my fics usually contain 18+ content. don’t interact if that’s not your cup of fanfiction/if you’re not old enough to read all that filth.
my viktor requests are NO LONGER open! thank you for sending me good ones, i’m currently working on them <3
robert requests are OPEN though!
DISPATCH:
• ONE-SHOTS:
estranged husband!robert x reader (nsfw)
ARCANE:
• MULTICHAPTERS:
the counterpart (viktor x f!reader, modern chess players au) — part 1 (sfw), part 2 (sfw), part 3 (sfw), part 4 (nsfw), part 5 (nsfw-ish), part 6 (nsfw), part 7 (sfw), part 8 (nsfw) completed
—
playing with this bow (and arrow) (viktor x f! reader, modern classical musicians au) — part 1 (nsfw-ish), part 2 (nsfw-ish) , part 3 (nsfw-ish), part 4 (nsfw-ish), part 5 (nsfw), part 6 (nsfw) ongoing/on hiatus
• VIKTOR REQUESTS:
how to lose your virginity like a pretentious poet (nsfw); viktor x f!reader
academic rivals viktor x f!reader (nsfw), part 2 (nsfw)
fornication; tipsy!viktor x tipsy!gn!reader (nsfw-ish)
i’m in love with a dying man; viktor x gn!reader (angst, nsfw)
viktor x m!wealthy nobleman! reader (nsfw-ish)
the jeweller’s hands - viktor x gn!reader (nsfw)
• ONE-SHOTS:
untitled angry sex drabble (nsfw, viktor x afab!reader)
his favorite worst nightmare (nsfw, nylon fetish, viktor x fem!reader)
if you have troubles finding my older works, read this.
could you do one where robert always baby’s reader after they’ve fucked?
Hey anon,,,,, idk if this is what u had in mind but I hope.... it tickles your fancy either way....
The face I made when I realized ppl like how I draw rob... you guys... sob sob... you like my art... oughg
SFW - Robert Robertsonxfem!reader. Post-canon Chase dies omegaverse AU, Mecha Man/Dispatcher!beta!Robert x civillian!omega!Reader who lost her mate.
Art was done by my brilliant friend @anon-nee!
MASTERLIST
next chapter ->
word count: 5,3K
warnings: Robert works part-time dispatch and part-time Mecha Man, lots of talk about grief and processing it (badly), Robert is depressed, mentions of self-destructive behaviours (drinking, unsafe sex, street fights), eating disorder, anger issues, mentions of Robert killing Shroud, dark thoughts (Robert hasn’t forgiven Visi for causing Chase’s death second-handedly, she’s implied to be gone/cut from the team), a very brief off-hand suggestion of suicidal thoughts, both of Robert’s parents are dead, dry self-deprecating humour, awkward conversations, Reader is mourning her mate, grief support group meet-cute, POVs alternating.
author's note: Welcome to another thing that hopefully I won't have to put on hiatus :') (just kidding). This is mostly a set-up chapter with lots of digging into Robert's POV. Tried to make it before AO3 goes down!
AO3
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Robert can’t remember the last time his eyes didn’t burn. Like somebody’s been rubbing match heads under the lids and expecting him to blink it clean.
It’s different than with his mother. He was too little to grasp the enormity of someone being there one minute, and then not. Sadness came child-sized, smothered by promises of her not being truly gone, always watching, always guarding.
It’s different than with his father. Loss came packaged as an idea first—the concept of a person. A distant dream hatched somewhere between the ages of three and ten: one day, he would have a dad. That dream got repossessed.
He felt plenty, then. Anger, yes, at the injustice and stupidity of men fighting over power he couldn’t parse as a teenager. Manufactured grief, size dictated by the heft of hands on his shoulder. Like weights at the gym: add another plate, add another plate, and push harder, harder, harder until he’s sobbing and everyone’s convinced that it’s a good boy that got left behind.
He accepted the hugs. He accepted the gifts. He accepted food he didn’t taste. He let people perform their duty to the son of a hero until the room emptied out and the air belonged to him again. Alone, he could finally feel the real thing: nothing. Clean, blank wall where the heart is expected to thrash.
Now, the grief doesn’t leave him that mercy.
It makes him suspect he hasn’t truly lost anyone before. There’s a Chase-shaped crater in the whole frame of him, entire scaffolding compromised. Mornings hit his legs first: lead drilled into bone, pinning him to the floor the moment his feet touch it. His hands he has to bargain with daily, to keep them from throttling himself. Stomach reminds him what it was like to be penniless—remnants of acid-burning poverty return when he refuses to eat because hunger at least is a sensation with edges. A pain you can name. Some primitive part of him believes if he starves hard enough he can starve the feeling with it.
His friends worry. He keeps orbiting the same stations: anger, bargaining, depression. It’s a broken lift that won’t reach the floor he needs. Denial has failed him, because no matter how hard his brain opposes the idea, Chase hasn’t come back. It sits in his mouth like a hard candy that cuts once you worry it enough with your tongue.
Images in his head resist sandblasting: the hospital bed, antiseptic light, Chase’s breathing thinning and thinning as if the air is getting rationed. Robert has to look at his palm to realise it’s empty, because he still feels it: the grip going from weak to weaker to absent, a hand unhooking from him one finger at a time. He left the room before rigor mortis could take Chase’s face and set it into something unarguable.
There are things Robert did to deal with it that were necessary and helped shit all. From a lifetime of Dad’s dead, I have to kill Shroud he moved to I must kill someone. Blind luck had it that it was Shroud anyway, and Robert doesn’t look too closely at the fact that it’s only because he couldn’t kill Visi.
There is no telling what it feels like to have your own, bare fist punch through someone’s skull. The body doesn’t want to know itself capable of that. Knuckles, skin, the shock travelling up the bones. Resistance, then the give. Wet warmth, sickly, fleshy, human. A small, squelching softness in the middle of it where the world turns purely mechanical and your brain is a half-step behind, taking notes it will never file.
Everyone watches.
Everyone nods along like this is normal, like this is justice. Like a man can be turned into a lesson and the crowd will clap politely with their eyes. Shroud killed Robbie Robertson and laughed into Robert’s face about it, more than once. Shroud had it coming. He had it all fucking coming.
So why is there a burning stone in Robert’s stomach after. Why does it sit there, heavy and dull, refusing to turn into relief. Why did he walk into that as one man and walk out as another. Why is there a cool tendril of guilt on his neck, wrapping, tightening, not fixing anything.
He tries other things after. Fucking it away until it misfires with a broken condom and makes Robert realise his next stop is not an option after all, when he’s truly sweating in an STD clinic. So he wants to live. Curious.
He gets into a few fights, but his body corrects him on it—it’s not what it used to be and with a diet of pure, undiluted air and the occasional sandwich, his muscles wither to tendons. Fat is scarce. Where he’s been able to take a punch, there are now breakable bones.
