. You narrowed your eyes slightly, studying them.
Had they always been there?
No, you thought, no, I simply had never pulled him this close before to notice them.
You felt your stomach sink and you leaned back with a small, awkward laugh, only to gasp when his palm came to the back of your head, guiding you forward again.
Your forehead met his.
His scent hit you properly for the first time, spice and metal and something warm beneath it. Cinnamon, almost. You bit your lip, swallowing the reaction back.
His skin was cool where it touched yours, but his breath spilled over your face and then down your neck was warm and slow, tracing paths over your nerves and sending quiet shivers racing along your spine.
“Na’kai.”
Your name rumbled out of him, low and rough and it felt like it crawled straight under your skin. No machine. No echo. Only that raw, guttural voice you had carried around in your memory, richer now, deeper and gentle when it called your given name.
A tremor went through you.
His palm guided you closer until your foreheads touched again and the world thinned to the cool of his skin and the warmth of his breath across your lips. The vibration in his chest sank into you, slowing your thoughts, pulling all the frantic nerves out of your body one by one until there was nothing left but this quiet sound shared between you.
Your fingers moved from the curve beneath his mandibles and dragged along the back of his neck, finding the thick fall of his dreadlocks. You curled them into your palm before you could think to stop yourself and tugged him just a little nearer.
The sound that answered, startled and almost bitten back, made you freeze.
“Sorry—” You released him, heat flooding your face, shame prickling across your skin when you remembered just how sensitive those locks were.
You began to lean away, but he followed you down.
The mattress dipped. The bed creaked. And then he was above you, guiding you higher against the pillows with his hand.
His body never fully settling on yours, but the space between you felt thinner than a thread.
“Keth’raal—” His name left you on a whisper that barely sounded like your own.
He caught your wrist and drew your hand to his chest. The rumble beneath your palm spiked, deepening into something fierce, like years of yearning trapped behind bone. With each beat, it pressed into your hand, as if demanding to be known I’m here. I’m breathing. Don’t look away.
His gaze held you there, dark and intense, pupils swallowed in black. He urged your hand against him and for a moment you had the wild impression he wanted you to reach beyond his skin and grab his heart to take as your trophy.
And knowing him, maybe he wanted exactly that.
His living hand lifted and hovered over you. Hesitation flickered through his fingers before they finally came to rest against your chest, just over your heart.
He listened to the stutter and gallop of your pulse, to the uneven breaths you tried uselessly to steady. Something faint painted his features, the hard lines of worry loosening as your heartbeat answered his.
You nodded at him, a simple reassurance, before his hand slid lower, tracing your ribs carefully with his sharp nails. His frown softened. The hungry chaos behind his eyes fading slowly.
“I missed you too,” you breathed.
Your fingers rose again, seeking the familiar groove beneath his mandibles. Your heart skipped wildly and you knew he felt it, but you didn’t stop. Because what tied you together wasn’t calm, wasn’t logic, it was this raw ache of longing mingled with an unbearable relief.
Whatever had dragged him across stars and planets, whatever need had driven him into your room and onto your bed, it lived in you as well. You felt it mirrored perfectly. That devotion, that desperate urgency to be close enough to prove that neither of you had imagined the other.
His breath spilled warm across your cheek. The bed shifted beneath the weight of him again.
He leaned in, his hands locking on your sides. His fingers flexed and eased over your ribs in steady pulses, as if he had to teach himself how your body reacted, how it shifted and bloomed under his touch alone.
His breath brushed your lips, while the cool plate of his brow cooled the heat burning beneath your cheeks. He didn’t need translation for that. Your face had already confessed everything to him.
“Kaail’thwei,” he murmured, the word pulled from deep in his throat. You felt every layered sound of it, the subtle click of his mandibles, the raw scrape of his native tongue, the faint metallic tang of his breath warming your skin.
God, you had missed all of it. Every strange, detail and sound that belonged only to him.
You exhaled slowly, your eyes closing as he lowered more, his mandibles grazed your throat and his forehead settled into the curve of your shoulder. He rubbed there, skin to skin, a quiet gesture that had your arms slid instinctively around his neck, holding him close, trusting him completely.
“I wish I could understand you without the helmet,” you whispered into the quiet. “I missed your voice.”
He drew back at last, the mattress creaking beneath him. Dreadlocks spilled forward, tickling your cheeks as he planted his elbows on either side of your head, caging you in. Those green-gold eyes searched yours as if trying to decipher your expression and the feelings under it.
You tilted your chin slightly, inviting him closer.
When he hesitated, you gently hooked a finger around one of his mandibles and guided him down. He followed without resistance, closing the last inch between you until his breath became yours.
“Hey,” you smiled up at him.
The sound woke that low, answering rumble in his chest again. You slid your hand up, fingers curving around the back of his neck and pressed a soft kiss beneath his collarbone before sinking back into the mattress with a smile you couldn’t stop. Warmth bloomed through your chest like sunlight you hadn’t seen for two years.
He tilted his head, curious, as if he was taking in every new expression you made.
“Sha’len,” he murmured, the word rolling off his tongue, while his thumb traced across your lower lip. He seemed entranced by the softness, by how fragile and human it felt under him.
You kissed the pad of his thumb lightly. His gaze flicked down, pupils blown wide.
He tried again, lowering his palm to your mouth. You pressed your lips there too, cool skin meeting warmth and watched the faint shudder that went through him. Slowly, almost experimentally, he moved until the inside of his wrist rested against your mouth. You kissed that spot too, feeling his strong, unsteady pulse jump beneath your lips.
His eyes never left yours.
He leaned in once more. His focus dropped to your lips, then rose to your eyes, then returned again and your body went rigid, your throat working as you swallowed against the lump that had formed in it. You whispered his name, your mouth hovering an inch from his.
That was when the wind slammed your window wider, shaking the frame with a loud crack.
You both flinched, jerked back into the room and into reality. Somewhere along the way you had forgotten that the world still existed outside your little bubble.
His gaze returned to you, lingering, before he eased back. The bed protested beneath his weight as he crawled away, then lifted himself to stand. He crouched to retrieve his helmet, turning it in his hands for a quiet second before fitting it into place. The lenses flashed to life and then dimmed.
You remained sprawled on the mattress, chest rising and falling too fast, the feeling of his touch still ghosting along your skin.
“Can you stay?” you asked softly. He waited at the foot of the bed, his fingers fidgeting with the edges of his gauntlets before finally looking at you.
He gave a quiet nod. One step, then another and you moved aside, inviting him back. The mattress groaned as he lowered himself beside you, his long legs still hanging off the end like the bed was something built for children.
“How did you get so tall?” you breathed, half-laughing at how unbelievably large he had become. He rested his head against his fist, watching you with a calm you remembered too well.
“I wasn’t fed by a tube anymore,” he said, amusement clicking faintly beneath the mask. His hand found yours, tugging you closer until you were lying shoulder to shoulder.
“And you also—” Your hands faltered in the air, not knowing how to phrase it.
He tilted his head. “Also what?”
“You’re… huge now,” you managed at last, settling on your elbow to face him.
“I think I can become bigger,” he replied, a low rumble echoing through his chest, almost sounding like a laugh.
“My bed won’t survive you,” you said, eyes widening at the thought.
“You want me in your bed?” His head tilted, dark locks spilling over his shoulders and suddenly it was hard to remember how to breathe, let alone answer. That familiar curiosity of his, unchanged, disarming, leaving you speechless.
“Where will you sleep if you visit again?” you shot back quickly, somehow keeping your voice steady while your heart skipped beat after beat.
“I’ll manage,” he murmured. His hand lifted, claws tracing the soft line of your cheek. The gentle vibration in his chest deepened, a warm sound that seemed to settle into every corner of your room.
Your fingers lifted almost of their own accord as they traced the curve of his mask now, mirroring him.
A new scar cut across the surface, deep and long. You followed it slowly, as if the line itself might tell you where he had been, what he had endured in the two years without you.
“I went back to look for you,” the translator murmured.
Your hand froze. Your breath did too.
“You did? What if they had found you? They were hunting you, Keth’raal, that was so reckless—”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he interrupted gently. His hand closed around yours and guided it back to the mask.
