SAY WHAT YOU WANT AND I’LL KEEP IT A SECRET . . . ft. Sae Itoshi
wc: ~6.1k
cw: NSFW—MINORS + AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DNI. set post-canon/during 2026 World Cup; all characters depicted are 21+. m!reader (anatomy described as cock + hole), smut + angst, NDA, light drug + alcohol use, very lightly referenced internalized homophobia, spit and drool, spit as lube, oral sex (Sae receiving), hair pulling, throat fucking, face slapping, ass slapping, choking, anal fingering, anal sex, dirty talk + pet names (slut, whore, good boy), mean Sae, rough sex, doggy -> prone my beloved, speculative af, just a sad grindr hookup rly
r: thank u to my sweety silas for hatching this idea with me. dl sae is real to me and i will always want to put him in a situation
To say it’s a nice hotel room is a gross understatement.
Everything in the room shimmers mutedly, even the mundane belongings he’s brought with him—a crystalline bottle of cologne, a robe dangling from the hook on the bathroom door, the like—which is unsurprising because of who he is, and also the occasion for which he’s in the city. The midcentury modern chair you’re perched upon is much comfier than it looked—low to the ground, so you’re not sure if you should splay out or draw your knees up to you. But the sheer presence of him freezes you somewhat between, and you sit a little meekly, legs sort of half crossed under you at your ankles. You crack your knuckles subtly as he moves around unhurriedly. And you try not to stare, but he’s very pretty.
Newport Beach glitters behind him. All the white terracotta is dusted deep blue and purple in the coastal evening; aquatic light from pools below dot the dimness (you consider, briefly, the irony of containing such an element in a place like this) along with fluorescent gemstones of windows, green and blue and mostly rectangles of yellow. Palms ruffle in the night air and the Pacific is only a suggestion by the jagged bit of coastline allowed to you from where the blackout curtain is pulled back; the further out you look, the more the lights dissolve, until the water is indistinguishable from the sky.
It’s so beautiful it almost takes your breath away. You’ve never been up this high in Orange County, and you suppose a lot of people don’t ever get to be.
It’s under relatively odd circumstances you find yourself up here, too. Also in yellow rectangles are your previously-sent messages, in which you played not too interested and yet not too detached, the way you do with every other guy on that godforsaken app—in your defense, you didn’t set out expecting to woo an international football star. It was just that his abs looked really good, and anything other than a blank profile insistently hitting you up with hey. pics? ass pic? hi. pic4pic? is a grail of its own kind. You don’t waste time tapping. Besides, his bio spelled it out—DL visiting looking for right now—and you also don’t like to waste time negotiating your pleasure. You could practically hear your friends chiding you for even entertaining those two letters—DL. Have some self-respect, they’d say, not quite half joking, but you’re not in the business of telling people how to live their lives. What went on in so-called straight dudes’ consciences after you fucked them wasn’t really your concern. Something was pleasing about such candidness, anyway, however incomplete and rooted in convenience—here’s my shame, have me anyway, even just for a second, if you can stomach it. Anyway, you weren’t looking for a life story, or even a love story—just an evening.
It obviously wasn’t the first time he’s done this, either. You appreciated that he also didn’t seem like a time waster. The guidelines were clear from the first message after the one where he told you you’re cute: he doesn’t kiss, he doesn’t bottom, and—get this—he’s a high-profile athlete with a reputation to uphold.
You had shaken your head a little, eyes narrow, smirking despite yourself. It was like that, huh? You’re not stupid; it’s Newport Beach during the World Cup.
You tapped the link to a PDF: an NDA, which came immediately in the wake of a picture of a heavy bulge through athletic shorts. His hands were sexy, a little veiny, and the dark, wet dime-sized bead of precum against the gray material he held himself through made it evident he was touching himself already.
But the twinge of excitement you felt, suspended in the momentary mystery of who he could be and which team he played for, was lightly subdued by such a procedural interruption. You’re maybe the last person on earth impersonality scares—it tends to pique your curiosity, if anything, you think—but filing intimacy into a digital cabinet before it could be enacted? That’s new. New to you; probably very ordinary to him. You had tilted your head at your phone a little as you considered the degree of piteousness you could feel for a man in a situation such as this.
Nonetheless, you scanned the document for what you could divulge to your friends later. The answer was, predictably, not much. But it was a short thorough read, and it didn’t look terribly suspicious, so you scribbled on it and sent it back over.
After all, if it wasn’t going to be you, it’d certainly be someone else.
The reward for this was the stunning, angular face of Sae Itoshi, looking a bit up at you through his phone camera—shirtless, from an angle where you could see his shorts slung low on his thin waist.
Not that you’re particularly well-versed in the world of soccer, but you’d have to live under a rock, especially in the SoCal area in the summer of 2026, not to have seen his face along with many others on more than a few promotional materials. He stood out, with his rosedust-colored hair and general aversion to smiling politely as his colleagues tended to. But even before all that ramped up, you’d scrolled past a few of his interviews on socials before; strange, that it would be him, you think. In the limelight, he seemed like he didn’t care about much. Funny how easily indifference passes for mystery when someone’s attractive enough. The internet had spent Sae Itoshi’s late teenage-into-early adulthood years sanding him down into archetypes; stoic prodigy, too cool for interviews, too talented to bother performing gratitude. What you sense is that no one ever seems to imagine that a person can look detached because they’re exhausted from keeping whole facets of their being hidden. And he’s not close to the first professional athlete your radar would ping, much less would strike you as one to go out of his way to keep it so strictly on the low. All just goes to show how dumb all that parasocial shit is. But it’s also not terribly shocking, either, you guess. Men’s sports are like that. Either way, it deflated you a little the longer you stared at him on your screen—his prominent collarbones, his toned abdomen, his biceps, the tent in the same gray shorts from the first photo. Anyway, how bummed could you really be if you were about to hook up with Real Madrid’s star midfielder?
You tried not to think about it too hard all the way up until you slid quickly through the door into the line of his pressing, empty gaze and to the chair upon which you now sit as he saunters about, still shirtless, incredibly delicious but slow, like he’s trying to give some invisible audience the impression that he’s not overly eager about anything, especially not for what’s supposed to happen. And, again, you really do try not to stare at him—not because he’s difficult to look at or you don’t want to make him feel weird but because fame tends to trick you into thinking you’ve already seen someone. But sitting here, watching him, you get the feeling that the public version of Sae had never occupied three dimensions. Also, you’re a little bothered from his photos, a little impatient to get your hands on him, a little unsure of what to say—or if you should say anything at all—to a really handsome, really closeted athlete whose room you’re in solely and only to fuck him in a way that will probably never leave the cover of night and non-disclosure. You pretty much clarified everything over text. People had informed him before that his demeanor comes off rather cold, he told you. You got that, you had poked jokingly. Very funny, he’d replied. A brief moment of humorous gratitude passed between you when you said you didn’t mind; if anything, it made him sexier. But as you sit, it’s like you used up all the banter over the phone and now there wasn’t any left. That’s okay, though. The message where he said he’s into you, that it’d be a good time even if it didn’t necessarily show on his face, sticks to your ribs. You know asking him to show it might be asking for too much, but you don’t mind, really.
“Do you care if I smoke?”
But before you can nod no, that you don’t care (which you were going to, anyway), he’s already twisting the dropper off a sage-green vial with a label that proudly reads Product of California, USA and sticking it under his tongue to deposit a couple drops of what looks like olive oil. Of course, Sae Itoshi would never actually, literally smoke his marijuana, the same way he wouldn’t let you more than three steps past the door without requiring the removal of your shoes, or wouldn’t permit you entrance to his penthouse suite if there was anyone else in the hallway. Walk directly past my door if anyone else is around. Don’t even look at it and don’t turn back until you’re alone, one of the many blue chat bubbles you’d rescrolled through on your way here read. He doesn’t offer you any of the tincture.
You shift a little as he throws something in a duffel bag here, checks something on his phone there, draws the blackout curtain forward a bit. Finally, he plops onto the foot of the big plush bed, kicking off a pair of expensive-looking house slippers as he does. A drawn-out sigh leaves him. He doesn’t look over at you, opting instead to lean back on his hands, and you quietly admire the slope of his torso as he breathes. Shoulders tense. His composure is very obviously manufactured, and you’re unsure if he lets you see this because he possesses a legally binding document ensuring you can’t expose such a thing to the public, or if he just doesn’t care. Maybe he thinks you’re too dumb to realize, or too much of a starfucker to care yourself.
Either way, the draw against Cape Verde in the first round was rough. You do not have to ask him personally about this or even be observing him right now in order to know that. You’ve seen the headlines, all the way up until this afternoon—Spain’s listless performance won't cut it against better teams at World Cup—after the win against Uruguay on an error. It gnaws at you a bit, that two shaky parts of his life are colliding in this room, and you’re here to watch. No, not watch—participate.
He runs a hand through the fringe he keeps pushed back when he plays; right now, it sweeps across his forehead. You know enough to know that no one ever really sees him like that. He’s obviously somewhere between pissed and defeated, and putting forth an artifice of indifference. There are too many things lingering in the room to appear indifferent about, in your opinion, but it’s another thing you’ll just have to not to think about too deeply. He’ll be fine. If he wanted you to therapize him, he’d have said that, but he didn’t, and he doesn’t. He just wants to fuck. However this goes, you remind yourself, he’s making a fat wad of cash either way.
People would kill for this life. It seems almost insulting to imagine someone could be lonely in a suite this expensive. You’re reading too far into the ephemerality, surely; after all, everything in a hotel room counts on guests leaving before there is a chance for an impression to be made. The mattress won’t remember the shape of one body before the next inhabits it, and the stocked minibar will never run empty. You wonder if he’s a drinker. It doesn’t look like it, but he’s only been here for less than a day. You make a mental note to help yourself later. A liminal space has never made you itch so terribly.
And the least you can do is treat him like a human being.
“You waiting for something?” he murmurs over his shoulder at you, cutting through your thoughts. It’s not bitey, but it is impatient. He doesn’t cast his sidelong glance at you as much as he does the wall.
You rise and make your way to him—one, two, three, four, five, six intentional steps until you’re turning to stand before him, one hand playing at the hem of your shirt, the other dangling limply.
Sae looks through you in your pause, sultry, unamused green eyes tired as they lift up to yours. They flit down once, toward the floor, and then back up to you. You understand this as your cue to drop to your knees.
As you sink onto the shag carpet you momentarily imagine yourself from a third perspective. And from this perspective, you speculate further about what Sae’s type in women might be; you imagine your own hair, but long and in a cute, athletic ponytail. While you shuffle closer to him, trailing semi-confident fingertips up his thighs to his waistband, you envision a set of understated French-tipped nails doing so instead. It’d be easier all around—tidier for the tabloids if anyone ever found out; star footballer spotted with mystery girl. His PR team would grit their teeth, a couple new sponsors would pop out, fans would speculate for a week or two, and then the world would move on. Sae is the kind of man who could build a life out of things like that, if he wanted; he has the face for it, the money, the path paved before him. But he hasn’t, and you’re here, tugging his shorts off his hips, down his muscular thighs, down his calves, looking up at him with want.
He kicks his shorts aside and places a firm hand on your jaw, peering down at you from behind the prettiest lashes you think you’ve ever seen on someone as you wet your lips and wrap your fingers around the base of his cock. The third perspective is gone—was never there to begin with. Just you and him in this room, like so many rooms he keeps returning to, where everything must disappear by the light of day.
The thought should flatter you, really, that in all the possibilities available to him, he chose you. But the longer you spend in his orbit—and it’s not even been two hours—that thing that’s been sticking to your ribs drifts down toward your stomach, where you know it will settle like a rock. It’s not really you he's choosing, anyway; rather, a version of desire that isn't real enough to him to threaten the rest of his life.
You push this unsavory line of thinking back out to sea again as you loll your tongue out.
Sae’s fingers skirt from your face into your hair. It’s hardly perceptible how he pushes you toward him, especially with you leaning into the motion so you can hold him to your mouth and lave the flat of your tongue over his frenulum. The closed-mouth sigh he breathes makes his chest flutter. You wonder if he’d let you touch it. And then you hold still and swipe him against you, slowly, arching closer to put better pressure on him, looking up into his striking face to watch his brows stitch together. When you ball up a mouthful of spit onto his tip so you can stroke him fully, once, then twice as you feel his warm, neutral precum mix with it on your tongue, his pretty lips fall open as he draws in a deep, controlled breath and lets it out just so. Laser-focused on you. You, laser-focused on him. If he’s going to battle with this internally, you at least want to make it good. Yes, there is conflict in his gorgeous ocean-colored eyes, and it fills you with the unmistakable urge to be good for him.
When you wrap your lips around his tip and swirl your tongue in honeyed circles, a deep rumble rises from his chest; it makes your stomach and your eyelids flutter in tandem, and you nod against him, suctioning and releasing to make more circles and draw more precum out of him, switching back and forth until his fingers in your hair tighten up. The longer you bob your head, the quicker he wants you, and the fuller his groans come.
And then he pushes. You figured he’d want it rough—a lot of DL guys seem to; it’s a dominance thing—so you move your hand off him and brace yourself against his inner thighs, which flex and twitch lightly as you take more of him in your mouth. Fuck, he breathes headily when you’re halfway down him, I wanna use this mouth; he’s not asking for permission, but you moan around him eagerly, nodding still, to mean yes anyway, just as much as you mean to make him feel good.
So his other hand knots up in your hair, too; you suck in air through your nose, ready—ready for him to guide you down until he’s prodding the back of your throat. You dig your nails into his thighs before slipping a hand down and beneath your own waistband; when you touch yourself, you’re unsurprised to feel yourself leaking and throbbing as he works into you.
Sae’s fingers interlock at the back of your skull, and you know this is where you resign yourself for a bit—you stop nodding, stop bobbing as he thrusts you down once, twice, and three times until you’re buried in the sparse patch of hair at his pelvis. He smells so good, you think, tastes so good, fills you up so good—and he holds you there as you gag around him, shoulders beginning to tremble; if you were looking at him, you could see him throw his soft head of rosy hair back before he lifts you so far up just to slam you back down.
And he makes good on his word. What he does is definitely use you, with no regard for how your scalp burns as he manipulates you up and down his length, uncaring for the pathetic gurgling sounds his cockhead forces out of the corners of your mouth each time he strikes your windpipe. You screw your eyes shut when the tears come—they blur everything anyway—and you falter as you rub yourself, no less content to listen to him grunt and sigh than if he was fucking you in a hole that felt good for you, too.
But his hips are restless even as you let him maneuver you. Sae returns the thrusts to himself double, going from passive to actively fucking into you, and you grasp onto him, squirming backward; you feel his form overtake yours—but Sae holds you, doesn’t let you falter from him as he stands to leverage his hips against your head until he’s standing, knees bent, unwilling to leave your mouth.
Instead of moving you along his cock, he clutches you still in his hold and fucks your face with fervor—balls slapping your chin while you sit like a good boy and take him, clawing at him like you want him to stop but you’re certain you both know you mean the opposite. He mutters something you can’t quite make out over the feeling of him wrenching your jaw open wider and wider to accommodate his relentless thrusts; you feel spools of drool collecting, sticking to your chin. You’re lightheaded. You’re letting up on his thighs as he growls above you; you catch good fucking hole as he batters into you and your eyes are rolling back and he’s trapping you between his knees. Fucking your face, holding you close like he needs you. You want to see him from that third perspective again, becoming a pretty, sweaty mess above you.
Just when you wonder if he’ll cum down your throat, he pulls out of you, punching the air back into your lungs.
And before you can breathe in fully, he’s slapping you hard.
You like the way your ears start to ring when your gasp gets caught in the shock of it; you like the way he doesn’t let go, just to shove himself back down your throat to the hilt again, deliver a few more bruising thrusts to the back of your throat, before he does it all over again.
He pulls out. He slaps you hard. He readjusts your head in front of him to choke you a few more times on his cock, and he repeats this a few times—again, again, again—until you can’t hear anything but your own ragged breathing wearing into rough gags and sobs.
Your senses come back to you after he drops you, and he really does drop you; your palms hit the shag rug as you heave, willing oxygen back to your brain with everything in you. You’re vaguely aware of him settling himself back down on the edge of the bed, but you can’t yet move to see what he wants next. You know what he wants next. You’re hard and leaking all over the carpet, too, and as soon as you can stand to get yourself on the bed next to him, you’ll gladly give it to him.
You’ve done enough psychoanalyzing him, anyway. How about how flushed and needy your cock is after being used so brutally? Why do you crave things like this from men like Sae—men who conflate distance and strength?
Through wet eyes you look up at Sae from the floor, his stone-carved chest and shoulders rising and falling, his cock slick and twitching, and you understand there are some distances no amount of reaching can close. Distance between two people is survivable, navigable—but the distance between a man and himself is an unscalable mountain. And you, you know, are unequipped to give a man like Sae the tools to begin.
Besides, you know why you do this, and it’s much simpler than why he does. You like sex. You’re young and hot and live in LA. You’re a huge sadomasochist—yes, that’s it. Maybe, you think innocuously, as if you have never thought this before (you have): you just like seeing something in men like Sae break. And you also like it when broken men break you a little bit.
And that doesn’t make you better or worse than him. You don’t even need that line of thinking. If anything, all that does is make you hurt more for him. The big difference between you and Sae is you’re into something, and he’s into something he can’t admit.
It’s really, truly whatever, you think as you push yourself up off the floor. You cough and it aches and you wipe drool and tears from your face with the back of your hand and stand on feet that tingle badly, and he looks bored with a barely-there twinge of dark satisfaction at watching you pull yourself together, and you like it. You bite back a watery grin as you stumble toward him and his open legs; he catches you by the hem of your shirt and slips it up until you raise your arms and let him tear it away.
Brow still furrowed, bangs sweaty, he suddenly tucks his arms back at his sides—like he’s caught himself doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.
But he looks at you. Drinks you in, even if he wants to act like he doesn’t, and the rock drops into your stomach so you let your grin break out fully now, growing like a flame before you wrangle it back.
Still breathless, Sae flicks his sea-colored eyes up to bore into you. “Pants off.”
You oblige, and he continues to gaze at you as you do. You don’t look away from him either, following his eyes as you step out of your boxers; he tucks his bottom lip between his teeth as your cock bobs, and you stand, bare, waiting for him to move.
But he doesn’t, you do. He doesn’t touch you and you don’t expect him to. You slink to him again, reaching for him somewhere in the space between his throat and his pecs, just to see what he’ll do, and he doesn’t disappoint; before you can sling yourself across his lap, his scowl deepens—he grabs your forearms, swinging you to the side of him onto the bed. You hit it and it feels like a cloud, the crazy threadcount sheets and pillowy mattress; one of his thighs wedges between yours as he wrestles you onto your back.
“Uh-uh,” he scolds you before you can link your legs around his waist, shoving you off him before he grabs you hard by the middle and, in a moment of feeling weightless, flips you onto your stomach. You splay out like a bug on impact, wriggling to right yourself, but you’re nowhere near quick enough; Sae and his strong grasp push and pull you around once more, taking you by the hips and yanking your ass up into the air. You yelp while he tells you, “Gonna let me do it like this.”
And you do, folding your arms up by your chest to brace yourself as he arches you down with one forceful hand. Cheek pressed to the bed, you gasp when you feel his cock heavy against your thigh. His other hand palms your ass, spreading you apart for him, and his thumb, coated with what must be his spit, circles your hole.
You flinch as he presses in. He smacks your ass for this.
“Sae,” you whimper.
He drops a glob of spit from above; you flinch at this, too, not because you’re a slow learner but because you know the sting will contrast the chill nicely, and you’re right—he lands another hard smack to your ass, and your breath gets caught between a sigh and a groan and then cut off when he sinks his thumb further into you.
You push back into him just for him to take his thumb out, smack your ass again, mutter slut underneath his breath. “So fuckin’ desperate for it.”
“I want it,” you tell him, truthfully—he pulls your ass apart again, with both anxious hands this time, and watches it recoil before he lands a few more smacks to it, and you whine into each one. “P—please, Sae.”
He leaves one palm firmly on your asscheek, fingertips digging indents into the fat of it as he gives you his index finger. You can’t help the moan that falls from your mouth, and you don’t fall back because you want his cock and now would be a moment to display the fact that you are a quick learner, but regardless, you’re confident he won’t tease you all that much more. You both have things you can’t think about too long. You can’t speak for him, but you just want him in you.
“I can take more,” you tell him, and his middle finger inches into you just like you anticipated because this is surely one of the parts he wouldn’t want to prolong if he wasn’t enjoying it, right? If you weren’t just a hole? You find this undulating obsession with having him admit it troubling. You don’t need that from him like he needs it from himself. It’s certainly not your responsibility to draw it out. Stop thinking like that, you tell yourself.
But he spends another minute or so stretching you out good, scissoring his fingers a bit in your ass to work you open. “Stay still,” he instructs you when you hump into nothing, and you bite the sheet and dig your nails in while your cock twitches with each upward curl of his fingers.
And you whine petulantly when he pulls them out.
“Greedy fuckin’ whore,” he calls you as he aligns his tip with your hole. Another smack, another glob of spit, another smudging of it across you. You have yeses spilling from you as he thrusts himself in in a way that would’ve undoubtedly hurt badly if he didn’t spend that extra bit of time opening you up.
And a full-bodied moan leaves your chest when he bottoms out. You cut it short so you can hear his before you start babbling things to get him moving—fuck, you’re so big, I’m so full, feels so good—but he smacks your ass again and tells you to shut up.
So you do. You clamp your mouth shut and hum moans as he works up a steady pace until you can’t keep it closed anymore and your jaw falls slack against the sheet.
You want to look at him. You have to see him.
So you twist the best you can, trying to glimpse him over your shoulder. In your peripheral, he looks wrecked—hypnotized as he watches himself disappear into you. His hips clap off yours in an obscene notation of rhythm and you feel his blunt nails in your asscheeks, keeping you open for him to ogle with his tongue pressed to the side of the inside of his mouth and pretty, breathy grunts and hisses leaving his lips. God, the sounds he makes are so hot. His abs flex when he hits deep inside you, his biceps, taut and sculpted, keep you in place, and his hair sways dazzlingly; he’s gorgeous behind you, and your moans get louder at the sight.
But he catches you watching him and one coveted hand flies down to shove your face into the bed. He props a leg up and in one vicious swoop, thrusts into you hard and stays there, knocking a shriek out of you that gets muffled hotly against your face; after this, not only does he pick up the speed, but the depth at which he pounds your insides. Suddenly every moan is a scream, every thrust is a punishment, and his hand is wound tight in your hair again, pushing you down and away from him this time instead of towards him and you want to just go limp and feel used. He’s using you. And you’re using him, and the word used echoes around your brain, making your cock jump erratically as Sae begins to grunt. It’s such a pretty sound.
You start to collapse under the force of him until you’re flat against the bed, your sensitive cock jostling against it with each harsh clash of his hips into you. It starts to hurt so good. All the stimulation begins to accumulate in your gut, blanketing that rock from before until it grows so warm and sweet and overwhelming you can’t remember the rock was ever there to begin with. Sae’s fucking your brain out of you, going to leave it leaking out of your spent hole, and you feel the tears again, wet and hot between you and the fabric as he drops to his elbows and cages you in.
You cum hard and loud, shaking and arching and jolting against him and the mattress and he doesn’t care. He’s relentless, splitting you open as the stickiness of your release soils the sheets. He fucks you at that pace until he can’t contain his voice anymore—tells you to fucking take it through open-mouthed moans until he pulls out fast enough to give you whiplash. You whimper all over again as you feel him cum across your ass in hot spurts. It’s like he cums forever and yet at the same time, it’s over too fast. But either way, as you lay there and wait for him to be done, you clench around nothing and wish, in your cockdrunk daze, that he would’ve cum inside you.
And he pushes himself off you to stand and disappear from your field of touch. His heat signature, too far from you. Most DL guys don’t cuddle after, and you didn’t expect him to be any different.
He just tosses a towel onto the bed in your line of sight, next to your unfurling fist, putting a fluffy gray splotch over the bit of window you were gazing out of as he used you until he didn’t need you anymore. You hear his footsteps, light and slow, before the bathroom door clicks shut and the shower turns on.
And you get up quivering all over. After wiping yourself as clean as you can, you retrieve your clothes; you shimmy back into them, feeling uncomfortably damp and dumbly wondering if you can expect to see him before you leave. It’s likely you won’t, you think. Wordless works well for men like Sae, in and out of public life.
It’s funnily appropriate, you think, the isolation he leaves you in. It’s one he knows well, you assume. Less than twelve hours ago, after all, he was tearing across countless television screens internationally, scoring the only Spanish goal of the tournament so far—the prodigal son of Japanese soccer, dull and burning and stunning like a star beginning to die. A spectacle. You’ve always wondered how athletes, or actors, or people with any sort of celebrity status maintain their humanity among the artificial intimacy that colors their lives. Loved by so many, known by none at all. It’s cruel and sad.
You like to think, in the quiet of the penthouse, that you do know some things about Sae Itoshi. But it’s no good, really—of no worth, because you can’t tell anybody, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want to because it wouldn’t be their business. Except it’s Sae’s business—but he, too, turns away from it. You know his body, which is a logistic in the eyes of the world, is going back to being just that under a hot stream of shower water as you reluctantly curl yourself up on a corner of the bed. It is with resignation that you understand he sees himself as national property.
But sadder than that—what makes you shrivel into the corner of the bed you’re going to be expected to abandon very soon—is what he really is, which is, of course, nobody’s at all. Not the public’s, not his country’s or another’s, and most certainly not yours. The loneliness of men like Sae Itoshi doesn’t start or end in stadium tunnels or hotel rooms or on the pitch; it begins somewhere so incredibly private, somewhere he keeps boarded shut with insistence and devotion close to fanatically religious. Sae is the kind of man you could reach for forever and still barely grasp the traces of the self he puts forward as player, competitor, genius, performer.
And the saddest thing isn’t even that Sae can’t be yours—it’s that he can’t bear to belong even to himself.
You pat your pockets for your keys, your wallet, your phone. And you remember the minibar. You sit in its call for a moment and listen to the water and look at the mess on the bed and at the tincture bottle and the cologne and the towel and his slippers and you scrunch your nose up a bit before you make your way over to the display of smoked glass bottles and pellucid whiskey cups. One, two, three, four, you count in your brain as you pour out the rest of the Ciroc Ten Year—looks like he does drink, but only the bougie shit. You roll your eyes as you down it, not counting, breath held. It burns and you like it.
Emptily glancing around the room, like something or someone in it is still waiting for you, you leave the glass on the cart before padding over to slip your shoes on and reach for the door handle. Funny, the room is already forgetting you. Another day and housekeeping will strip the bed, bring him fresh towels. In a week or two some other rich man might order a bottle of wine up here, looking out the big window over these same lonely ribbons of freeway and not suspecting Europe’s best midfielder stood there shirtless and silent and trying to look like he wanted nothing at all in this world. It’ll be like you were never even here. That’s the point of all this, anyway.
The next time you will see Sae Itoshi will be on a television screen, versus Austria at SoFi Stadium. And you will not know anything about him, and it will be a gross understatement for the next guy to say it’s a nice hotel room.
When you get home and mix yourself a vodka soda with Smirnoff No. 21, you find that you smell like him. You wonder who you can tell.
HE SAYS HE'S NO GOOD WITH WORDS BUT I'M WORSE . . . ft. Suo Hayato
wc: ~10.1k
cw: NSFW—MINORS + AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DNI; DARK CONTENT—PLEASE READ ALL TAGS BEFORE PROCEEDING. this is a work of fantasy and fiction and the author does not condone or excuse any depicted behaviors in a real life context. set post-canon; all characters depicted are 20+. afab!gn!reader, established relationship, smut, graphic rape/non-con, whether this is safe safe and consensual is mostly up to reader interpretation, slight predator/prey dynamic, fear play, stalking, semi/public sex, alleyway sex, penetrative sex, oral sex (m!receiving), face fucking, light bondage, struggling, crying, choking, spit, slapping, nonexplicit depictions of dissociation, violence not typical to canon, slightest tiny bit of very open ended comfort at the end sue me i like that shit too
r: tldr suo is really bad at talking about his kinks. LMAO. born entirely of my desire to be violated by him bye enjoy dont look at me
Scary was the word that started this. The conversation, which took place around the table at Pothos, boiled down to the mysterious exterior, the breezy smile that hid everything, the uncanny ability to fuck up an opponent twice his size without even using his fists—yes, Hayato Suo was regarded as scary, first and foremost by his closest aquaintances.
They had gone quiet when you chuckled—relaxed in your seat with your fingers curled around your cup of tea that matched his—and all turned to you; your lover only regarded the table before him with that smile, maybe a smidgen more pleased than usual, as they looked and you proclaimed casually he was nothing of the sort. Half-chewed omurice hung in the stunned silence.
