The Promise
The Heron, Chapter 7
CWs: smut, hurt/comfort, conversation about past tortures, PTSD wc: 9.1k
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A while ago, you wondered how Reiner’s kiss would feel now.
When he was younger, he always had this impulsivity about him. He kissed hurriedly, with knocking teeth and bumping noses, as if every second could’ve been potentially his last.
It makes sense, because he had a deadline.
Now, his hands tremble when he holds your face. He tastes of salt and the bite of days with little food. His stubble is coarse, and his nose is cold, wet at the tip. He’s unskilled and slow, teetering on the edge of pulling away and leaving.
It’s natural for your hand to find his cheek and caress it, coax his body into tranquillity. He needs it, and you do as well.
Reiner melts into it, fingers flexing nervously where they touch your scalp, unsure.
He sighs. Hunches down so your heels can touch the floor again. His eyes flutter closed, and he lets you guide him.
Lips part and slot. Tongues tangle, like your fingers in his hair. His chest touches yours, awakening your skin as if it had been asleep all this time. You feel him press against you, rubbing the thin robe of your nightgown against your nipples.
Reiner’s kisses have changed. He’s not rushed, he’s wistful. He’s not impulsive, he’s patient. He drags his mouth on yours, slips your lip between his teeth without sinking into the flesh. Just licks and tastes, slow and unrehearsed.
Which is odd, because he still has a deadline. A much bleaker one, at that—three days before you part, two years if he survives. Death comes sooner for those who hold the titan, and yet he holds you like that isn’t his fate.
Perhaps he’s learned to savour time, instead of rushing through it.
He pulls away enough to look at your face, thumbing the edges of your features as if committing them to memory. Each touch is apologetic and yearning, like he’s trying to say sorry again and again through the brush of his fingertips.
“I—I shouldn’t,” he falters, though you can tell it pains him to admit it. “It’s too complicated. I don’t want to hurt you again.”
“Then don’t,” you reply, feeling your breath short and your throat parched.
The hand on the nape of his neck guides him back to you, pushing his lips against yours.
“Don’t hurt me,” you pant into his mouth, all reason tossed out the window. “Just kiss me.”
You can tell there’s still that fight coursing through him, a voice in the back of his mind telling him that he doesn’t deserve it, that he should let you be, take you to your home, and give you the life worthy of the person you are, without him in the picture.
The truth is, you two are not as different as he makes out to be. He idealised you, put you on a pedestal you don’t deserve, not when your hands are as bloody as his.
So, you take them. Gently, your fingers curl around his knuckles, and you guide him to palm your throat first. His callouses scrape the line of your collarbone, thumb absently drawing the outline of your windpipe.
Then, you bring him on that sliver of skin above the collar of your nightgown. His fingers stretch and curl, trepidant. You drag them down to your chest. He doesn’t put up a fight, even if his kiss is still unsure. Your heart ricochets against his palm, then properly roars when you bring his hand over your breast.
You squeeze. Your knees buckle. You haven’t been touched like this in so long, it’s exhilarating. Shortens your breath and quickens your pulse.
“Let go,” you croon. “Take me. Just take me. Please."
Reiner stumbles forward, panting in your mouth. Of his own volition, he grabs another handful of you, as fabric and fat pillow between his fingers. Your back hits the edge of the desk. The open drawers rattle.
It’s like the air changes. Fills with tension of a different kind. Surprisingly, he’s the one who breaks it first.
His hands are cold and clammy when they curl around your thighs. Fingers dimple in, and suddenly, you’re airborne. You’re barely given the time to react—a gasp is all you manage, swallowed by his mouth. Intuitively, your legs wrap around his waist, and he hoists you up. Your arms sling over his shoulders, threading through the hair growing seldom at the nape of his neck—shivers pebble the skin there, tiptoeing down his spine.
Reiner keeps you lifted, doesn’t move—merely revels in your presence, in the feeling of your chest pressed against his. For once, you have the advantage of height, so you use it. Prop yourself a little higher, helped by his hands shifting from your thighs to your rear. You cradle his face, tilt it back so as to have him right on sight: blotched cheeks, parted lips panting for air.
You steal it, a little selfishly. Kiss him again until you can only taste him and nothing else. Warmth rushes madly up your throat, collecting at the nape of your neck where you feel your hair stick wetly. Like tendrils, it rises, ripens your cheekbones and the tips of your ears.
Soft smiles are exchanged, unseen, simply felt. The stretch of his mouth as he unravels and gives in, the smoothness of your teeth brushing his lips. Tears already shed paint dry tracks down your skin, tightening it, though the discomfort they leave is effortlessly forgotten, because he’s determined on shifting the focus to the present, leaving the past behind.
And it’s easy to give in. Easy to resign to this moment, freckled with the sugar of love and the alien though comfortable feeling of belonging.
His arms tremble the more you stay still—the weakness and the fatigue etched into his bones unravel the threads of this pocket of time you’ve sewn for yourselves. Nevertheless, Reiner doesn’t falter. Like the good soldier he is, when presented with a problem, he works for a solution.
He hoists you up, apologising for something you’re not quite sure of, as if the mere jostle of your body might hurt you. Though you don’t have the heart to remark on it. You have an inkling that he’d willingly scatter apologies into every action he carries out, hoping it would soothe his heart somehow.
You allow it, because perhaps it could help soothe yours, too.
He wobbles the two of you towards the couch, one you’ve rarely seen used, lining one side of his office. When the back of his knees hit the cushions, he drops onto them, taking you with him.
The springs moan under the added weight. Dust puffs from the covers, particles glittering under the rays of moonlight seeping through the window.
