Avengerrevenger - AvengerRevenger - Tumblr Blog

a lesson on nonbinary individuals and why we feel the way we do about numerous basic things, such as the mere fact of our existence and our pronouns.

artists meeting other artists

Jirou's ear jack is a little odd, but Iida has two engines in his calves like... how does he maintain it? Does he have a way to open his legs? Does he need surgery everytime?

It’s so weird, because what is the source of power, does he burn carbon hydrates, fat and proteins? I would never assume for the human body to be able to maintain a mile without burning your entire body if your body is literally a racing car, hahaha

Antecedent 

tags: AFAB reader (referred to as ‘mama’), established (kinda toxic) relationship, canon divergence: secret family au (post arrest), spoilers for touya backstory and chapters 349 onwards, hurt/comfort, original child character (‘Kaiyo’; he is your shared biological child), no reference to readers quirk, mentions of canon attempted suicide and canon child abuse, themes of generational trauma, family feels, todoroki family centric, villain rehabilitation, dealing with trauma and recovery, second chances

wc: 16.5k

You shouldn’t have come. 

There are crowds of press, packed so tightly that getting any closer would be futile, all of them a cacophony of questions and accusations. You’re standing atop a small brick wall encasing a flower bed of hyacinths outside of the hospital, a head above the sea of cameras, watching as a group of heroes — Endeavor and Shouto included — slowly lead Touya towards an armoured van. 

Relief floods through your system for a few precious seconds, overwhelming the hopelessness in your stomach. He was alive. 

One little rumour from a patient in your clinic, an unsure whisper of I heard they’re moving that Dabi kid from the ICU to villain corrections had led you here. It’d been two long, devastating weeks since the final battle. Two weeks with no word from him, two weeks of reading every article you could find about the ‘elusive first son of Endeavor’ and learning nothing. 

The media blackout that came thereafter was the only thing that kept you hoping that he was okay. The Todoroki family, though disastrous and complicated, held some influence in Japan. And though Touya would vehemently try to reject it, they could not allow their surviving first son to be fed to the wolves. 

And wolves they were; yelling obscenities and insults with spitting anger. Legal justice was one thing, but the court of public opinion was another thing in its entirety, a fragile and fickle thing that held the power to sway even government policy. 

Kaiyo stirs in your arms at the noise and you soothe him, rubbing your hand along his back until he quietens, then you tuck away the stray red hair that has fallen loose from beneath his hat. Truthfully you never intended to bring him here, but given recent events it has been hard for him to separate from you, cheeks still slightly pink from his earlier tantrum. 

It’d been damn near impossible to prevent the four year old from learning about the broadcast a few months prior, paired with the sudden less than frequent visits from his father, he knew something was deeply wrong and he didn’t understand it. 

Touya is scanning the crowds lazily, expression impassive to everyone but you. You could see was exhausted, more gaunt than you last remember, but his disinterest only fed into everyone’s fury. 

“Villain!” they’re bellowing at him, fingers pointed and words sharp, “don’t you care about the suffering you’ve caused?” 

He cares, you think, more than anyone could ever understand. 

You cannot look away as Shouto lingers by his brother, the other sidekicks giving them a wide berth. Endeavor is tucked away beside the van speaking with an armed officer, his shoulders hunched forwards in an uncharacteristic manner. He appeared to be ashamed. 

Good, the thought bitter and weighing heavily in your chest. 

Touya shuffles along obediently, wrists out and pressed together against his pelvis. Quirk suppressing cuffs, you assumed. They were bulky, and no doubt uncomfortable. You hold Kaiyo a little closer as you ache, distantly wondering if he’s cold without his quirk. 

After today it was entirely possible you’d never see him again, that your son would grow up without his father.

Nobody knew of your connection to him, something both of you doubled down on after your pregnancy came to light. There would be no way for you to visit or contact him now without suspicion being cast upon your little family. Law enforcement will without a doubt assume you were aware of his intentions, and worst case they would believe you to have played a part in them yourself. 

He couldn’t allow that to happen. And yet, here you were. 

You just needed one last look at him to know he was breathing, living flesh and blood, to know that the only thing you would have to mourn was your relationship. More than anything you needed him to be ok. And he does look different – better, in some ways. The new skin grafts hug his jawbone comfortably, and the rings that once kept him together are gone. 

Being alive meant he still had a chance. 

Touya tilts his chin up, squinting against the flare of the sun, and the corner of his mouth crooks into a smile. It’s the irony, you think, as your own lips twitch. The heavens should have opened by now, rain should be soaking your clothes to your skin, influenced by the utter misery flooding throughout your body. Instead, the day is bright.

As if he can feel it, he turns, and his gaze immediately falls on your figure in the distance. You’re close enough to see the abject fury flit across his features, eyes wide and unblinking as they stare back into your own. 

The hand you have rested against Kaiyo’s back slides up over his hat to cradle his head, his small fingers curled tightly into the fabric of your shirt, drawing Touya’s attention to the boy. 

To his son. 

The anger dissolves like sea foam, it washes away to give space for his grief. This was it, the final goodbye. You couldn’t find it in yourself to hate him for his choices, because it was something he had told you he’d do from the start. 

In hindsight, you can only curse your naivety. 

You’d met Touya a few months after your eighteenth birthday while shadowing one of the senior nurses in the clinic. The place was small, run down and barely funded, but it was valuable work and they were kind enough to give you the extra experience.

He’d been brought in unconscious by a concerned passerby. The skin of his arms has been rough, raised and pale pink, inflamed where they’d been burnt. Barely nineteen at the time, it was nothing compared to what he would do to himself years later. 

“Watch him until he wakes up,” they’d told you, and you did so dutifully until his eyes flew open in alarm. 

Back then his identity as Dabi was makeshift, fresh and unrefined. With the glue still wet between the cracks it was unsurprising that he would slip. Touya. That was how he introduced himself to you on that first day, under the hazy influence of painkillers.

The memory stuck with you throughout your relationship. You’d see it now and then — you’d see Touya plainly behind the veil. Sometimes you said his name as if it was a dare, and he’d hated it so much that he loved you. With you there was no need to exert effort in maintaining his bravado, he could just be. And that was dangerous, or so he’d insisted.

He would disappear for weeks at a time. He always had a myriad of excuses, from expressing concern for your safety to spitting that you were nothing but a good fuck. You could no longer count on one hand the amount of times you’d heard the ‘I’m a villain, you shouldn’t be with me’ speech. 

Touya would leave, and yet you’d still come home to a receipt on the counter, or to your clean sheets unmade. It was laughable, and you loved him. 

The pregnancy was… unexpected. Difficult. If his emotions were a switch on the wall, your growing baby was a finger flicking it up and down incessantly. Mornings full of nausea and nights full of reassurance. You offered him an out, a door that would always be left open, and he refused it. 

Stay and be a bad father. Leave and be a bad father. Those were the only options he thought existed for him. And maybe you should’ve believed him when he told you Kaiyo’s birth wouldn’t change a thing about the path he’d set for himself. 

But you couldn’t accept it. Not as he’d held your boy in his arms, not as the apprehension and fear in his eyes softened into love. Not as he’d laughed and told you, “guess I needed to give one good thing to the world before I die”. 

Sometimes the adoration would become overcast with anguish. There were days he couldn’t even look at Kaiyo because of how much he loved him, reminded only of how little he had been loved by his own family — but he never let Kaiyo see it. 

“Just because he’s too young to understand now doesn’t mean he won’t later”.

The only small mercy is that your son remains asleep, blissfully unaware of what he is losing, and unperturbed by the noise around him. His light, shallow breaths against the skin of your neck are a warm comfort. 

Touya can’t say anything for fear it will draw attention to you both, and you think that alone is punishment enough. 

Shouto stands beside him in silence, surveying the surroundings and eventually following Touya’s line of sight to you. Instinctively you step backwards into the soft soil of the flowerbed, your thoughts offering an apology to the hyacinth flattened beneath your shoe. 

With the realisation that his youngest brother has noticed you, Touya turns and lunges in Shouto’s direction with his teeth bared. It could almost be comical if not for the unpleasant murmurings of the crowd. In the short moment that Shouto is distracted, you jump down from the brick wall and slip away. 

You don’t look back. 

A small part of you had hoped your role in the story had ended, that you now might just move forward as best you can. Instead, you were shadowed by an overwhelming sense of dread everywhere you went. There was little to do besides work and walk, yet you couldn’t help but feel watched. The cashier at your local market, your neighbour, Kaiyo’s teacher, the food vendor on the corner; with just one look you can’t help but to think that they must know, that any day now this false peace will collapse onto you like a tonne of bricks. 

The anxiety keeps you up at night, counting the glowing stars stuck to the bedroom ceiling to pass the hours, tension threading itself into your muscle fibres. Kaiyo was warm where he laid curled at your side, but the loneliness — in all its violent emptiness — made the night colder. Despite it all, you missed Touya, your eyes still searching for him across the futon. 

Remnants of him are still scattered throughout the apartment. Should anyone come looking, there would be plenty of him to find. He’d hated having his picture taken, yet always gave in to you quickly, and you never needed to ask him for anything twice. There were photographs of his lips pressed to your hair, of his smile tucked against your neck, of his arms holding the baby; hand cradled around the crown of his head, his purpled scars a stark contrast to Kaiyo’s soft skin. 

He had treated fatherhood like he was a dying man, a clear red flag that you can only now see with hindsight. He had spoiled the two of you with his time and effort, no matter how uncomfortable it made him, because he knew any day might be his last. Touya was born with inherited wounds that were left to fester. To him, his failure was terminal, and no amount of love would undo that. 

The wood panels are cool beneath the soles of your feet as you pad your way through to the bedroom, bending at your knees to pick up stray toys and socks left throughout the hallway. There’s still an ache in your cheeks, the strain of smiling too long through all the tears and questions from your son that morning before school. You wish you had answers. 

Your shared room looks much emptier with the large futon hung over the balcony to dry. You find a small star in the centre of the room that has fallen from the ceiling. Held between your fingers in the daylight it is dull, a pale yellow, much different to the green glow it emits at night. Touya had bought them for Kaiyo after a series of bad dreams, lifting the boy onto his shoulders and letting him stick them wherever he pleased. 

Another piece of him. As you are slipping the star into your pant pocket, you hear a knock on the front door. You weren’t expecting anyone — rent had been paid, Kaiyo was with his sitter and your neighbours were at work. It sounds again, reverberating throughout the apartment, and the soft hair on your arm lifts in anticipation. 

There is a sense of embarrassment somewhere within you as you creep towards the entryway, keeping your body low and your steps light. You can hear muted, muffled voices through the cheap wood, fingertips carefully lifting the peep hole cover to look through. 