“Bullshit,” Tsuge chimed in, grinning like he’d finally seen through your shtick, while a few others at the table laughed—hesitantly, to be fair, but relieved to have something to grab onto nonetheless. You refused to defer with a smug sip of your tea.
“No, seriously—have you met him?”
You had set your cup down, unbothered, nodding once, deeply. “Intimately.”
Which got a bit more of a reaction: a few more barks of laughter, some hooting, Tsuge flicking his napkin in your direction, a tired groan from a red-faced Sakura. Whatever Nirei was writing in his little notebook was certainly too silly to be of any concern. Does he have a profile on you, too, you wondered briefly? You should ask to see it, you thought. Maybe you could fill in some gaps on Suo’s, too, while you were at it.
“Congratulations, still doesn’t mean you’re not completely delusional,” Sakura grumbled, visibly unhappy. You’d probably ruined his meal with one simple word. You pursed your lips in mock apology.
You were unsurprised by Suo’s lack of comment. It was in character for him to be humble and averse to any sort of spotlight, despite such renown—but his peers aren’t exactly known to let up, and let up they didn’t.
“You’re biased,” someone else added; you hummed, considering that maybe worth agreeing with.
“Or,” you said, crossing your arms over yourself, grin crooked. “You’re all just a little dramatic.”
That earned you a chorus of protests—save from Kiryu, who looked thoroughly amused, Sugishita, who, in notorious Sugi fashion, forewent participation in antics such as these, and Suo himself, who was so quiet he could’ve slipped out of the room without anyone noticing; you didn’t need to look to know how he held himself, all calm and just barely beating you out for most smugly unfazed in the room.
“Dramatic?” Kakiuchi and Anzai’s mouths dropped open in sync. “You’ve seen him fight!”
You lifted your cup again, closing your eyes into the warmth of the drink—an oolong the man in question had suggested because he thought you’d like it based on your taste profile, which he keeps vigilant tabs on, by the way.
The clamor lulled so the group could balk at you once more.
“And he’s efficient,” you conceded agreeably. But, as the saying goes, give an inch. “But that’s not the same thing as scary.”
“That’s—”
“You’re—”
“You know—”
An interlude of collective search for footing.
“—he’s dropped absolute trucks of dudes without t—”
“—taking his hands out of his pockets, yeah,” you finished for them, still easygoing. “You’ve said. But, really, he’s rather gentle.” You cast a tentative glance at the subject in question. “I think, anyway.”
He hadn’t interrupted once; as if having sensed your gaze, he looked to you, too, watching you over his mug with that ever-present smile—somewhat warmer than usual, between entertained and begrudged.
“Gentle,” Sakura bit, irked again, this time by what he’d long ago termed your googly eyes.
“Gentle,” Niriei repeated, as if he wanted to agree but had to really try; pairs on pairs of eyes looked between each other and you and Suo, and you just shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“He’s just careful with what he touches.”
Anzai scoffed for the third? fourth? time. “In a fight, maybe.”
You nodded. “Especially then.”
“Careful,” Suo piped up, finally, and in good humor. “You’re ruining my reputation.”
In an impenetrable moment of secrecy, you tossed your eyes toward him again, still smiling but in a way that indicated you were speaking only to him, now. “Was it that fragile?”
Altogether defeated, a weak, final attempt squeaked out from the far end of the group. “Trying to tell me that guy isn’t scary,” pffts, whatevers, and rolled eyes following. They already knew it was Sisyphean with you. You didn’t entirely catch it as the conversation mercied into something else, inevitably, because when it comes to you and Suo, it can’t hold its ground for long. There’s a way about you two that makes the whole thing feel already decided, like circling a maze with no entrance; there was no rebuttal or continuation as you slipped into your own world at your end of the table. Relentless as class 1-1 is, you wouldn’t be yourself, nor would you be the other half of Suo, if you were unable to shut them down every now and then.
Sakura had tied it off with an utterance like fucking ridiculous or something. Nirei’s equally fascinated and alarmed demeanor that accompanied his frantic scribbling smoothed to a halt, and that was the end of it. Dinner carried on as usual, and everyone parted after just the same. You walked home with Suo as you always did, inviting him in to stay under the same pretense as you do every time—the way to his place from yours is relatively long after an already lengthy trek to yours, so he might as well just crash here. Notably, not that he ever minded making his way to his own abode—but you always insist. He takes no issue with inhabiting your space, anyway. He might prefer it, you think, even if he doesn’t say it.
Which brings you to the way he’s been peering at you since you settled in. You’re on one end of the couch, head against the armrest and your feet in his lap, flicking across your television noncommittally while he reads—or, pretends to. He’s mostly just been looking at you over his book, inquisitive little expression on his features.
“What?” you ask finally, curious grin on your face. He’s obviously wanted you to notice, because he’d be subtler about it if he didn’t.
“You don’t think I’m scary?” Suo asks, joviality mirroring yours, albeit quieter, more calculated. Feigning disappointment—like he wishes you would, just the smallest bit. “Not even a little?”
You laugh, short and dry. “No, not really. Not even after you bullied everyone into silence,” you tease, nudging his middle with your foot.
“Hey, I didn’t bully anyone.”
“You loomed,” you correct with accusational certainty, uncrossing your ankles and crossing them again just to make him work a little for comfort. “But either way—”
Five slender fingers close around your ankle, soft and sudden; the pause you inhabit is a beat too long to pretend it doesn’t exist, and Suo just holds, book still in his line of sight, posture still relaxed.
“That’s what it felt like?” he asks, thumb shifting against your skin, all at once thoughtful and absent. “Looming?”
You shrug loosely, glancing back to the TV, keeping it airy. He knows touch is a weak point for you, and it’s not novel for him to use it against you. Still, you stumble momentarily—but your grin doesn’t. You tell yourself it’s more to appease him than anything. “To them, I’m sure.”
“And what about to you?” he inquires, light but direct—not unlike a therapist.
His attention is fully on you now, no disguises or subterfuge. Your foot flexes slightly in his grip as your pulse ticks, faint and inconvenient, but you know him—he’ll take every bit of leverage he can get, even if he already holds plenty of control. You even have his mind games predicted and down to a science. Suo might make you stutter, but your trick is this: you already know he’ll use it against you, and exactly how. It renders a lot of his menacing ineffective—something he yielded to long ago with you, or so you thought.
You regard him owlishly and shrug again, head swaying side to side deliberately. You’re unsure what he wants from you. “Still nothing in particular.”
He hums, nods a little, and his thumb picks a honey-slow pace at which to trace against you. “You sound so certain about that.”
You huff another laugh, trying to wave it into obscurity. Another reason why you work so well together—one of you pushes where the other holds fast to resistance. Between the two of you, anyway. You make a great team against others, for other reasons. “Oh, please, Haya, we’ve been over this.” It’s true, you have—many times. You’re not exactly a stranger to the multiple facets of your boyfriend; part of that, of course, is the awareness that there are facets you have yet to fully see, but still, you don’t have any reason not to trust him, his restraint, his self-control. You’ve watched him fight—hell, you’ve fought alongside him; you’ve seen him steer and shut down investigations into his character and when looked to for comment, you’ve resigned in similar fashion, happy not to put his stealth in jeopardy, and he’s rewarded you handsomely with knowledge no one else in the universe possesses—like how he doesn’t prefer to sleep around others because it would entail his eyepath undoubtedly being compromised, or what he does eat when he does so in secrecy (he likes agedashi tofu, but you can’t tell anyone).
“I know,” he agrees with a tilt of his chin, studying you thoroughly. “In front of other people, at least,” he reminds you. “Like today.”
Your brow shoots up. “Oh,” you say slowly, more like a question—with the curiosity from before just a little reserved. If a new facet is about to emerge, you’re nothing if not attentive, after all.
He closes the book, tosses it mindlessly onto the coffee table. “We don’t have an audience right now, is all I mean,” and although his tone is casual and his movements unsuspecting—like he’s ready to move on from here—you feel aware of the air in the room, and of his hand, still firm around your ankle.
You could pull away, easily, but you haven’t. He would let you, if you wanted to.
“That doesn’t change your answer?” he asks.
You tilt your head, hesitating before you question, “Should it?”
“No.” And he just looks at his hands, now unoccupied other grasping your opposite ankle. “Why?”
“Because you’re acting like it should. Or something.” Your grin rises back to your cheeks, a little uneasily now—you hadn’t realized that it’d fallen in the first place.
Your sweet Hayato, ever the trickster. He shifts. He’s abrupt, but not aggressive, just so your legs slide further across his lap as he sits forward, his grip adjusting; he’s trained in on you like a sniper, leaning over you, scooting to you, uncrossing your ankles with his hold.
“It just…” he begins, with genuine earnest, single wine-colored eye glimmering in the low light of your living room.
For a moment he looks almost bashful, like he’s about it say never mind and let it go. You know it’s for show when it flickers away immediately, when he doesn’t blink and his jaw sets back into place with a jolt of what looks like irritation.
“It makes me wonder if you know me as well as you think you do, is all.”
As well as you think you do? You’ve known Suo for most of your conscious life; you’ve loved him for almost as long, and you’re perfectly comfortable acknowledging that he can be intimidating or dangerously charismatic when a situation calls for it—even manipulative to a certain extent—but only when it serves the greater good, or is really funny, though. Right? But his voice is so low and smooth and he looks at you with such expectation that you wonder for a second if you need to be digging beyond such moments. Suo’s a great actor, is something you’ve always joked about, because his friends scarcely see how considerate and compassionate he can be, but the inverse and the fact that it could be true, too, occurs to you, quick, like a bolt of lightning.
But he’s messing with you, like he does. “What are you talking about?” Right? “You’re being weird.”
He leans back slightly like he’s suddenly remembered where he is. The intensity is gone in a blink as he knits his brow together. “Sorry. That probably sounded bad.”
You don’t know if bad is the right word, but your heart is racing dully despite the apology on his face. You prop yourself up on your elbows to look at him better; you don’t entirely know what your face looks like right now, but you’re trying to let it be an honest mix of confusion, adoration, and slight apprehension at the tone he was taking on a mere few seconds ago. You scan him for a brief second and find nothing out of the ordinary. Just your Suo, your Hayato, a mystery, an oddball, the light of your life who thrives on doing as little as possible for maximum reaction. Creep, you’ve jokingly accused him before—and he agreed, guilty as charged.
“You know, it’s just… well.”
“What?” you press now that he’s withdrawn, sitting up. Suo has ways of keeping people guessing without mincing words, and you don’t know what it is yet, so you know there’s more.
“Trust can be misplaced, you know?” He looks contemplative as he says it, eyes wandering about the room, shoulders shrugging the slightest bit. His fingers, still on you, break into a tender rhythm, slow and placating. “And the guys are always talking about how I could be anyone. But you trust me completely. Which is special to me, it is. But just think about it.”
And then he bends your knees up toward you; you rest your elbows on them and look at him thoughtfully.
“Even if what you, just you, know about me is all true—if it’s all real, and I love you and you love me,” he continues, reflective and utterly serious, and you’re unsure where exactly this is turning from finding him scary or not or trusting him or whatever, but the sharpness in the cherry of his iris returns again—a shift you don’t know how to pinpoint, it’s just there. His face sharpens with it and you try to study it and determine if it’s the scrunch of his nose or the angle of his gaze, but you don’t know. You don’t know and the air grows heavy all over again with it, and you really don’t like the way your stomach sinks when he lifts his eyes you once more.
But you stay still, like a prey animal with hope. You’ve outsmarted this predator before. Granted, you’ve never quite been so unsure if he’s doing a bit or if something is wholly, truly troubling him. For what it’s worth, the lack of regret—of anything—on his face for what his next words could invite into the room sets you back on edge.
“What if I snapped?”
But still, you stay, unmoving.
And what if he did? You try, under his magnifying glass-stare, to imagine what that might look like; your Hayato, who you do believe is gentle at his core of cores, doing something to shake you horribly. To terrify you. What would he have to do, reveal about himself, to irreparably damage the way you cherish him?
“It depends.” You pick your words like stepping across slick stones above water.
The way he looks at you is the way you imagine the accused must look at their jury. All at once ready to resign and yet peel back each layer of the complex individual to do any number of things but be found guilty.
“I could be scared of you and still love you,” you concede.
And this is the truth. He is too deeply ingrained in your soul, after all. Despite his monologuing and what-iffing and the stark emptiness in his eye and the beginnings of a hurricane in your gut, trust wins.
“Can I reframe the question?”
He pulls you out of your reverie where you could love him even if he was something monstrous. Like a serial killer, or if he had lied, and the Suo that sat beside you was not Suo at all but a fabrication, an elaborate lie meant to trap you in such a place.
“Yeah,” you permit. Please, reframe it, actually.
He smiles the Suo smile you only get in your room or his—not the charming, pacifying one his friends know or the conspiratorial, fake-upbeat one the dickheads on the business end of his kicks get, but a smile a little lopsided and proud, like he never doubted anything, like it was a silly little test and you passed with flying colors. And you have, so far.
“Would you take a walk?”
You blink. “Huh?”
“Go for a walk. Just down the street.”
“Right now?” It’s late—past midnight now, but it wouldn’t be the first time. You’ve walked with him to his place at later hours before, and if whatever’s on his mind could be solved by fresh air, you guess you’re not opposed.
He nods. “Yes.”
You consider him for a moment—really look at him again, searching for anything off balance. But he’s at ease, waiting only for your permission.
“Sure,” you say, pushing yourself up, unfolding yourself and padding toward the door. You can sense him in your wake like a warm ghost. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, no, not both of us.” He clarifies it like it should’ve been obvious, a careless detail to leave out and yet a given. “Just you.”
Your feet are halfway in your sandals when you shoot him a glare. He might actually be losing it, you think this time.
You gesture vaguely to yourself, eyes wide. “Just me.”
“Mhm.”
“Hayato,” you say, deflating. “It’s dark, and I—”
“You trust me, don’t you?” he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets, golden tassels swaying as he cocks his head.
Ugh. You did just try to make a distinguished little spectacle about trusting him—even if he goaded it out of you. You’d want to prove it to him either way. And it is kind of an absurd ask, but your area isn’t too terribly rough, and violent crime has all but disappeared in Makochi ever since Umemiya’s generation of Bofurin graduated and dedicated themselves and their successors to the town’s welfare full-time. Plus, you have friends close enough by where you could hole up for the night—or, you’d be happy to walk him home and back if that was what he wanted. Maybe he really is processing something he hasn’t totally let you in on yet.
“Haya, if you wanna be alone, I can crash at Ren’s or walk you ba—”
But Suo waves this away immediately. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. And don’t wear those,” he admonishes playfully, actually bending down to tug your slides off. He fits one of your sneakers on and laces it up for you before doing the other. Then he stands again, same smile still pasted on.
You look up from your sneakers and the smile brightens in his eye so much that it closes—an affectionate blink not unlike a cat’s that lets you know he’s pleased because you’re following directions. You should keep doing that—he trusts you to keep doing that, it says.
Lithe fingers cup your face and a soft, doting kiss is pressed to your forehead. “I’ll come get you, okay? Just a quick walk. Then we’ll come back.”
You stand, arms at your sides, eyes flitting.
He’s being so strange. But that’s your Hayato—cryptic, always playing games. And you do trust him enough to participate. You do.
His lips linger in your hair and you find yourself nodding. “Okay, love.”
He still looks proud when he pulls away from you, past you, to open the door for you. His hand finds the small of your back and turns you in a half-circle to nudge you through it. “Don’t stop walking ‘til I find you,” he instructs softly. “I won’t be long, promise.”
And you cross the threshold, “Okay,” on your lips again. But when you turn to face him again, he’s already disappeared behind your closed door.
You hear the lock click.
You scoff.
And you turn on your heel and make your way down the hallway to the stairs, which you descend with purpose. He wants you to walk? Fine. You push the front door open into the black night and start off, heading west without looking back. It’s a little chillier than you would’ve anticipated, but you’ll be fine once you get moving.
He said he wouldn’t be long, after all. So, you figure, your baggy tee and sweatpants will do just fine. Worst comes to worst, you text him and tell him to hurry his ass up.
Actually… the thought has you patting your pockets. Fuck—your phone’s on the coffee table. You know he won’t forget keys, but it would be nice to have your cell. You can imagine it, though: the scene that just played out, you standing by the door, his face so sincere and pleased, and you move to retrieve it—he would’ve just held you in place, brushed it off and reminded you you’d only be gone for a short while.
You cross your arms and scoff again, through your nose. Suo’s not what you’d call a proponent of phones, after all. But it is dark, and it is late, and as the breeze snakes between the silent buildings and circles around you, you think it would be good to have a light, or a way to keep the time, or a method of contact, just in case.
But it’s too late now. You’re already playing the game, so you just keep your pace, brisk but not too brisk.
And eventually, you make your way past Kaji’s apartment building—which marks you at about eight minutes, give or take. You’d have no way to get in, anyway. He’d have to buzz you up, and you have no means to tell him you’re around. Besides, there’s no light in his window, either, so he must be either out or asleep.
Still, you glance up. Waiting for movement, maybe.
But nothing moves. You feel silly as you tear yourself away from it and keep going.
There’s no light in any of the windows, except for one in the complex across the way, where someone’s cherry-colored LED lights remain on.
And Hayato should be around soon. Maybe you should’ve cleared up exactly what kind of numbers comprised quick and won’t be long—but again, you can only envision such an inquiry being shaken away as if it was comical, silly to wonder about. The absurdity strikes you again—what the hell are you doing?—but you try not to invest yourself too much in the inevitable. You remind yourself to glance around, stay aware of your surroundings. But, god, the longer you walk—the further you get from Hayato—the more this feels like maybe not the best idea.
You could call out for him; the only noise about is the wind, thin and restless. And your voice would carry. But too far, maybe—further than you’d like it to.
You walk ten, then twenty steps with your voice in your mouth before you decide it’s probably better to not.
You tune into your footsteps—are those louder than they should be, you wonder? You’re relatively quiet—going out of your way to be—but the vibration up through your bones from the ground is a stark reminder of how little else is around. No cars passing, no windows open, no chatter or music or life. Just the dull rhythm of your feet, the wind, and the occasional rattle of something loose in the distance—a street sign, a fence.
You turn to look over your shoulder.
And there’s nothing, of course. You’re just being smart, cautious.
So you keep on your path.
And the minutes pass; you try to keep counting them—you’re maybe at ten more past Kaji’s, which you tell yourself is reasonable and normal. Hayato should be any moment, now. But this stretch of quiet, empty block with too many dark windows has the unmistakable feeling of something you should’ve thought through better.
When you come to a corner, you stop to survey this time. The narrow cuts between buildings that you don’t pay any mind to during the day loom deep and dark. A single streetlight buzzes above, on the verge of failing; you can hear it, the way it strains, and as you stare. It blinks once, twice, like a dying star taking its final breaths; the moon is there, too, unwavering. Though you can’t see the stars, their largest companion hangs nearly full in the sky, promising to light your way when the lamps die.
And then you hear it, or maybe sense it, because nothing really prompts you to look other than the fact that you do—a quick crane of your neck toward the way you came from, where you see… nothing, again.
And it’ll keep being nothing until it’s your Hayato—hopefully with a jacket.
Unless it isn’t nothing; the thought supplies itself, unhelpful and immediate, but you swallow it down.
You’re not far from home at all, and you know these streets well. It wouldn’t be strange to turn around, either, you think—not at this point. Just say you changed your mind, that it was colder than you expected—you walked for long enough that you no longer felt like it.
But then you think of all the wild goose chases Hayato has sent you on throughout your relationship—and there’s been no shortage of them, for sure, whether they’ve been physical or mental. He’s dropped out of the realm of virtual communication for days at a time on a couple occasions; he’s told you he has a secret to tell you but you must wait a few days, insisted upon the return of a jacket or a notebook being forgotten at your residence that you swore never existed but was somehow there anyway, instructed you to meet him at bus stops that didn’t exist. But you’ve never backed down from them; it’s not in your nature, nor is it your MO when it comes to him, because you care about him so much. More than he realizes, maybe.
Every time, you recall there’s been the same feeling at the start of it—confusion, irritation, the faintest edge of doubt, and then something else braided through it. Anticipation. The sense that something about him was just out of reach, out of conceivable sights, just watching how far you’d go before you turned back. You’ve always been good about choosing forward, even when it led you somewhere inconvenient or strange or faintly humiliating to admit out loud, like stomping frazzled between two stops while he doesn’t answer his phone. But it always ends good and well—with him embracing you, thanking you, telling you you do so good for him.
You’re good for him. You smile in spite of yourself at the notion.
This is no different; just another game, test of patience, of how well you can sit with not knowing. You can’t turn back because it would mean admitting that this ordinary bit of sidewalk in the dark is getting to you and you don’t trust him to come get you. You do. You do trust him. You’d perform a task this mundane a thousand times over to prove it to him.
You keep walking.
Still, you think it would be nice if you had a text to reread, a vague hint to return to—something to clue you in other than the shape of his hand at your back and his voice at the door, assuring. Don’t stop walking ‘til I find you.
Find you.
Your chest flutters—a small, tight nothing that you disregard as a trick of breathing in the chilly air. Reading too far into it is always at least half the point with him, and god, do you. It doesn’t dull your awareness, anyway, of the way every step you take starts to feel less and less deliberate, like you’re a rat heading toward the wall of your cage.
But you still don’t stop, because, again, you’ve never stopped before. Even if this time you’re not entirely sure who’s supposed to be chasing who.
You hope he doesn’t think a walk is going to break you, because he’d be sorely mistaken.
But then you do hear something, from behind you.
Footsteps, approaching rapidly; something you never thought you’d feel relieved to hear, alone on the street in the shadow of the night, but you do.
“Hayato,” your voice decides before the rest of you does, and there is annoyance and peace of mind in it all at once. You loosen, almost laugh. Look at you, the very word you threw around so casually earlier—dramatic.
It’s strange he caught up without you hearing until now, but still, he’s sly like that. You load up a complaint—for making you walk so far, of course—and the world rights itself for a moment, the shadows realigning, the metallic swinging in the distance unassuming, your fingers unfurling.
Until you turn around, fully, to see the figure speedwalking toward you.
You squint, huddled in on yourself; this figure strides at a pace you’ve never seen him take, wide and determined. The hood, outlined and obvious beneath the dimness of the street, doesn’t help. You can’t see a face.
And he doesn’t call back.
“Hayato?” you think you mumble—maybe you shout, as you shuffle backward despite yourself and the steps you’ve walked already.
And he should answer, always does. Always lets you know you’re going to fall safely into his arms.
But the figure takes its hands out of its pockets, picks up into a run.
And you stumble into a sprint.
You don’t feel you have the luxury of sticking around and finding out if it’s him. You just run and you don’t look back.
You shriek his name this time—if it’s him he knows you’re on edge; if it’s not, please, please, let him hear you and come to your rescue from whatever’s encroaching on you. Your legs go and go, the thought of the trek back perished as you fasten your eyelids open and tear down the sidewalk. You need somewhere. You need somewhere to be. A door to bang down. A side street that’ll let you wind and loop around and disappear.
But you make it about fifty yards before you hear the footsteps catching up to you. Again, you yell for him—among other things—shrill and high.
“No, no, no!”
It’s no competition. His legs are longer. He’s more agile, and you’re already tired. The soft palm of a hand clamps around the lower half your face—the other around your eyes, and the body weight attached to it ushers you aside, pulls you this way and that in spite of your wild tossing and jerking about until you’re pressed to a wall, writhing about like a wasp caught in a spiderweb. And as you vocalize, although muffled, he hushes you, shh, shh—lifts his hand off your eyes while you kick down out of overdrive and into shock.
“Stop it—stop screaming,” a familiar voice instructs you calmly before it breathes in sharply—and you go a little limp when you realize it’s him—your Hayato. “Stop screaming. Stop screaming.”
And you do, digging into his arm as you hyperventilate into his palm. He rewards your surrender by taking his hand away from your mouth and you sigh with everything in you, all at once relieved it’s him and alarmed at the unexpected ambush, the perplexity; in the second strike of atypicality, he yanks one of your wrists hostage behind you so roughly it makes you grimace.
You try to wiggle your arm out of his iron-tight grasp, but he thwarts you, breathless, too; that’s when you can feel the erection he’s sporting beneath his jeans. “You’re a fucking freak,” you spit—it’s a half-truth because you’re expecting him to agree, guilty as charged, in that half-roguish, half-obliging way that completes your half-accusations into full ones, ones only you and him know the ins and outsides of. You try to laugh but your breath is still coming too quick, too choppy, and your heart is racing for more than one reason. “What’s wrong with you? This is f—”
But he doesn’t agree—he all but growls in your ear, “Be quiet or it’s gonna have to hurt, baby.” And as if to prove it, he pulls your arm a little further behind you—it burns in your shoulder, and you wince, but he lets up before you can think, and your mouth opens soundlessly a second too late. “Scared yet?”
“No,” you shoot back shakily—which may debatably be true, you wouldn’t say you’re quite all the way to scared—but you are pulsing with adrenaline from how he startled you. Still, you’re in his arms now. You tell yourself it’s alright, plaster your very best grin on your face, and try to eye him sideways behind you. “You won’t hurt me.”
You say it confidently, but then your brain catches up. He has you ensnared like this, after all. But if your words just land right, maybe it’ll be so. Like you can laugh and make this trial into something recognizable that fits nice and neatly back into the shape of him that you know. Because this is close, sure, but it’s off-kilter and you’d be an idiot not to at least see that. His grip isn’t painful, but there’s a rush in it, a controlled and very intentional panic. Not clumsy; this is the same restraint you’ve always pointed at and defended without thinking twice about it.
Your Hayato.
“I won’t, huh?”
A pure white chill runs through your body at his words and he shoves one palm between you and your pants. You can’t believe this is what he landed on. He wanted to track you down? Give you a sixty-second head start?
“No,” you shimmy against him a little, and even you can’t tell if it’s toward or away. “We have a safe word.” Another thought barely formed before it fractures, splintering under the immediacy of him and the way he’s already there, dragging your pants down like this was never a question of if but when. Your breath stutters as you protest his hand, but it sounds uncertain.
“We do?” Suo sounds genuinely baffled in that deadpan little way of his before the chilled night air on your bare ass forces a whimper out of you. You don’t know if you like how it sounds. “I think I forgot it.”
“You didn’t,” you hiss through your teeth, “and you could’ve just told me if this was a sex thing, you don’t have to fucking—”
Fingers curl harshly into the hair at the base of your neck and pull you back in one motion, and the wind leaves your lungs.
“Keep it down,” he snaps, blankly and coldly. Mild annoyance.
And you shut up, you do. It works—you’ll give him that, but it’s not only from the sternness of his touch; it brings up something new and uncomfortable in your gut when you consider that you know Suo is strong—beyond just witnessing it, it’s not that you haven’t let him throw you around a little before—but he’s never handled you, certainly never put his hands on you. The implication of the situation crosses your mind; you wonder if this counts as that, but it turns your stomach to linger on, so you don’t.
“You said, if I remember correctly,” he continues, all hushed as his weight holds you in place and he pulls you to him, forehead pressed to your neck as your sweats pool around your ankles, “you could still love me scared.”
You could—but you don’t necessarily want to if you don’t have to. No one in their right mind, certainly, could want to do that, and you almost wonder if you gave him that impression—but this isn’t on you. He’s acting out of line. He should know better than this and you should spit it at him right now.
“Yeah, but—” You try to smack him with your free hand, but you’re smushed like a bug between him and the wall; it’s futile, and all the resolve in your brain gets filtered through the static of him, the shock kicking back up into panic, and him tearing away, kneeling down to rip your shoes off. “You’re—this is a little extreme, don’t you… Don’t you—”
“I wanted to see,” he says simply, while you try to jab at his shin with one foot and at the same time, keep your cheek from smearing against the roughness of the brick. He tosses your shoes away, and your pants go next, and then he stands, and you hear his belt.
Okay. This is happening.
You turn your head the other way down the alleyway, which suddenly seems very, very big and empty. His thigh is quick, wedged back between both of yours, hot and immobilizing you as he manipulates your other hand and shoves it behind you, too, even as you try to hold it to the wall; the struggle between you is no struggle at all, of course.
He clicks his tongue as he unsticks you. You hear his belt again.
“Okay, you’ve—”
And you start as you feel smooth leather, wrapping around one wrist and then the other; it goes around both, through the buckle, around again, and pulls tight, sticking to your cold sweat. You hiss again at the friction burn.
“—had your fun,” you keep yelling in a whisper so as not to upset his merciless fingers again. “I don’t think we should do this here.”
“That’s why we’re doing this here.” Still easy and breezy, as if it’s the most logical thing in the world.
Your forehead hits the brick with determination—you don’t want to look at him in your peripheral anymore—and you kick again before there’s a heavy hardness on your lower back, a little wet and very warm. You seize again, lashing against him with the realization of how hard and leaky he is from this.
