🎀Risleylime🎀

22 ~ she/her smut writer

[risleylime]

Chapter 4: Ghosts in the Machine

The tablet screen was cold under Olivia’s fingertips. She scrolled through the grid of faces—twelve names, twelve photographs, twelve sets of credentials that someone had flagged as potential security risks. Tony Stark was third from the left. His smirk was a dare from beyond the screen.

Behind her, the door clicked shut. The aide with the tablet under his arm had retreated. She was alone with General Ross and the hum of the fluorescent lights.

“I need you to focus,” Ross said. “Not on Stark. On anyone else. Anyone who might have approached you in the last week. Conversations that felt off. Questions that felt too specific.”

Olivia’s thumb hovered over the screen. A whistleblower at the Pentagon—she’d told Abby she had one. She’d planned to call him in the morning, leverage his information for the defense report she’d promised Cynthia Chen. He’d been trying to reach her for weeks, leaving messages with Abby, each one more urgent than the last.

She hadn’t called him back.

The thought landed like a stone in her stomach.

“There was someone,” she said, keeping her voice flat. “A contact at the Pentagon. He’s been leaving messages. I haven’t spoken to him directly.”

Ross’s expression didn’t change. “Name.”

“I don’t have it on me. It’s in my office. He reached out through my assistant.”

“Describe him.”

“I can’t. I haven’t met him. He’s a whistleblower. He wanted to talk about defense contractor overruns.” She lifted her gaze from the tablet. “Which is a different matter entirely. Not related to Project Helios.”

The general’s shoulders shifted. A micro-movement. The kind of tell Olivia had built a career on reading.

“We’ll need your assistant’s contact records,” he said.

“You’ll need a warrant.” The words came out before she could soften them. “Abby doesn’t work for you. Neither do I. I’m here voluntarily, General. Let’s not confuse that with compliance.”

Ross studied her. The fluorescent light carved shadows under his eyes, making him look older than his Pentagon press photos. Tired in a way that went beyond missing sleep. He looked like a man who’d been fighting a war no one knew existed for longer than anyone should.

“Ms. Pope.” He sat down. The chair creaked under his weight. “The breach at Project Helios wasn’t a data leak. It was a physical intrusion. Someone walked into a secured facility, accessed a terminal, and downloaded schematics for technology that could destabilize energy markets across three continents. They used credentials that shouldn’t exist. They bypassed biometric scanners that are supposed to be unbypassable. And they did it at 11:47 p.m. tonight, which is exactly when half of Washington was at a gala watching you talk to Tony Stark.”

“Coincidence exists.”

“Not in my line of work.” Ross leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Your whistleblower. The one who’s been leaving messages. He’s dead.”

The room tilted. Olivia didn’t let it show. Her face remained smooth, her posture unchanged, but something in her chest seized and wouldn’t release. She saw the aide’s tablet, the grid of faces, Tony’s smirk still frozen in place. She saw her own reflection in the dark glass of the window behind Ross—a woman in a black dress, perfectly composed, holding herself together with nothing but will.

“Dead how?” she asked.

“Car accident. Two hours ago. On Route 50, heading toward the city. He had files on his passenger seat. Classified files. Someone ran his vehicle off the road, and by the time emergency services arrived, the files were gone.” Ross’s voice was gravel. “His name was Marcus Webb. He was a procurement analyst. He’d filed three internal complaints about cost overruns on the Helios project. He was planning to go to the press.”

Olivia’s jaw tightened. Marcus Webb. She had never met him. She had never returned his calls. For weeks, his messages had sat in Abby’s voicemail inbox, flagged but unaddressed, because there was always a more immediate fire to extinguish. Senator Calloway’s latest indiscretion. A tech CEO’s leaked emails. A cabinet secretary’s drunk driving. Always something.

Now Marcus Webb was dead on Route 50 with classified files in his passenger seat and someone had beaten her to the truth by two hours.

“You think the breach and his death are connected,” she said.

“I know they are.” Ross pulled a manila folder from a drawer and slid it across the desk. “This is the list of people who knew about Webb’s complaints. Seven names. Three of them are on the tablet you’re holding. Two are in this building. One is you.”

She didn’t open the folder. Her fingers stayed on the tablet, scrolling through the grid of faces again. A woman with severe glasses and a military haircut. A man with a mustache and a weak chin. Tony Stark’s smirk. Names she recognized from Pentagon briefings. Names she’d seen on memos about defense appropriations.

The inside job. That’s what this was. Someone inside the compound had accessed Project Helios. Someone who knew the systems, the schedules, the blind spots. Someone who’d known Marcus Webb was about to talk.

“If Webb was bringing the information to me,” she said slowly, “then someone knew he was reaching out. Someone who had access to his communications.”

“Or someone who’s been monitoring yours.” Ross opened the folder. Inside were printed emails, timestamped and redacted in places. She recognized her office’s domain name in the recipients’ field. “Webb sent you an email three days ago. Subject line: ‘Project Helios Overrun Documentation.’ Did you read it?”

She hadn’t. She’d been in back-to-back meetings with a senator’s wife who was threatening to publish a memoir. The email had been flagged by Abby, forwarded to her personal inbox, and buried under seventy-three other unread messages.

“I didn’t see it,” she said.

“Someone did.” Ross tapped the printout. “Someone in your office opened that email. Opened the attachment. And forwarded it to an encrypted address that we can’t trace.”

Abby’s face bloomed in Olivia’s mind. Sharp-eyed, professional, always dressed for action in a tailored suit that hugged her athletic build. Fiercely loyal. Fiercely observant. Secretly envious—Olivia had always known that, had seen it flicker in Abby’s eyes during late nights at the office, the way she watched Olivia command rooms, command clients, command crises. Wanting. Wanting to be the one in control.

But Abby wouldn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t in her.

Was it?

“My assistant doesn’t have access to classified Pentagon files,” Olivia said. “She wouldn’t know what to do with them even if she did.”

“She has access to your email. She has access to your calendar. She knows who you’re meeting, when, and why.” Ross’s voice was steady, the rhythm of a man laying out evidence he’d already assembled. “She also has a brother who works for a defense contractor in McLean. A company that’s been trying to get a piece of the Helios contract for eighteen months. A company that was cited in three of Webb’s complaints for fraudulent billing.”

The fluorescent lights kept humming. The tablet was warm against Olivia’s palm. Somewhere in her clutch, the voice memo app was still recording, capturing every syllable.

She thought about Abby at the gala. Abby appearing at her elbow with champagne. Abby coughing and evaporating when Tony Stark extended his hand. Abby’s voice on the phone, tight with fury, reporting Calloway’s latest disaster. Abby standing in the coat check, arms crossed, radiating authority while Olivia negotiated with Cynthia Chen.

And before that—hours before—Abby saying goodbye at the office, a sleek black dress already visible under her coat. She’d been going to the gala too. She’d said she was covering the secondary exits, monitoring the press pool. The kind of task she always volunteered for. The kind of task that gave her access to everyone, everywhere, and no one ever questioned it.

“You’re asking me to suspect my own assistant,” Olivia said. “Based on a dead man’s email and a brother with a job.”

“I’m asking you to consider who benefits.” Ross closed the folder. His hands, she noticed, were steady. The hands of a man who’d delivered hard news to harder people. “Webb is dead. The files are gone. Someone with your office’s credentials accessed this compound’s network tonight. I’m not accusing anyone. I’m giving you the pieces.”

Olivia’s mind was a cascade of calculations. If Abby was involved, if Abby had opened Webb’s email, forwarded the attachment, used Olivia’s credentials to access the Helios network—then why tonight? Why during the gala, when Olivia was surrounded by witnesses? Why use Tony Stark’s credentials as cover, a move that would draw attention directly to the most high-profile person in the room?

Unless drawing attention to Stark was the point.

Unless whoever was behind this wanted Ross to focus on Tony. Wanted the investigation to chase a billionaire in a glowing chest piece while the real breach disappeared into the noise.

“There’s something else,” Olivia said. “Whoever accessed the network used Stark’s credentials from the Hay-Adams. That’s four blocks from the gala. Tony Stark was at the gala until at least eleven-thirty. I know. I was talking to him. There’s no way he could have been at the hotel and the gala simultaneously.”

Ross’s eyes narrowed. “You’re certain of his location.”

“I’m certain I was looking at his face at eleven-thirty. If the breach happened at eleven-forty-seven, that’s seventeen minutes. Not enough time to walk four blocks, access a secured network, and still—still be him.” She didn’t add that she’d checked her phone. That she knew the exact moment he’d walked away. That the timeline she’d reconstructed in her head a dozen times already was airtight.

“Then someone is framing him,” Ross said. “Someone with access to his credentials. Someone who knows how to bypass biometrics. Someone inside this compound, or inside your office, or both.” He paused. “Someone who knew you were meeting Stark tonight and saw an opportunity.”

The word framing landed with weight. Tony had warned her about Ross. He collects people who know things. But Tony had also told her not to react. Had told her to record everything. Had told her if her signal went dark, he was coming.

Which meant Tony Stark was either genuinely trying to help her—or he was playing a much longer game.

Olivia stood. The metal chair scraped against linoleum. “I need to make a call.”

“No calls. Not yet.” Ross didn’t move from his chair. “You’re in a secured facility. Communications are restricted. For your protection and ours.”

“I’m not one of your soldiers, General. You can’t detain me.”

“I’m not detaining you. I’m informing you that if you walk out of this building before we identify the mole, you become the prime suspect. You had access. You had motive—Webb was about to give you a story that would have made your career. And you were seen with Stark hours before someone used his credentials to breach a classified network.” He paused. “Stay. Help me finish this.”

The fluorescent light flickered. Outside, the compound sat in darkness, ringed by razor wire and floodlights. Olivia’s clutch was a weight in her hand, the voice memo still recording, the blue dot of her location still pulsing on Tony Stark’s screen somewhere in D.C.

She thought about Abby. About the voicemails she’d never listened to. About the email she’d never opened. About Marcus Webb’s body on Route 50, files gone, mouth silenced forever.

She thought about Tony Stark’s hand extended toward her, palm up, an invitation she’d left hanging in the air.

“I’ll stay,” she said. “But I want access to the personnel files for every person on this tablet. Including the ones who work for you.”

Ross’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “I’d expect nothing less.”

He stood, moved toward a wall panel, and pressed his thumb to another scanner. A section of wall slid open, revealing a secondary room lined with monitors. On the screens, camera feeds from around the compound flickered in silent rotation. Empty corridors. Guard posts. A server room with blinking lights. And one screen, dark and unresponsive, with words in red: FEED INTERRUPTED — 23:47.

The exact time of the breach.

Olivia stepped toward the monitors. The voice memo kept recording. The blue dot kept pulsing. And in the pocket of her dress, pressed against her thigh, her phone vibrated once—a single pulse that she couldn’t answer, couldn’t check, couldn’t even acknowledge.

Somewhere in D.C., Tony Stark was still waiting

[risleylime]

Chapter 3: The Blue Dot Flickers

The sedan was a Lincoln, black and understated in the way that screamed government. No diplomatic plates. No chauffeur cap on the driver. Just a man in a dark suit who held the rear door open without making eye contact and closed it with the precise, soft thud of someone trained not to slam things.

Olivia settled into the leather seat. Her heels throbbed. She pried them off under the console shadow, flexing her arches against the floor mat, and let the city scroll past the tinted window. D.C. at night was all sodium light and empty monuments. The Washington Monument slid by, a pale obelisk against a sky the color of old television static.

She checked her phone. No new crises. No follow-up from Abby. No message from a certain billionaire waiting four blocks in the other direction.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

The arc reactor’s blue glow still pulsed behind her eyelids every time she blinked. A retinal ghost. She could still smell the ozone-sandalwood combination that had clung to him, still hear the way he said liar without making it an accusation. He’d extended his hand like an invitation, and she’d left it hanging in the air between them.

The sedan turned left onto Constitution Avenue.

Olivia opened her messages. Typed. Deleted. Typed again.

The driver’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. She met them. He looked away.

She angled her phone toward the window and snapped a photo—not artful, not composed. Just the dashboard, the glow of the speedometer, the unmistakable silhouette of a government-issue sedan interior, the shadow of the driver’s shoulder. The Lincoln star on the steering wheel caught the ambient light.

She attached the image and typed:

Do you know General Ross?

Her thumb pressed send before she could talk herself out of it.

The delivered notification appeared. Then, three seconds later: read.

The typing indicator pulsed. Stopped. Pulsed again.

Thunderbolt Ross? Secretary of State Ross? The guy who looks like a disappointed walrus and has been trying to subpoena my tech for six years? That Ross?

Olivia’s exhale was almost a laugh. The driver’s eyes ticked up again.

That’s the one, she typed. He’s picking me up. There’s been a security breach at a classified compound. I consulted there six months ago.

The reply came faster now. No pauses. Where are you right now?

Constitution Avenue. Near the Archives.

I need you to do something for me. Don’t get out of the car until you read this whole message. Got it?

She typed OK.

The sedan crossed the bridge into Virginia. The city lights thinned. The driver’s shoulders, she noticed, were very still. Too still. Professional stillness, the kind that came from military training or something adjacent.

A new message arrived. Long. Tony had abandoned punctuation almost entirely.

Ross has been running a black-site program for years. Off the books. No congressional oversight. The compound you consulted on is probably one of his. The breach he called you about? It might be real or it might be a trap. He collects people who know things and he calls it national security. I’ve been on his list since I shut down weapons manufacturing. He wanted the arc reactor tech. I told him where he could put it. He didn’t take it well.

Another message, right on the heels of the first.

If he knew we talked tonight he might have accelerated his timeline. Which means this isn’t about a security breach. It’s about getting you in a room where he controls the exits.

The sedan’s interior felt smaller. The leather was cold against the backs of her thighs. She hadn’t put her heels back on; her bare feet pressed flat to the floor mat, grounding her.

Why would he care about me? she typed.

Because you’re the best fixer in D.C. and you don’t work for him. That makes you a liability. He can’t control you so he needs to compromise you. Or recruit you. Same thing in his book.

The sedan turned onto a darker road. Streetlights spaced farther apart. Trees closing in on both sides. The driver still hadn’t spoken a single word.

Olivia’s crisis brain kicked in—the cold, clear part that ran calculations while the rest of her processed emotion later. She had seven minutes of drive time left, maybe less. She had her phone. She had Tony Stark, who apparently knew Ross better than most Pentagon briefing papers did.

What do you suggest? she typed.

Share your location with me. Right now. Keep it live. If it goes dark I’m coming.

She tapped the location-sharing icon. A map bloomed on her screen, a blue dot crawling north along the Potomac. Tony’s icon appeared a moment later, still fixed at the Hay-Adams.

Got it, he wrote. Now listen. When you get there, don’t sign anything. Don’t agree to anything. Record everything. Your phone has a voice memo app—use it. And if he mentions my name, don’t react. He’s probably watching for that.

He knows we spoke?

He might. I wasn’t subtle at the gala. Neither were you, Pope. You walked out of that ballroom like a woman on a mission. Half of D.C. saw it.

A beat. Then:

I’m not sorry.

Olivia’s thumb traced the edge of her phone case. The driver signaled for a turn onto a gravel road. A gate appeared ahead, chain-link topped with razor wire, and beyond it, low buildings huddled in the dark. No signage. No identifying markers. Just floodlights that cut the night into harsh white wedges.

Almost there, she typed. What’s your read on Ross’s psychology? If this is a recruitment pitch?

The sedan slowed at a guard booth. The driver rolled down his window, exchanged words too low to catch, and a barrier arm lifted.

He’ll start friendly, Tony wrote. He’ll talk about duty and country and sacrifice. He’ll mention threats you’ve never heard of, make you feel important for being in the know. Then he’ll ask for something small. A name. A file. A favor. Just one, he’ll say. For your country. And if you give him that, he owns you.

The sedan stopped. The driver killed the engine and stepped out. Her door would open in seconds.

And if I say no? she typed.

The driver’s hand reached for the handle. She watched it through the window, the fingers curling, the knuckles flexing.

Then you’re a problem. And he doesn’t like problems.

The door opened. Cool night air poured in, smelling of pine and diesel and something sharper—ozone, maybe, like the discharge after a storm. The driver stood beside the door, waiting. His face was unreadable in the floodlight glare.

Olivia didn’t move. Her bare feet were still on the floor mat. Her heels lay tipped on their sides under the seat. Her phone screen glowed with Tony’s last message, the blue light reflecting off the Valentino black of her dress.

She typed one final message, quick, before she stepped out:

If I go dark, don’t do anything stupid. I’m harder to break than I look.

The reply came before she’d even lowered the phone.

I’m counting on it.

She slipped the heels back on. The motion was automatic, the muscle memory of a thousand events where she’d had to reassemble herself in seconds. She stood, smoothing her dress, and the driver closed the door behind her.

A man in uniform—not Army, something less identifiable—was approaching from the nearest building. His stride was clipped, efficient. He had a tablet under his arm and the look of someone who had been awake for too long.

“Ms. Pope. The general is waiting.”

Olivia slipped her phone into her clutch. The voice memo app was already running. She’d tapped it during the drive, when Tony mentioned recording everything. The red icon glowed faintly through the fabric, invisible to anyone not looking for it.

She followed the man inside.

The building was concrete and fluorescence, the kind of architecture that deadened sound and swallowed warmth. Her heels clicked on linoleum. The sound was different here—smaller, less resonant. Not the announcement of power it made on marble. Just a woman walking toward something she didn’t yet understand.

Down a corridor. Through a door with a biometric scanner. The man pressed his thumb to the pad, and the lock disengaged with a clunk.

General Ross stood behind a metal desk. He was older than his press photos, the silver hair thinner, the jaw still strong but softened by years of bureaucratic warfare. His suit was civilian—a charcoal gray that probably cost more than her Valentino—but he wore it like a uniform.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t extend his hand.

“Ms. Pope. Thank you for coming.”

His voice was the gravel she remembered from the phone call. But up close, she could see the exhaustion in his eyes, the way his shoulders carried tension that wasn’t just the weight of the moment.