“That was still… reckless,” you whispered, the protest dying in your throat as he leaned into your touch. He sought your hands the way a drowning man might seek the surface and you had no words to defend yourself anymore.
“I’ve been known for my recklessness,” the vocoder replied dryly, while the faint clicking of his mandibles betrayed his teasing tone.
You sighed, shaking your head, yet a small smile appeared on your lips.
“I ran the moment you escaped. The xenomorphs kept them busy long enough for me to…”
The memory surfaced like a blurry picture and you tried to make sense of it.
“I still don’t know how I managed— how I ran — I… I uh…” The words thinned and vanished, your eyes drifting to that narrow space between you and you wished it’d be gone.
“It’s all right.” His fingers circled your wrist and you let him draw you in.
He guided you down against his chest, one broad palm cradling the back of your head. You held on, pressing into his cold skin, still afraid that if you blinked he would dissolve into a memory again.
“I was scared for so long,” you whispered, fingers digging his flesh, over the hard rise and fall beneath you.
“I know. I’m sorry.” The translator delivered the words in its rough monotone, but the deep, rumble in his chest told the truth of them, easing through you like balm. Your eyes shut closed.
“It wasn’t your fault,” you breathed, letting your forehead rest against him before shifting slightly, settling your head along his forearm so you could look up into his mask again.
Before you realized it, his hand was on your face again, his clawed thumb skimming your cheek.
“You saved my life that day,” the translator murmured, but you were close enough to hear the actual words he had used beneath it. The faint, guttural sound that never made it to the device.
“I owe you everything.”
You pressed your palm to his chest in answer, drawing slow circles onto it.
“Keth’raal,” you breathed, a small laugh caught halfway in your throat. “Do you remember the first time you saw me?”
He nodded, his hand closing over yours, keeping it pinned on his chest.
“You ignored me completely and went straight for the xenomorph.” Another soft laugh escaped you, and his mask flickered red for a moment.
“You know I was looking for you.”
“Yeah. My scent led you right to me,” you said, smiling at the memory, surreal but still so vivid.
“You were the only thing I remembered.”
“Keth’raal…” His name cracked in your voice as your hand rose again, fingertips brushing the edge of his mask. “Did anything ever come back? From your past?”
“Not really,” he admitted. His hand drifted to your shoulder, stroking, a quiet reassurance for a worry neither of you wanted to speak aloud.
Because neither of you knew how long this moment could last. The past still clung to both of you like chains, heavy and cold,no matter how desperately you wanted to escape it.
“I wasn’t welcomed back either,” he added, quieter now.
Your brows knit. “What? Why?”
“Yautja code. I was no longer one of them. Too weak when I returned, useless to the clan.”
“But you’re strong now,” you insisted.
“I am. But I don’t belong with them anymore.”
Your chest tightened. “Keth’raal… you can’t be alone forever.”
“I survived this long,” he replied simply.
The words you wanted to say trembled on your tongue.
Can I be where you go? Can I be home?
But they felt too human. Too much. He was still a Yautja, born of a world that was never meant to intertwine with yours.
You couldn’t be his peace.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
So you swallowed it back.
“Then… what did you find when you went back?” you asked instead.
“Nothing but debris,” the translator spoke. His hand froze at your shoulder, then slipped down along your arm, claws grazing lightly over your skin.
“I thought I had lost you.”
He said it without lifting his head, his gaze fixed on the spot where your skin touched his. The goosebumps that rose there seemed to hold him captive.
The confession made you feel empty. His chest vibrated softly against your ear, that quiet, needy noise that always stripped you naked. Too honest. Too real.
But the ache between you had changed. It wasn’t the frantic hunger of two years ago. Back then, everything had been urgency, fear and adrenaline, the thrill of danger pressing in and that didn’t let you name that feeling.
Naming it had felt like tempting death when every minute could have been your last.
And yet, across those years, your thoughts kept finding him. Memory turned him into something immortal, as if you had lived a lifetime beside him instead of days.
He had once been a subject under your hands, a strange, wondrous being you whispered apologies to every time a needle pierced his skin. You had marveled at him without ever glimpsing the full truth of what he was.
But now he was here, whole, powerful, almost unfairly beautiful.
“How did you find me?” you breathed, turning your face into his chest, pressing your cheek to the cool plane of his skin until it soothed the heat in your cheeks.
“Just like the first time,” he said, after a long pause. His claws threaded slowly through your hair, sending tingles to your scalp.
“By my scent?”
You pulled back in shock, a grin breaking over your mouth before you could stop it.
He nodded and immediately guided you closer again, until your forehead brushed his collarbone. His palm settled at the back of your head, holding you as if you might vanish if he loosened his grip. A deep hum rolled up from his chest, forcing you to melt.
“Keth’raal, you’re not getting out of this,” you laughed, nudging at him, watching his mask tilt toward you in faint confusion.
“What do you mean, scent?” you pressed, eyes wide, a smile pulling at your lips. The idea that just your smell had led him here, still didn’t sound convincing.
“I found your medical robe,” he said.
For the third time his hand found your arm, drawing you toward him until your face hovered inches from his mask. Close enough to feel the faintest sound of his breath, close enough that staying away from him felt like the least possible option in the universe, judging from the way he held on you.
He used his artificial arm now, slowly pushing his mask up just enough for his mandibles to be exposed. He brought your hand closer, pressing the inside of your wrist over his mouth, his mandibles clicking softly against your skin, almost tasting you.
He exhaled a short word in his own language, rougher this time, small and sharp, like an instinctive reaction pulled straight out of him at the scent of you.
He sounded almost angry, or maybe it was something deeper, heavier, that you couldn’t quite name.
“What?” you whispered, afraid that if you pushed too hard he might suddenly realize how close you were and pull away.
His mechanical claws lowered the mask again, sealing it back into place. The lights flickered across the dark voids and you waited. Patient on the outside but burning up underneath.
“What was that?” you asked again, now that the translator could catch your voice, while your fingers absently traced the medallion you had just noticed resting at his neck.
It was thick and roughly made, primitive and heavy, yet adorned with a large green stone that had been catching your eye for some time now.
“I think I’ll keep that to myself,” the translator finally responded, but beneath it, you could clearly hear a sound that was unmistakably laughter.
Your eyes gleamed with excitement.
Was that… a tease?
He really hadn’t forgotten his manners or his wit. Even after all this time, he still carried that sassy trait you were almost certain he wasn’t allowed to show to anyone else but you.
His ways always seemed to lean more toward human than Yautja and that was what made him so uniquely dangerous, not only as a hunter, but as something incredibly adaptive in nature.
“You’ve only changed on the outside,” you teased softly, your thumb brushing the emerald stone before your fingers crept higher, searching along the back of his neck for the faint blue line you had once seen in the lab.
His skin tightened beneath your touch. His body went still, as your fingers moved along the sensitive ridge of his nape.
“You’re still the same stubborn Yautja,” you added, but it came out more like a breath than a joke. Then your fingers found it, a pale, thin seam you could still distinguish over his skin.
You traced it gently.
The sound that came out of him wasn’t the deep rumble you had grown used to. It was darker, a low, raw growl that erupted in his chest. It startled you so much you gasped and jerked your hand away, your heart racing.
It felt like you had touched something forbidden, a spot you were never meant to find, let alone touch. Whatever that scar meant to him, it surely wasn’t for your eyes to see.
You tried to pull back, but his hand caught yours.
His thumb slid to the inside of your wrist, brushing slowly before pressing down, right over your pulse. Your breath hitched as he held it there, as if counting every beat of it.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, not entirely sure what you were apologizing for this time.
His thumb eased away from your vein and instead rose to your face, finding the thin line of your own scar, the ceremonial mark that tied the two of you together no matter how much time passed.
He explored the scar quietly, reading you, studying the way your features changed under his touch.
Then his hand slid into your hair. His talons threaded gently through the strands before he tightened his grip, just enough to guide you forward. You gasped, blood rising on your cheeks.
The motion felt startlingly human. Intimate in a way that erased everything you thought you understood about his kind.
“Keth’raal,” you breathed, his hand still fisted lightly in your hair as he guided you closer until your forehead bumped softly against his mask. The metal was cold against your skin.
You could hear him, his fast, uneven breath under the mask, his struggle to simply hold you.