“And only when you tell me you’re scared—”
He doesn’t touch you, not like he normally does. Suo hardly ever thinks about his own pleasure until he’s gotten you off at least twice on his tongue or his fingers, but right now he just flips you rudely to face him, so quick it might give you whiplash, while he holds your shoulders against the brick and pitches his hips against yours, face to face with you, fixing his eye right into yours.
“—I’ll think about letting up.”
“I told you, we have a safe word—”
“And I told you, I forgot it.” His small smile is cutting as he kicks your feet apart. “Jump.”
“Hayato—”
But when you start to protest again, that unforgiving, pitiless touch flies for your throat. The back of your head smacks the brick; you screw your eyes shut and blink them back open to see the smile gone, replaced with chilling nothing. “Put your fucking legs around me.”
He doesn’t take a particularly precarious tone, but Suo doesn’t curse often. The word flying from him glues you in place.
Did you do something? Is he upset?
When you don’t move, he takes matters into his own hands—he seems intensely irritated at the notion of having to do so, but this isn’t fair, you mutter it under your breath to him as he claws into your ass and hoists you up. You wince at the scrape of the brick against your back, your knuckles, and flail, because god, it hurts. He doesn’t look at you as he grips himself to press against your folds—and with no hands at your disposal, a helpless sound leaves you.
“Cut it out right fucking now,” comes the tail end of your yelp, frustration watering down with impending tears. His cock prods at you and he spreads you with his fingers, all the while you’re telling him no, no, no, Hayato, stop it, I don’t want it like this—but he doesn’t seem to be listening, hair curtaining over his face, pale as the moon itself except for the apples of his cheeks; there, he’s pink and flushed with want.
“But you trust me,” he holds over you. “I’m gentle, remember?”
“You’re—”
“So stupid. You haven’t figured it out yet? I want you afraid.”
You scream this time, loud and unapologetic—or, you start, not even for a second before he claps his palm back over you, leaving you to ugh and mph and quake in your body as he shoves himself inside you. You’re struck dumb, as you close your eyes and lull to the side, that he’s doing this to you. You can’t believe he’s doing this at all.
It hurts going in. The tears well up hot and dense and he grunts as pushes past your taut entrance; you can’t imagine it feels good for him, either, as you arch away and try to shake him off, get him out of you, spitting and cussing and whining no into him.
“I’ll let you talk when you wanna say it,” he talks over you in that silky, casual tone, gritty only in the way it fights its way out past his teeth as he bottoms out in a way that feels hazardously unnatural. “Say you’re scared.”
You nod frantically back and forth because his hand is smothering, not because you feel inclined to fight him. Undoubtedly, he is scaring you now. You’re afraid. But what will he do if you give him what he wants? You can only imagine him smirking from his high horse—because, even if you loathe to admit it on account of the fact that you are so head over heels for him, your lover is more prideful than he lets on behind his modest mask; another thing you know well, but not because you’ve had a bunch of mature conversations about it or anything. You know this because he doesn’t shy away from opportunities to say the words I told you so—even if he does it from a good place, even if he goes in with an initial hope that he’ll be proven wrong, and even if he goes to great, unnecessary lengths to prove his point beforehand.
And you would love to prove him wrong right now, you really would. You’d love to be wet and clinging to his shoulders and begging for it harder, but what encompasses wrong is starting to blur—you don’t know what he wants. You don’t know if he’d rather you say it or you don’t, you be scared or you don’t. Maybe it’s already too late to talk him down from this frenetic state of jagged lust; it’s all so confusing to you, if he’s getting off on the idea of you running from it or submitting to it, or if he’s getting off on just throwing your ignorance in your face. Whatever it is, it’s hurting. You feel them spill over and you hate it because you have no idea what it means in the grand scheme of things, of appeasing him, of getting him to stop and let you go and love you in a way that feels good and not like you’re being held hostage for a price you can’t pay in a currency you’ve never heard of.
You thrash again, trying to take advantage of how he focuses on picking up his thrusts to quick and deep inside you, trying to dredge your wetness up, and butt your head madly, through his grip, at his nose, leaning into him to pull your legs up and try to get to his ribs.
He laughs, short and mocking, as he dodges your skull coming at him; you groan again and wind back up but his hand, unforgiving and cruel and so out of character, leaves its gracious post on your thigh and lands back down on your neck. He sends the back of your head into the brick again. You wail on contact but it’s pathetic and clipped short as Suo’s fingers squeeze down, holding you in place in every way he can as he fucks into you stiffly.
“Thought you said you loved me, sweetheart?” Suo grits, and you feel his blunt nails under your jaw as you twist and try to buck away. Being held up by nothing but your head and his cock hurts like the bones and ligaments connecting you to the rest of your body are going to pop loose, leave you headless on the ground. “Huh? Either you don’t—” Thrust. “—or I’m making you—” Thrust. “—afraid.”
You try to shake your head—it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. You’re humming no and riveting your eyes shut—you don’t know what you’re shaking no to; you love him, you do, but yes, you’re scared, you’re so scared because this Hayato—still your Hayato, for better or for worse—is unpredictable in a way his preestablished unpredictability could simply not allow you to predict before this very moment, and it’s never felt so bad and uncomfortable to have him inside you, and he knows—he knows, you’re telling him you don’t want it with everything in you, and he’s not stopping. The only wetness you feel is in your eyes, fuzzing up everything around you.
“It’s one of the two,” he says, deeply reproachful as he grinds into you. You almost wish he would kiss you—let you hold him and tell him you do love him, but if you were free to move, would you really be able to will yourself to do that right now? “And if you’re scared, you don’t trust me—”
His fingers clamp tighter. You tremble and twitch against the wall, but you’re losing steam quick, blood rushing to your head, temples tightening like a balloon inflated too far—you try to keep kicking, but it’s like the remaining energy in your body streams down your face and if the way Suo looks in front of you or the way his pelvis gains speed, creating a hollow echo down the alley each time his hips meet yours, is anything to go off, your tears are the only arousal he really needs.
“—And if you don’t trust me, I don’t see how you can love me.”
There it is. The corner he’s been backing you into, revealed in stale silvery light on a night just like any other. Fuck, he hisses, and the hand on your mouth falls, and he burrows back into the fat of your thigh.
“I do love you, I do love you, I do,” you gasp a whirlwind of humid air in and sob brokenly, and the friction burns until it doesn’t—it feels like it takes a lifetime, but whatever it is about this that gets you the slightest bit wet, whether it’s purely physiological or if some thoroughly fucked up part of you is enjoying this like he does, you’re thankful for it right now. It disgusts you, but if you don’t think about the cold or the brick or the impact of him into you, how Suo’s disregarding all your pleas in favor of violating you, maybe it can start to feel good. You want to feel good.
“Don’t lie.” He sounds kind of sad. It makes your gut snarl and tangle like the rotted roots of a tree up through your shoulders and into your numb arms. He’s not giving you a choice.
He’s been backing you into it—the corner, the alley—since dinner, or maybe long before that, waiting to get you like this, confused and defenseless, just so he could take advantage of it and selfishly try to provoke the impossible out of you. Can’t he tell he’s hurting you?
Doesn’t it hurt him to hurt you?
You’re not lying. You love him so much and everything is starting to feel numb, not just your arms—and if he’d just stop and help you to your feet and say sorry and take you home, you might forgive him. If he can just see it—you’re telling him the truth and he’s tormenting you trying to hear what he so, so selfishly wants—you can forget about it and go home.
You want to go home and fuck in your bed. You want to kiss him. Your Hayato. Your fingers flex frantically and your shirt feels dirty against them and you feel dirty and you’re the one that’s been lied to, and it makes you very angry, how unfair he’s being. If only he’d kiss you.
You’re so angry you ball up spit in your mouth and hurl it right at him.
In his surprise, he flinches back from you, cock sliding out of you as he does, leaving you feeling stretched in all the wrong ways, and you don’t have time to cry out before he’s dropping you. When you hit the ground a crunch radiates from your tailbone up through your spine, white-hot and ugly and forcing a cough out of you. Oh, god, you think you might throw up.
You don’t catch him scooping it off from where it landed, between his eyepatch and his angular nose, but you certainly feel it when he flings it back down at you, gross and mean. He grabs you by the back of the head thereafter, fingernails scorching across your scalp as he raises your face to his. He slaps you hard with the back of his hand.
It sends you out of your body, almost. You’ve never seen Suo slap anyone. The other guys, sure—plenty of times, both jovially and in fights, and it’s almost always funny, but there is nothing funny about the ringing in your ears or the blood you taste in your mouth. You loathe to imagine what Sakura, Nirei, or Umemiya would think about what’s unfolding a few minutes’ drive away from where they’re all asleep in their beds right now. You hope maybe they’re not. Maybe someone will find you. Maybe Kaji’s on his way home.
You sob, full and breathy, as the pang subsides and the ache in your backside amplifies tenfold.
“Say it,” he demands of you, still not at full exasperated capacity, like this might still just be a huge bit to him—it’s like he barely has to lift a finger to break you. Maybe that’s what makes it all so horrifying. If his tone matched the aggression in the way he tugs and yanks and repositions you onto your knees, it’d make sense. But he just sounds sad. Your vocal cords keep reeling and the concrete scorches your kneecaps and you feel hopeless trying to think of what will fix him right now.
When he’s got you against the wall again, legs all askew beneath you and mouth opening and closing like the words want to come out but aren’t ready, he hunches over and cups your face—the gentlest of all his touches thus far, and you slump into it with the impression that it might be over; he tilts you up to him, coos for name, for you to look at him, look at him, and you do—he’s all blurry, but you do, and his thumbs swipe at the streams of tears. You squint to push the rest of this wave of the flood out and over onto your cheeks, and when you do, you miss the flash of a self-satisfied grin, the glint in his eye. Suo loves your tears when he causes them—he hasn’t told you this in those exact words, but he hopes you’re smart enough to have figured that out by now.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” his voice that’s been so flat takes on that familiar, dreamy intonation again. You struggle against his belt, acutely aware of it, offended that he’s starting to be nice again but not reaching around you to take it off. You’re eager and your ankles and knees are cut and scraped and it feels like you’re on broken glass; maybe you are. You’re spinning.
“Hayato…” you rasp, tensing back up when he stands back at his full height, your chin between two fingers.
“Tell you what. Say it or don’t,” he backs down, stroking himself once, and then twice. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.” It never mattered. He’s an asshole, you think. He’s evil, because he knew it didn’t matter from the beginning and now he’s done all this to you—taken it out on you in this rage against something in his mind that has so very little to do with you. “But if you want to, now’s your last chance.”
You start to say his name again but he catches your mouth with his thumb, hooking you like a fish as he steps to you, stabbing his cockhead at you so you taste it—the salt of his precum, the tang of yourself drying on him and you do your best to snap shut, to turn your head away, but you’re repaid for this swiftly with another slap, and then another, and then another; you envision screws falling out of intricately held together structures, rapidly unwinding spools of thread as each subsequent one lands harder, harder, unrelenting until your heaving sobs are nothing but claustrophobic air, neither wanting to enter or exit your lungs.
“You could at least stop,” slap, “fucking,” slap, “resisting,” he grabs your face, still restrained by sorrow, you can tell—loaded with frustration that you won’t just submit but certainly not at full power, or else he might break your jaw with his manic fingers, you can feel it. “If you’re gonna act like you trust me.”
One thumb becomes two and pries you open like a dog chewing on something it’s not supposed to.
“And if I feel teeth you’re gonna wish I only slapped you.”
The wheeze you intake as the heaviness of his cock drags across your tongue is garbled by your long, hopeless croon. His furious, despondent fingers land over your ears now, trapping you underwater against him as he punches toward your throat, hips as livid as the rest of him.
And you gag. It feels so suffocating—literally and figuratively, but mostly literally, because he forces you onto him, rocks back and forth until your nose is mashed to his pelvis and the tuft of hair there. You have no choice but to smell him, warm and sweaty as he maneuvers you, molds you to him, fingers locked around the back of your head as he fucks your face like a toy. Over and over and over, he bullies his way in, sighing and groaning as your senses start to fail; it sounds like it feels so good, the way he brutalizes your mouth.
You’ve never heard Hayato moan like he is right now, as he’s ripping ugly gargles and chokes from you, totally paralyzed, trying to become dead weight as he strikes the back of your throat again and again and again.
Drool spills from you and gets tangled in your shirt in pathetic strings; his balls slap your chin and your eyes wide shut pour all over again. It’s all wet in a dreadful way. You want him to finish. You want it to be over. Please let it be over, you think, as he still, and you feel him throbbing and pulsing against your tongue.
Not yet, though. His hips stop but his hands go, battering you against him; you try to wail around him but it just sounds like exactly what it is—a poor, soft throat getting wrecked.
And the pain from your cunt and the ache in your jaw reach for each other, meeting in your stomach and embracing. You quake and twitch as he holds you down one last time, humping and grinding into you and relieving a hand to pinch your nose. You want to bite. You want to bite. But you’re not a bad dog, you think, you don’t know why you’ve been hit, and it would be worse to prove him right.
Suo vocalizes a few more times—it would sound so pretty if it didn’t all feel so awful. He spills thickly down your throat with a cuss, and heavy breath. And you whine in protest, fingernails leaving violent crescents in your palms.
You are spinning again as you nod forward into him, head curling into his thigh, vision black around the edges, lungs screaming. You suck in air like you’ve never breathed before, and you crumple into his lap as he crouches down to catch you.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he murmurs tenderly as your form, a ball of utter defeat, curls into him, even though it’s not okay—none of it is okay and you can’t imagine a world where it ever will be again.
The sobs come again, loud and shaky, as he hugs around you to undo his belt; with newly freed fingers you dig into his shirt, damp with sweat, and cry, and cry and cry—all your anger and disorientation coagulating at your lashlines and cascading endlessly, endlessly into your palms, into his shoulder. You sob until you feel empty in his arms, until there’s nothing left in you, and what you’ve expelled feels like it could fill a swimming pool.
“You did so well for me, sweetheart. I never doubted you.”
And he coaxes you up, letting you grip his forearms and then his shoulders as he coaches you delicately to lift one foot and then another as he reinstates your underwear first, and then your pants, back how he found them; he tucks himself back into his jeans, soiled and sweaty, too, but neither of you mind that as you hide in your hands and he fits your shoes back on again, just like he did less than an hour ago. Lastly, a zip up hoodie blankets your shoulders. And after all this, all these blazing, tender little touches, Suo shoulders your weight against him to stumble you both back home.
Your hair feels a mess. Your wrists are sore. Everything aches and feels so, so bad.
If it was daylight, or if you felt a part of this planet, you might be self-conscious of how your knees knock together, how you walk funny from the chafing—but it’s not, and you don’t. You lean onto a warm body that supports you so kindly and make your way back, sniffling away, wiping at your swollen face, adjusting your clothes. Nothing feels right.
And you tell him, finally—you can’t talk but you look up at him, your Hayato, as your feet, which hardly touch the ground, get caught up between his.
He’s quick to right you, hands mild and kind and his face all full of placating grace and something bitter you don’t have the faculties to process yet. You can’t speak but you tell him in the way you tug at his shirt sleeve and look up at him with all the weight in the world in your glossy eyes and wobbling lip. You nod. It takes your whole body, but you nod, and it hurts, and you keep nodding forever because you want to make sure he knows.
He smiles at you vapidly as he picks you up like a baby.
And you let him, because he’s your Hayato, and it’s over, and he punctuates it all with an I know, sweetheart, you fall asleep, exhausted in every sense of the word, in the crook of his neck.
You think, as you drift off, pin-and-needle arms secure around his neck, that you are so tired you might never wake up. You hope you dream of being with him someplace far away from here.
nothing just thinking about sweaty Ness again (ꈍᴗꈍ)
wc: ~2.6k
cw: NSFW—MINORS+AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS WILL BE BLOCKED. gn!reader, messy bj, facefucking, sweat/scent kink, dirty talk, cute sweet beautiful teasing soft sweet switchy dom alexis, plurilingualism because german is a sexy language fucking sue me about it, if you ain't gonna imagine this in his cute lil accent get the fuck up out my traphouse, jk always enjoy how you want, this doesn't have a title because it was going to be 600 words max but here we are
reid: your kinktober crumbs my liege
You love how Ness smells after practice. Or a game. Or a run. Or after he lifts. Like, to an absurd degree. And he knows this. And to say he kind of adores it is an understatement.
He adores all of it—the way you’re on him before he even shuts the door behind him, the way you’re throwing your arms around him and balling up your fists in his shirt, the way you don’t even pull him down to kiss him; instead, you tuck yourself in the crook of his neck to inhale deep.
“Ich vermisste dich, schatz.” He’s chuckling as he clutches you close like he didn’t just see you a few hours ago; you trail your lips giddily up his neck, across his jaw. Your smile is low like the twilight when you pull back to look him in the eyes.
“I missed you, too,” you hum. Your fingers creep around his waist to feel the cool, damp skin of the small of his back beneath the hoodie he threw over himself for the bus ride home; you’re already planning to steal it and tuck it away and refuse to let him wash it until he absolutely needs it.
Alexis always kisses you so sweetly when he knows you want something from him. No tongue, no teeth—just a coy smile and his lips, undermined by the way you dip beneath his shorts to dig your palms and fingertips into both of his sculpted asscheeks; he grabs you by the forearms and pulls you away like he wants to call you vulgar, but his expression mirrors yours.
Still, he teases you. “You’re bad,” he accuses, regarding your face with mock disapproval—only for you to fall back into him, grinning like he’s just told you you’re beautiful.
Alexis’s pulse beats steadily against your kisses; his hands, large and calloused from lifting, clutch your waist, keep you close enough that you can’t drop to your knees—not yet—but not close enough that you can’t think about it, squirm about it. His skin runs hot beneath the cold sheen of drying sweat; his hair is mussed, mulberry ends dampened dark, still wet enough that it leaves a line of chill on your forehead where you nuzzle into him, and he doesn’t try to hide how much he likes it when your tongue flicks across his temple to catch a stray bead, undoubtedly reinvigorated by your eager attention and insistent whispers—love you, missed you, you smell so good.
Your enamored utterances gradually loosen his snug hold on you in permission to let you fold to the floor in front of him; your touch is all over his thighs, his hips, pushing up the hem of his hoodie—squeezing, clawing, massaging. After a few kitten licks-turned long, sweeping stripes of your tongue over his defined stomach, your next line of attack is the taut cut of muscle disappearing beneath his shorts; your spit leaves a burning trail as you work your way into the path of his groin, inhaling as you go. Alexis gasps when you do.
You love, too, feeling the seam of his shorts start to dampen with anything but sweat. His cock, still mostly soft but already heavy, twitches against your cheek, and the scent of him—strong, warm, ambrosial—makes your head swim. You hope whoever invented the polyester blend power-mesh fabric trapping his own scent against him is doing well for themselves—you’re certainly benefiting from it, you think, as you let your nose run up and down the length of him. You make a delighted noise that sounds most like a whine, and he pretends to scoff at it; in reality, it only makes him stand taller, cockier—his face flushing pink despite it, looking at you with corrupted fondness in his eyes as he pets your hair cutely.
“Pervert,” he says with no real bite in it.
You roll your eyes up at him; he wants you to do exactly what you’re doing—mouthing at the elastic, rolling your tongue across increasingly straining fabric, nipping at the crease where his hip meets his thigh. It’s so cute, you think, how playing with him through his clothes always gets him worked up. He always shudders, even if he pretends not to; what he’s not subtle about is shifting his weight back as your hands trace meandering lines up and down his legs, leaning himself to stabilize against your apartment door while you nudge his feet apart with your knees.
“Can I?” you almost plead, looking up, already shuffling his waistband down. The quiet mischief in his gaze betrays any innocence he could hope to put forward; you’re torn, hypnotized between the pretty happy trail emerging from beneath his shorts and the barely-controlled anticipation on his handsome face. Your eyelids flutter shut when he threads his hand gently into your hair, grazing the shell of your ear with his pinky.
“Was willst du machen?” he asks, tilting your chin up from the back of your skull, watching as your bottom lip catches lewdly to drag along his bulge; your tongue flicks out to soak up the faint tang of him you’re granted from over his shorts, but you’re more inclined to show rather than tell.
You tug his waistband down further, just enough—and your grin is wicked when something wrecked flashes through his eyes as his cock springs out to bob against your chin.
You coil your fingers around him, harder, more flushed; your nose follows your tight, wandering grasp, your cheek settling in the juncture of his hip only after you drool spit onto him to let your strokes come landguidly.
Alexis hisses out a curse as you trail into a steady pace, jerking him off, curled against him like there’s nowhere you’d rather be. The hoodie curtains over your shoulder, warm and smelling like him, and you can’t help yourself, surrounded; you bite at his groin, just once and just sharp enough that he lets out an adorable yelp before you lave your tongue over the spot in apology.
“Love how you smell, Lexis,” you whimper from beneath him like it justifies the bite, eyes shut, brows furrowed while you sink into the moment like you need it. As if to prove your point, you lift your head, smear his shaft over your face like it marks you as his. “Love when y’r all sweaty n’ gross for me.”
“I know, baby,” he breathes out, choppy and needy. “S’all for you, schatz, alles für dich.”
He tries and fails to keep his hips from bucking when you suck one of his balls into your warm, waiting mouth and swirl your tongue around it; you moan like you’re the one receiving pleasure from it, and it forces Alexis to echo you, biting his lip between his teeth while the suction sends his head flying back against the door.
Upon popping it out of your mouth, you sigh out a heady giggle, handling him in a rhythm that makes his gorgeous abs clench; you push the hem of the hoodie up to see more of him, but he takes it from you, tucks it between his teeth, and you’re quick to protest—soft no, no, nos leave you, your hand flying off him torturously, which he’s quick to raise complaint about, too—it’s such a sexy sight, but you want to hear him, too, and he wants you back to circling his tip with your thumb before rubbing down the underside of his cock again immediaitely, so the solution you both come to in this quick interlude is that the hoodie has to go; you shove it up toward his shoulders and in one swift movement it comes falling to the ground beside you, forgotten, before you’re wrapped around him again, squeezing and letting up a few times, flicking over his ultra-sensitive frenulum to get those noises you so urgently want to hear, and he indulges you.
“Fu—uhhh, baby.” With Alexis’ mouth shaping around low moans, you get back to work, at a quicker pace, now, as you steal glances up at him, naked and panting; a few more hasty, messy twirls of your wrist and you’re licking your lips, replacing your hand, cupped around his throbbing head, with your willing mouth.
It’s so throaty and full-bodied when you finally let him sink into your throat; your fingers, restless, steal away to his balls, then the tender patch of skin leading to his hot, twitching hole. When you press two fingerpads to it, he mewls your name, eyes screwed shut, fingers knotted against your scalp again. Pure heaven for Alexis Ness is the sloppy, wet noises escaping the corners of your mouth as you nod your head along his cock, tongue spiraling over him, drinking in everything he can give you—scent, taste, sound, adoration.
He’s so lucky, he thinks; he’s a star midfielder for one of the top football clubs in Europe, and he gets to come home to his pretty partner lapping up the evidence of all his hard work like a cute little puppy. It’s rare Alexis lets himself feel self-important, but it’s something purely arrogant and a little antagonistic that has him gripping the sides of your face to push your head all the way down his length in one motion, battering the back of your throat; the desperate streams of air that come puffing through your nose and the whines dying against the tip of his cock are like drugs to him. He shoves you down, over, over, groans low in his chest as your fingernails fix in his flexing quads—and you deepthroat him like you were meant for it; he knows you love it, burying your nose in his thick, musky bush while you let him use your mouth to get off.
When he fucks your face, he gets talkative.
“Th—this mouth’s so good to me.” He’s ceased moving your head for you, now opting to tower over you and thrust his hips into your skull. Alexis hunches to watch you—watch your cute face disappear into his crotch with each steady gag. “Such a good, messy little cocksucker for me.”
You whine and hum around him; you’re strapped for air but what you do intake is the sweet pheromones he radiates and the salty taste of him, of which the severity is toned down by your saliva as you suck him diligently. He’s rough, but not careless—while his palm cradles the back of your head, cushioning the impact of collision after collision of his hips, his other hand shifts to frame your jaw between thumb and forefinger, feeling your hollowed cheeks in his grasp.
“Ngh—schatzi—” He’s greedy for more of you, and you’re never shy when it comes to giving him all of you, lips stretched around him, eyes wet, nose running; Alexis loves your tears, and he chokes out something about kissing them off you once he’s done with you. “So pretty, so pretty, so—so good for me.”
You flick your gaze up impossibly as you milk him with your throat; he’s all blurry, but you feel every reaction of his body—he tenses against you, his balls jumping against your clumsy fondling and squeezing, the taste of pre-cum leaking out of him, jostled around your mouth and tongue with the flavor of what is so significantly just Alexis. With brows drawn up in a combination of distress and desire, you brace yourself against him as he pulses between your lips; your hazy brain feels full to the brim with his moans—those sharp, ruined noises that shoot straight between your own legs. God, you’re humping the air like a bitch in heat—he’s just so beautiful and perfect, taking what he wants from you, giving you exactly what you want in the process.
“Wanna swallow it?” he grunts brokenly, balls smacking your chin, your drool reaching for the floor in thin, wobbly spindles while you take it. “Or you want me to pull out and paint your pretty face?”
You hum frantically, slapping at his thighs; his hips stutter, and he pulls out completely, punching the wind back into your lungs in an instant as he fists himself with practiced desperation over your face. You know what to do; you push your tongue out and arch your back, still clawing at him, connected to him by cobwebs of spit, begging him to spill all over you. “Please,” you rasp, watching hungrily as he throbs visibly for you. “Please, Lexis, cum for me.”
“Fuck, baby—” He doesn’t need to announce it as the first spurt splatters across the bridge of your nose, but he does, shattered and relieved, watching as your big, watery eyes beg him for it. “Cumming—’m fucking cumming.”
Alexis’ harsh, uneven groans trail off into long, electric sighs; you can’t help but smile as your lashes flutter, feeling each last rope of his sticky cum land upon your face—first across your nose, then over your eyes (the way you flinch forces one more wave out of him, he could swear—you only regret that you miss the way his jaw falls slack as he whimpers out your name), then, in the final strokes he gives himself, atop your obedient, waiting tongue.
You’re already dutifully swallowing what you’ve caught when Alexis is thumbing his spend away from your eyes so you can look up at him, smiling sloppily; for a moment it’s just heavy breathing, your tongue out and dripping, his eyes glazed and soft and so full of satisfaction you giggle again. You lick the corners of your mouth. Before you can lean to rest on his thigh, he folds forward to press his lips to your forehead, followed by his own.
“Fuck,” he sighs again—like he wants to be reverent, but can only be redundant.
“Yeah?” you say, hoarse, proud, playful. You note the way he trembles; it makes you clench around nothing when he stays bent to kiss you, humming and nodding as his nose bumps yours.
But when he stands back up to full height, you’re clung to him like you don’t already have him. He’s not the only one glowing in the aftermath of his climax; you’re looking up at him like you haven’t even begun to have your fill yet, and the way you rub your thighs together—he couldn’t just leave you waiting while he does something as silly as taking a shower, could he? It’d be cruel—you just took such good care of him. It’d only be right for him to return the favor.
“Come here, cutie,” he coos, prying you off him to stand on legs like baby deer’s. He’ll tend to your sore knees later; you’re obviously not done, and neither is he. With a greedy arm around your waist, he pulls you to him, where you feel his cock already springing back to life at the mere sight of how needy you are after being away from him for so little time; he peppers sugary-sweet smooches all over your face—kissing away tears like he promised, licking the rest of his cum off you, too. Only once he’s got you clean, blushing, laughing, and writhing against him with your fingers pawing at his shoulders does he kick his shorts the rest of the way off and spin you around to lead you down the hall to your bedroom. All his clothes abandoned at the door, he’s determined to get you out of yours next; you stumble in front of him, pulling him with you as he beams at you in the way he always does before he destroys you.
“Wanna smell you, now—” He catches up with you for one second to kiss your hair. “Know you’ve been wet and needy for me all day, too.”
OH, NO TIME, MAKE, OR REASON, RIDICULE BREATHES A SIGH . . . ft. Suo Hayato, Kaji Ren, and Sakura Haruka
wc: ~5.1k
cw: NSFW—MINORS + AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DNI. set post-canon; all characters depicted are 20+. afab!bottom!reader (reader is largely gender neutral but implied to be masc/have gone to furin), established relationships (suo/reader, kajisaku), minor/unestablished relationships (kajisuo, suosaku, sakura/reader, & kaji/reader), top!suo, top!kaji, bottom!sakura, getting caught -> fourway, implied consent, riding, handjobs, making out, dirty talk, spit, anal & vaginal fingering/sex, degradation, pet names (whore, slut, pet, baby, sweetheart), mutual masturbation, suo doesn't shut up once, poor soft embarrassed sakura free him from this situation, best friend!kaji
reid: i had a thought
Suo doesn’t sleep in.