You hold your breath, stunned. There are two women just an arms length from you, both of them beautiful and horrifyingly familiar to you. Rei, Touya’s mother, stands with her head held high despite the nervous fiddling of her hands. Fuyumi, his sister, is clasping the strap of her shoulder bag with a white knuckled grip. 

“Mother, are you sure this is the place?” she asks, her eyes darting anxiously over the surroundings, “maybe Shouto made the wrong assumption”.

Rei is lovely, you think, even with the air of sadness  Her smile is gentle, and her expression softly determined. “The worst outcome to this is that he misunderstood the situation,” she replies, “but if this person is important to Touya then they’re important to me”. 

Fuyumi nods, shifting her weight between each foot. You inhale shakily through your nose, blinking back the dryness in your eye as you continue to watch through the lense. 

“He said… there was a child”. 

Your forehead bumps against the door as you startle, cursing under your breath, lungs tightening as the dread floods your system. The two women freeze alongside you, observing the door cautiously, glancing at one another in silent conversation. 

“If you’re there, we aren’t here to hurt you,” Rei lifts her hand, and rests it against the door in a show of reassurance, “I believe you know my eldest son. We only want to talk”. 

The push and pull of guilt, relief and fear forces the weight of your body to sink forward, drawn to the sincerity in her voice. There is no amount of time or distance that would dilute the loyalty you felt towards Touya. Letting them in would be a betrayal. 

“Please,” Fuyumi’s voice is wet, thickening with tears, “he’s my older brother. He’s refusing to talk about you or— or anything! We just want to—”

Rei turns to soothe her, and you’re reminded of your own parenthood. If something ever happened to Kaiyo you might just scorch the earth in your attempts to find him. It’s hard to swallow the swell in your throat as you watch his sister turn into the touch, seeking that comfort. 

Touya had loved his mother, a difficult thing for him to stomach but true all the same. He’d grieved the attention he never received from her, but you knew he didn’t blame her, and it is that which leads your hand to the door handle. 

Time feels like it’s in suspension. To see them standing so clearly before you without the film of dirt from the glass is still a shock to process. Behind you is a home filled to the brim with evidence of your own criminal involvement, the first photograph they’ll see hung in the hallway is of their grandson.

Kaiyo deserved his chance at having a family. 

“Please come in,” your fingers are trembling where they sit in your pocket, curled around the divots in the star. Please forgive me, you think. 

You step backwards to allow them through, both accepting with a short bow and a quiet thank you. It’s unnerving and tense, their stares lingering along the walls and shelves, the mother and daughter now hand in hand as they take a seat on your couch. 

“Would…” a blunt point of the star sinks into the thickest part of your palm, the sensation acting as your tether, “…can I get you anything to drink?” 

“Some tea would be wonderful,” Rei concedes, her voice full of earnest and so light it’s almost wistful. As you steep the leaves you can’t help but get the feeling she knew you needed more time.

The ceramic cups are old, stained with time and well loved. You fill them with hot water, tendrils of steam billowing warmth across your face, and place them atop the coffee table before kneeling onto the floor. 

Beneath your mug is a clumsily drawn cat, the marker permanently stained into the wood. There are others, too, little marks left by mistake. Faint lines of kanji where the ink had seeped through the paper, hearts and stick figures and stars. Rei reaches her hand out to trace a finger along them, lips pressed thinly in a sad smile. 

“I apologise for our unexpected intrusion,” she tells you, “I’m Himura Rei and this is my daughter, Todoroki Fuyumi".

“Believe it or not I’ve been waiting for someone to find us,” your hands wrap tightly around the hot cup, incognisant of the sting to your skin, “it was beginning to eat away at me a little bit”.

“Then Shouto was right,” Fuyumi mirrors you, keeping her voice soothing and calm as she speaks even as her eyes are tearful. You recall Touya telling you she was a teacher, and you can see why. 

“You did know him,” she says, “it looks like he spent… a lot of time here”.

You hear yourself laugh breathlessly at her tiptoeing of the subject, “he practically lived here until he decided to join the league. After that he stayed away for our safety, I suppose”. 

She nods, seeming to accept your answer, glancing then to her mother in a silent plea for assistance. “Could you tell us what he was like?” there’s a mellow, apologetic tone in Rei’s words, but to whom she was apologising you didn’t know.

“Could you tell us all the things we missed?”

So you sip your drink to smooth the dryness in your throat and it’s scalding against the roof of your tongue, and you tell them everything you know. 

After your first meeting you’d thought about him every day for a week, haunted by the intensity in his eyes and the marks on his skin. You had talked and talked and he had done nothing but listen. While you thought you'd never see him again it wasn’t long at all until he came back to your dingy clinic, this time of his own accord, in need of painkillers and suturing. 

He’d gone straight to you, rudely bypassing the doctors with any qualification in the ward, and shoved some money into the palm of your hand. He was still young, his attempts at carrying himself like a man seemed more like puppetry to you, but still you entertained it and attended to his wounds. 

“Since I’m still not fully trained you’ll need to sign this,” you remember holding out the clipboard to him, your supervisor lingering by the curtains, the impatient tap of her foot echoing in your ears. 

“Touya—” 

Back then his aversion to hearing that name was much greater. Every time it’d passed through your lips was as if you had pressed your thumb on a fresh bruise, and he’d lash out in kind. 

“Don’t call me that here!” 

“Why? Are you running from something?” 

He’d laughed at you with eyes that glittered like he was about to cry, but the tears never came, they never could. “Running implies that someone is looking for me,” his skin pulled uncomfortably taut as he smiled, “there’s no one to run from”.

“He dyed his hair black soon after that,” the mug held between your trembling hands grows cold, your tea mostly untouched and leaving a faint brown ring around the ceramic, “sometimes he would visit me all soaked with rain, and the colour would run down the back of his neck”. 

You pause every so often to offer them a chance to ask questions, but the two women remain quiet, listening raptly to your story. Their genuine trust and willingness to believe you bore a sense of unease, or perhaps guilt that you’d had him to yourself while they’d mourned. 

“Then things eventually progressed to… more,” even with the air of melancholy, you couldn’t help but take refuge in the normalcy of being timid around your partner's family, sheepish as you recount your relationship. 

“Did you love him?” Rei asks, and though not unkind, her question makes you feel unspeakably lonely. 

Loving Touya had felt nothing like a free fall, there was no moment in which you woke up and realised your feelings. It’d been no great feat to love him, no grand prize or climax at the end of a long battle; you saw all the worst parts of him and it didn’t change a thing. Even with all his flaws your feelings only deepened until they hollowed you out. 

Despite it all, you had walked into it knowingly, each step forward towards him a purposeful choice. 

You have only your own hunger to thank. Your eighteen year old self had been fiercely persistent, and however much he denied it, you knew he was drawn to your sympathy. Even though he was never entirely honest you pursued him with the small truths he did offer, motivated by the selfish wish to see him happy. 

“Yes,” in sickness and violence, in struggle and fear; you’d loved him through holidays and birthdays, through time spent apart and nights spent alone, “I love him”. 

“And the little boy, is he your son?”

Kaiyo. An unexpected yet happy accident. Named after forgiveness and the spitting image of his father, a red haired cherub, you both already knew the answer. “You can say it, Ms. Himura,” your smile strained as you run your thumb along the handle of your mug, “he’s our son. Mine and his”. 

Fuyumi exhales shakily, slumping forward like the fight left her body along with it. You can see the moment your confession truly registers, misty eyed and sparing a glance between one another. Turning on your knees, you reach into the shelves of the TV cabinet, grasping the framed photo of your son as an infant. 

Rei takes it from you delicately as you offer it to her with an outstretched hand and traces her fingers across the glass pane, circling the swell of Kaiyo’s pink cheek. It’s a personal favourite of yours — his arms are held above his head in triumph, the lower half slightly blurred from the excited kick of his feet. He’s grinning widely, so much so his eyes are squinted. 

Touya had been the one to take that photo, making ridiculous noises from behind the camera, the ghost of their intermingling laughter still ringing in your ears. 

“His name is Kaiyo and he’ll be turning four soon,” you watch warmly as Fuyumi leans over her mothers shoulder to get a better look, hand clutching at the fabric of her knit sweater, “the pregnancy was unexpected. We didn’t… I told Touya I would raise him myself, but he insisted on taking responsibility”. 

As you recall, the very notion that he wouldn’t stick around had offended him. He loved his son. He’d even cried over the baby scans, dry blood still smeared across black and white where they sit in your bedroom drawer. But you could see how the fear had eaten away at him throughout those nine months, restlessly doting on you and bringing home stolen things for the baby every few days but never being able to touch your growing bump. 

“Then, why did he join the league?” Fuyumi asks, but you were intuitive enough to see the real question between the lines. Why wasn’t any of this enough? Why did he leave this behind, too? 

You’d guessed from the beginning that his relationship with his family was, at best, a strained one. In reality it was worse than you could’ve imagined. The small pieces to his past that he let slip every now and then would always fill you with distress, at a loss for words. 

The reveal of who his father had been all you needed to understand the secrecy, of both his identity and of your relationship. 

“Stain,” you cross your arms over the surface of the coffee table, knees folded beneath it, and resist the urge to hide your face, “he continued to use his quirk so his condition was worsening, and his anger towards Endeavor had been festering for years”.

You ignore their plaintive wince at the mention of the pro, blunt nails curling into your inner wrists as you continue. “Touya felt his death didn’t matter. It didn’t change a thing,” and he had to watch his world move on without acknowledging it, “everything Endeavor did made him susceptible to Stain’s cause”.

Stain’s temporary reign of terror over Japan was the first time he’d ever heard anyone criticise hero society so blatantly. You remember the vengeful kindling in his eyes as he recited the vigilante’s words, your son sound asleep in his arms and none the wiser. 

It was that night, and every night that followed, that the stress had started to gnaw at your chest until you felt your lungs collapse under the weight. Panic gripped you each time he returned home with a new injury, the smell of smoke suffocating and clinging to the futon covers no matter how much you washed them. He carried a feral sense of excitement and restlessness that left you helpless — something had breathed new life into him, and it had not been you. 

Fighting had been pointless, your pleas like water to a ducks back. He loved you, he loved his son, and somehow he had rationalised that burning himself and the world would give rise to a better place.  

“He already died once,” your smile is tight but not as tight as your throat,  “and it did nothing. So this time he’d do it where it couldn’t be hidden, where everyone would have to look right at his self immolation and know their part in causing it”. 

It's then that Rei carefully places the photograph on the table as she lowers herself onto her knees, the frame remaining upright with the support of its stand. With her hands resting one atop the other, she leans forward into a full bow in front of you. 