The last stop is drinking. Moderate, quiet. A flask on him at all times. It doesn’t go beyond the fuzziness in the brain that accepts more once tranquillised. That one works until Blazer smells whisky on him and, inevitably, has him in for a talk.
He hears it in pieces. We’re all really—been some time now—help you—you can’t just—don’t want to fire you—give it a try—please?
Robert blinks through it. Holds back a barf and gets so distracted by the effort that, before he knows it, he’s leaving his stupid name on a heartfelt agreement: he will attend a grief support group weekly and bring in a signed confirmation, since the last therapist he saw threatened to call the police.
Blazer doesn’t have to spell it out twice. Robert hears one thing clean through the slurry of concern: this, or he’s back behind the desk full-time.
Behind the desk is fluorescent penance. Headset squeeze. Scripted empathy. A chair that complains when you shift. A screen full of blinking calls that have the decency to be someone else’s emergency. A job where everyone can see his face and measure the hollows under it and decide what kind of liability grief makes. Where they can watch his hands shake when he reaches for the mouse. Where the only thing he gets to pilot is a cursor.
Mecha Man is different.
The suit doesn’t care if Robert ate. It doesn’t care if his stomach is an acid pit, if he’s running on breath and spite and whatever’s left in the bloodstream after a flask. The helmet turns him into a shape the city understands: hero. Metal, glass, lights. A voice through comms. A symbol that can take a hit and keep moving. Out there, nobody asks him how he’s doing. They ask for clearance. They ask for angles. They ask for help. They cheer when the armour shows up and the problem stops being theirs.
It’s the last thread keeping him tethered to the fact of living. He can feel it, thin as wire, cutting into skin. He signs the agreement because the alternative is to be benched in plain sight and asked to be human all day.
So he’ll go sit in a circle of strangers and say the parts out loud. He’ll do it because Blazer said desk like a threat and Robert’s body responded like it still knows fear.
He stands in the rain outside the building and takes one more mouthful of cheap whiskey. Watches people come in. It’s one of those clubhouse places that accommodates every bane of humanity: AA meetings, family-member-in-clutches-of-a-cult support groups, grief support groups and old-ladies’ Tuesday bingo sessions.
Inside, there is a table with coffee in vacuum flasks, paper cups, cubed sugar and dried-out cookies. A circle of chairs. A man with thin wire-rim glasses sits with a folder, writing things down.
“Hey, um—” Robert starts. “I have a… My employer needs a signed note of my attendance. Are you the right person for it?”
The man looks up and there it is: stomach-churning compassion. Robert’s throat lurches. “You’re in the right place,” the man says, reaching out for the note. “What’s your name? I’m Allan.”
Expectant eyes. Let me get to know you. Let’s connect. Tell me about your pain, I will show you mine and you will feel less alone. Robert knows all this bullshit, he doesn’t care about other people’s pain. “It’s on the note,” he says blankly.
“Oh, I know,” Allan says. “It’s just the first step to opening up. First time? Recent loss?”
“Uh—” Robert grunts. “Six months. No idea if that’s recent.” Allan blinks, soft smile, like he knows something and Robert hates it. Allan knows nothing about him. The staring duel goes on for a few seconds, before Robert folds. “I’m Robert,” he says. “And yeah, first time.”
“Perfect. Nice to meet you,” Allan says, reaching out for a handshake. It’s rather dainty, fish-like. Robert’s courtesy squeeze is met with a floppy bone structure and moist skin, so he retreats before it gets weirder than it has to be. “Have some coffee—it’s not the best, but the place is community-founded. We will start soon. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t feel like it, you can just listen.”
“Thanks, man,” Robert says. Retreats to the table and pours himself a cup, sneaking in a gush of alcohol. He’s not going through this straight-edge.
People dribble in. An old lady with, Robert presumes, very long silver hair twisted into an elaborate updo with one of those hair sticks. She’s wearing a cardigan that looks like a blanket. Then, a guy who looks like Punch Up if Punch Up’s size corresponded with his strength. A few women, ages ranging from mid-twenties to mid-fifties, all with dark circles under their eyes and permanent pinkish shine to their upper lip. A teenage boy who looks chillingly similar to Robert and he wonders if that guy lost an absent father too. A girl with a blank face, suspiciously relaxed. She chuckles and apologises for bumping into a fat guy’s belly and Robert immediately knows this behaviour—she’s tipsy too.
They gather up in a circle. Everyone claims their designated seats. Robert and the drunk girl wait it out and take the two remaining chairs, which tells him the next piece of information: they are both first-timers.
“Everyone,” Allan says. “Welcome. Welcome back, and welcome our new faces. Rules, as usual: we don’t interrupt—raise a hand if you want to comment on something. We don’t judge. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to. And most importantly: everything said here stays here. Who would like to start?”
There’s a throbbing sensation in Robert’s skull. He hasn’t really thought through what it would be like to hear about other people’s losses. He’s not that interested and he’s absolutely certain his is the most tremendous one. He schools his face flat and picks a stain on linoleum to stare at, so he doesn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes.
The old lady speaks first. “Hello,” she says. “Most of you know, but my name is Martha. I lost a daughter. Breast cancer.” Robert nods, mechanical, head bobbing on his neck, but he doesn’t look up. “It’s been exactly two years as of last Saturday,” she says, like she’s telling a myth. “And I still feel like it was yesterday that my dear Olivia left.”
She talks about how her daughter’s husband met someone, and has now forgotten. How Olivia’s children have shed grief and it makes her happy that they don’t carry this burden anymore, but also alone. Robert sits through it, dreading the moment this will happen to him. When people start to forget the date of Chase’s death and he’s left alone with all of it.
The two-hundred-percent Punch Up is a cop who lost his partner. Can’t bring himself to get his new partner out into the field. The women lost their sons, daughters, husbands and siblings. The fat guy lost his boyfriend. The teenage boy lost a mother. The drunk girl stares blankly at the same linoleum stain Robert is staring at and he’s almost upset that she’s invading his safe space.
It’s all very heartfelt and familiar. Everyone says the same thing. I wake up thinking they are still around. I have to remind myself they are not. People have moved on and I can’t. I kept their clothes. I stare at their pictures. I wonder what I could’ve done to stop it. I wish I had one more day with them. I wish I was with them. I wish it was me instead of them. Forty five minutes pass. There’s sniffling and passing tissues around. Martha sits with red-rimmed eyes and a thoughtful face, nodding along to everyone’s pain.
Robert feels like laughing. He feels like running. Yes, it all checks out, this is how he feels too, but more. Nobody talks about the burning in the chest. Nobody talks about wanting to die and not being able to do anything about it. Everyone says I wish, I wish, I wish, but none of them have the dark thoughts of burning something to the ground, because the ground decided to swallow someone important to them.
