Tossing around the idea of Celine being half-gumiho (aka. Korean nine-tailed fox) => a fox demon.
These foxes are typically seen as cunning, malevolent, and deceptive creatures that can shapeshift into beautiful women in order to consume human lives. But they're also portrayed to be extremely misunderstood. Feels fitting for her.
Thinking about a situation where Celine's mentor discovered her and her true nature at an extremely young age but since Korean perceptions of fox spirits are also incredibly skewed, the mentor thinks Celine is the worst kind of demon.
There are stories online where some gumiho can become true humans if they abstain from harming/consuming humans for a specified period of time. And I think it would be fun terrible if the mentor forced Celine into isolation and supernatural starvation to make her become human.
You don't have to worry about accidentally exposing your faults and fears if we remove them and you're lucky that we can. Don't you agree?
Then Celine becomes human and will be for far longer than she can remember.
She learns that demons should be gone like all hunters do. Faults and fears must never be seen (because something bad will happen. Just a gut feeling).
When she meets Rumi, she doesn't kill her (something in her heart tells her that maybe there could be a chance that this baby is different; there had also been a promise). Surely, even a half-demon baby, the first of its kind, could be nice and sweet and deserving of life because she came from Miyeong.
Celine still believes that the half-demon should hide her patterns (because of everything that she learned as a hunter) but one thing that she prioritizes above all else is that Rumi, Mira, and Zoey will never starve. She knows it's important and the girls need the strength and energy to grow and do well. (But Celine has always felt compelled to starve herself. Just herself. It felt right for some reason she couldn't explain).
The tragedy here is that nothing changes. There's no AU. No divergence or ripple effects. The events in the movie happen as is because she is the same human Hunter. She still spares Rumi. She still tells her to hide. She still makes sure the girls eat. Rumi still kneels. No memories to be remembered and no experiences lamented.
Something inside of Celine is irrevocably lost but it changes nothing.
Gone too early for her to know what she had. The person that was portrayed is still the same one.
// If she ever does remember though, Celine will think that her mentor was wrong but in a different way. Surely, it wasn't Celine's half-demon lineage that was the problem that had to be removed. The problem was her (thinking about a daughter who kneeled and asked for the end).
What if Celine was kept isolated in a little storage room in the cellar while she was being starved to kill her demon side? Off to the side, easy to miss if someone wasn't looking for the room. More of a bomb shelter than a room to begin with.
And even to this day, Celine hasn't gone back inside the room. Doesn't like going into the cellar at all. It's a reaction she can't really explain; just a weird phobia maybe.
But maybe for some reason the cellar needs to be cleared out, the girls are helping and they find the room?
Celine does not remember the time before she came to the hanok well. She was very young, only eleven; it makes sense.
She remembers her mother—tall and long-faced and beautiful, lips that would curve up in small smiles, hands that would grip tight enough for her nails (claws?) to break skin, the way she always, without fail, served liver at the dinner table—but not her father, nor much of where they lived.
She remembers playing in the mud being a normal thing when she was small, so it must’ve been by water of some kind.
Miyeong used to ask her about home, about where she came from, and Celine was always left to shrug and say that she was a Hunter, and she had lived here on Jeju for long enough. This was the heritage she had.
(She suggested asking Hana once. Something inside Celine had revolted at the suggestion, irrational and animal and terrified, and she’d yelped out a “No!” before she knew what she was saying.)
Celine does not know how to cook liver.
When Rumi was an infant, she’d—they were so scared, her and Chaewon. What would this mean? What would she become? Miyeong clearly hadn’t known.
When they’d first started realizing they were going to have to transition from formula to baby food, Chaewon had gone digging through all the old books, searching for things demons ate besides souls. Human hearts and livers, she said, were the most normal answers.
Celine had promptly run to throw up. She hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning. They both blamed it on that. It had to be that. What else would it be than that?
(Chaewon, still holding Rumi oh-so-carefully, had forced her to sit down and nibble her way through crackers until her stomach settled. After she died, there was no one left to keep Celine from starving herself.)
(Rumi never develops any stranger appetites than her willingness to eat kimbap rolls whole, thankfully.)
Celine has nightmares, sometimes. Often, really.
She has nightmares of Rumi with her lips curved up in a small smile, covered in mud as she looks up at Celine and tells her to Do it.
(Eventually, the words change: her daughter kneels in the mud and says, Do what you should’ve done a long time ago.)
Nightmares of Miyeong, screaming her last battle cry. Nightmares of her hands covered in Chaewon’s lifeblood. Nightmares where both of them just—walk away from her. Always just them leaving, just her alone in the great echoing dark.
That—that has haunted her the longest. Alone, and afraid, and unable to move. Everything empty and yet claustrophobic. She is in the dark and she cannot move.
Sometimes, in the dream, she knows someone is there. But they will not come to her. They will not comfort her or let her out or feed her—
Celine has always, as long as she could remember, had that nightmare. She supposes it’s why she doesn’t like going in the cellar, either—something about that specific dark enclosure, the way the sound echoes in it.
But needs must, and when the storms leak into the cellar, down she goes. They can’t allow mold to form.
pfft @fakelawyerbug and @secondtolastrow I know I said I'm tossing Celine around in my head but I'm ecstatic that she's been tossed into another extended blender
I'm digging the idea of her having been caged in a bomb shelter. A place that's usually supposed to protect the people inside from bombs, but then the mentor uses it to "contain a bomb."
~
Celine wonders if she's shaking. There was a chill coming up from the basement, but something inside of her felt like this place was wrong. So wrong. And so dark.
She wants to grab more flashlights before they go in, but the girls were eager to explore the part of the house that had always been locked before so she decides to let them go on while she searches for more lights.
The girls slowly head on down the stairs, shining their lights on everything as they descend. Old furnitures lay sideways and boxes are piled up to the ceiling. Dust lines the floors and walls like snow.
They explore the basement with quiet wonder, until a rat darts out from somewhere and Zoey yelps as she flinches back and crashes into the boxes behind her. Mira shoots her arm out to bring Zoey back to her before the boxes fall where the rapper had just stood.
The girls hack and cough their lungs out as a storm of dust erupts, blinded as they try to wave it all away.
By the time the dust settles, they're covered in ashy filfth of some sort. Rumi is the first to recover and notices that behind the boxes that had fallen, there's a very rusted old door. She calls out to the other two as she clears the rest of the boxes out of the way so they can get to it.
Mira decides that she'll go first though just in case. She yanks the doorknob as hard as she can, expecting some resistance. Except the knob falls out as soon as the dancer pulls and she tumbles backwards with a squawk.
The singer and rapper burst out laughing at her very heroic act of chivalry as they go to help her back up, but as the door swings wide open, their laughs die down quickly.
The room was sparse, but the sight was no less chilling.
It looks like a bomb shelter, but as they walk in further, they notice that there are... shackles. And blood. And claw marks concentrated on the wall around the height of an animal. Or a child... Maybe even a demon child.
Zoey and Mira's hearts drop as they start to imagine something horrifying as they whip their heads over to Rumi.
Zoey takes in a shuddering breath before asking, "Rumi, I feel like I have to ask... Has Celine ever locked you up before?"
Rumi recoils and she sputters, "No! What? No, she's never done anything like that. At least, I don't think so. Why would you even ask me that?"
"Why?" Mira grits out through her teeth. "She's made you hide before, hasn't she? And an 'I don't think so' isn't exactly reassuring."
"My patterns! She's made me hide my patterns. Not me. She would never do that."
Zoey interjects before they can get more heated. "Okay! We know that Rumi but..." she gestures to the claw marks on the wall, "this doesn't exactly look very promising."
Mira runs a hand through her hair as she tries to calm down. "Yeah, sorry Rumi. I do know that she would never do something like that, but this is terrifying. It's obvious someone was here. Regardless, this is something we definitely have to talk to her about."
Rumi can only sigh as she looks around the room before she hears something crash behind them.
All three girls immediately turn around into their battle stance, ready to fight.
But as they shine their lights on whatever it was, they see Celine, collapsed onto her knees, looking like she had been drained of blood. Her eyes are unseeing.
"Celine?" Rumi calls out.
But their mentor doesn't answer. Doesn't move.
Zoey tries to call her name this time.
No answer. No shifts. But they soon begin to realize that Celine isn't looking at them at all.
She's looking at the bloody shackles, chained to the wall.
Mira starts to move forward to see if Celine is okay, but the former Hunter flinches hard when she sees a figure towering over her. They watch as Celine scrambles backwards before she slips and goes fetal, muttering something under her breath that they cannot hear.
Until they can and they wish they hadn't.
Please don't put me back there. I'll be good. I'm good. I swear I'm good. I would never eat anyone. I'm good. Please. Please. Pleasepleaseplease...
A horrifying truth dawns on them then.
No, it hadn't been Rumi that had been shackled up in chains.
Oh, hey, a new blender; wonder what this switch- *brrrrrrrrrr*
It is a sledgehammer, that room. The sight of it- the shackles, the scratches, the blood- smashes into her with all the unrepentant might of something meant only for destruction.
She shatters. In the face of a sledgehammer that is all one can do. Fallen to her knees with the force of the blow she feels her mind bursting into a hailstorm of biting glass shards.
It was cold, so cold; and hard, like the worst parts of winter. She had begged in the early days for a blanket or pillow, something to soften the stone; it wasn’t long before she learned to not ask.
It was dark. She hadn’t feared the dark before, but she learned to. She…she remembered sobbing, silently lest she hear, she missed the sun so much.
And the shackles…how long had she fought them? How long had she tried to wrest herself free? How hard at she pulled at the chains to try and hide when she darkened the door, because she’d heard claws on stone and that could not stand? How much had she bled before she broke?
(there are matching scars on her wrists that scream under the hammer’s blow)
She had mourned at the cold; she had trembled at the shackles; she had sobbed at the dark; but fear was the domain of the Hunger.
It was its own presence in her cell; a gnawing, gnashing beast that tore at her until she genuinely feared it would devour her from the inside out. It made her scream some days, arms wrapped tight around her middle as it ripped at her; others she just lay there on the stone floor, shivering, too sapped of energy to fight against the pangs stabbing with an army’s worth of swords at her insides.
“This is the only way. Do you want to be-“
“No!”
“Then you’ll starve it out of you.”
She obeyed, because she feared the hunger above all; the hunger was what made her-
“Wicked.”
“Evil.”
“Disgusting.”
“Hellspawn.”
“Dem-“
Her captor loomed over her.
“Celine?”
The bed of glass shards was waiting for her as she collapsed back into it, and a voice from the cell issued from her tongue.
“Please, don’t put me back there.
I swear I’m good.
I won’t eat anyone.
Please please please please….”
But a part of her still quailed even as she begged.
The answer was always the same.
***
“I don’t get it.” Arms folded, Mira glowered out the widow of the hanok at the garden beyond, a peaceful butterfly-strewn contrast to the storm raging within. “What was she going on about? Why would someone lock up Celine? And why would she ‘eat’ anyone?”
“Maybe she’s hallucinating?” Zoey was wearing a hole in the floor, hands twisting and twining around each other so her fingers almost literally tied themselves in a knot. “Or maybe we heard wrong? She was shivering pretty hard; maybe she meant to say ‘beat?’”
They both knew that was grasping at straws.
Fingers drummed against Mira’s bicep as she thought, replaying what transpired after Celine found them in the little room in the cellar. It had taken them nearly a solid hour to bring her out of the spiral she’d fallen into, and even then she hadn’t been herself at all, staring at the with a doe’s frightened eyes and flinching whenever they moved. When they’d finally gotten her up the stairs to the den she’d started breathing easier, until Mira had brought out some water and snacks (“Maybe she’s having some weird blood sugar drop I don’t know!”) .
She’d panicked. At crackers.
That was the only time she spoke, babbling wildly about how sorry she was, how she wasn’t hungry, how she was good, see? She’s not hungry so she’s good just don’t put her back-
Zoey was crying openly; Rumi looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown herself; Mira was at a loss.
Celine was basically her mom as well as Rumi’s, and…she was scared.
Eventually they got her to lie down in her bed, Rumi staunch at her side; hopefully she’d feel better when she woke up.
But…that still wouldn’t tell them what the hell happened?
“Why would she say she wouldn’t eat anyone?” Zoey muttered behind her, still pacing. “Do you think she was raised by cannibals?”
“Seriously?” Mira looked at Zoey in the reflection.
“Well what else could she be?” Zoey threw her hands up. “A demon?”
Mira stiffened, hand clenching on her bicep, Zoey's words striking her ears at the same moment a flash of red streaked across the hill behind the hanok and an idea flared.
She tried to douse it. Because it...it was impossible.
This was Celine.
But standing there, watching the fox disappear into the trees, she felt the truth of it settling around her like ash.
"She is."
"What?" Zoey came up behind her, brow furrowed.
"Celine's a gumiho. Or-" She swallowed as Zoey gasped, suddenly feeling sick. "She was."
the thing about panic attacks is that sometimes a person can lose the memory of the panic attack, or even the whole day before it.
What if the next day, when Celine wakes up and doesn’t recall a single thing?
Celine feels exhausted, as if she had been awake all night but the sun was singing bright through the window and her body will not allow her to go back to sleep. Not after the decades of conditioning.
When had she fallen asleep?
She begrudgingly opens her eyes, ready to start the day.
Celine turns her head to the side where she finds a Rumi with bloodshot eyes and dried tears on her face sitting on a chair next the bed as if she’s on guard.
Celine shoots up out of bed, but before she can say a word Rumi whispers in a tired, broken—“Eomma?”
“Rumi?” Celine tries to get out of bed, ready to take whatever it was that hurt her daughter, that made her cry when she was supposed to be at her happiest—when a body crashes into her from behind.
“Celine!” Zoey cries out, clutching desperately to Celine’s shirt, soaking the collar with tears. Why is she still in her day clothes? Distantly, she hears a voice, Mira’s?, scolding Zoey for being so rash but Celine is terrified that something terrible has happened to her girls.
“Zoey? Zoey?” Celine maneuvers the girl so she’s practically in Celine’s lap, face burying in the side of her neck, still grabbing onto the shirt.
“What happened?” Celine demands, looking directly at Rumi, who hasn’t even blinked since Celine awoke.
Mira’s face comes into view. “…you don’t remember?”
And no, Celine doesn’t remember, and there’s a cold sensation that builds up in her chests
She hates the cold.
What had happened? What had Celine done?
How has she failed, once again?
Rumi lets out a pained whimper, moving to crawl into Celine’s arms. She lays on her shoulder before grasping at Celine’s wrist, unbuttoning and pulling up the sleeve beforing staring at it, as if analyzing.
A choked sob leaves Zoey, and Celine turns her head to see the smaller girls eyes wide.
Rumi reaches out, quickly doing the same to her other arm and Celine just stares at her daughter as she becomes more and more distressed and Celine has no idea what to do except just sitting there and letting her do what she needs to do. No matter how much it feels as if Celine’s arms are itching past the point of pain.
Why are her wrists in pain? Yet Celine can’t find it in herself to look.
Mira comes closer slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. Like a small [REDACTED].
Celine blinks, hard.
Mira sits next to where Zoey is clinging, placing a hand on her back.
“How have we not seen that before?” Mira gasps out, staring intently at Celine’s wrist.
Celine, still so confused, finally follows that girls’ gaze to her wrist and…oh.
I've been dying to come back to all of this but I was busy T-T. sheesh y'all really cranked up the blender ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ᗜ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾ I need everyone to know that I have read every single reblog and I love all of them.
shout out to @maffynn and part of their tags here cause wow that's a whole new terrifying level of angst:
#I visualize the whole human transformation scene as something like “Starve her until she eats the fox” or something like that #And the whole scene is like a fox tearing off its skin piece by piece until only the human remains.
@frozenwolftemplar op I swear that sledgehammer of an addition came for our heads too.
@fishyupmywishy yes yes! memories from trauma can be real tricky
If we're going with a repressed memories route then:
~~~
There was a mark. Marks? She sees faint, jagged white lines streaking around the entirety of her wrists. That's... strange.
Cover those up.
Her hands shoots out to bring her sleeves down, the girls jumping back at the sudden motion.
That's right. Need to be out of sight. Can't let anybody see.
Disgusting.
No.
Hellspawn.
No!
She tries to shake the voice out of her head, feeling the chill that's been in her chest since she woke up only sink in deeper into her bones. Maybe she should go wear a thicker sweater (a longer one). Now.
She gets up to go find one.
"Celine?"
The former hunter whips around at her name, heart racing, but she's only met with Rumi's tear-stained face. Oh right, the girls were here.
She takes in a steadying breath before suggesting, "Why don't I go make some breakfast after I change? And you girls can tell me all about what happened to you three while you eat."
Not her though. The thought of food made her feel incredibly ill.
But instead of being met with the usual enthusiasm for food, the girls only stare at her with wide eyes.
"You really don't remember?" Zoey asks as she gets up off the bed.
"Remember what?"
Mira murmurs low, "Celine, we saw the room. We just saw your wrists. You can tell us." The dancer tries to keep from moving forward. "You know we'll listen to anything you have to say."
"Again, what are you talking about?" Celine was beginning to feel incredibly unnerved.
Rumi takes a deep breath before she utters, "We know, Celine. We know."
"We know you were a demon."
You're a demon, Celine.
I don't want to be.
Just like your mother was.
I swear I'll be different.
You're not like them.
I know.
But you can be.
...Okay
And because I have this one particular scene I just can't get out of my head: timeskips to after Celine realizes the Awful Truth (tm)
Celine draws a deep breath, letting the placid cool of night fill her lungs. It's late, far too late to be sitting out on the porch, letting the dampness of the hour soak through her shirt, but her mind is too loud to sleep, a jumble of discordant thoughts rattling inside her skull, and the rest of her feels too...
She doesn't know, just- not like she wants to sleep right now.
Nighttime was always when they were most awake anyway.
She leans back on her hands, listening to cricket song, looking off into the woods behind the hanok; the distant rustle of brush slinks through the shadows. One of the foxes that live in the hills, she's pretty sure (no, certain; she always was certain about the foxes), and she finds herself searching for it; she's not sure why.
Of course, she can't see it (she never can, it seems; find them in the dark). She frowns, disturbed; she's not sure why about this either.
(no, you know; and you should be disgusted).
She...should, but-
A soundless footfall behind her pulls her out of her thoughts and she turns to greet Rumi with a pale crescent moon of a smile. "Can't sleep?" she asks as Rumi sits next to her.
Rumi nods, sighs, passes her- of course.
"You didn't eat much at dinner," Rumi says simply as Celine, more out of politeness than anything, takes the plate of ggul tteok. She looks at her steadily. "You should eat something."
This is something new lately: the girls trying to get her to go against her body and eat, tempting her with favorite meals and sweets that come plated with assurances that "it's not okay to let yourself be hungry" and "your body needing food isn't bad."
(wasn't it though? considering what food she'd been raised on back...before?)
("wicked thing! have you any idea what your mother fed you? monster!")
She's been trying to tell them to not, but they're not listening; and they stare at her, like Rumi is now, with such...sadness and hurt, she finds she takes a morsel or two, whether or not she feels like it (more often not) and watches some of the worry recede.
So she takes up one of the sticky little rice cakes, lets a honey-drenched bite melt on her tongue, nods her thanks, and continues watching the woods.
Rumi stays, leaning her head against Celine's shoulder, and an old urge stirred, like it often had over the years when Rumi was sad or scared, sick or just...needed her close.
(you loved it when she wrapped you in her fur; Rumi deserves to feel that...the safety and love and sweet river mud scent of ninetails...)
(demon! wicked! there was nothing beautiful about that part of you!)
She sets down the plate.
Cricket song continues to fill the silence as they sit and watch the night. Then, soft as the starlight:
"Celine?"
"Yes Rumi?"
"Do you miss it? The gumiho?"
Celine sighed; turned her eyes to the stars; wrapped an arm around Rumi and rubbed her shoulder as she consulted the heavens for guidance.
The crickets pause.
"It was a demon, Rumi." Her voice is low, a requiem. "A dangerous one. Not like you. I...my mother-"
"You don't have to say it. I've read the stories."
She paused to kiss her daughter. "It...it wouldn't have been right to let it stay."
Rumi didn't nod, just pursed her lips, considered the grain of the porch steps. "But just because she was like that didn't mean you had to be. I'm...I'm not like my dad."
She wasn't, and every day she thanked everything that did or didn't listen that she wasn't. But- "This was different."
She wasn't sure how, but it was.
Their mentor's word was always law.
Rumi looked up at her, eyes disagreeing, but she turned back to the night, the forest climbing up the hill, the velvet sky lying heavily above, the stars. "You didn't answer the question."
Celine sighed; Rumi never did like letting those hang. And because she'd never move past it Celine did the wicked thing.
She considered it.
Shutting her eyes, she breathed in the night again and let it find that hidden, locked away part of herself whose iron-banded door whose implacable hinge had started to ease itself open.
As always, nothing crept out; one cannot miss what one cannot remember, and she had no memories of the gumiho.
But...
But there was something.
A breath of the mountains, a kiss of the pines, a crystalline laugh as she splashed through a stream too pure to have ever known sin; a song of the stars, a whisper of the snows, the loving brush of nine tails against her nose; and-
and a wildness that filled all the empty parts of herself.
She opened her eyes; her cheeks were wet.
She didn't know if she missed the gumiho, but...but she missed feeling whole.
Mirror mirror AU part seven! First here, most recent here
For anyone just arriving: Celine swapped places with her evil, abusive AU counterpart, and has been attempting to fix things for Rumi’s counterpart, Sarang. Her endgame plan is to get Huntrix through debut and then a murder-suicide of herself and her counterpart. While the girls have been bonding, Sarang just got to experience her first panic attack, and isn’t doing great. Also, the two universes are in contact via Derpy.
Mira goes and gets the muzzle.
It gives her something to do with herself, at least, and it gets her out of that room.
With Sarang. And her teeth.
Fuck, but Mira hates herself for it—being unable to stop being scared, wanting the reassurance of bringing the muzzle in herself. She’s just like Celine—the first Celine—isn’t she? She wants to control Sarang, to lock her up like she’s no better than an animal, and for what? For spooking her a little?
She can’t stop thinking about the way that Celine said it: Of course you are broken.
Simple. Like fact.
And Mira’s family weren’t half as bad as Celine but—maybe they broke something in her, too. Something that couldn’t be fixed.
She bends down in the grass and picks up the muzzle, turning it over in her hands, running her fingers over the magnetic lock at the back, where the straps fit together.
Uncontrollable. Difficult. Aggressive. That’s Mira—all really just because she’s scared and lonely and knows no one wants a thing like her around. And why not? Because she’s too difficult, obviously.
Her own personal vicious cycle.
(You’re the one who belongs chained up in a shed.)
Mira shakes off the ugly thought, and quickens her pace back to the hanok, muzzle jangling from her hand.
