Chainsmoking His Love 16: The Sixteenth Cleanse
Zeke Jaeger x Reader // follow #CHLZeke for updates // n.s.fw mdni
POV: second person, AFAB reader, feminine pronouns Chapter tags: nippIe play, vaginaI fingerιng, handy, praise, bathtub sex Chapter length: 4.3k
The heat pooling in your chest betrays the tone of your voice. “You’re impossible.” “Am I?” Zeke asks, his voice soft now, his fingers brushing idly at your side. He’s testing the waters – literally. “Or am I just honest?” You don’t have a chance to respond before his arms draw your body into him through the bathwater, the motion less like a trap and more like a silent plea to surrender. The warmth of his chest envelopes your back, his steady breathing slowing you. He kisses your neck, right at the nape, right where your spine crawls south.
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“Tell me something about yourself,” you say, turning your neck against the cool barrel of the copper bathtub. Over its rim, Zeke raises his eyebrows and folds the newspaper slipping between his fingers. “Something I don’t know about you.”
“What would you like to know?” he asks in return. He stretches his legs along the floor and drums the thin paper idly. “Something about my terribly boring childhood? Something about the Titans? You want a war story?”
You shrug. The warm water spills over your shoulders.
“Do you like being… a Titan?” you say after a moment’s contemplation of the phrasing.
He reaches to the small linen cart you had snuck from the laundry into his bathroom chambers, placing his paper down and picking up instead the small glass of wine balanced on the shelf. “Like,” he snorts. “Do you like not being a Titan? Do you like being just a person? Shall we survey Porco and Reiner and Pieck – see if they like it?”
It’s cold. But then Zeke laughs, and you laugh, too.
“As far as it goes, or -” he says, and interrupts himself by taking a sip, “by it, I suppose life itself, it’s certainly never perfect. I think at least we’d all agree on that.”
You wait for him to continue.
He takes another sip.
“Well,” you say into the pause, “how does it feel to be a Titan?”
“Feel?”
You look away, to the back of his head reflected in the mirror. His voice is evasive, not with the coyness you’ve gotten accustomed to, but some sort of real communication barrier. Cultural barrier. “Do you feel more natural like this or… like that?”
“I see,” Zeke says. He sets the wine glass down on the floor with a faint clink on the tile. His response sounds relieved, as if he had shared the same hesitation. “Something that you should ask Pieck in particular.”
He stretches his arms in front of him, strong forearms dusted with ginger hair.
“To me, ‘natural’ isn’t a word that describes either shape. Is it natural that we tie trousers around our waists? Is it natural that we groom the length of our hair and fingernails? It’s a condition of my life the same as any other. A condition that’s shaped me – same as preferring colder weather, same as liking tomatoes and disliking celery. No – more like being a subject of Ymir. Not what it means politically in this country or in this city; but I mean what is in your blood, in the tongue shaped in childhood to speak the language of your people, in what your father’s mother’s parents instilled in your lineage. You don’t ask for any of those roles in life, you just have them when you are born.”
He lets out something under his breath that almost sounds like Reiner, but he doesn’t repeat himself. He turns his hands into fists and circles them through the air. The bone cracks and you wince.
“So you were born a Titan?” You reach for the bar of soap and inhale it a moment – lavender, and perhaps, a faint tobacco leaf – and roll it between your hands. The lather begins to foam.
“No, that’s not how it works,” Zeke says, and he doesn’t elaborate further.
“Well. But,” you say as the muscle of his forearm weaves in his stretching, “you have power. More than I, but you’re their commander. Reiner, Porco. You do have some freedom that we don’t.”
You spread the lather across your skin absently.
Zeke makes a sound like a snort. He relaxes his arms into a wide shrug. “What freedom is there, what power, if someone’s holding onto the other end of the leash? You think that turning into – that – makes me free? In that form, I’m more bound to them than even like this.”
His hands fall, slapping sharply against his thigh.
You sink lower in the deep tub. The water laps at your chin.
“But you can do something,” you mutter, staring at the ripples shifting through the water as you draw your knees to your chest.
He picks up the wine again. “Believe me, I am. But let’s turn this around. Tell me something about yourself.”
You inhale slowly, shifting against the edge of the tub. “You know,” you say, letting your tone turn light, “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me that question before.”
“I haven’t?”
“No.”