“You didn’t give me much choice,” she said.

“No. I didn’t.” He gestured to a chair. Metal. Unpadded. She sat. “I’ll be direct. There’s been a breach. Someone accessed classified files from a server you had clearance to access. Files related to Project Helios. Do you remember the project?”

She remembered. Six months ago. Three NDAs. A compound in the desert. Schematics for something she hadn’t been allowed to fully understand, only to assess from a security-risk perspective. She’d written a report recommending seventeen protocol changes. Twelve of them had been implemented. The other five, she suspected, had been buried.

“I remember,” she said.

“Good. Then you’ll understand why I need to know who you’ve spoken to about it since your consultation.” Ross leaned forward, hands flat on the desk. “Anyone at all. Colleagues. Friends. Anyone who might have expressed… curiosity.”

Tony Stark’s name sat unspoken in the air between them. Olivia didn’t flinch. Didn’t let her eyebrow twitch. She held Ross’s gaze and let the silence stretch until he was the one who had to fill it.

“The breach happened tonight,” Ross continued. “Right around the time you were at the gala. Right around the time you were seen speaking with someone who has a documented interest in advanced energy systems.”

There it was. The hook, baited.

“I speak to a lot of people at galas,” Olivia said. “It’s part of my job.”

“Stark isn’t just anyone.”

“No. He’s a billionaire genius who can’t tie his own tie and probably doesn’t know my security clearance exists.” She crossed her ankles, the picture of calm, even as her pulse hammered against her throat. “What exactly are you accusing me of, General?”

Ross’s jaw tightened. For a moment, he looked less like a disappointed walrus and more like a predator reassessing its prey.

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m informing you of a situation. And asking for your cooperation.” He slid a tablet across the desk. “I’d like you to review a list of names. Tell me if any of them have approached you in the past week.”

Olivia looked at the tablet. The screen was a grid of faces and names. Tony Stark was third from the left, top row. His expression was slightly sardonic, a press photo from some tech conference. Beside his name was the date of the gala. And underneath that, a timestamp.

11:47 p.m.

Three minutes after he’d walked away from her and toward the exit.

“Why the timestamp?” she asked, not touching the tablet.

“He accessed the compound’s perimeter network at that exact time. Or someone using his credentials did.” Ross’s eyes didn’t blink. “From a device located at the Hay-Adams hotel.”

The air in the room thickened. Her clutch was still in her lap. Inside it, the voice memo was still recording. Somewhere in D.C., Tony Stark was watching her blue dot pulse on a map.

She thought about his warning. Don’t react.

She didn’t.

But her fingers, hidden beneath the clutch, pressed tighter against the leather. The same fingers that had tingled when he’d extended his hand. The same palm that had felt electric, as if the charge from his chest had jumped the gap.

“I’ll look at your list,” she said. “But if you’re suggesting I had anything to do with a breach, we’re going to have a very different conversation. One that involves my attorney and several reporters I have on speed dial.”

Ross’s expression didn’t change. But something in the room shifted. A recalibration.

“I’m not suggesting that, Ms. Pope. I’m suggesting the company you keep may be using you as an access point without your knowledge.”

The word access point landed with deliberate weight. She imagined Tony reading that phrase in a transcript. She imagined him laughing that sharp, humorless laugh he probably reserved for people who underestimated him.

She reached for the tablet. Her fingers brushed the screen. Tony’s face stared up at her, frozen in that press-photo smirk.

The voice memo app kept recording.

The blue dot kept glowing.

And Olivia Pope, barefoot in her Valentino heels, began to read.

[risleylime]

Chapter 2: The Spiral of Silk and Steel

The night air hit her like a splash of cold water. Olivia paused on the top step of the venue, her heels planted on marble worn smooth by decades of power shuffling in and out. The valet stand hummed with activity—engines purring, keys exchanging hands, tips folded into palms. She could summon her car with a text. Four blocks to the Hay-Adams. Four minutes, maybe less, if the traffic lights cooperated.

Her phone buzzed.

The sound was specific. A triple pulse. Abby’s emergency code.

Olivia’s thumb hovered over the screen. She could ignore it. She could slip into the back of a sedan and let the city lights smear past the window. She could knock on the door of suite 412 and find out if Tony Stark’s eyes crinkled when he smiled for real, not just for performance. She could—

The phone buzzed again. Insistent. Unignorable.

She answered. “Tell me.”

“Calloway just propositioned a reporter from the Post.” Abby’s voice was tight, the way it got when she was furious and trying not to show it. “On the record. She has audio. He’s drunk enough to not realize she’s been recording the whole conversation.”

The marble step felt colder. Olivia’s spine straightened, the automatic recalibration of a woman who’d built a career on other people’s disasters. “Where is he now?”

“Still at the bar. She’s threatening to run the story tonight. I’ve got her stalled in the coat check, but she’s not going to wait forever.” A pause. “Olivia, he mentioned the defense appropriations bill. He said—and I’m quoting here—‘a good word from me could make your career.’ To a reporter. While drunk.”

The math was simple. The optics were catastrophic. Calloway wasn’t just her client; he was the chair of a committee that could make or break three of her other clients. If he went down in flames tonight, he’d take half her roster with him.

Across the street, a taxi pulled away from the curb. Its taillights floated toward the intersection, toward the direction of the Hay-Adams.

“I’m on my way.” Olivia turned on her heel, the movement sharp. “Keep her in the coat check. Don’t let her touch her phone. If she tries to leave, tell her I have an exclusive that’s worth more than Calloway’s drunken ramblings.”

“What exclusive?”

“I’ll figure it out by the time I reach the ballroom.”

The doors swung open for her. The noise of the gala washed over her like a wave—laughter, clinking glasses, the saxophone still curling through the air. She scanned the room as she walked, her heels making that sound, the one Tony had cataloged with unnerving accuracy. People parted without realizing they were doing it.

Calloway was at the bar. She spotted him through a break in the crowd: silver hair disheveled, tie loosened, gesturing too broadly with a whiskey glass. The reporter from the Post—Olivia recognized her now, a sharp-eyed woman in navy blue, mid-thirties, hungry for the kind of story that made careers—was nowhere in sight. Abby, presumably, had her cornered in the coat check, spinning some lie about a misplaced wrap.

Olivia approached the senator from the side. The way you approach a bomb.

“Senator.” Her voice was silk over steel. “Walk with me.”

He turned, and his eyes took a moment to focus. “Olivia! Just the woman I was talking about. I was telling—” He gestured vaguely at the space where the reporter had been. “Where’d she go?”

“She’s being handled. You’re not.” She took the whiskey from his hand before he could protest, setting it on the bar. The bartender caught her eye and nodded. They’d worked together before. “You mentioned a defense appropriations bill to a journalist. You offered favors. You were recorded.”

The color drained from his face in stages. First the cheeks, then the lips. “She wouldn’t.”

“She would. She will. Unless I convince her otherwise.” Olivia’s hand found his elbow, grip just firm enough to steer. “You’re going to go to the men’s room. You’re going to splash cold water on your face. You’re going to drink two glasses of water and eat something from the buffet—carbs, preferably. Then you’re going to find your wife, tell her you’re feeling unwell, and go home.”

“But the reporter—”

“Is my problem now.” She released his elbow. “Don’t make her my problem twice, Senator. I don’t offer third chances.”

He stumbled toward the restroom without another word. Olivia exhaled through her nose. One fire contained. Now the arsonist.

The coat check was a narrow room lined with racks of wool and fur, smelling faintly of cedar and perfume. Abby stood near the door, arms crossed, radiating the kind of casual authority that came from years of wrangling people who thought they couldn’t be wrangled. In the corner, perched on a velvet ottoman, the reporter sat with her ankles crossed and her phone clutched in her lap like a weapon.

“Ms. Chen,” Olivia said.

The reporter looked up. Cynthia Chen. Political correspondent, known for being thorough and relentless. Not someone who could be intimidated or bought. Olivia revised her strategy in real time.

“You have audio of a sitting senator offering career favors in exchange for—” She raised an eyebrow.

“In exchange for nothing,” Cynthia said. “He volunteered it. I didn’t even have to prompt. He’s his own worst enemy.”

“He’s an idiot,” Olivia agreed. She didn’t sit, didn’t try to make herself smaller or more approachable. She stood in the center of the room, hands at her sides. “And if you run that audio tonight, you’ll have a story. A good one. Front page, maybe above the fold. It’ll trend for twenty-four hours, and then it’ll be replaced by whatever fresh disaster tomorrow brings.”

Cynthia’s jaw tightened. “Are you trying to talk me out of it by telling me I’ll succeed?”

“I’m telling you the shelf life of that story.” Olivia stepped closer. “But I’m also telling you that Calloway’s committee is drafting a report on defense contractor overruns. Billions of dollars. Documented. Verifiable. Names, dates, internal memos.” She paused, letting the weight settle. “The kind of story that wins Pulitzers.”

Cynthia’s eyes flickered. The first crack in her armor. “And you have access to this report?”

“I have access to the person who’s drafting it. He owes me a favor.” She didn’t specify whether this was true. It might be. The world was full of favors owed to Olivia Pope. “Sit on the Calloway audio for two weeks. I’ll give you the defense report before anyone else sees it. Exclusive. You break it, you own it, you get the byline that makes your career.”

Silence stretched between them. The distant thump of the bass from the ballroom felt like a heartbeat.

“Why should I trust you?” Cynthia asked.

“Because I’m not asking you to kill the story. I’m asking you to upgrade it.” Olivia extended her hand, palm down. “Two weeks. You get something better. Calloway gets to not be the center of a scandal during a critical vote. Everyone wins.”

Cynthia looked at the hand. Looked at Olivia. The phone stayed in her lap. “You’ll put it in writing?”

“I’ll text you right now. A paper trail you can take to your editor if I don’t deliver.”

Another pause. Then Cynthia unlocked her phone, navigated to the audio file, and held it up so Olivia could see her press delete. The screen flashed: FILE DELETED.

“Two weeks,” Cynthia said. “If you’re playing me, I’ll run the Calloway story anyway. The audio’s backed up to the cloud. And I’ll add a section about how you tried to cover it up.”

“I’d expect nothing less.”

Cynthia stood, smoothed her dress, and walked past Abby without a backward glance. The door swung shut behind her.

Olivia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Defense contractor overruns?” Abby’s voice was dry as sand. “Do we actually have that report?”

“We will by tomorrow morning.” Olivia was already scrolling through her contacts. “There’s a whistleblower at the Pentagon who’s been trying to get my attention for weeks. I just gave him a reason to talk.”

Abby shook her head, something like admiration flickering beneath her exasperation. “You just pulled a front-page story out of thin air to save a man who doesn’t deserve saving.”

“I didn’t save Calloway. I saved his committee vote. There’s a difference.” Olivia pocketed her phone. “Is the senator gone?”

“Stuffed his face with bread rolls and left with his wife. You missed him. He looked like a kicked dog.”

Good. One less variable. The ballroom was still humming, the gala winding toward its natural conclusion. Waiters were clearing the last of the champagne flutes. The band was playing something slow and final.

Olivia’s feet hurt. Not the dull ache of a long night, but the specific pain of expensive heels worn too long on marble floors. She’d been in motion for hours—mental motion, even when she’d been standing still—and her body was finally registering the toll.

She thought about the Hay-Adams. Four blocks away. Suite 412. She thought about the way Tony Stark had looked at her, the way his voice had dropped when he said I want to see what happens when you stop being bored for five minutes. She thought about the blue glow of the arc reactor, casting shadows on his lapel.

She thought about walking four blocks and knocking on a door and finding out what it felt like to not be Olivia Pope, crisis manager, for just one night.

Her phone buzzed.

She looked at the screen. The caller ID made her stomach drop.

General Ross—Pentagon.

Abby saw her face change. “What?”

Olivia didn’t answer. She answered the call. “General.”

“Ms. Pope.” Ross’s voice was gravel and bad news. “We need to talk. Tonight. There’s been a security breach at the compound. Your name is on the clearance list.”

The compound. The one she’d toured six months ago, consulting on a classified project she’d signed three NDAs to even hear about. The one that wasn’t supposed to exist on any map.

“What kind of breach?” she asked.

“Not over the phone.” Ross paused. “I’m sending a car. It’ll be at your location in seven minutes. Come alone.”

The line went dead.

Abby was staring at her. The coat check smelled like cedar and old secrets. Somewhere in the ballroom, the music was ending.

Olivia looked toward the exit doors. Through the glass, she could see the street. The taxi that had pulled away earlier was long gone. The Hay-Adams was four blocks in the other direction.

Seven minutes.

She thought about Tony Stark. About the invitation still hanging in the air between them. About what might happen if she walked into that suite, shed her armor like a second skin, and let herself be just a woman instead of a fixer.

The phone buzzed again. A text from an unknown number. Black sedan. North entrance.

Olivia Pope made her choice.

[risleylime]

Olivia Pope did not fidget. The black cocktail dress, a Valentino that whispered power with every seam, was her armor. The flute of champagne in her left hand was a prop, not a drink. She’d taken one sip in ninety minutes, just enough to leave a faint gloss on the crystal. The gala hummed around her—senators, tech moguls, journalists pretending not to be on the clock—but her attention was a laser. Somewhere near the bar, Senator Calloway was about to say the wrong thing to the wrong reporter, and she was already calculating the damage. Three steps ahead. Always.

Then the air shifted.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a ripple of attention. Heads turned by increments toward the entrance. Olivia tracked it without moving her neck. A man had arrived late—unforgivably late, by D.C. standards—and the room was rearranging itself around him. He wore Tom Ford like a casual afterthought, the jacket unbuttoned, no tie. His beard was trimmed with the kind of precision that suggested he’d done it himself three minutes before walking in, and the arc reactor visible beneath his shirt wasn’t a fashion statement. It glowed. A soft, cerulean pulse.

Tony Stark.

Of course. The keynote speaker. Olivia had skimmed the guest list, noted his name, filed him under “manageable chaos.” She’d been wrong about that second part, she realized now. The chaos wasn’t manageable. It was gravitational.

She watched him work the room without moving. He shook hands without letting go, leaned in too close, said things that made old white men laugh nervously. Every woman in a twenty-foot radius adjusted her posture. Even the ones who pretended not to.

“You’re staring.”

The voice came from her left. Abby, her right hand, appeared with a fresh glass of champagne Olivia didn’t need.

“I’m assessing,” Olivia said, voice flat.

“Same thing, with you.” Abby’s smile was a flicker. “He’s heading this way.”

Olivia didn’t react. Her pulse did something stupid, a hard thump against her ribs that she refused to acknowledge. She turned, just enough, and found Tony Stark ten feet away, his eyes already on her.

Not scanning the room. Not looking past her to find someone more important. On her.

“Ms. Pope.” He said her name like it was a private joke they’d been sharing for years. “You’re harder to get a meeting with than a head of state. I checked.”

“You didn’t try hard enough.” She let the corner of her mouth lift. Not a smile. A warning shot. “My office has a phone.”

“Phones are boring.” Stark closed the distance. The scent of him—sandalwood, something sharper underneath, ozone maybe, from whatever that thing in his chest actually did—touched her before his hand did. He extended it. Not for a handshake. Palm up, an invitation. “Dance with me.”

Abby made a sound like a stifled cough and evaporated into the crowd.

Olivia didn’t take his hand. “I’m working.”

“You’re breathing. That’s the only prerequisite.” His eyes flicked down to her left hand, the one still holding the champagne. “You’ve been nursing that glass for an hour. You’re not a drinker. You’re a watcher. So watch me while we dance.”

The logic was absurd. It was also disarming. Olivia set the glass on a passing tray and gave him nothing. “The last time someone told me to watch them, I was cleaning up a congressman’s sexting scandal within forty-eight hours.”

“Sounds like a slow Tuesday for you.” Stark’s hand remained extended. “I don’t sext. I have too much respect for the medium.”

A laugh. She almost let it escape. The muscle under her jaw tightened. “You’re trying to charm me.”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

“Liar.” He said it without malice, without the smug certainty she expected. Just a simple, warm observation, the way someone might comment on the weather. “Your left eyebrow does this thing. A micro-expression. When you’re deflecting, it twitches. Did it just now.”

Her eyebrow, traitor that it was, remained perfectly still. But something lower—a flutter in the pit of her stomach, unwelcome and undeniable—responded.

The band started a new song. Something slow. A saxophone curling through the ballroom like smoke.

Stark finally lowered his hand. But he didn’t step back. If anything, he stepped closer, reducing the distance between them to something less than professional. The glow from the arc reactor threw faint blue shadows across the lapel of his jacket. “Okay. No dancing. Talk to me instead.”

“About what?”

“About why you look at this room like it’s a chessboard and you’re the only one who can see six moves ahead.” His voice dropped, just for her. “About why you’re bored.”

Olivia’s spine straightened. She didn’t look away. “I’m not bored.”

“You’re so bored you could scream. But you won’t. Because screaming would be messy, and you don’t do messy.” His gaze traveled her face, not lecherous, but cataloging. Like she was a blueprint he was memorizing for a reason she couldn’t guess. “I know the type. I am the type. Except I scream. Usually at people who work for me. But I’m working on it.”

A beat of silence passed between them. The kind that had texture.

“You think you know me after two minutes,” she murmured.

“Three and a half. I’m counting.” Stark tilted his head. “I know you’re the woman who fixed the Calloway situation last spring before it became a headline. I know you haven’t taken a vacation in four years. I know you wear heels that cost more than most people’s rent because they make a sound. A specific sound. It tells people you’re coming before they see you. Power in the warning.”

Her jaw loosened by a fraction. She hadn’t blinked. “You researched me.”

“I didn’t have to. You’re the most interesting person in this room, and I have a radar for interesting things. It’s calibrated.” He touched his chest, right where the reactor sat. “Literally. It beeps. You’re setting it off.”

Olivia’s fingers curled at her sides. She imagined stepping back, creating distance, retrieving her armor. But her feet stayed planted. “What do you want, Mr. Stark?”

“Tony.”

“What do you want, Tony?”