For a brief moment, it’s quiet. Your lips have parted, though they’re still close enough to touch. Reiner basks into you; in the attention you give him. Each touch of your hand is nuzzled, his palm pressed to your knuckles as if you could pull away in case he didn’t keep you there.
Like when he held that letter to his chest, crumpled within your fist.
He takes greedy eyefuls of you, tracing the line of your mouth, the curve of your cheekbone now replenished, healthy in colour because of him, because of the care and stubbornness he put into each meal he prepared.
Then, his eyes find yours. Soften. The skin on his knuckles is harsh, bitten by wind and perhaps ceaseless training. It scrapes your cheeks, lands gently down the curve of your jaw.
In awe, he whispers, “Look at you.”
You can’t help but smile, those bashful ones that have heat crawl up your neck.
“Not much to look at,” you reply with a flustered tongue. “Feels like I’ve aged one hundred years since you last saw me.”
His eyes crinkle, a small huff from his nose in acknowledgement of your joke, no matter whether you truly believe in it or not. He doesn’t. His finger draws the line of your neck, follows the ringlets of the necklace that now sits around it.
Between thumb and forefinger, he picks up the heron. Traces the ridges of craftsmanship and the dents of what it has been through. Memories whirlpool in the gem sitting in its eye. He looks at it keenly, as if he could go back in time and watch himself clasp it around your neck.
“Still as beautiful as I remember,” he murmurs, before gracing you once again with the sincerity of his eyes. “If not better.”
Your heart flutters, chest warming up. Flattery has never been something you revelled in, though it is the first time you hear it from his mouth, said with the low gravel of his voice. It has a different sound, doesn’t land bitterly like empty compliments from the odd stranger—instead it feels like cinnamon, earthy and smooth. Sweet and nostalgic.
Unable to form a proper sentence, you decide to translate the words that fail you into actions. The tip of your nose nudges his, and you kiss him again. Reiner melts into it, stretching his head against the top of the couch, arms now wound around your waist.
Suddenly, all the four years spent apart from him drop onto you. All that restlessness, that desperate need to fix something inside you, hoping it would fix the rest around yourself. Needing the world to stop turning, only so it could give you time to absorb the events and rest.
Dead weight pushes down your ribcage, making breathing that much harder. There’s impatience in each touch; a kiss started as soft, rapidly turning feverish.
He matches that passion, that skin-burning heat. Meets your mouth with equal fire, explores your back with big hands. He fists your nightgown, lifts it enough to uncover at least your hips, where the fabric bunches and rests.
Finally, the warmth of his skin touches yours. Hands gripping your ass, kneading the flesh. Spreads, greedy, explores between your thighs where you’re now sodden and stretched, legs kept apart by his thighs.
His breath hitches in his throat. Similarly, you stutter, mouth trembling as he grasps your lower lip between soft teeth.
“God, I missed you,” he pants. “I missed you so much.”
Your voice is high-pitched and breathy, muffled against his lips. “I—I need to—”
“I know, love,” he coos, not patronising, instead trying to soothe both yours and his desperate urgency. “Let me. Let me just—”
His hands wrap around your backside again. Lift you slightly, freeing his thighs of your weight. Your eyes are closed, body focused only on his kiss, the hunger of his mouth and that of his strength—one that suddenly infuses him, in spite of how much weaker he seems.
The world around you spins, turns upside down. You don’t bother opening your eyes, trusting him entirely with your safety, until softness wraps around you when your back gently hits the cushions. It smells of dust, of stale air, and of his body pungent with sweat and the linen of sheets where he slept.
He leaves your mouth, and you follow him, whining at the loss of his touch. Reiner doesn’t like that sound, so he leans down again to leave a peck on your lips.
You find him hovering above you, hands planted on either side of your face. His mouth opens. Closes. Babbles on words that he doesn’t manage to utter, perhaps unsure of how to put his thoughts into feasible sentences. He’s flustered, cheeks pink and eyes frantic, wet lashes fanning his cheekbones.
You decide to make it easy for him.
“I need you,” you plead. “Please.”
You touched him in the right places. His exhale is a stutter, pulse frenzied and loud, felt underneath your fingertips when you skim them over his chest. He nods once, resolved, and yet still timid in his own peculiar way.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t give you time to coddle him, and maybe he doesn’t want that. His lips find the line of your jaw, skimming down your throat where he lingers: mouth pursed, he sucks on your neck with the intent of leaving his mark. It robs you of sounds, of breathy whispers of his name, of quiet please and yes— sounds he wants to hear, so he does it again, travelling southward.
Your nightgown is in the way. He gives it a light tug, but the position doesn’t allow you to undress comfortably, so you simply reach for the hem and ruffle it in your hands, letting it rest right above your hips. Your body, your heart, doesn’t want to waste more time.
Neither does Reiner.
Trembling fingers hook your legs above his shoulders. There, your vision fractures.
The last time you looked at yourself in the mirror was in Paradis.
Each time you scrub yourself in the tub, you keep your eyes staring ahead, hoping the sponge and the suds will do the rest. Each time you dress, you rely on touch alone. No matter how insistent you’ve been on finally facing yourself and the aftermath left on your body, you never truly had the heart.
Now, your thighs frame his face. You haven’t looked at those either, never for long enough to really understand the length of what has remained. Aside from sparse wounds, both old and recent, it’s what’s between them that leaves you breathless.
The inner skin, where the flesh should be softer, is now just a constellation of rubbery scars, burnt flesh whose scorch you can still feel. The rods dipped in the fire, pressed close to your sex as if to mark you as theirs—mere cattle, to their eyes.
Your stomach churns. Bile threatens to burn your throat, acidic and merciless.
Reiner buries his nose in the skin of your thighs, inhaling your scent to have it etched in his mind. Then, his eyes flit to you, landing gently like a feather.
