So idk if you've touched it since but can you give us a little sneek peak of BYLB as an original work? Like the new characters and things things you plan on/have changed from the version we read?
thank you so much for this question!!
i'm not sure i have a sneak peek that that is good enough to share, because for a long time, despite rewriting nearly 25k words, i couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with it. I thought changing pov might be able to tell the story better, but that was a tool, not the material itself.
thanks to all the reading and writing i have been doing on other projects, i have been thinking about bylb a lot. i think one thing i'll have to do, a kill-your-darlings of sorts, is to cut down a lot of details about other characters, and sometimes whole characters themselves.
the story i really want to tell demands a lot of interiority, and i think i'm way better at it now, but it also makes me understand then, that i cannot devote the same kind of attention or perspective to levi's backstory with petra. to his dynamic with hange. The incident that occurred between Cherry and Hange. I can't just throw them in there like I did last time and expect those things to resolve themselves.
I'll explain it this way. In my first draft that's up on ao3, I'm trying to talk about:
Levi, Hange, Levi's late wife and their relationship to the sex work industry. All of their relationships are different and filled with different types of pain. Levi was a cop that fell in love with a sex worker who became his CI, and then got caught and murdered for it. Hange is a trans character who wants to undergo a sex change surgery and is trying to save up for it, but at the same time they want to invest in creating a better environment for the girls who end up in similar situations. With Cherry we see a situation where Hange feels like they have failed in that endeavour, because Cherry refused to follow the boundaries laid out by Hange, and ended up being abused at the hands of a customer who claimed to love Cherry.
Mikasa on the other hand is trying to reclaim the ownership of her body by making it work. quite literally. she's been mothered by hange, fathered by levi, and this industry whilst dangerous, has been a playground of exploration for her. because she's been so protected, she doesn't consider the aspects of it that she doesn't want to. she's a good dancer, and she's proud of it. she wants to get a kick out of turning men on, so she does. But where Levi and Hange feel like shit for exposing her to this industry, she is trying to assert a "Why can't I do this if i feel safe and free?" kind of attitude.
Mikasa's sexuality: Mikasa is somewhere on the ace spectrum, demi i guess. she's felt broken for so long because her body doesn't experience desire the same way as others, but she's grown up knowing that her body elicits desire in others. and she's tried to push and prod and poke at that sensation until it's sore. Now for whatever reason, she finds it in the arms of a man who is supposed to be off limits to her. She is willing to disregard these limits, but this man is hot one minute, cold the next, hung up over an ex, and mostly unreliable.
Eren's backstory and divorce: Obviously Eren comes into the story with a really key perspective, the opening scene is about him and his friends, and his inner turmoil. What I was trying to do was write a man on the precipice of change. Here you have a man who thought he was doing all the right things in life, and suddenly he's found out it doesn't work. What is a moral choice anymore? He isn't so sure. What am I doing with a stripper? Why am I getting a divorce? How am I in love with someone else when I promised to be with my wife forever? Why do I feel like a different person when I am with this mysterious girl? etc.
Historia's sexuality and cheating: I obviously have sympathy for her, the way I wrote her into the story. She married her best friend but fell in love with a woman much later, something that she never expected would happen to her. This is not something she has an understanding of, herself. She has a controlling father whom she genuinely fears for, and is still very fond of her husband. So even though she wants to leave him, she is scared to leave him behind. He's one of the few people in her life who has been good to her, after all.
I have 2 choices to make here,
1) either I write a dual pov story from Eren and Mikasa's perspective, in which case I would really massively cut down point 1, and just briefly mention point 5 and change Mikasa's back story because there is so much to unpack in the dynamic itself, OR
2) I would keep the story from Mikasa POV and try to tackle all the above whilst featuring Eren as just a love interest. you know what i mean?
I THINK i am leaning towards the former, but this is a thing that keeps me spinning every three business days. Ultimately I am also conscious of "writing what I know" and the idea that I could be making an offensive commentary on sex work does scare me. On the other hand, I love romance and writing about Eren unravelling feels so compelling to me.
Regarding character changes: I like the character I have fleshed out for Mikasa. where I lean into her wistfulness, devotion and submissiveness in other fics, here I wanted to explore her pride and obstinacy, and desire to fight. So I like the character that I have here. In an original, I would call her M, and have her whisper her name to her lover, and the audience would not know it until the very end.
One thing I have toyed with seriously, is making M an onlyfans persona who breaks a lot of rules for a man who says he's never done this before, and kind of taunts her by asking what's so special about her. this is what i would do if i choose to option 1 as I explained above, because then I can just really make this an obsessive love story that takes place in the shadows. And I can still touch upon points 2, 3 and 4 in proper detail! If I got this route, I picture M's persona to have pink wig and a pole installed in her room. I wonder if she would be a rich girl. We'll have to see lol.
Eren on the other hand... oh boy. I just would not know what to name him. I have grown attached to the name 'Mr Jaeger' and it kinda sounds sexy, idk what else to say lol. Also while writing original fic, I also feel somewhat of a fraud writing names of people that are so far removed from the names and cultures that I know intimately. I've toyed with the idea of making the MMC an indian man, because I can then relate to the cultural obligations family thrusts on you especially in a marriage. i think i just need to give myself permission to do this, and a lot of things will fall into place, because here then is an archetype of man that i know LOL.