“Anyone else?” Allan asks.
Robert feels Allan’s eyes on him. He opens his mouth, and then he’s saved.
“Okay,” you say. The drunk girl. “Guess that’s my cue.” You hiccup and giggle through it and Robert is the only one who snorts amongst incredulous looks. “Sorry, I couldn’t do this sober. I’m not here of my own free will, my sister made me because I’m apparently unbearable.”
You tell everyone your name, and Robert remembers it. “How h-honest can I be here?” you ask Allan.
“As honest as you can bring yourself to be.”
“Hell. That’s great,” you say. “Okay, I… I lost a partner, obviously. No, actually—” There’s a pull of air through your nose, a sniffle, and a bleary glance toward the ceiling. “More than that. I don’t know how many of you will get it, but I lost a mate.”
Some of the people murmur. Some of them gasp, when the understanding settles. Robert’s met a few blessed or cursed with biological roulette, but never really grasped what those relationships look like. He knows Flambae is an Alpha, because he takes a week off every couple of months to burn off the rut. He was surprised to learn Waterboy is a beta, like him. If he had any extra cash, he’d bet it on Herman being an omega. He suspects Malevola is an Alpha too, but asking outright seems too awkward.
“Y’all are really fucking sad and I get it,” you slur. “I’m sad too. But I’m also just… so pissed.” Your fist lands on your thigh with a dull thud. “Okay, flash lore dump: he was a cape, died on a mission. And okay, I knew—I knew it to be a possibility, but you know what it’s like. He’s so strong, my man, it won’t happen to me.” A sip of your coffee and a grimace, and Robert knows you’ve poured too much into the cup. “They… they came to me with a fucking American flag, can you imagine? It’s been six months. And I just—fuck.”
Your voice wobbles, and Robert wonders how long it will take until the inevitable happens. He knows that state all too well. Turning into a drunken, bawling mess, because dignity is for people who have something.
“I fucking hate everything. I hate this.” You press your hands to your chest and spill some of the coffee on your jeans. “Everyone’s like… it will pass, you will move on. God, I could slap them all. All his friends, I hate their guts and I know they don’t deserve it, but I can’t bring myself to be pissed with him. Do you know what it’s like to be at your partner’s funeral and everyone cries harder than you, because they are mourning a hero? A fucking idea of a person? And they are all like—” A cackle. A full-body mad cackle, alcohol and anger-fuelled. “What a loss! A hero! Died defending us, we better pay respects to the widow with disgusting plates of lasagna! A saint! Fuck that! Nobody sees the person. He fucking… snored and shat himself on the job. I know, because I washed skid marks off his trunks.”
People chuckle. Clutch their soggy tissues, nod with that terrible recognition painted on their faces. Robert just stares, disbelieving. Martha, who sits next to you, puts a hand on your back, and you let her.
You let her because nobody touched you like this in a long time. People kept touching you at the funeral, and then sometime after, but it burned out to embers of annoyed huffs and eyerolls your sister kept selling you. Ultimatum got forged: either you will actively try to heal this poisonous wound, or you will no longer be allowed to see your nephews.
It’s hard to explain. Before you meet a mate, you are a person. Existence can be more or less annoying depending on what kind of Alpha or omega you are. Some people yearn to bond and after that their life is complete. Some people resist. You’ve done neither. Just lived, and tried things out, and turned adorers down upon discovering they are douchebags (meaning: Alphas riding a power-trip medieval fantasy where omegas are good for breeding and showing off Alpha’s social status).
Until Sol. He knelt for you. He showed you all his seams. He held you out, kept you from the first ruts, then put his collar in your hands and begged you to keep him. He got to know the person first, omega the second, making you realise what it’s like to be truly whole. And then he was gone, and there is no going back to being the person again. You have been disfigured since then. Missing parts, so many of them, you can barely walk. System rebelling, betraying, his mark aching, but no heats. In one failed swoop everything got stolen: the love of your life, your best friend, the sense of identity, libido, the essence of living that travels the body and takes, and gives.
If somebody warned you that the person after would be so much less than the person before, you’d never let him in.
You feel the same burn your mouth carries in your eyes now. Martha’s arthritic palm rubs between your shoulder blades, coaxing it out. Throat lumps up. “Fuck, I miss him so much,” you whisper, hide your face in your hands. People start sniffling, moved, wrecked by this pure, undiluted despair they know all too well, and you start crying. Sobbing into your fingers. The rest is quiet, out of respect, and Robert just blinks through it, realising there is no way in hell he can measure up to that. Not that it’s a competition.
You go through four tissues and your face still looks wet when you’re done. “Shit,” you chuckle. “Sorry, I’m—I’m still pretty drunk. Didn’t plan to get this disgusting.”
And then, something uncanny happens. People start rising from their chairs, walking up to you, one by one. Each one gives you a hug, a pat on the back, some women allow themselves a fleeting kiss to your temple. You look stunned, but accept every single ounce of compassion. They all say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and Robert has never heard it said with such conviction.
Before he knows it, he’s standing too, last in line. He feels like it’s cheating. Then, he’s facing you and you’re both equally abashed. It just happens. “Hi,” he says and opens his arms. You walk into his embrace, first timid, then clingy. Rest your cheek on his chest and suck in a long, wet breath.
“Hi,” you croak. Your fingers curl in his sweatshirt. He smells something faintly familiar, like a memory. Clean, paper-like. A morning when it’s cold. Jasmine, but not a chemical one. The dampness of old graveyards and churches. You smell like grief.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he whispers. Your eyes meet when you pull back. There’s a smile.
“I’m sorry for yours,” you tell him and rub his shoulders. He welcomes it. Apparently it’s not about losing the same person. It’s about losing the same calibre of a figure from your life. As gruesome as it sounds, he feels wanted here. For the first time in months, Robert feels wanted somewhere, even though he hasn’t uttered a word about himself.
“Everyone.” Allan claps his hands. “Thank you for opening up and being here. This is all the time we have for today, but feel free to stay and chat. If you need therapy recommendations there is a list of trusted names with phone numbers on the board by the entrance. Otherwise—same time, next week, we meet here.”
Everyone says thank you. People shuffle, head to the table for more lukewarm coffee. You’re still holding Robert’s arms when Allan pats your back and mutters, “Good job.”
“I’m Robert,” Robert says, feeling like he owes you his name.
“Hi,” you say again, stupid grin on your face. “Um… I’m probably gonna pass out if I don’t eat something.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure,” he says, letting go of your waist. He watches you smile and pick up your coat and bag. You do a weird entire-body shake, like you’re settling your clothes in place properly, and start walking towards the door.