He’s always been meticulous about his sleep schedule; early to bed, early to rise, something about wisdom and establishing himself as an adult—but this value gets lost, every time, without fail, whenever he stays at your place and wakes up with your head on his chest. It’s nearly impossible to let you go, sunlight stifled by your curtains, your fingers grasping into his shirt; you have the uncanny ability to slow down time when you lift your head sleepily and ask him for just a few more minutes before you enter the realm of the waking, and the tranquility of it all is always enough to have him teetering back on the edge of sleep until you decide it’s enough and you start tracing shapes across his chest, pressing kisses to his shoulder, cupping his face in your hands and tucking his hair away from his forehead.
And because you’re you—a menace, his weakness, the light of his life and the bane of his existence—your late mornings almost always end up like this.
You breathe out shakily as you hike your leg up higher over his waist; when not presented with interruption or obligation, the sweet tracing and kissing and fawning of these kinds of mornings always becomes squirming and writhing and grinding—only until you’re fed up, tossing the blankets back, and shoving his sleep shorts down the same way he does yours so you can dip the head of his hardening cock into your wetness.
Suo hisses, fingertips finding the fat of your ass. “D’you wake up this wet for me?”
You would snort, but what comes out is a hitched breath as you land a noncommittal slap to his chest and roll your hips, letting yourself sink onto him. The filthy, sticky noises your contact creates already makes you desperate; you steady your breathing as you feel him stretch you. “When’s the last time I didn’t?”
Suo sighs headily, letting your rocking hips do the work. When his head falls back—content to close his eyes and just feel as you fuck yourself on him slowly, gently, but needily—you toss an arm around his middle and burrow in the crook of his neck to muffle your groans with sloppy kisses. One of his arms links behind your back, traces your spine; the other works you up and down, guiding you in your rhythm, squeezing your ass cheek each time your dripping cunt clenches around him.
This is everything, you think. You think, you can’t wait until you marry him, move in together—and this can be your every morning, not just some mornings. This is all you want: Suo, his quickening heartbeat in your ear, the low groans from his chest while you ride him slow, pressed into his jawline. It’s perfect.
And then your door slams open.
“Get your ass u—oh, shit.”
You don’t even spare the bedheaded Ren Kaji in your doorway a glance. Almost reflexively, your palm comes to smack over your eyes (clipping Hayato in the process—who just laughs tiredly, like the psychopath he is; you feel his fingers dig deeper into your hip as you bury your face in the pillow beneath you both).
Okay, it’s objectively your fault for not locking the door, and even further in Kaji’s defense, in the five years you’ve known each other, your boyfriend’s never been in your room when he busts your door down in the early afternoon to drag you out of bed for Tachibana’s omurice as a hangover cure. Your best friend’s never really been the type to knock anyway, and you know this.
Your grinding stops abruptly; when you prop your elbow on Suo’s chest to look back, Kaji’s nestled in his own elbow, leaning on your doorframe in distress. Sakura stands behind him, hands completely over his face—which you know is beet red right now—while he mutters Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ over and over.
“Sorry, just—get out,” you snap, scrambling to pull the blanket up over where Suo’s literally buried inside you; not that either of them will be able to erase this image from their minds any time soon, you think, but the mood’s been killed and you figure you might as well try to reinstate some semblance of modesty before Kaji and Sakura both keel over and die of embarrassment.
But neither of them move, seeming to be turned to stone like they’ve seen the Medusa; you opt to flop back into the pillow face-first and lament the normalcy you now realize you’ve always taken for granted between you and your friends. You figure you can kiss it goodbye for the next few days, maybe a week at most, before Kaji can finally look you in the eye again; for Sakura, you figure it could take more like a month.
“Or you could come in,” Suo suggests casually. Joking, of course. The grin is evident in his voice; still, you snap your head up to look at him like his hair’s caught on fire. You swear you could rip off that stupid medical eyepatch he sleeps in and throw it at him.
What you miss as you glare sharply at Suo is Sakura peeking through his fingers and Kaji lifting his head to exchange a long look with him; you furrow your brow, and Suo raises his—a silent speak now or forever hold your peace before he makes it clear he wasn’t joking if they do actually want to enter the room. It’s always Schrödinger’s flirt with Suo; I mean it if you do, but if you don’t, then of course I’m only kidding. Always something hidden below the surface of what he says.
Silence settles uncomfortably as you weigh your options. Option one involves Kaji and Sakura leaving your doorway, scarred for life with an image that will probably make things incredibly, eternally awkward between all four of you (well, more like three of you—you’re pretty sure Suo doesn’t have a functioning mechanism for shame in his brain) and you having to leave your quarters grumpy, horny, and unsatisfied. Option two includes Kaji and Sakura indeed coming into your room—where you’re presently fucking your boyfriend—and watching, joining, or doing something otherwise out of the ordinary that will, again, probably make things incredibly, eternally awkward between everyone with a shred of sanity in this situation.
But as you hold Suo’s unassuming smile in your vision, you think twice.
It could also be really hot. And you really don’t feel like not getting dicked down right now. He’s throbbing inside you and it’s taking all your strength not to pick your lazy pace back up, toss a middle finger to your two friends regardless of what they decide to do, and get yourself off.
Anyway, you’d be lying if you tried to deny that your best friend is attractive. Kaji’s always been handsome, since back when you were at Furin together a grade above your two sweethearts—and you’re pretty sure Suo crushed on Sakura briefly in your high school days, too. Plus, it’s not like Sakura isn’t charming on his own account. You know, in his perpetually freaked-out, flustered, angry kitten kind of way.
Getting the words out feels like pulling gum out of your hair. You hold it in your mouth like a stone, turning it over once, twice, three times, before you open your dry mouth to say it.
You really hope you don’t regret this.
“Yeah, come in.” You narrow your eyes, never breaking eye contact with Suo. A silent if this goes south, I’m blaming you. You’ve mastered translating his cryptic words and jabbing them right back at him, after all. “If you want.”
You hear shuffling behind you—like they were waiting for your permission—and suddenly, there’s two flushed boys standing shoulder to shoulder at the foot of your bed, gaze anywhere but on you or Suo or each other; Sakura’s palm covers the lower half of his face, and Kaji’s fidgeting with his own fingers like they’re going to fall off at any second.
And in the quiet of observing them, you burst out laughing. Sakura shakes his head like he’s lost all faith in everything, himself included.
Kaji shoots you a glare, but you’re rising to your knees (Suo slides out of you with a lewd pop!) to twist back and grab his wrist, tugging him up onto the unoccupied side of the bed; refusing to be taken alone, he reaches back, too, and drags Sakura around the side to sit him down at the edge, yanking him this way and that until he’s on his back with the blond between his legs, arms crossed over his chest, huffing and puffing about how nasty this is and how you two are obviously huge, disgusting freaks.
You think it’s cute how Sakura betrays his own words when his hips pitch upward unconsciously as Kaji wraps large, strong hands around his thighs, pressing their bulges together—and of course, Suo, ever the diplomat, is quick to ease his friend’s complaints and concerns.
“You can always get up and go,” Suo basically singsongs. What’s hidden is but something tells me you won’t; you know Sakura and Kaji pick up on it this time, too.
Indeed, he doesn’t move. He just looks up at Kaji with a softness behind his scowl—a softness that’s long been reserved for the blond—as if confirming it’s alright with him; it’s uncharacteristic to see Sakura asking for someone’s permission. At the same time, your heart skips a beat for both of them. That’s cute.
Kaji’s eyes are firm, and so he turns to you, finally, to find you biting your lip expectantly.
You shrug a little as your hips start swirling again; you really want Suo’s cock back inside you, and as soon as Kaji’s fingers are flying impatiently to Sakura’s waistband, you get back to the prettiest one of them all, beneath you—oh, if Suo had a tail, it’d be wagging. He looks like a dog about to get a treat, and before you can realign him where you want him most, he’s flipping you under him in one smooth movement.
Plush mattress hits your back; your shoulder bumps Sakura’s.
“So sweet of you both to get all worked up just from catching us.” Your lover puts back on that easy, airy tone that usually slips away when it’s just you and him; teasing’s his game, and he’s going to play it with everyone. His fingers tilt your chin up to him as he asks you, “Think they want a show, sweetheart?”
“You suck,” Sakura spits before you can answer; nonetheless, his hands fumble with Kaji’s pants now, albeit clumsily. You try not to stare at both of their cocks as they spring up against each other—both big, thick, hardening quickly; Sakura’s tip is just as blushy as his face, and as Suo follows your gaze to it, your lips and his twitch up in twin smiles.
“We’ll enjoy watching, too.” Suo’s easygoing as he runs his fingertips from your shoulder, down the bend of your knee, back up across your stomach, like this doesn’t faze him one bit. “Right?”
He curls down over your body to press a burning kiss to the side of your neck before he whispers in your ear loud enough for them to hear. Soft, reddish-brown hair curtains over your face.
“You wanna watch them fuck while I fuck you? Hm?”
Suo’s always had a filthy mouth. It still gets you going, but you’re used to it enough; what you’re not used to is him doing it in front of other people—your friends—and it sets off an unfamiliar kind of electricity in your belly that has you clawing at his shoulders. But he’s pulling back away from you, and you’re whining.
“Haya,” you whimper.
His brow shoots up innocently, like Sakura’s hand isn’t curling into the sheets next to yours; Kaji’s at work lining his jaw with rough bites, both of them bare from the waist down and wriggling. It’s so sexy to watch; Sakura’s so crimson you think he might burst into flames.
Just when Kaji lifts up to drop a hand between Sakura’s legs, Suo catches his wrist.
“Wait.”
If looks could kill, the look Kaji and Sakura send your lover would’ve struck him dead instantly. You know something’s coming next; Suo’s always plotting some way to play mind games with you, and usually you can read him, but he’s got two new toys at his disposal, and you find your gaze falling to the two cocks of your friends pressed together, straining, leaking. You salivate.
“Make them beg for it,” Suo says—meaning you—like he’s requesting someone pass him the salt.
You watch the irritation on your best friend’s face morph into shock. His eyes lock onto you, licking your lips and grasping half-heartedly at your boyfriend, and you watch the shock become conspiracy—and the conspiracy become something downright evil.
Ren’s not above teasing you, either. You know this.
“Yeah. Right,” Kaji huffs, grinning as he frees himself from Suo’s hold to poke you in the side. You kick at him unceremoniously, but mostly end up knocking your knee into Sakura’s, which earns you a gruff watch it! “Beg me.”
You know, also, that the new rules of this arising game mean Suo won’t touch you or fuck you, either—not until you’re doing as Kaji tells you. As this knowledge settles, you look up at Kaji like you can’t believe him. You can’t believe he would betray you like this—take Suo’s side over yours, for a laugh, to make you squirm.
But his steely blue eyes are unwavering.
“Beg me to touch him,” he continues. “Beg me to fuck Haru so you can get off to it.”
Suo would never tell you, but he adores the helpless look on your face. He’s always talking about breaking you, about ruining you, but he might’ve just accidentally stumbled upon the thing that’ll help him do exactly that: your best friend, who doesn’t go any easier on you than your lover does.
You glance over to see how Sakura’s faring. Judging from the annoyance still fresh on his face, along with that trademark blush, you can guess he’s not much happier than you are about not being touched yet on top of being put through this humiliation ritual; when his dagger-like stare shoots over to you, you can basically hear him telling you to get on with it. He wants it worse than you do. The gloss over that mean gaze gives him away.
And you want it bad. You kind of hate that you have to be the one to stand down for both of you, but you’re clenching around nothing, feeling so unbearably empty, with Suo’s cock right there, so close to where you need it; the rapid rise and fall of Sakura’s breath—or maybe that’s yours—fills you with anxiety.
“Please,” you squeak out, voice getting caught. “Please, Ren.”
“Please, Ren, what?” he goads you; you don’t look over to see it, but Suo appears very pleased at how easily Kaji slips into this role. As they wait for you to continue, fingers push your shirt up; Sakura rids himself of his own shirt, and Kaji rubs a slow, intentional path up the plane of his abs to a nipple, which he tweaks, still searing into you.
“Please, Ren, touch Haru, please.” It all falls out in one breath. You anticipate what follows this, so on the inhale, you finish, “Touch his cock and stretch him out f’me, please?”
Your immediate reward is Suo’s thumb on your puffy clit; you gasp, your legs twitch—the far one, Suo tosses over his shoulder at your ankle. “Good. Wasn’t so hard, yeah?”
“Mm-mm,” you agree, shaking your head, almost shivering for it. You’re lying. It wasn’t anywhere near the easiest thing in the world, between these three, but you’ve got some leverage, acting like this, if it means Suo’s fingers on you and Kaji’s on Sakura—you relish that, take it in stride—you know Suo will be proud of you for doing so, and you’ll get what you want sooner; his slow circles are torturous, but relieving enough in combination with the visual of Kaji dipping two fingers into Sakura’s mouth and wetting them before they traverse back down his body to tease his balls, trace the rim of his ass.
The sound that leaves Sakura’s mouth is nothing short of adorable—restrained cry, choked breath. The string of spit that then drops from Kaji’s mouth onto the shaft of the other boy’s dick is hypnotizing. You only remember Suo’s touching you when his fingers prod at your hole, forcing your eyes back to him—his coy smile, his heavy-lidded single eye.
“Don’t forget about me,” he muses. “That’s rude.”
“No, baby,” you croon. You try not to pout in return; with both of them ganged up on you, you know you need to behave. Sakura needs it, too, if the way he tenses up and paws at his lover’s wrists is anything to go off of. ”Want you.”
“Gotta beg him, too, cutie,” Kaji tells you, working a finger up to the first knuckle in Sakura’s ass; you don’t remember who put them both in charge, but you’re not thinking about it for long once you feel Suo’s cockhead replace his thumb—sliding up, down between your soaked folds, those dirty, creamy noises that had your middle in knots earlier finding your ears again.
“Please,” Sakura chokes out abruptly, beating you to it, to your surprise—you’re unsure if he’s begging Kaji, or begging you to beg. “Please, just fucking—”
“Want you so bad, Haya,” comes your cracked voice, overlapping. You arch your back up into him, but Suo maneuvers himself away with discipline. “Please, put it—put it back in, please. Wan’ you to fuck me.”
“You should wait ‘til Haruka’s ready,” Suo hums, drooling pre-cum onto your cunt. You both admire and loathe his knack for constraint when it comes to pushing you to your wits end in bed; his desperation for you is ever-present but never obvious, and he uses it to make you feel even needier. “Don’t wanna be unfair.”
“I think we gotta hear ‘em both,” Kaji concludes. In your peripheral, you see Sakura’s jaw fall open; the full-bodied moan he lets out tells you he’s going to break just as quick as you. Good, you think. You’re better off for it.
“Ren,” Sakura gasps. “Fuckin‘—shit. Please.”
“Use those words, babe.” Kaji’s free hand sketches across Sakura’s hips, across his happy trail, avoiding his cock pointedly; you and Sakura are passing the antsiness back and forth between you, and now that you have your turn with it, it feels painful. You’re in a limbo, panting like an animal, eyes watering in a way that has Suo unable to tear his gaze away from you. He loves your tears. He wants to see more, but you want it to be from him fucking you hard.
“Just—fuck.”
“Haru,” you whine petulantly. You can’t wait for him.
Your vision’s blurry through the lust-thickened air when your hands start to wander before your brain can stop them; one, downward, to Suo—slick and messy with your arousal, straining at the moment of contact.
The other, across Sakura’s hip to coil around his cock.
You knock another string of curses from his chest when you squeeze; two-toned eyes roll back, and you stroke attentively, with both hands.
”Fuck, that’s hot,” you hear Kaji mutter; he supplies you with another glob of spit and you grin, open-mouthed, gaining traction back—you’re going to steer this in your direction, and fast. The quick jerking of your wrist has pleas falling from Sakura’s mouth like flower petals—exactly what you want to hear, whether they’re for you or not.
“Fuck, Ren, just fuck me—please, pleasepleaseplease—”
Sakura’s hips undulate with each thrust of Kaji’s fingers—bucking up into your hand, mouth moving faster than he can control it; he begs and begs and it sounds so pretty—that rough, low voice of his soaring up as he drones out appeals that sound more like impatient prayer.
“You can take it?” Kaji’s cocky, but ardent, insistent he tells him the truth. You’re not sure if you can handle anything other than a resounding yes.
“I can take it, I can take it, I can take it—please,” he rasps, eyes screwed shut. “Fuckin’—please, Ren, need it—need it in me.”
“Good fuckin’ boy,” Kaji growls, withdrawing his fingers.
You pan back to Suo. His grin is wicked. You must look destroyed. You feel like it.
“Poor baby.” No good boy for you. He wipes the tear that escapes from the corner of your eye down your temple with mock sympathy. “Alright, alright, you’ve been good, too. Open up for me, sweetheart.”
Almost perfectly in tandem, Kaji presses into Sakura as Suo pushes into you; you’re certain you and Sakura are a sight to behold as you’re both filled up, fucked out of your minds already, but you nevermind how you look when you tune into how you all sound—wet, sloppy, all uneven impact of pelvis into ass, harsh breath, rough groans, false consolation from the mouths of your two lovers as they pound you deep. You don’t let up on Sakura’s cock, determined to keep him crying and pliant; you don’t expect him to reach over you to return the favor, to swipe at your clit with tight, frantic loops, but he does—all too put together for how Kaji plows him to the point of breathlessness, and you follow him there, moaning long and choppy as you sink fully into the bliss radiating throughout your body from your aching core.
“Cunt’s so tight for me,” Suo breathes, hands full of your thighs, landing smacks to your skin with his otherwise delicate palms that have you yelping and chanting his name.
“This pretty ass’s so tight for me, too,” Kaji agrees through ragged, concentrated heaves of air.
“Good little pets we have, huh?” Suo brushes a tentative hand across Sakura’s shin; catching Kaji’s possessed stare as he turns sideways, your eyes fly open just in time to watch your boyfriend lean in, jaw tense, to capture your best friend in a kiss that’s all tongue and teeth and the congratulatory arrogance they split evenly in having you and Sakura broken beneath them like this.
Fucking you still, they bite at each other wantonly; beside you, Sakura’s voice heightens a decibel as Kaji’s thrusts grow more unforgiving. Suo’s bottom lip is caught between Kaji’s teeth for a brief second before the passion surges and their lips meet again, careless and decadent, fiery and intimate.
The open-mouthed smirk Suo sends you almost throws you over the edge; you’re flickering like a faulty radio through channels of ecstasy and agony and exertion as your boyfriend’s temple rests against your best friend’s, momentarily, as they pant hotly and peer down at you cloudily; it’s like Kaji can feel the way you clamp down on Suo through him, with the way he looks at you, all proud and smug.
Sakura’s lost. He reaches for Kaji’s hands; they intertwine effortlessly as his cock jumps at the scene in front of him, surrounding him, inside of him; the snowy half of him is bisected when his head lolls to look at you, gone off the absurdity of it all, and it’s only now when you realize you’ve forgotten to keep touching each other—but it doesn’t matter, because you’re clamoring to clutch Sakura’s chin and arching to make your way to his lips where you recreate, action-for-action, breath-for-breath, the kiss your lovers just shared. Sakura goes limp into you as his tongue finds yours, hot and weak, both of you jostling against the headboard, both of you swallowing each other’s moans as you get split open.
“Fuck, look at that—” Suo’s on the verge of breaking; you recognize it in his voice. “Filthy.”
“Good lil’ sluts, gonna cum?” Kaji barks, gasping shallowly. You reach for Sakura’s cock again, and he fumbles for your throbbing clit. “Fuckin’ fallin’ apart like whores on these cocks. So good for us.”
“S-so good for us.” It might be the only time in either of their lives they hear Hayato Suo stutter—but when when you pull back short of breath from Sakura’s mouth, his eyes are falling shut in sheer rapture; he won’t remember hearing it anyway, you think, grinning dazedly to yourself as you shift one last time to study your boyfriend as he falls apart.
But Suo grips your chin harshly and turns you. “Look at them. They’re lettin’ you watch, sweetheart.”
“Said you wanted to get off to us—you better watch,” Kaji warns you, eyes wild.
So you do. You watch Ren’s blond locks sway, a few strands sweaty, a few strays out of place; his pretty neck tenses as he swallows hard, dropping down to an elbow to batter into Sakura’s g-spot even more brutally. Sakura’s groans come from his diaphragm, potent and adrift as he wraps his arms around Kaji’s shoulders, pulling him down to his chest; they whimper things to each other you can’t make out, but they look so in love, they look so debauched—it has you fluttering, has you tightening, keeps you walking the thinning line between the stage you’re in now and the state Suo’s taking you to. Your lover’s thumb finds your clit again as he fucks you, and you watch, you do, not because you’re supposed to but because you want to—until Suo’s cruelly yanking your chin toward him once more.
He wants your eyes back on him now, so that ruthless hand trails down, braces on your throat, as his relentless hips thrash you toward your peak. “Watch me now,” he puffs “Watch me make you cum, baby.”
This is your favorite Suo: possessive, a little mean, out of control for you and you only—and you let your unspoken yes appear as nail marks in his wrist as he chokes you into the bed, intoxicated and exhilarated as you feel Sakura’s sticky cum spilling in pathetically large dollops down your fingers.
You follow right after. Toes pointed, tummy wound tight, back arching and curling, humping away as all the air and thoughts leave your brain with the crushing climax that rips through you—you’re croaking out Hayato or thank you or love you or something saccharine that you know will make its way to your lover even if you can’t fully register it; you see white, you see black, you see nothing—your jaw is wired open in a scream you can’t hear, and the convulsions replace heaven with something much more sinister but equally as satisfying, long, rhythmic, orgasmic voices coming in distantly—Suo’s cumming, too, pulling out to spill all over you stomach and snap you back to reality where Kaji finishes last, inside Sakura, grunting deeply, cumming hard.
The pressure on your neck fades away. When you blink a few times to regard the angel above you, it’s just that—kind-faced Hayato, who loves you so much, looking at you like you just won him a million dollars. His hand, his fingers, so gentle now, hold the side of your face as you come back to earth.
“Hey, there, sweetheart,” he coos as you flex your fingers, flex your legs; he lets the one on his shoulder down to stretch it away from you, your sigh getting stuck in your throat at the stiffness. God, you’re definitely going to be hurting for the rest of the day. Nonetheless, you giggle happily, sleepily.
“Hi, Haya,” you mumble, dopey smile on your face. Next, he massages circles into your hips that make you wince. It’s a good kind of wince; the same way it’ll be a good kind of pain. As he does this, Suo lavishes your face with flitting kisses—so different from the man who was about to break your bed frame a few moments ago. You love him and his duality and all the things no one other than you knows about him—well, except for Sakura and Kaji, now. But that’s minuscule.
You love him so wholly that you forget you’re not alone until Kaji comes back from your bathroom with a few wet washcloths; when did he even get up to get them? Sakura looks on the verge of unconsciousness beside you; you wonder aloud if someone should get him some water.
“No, no,” he croaks. “Need—no.”
“What’d’you need, babe?” Kaji’s voice is reserved now; nothing akin to the shark-like snarl he degraded you both with mere minutes before this—even gentler than his normal speaking voice, you’d venture to say.
You lay a palm across Sakura’s forearm, finger pads going mindlessly, just barely; your lover cleans you up, and Kaji kisses his boy back to reality, too.
“What were you saying?” the blond half-snaps once he has Sakura sitting up. He has indeed shoved a glass of water into his shaking hands.
Sakura drinks deeply, gulping like a child getting out of the swimming pool—elbows up, out of breath, comical. And then he speaks, all at once defeated and determined, exhausted and restless.
“Breakfast.”
When you slide onto a stool at Kotoha’s bar—your boyfriend to your right and Sakura to your left, who is cornered into the center of attention on the other side by his boyfriend—she makes note of your self-satisfied air; after dropping a cup of hot water and the tea sampler in front of Suo, she turns to Sakura.
“You look red this morning,” Kotoha quips, smirking at the split-haired boy. “Even for you.”
Sakura grumbles audibly but unintelligibly while she pours the other three of you glasses of ice water. You pluck a pineapple ginger green tea bag out of the box—one you’ve never seen before—and hold it up; your boyfriend gives you his soft-smiled nod, and you tear the package open for him before you hand it over.
Then she motions vaguely toward you and Suo. “These two giving you trouble?” she jokes—but your two friends hear anything but humor.
You glance over to see Kaji’s face go pink, too, as he unwraps a sucker and shoves it in his mouth, busying himself with the laminated menu in front of him (it’s been a long time since any of you have had to consult the menu). You hear Suo chuckle airily beside you; you sip your water and feign innocence.
GOT ME SO FED UP WHEN YOU TALK TOO MUCH, WHEN YOUR FOCUS IS ALL OUTTA LINE . . . ft. Osamu Dazai
wc: ~4.3k
cw: NSFW—MINORS/AGELESS+BLANK BLOGS WILL BE BLOCKED, explicit sexual content, gn!reader (no anatomy mentioned), Dazai is a little SHIT and manipulative but we <3 him anyway, switch!reader, switch!Dazai, biting, grinding, dirty talk/teasing, pet names (good boy for Dazai, honey, baby, etc.), finger sucking, spit, blowjob, facefucking, gagging, anal fingering, ruined orgasm, cum eating
reid: surprise! lol. this is old and i felt up to polishing it up today. kindly dedicated to anyone who missed me posting about what i made this blog for in the first place hahaha
“Such a long fuckin’ day.”
Osamu’s grumbling, wrapping himself around you from behind.
On any other evening, you’d be inclined to mock that it’s always a long day for him when he’s throwing balled-up paper at Kunikida's head, guilting Atsushi into doing his paperwork for him, and slipping out of the office under the guise of fetching snacks for Ranpo just to go lean against the railing of Bankoku Bridge and gaze longingly at the water—but frankly, there’s two factors at play keeping you from doing so.
One: his regular dramatics are nowhere to be seen. You hadn’t even realized he was on his way in until the door shut behind him—he’s normally sing-songing your name before he even opens it, before he’s bouncing over to you to ask what’s for dinner while he complains about the long day he had in that all too-spry voice of his. This evening, he’s subdued. Quiet complaints, quiet shuffling, quiet breath on your ear as he latches onto you.
The second is that, when you turn around from the counter to face him, he looks like he’s had a long day.
His messy hair seems messier. His eyes aren’t so wide and sparkly, and he’s got a nasty bruise blossoming on the apple of his left cheek—you bite back, too, the instinctual urge to tease and ask if it’s Chuuya’s doing.
“Baby,” you coo, bringing your hands up to cup his face (pointedly avoiding the bruise). “I didn’t even cook. Was just cutting up some fruit.”
“That’s okay,” he sighs, seemingly content to be under your grasp. He really does look exhausted as he grins weakly and slumps into your hold, faltering down to brush a kiss against your lips. “Cut up some strawberries, too, if you would.”
“Mhm.” You kiss him back, short and sweet—not entirely pleased with such a concise request, but happy to indulge it regardless. “Go get comfy, I’ll be there in a sec.”
So he does. He wanders off; you dump your fruit into a bowl, fetch the strawberries from the fridge, and toss those in, too, also preparing a glass of ice water for him for good measure. No guarantee he’ll drink it, but at least it’ll be there.
When you pad to your bed, he’s sitting, pulling a shirt over his bare torso—the local bandages lay at his feet. A rewrap for tomorrow, you think absently, hopping like a cat onto the opposite side and kicking the covers back; not that he’ll have any use for them—the beginnings of stirrings in your brain will come to fruition more beautifully, anyway, should he leave them be.
His quietness always spooks you a little; you hope nothing too terrible happened today, because if he wanted to talk about it, he undoubtedly would’ve started by now.
There are very few things a bowl of cut fruit and your fingertips can’t begin to mend, though.
You flick the light out, turn the television on, lean over to abandon the water on his side table; Osamu plucks a strawberry from the bowl you nestle in your lap and cuddles up to your side. Half a fat cherry gushes between your teeth; you peck the crown of his head.
Even if he is uncharacteristically quiet, you do always find a bit of joy in fussing over him. You might not draw from him what exactly is on his mind, but you can hold him while it simmers, take care of him—it’s one of the things you do best, after all, and you’re well aware Osamu likes being taken care of.
He’s painted soft, staticky colors from whatever sitcom plays. You curl the arm that’s fallen behind his head to twirl his hair between your fingers, toy with the shoulder of his shirt; you can feel the tension in him. But before you move, you let the fruit in the bowl dwindle. Better if he eats.
When his eyes flutter shut and he nudges you, mouth open like some sort of sultan, you shake your head (chuckling) and place a few halved grapes on his tongue.
You don’t know if he knows how proud you are of him; you tell him plenty, sure, but thinking back to the quip you’re relieved to have held back today, you wonder briefly why he only ever complains gratuitously about the easy days and never the ones that leave him like this. It fills you with a certain sorrow—one that shapeshifts swiftly into determination.