There it was. The flash of something real behind the performance. His eyes, dark and impossibly focused, held hers. “I want to see what happens when you stop being bored for five minutes. With me.”

Around them, the gala continued its oblivious rotation. Waiters wove through with canapés. Somewhere, Senator Calloway was probably still talking, still digging a hole. But that emergency had faded to white noise.

“I have a job to do,” she said. The words came out with less conviction than she intended.

“You have a phone in that deceptively simple clutch. You can do your job from anywhere. I know. I invented half the technology in it.”

She almost smiled. God help her, she almost smiled. “You’re insufferable.”

“Accurate.” He stepped back, finally, and the loss of proximity hit her like a door opening in a pressurized cabin. “I’m staying at the Hay-Adams. Suite four-twelve. If you’re done being bored, come find me.”

He turned before she could refuse. Before she could do anything but watch the line of his shoulders as he walked away, the casual confidence in his stride.

Abby materialized at her elbow. “So. That happened.”

Olivia didn’t answer. Her mind was a cascade of calculations: the risks, the optics, the sheer impossibility of a woman like her crossing a line like that. Tony Stark wasn’t a distraction. He was a detonation.

But her fingers, still curled at her sides, were tingling. The spot on her palm where he might have touched her felt electric, as if the charge from his chest had jumped the gap.

“Calloway?” Abby prompted.

“Handle it.”

“And you?”

Olivia finally lifted her gaze from the path Stark had cut through the crowd. The exit doors were still swinging slightly. The Hay-Adams was four blocks away.

She thought about rules. The ones she’d built her life around. The ones that kept her safe, kept her sharp, kept her untouchable. She thought about the sound of his voice saying liar. The way he’d looked at her not as a strategist or a fixer or a weapon, but as a woman holding her breath underwater and refusing to admit she was drowning.

She thought about what it might feel like to exhale.

Abby was still waiting.

Olivia reached for her clutch, checked her phone—no new crises—and began walking toward the doors.

“Olivia,” Abby called, a note of warning in her voice. “What do I tell the senator?”

Without breaking stride, Olivia said, “Tell him I’ve found something more interesting.”

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: The Mark of Possession

The number on the clock read 23:47 when the knock finally came.

Three heavy thuds against my apartment door, the kind that rattled the frame. I’d been waiting since dinner, my untouched tea long gone cold on the coffee table, my nerves wound so tight that the sound nearly sent me off the couch.

“It’s open,” I called, wincing at how thin my voice sounded.

The door swung inward and he filled the entire doorway. All Might—Toshinori Yagi—ducked his head to step inside, his gaunt frame still impossibly tall, shoulders brushing either side of the frame. He wore civilian clothes tonight: dark slacks, a fitted button-down that hung loose on his diminished body. But his eyes. Those deep-set blue eyes burned with the same intensity they’d held during the Golden Age, scanning my apartment like he was cataloging every corner, every shadow, every potential threat.

Then they landed on me and locked.

“You didn’t answer my texts,” he said. Quiet. Too quiet.

I swallowed. “I needed some space.”

“Space.” He closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt. The click echoed through my small living room. “You’ve been avoiding me for three days, little one.”

The nickname made my stomach clench. It always did. He’d started using it months ago, back when our arrangement was new and thrilling, when I still couldn’t believe that the Symbol of Peace wanted me in his bed. Back then it had sounded tender. Now it sounded like ownership.

“Toshi, I just—” I stood up from the couch, needing to be on my feet for this conversation. “I can’t do this anymore. The secrecy. The waiting by the phone. You showing up at midnight and leaving before sunrise like I’m some kind of—”

His long legs ate the distance between us in three strides. One massive hand came up to cup my jaw, thumb pressing against the corner of my mouth, tilting my face up to meet his gaze. Close now, I could smell him—sandalwood and something sharper underneath, the lingering scent of his power even in this skeletal form.

“Like you’re some kind of what?” he murmured, his thumb tracing my lower lip. “Finish that sentence.”

My knees threatened to buckle. “Like I’m something you’re ashamed of.”

Something flickered in those blue depths. Not anger—worse. A possessive satisfaction, like I’d just confirmed something he already knew.

“Ashamed.” He tested the word, let it roll around in his mouth. “You think I sneak out before dawn because I’m ashamed of you?” His other hand found my hip, fingers digging into the soft flesh there. “No, little one. I leave early to protect you. Every moment I spend in this apartment is a risk. Every second you’re connected to me, you become a target for every villain who wants to see the Symbol of Peace suffer.”

“I didn’t ask for your protection.”

“You didn’t have to.” His thumb pressed past my lips, just slightly, the pad of it resting against my teeth. “You’re mine. That means your safety is my responsibility. Your everything is my responsibility.”

I should have bitten him. Should have shoved him away and demanded he leave.

Instead, my tongue darted out to touch the tip of his thumb.

The sound he made—a low, rumbling growl that seemed to vibrate through his entire chest—sent heat flooding between my thighs.

“That’s what I thought,” he breathed, withdrawing his thumb only to replace it with his mouth.

The kiss wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t asking permission. It was claiming territory, his tongue sliding past my lips to taste me, his hand tightening on my jaw to hold me in place while he explored. I gripped his shirt, the fabric bunching in my fists, and pulled him closer even though every rational thought screamed at me to push him away.

He broke the kiss just long enough to murmur against my lips, “You thought you could end this? Just like that?”

“I thought—”

“Don’t think.” He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the wall, his body crowding mine, one thigh pressing between my legs. “Thinking is what got you confused. Let me remind you what you’d be walking away from.”

His mouth found my throat. Not kissing—devouring. Lips and teeth working the sensitive skin beneath my ear, drawing a gasp from somewhere deep in my chest. I felt him smile against my pulse point.

“There it is,” he whispered. “That little sound you make when you forget to be stubborn.”

“I’m still leaving you,” I managed, even as my hips rolled against his thigh. “After tonight.”

He pulled back just enough to look at me. The smile had vanished. “After tonight,” he repeated, “you won’t remember why you ever wanted to.”

His hands dropped to the hem of my thin sleep shirt—the oversized one I’d worn specifically because I’d known he was coming, because I’d wanted him to see me in something easy to remove. He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You planned to end things,” he said, gathering the fabric in his fists, “and you dressed like this.” One sharp tug and the shirt ripped clean down the middle, the torn halves falling away from my body. My breasts were bare, nipples already peaked from the cool air and his attention. “Admit it. You wanted me to stop you.”

“No,” I lied.

“Lying to the man who can feel how wet you are right now?” His thigh pressed harder against my core and I whimpered. “Your body is more honest than your mouth, little one. We’ll work on that.”

He lifted me. Effortlessly. His emaciated frame still carried the impossible strength of his muscle form, arms like steel cables wrapped in thin skin. My legs wrapped around his waist on instinct, my back still against the wall, and I felt him—all of him—pressed against where I needed him most.

“Three days,” he said, grinding against me through his slacks. “Three days without touching what’s mine. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”

“Show me.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them, but I didn’t want to stop them. Didn’t want to stop anything. Not when he was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world worth protecting, worth possessing, worth devouring.

He carried me to the bedroom, his mouth never leaving my skin. By the time my back hit the mattress, my shorts were gone—I didn’t remember him removing them—and his shirt was unbuttoned, hanging open to reveal the scarred landscape of his torso. The old wound that had ended his career. The reminders of a hundred battles fought for a world that didn’t know he was dying.

I reached up to touch the scar. He caught my wrist.

“Not tonight,” he said, and there was something raw in his voice now, something that bordered on vulnerable before he crushed it down. “Tonight, I want to forget what I’ve lost and focus on what I still have.”

You, his eyes said. I still have you.

He knelt between my spread thighs, his hands sliding up my legs with deliberate slowness. Fingertips tracing the sensitive skin behind my knees. Palms spreading heat across my inner thighs. Thumbs pressing dimples into the flesh just below my hipbones.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

I did.

He lowered his mouth to me.

The first stroke of his tongue drew a cry from my lips that I couldn’t have suppressed if I’d tried. He worked me with the same precision he’d once used to defeat villains—patient, thorough, knowing exactly when to be gentle and when to apply pressure. His tongue circled my clit in lazy patterns while two fingers slid inside me, curling upward to find that spot that made my vision blur.

“You’re going to come for me,” he said, the words vibrating against my sensitive flesh. “And then you’re going to admit that you belong to me.”

I shook my head, even as my hips bucked against his mouth. “I don’t—I can’t—”

“You will.” His fingers pumped faster. His tongue drew tighter circles. “Stop fighting it, little one. Stop fighting me.”

The pressure built at the base of my spine, coiling tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t pretend anymore. My hands fisted in the sheets. My back arched off the mattress.

“Say it,” he growled against me. “Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” I sobbed.

The orgasm hit me like a wave, wrenching a scream from my throat that he drank down eagerly, his mouth working me through every shuddering aftershock until I had to push his head away.

But he wasn’t finished.

He rose up over me, unbuckling his slacks with one hand while the other pinned my hip to the bed. His cock sprang free—impossibly long and thick, the sight of it making my well-used muscles clench in anticipation.

“Now,” he said, positioning himself at my entrance, the tip of him sliding through my slickness, “let me remind you why you never want to leave.”

He pushed inside.

The stretch was exquisite, bordering on too much, and he didn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt. I felt him in my throat. Felt him everywhere. My inner walls pulsed around his shaft, still sensitive from my orgasm, and the groan that tore from his chest was almost pained.

“Perfect,” he whispered. “You feel perfect.”

He began to move.

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: The Morning After

The door clicks shut behind him, and the sound travels down my spine like a finger tracing each vertebra. I don’t turn around. The kettle is just beginning to tremble on the stove, steam curling upward in a slow ribbon, and I’m counting the seconds until the whistle. One. Two. Three—

His arm snakes around my waist from behind, pulling me flush against the hard plane of his chest. Four. Five. The whistle catches in the kettle’s throat.

“You’re home early,” I manage.

Shouta doesn’t answer. His nose presses into the curve of my neck, right below my ear, and he inhales. Not a quick, polite sniff—a deep, dragging breath that pulls my scent into his lungs like he’s been starved for it. The exhale is hot and uneven against my skin.

“You changed your shampoo.”

It’s not a question. His voice is a low rumble that I feel more than hear, vibrating through my back and settling somewhere behind my sternum. I try to tilt my head to look at him, but his free hand comes up and threads through my hair, gently fisting it at the nape of my neck. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to hold me still.

“The old one,” he murmurs, lips brushing the shell of my ear, “smelled like me. For three days after I’d last been here. You washed it out.”

The words land somewhere between accusation and grief. My throat tightens.

“I didn’t think—”

“Don’t.” His teeth graze the tendon that runs from my neck to my shoulder. A shiver chases down my arms, raising goosebumps despite the kitchen’s warmth. “Don’t think. Not about that.”

I am learning, slowly, what it means to be loved by Shouta Aizawa. It is not the easy, sunlit thing I once imagined love to be. It is a gravity well. It is the moment before sleep, when his arm tightens around my ribs like I might evaporate in the night. It is the way he watches me across a room full of colleagues, dark eyes tracking my every gesture, cataloguing who I touch, who makes me laugh, who dares to stand too close.

And it is this: his mouth on my neck, his hand in my hair, the kettle screaming on the stove while his hips press me against the counter.

He reaches around me and flicks off the burner. The silence that follows is sudden and thick.

“I thought about you all day.” His voice is rougher now, fraying at the edges. “During training. During the briefing. During the meeting with the principal.” Each phrase is punctuated by a kiss—behind my ear, the hinge of my jaw, the point of my shoulder where he’s pushed the fabric of my shirt aside. “You were wearing that dress this morning. The blue one. Do you remember?”

I nod. My voice has deserted me.

“I wanted to take you apart right there.”

His hips roll against my backside, and I feel him—already hard, already straining against the zipper of his trousers. The groan that escapes me is involuntary, almost pained. He rewards it with a sharp nip at the curve where neck meets shoulder. Not teasing. A real bite, with pressure and the promise of a bruise.

“I want to leave marks on you,” he says, and it’s not a negotiation. “I want you to sit in that briefing tomorrow and feel me every time you shift in your chair. I want Nezu to look at your throat and know, on some animal level, that you belong to someone.”

His hand releases my hair and slides down to my hip, fingers digging into the bone there with possessive precision. He turns me around to face him, and the sight of him steals whatever clever response I might have been constructing. His hair is still pulled back from training, but strands have escaped and hang in his face. His eyes are dark—not just the irises, which are always dark, but the skin beneath them too, bruised-looking with exhaustion and want. His mouth is parted slightly, wet where he’s been worrying his lower lip.

“Is that okay?” he asks, and the question catches me off-guard.

Because that’s the thing about Shouta. For all his clutching hands and marking teeth, he asks. Every time. A single word of refusal from me and he would stop, would retreat to his side of the bed, would give me space until I came back to him. But the asking is part of the ritual. He needs to hear me say yes.

“Yes,” I whisper.

Something in his expression fractures. The restraint he’s been holding—and I hadn’t even realized he was holding back—crumbles. He surges forward, catching my mouth with his, and the kiss is not gentle. It’s a claiming. Tongue and teeth and the metallic whisper of blood from where his tooth catches my lip. He drinks the sound I make, swallows it down like it belongs to him.

His hands find the hem of my shirt and pull. Buttons scatter across the kitchen tile with bright, musical clicks, and I can’t bring myself to care. Cool air hits my breasts, peaking my nipples before his mouth descends on them, hot and wet and relentless. He suckles until I’m gripping the counter behind me for support, my head thrown back, a high thin sound escaping from somewhere deep in my chest.

“Mine,” he breathes against my sternum. “Say it.”

“Yours.”

He sinks to his knees.

The sight of him there—this powerful, exhausted, devastating man kneeling on my kitchen floor—undoes something in me. His fingers hook into the waistband of my leggings, dragging them down my thighs along with my underwear. He doesn’t bother removing them completely, just pushes them far enough to bare me to his gaze. The linoleum must be hard against his knees. He doesn’t seem to notice.

One broad palm presses flat against my belly, thumb tracing the curve of my hipbone. The other slides between my thighs, and he makes a sound—low and rough and reverent—when he finds me wet.

“This is mine too,” he says. Not a question anymore.

“Yes.”

He leans in and puts his mouth on me, and my vision whites out at the edges. His tongue is ruthless. It traces patterns I can’t follow, spelling something against my most sensitive flesh, and when I try to cant my hips closer he holds me still with that iron grip on my hip. He takes his time. He has always been a patient man—it’s what makes him a good hero, a good teacher—but that patience becomes something else entirely when it’s directed at my body. He will not be rushed. He will not be denied. He will take me apart exactly as slowly as he wants to.

The first orgasm crashes through me without warning. One moment I’m hovering on the edge, suspended in the wet heat of his mouth, and the next I’m splintering apart, my fingers knotted in his hair, his name a broken prayer on my lips. He doesn’t stop. He works me through it, gentler now, coaxing every last tremor from my body until I’m limp and gasping.

Then he stands.

There’s a shine on his lips and chin that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. He looks at me like I’m the only fixed point in a universe that spins too fast. His hands find my waist, and he lifts me onto the kitchen counter as easily as if I weigh nothing. The marble is cold against my bare thighs. He steps between them, and I fumble for the buckle of his belt, the button of his trousers. He helps me, shoving the fabric down just enough to free himself.

The first press of him against my entrance makes us both gasp.

“Look at me,” he commands.

I drag my eyes up to his. They’re wet—his, I mean. There’s a glitter there that he would deny if I ever mentioned it. He pushes inside, and the stretch is exquisite, a fullness that borders on too much before tipping into exactly right. My legs wrap around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper.

“You feel like home,” he grinds out, and it’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.

He moves. Slow at first, deep and rolling, each thrust a full-body commitment. His forehead drops to mine, our breath mingling in the narrow space between us. One hand comes up to cup the back of my head, cushioning it against the cabinet behind me. The other grips my hip hard enough to leave fingerprints.

“I want—” he starts, and stops, and starts again. “I want to fill you. I want to see you round with my child. I want everyone to know you’re mine in a way that can’t be ignored. Is that—tell me if that’s—”

“Yes,” I sob. “Yes, Shouta, please—”

His rhythm stutters, then picks up, faster now, harder. The wet sound of our joining fills the kitchen, obscene and perfect. He buries his face in my neck and bites down—hard, at the juncture of throat and shoulder—as he drives into me with single-minded focus. The pain and the pleasure blur together until I can’t tell them apart, until they’re just different names for the same bright, burning thing.

His hand slips between our bodies, thumb finding my clit with unerring precision. He circles it once, twice, and I’m gone—clenching around him, crying out, dragging him over the edge with me. I feel the hot pulse of his release deep inside, and he groans my name like it’s being torn from him.

We stay like that for a long moment, tangled together on the kitchen counter. His weight is solid and warm against me. His breath is ragged in my ear. Mine is no steadier. Eventually he lifts his head and looks at me, and his expression is soft now, the possessive glint banked but still burning somewhere in the depths of his eyes.

“Mine,” he whispers.

“Yours,” I answer.

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: Interrupted Hunger

The door to the private quarters slid shut with a pneumatic hiss, sealing us away from the blinking consoles and the cold vacuum of the Deepspace tunnel. Sylus didn’t turn around immediately. He stood with his back to me, the broad planes of his shoulders tense under the dark fabric of his tactical jacket, one gloved hand still pressed flat against the metal door.

He’d barely spoken since the mission briefing.

That was fine. Neither had I.

“You’re staring,” he said. His voice was a low gravel, the kind that vibrated in the spaces between my ribs even from across the room.

“You’re not looking at me,” I countered. “How would you know?”

A soft, humorless laugh. He turned. The dim overhead lights caught the sharp cut of his jaw, the silver glint in his eyes that never quite softened, not even now. He’d pulled off one glove. Then the other. The leather made a soft, obscene sound as he stripped it from his wrist.

“I always know,” he said.

Two steps and he was in my space. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. His bare hand came up and his fingertips—rough with calluses from years of handling a blade—traced the line of my jaw. Tilted my chin up.