He’s got a sinking feeling he will never see you again, that this was a one-time performance, and starting next week he’ll be here alone with Martha, and this version of Punch Up and whoever else, when you stop and turn. “Well? Are you coming?”
“W-what?”
“I know a ketone breath when I smell one. Come on.”
Robert nods and picks up his coat, awkwardly. He huffs into the bowl of his palm and you’re right—the air in his mouth smells like urine and sour apples, like bone-gnawing hunger. It’s the first time in ages he’s allowed himself to acknowledge how starving he actually is.
Torrance is bathed in rain. Robert treads after you, head ducked under a pulled-up hood. “Where are we going?” he asks.
“There’s, um… a pizza thing around the corner?” you say. “They sell slices.”
It’s awkward. He watches your face peeking from under the big hood as you drop coins into the hand in the little service window. You look tired. Wet strands of hair stick to your forehead. Your mouth is bitten. Your skin looks yellow under the streetlights. When it’s his turn, he just stares at the food, faintly sick.
“You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to,” you say, holding your slice under a small patch of tarpaulin, shielding it from the rain. “I think you should, though.”
“Yeah,” Robert says. “I know. I just…” He pauses, then picks the plainest thing he can see, pays. “I can’t remember the last time I ate something warm.” The words scrape on the way out. He winces, bracing for you to pry, for questions he doesn’t have answers for.
A flicker of recognition passes through your eyes, and he takes it like a handhold. You both huddle under the little roof and eat in silence until you’re the one who breaks it.
“So,” you say, careful like you’re not. “You didn’t say much in there.”
Robert works his jaw around a reluctant bite. “Hard to follow you,” he mutters.
You laugh, a quick ugly sound that still manages to be amused. “Oh, is that what it is? Who grieves hardest?”
“Sure looked like a contest,” he says. His mouth twists. “I figured I’d walk in, wreck them all with my tragic backstory, and then you show up drunk and steal the room.”
“Well, excuse me, Mr Saddest Man,” you say. “I won’t believe it until I hear it. Try me?”
After Try me? something in Robert shifts, a small knee-jerk. A familiar ache answers a familiar ache. Kinship, morbid and bright, kindling where he didn’t invite it. You’re both new at this particular kind of ruin; both had someone significant taken out of the world, and your insides haven’t figured out what to do with the space. Care rises in him with it, sudden and unshowy, like a hand coming up to steady glass before it tips.
He’s heard what people say about omegas. Irresistible at best, insufferable at worst. You don’t match any of it. You’re just—you. Present. Sharp. Laughing with your throat rough from crying. Seduction has nothing to do with it. He wants to keep this intact, whatever it is; he wants to avoid becoming another person who reaches out, leaves fingerprints, then disappears.
On instinct, he keeps the compartments sealed. He stays Robert. Chase stays Chase. No suits, no call signs, no capes, no hero-shaped nouns that would drag your eyes over him and make you see something you’ve already decided to steer clear of. He keeps it small. Human. Something you can hold without bleeding.
“Uh,” he starts, and the syllable comes out like it hurts. “It was… a friend. Kind of.” He swallows. “Older than me. Older-brother by choice, I guess.” He stares at the rain hitting the pavement so he doesn’t have to watch your face change. “We got separated for a few years. Ended up in the same office again. He was—” His tongue sticks on the word. “Sick. And then it just… got worse.”
You’re quiet for a beat, chewing. Then, softer: “I’m really sorry.”
He just hums.
“It’s… okay if you don’t want to say more,” you add, like you’re offering him a door without pushing him through it.
“It’s not that,” Robert says. His voice is low. “I just—” He exhales through his nose. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to say it twice.”
“I see,” you say. You drop the empty pizza cardboard into the bin. It hits with a wet slap. “Damn,” you add, glancing at him from under the hood. “You gonna make me come in again next week?”
“Yeah,” Robert says, and the corner of his mouth twitches like he hates that it does. “And I expect you not to steal any more spotlight.”
You snort. “No promises. I suffer in unpredictable waves.”
Robert snorts back. He knows this kind of humour. It’s the same funny he wears sometimes, shielding the ugly fact of bleeding internally. For a moment he wants to ask you everything—what you’ve tried, what you’ve wrecked, what you’ve swallowed down and called coping. He doesn’t. He picks something smaller.
“You hate capes then, yeah?” he asks.
“I don’t… hate-hate them,” you say, and the second hate comes out quieter. “I just don’t want to go through this again.”
“You won’t,” Robert says.
You look at him. “How do you know?”
He shrugs, small. His jaw works once. “Because it’s different every time.”
“You lost someone else?” you ask.
He nods. “My parents,” he says. “I was little with my mom, and sixteen with my dad.”
“Shit,” you mutter. “Another scale.”
“Yeah,” Robert says. He rubs his thumb along the edge of his crust, not eating it. “It’s quite… ultimate, right? For a boy to lose a father at an age where he understands both everything and nothing.”
“How… was it?” you ask, softer.
“Weird.” He breathes out, then continues like he’s choosing words from a limited set. “I just… soaked it up from other people who knew him better than I did.”
“Not a dad of the year then, huh?” you say, aiming for light.
Robert’s mouth twitches. “No. More of a… tough-love dad.” He glances at you. “You know. Men business.”
“Yeah,” you say. “I can imagine.”
There’s a brief pause where neither of you fills the space. You exhale an audible puff of air. He finally takes another bite, like he’s proving he can.
“Hey, uh,” Robert says, and you can hear him decide halfway through. “Do you want to grab dinner sometime?”
You bark a laugh. “Shit. Does grief agree with me so much? I thought widows are unsexy.”
“W-what?” Robert blinks, caught. “Why?”
“Too insane,” you say. “It’s widowers that make everyone’s hearts throb.”
“You don’t seem too insane to me,” he says, and his ears go a shade hotter like he regrets being that earnest.
“Oh boy,” you say, grin crooked. “You haven’t seen me when nobody’s looking.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Robert says. He clears his throat. “Unless… it’s weird?”
You tilt your head. “It’s hardly a standard meet-cute.” You look down at your hands, then back up. “Still. This is the most normal conversation I’ve had in months, so… sure. As, like… friends who met in a weird support group.”
“Yeah,” Robert says quickly. “Yeah. Totally.” He nods too many times. “Next Friday? Work for you?”
“Next Friday?” you say. “You want me to rate your next-week performance first?”
Robert huffs, a small sound. “Something like that,” he says. “You can confirm I’m still within tolerable levels of insane.”
“Sure,” you say. “Let’s give it a shot.”
Phones come out, bright rectangles under rainlight. You swap them, thumbs clumsy from cold and grease. You punch your number into his, swap back, then, before he can put the thing away, you lift your phone and take a picture.
The flash pops. Robert flinches like he’s been slapped. “Uh… Do you know many Roberts?” he asks, voice tight.