You’re stunned with arms suspended in the air as you hesitate to reach for her, a swell of tears lining your eyes at her softly spoken apology. Your son watches over the exchange, his presence poignant even through an image. 

“Ms. Himura, please lift your head,” you shift towards her, close enough to thread your fingers over her own, feeling the peaks of her knuckles against your palm. 

“I failed him as his mother,” she says, overturning her hand to hold yours and squeezing, “it was those failures that led to your own suffering. I’m sorry”. 

In your peripheral you see Fuyumi as she moves to mirror her mother, sitting close beside you, fingers ghosting a chill along your forearm where she comes to entangle with the two of you. 

“Please don’t take responsibility for my pain. Besides, it wasn’t always terrible,” you stare at the knot of limbs, comforted by the gentle warmth of their touch, “I don’t think… I’ve ever met anyone who loves as much as your son does”. 

Rei’s eyes fall shut, a faint pinch between her brows, sorrowful as she replies: “I know”.  

Her expression is so full of regret it’s almost contagious, drawing you in and reminding you of your own mistakes. There’d been so many opportunities that you could’ve fought him, could’ve said something, but didn’t for fear of pushing him further away. 

“How did you find me?” 

Your voice cuts through the plaintive silence and you shrink under their gaze as their eyes lift. Fuyumi speaks in place of her mother, her thumb rubbing back and forth over your wrist. 

“Shouto saw you as Touya was being transferred, and in all honesty he didn’t think anything of it until Touya attacked him to keep the attention on himself,” she explains with an amused lilt, “he appeared to be very protective of you”.

Idiot, you think fondly. 

“I assure you he only told my mother,” Fuyumi squeezes your forearm once again as if to comfort you, “he was concerned and wasn’t sure if he just misunderstood. But we wanted to look for you to make sure”. 

“Then, the authorities aren’t aware?” 

“No,” Rei murmurs. 

You’re surprised by just how much you were being upheld by stress, shoulders sagging forward in relief, sinking your teeth into the soft inside of your cheek to withhold a whimper. 

“Thank you,” you say hoarsely, and you repeat it again and again until the two women have swaddled you in their arms, surrounded by the gentle scent of lavender and detergent. 

“You’re family to Touya, therefore you’re family to us,” Fuyumi reassures you, “you don’t have to do this alone anymore if you don’t want to”. 

Family. The prospect almost seemed too good to be true, an enticing offer laid out only to trap you at the end. You couldn’t risk Kaiyo’s safety or wellbeing, but their sincerity is so palpable it’s stifling. 

“How is he?” you ask instead, “is he safe?” 

“This knowledge isn’t available to the public, but he has been moved into a private villain corrections centre,” Rei looks at Kaiyo’s picture as she speaks, and you wonder if she sees Touya looking back.

“He will be undergoing rehabilitation with the hopes of one day joining us for a period of probation,” she continues, turning to you with a soft smile, “rest assured we have no intention of removing his autonomy. Touya consciously chose to carry out his actions and he should take responsibility for it…”

Her voice breaks, “… but we had our own part to play in his creation, and believe he deserves a second chance”. 

It’d sound like a perfect dream if you did not know Touya as intimately as you do. You’re unable to repress the grimace that crosses your expression. 

“He won’t be happy about that,” your eyes fall closed momentarily as you exhale, “he won’t see it your way. You already took his autonomy by removing his choice to die, that’s what he’ll think”. 

“You really do understand him, don’t you?” Fuyumi laughs mournfully, “he’s refusing to cooperate. He was relatively fine in police custody but since the transfer he’s become more hostile”.

The room grows a little smaller with every word. “Do you think it’s because I was there?” 

“Shouto asked twice who you were and Touya attacked him both times. It’s a big part of why he came to me about it, and why we knew we had to find you,” Rei says. 

It would make sense. Touya always smothered his anxiety with anger, a response that allowed him some control or imitation of power, and power meant safety. You knew he found common ground with his youngest brother, that being the reason he ultimately lost to him, but that didn’t mean he trusted Shouto. The thought of him restlessly wondering if you and Kaiyo were in danger causes your chest to tighten. 

“Maybe if you’re able to tell him we’re okay, he’ll start responding to treatment?” 

“Maybe,” Rei nods and then the apartment is veiled in heavy silence. It wasn’t unlike sitting at his wake. You wished he could bear witness to how much love you all felt for him. 

Suddenly, a muted beeping sounds from the thin, mint coloured watch clasped around Rei’s wrist. She sighs and pressed her lips into a thin, displeased line. “I’m sorry but we can’t stay longer. They still get a little nervous if I’m out too long,” she says. 

Right. She too had spent time locked away in a hospital. It must be difficult, you think, to have a mistake follow you wherever you went. A perfect recovery did not mean other people would forgive, or forget. 

Maybe one day, Touya would see that he and his mother are more similar than he realises. 

“That’s fine, Ms. Himura,” you bow forward towards her, and then again while addressing Fuyumi, “I’m grateful to you both for finding us”. 

“And we’re grateful you gave us a chance,” Fuyumi lifts her arms in an aborted motion as if to hug you, but decides against it, “we’d like to leave you with our contact information. If there’s anything you need or… if you’d like Kaiyo to visit, please don’t hesitate to call”. 

Their touch lingers long after they leave. The evening moves on, sun dipping below the seam of the horizon as it always does as if nothing had changed, an unintended reminder of how minuscule your problems really were. Kaiyo is returned home by his sitter, excitedly babbling about his day, rushing throughout the apartment with bare feet padding over the spot where his grandmother had been seated only hours before. 

You’re reminded of how intuitive he is when he curls himself around your thigh, asking you if you’re okay, if you were feeling sick or sad. There’s a guilt there that can only come with parenthood, your depression smothered like a wet blanket as you pull forward a smiling mask to wear, hoping it will placate his worry. 

“I’m okay baby,” you tell him with fingers combing through unkempt red hair, his eyes wide and bright and distinctly your own, “I’m just a little tired”.  

There is an anger that accompanies the insurmountable love you feel when you look at your son. It is difficult to accept his abandonment, to know you will have to be the one imparting that pain into him. So gentle, excitable and considerate of those around him, qualities taught to him by his supposedly villainous parents.

Despite his mistakes and doubts, Touya tried to be a good father, he’d wanted to be one. You suspected a lot of it came from a place of wishfulness, parenting his child in a way he’d wanted for himself, as painful as it might’ve been to realise just how little he’d mattered to his own. And you can see it now — Touya’s inherited wounds are steadily present on Kaiyo, a passing of the torch, and all you can do is try to stop the bleeding.

If you truly thought about it, you could say your whole relationship had carried a disquieting dark shadow beneath its skin, something of a spreading blood wheel. You overlooked it anytime he was callous and unruly, you’d cry and ache but it pleased you to know he still cared enough about himself to be angry. 

Soon after joining the league he’d gradually plateaued, urges satisfied, and you should’ve noticed. 

“Mama, look,” Kaiyo appears and lifts a thin sheet towards you, paper wrinkling under his chubby fingers, “I drawed dad!”

“Drew,” you warmly correct, cradling his cheeks as you duck to press a kiss to his forehead. The drawing is that of three stick figures, each one distinct with features. Touya’s figure has his black spiked hair, and across the lower half of its face is a purple shadow. His scars, you assume. 

It was all perfectly normal to Kaiyo; the sutures and rings, the burns, the ever present smell of smoke. From the moment he could open his eyes, they would follow his father with love and excitement. The admiration would sometimes unsettle Touya, too familiar, too much like looking into a reflection. 

“It’s brilliant, baby,” you tell him, gentle as you take it from his grasp, “shall we put it on the pinboard along with the others?”

He huffs, incensed by your request, “but I want to show my friends!”

Therein lies the dilemma. You wonder how often this problem will crop up in the years to come, how quickly you might run out of acceptable excuses as he becomes old enough to understand. Dabi was too easily recognised, even in your son's amateur rendition of him. 

“I really love this one though Kai, it has all of us,” you twist your lips into a cartoonish pout, pulling the sweet sound of a laugh from him, “please can I keep it?”

His childish glare withers as he fights a smile, the restrained happiness plain on his face and entirely contagious. “Ok mama, I guess,” he relents, innocent and forgiving, head tilted and cheeks pink under your praise. In moments like this, you can truly understand a parent's wish to freeze time. 

You recall Touya’s claim of putting good into the world before his death. You too could hardly believe that you’d raised such an unequivocally good little boy. But as you watch your son appraise his art with an excited wiggle, you’re reminded that children are not a tool for redemption. 

“I love you,” I promise I’ll be better for you, “and dad loves you too. How about we draw him another picture? I’ll do one aswell". 

“Okay!” he takes your hand and begins to pull you along the hallway towards his room, your back bent uncomfortably to lessen his reach. Halfway to his destination, Kaiyo pauses, pulling anxiously at the hem of his metallica shirt. 

“When… When is dad coming back from work?” 

That’s right. Work in Okinawa, you’d told him. A terribly flimsy excuse given in a moment of panic. At the time you just wanted him to have a reason to hold onto, to reassure himself with, but it was slowly coming back to bite you. 

“He still has a lot to do baby,” an understatement if you’d ever heard one, “it’ll be a little while. But we can be patient, can’t we?”

His lips purse into a pout, eyes shimmering with unshed tears as he bravely nods, and the thought of Rei’s phone number waiting in your contacts lingers in the forefront of your mind. 

Truthfully it haunts you throughout the rest of your week, stomach lined thickly with guilt. You eat, you work, you walk Kaiyo to school with eyes on every corner. You sleep in Touya’s most recently worn hoodie and pretend it’s his skin, his hands, too attached to his scent to wash it. 

Kaiyo continues to draw, to write and create. He brings graded homework back from school to keep in one of your old folders along with his other keepsakes; just in case Touya comes back, just so he can show him. 

You were looking over some of the old home made cards the night you finally called Rei, reliving another time and wondering if it ever really had been better, or if it’d just been a figment of your imagination. 

It can be difficult to know when a memory has been altered by nostalgia. 

“What’s this?” Touya had said as Kaiyo handed him a Father’s Day card, the inside lined with confetti and star sequins that toppled into his lap when opened. 

“I— I made it for you,” Kaiyo had explained nervously with eyes wide, hands flexing at his sides, “see… that’s you and— and me!” 

“Those potato shaped things are us?” Kaiyo had visibly deflated even with Touya’s playful tone, “this is pretty fuckin’ cool if you ask me”. 

“Freakin’,” you’d gently chided, lacking any heat for it to sound truly scolding at the time, too pleased by Kaiyo’s excited dancing. You recall the relaxed smirk on Touya’s lips and how he’d pressed a kiss to your shoulder, a rare moment of him being truly at ease and present. 