I think the real thing is nailing down what questions I am trying to answer in this story, and i'm still not a 100% sure. However, writing this post was super fun and helpful because it also lays out very clearly what I need to think about and write about. All I know for sure is that I will write it eventually, and it will have a positive ending. thanks again for this ask!
I once knew a woman; she sold glimpses of her body to make a living. one day a man paid for one of those glimpses and she showed him one and then two— she wasnt counting but she should have— until she realised she ended up showing him everything.
there was nothing more she could charge him for, nothing more for him to peer at. yet she found herself wishing that he would stay. come back to see me, she’d think, I want you to see me again. I want you to want to see me again. You’ve seen me like nobody else has, did you like it? (I hope desperately that you liked it)
Because I like the person I am in your eyes, the one that is bathed in desire and hunger and maybe even love. Come back and see me, she prays, so that just in this moment, I can pretend this is love. That you love what you see, and I can love the way you see me.
I miss you, M 🥺 but I think I’m getting ready to write about you again ♥️
Summary: “Good things come to those who wait, Mr Jaeger,” she says, coyly.
He cups her face with his hand and turns her face upwards to him. “... I don’t think either of us wants to wait, M. Am I wrong?”
“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.”
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
He hears her breathing bounce off the walls, harsh, breathy gasps escaping her lips. Her breasts rise and fall in tune with her panting, and he watches with fascination as her head is thrown back, pleasure dissipating slowly as she licks her lips.
Her hand lies limp near his face, where she’d previously tugged hard on his hair, whimpers and pleas to never stop, pressing him closer to her sweet centre. He thinks of the way she cried in front of him, shame and fear and everything ugly that made her afraid of her own pleasure. It’s such a contrast to the woman in front of him now, so lost to the sensation of her own body that she’s barely able to recover. It mesmerizes him, all the different sides of her he is allowed to see, the untouchable woman on the pole, the self-possessed beauty who sat in front of him the first time and asked him “what can I do for you Mr Jeager?”
It makes him want to flip her on her knees, and whisper in her ear, to ask her what he could do for her as he relishes the abandon on her features, and eats up the melancholy on her lips. Desire pulses through him, thick and heavy in his veins as he thinks of it, his mouth watering at the sight of her- and it makes the itch in his mouth return.
Greed, he thinks, that’s got to be what it is, there’s no other way he can describe the way he shamelessly nips his way across her inner thighs, revelling in the way she squirms beneath him, gasps and moans that only urge him on further. It’s as if he can’t help himself; he laps at her slit eagerly, tongue flicking at her clit and also within the depths of her, tasting her without the intention of pleasure, but more for himself.
She’s sensitive, so fucking sensitive, he can feel her soft flesh quiver underneath his tongue but also under his hands, her body so so pliant for him. “Please,” she whimpers, but her hands are still in his hair, and she sounds so precious, so deliciously fragile, there’s something within him that makes him want to go deeper, to taste all of her, to consume the flavour of her body’s pleasure whole.
He licks it without any particular rhythm, sighing into her weeping cunt, lifting her ass up to him, the way he finds comfortable. And when he’s done gobbling up every drop that she had to offer him, he licks his way down her crevice, all the way from her ass to her clit.
He’s rewarded with the most beautiful, pleasure-soaked moan he’s ever heard, and if he could he’d make it his mission to hear that every day and night. “Ere..h,” she breathes shakily, and he hums against her wet, messy pussy, the vibrations tickling her. She arches against him, unable to help herself, making the softest, sweetest sounds.
She tastes like nothing he’s ever known in his life, nothing he’s ever imagined, except maybe a new, heady, addiction. That’s got to be it, he thinks, drunk on the juices of her, that’s got to be the reason he craves her like he does- like a drug in his bloodstream that he cannot get enough of.
So he eats her up, exactly the way he promised, teeth and tongue and lips, and the faint stubble of his chin scraping against her overstimulated pussy, until she begs again, “Please, Mr Jaeger,” - and he doesn’t care that she regresses to formality, it feels intimate from her lips, private almost - “Stop,” she sobs, “... please.”
He does, immediately, shocked by the desperation in her voice. “God, I’m sorry, did I,” - he looks at her with guilt-ridden eyes, his mouth red and the wetness of her cunt shimmering across his chin. He’d meant to ask if he’d hurt her, if he’d done something that didn’t feel good, where he should have stopped just like he’d promised, but instead he’d been too lost in her perfect body to even take notice.
She looks at him with watery, dazed eyes and whimpers, “... It’s too much. I can’t take it.”
And just like that, his mouth goes dry again. He’s struck with the urge to say things he’s never said before, to bury his face in her cunt and make her give him one more orgasm and show her that she really can take it, she’s so good, of course, she can- but instead, he ignores the desert in his throat and his rock-hard erection and says, “... Too much? It felt that good, huh?”
She blushes, long wisps of straight black hair matted to her sweaty forehead, her crimson lipstick bitten and smudged. “... I’ve never,” she looks at him honestly, dazed grey irises blinking up at him. “... felt that way… with someone else before.”
Swallowing painfully, he thanks whichever God is watching for the fact that he is fully clothed, and his dick is tucked away out of sight, so it doesn’t assume some irreverent importance in this situation. So before it can cause any problems for him, he pulls away from her, mumbling, “... Maybe we should get some fresh air.”