“No,” you say, already tapping. “Just something I do.” You glance up at him with that crooked little grin. “You don’t look too bad.”
You turn the screen toward him.
He does indeed look bad. Half-eaten, soggy pizza in his hands, knuckles raw and red, face drawn sharp. Eyes tired in a way that makes them seem older than the rest of him. He stares at the evidence a beat too long.
“I mean,” he says carefully, because politeness is a reflex even in rot, “whatever rocks your boat.”
You snort.
Robert clears his throat. “May I?” he asks, and holds up his phone a fraction, waiting.
You hesitate, then nod. “Fine.”
He lifts the phone. The flash hits again.
On his screen your eyes go bright in the white burst, reflective and wet. Even standing right in front of him, he hadn’t clocked it fully—the colour in your irises sits uneven, as if it can’t decide what it wants to be. Pretty. It does something small and stupid to him.
“Here,” he says, and turns the phone so you can see.
You make a face. “Ugh. As long as you promise not to show this to anyone.”
Robert’s mouth twitches. “Don’t call me too often, then.”
“I will try to control myself,” you say, deadpan.
You start back toward the community centre together, slow, shoulders tucked into damp fabric. The rain has thinned to a persistent mist. The building waits where you left it—beige, lit up, quietly patient. When you reach the steps, you stop like you’ve hit an invisible line.
“Well,” you say.
“Well,” Robert answers.
Your hand lifts, then seems to reconsider and lands instead at your own collar, fidgeting with it. “Next week,” you add, eyes on him a second longer than necessary. “Don’t starve yourself to death before then.”
Robert’s throat jumps. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and the sincerity in it irritates him on impact.
You nod, once, satisfied enough to leave him with that. Then you turn, hood up, and go.
Robert watches until you’re swallowed by the rain and the streetlight glare.
The odd thing is how little of it detonates him. The evening doesn’t fix him. It doesn’t crack him open wider, either. It just… helps him persist. A cup of bad coffee, a slice of pizza, a stranger’s number in his phone with a picture attached like proof the interaction happened. He hates to admit it, hates it on principle, but Blazer might have stumbled into one of better ideas in a while.
opening my robert robertson III requests in hope of rubbing foreheads alien style with yall because writer’s block is tough and i want the bitch gone
i can’t promise i’ll write all of the requests (frankly, i can’t promise i’ll write any of them lol) but i desperately need some input and ideas to really fuel the writing process. who knows, maybe it’ll help me have fun for once. we’ll see :)
before sending a request please check my pinned post <3
Hi Mandy! Thank you for the ask! Number 7 I answered here, and then rest:
12. Talk about a new friend you made this year.
I actually made a ridiculous number of friends, most of them online at a time when I stopped believing in online friendships. But I guess user @doggrowth is pretty neat and we talk about many things from lewd to regular. And I'm totally not freaking out when I don't get a message from her for one day. And we don't hold hands being delulu about blorbos together. Very normal friendship.
I also met many amazing authors and artists (yes, you!), and realised I gravitate towards people who are sad hampsters like me. *ew, feelings* but hi @ihopeinevergetsoberr thank you for being my cool friend and yapping to me about books and blorbos and @hextoken you showed me Peak and ruined my life :D
Shoutout to entirety of Freaktor Nation, love you guys!
14. Favourite book you read this year?
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner. It's nothing flashy or ground-breaking (though it was a bit ground-breaking for me), but this book changed the way I approach writing and showed me very painfully that I don't have my own landscape.
estranged husband! robert eats you off the bone as an attachment to his apology.
tags: mild angst. fluff. wet dog husband robert core. oral (f!) receiving. come yell at me if i missed something.
wc: 4.5k
author's note: merry christmas. have... a really mediocre one-shot. i'm trying the whole 'you can make it good later' thing (spoiler: it isn't working). lowkey spent two months on this thing and i physically can't look at it anymore so i figured i would just post it before i delete yet another draft. but heey. i'm back. sort of (?). are dispatch folks still around?
—
Sexual frustration comes in all shapes and sizes.
The irony of that turn of phrase isn’t lost on Robert as he gnashes his molars so hard his old fillings start to crumble. He gropes for the powdery stuff in the lumps of his saliva and chokes on a whine before it can make it out of his throat. One by one, glass shards go down, clinking into the sink.
He knows he’s a lost cause when the wound buzzes in that faint, raunchy way, like a cockhead microfissure or a dry, postprandial wank in a bathroom stall. He tries to recall closing that ‘real passionate amateur’ tab, winces to wonder if the thing might blast at full volume were he to unlock his phone just now.
Keeping his skin taut for you, he watches you yank at another shard, and it takes every scope of his selective faith to pray a boner away. Except that his words—still less prayers—are outnumbered by mental images of fingers being pushed into cunts, or rather, a cunt, singular—dependably with the pubes trimmed into a lovely stripe. Though, Robert realises, he can no longer vouch for the fantasy’s being accurate. All kinds of shit can happen in a few months. Say, one can blow up a multimillion-dollar family heirloom suit and lapse into a coma. And undertake a strange job rehabilitating emo ex-cons. And forget his wife’s bikini wax preferences while he’s at it, since plotting vendettas makes one forget that happily married people are supposed to have sex every now and then.
That, among many other washed-out superhero variables, finally rouses in Robert an awareness of his surroundings: the months of neglect having piled up into grudges, or the looks you give him narrowly ranging from staring daggers to flashy eyerolls.
Under your roof, affection is a concept—an elusive endearment mumbled into the pillow when your brain feels too foggy to hand out animosity first thing in the morning. And the touch? It’s gone. Fucking vetoed; and if you squeeze an ‘is’ in there—that one would be accurate, too. Only now it’s not about Robert shooing you away whenever you throw yourself at him. No, this new order is an exquisite punishment, the kind of anguish enforced not for atonement, but simply for the knack of it.
What he senses in you is not just anger. Anger, Robert knows his way around, can parry it just deftly enough to secure a make-up fuck. But this—a toothy, unprocessed, and, worst of all, quiet fury—is a language he’s not nearly fluent in.
And if his frustration comes in all shapes and sizes, yours might’ve just grown to operate within even larger quantifiers. You are a triptych: all evil peers over your shoulder while putting on eyeliner, getting dressed for work with your back to him and weaponising ‘honey’ to adorn an insult. It renders Robert small and taciturn. Perhaps—no, definitely—hard too, for your being so erotic about it doesn’t help matters.
So when the velocity of Phenomaman’s lurch off some poor McGee’s car sent windshield scrap straight through Robert’s skin, he didn’t rush to the infirmary. His was a quiet plot of knocking at Blazer’s door and asking to clock out early just this once.