“And the heart, why s’it blue and not red?” 

“Because of your fire, dad!” Kaiyo grinned as he lifted his arms, mimicking the pose of a hero, “I hope I have blue flames, just like you”. 

Fragile. You'd watched on as Touya’s expression became strained, closing the card and setting it on the table, “I guess we better keep it somewhere safe since you worked so hard on it”. 

Into the folder it went. 

You decide to make the leap the following morning, allowing Kaiyo to sleep a little longer while you sift through your shared wardrobe for a suitable outfit. Work had happily allowed you a day off — even though they were chronically short staffed, you didn’t often call in sick so they were glad to give it to you. 

Usually Kaiyo would be dropped off with his sitter, an older woman known in the neighbourhood for fostering children. She’d been around for a long time, had seen and worked with many a criminal, and she understood young people more than you could comprehend. You trusted her with your son, trusted that even if he unknowingly slipped up she wouldn’t say a thing. 

But today that wasn’t necessary. You feel the fabric of the small knitted sweater between your fingers, frowning at the aggravating itch. He wouldn’t wear this, too scratchy, but it was also the closest to nice clothing he had. 

It isn’t like you’re living in poverty, but one mistake and it could very well be a truth for you. Clothes were fine as long as they fit — Kaiyo loved the little band tees his father would bring him more than anything, he didn’t care much for formal wear. 

The unbidden image of Touya’s displeased scowl flashing through your thoughts is enough for you to put the sweater back. Forcing Kaiyo to conform for the sake of his wealthier relatives, indicating that your own reality was something lesser, is something you wouldn’t do. Something Touya would hate you for. 

A small lump curled up beneath the futon covers begins to move. Kaiyo stirs, almost as if he can feel your turmoil, sleep lined eyes searching for you. 

“Ma?” 

“Mornin’, handsome,” a smile pulls naturally at your lips and warmth unfurls in your chest when he reaches for you. Half of his hair is pressed flat to the side of his head where he’d laid. 

He blinks slowly from your lap, his fathers nose wrinkling as he surveys the clothes you’d been mulling over. It’s an unspoken question. 

“I have a surprise for you so I wanted to find something nice for you to wear,” you tell him, hand rubbing along the length of his back. He perks up noticeably, foot kicking out against the sweater you’d just been holding. 

“Don’t like that one,” he says. You laugh, eyes closing for a moment to silently send thanks to Touya, even if he had just been a fleeting piece of your imagination. 

“Thought so,” you murmur, leaning forward to move it aside, “pick something for yourself, then. Make sure it’s something you’ll feel good in, because we’re going to meet some new people today”. 

“Who?” he asks, mouth wet and shaped into an ‘o’ as he fists his hands into another one of his dark coloured t-shirts. 

“You know how a lot of your friends have more than just a mother and father?”

He mumbles a dejected ‘yes’. 

“Well, I know you’ve been missing dad so I thought we might be able to connect with him in a different way,” you explain, helping him lift his pyjama shirt over his head and refraining from pinching his belly. 

“What would you say if I told you… I was going to take you to see your grandma right now?” 

“Grandma?!” he squeaks from behind the clean shirt you loop over his head, frowning then as you help him push his arms through the sleeves, releasing a small noise of complaint. 

“That’s right, your dad's mother,” — your smile dims slightly while he insists on dressing himself, reminded of how quickly the time has passed, how much he was growing — “I guess he didn’t talk about his family a lot did he?”

Kaiyo shakes his head excitedly, bouncing on his toes as he struggles to tug his pants over his clean underwear. He relents and allows you to do up the fiddly top button of his trousers. 

“That’s not all…” 

“More?!”

“You have an auntie and two uncles,” you tell him, and his hands fly to cover his mouth as he begins to dance with excitement. His joy is contagious, you feel it fill you and spill over as you pull him back into your lap, holding him tightly. 

Rei and the siblings, that had been the deal. No Endeavor. Touya may forgive the former, but never the latter. You wouldn’t do that to him.

It isn’t strenuous getting him out the door, but it is taxing to get him to the station, hair once again tucked under a knitted beanie despite the day's warmth. He jumps over the cracks in the pavement, follows the pattern with his feet, stops to greet every stray he sees. 

And you let him. Because his happiness is your own, and you dread to imagine him without it. Maybe it was selfish for you to cover his ears to the cruelty around him. He knew of fear, pain and crime, he knew that people sometimes did bad things to others. But it had never been personal to him, not yet. 

Perhaps the biggest question as a parent was just that — at what point do you expose your children to what may hurt them? 

You had told Rei the cover story ahead of time, embarrassed by your own lies, but she’d been understanding. Gentle. Somehow it only left you more ashamed. 

You wanted to preserve the innocent lense in which he viewed the world, wanted to encase the image he held of his father in amber. Because when you’re a child, the power of those traumas stay with you, chemically alter you; they become the epicentre of your nightmares, they shape your convictions and morals, they fuel your will. Touya knew that more than anyone. 

You observe Kaiyo while he watches the surroundings change, clutching the backrest of his seat as he looks out the train window, propped up on his knees and ignorant of the glare from the elderly woman beside him. Folded on her lap is the morning newspaper, a grainy black and white photo of flames and the words ‘Where is Endeavor’s Villainous Son?’ printed across the front. 

You adjust the hat, his eyes fixed on the moving landscape. He’d never been this far out of the Kanagawa prefecture, Touya’s unease with regards to your safety always taking precedence over the freedom to explore, so you let him press his nose to the glass and laugh as his voice begins to vibrate with the train. 

“Do you remember the names I told you?”

“Yumi!”

“Fuyumi,” you emphasise, tucking the tag by his neck back into the confines of his shirt, “who else?”

He holds out his fist, fingers unfurling one by one as he counts, seeking your praises as he goes. “Fuyumi… Shouto… Natsu…o… Natsuo!”

The two hour journey passes in what feels like a minute. With one blink the train arrives in Shizuoka, slow as it pulls up to the second platform, the anticipation knotting thickly like yarn in your gut. Kaiyo, as perceptive as he can be, is bubbling with too much enthusiasm to notice your inner turmoil. 

You hold him on your hip, arms pressing him close into your chest as the sliding doors part, and step into the throngs of people waiting to board the train. As if you’d been in a soundproof bubble the noise of the city amplifies, a cacophony of voices and cries and whistles echoing uncomfortably in your ears. There are suits everywhere, hats tipped over eyes, too many unknowns in such a crowded space. 

The relief of stepping out onto the clear street almost buckles you. Kaiyo is squirming in complaint, wanting to be put back on the pavement but you hike him up a little higher. You couldn’t let him down, couldn’t let him out of reach, couldn’t let anyone take him. 

“Sorry baby, you can walk soon. I just need to find the car first—”

You’re interrupted then by a low, nasal voice, startling you to pivot on your feet. Behind you stands a large figure, bowler hat held politely to his chest as he bows forward. Kaiyo shrinks into the crook of your neck at the sight of a stranger, sensing your unease. The man repeats your name, the well groomed moustache sitting on his top lip moving as he speaks, curled into spirals at either end. He’s formally dressed, wearing a three piece suit and a large black topcoat. 

“That is you, correct?”

Grappling at your thoughts, you recall the riddle that you had given to Rei after her suggestion of having you picked up. She hadn’t wanted you to make your own way there, adamant that the family staff would drive the two of you to her home, and you gave in only at the promise of a safeword.

You inhale to steady yourself. “What is it that, given one, you’ll have either two or none?”

His eyes soften considerably but it does nothing to soothe the tension, only when he gives you the answer do you let yourself relax. “A choice,” he says, “my apologies. I should have been more considerate of your circumstances”. 

Circumstances. What a kind understatement. 

“My name is Ono Hiroki, I’m under the service of Ms. Himura and will be your driver,” he continues with a well meaning tilt to his head as he leans towards Kaiyo in greeting, “and what is the young master's name?”

You feel your son shift beneath your chin, presumably to look up at Hiroki, but he remains stubbornly quiet. “This is Kaiyo,” the grip he has on your shirt lessens at the sound of your voice, “we appreciate you coming out here to meet us but… please don’t refer to him with that title”. 

Touya would turn his nose up if he heard. You can almost imagine the shiver that may have run down his back just now, wherever he may be, and the thought forces you to hide a smile into Kaiyo’s knitted hat. 

“Of course,” Hiroki assents, and he begins to lead you towards the car. You cringe at how obviously it stands out amongst the more common models, clearly something owned by someone with great wealth and status. Even with having chosen your best outfit, the clothes on your back suddenly felt like straw, cheap and unfit for the occasion. 

The drive is smooth, though your sense of time becomes warped — had someone asked you how long it took to arrive, you wouldn’t have an answer for them. Kaiyo, just as he had done on the train, pressed his nose and fingers to the window; leaving behind murky smudges against the glass. 

As the car pulls to the curb you’re left feeling alienated by the neighbourhood. Worse, Hiroki steps out and speeds around to your door, opening it for you with a reflexive bow. 

It feels… uncomfortable. 

The property itself is walled off from the street and the building is large, though you’re sure that’s only in comparison to your own homes. You’re drawn in by the greenery that surrounds it, though the trees were likely put there for the sake of privacy the garden was clearly a labour of love. 

It appears to be a single story house, the roofs tiled dark brown with broad waves and an exterior hallway that frames around each room. You could picture Rei tending to her garden while her children sat on the veranda in the summer months. 

It was beautiful. 

Hiroki slowly leads you up the path, the gravel between each step crunching beneath your shoes. The pace can be attributed to Kaiyo’s adamance in standing on each individual stone, which the man kindly indulges. 

The entrance is made up of a large sliding door with plaster slitted windows. Hiroki pushes it across and moves aside to allow you into the house. You murmur in wonderment at the width of the genkan, the wall above the shoe cupboard  lined with traditional calligraphy. 

“Yes— it’s fine! I’ll bring them through…”

A sweet, familiar voice echoes throughout the entryway. Kaiyo tucks himself against the back of your knees as Fuyumi rounds the corner, socked feet slipping slightly on the wooden flooring in her excitement. 

Her lips part to greet you, the words caught in her throat as her gaze is drawn to the movement behind your legs. Typically Kaiyo could be quite rambunctious around others, loud and eager to befriend others. Here you can feel his anxiety, how small he must feel in this large, unfamiliar place. 

Fuyumi, too, is at a loss for words. A little pale, teary eyed as she blinks, visibly composing herself in front of you both.  “It’s good to see you again, Fuyumi,” you say as the silence stretches on, taking pity on her. 

Her demeanour lightens, and she appears grateful. Somehow her awkward loss of words and your son's hesitance lent you courage even if you, too, did not have your footing. 