The closeness wrapped around you like a net, warm and suffocating and not nearly enough.
Something was missing.
You wanted the mask gone.
You wanted his real breath on your lips, his presence overwhelming and taking over your senses.
That little gap between you felt more painful than the two years you had lived without him.
So you reached for his mask, your fingers brushing along the edge and he shook his head. No words. Just that quiet refusal.
You stopped immediately. Your hand slipped down, landing on his chest instead, trembling against it.
You drew in a breath, metal, earth and that faint sweet scent that belonged only to him filling your lungs before you leaned back, your forehead suddenly burning without the cool press of him.
He released you then, watching as you settled onto your pillow.
Your heart echoed inside your ears, loud and demanding, almost irritating and you were sure he could hear it too. His instincts were built to track prey, pulse, fear and want and pretty much all the signals your body was screaming right now.
Another slow breath. In. Out. You tried to calm your heart first and then your mind.
He didn’t move. Didn’t shift away. He simply stayed there beside you, propped on his elbow, his head braced in his fist as his gaze traced your face while you tried to calm down.
“Na’kai… is your heart okay?”
The translator carried the words, but his chest gave that soft purr underneath, as if the name itself coaxed it to life. He spoke it casually, as though it was simply you, but you knew how much more it meant in his language. In his world.
You looked up at him and noticed his hand. It rested by his side, appearing relaxed… yet his fingers tapped fast into the mattress. Nervous. Restless.
You hadn’t known Yautja could display nerves like that, like a human caught somewhere between tension and hope. And the curiosity gnawed at you again, that thrill of discovery you hadn’t felt in so long.
Sure, marine biology had fascinated you. But this, he, was something else entirely. This unknown wrapped in bone and metal and scars that begged you to discover it.
Your hand reached for his.
The tapping stopped instantly.
His hand softened beneath yours, then he turned it, letting his palm cover yours as his fingers slowly interlocked with your smaller ones.
You looked down, mesmerized by the sight of them together, your hand dwarfed, wrapped by his, struggling to weave your fingers through his.
“How did you really find me?” You returned to your earlier question, the thought of him tracking you down by scent alone still refusing to sit right in your chest.
“Why do you think I’m lying?” he rumbled back, that slow vibrating sound travelling into your hand now, slipping beneath your skin like a pulse that wasn’t yours.
“Did you really find me by my smell?” you pressed, your voice quieter this time, shock settling in as your smile faded at the realization.
He couldn’t have possibly found you… by your scent alone. Not this time. You were too far from him to reach you.
He didn’t answer, but the silence was enough.
It said everything.
He had admitted to it more than once already. Asking again was useless.
Besides, he had never lied to you. Not once. Why would he start now?
You opened your mouth to speak, then closed it again. His fingers tightened over yours and suddenly your skin was burning.
All those questions.
All those nights you felt completely alone.
All that time waiting to be found.
They crashed over you at once, relentless and unforgiving.
Your eyes stung before you even realized you were yelling. “Then what took you so long?” Your body moved before your mind caught up, pushing at him as you rose to your knees on the mattress, looming over him.
He tilted his head, unfazed by your outburst, answering with that same calm composure.
“Found some trouble on my way.”
Your anger died instantly. The words hit you like cold water, freezing the frustration right out of your bones. Your gaze searched for his eyes through the mask.
So he really was hunted by everyone…
Humans were after him.
Yautja were after him.
No place, no side, nowhere to belong.
He truly didn’t fit anywhere at all.
“I waited days and nights for you,” you breathed, your voice trembling with a confession you would never give to anyone else. That strange pull toward him wrapped tight around your ribcage and for once you didn’t fight it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t leave anything behind so you could find me faster—” you tried, staring at the mattress.
“You waited for me?” he interrupted, the vocoder sounding rougher than his actual voice.
You noticed his palms curling into fists, talons disappearing into his hands.
You nodded, throat tight, glancing between the empty voids of his mask. His fists slowly relaxed, but neon green blood remained smeared along his talons, gleaming in your room’s low light. You barely had time to ask if he was hurt before he spoke again.
“You’re such a strange human,” he said, still composed, still watching you with that quiet attention that always made you feel seen. As if he admired the way you held your ground now, something you had learned because of him. He had taught you to stop shrinking, to fight for what mattered, when once you would have simply endured and stayed small.
“And you’re a strange Yautja,” you muttered under your breath, just as his hand lifted. His thumb and forefinger brushed your earlobe, rubbing softly and for the tenth time tonight you felt heat instantly rising beneath your skin, because of him.
“Looking for me after two years…” you whispered, your voice faltering as he continued those slow circles that sent sparks through you.
“I knew where you were,” he murmured through the vocoder. His hand lowered, claws tracing a slow path down your arm until they reached your hand again.
“You did?” Your voice barely carried the words. “Then why didn’t you—”
But you already knew the answer. Trouble. Hunters. Survival.
So you let the question drop, watching instead as his sharp nails dragged across your skin, leaving faint pink trails in their wake.
You swallowed hard, fighting the urge to gasp.
It didn’t hurt, not even close, but something in your nerves lit up, addictive and unsettling and you wanted more of it.
“How long did it take you to find me?” you asked instead.
His talons stopped moving against your skin as he thought.
“A month after I lost you.”
You blinked as the words landed, like a giant rock pressing straight into your chest.
He didn’t mention his escape. Didn’t talk about freedom.
Only that he had lost you.
His nails raked gently across your arm again, more faint pink lines appearing as you stared at his mask, your mind loud and annoying. The way he said it, the way he described that day shook something inside you, violently.
Your shoulders sagged. Your defenses melted. That familiar heavy feeling spread in your chest as you lowered yourself toward the mattress… only to pause, deciding against your pillow.
Instead, you reached for him.
You found his arm ,the one propping up his head and rested your cheek against his bicep. The artificial metal graft felt cool against your skin, before you slowly turned inward and pressed closer to his chest. Your lips brushed the green stone of his medallion as you buried your face there.
You inhaled deeply.
His hand slid to the back of your head, holding you in place , like he knew exactly what you needed. And by now, you were pretty much sure he did.
He guided your hand , moving it gently from his arm down your wrist and across his torso, placing your palm over his chest. Your skin buzzed at the contact. His heartbeat thrummed beneath your touch, fast, uneven, buried deep inside his massive ribcage.
You pressed harder, searching for it, for that rhythm struggling beneath layers of muscle and armor. Then you lowered yourself more, pressing your ear to his chest so you could hear it better.
His hand covered yours, large and cold, flattening your palm firmly against him, making sure you listened. Making sure you understood.
And you wondered if he could hear yours too, how violently it screamed inside your ribs the closer you were, like it was trying to answer his.
“You went back? Only a month later?” you whispered, your lips brushing his chest as you spoke. You felt him tense, that deep rumbling sound stirring inside him, restless enough to almost scare you.
His breathing quickened. Your own matched it, shallow and shaky and you struggled to swallow as you pressed your lips faintly against his chest again. A spark raced through you at the slight contact, like electricity lived under your skin.
“I wanted to go back the next day…” His voice faded, the translator catching the restraint, the way he had to force himself to talk while your mouth kept ghosting over his skin.
“That was so reckless, Keth’raal,” you breathed, the accusation soft and intimate against him, hoping the whisper of your lips affected him the way his fingers tangled through your hair were affecting you.
Driving you absolutely insane.
His loyalty, the fact that he had risked himself again and again for you, brought a small smile to your lips as you kissed his chest.
“So stubborn,“ you kissed him, “so reckless…“ you kissed him again.
It almost hurt to think about. You felt your core tightening with the urge to give something back, because the feeling inside you needed somewhere to go.
Because you had missed him.
Far more than you wanted to admit.
Maybe even differently than he had missed you, in a way you refused to name, especially not now.
“I…” Your voice faltered. His fingers paused in your hair as you searched for the right words.
“I also… you know…” You swallowed, your lips lifting from his chest as heat rushed to your face.
He shifted slightly, angling his head down to look at you.
“Your gauntlet…” you whispered, squeezing your eyes shut and pressing your forehead back to his chest to hide. You inhaled deeply, realizing only then that the soft purr he had been making was gone.