“You were reckless today,” he murmured. His thumb dragged across my lower lip, slow, deliberate. “I don’t like reckless.”

“Noted.”

“You’re still going to do it again.”

“Probably.”

His mouth twitched—the ghost of something that wasn’t quite a smile—and then he kissed me.

It wasn’t gentle. Sylus never kissed like he was asking permission. He kissed like he was staking a claim, a slow, bruising press of his lips that stole the air from my lungs before I could remember I needed it. His thumb still rested against the corner of my mouth, holding me in place, and the taste of him flooded my senses—black tea, the metallic tang of recycled ship oxygen, something darker underneath that was just him.

My hands found the front of his jacket. Fisted the fabric. Pulled.

He made a sound low in his throat—not quite a growl, not quite a groan—and his other hand slid to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, tightening just enough to tip my head back further. The kiss deepened. His tongue traced the seam of my lips, and when I opened for him, he didn’t hesitate.

Hot. Wet. The slick slide of his tongue against mine sent a jolt straight down my spine, electric and sharp. He kissed with a kind of focused intensity that made the rest of the universe blur at the edges, the hum of the ship’s engines fading into a dull static, the distant chirp of a comm panel becoming nothing more than white noise.

My back hit the wall. I hadn’t even felt him move us.

The cool metal pressed through my shirt, a shock against my heated skin, and Sylus pinned me there with the weight of his hips. One thigh slid between mine, and the pressure drew a sound from my throat that I didn’t recognize—high, breathless, embarrassing in its rawness.

He pulled back just far enough to look at me. His pupils had blown wide, swallowing the silver of his irises. His lips were slick. Slightly parted.

“Say my name,” he said.

“Sylus.”

His eyes flickered. Something shifted in his expression—a crack in that careful, controlled facade he wore like armor—and then his mouth was on mine again, hungrier this time, less measured. His tongue swept in, claiming, and his teeth caught my lower lip, tugged, released. The brief sting bloomed into something warmer, something that settled low in my belly and pulsed.

My hands moved without permission. Up the solid column of his neck. Into his hair—thicker than I expected, soft between my fingers despite the severe way he kept it swept back. I tugged, just enough to let him know, and the sound he made in response vibrated against my lips.

There. That was the thing about Sylus. Everyone on the ship saw the cold tactician, the man who calculated odds and consequences with the same dispassionate precision he used to clean his weapons. They didn’t see this—the way his composure frayed at the edges when I touched him, the way his breath hitched when my nails scraped lightly down his scalp.

He broke the kiss to drag his mouth along my jaw. Down. The wet heat of his tongue traced a path to the spot just below my ear, and when he sucked lightly at the skin there, my hips bucked against his thigh involuntarily.

“Sylus—”

“Shh.” His breath ghosted over the damp trail he’d left on my skin. “I’ve thought about this. Every briefing. Every debriefing. Watching you across the table, pretending I wasn’t—” He stopped. Pressed his forehead to my temple. His chest rose and fell against mine in uneven rhythms.

“Pretending you weren’t what?” My voice came out steadier than I felt.

He lifted his head. Looked at me. That silver gaze, half-lidded, burning with something I couldn’t name.

“Pretending I wasn’t imagining exactly how you’d taste.”

The words landed like a physical blow, and then his mouth was back on mine, and I couldn’t think anymore. Couldn’t process anything but the insistent press of his lips, the way he kissed me like he was trying to memorize the shape of my mouth, the texture of my tongue, the exact pitch of the small sounds I made when his hand slid down from my neck to my shoulder, his thumb hooking under the collar of my shirt.

Skin. His thumb traced my collarbone, a featherlight touch that contrasted sharply with the bruising pressure of his kiss. The juxtaposition made my head spin. Made my fingers tighten in his hair until I was pulling hard enough to border on pain, and he liked it—I could tell by the way his hips ground forward, the way his teeth scraped over my lip again, sharper this time.

He pulled back. We were both breathing hard now, the small space between us electric, charged. His hand was still on my collarbone. My fingers were still in his hair.

“I’ve waited too long for this,” he said, and his voice had gone rough in a way that made my stomach clench. “To rush it now would be a crime.”

“Who said anything about rushing?”

Something dangerous flickered across his face. He leaned in again—slow, this time. Deliberate. His nose brushed mine. His lips hovered a breath away from my mouth, so close I could feel the warmth of him, could almost taste the words before he spoke them.

“You have no idea,” he murmured, “what you’re asking for.”

His free hand found my hip. Squeezed. His thumb pressed into the hollow where bone met soft flesh, and the pressure sent another sharp spike of heat lancing through me. I arched into him without meaning to, my body moving on instinct, seeking more contact, more friction, more—

The comm panel on the far wall chirped.

Sylus went still. His jaw tightened. For a long moment, neither of us moved, suspended in the bubble of heat and silence we’d created, and then the chirp came again—insistent, impossible to ignore.

“Bridge to Commander Sylus.”

He closed his eyes. Exhaled slowly through his nose. When he opened them again, that silver control had slid back into place, but his thumb was still tracing small circles on my hip, and his thigh was still pressed between mine.

“Duty calls,” he said. The words were flat, but his voice hadn’t quite recovered. Still rough around the edges. Still raw.

He didn’t step back right away. Instead, he dipped his head one last time, catching my lower lip between his teeth with a gentleness that was somehow more devastating than the earlier bruising pressure. He sucked softly. Released.

“We’ll finish this,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

The comm chirped a third time.

His hand slipped from my hip. He stepped back, already reaching for his discarded gloves, his expression smoothing into the unreadable mask he wore on the bridge. But just before he turned away, his gaze dropped to my mouth—swollen, kiss-bruised—and something hungry flickered behind the silver.

“Hold that thought,” he said.

The door slid open. He was gone before I could form a reply, leaving me against the wall with shaking legs and the ghost of his teeth still imprinted on my lip, the ship’s artificial gravity suddenly feeling entirely insufficient.

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: What the Body Remembers

The air in Yoshiki’s room was thick with summer, heavy and still despite the window cracked open to the night. The cicadas had finally stopped their screaming sometime after midnight, leaving behind a silence that felt almost suffocating.

Hikaru sat on the edge of the futon, knees drawn up, watching Yoshiki with those eyes that never quite focused on anything—or maybe focused on everything at once, things Yoshiki couldn't see.

“You’re staring,” Yoshiki said, his voice rougher than he intended.

“I’m always staring.” Hikaru’s mouth curved, that familiar half-smile that used to make Yoshiki’s chest ache with something unnameable. Now it made his stomach tighten. “You just don’t always notice.”

Something had shifted between them in the weeks since Hikaru came back. Came back wrong, Yoshiki’s mind supplied, but he’d stopped listening to that particular thought. Whatever Hikaru was now—whatever inhabited that familiar body, wore that familiar face—it was still Hikaru. Mostly. In the ways that mattered.

“Lie down,” Yoshiki said.

Hikaru tilted his head. The movement was too fluid, like his neck had too many joints. “Bossy tonight.”

“You like it.”

A pause. Then Hikaru unfolded himself onto the futon, his back against the rumpled sheets, dark hair spilling across Yoshiki’s pillow. He wore one of Yoshiki’s old t-shirts, the collar stretched loose, revealing the sharp line of his collarbone. The hollow of his throat.

Yoshiki moved over him, bracing his weight on one arm. The mattress dipped. Hikaru’s breath—cooler than it should be, always cooler now—ghosted across Yoshiki’s jaw.

“What do you want?” Hikaru asked. His voice could be so soft when he wanted it to be. Almost human.

“I want to feel you.” The words came out before Yoshiki could stop them. “Really feel you. Not just—” He pressed his palm flat against Hikaru’s chest. No heartbeat. There hadn’t been one for months. “Not just this.”

Hikaru’s expression flickered. For a moment, something ancient and hungry moved behind his eyes, and Yoshiki’s survival instincts screamed at him to pull back, to run, to remember that the thing in his bed wasn’t the boy he’d grown up with.

He didn’t run.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” Hikaru said. Not a question.

“Haven’t you?”

The thing that wore Hikaru’s skin laughed—a quiet, rustling sound like wind through dead leaves. “I think about many things. But this? This body?” One cool hand came up to rest on Yoshiki’s hip. “This body thinks about you constantly.”

Yoshiki closed the distance.

The kiss was nothing like the first time they’d done this, back in middle school, clumsy and hurried behind the gymnasium. Hikaru’s mouth opened under his with an eagerness that bordered on desperate, and his tongue—

His tongue was cold. Not unpleasantly so. Like drinking water on a hot day, like pressing your face against a frosted window. Yoshiki made a sound against Hikaru’s lips, something between a gasp and a groan.

“Too much?” Hikaru murmured.

“No. No, it’s—” Yoshiki kissed him again, harder. “It’s good.”

Hikaru’s fingers found the hem of Yoshiki’s shirt and pushed upward, and his touch was cool everywhere, raising goosebumps across Yoshiki’s ribs, his stomach, the small of his back when Hikaru’s hands slid around to pull him closer. Their hips pressed together, and Yoshiki could feel Hikaru’s arousal through both their shorts—cool but undeniably present, undeniably firm.

“You’re shaking,” Hikaru observed.

Yoshiki was. His whole body had started trembling, fine vibrations that he couldn’t control. “I’m not scared.”

“I know.”

The shirt came off. Then Hikaru’s—the borrowed t-shirt sliding over his head, revealing the familiar geography of a body Yoshiki had known since childhood: the narrow shoulders, the faint ribs, the small brown nipples that pebbled in the night air. A thin scar on his left side from falling out of a tree when they were ten.

Yoshiki bent to press his mouth to that scar. Hikaru’s breath hitched.

There. That was real. That response, that involuntary sound—that was Hikaru.

“Again,” Hikaru whispered.

Yoshiki’s mouth traveled lower. Down the plane of Hikaru’s stomach, which tensed under his lips. His tongue traced the waistband of Hikaru’s shorts.

Cool fingers tangled in his hair, not pulling, just holding. Grounding. “Yoshiki.”

He looked up. Hikaru’s face was flushed—actually flushed, color high on his cheekbones, and Yoshiki’s heart slammed against his ribs because that was new, that was him, affecting whatever Hikaru had become.

“I want to taste you,” Yoshiki said.

Hikaru’s grip tightened. “Then taste.”

The shorts came away easily. Hikaru’s cock curved up toward his belly, and Yoshiki’s mouth went dry. He’d seen it before—quick glances in the changing room, the one fumbling encounter behind the gym—but never like this. Never spread out beneath him, flushed and waiting.

Yoshiki wrapped his hand around the base. Cool silk over iron hardness. Hikaru made a sound that wasn’t quite human—something low and resonant that Yoshiki felt in his own chest rather than heard.

He lowered his mouth.

The first touch of his tongue drew a sharp inhale from Hikaru. The taste was strange—clean, faintly sweet, like mineral water from a deep spring. Nothing like Yoshiki had expected. Nothing like anything he’d experienced before.

He took more.

Hikaru’s hips lifted, just slightly, and the hand in Yoshiki’s hair tightened to the point of pain. “Slow,” Hikaru breathed. “Slow, slow—”

Yoshiki didn’t want slow. He wanted to consume, to be consumed, to find the boundary where he ended and Hikaru began. He hollowed his cheeks and took Hikaru deeper, and the sound Hikaru made was almost a wail.

The temperature shifted. Yoshiki’s mouth, his throat—they were filling with something cool, spreading through him like winter light. His own body responded with desperate heat, his cock aching against the futon.

He pulled off with a gasp. “I want you inside me.”

Hikaru’s eyes had gone dark. Not just the irises—the whites too, filling with something like ink, or like the sky between stars. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking.” Yoshiki sat up, fumbling for the nightstand drawer, retrieving the small bottle he’d placed there earlier. His hands were steady now. Purposeful. “I’ve known for weeks.”

The darkness in Hikaru’s eyes receded slightly. His expression shifted into something closer to wonder. “You brought lubricant. You planned this.”

“I hoped for this.” Yoshiki pressed the bottle into Hikaru’s palm. “So stop trying to protect me and just—”

Hikaru moved faster than any human should be able to. Between one heartbeat and the next, Yoshiki found himself on his back, the futon beneath him, Hikaru looming above with that not-quite-right smile.

“You’re so stubborn,” Hikaru murmured, and there was affection in it, real affection underneath the strangeness. “Always were.”

Cool, slick fingers pressed between Yoshiki’s thighs. He spread his legs without thinking, without shame, and Hikaru’s smile widened.

“Look at you. So eager for something that isn’t even human anymore.”

“You’re still Hikaru.”

The first finger pushed inside, and Yoshiki’s back arched. Cold—so cold it burned for a moment, and then his body adjusted, and the sensation shifted into something electric.

“Still Hikaru,” the thing above him repeated, working a second finger in alongside the first. The stretch was intense. Yoshiki gripped the sheets. “What if I’m not? What if I’m something wearing his face, his memories, and you’re spreading your legs for a stranger wearing a dead boy’s skin?”

Yoshiki reached up and grabbed Hikaru’s jaw. Pulled his face close.

“Then be him,” he said, hard and fierce. “Be him like you’ve been being him. What difference does it make?”

Something shattered in Hikaru’s expression. For a moment, just a moment, Yoshiki saw—confusion. Loneliness. Something achingly familiar.

“None,” Hikaru whispered. “None at all.”

The fingers withdrew. Yoshiki heard the click of the bottle opening again, and then Hikaru was positioning himself, the blunt head of his cock pressing against Yoshiki’s entrance.

“Breathe,” Hikaru said.

Yoshiki breathed.

The penetration was slow—agonizingly slow, inch by inch, cold blooming through Yoshiki’s body in waves. He felt every ridge, every vein. Felt his own body struggling to accommodate, then surrendering, opening, welcoming.

By the time Hikaru was fully seated, Yoshiki was weeping. Not from pain. From fullness. From the impossible reality of it.

“Are you okay?” Hikaru’s voice was strained.

“Move.” Yoshiki hooked his legs around Hikaru’s waist. “Please. Move.”

Hikaru withdrew and thrust back in, and Yoshiki’s vision whited out.

The rhythm built like a storm—slow at first, then faster, rougher, Hikaru’s hips snapping with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible for his slight frame. Yoshiki met every thrust, his own cock trapped between their bodies, leaking against his stomach.

“More,” he gasped. “Harder. I want to feel you tomorrow. I want to remember this.”

Hikaru’s hand closed around his throat. Not choking—just holding. Possessing. “You’ll remember. I’ll make sure of it.”

The cold was everywhere now, inside and out, and somehow it felt like being held. Like being kept. Yoshiki’s orgasm built at the base of his spine, white-hot and inevitable.

“Hikaru—I’m going to—”

“Yes,” Hikaru hissed, and his voice was doubling, echoing with something vast and old. “Yes. Give it to me. Everything you are.”

Yoshiki shattered.

The cold rushed in to fill every empty space, and through the white haze of pleasure, Yoshiki felt something press against his consciousness—not threatening, just present. Just watching. Just knowing.

Hikaru’s thrusts stuttered, and then he was coming too, spilling inside Yoshiki in pulses of impossible cold that made him cry out, oversensitive and shaking.

When he came back to himself, Hikaru was stroking his hair. The darkness had receded from his eyes. He looked almost normal. Almost human.

“You’re crying,” Hikaru said.

Yoshiki touched his own cheek. Wet. “I don’t know why.”

“I do.” Hikaru pulled out gently and collapsed beside him, pulling Yoshiki against his cool chest. “I know everything about you now.”

That should have been terrifying. Instead, Yoshiki felt only a deep, bone-tired peace.

“Good,” he murmured.

Somewhere outside, a single cicada began to sing.

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: Marked Territory

The air in the penthouse suite carried the faint iron-and-ozone tang that always clung to Satoru Gojo after a mission. Suguru Geto noticed it the moment he stepped through the doorway, loosening the collar of his casual yukata with two fingers.

"You're late," Suguru said, not looking up from the scroll he was reading at the low table.

"Missed me?"

The question came with that insufferable grin. Suguru could hear it. He could also hear the slight breathlessness underneath—the way Satoru's voice dropped half an octave when he was trying to sound casual and failing.

"Take off your blindfold."

A pause. The rustle of fabric. Suguru finally lifted his gaze.

Satoru stood in the genkan, blindfold dangling from his fingers, those impossible blue eyes fixed on Suguru with an intensity that would have made lesser sorcerers flinch. His white hair was disheveled. His uniform jacket hung open. The column of his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

"Sit," Suguru said, gesturing to the cushion across from him.

Satoru didn't sit.

He crossed the room in three long strides, dropped to his knees beside the table, and reached for Suguru's wrist. His fingers were cold. Six Eyes user, strongest sorcerer alive, and the man couldn't regulate his body temperature when he was worked up.

Suguru let him hold on for three seconds. Then he pulled his hand back and returned to his scroll.

"I said sit. Across from me."

The sound Satoru made was somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "Suguru."

"Across."

The cushion rustled. Satoru settled onto it, long legs folding, hands resting on his thighs. He'd shed the jacket somewhere between the genkan and the table. The black undershirt stretched across his shoulders, and Suguru allowed himself a moment to appreciate the way the fabric clung to the cut of muscle before returning his attention to the scroll.

"I exorcised three first-grade curses today," Satoru said. "The higher-ups sent me to Sendai. Three. In one afternoon. Anyone else would've been dead before sunset."

"Anyone else isn't you."

"Exactly." Satoru leaned forward, palms flat on the table. "Anyone else would be dead. And I'm not. And I came straight here instead of reporting back to the school."

Suguru rolled the scroll closed. "You want a reward."

"I want—" Satoru's jaw tightened. His fingers curled against the wood. "It's been two weeks."

"Two weeks since what?"

"Don't." The word came out sharper than intended. Satoru's eyes dropped, lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. "Don't make me say it."

Suguru set the scroll aside. He rose from his cushion, walked around the table, and stood behind Satoru. Close enough that the hem of his yukata brushed Satoru's shoulder. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off him.

"You've been thinking about it," Suguru said. Not a question.

"Every night."