“Last one’s yours.” You pan back in, referring to the sole strawberry left.
“Mm.” Again, wordlessly, he demands you feed it to him. You concede, of course, with a sleepy grin of your own.
It’s when his tongue flicks out to lick the remnants of sweetness off your fingertips that you strike; only when you fiddle with his bottom lip do his owl eyes flicker open to peer up into yours.
Juxtaposition is a fascinating thing. You don’t know what happened today. You don’t know what’s happened on most of the darker days he’s left trailing behind him—you might never know all of it, other than it’s been horrible, scarring, gutting both for him and those staring down the barrel of the gun that is Osamu Dazai—but he looks so innocent before he takes your finger, all the way to the second knuckle, into his mouth to swirl his tongue around.
You can’t help biting the inside of your cheek.
As his jaw flexes around you, you press your middle finger in, too. Those brown eyes never falter from yours, nor does the quiet smile in them; any remaining strawberry is long gone, swallowed down, but Osamu sucks on your fingers with fervor, nearly nodding like he’s drawing some other sort of elixir from you—one that will compel him to keep moving forth another day, perhaps, and as he does, his ankles knock against yours.
“Needy boy, huh.” It’s a statement, not a question, which he needn’t deny or confirm; the attention you shower him with after the days that drag him to hell extends to all the vulnerabilities he doesn’t allow another soul to see—the ones that stem from a depth left neglected by any previous excuse for a caretaker he might’ve had.
Whereas, you’d be damned if you cast aside a single inch of that void.
So you poke a kiss to the corner of his mouth—an I’ll be back here later—before you latch onto his neck softly, with just lips first, then tongue, and finally teeth. You find his pulse point and bite, dragging spit-coated fingers down his chin, past his throat to his nipple.
The exhale from his chest prompts your knee into his lap like the kickback of a gunshot. Rolling equally into you, Osamu tugs you by your arms on top of him, across his hips so you can hunch over him and kiss, bite, kiss, bite, worship from above in the little rhythm you have that's so familiar to his fatigued body.
Fingers flitting, you creep up his shirt.
You work his sleep shirt off, too slow for his liking, but something he loves about what you do is how you never even mind the scars; you look at the exposed, marred flesh of his chest, shoulders, arms, and abdomen like it’s empty and pristine only until you mark it up yourself. There are fading bite marks, ones from maybe a few days or a week ago, across the curves where his pectorals slope into his collarbones, and you take it upon yourself to retrace, refresh them as you caress up and down from his shoulders to his hips and back again, doting and unhurried. You bite into him like you did the fruit—like he’ll gush sweetness for you, and he might.
The empty bowl’s lost somewhere outside the searing kiss you land to his eager mouth (one of you has likely tossed it, kicked it, or pushed it to the floor with his shirt), and his hands wander, aching to offer fair exchange—but you’re quick to stop him, slow him, lick his bottom lip and pin one of his wrists to the headboard beside him before you mutter, “Let me take care of you, ‘kay?”
In true Osamu fashion, he whines, not unlike a cat being denied a treat; after all, for him, half the fun of fucking is getting you off—but tonight, you smell insincerity in his protest, sense the smallness that silently begs yes, please, take care of me, and you find yourself grinning into his mouth. Osamu’s rarely straightforward; he gets what he wants anyway.
So, in equally as true Osamu fashion, he’ll sit pretty and let you send him to the clouds.
You crawl with lips and fingertips back to his chest, to his nipples, where you both know he’s so sensitive; you could make Osamu cum just from your tongue on those pretty, pink buds of his—you have before—but you feel determined to work him up thoroughly, take your time with all of him, all of his distress, right now.
“Want that pretty mouth on me, baby,” he confesses, quieter and meeker than usual. He keeps drilling home how tired he is—here he is, telling you what he wants so soon.
You finish sucking a particularly harsh mark into his sternum; plum blooms in your wake, and you twist a nipple. “It is on you.”
“Mm—no, on me.” And then his hand, the one not held hostage by you, is pushing yours down to his cock, beginning to stiffen in his sweatpants.
“Be patient.” You rise back up to kiss him again, swatting him away just to toy with him over his pants; Osamu chases your breath with his own, hungrily, fingers flexing and relaxing in your grasp when you squeeze him, circle your thumb over his tip, nip at his mouth. “I'll make you feel good.”
It’s when you sit yourself down fully on his growing erection and begin to grind back and forth that he starts whining, barely perceptible, against your lips.
You hold his face to yours, smile into him reflexively; you love when it’s easy to make him mewl. For as much composure as Osamu holds in every other corner of his life, your bed is the one place he tends to let it escape him, and you live to watch him crumble for you. You live to feel his jaw work into your kiss, to trace adoration into his skin, to hear the little whimpers he lets out rise in decibel the longer you drag him out. You love it most of all because he deserves it—to let go, retreat from himself into your touch.
“Please,” he whispers into you, so quietly you almost don’t hear it. It might be nothing to make him whine, but it’s no small feat to reduce Osamu Dazai to begging. That you didn’t even have to try tells you he needs this—he needs you; no matter how much he might’ve lied if you asked or banked on you missing it, you know the outline of that word on his lips, and he knows you know it, too. So you grind, not faster but harder, cockily slipping your tongue into his pliant mouth.
After letting his wrist go, after he grabs your hip and presses you onto him feverishly with a few more of your undulations, you work your way down him again—stopping not at his chest this time but between his hips, waiting to peel the waistband of his sweatpants down and off until you've first circled his belly button and the gradual path of hair that disappears beneath the fabric with kisses growing more intense from one moment to the next. You seek out the little layer of fat stretching across his tummy and bite there, too; he grabs your hair and snickers, watching you through squinted eyes while he tells you hoarsely to stop, it tickles! And you relent with a giggle of your own only to shove his pants down and settle on your stomach, where you urge each of his knees over your shoulders.
You look up and think, god, you wish you could photograph him right now. Gazing down at you, lips parted with breathlessness, Adam's apple bobbing as you tease him; he’s a quiet image of ecstasy as he curls his hands around your face, only because he trusts you to let him be. When you pause and admire for a moment too long, his lithe fingers take root in your hair; he's wiggling, saying please with his low-lidded eyes and desperate hips only so he won’t have to subject himself to verbalizing it again.
You wrap an arm beneath his thigh to seek out his cock, finally, sweetly; he’s so hard from that little bit of humping and kissing, and you hold him up to lick a torturously slow stripe from base to tip up the underside. Osamu croons.
And just when you thought you had him, he starts running his mouth.
“Uh—yeah, was wondering when you'd get to the whole making-me-feel-good part.”
With your free hand, you swat his leg—impatient and sassy, even while he’s supposedly running on fumes. Roguish in every sense of the word, still, while you’re taking such good care of him. His spark would normally have you grinning, and you try not to by burying your face in him, lapping sweetly, diligently at the spot between his base and his balls that should shut him up, but he turns on a dime for you, so unpredictable he’s almost predictable.
“You're so mean, you know?”
You can tell from his tone he’s smirking.
“Ngh—telling me to be patient wh—while I beg for you.” But he’s far from in pain; quite the opposite, actually, as you glance up and confirm your suspicion. His eyes are dark, lazy, ready to use you to his heart’s content. It should piss you off, but it eggs you on further. He keeps going, but you do, too, suckling one ball into your mouth and making him groan sharply.
“—Mhm—yeah,” he exhales, one heel digging into your back—telling you he’s still going to fall apart quick. “You always know just—uh—just where to... t’—”
In a rarer display of force, you grab behind yourself for his shin, gripping it, bending it up close to him and freeing your other arm; after this, you reach up, stuff your pre-cum dabbled fingers back in his mouth as your fingers around his cock give a tough squeeze—to which he can only respond with a muffled mph! and widening eyes.
Your patience with him is perpetually thinning. You pull away from his leaking cock to prop yourself up to kneel, to shove your fingers deeper and peer right into his face. He has you doing all this moving around. He should be grateful.
“How about you be quiet, Osamu?” you pose gently; your fingerpads on his tongue are anything but, and he’s squirming at the loss of pleasure. You relish it. “Get my fingers nice n’ wet while you’re at it.”
Osamu’s teeth are in your knuckles a little too harsh to be considered polite, but you thrust them toward the back of his tongue anyway; he holds your eyes, you shoo his legs open further so as not to have to work around them as you resume stroking him lazily, and you tilt your head, admiring again. He hums around you, sighs through his nose while he laps you up, so you pick up the talking.
“So cute when you shut the fuck up.”
You retract your fingers momentarily to squish his cheeks, and the face as well as the sound he makes is nothing short of adorable, less in the contrived sense and more in the literal as his nose scrunches; you want to adore him by making him come, and you will, but he’s making it so hard—so you will after thrusting your fingers back into his bratty mouth immediately.
“When have I ever left you unsatisfied, huh?” You don’t wait for an answer. “When have I ever not given my good boy what he needs?”
It’s rhythmic, how he echoes the cadence of good boy with his body—first in the way his hips buck into you, and next in the groan you don’t let pass his teeth.
“That’s right. You’re smart enough to know when I want you to be quiet and take it.”
You leave hardly a second between replacing your fingers with your mouth, sloppy, all breath, biting at his bottom lip and the tip of his tongue; Osamu loves when you kiss him hard, like you need him. Loves feeling needed more than he needs. But you know—maybe better than he does.
You smear his spit down his chin, wasting it for what you’re planning next; there’s one more thing he’ll do for you, and you'll get him there if it kills you—you’ll disarm this unshakably smug and prodigiously self-controlled man and turn him into your lover, like you do so often.
For what it’s worth, this is the least he’s made you work for it in a while.
Osamu chases you when you leave his kiss, but you pin him down.
“Aht—” You shove them back in, abrupt across his tongue, just the tips of them. Only until he settles, and then you hold them out, cradling his bottom lip with your two fingers like a spoon. “Spit.”
And he does.
“Good boy, Osamu.”
You love watching the power leave his body when you utter those two words in combination with his name. As if conditioned, his cock jumps; you notice this as you reach down, dollop of spit beginning to drip between your fingers before you circle them around his hole and oh, you’re rewarded with the prettiest gasp that trails off into an even prettier whimper—yes, a whimper, because he always ends up breaking so pathetically beneath you.
You smile into Osamu’s mouth when his breath picks up, evermore unsteady as you tease the rim of his ass. Without having to ask, he pitches his hips up for you, knees bent and feet bracing when you traverse back down his jugular with your lips and teeth.
You’re fast now, eager yourself; your line’s barely straight, but you meet your own hand again as you return.
“Please,” followed by your name, huffy, totally realized this time.
And since it’s finally looking like he’s going to be obedient for you, how can you do anything but oblige?
Curling your fingers back around his cock, collecting the leakiness at his weepy tip to stroke him fully, he throws his soft brown head back into the headboard, gripping the sheets. No free hand to use, you hum and hope silently for his legs over your shoulders once more, and like a mindreader, he obliges you now—good boy, you’d be saying, if your mouth wasn’t occupied with one of his balls, or maybe tracing into his skin if you weren’t fucking him open on two fingers now, rewriting the meaning of triple homicide with your movements.
When you switch your mouth and the hand wrapped around him, Osamu starts to get demanding.
“Deeper,” he growls through his teeth, and you’re unclear whether he means he wants you deeper inside him or his cock deeper down your throat, so you do both. “C’mon—I want it, baby.”
No please, and definitely no thank you when you give into his whims both ways, thrusting deeper to curl up and apply pressure to the spot you know will have him writhing into you, and that’s exactly what he does—bucks into you, shoves your face all the way down on him harshly.
And then he really starts talking.
“Thought you’d be all nice n’ be in charge—n’ take care of me? Hah—”
You still your head while Osamu holds either side of your jaw and humps upward, drawing wet, smothered heaves from the back of your throat as his throbbing tip starts to hammer it.
“That’s sweet, honey.”
Deep down, you really, truly do know why he doesn’t complain about easy days, but the bulb only ever flickers once you’re choking and drooling on him—only ever once he has you right where he wants you. When you fuss over him, it always gives him a leg up to rip that control he thirsts for so deeply away from you with all the more force. You thought today might be different, but you were wrong.
He licks his lips as honey drips from it, cradling you with the same gentleness you talked to him with earlier and employing the same ruthlessness in contrast with his snapping hips. You surrender to his brutal pace and the air he cuts off from you so cruelly—but god, if you had the faculty to, you wouldn’t even be able to deny that you love letting him use you, love letting him take what he wants from you, so you focus your swirling consciousness on pressing the pads of your fingers up, deeper into his ass, worming your ring finger next to your middle one to stretch him even wider open, have him gasping, holding on loosely.
It’s always a push and pull between you, after all; you always let Osamu have his fun, but he knows who he belongs to at the end of the day, because you always have him sounding like—
“God—fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
—while he leverages his heels in your back to fuck your throat meaner, harder. You gag, spit dribbling down your chin, onto his balls, and you know it spurs him on—you know the ring of drool at his base and the sweet, nasty sounds you make involuntarily for him keep him chasing that pretty fulfillment you inspire in the pit of his stomach.
“Look who’s cute now,” he drawls on, pushing your hair away from your forehead to watch the way he possesses you when he’s in you like this; wheezing, whimpering in between, eyes rolling back from the force. The dominator in him wants to laugh at you, but his taunting throttles almost violently back to strangled groans and cries of your name while tears bead on his lashes. For every take it, take it, take it, there’s an equal please, please, please. “Not so bad yourself when you shut the fuck up.”
Osamu always grunts in a certain vocal register lower, a sultry one, when he’s close to spilling down your throat—and each byte you draw from him by sitting and being his good little toy is reminding you how much how much it gets you off, too, to make him feel good; you grind against the mattress helplessly while he has you pinned in place—you squeeze and massage his balls needily, frantically while you keep his clenching hole full, keep him moaning and sobbing for you through his little semblance of authority because you know all of his tells. You know when he’s about to fall apart, you can always tell by the way he twitches fast, abrupt—when those grunts splinter into high-pitched cries and he starts breathing almost panic-like, enough to make himself a little dizzy while he unloads in you but you don’t give him the satisfaction of that this time, because he led you here too easy today and you’re not quite done. You have to take something back, and so when he’s cursing with his eyes screwed shut and tears threatening to slip down his face you muster up your strength, wrestle yourself off of his cock and out of his hole with a lewd pop so he can warble no, no, no—half-launching yourself away from him to watch his chin fall to his chest to see himself shoot spurt after spurt of hot, sticky cum onto the sheets. He grapples, pumps at his dick clumsily, but it’s done and over; your grin is nothing short of vicious as his tears fall, and he scowls at you through his ruined orgasm that was going to be so sweet with you milking him from the inside, but now his ass twitches emptily and his balls do the same, and the satisfaction is all yours.
You thumb your drool from your face—you should scoop it up and drop it all back in his mouth, but he looks so wrecked in front of you with his hole spasming and his cock softening that you decide not to add insult to injury. Your giggles are bubbly as you crawl back toward him.
Beneath the triumphant kiss you press to his mouth—still sweet with lingering strawberry flavor—he blindly swipes the mess up off the sheets and draws you away to shove his own fingers in your mouth. You got the last laugh, but he’s not about to give it up so easily. Still fighting him, you lick his spend up diligently and return to poke at his hole. He jumps, you bite down—you’re not going to let him win, and finally pulling out of your mouth, still glowering at the way you take great delight in yourself, Osamu concedes victory.
“You’re so fucking mean to me.” He’s hoarse, as if he’s the one who just got his throat fucked.
“Trust me,” you sigh back, slinging yourself over his lap again and wriggling on his thigh. He’s going to tease you so bad for getting worked up by letting him use you and play games with you, but you’re certain you can handle it. “You deserve it.”
Blowing a stream air at your face, Osamu’s hands wander down to your ass to rock you along. He sounds gruff, but he’s returning your grin when he starts working your shorts down and tells you through gritted teeth, “Shut up and get me hard again.”
BREATHED SO DEEP I THOUGHT I’D DROWN . . . ft. Floyd Leech
wc: ~7.5k
cw: NSFW—MINORS + AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DNI, gn+afab!yuu/reader, reader is not called yuu, reader is called shrimpy sorry, all characters portrayed are 18+, mutual pining, friends -> lovers, implied virgin!floyd, scientifically inaccurate/speculative on behalf of author’s conception of mer-eel anatomy, #fucking4science, more like fucking under the guise of science, pool sex, mentions of mating/breeding, penetration, fingering, cunnilingus, kissing, biting/marking, dirty talk, creampie, silly and unserious because it’s floyd, shrimpy more like simpy (floyd's worse), only like a third of this is actually smut someone shoot me
reid: couldnt have written this ridiculousness without my two beloveds @seasidefallenangel and @fleursdaydreams ... thank you for bouncing around analysis, prompting me to write, and listening to me talk endlessly about him for the past few weeks lol <3
You and Grim struck a deal back when you were first settling into Ramshackle together: he’d take the classes that required applied magic and its necessary preparation, and you’d take the more basic courses. You were mostly spared first year, save for the moments when you were more or less dragging Grim through History of Magic by the scruff of his neck (he was going to hold up his end of your duo-enrollment if it meant you had to maim him a little along the way), but that was it. Not that you’d have had much time to devote to study, anyway, what with the way Crowley had you running around all over campus and beyond, cleaning up after people’s messes and bailing your lovable (deplorable) companion out of trouble. But he promised he’d take it easier on you this year, your second year, seeing as you’d be personally enrolled in a few classes—just another one of his kindnesses that he had no reservation extending to you, of course, because Crowley was just so nice like that.
And you quickly learned in the first weeks of fall semester that being in class with the friends you’d made thus far is actually pretty fun—or, at least, it’s never dull. Kalim’s TA position in Trein’s astrology class comes in handy both for academic and entertainment purposes (he likes to tell the class the stories he used to make up for the constellations before he knew what they meant), and even mathematics is alright when Ace is willing to let you peek over his shoulder for answers.
And you have biology with Floyd, which goes… exactly as you might expect it to.
Really, though, people tend to write Floyd off as a clown—and for good reason, because he certainly acts like one sometimes, but he’s smarter than he appears. On the first day of classes when he’d slid into the seat next to yours, you immediately wondered aloud why he was taking biology his third year instead of his second, which would’ve been usual protocol. Had he flunked it or something?
“Subbed it for Ancient Magic last year since bio sounded boring,” he’d explained, kicking his feet up on the chair in front of him (Crewel, sauntering around all dramatic-like before the bell, passed by and batted them to the ground, muttering bad), “but they wouldn’t let me get away with flakin’ out on it entirely.”
Ancient Magic was usually strictly reserved for third years, so you guessed it was no small academic feat that he’d managed to wiggle in a year early. Even Jade’s test scores didn’t quite rival his brother’s.
And despite this quiet academic prowess (or maybe because of it), he seemed to really be dreading biology. You kind of scrunched up your nose when he complained—you wished your biggest worry was being too bored by college level subject material, even if it was just a gen ed—but in that lovingly compensatory Floyd way, he’d wrapped up his lamenting with some slyly sweet comment about how it couldn’t be that bad as long as he had his Shrimpy with him.
So you’d just rolled your eyes and smiled, returning the sentiment. As long as you had boy-eel-genius Floyd Leech to steal test answers from, you supposed you’d be alright. (He’d dismissed such a title with that radiating laugh of his, and so you were certain.)
And to this present day, he’s been a shining classmate, honestly. Meticulous lab partner, halfway decent notetaker. When he’s in the mood for it, is what everyone usually bellyaches about his redeeming qualities, but you have yet to experience a Floyd so stormy that he’s unwilling to lend you a hand or be sweet to you. And you’ve been waiting for it to happen, you really have—to catch him on a bad day, to be the one to say or do the thing that sours his mood before you can blink.
But it hasn’t, and you haven’t.
Ace and Deuce theorize it’s for reasons that make you go warm in the face. Please, who else is he that nice to but you? Because Floyd is notoriously an individualist to his core. Yes, he has a reputation for scaring underclassmen straight with a single glare. Yes, he heckles professors every chance he gets. Yes, he likes to skip out of class and wander the halls when lecture falls into a lull, but when he drags you with him, he never disappoints his MO of loathing boredom. He keeps you guessing—but, somehow, in a way that never exhausts or overwhelms you. If you’re thankful for nothing else that’s come out of the entire ordeal of being isekai’d into this terribly absurd pocket of existence, you’re at least softened by the opportunity to find beauty in places no one else gets to see, even if those places are renowned idiot Floyd Leech.
Like so many other things in Twisted Wonderland, he looks scarier than he is; the simple reality is that he doesn’t pay any mind to the narratives others fit him into, nor is he lacking in the depth that’s endeared him to you beyond your own expectations. He’s funny, he’s chaotic, he’s a quiet mind and a loud lover, reliable in his own right, predictable in his penchant for unpredictability. And one of your best friends!
Okay, so biology with Floyd goes better than what you might’ve expected it to.
It’s not like you’re going to complain. If he weren’t six-foot-whatever and heartwrenchingly pretty, you’d be so content with just best friends, but again, you’re picking your battles here. And Floyd, thankfully, doesn’t have to be one of them.
“Shrimpy,” he snaps, but when you look over, he’s grinning. Floyd tips your textbook shut for you; people are filing out of the classroom. You must’ve tuned out the bell. “Class is over. D’ja hear me?”
“Sorry,” you mumble, grabbing your bag. “What’s up?”
“I said you should study with me later,” he says, folding his arms beside you and tucking his chin into them. He looks up at you adorably. “Anatomy section’s kinda kickin’ my ass.”
Liar, you think at first—but then, maybe he’s not. Despite zoning out today, you recall the content of the past few classes—particularly, a class from last week, in which Crewel spent a whopping five whole minutes (if you were generous) taking a detour to a flimsy conclusion about how marine anatomy and physiology is so often glossed over on land, just by nature, by expectation, by separation or whatever, and for that reason, there isn’t really room for it in the syllabus. Or whatever.
You don’t remember the smart comment Floyd made at this gap in the curriculum, but you remember he made one. And if landfolk life science is by and large as foreign to merfolk as vice versa, you figure maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe you’ll actually study for once instead of goofing off like you usually do, ending up on the roof of Ramshackle, scrounging in the cafeteria for late-night snacks, or sneaking onto the bus to Foothill Town; his kicked puppy stare tells you so.
“Of course,” you say, gathering your things. “Mine or yours?”
“Mine, duh.” Floyd stands to trail behind you to your astrology class; he has a break after bio, but he always walks with you anyway. “Or send Sealie away, at least, if we do yours. Gotta get serious about this test next week.”
He still jars you a little when he talks so sensibly, but you chuckle anyway. “I can ask the uncles to babysit.” Your two now-sophomore Heartslabyul friends, you mean.
“You’re the best, Shrimpy.” Floyd tosses a jovial arm around your shoulders, and you tuck yours around his waist to keep yourself from tripping on his feet. “Can’t get ya to Trein late or he’ll have both of our asses. What were ya thinkin’ about just now, anyway?”
You, you could blurt, but you don’t. His fingertips toying with the shoulder of your blazer always make it harder for you to think clearly. Shouldn’t you have grown used to this by now? Floyd’s so open with physical affection when it comes to his friends; you hate when your brain makes it into something it obviously isn’t. Only it isn’t obvious that it isn’t, and you’d only ask if you were an iota more certain.
You hum. “Can’t remember.”
“Too bad. You looked real concentrated.” His chin knocks into your head, and you swat him away, laughing. “Love that lil’ brain of yours.”
Please, shut up. You’re not an easily flustered Shrimpy; Night Raven College knows this about you. So, you think, what the hell? “J’you just call my brain little, Leech?”
Cue sunshine laugh again. He doesn’t deny, nor does he confirm, but you know it’s out of love. Friendly love. Fuck, you’ve got it bad.
Before you break away from him to cross the threshold into astrology, Floyd takes you by the shoulders.
“I’m serious, I need help.” He’s got that whiplashingly serious look in his eyes when they snap to yours. “I’ll see you after dinner, yeah?”
You nod, smiling as you internally curse the indelible flush in your skin. You’re so irritatingly sensitive to his charms today. No doubt if he does end up wanting to bail on studying later, you’ll give in. “I’ll text you.”
“Cool.” In an instant, that toothy grin is back. He presses an amiable smooch to the top of your head (complete with loud mwah) and you swear you feel ten degrees cooler as soon as he begins retreating down the hallway. “See ya later!”
You toss him a wave as you duck into Trein’s. Kalim greets you brightly—he also immediately asks you why you look sweaty. You blink, sheepish, and say, “Good afternoon to you, too.”
What you didn’t expect out of biology was to have it so horribly for Floyd Leech.
Night Raven College knows, too, that you generally do a bad job at picking your battles.
It really kind of blows for the mer-students at Night Raven that they don’t teach their fucking anatomy and physiology in bio. Sure, the majority of them probably learn about it under the sea, but then to be thrown into landfolk A&P with no frame of reference to accompany? Talk about a learning curve.
It blows even worse that, right now, Floyd’s zeroed in on two blown-up diagrams right next to each other—the female and male reproductive systems—tongue poking out from behind his sharp teeth, brows knitted as he struggles to remember the names of everything he’s looking at. You’re pretty sure he was joking when he referred to the lymphatic system the limp-fantastic system (and maybe halfway intentional in making it sound like it moonlights as a Bizkit cover band instead of regulating fluids), but it is a lot to take in. Imagine him recounting the bones in the lower extremities some thirty minutes ago before getting to this.
“So, these are the…” Floyd’s circling both illustrations tentatively with his fingertip, and then taps harshly on one. “Okay, I know this is a penis. That’s a wiener. Duh.” He drags his finger, panning over to the other as you snort. “And this is where the babies are made. This is the babymaker. Yep.”
Your chin drops to your chest (even though he’s technically correct) and you sigh through a laugh. “Well, they… yeah.”
“Sorry,” he whines petulantly, more for himself than you, “this is hard! I ain’t never seen any of this stuff before, you know.”
But it’s less his human-anatomical incompetence that’s got you more dismissive than you ought to be for such intense material, and more the fact that since astrology all you’ve been thinking about is Floyd, Floyd, Floyd, just like you always do, like you’re a pathetic middle schooler lovesick for the first time, for their best friend no less. And now, words like penis and babymaker are leaving his mouth, and even though physiology specifically has got to be up there next to abstract algebra as one of the unsexiest areas of rote studying, having the guy you’ve got a massive crush on pick apart the literal stuff that’s inside you is making you feel some inconvenient (but not entirely unwelcome) things. You swear it felt a little romantic just watching and listening to him label the arteries, veins, and capillaries on and around the human heart.
“Weird as all hell I’m part’a this whole new species and I don’t hardly know shit about it.” He grumbles briefly about technicalities and vocabulary as he flops onto his stomach; your mattress creaks out its protest, but he just buries his head in his arms. You hear, muffled, “I’m sick’a this, Shrimpy, let’s do somethin’ else.”
Right, his borrowed human form.
It’s not even a second before you’re trying not to think too hard about the fact that he’s inhabiting a body incredibly biologically compatible with yours. You disguise this train of thought beneath the sound of your textbook smacking closed before you opt to flop next to him, nosediving into your own arms in a similar fashion. Your skin feels like it itches.
Stupid Floyd and his stupid study session and his stupid mouth that never shuts up and that you absolutely want to kiss. You miss the way he peeks up at you quizically with one golden eye, but if you would’ve noticed, you’d be cursing his stupid receptivity that no one ever expects because he acts like a moron. You need to pull it together now. Quit being distracted by your stupid, attractive best friend, quit reminding yourself of his stupid human anatomy, and especially quit wondering if you could get him as worked up over nothing as he’s got you, in mer-form or otherwise, and how it would feel for him—if he’d like it, if he’d like you… If he’d—quit it, quit it, quit it, your stupid human brain chants like a mantra.
Think about anything else. His true form is probably so incompatible with yours, think about that. Think about how he’s actually, like, half a fish. Yeah. There. Crisis averted, battle picked.
“D’you feel alright?” he asks, fingers curling around your arm to feel your forehead. Ruined it, just like that. “You’re warm.”
“I’m fine,” you don’t mean to snap, but you do—even so, his hand doesn’t recoil. Floyd scratches your hair a little, the way one might do to a dog. You could scream at him not to touch you if you didn’t like it so much, but you do—painfully so—which is why you turn your head to face him while his fingers trace lazy half-shapes from your hairline to your temple. You try to sound chipper and not at all strained when you concede, “Let’s do something else. What’d’you wanna do?”
He blinks at you slowly, obviously dissatisfied with your dodge. He still traces, brushing your cheekbone as he studies you. “Something’s on your mind, Shrimpy.”
Stupid receptivity. “Just information overload,” which isn’t entirely a lie. “And I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for you. No marine A&P, my ass. You’ve got marine communities well within reach here, so not teaching it’s an outdated excuse for ignorance, if you ask me. But I guess humans are good for that wherever you go.”