Silence.
Fear crept in slow and cold, but retreating wasn’t an option anymore. You pressed both palms against his chest, almost desperately, trying to steady your racing heart.
“I found your gauntlet on the ground… after you were gone,” you confessed in a single breath.
Your body trembled. You had no idea how he would react and that uncertainty pounded louder than your heartbeat.
How could you possibly explain it? That you had found his broken gauntlet lying on the ground the moment the lab doors burst open and he was gone?
And the worst part was that after you had snatched it up and run, clutching it like the last piece of him you would ever have, you realized you had no idea how to turn it on.
Two years.
Two whole years and it still lay hidden in the back of your drawer, untouched except for the countless times you had tried to force life back into it. You had given up after a year of failed attempts, pressing buttons, prying seams, whispering his name like the damn thing might recognize your desperation.
All you had wanted was to find him again. Or at least feel closer.
“That damn thing wouldn’t switch on…” you muttered, your lips brushing his chest again. You still didn’t dare look up, not even with the mask between you.
Embarrassment burned through you and some reckless, foolish hope he would understand. He’d probably be impressed by your attempts… and furious.
But he didn’t move.
His hand rested against your head, completely still. His chest barely rose, as if he had stopped breathing.
“Please… say something,” you whispered, the words trembling out of you. You lifted your gaze at last, because you couldn’t stand the silence and found his mask staring down at you.
As if he had been waiting precisely for that.
The instant your eyes locked on the dark voids of the helmet, his hand left your hair. In one sudden, powerful move he tore the mask free and then his hand returned to you, pulling you closer.
His face was bare now, pressing his forehead to yours. Your breath snagged as his exhale washed over your lips, fast, almost shaken.
Before you could react, his hands slid over yours, pinning them to the mattress as your back sank into it. He leaned over you, his shadow swallowing you, his dreadlocks spilling forward like a cascade of black silk over his shoulders.
Your eyes flew open in surprise as he leaned closer, his forehead finding yours again and you shut your eyes at the closeness, sudden and overwhelming.
He felt restless above you, for the first time mirroring exactly how you had felt this entire night. Shaking. Overwhelmed. Barely holding himself together.
“Vrek’shai-ka,” he rumbled, the word spilling straight from his throat. You heard it perfectly, but couldn’t grasp its meaning.
And you knew what that meant.
When he spoke his own language without the helmet, it was because he didn’t want you to understand. Because it was safer to confess things in words only he could truly claim.
Safer to keep you from knowing.
You tried to break free, not to escape, but to reach him, his chest, his dreads, anything he would let you hold onto. But the instant he sensed it, his grip shifted, sliding from your hands to your wrists. He pinned them to the mattress, trapping you under him completely.
A sharp breath burst from you. His strength was impossible, with so little effort, you were caught, like a prey running straight to a trap.
But you kind of liked this trap.
He leaned lower, his forehead brushing your shoulder, his breath hitting your chest.
His chest rose and fell too quickly, each inhale ragged, as though he’d sprinted across miles just to get here.
You whispered his name again, not wanting to break whatever fragile control he was clinging to.
And he pulled back, like your voice had burned him.
It struck you all at once.
He wasn’t afraid of touching you.
He was afraid of you touching him, of losing whatever restraint he still had the second your fingers found his skin.
His hands pressed you into the mattress at the sound of his name, his forehead settling against the side of your head. His breath grazed your ear, warm, tingling, the clicking in his throat sending a jolt through you. You turned your head, trying to escape the tickling sensation.
But the second he realized how sensitive you were, it was over.
He leaned closer, breath brushing your ear with deliberate slowness and another word slipped out in his language, familiar, yet still just out of reach.
Goosebumps ran down your spine. You writhed beneath him without meaning to, biting your lower lip hard to keep that helpless sound trapped in your throat, while he held you down, as if a battle he refused to lose.
“Let me hold you back… please,” you begged, your voice breaking on the last word. He exhaled against your ear and the sound crawled over your skin, setting every nerve alight. Goosebumps spread everywhere. That low, controlled rumble inside his chest grew louder, heavier, as if the need itself had taken shape.
“Please.”
You said it again.
Only then did he release one of your wrists, as though he had understood the word the first time… but needed to hear you surrender to him twice.
Your free hand moved on instinct. It slid to the back of his head, fingers tangling into his dreadlocks. You tugged him back just to pull him forward again, pressing his forehead to yours and a sound escaped him, a sharp gasp that melted into a deeper groan.
You shut your eyes instantly.
His other hand cupped your cheek carefully, the pad of his thumb gliding under your scar as if tracing a memory engraved into both of you.
“Keth’raal.”
You breathed his name, lips barely moving. His proximity felt suffocating and still you welcomed it, ready to drown in the air he breathed.
“Let me try something… please,” you whispered again, knowing now he recognized the pleading word.
You inhaled slowly and didn’t open your eyes. Your hand slid from his dreadlocks and moved between your faces, fingers grazing his mandible. Carefully you opened the right one… and he didn’t resist.
He let you.
You lifted your head slightly, your lips brushing against the inside of his mandible.
Then you lowered yourself again, finally opening your eyes.
He was staring at you.
A deep frown shadowed his features, confusion tangled with something like pain, or hunger, or both. You reached up, cupping the side of his head with both hands, fingers brushing behind his mandibles.
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but humans—”
You never finished.
His artificial hand gathered your shirt and hauled you upward, pulling you flush to him. His mandibles spread open, wider, inviting, beckoning you wordlessly back to him.
No hesitation.
No translator.
Nothing else but his need to feel you again.
You cupped his face, your lips softening into a smile as you leaned in again, brushing another kiss against the inside of his mandibles. You lingered a second longer, moving slowly toward the left one, pressing a peck over it and only then did he release you, letting you fall back onto the mattress.
“You have no idea how much I missed you.”
The words came freely now, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t understand them.
“If only you knew…”
Your fingers slid toward his medallion, hooking around the rough vine. You tugged him closer by it and he followed without question. His eyes gleamed with that helpless curiosity, searching your face, studying you, as he leaned in.
Your mouth found the emerald stone, lips closing around its cool surface. You kissed it slowly, never looking away from him. Your tongue grazed the chilled green and his gaze dropped fully to your mouth.
“Mouths aren’t only for biting,” you whispered, breath feathering across the space between you as you let the medallion fall. It swung lazily, tapping once against your chest.
He still looked torn, that same quiet ache lingering in his eyes, as if even now, even here, there was still a distance neither of you knew how to cross. Whatever he couldn’t say, you knew it already.
You reached up, trying to smooth the tension from his brow again. He moved back slightly and then his fingers curled firmly around your wrist, guiding you upright with him. The bed dipped under both your bodies, wooden frame creaking and this was your time to act first.
Your arms wrapped around his neck, burying your face into the thick fall of his locks. You held him tight, lips pressed together as you swallowed down the ache in your chest.
“I missed you. I missed you—”
The words trembled against his skin, your breaths breaking as you fought back the urge to finally give in, to let the tears come, to let them say everything you still couldn’t.
His artificial arm wrapped around your waist while his other hand slid to the back of your head, keeping you close, his mandibles brushing your temples.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you when I said I would follow you. You wouldn’t be safe with me, you wouldn’t—” you stumbled, “I would just be a burden and— and you’d end up dead—” Your words broke off mid-sentence.
His middle and index finger rose to your lips, pressing them closed.
Your eyes snapped to his, wide and startled.
He released your lips only to return, rubbing over them with the rough pad of his thumb. He lingered a moment longer, always captivated by the softness of your human nature.
Your heartbeat slowed, no longer kicking your ribs, your hand curling gently around his wrist as that low, soothing growl began deep in his chest.
“You should wear your helmet now,” you whispered, glancing toward the discarded mask at the edge of the bed, but then his talons slipped just an inch past your lips and you forgot how to breathe.
Your mouth parted, heat rushing to your face while your hands twitched uselessly at your sides. Whatever was happening, whatever strange moment this was, you prayed it wouldn’t end just yet.
He withdrew slowly, leaving your lips cold and turned toward the mask. Your fingers rose to your mouth instantly, tracing the exact path his had drew over them, as if replaying the sensation might help you understand what it meant, what he meant.