“Don’t go there,” he murmurs, catching on seamlessly.
And he’s right.
Not now. Not now.
You’ve had months to mull over it. You’ve had plenty of time to face it, and you never did. You wouldn’t call yourself a coward, because some things just take time—but now isn’t the time. They robbed you of everything already; you’re begging your mind not to let them rob you of this, too.
Not now.
You repeat it, over and over, to quell your brain and force it to focus on what is good, what is healing. Focus on the bits of love scattered around you, sprinkled on your body like new snow: his hands on your legs, smoothing tranquil lines down your skin. The freckles dotting the bridge of his nose, the moles running up his neck. The wetness of his mouth when it kisses your skin to soothe it, as if he could absorb the anguish and digest it in your place.
You deserve this. You want this, crave this.
And you’re allowed to want, to hunger.
Your mouth fails you, but not your heart, not your body. Your head reaches for his hair, settles comfortably in the tuft of blond strands.
Reiner is comfort. Reiner is safe.
His mouth stretches in the softest of smiles. “Like that, my love. Stay with me.”
You dip your chin in a nod, eyes misty and ruddy.
If there’s someone who understands, it’s him. If there’s someone whose soul has been ravaged, just like yours, it’s Reiner. It clicks—that pull, finally bringing you where you should be.
Where you belong. Where you’re not owned, and neither is he.
His head turns, placing a kiss on the inside of your knee, then up, and up, tracing soft skin dotted with hair, scars that don’t allow its growth, blemishes and silver lines. Worshipped, the whole of you, independently of beauty.
His mouth finds you, finally. Hot breath fanning between your legs. Nose buried in your curls, eyes closed. His fingers flex with anticipation and muted nervousness, though you catch it in his eyes—that twinkle of insecurity, something utterly misplaced, and yet so obviously belonging to him.
When he first flicks his tongue, you can feel yourself awake. Nerves alight, vibrating. Pleasure ripples, invades you, takes unmitigated control of your hands, and they clench mercilessly at the strands of hair stuck between your fingers.
The sudden realisation that you might have caused him more pain than necessary shocks your eyes open, but they only find a man lying on his front, acting utterly devoted. Gaze locked downward, shrouded by heavy eyelids.
And then he dives in again, this time flattening his tongue against your pussy and dragging upward. You groan at it, tighten your fingers and punch the cushions underneath you with your offhand. It’s been so long. So long since you’ve been touched, adored with such furore, enjoyed a moment of pure, utter selfishness.
Selfishness feels good. Reinvigorating. You feel alive in a way you haven’t experienced in ages, or perhaps ever at all. And Reiner feeds this grandeur. He wants you to feel like you’re being worshipped, because you are.
He holds your legs apart with merely the breadth of his shoulders. Pulls back to spread your pussy, watching intently as slick gathers before him. His eyes are hooded, captivated—licking his lips as if he can still taste you there, exploring with his fingers downward first, then up. There, he catches your clit, and you jolt.
He picks up on it, switching his focus to your face. You’re propped on your elbows, fixed on the picture he paints—how good he looks, dedicating himself to you, framed by your legs.
When your glances meet, Reiner brushes his finger over your clit again. Your mouth parts, choking on a moan too weak and shy to properly make it past. His eyes widen, a thrill dashing through them.
Slowly, his mouth approaches you again, and he flicks his tongue. You exhale, legs trembling on his shoulder. Once more, he tries. Then, twice. Until finally, he curls his lips around your clit and sucks.
Your head collapses back. Teeth sink into your cheek to chew on curses that are trying to brawl with the tight seal of your mouth. Reiner insists, though.
“Let me hear you,” he says, soft like silk.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you, he returns hungry and determined, and all you can do is to heed him, voice feeble and pitching upward.
“Fuck!”
You can feel his smile broaden, cheeks puffed against your thighs. Though he knows better than to pull away and instead relaxes between your legs, working on you tirelessly.
Apparently famished, he feels like eating you whole. Messy tongue and slurped spit, the hooked bridge of his nose nudging your clit when he ventures downwards, the dents of his fingers as they dig into your thighs.
He finds your hole, circling the rim teasingly, smearing you with his spit and your wetness to make the stretch flow gently. He tests around, focusing his tongue upwards—where you need him, where you tell him to stay.
“There,” you gasp. “Shit, don’t—don’t move from there—”
Maybe a bit too eager to heed your command, he acts a bit harshly. It stings like nettle, teeth puncturing your skin where it’s softest, stealing a hiss from your mouth. However, the first flinch you give, he internalises, relenting until your thighs soften around his head.
Then, his finger prods inside. Just one at first, as you stretch deliciously around his knuckle. You fist his hair tighter, and he takes it in stride, keeping up with his touch. Reiner tries it all: deeper thrusts, more shallow ones. The latter you like more, so your mouth decides to run and give him what he wants.
Sounds. Mewls. Moans.
“Like that,” you mouth in a breath, fighting your eyes to stay open to keep watching the vision he paints. “Fuck, just like that, Reiner—it’s perfect.”
The only way you know he’s heard you is because his pace doesn’t change. Ever so devoted, he keeps the rhythm you told him to follow, undeterred, as his tongue lavishes your clit.
You watch him—eyes closed, brows pinched in focus, nose buried in your curls. No tears, though the salty tracks left by the ones he’s shed still cross his cheeks—blotched pink, hues of red to the tips of his ears.
Fondness makes your chest hurt, though it’s easily forgotten when he inserts another finger. The sudden intrusion, while welcome, is unexpected. Your hips nudge away, but they don’t make it far.