..
The view from Eren’s apartment is a thing of beauty. The lights of the inner city gleam with colour, gold and pink and a dash of red if you look carefully, far enough into the interior. Rows of winding canals with the old leaning houses and their pretty reflections, and the little bikes adorning every corner.
He’s seen this view every day for months now, and every time he looked at it, he’d allow himself to be a little lost, to feel enamoured with the secrets of the city that he’d tried to call home but had swallowed him whole. This time he has something else to distract him, and he watches her from the corner of his eye, watches the way she holds the joint in her hands, the way her lips purse around the stick as she brings it to his mouth.
It doesn’t help the situation in his pants, the one that the cold air doesn’t take care of, his emptying whiskey glass only taking him further down the thought spiral of how he would like himself sliding between his lips like that-
“... You always have some on hand, huh?” He blurts out, desperate for some small talk. He’d lived 28 years of his life without blatantly sexually objectifying the women he meets, surely he could manage ten minutes of keeping his brain out of the gutter.
She looks at her joint, amused. “... Easier than carrying that whiskey decanter around, I suppose.”
It’s a familiar look again, the look of a woman who’s in control, but he sees the crumple of her dress, the fragility of her expression, and he recognises the dimensions he hasn’t seen before.
She shivers, and he notices. Reaching for his coat, he asks, “... Does the smoke keep you warm?” He puts it around her shoulders, but his hands linger at his elbows, his body close to hers.
“A little.” She leans back against him, slightly, her back to his front, hair brushing against his chest. He lets his chin rest in the crook of her neck, inhaling the scent of her, smoky and pungent. “... Like your drink, I suppose.”
He inhales deeply before taking another sip. And for a moment he feels bad about it. It’s part of his every day now, when he thinks of her, when he thinks of his ex, when he thinks of how he knows genetically he has a weakness to liquor and it still doesn’t stop him. “... I think I have a problem,” he confesses, breath heavy with whiskey.
“... Maybe you do,” she agrees, turning towards him, slowly taking away his glass.
He looks at her indignantly, before reaching for her joint. “So do you,” he murmurs, taking it between her fingers.
Her eyes flicker at him as he takes her joint and stubs it out. “... Maybe I do,” she breathes, and when he moves towards her again, her lips move to capture his.
He lets her press herself against him, her body unfurling against his, her breath warm in his mouth.
She’s such an addictive taste in his mouth, a drug, the kind that takes over his sense and lets him think of nothing else. He feels it in the few minutes when he watched her from afar, how his mind burned with questions, with guilt, with what-ifs. It was an absurdity by this point but Eren was a simple man- he wanted her with the kind of certainty that bore no rhyme nor reason- but seeing her in a home that no longer felt like his, a room that bore the stamp of someone who wasn’t here, felt wrong.
Historia was in everything around him, the cream paint on the walls, the couch he’d eaten her out on, the expensive shirt that M tugged on when she kissed him. It’s a nausea that lives under his skin, something that refuses to get out of him.
Yet, the more he presses against her, the less he remembers any of it. M rests her hand loosely on the nape of his neck and presses her breasts against him as she kisses him and he lets her; he lets her tongue slide into his mouth that tasted of her and lick the raging thoughts away, filling his mind and his body with something else entirely- a terrifying intoxication that he was dying to submit to.
His hands wind low on her hips, curving around her ass, pressing her close against him without any regard for the erection that presses through her satin dress. It rests against her abs, perfectly toned from the way she works it, and it makes him groan into her mouth. He pulls away, grasping her chin harshly as he forces some distance between them. “... I thought you wanted to stop.”
She licks her lips fetchingly. “But you,”- her eyes dart to his crotch, and he feels his cheeks burn- “... You didn’t get a chance to feel good.”
He runs a thumb across her lower lip, saliva sticky on his skin. “It’s not a transaction, M. I felt plenty good going down on you…” And god knows he would have done it longer, if she’d let him. “You look so fucking good when you come, I think I could watch you forever.”
He thinks about that for a moment, pushing her just a little bit more, watching her come over and over again even though she thinks this pretty body couldn’t handle it. He tips her chin up so can look into her glazed eyes. “... But I bet people tell you that all the time, huh.” The words are out of his mouth before he can even stop to consider what he’s saying. It’s a nonsensical double standard; the way he’s paid to watch her before but the idea of anyone else seeing her like this makes him see red.
“I told you already,” she says, voice hoarse, “... I can’t, I’ve never.” Her cheeks bleed with shame. “... Never with anybody else.”
Maybe it’s the fantasy of it that’s hard to believe, because he murmurs gruffly, “... Not even in the club? The way you did for me that day?”
He doesn’t know why he’s asking her this, it’s none of his business, nor his right to care, but it feels as irrational as the fact that he brought another woman home to his wife’s house.
She should protest with the way he asks her this, like he has some ownership over it. But she only shakes her head shyly, unable to meet the heat in her eyes when she says, “... Never.”
It’s embarrassing how much he likes that fact- like this was something of hers that belonged to him and only him. He pushes backwards until she’s nestled against the wall, “But you’ve been with many others, haven’t you, M?”