When he turned back with the helmet in his hand, your arm snapped down to your side, pretending you hadn’t just touched your own lips.
He pressed the helmet over his head and looked down at you.
His thumb returned to your bottom lip, rubbing softly. “It’s soft,” the translator finally said.
You nodded too quickly, unable to stop yourself and then his hand slipped away.
He turned and climbed off the bed, rising to his full height.
“Do you have time?” you suddenly asked, nerves gathering again as you stared at his back, just the thought of him leaving making your jaw lock.
He turned then, placing his palm gently on the crown of your head and then sank to one knee before you. You moved on the mattress, still kneeling, facing him.
“All my life,” came the low reply through the vocoder, his hand settling once more behind your head.
And you finally let yourself go.
You lunched forward, wrapping your arms around him, clinging to him with everything you had. His arms closed around you and you allowed yourself to hold the hug longer, as long as you needed, until the years you’ve been waiting fade into a distant memory.
a/n: I hope somebody gets why I chose an orca for a widget 💙 you guys are the best thing that has happened to me on this app 🥹 Now let’s talk about our boy and his biologist 🤭
HI !! I was wondering if you could do more orc based monster stories? Perhaps with a fem reader being taken hostage by a older rugged orc leader ? Thank you!! Love your work and may you have both sides of the pillow cold °^°
I most certainly can! Plus, I am certainly glad you like my stuff, and I will be taking that both sides cold as it is going to be 36 today, and I wanna die :(
Anyway, I may have gone a little off script with this, but! Still rugged old orc chief? Yes, please.
-
When they came through your town, you knew they would likely claim some noble's kid as ransom, and then the rest of you would have to help cough up the coin to pay for the poor kid's return. However, when the orc clan came to collect their pay for some mercenary work they'd done, it wasn't some noble's kid that got snatched, but you and two others from the commoners' areas.
The orc that was carrying you was a strong woman, older and more scared than the rest of the band that had come through your town, but still just as tall and thickly muscled.
She wasn't the one claiming you, no, unlike the other two that got snatched up. You were a gift from this orcish lady to the clan leader, a bargaining trade for the right to claim a spouse in the next raids. The moment they had passed through the small forest that sheltered your town and entered the stronghold, you were dropped off with a few other women, elves, goblins, and humans. They were all batering chips being peddled and traded off, but once again, as you settled and resigned yourself to what will become your life, the door to the hall you were in was opened.
The strongholds' chief stalks along the groups of you all, grunting at certain ones and telling the orc behind him to let them go, pointing out illness, injury, and the beginnings of pregnancy.
When he rounds on you, he stops, tilting his head, ornaments of iron, bone, gold and bronze gimmer and click together as he kneels in front of you and smiles. One of his tusks is capped with gold, and the other half is missing; he has lines from laughter and smiles mixed with the deep lines of scowls and snarls. His hair is long, deep black with faded grey and white streaks beginning to appear.
It moves and slides across his shoulder as he tilts his head and nods at you, telling the orc behind him to get you cleaned up and sent to his home in the stronghold. It seems the orc woman who wanted a spouse would get her wish, the younger orc behind him nods, and soon you are being moved again, guided and shuffled to a large home.
The bath they draw for you is clearly one made for the orc chief. You feel like a child as you sit in it, trying to keep the water out of your eyes and nose as an older orcish woman scrubs at your hair, tutting about human lords and the lack of care they have for their people. By the time you're done and dried, you feel cleaner than you ever had back in the town you lived, sure, you bathed, but this was a whole new level. You had been washed, scrubbed, oiled, and balmed to the point of pure softness.
Standing in front of the fireplace, you can't help but wonder what the chief will want with you, a wife? A servant? A plaything? All three? You're deep in those spiralling thoughts when the door opens, and he steps in.
Kicking off his boots before striding over to where you stand, the difference between you and him is staggering; your head barely reaches his shoulders, and as he reaches out to touch your hair, you can't help but flinch slightly. He laughs and calls you 'little doe' before repeating the motion, rubbing a little of your hair between his fingers and humming softly at the feeling.
You're not sure what to make of him before you are being hefted and moved, the chair he settles into by the fire is bigger than him still, being made to straddle his lap as he looks you over again. Still smiling as he grunts at you, remarking that you may just be the best prize they have claimed from a payment raid yet.
Summary: Taken by the Yautja at twenty years old, you have spent years working quietly as a maid within the household of an honoured hunter. Your days are spent caring for the home and its younglings. Life is controlled but predictable. That changes the moment Vorkath’ren, the clan’s feared Enforcer, returns from a hunt.
You woke before the suns rose, as you always did.
The house was still and cool, the walls humming with the noise of Yautja technology that you had learned to live beside.
You gathered water, prepared food for the younglings, and tidied the common room before the first of them padded sleepily into the halls.
The children of the clan always found you amusing. You were small to them, soft, and fragile.
They adored you for it.
One clung to your leg as you tried to sweep the floor. Another demanded to be carried.
You obliged, lifting the smallest and settling him on your hip. His low purr vibrated against your shoulder.
This was your place. This was your life. It was not easy, but it was safe enough.
Until today.
The rumble of returning hunters echoed through the compound long before the door slid open.
The heads of the younglings snapped up. Their eyes widened with excitement.
“They are back,” one chirped, hopping from foot to foot.
The returning party always presented themselves to the tribe's Elder, and you were expected to greet them as part of your duties. You steadied your breathing and stepped into the main hall.
The air grew heavier as the hunters entered. The first few were familiar to you, masked warriors you had tended to after training sessions.
They smelled of iron and smoke, their hides marked with fresh paint and newly earned scars.
Then he stepped through the doorway.
Vorkath’ren.
You knew his title long before you ever saw his face.
The Enforcer.
The executioner of the Elder.
The one even seasoned hunters whispered about in low tones. His armour was plated in obsidian metal and decorated with bones from creatures you could not name.
His dreadlocks were bound with trophies, each one telling a story of violence and dominance. His presence filled the hall like a storm rolling in from distant mountains.
He carried the skull of a slain bad blood in one massive hand and dropped it into the centre of the room as proof that his task had been completed.
The warriors roared their approval.
You should have been able to stay invisible. You never made noise, never drew attention.
Yet as the Elder stepped forward to praise the returning party, Vorkath’ren’s gaze moved.
It landed on you.
For a moment, your body forgot how to move.
His mask turned fully in your direction, the glow of his eyes sharp and focused.
He had been looking at the Elder a moment before. Now, every line of his towering form faced you, as if pulled by an instinct he did not understand.
You lowered your eyes.
It was improper to hold a hunter’s stare for too long, especially one like him.
It was considered rude and a challenge between Yautja.
The weight of his attention. The force of it.
Your pulse quickened at the way he stood utterly still, observing you as though you were the only living thing in the hall.
Another hunter approached him, speaking of the fallen bad bloods. Vorkath’ren did not respond.
His focus rarely lingered.
The Elder noticed and followed the line of his sight, landing on you. His expression tightened with curiosity.
“You.” The Elder called out.
Your steps were quiet as you approached. You kept your hands folded, your head bowed.
“Offer greetings to the hunters,” the Elder instructed.
You did, voice steady despite the tremor beneath your ribs.
“Welcome home. May your hunts continue to honour the clan.”
A respectful sentence. One you had spoken many times.
Vorkath’ren tilted his head as though memorising the sound of your voice. His mask retracted with a sharp click.
You had never seen him unmasked.
His mandibles framed a mouth full of sharp, gleaming teeth.
Scars crossed his lower jaw. His eyes were a molten shade of amber, intense and almost strange in their depth.
He looked at you. He really looked.
Your breath caught.
Something flickered in those eyes.
He inhaled, sampling your scent.
You were not supposed to react, yet your heart thudded so loudly that you feared every hunter in the hall could hear it.
The Elder spoke again, addressing Vorkath’ren.
“Your hunt was successful, Enforcer. The clan is safer with the bad bloods destroyed.”
Vorkath’ren did not answer.
His gaze remained locked with yours.
The Elder’s eyes narrowed with thought.
“Does something interest you?”
A low, rumbling sound left Vorkath’ren’s chest. Not a threat. Not entirely. It was something far more complicated.