Reiner nestles his free hand in the crease of your thigh and snatches you forward again. Both fingers slam inside you, and your voice cracks in a moan.
“Fuck!” Curses stream through gritted teeth—pleasure and pain woven in one. “Shit—fuck, Reiner!”
His response doesn’t translate into words, tongue busy stealing those sounds from you. Instead, he nuzzles your pussy, hooks his arm around your thighs and settles his palm on your stomach, pressing down. A grip that’s firm and demanding, a shackle that forbids you from pulling away again.
He’s desperate. Brows knitting tighter, tongue working faster. That pinch of fear you saw as he held your hand and his letter, once again—as if you might draw back, as if you’re nothing but a dream and he’s bound to wake up to a world in which you don’t exist.
It escapes you, really. Leaves your mouth like it’s the most natural thing.
“Baby,” you heave, finding it hard to speak when your breath is so shallow. “I’m not going anywhere.”
There, Reiner comes back for air. Fingers leave your pussy to clench around the lack of him, only to replace his tongue and glide over the stiff kink of nerves that’s your clit. Clumped lashes shadow his eyes, honey iris swallowed by the black of pupils.
He gulps, mouth slick and ruddy. Voice like gravel, choking on love and lust. “Promise me.”
You read him right, then. Fear grapples with him constantly, leeches off him and bleeds him dry. It’s harrowing to see him so unbelievably scared of losing you once again. And fear behaves like a plague, spreads and infects you—or maybe you were always afflicted, always victim to its play.
Just as afraid.
You nod, throat tight. “Yes—yes, I promise.”
Reiner gazes at you in awe, blinks away the mist. His cheek rests on your thigh, eyes falling closed in quiet thoughts, pinched with relief.
“Thank you.” Mouth to your skin, reverent tongue—up and up. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”
Until he’s on you once more, punching a gasp from your mouth and tears from your eyes when he enters you again.
His fingers scissor, prod around, experiment, and before you can even tell him where to touch, he’s found a spot that robs you of that choice. His brows flutter: hearing, noticing, taking stock. Reflexes of a hawk have always been his most prominent quality when he was a scout. They’re the perfect attributes for a soldier, though you never thought they’d apply just as exquisitely to a lover.
Your breath turns shallow, broken by cries, growing louder and wetter. Thighs of syrup, mellow on his shoulders. Oppositely, your stomach tightens. Coils wound around it flare up your arms and down your legs, reaching the tips of your fingers and toes.
It feels good, in a way that is different. He’s methodical and precise. Follows the instructions you say and those you don’t. Picks up clues, appears to know you inside out, even if he’s never touched you before.
He’s there to please you, but there’s a selfishness about his touch that you’ve yet to see. It’s thrilling. He wants to be there, between your thighs, not only because you like it, but because he loves it. Craves to wreck you, keep you, show you that it’s where he yearns to be, and where he wants you to stay.
His fingers follow shallow thrusts, slow and measured. They push upwards, dragging slowly against the front of your walls. His tongue dances in circles, lips pursed around your swollen clit, unsheathed by his thumb, sucking lightly.
He’s deft, masters your body language swiftly. He opens his eyes and looks up, finding the mess he’s made of you—sweat beading your forehead, muscles rippling beneath the nightgown draped over your stomach, fabric folded like marble. The curve of your mouth as it fails to plead, lost in the breaths he steals.
He groans. Rumbles against you with a force propelling from his chest, vibrating through you in waves. Your hand acts before you can think, and tightens around his hair, further pulling him in.
Reiner’s eyes roll back. Your legs close around his head.
And there it blooms, like vines growing up your stomach, your chest. Branches tighten around your throat, envelop you in a grip that has you scratch his scalp and dig your nails into the cushions of the couch.
A string of soft yes’s turns into garbled syllables, grows in volume and scratch, mixing up his language and yours.
Your orgasm is strong, burning—and the first in months.
A groan signals it, wrecking your chest as it’s liberated from it. Reiner’s eyes snap open, finding you in all your broken glory, though you’re too lost in the ecstasy to notice. Fog clouds your thoughts and senses, gooseflesh bumps your skin, blossoming in the waves that ripple from his tongue to the shore of your stomach.
Head thrown back, eyes shut. Your throat burns with each breath you take, your bones turn soft, legs melting around his head. Reiner’s mouth leaves you, perhaps too abruptly, though the rest of you is still throbbing in the afterglow, so you barely notice. The only thing properly giving it away is the sudden coldness brushing where you’re still hot and wet.
The space between your back and the sofa is filled by warm skin, arm snaking between the dampened fabric and your sodden back. Sweaty and sticky, his chest isn't different either, as it’s pressed against yours, slick even through your nightgown. His other hand cradles the nape of your neck, where it rests soft and idle, lifting you up that much to leave your head limp.
Reiner kisses you, just like before. Not with the fervour he used to ruin you, but with the tenderness and fluster he wore when your lips first touched, that night. You taste yourself on his tongue, the wetness left on his chin softening the scrape of his stubble. When you finally manage to summon enough willpower to open your eyes, you find him utterly astounded, as though he has never witnessed something of the sort before.
Wide eyes, pupils blown. Agape mouth tilting in a way that hints at the amazement of a new discovery. Slight smile, twinkling in awe.
“That—” he utters. “You—”
You hum, still dazed and syrupy.
“—Are breathtaking.”
You are much past the point of pretending that the soft rasp of his voice isn’t doing wonders for your heart. Much past the point of denying that your cheeks don’t swell with heat and smiles whenever he admires you so openly.
“And you are really good.” It’s all you can muster. You almost want to punch yourself for your lack of vocabulary, but Reiner’s boyish smile and ruddy cheeks have you melt on the couch before you can berate yourself.