“How about we take off our shoes and make proper introductions?” the question ends with a soft hum, a gentle verbal push, reaching back to pluck the hat from Kaiyo’s head. 

His hair is mussed, cowlicks pointed in all directions after being pressed beneath the yarn. You run your hand through it, wetting the pads of your fingers to flatten some of the more unruly curls down until they’re neat. The red is brighter in the sunlit genkan, and Fuyumi does well to conceal her sharp inhale. 

Kaiyo steps forward, nervously wringing out the material of his t-shirt, and Fuyumi lowers herself to his height as if approaching a cornered animal. Tender with her motions, she reaches out to still his anxious tic, ducking her head to smile where he can see it. A teacher, you remember. 

“It’s so wonderful to meet you Kaiyo. I’m your aunt Fuyumi,” she says. He turns over his wrist and takes three of her fingers into his fist, head nodding forward in what you know to be a bow. 

“Nice to meet you, aunt Fuyumi,” he replies. 

“Don’t worry about formalities, sweetheart,” she uses her free hand to straighten out the hem of the shirt, her eyes flickering over the logo with some recognition, “you can call me ‘Yumi. You are my nephew, after all”. 

Kaiyo straightens his back, overjoyed by the privilege, and looks up to share the feeling with you. If you could read his thoughts you’d guess it was something along the lines of told you her name was ‘Yumi, mama. 

“Natsuo isn’t here yet as he stayed overnight at his girlfriend's dorm,” Fuyumi continues as she rises to her feet, still keeping a firm hold of Kaiyo’s hand, “but mother and Shouto are in the tatami room. She likes having all the doors open on a day like this while we sit together, would you like to meet them?”

“Yes!”. In his excitement he pushes up onto the tip of his toes, shedding his timid attitude and grinning so wide his cheeks begin to pinken. It’s infectious, Fuyumi brightening considerably at his sudden comfort in her presence, and she begins to guide you both through the house. 

Soft spoken murmurings become louder as you approach the open sliding door into what you presume is the tatami room. Kaiyo pauses a few steps before, hidden behind the panel, waiting until you’re close enough for him to wrap an arm around your thigh. 

“You’re ok, baby,” you whisper warmly, “let’s go in together”. 

You enter the room with an awkward gait, slowed by the weight of your son against your leg, the matts firm beneath your feet. Immediately you are embraced by the scent of earth and autumn bellflower. Rei is seated on a pale green cushion across from Shouto, cross legged and holding a steaming cup of tea with both hands, on the table between them is a vase blooming purples and blues. You garner their attention, self-consciousness twisting uncomfortably in your chest as they appraise you and Kaiyo, a part of you always ready to jump to his defences. 

But the two, despite the cool air and unreadable expressions, only seem to thaw as their eyes fall to your son. 

The light knock of Shouto’s mug levelling atop the table surface brings you above water. “Greet your grandmother properly, sweetheart,” you step further into the space and lower to your knees, Kaiyo mirroring your actions with caution, facing Rei with his hands resting politely on his knees. 

You bow forward, thank you for having us Ms. Himura, and watch with fond exasperation as Kaiyo leans until his forehead is touching the tatami in your peripheral. “It’s nice to meet you, grandmother. It’s— it’s nice to meet you, uncle Shouto,” he recites, “my name is Kaiyo!”

You smile at the force behind the words, as if he’d practised them in his mind repeatedly before arriving. Rei appears to come to the same conclusion, returning the words and beckoning him to sit beside her, and Fuyumi ushers you to take a seat by Shouto.

In closing the distance Rei appears mystified, eyeline wet as she blinks back the tears, hands lifting to cradle your son's face in her palms. Kaiyo tenses for a moment on contact, shoulders relaxing as her thumbs graze over the swell of his cheeks. You wonder who she was truly seeing as she looked at Kaiyo, a little boy almost identical to her own. “My hands are a little cold, aren’t they?” her voice is soft, weak. There’s an intonation of grief, of regret, and an apology in her eyes. 

And your son, ever loving and perceptive, covers them with his own as if to tell her it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Then he shifts closer on his knees until he’s tucked against her chest, her chilled touch running along the length of his back as she holds him. At your side you feel Shouto exhale a short, hot breath of emotion. 

“Tea?”

You look to see Fuyumi has set out more cups, now with a pale cream teapot in her grip, unphased by the temperature as tendrils of steam wisp and dance from the spout. Along the curve of her jaw is a single tear, and she tilts to wipe it on her shoulder with a weak sniffle. You feel it too, pulling the sleeves of your shirt over your wrists to conceal the trembling, lifting your chin to keep the emotions behind your eyelids.

“That’d be great,” you nod, accepting the cup that Shouto slides towards you, “thank you”. 

You’re tempted to thank Fuyumi again as you bring the ceramic to your lips, a slight sting to the skin of your palms and your lower lip, breathing in the potent scent of green tea. This family must enjoy it a little stronger, steeping the leaves for longer, the bitterness heavy on your tongue. There is at least some respite in the distraction it provides — you could not talk if your mouth was busy. 

Kaiyo ignores the silences, leaving his grandmother's lap to squeeze himself next to Shouto. You try not to laugh, the youngest at a loss for what to do as your son looks up at him in wonderment and admiration, though it is hard to restrain yourself at the barrage of questions Kaiyo targets him with. 

“Are you really going to be a pro hero, uncle Shouto?”

“I am,” he replies solemnly, “I’ll be a hero that my family can rely on. Do you want to be a hero?”

“Hell no!” 

“Kaiyo—”

“I’m going to go to space,” he barrels on without a care, too wrapped up in his own passion to recognise the informality, but with Rei’s quiet laugh you realise there was no need to worry. As Kaiyo stumbles over his words about asteroids and comets, about how the sunset on mars is blue and isn’t that so cool, Shouto seems to relax even further. 

“He doesn’t think he’s good at talking to children,” Fuyumi whispers at your side, “believe me, Kaiyo is doing him a favour”. 

Even as the time passes Shouto’s tea remains steaming in his left hand while yours begins to cool, and Rei observes their back and forth with an autumn bellflower petal between her fingers, gently as she handles it like it were something precious. There’s no tension, any growing pains soothed as Kaiyo soaks up the attention, the beating heart of the room. 

“I’m gonna go to space an’ clean up all the junk,” he announces. A goal that you’d heard many a time, manifested in his fathers arms one evening as they’d sat together watching a pre-quirk era documentary about space travel. 

“Pro heroes came along and suddenly we forgot everything that used to be important to us,” Touya muttered, “going to space is—”

“—a hero's job in its own right,” Shouto says. 

You do well not to drop your drink as Kaiyo launches himself into Shouto’s lap, one of his arms outstretched to not spill his own while the other steadies the boy to his chest. Gleeful, childish laughter wells throughout the room, paired with the balmy sun and the whistle of a Japanese tit flitting through the gardens. 

“Dad told me that too,” you feel as the mother, the sister and the brother all hold their breath at the mention of Touya, the one topic they weren’t sure if they could even touch upon, “do you really think so, uncle Shouto?” 

“I do…” he shifts, hugging Kaiyo only after glancing at you for permission, “...and you don’t need to prefix my name with ‘uncle’ every time. You can be casual”. 

“Prefix?” 

“A word that comes before another,” you interject gently, “he means you can just call him Shouto, baby”. 

In that instance your back straightens at the sound of another voice ringing throughout the house, low and distant. “I’m home,” they shout with familiarity, “sorry I’m late!”.

Fuyumi jumps to her feet, leaving to meet the new arrival, and Kaiyo watches her go with a chubby fist curled into Shouto’s sweater. He pats his hand awkwardly to Kaiyo’s thigh in reassurance, “don’t worry, it’s just Natsuo. He’s my other older brother”. 

Kaiyo lessens his grip, tentative as he watches the open doorway, and you can’t help but to reflexively reach out to pinch his cheek. “It’ll be fine,” you murmur. 

Your first impression of Natsuo is that he’s much bigger than his siblings. He must’ve inherited his build from his father and his demeanour in spite of him, because even with the chill that he brings, his grin is refreshing. The type of person that sets you at ease and wordlessly invites you in, that actively wants you to feel welcomed. 

“Wow, you’re really here. You’re really…” Natsuo's throat bobs as he swallows his next words, silenced by Fuyumi’s encouraging touch. Rather, he hastily greets his mother with a kiss to the cheek, and then he settles down at the table facing Kaiyo. 

A litany of emotions flicker through his face, like he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Even so, his smile doesn’t waver as he introduces himself to you, nervously rubbing his neck as he bows. 

“And you must be Kaiyo. I’m Natsuo, I guess that makes me your uncle,” he inhales deeply, chest expanding and falling, “you… you really do look like your dad”. 

He sounds mournful. Kaiyo senses the change in atmosphere, though he doesn’t understand it, and the anxiety settles into his restless fingers as they pick a thread loose from Shouto’s sweater. 

Fuyumi lightly swats at him: “Natsuo, you’re freaking them out!” 

He gives a wounded complaint, dramatic only in a way you can find with siblings as he clutches at his bicep, and Kaiyo laughs. Like it was called upon, the sun moves from behind a cloud and brightens the room. 

“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to be awkward, I was just surprised,” he says. 

Kaiyo slides down from Shouto’s lap, the youngest briefly forlorn at the loss before schooling his expression once more. “It’s ok, mama said I look like dad too. That’s why I’m so handsome,” he grins triumphantly. 

Your chest knots tightly at the spotlight it shines on your relationship with Touya, thoughts running amok with assumptions of what they must think of you, whether they approve of how you have raised Kaiyo. But despite your inner conflict the family don’t flinch, in fact — they smile with him. 

“Touya was indeed a beautiful little boy,” Rei briefly looks at the purple petal still held between her fingers, “I have a lot of pictures here. Would you like to see?” 

Kaiyo scrambles, almost knocking the table as he stands, “yes please, grandmother!”

There’s an air of nostalgia as she leans down to take his smaller hand into her own, in the way he looks up with love, height falling just short of her hip. The last time she had seen her children this size had been before she was sent away. You can’t even begin to comprehend such a loss.

“Just 'grandma' is fine,” she assures, and Kaiyo bounces with each step as they leave to find the photographs. 

You realise, then, that you are left alone with the siblings. Fuyumi pours more tea, the sound of running water loud in your ears, Natsuo’s words barely audible to you. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he says, cup in hand with his thumb anxiously tapping the rim, “for being there for Touya when we couldn’t be. For bringing Kaiyo here even when you have every right to distrust us”. 

The words pick away at the composure you’d maintained throughout the morning, their gratitude, while completely genuine, feels undeserved. In the grand scheme of things your relationship to Touya had not changed much at all, perhaps he’d staved off his mission for a while to play house with you, but the outcome was the same. 