Zeke smiles. His eyes remain steady on you. He leans forward, turning the wine in his hand for another sip before placing it down. “Alright. Then start telling me. Why are you here?”
You run your fingers along the lip of the tub, watching the water bead on your skin.
“It’s a good job,” you say. “I mean, the pay is really, really good. It’s enough to send home and still live off. Lodging is included for us, too.”
“You barely get weekends and holidays off.”
“Well,” you say, and lift your foot from the water to examine the pruned texture prickling at your toes. “Where would I even go?”
Not like we ever go anywhere…
He offers nothing. You lower your foot.
“So all of that is worth being right in their line of sight?” Zeke lifts two fingers in mock crosshairs and narrows his gaze as if taking aim at you.
“Well, you should know,” you say, and smile at the gesture, “isn’t it easier to get away with things right under their nose?”
“Oh, you little rascal, you,” Zeke laughs. His teeth shine. “Have I been such a terrible influence?”
He moves now. His arms rest on the copper rim of the tub, his faces inches from yours. His hand moves, and you lean your face towards him. He reaches past to tug at the handle, and hot water comes gurgling once more from the faucet.
“Scoot up.”
“What?”
“You’re hogging all the hot water,” Zeke says. An eyebrow quirks up as if daring you to object.
“Are you serious?”
“Have I ever struck you as someone who’s not serious?”
“I don’t know if there’s room” you say, but he’s already unbuttoning his shirt in a casual fluidity. The lean, muscular lines of his torso come revealed. The faint smattering of hair across his chest weaves a pattern in the soft light.
“There is,” he says in a tone so matter-of-fact that it ever-so-slightly stirs that low instinct of jealousy below your belly.
You sink into the water, either to make room, or to hide.
“Well?”
He discards his clothing and runs his hand along the side of the tub. You push your knees forward and feel him step into the tub behind you, hear the water slosh with the weight of his limbs displacing lazy splashes over the side.
“Come on, lean back.”
The water laps against your arms as his legs bracket yours. He catches your wrist beneath the water and runs his thumb against the back of your hand.
“Are you trying to swim away? You’re quiet.”
You hesitate, and his thumb traces a slow line against your wrist.
“I have another question.”
“You do?”
His tone is mockingly sweet. Heat rises to your face. Zeke’s hand slides in the water, pressing gently against the curve of your waist. His cock twitches at your flank, and your body aches in response.
“Another query about my Titan blood?”
“No,” you say, and you’re glad that he can’t see your face. “It’s a silly question.”
His hands lock at your waist. “Then it’ll have a silly answer.”
The heat pooling in your chest betrays the tone of your voice. “You’re impossible.”
“Am I?” Zeke asks, his voice soft now, his fingers brushing idly at your side. He’s testing the waters – literally. “Or am I just honest?”
You don’t have a chance to respond before his arms draw your body into him through the bathwater, the motion less like a trap and more like a silent plea to surrender. The warmth of his chest envelopes your back, his steady breathing slowing you. He kisses your neck, right at the nape, right where your spine crawls south.
“It’s silly,” you say again. “But I just – have you ever shared this tub with another woman?”
His arms tighten, a conspiracy between himself, the water, the tub, to keep you close.
“And I mean – more than that. Have you been close like this – have you shared yourself like this, with another?”
“You think I warmed my bed with mindless Titans on the island?”
He’s trying to make you laugh and you refuse to fall for the distraction. You scoff louder than you intended.
“You know what I’m asking,” you say plainly, refusing to engage with the riddles.
Zeke keeps his grip on your waist firm as he adjusts himself to better fit the confines of the bathtub. “I do know. I didn’t know it mattered to you.”
You stay silent. He stays silent a moment longer.
“I was blessed to enjoy more of my teenage years as a human than others could. Did you know that Reiner took on the mantle when he was twelve?”
You will not ask after the breadcrumbs left in those sentences. Zeke sighs, as if he had hoped you to. His chest swells and collapses at your back with the breath.
“So, I had what some – what I – would consider to be the typical teenage experience. Dates at the pier after training at the gymnasium. Passing notes and promises in class. Snuck a few dates into the basements of taverns with no means to pay for our drinks.” He pauses. “Spent a few nights in rooms I also had no means to pay for.”
You fidget. He kisses the back of your neck again.