He chuckles shyly, shaking his head in what looks like bashfulness. “I—I wasn’t aware of that.”
You grin lazily. “Glad to have been eye-opening.”
His eyebrows flutter. “More than eye-opening. Unforgettable. Even better than what I had imagined.”
“Oh, you’ve imagined it?”
He nods seriously, as if discussing really important matters that could change lives. “I have dreamt of doing this for far too long, yes.”
Quietly, you decide you won’t share that you’ve also dreamt of him doing this for far too long.
“Mh,” you hum. “So, you’ve trained in your sleep. That explains it.”
You also won’t share that you wish for this to be the only reasonable explanation, because the thought of Reiner’s ruddy cheeks buried between someone else’s legs has your stomach retching.
A snort. “In my sleep, in my wake, between meetings, at lunch—”
It makes you laugh. He eats it, placing his mouth on yours again, as his own lips stretch in a smile.
The conversation dies there, in between jokes and puffed cheeks and soft laughter. With your body still glowing in the bliss he gave you, as he promises more when his tongue slides into your mouth, deepening the kiss.
His waist is trapped between your legs. Needless to say, it’s what’s between his thighs that catches your attention. Solid warmth, sliding dryly between your folds. The friction of the linen of his pants is harsh, especially when you’re this sensitive—you can only imagine how arduous it must be for him to search for pleasure and only find rough fabric. Because he is seeking it. His hips rut against your cunt, grinding in twitches that feel involuntary—almost as if his body is lost in this tireless search to find the warmth his mouth has already experienced
Your hand traces his chest, fingers dancing on the ridges of his ribs. Then his stomach, as it ripples underneath your touch, following the trail of hair drawing a line in the middle. There, you find the first obstacle: a couple of strings tied loosely just above where his hair grows thicker. His hand catches yours, inviting you to pull down his pants. He helps, kicking them away as far as he can without parting from you. They coil around his ankles, and it seems enough.
Curious and impatient, you find him straight away, wrapping your fingers around his shaft.
“Fuck—"
Reiner leaves your mouth unattended, stuttering on his own curses and breaths. Concerned, you take a step back, retracting your own hand. You don’t know what has shocked you more: if his sudden worry, or the curse that so seamlessly has left his mouth—realising that you’ve never heard one from him, realising how deliciously filthy it is when spilling from lips that have only ever uttered praises and apologies.
Time comes to a standstill, where his eyes search yours, but yours inevitably fall downward.
Reiner’s cock doesn’t spring up; it hangs. Lands flat against your lower belly, giving you a visual of how deep it would reach.
Crossed by a thick vein that throbs under the touch of your gaze, engorged all the way to the blushing tip—wet, pitifully irritated by the repeated rubbing against fabric. Wild curls spread above his pelvis, light like his hair and thinning as they venture up his stomach.
It's mouthwatering.
However, your thoughts are interrupted by shaky fingers engulfing your hand. Reiner guides it back around his cock. You watch him shudder, eyes fluttering and fighting the urge to roll back, instead focusing on how your hand fits around him.
A pearl glistens on the head of his cock, weeping in a drop that you collect with your thumb.
Reiner cracks, head collapsing on your shoulder as his voice dies in a whimper.
You hush him.
“It’s alright,” you breathe.
His mouth is open, puffing on your neck. It ventures: pursing, sucking, taking your skin between trembling lips.
“Fuck you’re soft,” he whispers, completely disarmed.
Your strokes are slow when they begin. Skin pulled downwards, until your pinky touches the curls at the base of him, before returning to the head of his cock—wet and pulsing, vibrating with the excitement you can feel running up his veins. Each twirl sends shivers wrecking both his spine and his voice—one he tries to swallow, perhaps shy in the endeavour of sharing it. Moans, whimpers, groans: some escape him, tickle the side of your neck, and every time they do, your stomach tightens.
Your other hand busies itself with his hair, cradling him to nestle on the line of your shoulder.
Curses are forced out of his mouth, hanging by his teeth. Garbled nonsense, the sweetest of praises. Until one that you can hear clearly, mouthed against your ear, the tip of his nose notched behind your lobe.
“I want to fuck you.” He shakes, breathing out and breathing in. “Please. Please, I want to fuck you.”
His plea wrecks you. Lightning hits your chest, pulsating through your bones.
Bound to happen. You had catalogued it already in the things that would inevitably occur from the moment you placed your lips on his.
Bending your neck away, you focus on his face.
Brows pinched, lined between. Lashes spiky with tears of past sorrow and present pleasure, with the sweat collected from his forehead and your neck. The longer strands of hair stick to his temples and curl behind his ears. His mouth is swollen, pink and alive, thrumming with the need of another kiss.
You gulp, struck by the image he paints. “Sit up.”
Reiner nods vigorously. He pulls away, wincing at the loss of your hand around him. Transfixed, your eyes watch his cock bounce once free from your fingers. Just for a second, you wonder if you should get on your knees and suck him off. Feel that thick vein running across his shaft flutter when you’ll get him all the way to the back of your throat.
Spit collects on your tongue, though you don’t have much time to think about it, because Reiner seems impatient. He grabs the back of your head and pulls you up for a kiss, stopping your imagination from running.
Quickly, you straddle him, knees digging in the cushions on either side of his thighs.
He looks at you with eyes like slits, heavy with lust and glossy in adoration. You feel loved just like that, just with the brush of his gaze. Forgetting that your body, now sitting taller, is not the one you wanted him to see. Not the flawless one you once had, plump with youth and hope.
Though one he loves, nonetheless.
His hand reaches for your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs. “I don't deserve to be this lucky.”
“Well, you have me,” you say, biting your cheek to tone down your smile. “The best you can do is make the most of it, no?”