“It isn’t you that I distrust,” the ‘Endeavor’ goes unspoken, “I wanted Kaiyo to keep his connection to his father. And you don’t need to thank me, I didn’t…”

Didn’t help him. Didn’t save him. Didn’t stop him. You only loved him. You laid with him in darkness and thought if you held him tight enough that something might crack, that the light might get in. 

“What I did wasn’t enough,” you tell them, the words broken with your wet exhale, “it was your actions, your dedication to understanding him. It’s… it’s you I should thank, Shouto”.

“Still,” Fuyumi is tender as she speaks, her hand resting between your shoulder blades, “knowing that all that time he wasn’t alone, knowing that he had you, it means a great deal to us all”. 

Even if he hadn’t been alone for those few years, there was still a rotten past from before he met you that he wouldn’t touch. Touya, stone faced and eyes narrowed, watching you from beneath the sheets of his hospital bed as if he were a wounded animal. Your slow, telegraphed actions, promising respite. That’s why despite wanting to stay away from you, he couldn’t — because you saw who he was, and you still loved him. The burning flesh, the distended skin, the smoke and the blood. You saw the bodies on the news, you saw the flames across the city, and you still loved him. 

Maybe that was the only thing you got right; because there isn’t much else worse than someone loving the potential of who you could be, or loving someone you’re not. In the end, you think, we all want to be seen first and loved second. 

“I do think he’s worried about you,” Shouto interjects plainly, “ he’s not directly asking about your wellbeing because he doesn’t want to reveal your identity, but the staff say he’s restless”. 

“You can be quite perceptive, Shouto,” Fuyumi says. 

“A friend of mine has told me that before,” there’s a flicker of a smile pulling at his lips and it warms his expression. If you needed to attach a word to it you’d pick fond. 

“Though he also said I make all the wrong assumptions about what I’m seeing,” he exhales through his nose in what you think might be a laugh, “that’s why I went to my mother first. This seemed… too important to be wrong about”.

“I’m truly grateful for your discretion,” you wipe a tear along the heel of your hand, ignoring the sting in your sinuses, “and for your acceptance of us”.

“You’re our family now,” Natsuo’s grin widens, “and I can’t say I wasn’t curious ‘bout the kind of person my brother fell in love with”.

You knew what Touya would say to that. You're too good for me, I don’t want to hurt you. You should’ve seen through it then, with every premature apology. People only say those things when they know they’re going to hurt you. 

Over your thoughts you hear the siblings begin to talk again with affection, your eyes drawn to the empty end of the table. You should be here, you think, I wish you were here. 

Kaiyo returns excitedly with a large picture frame held to his chest, the paint worn and flaking, encasing an old school photograph of Touya. His uniform is buttoned to the top, face youthful and pale, not a scar to be seen. You recall his discomfort with high collared clothing, always irritable against his sutures. 

Following behind is Rei with an album of family pictures. Some of them have been awkwardly cut, some burnt along the edges, some faces notably scribbled over with a pen almost out of ink.

“Mama look, he really does look like me. And dad’s hair was white! Did he colour it like that, too?”

“No sweetheart,” you murmur with gaze fixed to the page as it turns in Rei’s lap, the siblings all gathered around to look, “remember, he told you he had red hair like yours, but it changed like magic”. 

“So cool,” he mumbles in awe under his breath, “dad is so cool”. 

Rei stiffens minutely. Maybe that, too, was uncomfortably familiar. 

The conversation continues into the late afternoon, moving only to sit beneath the clear skies and stretch your legs, Rei guiding you along her well loved flowerbeds. They tell Kaiyo stories of his father, diluted but true for the most part, their smiles tightening with the memories. It feels odd, wrong, mourning a man that is very much alive. You give them a piece of him and in exchange, they offer one back as the hours pass. You come to know another Touya — their Touya — and when you line him up aside your own you find that they aren’t all that different.  

As Kaiyo’s confidence grows with his newfound family he begins to wander. Natsuo lifts him into the air and he laughs joyfully, a sound you wish you could solidify and keep by your breast, and they take off to hide in the house with Fuyumi close behind. 

“Are you sure it’s ok for him to play indoors? I’d hate to leave any mess—”

Rei smiles. The light reflects against the crown of her head forming something of a white halo and Shouto is at her side, eyes softening at his mothers happiness. 

“I assure you it’s alright,” she says, “truthfully I think I’ve missed the mess”. 

You think of toys left astray, crayon smudging cheap wallpaper, juice rings staining the coffee table. Marks of your little boy left all around the apartment. Touya cursing as he steps on a building block, hopping on one leg theatrically to make Kaiyo laugh. Touya spilling the warm bottle of milk as he falls asleep and Kaiyo on his chest, exhausted from a day without rest. 

“I know what you mean,” you reply. 

Shouto only blinks. You couldn’t imagine that he was allowed to make much of a mess at all, and that thought alone makes you ache. His brow furrows then, and anticipation settles in your gut. 

“There was something we wanted to ask of you now Kaiyo is distracted,” he seeks Rei’s support as he talks, and she nods gently before turning to face you. 

“As we’ve told you… Touya is not being cooperative to treatment. In all honesty, we are getting anxious that he will be removed from the programme,” she says with regret, “you are free to refuse. But as you suggested when we first met, I thought he might benefit from knowing you’re safe”.

It feels as if the ground beneath your feet has steepened, a weightlessness flooding through your chest, and you reach for the closest pillar on the veranda to steady yourself. 

“You’ll let me visit him?” 

“Strings can be pulled to get you a visitor's pass,” Shouto confirms sagely, “typically it is for professionals or family. Which you now are”.

You hadn’t even let yourself entertain the idea of being able to see him again. The possibility of hearing his voice, of holding him again, felt too good to be true. 

“And Kaiyo? Where will he stay?” you ask, “I can’t take him with me, I don’t want him to see his father like that—” 

Approaching you from the house is the soft, pitter patter of socked feet. You feel a weight fall on your back, Kaiyo interrupting to wrap his limbs around your waist and neck, giggling into your nape. Natsuo lands unceremoniously on the tatami matts, leaning himself against the inside of the sliding door panels with pink blossoming on his cheeks, “damn, kid. You’ve got too much energy”.

“Your house is so big, grandma,” the words carrying a little embarrassment as Kaiyo says “ours is a lot smaller”.

“Sometimes houses are too big,” Natsuo reassures as he slumps forward to rest his chin against his fist, “you can get lost and feel lonely in a big house. I bet at your place, you can always find your mama, huh?” 

He nods, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rocking your body forward with the motions, “does that mean dad was lonely in the big house?” 

Rei’s hands wring tightly in her lap, the question pulling a forlorn atmosphere over the three, and you’re quick to try and rectify it. “Even if he was, he won’t be anymore because he has you,” you say as you twist your body to pull him into your arms, squirming as your touch curls against his ticklish stomach, “isn’t that right?” 

“Yes,” he stammers between deep inhales, giggles tumbling from his lips and ringing across the garden. Rei reaches to thread her fingers through his hair, the red stark against her skin.

“You are both free to sleep in my guestroom tonight,” she offers warmly in response to your earlier concern, “we will watch him while you’re busy tomorrow”. 

“We can have a sleepover!” Natsuo shouts, the excitement forcing him to sit straight and eyes gleaming. Kaiyo gasps, mirroring his uncles enthusiasm as he clings to your shoulders. Shouto, however, remains plain faced as his gaze flickers between the two. 

“Is it really that fun?” he asks. You hide your abrupt laugh into Kaiyo’s hair as Natsuo’s expression settles into disbelief. 

“What? You’ve never had a sleepover in the dorms?”

“We have a curfew,” Shouto shrugs, and Natsuo guffaws.

“What the f… heck is wrong with your school—”

As they bicker you observe contentment settle around Rei. A gentle breeze passes through the shrubbery and you hear the leaves rustling, light breaking through the canopy above and dancing along the grass. Fuyumi calls everyone back into the house as the scent of curry is coaxed out into the open, and you all make your way to the dining area. 

The night comes sooner than you expect. Kaiyo whines at the full feeling in his stomach, cheeks orange and smattered in sauce. Apparently Rei brought over all the childrens things during her move — everything, from toys to certificates to baby clothes, and you’re offered the hand me downs with a wistful smile. 

Aside from the red sleeves the shirt is white, a flame embroidered into the centre and the word fire written below it. Then you’re given an old blanket, slightly thread bare and clearly well loved. It is a light purple, faded after years of being washed, and dotted with stars. It’d belonged to Touya, she’d said, he always loved stars. Kaiyo clutches it tightly to his chest where he lay across from you on the guest futon. 

“Did you have fun today?”

The covers shift, a tell tale sign that he’s kicking his feet. “Yes mama,” he mumbles, nose wrinkling as he fights to keep his eyes open, “I feel really happy”. 

“I love you baby,” you hum fondly, leaning over to needlessly readjust the covers once more, if only for an excuse to kiss his forehead again, “are you sure you’ll be alright while I’m gone tomorrow?” 

Kaiyo nods, cheek turned against his pillow, jaw already slackening as he succumbs to sleep. It isn’t home, there’s no glowing iridescence on your bedroom ceiling tonight, but the space across from you feels empty as it always does. 

“Watching you two sleep soundly together was the happiest I’d ever been,” he’d said. You have no doubt in your mind that he had been telling you the truth. 

When you're pulled into consciousness it happens gently, the house so quiet that it’s unsettling. You were used to rousing with voices in the streets, car engines spluttering as they passed, thuds from the apartment above your own. Here it’s peaceful, a reality that you never thought you’d come close to, and for a moment you can hardly believe you’re awake. 

The staff offer to make the two of you breakfast but you politely refuse, a possessive twist in your stomach. Accepting help never came easily to you, a deeply buried seed of insecurity in your heart that first leapt to defensiveness. You could feed your son just fine on your own. 

Rei joins you soon after tending to her potted plants, Kaiyo pushing up onto the tip of his toes to kiss her cheek as she holds her dirtied hands away from his clean clothes, passing by you to wash the soil from between her fingers. “Grandma, will you have breakfast with us?”

“Of course,” she smiles. 

The rest of the family slowly trickles into the dining room with slow, sleep leaden movements. A full table, a full heart, a full stomach. Breakfast tastes all the better in their company, even Kaiyo seems to have soaked up the serene atmosphere as he quietly recounts a strange memory he had to Fuyumi. 

Still, the dread begins to settle, your knee bouncing restlessly and concealed by the table cloth. Hiroki enters the house with a deep bow and a lanyard around his wrist, your ID badge clipped securely to the end. “It’s best we leave now to avoid any run-ins with the press,” he tells you apologetically, “the likelihood is low. But I’d like to completely mitigate the chance, if possible”. 