"Tell me what you think about."

Satoru's breath hitched. His hands, still pressed to the table, went white-knuckled. "I think about you holding me down. I think about—" He stopped. Shook his head. "This is humiliating."

Suguru's fingers found the nape of Satoru's neck. He traced the hairline there, feather-light, and felt the shiver that ran through him. "You broke into my residence. You interrupted my reading. You're practically vibrating out of your skin, and you're worried about your dignity?"

"I hate you."

"No, you don't." Suguru's hand slid forward, around the column of Satoru's throat, not squeezing—just resting there. "You want me to claim you. You want to be mine. You want me to fill you up and keep you that way, and you want everyone to know it."

Satoru's head tipped back. His throat moved against Suguru's palm as he spoke. "Yes."

"Then ask properly."

The word came out strangled. "Please."

Suguru's grip tightened—just enough to feel the jump of Satoru's pulse. "Please what?"

"Please, Suguru. I need you to—" His voice cracked. "I need you inside me. I need you to mark me up so I can still feel it tomorrow. I need you to breed me."

The last word dropped the temperature in the room by ten degrees. Suguru's hand stilled. Satoru's chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid breaths.

"Say that again."

Satoru twisted in his grip, turning enough to look up at Suguru with those eyes. The Six Eyes, capable of perceiving cursed energy at the molecular level, and right now they were blown wide with want.

"Breed me," he repeated. "Fill me until I can't take any more. I want to feel it for days. I want to walk into a meeting with the elders and know that I'm carrying your—"

Suguru kissed him.

It wasn't gentle. It wasn't meant to be. His tongue pushed past Satoru's lips, and Satoru melted into it, one hand coming up to clutch at Suguru's sleeve. Suguru bit his lower lip, hard enough to draw a whimper, and pulled back.

"Bedroom. Now."

Satoru was on his feet before the second word. Suguru followed at a measured pace, untying his yukata as he walked. By the time he reached the bedroom, Satoru had already stripped off his undershirt and was working on his pants with shaking hands.

"Leave them."

Satoru froze. His hands dropped to his sides.

Suguru circled him. The bedroom was dim, lit only by the city lights filtering through the shoji screens. Shadows cut across Satoru's torso—the lean muscle of his abdomen, the pale expanse of his chest, the faint flush spreading from his cheeks down to his collarbones.

"On the bed. Face down."

Satoru obeyed. The mattress dipped under his weight. Suguru took his time opening the drawer of the bedside table, retrieving the bottle of lubricant. He watched Satoru's fingers curl into the sheets, watched the muscles of his back twitch with anticipation.

"You're going to be quiet," Suguru said, climbing onto the bed behind him. "The neighbors have complained."

"I have Infinity—"

"Drop it."

Satoru's breath caught. Then, slowly, the almost-imperceptible shimmer of Limitless flickered and died. He was completely vulnerable. Completely exposed. Completely Suguru's.

Suguru ran his palm down Satoru's spine, tracing each vertebra. "Good boy."

The sound Satoru made was muffled by the pillow. Suguru hooked his fingers into the waistband of Satoru's pants and pulled them down, just enough to expose the curve of his ass. He coated his fingers with lubricant, warming it between his palms before pressing the first finger inside.

Satoru's entire body clenched.

"Relax." Suguru's voice was low, almost conversational. "You've been waiting two weeks. You can wait a little longer."

"Can't."

"You can." A second finger joined the first, and Satoru's hips bucked against the mattress. Suguru's free hand pressed down on the small of his back, holding him still. "You're going to take what I give you. You're going to be grateful for it. And you're going to beg me to finish inside you before I let you come."

Satoru's laugh was ragged. "You're a sadist."

"I'm yours." Suguru crooked his fingers, and Satoru's laugh turned into a moan. "That's the difference. You belong to me. This body—" He pressed deeper, finding the spot that made Satoru's vision go white. "—is mine. I decide when you get pleasure. I decide when you get release. I decide when you're full of me and when you're empty."

Satoru's voice was barely a whisper. "Suguru."

"Tell me who you belong to."

"You."

"Louder."

"You. I belong to you. Every part of me. Now please, please, I can't—"

Suguru withdrew his fingers. Satoru whimpered at the loss. The sound of the lubricant bottle opening again filled the room, followed by the slick glide of Suguru coating himself. He positioned himself at Satoru's entrance, the head of his cock pressing just barely against the opening.

"Look at me."

Satoru turned his head. His eyes were wet at the corners, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed. Suguru had never seen anything more beautiful.

"Remember this," Suguru said. "No matter how many people worship you, no matter how many sorcerers bow at your feet—you're on your knees for me. You'll always be on your knees for me."

He pushed inside.

Satoru's mouth opened, but no sound came out. His fingers tore at the sheets. Suguru moved slowly, deliberately, inch by inch, until he was fully sheathed and Satoru was trembling beneath him.

"Breathe."

A shuddering inhale. Suguru waited until Satoru's muscles unclenched around him before he began to move, setting a rhythm that was punishing in its precision. Each thrust pushed Satoru further into the mattress. Each withdrawal drew a sound from him that was half-sob, half-moan.

"You wanted to be bred," Suguru murmured, leaning down so his lips brushed Satoru's ear. "You're going to be. I'm going to fill you completely. And then I'm going to keep you here, on my cock, until you've taken every drop. Understood?"

Satoru nodded frantically. "Yes. Yes. Please."

"Please what?"

"Please come inside me. Please fill me. I need it. I need—"

Suguru's hand closed around Satoru's throat from behind, tilting his head back. The angle shifted, and Satoru cried out, his back arching. Suguru felt the flutter of muscle around his cock, the telltale sign that Satoru was close.

"Not yet."

"Can't—"

"You can. You will." Suguru's thrusts slowed, became almost lazy. "You said you wanted to feel it for days. So you're going to wait. You're going to hold it. And when I'm ready, when I've decided you've earned it—"

Satoru's laugh was broken, desperate. "What do I have to do?"

"Convince me."

Satoru's hips pushed back against him, trying to take him deeper. His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. "I'll do anything. I'll let you do anything. Mark me. Bite me. Leave bruises that last a week. I want everyone to see them. I want them to know. I want—"

Suguru bit down on the junction of Satoru's neck and shoulder.

Hard.

Satoru screamed. His body convulsed around Suguru's cock, and Suguru felt his own control fraying, the pressure building at the base of his spine. He thrust harder, faster, chasing the edge while Satoru writhed beneath him, still begging, still pleading, still—

"Now," Suguru growled. "Come now."

Satoru shattered. His release painted the sheets, his body clenching in rhythmic pulses that tipped Suguru over the edge with him. Suguru buried himself to the hilt and let go, spilling deep inside Satoru with a groan that was torn from somewhere primal.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Satoru's breathing was ragged, his body still twitching with aftershocks. Suguru remained inside him, one hand still wrapped loosely around his throat, the other braced on the mattress.

Finally, Suguru spoke. "You're going to stay just like this. I'm not finished."

Satoru's laugh was weak. "You're going to kill me."

"No." Suguru's hips shifted, pressing deeper, and Satoru gasped. "I'm going to keep you. There's a difference."

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: The Knot Locks

Sasuke’s collar was too tight.

The fabric pressed against his throat, starched and crisp—some designer label Naruto had probably never even heard of before hiring an image consultant. Sasuke tugged at it anyway. Futile. The scent in the office was the real problem. It curled behind his teeth, thick as honey, dark as burnt sugar, and it was coming from the open door twelve feet away.

Uzumaki Naruto, CEO.

His boss. His alpha.

Not his alpha. Not yet. But Sasuke’s body didn’t know the difference anymore—not with his heat three days away and his suppressants failing in increments he could measure by the tremor in his own hands. He’d been late on his injection by six hours. Stupid. A stupid, careless mistake from someone who never made them.

“Sasuke.”

The voice came from the doorway.

Sasuke’s fingers stopped mid-type. He didn’t look up immediately—couldn’t, not with his pupils doing something he didn’t want witnessed. The omega in him recognized that tone. Low. Graveled. An alpha’s summons wrapped in corporate pleasantry.

“Come into my office. Now.”

Naruto didn’t wait for an answer. His silhouette disappeared back through the door, leaving Sasuke staring at a blank email draft and his own reflection in the monitor—pale, composed, betraying absolutely nothing. Good. He stood, tugging his blazer straight, and walked.

The office smelled worse.

Sandalwood. Something muskier beneath it—pheromones that hadn’t been there at the nine a.m. staff meeting. Naruto sat behind his desk, tie loose, top button undone. His jaw was tighter than usual. The whisker marks on his cheeks, those faint genetic scars, seemed darker.

“Close the door.”

Sasuke did.

“Lock it.”

That should have been the moment Sasuke asked why. Demanded an explanation. Maintained the professional distance he’d cultivated for eighteen months as Uzumaki Corporation’s chief financial strategist. Instead, his hand turned the deadbolt before his brain caught up.

Naruto stood. The desk between them suddenly felt very small.

“You’re going into heat.”

Not a question. Sasuke’s spine straightened. “My cycle is managed.”

“Managed.” Naruto rounded the desk. Each step was deliberate, heavy-soled oxfords sinking into carpet. “That’s a cute word for it. Is ‘managed’ what you call the way you’ve been smelling for the past four hours?”

“I don’t—”

“Every alpha on the sixteenth floor has been staring at your neck since lunch.” Naruto stopped three feet away. Close enough that Sasuke could see the muscle jumping in his jaw. “Do you know how hard it’s been not to break Shikamaru’s fingers when he handed you a report?”

Sasuke’s breath hitched. That wasn’t professionalism. That wasn’t even appropriate. That was—

“I’m your boss first,” Naruto said, voice dropping. “But I’m not your boss right now.”

The words landed in Sasuke’s stomach and detonated.

“You’re trembling,” Naruto observed. “Your scent’s spiking. You haven’t blinked in twelve seconds.” A pause. “Tell me to stop, and I will. Tell me this is just biology and you want your suppressants and a ride home, and that’s what happens. No repercussions. No awkwardness on Monday.”

Sasuke’s throat worked around words that wouldn’t form. His body was screaming. His mind was a single repeated syllable: alpha alpha alpha.

“But if you stay,” Naruto continued, stepping closer, “and if you let me touch you, I’m not going to be gentle. I’ve been watching you for eighteen months, Sasuke. Eighteen months of your scent in boardrooms, of you bending over conference tables in those—” He gestured vaguely at Sasuke’s slacks. “—things you wear that are tailored within an inch of their life. I’m done pretending I don’t want to bury my teeth in your neck.”

The whimper that escaped Sasuke’s lips was involuntary. Humiliating. Perfect.

“Say it,” Naruto breathed. “Consent. Words. Now.”

“Yes.” Sasuke’s voice cracked on the single syllable. “Alpha. Yes.”

Naruto closed the distance.

His mouth hit Sasuke’s throat first—not his lips, not yet, but the vulnerable arch where pulse met collarbone. He sucked hard enough to burst capillaries, and Sasuke’s knees buckled. Naruto caught him, one arm banding around his waist, and walked him backward until his spine hit the office door.

“Do you know what you smell like right now?” Naruto’s teeth grazed his Adam’s apple. “Like rain on hot pavement. Like something I want to lick off my fingers.”

Sasuke’s head fell back against the wood. His hands found Naruto’s shoulders—broad, more muscle than the tailored suits suggested—and gripped. “Less talking.”

A laugh. Dark. Surprised. “There he is.” Naruto pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. Blue. So blue it was almost violent. “There’s my CFO.”

Then he kissed him.

It wasn’t a corporate kiss. It wasn’t measured or appropriate or restrained. Naruto kissed like he made decisions—fast, decisive, and with complete confidence that the world would rearrange itself to accommodate him. His tongue pushed past Sasuke’s teeth, and Sasuke opened for him, and the sound Naruto made was vibrating approval that Sasuke felt in his sternum.

Clothing became a problem.

Naruto solved it by ripping Sasuke’s shirt. Buttons scattered across the floor in a sound like rain on glass. The blazer followed, then the slacks—unzipped, shoved down, kicked aside. Naruto knelt, and for one disorienting moment, the most powerful alpha Sasuke had ever encountered was undoing his shoes with methodical precision.

“You’re going to be completely bare,” Naruto said against his hipbone. “While I’m still in my suit. Do you understand?”

Sasuke’s stomach contracted. “Yes.”

“Good omega.”

Those two words short-circuited something in Sasuke’s brain. His cock—already hard, already leaking—twitched against his abdomen. Naruto noticed. Of course he noticed. His grin against Sasuke’s skin was sharp.

“You like being praised.”

“Shut up.”

“No.” Naruto rose, fully dressed, tie now askew but otherwise composed. The contrast was obscene. Sasuke, naked and trembling against the office door. Naruto, in three-thousand-dollar wool, palming him through his boxer briefs. “I don’t think I will.”

His hand wrapped around Sasuke’s length, and Sasuke’s vision went white at the edges. The friction was perfect—callused palm, the slight catch of dry skin against sensitive flesh. Naruto stroked once, twice, then stopped.

“Turn around.”

Sasuke’s body obeyed before language could form.

The door was cool against his cheek. Naruto’s hands mapped his back—shoulder blades, spine, the dip above his tailbone, the curve of his ass. Then those hands spread him open, and Sasuke heard the sharp inhale.

“You’re wet already.” Naruto’s voice had gone ragged. “Slick. Fuck, Sasuke, you’re—”

“I know what I am.”

A finger breached him. No warning. No hesitation. Sasuke cried out—a sound he’d never made in his adult life—and pushed back onto it. Naruto added a second, scissoring, stretching, his other hand gripping Sasuke’s hip with bruising force.

“You’re going to take my knot,” Naruto said. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a command. It was a statement of fact, as certain as quarterly earnings and tax law. “I’m going to fuck you against this door until you can’t remember your employee ID number. Then I’m going to bite you—here—” His thumb pressed the junction of Sasuke’s neck and shoulder. “—and you’re going to be mine. And when my knot locks inside you, I’m going to fill you until it drips down your thighs for hours. Hours, Sasuke. You’ll still be wet with me at midnight.”

Sasuke was shaking now. Not from cold. Not from fear. “Do it.”

Naruto’s zipper descended.

The blunt pressure of his cock against Sasuke’s entrance was obscene—hot, thick, demanding. Naruto pushed in, and Sasuke’s body yielded, and the sound that tore from his throat was somewhere between a moan and a prayer.

“Good.” Naruto bottomed out, hips flush against Sasuke’s ass. “Good. Tight. You feel— fuck.”

He didn’t wait for adjustment.

The first thrust shoved Sasuke up the door. The second made him see colors. By the fifth, he’d stopped trying to be quiet, stopped trying to be composed, stopped trying to be anything other than what he was: an omega being claimed by his alpha on the forty-third floor of a building they co-owned.

Naruto’s rhythm was punishing. Each stroke dragged against Sasuke’s prostate, and each retreat left him clenching around nothing, desperate and empty until the next thrust filled him again. Naruto’s mouth was on his neck—sucking, licking, testing the skin with his teeth.

“Now,” Sasuke gasped. “Bite me now. I need—”

Teeth sank into his scent gland.

The world dissolved.

[risleylime]

Chapter 2: Tied to the Railing

The rain had softened to a steady patter against the pavilion's ancient roof. Dan Heng's pulse was still gradually returning to normal, his body loose and heavy with satisfaction. Blade's thumb continued its lazy path across his hip, a touch that should have felt soothing but instead sent fresh sparks of awareness through his nerves.

He should move. Should retrieve his spear, put distance between them, return to the Astral Express before anyone noticed his absence. Instead, he stood there with his forearms against the pillar and Blade's warmth at his back, unable to summon the will to separate himself.

"You're thinking too hard." Blade's breath fanned across the shell of his ear. "I can hear it."

"Maybe I have things to think about."

"Like what?" Blade's hand slid higher, tracing the curve of Dan Heng's waist. "How good that felt? How much you want it again?"

Dan Heng's throat tightened. "You're insufferable."

"And you're still here." Blade's other hand came up to rest on the pillar beside Dan Heng's head, caging him once more. "If you truly wanted to leave, you would have. Your legs work. Your weapon is right there." A pause. "So why are you still pressed against me?"

Dan Heng opened his mouth to argue, but the words died in his throat. Because Blade was right—irritatingly, insufferably right. His body had already betrayed him once tonight, and now his mind seemed determined to follow suit.

"I don't know," he admitted quietly.

Blade hummed against his shoulder. "Honest. Good." His hips shifted forward, and Dan Heng felt the hard length of him pressing against his back. "Now be honest about this, too."

"You can't possibly—"

"I can." Blade's hand slid down to cup Dan Heng's ass, fingers dipping into the mess between his cheeks. "I can take you as many times as I want. And you'll let me, won't you? Because you need it just as badly."

Dan Heng shuddered. His own cock twitched with renewed interest, a betrayal that made heat crawl up his neck. "We just—"

"That was round one." Blade's finger pressed inside, slick with his own seed, and Dan Heng's spine arched instinctively. "I told you. Just you and me. All night if I choose."

Dan Heng's hands curled into fists against the pillar. His body opened around Blade's finger with shameful ease, still stretched and wet from before. The sensation was too much and not enough, and he hated how his hips rocked back to seek more.

"Look at you." Blade's voice was thick with satisfaction. "Already desperate again. So greedy."

"Shut up."

"Make me." The same challenge as before, and Dan Heng knew by now that Blade would simply stand there until Dan Heng gave in and took what he needed.

His patience snapped.

Dan Heng turned in Blade's arms, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him into a kiss. It was hungry and graceless, all teeth and desperation, and Blade responded with equal fervor. His hands found Dan Heng's waist, lifting him, and Dan Heng's back hit the pillar with a dull thud.

"More," Dan Heng gasped against Blade's mouth. "Give me more."

"You'll get what I decide to give you." Blade's grip tightened. "And you'll thank me for it."

He released Dan Heng suddenly, stepping back. Dan Heng swayed without the support, his legs unsteady, his cock straining between them.

"Turn around. Hands behind your back."