You took a small step back.
That was when he moved.
Only an inch forward, barely noticeable to anyone who did not know Yautja body language. But you knew enough. He was closing distance.
The Elder lifted a hand, halting whatever shift had started in the air.
“Return to your quarters, Enforcer. We will discuss the hunt later.”
Vorkath’ren hesitated.
A feared executioner. A brutal enforcer whose word was law to the lower ranks.
He hesitated.
But eventually he obeyed, turning away.
As he passed you, he looked down at you one last time, pupils wide, breath warm and heavy.
You felt it like a touch. A warning. A promise.
Something you did not yet have a name for.
You were supposed to return to your duties. You were supposed to forget this moment.
But long after he left the hall, you could still feel the burn of his eyes on your skin.
And deep in your chest, something answered.
You tried to tell yourself that nothing had changed.
You tried to believe it.
But from the moment Vorkath’ren returned from the hunt, the walls of the house felt different, as though something had awakened in the shadows and refused to rest again.
He watched you.
You first noticed it the very next morning.
You were carrying herbal infusions to the balcony to dry in the weak sunlight when you sensed it.
A shift in the air. A weight. The unmistakable feeling of being watched.
You lifted your head.
Vorkath’ren stood on the far side of the balcony, silent as a carved idol. His arms were folded behind him, skull trophies hanging across his broad chest. His eyes were fixed on you with that same intensity from the hall.
You almost dropped the tray.
He did not move. He did not speak. He watched.
You gave a small bow, unsure what else to do, and hurried away.
The moment you stepped inside, your skin prickled again. You looked over your shoulder.
He followed you.
Not close. Not enough to appear threatening. But he stood at the next doorway, gaze anchored to your retreating form.
You felt heat rise in your face.
He continued like this for days.
Everywhere you went, he was there.
In the training yard, standing against a pillar as you passed by with supplies.
By the nursery, observing quietly as you soothed a crying youngling.
In the market corridor, his towering form blocked a group of rowdy hunters from brushing too close to you.
The first time he did that, the younger hunter attempted to challenge him, puffing his chest and hissing a complaint.
Vorkath’ren turned his head slowly.
The young hunter froze. Whatever he saw in those amber eyes made him drop his gaze and step back at once.
No one bothered you after that.
You should have been relieved, but your heart raced whenever Vorkath’ren was near. Sometimes you caught him scenting the air when you walked past, a low inhale that made something stir deep in your stomach.
You had never been so intensely noticed in your life.
One afternoon, while trying to stack storage crates, you lost your footing. You braced for the impact, but it never came. A huge hand caught your arm, lifting you upright as though you weighed nothing.
Vorkath’ren.
He crouched, bringing his face level with yours. His eyes scanned you from head to toe, checking for injury.
“I am fine. Thank you.”
He did not release your arm immediately. His grasp was warm, steady, careful.
When he finally let go, his fingers traced lightly across your wrist as though reluctant to break contact.
He rumbled something in his own language. A sound low and soft. You had heard Yautja hunters speak many times, but none of them ever used a tone like that.
Then he rose to his full height and walked away, leaving you breathless.
Later that night, when you returned to your quarters, something waited on your sleeping furs.
A charm.
Bone carved into the shape of a curved talon, polished to a soft shine. A traditional token used by Yautja males when they wished to express interest.
Your breath stopped in your throat.
You lifted it with shaking fingers.
The air carried a faint scent that did not belong to you.
Him.
Footsteps echoed down the hall outside your door. Heavy. Controlled. You knew the sound now.
He paused outside your quarters.
Waiting.
Listening.
You clutched the charm to your chest, unsure whether to hide it or cherish it.
The footsteps moved on.
You sank onto your bed, the charm still resting in your palm, glowing faintly in the dim light.
You should fear this. You should return the token immediately.
Yet warmth bloomed in your chest. A slow, hesitant flutter that made you press your other hand to your heart as if you could calm it.
The Enforcer watched you. Protected you. Desired you.
And no matter how much you tried to ignore it, a part of you felt strangely safe when his shadow fell over yours.
A part of you wondered what it meant to receive a token from a male like him.
A part of you wanted to know what he would do if you kept it.
The gift weighed on your mind for days.
Every time you tucked the carved talon beneath your tunic, every time your fingers brushed its polished surface, you felt the same gentle ache in your chest. You should have returned it. You told yourself that many times. Yet each morning you found it still resting above your heart.
You noticed changes in Vorkath’ren too.
He no longer lurked in distant doorways. He approached you with deliberate steps, closing the distance inch by inch until there was no ignoring his presence.
He found you by the feeding hall one morning, sorting through herbs for the younglings. His shadow covered the table before you realised he was there.
“Enforcer,” you greeted softly, bowing your head.
His mask was clipped to his hip today. His face was bare. His eyes studied you with the precision of a hunter tracking something precious.
“Vorkath’ren,” he corrected, voice deep and gravelled.
You startled. He had never spoken his name to you before.
“I mean no disrespect,” you murmured.
He lowered himself until he was crouched at your level, movements slow and deliberate, as if approaching something fragile.
“You do not disrespect,” he said. The words were heavily accented, but the meaning was clear. “You speak. I listen.”
Your stomach fluttered. You had spoken to many hunters before, but Vorkath’ren was different.
His attention felt heavy, purposeful. His gaze tracked your eyes, your hands, the subtle rise and fall of your chest when you breathed.
You cleared your throat. “I should return to work.”
He tilted his head, mandibles flexing faintly in what you were beginning to recognise as curiosity.
“If I am too near, you speak. I move.”
The offer stunned you. Yautja were not known for yielding to humans. Yet here he was, offering you the ability to push him away.
You hesitated.
“I will tell you if I need space.”
He nodded once. A promise.
True to his word, he respected every boundary you set. When he stepped too close, you gently lifted your hand. He backed away immediately. When his looming presence became too much, you told him, voice shaking.
He bowed his head and stepped aside.
Each time he listened, something inside you softened.
But even with distance, he watched.
He watched you braid a youngling’s hair.
He watched you carry a basket of fruits across the courtyard.
He watched you walk home at twilight, standing sentry on the rooftop above as if guarding your path.
You should have been frightened. Yet somehow, every time your eyes found his towering silhouette, your heart steadied instead of racing away.
The change came on the night of the storm.
The world outside the house raged with thunder. The walls shuddered with each strike of lightning, the sound echoing in your chest.
You hated storms here.
The atmosphere felt different, heavier, more violent than storms on Earth.
You sat curled on your sleeping furs, arms wrapped around your knees, fighting the urge to hide beneath the blankets like a child.
A crash shook the compound so violently that you flinched and covered your ears.
Something moved outside your door.
Footsteps. Heavy, steady, unmistakable.
Your breath hitched.
The door opened with a quiet hiss.
Vorkath’ren stood in the doorway, his silhouette framed by flashes of white lightning.
He looked at you, then at the trembling doorframe, then back to you. A low hum vibrated in his chest, something warm and unthreatening.
“Fear. Your scent.”
You swallowed hard.
“The storm is loud. That is all.”
He stepped forward slowly, giving you time to refuse. You did not.
He lowered himself to sit beside your bed, his back against the wall, arms resting on his bent knees.
“I remain here. If you wish.”
Your heart fluttered.
“You are not needed.”
“No. But I remain.”
Another crash shook the house. You jerked, breath quickening. Vorkath’ren glanced at the ceiling, then back at you.
“You rest, I watch.”
There was no demand in his tone. Only quiet certainty, as though protecting you had ceased being a choice.
You lay back on your furs, though sleep did not come easily. The storm raged. Thunder cracked.
Lightning flashed.
But beside your bed sat the Enforcer of the clan.
Silent. Still. Watching the entrance with unwavering focus.
Your eyes traced the outline of his form.
The breadth of his shoulders. The slow rise and fall of his breath.
His profile was illuminated by every lightning flash.
You loosened your grip on your blankets.
He felt your stare and turned his head, eyes meeting yours through the dim light.
“Sleep,” he murmured.
Something in his tone unravelled the knot inside your chest.
For the first time since childhood, you fell asleep during a storm.
And when you woke, he was exactly where he had been, guarding your dreams with the patience of a creature who had claimed a place he would never relinquish.