“But that was a lifetime ago. It truly feels that way. You know I’ve been a little occupied.”
“Yes, with being a giant monkey.”
“And,” he says, tightening his arms, “with someone else.”
It makes you smile and you’re glad he can’t see it.
“Come on,” Zeke wheedles, and his hands begin to slowly ride up, thick through the water. “You can’t think I’ve had much of a chance to climb out of the monkey suit and into someone’s skirts.”
“I can’t, but I also can’t think you’ve been celibate that whole time as well.”
“I’ve heard,” Zeke muses, “that there are actually those that prefer seeing me as a giant monkey.”
You have to turn at that, and the corners of your cheeks are plump with a smile. “You’re ridiculous.”
Zeke kisses your cheek, and then, with a deliberate slowness, your mouth. “But you’re still here.”
His thumbs rise and first he traces around your chest. He drips over your collarbones, watching your shoulders move concave with each breath, before moving back to your breasts. He goes in slow circles, slippery in the water against the texture of your nipples. It brings a hot rush between your legs almost instantly.
His cock is stiff against your back again.
“You,” you pant, your neck beginning to ache, “are trying to distract me.”
“I’m not,” Zeke says innocently. “That’s the end of it all. I swear.”
You sigh. The distraction is working. His thumbs wash water over your skin, and your nipples ripen to peaks. You fidget back.
“Then tell me – Zeke, Zeke. Why do we have to hide so much?”
Zeke’s hands stiffen. He hides it with a pinch that makes your next words break into a high squeal, something so loud you clap a wet hand over your mouth in reflex.
“Isn’t it just easier like this? We each have work to do. And Pieck knows, Porco knows, Reiner knows. That’s all that matters. You want to, what, report to Magath?”
“No, I guess…”
You let your voice trail off as his fingers flatten, arch again.
“And did you really fear,” Zeke whispers, “that you were sharing this space with another?”
“N-no -”
“I thought you knew better than that. I’ve never taken your head to be one filed with silly fluff and candy floss.”
All you can do is keen, your voice high, when he slips a hand down between your legs. He’s quickly ridding your head of any thoughts at all. You try to force your knees apart, but the muscular band of his thighs separating you from the tub in the narrow space has left no room for more movement.
“I thought you trusted me.”
“I – do – oh – ”
Your head is tipped back, resting on his shoulder. Your hand falls, limp. His thick fingers sweep in measured caress through the water and over your skin. He cups a hand between the plump of your thighs and you tighten automatically at it. He chuckles hot at your face and kisses your cheek again.
“I was a good little boy,” Zeke says, as your hips move between his hand, the smooth metal of the tub. “I took care of my toys. I even shared my toys. But now I think I only want to play with this one. And she’s mine alone, now.”
You arch your back, squirming into his frame. He lifts his hand He nips his teeth at your earlobe and his breath is quickening to the same pace as the clumsy circles he draws over your clit. The water laps at the back of his hand, the valleys between your crowded knees.
“Right?”
You close your eyes and let out the yielding, “Mmhmm.”
Water slides over your soaped body like silk. His touch doesn’t bring the usual friction of skin on skin, but the slickness has its own seduction. The coiled spring that rests heavy below your hips tightens, weighs you down in its steady, impatient pressure. It feels as though you could leak into the bath.
“I’m…”
“You’re so wet,” Zeke whispers. “I can feel it on you.”
With that his fingers slip between your folds, teasing without entering. You turn your head into the crook of his neck, and your arm is up, reaching desperately to rake fingers through the back of his head.
“Zeke…”
“Can’t fuck you here, can I? Just too narrow,” he croons. “I don’t think the tub was made for two after all, but I’m not complaining.”
He traces his hand back down your body to find your other, take it, and bring it back to your chest. He guides your fingers to your breast and slides wet fingers into a V, into a pinch, to show the pressure he likes to apply.
“I like playing with my toy,” Zeke says, and the words growl through his teeth and rumble at your back. You open your eyes to guide your lips to his neck, where you miss the kiss you intend and instead land at the border of his beard curling under his chin.
He’s dancing his fingers along the slick between your legs and drawing it out of you like some magician’s never-ending display of magic. Playing indeed, toying with you right on that line as each touch slides over your body.