It’s alright, Blazer, but I don’t think an infirmary visit is going to cut it—I’d much rather someone give me stitches. Get it? I’m explaining the joke so— Yeah. Am I absolutely sure I’m going to need stitches? Yeeeep. Positive. Some of these are, like, totally stuck deep. Better hurry up before a piece or two gets swept into my bloodstream and sends me into a cardiac—Wait, that’s a myth? Interesting. Never heard that one before. Oh? I should just go? Sweet. Thank you, Blazer. I owe you one.
The rest is history.
Of one overworked, underfucked, and just perfectly culpable dispatcher, coming home with shrapnel in his chest as his only means of getting you to undress him.
He grips the edge of the bathtub and bumps his head on the cool tiles, hissing when you pry at the last piece of glass with your tweezers. The final pull is worth a half-whimper—not for the meek pain, but for your standing between his legs, no doubt aware of a certain itch of his growing heftier. Robert doesn’t rule out the possibility of it being your aim exactly: what better way is there to torture someone egregiously horny than to toss them scraps of domestic tenderness?
His eyebrows twitch as he searches your face for hints of your having enjoyed this. None please him. There’s minor stuff Robert could overstate if he squints: your cheek moving when you bite it while wiping his blood with an alcohol-soaked cotton pad, or the gap of your tits flashing when you bend to dispose of the surgery’s aftermath.
Intentional or not, he claims those little blessings. They never last with you, not anymore, and the reminder comes soon enough: the shrapnel’s gone, but so are your hands anywhere near him.
“All done,” you mutter, and it lands with that clenched-jawed strain of a ‘here damn’. The speed with which you reach for the soap doubles down on the delivery. It has Robert feeling so dirty he takes a whiff of his armpit when you’re not looking: just to make sure it’s only blood you’re so keen on washing off your fingers.
“Thanks, doc.” Robert sighs, craning his neck to assess the damage. He finds fresh blood oozing out of the little dents, dabs a huge drop with a gauze right before it plops onto his pants. “Only I’d appreciate it if you applied the bandage like I asked you to. Don’t they teach you that in, like, grade nine?”
Your eyes follow him when he jumps off the tub, and Robert pretends to fumble for more gauze just for the thrill of feeling pursued. Stepping behind you, he cocks his head back and finds your reflection glaring at his.
“Sorry,” you chide, turning off the tap. “I used to skip that class.”
“Which one?” Robert snorts. “Basic first aid or Act Like You Don’t Hate Your Husband For Five Minutes?”
“Why would there be a marriage-related class for freshmen?”
“At the rate things are going in this country, I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that got added to the curriculum—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Robert?” The corner of your mouth twitches. Water drizzles everywhere when you face him, and that over-the-shoulder leer gains an even meaner tilt: all stiff posture and shaky hands, like you’re charging to jump him, or stab him in the jugular with the tweezers.
Robert’s insides twist at the thought. It’s a bad case of heartburn gone off course—that stupid thing his fear does when mixed with compulsive depravity—and he feels the warp settle in his crotch instead, a kind of brittle pull out to get his every vein.
He stares at you and sees capillaries burst from sobbing under his cardiac monitors, flaky nails bitten down to the quick, a swollen lip sliced precisely where a chipped incisor must’ve gone at it a tad too hard, and—finally—salty, smudged eyes of almost-a-widow.
He stares at you, mutt-like, with a stupid itch between his ribs, and for a second, it turns him into the hottest thing a man can be: a little bit scared of you.
“I think you should be asking what the fuck is wrong with the Republican party.” The joke plops out of him with a voice-crack—a lame, dehydrated stumble. “Look, I’m the last person to root for weird, dog-whistley classes. Do you know how many fresh-out-of-high-school villains we recruit?” He bites his cheek and presses the gauze tighter against his wounds. Caked blood comes off his sparse chest hairs—a smooth, tooth-grating peel.
“Robert,” you warn, arms crossed.
“Well, I’ll tell you. A lot. Like—ah—so many we’re running out of units to put them in.”
“Stop that.”
“Can you imagine the absolutely insane increase to the teenage criminal demographic after a bunch of creepy dudes implement a weekly glaze of family values? Oh, the work hours I’d have to pick up—”
“Robert, please.”
That does the trick. Sends his half-assed peace offering back up his guts.
Then comes the panic. The type to land when jokes don’t: a tempest that has Robert listing five things he can see (a toothbrush glass, your fluffy slippers, paper towels, the flickering light bulb, glass shards on a bloody napkin). He moves on, chews on his cheek until his mouth is filled with spit and copper, and broods upon failing to find you among the four things he can touch.
The grounding exercise gets discarded.
“Okay,” he says—a half-groan through gritted teeth. “Whatever did I do to make you drop the please bomb?”
Your indignation startles him.
It punches him in the balls with that sweet, colossal force of something underestimated. But he dares a step closer. Clenches his fist and feels sharp, wet nips where alcohol is drying under his hangnails.
Leaning back against the sink, you treat him to a scoff. It has your throat take up a narrow, mean shape—an angry bout on lump swallowing, with damp, furious eyes to match. Filmy pupils, tendons taut, arms unfolding. All of you suddenly so pointy and so furious: from goose-flesh-mussed body hair to the outline of your knees.
Terrifying. Bitter. Fucking hot.
“Oh, I don’t know,” you chide, with a kind of hoarse sass, so the scope of your resentment really dawns on him this time around. “Had me pick shrapnel out of your chest?”
Robert frowns again: in a slippery, hallmark way that always makes his forehead crease and his brows twitch an elusive little jolt.
He takes it all in—the stance of yours like a warrior’s in a tank top, the impatient twitch of your fingers, flexed muscles cueing ‘duck, or else’. Closing his eyes, he sees romcom clips: you, biting his ears symmetrical, throwing soap and toothpaste at his head, yelling, pulling, slapping, and crushing him with your thighs.
“Would you rather it fester there so I get sepsis?” He asks, if only to switch the mental image before the romcom gets to move onto its less safe-for-work bits.
“No, I’d rather you go to the infirmary the second it got there. You know, so you don’t get sepsis.” You smile at him—vague, deceitful, shedding a slipper to scratch your left calf.
“Well, I happen to be a considerate coworker, honey.” Robert crosses his arms for that cheeky lean forward of his, yet the sass comes out of him in a sloppy deadpan —not nearly as lewd-yet-leaden as when you say it. “The nurses can’t exactly get sidetracked by a tiny scratch when there’s a superhero bursting in for a penis reattachment every four minutes.”
“Yeah, because it would make so much sense for a dickless guy to come back to the office while actively bleeding out. Who needs 911 when there’s an underpaid nurse just waiting to slap a bandage on it, right?”
Robert flinches, nose scrunching: an admission to catching whiff of his own bullshit. He finds it smells of mouthwash, shaky hands, and lymph—a pungent, shameful thing like those nasty Toskovat’ testers you’d ordered for him as a gag a few years ago.