Floyd hums, pulling away from you, rolling onto his back, tucking his hands behind his head. “Yeah, that pissed me off, too.”
“‘M pissed for you.” You do give a shit, really, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have something to channel your intensity into right now.
Quiet settles over you both. You allow yourself a few seconds more of stewing and admiring his side profile, his sharp nose and bitten lips; Floyd looks like he’s pondering. You wish you could pick apart what’s inside him, too. He’s fascinating to you—you love his lil’ brain, too, you know, in more ways than one. It really is an injustice that landfolk don’t know more about merfolk and their glaring similarities and yet, major differences; Floyd’s an emotional, physical, scientific marvel to you. You don’t think you’ve met anyone more interesting. Or easier to love, for that matter.
Fuck.
“I know!” In an instant, he’s on his feet. “Let’s hit the pool. You’re all warm, it’ll cool you off—” He’s tugging you to your feet, grabbing his bag, bright, pointy smile lighting up all at once, “—it’ll be so fun. You can relax, and I haven’t swam in days…”
“That actually sounds perfect.” Yes, back to fish-form with the heathen. You’re quick to toss together a bag of swim things, eager to put mind-numbing, rage-inducing study material and complicated emotions alike to rest for the night. His unreserved laugh when you agree so readily still makes your heart flutter, but you plan to leave it at the door.
Surely, you can leave it at the door.
On the way to the mirror chamber, you’re so eager to leave it behind that you’re asking questions—your mood flipping with his, incidentally—because you’re disgustingly susceptible to him and, as noted before, you do give a shit. Ardent and full of curiosity, just like you always are with him, you shed the limitations of textbook-sanctioned inquiry and launch yourself full-force at reclamation of your own wall-hitting; you can and will get a fucking grip and be normal.
“Is it super different?” you ask.
“What?” Floyd’s rummaging in his bag as you both walk, already aware he forgot a notebook in your room. “Merfolk stuff?”
“Yeah.” You adjust your own bag on your shoulder. “Like, your A&P is probably as different to me as mine is to you. Where I’m from, scientists haven’t observed a whole load of shit about the ocean—it’s more of a mystery to us than outer space. There’s tons we don’t know about morays, you know.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean skeletal system-wise, there are bony fish, and then ones with more cartilage. And either way, the whole structure and makeup is so different since we got no legs, and…”
You listen to him talk all the way through the mirror, into the halls of Octavinelle, past the lounge and onto the sprawling pool deck—it’s empty, much to your relief, sparkling and humid; when you reach down to skim your fingers across the water, it’s refreshingly cool. Floyd’s submerged before you can blink, hardly pausing his spiel; you lift your shirt off and toss it aside, and suddenly he’s aquamarine and soft green, scaly and shiny and webbed and you would tell him to look away while you slip your bottoms on but it’s you who’s staring, really.
“And then merfolk fall sorta in the middle of the venn diagram between humans and fish when it comes to reproduction and shit. Don’t really know how that happened, and I don’t even know how—I don’t think…”
For once in his life, he trails off. You settle at the edge of the pool, dipped in up to your knees, and he swims up to you. Wanna play mermaids? is what you’d usually joke, but as your kicking feet slow to a stop and Floyd’s arms curl up across your lap, all you can do is look down at him, ruminative and a little mystified (no matter how many times you see him in his true form, you’re always taken by its elegance).
“Whatever.” It’s the day of Floyd burying his face in his elbows and looking up at you in a way that makes you want to take a page out of his book and squeeze him until he pops; it certainly doesn’t help that, absentmindedly, your fingers move to card through his wet hair and he hums, low and sweet as you do, so that you feel it in your stomach. “Not like lookin’ at anything on a piece of paper does squat. I’m more of a hands-on learner.”
He blinks up at you through his wet lashes—it should be a criminal offense—and you grin down at him as he splays his palms across your thighs, tracing, tracing little shapes again (fuck, and now you’re looking at his biceps. Stop that!). Your face burns, but you mock confusion to play it off. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re flirting with me, Floyd Leech.”
Less a bold move and more placing the ball in his court because with Floyd, what you see is mostly what you get. Yes, he’s a horrible trickster, but you know him. And if you know him as well as you think you do, he’ll laugh that radiant laugh (which he does) and, next, you’re confident, brush you off and yank you into the water yelling about how his Shrimpy needs to learn to swim like he does so you can keep up with him—yes, he’ll wave the silly little theatrics behind you both and forget it even happened before tomorrow peeks over the horizon.
But he muses, “I am,” not at all coy, because coyness and Floyd don’t go hand in hand.
And you blink at him, all at once a little giddy and disbelieving. “No, you’re not.”
“D’ya not want me to be?” Schroedinger’s flirt. I mean it if you do, but if you don’t, then of course I’m totally joking.
His mismatched gaze is locked steadily on you. You wish he would ever let you hear the end of it if you covered your face with your hands, but he won’t, so you don’t; you just giggle, unable to not, unable to confirm or deny, unable to decide if it’d be better or not for him to say he’s messing with you. It’s always straightforward, except when it isn’t.
“Shrimpy, I’m serious,” he continues when you finally look at him again. He does feign urgency—or maybe he’s not feigning, like his words would imply, as he positively bores into you. “Do you not want me to flirt with you?”
“I—” You suppress your trepidation, doing your best to match his air. “I never said I don’t want you to.”
“Get in the damn pool, then,” he snaps a little bit, impatient—impatient for you, you realize; you’re smirking as he slinks down to tug at your ankles with no real consequence. “C’mon.”
“Make me,” you tease, and something dangerous ingnites in his eyes—something that makes you want to toy with your fingers and look away, but you don’t, because it’s always worth stifling yourself to feed Floyd a little bit of his own medicine. You’ve never watched it have this particular effect on him, though; when you grin evilly at him, he plants his palms on either side of you and rises out of the water to your eye level.
“Don’t piss me off,” he half-barks in your face—sometimes, if you poke him hard enough, you do feel like you’re catching a glimpse of the scary Floyd everyone’s warned you about, but you don’t slink away from it. You kick at him, go to pinch his nose—he makes an attempt to bite your fingers and you laugh and laugh, and he does, too, eventually, the two of you in a duel where you have the upper hand only because he chooses to give it to you (and his hands are literally occupied with holding himself above water).
You wrastle with him, landing a jab to his (infuriatingly well-defined) stomach, snapping your fingers in his face a bit, blowing air in his eyes—before you gather his cheeks between your fingers, squishing his face in a way that makes him scrunch his nose, lips puckered unwillingly, and you—you fucking kiss him. You land a quick peck to his mouth without even thinking, and you release him immediately; he pulls back, but only a few inches, just enough to look at you.
For a moment you think he’ll really get mad. You try not to shrink.
It’s quiet and you can’t tell if his expression is starstruck or disgusted.
A few seconds is a century.
“Kiss me again,” he barks right at you. Like he thinks you won’t.
Your face feels stuck, contorted into a sheepish grin; Floyd’s open mouth, taunting you, luring you in, lets you watch his tongue flick between his rows of sharp teeth and the thought of what they’d feel like in your neck jolts you toward him, your hands grabbing for his strong shoulders; he’s not sure if you’re about to shove him off or devour him whole, but he hangs in that lightning-quick moment of anxiety, thrilled to have your hands on him, all at once assured and with the only hint of apprehension you think you’ve ever seen on his face and you decide you have to, you must—what else could you possibly do but throttle yourself forward, into him, not at all soft or scared as the water envelops you from head to toe and he does just the same?
Beneath the surface is a pillowy, noise-cancelling limbo—you feel like you’ve plunged into a dream, eyes screwed shut and senses dulled where the only vivid things are his hands clutching your waist and his lips on yours. And you kiss him and kiss him, drifting up, suspended, cupping his jaw like you’d start breathing him if you could.
Before you hit oxygen, pockets of air bubble out from between both of your mouths; you’re laughing before you’re inhaling, finding yourself panting to catch your breath—unlike Floyd, who giggles so fully and unapologetic it echoes around the pool deck. The next thing you feel is a cool, slick tail twining around you—your hips, your waist, so you don’t have to flail to stay afloat.
“Here, hold onto me.” His tail slips away with his tense disposition, replaced by laughter that doesn’t cease as you link your ankles behind him at the spot where his human back gives way to his mer-half, and your wrists at the base of his neck. “There ya go.”
You’re not sure if you’re tingling from the impact to the water or from the way his pale teal chest rises and falls so rapidly against yours. He sways back and forth so subtly you’d almost think it was only the rippling of the water; you wane into silence in the crook of his shoulder, like you don’t want to be the first to speak.
But he does (you’d be nervous if he were to be quiet); large, clawed hands slide from your waist to hold you up from beneath your ass.
“I could kiss you again,” he offers into your ear like it’s the most obvious thing—a was that okay? of Floyd fashion, an opening to tell him he’s silly, this was silly, to let you go. He listens to you for alarm bells. You don’t set any off. “Always wanted to do that. Could do anything you want, baby.”
Baby?
What world were you transported to when you resurfaced? It’s the first time he’s called you anything other than Shrimpy, or your name. Something flares in your chest, unfurls down your arms and into your fingertips which trail down to the planes of his chest.
Anything?
Your manner of yes, of promptly shutting that window, is a series of fluttering kisses beneath his ear, over subtle, pulsing gills you’ve never been close enough to notice before, let alone touch. You really can’t curse the A&P curriculum now—it’d be blasphemy. Look where it got you: nipping at your best friend’s throat, quick to wonder what bruises would look like blooming on his aqua skin. You tear into him gently, hearing him hum over hitched breath when you do.
“I mean, I think I could use an interactive lesson if I’m gonna have a shot on this test.” A minute ago, you were the one gasping for breath; now, Floyd sighs to maintain composure, accidentally puncturing your bottoms with his nails while you lick across his jaw. You can’t see his erection, but you can feel it, beginning to press up beneath you as his arousal grows. Merfolk fall sorta in the middle of the venn diagram between humans and fish, he had said; maybe you’re more compatible that you originally assumed, and the fact that you have him hard just from a little bit of kissing and biting is so pathetically cute. Floyd might look real tough, but he’s practically falling apart just the way you fantasized he would earlier today, just as quick if not quicker than you, his cute lil’ Shrimpy—his baby—who’s clearly had more control over him than he’s let onto until now.
You pull back to look into his olivey eyes and he’s half-lidded with something just to the left of restless yearning—like how a predator must look when it’s got its prey backed into a corner.
But you’re hardly prey.
His head cocks like a puppy waiting for a treat. “Ain’t’cha gonna help me out?”
Later, you’ll swear this was him begging, and he’ll deny it; he tries to distract you from it with that sly confidence, his eternal air of never taking anything too seriously, but you have him right where you want him.
Even if he does get one final jab in, sing-songy, grasping onto the last of his smugness. “You could get a little marine anatomy lesson in return, y’know.”
You want to make him squirm back—so you concede, “Alright,” like you’re doing him a favor. In reality, it’s so sweetly dizzying and surprising to drink in his desperation after he’s made you feel crazy for as long as he has. You untangle yourself from him, backing up until you hit the wall so you can hoist yourself upon it once more.
Floyd treads back up to you without having to be told. When you slip your bottoms off, you don’t ask him not to look.
“Ever touched a human like this before?” you ask, more to put him through answering than actually looking to know; you have a pretty good idea, anyway, from the way he just pouts up at you—an answer in itself. You prop one heel up on the edge of the pool and push his drenched hair away from his forehead as he settles a shoulder beneath your still submerged calf, downturned eyes shining.
You look at him so fondly, drag your gentle touch down his face before tilting his chin toward the apex of your thighs; if eels could blush, you’re certain you’d have gotten him with the way you wiggle forward to the edge and spread yourself open with two fingers.
You’d be kidding yourself if you said his hungry gaze and warm breath on your cunt doesn’t affect you just as terribly.
“So,” you clear your throat—this is an anatomy lesson, after all. You’re nothing if not committed to the bit. “A lot of my reproductive anatomy is inside—totally unreachable. But this—”
You demonstratively swipe a finger over your clit.
“—feels real good if you touch it.”
Floyd, self-proclaimed hands-on learner, doesn’t waste a second replacing your finger with his thumb.
You yelp, jumping a bit, for more than one reason. “Watch the claws, Leech.”
He bites his lip through a focused smile—he really is so hot when he actually gives his full, undivided attention to something, and the fact that you’re the something is even better. “Sorry.” He’s hardly sorry.
But he struggles to avoid scratching you up.
“Tell me what to do, baby,” he insists at your ow, ow, ow, lower and more invested than usual—it makes you clench around nothing, makes you feel so empty. You wish his fingers inside you wouldn’t maim you. You suppose that’s an excursion for his other form. His hands instead busy themselves grabbing at your thighs, opening you up, wanting more. “Can I just…?”
You don’t know if oral sex exists under the sea and you don’t really care—either way, Floyd’s unhinged enough to just go for it without you having to tell him, and you simply guide his head the rest of the way to you as his tongue licks a long, experimental stripe up your slit.
“Yeah,” you sigh, “yeah, that feels—”
He keeps licking. Enthusiastically, like one might an ice cream cone. You cover your smiling mouth for a split second before you continue, pushing him away to show him.
“Here, here, here.” Again, you touch yourself—so pulsing and hot compared to how chilly he is. “This little—above the hole, is the—”
“The Exorcist,” he insists, looking deadpan up at you, so Floyd in timing, that you can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
You try so hard not to snort. Sevens, what kind of media has he been consuming up here? At least he’s maybe, sort of trying? (His bio grade does depend on it, after all.)
“Clitoris,” you correct him, chuckling at the sheer absurdity of this whole situation. It’ll catch up to you in embarrassment if you don’t get his mouth on you in the next five seconds, you’re pretty sure. “See it? Feels really good to touch, lick, suck o—oh!”
Before you can breathe, he’s latched onto you—licking again and pausing where you’ve instructed him, suckling around you and twirling his tongue in a way has you pushing him into you instead of away, now, and you’re going to keep your voice, of course; you’d go as far as to call him somewhat of a natural, but you’re still going to instruct him like a good tutor.
“Y-yeah, that’s it,” you encourage him; his tongue feels long and a little frigid, so unlike anything you’ve felt before, and it’s certainly not working against him. “Just—don’t move down—yeah, like that. G-good boy, Floyd.”
He must like that, because he hums into you; the vibration sends your hips rolling forward into his mouth—you prop your other heel up to spread yourself even wider—and he peers up at you wetly like he wants you to say it again.
When you don’t, his eyes flutter shut, his brow furrows, and his tongue works harder—making you arch, making you croon.
And it falls from your mouth like you can’t help it, “Good boy, right there—mhm!”
Said tongue slips down, prodding your hole; you’re gasping all over again, biting into the back of your hand when Floyd moans into your pussy once more like he’s unaware of the shockwave it sends through you (he probably is), his hands landing at the small of your back to tug you into grinding on his face. He seems to enjoy alternating between tonguefucking you and making out with your clit—if how tight he’s holding you is anything to go off of, anyway, and with the way he moves, the way his elbows come up to rest under you, tense and holding himself up, it seems like he’s humping the pool wall.
The fact that he’s getting off on going down on you makes you want to lay back and curl your thighs around his head. But as much as you’d love to cum in his mouth, as good as his tongue feels drinking you down, now that you know he has a cock, you pretty much need him to fuck you with it.
“Floyd,” you whine, wriggling away from him. He’s hesitant to let you go; his eyes fly open like you’re taking away his favorite toy, which you may as well be. “Floyd—ah, I want you t’fuck me, please?”
That has him happily departing with a lewd smack, nails letting up on your flesh; he looks up at you with a dopey smile, like you’ve just injected him with something that’s sent him skyward, but it doesn’t last long—he’s determined as he pulls you back into the water with real firmness, catching you beneath your arms as you squint for the splash.
When you open your eyes, you’re met with a satisfied and glistening mouth, tongue poking out, lapping you up. “You taste good, Shrimpy.”
You roll your eyes. “Don’t call me Shrimpy while we’re fucking.”
Floyd snickers. “Ya like baby better? Maybe I’ll use that all the time from now on.”
“You should,” you agree before he’s kissing you; you’re coiled around him again in an instant, tasting yourself in his spit, sliding a restless hand under the water between both your bodies to thumb his tip.
Floyd bites your lip as you circle him; you half-wish you could see him from an outside point of view, how his eyes are screwed shut, how his jaw flexes and releases when he chokes on his breath, but you know you can’t be anywhere but here—you fully don’t want to be anywhere but here—pleased at the way he bucks into your hand all needy.
When you maneuver him down to drag your cunt along him, you earn your first nasally, full-bodied moan from Floyd Leech—all at once obscene and uncorrupted; you wonder if he’s ever made himself sound like this, if he would even know how to; you nearly growl into his open mouth as his ridges and veins catch on your clit, your entrance. You wonder, too, just how soaked you are right now, riding along his length, which does not by any means feel small, by the way. When you close yourself around him to let him fuck your thighs, you feel his tip reaching past your ass.
And now that he’s started, he’s not going to shut up. “Oh, shit, that feels—Shrim—baby, oh, fuck.”
You wish you’d have dedicated some time to learning his cock—when you catch a glimpse beneath the surface, it seems to be the same darker shade of blue-green that contours the edges of the rest of his body; it’s undoubtedly naturally slick, also not unlike the rest of him, probably as pretty as it feels.
You bite into the freckles across his collarbone as you thrash against each other, all sweat and water and stickiness and teeth. “Want you,” you mumble in his webbed ear. “Spare me the lesson.”
“Alright,” he hisses, letting up like it’s painful. “Your turn.”
It’s in Floyd’s nature to turn on a dime. He was so docile while you let him explore you. His razor-sharp grin threatens you with ruin now that you’re letting him take what he wants, forgetting all about the subject at hand—the topic that got you here in the first place. Nonetheless, he intends to be strict, you can tell—even if you’re the one palming his cock, wetting your lips for more of his rough kisses, hooking your knees over his elbows and guiding him into your cunt.
“This how ya do it?” But he’s got the basics down by now—and with you lining him up, he’s got little more to do than thrust himself forward, but he decides the best way to go about this is to shake his head dismissively, almost annoyed, and bend your knees up to your shoulders, damn near to the pool wall, and all at once he’s in you, filling you up, hitting you deep.
“Floyd!” you squeal, stretched in more ways than one. “Chill!”
“Fuck—can’t,” he groans brokenly; he’s fucking into you already, steady and rigid. His next sentence tumbles out more like one long word, like it might be the last thing he ever says: “Oh, fuck, it feels so good, I gotta move.”
His long tail comes to wind tight and writhing around your middle as he pins you, leveraging your whole body as he keeps an experimental pace, but already, speech escapes him; still, Floyd doesn’t shut up, groaning through uneven whimpers, unabashed and frantic to let you know how you good you feel even if you’ve stolen his voice.
Water swashes around you and you can do nothing but cry out, tangling both hands in Floyd’s drenched hair, your forehead pressed to his.
“‘S’okay, baby, I want it all,” you whine.
And in a second, his hips are brutal against yours.
You can’t see anything below—the way he fucks you deliriously stirs up the water—but you reach down to touch yourself again, jaw slack to your chest as he bends and pounds you; Floyd’s so damn loud you’d worry about being heard if it wasn’t for the way you can feel his dick, ruthless in your guts, turning your brain to pitiable mush. He looks so pretty, eyes all teary and borderline crazed, teeth clenching closed just to be pried open by pitchy moans that send waves of heat straight to the orgasm building in your core.
When he gets his voice back, you’re losing yourself—reminding yourself to keep your eyes open, keep your gaze on him, because you’d rather die than miss the way Floyd looks when he opens his pretty mouth again.
“If you—fuck, ‘m gonna cum in you—‘f you could take it, I’d keep—keep fuckin’ you…”
“Want it,” you breathe, words all strung out and slurred, whole body jostling with the way he batters against your insides, “ngh’I want y’r cum.”
Floyd cusses a few more times—mouth just as filthy as the rest of him for you as you goad him—because you want him, you want him to cum in you, you’re so fucking tight and perfect around him that he knows he’s growing more and more addicting with each rapid-fire slam of his tip against your cervix but he couldn’t stop if he wanted to, and from the way your hips jerk to the flexing and curling of your toes and the whines and moans you sing, muddled and noisy, into the air for him, he doesn’t think there’s a world that exists where he’d want to.
“This is where you’d release your clutch, if ya had one—oh,” he explains, breath quick and hot against your neck as you twitch—you’re so close, he can feel it, the way you clamp around him erratically as each stroke, each thrust distresses his words into little more than gasping and rambling. “A-and I’d—hah, fuck, I’d knock you up so good—”
In your hazy, foggy, humid upswing of pleasure your melting mind remembers his unfinished thought from earlier: I don’t even know how—I don’t think… And oh, fuck, just the thought of it sends you hurdling over the edge, cumming hard, but
the words, too, are leaving you before you can stop them, before you can think too hard about what it is your clipped and breathy voice is babbling—
“G’na breed me? Wanna fill me up with your kids, Floyd? Huh?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah—” he chants back, ruined, “G’na fuckin’ take it all for me, aren’t’cha, baby?”
“Fuck, I need it,” you’re unsure if you whisper or scream—your nails are harsh in his shoulders and his teeth are buried in your neck, muffling rough, rhythmic cries as he cums, throbbing inside you; he cums so fucking much, you can feel it, filling you to the brim, coating every inch of you he can reach, trembling and spasming and fuck, he can’t stop—it feels like forever and too soon when he slows to a stop, buried in you, letting up on your neck and dropping your legs to grab either side of your head and kiss you long and hard, both of you half-humming, half-whining into each other.
Between labored breaths and lazy kisses you spend a good few minutes rocking into one another—biting at lips, hands wandering, tongues poking, until eventually you’re both just play-fighting, snickering quietly, touching in ways that are spent of sex and yet still wholly intimate.
When he calms a bit, scarily serious in that way only Floyd can get, he asks you, “You gonna be mine ‘er what?”
“I’m already yours, Leech.” You flick water at him, resigned, and wriggle a bit. One golden eye winks to dodge, and he’s grinning, so familiar; as he untangles himself from you, helping you back up onto the tile, he mocks relief.
”Good. Would be kinda awkward if you weren’t.”
Water settling is the only sound across the pool deck as you towel off, shuffle your shorts back on. In the silence, Floyd twirls around the water and starts to sing a stupid little song—totally off-key and fully content, I love my Shrimpy, I love my Shrimpy…
Until the lights start to flicker, and you hear the extremely vexed voice of a certain Mostro Lounge owner from the far hallway—
“If you’re done, get the fuck out! My students are trying to sleep!”
And in another blink, Floyd is human and wild-eyed, on the deck pulling his shorts on and running—he catches your hand in his, mumbling something about how he’s gonna ace this test and Azul can suck it—and he’s laughing, running, and you wouldn’t rather be doing anything but the same.
cw: NSFW—MINORS AND AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS WILL BE BLOCKED, not smut but not.. not smut? gn+afab!reader, references to sex, finger sucking and spit, messy kissing, exhibitionism, just sucking aven's pretty gloved fingers (with eye contact) for good luck at the casino <3
reid: me posting hsr writing before bllk writing is like the pope dying before gta 6
tags: @voidcat <3
For good luck is what he always says when he’s doing something degenerate with you before hitting the poker room.
The cosmos know Aventurine as a sensualist. A libertine. A man who ties cherry stems into knots with his tongue, who infuses the very air around him with the confidence of a king. Silver-tongued, golden-haired. Looks, smells, and talks expensive; drips with jewels and masterfully spun semantics. Blessed with beauty and the favor of forces unseen.
He’s the sort of man no one’s good at saying no to.
And the cosmos know you as one of the rest of them: under the spell of that easy charm.
Although you’ve got a more fully-colored minds’ eye portrait of him than the rest—you’re privy to the depths of the gambler, the allure he drips even after he takes off all the jewels and settles into bed at night—the cosmos don’t know this about you, and you’re okay with this.
It allows you to play a part in the little shows of debauchery he likes to put on; it lets you indulge him, and him you, inside a narrative which might otherwise hold space for shame. But this one does not. This frame of perception holds you both up to the face of the world as something simple: the player and his good luck charm.
“For good luck,” Aventurine reminds you in that signature purr of his; his grin is quiet, cat-like, assured and endeared, as he tugs your bottom lip down. You prefer the world see how pliant you are for him, against this marble wall, at the inlet of a low-lit hallway, both of your hands on either side of his neck; his elbow’s propped above you to shield you, not quite enough, from the casino crowd which bustles by you. You’ll disappear into it soon—after you kitten lick at his two gloved fingertips, teasing him as he slips them up to his first knuckle into your open mouth.
“That’s it,” Aventurine hums for you, wholly satisfied, part condescending, which makes you lean into him even more, toying with blond locks where you link your wrists behind him. You tilt to take more leather between your teeth, atop your tongue, while you admire him like he’s your world. Yes, mouth full of him, eyes on him and no one else—you’ve always known how to make Aventurine feel like the luckiest man alive.
His good luck charm always bobs their chin up, and then back again—always sucks his fingers slowly, doll-eyed. You take it so well, so eagerly, when Aventurine gently thrusts his pretty, slender fingers, worming them toward your throat. You’re warm with soft-thudding adrenaline at the way his eyes simmer with some impossible mix of contentedness and insatiability, falling numb in your rhythm of drinking him down and pawing at him, humming back as your lashes flutter—you want to be so good for him. He traces the sharp ridges of your teeth, scissoring and curling his fingers lazily. He explores your mouth the same unhurried way he always likes to explore your cunt; you suck his fingers the same ardent way you always suck his cock, and oh, fuck, you find yourself whining around him, drawing your brows together while he bites his lip. You want him aching for you, too, and you’ve just located the first crack in the facade. Despite striding the path of Preservation, Aventurine’s a master of masks. Anyway, you know he more than enjoys your shameless desperation. You all but arch into him, parting your lips to circle your tongue, closing them again to suck, to bite down just enough that he heaves an impatient sigh.
Your eyes beg.
He retracts his fingers, but you don’t chase; Aventurine smears spit-soaked leather across your lips, down your chin and the column of your throat. And he grins, beaming. Promising. As if he’s asking a question, you almost nod, bottom lip poking out in a pout like it misses his touch. The wetness on your skin dries cool against the circulating air, an invisible mark indicating where he’s been.
“Av’,” you almost whimper. Almost want to stomp weakly like a petulant child being denied their way. But it’s all a bit of a ritual; you know what comes next, and you know what comes later, and you wouldn’t change it. The reality is he gambles with more exhilaration when you’re both worked up, when you can’t keep your hands off each other.
He shimmers with false sympathy, hand coming up to cup your cheek, which you sink into. “Yes, my love?”
You grasp blindly, too, at the fur lining the collar of his jacket, like you can’t possibly have him close enough—your answer is to tug him down until the tip of your nose brushes his, until you can nip at his lips while he dodges you cutely. It’s an immodest display, really, but he adores it. You love that he adores it. You push and pull each other until your tongue sweeps his bottom lip, and he catches it between his teeth; you’re flushed and feverish when his eyes flutter closed, indicating it’s time for yours to do the same while he kisses you and kisses you and kisses you.
You think you hear an oh, my from a passerby. It makes you smile devilishly into his mouth.
Aventurine’s chuckling, dragging your hips to his with the same gloved hand he just fucked your mouth with, and he finishes with you in a quick sequence of chaste pecks, first to your lips, then to the corners of them, each with a slightly exaggerated smooching sound that now leaves you both giggling. When you look to him again, he’s glowing.
“Whad’ya say we go buy this place?” Aventurine poses like one might suggest heading to the bar for a drink or two.
Your eyes mirror the gleam in his when you pluck his hand off your waist to press one last kiss of your own to the leather pads of those two fingers. For good luck, of course.
“Lead the way,” you accede as your lover curls an arm around your shoulders and escorts you into the bustle.
Numerous eyes fall upon you both as your sleek dress shoes fall into step with his, but you pay them no mind; the card tables are waiting, and it looks like luck is on Aventurine’s side tonight.