Reiner huffs from his nose, eyes dancing about your features.
“I’m never letting you go again.” His lips twitch. “Not if I can help it.”
You lean forward, tipping your nose against his.
“Is that a threat, Braun?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. You’ve missed his smile, the genuine one that shows teeth and dimples his cheeks. He’s only offered glimpses of it, though never enough to satiate the ache of nostalgia.
“A promise.” He tilts his head, noses slotting together and out of the way. “To find you, always.”
Your eyes soften. Fingers brush his cheek. He leans into it, but instead of turning his head to kiss your palm, he angles forward and kisses you.
A kiss you give back, just as needy, as your hand encircles him at the base and guides the tip to meet you where his mouth has already been.
“Always,” you promise, too, holding his eyes.
Slowly, you sink onto him, hands finding purchase on his shoulders, foreheads touching.
His hips stutter upwards, unsupervised, searching for something that seems instilled in his biology, into his very being. When the first inch of him enters you, Reiner’s head limply hits the backrest of the couch.
“Oh, fuck.”
Yes. Deliciously filthy.
Lashes fan his cheekbones. His breath is staggered, rough—catching in his throat with the sharpness of talons. He barely manages to get it out, chest rising and falling rapidly.
He’s thick and hard, stretching you wide, toeing the line between pain and bliss. While gravity might help you, it’s difficult to take him, even as wet as you are. However, your efforts are stopped by a gentle hand on your stomach. Your focus rapidly switches from his cock splitting you open to the sudden look of apprehension on his face.
“Are you alright?” You ask, tenderly touching his cheek.
His throat bobs. Looks down to where the head of his cock has already disappeared inside you. You feel it twitch, tremulous as it’s engulfed by tight velvet, wet because of him.
“Yes, yes I—” He stutters. Smooths back the hair from his forehead. “I—I just—I have never done this.”
Your heart flutters, mouth dry.
His eyes avoid you, staring at anything that isn’t your face or the place where you two join. The tips of his ears tinge a furious red, lips parted to take in fat mouthfuls of air—debating on whether to be preoccupied with your reaction, or with the pleasure that has him gasping for air.
Gently, your fingers find his jaw, trace its outline—the prickly stubble, the dent halving his chin. Reiner’s eyes flit to you, somewhat shy, though still enamoured.
You both have barriers to cross tonight. Obstacles to overcome. Two people who’ve grown apart, led different lives, and found each other in the direst of times. Marked by war on body and soul.
But people, nonetheless.
Existing in a timeframe that isn’t kind by any means. One that hasn’t shown mercy or pity. Only freckled by cruel hands and dreadful destinies. And still you’re willing to fight for it—that bit of humanity still left, that blinding hope that ties you. Not a chain, not a string. Golden sunlight wrapped around your fingers, binding you through time and space.
Not scouts, or warriors. Not victims, or weapons.
Just people.
Your head tilts, eyes gentle. “Do you want to stop?”
Reiner blinks.
The wrinkle between his brows smooths over, mouth relaxed. Then, his hand reaches upwards, mimicking yours to caress your cheek, under your eye, thumb tracing slow lines on your mouth. Salt and cinnamon, again, as if they’re still lingering where he last touched you.
A wordless answer. He shakes his head just barely, keeping his eyes on you with profound kindness. Then, he pulls you in, resting his forehead against yours.
The rest flows naturally. Your lips find him as he meets you halfway, savouring your breath and the crackle of your voice when you finally sink fully.
There, Reiner’s arms engulf you, wound tight around the hollow of your spine. With a jagged moan, he hides in the crook of your neck, where he stutters on sentences you can’t quite understand—praises, and those you’ve heard plenty. Curses, too, and those still strike you, since it’s not often you’ve heard them fall from his mouth.
“Breathe,” you whisper, cradling the back of his head.
He heeds you, ever so devoted. Breathes in deep, exhales shakily as his whole body shudders.
Somehow finding strength within himself, he lifts his trembling head only to knock his forehead on your shoulder with a sigh. He climbs the length of your neck with kiss after kiss, until he finally forces his mouth to align with your own, looking up at you.
Throat stretched, breath shallow and hurting, as if air grates his windpipe each time that he takes it in. He’s a sight to behold, wrecked and enamoured.
“Fuck me,” he pants. “Please, fuck me.”
His taste hits the back of your throat. You swallow it—him. Mouth open when it crashes on his, catching the air he gives instead of the one around you.
You lift your hips, holding onto his shoulders for dear life. His fingers flex, dig into the flesh and release—helpless in the effort to let the tension go.
You watch his eyes glaze over, jaw hanging open. You’re not faring much better, thighs widened and hamstrings taut. Stretched and full in a way that snags your breath. It has you roll your head back, look at the ceiling with a staggered groan when you sink down, and he fills you to the brim again.
And as he asked, you fuck him. You fuck him languidly, feeling every inch of him that leaves you empty, and drowning in the greed of wanting it to fill you again. Reiner coils his fist around your nightgown, flexing and tightening until his knuckles click.
Each time you drop down, you roll your hips to grind your swollen clit against his pelvis. That, combined with the girth of him stretching you wide, spurs your eyes to roll behind the curtain of your lashes. It scratches you in places no one’s ever reached, deep and merciless, even as slowly as you’re moving. Exquisitely balanced on the thin blade of burning pleasure and scorching ache. Though the fire is what they share. You feel it burn, flames licking your skin from where he fits so perfectly within you, up until the base of your skull.
Dazed, you find his face—hardly managing to piece his features together in this fog of bliss you’re lost in.