He finds it you can smell the lies on him, too—only you were always more lenient toward niche fragrances.
You lose that wan smile, and Robert reads it a bidding to (his) beheading, adds up unrequited hip squeezes and your sloshing his latte art into thermos flasks unaddressed, and the taste of your laughter hollowing in his mouth day by day like a spreading cavity, and the stiff pull of back muscle under the first stream of a lukewarm shower when the force of old habit makes you forget the curtain.
He thinks about hacking and dirty warehouses, and that one week he dreamt of ripping out Shroud’s teal-ish, ratty eyes yet couldn’t remember the exact shade of yours even if the masked motherfucker himself held a gun to his head.
He stares at the nape of your neck in the streaky mirror, plays with the gauze poking him in the weakened pecs, and concludes that the closest he’s been to death was never inside that suit: it was the neglect of you that almost killed him.
For that, he surrenders. In that special, canine way of his. Looking up at you and clenching his jaw until it fucking creaks—like the very last endeavor of a man who’s about to enjoy his sentence.
Because Robert knows: whatever you pick—a noose or a mere slap—involves your hands around his neck. And today, he’s one touch-starved, guilt-ridden bastard.
“You want the truth?” He mutters. “Fine. I absolutely could’ve gone to the infirmary. Hell, I could’ve done this myself in the shitter.”
“Well, at least that played out.” You snort—discreet, improper, biting your thumb to stop a laugh from bursting through your teeth. All in vain, because the second you nod to the toilet, that knish, stupid sound bounces off the bathroom walls, and Robert imagines licking it off the pink tiles.
Fuck it, he thinks. If fortune favors the bold, chances are the girl who’d agreed to‘in sickness and in health’ might just share that preference.
He makes it across the bathroom before you’re done choking on your huff, savors the slow, baffled blink as you find Robert standing so close the wet plop of him sucking on his cheek makes you both wince.
“I was dying for you to touch me.”
There.
The sweet weight of admission pares off his lungs—a clean pinch-of-a-peel that takes his breath away for a hot half-minute.
“So—“ You throat bobs—slow, stricken, eyes flickering up and sideways, and Robert guesses you must be using his freckles for the very panic-attack remedy he’d cut short earlier.
“So?” He prompts. Same cheeky lean forward. Same head tilt so emphatic he can feel his neck muscles pull.
Stooping to stare you down, he thinks he’s going to snap, chews his cheek into a mess so shredded it starts twitching—imperfect timing. The least perfect timing, actually, for when you yank him into a kiss, all he can think about is his breath stinking of penny rust.
Nevertheless, a commotion of limbs and mouths. Hands—sweaty, tingly, grabby in a way that almost punctures. Hands—in his face, in his hair, dragging over and out, then around the nape, with a grip like a claw protraction, holding so close his front teeth crash into yours. A terse sorry is spat into your mouth with a plump, greedy smack. You don’t acknowledge it. You just smile and swallow the coppery taste of his trying to eat himself alive. Which, against Robert’s hopes, absolutely does reek of pennies.
Pulling away, he grins back a fragile thing. It goads in him a bratty notion to try his luck: something smug and toothy and nipping at your thumb so raunchy and mock-mean. He runs his tongue over your fingers and tastes shaky, slipshod love, cool mint Listerine, salty skin—the lewd appeal of a choking hazard.
“So,” he prompts, “you were saying.”
You twitch—an un-sexy, awkward lean back with a dull bang against the mirror. Trying to hop onto the sink, you almost knock a toothbrush cup to the floor—glass clanking, hands peeling off his neck and into rusty reflexes.
“S-so,” you stutter. “You’ve decided walking headfirst into a blast was the way to go?”
Robert laughs. “You were impervious to begging, grovelling, and breakfasts in bed. Not much wiggle room if you ask me.” After that, an ugly, chocked-up gulp. He straightens, tongue-in-cheek and sheepish; props himself on his fists in that jaunty way which makes his muscles flex. “I didn’t hurt myself on purpose, though.”
“Right,” you chide, a huff through clenched teeth. “You just risked a severe infection to be felt up. No big deal.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Robert, that’s…”
“Manipulative?” He suggests. “I’m aware.” Then, an addition—quiet, culpable. Doe-eyed. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, that. But also—” You trail off—grinning, deviant. He feels your fingers in his hair again—mussing, raking, swiftly pinching his ear in a trice. “Fucked up—” you murmur, emphasis on fuck—“careless”—you nose his temple, mouthing the sore skin as if trying to lick it better—“and really hot. In a pathetic sort of way.”
Robert snorts. Fights an urge to object for a second or so, but a head tilt is all that takes to make him admit defeat. Suddenly, he’s watching his gruff reflection mount from above the back of your head, every line of his taut like all wretches same: pathetic alright. He swallows, then bends down to moan a clipped little ‘whatever’ into your shoulder, and before he knows it, you’re cradling his face again, wet tongue pressing into his—a slick cue to keep up.
His neck joins the tempest. Terribly out of practice, it cranes this way and that: muscles pulling, vertebrae snapping, tauter, thinner, unsound, breakable. The gritty bob of his throat punches you in the fingers as you treat him to the noose he’s been so hard for. And god is he hard. Sweet and cross and bulky against the sink, so irksomely caught in between his thighs while he’d much rather be spreading yours. And when you move, so does he, with your hands around his throat like a tight leash: pliant and shaky and so canine he’s just one growl short of rabid.
“Baby,” Robert pleads, and the novelty of it makes his spit curdle. He finds he’s missed the shape of that endearment, lets the darling weight of it pin his tongue to the floor of his mouth. “Baby,” he tries again, feels you hum into his lip through a peeved nip. “Slow down.”
You do.
Glassy-eyed and breathless, you look up at him with a frown that cries concern, and he rushes to kiss it away, pulls you by the shins, and plucks a ticklish gasp from between your lips. Everything halts: blood circulation, the horny pitter-patter of hearts, shaky mirror, curling toes, closed fists—the end of the world within these pink tiles.
When it’s over, he presses his forehead against yours with a slow, bone-fusing force.
“Are you upset with me?” he asks, staring at your lips.
“Yes,” you bite back. “Furious.”
“I can work with furious.”
“Can you, now?”
“Look—” He exhales. “I know what you’re gonna say. No one wants to come home to a rigid man whose only source of arousal is clubbing a masked evil fuck to death.”
At that, you frown. Leaning back just so, you slide down the mirror and shake your head—arms crossed, chest so taut Robert has to look away before your cleavage diverts him into senseless gaping again.
“I’m not mad at you trying to avenge your father, Robert,” you say, and he knows you mean it from that courtly headshake alone. “But I can’t stand for you going nuts over it. Look where that almost put you.”