She turns away embarrassed, defiant. “More than you’ve been with, Mr Jaeger.”
It isn’t the retort that she’d aimed for it to be. There’s a flicker of pride in his eyes, and it teases the existent desire inside of him. “... And you teased all of them this way, huh?”
“... Is that how you feel? That I’m teasing you?”
It’s an absurd question. It feels as if that’s all she’s been from the moment he first laid his eyes on her. Teasing his attention, his emotions, his blatant hunger. “I didn’t think I was teasing, earlier,” her voice is choked, her bangs hiding her eyes, as she diverts her gaze to the pretty skyline beside them. “Sounded more like begging, if I’m to be honest.”
“Teasing or begging,” he confesses, “... I liked it.” So much. The way she looks at him, with honesty the way her words seldom are, the way her body thrust into his mouth, the whimpers- he loved all of it.
“Then let me beg properly,” she murmurs, tilting her forehead against his. “... Let me make you feel good.” She kisses the side of his mouth, “... Let me make you feel the way you made me feel.”
And before he can say much more, she drops to her knees, pretty grey eyes looking up at him like stars. “Please?”
So, before he can combust purely from his overactive imagination, he nods, licking his suddenly dry lips. She opens his zipper in a practiced motion, extracting his cock from his pants, and letting it spring to erection before her.
It’s a shameless sight, and he shivers as the cold air of Central Sina hits his skin, but the look in her eyes, somewhat taken aback, but mostly intoxicated as she wraps her hand around his length.
She jerks him like she knows what she’s doing, bending over his cock, her breath warm on his tip before using her spit to lube him up. Tilting her head up, she catches his entranced gaze, like smouldering leaves, as she strokes him slick, his cock jerking embarrassingly into her hand.
“Fuck,” he breathes, as she sets a rhythm, practiced, her grip just perfect, the sight of her lush breasts from above turning him on even further. “Pull it lower,” he rasps, “... your dress. I want to see your tits.”
Her eyes sparkle in the moonlight. He’s always been so proper with her, even with his head buried in her cunt, even with his fingers inside of her- It had always been ‘Please’ and ‘Whatever you like,’ but she can’t say she had never suspected (or fantasized) about this side of him. The slightly rougher side, the one that looked at her like a starved man, desperate for whatever she’d give him.
She pulls her dress lower just as he asks, her bra cupping her breasts temptingly before she lowered those cups as well. He runs his teeth over his lower lip as he watches her, as he sees her nipples harden froma the cold air. “Don’t stop what you were doing,” he reminds her, as if she could forget his rock-hard erection that hovered right at her cheek.
“Good things come to those who wait, Mr Jaeger,” she says, coyly, reaching for her nipples and playing with them, relishing the way his eyes darken.
He cups her face with his hand and turns her face upwards to him. “... I don’t think either of us want to wait, M. Am I wrong?”
It makes her flush crimson, down her neck and till the tips of her breasts. He tugs her gently towards her cock, and her lips part for his length, tongue laving along the length of his underside.
He hums in satisfaction, eyes closing for a brief second as she takes him in and sucks, hard. His hand glides to the back of her neck, positioning it where he can guide her, murmuring, “... Your mouth feels like heaven.”
She flushes at the compliment, using her mouth the way she knows how to, the way she’s learnt through all her mistakes, through all her lost endeavours in the name of finding love. She takes in all the appreciative sighs, the groans, the way his cock twitches in her mouth, using her technique perfectly but she isn’t prepared for his candour, the way he talks about her, the way he presses her head down on his cock like he can’t help himself, as he mumbles, “So fucking warm, just like your pussy.”
His words pour straight into her bloodstream, like a potent hit, burning under her skin. Makes her wonder if she could make him feel this good even with her pussy. Tears sting her eyes as she takes him in as far as she can go, trying not to struggle around the length of him; trying not to think of all the times she’s pleasured men with her mouth just so she wouldn’t have to disappoint them with her cunt.
He slips out of her suddenly, a strand of saliva lingering between her lips and his tip. She wipes it with her palm as she catches her breath, looking up at him. “You’re distracted,” he says, roughly. “... What else is on your mind, babe?”
And before she can answer, he slips into her mouth again, smoothly, just shy of hitting the back of her throat. He let’s her catch her breath around him, bob up and down on her own pace. He caresses the side of her cheek as she works him so good, voice rough as he tells her, almost possessed, “I don’t want anything else on your mind when you’re with me.” And then he holds her head in place and thrusts into her mouth, in and out, as she adjusts to him, gasping, taken a back by the change in demeanour.
A part of him knows he’s being careless, irrational, but he doesn’t want her practiced techniques, no matter how good they feel. He doesn’t want anything she learnt from anybody else, doesn’t want anything else in her pretty head when she has his cock in her mouth. So he fucks her mouth the way he likes it- she likes it too, he thinks, he hopes, because he can hear her moan softly and it’s like an aphrodisiac. He fucks her mouth in a shallow way, careful not to make her gag but fast, in and out till she is panting, pushing back and begging for breath. His cock glistens with her saliva, hard and pulsing, but he pulls back, eyes dark as he murmurs, “... Sorry, was I too rough with you?”