She can work this out. They’re trusting her. She’ll make sure she works this out, and no one will ever have to know how fucking shitty she is on the inside—Sarang needs her there, not scared.
Zoey hovers. She can't help it - she doesn't know what to do but she can't do nothing while the newfound third of her soul is distress, and so she stays in the room and manages to do too much and not enough simultaneously.
And part of the problem is that Zoey is the problem she is currently trying to solve. Sarang flinches from them and has PTSD flashbacks because they were the ones to hurt her, and now they're the only ones who can even try to help her because she still looks like a fucking demon and so therapy is completely and utterly out of the picture. Every resource Zoey has looked at emphasized getting the victim away from their abuser and Zoey can't do that because she is the abuser and Sarang was kept so ignorant of the world that there is no way she can survive without them anytime soon.
Obviously, they've stopped with their previous behavior and they can try and support Sarang as she learns how to be a person, and remind her that she's a person when she forgets. But there's only so much they can do when it's likely that their very presence feeds into her triggers.
...Her triggers. That's one way that Zoey can help. She can make a new notebook, keep track of what triggers Sarang (bullet point one: any sort of violence directed towards her by them, no matter how playful or harmless), record what works and what doesn't to bring her out of her flashbacks. Zoey can be scientific about it, can help give Sarang tools manage the consequences of the damage she herself caused.
The outline of a plan, something to do to help, makes Zoey feel like there is ground underneath her feet again. Makes her feel like she can be something beyond the monster that caused this damage in the first place.
Mira returns with the muzzle shortly. There is a desperate relief on Sarang's face as she reaches for it and Zoey is keenly aware that she has been deliberately conditioned into needing the damn thing to feel secure. It's the most obvious symbol of what has been done to her remaining - even after she's left the kennel, she still wears part of her cage.
The corner of Celine's mouth twitches downward as she watches Sarang buckle the muzzle on. "Sarang, your room is a safe space for you to rest and recover whenever you need it," she says. "You can always return here, for whatever reason, no matter what you are doing before. Likewise, you can always leave it whenever you wish - it is not and will never be a cage."
She rests her hands on Mira and Zoey's shoulders, and gently guides them out of the room. "Come, girls. Let's give her some space. Sarang, we'll be in the living room. Feel free to come join us, when you feel comfortable doing so."
Sarang looks up at them and nods once. The last Zoey sees of her as the door closes is her picking up the plushie and regarding it with an expression that Zoey cannot interpret.
Sarang does not know that she has ever felt something like Zoey’s stuffed turtle before.
She has gotten so many more soft things since everything changed, of course—hotel room blankets and new clothes and even the feeling of her own hair and skin, once Celine explained to her how to use the toiletries like a person, including the conditioner and lotion.
The fabric of Zoey’s turtle feels a little like one of the hotel blankets, the one that was not a duvet, and a little like the skin on Sarang’s cheeks, where the hair is very thin and soft, and nothing like either. She doesn’t have good words for it.
And Zoey just… gave it to her. Claws and all. And then left it with her.
Real turtles do not have fur. They are reptiles, with shells made of bone covered in keratin. Sarang knows this because Zoey has said it, because Zoey loves turtles.
Sarang holds it again, close to her chest, and presses her face into it. The stuffed animal squishes against her muzzle, safely away from her teeth.
Of course you are broken.
Sarang, ungrateful creature that she is, still feels awful, no matter that Celine promised they would fix her.
She feels restless and sick, and she doesn’t want to stay still but she doesn’t want to go anywhere, and definitely not to eat, where she will have to take her muzzle off.
She kicks at the sheets and then feels worse, hurrying to right then again before anyone sees, checking that no damage has been done.
“Everything is fine,” she tells the turtle. “I put the bed back how it should be.”
And that feels nice, so she keeps telling the turtle things.
This is how the dresser is. This is her window. This is her carpet—the fur-fabric is much thicker than his, but not nearly as soft, and no, she does not know the word, but she doesn’t think people say that carpets have fur.
When she has introduced the turtle to her whole room, she feels much better.
“I hope you will remember me when you go back to Zoey’s room,” she says, even though she knows the turtle will not, because it is not alive.
Unfortunately for Sarang’s plans to go and calmly return him to Zoey, and thank her for how much she has helped, this is when the tiger begins welling up out of her floor.
Celine is partway through an explanation of the logistics of debuting when a loud SLAM echoes through the hanok. As all three of them whirl to face the bedrooms, Sarang comes sprinting out of the hallway, still clutching the stuffed turtle to her chest. She skids to a stop, scans the scene in front of her, seems to come to a decision, and dives behind Mira.
As Mira is processing all this (and if there is a part of her that's afraid of the demon lurking behind her unprotected back, there is also a much louder part of her that is preening that Sarang chose her to hide behind), the cause of the furor enters the room. The tiger plods gamely along, bird perched on its head.
"Oh, hi, Tiger-ssi!" Zoey bounds up to him and gently divests him of the plastic baggie containing the note from their alternate universe counterparts. Missive delivered, the tiger wanders over to a sunbeam and plops himself down.
As Zoey opens the letter there is a tink as something small slips out of it. Mira, who has repositioned herself so that she is still between Sarang and the tiger's new location in the room, can only get a clear view of it once Zoey has bent over and picked it up. It's a USB drive.
Zoey finishes opening the letter and scans it. "Okay, so. It looks like alternate-me and alternate Mira had a LOT to say about musical and fashion trends from now until 2026, so they've compiled all that information on the flash drive, along with samples of their songs and choreography."
"I don't think we should be copying their music," says Mira, uncomfortable with the idea.
"You won't be able to," says Celine. "Almost all of Huntrix's songs were written for Rumi's vocal range as the main vocalist. Also, since you'll be entering industry within a typical company you won't have much control over your lyrics and choreography, at least at first."
"Yeah, uh," Zoey says, "that's also what they said. Rumi being the main vocalist, I mean. They suggested that Sarang sing background vocals or harmonies or something.
"By the way, Sarang, they said that they love that name for you!"
Mira is aware, suddenly, of the heat of Sarang's body as she huddles up behind her, the gentle puffs of her breath on the exposed skin of Mira's shoulder, exposed as it is by her fashionable asymmetrically cut shirt. She feels as well as hears Sarang's pleased hum.
"For Rumi's medical information, she says she cannot get blood transfusions for some reason? She doesn't remember exactly why. Presumably it's demon related?"
"She has RH null blood," says Celine. "Or at least, that's what the doctors told me. She's also allergic to several chemicals commonly found in antiperspirants, which limits which brands she can use." She levels a look at Mira and then at Zoey. "If you have questions about Ru--Sarang's medical condition, you can ask me. I was the one taking her to the appointments."
Mira and Zoey exchange sheepish glances. Sarang, still curled up behind Mira, is spared the full weight of Celine's Gaze of Mild Disappointment.
"Also! We asked about Rumi's patterns fading," Zoey says, a bit rushed to move off the topic, and Celine freezes. "And she says they faded when she accepted them as a part of herself and stopped feeling ashamed? Um. Hm. She spends a whole paragraph talking about how demonhood is intrinsically tied to shame. I don't remember any of this any of the Hunter documents?"
It doesn't make much sense to Mira. Demons kill people, and none of the demons that Mira has ever fought so far has seemed particularly ashamed of that. Except Sarang, who hasn't killed anyone (except Miyeong maybe?) and definitely feels shame about being a demon. Half-demon. Whatever. But that means that the only good demon Mira has ever met is the one who is ashamed of it, which sounds like the exact opposite of what Rumi's talking about.
She looks over to Celine for guidance, but all the blood has drained from her face and she looks as if she has seen a ghost. Zoey notices as well, and as she opens her mouth to ask--something, Mira will never know--Celine's arm darts out lightning quick and grabs the letter. Zoey yelps and tries desperately to hang on to it, but Celine meets her eyes with a stare so intense and expression so distraught that Zoey lets go.
Leaving Celine - acting weird again - in possession of a reply to a letter in which they asked their alternate selves about her weird behavior. Shit.
Celine scans the letter, furiously searching for Rumi’s explanation, needing to see the condemnation for herself.
Instead, she finds her own name first:
It’s my fault. I did something to hurt Celine pretty badly a few months ago.
Her vision blurs, a breath choking in her throat.
The very idea that Rumi would blame herself—
Her stomach lurches. She bites her tongue, hard, just like she’s seventeen again, and it holds back the nausea.
She keeps looking, trying her best to ignore—
I did something to hurt Celine pretty badly a few months ago. I don’t know what kind of mental state she’s in, but if she’s letting you see that she’s hurting, then it’s not good. I definitely wouldn’t tell her she doesn’t care about you again.
(‘Definitely’ is underlined.)
They need to be free to be honest; Celine doesn’t know why Rumi would say such a thing—is Celine being manipulative even from another world?
Finally, she finds it.
Rumi’s careful handwriting describing how a demon is controlled by their shame—how their belief that they are wrong and bad only makes them worse, whether directly (a demon resigned to their selfishness will hurt others unrepentantly) or indirectly (I would’ve done anything to keep Mira and Zoey from finding out—and I did)—but by recognizing that they are, like anyone else, a collection of both good and bad and capable of choice (In my case, choosing to embrace the truth rather than hiding) they can be…
You can take possession of your own soul once more, Rumi writes.
Because Celine had stolen it from her for all those years, buried it away under all of the shame she taught.
“Celine?”
Something brushes against her, and Celine jumps backwards, arm jerking up to block an incoming blow.
She stares at Mira. At Sarang, who didn’t make it all the way over, huddled in the open space and eyeing the tiger so fearfully.
Zoey hates it when adults cry. It reminds her too much of the last, miserable months of her parents' marriage, of her mother slumped over in the kitchen bemoaning all the suffering in her life as Zoey tried awkwardly to stay small and out of sight (as she was, after all, the source of much of her mother's suffering, in ways that her mother would explain in great detail if she saw her).
She wonders if it's just part of the experience of parenting, of family. Zoey had hurt her mother (and her father, though he didn't discuss it; had just been relieved to hand her off to Celine). Mira's parents had hurt her. Their Celine wasn't family to Sarang but had abused her horribly. The Celine in front of them had tried to parent the half-demon and Rumi had apparently hurt her quite badly, for Celine to be crying.
(A part of Zoey wants to know what Rumi even did, to shake their stoic mentor so severely. Another part does not want to sit through an adult detailing all the ways their child has hurt them, she has had too much of that already, she cringes at the very thought of Celine doing that to her, to Rumi. (But then again, their Celine has done so so so much worse to Sarang. Orders of magnitude worse. So.))
But Celine doesn't seem like she's about to start explaining how Rumi ruined her life. She's taking deep, even, deliberate breaths and blinking rapidly. (And a shameful part of Zoey is glad. They can just. Move on! Move past it. Maybe stop taking letters from their alternate selves because they somehow always manage to make things worse!)
As Mira pulls the letter out of Celine's loose grip and starts furiously speed-reading it, Sarang cautiously approaches Celine. She holds out Logger-nim with both of her hands.
"That's very sweet of you, nae sarang," says Celine, only slightly wetly, "but Zoey gave him to you."
"I talked to him, and it made me feel better," Sarang says, and Zoey is so so glad that her idea - her stab in the dark at providing emotional comfort - worked. "I don't need him anymore. You could, um, maybe you can try, uh. I just thought..."
Zoey can't see Sarang's face from this angle, just the back of her head, but presumably something in her expression drives Celine to reach out and take Logger-nim. She looks awkward, standing there holding him like she doesn't know what to do with him, and it'd almost be funny except for the fact that she was just crying and that's just inherently distressing.
"What the hell did Rumi do!?" exclaims Mira, and Sarang flinches. "Not you," Mira hurriedly clarifies, "the other world's Rumi."
"Nothing," says Celine. "She did nothing but her best."
(And Zoey is glad, so glad that Celine isn't jumping to lay the blame on her daughter but also--)
"Rumi certainly seems to think that she hurt you somehow," says Mira, and Sarang whips her head around to stare at her.
Celine shakes her head. "I don't know why she's blaming herself for that night, but what happened between us was not her fault."
"What did happen?" presses Mira.
A hint of steel enters Celine's expression. "It's not relevant to you girls. There's no risk of it happening here."
Mira opens her mouth, but stops when Sarang takes a deep breath.
"So you can stay here then," Sarang says. There is a calculating look in her eyes that Zoey has never seen in her before, but also the sort of desperate relief of someone treading water who has just spotted a rope thrown to them. "You can stay here forever and you won't get hurt like that again." She pauses. Blinks. Licks her lips. "And I won't get hurt again, because you'll be here. And Rumi and her Hunters are successful and have their Honmoon and don't need you and so they'll be fine." Sarang stops and schools her face into a pleading expression that reminds Zoey of a starving Victorian orphan. "I--We need you and they hurt you and so it's better for everyone if you stay!"
KPDH AU where Zoemira are both Rumi's exes but they start dating each other. Then Rumi meets a coupled up Zoemira at the bar. Rumi still has feelings for Zoemira, but she's in her own head about it. But one night, she wants to relax and forget so she goes out. Then she SEES Zoemira at the same bar and now she's confused because she misses them both, but they're dating each other now and...
ship: fox hybrid!agatha harkness/bunny hybrid fem!reader
summary/request: in need of a change in your routine of boring hookups with other prey hybrids, you go to a predator bar.
word count: 9245
warnings: smut (18+), transfem agatha (agatha has a cock), animal behavior, mentions of divorce and not so healthy agathario dynamics, age gap, psychological analysis as foreplay, cigarette on skin, semi-public makeout session, primal play, tiny bit of blood, scent kink, blowjobs, rough sex, degradation, dumbification, brat taming, cunnilingus, pussy inspection, breeding kink, technically dubious consent over something but its more like a misunderstanding, knotting, cockwarming
masterlist | ao3 link | tip jar
🦊more fox and bunny rambles🐰
The city streets are strangely crowded tonight, especially for such dreary weather. The concrete is soaked from the rain that's been persisting all day, only to finally stop in perfect time for you to go out. A large figure bumps into you as you walk down the sidewalk, growling at you to watch where you're going.
"You were the one who bumped into me. You watch it," you huff, stamping your foot in frustration. A trait of rabbit hybrids that many other species find amusing, which makes it hard for your anger to be taken very seriously. Luckily, you're saved from any condescending comments when the puddle beneath you splashes up towards the person causing them to recoil.
"Stupid vermin," they snarl, baring their teeth at you. Your ears twitch at the threat, noting that they're some sort of canine hybrid. You're not intimidated, though. Possibly stupidly, you stamp your foot again, harder. Before they can lunge at you, you dash away, weaving through passersby until you're out of their vision.
You pant softly, heart racing from the adrenaline. The canine hybrid got left far behind, too large to maneuver through the crowd nearly as swift as you. They ended up bumping into another canine, and you laugh when you see them get into a little scuffle.
Safe now, you finally finish the walk to your destination. The neon lights of the sign reflect off the water on the sidewalk, creating a luminous puddle for you to step through as you approach the door.
THE DEN
There are plenty of bars in the city, and most of them are co-ed, hosting spaces where both predator and prey hybrids can be comfortable. There's a few that are targeted towards specific species, with atmospheres and menus that center them. You've been to quite a few rabbit clubs. This one, however, is catered towards predators. It's not a strict rule, but it's one of those social rules that are just understood that you should follow.
You never liked rules very much.
You push the heavy wooden door open and step inside. Almost immediately, your nose twitches as its sent into overdrive. The smells hit you like a meteor, a mix of hybrid musks that has your rabbit instincts screaming at you. Heads turn and glance at you as you walk to the bar, a few eyebrows raised, tails swishing with curiosity, but no one says anything about your presence.
The leather barstools are nice, but worn, squeaking a little under you as you sit. You wait patiently for the bartender to come over, watching him speak in a low, deep voice to a couple of patrons who were here just before you. He's a wolf hybrid, but strangely the fur of his ears and tail are much lighter than his black hair. An arctic wolf, you muse. You rest your head in your hand and watch him move.
Your parents used to say that you were too curious for your own good, especially when it came to danger. They always got calls from school saying you got into tussles with other kids on the playground, provoking them or just thinking you were able to scrap with the big dogs—literally. Multiple teachers and counselors expressed concern for the behavior, citing that it was very unusual for a rabbit to be so willing to put themselves in these situations. It was like your fight and flight instinct were swapped.
As a teen, your focus shifted to school, so you mellowed out a little. But you still had a reputation for not backing down from a fight. You're pretty sure your unwavering attitude is the main thing that kept you from being shoved in lockers daily. That and being a teacher's pet.
It's funny, really. Everyone who meets you always expects a trembling bunny, and instead they get met with a spitfire jackrabbit. Flipping those expectations on people always amuses you, and it's gotten you a lot more respect as you've climbed your way through the hellscape of academia.
But part of you misses the adrenaline rush of a good scrap.
"What can I do ya for?"
You glance up at the wolf bartender, who seems to be watching you with the same curiosity that you were watching him. He cleans a glass as he waits for your response.
"What do you have that's fruity?"
A feline hybrid next to you snickers at the request. You ignore them. The wolf pauses his cleaning for a moment as he thinks, sets the glass down, and starts grabbing some things from the back counter. He looks at what he has for a moment then turns back to you.
"Don't usually get a lot of fruity requests, but I do have some stuff. Just gotta go to the back to get something. That okay?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
"Not at all. I'll be right back."
As you wait, you idly spin the stool around a bit by pushing your foot off the counter. Your rabbit ears sway with each motion. They quirk up as you pick up on various conversations around the room. Someone telling a friend about their promotion at work. A group of friends comforting a girl after a breakup. Animal senses come in a lot of handy when you're nosy.
"I'm telling you, I'm done with her this time."
"You've been saying that for years, Agatha. I have a hard time believing this is the final straw."
"We're divorced for a reason."
"And yet, you still hook up constantly."
"A woman has needs, Wanda."
This conversation has you zeroing in, looking towards the source of the voices. Standing at a table near people playing pool, you spot the pair whose chatter has made its way to your ears. Two women, both nursing what looks like it might be bourbon and coke. As they keep talking, you identify the one closer to the bar side as Agatha, the apparently divorced woman. And you are so thankful she is, because suddenly your ambitions for the night have found a target.
Her hair is wild and dark, a deep brunette that looks almost black in the dim lights of the bar. As she moves and the lighting shifts, you can see streaks of silver running through her waves. Pointed ears, perfect little triangles, sit atop her head, and a bushy tail the same color as her hair, grey streaks and all, swishes behind her. If you had to guess, you'd wager she's middle-aged, maybe late 40s to early 50s, judging by the distinct lines of her face when she shifts expressions and the easy confidence that she carries that can only come with decades of spending time in bars like this. When she opens her mouth to speak to the woman next to her, you can see her sharp canines.
A silver fox. Both literally and figuratively.
The other woman, Wanda, is also a fox, her hair and fur a red-orange that reminds you of autumn. She's pretty, closer to your age than Agatha's. But your sights are set on the older woman.
Someone clears their throat behind you. You spin back around to face the bartender again. He's placed a drink on the counter. The glass is filled with a pink-peach color and garnished with a maraschino cherry.
"Here you go. I hope it's okay," he says awkwardly. You thank him and tell him not to close your tab yet. Luck willing, you'll be buying another drink soon.
The cocktail is good, a bit sweeter than you hoped, but a nice flavor nonetheless. You sip it and play with the tiny straw, stabbing the cherry as you swing back around to scan across the room. Your brow furrows when you look over and there's only one fox still at the table. Where did Agatha go? Did she leave before you could even meet her?
Your body twitches, alert, as someone walks up behind you.
"Looks like a little bunny got lost," a low voice that can only be described as sultry speaks.
Pushing off the counter again, you spin to face her. Agatha stands before you, empty glass in hand, looking you up and down. Regarding you with cool blue eyes.
"Not lost at all. I'm right where I wanna be," you reply, leaning an elbow on the bartop.
"So, you want to be staring at a pair of vixens across the bar like a creep?" Agatha raises an eyebrow. She clearly expects the callout to fluster you, but you simply shrug.
"Wasn't trying to be creepy. Just admiring the view." Both of Agatha's brows raise now, visibly surprised by your boldness. You return the accusation. "Did you come over here just to intimidate me?"
This makes Agatha set her glass on the counter, leaning over you. Her tail lashes behind her. The sharp points of her fangs gleam when she opens her mouth to speak. "That depends, bunny. Is it working?"
"Not in the way you want it to."
"And what way do you think that is?" Agatha asks smoothly, never pulling back. She taps her fingers against the bar, her claws making a light tapping sound on the polished wood.
"I think you expected me to run," you say, tilting your chin up to meet her heavy gaze more firmly. "Probably thought I'd hightail out of here the second you flashed your fangs."
You take a sip of your drink again, keeping your eyes on her. She glances at your lips pressed against the glass momentarily, almost imperceptibly, before they dart back up to your face. Before you realize what's happening, Agatha steps back. You think that she's about to leave, disappointed that she couldn't scare you off, but then she turns to the person sitting on the bar stool to your right.
"Move. I'm taking this seat," she snaps at them. When they start to protest, she snarls, and they relent, uninterested in getting into a fight over a seat. Agatha looks smug as she sits down.
"You always that pleasant?" You tease.
"No, I'm in a good mood, so I'm being extra nice."
You introduce yourself, and Agatha says her name curtly in response. You choose to omit the fact that you've been listening to her conversation and learned her name that way, but you have a feeling that she might have guessed that already.
"Should you tell your friend you're abandoning her?" You nod your head towards where Wanda was left standing.
"She'll figure it out." Agatha waves a hand dismissively. She waves to get the bartenders attention, and he takes her glass to get a fresh drink.
"I'll get that," you tell him as he sets Agatha's drink down. His eyes dart between the two of you, a bit of surprised on his face, but he simply nods and leaves you alone again.
"What do you do that you can just go buying drinks for women, hm?" Agatha asks as she brings her glass to her lips.
"I'm a waitress, but I'm still in school. I'm also a TA," you explain.
"Undergrad?"
"PhD."
Agatha looks impressed, and you beam a little.
"What field?"
"Anthropology."
"Small world," Agatha smiles. She points at herself. You try not to let your eyes linger on her sharp claws. "History professor."
"At Westview?" She nods as she takes a bit of ice from her glass and crunches it. "That's where I'm studying. I'm surprised I haven't seen you before."
"I don't linger around campus often. Too many of my students love to barrage me with annoying questions and ask for life advice."
"I'm not actually on campus that often either, to be fair. I'm usually running from my last class to get to work."
"How do you fit going to predator bars and ogling women into your busy schedule?" Agatha asks casually. You scoff, nose scrunching up. Agatha grins, finally having caught you off-guard. "Seriously. What are you doing here, bunny?"
"I'm allowed to be here," you sneer.