It won’t take long like this, and he knows it. He knows your body well by now, speaks the same nonverbal language as the impatient grind of your hips. So this is how he strings you out moments longer, moments that feel like hours, until at last, you let it burst from your lips:
“Please, please, more.”
“More,” Zeke says in a voice bordering on mocking, but then his fingers are in you and all is well. You lean forward, almost choking on your inhale. His arm keeps you down and tucked against him.
“More, more, for my girl,” he says thickly. With the grunt of his words, he forces two fingers higher, bends them, and crooks them.
“Oh – ”
“Mmhmm.”
It’s as if the ecstasy you feel is contagious. Zeke begins to fuck you with furious fingers, as if it were enough for him to feel. His breath is coming from his mouth, and you close your eyes for a dizzying moment, wishing that your forehead could be against his, your mouth on his, his body over yours instead of the unforgiving air waiting outside of the shallow cradle of the tub. Water cascades furiously. You can hear the splashes and puddles gathering on the floor.
Neither of you remotely care.
You toss your head against his chest and whine, clutching at his arms as if to bring him closer, to throw him off.
“I’m – I’m gonna – it’s –”
“Fast,” Zeke murmurs. “Come on then, come on, come. I want you to come.”
He wants you to come, and those words are the anchor to bring you through. His fingers almost tense in you and you prepare to give an outburst of protest, but the slowing is just a moment to re-angle before his fingers turn furious. Zeke brings his other hand down to your clit again and you strain, a foot pushing against the edge of the tub, a wave going over the edge.
“Fuck!”
The sound echoes and dances along the tiles.
It ripples out of you as that coiled spring of tension releases in orgasm. Something about the surrounding basin of water makes each internal clench feel as though it leeches out of you in pulse. You almost expect to look down to milky white rivulets, as if it had been that strong.
You don’t even realize when his hands have come away from you. You’re sitting up, your stomach muscles aching and knees cramped.
“Oh my… god.”
“Fuck,” Zeke mutters low in agreement behind you.
You raise your hands to your face and slowly press into your palms, breathing heavily. The lights spin around you when you raise your eyes again.
Zeke’s arms languish back in the water. You reach over him to clutch at the sides of the tub.
“Are – d’you need help getting out?”
“No,” you manage, the foggy heat still rising in your head.
When you get yourself turned, kneeling now to face him with the water up to your elbows, Zeke looks as flushed as you feel. He’d taken his glasses off at some point and they lie half-folded and fogged up on the tiled floor in a shallow puddle. His cheekbones are pink, and his smile is fat and lazy.
You inhale, exhale, steady yourself.
“You want to play a little more?”
“I do,” you say softly, reverently, and half-crawl closer, a hand sliding along the copper floor between his legs. You reach up and trace the lines of his muscle, higher to his chest. Zeke’s hands are firmly braced along the tub as he leans forward and kisses you. The mist and humidity of the room melts your lips together with ease.
The kiss is soft and short.
Your hand wraps delicately around his erection, the water guiding the ease of your motion before skin meets. Zeke hisses as you begin to pump, awkward, in the water, but as the flush reddens on his cheeks your grip tightens and you work up. Down.
“Oh,” he says – he moans.
The sound of it almost makes you melt anew. You can feel your lip draw back in a half-smile, and you lower yourself slightly, your knees tight between his and the curve of your waist sloping to create a heart in your hips. Zeke sucks in his breath.
Down, down, firm and up.
You cannot lower your mouth to him, and you understand his frustration with the limits of this tub; but while you are knelt down between his thighs, you can still let your thumb work as his have. You swirl around his tip, teasing the slit when you find it, coaxing each slippery bead out.
“Oh – fuck – ”
What you touch is soft. What your movements of skin dance over is a hardness beneath. Zeke is clutching at the lip of the tub with pruned fingers. You watch the whiteness seep into his knuckles and think, in a fresh flashback of memory more than words, of what made his touch wrinkle so. You pull back for a moment and move your hand between your legs again.
Slick of your orgasm still remains webbed at your thigh. Some had not been washed into the water. Zeke sees your reach and makes that delicious, raw, moaning sound again, knowing the thought before it even formed in your mind.
You want to hear it again, and so you gather your fingers and stuff your hand between your legs to swollen, dripping folds where you can bring it back to Zeke. You have the urge to taste it, or to draw it across his lips, if there were any more.
Zeke moans again.