Kaiyo lingers in the genkan, shifting on either foot, fiddling with the strings on his sleep shorts. “I’ll be back later, baby,” you hook your pinky around his and squeeze, “I promise”.

He presses a wet kiss to your cheek and you do not wipe it away, the morning air cooler on the skin where the imprint is left. An off duty officer waits by the curb to follow behind Hiroki’s vehicle — another safety precaution, they say — and he opens the side door on your behalf. 

“What will happen once we get there?” you ask, stare fixed on the streets as they speed past, flocks of people continuing with their days as normal. The thin, plastic card in your hands feels like lead. 

“Upon arrival the officer will escort you to the reception as I am not permitted to enter the building,” he explains while subtly adjusting the rear view mirror to watch you, “you will sign yourself in and then you’ll just have to wait. I’m afraid Master Touya isn’t aware that you are his visitor, so it’s entirely possible he’ll refuse to see you…”

Eventually the words become muffled, a disjointed hum in your ears, and your fingers tighten around the lanyard. You play out every hypothetical in your head, try to script questions in preparation, explanations and excuses. But you come up empty. 

Anything that you think of would be rendered useless as soon as you laid eyes on him. 

Pulling in, you survey the land. The facility is double fenced, double gated, and for all intents and purposes it looks to be a prison. There are patients spread out across the grounds, some lounging in the shade while others gathered under staff supervision. 

Surprisingly you are hesitant to part ways with Hiroki, the man bidding you goodbye with a bow and with promise to pick you up as soon as you’re done. The click of your shoes echoes throughout the building as you walk, the accompanying officer striding ahead of you and silent, beckoning you hastily through the security scanners.

A man stands incredibly tall behind the desktop screen situated atop the main desk, large auburn jackrabbit ears protruding from the crown of his head, paired with two large antlers. As you approach his nose wrinkles. 

“Pass?” he asks, interrupting any chance of you greeting him. You swallow the agitation in your chest and show him the ID card, to which he scans with a handheld device and waits until it beeps. Satisfied, he hands you a clipboard detailing a list of names and tells you to find yours. 

“Write your signature in the arrival slot, and when you leave write it in the departure slot. Wait to be called upon in the seating area”. 

You exhale shakily as you sink into your chair, taking in the room, unable to describe it as anything other than impersonal. You had spent a good deal of adulthood working in a clinical setting, and yet this place only seems to make you uneasy. No colourful posters, no informative leaflets, no magazines for people to read. No stickers by the doors, no colour in the staff uniform, guards posted at every entrance. 

Eventually a red light above the doors to the wards flashes red, a loud buzz cutting through the silence and startling you so harshly your chair scrapes against the tile. A doctor calls your name from the doorway, all eight of her beady eyes observing closely as you get to your feet. 

“The patient is being given forty milligrams of quirk suppressant every four hours while he acclimates to his skin grafts. So rest assured he will not burn you,” — you quickly smother your anger at her insinuation — “since you have a high ranking family pass, contact has been allowed, but if anything goes awry there are guards posted at the door”. 

You’re barely given time to process her explanation or the new information as she abruptly comes to a halt, almost stumbling into her back. All eight of her eyes blink at you expectantly as the door clicks open, inclining you to enter. 

“Thank you,” you mutter as you pass, flinching when the door once again clicks shut. You steel yourself with a deep inhale, lungs ballooning to expend the anxiety spiking throughout your chest, and lift your head. 

The air remains there, held in your mouth so as not to make a sound. Touya stands across the threshold with his back to you, facing the wide barred up windows and observing the other patients. He’s in a loose fitting t–shirt and pants, all white and blending into the rest of the room. Where the collar dips below his nape you can see pink, inflamed skin, and for a moment you are reminded of your first meeting. 

“Finally decided to come look your failure in the eye, did you?” his voice is harsh, like talking through gritted teeth and lilted with sarcasm. You’re frozen in place, muscles tensed as if you were bracing for impact, throat swelling just from hearing him speak again. 

“Hate to say it but there’s no cameras here,” he laughs, a hollow and dry sound as he begins to turn, “so you can drop the fuckin’ act—”

The anger dissipates as soon as he meets your gaze, his seething grin slipping until his jaw slacks in surprise. Even as your eyes sting you cannot blink for fear that he’ll disappear, a wishful figment of your imagination. He’s really here, a few feet from you, flesh and blood and breath. 

Closer now, you can clearly see there are lines of scarring where his previous body had been sutured together. No longer held by staples and rings, the patchwork skin fitting the curve of his cheeks without pulling taut and tearing. He doesn’t wince in discomfort as his expression contorts into disbelief, as his brows pinch and he starts toward you. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” 

Even with the obvious ire behind his words you aren’t frightened by him. Your legs carry you to meet him halfway, reflexively reaching out for him in all the ways you had longed to over the past few months, only for him to catch you by your wrists. His grip tightens in warning, answer me he snaps, but his demand goes ignored. You’re focused entirely on how cold he feels, sharp around your forearms, just like his tongue. 

“You’re freezing,” you whisper.

He huffs in exasperation, a sound you never knew you could miss. “I know,” he says, dropping your arms as his hold loosens and you silently mourn the loss, “it’s like this all the fuckin’ time now”. 

“Because you don’t have your quirk?” 

He nods curtly, lips twisting in disdain, the confusion in his eyes sinking through realisation and settling on betrayal. “You’ve been getting cosy with my family, haven't you? It’s the only way you would’ve been able to get in here,” he sneers.

You rub away the chill from your inner wrist, following him further into the room as he walks away from you, pleading with him to listen before he makes any assumptions. “Touya, it isn’t what you’re thinking—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Your own anger steers you then, frustrated by his refusal to hear you.  “Touya. Touya. Touya. Touya,” you repeat childishly until he spins on his heel to glare at you. I’m going to keep your name in my mouth until my last breath, you think.  Arguing, scowling, you’ll take anything in this moment as long as he keeps looking at you. 

“Your mother and sister tracked me down, I didn’t go looking for them—” your own fault, you shouldn’t have been there “—they wanted to help me. They wanted to look out for your son!”

He hums like he doesn't believe it, and the forced amusement in his smirk irritates you, crawling hot through your chest. “I bet you’ve been enjoying all that bastard's money, right? He’s got plenty to throw at you and keep you quiet”.

You almost forget to breathe with how his accusation takes you by the throat, the regret crossing his features being the only thing keeping you in the room. It’s hard to handle his vitriol when it is directed at you, hard to see him like this, so wounded and cornered. In his mind you have gone behind his back, you have sought help from the people who hurt him the most, and you are only here on their orders. 

It’s a cycle he cannot break from. He’s gone again, tethered still to the world, but they are all moving on without him. He’s gone again, tucked away where no one needs to look at him, and they are all better for it. 

“I have not met Endeavor and I have made it clear that Kaiyo will not meet him either,” you tell him firmly, “I have not, and will not, accept financial help from that man. You… I’d never do that to you”. 

He wilts then, partially limbless as he sinks back against the hospital bed frame tucked beneath the barred window, covers still spotless and unused. As you glance up at the star-less ceiling, you wonder if he manages to get any sleep at all. 

“Why are you here?” he asks again, no fight left in his words. Without the bravado to keep him up he looks exhausted, torpid. You join him cautiously, settling yourself on the edge of the mattress. 

“To reassure you that we’re okay. That we aren’t in any danger,” you murmur, splaying your hand out in the space between your bodies, “we’re worried about you, Touya. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

He rests his hand beside yours, stretching out his pinky to hook over your own; the one you’d linked with Kaiyo only two hours before. “What good would that do?” he says, “I’m defective and this is just a waste of taxpayers money. Why let me live in the first place?”

The worst part of it all is the grating monotony in his tone, the total disregard for his own life and wellbeing. “Don’t say things like that,” you rasp, “it isn’t true. You have a real chance to do better now”.

“Fuck you,” he snorts without malice, giving a light shake of his head as he continues, “I was always going to end up here. You knew the path I was going to take from the start”. 

“And so did you, Touya!” 

The words come hoarse as they catch in your throat, heavy where they press against your nerves. Around you the room becomes smaller, stifling, and yet he is still miles from your reach. You’d do anything if only it meant wiping that look of indifference from his face. 

“You knew, and you could have made the effort to change. Don’t act as if this was predestined for you, it was your own choices that led you here—” 

“This wouldn’t be happening if you just hadn’t come looking for me!”

“Of course I looked for you,” you pleaded with him, “what would you have had me tell Kaiyo?”

“That I was dead,” he replies plainly, “he would’ve been better off”.

“You…” fatigue floods your system and you feel yourself sink back against the bed frame “…you truly believe that”. 

You don't sob, don't let yourself whimper, you simply let the salty burn overtake your vision and clog your throat, thick and cloying. “Don’t cry,” he murmurs, “you know I’m bad with crying”. 

“You’re crying too,” and he laughs humourlessly, eyes still dry. Amongst the quiet you can hear people outside talking, the window panel slightly ajar to let in a continuous breeze, carrying in the scent of spring. You shiver, and when his icy touch begins to move away you upturn your hand, interlocking your fingers together to keep him there. 

You can feel him watching you as you appraise his belongings. No character, no personality, everything looks brand new and unused. Compared to your stingy one bedroom apartment tucked away in the sparse Yokohama neighbourhoods, this place was completely lifeless. He must hate it here, waking up in yet another unfamiliar place against his will, treated as if he were something to fix.

Though after everything he’s been through, it must be a relief to do something bad and be punished for it, rather than to be punished for all the things you couldn’t do. 

“How is he?” he asks, ending the drawn out silence. 

“He knows something isn’t right,” you say, feeling the chill along your wet cheeks, “he wants to see you”.

He makes a sound of acknowledgement as he strokes his thumb along the back of your hand. You tighten your grip, still habitually cautious of the sutures that are no longer embedded into his skin. “What a kid wants isn’t always what’s good for them”.

“That’s priceless coming from you,” you huff, and he knocks his shoulder against yours in response. Bittersweet, you recall how you sat beside him on a hospital bed just like this five years ago, IV hooked into his veins to ward off infection. Hair white, skin mottled, growing accustomed to your freely given affections. 

You breathe, the exhale long, and lean your weight into his side. Your hands, still interwoven, rest together in your lap. “We just wanted to be closer to you,” you tell him, your apology unspoken, “Kaiyo misses you. I miss you. Even if I’m angry with you, don’t ever believe that we aren’t thinking of you”. 

The word sorry does not come naturally to Touya, it never has. Remorse was best shown through action, overbearing attention and unnecessary gift giving that only ever left you wondering who he’d stolen from. When he rests his cheek atop your head, nuzzling softly into your hair, you know he’s trying to apologise as well. 