"That's not what I mean." Agatha sets her half-empty glass down and rests her chin in the palm of her hand. "A bunny doesn't just wander into a building full of drunk predators."
"Maybe I do." You bristle at the assessment.
"In that case, you're dumber than I thought." Agatha shrugs.
"Did I mention the PhD?"
"You did, and I stand by my statement." Agatha watches you start to grow frustrated with her, a greatly amused smile on her infuriatingly pretty face. "The way I see it, you're here either because you're dumb and horny, or just plain dumb. Pick your poison."
Heat rises to your face. You reach for your drink to try to occupy yourself while you come up with a response that doesn't make you sound as flustered as you are, but your glass is empty.
You've prided yourself on defying the timid rabbit stereotypes for your whole life. Nothing has ever truly made you cower. You've presented the thesis that you've dedicated your entire being to in front of a board of intimidating faces and didn't waver. But now, face to face with a beautifully terrifying woman almost twice your age, is where you're forgetting yourself. Your heart is beating at an ungodly pace, your foot tapping nervously against the footrest of the bar stool.
This is the first time you've understood what it means to be prey. Though you're sitting in place, you can't help but feel like Agatha is hunting you. It's the way she's been watching, waiting for her perfect moment to strike. To hit you with the blunt observation that she somehow knew would finally make you stumble.
But you're not going down without a fight.
"Projection is a dangerous game, Agatha."
A beat. Agatha scoffs, shaking her head with laugh. "Oh, you're just asking for it, aren't you?"
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you though?" She leans in closer to whisper into your ears. Her hot breath brushes against them, and they twitch, which makes her chuckle. "Tough bunny just wants someone to put them in their place. That's why you're here."
You run your tongue over your teeth, eyes darting up to meet her. Agatha is looming over you now, her hair a curtain around you. You're positive she can hear your heart beat. You wonder if she can also smell your arousal that's starting to pool in a wet heat between your legs.
She probably can, given the fact that you can smell hers.
It's thick and musky, much more intense than the prey hybrids you usually sleep with. And you desperately need to press your face against her and have it surround you completely until your scents are so intertwined that they're indistinguishable from each other.
"You're making an awful lot of assumptions here." Your snarky responses are getting less potent by the second.
"Am I?" Agatha raises a brow. She sits back a little, starts counting off on her fingers. Long fingers that she definitely knows how to use. Veins along her hands down to her perfectly toned forearms that you've been drooling over since you saw her from across the bar. Of course she's rolled her nice button up sleeves up to her elbows. It's bait for anyone who loves a hot, powerful woman. "Bunny walks into a bar catered towards predators. Bunny watches a woman old enough to be her mother from across the room. Bunny has a whole lot of pride that she's had to wear like armor to get where she is."
"Your point?"
"Bunny is trying to cut off my assessment and divert my attention." You huff. Agatha continues with a smirk, "All that is to say, you like a challenge. You like to push boundaries. If you didn't, it would take you about five minutes to find a dozen other bunnies who'd be down to fuck you."
"Two dozen, probably," you mumble. Agatha gives you a look that says "I know I'm right, but thank you for confirming it." Feeling defensive but unarmed, you cross your arms over your chest and glance away from her intense gaze. "I thought you were a history professor, not psych."
"History is my main interest, but analyzing people is my real talent."
"Are you done?"
"I could probably keep going. Do you want an analysis on your various psychological complexes too? Or is that too explicit to do in public."
"No thanks, Freud."
"Rude. But if you want Freud, I can give Freud."
"Don't—"
"How's your relationship with your mother?"
The noise you let out is nothing short of a feral whine of frustration. You try to play it off, act like it was a squeak from your stool, but Agatha isn't that stupid. Her ears perk up, and her lips curl up over her teeth. You blink, body reacting off pure instincts as you lean back and away from her. A low chittering sound hits your ears, and you realize it's her. It must have been as involuntary as your own noise, because Agatha shakes her head a bit, ears flopping in a rather adorable way, before steeling her gaze again. She lets out a little snort of air.
"I'm leaving. I'll be waiting out front for an Uber. You have about ten minutes to decide if you want to follow."
And just like that, she's getting up and walking away from the bar.
Ten minutes. Nine now, as you pay for your drinks. Eight by the time you're opening the front door and looking around, ears rotating atop your head and nose twitching as you seek out the fox.
Agatha is leaning against a lamp post, foot propped up against the fire hydrant next to her. A cigarette is perched between her lips for a moment before she pulls away and lets out a stream of smoke. She's facing the street, but you know she hears you approach by the way her tail swishes and ears move.
"Bunnies shouldn't follow foxes, you know," Agatha hums, still looking out at the few passing cars. You let out a wavered sigh, the cool night air allowing you to see your breath. It mirrors the smoke she's exhaling. "You're just asking for it."
"I know what I'm asking for." Your words come out childish, like a kid who's determined to try something they're not usually allowed to do.
"I don't think you do," Agatha says, looking over at you now. You stand firm, unmoving. She brings the cigarette to her lips again. The end glows red. Pulls it away. Breathes out. "Prove it."
"How?"
"Hold out your wrist."
The request is strange, but when she flicks her cigarette a bit and steps closer to you, blue eyes dark and hungry, you realize what she wants. It's a test. She's showing you that she's not going to go easy on you just because you're a cute rabbit hopping into the fox's den. It's a little crazy, and for the first time all night—or possibly the first time in your entire life—you start to think you've bit off more than you can chew.
But you've never met a test that you couldn't handle.
You hold out your wrist for her, chin up to face her fully. Agatha grins, toothy and a little menacing. Holds eye contact as she takes your wrist in her hand. Her fingers easily circle around you, meeting over your pulse point. She can feel how fast your heart is racing.
The tender skin burns as Agatha presses the cigarette against you. You visibly wince, but you refuse to pull away. She holds it there, until the embers start to fade, and then finally takes it away. You let out a stuttered sigh of relief, eyes watering at the corners. Agatha is still holding you by the wrist. Her thumb rubs over the burn mark.
"Good girl."
A shiver runs through your body. You're trying to find any coherent response, but the tension is fogging your brain. All that you manage to squeak out is, "Can I kiss you?"
Agatha simply pulls your body into her own, cupping your face and crashing her lips into yours. You squeak again, fingers grasping desperately at her shirt. Anything to ground you. You've kissed a lot of people, but none have made you feel even close to this. Agatha's fangs graze your bottom lip, nipping and suckling at the soft flesh. You can feel your body trying to go limp.
Blood smears across your mouth as she bites too hard. Agatha pulls back suddenly, breathing heavily. Her eyes are wild, mouth twitching like she didn't want to stop. Your body hums, arousal spiking impossibly as you see just how much she's affected by this too. She runs her tongue over her lips, tasting your blood.
"Fuck," Agatha breathes out. She looks almost surprised that she lost a bit of control.
"Yeah. I agree." You reach up and swipe some of the blood away from her chin with your thumb, and she smiles. Maybe satisfied that you didn't get freaked out by her feral instincts peeking out.
A car rolls up to where you two are standing, asks for Agatha. She nods at the driver.
"Ride's here."
Agatha doesn't ask if you're coming with her. She doesn't need to. You follow her into the backseat, closing the door behind you with a soft slam.
As soon as the car starts moving, Agatha is on you again. She kisses you eagerly, then trails her lips along your jaw down to your neck. You tangle your hand in her hair, scratching at her scalp right at the base of her ears. She makes a noise that sounds like a mix of a purr and a growl. You feel her press her nose against you and inhale. The hand that's gripping your thigh tightens.
"You smell so fucking delicious, bunny," Agatha says against your skin, voice husky. Her teeth graze against your neck. Your rabbit brain reacts, and your human brain is too aroused to push the feeling away. Your body tenses, freezing in place as it tries to tell you that there's danger. Agatha rubs her hand over your thigh. You feel her claws through the fabric of your pants. Those also set off your instincts, but the slight pain when she bites your neck again is enough to snap you back to reality.
"You gonna fuck me or eat me?" You tease, but your voice wavers.
"Both. But the latter in the former sense."
"What?" You blink. Agatha's fingers brush against your crotch. "Oh."
"Not as quick as you were earlier, hm?" Agatha laughs.
"Your wording was confusing," you mumble defensively. You tug on her hair, and she growls.
"Mhm, or you're just not the smartest in the room like usual."
"I have very little doubt that you're smarter than me, but you have age advantage."
Agatha snorts and pulls back from your neck. She rubs her thumb over your bottom lip, pressing hard enough to make that still sensitive cut dribble out a few more drops of blood. Instead of licking it off herself, she pushes the digit into your mouth. You wrap your lips around her and lave your tongue over the pad of her thumb, holding her gaze with wide eyes the whole time. The taste is metallic and unappealing, but the weight of her fingers on your tongue distract you from that.
"Oral fixation," Agatha says simply.
"Oh shuhup," you garble through the finger still wedged between your lips. Agatha cackles and removes her thumb. "You're the one who smokes."
"That's addiction, not psychosexual."
"Two of Freud's favorite things."
"Your little rabbit teeth are cute," Agatha hums, tapping her index finger against your lips.
Your face feels warm, and you turn away from her gaze. One of the signature traits of rabbit hybrids was the distinct front teeth. You grew up hating them. It was definitely a learned insecurity from schoolyard jabs through your childhood, but they stuck nonetheless.
For a split second, you believe that maybe Agatha is giving a Mean Girls-esque fake compliment. But you get the feeling that if Agatha were Regina George, she would've told that girl straight to her face that she was wearing the ugliest effing skirt she's ever seen.
So, you take the compliment.
The car rolls to a stop in front of a nice row of townhouses. You thank the driver. Agatha ignores them and gets out of the car swiftly, taking you by the hand and leading you along. You follow her up to a small two-story house. The yard is a little overgrown, but it's nice otherwise. You resist the urge to go sniff around what looks to be an abandoned flower garden below her porch while she fumbles with her keys.
Once inside, you look around in the darkness. Agatha doesn't bother flipping the lights on. Both of you can see well enough.
"Your house is nice," you say, admiring all the vintage furnishings. With curious eyes, you wander over to a tall bookshelf, scanning over the titles. It's mostly non-fiction, which you expected from the history professor. Agatha seems to have a morbid curiosity in tragic historical events, given the array of books about everything from the Titanic to the Hindenburg disasters. But the number of those pale in comparison to the sheer volume of Agatha's witch trials collection.
Your body twitches, and you suddenly feel a warm presence behind you. You know she's been watching you this entire time, but it seems she's growing impatient. Fair. You might've been tempted to flip through the very out-of-place Dolly Parton biography if Agatha wasn't ready to finish what you started.
Agatha wraps her arms around you, her mouth finding your neck once more. You gasp as she nips you. Not quite drawing blood this time, but certainly enough to bruise. Her body presses against yours. When you feel a slight bulge pressing against your ass, you almost have to grab onto the bookshelf to steady yourself.
"I'd offer you a drink, but I'd rather see if I can get you drunk on something else," Agatha murmurs against your skin. She punctuates the sentiment with a roll of her hips, and you groan.
Boldly, you push back against her, grinding your ass against her clothed cock. Agatha curses under her breath, her hands falling to your hips. She pulls away from your neck, and you know exactly what she's busy looking at. You flick your cottontail purposefully, and Agatha exhales a stuttered laugh.
"Fuck, that's adorable." Agatha gives another hard thrust and slaps your ass playfully before pulling away. You try not to whine at the loss. Before you can complain, Agatha says, "Bedroom is upstairs. Door at the end of the hall. Lead the way, bunny. I'm right behind you."
"Why don't you lead the way? It's your house." To answer your question, Agatha slaps your ass again. You snort. "Pervert."
"Excuse me for wanting to look at that cute tail of yours more."
Even as you walk up the stairs, the tension in the air is palpable. While you know that Agatha is trailing you, it's a bit eerie having her lurking behind you. Especially when she lets you get a few steps ahead of her. It feels like she's stalking you rather than letting you lead.
"You're weird."
"Why's that?" Agatha asks in a low voice as you reach the bedroom.
You spin around to face her, but keep walking backwards until the back of your knees his the edge of her bed. You're expecting her to push you down onto it, but instead she just gets as close as possible, looming in your space. Chest to chest, you can feel her breathing against you.
"Just are." Your eyes drop down to the bulge nudging against you. You lick your lips.
"Very well put, bunny," Agatha snorts. "If you're not going to say anything useful, how about we put that mouth to work?"
You reach out to unbutton her slacks, but she slaps your hands away.
"Nope. Get on your knees first."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"Am I just going to unbutton them when I'm down there? What difference does it make?" You scrunch up your nose at her. Agatha's buttons are very fun to push. Her brow furrows adorably and the vein in her forehead becomes more prominent as she tenses.
"The difference is that I want to see you on your fucking knees," Agatha growls. "But if you want to be a stubborn thing, you strip first."
"But I wanna see you—"
The sound of fabric ripping hits your ears before you realize whats happened. Agatha has taken her claws and shredded them down the front of your shirt. The fabric parts in a tattered mess, exposing your chest and tummy to her hungry gaze.
"You're paying for that," you huff, trying to act offended and not give away that the action made your cunt throb.
"You know, for someone who literally wanted this, you're doing an awful lot of talking and not much being a good little fuckbunny."
That is not something anyone has called you before, and you think it just changed your brain chemistry.
Agatha smirks, fully aware that she just activated that little submissive part of your brain that you've been hiding behind sass and annoying questions.
"Am I going to have to repeat myself, bunny?" Agatha tilts your chin up with her finger, her claw poking into your skin. "Surely you remember what I just told you to do."
Trying to pretend you still have some dignity left, you shed the remains of your shirt and put it aside. Agatha runs her hands over your tummy and up to your chest, palming your tits through your lacy bra. Normally, you'd want her to play with you like that for a bit longer, but with how the nights been going, you're far past ready to get down to business. You slide to your knees in front of Agatha, the plush rug under you a soft cushion against your delicate skin.
"Good bunny," Agatha hums, patting your head condescendingly. You shake your head to get your ears unruffled when she pulls back. "Now you can unbutton, sweetheart."
The palms of your hands are sweaty, but you manage not to tremble as you reach up and thread the button through the hole. The heat of her arousal is searing. Agatha is wearing purple lace. The dark curls of her thick bush peek out of the waistband and through some of the thinner parts of the fabric. That sight is already mouthwatering in itself, but you can't even dwell on that because you're face to face with the thick bulge of Agatha's cock.
Strained against her panties, you can't tell how big she is yet. But you're stopped dead in your tracks as the smell of her musk drowns out any other thoughts. Agatha might get her wish of getting you cockdrunk before it's even out.
"Fox got your tongue?" Agatha asks, looking down at you with a fake pout. "Aw, poor bunny. Do I need to help?"
A needy whine is your only reply. Agatha laughs and slowly, teasingly, starts tugging her pants and underwear down.
Her cock springs free the second that the lace is peeled away. Your senses are absolutely overwhelmed. The smell of her is still making your entire body buzz, and now you have to remember how to function as you try not to drool at the sight of her dick.
Agatha wraps her hand around the base, giving it a few pumps. You'd wager it's about five or six inches. Thick. As her hand reaches the root again, your eyes dart to her sack. You've never done it with anyone before, but you kind of want to press your nose against her balls and try to get her musk directly from the source into your head. Or wrap your lips around them and massage them with your tongue. Or take her cock while you're laying upside down over the edge of the bed so that her sack press against your nose while you deep throat her. Or—
"Bunnyyy," Agatha singsongs. You don't snap out of your haze, you simply let your eyes drift up to her face. The way she's towering over you makes you feel so small, helpless in the face of whatever she chooses to do with you.
It's her pheromones, you tell yourself. That's why your head feels like it's full of static instead of real thoughts. Even though your pheromones shouldn't even be compatible as two wildly different species—predator and prey, no less.
Or, maybe the stark difference is why you're so overwhelmed. The rabbits you've hooked up with never elicited even close to this response.
Agatha taps the tip of her cock against your lips to try to focus your attention. You part your lips, tongue darting out to lick a dribble of pre-cum.
"Wider," Agatha urges, hooking her thumb in your mouth to wrench your jaw open for her. You give her no resistance. Her finger runs over your teeth, back and forth over the more prominent rabbit ones. "Don't use these on me. Don't want my dick snapping like a carrot."
"Won't." You promise and open your mouth a little wider.
"Good bunny."
The tip of her cock presses against your tongue as she pushes in. You groan as you taste her pre direct from the source. Agatha's breath hitches almost imperceptibly as she sinks deeper into the warm wetness of your mouth, but your ears just barely pick it up.
She doesn't hesitate to push as deep as she can right away. The look in your eyes might be getting more dazed by the second, but in them she can see the determination to prove yourself to her. Agatha's cock lays thick and heavy on your tongue, sliding towards the back of your throat. Her fluffy tail has stiffened behind her. Your nose twitches, getting closer to her pelvis. Her bush brushes against your nostrils and you wrinkle your nose as her hair tickles you. Agatha must find the sight of your nose scrunching up amusing. She grips your head and pushes you all the way down. You gag.
"Aww, is the wittle bunny wabbit getting overwhelmed?" Agatha coos down at you, voice dripping with mocking condescension and an exaggerated pout on her lips. The "wittle wabbit" nickname is something that would normally make your skin prickle with irritation. But you can't exactly think straight right now, and from Agatha's mouth the degrading tone is hypnotic. You make a little gurgling whine around her cock as you adjust to the feeling of her in your throat. Your nose is mashed against her now, buried deep in her bush.
"Breathe through your nose, bunny," Agatha encourages. If Agatha doesn't let you up for air, you might die happily here. The puffs of air that you exhale through your nose are unsteady. Agatha runs her hand through your hair, flattening your ears against your head. "C'mon, you're a big girl. You can do it. In…"
You inhale. As you do, the scent of her musk hits you hard. It shouldn't be possible for your head to feel this empty just from Agatha's smell. But here you are, moaning around her dick. Agatha curses at the vibrations, hips jerking. She remembers she's supposed to be guiding you, voice coming out strained as she says, "And out…"
When you exhale, she pulls back ever so slightly. Then Agatha starts thrusting, her cock gliding over your tongue. In and out. Back and forth. Your eyes droop, and your body is strangely relaxed as your throat is being used for her pleasure. Arousal is soaking through your panties now, growing slick and uncomfortable, but you can't be bothered to focus on that.
You're jolted from your meditative state as Agatha's hands wrap around your rabbit ears. You glare up at her. Rabbit hybrids ears are very sensitive. Luckily, the human part of your genetic make-up means they're not devastatingly fragile. But the feeling of someone grabbing them does make your heart beat rather fast.
Agatha senses your tension and pauses her movements. She doesn't move her hand from your ears, but her grip loosens a bit. Her other hand comes up to your jaw and cups it gently.
"Nod if this is okay," Agatha murmurs under her breath.
You don't ponder it for long, far too eager to push your comfort for the sake of getting rough treatment from Agatha. You nod. Agatha smirks and tightens her grip again.
"Tap my thigh twice if you need to stop."
That warning is the last one you get before Agatha starts fucking into your mouth again, this time, using your ears as a handle to guide your head. It hurts a little, but it's a similar sensation to when past hookups have pulled your hair. The sting tugs at your scalp, but the pain is colliding with pleasure.
"Fuck. Fuck yes. Take it."
The room is filled with the guttural sounds of your throat working around her, coupled with a rumbling growl from Agatha's chest and a muffled whine from your own.
"Arch your back and stick your ass out," Agatha orders through gritted teeth. "Wanna see your cottontail shake while I use your mouth."
You shift, spreading your thighs and pushing your hips back so that Agatha can admire your ass from above. You flick your tail teasingly, and Agatha's cock twitches in your mouth at the sight. As Agatha gets more and more frantic, fucking your mouth faster, you notice something. When your lips get closer to the base of her cock, you feel them stretch a tiny bit more than they were earlier, like Agatha's cock is starting to swell at the base.
Before you can worry about it, Agatha yanks you off of her. You squeak and wince, and she breathes out a clipped apology when you rub the base of your ears.
"God, your mouth is so good. Almost made me knot."
Since you're rubbing your ears to soothe them and your mind is currently centralized between your legs, you don't fully register what Agatha's said. You hear "nut" and assume she just didn't want to come yet. Maybe her refractory period isn't what it used to be. Makes sense. Age and hormones will do that.
Agatha draws your attention again, cupping your jaw and rubbing it with her thumb. You lean into the touch, a small buzzing noise escaping you. Agatha's ears perk up. She laughs, an amused chittering sound.
"What's that?"
"Oh." Of course she heard it. Your cheek goes warm under her touch. "Sometimes rabbits do that. When they're happy. Or aroused."
"Mmm, all it takes is a cock in your mouth to get that cute noise out of you?" Agatha asks with a smirk. Too flustered to respond, you just shrug. The smirk turns into a full grin. "What happened to all that backtalk, hm? I guess you really are just a needy little fuckbunny."
"No…" You say with zero conviction in your voice.
"No? So, I shouldn't fuck you then?" Agatha bends down and reaches slowly for her pants, her cock still leaking between her thighs. You could absolutely call her bluff, and normally you would. But the logical side of your brain is nowhere to be found.
"Wait." You stop her. She laughs in your face.
"That's what I thought. Now finish stripping and get on the bed."
You scramble to obey, shedding the rest of your clothes until you're completely naked. Agatha follows suit, unbuttoning her shirt quickly and tossing it aside. When she unclips the lace bra that matches her panties, your mouth waters at the sight of her tits. Puffy, sensitive nipples practically begging to be sucked. But she clearly has other plans. Agatha tells you to lay back against the pillows, so you scoot your way up and rest your head against the silk pillowcases.
"So obedient now," Agatha hums as she crawls up the bed. You watch the way she stalks towards your body, the muscles of her body moving like a Renaissance art piece. "Dumb bunny think she's all high and mighty, but she just needed to be reminded where she sits on the food chain."
Your cunt pulses and legs spread. Agatha can see the way your pussy reacts, so she continues with a low, sultry voice that could lure even the most suspicious prey into her trap.
"About an hour ago, you would've died rather than have someone dare insult your intelligence. But now, here you are, practically moaning when a mean old fox calls you dumb bunny. This is why you went searching tonight, isn't it? You just needed someone to put you in your place. Needed to embrace that prey side of you that you've stuffed away for so long."
The truth of the statement makes you turn away, eyes shiny with need and a couple of tears. Agatha is hovering over your body now, her thick hair falling in your face. She grips your face and turns you back to face her. Unable to hide from the truth, you nod. You swallow nervously as you see her lick her lips.
"Don't look so frightened, bunny. I won't tell anyone what a needy mess you get when you finally find someone willing to bite back." Agatha's voice is slightly softer. The tenderness must surprise her as well, because she kisses you sloppily to divert your attention. She loves the way you're shaking under her. Pure arousal is pumping through your body, and you're not sure how much longer you're able to stand not being filled. When Agatha pulls back a bit, you nuzzle your face against hers, making whining noises.