⊹ YOICHI ISAGI . . . the sound of the ocean, seeing a shooting star, promise rings, iced tea on a hot day, being unable to sleep because you're excited about something, magnetic attraction, clinking flutes of sparkly champagne, blueberry and pomegranate, wishing so hard it feels like prayer
⊹ MEGURU BACHIRA . . . matching keychains, bandaids with doodles on them, dollar bills folded into hearts, sugar cookies, initials in sidewalk chalk hearts, nostalgic music, messy scrapbooks full of love, jumping in the pool with clothes on, kisses to transfer lip balm, dandelion and lemongrass
⊹ HYOMA CHIGIRI . . . red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, familiar smells, fresh cut fruit, city sunsets, tucking a flower behind a lover’s ear, a butterfly landing on you, getting ready to your favorite music, pink azaleas, laying in the bath with a good book, the bubblegum at the center of a lollipop
⊹ RENSUKE KUNIGAMI . . . warm honey, beams of sunlight through blinds, sitting in front of a campfire, sourdough bread with pretty designs cut into it, brown sugar and syrup, the sweet messages on teabag tags, “this reminded me of you,” gentle hands on both sides of your face
⊹ SHOUEI BAROU . . . your lover’s laundry mixed with yours, cucumber and lemon, shoulder massages, green grass after a thunderstorm, being excited to give someone a gift, an animal’s fluffy tail in the shape of a heart, grabbing onto someone’s arm while you stumble, perfect omelettes
⊹ SEISHIRO NAGI . . . a head tucked beneath a chin, jeans that fit just right, the cold side of the pillow, powdered sugar, getting off work or out of class early, hot cocoa, pulling your arms into your sweater for warmth, tearing an orange in half to share, doves cooing, sonny angels
⊹ REO MIKAGE . . . lavender lemonade, expensive chardonnay, an arm around your waist, securing a piece of jewelry on someone else, “you’ve got me wrapped around your finger,” crushed velvet, your lover bragging about you to their friends, the beginning of the weekend, cherry blossom petals
⊹ RIN ITOSHI . . . movies on vhs, “not a lot, just forever,” graham cracker crust, root beer floats with two straws, kept promises, flowers left in the handle of your car door, talking on the phone early in the morning, sharing an umbrella, sleeping in the curve of a crescent moon, cinnamon and clove
⊹ SAE ITOSHI . . . your lover’s initial on your jewelry, fast rides in sleek cars, vanilla and raspberry, rose petal trails that lead to sweet surprises, whipped cream vodka, heart-shaped ponds, private but not secret, naming stars after each other, red string of fate, blindly finding your lover’s hand in the dark
⊹ OLIVER AIKU . . . “kissing a man without a mustache is like eating an egg without salt,” brushing your teeth next to your lover, candid photos, warm summer wind, linking ankles beneath the table, dark chocolate with sea salt, finding your lucky number in a fortune cookie, sandalwood and musk
⊹ ALEXIS NESS . . . heart-shaped sweets, getting lost in a big library, hugs where neither person wants to let go, strawberry ice cream, myths and fairytales from childhood, knuckle kisses, fresh rosemary and basil, making up a language with someone, halloween parties, feeling tipsy off soju
⊹ MICHAEL KAISER . . . ridiculously large bouquets of flowers, matching tattoos, cherry juice, short affectionate messages on postcards, spiced rum and peppermint, a possessive hand on the small of your back, the smell of rain, a pet preferring your presence over someone else’s, bubble baths with candles
LET IT BEGIN, HEAVEN CANNOT WAIT FOREVER . . . ft. Osamu Dazai
wc: ~3.6k
cw: NSFW CONTENT—MDNI (I BLOCK AGELESS+BLANK BLOGS), ada+masc!reader, reader has a tongue piercing, pet names (pretty boy and cutie for u), romantic and sexual tension, established flirtationship->new relationship?, a lil alcohol, making out, oral fixation/finger sucking, oral sex (Dazai receiving), cum eating (Dazai lol), patheticzai makes a spectacle of your shyness even though he can't just ask for what he wants good thing u have telepathy with him /j
reid: trade w my sweet friend @rossithepixie / @selfindulgentpixies who masterminded some beautiful osareid art for me <3 (if u havent seen it yet dw i will be reblogging it a million more times but also check out rossi's work neow cause he's super talented). thank you for trusting me with this rossi—it was such a blast to do a little lovesick dazai desperately chasing ur cute lil self into a corner (i listened to fiona apple's song with the same title a lot while i wrote this—is it obvious? lol). i hope u enjoy so much <3
It’s a cute little habit of yours. Unconscious, he knows, but that makes it no less cute. No less dangerous.
Everyone notices you do it—Atsushi pointed out the jewelry poking from your mouth with awe when he first caught you fidgeting with it (“People can have piercings there? That’s so cool”)—but Osamu highly doubts anyone finds it nearly as charming, as endearing as he himself does. After all, he’s the one consistently wheeling over next to you on his chair to fold his arms under his chin on your desk and admire you unashamedly while you tie a loose end around a sentence in whatever report you’re writing before even thinking about turning your attention to him.
So diligent.
That’s another cute thing about you. You've been a star worker, really, since you started. In the months since you got hired, your reports have been nothing but thorough and on time; even your first steps into fieldwork as a detective have been spotless, practiced, as if you already know this work like the back of your hand. You’re personable yet serious, easygoing and dedicated all at the same time, continually proving your worth as a voice of reason and contribution around the meeting table as well as a supportive, kind, all-around more than pleasant coworker on and off of crime scenes. Not to mention, your ability’s nothing to scoff at.
You’re a true asset to the Armed Detective Agency.
Which is why Kunikida’s glaring Osamu down again, threatening him silently with an HR department that unfortunately doesn’t exist—because, yes, you are for all intents and purposes perfect for this workplace and the blond man will simply not have you driven off by his partner’s insufferable tendencies.
Even Kunikida’s wrath, however, is scarcely known to deter Osamu Dazai, and that is why, when he notices you doing it again—toying with the metal bar through your tongue in an absentminded display of your oh-so-coveted concentration on and application to your task, he scoots himself right over, rowing on his heels, brushing admonishing stares like he might dust off his shoulder and settling next to you, chin in his palm, feet knocking into yours beneath your desk.
As expected, you don’t turn to him immediately. All the better. Gives him a few seconds more to admire you, your parted lips, the glint of the metal and your pretty teeth against the natural light streaming into the office on this lovely day, made all the lovelier by the vision of your adorable expression.
But when you do, it’s melt-worthy.
“Hi, Osamu,” you mumble, turning your eyes to him and tucking your tongue back in to offer him that sweet but aware, workplace-appropriate smile that makes him grin even further. You’d have to be naive not to know he wants to strip you of that professionalism, but you make sure to give him time of day in only the most graceful way when you’re both at the office; for as charming as he is, and for as much as you must shyly admit you find him endearing just the same, you don’t turn a blind eye to his cunning nature.
And like so many things, it’s a bit of a game that he enjoys—seeing what he can do to crack that competence of yours.
But today he’s restless, so he punches low from the jump.
“Hi, pretty boy,” he purrs, gaze searing into you. Signature.
And just like he hopes, your brow raises and you look away, pursing your lips to mask your reaction to his antics. He usually toys with you a little longer before he brandishes the pet name he knows all too well gets your cheeks glowing pink in an instant—and that’s exactly what they do. Your coyness can’t hide that.
“Eager today, are we?” you fill the silence with the lighthearted accusation, busying yourself on your keyboard so as to fight off the squirming you’re sensing will be futile to escape this afternoon.
“Yup.” When he pops the p, he nudges your ankle with his own.
But in your busying, the tip of your tongue flicks out again, and Osamu’s seemingly-aimless display of fluster-inducing attention surges toward its goal, which he’s been contemplating for a few days now, actually: getting you out of this stuffy office (or the all-too public nearby bar you’ve started frequenting with him after hours, strictly as friends it seems—if friends tangle their fingers together after a few cocktails and then don’t make mention of it the next day, anyway) and into his dorm, which he actually tidied up because he calculated with most near-certainty there couldn’t possibly exist a world in which you’d turn down such an invitation. So he hopes, anyway. For as player as he acts, the way you make him feel sows seeds of doubt in him and his usual methods of seduction. You know full well how sincerely captivated he is by you… right? You must. You have to.
“You know,” he continues, “I was wondering…”
Mincing his words is never part of his plans. Unless, of course, it’ll draw a desired outcome closer than being direct will. But now, Osamu finds himself almost hesitating, with no prior inclination to do so; he’s wondering, not thinking, like he seems to do so much when you’re near him, and he doesn't know if you fully realize it, but you might have more control over… whatever this is between you than he does.
You tilt your head, still turned to your screen, as if it begins to occur to you.
“...Drinks at my place?” he spits out—pointedly dropping the “double suicide?” intonation so it’s clear he’s serious—before he can give any more indication that he’s slipping.
When you look to him again, Osamu’s filled the space of his doubt with that low-lidded grin once more.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight? Oh—” You clear your throat in a way that sounds oddly affirmative, as if you’re trying to keep it from bubbling out too soon. You’re so assured in everything else you do around here, so Osamu, ever the contrarian, regains his balance on the premise of your shyness. When you go to confirm, you’ve all but lost your teasing lilt. The flush on your face doesn’t miss him. “Yeah, that’d be nice, Osamu.”
Nice. If he didn’t have an image to upkeep, he’d leap up and fistpump the air like a cartoon character. Perhaps, if he were more in tune with his hand-to-god emotions, he’d crumble to the floor in a ball wondering what the hell he’s getting himself into.
He doesn’t do this. He doesn’t clean his dorm, much less invite romantic prospects over to it. You’re new territory in the way he feels freshly determined not to mess up, so he keeps himself composed behind that smile. “When are you out of here?”
“I can be out of here whenever you’re out of here,” you mumble, your lips pressed into a smirk you won’t let unfurl fully. He wishes you would. He’ll get you to. If he had it his way, he’d whisk you out of here now, clock be damned, and pop open that red dessert wine he picked up specifically for the event in which you would land on his uncomfortable little couch with your tongue lingering in, hopefully, closer proximity to his own. He’s seen you tipsy; you don’t suppress that air of sheepish enthrallment so much when you are, and he’s impatient for it. He needs more of you.
But it’s three in the afternoon, and Kunikida’s abruptly dragging Osamu by the collar of his shirt like a puppy on a leash to roll him back over to his own damn desk, muttering something about how if he had any decency he’d leave you the hell alone and if he wasn’t going to contribute anything of worth to the Agency’s productivity yield, the least he could do was not disturb those who are.
This makes you chuckle fully as you shake your head. Osamu eats it up—and he doesn’t hide it, eyeing you with something most akin to yearning in his gaze. You have such an effortless knack for putting hearts in his eyes in a way he’s not used to.
The rest of his shift dawdles by; as a way to pass the time, Osamu volunteers himself to run out and pick up the Thai takeout for those who will be clocking out later than he hopes he will. Kunikida so graciously (read: reluctantly and irritatedly) let him order on his card, so he claimed it as repayment; really, he needed to get out of his desk chair.
He feels insane watching you play with that piercing of yours, his stack of unfinished reports (or, pre-construction paper planes) serving as no distraction.
He delivers your spring rolls to you with a wink. He eats his pad thai and fools around on his desktop. He watches the sun streak down the window.
He actually considers getting some work done. It’s nearly torture.
He gets up to leave the second the clock strikes eight. If he was bad at focusing on work before, you’ve ruined him.
The implication’s all too clear when you’re stepping into the evening air behind him. You don’t mind—it’s evident in your reserved but knowing smile, the one he so terribly wants to unravel.
His place is threadbare, but cozy. You curl yourself up on one of the two couch cushions while Osamu sets two empty glasses and a bottle on the low table before you—he’s eager, too, for the wine; he’s aching to dispel both your timidity and his anxiety that it feeds. Maybe it’s just that he can’t seem to handle himself positively spiraling over you while you remain enchantingly reticent, quiet in the desire he knows flows between you both. Usually, he’s the one with all the self-control. Tonight he’s counting on you missing the tremble in his fingers as he pours.
“Kunikida’s such a hardass, isn’t he?” he muses while he tucks a glass into your hand and draws himself up onto the couch, facing you, leaving a respectful but still considerably involved distance between you. Your knee almost touches his. “Berating me for something as little as asking such a cutie to come over for drinks. It’d be more criminal not to, I think.”
You chuckle at his dramatics, taking a sip. It’s sweet, red. You remind him, “We are coworkers, Osamu.”
He cocks his head, drinking deeper than you do, with a thoughtful look on his gorgeous face. He hums and reminds you, “We’re not just coworkers.”
Your chuckle becomes a giggle—one less dubious than the short, amused headshakes you save for the office—and with your next question, he knows he’s pulling you in. You’ve been dancing around each other long enough; he’s warm, trying not to overflow when you speak—you finally sound ready to acknowledge what’s been turning him into a mess for you when you hum and press skittishly. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging.
“What else are we then, hm?”
Your bashfulness reads so seamlessly as effortless wooing—he wonders if you’re so purely humble, or actually a mastermind of coquetry. The way you keep yourself veiled, thinly enough to keep him pining for more of you but staunchly too so that he constantly doubts whether the cat or the mouse has the upper hand, turns him to mush—absolute pathetic mush—and he answers a question with a question. You’ve got him going against all sorts of personal philosophy.
“What else do you wanna be?”
The answer gets lost between shifting hands, closing space, conversation and jokes that relax further and further as you both stabilize into one another over the following hour or so. A couple more glasses of wine are poured, drank, tasted—at some point in the blackening night you end up astride his lap in the dim lamplight with your glass in triumphant hand, tucking his hair behind his ear while he cups your face, simpers out another remark that makes you blush and wave him away; Osamu looks at you with something you can only construe through your buzz as pure want. Coming down from laughter that screws your eyes shut—he’s never short on humor, which is one of the things you think you love—love? about him, you say it aloud, tell him you do in fact love that about him and if he was all pure want a moment before, now he’s pure shock.
But he plays it off in his way; you watch the intricate way he takes no more than a half-second to collect himself, just tipsy enough to get snagged on the words love that about you that the half-second seems a feature-length film to you—one you would watch over, over, over again.
Osamu slides four fingers on one side of your jaw, thumb on the other—holding your chin gently but firmly in place so he can bore like fire into you.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asks, half sincere, half flirtatious. Your gaze scatters momentarily beneath his; you take a second, copy his recovery.
You hesitate before you say, “I think I have some idea,” fully sincere, fully flirtatious. When you pinch your bottom lip between your teeth—not an unconscious habit but an intentional move in this game—he thinks this is what middle school boys must feel like the first time they get close to their crush. It sickens him so sweetly, like he’s swallowed a lump of sugar. He wants more.
Your breath coils around his between your noses, between your mouths. The wine in your glass sloshes and settles.
“Can I tell you what drives me crazy?” he breathes.
You nod like you’ve been waiting lifetimes to know.
He answers not with words but a touch to your lip—a stroke back and forth that leaves you parting for him. He leaves feather-light fingerprints on the sharp of your front teeth, pushing, slowly, forward until the hot muscle in your mouth cradles his thumb and he’s touching that devil-sent piercing of yours, the ball all at once cool and warm as it twirls to evade him.
“This,” he whispers, chasing the metal back and forth. “This drives me crazy.”
You don’t respond with anything but suction, a soft bob of your head like you understand, and a hmm.
Osamu thinks he might implode beneath you.
His attention has hardly ever felt so streamlined as when you search his face, circle his thumb, wet it for him to retract and drag down your chin while you draw your brow together like you miss it—his eyes are all yours, wide and waiting and holding the answers to all the questions drifting around, surrounding both of you.
The kiss is searing as he pulls you into him—or, hardly has to, rather, as your eyes flutter shut and you lean to meet him, five of your fingers matching his grip but on his shoulder while you suffocate that mingled breath so it becomes mingled spit, mingled tongues. He worms himself past your lips, into you—he almost moans when the tip of his own tongue brushes across the jewelry sitting on the pad of your tongue like a pearl in an oyster. He’s finally cracking you open. It makes him smile wickedly into you.
Your arms locking around his neck leave him rolling into you hotly, asking for you with anything but words which escape him again now—so uncharacteristic, but he’s lucky you’re both too entangled to notice, for words aren’t necessary right now; he’s ushering your wine glass out of your hand, setting his, too, onto the table so you can wind your fingers in his hair and tug, prompting the sweetest gasps that you echo back into him while he guides your hips across him. The fervor either of you holds is indistinguishable from the other; you grind, he grips you, the harder he grips you the harder you grind and vice versa until he’s biting down the column of your neck toward absolution.
He mutters your name through an umph; you pick his lips back up the second he goes for air, and he goes for your tongue. When you pull back to observe him, mirroring you in kiss-puffiness and staccato breath, he’s wild between your eyes and your lips.
“That’s all for you,” he tells you when he grabs your wrist and guides you to palm his cock before you hit him with another question for the ages—one that will not receive a verbal answer but a noise from his throat he swears he’s never heard himself make before.
“Wanna feel it?”
God, has he ever wanted anything more in his life? The erection he’s built up just from kissing you, moving you against him, is all the evidence either of you need.
So, you take your turn kissing down him until you’re pooled at his feet, between his knees, with devoted fingers undoing the button on his pants; the task at hand, so sweetly and circularly, has your tongue poking out in concentration as you work his waistband down. Osamu twitches at the sight—he doesn’t mean to mutter you’re so fucking adorable but he does, he does. It’s your turn to grin wickedly as you take his cock out, your turn to tease with your thumb on his drooling tip, your turn to explore with your mouth.
You’ve had the reins all this time, really—from the first day you sat at your desk, making that attentive face. He must be the luckiest sucker in the world to have ended up here, with your shining eyes watching him fall apart as your honeyed lips guide him toward sweet devastation.
The first stripe you lick up his underside sends Osamu’s head flying back, jaw falling slack on the end of a breathy “fuck!”
And he feels every stride of your tongue piercing when you wrap your lips around his tip and swirl.
The sounds you draw from Osamu’s open mouth are like song; diligent in this task as you are every other one, it’s hardly a minute before he’s tangling his fingers in your hair, crooning your name between broken praises that come naturally as you hold him, lick him, look up at him with eyes that he thinks could turn him to stone—if only you had been evil, that is, but realistically, you can’t be anything other than an angel.
“Pretty boy, you—”
At that name, you groan. Take him further.
And through how good it feels, he laughs.
“Oh, you like that? Huh?” He could pull you off him if he wanted a response, but you’re too heavenly to interrupt—anyway, he already knows how you feel about pretty boy.
You hum around him—another sensation that sends him reeling with oh, god on his lips.
“That’s it… Feels s’good on me. Unh—yeah, like that…”
Indirectivity and grandeur has always been something Osamu considers himself a professional in—everything you do throws him for a loop and the way you bob up and down does him no favors. He whines in the way he does when he’s already going to finish all too quickly, but the fact that it’s you bringing him to his end—his cute coworker he’s been pining after since your first day on the job, the one that’s inspired such foreign feelings of wonder in his long-gone-cold heart—has him unreservedly bucking his hips into your mouth as you rake your nails down his thighs, ardent in this undertaking, bobbing frantically like all you’ve ever wanted was to have him noisy and messy underneath you like this.
“‘m gonna—oh, fuck!”
But he doesn’t have to tell you; you feel him, spasming on your tongue against the otherworldly friction your jewelry provides—his true downfall, that thing, and the image of you formed around it—you pursue his climax like a predator pursuing prey, pulling away to give him that false sense of security as you rise to your feet, pounce back over him and kiss him so intensely while you handle him, jerk him to orgasm between your bodies; Osamu’s hoarse, aching as he humps the hole you make with your fist and chants yes, yes, yes, please! into your mouth, tasting metal, never wanting it to leave.
He settles into soft panting as you draw your fingers up; he’s beginning to speak— “You’re so—” but you’re cutting him off so he can suck your fingers, taste himself and the way you’ve shattered him so beautifully. And he does, he laps like a man possessed, obsessed with the flavor of himself if only it’s leaving your skin, before you let him continue. “You’re incredible. You and that piercing.”
You huff out a laugh, but it’s true. He’s convinced you’re a dream in every sense of the word—how did he get so lucky, no—how did the earth get so lucky to have you dropped upon it, right here in Yokohama, doing such scandalous things with that godly mouth of yours?
“I try,” you quip with a half-shrug, smiling softly, kissing him just so.
“Do you, now?” Osamu Dazai, who so often loses those good things before he can really grasp them, takes note of another new sensation—unwavering resolve, in the amorous sense—and concludes that if he can help it, this dream will not slip away so quickly. He can’t possibly send you back up to heaven.
He grabs your hips, pulls you onto him.
Everything you are—all hard working, handsome face, sweet disposition, and tongue ring—he’s wanted it for so long; it would be nonsensical, a tragedy, to let the same evening air you stumbled in on steal you away again.
This is a dilemma he doesn’t have a solution to; not immediately.
But he speaks anyway, smirking and toying with the button on your pants, overwhelming your frame to put your back to the cushions—turn you into a mess for him.
I WILL PRETEND THAT I DON’T KNOW OF YOUR SINS UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO CONFESS . . . ft. Osamu Dazai
wc: 2.1k
cw: gn!reader, implied/referenced dissociation+anxiety+self harm+scars+past suicide attempts, hurt/comfort but it's him so of course it's a little unhinged, mentions of dying and being dead, mentions of kidnapping but it's not serious, minor suicidal ideation but it's romantic i guess? non-sexual nudity/intimacy, showering together, lots of kisses, just unbandaging a fragile Dazai and covering him in kisses
reid: draft i been sittin on. how many times will i do an iteration of unwrap and clean him. idk. a million billion. i love him so bad
He’s looking down at his hands—or his wrists, or his fingers, or the spaces between his fingers; you’re not sure. But he’s looking down, emptily, when you nudge the cracked bathroom door further open.
He’s sitting on the lid of the closed toilet. He has no shirt on. His bandages are unraveling at each end of their respective reaches. It’s long past time they should be changed, long past time the flesh beneath them breathe and be washed.
Changing the bandages is just something that has to be done; he will not give them up, nor will he give up the habit evidenced beneath them, and you’ve been with him long enough to know this is how he survives. The bandages do the holding-together when you’re not there to, which is far more often than he’d like. Ideally, he’d be able to shrink you down and keep you in his pocket for safe-keeping and take you out whenever he needs, like a good luck charm; he’d be able to have you on his arm all day, every day, but that’s not possible when you’re an adult with a job and a life. Like him. Right? Right. He’d shuck this skin sooner than the habit, anyway, so, like showering, it’s just something that has to be done.
He doesn’t particularly love when you watch him do it, or offer to do it for him, but you certainly drive off the impulses, hazes, and tremors that come with doing it alone. So, he lets you.
He didn’t always; he went out of his way, bent over backwards for a long time to make sure you never could, much less had to. Somewhere deep down, though, beneath that resolve and the facade stilted upon it, he knew he couldn’t hide his ugliness from you forever.
Despite the normality—the domestic intimacy that standing beneath the water with you suggests now, so much that he has to admit it stills the expansion of the ever-growing black hole inside him—he still always fears it’ll be the last time you want to look at it.
“Osamu?” you mumble from the doorframe.
He does not move, does not look at you over the white noise of the shower running—if he’s noticed you’re here, he doesn't show it. You move to him, slowly, like approaching a skittish cat.
Before you touch him, you bend down—beneath the sink are the rolls of fresh bandages, the clean, new ones that make him look less like a mummy unearthed from Victorian times and more like what he understands himself to be in his purest form: a basket case of the modern era, the worst gift you unwrap every Christmas and birthday and have to pretend to fawn over until it’s safe to be rid of it. You’ll never be rid of him, he thinks regretfully while you shuffle next to him; he’ll never get by without you now, and it almost makes him wish he never met you in the first place, just so he never could’ve inflicted himself upon you.
But you never send him back. Dazai can’t seem to understand, even with all that sharp intelligence of his, that you don’t ever plan to.
Four rolls. One for each of his legs, one for both of his arms, the rest for miscellaneous spots like around his neck or across his chest or wherever else he decides he needs them this time. That’s how many you set on the counter before you land in front of him, your hands pushing his hair back, your proximity forcing his cheek to lay tired against your stomach while those hands curl around the backs of your legs and pull you closer to stand between his.
You cradle Dazai’s head like you’re some sort of saint. To him, you might as well be.
Thumbs brushing his temple and the base of his skull, you speak again, just as quiet. “Come on, let’s wash.” Or, let me unwrap you and look at all that ugliness. He can’t help that he doesn’t move for a firm fifteen seconds; why would he want to, when you hold him so sweetly like this?
But eventually, he rises.
You don’t feed him formalities or those silly questions anymore when you do this. No more can I? Or, you’re gorgeous, or, is this okay? He doesn’t want those during this, you’ve come to find out; you’ll tell him you love him plenty in a few minutes, when he’s only marginally more ready to receive it, but right now you go to work like a tinker repairing a broken doll. Your touch is objective, but not cold or clinical. You treat him with a tenderness he couldn’t have fathomed until he knew you.
After he steps out of his slacks, you loosen the strips with one hand and twirl them around the other; they accumulate in a graying mass of two or more weeks worth of sweat, and you place them in the trash, softly, like you adore and respect those, too, as he skitters past you toward the water for a sense of cover. He knows you’ll be in right after him, but at least the light behind the shower curtain is dimmer. When he disappears, it’s as if he was never there.
But he says, “I’m okay,” unprompted, as you step beneath the water.
He is, really. It’s just jarring when it’s the focus.
The process of becoming accustomed to vulnerability is often more painful than the vulnerability itself, Dazai has learned. While the realization can be sudden, like the flipping of a switch, the vulnerability on its own can actually be quite nice. Peaceful. He knows this because you showed him—continue to show him.
He’s just a man in the shower with his beloved, so, now you’ll talk to him.
“I know,” you say. And you do, really. The hardest part is over, and he’s practically pranced through it this time. You crack a smile.
And he mirrors your smile, not so bright and smug as under normal circumstances but soft and searching. Dazai reaches for your arms, your waist, and pulls you into him; the water hits your back—hot, how he likes it—and you tuck your head into his shoulder and wrap yourself around his middle, whispering I love yous into his shoulder.
It's peaceful. He sways you ever so subtly.
But in true Dazai fashion, he'll shatter the peace. Ever the disruptor.
“I'm sorry you have to love this part of me, too.”
The ugliness, he means. Not just the marred and keloided skin that maps out his history of self-destruction, but his resignation to it. The scabs that touch the small of your back are freshly healing and peeling. If you didn't have him beneath your watch right now they'd probably be scratched open, raw and bleeding again, but as previously mentioned, your presence staves off the itching need to do so.
The tips of his fingers squeeze you when you pull back to look up at him, sliding your hands up his shoulders and behind his neck to link.
“I love every part of you,” you murmur as his forehead dips to rest against yours. Your stunted slow-dance deepens as he sighs himself back into his body, back into the clearer image of you in his grasp. “Don’t be sorry about it. Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to.”
The demons snap at his ankles, though. “What if you change your mind one day?”
If he was a hair more insane, he might take you hostage. Keep you to himself forever, and never let you leave. But that would take the peace out of it, he thinks. Your volition makes it all sweeter. You want to be here. You want to love him.
He just doesn’t want that to change.
You hum patiently, although hating when he what ifs. That’s the plague of the ever-moving mind he keeps, you suppose; so intelligent, but so restless. “I don’t think I will.”
You don’t think you will, but that doesn’t settle the insecurity that’s settled in his stomach like a coiled snake.
You don’t think you will, but you will. He knows you will, because that’s how it’s fated to unfold for him.
Your short words don’t corral him away from the snake, but the less you treat him like he’s a gaping wound, the better. You see it. You don’t cry or gasp or lament or promise how you could never leave him, will never leave him; you don’t like to make promises that reach beyond your control.
The human existence is so strange and fluid, and while you’re confident you won’t tire of him, well, your reciprocated touches aren’t the only things stitching you together, you know; there’s a world, much larger than both of you, that you live in, and a universe even more incomprehensible and its whims are fickle—but they’re also serendipitous. Everything is a miracle, if you think about it. A big, beautiful mistake. You don’t know how much he buys into this, and you’d rather him not read into it as an excuse not to answer with a resounding I’ll never leave you, my love, so you just do what you always do best: spin it in a direction his troubled mind can find solace in, pair it with kisses that have all your soul for him to inhale, and promise what you can: your hope.
You start with his lips. The best place, arguably; one of your hands tilts his chin toward yours and you kiss him softly, simply. Dazai responds hesitantly, still holding onto you tight. You kiss him for minutes, until he's humming, until his grip loosens comfortably and his shoulders untense and his palms rest on either of your hips.
You have a habit of kissing him silly, literally. Your lips move against his and he feels high. His head gets light, and his hands get restless, and between the short puffs of air he draws in through his nose he croons at the way your fingers push his hair back, trail down his neck.
“I’m confident,” you say, sliding across his cheek to beneath his ear while he grabs at you in soft and absent-minded desperation, “that I’ll love you ‘til the end of my days.”
“But what if the e—”
“I’m certain—” You cut him off, first with speech and then with a kiss before you begin pressing your lips into a necklace around his throat, “—that I want to get old with you.” On one side, you bite softly. “That I want to die with you.” You bite the other. “That I want to be buried next to you.”
Osamu’s breath catches on the words buried next to you. Of course it’s crossed his mind before that if you were to go before him, he certainly wouldn’t be long after you. The thought that you want to live a full life with him before any of that can happen, however, makes his heart swell almost uncomfortably, like it’s no longer meant to fit inside his chest—like it wants to crawl up his throat and go home to yours. It will one day, you say, when you’re rotting next to each other. He wants to melt at the idea of it.