The days after the storm settled into a strange rhythm. Vorkath’ren appeared everywhere you went, but no longer hid behind distance.
If you walked through the courtyard, he followed at a respectful pace. If you tended the younglings, he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, protective eyes tracking every movement around you.
The clan noticed.
How could they not?
Whispers echoed through the corridors, hunters murmuring to one another in disbelief.
The Enforcer watches the human.
Why her?
Does she have a hold on him?
Some were curious. Some were unsettled. A few were openly displeased.
One of them was Jatruk.
He was younger than Vorkath’ren, ambitious, arrogant, a hunter who thought status made him untouchable.
You had always avoided him. His gaze was too bold. His voice is too sharp. He disliked humans and made no attempt to hide it.
You should have been more cautious when you passed through the storage hall alone.
You were gathering medicinal moss for the elder’s mate, head bent, arms full of herbs. No one else stayed in the long corridor. It should have been a simple task.
“I have been watching you. The Enforcer gives you his time. His attention. His silence. You must know what that means.”
Your pulse sped. You stepped back, but he followed.
“I have wondered what you did to earn it. Did you beg him? Offer him something? Humans use tricks. It is known.”
“That is not true. Please let me through.”
He smiled, mandibles flaring faintly.
“Perhaps I should inspect you myself. See what he finds so interesting.”
You moved back again.
He trapped you between a support beam and his towering frame. Panic rose in you.
You clutched the herbs against your chest.
“Move,” you said, voice shaking.
“No,” he answered, leaning closer.
A low sound rumbled from your throat.
Not a cry. Not a scream. A sound of fear so raw it echoed through the corridor.
Jatruk’s hand reached for your arm.
He never touched you.
A shadow dropped behind him with the weight of a falling mountain.
Vorkath’ren.
His roar shattered the silence.
Jatruk spun, but it was already too late.
Vorkath’ren struck him hard enough to send him skidding across the floor. Skulls rattled on the Enforcer’s armour, teeth bared, mandibles wide with fury. Rage radiated from him in waves.
The entire compound seemed to freeze.
Jatruk scrambled to his feet, sputtering.
“She is a servant. A human. She has no claim.”
Vorkath’ren advanced one step. The floor trembled beneath his weight.
“You will not approach her. You will not speak to her. You will not breathe near her.”
Jatruk bared his teeth, refusing to yield.
“You break our customs for her. You shame the clan. Has she enthralled you? Has she made you weak?”
Vorkath’ren’s eyes darkened.
“No. She makes me choose.”
Jatruk lunged.
It was foolish.
It was the end of him.
Vorkath’ren moved with a speed you had never seen.
The collision sent Jatruk crashing into a stone pillar, air leaving his lungs in a single pained gasp. Vorkath’ren pinned him with one massive hand, claws pressed lightly against his throat in warning.
He did not kill him.
But the message was unmistakable.
The Enforcer chose restraint only for you.
Hunters gathered at the edges of the corridor, drawn by the noise, silent witnesses to what came next.
Vorkath’ren released Jatruk, who collapsed to the floor, panting and humiliated.
Without looking at him again, Vorkath’ren turned to you.
His voice softened in a way that stunned everyone present.
“Did he touch you?” he asked.
“No,” you whispered.
He stepped closer, towering above you, but his posture was low, submissive in a way Yautja rarely displayed.
He reached out, paused, and waited for your permission. You gave a small nod.
His hand came to rest lightly against your arm, warm and steady.
“Good,” he said, voice thick with relief.
The gathered hunters exchanged shocked looks.
A murmur rippled through them.
The Enforcer protects the human.
The Enforcer claims her.
The Enforcer chooses.
You swallowed hard, the realisation sinking in.
“What you did, you declared something.”
His eyes met yours, dark and burning.
“I declare truth. You are under my protection. My watch. My choice.”
The words were not casual. Not symbolic.
Among Yautja, such a declaration was the first step toward a mate bond.
“Vorkath’ren, you cannot simply claim me.”
He lowered himself until his face was inches from yours. His mandibles brushed your cheek in the faintest touch, the contact so gentle it barely existed.
“I do not claim your body, I claim your safety.”
His hand lifted to your chest. Not touching.
“As for more, you decide. Not I.”
Your heart ached at the tenderness hidden beneath so much power.
Hunters still watched, stunned, uncertain, afraid to speak.
But Vorkath’ren did not care for their eyes.
He stepped to your side, standing as your shield. He looked at the hall, at Jatruk, at the hunters gathered, and his voice thundered through the corridor.
“She belongs to my guard. My watch. My protection. Any who threaten her are my enemy.”
Silence fell like a closing door.
Your life changed with those words. Yet, you still choose to act as if nothing happened.
Even if you were no longer just a maid. You were the Enforcer’s chosen.
And nothing in the clan would ever be the same again.
Later that night
You help put the younglings down for sleep, soft humming drifting through the stone hall, blankets pulled up, little claws clutching at your sleeves as they nestle in.
Once the final one is tucked in, you step outside for a moment of quiet, breathing in the night air.
The village glows with dim bioluminescent lanterns.
The jungle sings in its endless voice of insects and distant beasts. Cool wind wraps around you.
You close your eyes.
A branch cracks.
Your heart jumps.
Then you feel it, the shift in the air, heavy and unmistakable.
You turn.
Vorkath’ren stands in the shadows between the huts, half-lit by the soft glow. His mask is removed now, hanging at his hip.
His bare mandibles flare slightly, breath deep and steady, eyes burning like molten amber.
He does not speak.
He simply watches.
You know in your bones he does not stumble upon you by chance.
He came for you.
Slowly, he steps into the lantern light. His trophies clink softly with each movement.
His muscles ripple with controlled violence under the dim glow, but his eyes… his eyes soften when they land on you.
A shock hits your chest.
This creature, who executes traitors without hesitation is looking at you like you are something delicate.
Something important.
You take a step back.
He takes a step forward.
“Why… why are you here?” you whisper.
He gives a low chirr.
So soft it sends heat down your spine.
Then he does something you have never seen him do with anyone.
He kneels.
One knee to the ground. Head bowed. Eyes locked on yours.
A gesture of intent.
A vow.
Your breath catches.
You don’t understand it.
You’re not ready to understand it.
He rises slowly, towering once more.
His claws lift, hovering near your face again, but he stops himself, pulling back with a frustrated growl.
Restraint.
You realise with a shiver:
He wants you.
Deeply.
And he is trying very, very hard not to take what he wants.
He steps back into the shadows.
Watching.
Guarding.
Obsessed.
You shiver.
Not from fear.
But from the dangerous flutter low in your stomach that whispers you might want him too.
For almost a full week, Vorkath’ren becomes a shadow stitched to the edges of your world. He doesn’t approach you directly.
He doesn’t speak.
He simply appears.
Everywhere.
When you fetch water, you sense him crouched on the rooftops, silent as a panther.
When you walk the younglings to their lessons, he lingers at the far edge of the training grounds, trophy bones clinking in the breeze.
When you sweep the family hearthstones, you catch glimpses of him through gaps in the walls, mask glinting as he watches.
He never moves toward you unless you look away first.
He never touches you again.
And somehow that makes it worse.
That makes the air between you tighter.
Sharper.
Hungrier.
The matron of the house notices the way you startle at every heavy footstep, every distant growl.
She tuts, as if amused.
“The enforcer’s interest is unusual. He shows no tenderness. No fondness. Not to anyone.”
Her mandibles twitch in what you’ve learned is a smile.
“My dear, that hunter is watching you as if you were a wounded animal he wishes to guard, and a mate he wishes to claim.”
Your cheeks burn.
She continues, voice softening.
“Be careful. His kind love fiercely… but when they choose, it is with absolute possession.”
The bowl in your hands suddenly feels too heavy.
You wake to the sound of metal striking stone.
Clang.
Scrape.
Clang.
You sit up in your small sleeping corner, heart thumping. The household sleeps deeply, but something outside calls to you.
You push aside the cloth covering the doorway and step into the cool night.
The moonlight spills silver across the training yard.
And there he is.
Vorkath’ren
Mask off. Standing before a tall stone pillar engraved with ancient glyphs. His dreadlocks hang in wild black ropes, some tied with the skulls of creatures you’ve only seen in nightmares.