She’s so confused by the change, but when she looks at him, she realises she’s stupid to be. He looks at her with concern, with hunger, the same way he’s always looked at her, like there was always this animal hungering beneath his silk shirts and trousers. “I,”- rough, maybe, but her soaked panties tell her that she likes it, “... no, it was…,” she licks her lips. “Good.”
His fears dissipate when she leans towards his cock, aching to have him in her mouth again, but he grabs her cheeks before she can take him in again, savouring for a moment the sight of her, on her knees, with her tits out, mouth eager for him. And with a titan’s strength, he pulls back and says, softly, “... Get up.”
She stiffens, “But you haven’t,” -
“Anymore of this pretty mouth and I’ll be finished in seconds.” He wipes the saliva from the side of her lips, before pulling her to her feet and towards the little diwan on the corner of the balcony. “And I’m not finished with you yet… not for a long time.”
He sinks down on the cushions, and tugs on her hand to follow, but she looks down at him hesitantly. “Are you sure? I can,”- her voice is shaky, “... Let me make you come.”
He gets on his knees, threading his fingers into hers, as he meets her anxious gaze. “I want you to, God, I want it to so bad,” he confesses, “... but not with your mouth.” He cups her panties, soaked again, and his voice grows hoarse as he realises just how wet she is. “I want you to make me come with this.”
He slips a finger into her gently, swirling inside of her and groaning. “... Can you do that for me, babe? Please?”
And God, the way he looks at her, she doesn’t think she’d be able to deny him anything. So nervously, she sinks on to her knees on the plush linen cushions, and lowers herself on his straining dick. He groans as he feels her, drenched satin panties against his thobbing erection as she rubs against him tentatively.
His hands make their home on her hips, raking her dress up so her ass cheeks were exposed. A strange mixture of anticipation and anxiety thrums between her legs, but she grinds down on him, using her hips the way she’s done numerous times, for numerous men, and a small part of her thinks maybe she can bring him to climax just like this. She’s definitely done it once before. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to know- he would feel good, just the way she’d felt because of him, and he’d never find out. She’d orgasmed from his touch, but penetration was another thing entirely, it had never worked, it had never felt good, and if she gets him off now, she’d never have to see that frustrated, displeased look they always got when her body refused to comply-
“Hey,” he murmurs, nipping gently on her lower lip. “You’re lost again.”
She steadies her breathing, tries to look at him seductively, working her hips down on him faster. “... No, I just… Lost in how good it feels, that’s all.” And she gives him a small smile.
He narrows his eyes at her; runs a thumb along her lower lip. “Yeah? Are you lying to me?”
She flinches, pulling back, but he wraps his arms around her hips tightly. “... If you don’t want to do this, tell me.”
“Whatever you’re feeling tell me,” he begs, softly, loosening his grip. “... But please, for the love of God, don’t look at me like you’re afraid of me.”
“I’m not,” she whispers, cupping his cheeks in her hands- because how could she be? He’d treated her with so much care, with so much reverence and passion, she just couldn’t bear to be looked at any differently. “... I’m not afraid of you. You… You’ve been so good to me…”
“Then what is it, M? If you’re not… feeling it,” he swallows, trying to forget how wet she’d felt against his fingers just seconds ago. “... We don’t have to. It’s exactly what I said before,” -
“I’m just afraid of myself,” she whispers softly, and she doesn’t have the strength to put it into words any more than this. So she pulls her panties to the side and sinks down on to his cock, wincing at the pain that she knew was inevitable.
His head goes blank, pupils blown from the sheer feeling. He groans, the feeling of her simply exquisite around him, like a glove, warm and wet, and so fucking perfect- until he hears her whimper in pain.
“... M?” He breathes, concerned. Her hands clutch his neck, eyes screwed shut in concentration, as she lets herself settle on top of him. “What are you, oh-”
He’s cut off with a moan, her hips rocking against him, sucking him deeper with every sway. She feels like the sweetest oblivion, the stuff of poetry, if he was that type of guy, but all he feels is like the worst type of asshole, because he’s in some kind of paradise, and the incredibly gorgeous woman on his dick looks like she’s about to cry. “Stop,” he gasps, “... For fuck’s sake, your obviously in pain, just stop,”- and he chokes almost, because the more she moves against him, the more he wants to forget it and rut into her mindlessly.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Is all she asks him, and he has no way to deny that it feels probably like the best thing he’s ever had in his life.
He rests his forehead into the nape of her neck. “Like fucking heaven,” he mumbles, his fingers dipping between her legs, reaching for her nub.
“Babe,” he whispers, his breath hot on her shoulder. “Stop, stop moving, please. For one second.”
“Why,” a twinge of panic seeps into her voice, “... You… don’t like it?”
He grabs her hips forcefully and stills her. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good in my life,” he says honestly. “... But I don’t like that you seem to be in pain.”
“I… I tried to tell you,” she says, shakily. Tries to laugh it off. “My body doesn’t exactly work like it’s supposed to.”
He rubs circles into her hips absentmindedly, doing his best to breathe in and out, and not lose his fucking mind, because he was still sheathed tightly inside of her. “Yeah? And how is it supposed to work?”
“Are you… mocking me? You know what I mean,” -
“No I don’t,” he rests his hand on the curve of her waist, thumbs brushing against her abs. “... You keep telling me something’s wrong with you, and I can’t see it.” He looks at her reverently. “Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so perfect in my life.”