“And then… I don’t know what, if anything, will happen after that. But it’s my purest hope—” You traverse from one shoulder, across his collarbones, stopping only above his sternum to finish, “—that I’ll be with you forever,” before making your way to the other. He’s a mistake you’d make again and again, given the opportunity. If reincarnation is real, you’re sure of it, more than anything—you will.
And you know not expect anything but speechlessness from Osamu until after you’ve kissed a circle around that heart of his that’s beating so frantically for you, until after you’ve brought his knuckles to your lips, all twenty-eight of them, until after you’ve made your way back up one arm just to kiss down the other, until you’ve bent to scatter kisses across his stomach, his hips, until you’ve knelt to descend the ladder marking each of his thighs, until you’ve sat at his feet with your arms looped around the backs of his knees with your head pressed against him like he’s the saint this time. You sit at the feet of a sinner and make him taste redemption. It tastes like the shower water that’s touched your skin and the dinner you both ate before wandering into this strange place between his disillusion and his sheer need. You kiss him back into his humanity.
When you stand, level with him again, he smiles that smile you love so much—not the cocky, performative smile nor the uneasy, misgiving one that wants to trust but has forgotten how to but the smile that’s altogether subtle and plain and sad and the most radiant thing you’ve ever known. Every time he falls apart, you just stitch him right back up what he’s always wanted to be: loved, held, loving and holding.
Osamu touches your lips with his fingertips like you’re not quite real, like you’ve not just reminded every other inch of him that you very much are; he speaks, not a progenitor of pretty promises himself—but he owes you forever, he thinks, as long as it’s what you want. “Thank you.”
You laugh once, breathy, in no need. “Thank you,” you echo, “for being the most wonderful thing to love.”
Not the easiest, you both know—but it’s just something that has to be done, and there’s no law forbidding you from reminding him how beautiful he is in the process. Until you can be buried next to him. There’s hardly anything keeping forever from beginning right now.
He holds you, and you hold him, and he feels clean.
IF HE LIKES ME, TAKES ME HOME . . . ft. Nikolai Gogol
wc: ~5.8k
cw: NSFW—MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT—PLEASE READ ALL TAGS BEFORE PROCEEDING, snuff film maker!nikolai, alternate universe—no abilities, gn+afab!reader, 2nd person pov, siglai easter egg if you squint, stalking, implied/referenced dissociation, substance use/abuse, intoxication, drugging, abduction, choking, filming, restraints, graphic depictions of violence and gore, graphic noncon elements, mindbreak(?), spanking, object insertion (knife handle), knives/cutting, murder, reader.. dies(?)
reid: brilliant idea courtesy of my friend @berryzai thank u for planting this thought in my little freak brain. this was a fun little practice in suspense building and i would love feedback <3 .......if anyone would be tickled by a gross and gratuitous part 2 lmk lollll
It would happen to you.
At what’s felt like your goddamn lowest, too. There’s been a distant echo of a warning in your brain—perhaps from your mother or your father a long while ago; it rings now, still—that you hadn’t been heeding from the second the alluring silver-haired man placed himself with grace next to you at the bar. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go out by yourself. Don’t let your guard down. Sentiments you know to arm yourself to the teeth with—or, knew to, at some point, anyway.
You’re vigilant, always have been. Maybe aside from the going out by yourself part, but you could hardly help that living in a new city, sans friends and family, would prove more exhausting and isolating than you could’ve imagined in the technological age. No amount of text messages or FaceTimes or stupid Tiktoks sent to you from familiar, faraway fingers has translated into anything other than bitter little reminders that you’re really on your own this time.
Your social life has fallen completely by the wayside in light of your frantic work schedule. You’re never off the clock for more than twelve hours at a time, what with how criminally expensive your shiny, brand-new rent is—you could laugh to yourself right now if you were less delirious, thinking about paying so much for a room where you slept three feet from the shitter—and even if you did have friends, or nice coworkers, or a day off, would you even be able to muster up the dignity to bring anyone to your excuse of a place? You doubt it. You can barely stand being cooped up in there as it is, which is why, so often, you find yourself waggling your empty glass for the fourth time each evening at some bartender who by now recognizes you better than you recognize them.
And who could blame you? You have never felt so fucking alone.
You’ve been feeling caught in the spiraling downstream with all the other excreta Yokohama pushes from the pipes in the slums out into the ocean. It’s probably why you so eagerly welcomed the not-so-subtle curiosity of the man who introduced himself to you as Nikolai, proclaiming himself an avid drinker of your cocktail of choice—whiskey and whiskey—and commenting with enthusiasm on the glow of your skin even in the stale light of the bar. The apology for the awkwardness of such a compliment that followed it was just as bubbly; it was perhaps the first thing in weeks, if not months, that had made you crack a scoff of a laugh and raise your eyes to another human being outside the pretense of a monetary transaction.
He was stunning, really. You’d even felt lucky, momentarily, to have your attention stolen from your sorrows by this man whom you learned was visiting from Ukraine, was a filmmaker and photographer, was blind in one eye—it was true, it seemed, as his own skin was unblemished, perfect and not unlike porcelain, aside from a vertical scar plunging through his right eyebrow to below, just above his cheek, which did not detract from his beauty one bit, by the way. His teeth gleamed, wide and often, in low-contrast to his pale complexion when he tangented about his artistic endeavors which, according to him, explored the depth of the soul and the capabilities of the mind. He was fascinated with people, he told you. Fascinated, to a spiritual extent it seemed, with the billions of different possible human conceptions of the word freedom.
Freedom. It felt ironic now.
He could tell you had a certain depth, he’d said—one he liked to find and study in people. His testimony went like this: he’d have drinks and movies and a double bed for you to crash in, and it sounded a world more appealing than drowning your organs in liquor alone another night before slumping to your abominable makeshift-cell of a home before throwing up your hangover, sleeping a half-hour over the toilet, and heading in for your morning shift.
So, you agreed, on behalf of the fact that you’d felt fascinated by him, too. You noticed he’d gone on blabbering so long that you’d sobered up adequately enough to nod and accept, in what you assumed was your right mind, his invitation to go back to his place with him. In retrospect, he could’ve asked you to come over and do this—whatever was happening right now—and you’re not sure you wouldn’t have just laughed and resisted only playfully.
You’ve been so desperate for any interruption in the mind-numbing, feet-dragging routine that’s consumed your pathetic life that if you weren’t a dose of sedative short of completely panicking right now, you’d probably still be thinking this isn’t too bad.
But that’s silly, of course. You do, above all, feel like an idiot through your haze. You’d done everything right—everything except the going out by yourself thing, and that's how you've wound up in this man's dingy apartment, cuffed to the radiator with no less than three layers of tape wrapped around your head and ankles respectively. Alone. Alone is what you're used to these days, and it’s looking like it’s all going to come to a screeching halt the very same way.
You have no idea where he's gone. You just hope he’ll save the mutilation for after you’re dead.
Hey, you can forget about paying rent for that shithole of yours, at least.
His own's not a sight to behold, and you've gotten pretty familiar with it since you've woken up. He was showing you pictures before he left—before he knocked you unconscious, cleanly and with whatever he obviously slipped in the homemade whiskey and whiskey as far as your memory serves, but the throbbing, sore patch at the back of your skull that's obviously bruised when you lean it against the wall says otherwise. He must've hit you. But maybe he didn't. At your brightest and most alert, you can't say you'd be able to differentiate between blunt-force fog, roofie brain sludge, or the mixture of both.
The photographs started out elegant, really. Men and women alike posed solo, side by side, or in small groups, with knives and guns, mostly—pretty lines, sharp contours, silhouettes that prompted you to ask if he was a student. No, he'd replied, here for work; this is just a hobby. More men and women—a few recurring ones, including an androgynous-looking person with the most artful pastel split-dye you'd ever seen and a side profile to die for—in intricate shibari. A coworker? you'd asked; you could say that, he had replied with a wink. You'd drawn your legs up into yourself onto his bed where you leaned into him closer than could be considered friendly and you fawned. You weren't sure you'd met anyone like him. You hadn't met anyone in a very long time, it felt like.
The photos got strange rather quickly. Same photoshoots, same models, same weapons—but with blood. Bullet holes and brain matter and exposed bones. He has a passion for practical effects, he'd told you. See that little bit of brains there? he'd pointed out. Wet cauliflower rubbed with food coloring. Just like that. Easy! Blown-off skin was exceptionally simple to recreate using deli meat, you learned. You remember ogling a particularly convincing pile of innards with half-disgust, half-astonishment. He had photos of similar nature pinned up, collaged, ripped and repieced all over his water-damaged walls, all taken by him; there must've been hundreds. He’d love to do a shoot with you, if you’d be up for it, he said. He’d make sure you’re comfortable—show you just how simple it is to create such images with practical, do-it-yourself effects.
It hadn't started to sink in until too late just how practical the effects in those pictures might've been.
But by then, you were seeing two of him. When did he grow another trailing, milky braid? You'd reached out drunkenly to touch it, take it between your fingers, and there was two of your one hand, as well; there had to be, for when you looked down at your glass, now empty, there were two of those, too. You had four hands, and his two smiles were as charming as ever when he giggled and asked if you liked his hair. Yeah, you're pretty sure you'd slurred, maybe once, maybe twice, but after that, it's all dark.
You should've scalped and strangled him with it.
Your guess is as good as anyone's how long you've been here, how long he—Nikolai—has been gone, if or when he's coming back.
But there's no room for guesses when you're hyperventilating manually through your nostrils just to keep yourself awake. You've been searching frenetically, yanking uselessly, screaming into plastic for at least a couple of hours now—long enough to be reduced to whimpering, rocking, and absent surveying of your surroundings. A fridge with the handle duct taped on. An unmade bed with black and white striped sheets stretched over it. Cutlery all over the countertop. Laminated floors curling up beneath the cupboards. A birdcage, tipped over and with no bird in it. Smoke stains on the ceilings. Boxes. Boxes. Cardboard boxes piled up next to the dresser and spilling out of the meager closet, among other trash. A video camera silent on a tripod in the far corner. A distinct and hollow smell that reminds you, for some reason, of your elementary school. A small analog television. All those photos, everywhere.
You've cried enough in your life to know the taste of tears. It's odd when they run, like raindrops down a window, across the tape and you find the salt inaccessible.
Please, succumb to dehydration, or starvation, or let the will just leave my body—who hasn't wanted to drop dead a time or two in their life? You just never expected these prayers of yours to be so immediate. So visceral.
You think back to the pile of innards in that photo. Gelatin, he'd told you. As if to prove himself, he bounced over to his kitchen cabinets and produced a tin mold that looked readily liver-like.
So much trouble, just to get you here. Inevitably.
The last words you remember him uttering to you—quiz time had preceded them—while he tucked your hair behind your ear and grinned toothily, don’t haunt you as much as they feel like drying cement in your stomach.
“At what point tonight did I start lying to you?”
Even now—especially now—you can’t say.
You’re rather annoyed with the squeaking, wheezing sound that pulses through the space until you remember it’s coming from yourself. Your lungs and throat. It’s getting easier to slip out of your body like that, the longer you sit here.
You hope the dissociative blessing will find you again at the right times.
It would be nicer—not to be so aware of everything right now. The metal digging into your wrists, your elbows and knees knocking against the humming radiator, the absurd way your cheeks puff up like a squirrel’s before your airways can remember you’re not allowed to draw breath in through your mouth anymore. You’re aware of the ache at the base of your neck and the nail marks you dig into your own palms and loads of other physical stimuli, in the form of nothing, barraging you from inside this apartment where nothing, dreadfully, happens. Nothing.
But again, your awareness does not reach your sense of passing time.
So, when he does come back, it might’ve been an hour since you’d woken up—or it might’ve been a few, or it might’ve been longer.
You don’t know.
“Oh, my friend! Terribly sorry to keep you waiting,” he chirps, as if you’re lounging on the couch with the next episode of your favorite show loaded up and ready to watch.
The tears come fresh when he walks over and squats down in front of you, at your eye level, muttering hey, hey like you’re a small dog, smiling the smile that was once charming—now it makes your jaw tighten, your breathing quicken, your back hit the wall.
“I promised movies, didn't I?”
You could mistake his tone for warm if you closed your eyes. You want to. You can't.
After regarding you and finding some satisfaction—you're not sure what in—Nikolai hops up, whistling. Your gaze follows him, dutifully, as if watching him will keep him at bay. That white braid swishes out of time with your breath as the little television crackles to life.
His rifling through one of the boxes produces a stack of DVDs in telltale white paper sleeves, each with its own permanent-marker-scribbled identifier like a love letter—you see these, make these out when he kneels back down in front of you, still whistling as he fans them like a deck of cards, like he wants you to pick one, any one.
But then he clicks his tongue.
“So impolite of me.” He seems to remember the predicament he’s placed you in. Setting the discs aside, he digs in his pocket. “Let's try something, okay?”
On its own, your head shakes side to side. No, is what the tape keeps in your mouth.
But it's a small key, and he's reaching for your cuffs—some sick part of you feels ready to forgive him if he just unlocks you and lets you go. Maybe he'll let you go. You would've stayed for movies had he not done this to you, you swear, unintelligible in your mewling—you’d been so lonely, he could’ve shown you anything and you would’ve stayed. Just let me go, you think now. Just let me go.
Before the tooth of the key slides in—so close—he tells you, "Nothing funny, now. This hand—" he taps the one closest to him, "—is for picking only, got it?"
He's frozen; you realize he's waiting for an answer. Your sight has never wavered from him, but you feel like you're zeroing back in on him and his expectancy from behind closed eyes as he tilts his head forward, toward you. Yes begins to form on his lips, like he's speaking it into you. You nod harshly. It hurts your neck.
But when the key clicks, a caged animal cannot be expected not to pounce.
Your free hand flies up to claw at his face, hard, unforgiving and without knowing what exactly you hope to accomplish. Nail tracks and fingertips find purchase as quickly and comfortably as they can into an eye socket. If your mouth was free, you'd be spitting. Shouting.
But he just peels you away and twists your arm in a way that forces your torso to follow and you screech into the tape; he twists, toward your chest and then down, and you're no match for him and his manic clenched teeth and the way he rises up to plant his foot upon your wrist, in the middle of your back.
Your chin hits the floor.
Something in your shoulder tears loose with a nauseating crack.
You scream. It's not loud enough.
“It's only gonna get worse if you don't just listen to me, sweetheart,” he growls, leaning down, grinding your carpal bones to dust beneath his heel.
Sweetheart. The first time he calls you anything other than friend is when it's really started. He's hurting you and the gutting certainty that he won't stop here is washing over you like a frigid wave.
Those pathetic, annoying sounds again—whining, whimpering. It's harder to remember it's coming from you when your eyes are screwed shut. If you close them tight enough maybe you can pretend this is all happening to somebody else.
“Obviously, that won’t work,” Nikolai says more to himself than you, yanking you back up, putting you back together off the radiator in a few motions you can’t keep up with before he lets you fall again.
You ragdoll.
You would like to think you might’ve had more fight in a situation like this one. But a steady ache is spreading from your shoulder down into your back and the angle at which he presses you into an arch reminds you your dignity is not something of his concern. You ragdoll.
“No, no, baby, we’re gonna get up now.” He drags you up by your wrists and hair and you groan and ache and try to ragdoll yourself into a bag of sand but he kicks your bound ankles and the negative spaces your knocking knees cut out until you’re sitting on your ass on the edge of his bed, in front of the buzzing TV, tears aglide in a new wave when he threatens you, with so little as a bruising grip on your face, to stay upright. “You’ll be okay,” he purrs emptily.
You’re past the liberty of choice, so the thin stack of DVDs hit the dresser with a papery thwack—all but one, which he jams into the slot before he crawls behind you on the bed.
It wouldn’t have been so difficult to turn you into a lover, really. You wish you could tell him this while he sets either thigh on each side of your own, slides his arms around your middle, beneath your arms, the dishonesty of his fingertips beneath the hem of your shirt so welcoming. You still wish he wouldn’t have lied to you. You wish he wouldn’t have put drugs in your drink. You wish he’d take the tape off and let you wake up from the pain careening parallel to your spine and in your hand and you’d cover his arms with your own and tell him thank you, you’ve needed this, it’s been so long since you’ve felt physical affection from a human being that you think you could cry. His fingers wander between your legs and away again and you are crying.
But Nikolai doesn’t want to turn you into a lover. The staticy screen hosts a shaky frame trained on where a cracked alleyway swallows up the foot of a brick building in shifty evening light and when it pans up to a window, there you are, impossibly, between a sliver of blinds. When you turn your head away—hearing those suffocated garbles from someone else’s throat—he creeps back up to your jaw, hard, like he wants to leave his fingerprints on the teeth they’ll use to identify you.
You watch yourself get undressed. You watch yourself wrap a towel around your waist and step halfway out of sight behind the frosted glass of your shower door.
He gets up, periodically, to change the disc. Whistling, leaving you shivering in your bones, glaring sharply at you when you writhe until he guides your wet eyes to another film of yourself. And another. And another. And another. Ones where you’re on your way to work, on the bus. Ones where you carry groceries. Ones where your back faces him, on that barstool of yours. Ones where he gets close enough to touch you and then retreats. Ones where he’s picked up the convenience store receipt that slips out of your pocket. He uncrumbles it for the camera and scans the text and discerns your fate between your case of wine and bag of chips, laughing to himself. He’s a filmmaker. You’re his muse and we’re going to make the best movie ever, you think you hear him whispering to you or shouting at you with vigor when the television finally zaps dead beneath his touch. It’s going to be an exploration, he says, and he’s so lucky it’s you, who did everything right, sweetheart.
“How many days,” he begins, moving you like a mannequin to face him on the bed, your legs curling up uncomfortably as if they’re one, “did I follow you, do you think? Give me your best guess.”
You desperately don’t want to vomit behind the tape, so you don’t make a sound.
But he’s looking to you like he’s waiting for you to take your turn in the game, most likely unwilling to give you a leg up after your little outburst earlier. The tiny red crescents between his brows, barely visible beneath his snowy bangs, do not miss you.
Chain link clicking, you lift up your one ten-fingered hand—no more four hands for a wider array of guesses—and present six shaky fingers. You think about going for his neck.
Nikolai shakes his head as if he’s pleased to be winning. “Try again.”
You spare a middle finger. Without looking at your seven, he shakes no once more. You don’t have to cast your eyes down to his arms, filling out the sleeves of his plain white shirt, to remember how strong they were around you without even trying to be. You’d have to be quick and you’d have to squeeze hard.
Your thumb pokes out.
No.
The rest of your planning time rests like a marble between your last two fingers and when your ring finger flicks up you feel it slipping—slipping because what will you do after? You’ll have to choke him until he’s out cold. You’ll have to be certain he’s subdued before you’ll be able to waddle on your bound feet to his door to undo the latch and deadbolt—forbid you shouldn’t have enough time before you can make it out, pound on a neighbor’s door, get to a phone so someone, anyone can help you get out of here.
Happily, Nikolai shakes his head once more.
And you’re uncurling your pinky, making your way to a mockery of jazz hands.
But before you get there, you lunge at him with everything left in your body and shattered hand—your ridiculously stringy reserve of willpower, funneled down through your dislocated shoulder and hours of frantic breath and trembling next to that radiator so that when your nails land this time in half-moons around his throat you groan; you get his jugular with two palms, one assured, one numb, insistent knuckles, and vengeant fingertips and his eyes widen so sweetly, his mouth twists down in the first and only displeased expression you’ll see on his angel-white face and you grit your hidden teeth and squeeze. You can taste the outside air and the blood from inside your cheek.
Frowning and flailing backwards, Nikolai gives you the privilege of a little performance.
You think you could kill him before he kills you. You want to see the blue rise up his pretty skin. You grit your teeth. Your groan becomes a shriek. You squeeze.
And when he’s on his back he pries you off. Does you one better.
He’s grinning before he can get you off him—you’ve lost. You’ve lost a long time ago—when are you going to believe him? Does he have to spit it in your tear-streaked face? Surely you’ll understand, after his knuckles ripple into the space between your upper and lower jaws, now that he stamps his knee into the back of your neck in another choreography-perfect motion you never stood a chance against. Jazz hands against your chest, elbows jabbing your stomach.
“It was thirteen, anyway,” he growls like he’s angry with you for guessing incorrectly. “Thirteen days. Feisty one.” You had no extra hands or mouth to make such a speculation, and now his heavy leg bears down on you. Hand on your back, grappling toward the curve of your ass, almost soothing. Almost. Your eyes are pressed into a blur of black and white stripes.
Smack.
It’s one of the kinder touches, still.
“I don’t like having to discipline my subjects into submission, you know.” Nikolai almost sounds regretful. “If you’ll just—” Smack— “trust me to do my work, I can trust you to be good for me.”
Your spinal cord could snap like the head off a flower and he just smacks your ass, over, over. All your permission to make sound is trapped between his kneecap and his mattress, him and his rough hands, one of which knots in your hair and yanks, yanks until you can’t pretend this is nice anymore. You should’ve struck faster, gripped harder, shaken him with all your might but you should’ve done lots of things prior to now, and he’s the disappointed discipliner and you’re sorry, alright—you’re sorry you caused either of you all this trouble and you just want to go home. You just want to go back to your shithole apartment and let your chafed wrists heal and allow the long-term pain of a few dodged medical bills remind you that this wasn’t quite a dream, but at least you’ll be alive.
At least you’d be alive.
“Don’t fucking move,” he doesn’t bark at you. He’s not unkind. It’s a simple instruction. All the air rushes back in when he gets up, off you. Moves somewhere in the room to make a soft clatter.
At least you’d be alive. But for what? To slog back to the machine? With all this added weight on you?
Would you want to be? You hadn’t begun with much when you crossed the threshold of the bar into the night he swept you up in. You had the stifling promise of work, home, work, home, feel alone, drink yourself to sleep, and you would be dumbly hopeful—no, pitiably lying to yourself to think anything more, anything different would be waiting for you on the other side of this.
Another clatter, dull and short, sounds on the bed next to you and you dip with the weight of him following. From the clatter he chooses scissors—you know this because your shirt goes first, the cotton ripping, before your pants which too rip, rip, rip in places all over before he shucks it all, undergarments too, off you like the skin of a fruit.
At least you’d be alive. But what is it you’d aim to become after being Nikolai’s pretty little victim? A work of his art? Surely this isn’t something you want to carry with you, you think in the margin between rationality and ruin—between you and the door you’re not certain you’ll ever reach again. Certainly, not in one piece.
You roll over, exposed. He’s so pretty, biceps flexing, jaw clenching while he situates a body that is not yours into an adequate position where he can sever the duct tape binding the ankles with a few back-and-forth flourishes of his serrated knife like it’s a saw. This is a hobby, you remember. You wonder if he’s a butcher or a mortuary scientist or what he does to make his living and if he looks just as beautiful doing it. You’ve been granted the point-of-view of specimen. You can’t think of a perspective you’d rather watch him splay himself across your thighs from.
Your feet twitch to kick. Your brain doesn’t follow through.
“I told you you’d be comfortable, didn’t I?” He’s back to grinning that grin you’re holding onto. You can be a pretty model if you keep reminding yourself that if you weren’t weakened and restrained in his bed, that grin would look so inviting. His joy and passion are what drew you into him in the first place, after all. He talks to you, looks at you so softly while you feel broken. Isn’t that all you’ve been craving for someone to do? “Let’s get you comfortable, dovey.”
He kisses you—not rough, especially gentle in fact—over the tape as he’s tucking the same knife between your bodies. The kiss of an angel, the kiss of death.
It’s not comfortable when the stainless steel handle finds its way inside you. You can’t even get wet, looking at him, seeming so patient now that he’s got you bending nice and far, and his teasing from earlier has done nothing; he’s so pretty and you would’ve wanted him before this. He didn’t have to do this to you.
It’s uncomfortable, too, when he fucks you with it, slow at first—gradually faster. You don’t think you even moan, or whine. You just watch him, silky braid fallen in the crook of his neck, as he alternately studies your face, the knife, how you don’t react. When he fucks you faster, risking cuts upon his own hand, you let your eyes flutter shut, your fingers curling and uncurling subtly like they’re the only part of you that registers what’s happening. You don’t want to watch him anymore, going to the trouble. For you.
He pushes it so deep for you, so deep you start to feel the serrated teeth. Your toes echo your fingers and finally, you give him sound in the form of a cry.
“Oh, that’s good,” Nikolai tells you. A laugh bubbles through the words.
Stop, you think you’re saying. Don’t. It’s anyone’s guess and his guess is more.
So you leave. You remember this is all happening to someone who isn’t you—you have to feel it, but it’s not happening to you. You leave and you pretend it’s two of his fingers in you—they’re cold, that’s all—pretend the tape and the cuffs are some kink thing you were thrilled to indulge him in. Pretend you’re not concussed. Pretend your faculties can come back to you anytime you want in this little daze of yours—he’s just making you comfortable, he’s just making you feel good because your life isn’t so sad that you don’t deserve even that.
He’s just making you feel good.
Your tears have no end. They unravel out of you like string.
“Don’t cry, baby,” his voice shakes with the speed. You jostle with his pace but you pretend you’re floating. “Don’t cry, pretty thing.” But he’s cutting you open from the worst place and when he grabs your chin again, his hands’ slick with his blood or maybe yours and you jolt back home into your body to find him again and the knife is still inside you.
You hurt all over. He’s just making you feel good.
Your sobs come loud and violent, withheld only by tape. He’s patient with you. He’ll be patient with you while you purge it, surely. You blur over, the string undoing faster and faster and he’s wiping your tears away, replacing them with something else, something red. It gets in your eyes. You miss his grin this time but if you were to see it, you would not think it the same one from before.
When your body rejects the knife he scoops it up, licks the handle clean of all you’ve given him so far, with care.
And he hushes you.
“It feels good,” he reaffirms to you. “You’re doing so good.”
You’re doing better than you ever have. You’re good—you must be. It’s the first time you’ve heard that in what feels like lifetimes. You’re good beneath his touch. He smears your blood or his blood down your cheek, down the tape, and you cry for him. Stop. Don’t. Be cruel to me again. It’s what I know. It’s easier to die when burning hatred is the one burying you. His affection makes your stomach turn. You loll into the palm cupping your face. You’re doing so good.
And he’s grinning, sharp and wide, when your eyes roll back and forth. Back into your skull, forward onto him. Nikolai grants your wish when his fingers worm beneath, between the tape and your skin, while he’s telling you don’t scream or I won’t be so nice anymore and when he tears it away your face feels cold and you scream anyway—you scream for your crumpled arm and the violation and the knife life’s held above your throat come to materialize now in the third strike against him and there is a thick, flowing gash that leaves you feeling waterboarded as it seethes and gurgles its way through your teeth and around your shoulders all at once like a crimson harness to keep you flat on your back while Nikolai looks at you like you didn’t learn.
“Ultimately—” His cloud-colored eyes burn as he towers over you like a god. Your god. The only one that can set you free, now. “—you made such easy little snuffbait,” he quips, running the blade once, twice along the cloth of his shirt before turning it on the thin, tender skin keeping him from your sternum. You and your first-floor housing and your melancholia. “Too caught up in your woes to notice the man following you around each corner for—god, weeks now. So little to live for anymore, sweetheart—it wouldn’t be so much of a shame to put you out of your misery now, would it?”
The look you give him must be delirious and begging; you swear a flicker of the most genuine sympathy you’ve ever seen crosses his face until he’s laughing, softly, rumbling to your ears like a fan’s whir.
“Oh, it would be such a waste of you,” he waves away. “Besides, I’ve already given you my artist statement.”
His artist statement. From the bar.
Freedom.
His work—work, the word is bitter and foamy mixed with your blood—explores different conceptions of freedom.
Freedom. What could it possibly have to do with an innocent person, bound and drugged with their throat slit on film? What exploration is being made? What endeavor toward enlightenment are you when your mouth is too full of blood to ask him to stop?
Freedom. He’s been following you for weeks, if all he’s said is truthful, while you’ve been swirling in that downstream like a helpless fucking bug. And like a kid looking for an insectile test subject, Nikolai plucked you right up, splayed out your limbs, and stuck you beneath the microscope. Next he’d pin you, dry you, feed the story of your mortality to someone—his next victim, an empty roll of film, his own reflection, some god that wasn’t listening to you—and you would be another nameless face, a decomposing body, a snapshot demonstration of how well deli ham apparently mimics peeled-back human skin. A lesson in deliverance.
You haven’t been free in a long time. Perhaps, even, since before you moved to Yokohama and all your shit uprooted itself to the forefront of your mind and landed you on your back in the Devil’s bed.
“You should know well by now I’m interested in more than just seeing you bleed.”
Your hands reach out, trembling for his face like it’s salvation, while he leans to rest with his chin above yours. The Devil traces white heat, a bullseye for where he’ll stab into that tender skin on your chest, drag down, cut you open for him to begin the messy part of his project.
You tilt ninety degrees and the red light of the camera winks at you. At least you’re not alone.