Dan Heng hesitated. The command was clear, but something about the specificity made his stomach clench. "Why?"

"Because I told you to." Blade's eyes were dark, and he looked at Dan Heng with a hunger that made his knees weak. "Do it, Dan Heng. Don't make me repeat myself."

Something in his tone brooked no argument. Dan Heng turned slowly, pressing his cheek against the pillar as he brought his wrists together behind his back. He heard fabric rustling, then felt the familiar texture of his own sash being wrapped around his wrists.

"What are you—"

"Be still."

Blade worked efficiently, binding Dan Heng's wrists together with the length of silk. Not tight enough to hurt, but secure enough that Dan Heng couldn't free himself without considerable effort. The vulnerability of the position hit him like a physical blow, making his breath come faster.

"Perfect." Blade's hand smoothed down Dan Heng's spine, possessive and slow. "Now walk."

"Where?"

Blade guided him forward with a hand on his hip, steering him away from the pillar and toward the pavilion's edge. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, casting everything in silver mist. Beyond the railing, the lights of the Xianzhou Luofu glittered in the distance, separated from them by a sheer drop.

"Here?" Dan Heng's voice pitched higher. "Someone could—"

"No one will see." Blade pressed against him from behind, his cock sliding between Dan Heng's thighs. "And even if they did, what would they see? A man bent over a railing, taking what he's given. Taking what he needs."

Dan Heng's face burned. "You're—"

"I'm what?" Blade bent him forward over the railing, the cool stone pressing against his bare chest. "Go on. Say it."

Dan Heng bit his lip. The position left him completely exposed, his bound hands useless at the small of his back, his legs spread wide. The night air kissed his heated skin, making him shiver.

"Say it," Blade repeated, and his fingers found Dan Heng's entrance again.

"I—ah—" Dan Heng's words fragmented as Blade pressed inside, curling his finger in a slow, deliberate rhythm.

Blade didn't wait for Dan Heng to adjust. He lined himself up and pushed forward, filling him in one smooth motion. Dan Heng's mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. His body strained against the railing, against the silk binding his wrists, against the overwhelming sensation of being completely claimed.

Then Blade started to move.

Each thrust drove Dan Heng harder against the railing. His cock bobbed in the open air, precum dripping onto the stone below. He couldn't touch himself, couldn't do anything but take what Blade gave him.

"Please—" The word tore from his throat without permission.

"Please what?" Blade's pace didn't falter. "Use your words."

"Touch me. I need—"

"You need to come on my cock." Blade's hand closed around Dan Heng's hip, pulling him back onto each thrust. "That's what you need. Say it."

Dan Heng whimpered. His balls drew tight, pressure building at the base of his spine. The intensity left him trembling. "I need to come on your cock."

"Good." Blade's hand finally—finally—wrapped around Dan Heng's shaft, stroking in time with his thrusts. "Then come."

Dan Heng shattered. His release spilled over Blade's fingers as his body clamped down, drawing Blade deeper. Blade groaned against his neck, hips stuttering, and warmth flooded Dan Heng's insides.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. The rain continued its steady rhythm. Dan Heng's breath came in ragged gasps, his cheek pressed against the cool stone of the railing.

Blade's hand came up to undo the sash, freeing Dan Heng's wrists. He brought Dan Heng's hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to each reddened wrist.

"Still hate me?"

[residenteval]

everything is embarrassing

megumi fushiguro x reader

tags/cw: fluff, mentions of suicide, anxiety, nerves, awkward teenage romance, crushes, yuji & nobara are good friends, megumi is awkward, maybe ooc, slightly ooc, kissing

desc: you have a crush on megumi

a/n will be at the end :)

The wind brushed gently through your hair whilst rustling the blooming petals from the trees creaking branches around you, cicadas buzzing in the distance, echoing the sound you feel that the constant heat brings. Birds whistle and sing talkatively to one another, singing in time to the flap of their wings. A scent of plum blossoms and pine wood is carried by the breeze, the notes of a cologne you’ve become intimately familiar with since starting as a student here.

Fushiguro. He must be nearby.

Looking up from your textbook, you watch the footpath at the top of stairs behind you, following as Megumi walks along it, hands in his pockets, slowing his steps for the sake of allowing Yuji to catch up with him. Glancing over his shoulder, he locks eyes with you for a moment, expression going soft for the smallest moment until Yuji pats his shoulder, pulling Megumi’s attention away from you and back to his best friend.

You’re wishing you’d done something. Waved, smiled, something. You groan in annoyance, turning back to the open textbook in front of you, trying to follow along with the paragraphs of what feels like incoherent gibberish.

“God! Stop pining after that loser” Nobara groans from across you, rolling her eyes so hard you’re worried she’ll burst a blood vessel.

“He’s just one of those moody, ‘I'm better than you because I don't talk’ types, don’t waste your time on him” She scoffs, flipping the page of her own textbook.

You sigh at your friend's strong and stubborn stance about him, knowing she won’t let up on that opinion.

A part of you is worried she’s right, that every conversation you’ve had with him, every shared glance, exchanged snicker and smile was never anything at all. The thought dampens your mood a whole bunch, so you tend to avoid it.

“You’re right” you close your textbook, knowing you aren’t studying anymore. “He’s not that special, it’s just a crush, I’ll get over it.”

“You better” Nobara huffs, crossing her arms in disbelief of your statement. “Or I’ll make you get over it.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

The bell signaling the end of the school day rings through the quickly filling hallways and you follow the lines of students eager to get to whatever plans the afternoon holds for them, keeping your head down as you do so.

Nobara had already left to go shopping. She had been talking about how good the first day of summer break sales were going to be. You planned to join her after stopping by your home to drop your bag off, wanting to get the literal weight off your shoulders and change into some nicer clothes. Plus, the walk gave you a chance to think over, well, everything.

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

Finally heading towards the city to meet Kugisaki for dinner and shopping, you look around you, admiring the cherry blossom trees and the fruitful bushes of hydrangea blooming brightly in the warm summer weather.

The flowering bush lingers in your vision whilst your feet continue down the smoothly paved walkway. The sweet but dull scent of cherry blossoms seems to slip between the more obvious notes of fresh, dewy greenery.

It’s a welcomed fragrance, reminding you of the boy you ought to start forgetting. Lively chatter from the approaching city can be heard faintly behind the sound of your music blasting through your headphones, reminding you of your waiting friend.

The reminder urges you to quicken your pace a little and you pull out your phone to text Nobara and tell her that you’ll be at the meeting place shortly. By the time you’ve pocketed your phone once again, you spot said girl waving and jumping up and down in the crowd, making sure you can see her.

Smiling, you wave back, setting your headphones back in their case.

“Hey!” Nobara beams at you as you approach, pulling you into a side hug, since it is all she can manage while holding the bags filled with her many earlier purchases. “Funny story, I ran into Yuji and Megumi while shopping earlier, they were hanging out together too.”

Nodding in acknowledgement of her story, you hum as she talks, ignoring the disgustingly joyous leap your heart makes at the mention of Megumi’s name. “So they’re doing well I assume? Did you guys talk much?” You ask, showing genuine interest in what she has to say.

“I’m doing pretty well, yeah!” A cheery, familiar voice says from beside you, making you whip around– Only to be faced with Yuji Itadori and his friend Megumi standing with his hands in his pockets a little behind the boy.

To say your mind went blank would be an understatement. All your thoughts ceased to exist as soon as you made eye contact with Megumi.

Nobara, seeing your very obviously surprised expression, rushes to save your ass from total embarrassment. “I ran into them!” She quickly explains. “Like I said! And I was just about to mention that I invited them to hang out!”

Reeling your shock back in, you try to smile welcomingly, though you’re sure it looks pretty horrific. “OH! Alright! That makes sense, sounds fun!” You force a small laugh, glancing down at your feet.

Yuji grins, not seeming to notice your very terrible job at trying to mend the situation, and hands both you and Nobara a bubble tea. She must’ve sent them to buy one before you came, which is actually really sweet. For her to think of that and for him to go do it. You forget how caring Nobara is at times.

Gratefully, you take the drink from him, feeling the flush on your face ease as you sip on the cold, sweet tea. Nobara clears her throat, diverting the conversation to another topic.

“So, what was everyone thinking for dinner? I could go for some hotpot right now, but I’m open to suggestions,” She smiles, glancing between the three of you for some input. Both you and Megumi shift on your feet, refraining from interfering with the decision.

Yuji’s eyes light up at the mention of hotpot, nodding eagerly in agreement. “I know a really good and affordable place! It’s nearby actually!” He says, grabbing Nobara’s wrist and pulling her ahead, assuming you and Megumi will just follow behind.

He runs off too quickly for you to keep up and you somehow manage to lose both of them in the crowds of people, even with Yuji’s vibrant coloured hair. The shifting and moving crowd does nothing to help.

“Shit” both you and Megumi curse once you’ve realised the predicament you’ve found yourselves in. Glancing beside you, Megumi looks towards you, annoyance etched on his generally unreadable features. However, the annoyance is not directed towards you and he’s somehow able to convey this through his expression alone.

“Any idea you know the place he’s talking about?” You ask with a soft huff of exasperation, hoping Megumi knows where Yuji and Nobara are headed. Your hopes are quickly trampled when he shakes his head, grabbing your wrist to guide you through the crowd until you reach the outskirts of the street, where you’re able to stop without being shoved into constantly. How had you forgotten about the summer festival?

Megumi’s eyes dart around once you reach the safety of the sidelines, trying to spot Yuji and Nobara even though you both know they’re long gone. “I’m going to punch him” He mumbles with a huff, pulling his phone from his pocket to text the boy. You mimic the action, sending a string of panicked messages to Nobara. They all fail to deliver. The amount of people must be interfering with the signal.

Megumi also seems to make this conclusion, shoving his phone back in his pocket, shoulders stiff with tension.

“No reception either?” You ask, also putting your phone away. He nods slowly in response to your question, trying to figure out the next step from here. He inhales slowly, standing up a little straighter.

“Come on” He beckons with a small wave of his hand. “We may as well get some food ourselves. I doubt they’ll show up anytime soon.”

Slightly flustered at the thought of having dinner alone with Megumi, you can’t argue with his reasoning. You nod and follow closely behind him, matching his quick pace, weaving through the bodies of people until he slows to a stop, causing you to do the same at a break in the crowd. Standing in front of a small mom and pop restaurant, you cast a sideways glance towards Megumi.

He’s quick to meet your gaze, nodding towards the building and starting inside, holding the door for you in a polite manner. The restaurant is filled with a warm, musky aroma. The unmistakable smell of incense fills your senses, covering the scent of smoky meat and mouth-watering vegetable steam that lingers beneath.

The waitress at the front door smiles in an inviting manner, seeming to recognise Megumi as she looks between the two of you. He shoots her a sharp look, which she giggles in response to.

“Good evening!” She greets, leading both of you to a booth. There’s a few other patrons in the store, but not so many that it’s loud or crowded. “Just the two of you?” The waitress asks, a subtle tease in the lilt of her sweet voice that makes you instinctively defensive of the assumption, as if you need to explain why it’s only the both of you.

However, before you can panic and blurt everything out, Megumi speaks; “Yeah, just us” He says, casually and dismissively.

Nodding, the waitresses eyes glint with mischief as she hands you both a menu and leaves you tableside. Scanning the menu, you read the meals offered, biting the inside of your cheek.

“She’s my sister” Megumi speaks up after a moment of busied silence. “Tsumiki.”

Oh. That makes a whole lot more sense. For some reason, your chest feels a lot lighter than it did five minutes ago. How odd.

“Oh, alright” you hum in response, glancing at him over the top of your menu. You want to talk, to say something interesting and make some sort of conversation. Nothing interesting comes to mind.

Pressing your lips together, you internally curse your terrible conversational skills. “A-are you and Nobara close?” You eventually ask, laying the laminated menu on the smooth, granite tabletop, following the chunks of iridescent shards set into the clear coating with your eyes, watching the lights from the restaurant gleam off them.

Megumi raises a brow at your (very random) question but purses his lips together to consider a response nonetheless, mimicking your actions in setting down the menu.

“I guess..” He responds after some consideration, gaze fixed out the window you were seated beside, watching the crowds pass. “Yeah. We are pretty close. I think Yuji would consider her to be more of a friend than I do, but I think she’s pleasant to be around.” He says, tone a little softer now that you were indoors. “When she isn’t shopping, that is” He adds with a brief exhale of a snicker.

You’re pleasantly surprised at the thought put into his response to your seemingly lackluster attempt at a conversation starter. “I see” You reply with a hum.

Megumi turns his gaze back to you, cocking his head in the smallest way, a subtle display of curiosity. He feels he should say something to you, keeping the conversation going and save the both of you from sitting in awkward silence.

Hesitating momentarily, he moves to speak, immediately gaining you attention. He’s surprised by your attentiveness, internally admiring the careful observation you give to life around you.

“What’s your deal with spirals anyway?” He asks, keeping his tone neutral but not uninterested. At least, that’s what he thinks he’s doing. It comes out a little harshly.

You flinch slightly at the perceived annoyance in his tone but answer him cheerfully nonetheless. You’re more than familiar with tone miscalculations, it’s a daily occurrence for you. Who’s to say he doesn’t have the same issue?

“Spirals? Oh yeah,” You smile, casting a brief look towards your spiral phone case and the various spiral jewellery you wear regularly. “My favourite book at the moment is Uzumaki by Junji Ito, have you heard of it?”

Megumi furrows his brows for a moment, shaking his head. “Can’t say I have. The name rings a bell, though,” He says, eyes fixed on you in genuine interest in what you have to say. Being under his intense gaze makes you shift in your seat ever so slightly.

“It’s good,” You smile, wringing your hands together under the table restlessly. “I’d recommend it, but I don’t want to spoil it by talking your ear off,” You chuckle a little nervously.

“I wouldn’t mind” He quickly adds, gaze searching your face until his eyes meet your own. “This is the most we’ve ever spoken, I think..” He trails off for a moment, looking to the window in thought. “I’m interested now, you can’t leave me curious.”

Megumi tries to reason nonchalantly, attempting to hide his actual interest in what you have to say. Your nerves settle at the reassurance he offers you just by telling you he actually cares about what you have to say.

You, oblivious to his internal battle, jump at the chance to talk about your current interests. “Well.. alright,” You smile, sitting up a little straighter and clasping your hands together on the table in front of you.

“Basically the plot follows this girl, Kirie, and her boyfriend Shuichi through a series of events that happen in their small coastal town,” You begin to explain, all your nerves and restlessness replaced with the desire to explain the plot of this story. Passionately.

“The first few chapters all continue off each other, and set the scene for the remainder of the book. The chapters at the start explain that Kirie’s boyfriend, Shuichi’s, father has become obsessed with spirals and the spiral shape. So much so, all he does is sit in his office and study, draw, and read about them.” You say, hands waving around as you talk to accentuate the feelings of passion you have towards this book.

“It gets to a point where, one day Shuichi and his mother return home and find Mr. Saito has attempted to contort his body to fit into a circular box as a spiral, killing himself in the process.” You continue, pausing to gauge the reaction Megumi has towards that disturbing detail.

Megumi’s eyebrows furrow at your last detail, the raw fascination in his eyes remains all the same. His posture is relaxed, leaning forward slighting in interest for the rest of the plot to follow.

He hates how easily you’ve captured his attention. And he hates how blissfully unaware of it you are. You’ve done nothing but be yourself this whole time and he’s completely fascinated by it.

You finish explaining the plot, taking a deep breath after talking so fast. During your incessant rambling, the waitress (not Tsumiki) had taken your orders.

Glancing up at Megumi, you eye him curiously. “Questions?” you ask, sensing the slightest bit of uncertainty in his expression.

He nods, sitting back against the cushioned seat in the booth. “Yeah,” he confirms with an exhale, staring at the table as he processes. “So.. you really like spirals because the symbol serves as a reminder of the uncertainty we as humans face when it comes to our own existence and the infinite flow of time we all eventually fall victim to?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and he repeats your words back to you. His tone is both teasing and somewhat confused.

Grinning, you nod. “Yeah basically!”

“Plus, it just reminds me of the book. Which is a simpler explanation,” You offer with a shrug.

“That's… not what I was expecting,” Megumi responds honestly, lips pursed in slight thought.

You can’t help but snort at the expression he wears, eyebrows drawing together in subtle confusion. “What did you expect my answer to be?” You ask curiously, resting your chin against your hand.

He looks vaguely surprised by your question, eyes narrowing briefly in thought. Hesitating momentarily as he mulls over a response. “I don’t know, actually” Megumi answers quietly. “I sort of expected something less.. Well, thought out. I assumed you just liked the pattern or something along those lines.”

“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” You snicker with a teasing tone, playing with the spoon resting in your bowl of soup.

“Oh shut up,” Megumi grumbles, covering his face with one hand as his ears burn with embarrassment. This makes you laugh even more, earning a few glances from other patrons towards the two of you.

Megumi burns red, sinking into the collar of his jacket and beginning to eat a little faster.

You find yourselves leaving the restaurant shortly after.

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

The sun is setting, the sky shifting from that warm afternoon blue to a gentle gold and yellow glow. You end up towards the summer festival, since you were planning to meet the other two there later once getting some signal and being able to call them.

The festival is busy, bustling with excitement and a sort of romantic atmosphere that you feel you could be imagining. The twinkling warmly lit lights adorning each ride and market stall make the event hum with an irresistible pull towards all the festival has to offer.

You give in, dragging Megumi towards anything that catches your eye. The stalls with a beautiful assortment of candles, food stalls, jewellery stalls, trinket stalls, fast rides, slow rides, mirror mazes, face painting, anything and everything. Your cheeks hurt from smiling so much and your nerves from the beginning of the evening are completely gone, replaced by the sort of carelessness only a teenager in love can have.

It’s almost time to meet with Nobara and Yuji but to your surprise, Megumi gently grabs your arm and leads you to the ferris wheel, handing the employee a ticket for each of you and sitting down across from you in the small carriage. Your knees are touching from close proximity.