Despite himself, Robert chuckles. “A divorce attorney’s office?”
That earns him an up-down. A kind that hisses ‘how dare you joke at a time like this?’ You roll your eyes—showy, a tad preposterous, and mumble, “No, you idiot. An early fucking grave. I thought I’d lost you. And then there you were. In my arms again. Alive. Moderately well. Back. But you just had to get that SDN job the very day your fucking legs started working again, huh?”
“Oh, the horrors. An office job! I'd better start bringing pepper spray to work in case our wet-vomit janitor decides to drown me in my cubicle.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know. Sorry. I—“ he falters. Scratches at his nape so hard it could hold its own against his bleeding chest. “I’ve been a shitty husband—no point trying to argue that case. Now,” he stumbles over a chuckle, a crunchy sound bouncing off his dry throat, “this is the part where I’m supposed to smother you in promises of no more lonely nights, ERs, or cold shoulders. But we both know you’d rather fast forward to where I actually ditched my vendettas and started making it up to you.”
“No,” you whisper, and—oh finally—he senses forgiveness in the lilt of your voice, feels his stomach do that churning, terrified thing again.
“No?” he confirms. Arches a brow with what little charm his weakened muscles can muster.
“No.” You nod—a beautiful contradiction. One followed by you finally unfolding your arms for a hug that ends up yet another wet kiss to his jaw. “Don’t you dare ditch shit. Avenge away. Just don’t forget to take a breather every now and then. Who knows,” you taper off, building suspense—a smile that stretches against his skin with a coy, moist click, “maybe you’ll find it easier to plot after a dinner date and some head.”
“Wow. Way to ruin a good apology. And here I thought you’d appreciate me pouring my heart out—”
“Oh, I do appreciate it. But tonight I need you pouring out less noble discharge. You can send me a statement of regret later.”
“God, foul-mouthed and a corporate drone. Whatever should I do with you, Mrs Robertson?”
“Whatever you’re told, of course.”
Of course.
Kneeling, he thinks of sublime things: the jumpy anticipation of your fitting around him in a trice, the shaky spasm of the between of your knees, and how it’s sure to wreck him into a pile of weightless bones. He spreads your legs and stares at you all slack-jawed piety, eyes large and gentle and void of a single appropriate thought.
It’s an accolade gone porn-plot, with your fist in his hair like a sword slicing through. You beam at him and he beams at you, trading smiles—a kind of teenage, raunchy excitement that’s only ever rekindled by abstinence. He leans in to nip at your thigh, makes sure you see his shoulder blades sail-taut for you. Slips a “Can I?” in there—desperate, whisper-coarse, if only for the thrill.
But oh, what a generous arch off the sink it earns him. What an urgent, hissy “Please” and “Now” and “Oh fuck”—triple threat.
Robert grins—for the umpteenth time—slow and blurry around the corners. Taking off your shorts, he keeps his eyes on the space between your brows—like he’s trying to win a staring competition.
He thinks of what to say to you, pores over his scattered semantics one by slurred one. “Gorgeous,” he mumbles, lamely. Kisses your knees—thrice and frantic, as if his way into your pants is some kind of rite he must complete in the finest fettle. He’s so rusty, and it’s written all over him as he works your underwear down, more so when the awkward dangle of it around your ankle prompts his heart to skip a vitally-long percussion.
When he gains his heartbeat back, his breathing goes full volitional mode—in a sense that it stops being manual since there’s no room for it with his tongue up your cunt, and he has to lean back a few inches to figure out where to rest his nose. At first, muscle memory fails him, lays on him a neck cramp so itchy that Robert winces. He endures it with a whimper, a strained, pleasureless kind that makes you yank his head up to check on him. And when you hold him in place, he sees stars—white, streaky eye-floaters eating at his retinas with the artificial might of a light-bulb.
“Are you okay?” You ask, concerned. Sort of sombre-gentle.
Robert licks his lips. Grabs your ankles to throw them over his shoulders. “I’m okay,” he says, yet instantly marks it a lie. He’s the furthest thing from okay. He’s a ticking bomb threatening a bust in his pants. “I’m okay,” he lies again, “I’m— Yeah. A little out of form is all.”
“Well, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. I really, really do.”
You smile, head thrown back. Canines flashing, throat tightening. “Then quit fumbling,” you say. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He starts over. Slower this time. Less frantic licking, more flat-tongued shoves—like a comeback for the celibacy you’d imposed on him. His nose presses into your pubes—trimmed and neat and soft just as he remembers them—and he peels his eyes to catch the curve of your mouth, the falling in shape of a perfectly round moan. It tells him that he must be doing something right, strokes his ego back into a firm ‘still got it”.
You lift your ass off the sink, squirming. Hitting his face with a fevered jerk that has Robert licking up the length of you, finally deft enough to claim a “Right there”. Robert wishes he could smile against you. Folds his tongue so it moves in a round-ish pattern from slit to clit—no sucking, no poking, just the way you like it.
It lasts forever. It doesn’t last at all. But here he is, a lover reborn—faster, but not jagged, deeper, but not boundlessly so—just enough, just right, just perfectly patterned. He sticks to that rotation. Lets the clench-unclench of your fingers in his hair guide him.
Another senseless babble, this one with a strained profanity he can’t quite make out. He steals another peek—the heaving chest, the flush of your face, the string of saliva dangling off your palate. All of it a familiar substitute for I’m close. All of it praise and stupor and rib-smashing anticipation.
Force is what you need. Robert remembers that much. He squeezes your thighs—white-knuckled, deep to the bone—and watches you pinch your nipple so hard his own chest starts tingling.
You point your toes. Crush his head with your legs with such sloppy cruelty that Robert’s blood pressure spikes in his temples. And when you cum, it’s a drawn-out whine into a mouthful of wet hair—a stupefied, glassy-eyed endeavour. Bent double, you fuck the aftermath into his face, feel him wrangle so his stubble doesn’t scratch your thigh into pieces.
Grinning, Robert takes his mouth off you. Shakes your fingers out of his hair with a—yet again—endearing, canine shrug. The beaming comes back tenfold, only now there’s something fond about it, like a slow-blink love confession. Getting off his hollow knees, he tries to hold onto the thought, drags your hair out of your mouth to suck a few lazy kisses into your bottom lip.
“Are you okay?” He asks. Swats the stringy remnants of your common disaster off your shaky thigh.
“Can’t you tell from the optics?” You laugh, nosing a sated exhale into his collarbone.
“I can’t tell… Period.” Robert mumbles. Clenches his jaw and winces at it locking in place with a dull click. “I think I just pulled my tongue.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s impossible.”
“Well, it is a muscle.”
“Sure. You know what else is a muscle?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Why, do you want me pull that, too?”
“Maybe." You grin. "Keep being a smartass, and I might just throw in some contusion.”