In his hand, he holds a blade nearly as long as your torso.
Clang.
Scrape.
He drags the tip along the stone in slow, deliberate strokes.
Marking something.
A symbol.
A vertical slash followed by three cross-strokes.
Your breath catches.
You’ve seen that symbol before.
On armour.
On huts.
On weapons.
It is the sigil of a Yautja’s chosen mate.
You freeze.
He pauses, sensing you, head lifting slightly.
Very slowly, he turns.
His eyes glow gold in the moonlight, burning like twin suns. His chest rises with a deep, deliberate inhale, as if tasting the air you displace.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t have to.
You can feel the weight of the gesture.
He has carved the sigil, knowing you would see it.
Knowing you would understand.
You step back, breath shaking.
“Vorkath’ren… I… I don’t…”
You don’t know what.
What to feel.
What to say.
What to do with the wildfire building between you.
He takes one heavy step toward you.
Then another.
Not fast.
Not aggressive.
Just steady.
Sure.
Like gravity itself has chosen you and refuses to let go.
Instinct takes over, and you brace to run.
He stops instantly.
His head tilts, mandibles tucking tight with frustration, almost fear. As if even the idea of frightening you rattles him more than any hunt.
He lifts one clawed hand.
Very slow.
Palm open.
Showing he means no harm.
The gesture steals your breath.
You’ve seen him lift that same hand to crush skulls.
To cut down traitors.
To silence those who disobey the Elder.
But to you…
He shows his empty palm.
His voice rumbles out, low and rough, shaping your name with surprising clarity.
It sounds different in his mouth.
Possessive.
You step forward before you even realise you’ve moved.
He inhales sharply.
Your closeness affects him, visibly, intensely. His pupils blow wide, his mandibles twitch with restrained hunger, and his claws flex as if begging to touch but refusing.
Slowly, he lowers himself to one knee again.
The enforcer.
The executioner.
The tribe’s monster.
Kneeling. For you.
Your throat tightens.
“Vorkath’ren… why are you doing this?”
He rumbles deep in his chest, a sound you feel in your spine.
Then he lifts one claw and taps the newly carved sigil on the stone.
Your breath stutters.
“You cannot, I’m human. I’m not… I can’t be that to you.”
He tilts his head again, amber eyes narrowing with a certainty that chills you.
He isn’t asking. He’s telling you.
Claiming you in the only way he knows.
He stands slowly, towering over you, body radiating heat, breath heavy with want he can barely contain.
His claws gently brush the air near your shoulder.
Not touching.
As if he’s waiting for you to choose first.
Waiting for permission.
You take the tiniest step closer.
He shudders.
Then he exhales a low, trembling sound you’ve only ever heard from wounded Yautja.
Vulnerability.
Need.
He backs away into the shadows before he loses control.
But you know now what he wants.
And what you are becoming to him.
Not prey.
Not property.
Not duty.
Something far more dangerous.
Something he would kill for.
Something he would die for.
Something he has already begun to claim.
---
The threats that once stalked your nights, bad blood hunters, political tension within the tribe, challenges to Var’kah’s authority, fade, conquered one by one beneath his claws.
His savage reputation remains, but there is a softness now that only you ever see.
And it starts every morning.
You wake to the warmth of his chest pressed behind your back, his arm coiled around your waist like an unmovable band of iron and affection. His mandibles rest lightly against your shoulder, a habit he formed the first time you shared a sleeping mat. The rumble he makes when he feels you stir vibrates through your ribs, low and content.
You turn to face him.
His eyes open.
He has never slept deeply unless you are beside him.
“Good morning,” you whisper, brushing a hand over the scars on his jawline.
He answers in a gentle click, then lowers his forehead to yours.
A gesture you once feared, now one that unties your heart a little more each day.
He lifts your hand to his mouth and presses a slow kiss to your palm. His tusks scrape softly, deliberately careful.
Once, he was the tribe’s executioner.
Now, he is the male who warms your feet at night, who wakes before dawn to hunt your favourite fruit, who growls possessively when anyone looks at you too long.
And no one challenges it.
Not anymore.
The tribe accepts you.
Respects you.
Some even adore you.
The younglings, greet you each day with chirrs and small carvings they insist on giving you.
When the matron grew too old to keep the nursery, you took her place without question.
Vorkath’ren rebuilt the sleeping hall himself, larger and sturdier, so you would be safe, though everyone knows he meant “protected by walls built with my own hands.”
He watches over you even now, but the obsession that once frightened you has softened into something deeply loyal. Intensely warm.
Still possessive, always, but no longer tangled in pain.
One evening, you sit together at the edge of the jungle, watching the twin moons rise. Var’kah crouches beside you, his size dwarfing your own, his arm brushing yours as if he cannot bear even an inch of distance.
He holds something in his hand.
A bone carving.
Small, elegant, shaped into a sigil you know very well: his.
You lift it with gentle fingers.
“For me?”
He nods, mandibles lifting in a subtle smile.
“Mine,” he rumbles softly.
Not a claim.
A promise.
You lean into him, resting your head against his arm. He shifts so you can settle more comfortably, pulling you against his chest with a tenderness that would shock anyone who once feared him.
“Yours,” you reply quietly.
His entire body warms at the word.
He wraps both arms around you, holding you as if you are the axis of his world, the thing he orbits. You feel the soft vibration of his contentment, a sound that settles into your bones like sunlight.
The moons climb higher.
The night grows still.
And for the first time in your life, the future feels simple.
Safe.
You reach up and brush his cheek.
“Are you happy?” you ask, though you already know the answer.
He presses his forehead to yours, eyes burning softly, voice low and sincere.
“With you, always.”
You smile, closing your eyes as he pulls you into the circle of his arms, the hunter’s moon glowing white above you both.
Here, in this life you built together, there is no fear.
His ambition was a mistake. He had lost long before the Straw Hat thwarted his plans. A rare admission of defeat from Crocodile.
Here he was, on the cold cobblestone floor, chained like an animal. Had he been told that Eternal Hell—the deepest level of Impel Down—is where his ambition for Alabasta would have brought him, he would have laughed. Killed the person too, perhaps, for his ego would not tolerate such disrespect, but he would have laughed no less.
That is if he had not lost his true treasure before the fall. Though, he did. And he never bat a lash.
"Seventeen years of being your partner and this is what you reduce me to... So be it."
If only he hadn't been such a fool. If only he had stopped you from walking out the door.
"Goodbye, Crocodile."
Perhaps he wouldn't even be here in the first place had he simply looked your way.
Impel Down had given him time to think. Time to realise. Time to regret. It was only yesterday his daughter was born. Now, he can only see her in his memories and the few rare dreams he has of her.
Yet, even the dreams have no mercy to give. Her innocent calls for "Papa" unanswered while he turned his gaze never failed to wake him with a racing heart. It was only when the torment of those dreams began did he become familiar with the gnawing ache of guilt. He hated it.
He hated knowing that his daughter roamed an incomplete household, that any questions about Papa would be met with sugarcoated lies.
So, when Straw Hat breached Level Six and sought an ally in him, he accepted. He only accepted because he needed to return to his treasure. He needed to return to you and your child. He needed to let you know how wrong he was. He had to let his precious know how much his world revolved around her.
divorced but still in love has me in a chokehold. I couldn't resist.
Thinking about the intersection of monsterloving and yautjas, from the perspective that the humans are the monsters...
Like, one of the big appeals of monsters is the ways in which they aren't human. This applies to the 'animal' tendencies, of course (hello thousands of predator/prey dynamic fics), but it also applies to ways in which some monsters go against standard social norms. The animalistic instincts can be appealing, but the non-normative relationship can be appealing in a completely different way. Its like how the appeal of the fishman from Shape of Water is that he was masculine, but in a way that wasn't the social norm. He was gentle in ways the other men in the movie weren't. The monstrous appearance is attractive, but so is the way monsters defy normative expectations and don't fit into the typical way humans operate socially (hello thousands of 'undying devotion' fics).
Anyway. It makes me think that maybe yautja like certain kinds of humans because of the ways they don't align with the image of the ideal yautja mate, not in spite of it.
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