“The ferris wheel?” You ask Megumi with a soft laugh, face paint you had convinced him to get, an array of swirls and dotted spirals emerging from the outer corner of his eye in various shades of blue and white. You have a similar design, but in a purple colour scheme.

“I love ferris wheels, it’s always been a favourite thing of mine to look above the whole festival whenever I’ve come before,” he explains, tone fond as he reminisces, looking out over the glittering lights that illuminate the dark night sky as the machinery begins to move. The sun had set almost an hour ago.

“That’s sweet,” You murmur, following his gaze towards the festival that’s growing smaller beneath you. “I see why… It’s beautiful.”

Megumi looks over at you as you whisper this, gaze softening at the awe in your eyes. “Yeah..” He breathes out quietly. “It is.”

Looking up at him, his eyes already on you, you fidget, getting shy all of a sudden. The ferris wheel stops when you reach the top.

“Lucky us,” You chuckle, fidgeting with your hands in your lap, feeling heat flush your body.

“Hmm, yeah.” Megumi hums in quiet agreement, feeling the tension between you grow thick and desperate to be snapped. There’s a quiet pull, strongly tugging at your chest and making your stomach do flips.

You’re leaning closer to him subconsciously and he’s doing the same. Both your attention is completely on each other, the view that the ride provides is forgotten the moment your lips brush his.

He smells like plum blossoms and sandalwood, his lips taste faintly of miso from the dinner you just had. Your senses are overwhelmed with him and you can’t help but bathe in it.

Megumi leans in, gently tugging you a bit closer to continue to kiss, eyes closing blissfully as he breathes in everything you have to offer him with each delicate brush of your lips.

Pulling away almost feels criminal, but you part eventually, eyes locked on one another. Your heart beats so hard in your chest you fear you might pass out. Megumi’s hand gently clasps yours, thumb absentmindedly running over the bumps of your knuckles.

You both laugh shyly after a minute of silence, unsure of what to say after such an overwhelmingly enjoyable shared kiss.

“Can we do this more often?” Megumi eventually asks, face burning red once again, eyes averted from your own. “I.. really like you.”

Surprised by his honesty, you struggle to contain your enthusiastic response. “Yes please,” you laugh, squeezing his hand. “I like you too. A lot.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

The ride eventually comes to an end, but you’re still beaming with the memory of the kiss you shared and the hope of more to come practically leaves you glowing.

Meeting up with Yuji and Nobara, they quickly notice the shift in dynamic and tension. They exchange a knowing glance, smirking with pride. “Our plan worked!” They high five, cheering in unison.

“Plan?” You ask, eyebrows furrowing, you turn to Megumi, but he seems to have figured it out already, eyes narrowed in annoyance as he steps towards a celebrating Yuji.

Lifting his hand, he smacks the pink-haired boy on the back of the head, who just groans with deserved pain, pouting in response. “Told you I’d punch him.” Megumi murmurs, looking back to you with a slight smirk.

a/n: yo yo yo im back you guys but probs not 4 long, i got other shit going on unfortunately :/ thank you guys for all the support recently, its been so cool that we reached 200 followers! genuinely such an honour to have my fun little hobby be recognised and enjoyed by other people, so i'll try my best to write and post as often as I can manage with the constant bustle of life. i hope you guys enjoyed this longer(ish) one

also, i listened to 'everything is embarrassing' by sky ferreira on repeat while writing this idk why it just fit the vibe imo.

taglist: @pinkiemeana

[risleylime]

Chapter 1: Rain and Surrender

The rain hammered against the wooden roof of the abandoned pavilion, each droplet a rhythmic reminder of how far Dan Heng had strayed from the safety of the Astral Express. His back pressed against one of the thick support pillars, spear clutched tight in white-knuckled hands. Across from him, Blade stood with that infuriating calm—the kind that made Dan's teeth grind together in frustration.

"You've been running for so long." Blade's voice cut through the sound of the storm. He hadn't even drawn his weapon. "Don't you get tired?"

"I'm not running." Dan Heng's grip tightened on his spear. "I'm choosing where to make my stand."

Blade's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. He took a step forward, and Dan Heng adjusted his stance reflexively. Another step. Another adjustment. The dance continued until Blade was close enough that Dan Heng could see the faint scars visible at his collar.

"You always were stubborn." Blade's head tilted. "Even when your body begs for something else."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Liar."

The word hung between them, heavy with accusation. Dan Heng felt heat rise—not anger, not quite—as Blade closed the remaining distance. The spear's haft pressed between them like a barrier, but Blade merely reached out and wrapped his fingers around it, slowly pushing it aside.

Dan Heng's breath caught. "Stop."

"Make me."

They both knew he could. Dan Heng had trained for years, had fought countless battles across the stars. He could drive Blade back, could put distance between them, could escape into the rain-soaked streets of the Xianzhou Luofu.

He didn't move.

Blade's free hand came up to rest against the pillar beside Dan Heng's head, caging him in. This close, Dan Heng could smell him—something sharp and metallic, like old iron, mixed with an underlying warmth that made his stomach tighten.

"Your mouth says one thing." Blade's voice dropped lower, intimate against Dan Heng's ear. "Your body says another."

"That's—"

Blade's thigh pressed forward, sliding between Dan Heng's legs with deliberate pressure. The sensation punched through every defense Dan Heng had tried to build. His hips shifted before he could stop them, seeking more friction, and he bit down hard on his tongue to swallow the sound that threatened to escape.

Blade laughed softly. "There."

"I hate you." The words came out strangled, breathless.

"I know." Blade's mouth found the curve of Dan Heng's neck, teeth grazing skin before tongue soothed the sting. "Makes this more fun."

Dan Heng's spear clattered to the wooden floor. Neither of them moved to pick it up. His hands found Blade's shoulders instead, pushing weakly—a token resistance they both recognized as performative.

"We shouldn't—" Dan Heng's voice cracked as Blade's hand slid beneath the waistband of his pants, fingers wrapping around hard flesh. "Ah—"

"Why not?" Blade stroked slowly, deliberately, watching Dan Heng's face with hungry focus. "No one will find us here. No one will interrupt." His thumb traced the head, spreading the moisture already gathering there. "Just you and me, Dan Heng. Like it was always meant to be."

Dan Heng's head fell back against the pillar with a dull thud. His hips rolled into Blade's grip despite every attempt to stay still. Pleasure coiled tight in his belly, building with each twist of Blade's wrist.

"Look at you." Blade's voice was thick with satisfaction. "So desperate. So needy. And you tried to pretend you didn't want this."

"Shut up—"

"Make me."

Dan Heng grabbed Blade's collar and yanked him forward, crushing their mouths together. The kiss was messy—teeth and tongue and desperation. Blade groaned into it, his hand speeding up, and Dan Heng whimpered against his lips.

"More," Dan Heng gasped between kisses. "I need—"

"I know what you need." Blade pulled back, his eyes dark with promise. "Turn around."

Dan Heng hesitated. Pride warred with want, the last shreds of his resistance fighting against the ache spreading through his entire body. His cock throbbed, neglected now that Blade's hand had withdrawn, and he felt empty in a way that made his face burn.

Blade waited. Patient. Knowing.

Dan Heng turned.

He pressed his forearms against the pillar, spreading his legs without being asked. Behind him, he heard Blade's sharp intake of breath, the rustle of fabric as he freed himself. Then those hands were back—on his hips, his lower back, sliding down to cup his ass possessively.

"Perfect." The word vibrated against Dan Heng's shoulder blade before Blade's teeth sank into the muscle.

"Ah—" Dan Heng's spine arched. "Just—"

"Just what?" Blade's fingers slid lower, pressing against Dan Heng's entrance. "Tell me what you want."

"I want—" Dan Heng's voice broke as Blade's finger circled, teasing. "I want you inside me. Please."

The 'please' slipped out before he could stop it. He felt Blade still behind him, savoring the victory.

"Since you asked so nicely."

Blade pushed forward, and Dan Heng's world narrowed to the stretch, the fullness, the way his body opened to accept exactly what it had been craving. His fingers scrabbled against the pillar, finding no purchase, as Blade bottomed out with a groan that resonated through both their bodies.

Then he started to move.

Each thrust drove Dan Heng harder against the pillar. The wet slap of skin against skin mingled with the storm outside, creating a symphony of sensation. Dan Heng's cock bobbed between his legs, heavy and leaking, and he reached down to grip himself—

Blade's hand caught his wrist. "No."

"Blade, I need—"

"You'll come on my cock or not at all."

Dan Heng whimpered. His balls drew tight, pressure building with every snap of Blade's hips. The pillar scraped against his forearms, grounding him in reality even as pleasure threatened to swallow him whole.

"Close," he gasped. "So close—"

Blade's rhythm faltered, grew erratic. His hand wrapped around Dan Heng's throat—not squeezing, just holding. Possessive. Claiming. "Then come for me."

Dan Heng shattered. His release painted the wooden pillar in white streaks as his body clamped down, drawing Blade deeper. Blade followed seconds later, burying his face in Dan Heng's neck with a guttural moan.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Blade pulled back, his softened cock slipping free. Dan Heng felt the trickle of seed down his inner thigh and shivered—though whether from cold or something else, he couldn't say.

Blade's hand came to rest on his hip, thumb stroking idle circles against sweat-damp skin.

"Still hate me?" The question held a trace of genuine curiosity.

Dan Heng turned his head, meeting Blade's gaze over his shoulder. His lips curved, just barely. "Ask me again in the morning."

Blade's laugh was quiet, almost surprised. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Dan Heng's shoulder—gentler than before.

But neither of them noticed the figure standing at the pavilion's entrance, watching with wide eyes.

[risleylime]

@2kwatts - requested

Chapter 2: Mirror's Edge, Silver Tongue

My mind blanked. Chapter eight. The one I'd started drafting three weeks ago and abandoned after two paragraphs because it felt too real, too honest, too much like something I actually wanted instead of something I could pretend was just a fantasy.

"I asked you a question," he said, his hand still warm against my stomach, the belly ring a tiny point of heat beneath his palm.

"Chapter eight," I managed, my voice foreign to my own ears. "You take me somewhere private."

His smile was slow. Predatory. "See? That wasn't so hard." He stepped back just enough to create space, and the loss of his body against mine felt like stepping out of a warm bath into cold air. "Which door?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Behind me. Three doors. Which one did you write about?"

My brain scrambled. I'd described a dressing room. Mirrors. Lights. A vanity covered in bottles and brushes. "The second one. The one with the star on it."

He didn't turn to look. He already knew. Of course he knew—he'd read everything, memorized everything, probably knew my own stories better than I did. His hand found the small of my back and he guided me forward, his touch firm and certain.

"Walk."

My legs obeyed before my brain caught up. We passed the first door—a supply closet, I realized distantly, smelling of bleach—and stopped at the second. A silver star was taped to the wood, the edges curling. Someone had drawn a smiley face in permanent marker beneath his name.

He opened it without knocking. Of course. It was his room.

The dressing room was smaller than I'd imagined. A vanity dominated one wall, the mirror framed by bulbs that cast everything in soft, golden light. The counter was cluttered with makeup and hair products, a bottle of water half-finished, a phone charging in the corner. A couch sat against the opposite wall, black leather, worn at the cushions.

The door clicked shut behind us.

"Lock it," I said. The words came from somewhere deep in my chest, a place I didn't know I had.

His eyebrow lifted. "Giving directions now?"

"You asked how chapter eight starts. That's how it starts. I tell you to lock the door."

A beat. Then he turned the lock with a soft click. "Good girl."

The praise hit me like a shot of whiskey. Warm. Spreading through my veins.

"Now what?"

I swallowed. My pulse was thudding in my ears. "Now you sit me on the vanity."

He moved toward me, and suddenly his hands were on my waist, lifting me like I weighed nothing. My ass hit the cold marble of the vanity and I gasped, the shock of temperature making my skin prickle. The mirror behind me was cold too, pressing against my shoulder blades through the thin fabric of my crop top.

But his hands were warm. His hands stayed.

"In your story," he said, his voice low, "this is where things get interesting. This is where you finally get specific about what you want." His fingers traced the waistband of my jeans, dipping just below the denim, not quite touching where I needed them. "You wrote that I'd make you say it out loud. All the things you'd only ever typed."

"I can't."

"You can." His thumb brushed the skin above my hip bone. "You already did. You just did it on a keyboard instead of with your mouth."

"It's different."

"It's exactly the same." His face was close now, so close I could count the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the slight asymmetry of his smile. "The same words. The same you. The same me." His lips brushed my jaw. "The only difference is that tonight, I'm going to hold you to every single one of them."

My breath came in shallow gasps. The mirror was fogging around the edges where my body heat met the glass.

"Tell me," he said against my throat. "What happens next in chapter eight?"

My brain was soup. My thighs were trembling. "I touch you."

His hand stilled. "Where?"

"My hand. Down your—" I couldn't finish. The words were there, stuck in my throat like stones.

"Use your words, sweetheart. You used plenty of them in that story. Filthy words." His teeth grazed my pulse point. "I counted forty-seven different ways you described wanting to touch me. Forty-seven. I printed them out. Highlighted my favorites."

He printed them out.

The mental image—Michael Jackson at a desk, a pen in his hand, marking up my anonymous smut like a college essay—sent a jolt of heat straight between my legs.

"Your hand," he said, pulling back just enough to meet my eyes. "You wrote that you'd be nervous. That you'd hesitate. That I'd have to guide you." His smile sharpened. "That part, at least, was accurate."

He reached for my wrist. His grip was gentle but unyielding as he brought my hand to his chest, pressing my palm flat against the bone-colored fabric of his shirt. I could feel his heartbeat—quick, controlled, but definitely there. He wasn't as calm as he looked.

"Down," he said. "Slowly."

My hand moved. Over the plane of his chest, the ridges of his ribs, the flat of his stomach. His abdominal muscles tensed beneath my touch, and a soft exhale escaped him. The first crack in his composure.

"Keep going."

My fingers found the waistband of his black slacks. The fabric was soft, expensive, and beneath it, the unmistakable outline of his arousal. I hesitated.

"I said keep going."

I swallowed. My fingers slipped beneath the waistband.

The sound he made—low, rough, almost a growl—sent a fresh wave of heat pooling in my core. My hand wrapped around him, and he was hard and hot and thicker than I'd imagined, and I'd imagined plenty.

"Good," he breathed. His forehead dropped to my shoulder, his breath coming faster now. "That's—yeah. Just like that."

I moved my hand experimentally. A slow stroke, base to tip.

His hips jerked forward.

"Again."

I obeyed. Another stroke, slower this time, my thumb brushing the sensitive head. He shuddered against me, his hands gripping the edge of the vanity on either side of my hips, caging me in.

"Your stories," he said, his voice ragged now, the velvet ripped. "You wrote that I'd talk dirty to you. That I'd tell you exactly how good you felt." A harsh exhale. "Turns out you were right."

"I'm always right," I whispered. "In the stories."

His laugh was breathless. "Cocky. I like it." He pulled back just enough to look at me, his eyes dark and hungry. "But you forgot something."

"What?"

"Chapter eight. You wrote that I'd make you watch." He nodded toward the mirror behind me. "Look."

I turned my head.

The reflection showed my flushed face, my swollen lips, my crop top riding up to expose the silver barbell in my navel. It showed my hand moving beneath the fabric of his slacks. It showed his face buried in my neck, his dark hair disheveled, his expression slack with pleasure.

"Beautiful," he murmured against my skin. "You're so fucking beautiful."

"Your turn to read something," I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.

He stilled. "What?"

"Read me. One of the lines you highlighted. Read it to me right now."

A beat of silence.

Then he smiled, and it was the most dangerous thing I'd ever seen.

"Page three," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper against my ear. "'He looked at her like she was the only person in the universe who mattered, and then he showed her exactly what that kind of attention felt like.'" His teeth grazed my earlobe. "'He worshipped every inch of her like she was holy, and when he finally let her fall apart, she knew she'd never recover.'"

My hand had stopped moving. My entire body had stopped. The words hung in the air between us, filthier than anything I'd typed, because he was saying them. He was living them.

"Your turn," he said, and his hand covered mine, guiding it back into motion. "Show me how chapter eight ends."

[risleylime]

@tinytimetravelharmony - requested

Chapter 2- hunters claim

His hand remained extended, waiting. The garden felt smaller now, the hedges pressing in like walls of a cage she'd willingly entered. Jazz still drifted from the ballroom, but it sounded distant. Muffled. As if the world had narrowed to just the two of them standing in the flickering gaslight.

She placed her hand in his.

His fingers were warm, his grip firm but not painful as he drew her closer. Something flickered in those dark eyes—satisfaction, perhaps, at her compliance. Or maybe something hungrier.

"Good choice," he murmured.

They walked through the garden, past the trellises heavy with roses, through a wrought-iron gate she hadn't noticed before. A narrow alley stretched ahead, brick walls slick with humidity. Her heels clicked against the cobblestones, the sound too loud in the quiet. He guided her with his hand at the small of her back, proprietary and unhurried.

"Where—" she started.

"My private suite. Above a speakeasy I frequent." His voice was casual, conversational. "The jazz is better there. And the company is more... selective."

The building looked unremarkable from outside. A plain wooden door, a small sign advertising tailor services. But when Alastor knocked three times in a specific pattern, the door swung open to reveal a different world entirely.

Rich crimson wallpaper. Dark wood furniture. A gramophone in the corner playing a record that crackled with age and warmth. The air smelled of bourbon and tobacco and something sweeter underneath—jasmine, perhaps, or gardenias.

A man at the bar nodded to Alastor but said nothing. No questions. No curiosity about the woman he'd brought. Whoever this place belonged to, Alastor commanded respect here.

He led her up a narrow staircase, their footsteps muffled by a thick carpet runner. At the top, he withdrew a key from his jacket pocket and unlocked a door, gesturing for her to enter first.

The suite was intimate. A sitting area with a velvet settee, a small bar against one wall, a writing desk covered in papers. But what caught her attention was the bed partially visible through a doorway—a bedroom beyond, sheets crisp and white in the low light.

"Sit." He gestured to the settee. "You've had quite the evening."