His eyes are equally unfocused, moving from your lips and upward. Throat locked, breath clipped. He blinks once, twice, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“C-can you look at me?” His voice is feeble and breathless. “Please look at me—”
Reiner turns your head his way, directing your line of sight to his face. He’s entirely spellbound, glassy eyes and parted mouth. Looks at you in a way that is reserved for gods, traces your lips with his thumb and fits it between your teeth, finding no resistance on your part.
“Keep looking at me—God, fuck—” He croaks. “I need to see you.”
Panting, you obey. Wrap him a little closer, granting him the sight of your face as he explores it with his eyes and his hand. Your pace picks up, then, perhaps infused with this thing he’s imbued you with—this complete adoration you’ve never once experienced, devotion that shouldn’t be directed to a mere human being.
Maybe he was right. Maybe you are a devil, or a witch.
But he was grateful for it, wasn’t he?
The sound of skin slapping on skin grows louder, much like his moans. Reiner likes your sounds, so he grants you his. Groans, sighs, whimpers and sobs, all cracking through gritted teeth. Praises, too. Those fall easily, though, like his jaw is well-oiled for that purpose, like it’s natural for it to comply.
You’re gorgeous.
His hips buck into yours, lifting off the sofa with no little effort. He hits something within you that has you see stars, but you follow orders dutifully, and instead of rolling your eyes away, you keep looking at his.
Perfect. So fucking perfect. I—I can’t believe this is real.
The pad of his thumb is soaked with your spit. He smears it down your mouth, your chin. Holds your jaw firmly yet kindly, like he always is. His gaze brushes your features, draws them within his mind. Keeps it there—perhaps like a memory to leaf through when he’s lonely.
My girl. My girl. I missed you. I missed you so much.
Your stomach tightens. You roll your hips down, grinding your pussy against his pelvis.
“I love you,” he breathes.
You should be smart enough to understand that no confession is entirely truthful when spoken during the bliss of sex. But it’s not just sex, how could it be? No impending orgasm could make his eyes look this earnest, no shivering pleasure could crack his voice so sincerely.
Your movements don’t stop. Even if they did, they’re met with the unsupervised tilts of his hips, inexperienced and out of rhythm, but still showing his complete involvement in the act. How he wants this. How he wants you.
How he’s missed you. How you’ve missed him.
“D-Don’t say it back, I—” He croaks. “I needed—needed to tell you. I just needed you to know.”
Your throat is parched. Your legs ache. Everything about you is ablaze, awakened, even those parts of you that should be scarred and insensitive somehow forgot to be such. A stone in your throat floods your mouth with salt, hinders your words as they sit unsure on the tip of your tongue. Not ready, not yet—but there. There, just there.
You don’t know how to voice it, so you transfer it to him with the same reverence he’s shown you.
“Come here. Come here,” you breathe, curling your fingers at the nape of his neck.
You bring his mouth to yours. Kiss him as you fuck him, slamming down your ass against his thighs. Reiner wraps his arms around your middle, encircling you entirely. His mouth whispers praises to your skin—endless I missed you’s, endless I love you’s.
A bubble of glass. Untouched. The world out there doesn’t matter; it has no say. It’s just you and him, and that silver necklace that holds it all. All the memories, each kiss you shared, each innocent touch of youth and all the greedier ones claimed now.
Each word collides against it. Each I love you a new dent in its image, perpetually etched on its wings.
Reiner’s breath grows weary, his mouth reluctantly giving in and parting from yours.
“Fuck—”
You mouth it too. Even though you’re not close, it doesn’t matter—not now.
“Shit, fuck—”
Quickly, you pull your hips away. The emptiness inside you feels wrong and unwelcome, leaving your whole body to shudder with the rejection of being deprived of him. Even if you're still drunk on feelings and sex, you manage to wrap your fingers around his shaft, twirling your hand from base to tip.
“Come on, Reiner,” you breathe. “Cum for me—go on, baby—”
Speechless, breath shackled inside his throat, he bumps the back of his head against the top of the couch. Reiner cums with a groan that rips through his chest, all flushed pink and beaded with sweat—rising rapidly, uncontrolled. Cock throbbing between your fingers, jumping each time your hand strokes downward.
His cum lands in ropes on your nightgown and his belly, dripping slowly and meddling with the curls at the base of him. Droplets on your fingers, ones that you bring to your mouth, licking them clean when you notice his eyes are once again set on you.
He gulps. His cock bobs against his belly, where it rests now as it softens.
“You’re going to kill me,” he murmurs, no animosity in his tone nor his face—one that looks more alive than you’ve ever seen, and finally blushing fully. All of him, ruddy and glowing, no blotches in sight.
He pulls you in. Smashes his lips to yours in a kiss that’s devouring, open, and still soft. Savouring. Slow. No need to rush through time, because there is no such thing as grains of sand piling up in this bubble of glass.
“God, you’re perfect,” he says.
You smile. Chuckle. Laugh. It bubbles slowly from your stomach and then erupts, bursting from your mouth with a joy unmatched.
You hold his face in your hands, watching the dimples bloom on his cheeks, the lines of his mouth deepening the more he shows his teeth.
Seemingly revitalised, Reiner lets his lips travel down your neck. Kissing and nipping, though you figure it must be hard to purse his mouth when he’s so busy smiling. You feel the smoothness of his teeth against your pulse, the delirious beating of his heart under your palms, the waves of happiness thrumming in his chest—breathy chuckles, tinged golden.
Drunk on bliss. Euphoric. Beautiful, untainted joy.
His murmurs buzz against your neck. “You smell so good. I could eat you.”
You nuzzle his scalp, not bothering to swallow your smile. “Not a comforting thought coming from a titan shifter.”
Soft teeth bite the curve of your neck admonishingly. “Very funny.”
“It is the truth.”