"Silly rabbit. Such a pathetic creature. Can't even wait one more second to be filled?" You shake your head. "Too bad. I need to taste you first. I promised to eat you, didn't I?"
Her lips trail down your neck, leaving bites along the way. Agatha gives your tits a little bit of attention, flicking her tongue over your nipples to listen to you squeal, but she's on a mission.
Her hands grip your thighs, spreading you open for her hungry gaze. Agatha leans in and inhales, her tail lashing as she smells your soaked cunt. Her tongue lolls out, and before you can comment on how long it is, it swipes through your folds in a long, firm push. Your head falls back against the pillow, back arching as you feel her start licking you eagerly.
Agatha's fox tongue has little bumps meant to help groom fur, and the feeling of that ridged, wet muscle lapping at you like she's been starved for months has you seeing stars. You wrap your legs around her head, your fingers grasping at her hair. Anything to ground you.
"Ah!" You moan, thrashing under her. "Don't stop, I'm close!"
Agatha doesn't speak, but her gaze never leaves you. Her nose brushes against your clit as she fucks her long tongue inside of your aching hole. Claws dig into the meat of your thighs as she tries to hold you still. You might be bleeding, you're not sure. All you can feel is pleasure that practically has you passing out as your orgasm crashes through you.
Despite the mind blowing climax, you're not nearly done yet, and Agatha knows it. Agatha pulls back just enough to reach between your thighs. She spreads your pussy lips with two fingers, groaning at the sight of you.
"I've never seen anything like this, bunny," Agatha murmurs, her lips shiny with your slick. "So red and open. It's like you were built to be fucked."
When your cunt clenches visibly at her words, a bit of your cum squeezes out and down to the sheets. The sight makes Agatha pounce into action.
There's no more words shared between the two of you. They're not needed. Both of you know what the other needs right now. The raw, animalistic need is all-consuming. Agatha sits up and rolls you onto your stomach. You're already moving into the position she wants, so she doesn't have to do much. Once on all fours, you raise your ass in the air, practically shoving yourself against her body.
Agatha positions herself behind you, stroking her cock as she gives you a slap on your flank. Your fluffy tail flicks back and forth, wafting the scent of your need around. You feel her claws dig in at the sight.
There's barely any time between Agatha rubbing the tip of her cock through your folds and almost her entire length being shoved inside you. Both of you let out feral noises at the feeling. Agatha starts rutting into you, draping herself over your back so she can latch her teeth into the back of your neck.
The sound of her grunts fill your ears, with the wet slapping noise of your bodies meeting as she fucks you serving as the backing track. You're glad that Agatha can't see your face from this angle, because you're sure that you look like a wreck. Eyes rolled back in your head, mouth hanging open and drool down your lips.
You've never been filled so perfectly. The thickness of her cock drags against your walls with each thrust, sending shockwaves up your spine and reducing your brain to a pile of mush. Another orgasm sends your body into a shaking mess, moaning into the pillow when you lose your balance and can't hold yourself up anymore. Agatha doesn't mind though. She sits up, shoving your face further into the pillow and fucking you faster.
"Gonna fuck you so good that you never want another cock," Agatha growls lowly. "No more rabbits for you, baby. You're gonna crave this from now on. Thick predator cock breeding this pretty pussy."
Her voice is starting to sound higher pitched, and you can tell she's close. You want to make her come. You want to feel her breed you. With what little strength you can muster, you start pushing your hips back to meet hers. She gasps, cock pulsing inside of you as you fuck yourself on her cock. The stretch of her feels so good that you don't notice that she's stopped going as deep, fucking you in small swift thrusts instead of the delicious ones that reach deep in your wanting hole. And you also don't notice the thickness at the base of her cock swelling again. All you can do is push, wanting her hilted inside of you and letting out a high pitched wail when she pulls back out a bit further, staving off her orgasm for a moment longer.
"Dumb bunny," Agatha breathes out. "Don't even know what you're begging for."
"I do. Please. Please, I need it," you babble mindlessly. You do know what you're begging for. You're begging for her cum. You're begging for her to claim you. To ruin you for anyone else.
Agatha hesitates for a moment before pressing herself against your back again.
"Okay. Okay, bunny. I'll give you what you need." She nips at your ears to distract you before shoving her cock fully inside you once more. It's bigger. Thicker. It's stretching your cunt at the entrance. You cry out, and she shushes you, lips against the back of your neck now. "You've got it, it's in. Just relax, and it'll go smoother."
Agatha's thrusts are shallow now, barely pulling out of you before hilting with each push of her hips. You thought the stretch would settle, but every time your cunt adjusts, it feels like the girth around the base of her cock swells even bigger, growing into a bulbous shape that catches against your hole.
And then, realization hits you.
Knot.
Agatha was right. You didn't know what you were begging for. She warned you earlier, and you misunderstood. And she was holding back now because she didn't want to knot you.
Knotting is meant for mating and is supposedly incredibly intimate for species that do it. Agatha probably hesitated because of course she would. She probably doesn't just go knotting any random hookup.
But she heard your desperate begging and gave it to you anyway.
Your impression of Agatha tells you that she wouldn't do something so vulnerable if she didn't really want to. This divorced woman who's old enough to be your mother is crossing a social boundary for you, just because you sat pretty and begged pathetically for her to claim you.
The brief panic you had disappears. Your cunt clenches and gushes around her. Agatha is letting out an endless stream of grunts and moans. The vibrations of them rattle through her chest and against your skin where she's pressed against you.
Even if you wanted her to stop, you're not sure that you'd be able to shove her off. She's too far gone now, too close to release that the only thing in her mind is finishing.
You wiggle your hips and clench around her deliberately. Agatha's eyes fly open, and you feel her pulse.
"Bunny, I—"
"Knot me, Agatha."
Agatha's eyes roll back and her entire body shakes. Her sweat slicked forehead drops to your shoulder as she manages a few more tiny thrusts before you feel a spurt of thin cum shoot into you. Agatha gasps when you squeeze around her, milking every drop you can.
The knot swells as the last bit of her load dribbles out. You bite the pillow at the feeling, the walls of your pussy gaping around the fleshy plug meant to keep Agatha's seed inside of you. The sensation is so painfully delicious that it has you rubbing your clit, urging one last weak orgasm from your trembling form.
Agatha's body collapses on top of you. She takes a moment to catch her breath before rolling you onto your side.
The sudden movement and tug of the knot at your hole makes you scramble. She didn't know that you were biting the pillow. The sound of fabric ripping hits both of you, jolting you from the post-orgasm haze. You blink and flatten your ears, straining to look back at her over your shoulder.
"Sorry."
"We're even now from the shirt thing," Agatha huffs out an exhausted laugh.
"Yeah, that's fair."
You can't turn to face her with her knot snug in your cunt from behind, so you can only get a glimpse of her beautifully wrecked appearance. Her hair is wild and pupils blown out so that they look like midnight rather than sky blue. Her tail is wagging slowly, content.
"Can you reach the nightstand? There's a water bottle there."
"Yeah."
After both of you chug half a bottle each, Agatha drapes her arm over you and nuzzles against your back. You try to free yourself and roll over to face her, but her knot is still just as swollen.
"How long does this thing last?" You ask.
"Depends," Agatha mumbles, sounding sleepy. "Could be soon. Could be as long as an hour and a half."
"What? That's so long," you whine.
"Don't you know anything about knots?"
"I thought it was like, a few minutes!"
"I know it's been a while since I've been in school, but didn't they teach you kids sex-ed?"
"They separate us by species! All I learned was rabbit sex. Anything else I've learned through experience, and you're the first person with a knot I've ever fucked."
"Maybe you should do your research next time then," Agatha shrugs.
"What was I supposed to do, look up fox breeding dynamics when I saw you at the bar?"
"Or not beg to get knotted."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
You hike your leg up and kick backwards into her shin. Agatha yips. You giggle, which is cut off very quickly when you feel her teeth sink into the back of your neck, scruffing you like an unruly kit.
Prey instincts make you go limp, and Agatha lets out a satisfied snort.
"Don't get too cocky, bunny," Agatha says once she releases your neck. "I know all the buttons to push to make that bratty attitude of yours disappear."
"Not a brat," you mumble.
"Yes, you are."
"I'm not."
"You're doing it right now."
"It's not bratting."
"It is. Textbook even."
You give up, scooting back against her body fully so that you can steal her warmth. Agatha's fingers stroke your lower tummy. You wonder if she's thinking about her cock nestled inside there.
"Why'd you agree to knot me?" You ask after a bit of silence. "Isn't it like, meant for mates or something?"
Agatha's hand stills. Clearly, you struck a nerve. She makes up an excuse on the fly.
"I just wanted to see how it would feel inside you. Different species and all."
"Have you only ever fucked other foxes?"
"No." A beat. "My ex-wife is a wolf."
Ah. The ex-wife that she can't stop hooking up with. Something about this first-date knotting is screaming attachment issues (literally). But, not eager to have Agatha angry with you while you're locked together, you hold your tongue.
"Cool. I've never fucked a wolf before. Did she howl?"
"You really want to ask me questions about my ex while I'm inside you?"
"You brought her up, I'm just being following the thread of conversation."
"I bet your mouth gets you in a lot of trouble, missy."
"It does. Like the time it got me stuck on a fox's knot for an hour."
Agatha barks out a laugh and squeezes your tummy. You beam with satisfaction.
"Alright, that's enough out of you. You tired?"
"Physically. But I'm pretty awake still."
You feel Agatha wrap around you, and she grunts as she maneuvers the two of you. Her knot tugging at your raw entrance is a dull ache now. She repositions the two of you so that you're laying horizontal across the bed. Agatha reaches around you to grab a remote from the side table. She points it at the television mounted on the wall and turns that on before offering it to you.
"Pick something. We can shower after my knot goes down. Might as well keep yourself entertained."
You smile at the thoughtfulness and take the remote from her. Agatha falls asleep within about ten minutes of the documentary you turn on, snoring behind you with her nose pressed against your shoulder. You feel her drooling on your skin.
The warm stretch of her cock buried inside of you keeps your brain in a delightfully hazy space. It's just enough to keep you from overthinking about how you've never stayed with a hookup for more than a couple of minutes after they rolled off of you.
Steadily, her knot starts going down. After about a half hour passes, it's small enough that you could probably pull yourself off of it now.
But you're comfortable. And you don't want to wake the woman behind you by moving around so much. So instead, you settle in Agatha's arms, tug the blanket over the both of you, and wait for her to rouse from sleep so that you can shower together.
The employee handbook didn’t cover the way Wanda looks at you when you’re on your knees scrubbing the floor, or the way Natasha’s fingers feel when she tangles them in your hair to tilt your head back. You were hired to be their domestic chatelaine, but the professional lines didn't just blur. They dissolved entirely the moment the married couple decided that the only thing missing from their perfect home was you.
details: nasty smut (poly), porn w/ some plot, hurt/comfort, employee/employer to complex? to partners/dating/married, switch/gentle strict dom!wanda, top/sharp quiet dom!natasha, bottom/sub!reader, personal cook/maid!reader, rich/well off couple!wandanat, oral/fingering/strap in v, (kinks such as... hair pulling, spit, dom/sub, impact play, praise, ownership, overstimulation)
The kitchen is steeped in the soft amber glow of golden hour, sunlight spilling lazily across the countertops and catching on the edges of polished glass. The open window lets in a gentle breeze, just enough to stir the curtains into a slow, rhythmic sway. It’s peaceful—quiet in a way that makes the clink of utensils and the low hum of the oven feel almost comforting.
You’d finished your usual list earlier than expected today. With time to spare, you decided to start dinner—something more involved than usual, a recipe that required patience and care. The kind of meal that fills a home not just with aroma, but with warmth.
It’s been about a year since you started working here, and you’ve settled into the rhythm of it all with ease. Wanda can be particular—precise in a way that keeps everything running just so—but never unkind. And Natasha balances her out effortlessly. Together, they’ve made this place feel less like a job and more like somewhere you belong. The small home they’ve provided nearby only adds to that sense of comfort.
You’re pulling the dish from the oven, the rich scent of slow-cooked herbs and roasted vegetables (or perhaps a carefully layered lasagna, bubbling at the edges) filling the air, when you hear the front door open.
Voices follow. Familiar, welcome. A small smile tugs at your lips as you set the dish down carefully.
“We’re back,” Natasha calls, her tone lighter than usual, travel always seems to wear on her.
Wanda, however, makes a beeline straight for the kitchen, drawn in by the scent before anything else. She pauses in the doorway, breathing it in, her expression softening.
“What smells so good…?”
You glance over your shoulder, slipping off the oven mitts. “It’s a slow-baked recipe—took most of the afternoon,” you say with a small, proud smile. “Figured I’d make something special. Welcome back.”
Natasha appears behind her, resting a hand lightly on Wanda’s arm, a knowing look in her eyes. “Tempting,” she says, “but we should probably get out of these airport clothes first.”
Wanda hesitates for just a second longer, clearly reluctant to leave the kitchen, before allowing herself to be guided away. You chuckle softly, turning back to the counter to finish plating.
“I’ll have everything ready when you’re done,” you call after them.
The dining room is already set. Candles waiting to be lit, plates placed just so.
Their footsteps return not long after, quieter now. Changed, settled, the fatigue of travel softened into something more relaxed. Wanda lingers near the doorway again, though this time she leans lightly against the frame, arms crossed, watching as you finish up the last touches.
Dinner passes easily. They ask about the house, about anything that might have come up in their absence. It’s brief, casual—more habit than concern—and you reassure them everything’s been smooth. No issues, no surprises.
Wanda hums in quiet approval, exchanging a glance with Natasha before looking back at you. “We appreciate you,” she says simply, but sincerely.
Natasha offers a small, warm smile. “You’ve done more than enough. Go ahead and call it a night.”
You nod, returning the smile. “Enjoy dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They thank you again as you step away, settling in at the table just as you disappear back into the kitchen. The routine comes naturally now—plates rinsed, dishes loaded carefully into the dishwasher, counters wiped down until they gleam faintly under the soft overhead light. The house quiets again, save for the low murmur of their conversation drifting faintly from the living room.
By the time you’re done, the last of the sunlight has faded, leaving behind a gentle dusk. You grab your things, slipping out the door with a quiet ease, the cool evening air greeting you as you step outside. The short walk to your place feels familiar, almost grounding after a full day.
The ocean breeze greets you the moment you step outside, cool and laced with salt, drifting up from the waves crashing steadily against the rocks below the cliffside mansion; you take your time walking the familiar path to your small home tucked along the ledge, letting your gaze wander out over the endless stretch of darkening water as the last of the sunlight fades into soft blues and grays, and for a moment you simply pause, breathing it in, enjoying the quiet and the view that never quite gets old, before finally heading inside, closing the door behind you, and settling in for the night.
It seems as if something had shifted during their trip, you notice it before you can quite name it.
They’ve always been kind. From the awkward, careful beginnings when you first started working for them, to the easy rhythm you’ve settled into now, there’s always been warmth there. Gentleness. Familiarity that never crossed a line.
But something is different. You’re in the living room, cloth in hand, carefully wiping down the edge of the TV table, more out of habit than necessity.
Wanda is there too. She’s settled into one of the armchairs with a glass of wine, posture relaxed, but not absent. She isn’t doing anything obvious. Just watching. Or at least, it feels like watching.
At first, you try to ignore it. Focus on the surface in front of you. The grain of the wood. The steady motion of your hand.
But you feel it anyway.
“We don’t know too much about your life outside of here, do we?” Wanda asks, her voice smooth as velvet, casual on the surface in a way that doesn’t quite match the weight of her attention.
She tilts the glass toward herself and takes a slow sip of wine, watching you over the rim. Patient, unhurried, like she’s not expecting an answer so much as a reaction.
You pause.
“Um…” Your hand stills briefly against the cloth before you force it to keep moving. “I guess not, no.”
There’s a small, thoughtful hum from her. Soft, almost approving, though it’s hard to tell exactly why.
“I suppose that’s partly my fault,” she says after a beat, as if considering it for the first time in that moment. “We do tend to keep things… focused here.”
Wanda leans back slightly in the chair, glass resting loosely in her hand.
“You’ve been with us a while now,” she adds, softer. “It’s strange how little we know about you.”
A pause.
Then, lighter. Carefully so, like she’s stepping around something:
Wanda hums softly at that, the sound low and thoughtful as she turns the glass slightly in her hand. The last of the light shifts across the room while she watches you a moment longer, as if weighing something quietly in her mind.
“Is it alright if I ask you a couple of questions then?”
The request is gentle. Polite, even. Still firmly within the boundaries of employer and employee,but there’s something in the way she asks that makes it feel more personal than procedural.
You hesitate just briefly before nodding.
“Yeah… that’s fine.”
“Wonderful,” she says simply.
And just like that, the conversation continues.
At first, the questions are harmless enough, small things, things that could pass as curiosity after a year of shared space. Your routines. What you like to cook when you’re on your own. How you found your way into this work. Wanda listens to every answer with an unusual kind of attention, like she’s not just hearing you, but remembering you.
Time slips in quiet increments.
The sun lowers further, golden light fading into softer tones as your conversation carries, the house shifting gradually toward evening. Somewhere along the way, her wine glass empties, left resting on the arm of the chair as she forgets to refill it or even notice.
It was the most tame of what was to come. Of how quietly, almost imperceptibly, things would begin to shift.
A couple of days later, the house has settled back into its usual rhythm. The library is warm and dimly lit, the kind of space that feels even quieter after a long day—books lined in perfect order, the faint scent of paper and polished wood in the air.
Wanda and Natasha are there after work, speaking in low tones, their presence relaxed in that familiar way that only comes after years of sharing space. You pass through briefly, intending only to retrieve something you left behind.
You barely make it a few steps inside when Wanda’s attention shifts toward you.
“I showed Natasha some of your artwork,” she says gently, as if continuing a thought rather than introducing a new one. Her gaze flicks briefly to her wife, then back to you. “From what you shared with me last night… if that’s alright.”
“Oh,” you blink slightly, caught off guard but not uncomfortable. “That’s… quite alright.”
Natasha looks at you then.
“They were beautiful,” she says simply, no hesitation in her voice. A pause. “Did you paint them while we were gone last week?”
You nod, still a little unsure where this is going. “Yes. I had extra time… not as much to clean.”
A faint hint of amusement passes through Natasha’s expression at that, though it never fully forms into a smile.
“Right,” she replies, tone even, thoughtful. Then, after a beat: “Well… we were thinking we’d like to put your artwork in a showing next week.”
That lands differently.
You stop for a second, processing it. “What…? I— that’s very kind, I…”
Wanda watches your reaction carefully, something warm in her expression that isn’t quite pride, but close.
“It’s very beautiful,” she says softly. “It deserves to be seen.”
Natasha gives a small, confirming nod beside her.
Your surprise eases into something quieter—something touched, almost disbelieving. “I’d love to,” you say finally.
And for a moment, the conversation pauses there—not ending, but settling into something that feels a little more deliberate than before.
The museum is everything you expected it to be, and a little more overwhelming than you care to admit.
High ceilings, polished marble floors, and soft, controlled lighting that makes every piece of art feel curated to perfection. People move through the space in quiet clusters, dressed with the kind of ease that comes from never needing to think too much about where they are or why they belong there.
You stand near your work, hands loosely at your sides, trying not to look as out of place as you feel. The painting is hung beautifully—better than you’ve ever seen it displayed, but your attention keeps drifting to everything else instead of it.
A few guests pass by, offering polite nods or brief comments, but it all feels slightly distant, like you’re watching it happen rather than part of it. Then you see them.
The moment your eyes meet theirs, something in your shoulders loosens without permission. Wanda notices first, her expression softening as she approaches.
“There you are,” she says gently, as if you’d only been briefly misplaced rather than standing in the middle of a formal exhibition.
Natasha follows beside her, gaze briefly flicking to your work before returning to you. “How are you holding up?”
It’s a simple question, but it lands with more weight than it should here.
You manage a small breath of a laugh. “Alright,” you say honestly.
Wanda hums, understanding immediately.
Natasha’s eyes linger on you for a moment longer before she gives a slight nod. “You did well.”
There’s a pause. Not awkward, but fuller than before.
And then you notice it. Wanda steps slightly closer than she usually would in public. Not enough to be obvious to anyone else, but enough that you feel it. Natasha’s hand briefly touches your arm as she adjusts her position beside you, guiding you gently through the flow of passing guests as they speak.
It isn’t dramatic. Nothing about it is. But it’s different.
As the conversation continues, small comments about the turnout, a few quiet remarks about the piece. You become aware of it in fragments: Wanda’s attention resting on you a little longer than necessary, Natasha’s hand lingering just a second too long before letting go.
By the time they eventually guide you away from the painting to greet someone else, you realize the shift isn’t something you can point to clearly.
Their touches, once fleeting, have begun to carry intention.
Their glances, once brief and forgettable, now tend to linger just a little too long.
Even now, kneeling on the floor with a cloth in hand, wiping a section of tile that doesn’t really need attention, you feel it. The quiet weight of their presence behind you, the way you feel their gaze drift to areas they maybe shouldn't.
You keep your focus down, continuing as if nothing has changed, as if you haven’t been carrying this awareness with you for weeks. You’ve been ignoring it, even as it follows you into the night and sits restless in your chest when everything else is still.
A month passes like that. Supporting your art, inviting you to sit while they chat quietly in the library. Investing in learning more about you, and you about them. Blurring a line from before into something warmer, friendlier.
Then they leave again for the weekend.
The departure is familiar by now. Bags by the door, last checks, calm instructions spoken in that easy rhythm of theirs. But the goodbyes feel different. Slower. Softer.
Wanda pauses at the door longer than usual, stepping closer as her hand brushes your arm with a deliberate gentleness. “Take care of yourself,” she says quietly.
Natasha follows, her touch brief but steady as it settles on your shoulder a moment longer than necessary. “We’ll be back,” she adds, her voice lower than usual.
Then they’re gone, and the house settles into a silence that feels heavier than it should.
One weekend later and all your usual preparation for their return is already in motion by late afternoon. The house cleaned, the air subtly refreshed, a simple recipe planned for dinner that will be ready around the time they’re expected back. Even a small arrangement of flowers sits on the coffee table, something soft and thoughtful you added without really thinking about it.
But somewhere between checking the oven and straightening the living room for the third time, exhaustion catches up with you.
It’s been building for days—late nights, early mornings, the quiet tension you haven’t fully admitted to yourself. And when you finally sit on the couch for “just a moment,” it becomes something heavier. Something you don’t fight.
The next thing you register is warmth, and the feeling of being watched.
Your eyes open slowly, focus slipping into place. Natasha is beside you, sitting close enough that you feel her presence immediately, her hand gently resting against your cheek. Her fingers move with quiet care, brushing hair away from your face.