Her cheeks burn, self-consciousness almost choking her. She can see her own reflection in his bright eyes, but she doesn’t see what he sees. “You’re wrong.”
Frustrated tears sting behind her eyes. “This is where it always goes wrong. This stupid pain, and this stupid fucking body, it never listens,” -
“Is it hurting you?” He asks quietly, “... Am I hurting you?”
“No, it’s not you,” -
“Where does it hurt, babe?”
She takes a deep breath, biting back the tears that well up in her throat, the sheer mortification of having this man so deep inside her- just like she wanted- and still suffering over something that cannot be fixed. “Inside, it stings, when you enter,” -
“What I did earlier, did it hurt you?”
“N-No.”
He wets his thumb with his saliva, generously, and slips it down between her legs. “Don’t move, okay? I want you to try and feel comfortable.” And he glides his slick finger over her clit- once, twice, until he sees the tell-tale shiver, run along her body, her eyes glazing over. He withdraws and spits on his finger, wanting as much lubrication as possible before applying a little more pressure.
He’s rewarded with a little whimper, but a different-sounding one than before. “You feel okay?”
She nods, tentatively. “And you?”
He laughs, ironically. “How do you think I feel?” He ups the pressure, his fingers moving haphazardly, these motions totally unpracticed. She moans, and he can feel how good she feels, feels it in the way she squeezes around his dick. “You’re, fuck,”- He has to bite back his own groan, smothering it against her collarbone- “... dripping all over my cock.”
His words make her feel dirty, dripping into her skin, her bones… but it makes her feel redeemed. She searches his face for the tell-tale signs of disappointment, of frustration, but she doesn’t find it. Eren looks at her the same way he always has- hungry, desirous and openly desperate. It makes her feel molten inside. Maybe she doesn’t have to worry, she thinks, she’ll never feel dry or devoid of pleasure in his arms, his gaze is enough to make her liquid with heat.
“Take off your dress,” he rasps, breaking her out of her reverie. “... I’ll keep you warm.”
She lets out a shaky laugh before she lifts her dress over her head. “I already feel like I’m on fire, Mr Jaeger.”
“I can feel it,” he murmurs, “Feels like you’re fucking burning me from the inside.” His eyes linger on her bare breasts, the way her bra pushes it up towards him- almost like an offering. He tilts his gaze towards hers. “Your bra, too. Take it off”
He removes his hand from her clit, wet from her juices, plays with her right nipple, before he leans closer to her left one, giving it a wet, sloppy kiss. He doesn’t discriminate, giving the other one equal attention, his saliva drying on her skin from the cold, night air. Her hands interlace behind his neck, pressing him down further, running them into his soft hair.
He kisses her as if they have all the time in the world, unhurried, indulgent, but she can feel him still inside her, throbbing, hot and impatient.
“Don’t you want to fuck me?” She asks, breathy.
“Like I’ve never wanted anything else,” he tells her simply, before going back to his mission to squeeze and fondle and taste every inch of her breasts.
“Then do it,” she pleads, skin flushed.
He hums, fingers dipping back down between them, back on her wet, slick, nub. “You want it, huh?”
He regards her darkly, a part of him wanting to go ahead and give in, if only because she is undeniable when she begs. But the other part of him wants her to never look at him like that ever again, with discomfort, with pain… with fear.
“... Whatever you want, I’ll do it,” he murmurs, words caressing the side of her neck and making her shiver. “Just give me one more and I’ll do it.” And he works her clitoris mercilessly, using his spit generously, using his thumb and then his index and middle to stroke up and down over the top of her folds.
She clings to his neck, pleasure rising in her body, along her skin, the tops of her breasts, and deep inside of her. He caresses her neck with kisses, lips and teeth and tongue, as he tells her, “... I’ll fuck you just like you asked me to, babe. I promise.” He groans as he feels her tighten around him, her walls like a vice around his cock, squeezing, edging him impossibly. His voice grows rougher, “... Come for me and I’ll fuck you like I want to, just like I’ve fantasized about.”
“Ere-h,” she breathes, and he loves that, loves the way her name is just a breathy whisper on her lips, loves that she tells him incoherent things about how she’s feeling, tells him, “D-do it like that,” as she shudders through an orgasm.
It rips out of her like she didn’t even expect it, her cunt spasming deliciously and making him throb, her entire body shaking from the force of it. The sight makes his mouth water; so vastly different from the woman who took her clothes off for him that first night, the one who’d teased him and told him that he couldn’t touch her. And now she begged him for it.
She was a fucking wet dream and she felt like it, liquid heat consuming him, a drug that had an impossible grip on him. And even after her orgasm, she begs, “Fuck me, please… You said you wanted to.”
His voice is dry when he asks, “... Does it still hurt?”
“... Only because you aren’t moving.”
He groans, “Don’t say that… I just don’t want to hurt you.”
She laughs, high from her orgasm. “Don’t give up on me now, Mr Jaeger… Not after making me feel like this.”
His throat constricts, his hands digging into her hips only to prevent himself from throwing away every shred of control he has. “... And how exactly do you feel?”
Her lips ghost against the shell of his ear, lighting his skin on fire. “Like you’ve given me… almost everything I could’ve asked from you.”