His eyes almost roll back in his head. He lifts a hand, clutches it to his mouth and groans when your hand glides round him again. His abdomen muscles contract so slightly. His cock firms in your hand.
“Come – up here,” Zeke says, ragged. “Give me a kiss.”
You push yourself up on your elbow, and he watches your hips sway and settle in position. The pace of your pumping slows as you balance yourself, but Zeke extends that hand to you, almost crushing with a strength at the back of your head, and hunches forward to have his lips meet yours again. His fingers trace the outline of your cheekbones as he kisses you harder, deeper.
Your own fingers tighten, and a sound like no other tears from his throat into your lungs.
“Come on,” you whisper, and the sound of it is his own undoing. His hand tightens on you as his hips jerk upward. You tear away from him with regret, but watching him ride this wave is almost fascinating. Zeke is thrusting into your fist, fucking your hand as you have fucked yourself on his touch, as the water sways and lurches in currents around your bodies.
“Come on, come on,” you say again and again in soft command.
“Oh – ”
Zeke’s climax claims him. His cock jumps in your hand and your gaze is adoring as the pulsing swells. He has his head back in a delicious agony, blonde hair spilling over the rim of copper, his mouth just barely open. His collarbones take shape with each sucking breath. Droplets of water shine in his beard like individual diamonds.
He shoots on his chest, your fingertips rolling along him.
Zeke groans, something animalistic and beastly that makes your spine roll.
“Oh,” he says again, and he grabs for your wrist. His neck snaps forward, and it takes a moment for his eyes to find yours.
“That – fuck,” he says – groans – and then droops his chin, as if the battle to find words exhausts him. But then he groans again with more coherence. “Oh, fuck. I’m going to have to wash up, huh.”
“I didn’t even finish my bath,” you say, but the words are delighted and lack any trace of sourness.
“I am sorry about that,” Zeke says in a tone that implies he will not be leaving you to return to it.
You sigh and haul yourself from the tub. Your legs, though cramped, have regained some strength that orgasm saps from you; but between your thighs is still a heavy weight, a physical memory of his touch. Zeke remains immobile in the tub. Perhaps he simply cannot move yet, and, with a slightly haughty triumph, you would believe that.
You reach for a thick white towel neatly folded at the bottom of the laundry cart, and wrap yourself in it like a cloud.
“The truth is,” Zeke says suddenly – and it isn’t the words, but the somber tone, that startles you – “that it isn’t safe.”
Your feet turn back to the tub, where Zeke is sitting forward now in the cloudy water. His elbows are outstretched on his knees, and he cracks his finger joints now in hesitant, uncomfortable motions.
“If we were to be more. If we were to be seen as more,” he says. His voice is faint, somehow. Distant. But grounded, with none of the usual slyness or song.
Playtime is over.
You clutch at the towel and step closer to him.
“What do you mean?”
“I…” Zeke stops, rubs the back of his head. The hair streaks dark where the wet hand touched the strands. You almost reach out for him, prepared to tuck the towel under your armpits and sink to the wet floor, but he hasn’t even tilted his head back to look at you.
The wall is back up.
“I will tell you one day,” he says. “I will explain.”
You wait, but he offers no more.
“Well,” you say, slowly. “Then, we can talk about it later.”
Zeke makes no sign that he’s heard you. He fidgets with his hands again and says nothing. You wait a moment longer.
“There’s a washcloth and towel on the bottom rack,” you say at last. You nudge the cart a little closer to the tub, and Zeke nods at that.
“Thanks. I won’t be long,” he says. Some strength has returned to his sounds, but he still has not turned to you.
You hesitate, as if hoping for something more, some form of guidance or next clue. And when it does not come from Zeke, you turn and walk back to the bedroom, closing that dividing door behind you. You shimmy out of the towel, and slip a dress shirt of his off the hanger to button up to your throat. Easy to add to the laundry cart when you slide it out in the morning as your cover, with any other dirty clothes. Your fingers freeze in a fist for a moment on the buttons, a motion that shocks you.
You climb into his bed and turn down the covers, staring up, up, the black expanse out the window beyond. You refuse to look at the light seeping under that door. You try to organize your thoughts, to think of what to say when he gets out. But sleep steals over your bones with a devious speed, and drags you easily into the realm of dreams before Zeke comes to bed.
chapter 17