“Good evening,” she says, her voice low and calm, like she’s been speaking for a while already and only now expects you to hear it.
You jolt slightly as awareness snaps back into place, not just of where you are, but of how close she is. Natasha notices immediately.
“Hey, hey—whoa,” she says, her tone shifting as her hand stills against your skin. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah… yeah, I’m alright,” you manage, pushing yourself upright quickly, the sudden awareness making you hyper-conscious of everything at once. “I just— I must’ve fallen asleep.”
You sit up fully, adjusting your position on the couch, suddenly too aware of how you’re sitting, of your uniform, of the space between you. Natasha shifts slightly to give you room, though she doesn’t move far.
Wanda is there too, standing a few steps behind the couch with her arms loosely crossed. Her expression is harder to read, but her attention is fixed on you in that quiet, steady way you’ve started to recognize.
For a moment, no one speaks. The air feels different than it did when you fell asleep; it no longer feels like you are just waiting for her to come home.
Over the last month, everything has started to catch up. The tension has built steadily through every conversation and every touch, everything done with quiet intent.
Your chest rises and falls quickly, the sound of your breathing loud in the silence. Your eyes search her face, while her gaze remains steadier, watching you back. Her eyes dart to your lips, as yours dart to hers.
Before you can make a move or say another word, her lips meet yours. With a month of built-up pressure finally breaking, you lean into the kiss far quicker than you’d like to admit.
Your back hits the couch cushion again, and your hand reaches out to grip her shirt. With eyes shut and your face tilted, you settle back, moving with her.
It was a kiss, a long winded one.
Lingering kisses eventually deepened into long make-out sessions, and those sessions inevitably blurred into the arrangement you had now.
With Natasha at work, the house was quiet, leaving only you and Wanda. At her request, you were on the floor scrubbing the tiles in the foyer. Her focus was lower than usual, her gaze fixed intently on the backs of your thighs. She watched with a quiet hunger, wanting nothing more than to pull your skirt up just a few inches to see more of you.
You swallowed hard, a soft "oh..." escaping your lips when you felt the point of her heel press against your skin. She dragged it slowly up the back of your thigh, inching toward the hem of your work outfit and pushing the fabric of your skirt higher and higher.
Wanda hummed in low approval at the sight, her eyes tracing the curve of your hips and the lace of your underwear, the only thing obscuring the view she wanted most.
The air in the foyer felt thick as you slowly turned your head. You didn't meet her gaze directly; instead, your eyes traveled up her legs, to the line of her shoulder, and finally to the soft curve of her cheek. The silence stretched between you, charged and expectant, until she spoke with a quiet, firm command.
"Continue."
Taking a deep breath, you turn back to the tiled floor, forcing yourself to focus on the scrubbing. You try to work as if you don't feel her gaze on you, heavy with a sense of deep entertainment.
When you finally finish the spot Wanda had pointed out earlier, she reaches down, her fingers firm against your jaw. She tilts your head up until you're forced to face her, then leans down to capture your lips in a brief, searing kiss.
"Good job..." she murmurs against your skin, her voice laced with a quiet, lingering satisfaction.
This whole thing was torture.
The memory of their kisses and the heat of their hands seemed burned into your skin, dragging you deeper into a hazy, unfocused mindset. They would pin you against the wall, hands sliding over your curves, feeling the shape of your body until you were breathless. They’d press feather-light kisses up the sensitive line of your neck or grip your hips just to hear the sharp catch of your gasp. These were hot, quiet, random spikes of intimacy that promised everything before they were stopped.
It was driving you up the wall. You felt like you were losing your mind because it never went further.
You’d be cleaning a counter and feel a hand drag slowly up the back of your thigh. Your back would arch instinctively, a silent, desperate plea for them to keep going, but they would just pull away. Every time, they took everything back right before it could progress, leaving you shivering and stranded in the silence they left behind.
You had finished for the day, your body burning from a weeks worth of teasing. Your forehead pressed against your shower wall, sighing from the coolness on your hot skin. Your mind kept replaying the moments, the scenes from earlier. And your fingers unknowingly dipped in between your thighs to feel the soaked mess. You keen at the touch, finally getting something.
You rub your clit, thighs shaking. Leaning heavily against the cool surface, bottom lip dropped open as you whine and keen at the feeling. Your mind full of all the moments between you and Natasha, Wanda... the both of them. Imagining if you went just further, how they'd take care of you. They're kind, so incredibly so. You can only imagine how their touch would feel there, how their voices low would sound against your ear.
"G-gods," you cry softly, shuddering. "W-wanda... Natasha... please...!"
Thighs clenching together as your thighs drip with your arousal as you fall down from your climax. Unaware Wanda had come by to your little home to try and return your laptop that you had left in the library, her ears perked to hearing your moans from the small space inside the front door.
As you breath heavily, your mind feeling a dazed mess. You jerk awake at the knock to your door, heart falling into your stomach. Wrapping a towel around your body, you hear towards the front door. Cheeks flushed, embarrassment and shame filling your body at the possibility that she's heard you.
"Wanda... I-"
She shuts your hesitant explanation up, grabbing hold of you and pulling you into a kiss. She places your laptop on a surface that she passes by, her eyes opening briefly to place it there before her attention turns back to you.
"Listen to me, shh." She explains, tone too sweet. "We're going to put a name in place if you wish to stop at any time, alright? Tell me you're listening, lovie."
You whine, arms crossing around the back of her neck, nodding, "Yes..."
"Any word you'd like?"
"I... um, Pear?"
"Alright, you say pear if you wish to stop. Okay?"
"Okay.. I will."
She's not wasting time after to back you up until you're falling back onto your bed. Her lips run down your neck, fingers tugging the towel around your bare body off. She runs her hand down your chest, rubbing at your nipple to hear you moan.
"Please...!"
"Shh," she murmurs, sliding her hand down your side to touch you directly. Her eyes, dark and lidded, watching your head fall back as she swirls her fingers around your wet pussy.
You bite your bottom lip, "mm..!"
You were already hovering on the edge, your nervous system frayed from the back-to-back stimulation. Every time her thumb swiped over your clit, a jagged bolt of lightning shot straight to your core. Your breath came in ragged, broken sobs, your fingers digging into the bedding as you tried to find some purchase in the storm she was creating.
"Wanda, please... I can't—"
"You can," she countered softly, leaning down to catch your whimpers with her lips. She tasted like expensive wine and authority.
The door to your cottage creaked open again, neither of you locked it in your sex-crazed haze. The heavy, measured tread of boots on the wood floor told you exactly who it was before she even spoke.
"I thought I'd find the two of you here," Natasha’s voice drifted in from the bedroom doorway.Her eyes took in the sceen. Looking from the discarded towel, your flushed, shaking form, and Wanda’s hand buried between your thighs. Natasha walked to the edge of the bed, her shadow falling over you. Your teary eyes looking up to her, hands clutching at the sheets beside your head.
"Heard her touching herself in the shower, moaning our names," Wanda explains, angling her hands so Natasha can bring her hand alongside Wanda's.
The addition of Natasha’s finger pushing into you was the final breach. Her fingers stretching you in a way that made your breath hitch and stay trapped in your throat.
"Is that so?" Natasha murmured, her voice dropping to a gravelly low as she watched the way your body reacted to the dual invasion. She didn't look away from your eyes, holding your gaze even as she began to move in tandem with her wife. "Using us to find your little thrill while you're all alone?"
Wanda leaned over you, her hair draping like a silken curtain around your face, sealing the three of you into a private world of heat and friction. "It’s a breach of contract, really," Wanda whispered against your lips, her thumb never stopping its relentless, grinding circles on your clit. "Taking what belongs to us without asking."
The sensation was overwhelming. Too much, too fast, and yet exactly what you had been dying for during those long, lonely months of "professionalism." With Wanda’s thumb pushing you toward the sun and the combined weight of their fingers filling you, your internal muscles began to clench in desperate, rhythmic pulses.
"She’s close," Natasha noted, her eyes darkening. She hooked her thumb into the crease of your hip, pinning you down as you tried to buck upward. "Don't you dare close your eyes. Look at what you've done to yourself. Look at how we're taking care of you. Open your eyes."
You let out a broken, high-pitched keen, your fingers losing their grip on the sheets as your back arched off the mattress. The world narrowed down to the point where their hands met inside you.
"Please," you sobbed, the word a frantic prayer. "Please, I—I can't—"
Your climax hit with the force of a tidal wave, your internal walls squeezing around them in tight, helpless spasms. Your overstimulation turned into a white-hot blur. You were vaguely aware of the way Wanda’s hand stayed exactly where it was, holding you through the aftershocks, refusing to let you retreat from the intensity of what they were doing to you.
As the room slowly stopped spinning, you lay there shivering, completely exposed and utterly claimed in the quiet of your own room.
"Good girl," Natasha whispered, finally withdrawing her hand to stroke a damp strand of hair from your forehead. Her touch was suddenly, jarringly tender as she looked down at your spent form.
Wanda hummed, leaning down to press one last, lingering kiss to your heated temple. "Rest now, darling," she murmured, her voice returning to that smooth, employer-like calm that felt so much more dangerous now. "We expect you at the main house at dawn. Breakfast won't make itself."
Same from before...
Torture. This was torture.
The granite was cold against your palms, a sharp contrast to the heat of Natasha’s body pressed firmly against your back. You had barely started on the morning’s routine before her hands were on you, dragging the fabric of your uniform up until it bunched at your waist.
Your head fell back against her shoulder, a broken sound escaping you as she reached around to find you. Her movements were steady and deliberate, her fingers sliding over your skin with a familiarity that made your knees weak. She didn't say a word, her quiet focus more overwhelming than any command.
"The stove," you managed to whisper, your fingers white-knuckled as you gripped the edge of the counter.
"Ignore it," Natasha murmured against your ear, her thumb finding your clit and applying a slow, heavy pressure that made your breath hitch.
Across the island, Wanda leaned against the counter, her dark eyes fixed on the way you moved under Natasha’s hands. She didn't move to help or stop it; she simply watched, her presence adding a weight to the room that made the air feel thick. She reached out, her fingers trailing idly over the morning paper, but her attention remained entirely on you.
Every time you tried to regain your footing, Natasha shifted her weight, pinning you more firmly against the stone and increasing the pace of her fingers. The friction was relentless, grinding against you in all the ways she knew you couldn't handle.
Your back arched, a sharp gasp leaving you as the stimulation became too much to fight. The kitchen was quiet, save for the hum of the house and the ragged sound of your own breathing as they watched you come apart.
The study was quiet, the air thick with the scent of old paper and the soft clicking of Natasha’s keyboard. You stepped inside, your grip light on the handle of your duster as you caught her eye.
"Hi," you murmured, offering a soft, tentative smile. "Is it alright if I start on the bookshelves?"
Natasha leaned back slightly, her expression warming as she looked up from her screen. "Yes, of course. Thank you."
You moved to the far wall, the steady rhythm of your work filling the silence as you reached for the higher shelves. You could feel her gaze occasionally flicking away from her work to follow your movements.
"How is your latest painting coming along?" she asked, her voice casual but attentive.
You paused, your hand hovering near a leather-bound spine. "Oh... it’s fine. I just haven't had much time to get back to it lately."
Natasha’s eyes lingered on you for a moment longer, a thoughtful look crossing her face. "Then take the evening off," she suggested.
Your hand faltered, the duster stilled against the wood. "B-but... I still have the dinner service and the—"
The study was quiet, the only sound the soft friction of your cloth against the wood until Natasha spoke. Her suggestion caught you completely off guard, the professional habit of always being available momentarily clashing with the genuine excitement bubbling up in your chest.
"Truly, I mean it. Take the time."
"Really?" you asked, pausing with the duster still in hand.
"Really," she confirmed, a faint, knowing tilt to her lips.
You didn't need to be told twice. After a quick, grateful goodbye, you practically floated out of the main house. The walk back to your cottage was brisk, the salt air feeling particularly invigorating.
Once inside, the evening was a blur of focused energy. You set up your easel by the window, catching the last of the golden hour as it washed over the canvas. The brushes felt like an extension of your hand, the colors blending with a fluid ease you hadn't felt in weeks. The tension of the house, the complex stares from Wanda, and the weight of Natasha's attention seemed to channel themselves directly into the pigment.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving only deep purples and bruised oranges across the sky, you were covered in faint splatters of paint and feeling a sense of profound peace. You stepped back to survey the work, your chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
The snap of a twig outside made you turn.
A silhouette stood on your small porch, framed by the darkening ocean behind them. The door wasn't locked, you rarely felt the need for it here. Wanda stepped inside, her movements as graceful as ever, her eyes immediately finding the canvas before they drifted to you.
"Natasha said you were inspired," Wanda said softly, stepping closer. She didn't look at the mess on your hands or the smudge of blue on your cheek; she looked at the painting with a quiet, intense reverence. "It seems she was right."
"I... I didn't hear you come up," you whispered, suddenly very aware of how small your home felt with her inside it.
Wanda didn't answer right away. She walked around the easel, her silk dress rustling faintly, until she was standing directly in front of you. The air between you hummed, charged with the same unspoken current that had been vibrating through the kitchen and the library for months.
"It’s beautiful," she murmured, reaching out. Her fingers didn't touch the painting; instead, they brushed against your jaw, her thumb ghosting over that smudge of blue paint on your skin.
"Thank you..."
Wanda’s thumb lingered on your jaw, the blue paint smearing slightly under the warmth of her skin. The silence in your home was heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic crash of the waves against the cliffside. Her gaze dropped to your lips, and before you could draw another breath, she leaned in.
The kiss was deep and inevitable, the culmination of a year of stolen glances and professional restraint finally snapping. You whimpered into her mouth, your hands coming up to clutch at the silk of her sleeves as she pressed forward, her body a firm, commanding weight that forced you backward. Your heels hit the base of the wall, and the cool glass of the window pressed against your spine as she pinned you there.
She pulled back just an inch, her breath hot against your skin. "I've wanted to do that since the day we hired you," she whispered, her voice low.
Without waiting for a response, her kisses began to migrate. She trailed them down the line of your throat, her tongue grazing your pulse point before she dropped to her knees. The transition was fluid, her hands sliding up the insides of your thighs to gather your dress, bunching the fabric at your waist.
You gasped, your head hitting the windowpane with a dull thud as she moved between your legs. The cool evening air from the slightly ajar window hit your bare skin, but the heat radiating from Wanda was all you could feel.
"Be good for me," she murmured, looking up at you with lidded, intense eyes. "Be very still."
She didn't give you a choice. Her tongue swiped along your clit, tasting the arousal you’d been carrying all day. You bucked instinctively, your fingers tangling in her hair, but she gripped your hips, her fingernails digging in just enough to anchor you.
"I said still," she repeated against your skin, punctuating the command with a sharp, sudden nip to your inner thigh.
You let out a strangled cry, your legs trembling as she settled in. She ate you out with a slow, agonizing thoroughness, her tongue swirling and pressing in all the ways that made your vision blur.
Every time you tried to shy away from the intensity, her grip tightened, holding you ruthlessly against the glass until you were nothing but a shivering mess of sensation under her quiet, focused care.
The house felt unusually cold that Tuesday, the coastal fog pressing thick and grey against the windows. You were in the dining room, your movements mechanical as you adjusted the floral centerpiece, but your heart wasn't in the work. You’d been feeling the shift. A strange, growing silence between the three of you that felt less like peace and more like a withdrawal.
As you stepped toward the foyer to retrieve a fallen leaf, you heard their voices. Low, serious, and stripped of the warmth that usually colored their private conversations. You froze behind the heavy oak door.
“It’s getting complicated, Natasha,” Wanda said, her tone measured, quieter than usual. “We didn’t exactly set rules for this, and now… we’re just letting it drift.”
There was a brief silence. You could almost hear Natasha exhale.
“I know,” she said, her voice softer, but edged with something firmer underneath. “But we can’t keep guessing how she feels and calling it enough. She hasn’t said anything. She just… goes along with it.”
Your chest tightened.
Another pause.
“And if that’s all it is for her,” Natasha continued, a little more distant now, “then we need to stop pretending it’s more. Either she actually wants to be part of this, or we step back and let things be what they were before... We should ton-"
You didn't stay to hear the rest; the floor seemed to tilt beneath your feet. You retreated to your small cottage on the ledge, the salt air stinging your eyes as you spent a sleepless night convinced that the "arrangement" had finally reached its expiration date. You weren't just losing a job; you were losing the only place you’d ever felt you belonged.
The next morning, you moved through the main house like a ghost. You kept your eyes down, your uniform pressed and perfect, returning to the invisible persona of the domestic chatelaine. You avoided the study. You stayed out of the kitchen. You were back to being the help.
You were on your knees in the hallway, scrubbing the baseboards with a desperate, shaky intensity, when two pairs of shoes appeared in your peripheral vision. You didn't look up, your fingers white-knuckled around the brush.
"Look at me," Wanda commanded. It wasn't the playful, dark command from before; it was soft, laced with a sudden, sharp concern.
"I’m almost finished with the hall, Ma’am," you whispered, your voice thick and brittle. "I’ll be out your way."
A hand settled on your shoulder, Natasha. She knelt on the floor beside you, her strength forcing you to stop the frantic scrubbing. "Why are you calling her that? And why have you been hiding in the shadows all morning?"
“I heard you,” you said, the words breaking out of you before you could stop them. Your voice shook, eyes stinging as you looked between them. “About the distance… about things getting complicated. I know I’m just—” you swallowed hard, “—I know I work for you, and things got… blurred, but I can’t just go back to how it was. I can’t pretend none of this happened.”
The hallway went still.
For a split second, neither of them reacted—like your words hadn’t landed the way you thought they would.
Then Wanda moved first.
She dropped down in front of you, not cold, not distant—something in her expression cracking open instead. Her hands came up, hesitant at first, before gently steadying you.
“Oh, sweetheart…” she murmured, her voice soft with sudden understanding. “That’s not what we meant. Not even close.”
Natasha stepped in beside you, close enough that you could feel the warmth of her, the tension in her shoulders. “We weren’t talking about pushing you away,” she said, quieter now. “We were trying to figure out if we already crossed a line we shouldn’t have.”
You blinked, breath catching.
Wanda’s thumb brushed lightly under your eye, catching a tear before it could fall. “You haven’t said anything,” she added gently. “You’ve just… gone along with us. And we started thinking—what if you felt like you had to?”
Natasha exhaled, rubbing a hand over the back of her neck. “We didn’t want you stuck in something you couldn’t refuse. That’s what the ‘distance’ was about. Giving you room, if you needed it.”
The words hit differently now. Not sharp—just heavy in a completely different way.
“I don’t want room,” you said, the truth rushing out of you, uneven and fragile. “That’s the problem. The idea of going back—to just being your employee, pretending this didn’t happen—” your voice broke, “—that’s what scares me.”
They both stilled.
You forced yourself to keep going, even as your chest tightened. “I thought you were… done with me. Like this was just something that got out of hand and now you were fixing it.”
Wanda’s expression softened instantly, something almost pained flickering across her face.
“I don’t feel like ‘the help’ anymore,” you admitted, quieter now. “And I don’t want to. I want it to mean something. I want… all of it to mean something.”
The confession hung there, fragile and exposed.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Natasha stepped closer, her hand coming up—slow this time, deliberate—giving you time to pull away if you wanted.
You didn’t.
Her fingers curled gently at your jaw, grounding. “You should have told us,” she said, but there was no reprimand in it. Just something softer. Regret, maybe.
Wanda leaned in beside her, her hand finding yours and holding it tightly. “We thought we were protecting you,” she said quietly. “Not losing you. We should've said something too.... We're sorry, lovie."
The distance you’d been bracing for didn’t come. Instead, they stayed right there—close, careful, and waiting. Like this time, whatever happened next… would actually be your choice.
"Oh," Natasha moans, her head falling back into the pillows, her fingers tangling deep in Wanda’s hair as Wanda works between her thighs with a slow, devastating hunger.
The sound carries through the heavy oak doors of the primary suite, but you’re already inside, clutching your cleaning tray. It’s the standard schedule, the routine you’ve followed for a year, but the air in the room is different now—thick, charged, and smelling of salt and expensive perfume. Your cheeks flush a deep, hot crimson as you freeze mid-step, your eyes catching the sight of them on the expansive silk bed.
"O-oh, I... I’m so sorry. I’ll come back—"
Natasha’s eyes snap open, dark and lidded, "stay... if you'd like."
When you nod after a moment, she reaches out, her hand trembling slightly as she waves you further into the room.
"Sit," she commands, her voice a low, gravelly rumble. She gestures to the edge of the bed.
Wanda pauses, her lips slick as she starts to move toward you, drawn by your presence, but Natasha’s grip tightens. She tugs Wanda back to her core by her hair, a sharp, grounding pull. "You’re not finished," Natasha murmurs, her gaze never leaving yours.
You sit, your legs feeling like lead, your thighs squirming against the soft duvet as you watch them. You watch the rhythm of Wanda’s shoulders, the arch of Natasha’s back, and the way they move together until Natasha finally breaks, a long, shattered breath escaping her as she finds her release.
When she’s done, Wanda finally pulls away. She crawls across the silk toward you, her eyes glowing with a dark, affectionate possessiveness. She reaches out, tilting your chin up, and spits into your mouth—a raw, visceral claim that ensures you taste both of them before she crashes her lips against yours. You kiss her back, a broken whimper escaping you as you finally receive the attention you’ve been starving for.
As Wanda makes out with you, her tongue searching yours, you hear the quiet, rhythmic click of a harness. Natasha moves toward you, her movements steady and clinical. She doesn't say a word, but the intent in her eyes is absolute.
Your legs are guided open, wrapped tightly around Wanda’s waist. You take Wanda’s fingers into your mouth, sucking on them as Natasha moves behind you. The first thrust is slow, a heavy, filling stretch that makes your eyes roll back. You moan into Wanda’s palm, your body shaking at the sheer scale of the sensation.
Wanda shifts her body, her hands firm on your shoulders as she maneuvers you onto your elbows and knees. Your back arches instinctively, a sharp, jagged keen escaping your throat at the way your body is being opened and used. It’s a beautiful, overwhelming stretch.
Wanda moves directly in front of you, settling onto the mattress and parting her legs, her gaze fixed on your face.
"Good girl," she whispers, her voice a dark velvet caress.
She pulls you forward, making you eat her out with a desperate, frantic hunger, while behind you, Natasha takes you with a relentless, punishing pace. You are pinned between them—the damp, intoxicating heat of Wanda in front and the sharp, rhythmic force of Natasha behind.
Every thrust drives you further into Wanda’s core, the dual stimulation turning your world into a blurred symphony. The rhythm behind you shifts, becoming sharper and more deliberate. Natasha’s hand leaves your hip, and the air hits your heated skin for only a split second before the first crack of her palm meeting your flesh echoes through the room.