And she moves. It’s lazy, a drawling sway of her hips, drugged by the aftermath of her pleasure. But it shakes him, pulls the tight cord of restraint that he’d done so well with, the arousal taut on every inch of his body. “You’re sure?” He asks, his last ditch attempt at not being the most selfish bastard on this planet.
“How much more do you want me to beg?” She doesn’t say it with sass, but with a desperation that matched his, eyes that looked at him like she’d plead how many ever times he asked her to.
He stares at her for a moment, heat flaming in his verdant eyes. And then he rolls her back on to the cushions and spreads her out for him again, legs pliant in his firm grip as he kneels down to touch his tongue to her - again.
“No,” she begs, “... Don’t try to distract me with that,”-
He swats her ass lightly, skin blooming pretty against the sting. “I want you ready for me when I fuck you,” he murmurs, before his tongue sweeps against her opening again, steam crawling through her blood when she thought she couldn’t possibly feel any hotter.
“I am,” she whimpers, “... I’m ready, Eren, I’m so,”-
He thrusts a finger into her and slides into her easy, so easy, it barely satisfies her. He adds another and watches her carefully, searching for any signs of discomfort.
He only sees her shiver in pleasure, lips parting with pretty whimpers, so he adds a third.
It makes her gasp, wriggling around him with how full she feels, and she mumbles, “... I can take you, you know, I’m not a virgin.”
And before she can elaborate he withdraws and thrusts himself into her in one deep stroke, eyes trained on her features the whole time. When he sees only her eyes fluttering closed, breasts arching, he says gruffly, “... I don’t really feel like hearing about who’s been here before me, babe.”
He lifts her legs and hooks them on to his shoulder, angling himself nice and deep and so deliciously warm inside of her. “You’re not lying now, are you?” He murmurs, reaching down to kiss her forehead, “... It feels good for you, doesn’t it?”
“I,” she inhales sharply as he pulls back and slides back in, still careful, still slow. “I won’t break, Eren.” She laughs, throaty, because she’s already broken, in ways that he still would never know, and when he handles her like this, so so carefully, like she’s made of glass, it makes her ache inside. “Fuck me harder… please.”
He stares at where they are joined, where he disappears inside of her wet heat, whispers, “... Fuck.” And before can think about it any harder, he grabs her by the hips and fucks her.
He drives into her like he’s dreamt of, hands rough on her legs, tilting his face into her soft skin as he bites curses into the swell of her calves. “You’re so good,” he praises, “.. so perfect. And you tried to keep this from me?”
She cries out, each thrust feeling so full. “I didn’t want to disappoint,” she whimpers, back arching from his pressure, “... Like I always do.”
He bends her over and eases into her smoothly, mumbling hoarsely, “A disappointment? God, you have no idea…” He fucks into her shallowly, the wet, slapping sounds of her body humiliatingly loud. “... Do you hear that, M?” “That’s how good your pussy makes me feel. So fucking wet for me.”
Her pants grow harsher, the mind-numbing drawl of his filthy words descending on her and making it harder for her to breathe. “So pretty when you feel good, babe,” he litters kisses along her calf, thrusting erratically, “... Gonna come again?”
He can feel himself getting close, but the urge to see her tip over one more time was simply overpowering. “It’s too much,” she sobs, his hand closing around her breast and squeezing hard. “... You can take it,” he encourages, because now he feels arrogant enough to think he can read her, he’s memorized those pretty expressions and tattooed them in his brain, knows perfectly well that quivering cunt can give him one more so they can finish together.
If the rational part of him thinks he has no business pretending he knows her, or fucking her like she’s his, he squashes it. It’s just so so easy to forget when she feels like that, looks at him with overwhelmed tears stinging her pretty eyes, gasping his name as she falls apart around him and takes him with her. So he squashes that part of him deep within along with the voice inside him that screamed when his ring brushed against her skin, or when it was buried deep inside her pussy as he fingered her.
It’s all he can do to pull out of her jerkily, ropes of cum splattering on her thighs and her mound, messily. He’s panting over her, body heavy on top of hers, but she kisses him sweetly, a smile pressing against his lips. There’s much to think about and he knows it, so much he wants to ask her and so much he wants to apologise for, because he’d been so rough, so careless fucking her without protection just now. But she laces her fingers around his neck and pulls him deeper for a kiss, and all he can feel is a blissful tiredness.
for bylb, what is it about the eremika dynamic that makes it particularly special to you?
ok so. I saw this question just as I got into my flight and I typed up a huge asf essay I’m embarrassed 🙈 it’s just me wordvomiting so I hope it makes sense 🙈
bylb was just a story of learning how to love… eren and Mikasa learning how to love (and then love each other) was very special to me. in future chapters I want to write about how they discover each other, different parts of each other, while simultaneously unlearning things about themselves and their past.
Mikasa had always wanted love, craved it more than anything else: a love like her Papa loved her Mama. I think she also grew up touch-starved. Levi took care of her, but he was too emotionally stunted himself, to be there emotionally for her. I remember writing this scene in my drafts where Mikasa is younger and has just moved in with Levi, and she says, I’m scared of the dark. Will you sleep with me?