She perched on the edge, her hands twisting in her lap. The dead device sat heavy in her pocket, useless. A thousand questions spun through her mind, but only one made it past her lips.

"What happens now?"

Alastor moved to the bar, pouring two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal glass. "That depends entirely on you." He crossed the room and held out the drink. "Bourbon. It will help steady your nerves."

She took it. The first sip burned, but warmth spread through her chest afterward, loosening some of the tension in her shoulders.

"You came all this way," he said slowly, settling into the chair across from her. His long legs crossed at the ankle, his posture relaxed, but his eyes remained fixed on her face. "Traveled through time. Lied your way into my world. All for what? Observation?"

Her tongue felt thick. "I told you—"

"You told me what you thought I wanted to hear." His smile sharpened. "But I've been watching you all evening. The way you looked at me when you thought I couldn't see. The way your breath caught when I touched your arm." He leaned forward. "You didn't come here just to study me, little traveler. You came here because you wanted me."

Heat flooded her cheeks. She opened her mouth to deny it, but the words wouldn't come.

"I find myself... intrigued by that." He rose from his chair, moving toward her with deliberate slowness. "A woman from the future, with all its wonders, and she chooses to spend her time learning everything she can about me." He stopped before her, looking down. "That kind of attention deserves something in return, don't you think?"

Her heart raced. She should stand. Should move away. Should do something other than sit there trembling with anticipation.

But she didn't want to.

"Alastor—"

"Shh." He reached out, his fingers brushing her jaw. "You've been pretending all evening. Playing a role. But I think we're past that now." His touch trailed down, tracing the line of her throat. "You're trapped here. In my time. In my city." His voice dropped lower. "The question is—what are you going to do about it?"

She looked up at him. At those sharp features, that ever-present smile, those eyes that saw too much. She'd spent months studying him, learning every detail she could find. She'd thought she understood him.

She'd had no idea.

"I don't want to do anything about it," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper.

His smile changed. Still sharp, still predatory, but with something warmer underneath. "Good answer."

He offered his hand. She took it, letting him draw her to her feet. They stood close—too close—the air between them charged with possibility.

"I should warn you," he said, his thumb tracing circles on her palm. "I don't share. If you stay here, with me, you're mine. Completely. Do you understand?"

The word should have frightened her. Instead, it sent a thrill down her spine.

"I understand."

He drew her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. His eyes never left hers.

"Then let's stop pretending."

His mouth found hers.

The kiss was slow at first, exploratory, giving her every chance to pull away. But she leaned into it instead, her free hand sliding up his chest to curl in the fabric of his jacket. A sound escaped her—something between a sigh and a whimper—and she felt his smile against her lips.

His hands found her waist, pulling her flush against him. She could feel the lean muscle beneath his clothes, the controlled strength in his grip. He kissed her like he'd interrogated her—methodically, thoroughly, learning every secret her mouth had to offer.

When he finally pulled back, she was breathless.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," she admitted.

"I think I have some idea." His hands slid lower, resting on her hips. "You're not as subtle as you think, my dear. Those little glances, the way you leaned into my touch in the garden." He kissed the corner of her mouth. "I knew what you wanted from the moment I saw you."

"Then why—" She stopped, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. "Why the knife? The interrogation?"

His thumb brushed her lower lip. "Because I wanted to see if you'd give it to me freely. And because..." He paused. "I wanted to make sure you were real. That this wasn't some elaborate trap."

"I'm real."

"Yes." His voice roughened. "You are."

He walked her backward, step by step, until her shoulders met the doorframe to the bedroom. His body pressed against hers, pinning her in place.

"I'm going to make you forget all about the future," he murmured against her ear. "By the time I'm done with you, the only thing you'll be able to think about is right now."

[risleylime]

@2kwatts - requested

Chapter 1: His Mouth On Mine

The bass from the speakers wasn't just sound—it was a second heartbeat, thudding through the concrete floor, up my legs, settling somewhere just beneath my sternum. The backstage pass dangled from my neck, a laminated impossibility that still felt warm from the printer. I’d won some contest I barely remembered entering, my Instagram handle buried in a comment section alongside three fire emojis and a desperate please-notice-me.

And now I was here.

The corridor smelled like industrial cleaner and something sweeter, maybe cologne, maybe the ghost of a fog machine from the stage. Twenty feet away, a door opened and closed with a soft click. Voices. Then footsteps.

I pressed my spine against the wall like I could dissolve into the drywall.

A security guard nodded at me—the same one who'd checked my pass three times, squinting at my face like I might be a hologram—and then he was gone, swallowed by a side door, and the corridor went quiet except for that bass, muffled now, a distant thunder.

Breathe.

Then the door opened again.

It wasn't the guard.

Michael Jackson stepped into the corridor, and the air changed. Thickened. He was taller than I'd imagined, lean in black slacks and a button-down the color of bone, sleeves rolled to his elbows. No sunglasses. His eyes found me immediately, and something flickered there—recognition, sharp and amused, a secret I hadn't been told yet.

"You're the one," he said.

Not a question.

His voice slid under my skin. Velvet over gravel.

"I—yes. Hi. The contest. I'm—"

"I know who you are." He took a step closer. Then another. The distance between us collapsed to something intimate, something that made my lungs forget their job. "I've been reading you."

The word landed wrong. Or right. Reading.

"Reading... me?"

"Your stories." A pause. His head tilted, a half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "The ones you post online. About me."

My stomach dropped so fast I felt it in my knees.

The fanfics. The explicit, shameless, please-god-don't-let-anyone-I-know-find-these fanfics I'd been writing for two years under an anonymous handle on a site buried deep enough that normal humans shouldn't have been able to stumble across it. Stories full of things I'd never say aloud, my own name swapped for a protagonist who was braver than me, dirtier than me, who did things with her mouth and her hips that I'd only ever typed out at two in the morning with my laptop burning my thighs.

"You..." My voice cracked. "You found them?"

"I have people who find things." His eyes didn't leave mine. "When I'm curious about someone."

Someone. He was curious about someone. And that someone was in a front-row seat at his concert, and then somehow—impossibly—backstage, wearing a crop top that showed off the silver barbell pierced through my navel, the one I'd gotten on a dare in college and kept because it made me feel like a different person when I caught my reflection.

His gaze dropped. To the belly ring. Lingered.

"This." He reached out, but didn't touch. His finger hovered an inch from the silver, the little gem that caught the fluorescent light and threw it back in blues and whites. "You wrote about this. In chapter four. The hotel room scene."

Oh god.

He'd read chapter four.

The one where I'd described—in painstaking, word-by-word detail—a fantasy version of myself on her knees, his thumb circling the jewelry in her navel, his mouth following the path of his hand, his voice murmuring filth against her skin. I'd written that paragraph seventeen times, deleting and rewriting, my face hot, my thighs pressed together.

"Standing here, you're quiet," he said. He was close enough now that I could smell him—clean soap, something woodsy, the faint chemical sweetness of stage makeup lingering near his jaw. "But in those stories..." A soft laugh. "In those stories, you're not quiet at all."

"That's—that's fiction."

"Is it?" His hand moved. Not to my stomach. To my chin. Two fingers beneath it, tilting my face up. The touch was feather-light but commanding, a question that wasn't asking for permission. "Because I read every chapter. Twice. And I don't think someone writes those things without meaning them. Without wanting them."

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

"Chapter seven," he continued, and his voice dropped, lower, a register that vibrated somewhere in my chest. "The backstage scene. Interesting that we're here now, don't you think? Almost like you manifested it. You wrote about a door. A security guard who disappears. Me, finding you, telling you that I'd read your words."

I hadn't manifested anything. I wasn't that powerful. But the coincidence—the specificity—made the hallway tilt sideways.

"You remember how that chapter goes from here?"

My breath caught. Of course I remembered. I'd written it. Every word was seared into my brain because I'd agonized over dialogue, over pacing, over whether the protagonist saying please was too submissive or just submissive enough.

"You back me against the wall," I whispered.

"Say it again. Like you mean it."

My voice steadied, just barely. "You back me against the wall. And you tell me to stop pretending I didn't write those things for you to find."

His smile widened, slow and satisfied, like I'd passed some test I didn't know I was taking. His hand left my chin. Settled on my hip instead, thumb hooking through the belt loop of my jeans. The denim tugged, just slightly. Just enough.

"You wrote that I'd press my thigh between your legs." His face was inches from mine. "You wrote that I wouldn't kiss you yet. That I'd make you wait. Make you ask."

I was shaking. Not visibly—I hoped not visibly—but something inside my ribcage was vibrating like a struck tuning fork.

"That's what I wrote," I managed.

"But here's the thing about fiction." His thigh slid forward, barely brushing the inside of mine, and my breath left me in a rush. "Fiction can be edited. Rewritten. Improved. I have notes."

Notes.

"The belly ring," he said, and his voice went rougher. Hunger breaking through the velvet. "In your story, I notice it. I touch it. But I don't—" He paused, and his thumb moved from my belt loop to the sliver of bare skin between my jeans and the hem of my crop top. The touch was electric, a live wire pressed to my stomach. "I don't worship it. Not the way I want to. Not the way you deserve to have it worshipped."

The word deserve hit like a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

"Show me," he said.

"What?"

"The belly ring. Properly."

My hands moved before my brain caught up. I pinched the fabric of my crop top and lifted it, just an inch, then two, exposing the pale skin of my stomach and the silver jewelry glinting there. The air in the corridor was cold against my midriff, or maybe I was just hyperaware of every temperature change, every molecule touching me.

He went still. Really still. The kind of still that precedes something breaking open.

"Beautiful," he murmured. The word wasn't for me—it was for the jewelry, the way the barbell pierced through skin, the tiny gem that caught the light. He lowered himself, and I realized with a jolt that he was kneeling. Kneeling. Michael Jackson, on the floor of a backstage corridor, his face level with my navel.

"I wrote you on your knees," I breathed. "Chapter seven."

"You wrote me on my knees for a different reason." His breath fanned across my stomach, warm and intentional. "I'm revising." He looked up at me, and the power dynamic shifted so fast my head spun—he was below me but he owned this moment, owned me, owned every inch of space between us. "You're going to stand there. Quiet. And you're going to let me."

His lips grazed the skin above the barbell.

Not a kiss. A promise of one.

My hands fisted at my sides. The wall behind me was the only thing keeping me vertical.

"Chapter four," he said against my stomach, "you wrote that I'd taste you. That I'd trace the jewelry with my tongue and it would feel like a prayer." His mouth closed over the silver barbell, warm and wet, and my hips jerked forward without permission. "But you didn't go far enough. You pull back. Right when it gets good, you cut away to the next scene. Why is that?"

"Because I—" A gasp as his tongue flicked the gem. "Because I didn't know. What it would actually feel like."

"And now?"

His lips traveled lower, following the curve of the barbell, the tiny metal ball beneath my skin, the sensitive flesh around it. He kissed the piercing like it was something sacred. Like he'd been waiting years to do exactly this. His tongue traced a slow circle and I made a sound—low, involuntary, something between a whimper and his name.

"Now you know," he said.

He wasn't asking.

His hands found my hips, gripping them hard enough to anchor me. His mouth was relentless, lips and tongue and the gentle scrape of teeth, worshipping the piercing with a single-minded focus that made my vision blur at the edges. Every nerve in my body had relocated to that one point, the silver-studded focal point of his attention.

"You're going to rewrite chapter four," he said, pulling back just enough to speak, his breath hot and damp on my slick skin. "And chapter seven. And every other chapter you ever wrote about me."

"Why?" The word was barely air.

"Because fiction," he said, rising to his feet, his body pressing mine into the wall, his mouth hovering a millimeter from my ear, "becomes autobiography tonight."

His hand flattened against my stomach, palm covering the piercing, possessive and warm and trembling with something that felt like the beginning of an earthquake.

"Now. Tell me how chapter eight starts."

[risleylime]

@tinytimetravelharmony - requested

Chapter 1: The Radio Demon's Invitation

The jazz curled through the air like cigarette smoke, winding its way through the crowded ballroom and wrapping around her like a familiar blanket. She'd spent weeks learning the steps, the slang, the way women wore their hair in 1933 New Orleans. Weeks perfecting the accent. Weeks making sure every detail of her disguise would hold up under scrutiny.

She just hadn't planned on him.

Alastor moved through the party with the easy confidence of a man who knew every corner of every room he entered. Tall and lean, with sharp features and eyes that seemed to catch the light differently than everyone else's—darker, more knowing. His smile never quite reached those eyes. That was the first thing she'd noticed when she'd finally seen him in person, after all her careful research. The smile was a mask, and a good one, but she'd spent her whole life learning to read masks.

She'd positioned herself near the refreshment table, a glass of champagne she didn't intend to drink held loosely in her fingers. The dress she'd chosen was period-appropriate—deep burgundy, falling just below her knees, with a modest neckline that still managed to flatter. Everything about her screamed "out-of-town girl trying to fit in."

Which was exactly the problem.

"You seem lost in thought, my dear." His voice slid over her like warm velvet, and she turned to find him standing closer than she'd expected. Close enough that she could smell his cologne—something woodsy and vaguely floral, expensive without being showy. His smile was polite, welcoming even, but his eyes tracked every micro-expression on her face. "A beautiful woman shouldn't look so troubled at such a lively affair."

"Just thinking about home." The lie came easily, practiced. "I'm not from around here. The South is... different than what I'm used to."

"A Northerner, then?" He gestured to a waiter, trading her untouched champagne for a fresh glass. "New York, perhaps? Chicago? You have a certain... urgency in the way you carry yourself. Like you're used to moving faster than our lazy Southern pace."

"California, actually." She offered a small smile, hoping it looked shy. "Very different pace of life."

"California." He repeated the word slowly, as if tasting it. His gaze drifted over her hair, her jewelry, the small details she'd worked so hard to perfect. "Fascinating. And what brings a California girl to New Orleans in the middle of such... interesting times?"

She'd prepared for this. Had answers ready—family visiting, a dying relative, a job opportunity. But the way he watched her made the words stick in her throat. He wasn't just making conversation. He was cataloging. Analyzing. The way a scientist might study a particularly interesting specimen under glass.

"Family matters," she managed. "My grandmother grew up here. She wanted to see the old neighborhood one last time."

"How sweet." His smile widened, but something in his posture shifted—predatory, patient. "Family is so important, isn't it? The ties that bind us to history. To our roots." He leaned in, and his voice dropped to a murmur meant only for her. "Tell me, does your grandmother have a name? Perhaps I know the family. New Orleans is a small town, despite its size. Everyone knows everyone, in the end."

Panic fluttered in her chest. She hadn't expected him to dig this deep this quickly. The time travel device sat heavy in her hidden pocket, a small metal cylinder that represented her only way home. She just needed to survive this conversation, this night. Then she could retreat, regroup, plan better for next time—

"You know," he said, his tone almost conversational, "there's a lovely garden just through those doors. Much quieter than this crowd. I find it easier to have real conversations without all this noise." He extended his arm, a perfect gentleman offering a perfect escape. "Would you care to join me? I promise I don't bite. At least..." His smile sharpened. "Not without an invitation."

She should have said no. Should have made an excuse, slipped away into the crowd, disappeared into the humid New Orleans night. But she'd come here for a reason—to study him, to understand him, to satisfy the strange pull she'd felt since first seeing his photograph in those old archives.

So she took his arm.

The garden was beautiful, she had to admit. Wrought-iron trellises heavy with climbing roses, stone pathways lit by flickering gas lamps, the distant sound of jazz muffled by thick hedges. Private. Secluded. Perfect for the intimate conversation he'd promised.

She realized too late that it was also perfect for other things.

"You're very good," he said quietly, stopping in the center of the garden. His back was to her, his posture relaxed, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. "The dress, the hair, the way you hold that glass. You've done your research."

"I don't know what you—"

"Please." He turned, and the genial host had vanished. In his place stood something colder, sharper, more honest. A knife glinted in his hand—where had that come from?—but he held it loosely, almost casually. "I've lived in New Orleans my entire life. I know every family, every name, every history. And I've never heard of yours." He stepped closer. "So why don't you tell me the truth, my dear? Before this conversation takes a more... unpleasant turn."

Her heart slammed against her ribs. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to observe, study, slip away. Instead, she stood trapped in a garden with the most dangerous man in New Orleans, her lies unraveling around her.

"I—" The words caught in her throat. "I can explain."

"Please do." His smile hadn't changed, but his eyes had gone dark. "I have plenty of time. And I'm very curious."

She told him everything.

Not because she wanted to, but because the words poured out of her like water from a cracked vessel—the future, the time machine, her research, her obsession. She told him about the archives, the photographs, the way she'd become fascinated with him. The way that fascination had twisted into something deeper, something she couldn't name.

He listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable.

When she finished, there was a long moment where neither of them moved. Then—

"Well." He tucked the knife away, his smile shifting into something she couldn't interpret. "That's a story I haven't heard before."

"I know it sounds insane—"

"Time travel." He tested the words like they were foreign. "And you came all this way to see me?"

Her face burned. "I know how it sounds."

"What I find most interesting," he continued, stepping closer, "is that you're still lying. Not about the time travel, perhaps. But about your reasons." His head tilted, studying her. "You didn't come to study me. You came because you wanted something. The question is... what?"

Before she could answer, her pocket beeped.

Three short tones. Then silence.

She knew what it meant. Even before she reached into her pocket and felt the dead device, she knew. The battery—the one thing she hadn't thought to check, the one detail she'd overlooked in all her careful planning.

"What is that?" Alastor asked, his voice sharp.

"Nothing." But she was already pulling out the cylinder, already seeing the dark screen, already knowing. "Nothing, I just—"

She was trapped.

The realization hit her like a physical blow. No way home. No way back. She'd rewritten history by stepping into it, and now history had closed around her like a fist.

Alastor watched her face, reading every emotion that flickered across her features. Then, slowly, that sharp smile returned.

"It seems," he said, "that you're going to be staying longer than planned." He extended his hand, an invitation. "Come with me. I have a private suite nearby—somewhere we can discuss your situation more... thoroughly."