A sharp, shocked cry breaks from your throat, muffled only by the proximity of Wanda’s body. The sting is immediate—a bright, stinging heat that radiates across your cheek and down your thighs, grounding you in the intensity of the moment. Natasha doesn't let up; she finds a punishing cadence, alternating between the heavy, filling thrusts of the strap-on and the stinging weight of her hand against your backside.
In front of you, Wanda’s fingers suddenly entwine in your hair, tugging just enough to pull you away from her. She grips your jaw, her thumb and forefinger squeezing your chin with a firm, unyielding pressure that forces you to look up. Your eyes are watery, your vision blurred by the sheer overstimulation of being taken from both ends, but she waits until you meet her gaze.
"Look at me, darling," Wanda murmurs, her dark eyes searching your face, drinking in the flush of your cheeks and the way your lips are parted and trembling.
The sting behind you continues—crack, crack—and your back arches with every impact, your breath coming in ragged, desperate hitches. You are completely undone, a shivering mess of arousal and surrender pinned between the two women who own every inch of your world.
"Tell her," Wanda commands, her thumb dragging across your bottom lip, catching a stray drop of moisture. Her voice is a soft, velvet blade. "Thank Natasha for taking you so thoroughly. Let her hear how much you love it."
You let out a broken, keening sound as Natasha delivers one final, heavy swat that makes your entire body shudder. The friction, the heat, and the weight of their attention culminate in a crushing wave of affection and need.
"T-thank you," you sob out, your forehead dropping to rest against Wanda’s chest as the last of your composure shatters. "Thank you, Natasha... please! thank you... thank you."
The room felt small, the air heavy and still as the frantic energy of the last few minutes began to settle into something deeper and more permanent. You were slumped against Wanda, your body vibrating with the aftershocks of a pleasure so intense it felt like grief.
"Good girl," Natasha rumbled behind you. She didn't pull away; instead, she held you flush against her, her arms locking around your waist like iron bands. She pressed her face into the crook of your neck, inhaling the scent of your skin and the salt air. "Look at her, Wanda. She’s perfect when she’s broken down like this."
Wanda’s hand moved from your chin to cup your cheek, her thumb wiping away the tears that wouldn't stop falling. Her expression was luminous, a terrifyingly beautiful mix of pride and hunger.
"She is," Wanda whispered, her voice a soft, melodic hum. "And she did so well for us."
She leaned down, her lips ghosting over yours, and the mere contact sent a fresh spark through your sensitized nerves. She didn't let you rest. Her fingers drifted back down, finding the core of you that was already raw and weeping, and she began to move with a slow, agonizingly precise rhythm.
"One more, darling," Wanda coaxed, her eyes locked onto yours, forcing you to stay present in the sensation. "Just one more for us. Show us how much you belong here."
You let out a weak, desperate protest, but your body was no longer your own. Natasha’s hands squeezed your hips, grounding you, while Wanda’s touch drove you back over the edge. You came with a shattered, silent cry, your head falling back against Natasha’s shoulder as your muscles seized and finally went limp. You were completely ruined, your strength drained, leaving you a soft, pliable weight in their arms.
Wanda leaned in close, her lips brushing your ear. The words she spoke next were quiet, but they carried the weight of a life-changing vow.
"We don't want to just hire you anymore," she breathed. "We want the truth. We want total ownership of you—body, heart, and soul. How does that sound, lovie?"
The question hung in the air, thick and sweet. You didn't even have the breath to speak, but the answer was written in the way you slumped into them, seeking their heat. You nodded frantically, your chin brushing Wanda’s collarbone as you let out a small, pleading whimper.
“Yes,” you breathed. “I want this. I choose this, both of you.”
They didn’t rush. They just stayed. Together, you sank into the bed, their warmth on either side of you, no space left for doubt. Wanda’s arm curled around your waist. Natasha’s hand found yours, holding it gently.
celine post-movie trauma dumping on zoey and mira whenever they’re alone in a room together. she drops the most insane lore mid-conversation and blows by it like nothing while zoey and mira sit there rapidly processing. bonus points if she only does it to one of them at a time and bonus bonus points if she’s been keeping rumi completely in the dark about her past for 24 years and only does it when she’s not around
it’s kind of the equivalent of being at your in-laws house and they’re flipping through your partner’s baby photos except celine gets to an image of 2 year old rumi, sighs fondly and says “she used to never let me put her down. one time i did and she sunk her fangs right into my neck. i still have the scar—it’s actually the one i told you three i got from a demon hunt. not even rumi knows the truth behind it. of course, once i cleaned the wound up and checked on rumi, her teeth were back to normal, but i still remember the fear i felt when i thought she had fangs. every time i picked her up after that day i was terrified. i’m ashamed to say every time she turned her head even the slightest bit towards my neck or face i would flinch. irrationally i was afraid having fangs meant she would desire souls, and that one day she would try to consume mine—so i would check her mouth recreationally to make sure her teeth looked normal almost every day. i had nightmares about her demon side becoming more prominent than her human side. i’d grown so attached to her, and the idea of having to…well, the idea of her becoming something dangerous that needed to be killed was something that plagued me relentlessly. i cried myself to sleep many nights imagining a world where i woke up to a baby more demon than girl. i wasn’t sure i’d be able to bring myself to do it. oh, and this is a photo of us at the teddy bear museum—”
when rumi re-enters the room she sees their horrified expressions and is like omg celine did u show them a naked one. i TOLD you not to show them any naked baby photos come on
Depite them trying to fix what's broken, Rumi's still unsure around Celine and won't raise her hopes up. An old tape shows her Celine's feelings run deeper than she imagined.
---
Stepping out of the car, Rumi breathed in the faint smell of wet soil and sweet Clematis. No matter how often she visited her childhood home, the earthy, natural smells always managed to bring her a sense of comfort few other things in the world did.
Celine’s hanok stood at the end of the narrow gravel path, modest, as it had always been. The front garden now overflowed with new plants that seemed to have grown in the last three months, giving Rumi the idea that perhaps Celine had dedicated her time to tend to the garden in her absence. She almost regretted having left the penthouse later than intended, missing the chance to walk Celine's garden before the sun set. Perhaps, if dinner was uneventful, and Mira agreed on staying, she might get the chance to walk it in the morning, hopefully alongside Celine.
Feeling both overly excited and nervous to be back, Rumi didn't wait for Zoey and Mira to finish unloading their bags from the trunk. She made her way to the front door in long strides.
It had been a little over two months since the two of them had started mending their bond, and Rumi would be lying if she said she wasn't eager to see Celine once again. After Celine had spent a weekend in Seoul, when the two had managed to narrow their distance, giving themselves the opportunity to start healing. They had remained in contact afterwards, sharing messages and short calls here or there.
It reminded Rumi of her first few weeks living in Seoul. Back when, despite being ashamed to admit it, she had called Celine almost every evening. She had been still a teenager, finding it hard to adapt to the noise and lights of a world so different. Even though she had grown up in events and galas, the cameras always trying to find her and Celine, she had been surprised how different it was to live everyday in the city.
Shaking her head, she tried not to think about how clingy she had been back then. Rumi knocked on the door and waited, not feeling comfortable barging in like she used to. She had already invited herself over for dinner, claiming she wanted to see Celine before they began their tour around Korea. As she waited, she could see the warm glow spilling through the small window next to the door. She could hear someone moving inside, and it only took a short moment for Celine to open the door with a soft smile.
Rumi hesitated, unsure whether to hug her, wave or bow. Now that she was standing in front of her once again, the doubts she had carried her whole life resurfaced. She had always struggled with the balance of respecting her as a mentor —keeping things fair between her and the girls— the familiarity of her being her guardian, and the deeper longing of Celine being her mother.
She took a step closer, and for a heartbeat, she just stood there, wondering where all the courage she had found the previous weeks had gone. Over the phone things were easier, at least she couldn’t see Celine’s expressions when she talked.
To her relief, Celine seemed just as happy to see her, and she raised her arms, inviting Rumi into a hug. Rumi smiled, her eyes shining as she narrowed the distance, falling into her arms.
The older woman opened her mouth to speak when Mira's voice broke the tender moment.
“You insisted we tagged along,” she said, annoyed. “You said you wanted us to keep you company. Just in case. And as soon as you step out of the car you disappear leaving Zoey and I to carry your stuff? Na-ah. Go pick up your things, princess.”
Rumi turned around, glaring at Mira. Not only for interrupting, but for calling her princess like she used to, when she first came to live and train with them. ‘Princess’ was still better than nepo-baby, she thought, but not less annoying.
“It wouldn't kill you to do something nice for your best friend,” Rumi murmured, walking past Mira back to their car.
Right at that moment, Zoey made it all the way up, carrying both her things and Rumi's. “No need to go back! Here's your stuff!” She said with a smile.
“Thank you, Zo,” Rumi mirrored her smile. “See, Mira, it's not that hard.”
“You try doing something nice after being forced to spend your last weekend off in this place pretending— oof.” Zoey's elbow on Mira's side stopped her before she said something she would certainly regret once her bad mood disappeared.
Rumi sighed and turned to Celine once again, who remained by the threshold, waiting for them with an uncomfortable smile. When Celine's eyes fell on her again, however, her smile became a bit more honest, and she took a step back to let them in.
The smell of something simmering filled the air —and Rumi's mouth watered. The memories hit her harder than usual. In her years living in Seoul, she had spent longer periods of time without visiting. In between tours, interviews and keeping the demons at bay, it wasn't unusual for her to go months without setting a foot in her childhood home. Still, this time the distance had felt greater, harder, and she was glad to be back. She wasn't ready to go to the sacred tree just yet, for obvious reasons, but being back home was exactly what she had been needing.
She didn't think Mira would agree to stay more than a day, but perhaps, depending on how dinner went. She could try and persuade her.
She looked around, trying to see if there had been any changes around. And to her surprise, she instantly noticed books and boxes stacked against the wall, right between Celine's bedroom and her office.
To Rumi’s consternation, some old Sunlight Sisters posters were lying on the floor. She took a step closer, and realised all of Celine’s records were neatly wrapped as well. A handwritten label marked the content of the boxes: some books, CDs and even tapes filled the boxes.
Celine noticed Rumi’s eyes linger on the messy hallway, probably noticing her worry. It knew it was ridiculous to think of Celine moving, but seeing those precious things lying on the floor left a sour taste in her mouth.
“Sorry about all that,” she said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “There was a leak in the office. It's already fixed but I haven't had time to sort through the things and see what's worth keeping.”
“You're not planning to get rid of those records, are you?! I mean it's evidence of the greatest music era of a—”
“No, Zoey. I do not plan to get rid of anything important.” Celine replied with a small smile. “Just trying to arrange things in a more convenient way. Make some space in the office for Huntrix among the old stuff.”
“You have a lot of tapes,” Mira commented, clearly curious about the content of the boxes, but trying not to show it.
“Miyeong used to record everything —I mean everything. Rehearsals, interviews, whatever we decided to do during our time off…” She sighed. “At the time, I regretted giving her a recorder as a birthday gift… I think I still do, seeing all this mess.”
Rumi knew what she wasn’t really saying. She knew that when the Sunlight Sisters disbanded, Celine didn't have the heart to get rid of anything nor sit down to watch what was really in the tapes. As time went by, the memories seemed to weigh too much to actually do it, and she simply moved them around from one shelf in her office to the other.
“You mean this is a whole archive?!” Zoey exclaimed, kneeling down to open one of the boxes.
Rumi flinched, expecting Celine to reprimand her for meddling or touching things without permission. But to her surprise, Celine kneeled as well and picked a small photo frame that was lying close to the boxes.
“Your mother was sentimental,” Celine said, smiling faintly, as she handed Rumi the frame. “She used to say it was the only way to keep the memories frozen in time. She was worried about getting old and forgetting one day…”
Rumi felt the words land heavier than Celine probably expected. To think Miyeong hadn’t lived past twenty-three seemed too cruel. She forced a small nod, her fingers tracing the edge of the frame. Celine and Miyeong were mid-laugh as they lay on a couch, mostly imperceptible at first glance, but Miyeong’s small growing belly could be seen.
“That picture comes from one of those recordings. I kept them, wondering if there aren’t other moments I’d like to frame.”
Zoey, meanwhile, was nearly vibrating with contained excitement as she pulled tape after tape from one of the boxes reading the labels.
“This is surreal,” she whispered, almost to herself. It was obvious she'd already be on her way to find a way to play the tapes if it weren't for Celine standing right behind her.
Celine heard her and a small smile drew on her face once again. “Well, it’ll be a few minutes until dinner’s ready. You can look around if you want. Watch them and help me classify them if you’d like? There’s an old VCR in the guest room.”
With that she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the three girls alone in the narrow hallway.
The air settled a tad more uncertain now that their mentor was out of the room and Mira didn’t need to pretend she wasn’t entirely comfortable being back at her house.
“Why am I not surprised that the first thing she comes up with for us to do is some boring chore?”
“She’s trying,” Rumi said, her voice sounding like a warning. The last thing she wanted was to pick up a fight with Mira before dinner.
Mira folded her arms. “So am I.”
“Holding yourself back from barking at someone doesn’t really count, Mira,” Zoey said, as she kept taking tapes out of the box.
Rumi agreed with Zoey, though considering Mira hadn’t come here for Celine, but for her. Rumi couldn’t truly blame her for acting a tad overprotective after she had asked them both to tag along.
Trying not to think too hard about her still fragile relationship with Celine, Rumi began paying attention to the old yellowish labels on the tapes. The majority were written in a handwriting she couldn’t recognise —Miyeong’s, most likely— in some others, she could easily tell it was Celine’s.
Logic said she should be drawn to the ones her biological mother had recorded and labeled. But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t more curious to see what memories Celine had recorded.
‘Demo – Guitar only’ Rumi read the first tape she picked up. ‘My light’, she read another. ‘If you only knew – voice only’. They all seemed to be songs she had written. Ideas immortalized in tape instead of an audio file. She didn’t want to say she was disappointed, after all she couldn’t recognise any of those as Sunlight Sister’s songs. But perhaps they were projects she had before everything fell apart… before she came into the picture.
A sudden ache inside her chest made her drop the tapes back into the box. Paying a look at the past didn’t sound too good all of a sudden. She could see Zoey’s excitement and she wanted to share it, but what if the things she got to see only proved she had taken more from Celine than she’d originally imagined? What if she never got to narrow their distance because her presence only reminded Celine of everything she had lost?
As if on cue, some flourish words in French came from the kitchen and a smile drew on Rumi’s face. She’d never paid Celine too much attention when she had tried to teach her French, but she knew when the words she was using were insults or curses.
Leaving Zoey and Mira to rummage the boxes, she walked to the kitchen to see if Celine needed any help.
“Rumi,” Celine said, turning around when she heard her step into the room. “Food isn’t ready yet.”
“I can tell. It’s been a while since I last heard you use that word. Mira speaks French, by the way.” Rumi grinned at Celine’s mortified expression. “Do you need help?”
“Not really. I burnt my hand with a pot, that’s all.”
“The one I kept telling you to throw away?”
“No…” She lied, as she tried to fix the handle in place again.
Rumi smiled again, enjoying this a bit too much. No matter how much money Celine had, she couldn’t get rid of the old habits and austere teachings from her mentors it seemed.
“Table’s already set,” Celine continued, trying to change the topic. “You can go back with the girls if you want.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind keeping you company.”
“I thought you might be interested in watching some of those old tapes,” Celine said, as she picked some broth and blew on the spoon before offering Rumi to taste it.
The smell alone made Rumi’s mouth water, and the taste made her travel back to her childhood in an instant. It was funny how some distance made everything different. “Actually, about that… Are you sure it’s okay for us to watch the tapes? You know how Zoey gets whenever Sunlight Sister’s content is at her reach.”
There was a pause. Then a small smile. “There shouldn’t be anything weird or embarrassing, if that’s what you’re worried about. You could watch them to see if there’s a date stamp on them. Group them by year? I don’t expect you to watch all of them either.”
“Zoey won’t mind,” Rumi said, rolling her eyes.
“Just make sure Mira doesn’t judge our clothes too harshly.”
--
After watching Celine cook for a while, talking about the things Miyeong used to film, Rumi’s curiosity spiked once again and she made her way back to the girls.
Zoey had already arranged the tapes in three piles. The ones that were properly labelled, the ones that had some information missing —like the date— and those that consisted of one-word titles or weren’t labelled at all.
It was clear at first sight that Miyeong seemed to have had a system: writing the date and the place on the tapes, and a small description. Almost all of Miyeong’s were labeled well enough for Celine to know what they were about and see if they were worth keeping. Celine’s, on the other hand, had a word or two written on them. No date stamp nor place where they were recorded. At least, it made their choice on what to watch a little easier.
In no time, Rumi had picked up the tapes with Zoey’s help, and they were setting up a small television in the corner of the guest room. They plugged in the old player and they began sorting through Celine’s tapes first.
“Do you think these are Sunlight Sisters demos?” Zoey asked as she sat cross-legged on the bed.
Mira joined her, taking up the rest of the space as she sat on the foot of the bed next to Zoey. “Wouldn’t they have taken them to the label back then?”
“An early project!” Zoey exclaimed, barely containing her excitement.
“Zoey,” Mira sighed. “Even if these are the original demos, Celine won’t let you brag about them in your old-ass forums. It’ll be too obvious that one of us is sharing them.”
“Either us or someone too close to Celine,” agreed Rumi, sitting down on the floor by the foot of the bed with the remote in her hand.
Here goes nothing, Rumi murmured and pressed play. The television came to life, the screen flashing with static before it turned to gray and black. There was sound and the colours moved as if someone was standing too close to the lens. Before any of them could complain about the video quality, an image began to form.
The frame cleared, suddenly too bright, as the laughs of two women could be heard. Celine and Miyeong sat on the floor, guitars balanced on their laps. The camera was angled slightly too high, as if it had been placed on the only flat surface they could find. Miyeong had her usual braid, slightly more disheveled than in the interviews Rumi was used to seeing. Celine on her part had two careless ponytails.
“What are they wearing— Ow! What was that for?!” Mira rubbed the side of her leg where Rumi had punched her.
“I promised Celine I wouldn’t let you comment on their wardrobes.” Despite the flashy colours of their clothes being a pain to see, she thought to herself.
“I doubt she said: ‘Hit Mira as soon as she tries to talk’.”
“A necessary measure.” Rumi smiled at her, faking innocence.
“Would you shut up and listen!” Zoey exclaimed, too excited to see her idols in what they guessed was a creative process.
On the screen, Miyeong nudged Celine with her elbow, stopping her strumming.
“You’re flat again,” she teased.
Celine groaned. “It’s you. You’re making me laugh.”
“Excuse me? You’re the one who’s— I’m trying to keep you in tune, as always,” she complained exaggeratedly.
They burst into another round of laughter.
Rumi felt something in her chest constrict. Once again she felt as if she should’ve been paying more attention to Miyeong, getting to know her birthmother, but she couldn’t stop watching this version of Celine. She seemed so relaxed, her eyes full of light —it made her wonder once again if this wasn’t a bad idea. It felt as though she was about to face the person whose life she had ruined.
The video continued for a few minutes: them singing, stopping, arguing playfully about chords, before they started once again. It was intimate in a way professional footage never was. And it reminded Rumi so much of Zoey and Mira in a way. The thought gripped at her heart. She had most certainly ruined Celine and Miyeong’s lives, and she had almost done the same to Mira and Zoey during the Idols awards.
Shaking her head, Rumi pressed stop and soon after stood up, ejecting the tape without warning.
“Hey, I was watching that!” Zoey tried to complain but Rumi stopped her without meeting her eyes.
“There are two boxes full of videos, we can’t watch them all. Let’s just write what it is about and the date stamp. It’ll be enough for Celine.”
“We could at least have listened to what they were saying for more than two minutes,” Mira said, slightly annoyed. She was enjoying the version of Celine that wasn’t an idol nor her mentor. “Celine seemed to be more fun than I imagined.”
“I know,” Rumi said, trying to keep her emotions in check. She did know there once had been a version of Celine that wasn’t drowned by grief, she simply couldn’t stand seeing it right at that moment. “I know,” she repeated, trying not to look at the weird look on her friend’s face. “There are more tapes here, I’m sure we’ll get to see it in the other videos.”
Paying a quick look at the pile of tapes, Rumi picked one that seemed to be a work progress: My light. It had called her attention earlier. Perhaps seeing the Sunlight Sisters working on a project could be easier than watching them having fun together. She could see what ideas they had discarded along the way and find something to help her ground herself. Maybe even learn a thing or two from their creative process.
Rumi pushed the tape in. The player clicked and the screen went black, before it flickered with colours once again. There was no sound or laughter this time. A familiar lamp and keyboard could be seen under the dim light of the room. Despite the angle, Rumi knew the room to be Celine’s studio. There was a cup of tea on the table beside the lamp and a stuffed animal facing down on top of the keyboard.
Celine appeared in frame after a moment. Rumi couldn’t tell if this was before or after the disbandment of the Sunlight Sisters. She still looked young, but slightly older than in the previous video — early twenties, perhaps — her hair was shorter, falling over her shoulders, closer to the style she wore today. It seemed like she was already living in the hanok, and Rumi made the mental note to ask Celine when she moved there permanently.
“Okay,” Rumi heard her whisper. She then sat down on the bench by the keyboard and turned to look at the camera. “New song, I guess. Still working on it. I can’t stop singing it since I came up with the lyrics, so it’s best to just do something with it.”
She sounded tired, and slightly unsure of what she was about to do, but still she placed her hands on the keys. The first notes were played slowly, as if she was trying to feel the melody. It was hauntingly beautiful, even if it was nothing like the music she used to create with the Sunlight Sisters. Something told Rumi this was definitely after everything fell apart.
After a minute of soft melody, she began to sing quietly, making an effort not to disturb the peaceful atmosphere.
‘May these words be the first to find your ears…’
Rumi straightened instinctively. Every word struck a chord inside her chest, as if she had heard the song before.
‘The world is brighter than the sun, now that you’re here.’
“I’ve never heard this one before,” Zoey exclaimed in awe, suddenly bringing Rumi back to the room.
“Me neither,” she said, though it felt like a strange lie.
‘Though your eyes will need some time to adjust, to the overwhelming light—’
Halfway through the verse, there was movement at the edge of the frame. A tiny voice could be heard and Celine looked up, her concentration breaking and stopping altogether.
The camera moved slightly. “Rumi-ya, what are you doing?” Celine warned, though she couldn’t help the amusement to filter through her words.
A little girl toddled into view with a giggle. Little Rumi was wearing her pajamas, accompanied with messy hair and blanket dragging behind her.
Rumi’s pulse quickened, not expecting herself to take over the video all of a sudden.
“Aw, look at you all tiny!” Zoey exclaimed, overwhelmed by the cute scene.