Levi struggles with this. Struggles with getting close to people. Everyone he ever embraced was dead, after all. And he can see it in her eyes, a little girl who lost her family, who’s in a strange city with a strange man, who doesn’t smile and probably snaps too much. He wants to say yes— he wants to give her what she needs. But he can’t. So instead he says, I’ll get you a nightlight.
It’s hard because Mikasa’s love language is touch. She wants to be touched, and to be loved, like a hollow pit inside of her that she wants to stuff until it’s bursting at the seams.
She struggles with this in her teens. When she hits puberty and her body changes, and there’s hormones all around her. Stares at her body in the mirror and thinks, How can I find love? If I give him my body, will he give me love? If I make her feel good, will her touch make me feel good? And she never stopped to think about the him or the her, not for too long anyway. She’d jump in willing to try anything, just to feel something, just for a moment to be fill that aching pit inside of her.
I think she grew up hyper sexual in a way, although I believe it isn’t really encouraged to use this word nowadays. Mikasa was a girl bursting with feeling: loneliness, anger, need. It felt like a being within her, living under the surface, quelled into submission by her better sense, but she was always aware of it. Like little stitches onto her skin, repressed by her colder outward personality. But she’s afraid, afraid that if she lets the stitches rip, if she lets someone feel her warmth, that she might combust, that every ache and desire inside of her might consume the other person she touches.
Its one of many things that draws Mikasa to Eren. Anger lives in his sleep sunken eyes, glazed under the alcohol he’s so generous with. He feels like a lost boy, in a sense, stumbling around in the dark— wondering what love is, because it turns out what he had thought it was, wasn’t really that. Eren’s never been good at letting go of the past, after all. Eren seeks touch, in a way Mikasa doesn’t; to quell everything else he feels, betrayal, misdirection, foolishness. Like the carefully constructed veneer he had worked so hard for; promised his mom he’d have a family someday (got himself a wife), told her her he’d build her the house of her dreams someday (Grisha could never afford it bc he worked at a charity clinic; Eren went to architecture school). Thought he’d finally filled that hole in his chest. He’d been so angry in school, out of control— what would he do? His father was drinking himself to death, his mother was in a coma and she was never waking up. He used to let his fists keep him busy then, pain was distracting, numbing— and when he didn’t have his own, he’d take on Historia’s. They did that to each other: behaved like sponges. Took a little bit of pain for each other, whatever they could. The boy with bandages and the orphan girl with braces.
Grisha couldn’t save Carla, in the end. Not with all his knowledge of surgeries and chemicals compounds and whatever. One day he found his father drunk in the kitchen smelling of perfume. His mother had only smelt of the hospital for weeks now. He looked wrecked. Eren had gone so blind with fury he wrecked him even worse. From that day on, Eren never spoke to Grisha. Didn’t clean away his bottles, didn’t wash the puke stains out of his jackets. Didn’t give him a hug when he cried for days by Carla’s side. He’s dead to me, he told Christa once, when he was eighteen, they’d just started college, and they did this thing where they tried sleeping with each other, it wasn’t bad, especially the part when he had her in his arms after wards and they talked. She listened to him. He liked that. She helped him clear his mind.
And then Grisha was finally dead. Eren made it to his funeral then, cut his hair neat, put on a blazer. Saw his father’s cold face one last time before they put him in the ground. Right next to Carla. His heart felt like stone, heavy, weathered, weighing down the rest of his body. Let’s get married, Krista told him. One week later. One week after he’d walked around with stones in his chest. It had felt like a bandaid then. A purpose. Something that made sense.
He’d done well in university after that. Rod gave him a job. Nepotism probably since he was married to Rod’s only living heir. But he didn’t care. I want a house, Carla had told him. Pebbles leading up to the doorway, space for a greenhouse up at the back. I’ll get it for you, he’d told her. Whatever you want. He’d clutched her bony hands, and watched her feeble smile and cried. But he’d promised. Now he could actually do it.
When all of this slips out from right under him, Eren is bereft. The way Eren wants Mikasa is like a drug, he seeks her out because she helps him forget. Wants her touch, her body, her mouth, wants her brain to want her in the same way he wants her. It’s a bit obsessive, because Eren wants to hide away inside of Mikasa. He wants to know her and take her, and make space for himself inside her body so he doesn’t have to live in the world anymore.
Because all the world brings out from him is anger. Anger at his own incapacity. At his foolishness.
He approaches it confusingly at the beginning because Eren has never really dated before, and he doesn’t really know of any alternatives. To put it simply, He’s enamoured by Mikasa and he wants her. Her body, her name, her story. Wants to possess her and feel like he has something. That he isn’t where he was when he was 18, completely alone.
It’s probably an inverse of what Mikasa wants tbh, not too different. They just approach it differently. Mikasa wants to feel loved, that she wants somebody, doesn’t want to feel alone. Eren doesn’t want to feel alone either, but he isn’t ready for love. I don’t think he has these conversations with himself tho. He is reckless and extremely possessive, and generally large-hearted despite his hang ups. So he treats Mikasa the same way. But the hang ups he endures are so frustrating god I want to punch him.
I think the most interesting thing in all of it: is to write the dynamic where Mikasa, who would have done anything for love, finally learns to stand up for herself and accept the kind of love she deserves. And Eren learns how to love. Not just pick the easiest, most convenient path in life, but what it means to actually love, to clean yourself up because you want to be good for someone.