His shoulders shake with the quietest of laughs. “Do I have to rephrase it, then?”
“Mhmh.”
“Right,” Reiner sighs, tilting his head back to meet your eyes. “I could eat you out.”
You purse your lips in a cheeky grin, brow cocked. “Again?”
“Over and over,” he insists, returning his mouth to your neck. “And never get tired of it.”
Tingles spread down your spine, skin pebbled in goosebumps. It’s quiet and breathy, intimate and reverent, under this dome of glass.
Until it cracks, at once, when his hands snake underneath your robe.
You can feel him—or better, the lack of him, where the skin has lost its sensitivity, and suddenly remembers of its scars. Where your stomach is not flesh anymore, but jagged memories.
For a moment, you’re disoriented. Frozen stock-still even as his fingers lift your nightgown, even as his mouth finds purchase on your chest—right there where the softer flesh turns bone. A chaste peck. Dry kisses that are only adoring and lack the lust you saw until now.
Thick fog shrouds the clarity of your bubble of glass, and the fissure gives in, letting dark tendrils reach you.
Your breath grows heavy. Agitated.
You dare to look down.
Thick lines zigzag your belly, overlapping each other somewhat in the middle—remnants of your fall, the wires of the ODM gear that saved your life and doomed it at the same time. The jagged curves of knives, the deeper ones of whips, branching from your back and clawing at your sides.
The heel of your hand presses against his forehead, pushing him back. Pliantly, he gives in, letting your nightgown pool at your hips again.
“Reiner—”
“Are you okay?” Is the first thing he asks, and it’s the most genuine you’ve ever heard him say it.
Limply, your hand falls to cup his cheek in a weak caress, given mainly to anchor you to something solid, as the world threatens to swallow you in its maws.
Reiner kisses your palm tenderly, understanding the urgency in your eyes.
“I—I don’t know if—”
If I can look at it. At me.
You’re the one who stutters, now. You’re the one whose words can’t come out, whose cheeks burn furiously, whose heart thunders—speechless, afraid, horrified.
Will you ever get rid of it, is the real doubt that rankles you. Will you ever manage to find a way out, a way to feel anything different than this. You’re aware that the wounds are still fresh, even if physically scabbed over, so you’re willing to give yourself some grace. But it’s the future ahead that scares you, because what if you will never be yourself again?
What if you’ll forever be the victim they made?
Reiner’s hand rises, cupping your cheek. You lean into it because you know that it’s where safety is.
“I’m scared,” you whisper tremulously.
Fresh tears are soaked up by his palm. His eyes follow the trajectory of your gaze, landing on the thick skin webbing your stomach. His brows flutter as everything clicks into place in his head.
His tongue pushes against his cheek, eyes hard for a fraction, and then softening again once they return to you.
“Don’t give it to them,” he murmurs, mouth tight with resentment, but not directed at you. “They took enough.”
You gulp. “What if they took everything?”
“They didn’t,” he says. “You’re still here, so they didn’t.”
That is true. You are still breathing, so they didn’t take your life. Though that isn’t what terrifies you, because to have a life doesn’t mean you know how to live it. Doesn’t mean you even know how to survive it.
Anger has been your only fuel for years, and now that you can feel her take the back seat, you’re not sure how to go through the motions of the day. What if fear takes her place? What are you supposed to do, then?
You wish for that rage to take the reins again. Finish the job she started, and finally consume you whole, until there’s nothing of you left but a husk and its ashes.
You will burn, sure, but it’s better to burn because you decided so, than to allow the actions of others to smoulder you entirely.
“But it’s not me,” you croak.
Reiner’s eyes crinkle in a wistful smile.
“I’ve lost you for four years,” he whispers. “You’ve grown, you’ve changed—but it’s still you.”
The hand on your cheek leaves, fingers tracing briefly down the valley of your breasts, your stomach, before both his palms close around your middle, thumb smoothing the fabric of your robe.
“They can’t take that, no one can,” he tells you quietly, “It’s you, it will always be you, until you breathe.”
Soft eyes find yours, both brimming with unshed tears. His words seem to come from experience, and while it doesn't quell your fears, there is that comfort blooming again, like leaves trying to sprout under the weight of melting snow—spring, brawling its way against winter. You're not alone in this fight, because someone else is fighting it as well. For himself, for you. With you. And that seems to at least soothe you, at least for now.
Perhaps you won’t have the body you knew, perhaps your mentality will change, perhaps you’ll be afraid, and angry, and resentful, and one day, even forgiving—kinder to yourself.
But it’s still you. Your body is still yours. And with that comes hope—the one you thought lost alongside your youth, now back with a new kind of light.
It’s you, until you breathe.
So, you do. Place your hand on your stomach, right there where the scars begin. You feel it grow, swell, fill with air that tastes different, even as the lump in your throat threatens to block it—you don’t let it. You won’t allow anything to hinder its flow.
Every breath you take, deep or shallow, it’s yours.
“You’re alive,” he whispers, palming your knuckles to feel you breathe, too. “That’s enough.”
The percentage that was missing.
It clicks.
There wasn’t something lacking in his actions; there was something missing within you. Years spent trying to fix something inside that didn’t need to be fixed, months wondering whether you’d been broken irreparably, when the truth lies elsewhere. Because things can break, that is a fact, but you aren't a thing.
Not a scout, not a victim.
Your blood runs, air fills your lungs. You’ll covet all of it, every drop and every sigh.
Salt traces your cheeks, chin nodding softly.
You exhale.
“That’s enough.”
When you kiss him again, there is no bubble of glass protecting you from the world, because right here, there is no threat looming in the shadows.
No scouts, no warriors. No victims, no weapons.
Just people.