Before Rumi knew what was happening, Mira had taken the remote from her hand. “You are not stopping this one,” she said with a smirk.
Celine sighed on-screen, calling the girls’ attention once again. She kneeled in front of little Rumi. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” she said with a small smile.
The child mumbled something and raised her arms to be picked up.
Celine laughed and did as told. She picked Rumi up and spinned around to amuse her. Little Rumi laughed and clapped. She then said something the camera didn’t quite catch.
“You want a song, huh?” Celine asked, smiling. “Alright. But then you go to bed, deal?”
Little Rumi shook her head and grabbed Celine’s t-shirt, murmuring something onto her neck.
“Okay, okay. A song, and then we go to bed. Is that better, your highness?" Celine conceded with a roll of her eyes, though her smile proved she was more than willing to grant Rumi’s wishes.
“Wow… you’ve always been a brat, princess,” Mira said with a laugh, though the tone she used to call her princess was more tender than usual.
Rumi didn’t respond, too focused on the woman in the video, captivated by that moment lost in time.
Celine sat down on the keyboard bench again, sitting Rumi on her lap. Little Rumi tried to play the keys, but Celine managed to stop her right on time. She handed the toddler the stuffed animal that had been lying on the keyboard, and only then did Rumi realise it was her stuffed tiger.
The tiger seemed to be exactly what little Rumi needed, she held it tight with her small arms and looked up at Celine expectantly.
Celine smiled, combing back the hair from Rumi’s eyes before she placed her hands on the keys once again.
“Where was I?” she asked, looking at Rumi. Little Rumi shrieked excitedly, making Celine laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll start from the chorus.”
‘I’ll give you everything I have, I’ll teach you everything I know,’ Celine looked at Rumi once again, this time her smile conveying more than the words themselves. ‘I promise, I’ll do better…’
Celine’s eyes stayed on Rumi after that. Smiling through the lines, sometimes missing a note, but never stopping.
‘I will always hold you close, but I will learn to let you go. I promise, I’ll do better.’
The toddler reached out and played a random key, throwing the tune off. Celine let out a real laugh. The same laugh from the previous video, pure and unguarded. She stopped playing, letting little Rumi smash the keys, but she finished the verse anyway.
‘With every heartbeat I have left; I will defend your every breath…’
The lyrics washed through the room, impossible to ignore. Mira had gone completely still. Zoey had a hand pressed against her mouth. And Rumi… she couldn’t move. It wasn't a memory —she was too young to remember any of this— but something deep in her stirred in recognition.
On the screen, Celine leaned closer, wrapping her arms around Rumi and holding her close to her chest. “You’re loved, you know that, right?” she said. “Even if I don’t always say it right.”
The little girl on her lap tilted her head, watching Celine with wide, fascinated eyes. Celine caught her gaze and smiled, soft and a little guilty. “I was hoping to have it finished before you heard it,” she said, fondly. “It’s yours anyway so… If you like it, then I guess it’s okay as it is.”
Little Rumi smiled and rested her head on Celine’s chest. It didn’t take long for her to start blinking slowly, tiredness finally catching up with her.
Celine’s smile deepened. “Alright,” she murmured. “to bed with you. It’s late.” She got up and held Rumi close, kissing the top of the child’s head. “You’re my light, you little thing,” she murmured as she walked out the room, camera forgotten.
After a minute of watching the empty room, Mira stopped the video, knowing it probably went on until the tape finished or the camera ran out of batteries.
The screen went dark, but no one moved. The silence that followed spoke louder than anything the girls could be saying.
Zoey was the first to stir. “That was…” she started, then stopped, her voice barely above a whisper. She pressed her lips together, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.
Rumi didn’t answer. Her throat was too tight. She’d thought she’d already heard everything Celine could possibly say to her. She never imagined she could get more than she had that rainy evening when Celine opened up and told her she loved her. The weeks that followed, Celine hadn’t repeated herself. She hadn't talked about love. Instead explanations and apologies had taken center stage in their conversations, making Rumi believe that perhaps Celine’s love was real but didn’t extend to the lengths she hoped. This video, however, was something purer. Real. A fragment of love, untainted by mistakes, time or regrets. It was everything Rumi had ever hoped for.
Mira leaned back slowly, rubbing her eyes as if to discreetly hide the way they’d started to glisten. “I feel like an ass for the things I said. It seems like she did care for you.”
Rumi exhaled shakily, brushing at her cheek when she realized she was crying.
Before she could say anything, a faint ‘Rumi’ coming from outside the room called her attention. Celine was standing there, her hand still on the frame of the door, motionless. Her face was pale, her expression unreadable.
For a long moment, no one spoke, waiting for Celine to do so. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, words alluding her. She let out a slow, uneasy breath. “I didn’t realize those tapes were still in there,” she said finally, her eyes fixed on the floor. She blinked a few times before she said, “Dinner’s—” she said, shaking her head. “You three should wash up. Dinner’s ready.”
And just like that, she disappeared down the hallway.
---
The song Celine sings is a real song. Light by Sleeping At Last. Recommend listening to it, it's really, really good.
Any comments are welcomed and encouraged! Thanks for reading!
summary — there are a few things natasha has to see to before you and her can make the great escape to norway
warning(s) — established relationship, black widow film semi-canon, emotional exhaustion, brief angsty vibes, the accords, dom/sub dynamics, soft?hard?daddy? (all of the above?) dom!natasha, domestic banter, essentially negotiation ensues, humiliation kink, size kink, makeout session, fingers in hair, hair pulling, lip biting, spit play, thumb sucking, previous knife play, admittedly just freak behavior, undressing, neck kisses, shaving, every kind of teasing, gentle reassurance, manhandling, threat of spanking, clit slapping, nipple stimulation, clit licking, cum play?, cum tasting, bathtub sex, slow fingering, begging, moaning, soft orgasm, aftercare, cuddling, kissing, showering, talks of hair braiding, morning after vibes, hand holding, packing, public play, free use kink at large, biting, exhibitionism, clothed grinding + groping, strap-on usage, dirty talk, elements of cnc, thigh fucking, clit stimulation (nat!receiving), just the tip, delayed orgasm, choking, mutual orgasm, praise kink, pet names, men/minors dni
authors note — so… i’ve never written anything like this and i cannot even be sure how i thought of this so... enjoy? would love to hear your thoughts and comments!
It’s not the best place you’ve stayed, but you’re leaving tomorrow morning before the sun even breaks across the sky regardless, so you try not to focus too much on the cobwebs toward the far corner of the room tapered across the ceiling like nonchalantly acknowledged decorations, or the draft that blows in from beneath the door and fights the heating system that you’ve had cranked up to seventy-nine degrees since the very moment Natasha had turned the deadbolt behind her that morning. It’s not the best place you’ve stayed. Not by a long shot. There have been cleaner apartments, warmer trailers, more thoughtfully decorated shacks that you’d slept in across the larger United States up until this point, but you’re choosing to see this situation as an opportunity for reflection rather than what it actually is; a devious and emotionally devastating rerooting of your lives by force from the elected government officials who see your girlfriend as a weapon and yourself as a necessary casualty in their crusade — though it feels more like a manhunt.
It’s not the nicest place you’ve stayed during the last two months of constant moving and continuous planning for something larger, but if you think about the cobwebs instead of the fact that Natsaha’s out securing the very last of the fabricated documents you need to maintain a low profile life outside of the states and everything you’ve ever known, it at least keeps you comfortable in bed beneath thin blankets, not pacing the creaky floors sick with nauseating worry and unease. For the first time, cobwebs are a nicer alternative than facing your reality.
You’ve been trying not to glance at the analog clock that’s propped up on the nightstand by a waterlogged bible, but your eyes shift toward it regardless of your intentions. She’s late. Natasha Romanoff, a woman who had once been allergic to tardiness, now drowns in her own timelines and overlapping escape routes. The last two months have been draining for you, exhausting in a way you hadn’t previously had a fundamental understanding of, but this is the adrenaline that she’d been carved from with razor blades, and the comfortability she exudes even still rattles you as you sit alone in the bed. It’s a cute little bungalow, but she’d promised to be home before nine. The cover of darkness adds a layer of protection to her already masked identity, but the last parade around town that she’d let herself get lost in had led to three different whispers of a Black Widow sighting, and a fourth just won’t do before you can slip away into the advantage of international waters.
Across the room your bags are packed. Two backpacks that couldn’t have appeared more different when you’d first come into possession of them now dulled by the elements and violence you’d been barely escaping since the accords had dismantled everything you’d finally found peace in. The deadbolt giggles, and then the latch turns. Two quick knocks tap the center of the door before panic can swell in your already tight throat, Natasha’s fingers always faster than your mind can anticipate in every setting. She breaks into the room with a strictness in her stare that sets alarm bells off in your head too quickly. She’s four minutes late. It makes no sense to you. Nothing insignificant would’ve deterred her from the objective at hand, but something imminent would’ve postponed her arrival much later. The darkness in her pupils unnerves you more as silence emphasizes your empty hands. You have no cards to play right now, no insight, no clue what could’ve happened or what will happen.
“You’re late.” You find yourself saying instead, because you have to say something, but there’s nothing left to say when the last four months have consisted of nothing but talking. So much talking. You’re tired of it now, something you once never thought could happen with Natasha. Your voice is brittle. Even in your dryness toward her, your voice can’t hide the nervousness you feel that she can’t comprehend. She knows you have valid reasons to be nervous, but it had been a long time since she’d been allowed to feel with every aspect of her being, and this is a life she’d never wanted to tangle you into so intricately, so she struggles to meet you at a level that’s not dismissive or overly suffocating.
“I want control.” She says instead of answering the unspoken question in your statement. Your brain stops for a moment as it considers the depth of her statement. It’s been weeks since you’d last released any kind of tension; outside of the nights you find Natasha out of bed and outside hitting a tree with wrapped knuckles, but at least she’d stopped emptying her barrel into tin targets as an immediate response to the nightmares. Avoiding sex hadn’t been either of your objectives, you either didn’t have the time, the space, or the desire since you’d left the east side of the country and came west, but it still feels like something you hadn’t even considered as it turns in your brain. The last last time she’d touched you, really touched you for more than just ten minutes at a time, there’d been nothing but exhaustion in your muffled moans and panting. It was, in all blatant terms, a quickie that might’ve left you more unsatisfied than satisfied, but you’re reserved to agree. Something could happen. It feels like that’s what you should be waiting for instead of a night of intimacy the government doesn’t think you deserve.
“We leave early tomorrow.” Your eyebrows furrow and Natasha takes two steps closer, her own expression beginning to mirror yours as she drags her eyes over the visible portion of your body. Your hands sit in your lap patiently, but your thumb rubs your knuckle raw as it works perfect tiny circles into your skin. Your cheeks are pale, lacking their usual color as the curtains remain drawn.
“So you need to sleep good.” She reasons, walking nearer until her thighs hit the end of the bed, her hands encouraging you closer as they wait in front of her toned frame calloused palms up. You comply with a huff that feels heavy in your chest, twisting your body until the blankets slip off of your thighs down to your ankles, out of the way enough to get your body upright and situated on your knees that are littered with scars from chain link fences and rocks — a visual reminder of the last two months you didn’t ask for. Her thumbs are cold as they brace your cheeks first, her palms slowly easing down onto the flush apples of your cheeks until they’re squished between her touch not too much, but enough to draw her focus down to your cupid's bow.
“I don’t think its practical to be fucked-out in the middle of our international escape.” Her hands have an addicting hold on your brain function, but they’re too cold to pull you beneath her fully how she wants, and an amused fire burns in her eyes as her nose squints and she twitches just slightly with a repressed laugh.
Her tongue clicks against her teeth before she speaks, a whimsical essence to her stare that hasn’t existed in weeks now as she lets herself forget about visas and falsified birth certificates and the likelihood of dying before you can even find peace again. “I don’t think it’s necessary for you to be thinking about the logistics of anything at all.” She teases, knowing how much you resent her throwing your words back at you near verbatim even if it is in jest.
“Natasha, I’m serious!” You pull away with a laugh, batting at her chest with hands that always appear so tiny when they’re up against her. She’s thinned out since you fled New York, bulked up and toned thoroughly sure, but her face is slimmer now. Hollow around her cheeks and bony in her nose. Still, she manages to make you feel tiny just by the confidence she exudes. “Tell me what took you so long first.” You throw out your only card to play with a resigned sigh.
“I bought razors.” She answers you simply, nodding toward the bag on the floor by the door that you hadn’t even seen her drop as she came inside. It takes a minute for your brain to come up with a reason for why she could’ve even possibly needed to go out of her way to purchase razors before it dawns on you and your body melts into the bed, all resistance evaporating into the air to be replaced by a pitiful state of submission Natasha hadn’t seen in many moons.
“No.” Your voice is whiny, high pitched and soft in a way that tells her she’s won this fight your brain just hasn’t caught up to your body yet. “Why does it even matter if I shave?!”
“Because you’re supposed to get your period in the next three days and we have more pads left than tampons and you get grumpy when the ad—“
“Why do you pay so much attention to the most random things about me!” Your face flushes, eyes wide with mortification that turns your bones hot and fuzzy. You know that she knows this about you, you know this about yourself, but nobody had ever felt it necessary to speak it aloud, and you’d never previously considered how much you appreciated that before.
She doesn’t so much as flinch at your outburst, only raising an unimpressed eyebrow at your interruption as it happens before she continues the moment your mouth closes. “—hesive gets caught in your hair. And. I want control.”
“Can I at least do it?” You plead, eyes squinted, glassy with arousal that pools in your panties and slowly rises to a boil in your belly, but there’s time before it bubbles over, not yet unbearable beneath your skin as your mind sinks into the subconscious state of submitting. When there’s expectations instead of options, things are just easier, but your hands have not been forced yet. The door to independence and resistance hasn’t been fully closed on you yet. Harsh white lighting still shines brightly through the crack in the door that Natasha watches through with a sick smile. You still don’t even realize that you beg for it every time. Maybe not with your words directly, but with your body, with your willful resistance that really just begs for harshness and direction. You know the answer is no, but she hasn’t said it and you want to hear it. You want it laid down upon your skin like a burning hot rod ready to brand you.
“No.” She shakes her head, her eyes questioning as her head tilts. “It’s my body, isn’t it? My pussy between those legs?” She doesn’t need to touch you for you to feel the implication of those words. Your thighs twitch as pleasure shoots off in your core, your eyes pinching shut as you exhale through your lips
“Yes.” It’s a quick nod of your head that satisfies her, not the titleless whisper that falls off your lips quietly and pathetically. She’s taught you better than to answer her so halfmindedly, but there’s time to remind you.
“Then you let me take care of it.” The finality in her voice seals your coffin for the night indefinitely, but Natasha’s not done reminding you how effortlessly she can get your body to fold. She’s not done abusing the power she still has left beneath her fingertips. “Kiss me. Come up here and kiss me, baby.” She nods her head, reminds you of how high her frame hovers over yours when you're situated like this, all folded into yourself on the bed while she stands, dressed in tactile clothes with more knives than you’re aware of tucked into the waistbands and pockets of her outfit.
Her lips are rough when yours first brush against them, your hands braced on her toned belly as you lean your weight against her body and sit up on your shins, the very tops of your knees hanging off the bed yet stationed between her strong thighs. The aquaphor you’d been sharing since Texas had been lost somewhere between scaling the rusted picket fence and jump starting a black camaro, but your lips haven’t fared the same fate as hers. Somehow, your lips are still cushiony and soft as they settle between Natasha’s, but she hadn’t expected anything less. Not from someone so perfect, so angelic and sweet.
Her tongue is probably the only warm thing about her body right now as it breaks through her lips and swipes across your bottom lip that maintains suction around hers. Your hands hold her belly, but hers make their way up to your hair as your head turns to let her tongue in to wander. You don’t need to be shown how she likes you anymore, you just fall into place, knowing the pleasure that follows. A whine climbs your throat as she tangles her fingers into the hair nearest your scalp, tugging only slightly as if to edge the accumulated tension from how often you’ve had it swept up into a ponytail.
Natasha moans when you brazenly — with all of the control you have left in your body — suckle on her tongue that scrapes across yours, and in a moment that's too quick for you to process but slower in reality, her fingers pull at your hair hard enough to shock you, regaining control of the kiss that you’ve nearly derailed. Her teeth bite your bottom lip as she pulls away too soon, cheeks flushed and lips swollen as a string of saliva follows her glistening mouth.
“Cheeky girl.” She hums, admiring the way you lick your lips clean of her taste without being told to clean yourself up. Her thumb comes to help what you can't reach with your tongue, swiping away the wetness beneath your lip before she feeds it back to you with a heavy pressure on the center of your tongue that gags you. She lets you have a moment of bliss only after the tears dissipate from your waterline, your cheeks hallowing around her thumb as you suck with a drunken gleam in your eyes that’s intoxicating.
“Please.” You lean in, begging for another chance to kiss her that deeply again, but Natasha shakes her head, pulling a knife from the cuff of her suit. It stirs something inside of you that you hadn’t thought about before, knowing she’d just been so soft with you, and yet a knife that she’d definitely killed someone with was being kept so close to your face.
“You like that one.” Natasha tracks your eye, a smirk pulling at her lips as she continues to undress haphazardly, like its not ruining her panties to watch you sweat with excitement over a weapon she’s plunged into many. “The one I used to cut your panties off in Venice.”
”Oh.” You shift on the bed, pressing your thighs together as you get lost in the memory of that night and the uncountable amount of orgasms you’d experienced all throughout the hotel room.
Natasha hums with a glint in her eyes, setting the last knife down on the nightstand before she nods toward the bathroom. “Don’t run the tub yet, just get a towel for your back and one for me and wait for me.” She leans in close to peck your lips once before she taps your thigh, directing you away with a pointedness in her green stare.
There’s a lightness in your head that hasn’t felt so attainable in a while, and when you get up off the bed you’re aware of the tingling in your legs that comes from not only the position you’d occupied, but the eager anticipation that drags you out to sea and strands you in an ice cold current, but you can’t focus on any one thing in specific despite the running list of things you realize and notice all at once as you move through the room on autopilot you didn’t even know you were aware of. It doesn’t really feel like time is moving at all around you as you grab two towels from the linen closet on the wall in the bathroom and spin around to analyze the tub, but evidently it is because one moment you’re all alone, two white towels beneath your arm, and your gaze set upon the bathtub with butterfly wings going crazy in your belly, and the next there’s arms tugging at the hem of your t-shirt, cold knuckles dragging along your skin as your wordlessly undressed.
Natasha’s warm breath leaves a trail of goosebumps up your neck as she kisses you softly, easing your right arm out of the hole in your shirt before the left, ensuring the towels never touch the floor in the process, and that the cold you face is only temporary as her kisses bloom warmth beneath your skin. She takes the towels from you and sets them on the counter once the t-shirt is on the floor and out of tripping zones for all parties, easing your shorts and underwear down your thighs in one fluid motion next. She taps your thigh to step out, cooing softly in your ear when you shiver.
The bath doesn’t take long to draw once she reaches over to fix the plug and get the hot water running, but she leaves you standing naked beside the bathtub for longer than necessary just to keep you antsy in anticipation for something that you’re not even fond of, enjoying the sight of your bare body as she stands fully clothed in a suit that had once put so much authority onto her name. There’s so much about this situation that drives her crazy and releases the nerves she’s never learned how to express. If she let you pick, you wouldn’t be doing this. And it's not even that she likes it, it’s that you let her. You don’t like it, and it makes you feel small, and exposed, and vulnerable, but you trust her, and in moments when she can’t even find the strength to trust her gut, that counts for more than the world itself.
“Step in, baby girl.” She coaxes gently, certain that the goosebumps accumulating on your spine are only half from arousal and definitely from nerves. She breathes deeply, her shoulders dropping before they roll back to square as she helps you over the wall of the tub and into the just-right water that sloshes mid-shin. “Too warm?” She asks quietly, knowing you’re a better gauge of temperature than she could ever be. So long as her body gets clean, the means of showering has never mattered much to Natasha Romanoff, even in freedom, even in adulthood.
“No.” You shake your head, wrapping your arms around your body as half of you warms up a considerable amount in only moments. Natasha tuts, reaching out to tap her hand against your wrist, shaking her head as she begins to work the zipper of her tactile suit down her body, letting it pool in a heap of wrinkles after it is pulled from her hips. “Mmm.” The water sloshes as you whine and shake your body in protest to her silent command, yet your body obeys the direction and forces your arms to drop to your sides within the same moment, further amusing Natasha who leaves her sports bra on as she climbs into the tub behind you. “Please!” She pays you no mind, which might turn you on even more, as she reaches back to the counter and pulls the two towels you grabbed near.
“Sit down on the edge, legs on the sides.” She hums, not fussed by your accumulating blush as you stand still in front of her. “Come on, sweet girl, I’m not going to tell you again.” The gentle coaxing is backed by a strongness in her stare that has you moving, sloshing through the water, sinking onto the ledge of the tub where a towel is draped behind your back until you’re situated enough to even consider putting your legs up. “Heels on the ledge, baby.”
“Please.” Your cheeks burn with shame as you shake your head, not sure what it is about this particular setting that makes your belly burn so fiercely, but it reduces you to whimpers and whines just to think about. It’s not the feeling you don’t like, which is part of why you don’t put up that hard of a fight. The feeling won’t feel the same without the build-up.
“Don’t make me do it, detka.” Natasha warns, already sinking onto her knees as she reaches for the bag still on the floor outside of the tub. You hadn’t seen her bring it in, hadn’t seen her come inside the small bathroom at all, but there it is and here she is and this is happening whether you want it to or not unless you say the one word you’re not even thinking about using; the word you like to forget you have, even though Natasha hates when you phrase it that way.
There’s no hiding your glistening core when your heels find their place on the thin ledge of the bathtub you know is clean only because she’d soaked a blood soaked hoodie in bleach within it hours before she’d left for your fake papers. It takes effort to keep them there with your body so stiff against the wall, and Natasha tuts and shakes her head as she recognizes you trying your best to keep your thighs as close together as they can be.
“I told you I wasn’t going to ask again.” She grits between a locked jaw as her hands drop the shaving cream and disposable razor she’d been grabbing with and instead settle on your knees, forcing them apart until one hits the shower curtain and the other rests against the wall. Your butt slips off the edge at the aggression just the slightest bit, engaging your core and thrusting your hips upward just enough to satisfy Natasha who hums at the unblocked sight of your throbbing clit she hasn’t even touched yet. “Keep them open or we can revisit how much you hate a spanked and shaved pussy.”
”No.” You shake your head dazedly, your lips pouting as you look down at Natasha between your thighs. She situates herself between your legs, moving closer to your core until the tops of your thighs rest some of your weight on hers, the tension in your engaged core dissipating slightly, but not all the way. Part of Natasha wants you fucked out and pliant tomorrow because she knows that otherwise, your nerves will derail the whole thing, but the other part just wants you to feel so unbelievably good.
“So keep them open and I won't have to do that.” She amends, grabbing the shaving cream again. She cups a handful of water, letting it fall over your core as she pulls the plastic off the top of the can with her teeth, spitting it over the side of her tub with infuriating attractiveness. “Good girl.” She hums when your thighs shake, trembling as you fight the urge to close them as water falls so perfectly overtop of your understimulated and aching clit.
“Ready baby?” She asks, nozzle of the car stationed over your pelvis. You shake your head, a mumbled no falling off your lips in the last second she’s giving you to back out before damage is done, but when you don’t say your safe word and your eyes pointedly avoid hers in shame that feels so nice in your belly, she hums with acceptance of the submission she’s being shown so perfectly. “Oh well.” She mocks sympathy as she lays the first squirt of cream on your maintained patch of hair that she’s only tackling to assert control. There’s no reason for this, and yet here you find yourselves anyway.
The razor drags across your skin smoothly, and while you hate the process, you admit she gives you a cleaner shave than you can manage most of the time. Not to say this happens often, but it's definitely one of the quicker ways that Natasha feels she’s regained complete control. It almost tickles as she takes on the insides of your thighs, but all amusement you’re even considering allowing yourself to feel dissipates when her fingers pull your lips apart, her fingertips prodding at your weeping entrance before they travel up to your clit.
Natasha taps the pulsating bud with two fingertips tauntingly, laughing in amusement as your hips cant and your hands grapple to grab at anything they can find, migrating to your chest to grab and pinch at your nipples that offer release. She doesn’t offer you a hand to grab onto, doesn’t remind you of the bar that’s mounted to the side of the wall right within reach, she watches as you grope and fondle yourself to find any kind of solid ground to channel the sensations she’s causing you into.
“Such a pretty pussy. You’re so needy, my love. So needy this little clit is just dancing for some attention.” Natasha leans in close to lap at your clit with the softest kitten-like stroke. Your hips jump upwards, desperate to chase the pressure she’d barely even given you, but her hands keep you still before you can buck shaving cream all over her chin and cheeks. “Shh, stop. You’re the only one who needs to be messy right now.”
Your head gets thrown back sometime between the comment and her fingers trailing down your labia like she’s admiring a painting while trying to add her own creative touch in the process. She pulls her fingers away only after she swipes across your opening again with featherlight pressure, rubbing her fingers together and holding them up to her face to admire. She pulls them apart obscenely, chuckling softly at it pearls and slips down her fingers, too much to keep under control with such carelessness. She hums in displeasure as it slides down toward her palm as she holds her hand up still inspecting, her tongue jutting out to lick her digits clean before it can fall to waste into the water, only adding to the tightness in your belly as you clench around nothing.
You can’t watch as she goes back to shaving you bald, can’t think as you drown in the sensations that she’s forcing you to feel with no release or relent. “Clenching around nothing, baby.” Natasha comments, unable to help herself after watching your walls contract for the third time in only a handful of seconds, her thumb pulling the top of your cunt taut, your clit fully exposed as she collects the last remaining bit of hair and shaving cream on the edge of the razor. “Leaky pussy can’t even handle me just touching it. That’s all I’m doing baby, just touching you and you’re dripping. String of wetness all the way down to the water, you know that? Know you’re dripping all over me and I can just tell how tight that little cunt is by looking at it?” She wipes the razor on the towel she has draped over the side of the tub, your hair and shaving cream smeared all over half of it, but then she grabs it, balls it up until the clean side’s all that’s exposed, and brings it down between your legs where she knows sensitivity has increased tenfold.
“Daddy!” You gasp, the final straw breaking as you jerk your hips, trying both to get away from the friction and to chase it. “Please! Please please please!” It’s a breathy mantra that you lose track of as quickly as you’d found it, your voice trailing off as you shake your head, not sure what you’re begging for or what you want or where you’re going from here.
“All this wetness.” Natasha continues to drone on about your arousal, unbothered by your fierce blush, or your growing desire that's starting to become too much in your bones. “Look at it. Look at how slutty that little pussy is. Just for me.”
Your eyes glance at the towel for only a moment, but there’s no denying the smear of clear glossy wetness that dampens and dirties it. She tosses it aside without care, pulling your thighs until more of your weight rests on her.
“But it’s not your fault is it, baby girl? Can’t help that you get so wet. Daddy trained you, huh? It’s all Daddy’s fault you're a wet, needy little girl, isn’t it?” Natasha feigns a coo as she trails her fingers against your mound, down your clit, towards your entrance. She’s soft, but not teasing this time. There’s no slight pressure followed by nothingness this time. Her fingers, three of them, sink into your core with some resistance, but the tightness of your walls is no comparison to her determination or the arousal coating her fingers. ”That’s right, that’s it. Oh, it’s not gonna take my girl any time to cum, is it? Oh no, no, you’re already clenching on my fingers. Oh, do you need to cum pretty girl? Yeah you do, yeah you do. Daddy knows your body, Daddy knows. Come on, cum for me, malysh. All over my fingers, make a mess. Shh, shh, there you go, there you go, sweet girl.” Natasha coos softly, easing her fingers out of your sensitive and stretched walls the second you show the first sign of being through and past your orgasm. She pulls you off the ledge entirely, down into her lap as she sinks into the water that needs to be drained and washed away, but for the moment, she stays, your chests flush together for the first time in a while. “Haven’t cum that hard in a while, huh? Just need a minute to get that pretty head on right again?” Natasha asks when you melt against her and remain a slumped blob, not a sound or a single hum coming from your chest as your eyelashes flutter against her neck as you thoughtlessly stare at her skin. “That’s okay, baby love. You did so good for more. Now I have a nice smooth baby to play with, huh?” She teases slightly, but you let her, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth as you melt contently into her. “Yeah, just keep breathing, sweetheart. Nice deep breaths for me.”
She doesn’t mean to rush you, but you’ve tested the patience of the water you sit in, and the temperature is becoming unwelcoming as waves slosh into your sides and shoulders as you slowly sink lower and lower into the tide.
“Gimmie a kiss, baby.” Natasha directs, grabbing your chin with her fingers and guiding your face up toward the light, forcing your eyes to focus on something other than the freckles that vary in darkness across her chest. You comply, albeit loosely, your lips resting against hers much to Natasha’s amusement as she presses hard into you before pulling away. “We’re gonna shower now, baby.” She rocks you slightly, if only to make sure your limbs are able to react and support your weight sufficiently when she eventually makes you stand.
“No.” You shake your head, looping your arms around her as you find your voice quietly. Natasha laughs, scoffing slightly benath her breath as she considers how it’s possible to have you so fucked out and pliant, and yet your first coherent utterance post-orgasm is still an act of petulant defiance agaisnt her authority. She doesn’t know how you can manage it so effortlessly, but she knows you aren’t even meaning to do it, which only amuses her further.
“Yeah, baby. We’re going to shower, and you’re going to go put some jammies on and wait for me in bed, and then how about I braid this mane of yours so we don’t even have to bother with it tomorrow morning. Let ya sleep in a little bit, hm? That sound like a good plan for a good girl?” She questions you sweetly, patiently, brushing her hand through your hair that's tangled from the wetness and tousling it’s experienced.
You nod, blinking your eyes just the slightest bit faster as your head doesn’t swim so terribly thick anymore. “Okay, so then it's time to get up.” Natasha nods encouragingly, helping you to your feet in the water that's slightly disgusting to look down at. She undoes the drain, turning the shower water back on hot and turning to face the brunt of the assault as the water warms back up to an acceptable and welcoming temperature.
She doesn’t let you think about anything for too long or too deeply, guiding you through the motions of showering, drying off, and getting to bed for the night. The next morning brings the same tender fate of care and affection, her thoughtful consideration sparing you no second or reason to wander off to the list of possibilities and outcomes that you could potentially face on your great escape to Norway where the real adventuring would begin. You wouldn’t have to pretend to find joy and comfort in cobwebs and dingy showers there, you’d be able to relax a little bit, at least until Natasha got a better idea of how to fix everything.
Fixing everything and the accords never crossed your mind once as she guided you through the docking station with a tight grip on your hand, keeping you beneath a current of control that was dissimilar to the ocean beneath you so drastically. The ocean churned and protested beneath the heavy metal of the ship as Natasha slid her cellphone and yours over the railing, dressed in a grey sweat seat that she’d lifted from a continent store on the corner only an hour ago. The bulge in her pants doesn’t go unnoticed, in fact, it's the only thing you’ve been thinking about as she manages the talking and the scamming.
The ship horn blows louder than you anticipated, but Natasha takes it as an excuse to pull you between her body and the railing, letting her strong arms provide a shield from the reverberations of sound all around you and the wind that tries to force its way into your bones. It's cold, too cold, but it's less confined out here. There’s scaffolding and metal hunks you can’t name that conceal identification, and with weather keeps away a majority of the people sharing the experience with you.
You can finally breathe when the ferry begins to leave the port, pulling away from the shore with no government order to stop immediately, but Natsha doesn’t take a breath for two entire minutes as she watches the coastline get farther and farther away through her peripheral vision. She stays still, eerily so, as she lets herself feel nervousness through the control she’s still grappling to maintain as an outlet. It’s a confusing mix of emotions, but she feels it full until she doesn’t want to anymore, turning her attention to you fully, entirely and truly fully, for the first time in a long time, her face nuzzling into your neck as she bites down on your collarbone.
Your hips jump in startled shock, grinding back against the bulge in her pants that swings with her body every time the waves jostle her frame. Her arms provide more than just decoration around you, Natasha knowing with certainty that if she were to let you go, you’d tumble over within seconds with the force building beneath the both of your feet from the winter waves.
She doesn’t comment on the movement of your hips as you manually mimic the unconscious sway that had created a point of contact between your body and the silicone extension of hers. The warmth from her chest radiates through your being as she leans closer, sandwiching you between the cold metal railing and the strength of her body as she turned to take your earlobe between her teeth, her tongue licking to smooth the ache away from your mind as she silently took advantage of your body.
”Anybody could see.” She mutters after a moment, reminding you of where you are and the bodies that you’re surrounded by for the foreseeable future. The warning barely sits on the surface of your skin for a moment, brushed off just as easily as the wind rolls over the apples of your cheeks with a harshness that chaps them.
“N-Nothings happening.” Natasha doesn’t expect the response that comes falling off of your lips with a shaky softness; some of the only words you’d spoken that morning at all. She laughs softly, muffling the sound in the pocket of your neck to keep from drawing attention to yourselves, feeling like she can breathe again for the first time as she zeroes her focus in on you. She’d used that line one too many times it seems, because now even in the half-drunk state that you maintain, you’re using her manipulation against her.
“No? Nothing’s happening, baby? We’re gonna play that game?” Natasha coos, brushing strands of hair away from your jawline that she peppers kisses into seconds later, selfishly seeking ounces of your warmth wherever she can find it
”Play that game.” You nod desperately, pussy clenching around nothing as you press up onto your tippy toes, trying to get the head of the strap-on to sit against your entrance through the layers of clothing that keep you separated.
”Good thing I picked this hoodie then, hm?” Natasha rips the waistband of your pants down faster than you can register the intention of the question, your fleece lined leggings bunching right beneath the curve of your ass with the black panties she’d insisted on being the choice for today. “Covers your ass.” She fills you in while pulling the waistband of her sweatpants down just enough to finagle the head shape of the strap overtop of them, her boxers bulging around the thick, girthy shape and length.
Three fingers last night. She’d done it for a reason. Not that you’re thinking enough about last night to realize the connection. You haven’t brought the strap out since before everything had gone down between Steve and Tony. You didn’t even know she had one with her until she’d off handedly mentioned it being at the bottom of a bag last week. It’s the big one, the one she’d worked for months to be able to fuck you with at random.
She doesn’t free the strap-on from its cotton confines, letting the arousal between your legs saturate it. The sensitivity you’d experienced last night hadn’t dissipated yet, nor would it until the hair around your clit grew back, and Natasha hums, soaking up the sounds and twitches of your body that only spread warmth throughout her from the very center of her being.
You whine when it becomes too much and not enough of anything at all, but her hands only grab your hips harder, pulling you against her strap and rocking the base back into her clit by doing so. She groans, dropping her face back into your shoulder as she works the strap between your thighs harder, faster, wishing she could feel how the cotton saturates until its wet, sodden and ruined from arousal she’d surely satisfied last night, but her little sluts insatiable at best sometimes, and she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been baiting it this entire time.
“Awfully fucking wet, baby.” She grunts against your neck, the warmth from her words sending shivers and shockwaves down your frozen spine. You shake your head wildly, but you know that you are, it doesn’t matter though. Your cheeks burn, flushed from heat and wind. “No? Oh, but I think you are. Mmm, let me just- Fuck.” Natasha pulls your panties aside and over the bulge in her boxers, the pressure driving the both of you insane but its short lived as she stills to change things, slipping the strap through the slot in her boxers but still refusing to put it inside, just ramming your sensitive throbbing clit over and over. “Fuck, I need to feel you.” Natasha mumbles, your head shaking again, a mumble falling off your lips that's inaudible but easy enough to fill in. “Shh, baby. Just the tip, just need to feel you a little bit. Just a little bit of this pussy.” It’s agony to pay when she slips only the head of the strap into you, splitting you open wide and staying there for a moment as she relieves the pressure on her clit, not wanting to cum just yet despite holding out for so long.
”Please.” You plead, rocking your hips back onto the strap as best as you can, but Natasha has the height advantage, and as fast as you move to get back up on your tippy-toes, her hand comes up to hold the base of your throat, not teasing, yet, just resting over the edge of your sweatshirt that you’d once wished was a full winter jacket. Not now. Now, sweat rolls off of you in pearls that dry quickly from the wind, goosebumps replaced with shivers of anticipation.
“Please?” Natahsa mimics, rocking her hips shallowly into you as her hands keep you still where she wants you. “Please what, baby? Please keep fuckign me with just the tip of your cock, or please fuck me deep until I can feel it for days? Which one is it, hm? What’s it going to be? Like this? Or do you want me, fuck, or do you want me deeper?” Natasha slams her hips into you hard, unforgivingly so, her hand dropping from your throat to sit over your bladder, pressing down with a cruel mess that has you writhing between her chest and the metal railing. “Do you want me here? In your belly?”
”Please!” Natasha will never get tired of hearing all the different ways she can get you to say it, but she concedes with your pleads before you can ask again in a different way, ramming you full with long, deep thrusts that have little speed built behind them, but enough strength to ensure bruises on your hips from the railing come morning time. “Hold it baby, just for a minute. Fuck, just so that I can get there too. Come on, be good. Be a good girl for me, fuck fuck fuck.” Natasha’s thrusts turn frantic quickly, but there needs to be no rhythm in place to secure your orgasm, your body tumbling over the edge the second permission falls from her lips cut short by a moan as na orgasm bursts through her body and yours in tandem.
A giggle tears through your chest in the aftermath of the orgasm, no real reason for the laughter but no reason to shove it all away either. Natasha laughs with you fondly, turning your head with her finger eventually to kiss you sweetly and deeply.
”We did it.” She whispers against your lips, her breath warm and welcomed across your face as she blocks it from the wind for the first time in too long. “The first step at least.”
Your in no state to weigh in on the standings of your safety and progress in the plan, and Natasha knows that, she doesn’t expect an answer, but she has to say it anyway for it to be real. You smile, nodding your head because you can recognize how significant this moment is to the both of you right now, but the only echo in your head right now is getting every inch of your body inside and on top of you at the same time, so deeply infatuated with her entire makeup that seconds pass slower, just a vortex of emptiness beside you and her tangled together and mangled.
”We’ve gotta stay out here a little bit longer, baby.” She breaks it to you eventually, her forehead resting against yours in a moment of gentle affection she would never want another soul to witness. You’re hers. She fought too hard to find you to let just anybody have the sweetest parts of you.
“It’s cold.” You whine softly, finding your voice, though not your body, still relying on her to keep the both of you standing on the deck.
”I know it’s cold, but people are still finding their spaces in there. Once it settles down a little bit we can go catch a couple hours of sleep and warmth, okay? You can be my brave girl for a little while longer, yeah?” You nod against her chest, too tired and cold to form words, not that Natasha’s ever required them from you. She’d live in silence before she found someone else. “This isn’t what I wanted for us, you know.” She says sparingly, despite both of you knowing that never in a million years had she pictured this for you even in her worst nightmare.
“I choose you.” You remind her simply, but it has the same effect as an entire monologue would’ve. Natasha nods, taking in another deep breath before she melts, resting her chin against your shoulder as she lets the both of you sway, being carried away into freedom for the first time in too long.
(Any complaints or requests for financial compensation should be addressed to @secondtolastrow for starting this)
But Mirrorverse AU where normal Celine (was maybe not the best parent but 100% loves Rumi and would never intentionally harm her) swap places with mirror!Celine (sees Rumi as a weapon and a "tame demon" and nothing more);
Main!Celine wakes up at the hanok wondering why (and when that got built) there's a kennel behind the house and why there's a cattle prod hanging outside the door.
Opening the door and seeing a demonic looking Rumi sleeping on a floor mat, chained to the floor with a collar, muzzled, and hands shackled behind her.
Main!Celine going, "what the fuck" which wakes Rumi up and Rumi is suddenly cowering away from her.
And mirror!Zoey and mirror!Mira come up behind main!Celine (mirror!Rumi cowers even more) and is like, yeah we don't know what's causing this so we put it back in its kennel for you to fix.
(Main!Celine going wtf wtf wtf)
Meanwhile;
Mirror!Celine wakes up at the hanok, Rumi and the girls show up to finally have that talk with Celine post-Idol Awards and mirror!Celine immediately goes, "why is that thing unmuzzled?"
And the girls immediately go, who the fuck is this and where is Celine?
And anyways;
Shenanigans from main!Celine trying to get mirror!Rumi into her world while trying to pretend to be evil;
The girls from the main verse trying to find main!Celine and getting increasingly fed up with mirror!Celine
Okay, I know this is angst, but I just- I just keep thinking about main!Celine pretending to be the absolute worst fandom interpretation of her and it's basically her woodenly going through the expected Evil Motions while being Soft with mirror!Rumi when mirror!Zoemira's backs are turned.
Mirror!Rumi’s hair is kept short—easier to deal with that way, not as finicky or prone to getting in the way of the muzzle. It’s generally around the point when there’s an issue when someone will annoyedly sigh and the scissors will appear shortly
Mirror!Celine cuts it efficiently, uncaring of if she’s pulling or what it looks like. Mirror!Mira takes more care, exclusively so she won’t have to look at scruffy tufts turning into an ugly, uneven mess
Celine manages, somehow, to talk Rumi into taking a real shower, with whatever products she wants, not just swiftly scrubbing herself down in the downstairs bath. (At least, she thinks, her counterpart didn’t just hose Rumi down and call it a day.)
After, when Rumi has insisted her way back into the muzzle again—and Celine has, begrudgingly, admitted that mirror!Zoey and Mira might appear—Celine gently sits her down and offers her a hairbrush.
Rumi eyes it nervously, uncertain
“You can brush your hair, or I can brush your hair,” Celine says plainly. “I don’t care.”
(It’s not a lie, exactly, but it’s not the truth. If Rumi let her brush her hair, Celine would be happy—it’s always been a bonding activity between her and her Rumi. If Rumi chose to do it herself, Celine would be happy—Rumi is expressing a preference.)
Rumi just… turns around a little. Drops her head. It takes Celine a moment to grasp her meaning.
Gently, she guides Rumi to sitting, gets her to tilt her head back up, carefully works through snarls that have been there for far, far too long. Slow and even and almost meditative, even if it’s shorter than her Rumi’s hair has been almost… ever.
And as they get past the first part, the little sparks of unavoidable pain, Rumi finds her eyes slipping closed at the steady, repetitive motions
She jerks upright—respectful, aware, can’t let herself get hurt—and again and then just… falls slowly into a doze
First hint of progress Celine’s gotten in this fucking hell world
She watches Celine, eyes darting back and forth she tracks her moving around the enclosure, grumbling to herself. It’s strange.
Not Celine grumbling; she always grumbles. Rather, it's her words that are…wrong.
“Honestly,” she huffs, taking up an armful of straw, damp with yesterday’s rain, from her bed and throws it in a wheelbarrow. “All her money she couldn’t have at least gotten moderately decent stuff? Wouldn’t give this to an animal.”
But that's what she was, right? Or, at least, what she was closer to? She certainly wasn't human...
Taking up the last of the straw, Celine wheels it out of the enclosure, not bothering to shut the door behind her (she's been oddly careless about that). "I'll be right back, Rumi."
There's that word again...Celine said it's a word for her, but there are already words for her: 'demon,' 'beast,' 'creature'. This one doesn't sound like any of them, a mountain breeze whose kiss is welcome relief on a sweltering summer's day rather than shame crackling and cracking her skin.
She wants it, even though she knows it's wrong, because demons don't deserve names.
Light spills from the hanok as Celine steps out, loading up the wheelbarrow again. The demon's confusion only grows when she returns to the enclosure.
"These should be much more comfortable." Celine smiles (???) as she lays down a blanket, so thick and plush her skin tingles at the thought of wrapping herself in it, then another and another until there's a luxurious nest in place of the thin straw bedding. At Celine's urging she tentatively brushes a hand across it, then piles in with a sigh.
She looks up at a thud. "It's supposed to get cold tonight," Celine explains as she sets up a space heater. "Can't have you catching a chill."
"Why?" she can't help but ask.
In answer Celine settles next to her, running a hand over her hair as the heater starts glowing dully. "Because you're dealing with enough as it is, Rumi-ya, without adding in a head cold."
Yes, there is something very wrong with Celine. But, she thinks as Celine's stroking and humming coax a doze to her eyelids, maybe that's not so bad?
(Rumi feeling softness for the first time in who knows how long 🥺)
(And she's expecting Celine to chain her back up, but she doesn't do that either. And when it gets dark and it's time for her to return to the house, Celine leaves a lamp instead of leaving her to the mercy of the moonlight.
And when she closes the door, she doesn't hear the heavy metal latch shut.)
(She could...walk out. Leave.)
(The thought scares her. It was wrong for her to even have. This was where she belonged. No demon could be allowed to wander freely.)
(That night, the wind howls, bringing cold air and frost with it.
The demon remembers the winters spent in this shed. The thin blankets, the cold straw. How the cold always seeped through the walls and chilled her.
How she spent the long nights shivering, iron collar around her neck so cold it hurt.)
(The cold still seeps through the walls but under her new blankets and in front of the space heater, the demon feels warm and drifts off to sleep easily for the first winter of her life.)
(She knows this is some trick. Some lesson that Celine is trying to teach. That she shouldn't get attached to the warmth and softness.)
(But that night, she lets herself imagine this as her new normal.)