So you recount everything that happened over the past two weeks. Of nightmares and paranoia, of old photographs and starless ceilings, of autumn bellflowers and cultural dissonance. You rush each story, unsure of how much time you would be allowed in this place, nor how often you would be able to visit. And he listens, slowly sagging against you the more you speak, your bodies two beams upheld by the other. 

“Oh, and the driver called him ‘young master’ at first,” a small grin pulls at your lips at his amused snort, the only sign that he was still awake, “I know. I told him right away not… not to call him that. I knew you’d hate that”.

His muscles tense then as an intrusive knock reverberates throughout the room, a white knuckled grip on your hand at the interruption. The doctor from before steps into the threshold and is followed closely by one of the guards, eight eyes blinking simultaneously as she takes in the scene, her expression unreadable. 

“Your allotted time for visitation is up,” she says, her voice softer than before and perhaps even tinted with regret, “I’ll give you a few moments to say goodbye and notify your driver”. 

A part of you wishes that the wordless goodbye you gave back at the hospital by the hyacinth beds had been your last, because this time around it is impossibly harder. If his expression is anything to go by you think, if he could, Touya would freeze your hands together in an eternal block of ice. 

“Touya,” he begrudgingly meets your gaze, “what happened to you was undoubtedly a tragedy. Still you— you hurt people, and you need to accept that. I’m not going to tell you to forgive anyone, you don’t have to, but…”

You lean forward, pressing your forward to his “…even if others can’t, I want you to forgive yourself”.

“For who I was or for who I wasn’t?” he mutters, so close you can see the stray white stripes in his eyelashes. The doctor clears her throat quietly where she lingers by the door, and so you get to your feet. His throat bobs as he swallows, expression suddenly pleading as you let him go, and you take his face between your hands. 

His cheeks are rough, the sore skin raised under the pads of your thumb. “For all of it,” you say. 

You’d always thought that love didn’t need to be so complicated. Sometimes it was as simple as I see you, and I understand you. Sometimes it was dirtying your hands to make their life a little easier. Sometimes it simply took the form of an illusion, and all you needed was for someone to point out the tangled lines, the true image irreversibly seen. 

“We love you. If that means anything to you, then take advantage of this second chance and let yourself be better”. 

Afraid of testing their patience, you step away from the bed, heading towards the door where your guide awaits. While only four strides, it feels like a lifetime, and you find yourself dragging your feet to stall for time. The thought of leaving him here made your stomach sink, an invisible magnetism tied to your spine and begging you to turn around. 

You startle as the guard suddenly steps forward, recounting Touya’s patient number with warning, but the doctor holds her hand out to settle him. You’re tugged back against a firm chest, familiar if not for the deathly temperature, arms circling firmly around your waist. 

Their presence falls away as he kisses you, and the sensation is new. No awkward angle, no need to be aware of his sutures, no copper tang left on your tongue as you pull back. Once, twice, and thrice — Touya kisses you without regard for time he was wasting, for the people who were waiting to take you home, and you give him every extra second you have. 

“Tell Kaiyo I’ll be out by the time he starts his training at JAXA,” he murmurs. You laugh wetly, finally forced to take your leave. 

“Better make that ten years sooner, you hear me?” 

The door begins to shut behind you and he’s crying again, eyes dry as he calls out to you.

“No promises!”

One and only.

Pairing: Astarion x fem!reader

Genre & warnings: smut and fluff, post act 3, soft Astarion, fingering, slight overstimulation and orgasm denial, unprotected sex, a lil of anxiety? and thinking but lots of love too, blood, biting.. I don't think there's more?

Words: 4.4k (damn i didn't think it was that long oof.

Healing is a slow process, but with you it's a little easier.

Astarion paced back and forth in front of the tent, weighing the words that were floating in his mind, the feeling that pooled in his stomach and shoved off the fear hidden in the back of his mind.

You were different because you cared about him. You reminded him every night before you'd close your eyes and fell asleep in his arms, and you respected him like none ever did. You reassured him whenever he'd ask you if you were still okay to wait for him until he was ready to try again with sex, and he was oh so grateful for it.

It's been around three years since you were free of the tadpole, you'd grown so much together: patching up each other's wounds while learning how to love. You taught him to be intimate without bedding you. You taught him how caresses could be so much more than sex.

He looked around the camp, you called your old companions for another adventure, helping you find a cure for vampirism, and they all eagerly accepted.

Aylin and Isobel were the only ones missing, literally.

You found a nice spot in the underdark, glowing mushrooms of pretty colors decorated all around you, and the circular cave was just perfect enough for the bunch of you.

You were fumbling around the fire, trying to roast a boar leg you got at a small merchant you found on the road.

Gale was trying to interfere with that boar leg cooking process, but you didn't want to hear him, especially after you had to live off his particularly unsavory stew for months, this time you were taking the metaphorical chef hat and feeding everyone with your newfound skills. Three years away from adventure had to be filled one way or another.

The camp was always lively, that's one of the perks of being so many.

Wyll was playing with Boo, while Minsc and Jaheira were playfully fighting over something dumb. Karlach and Halsin were fast asleep next to the fire, snoring loudly between Gale's words.

Lae'zel and Shadowheart were discussing as always and, though everyone was too distracted to hear him, Astarion was still mumbling to himself while pacing.

The dinner was great, you could see it in the eyes of everyone as they bit into the tender meat and shared stories. Minsc was deep into another tale of Boo, Jaheira and him as your eyes wandered to Astarion, which still hasn't had his dinner.

You couldn't see him, until you noticed that the oil lamp in your tent was on, and his shadow was fixing something around the tent. For what you knew he was moving the pillows scattered around, in a way that you'd be more comfortable while he fed.

They all knew at this point that you'd let him feed off you on daily basis, it started back while you were on your way to Baldur's Gate back then, and you took the habit so much that at a certain point you didn't even feel dizzy after he'd been done.

You excused yourself as you made your way to the tent, it was one of those nights where you needed an extra long hug, and a few kisses on the forehead.

When you opened the flap of the tent, he was still fighting with a pillow, trying to fluff it up just how he liked it, but failing. He was glad that he learned how to hide his emotions, shoving the tension down and away.

You kneeled next to him, placing a hand on his before taking the pillow from his grasp.

He followed your movements closely with his eyes, as you put the pillow on the floor.

He didn't know what he expected to see, but to watch you punch the pillow relentlessly, was definitely not on the list. Though after you were done, the pillow was somehow perfect. Was that how his pillow was always extra fluffy?

You gave him a soft smile before you tossed it next to the others, which you noticed were arranged differently, making something closer to a nest, than your usual layout.

You both didn't speak, you were so close that you'd know just by looking at your bodies, or the way your face crunched, and yours clearly said "cuddle".

In a matter of seconds, he pulled you in his arms before scooting closer to the pillows to rest there.

He loved the way you'd make yourself comfortable on his lap, how you wiggled for a moment before finding that nook where your head rested perfectly on his chest, and the way you would hum when you were happy with the position you chose.

He could live off just of that pretty sound that would come out of your lips.

You were so absorbed by the closeness that you didn't notice the barely perceptible hesitation in his touch, as he slowly turned your face to him, making sure you could hold eye contact for a moment.

The eagerness and the pure undevoted love were fighting with the fear, the fear of reliving those nights he tried so hard to forget, but at the end of the day, he needed you. He needed you more than he feared his nightmares, he needed to feel you around him, he needed to let you feel his love, his devotion, all of him.

If there was one person that he wanted to love so deeply, it was you.

So many times he thought of trying to have sex again just to see if he still was disgusted, but only with time he was able to realize that he wasn't disgusted by sex, he was disgusted of being stripped of his chance to back away. And the more he got to know you, the more he grew closer to you, the more he longed for you, in every way. It was no longer the need for release or just the fucking without attachments, he wanted to make love with you. He wanted to hear you moan his name like a chant, he wanted to feel your hands reach were no one was ever allowed to: tracing his back, on the dip of his lower back, around his hips, at the center of his chest, where his heart, your heart, resided.

There was no one else he desired like this, the idea of other people, or having other lovers but you, made him retch. He didn't want love unless it came from you, he didn't want sex unless it was you making him feel lightheaded. Of course it took him a lot of time to understand this, and a lot of work around his feelings, and his body, and you never shied away from any of his attempts to push his boundaries.

You helped him reshape the ideas of the smallest things, down to skinship.

Even after hours of brooding on how to ask you, he found himself speechless at the sight of your soft eyes filled with love, and the peaceful smile you gifted him. He was mesmerized.

It took him a second to just recollect, as he took his time ingraining in his mind that look he loved so much.

"My love" He whispered as he cupped your cheek, making you lean into his touch. "I've been thinking a lot" His thumb traced your cheekbone ever so slightly, drawing a delicate humm from you. He had planned a lot to say but as you leaned close, the speech was already out the window. So he just lowered you on the bed, and crashed his lips to yours.

It took you a second to process the unexpected movement, but a second later you were lost within his kiss.

Initially it was rough, the way he gripped on you, like an instinct that he could barely control, full of yearning and need, but slowly, the more you relaxed in his arms, savoring the taste of his kiss, the more he would slow down, like a love poem traced with his whole body.

His hands would graze over your hips, your shoulders, your neck, every bit of exposed skin was being caressed by his slender fingers, holding and molding your body like it was putty.

He rested his forehead against yours as he caught his breath, and allowed you as well. His eyes were closed as he was lost in your sweet scent.

It took him another long moment before being able to control his breath, regain his senses as his head was already spinning away.

"My love, allow me.." He breathed ooutsweetly as he latched his hand around yours, your fingers intertwining in his like an instinct. "Allow me to feel you." He placed a soft kiss on your cheek. "Allow me to make you mine" The words came out almost as a plea, like a starved man that was in front of a banquet and forced to resist the need. His lips traveled to your neck, resting where he'd usually drink from you.

"I'm already yours" You whimpered as you could feel his teeth graze, sending a shiver down your spine. You could feel the pit of your stomach bubbling with tenderness, as his eyes were rounder than usual, and his gaze was soft. Though there was a yearning feeling in the bottom, drowned momentarily by the adoration.

So many nights you had to leave the tent to take care of your needs, as you didn't want to burden Astarion with it. You wanted him to be fully there as he helped you release all that pent up tension, not just a shell of him. You craved his love, not his body.

You had to resist the very urge to push your hips against him, even though he was asking you already. You wanted to make sure he was truly okay before making any movement.

He groaned as he tilted your neck, pressing his lips right under your chin, and descending between your clavicle. He wanted to worship every millimeter of you, no skin would have to go unkissed.

"I want to make love to you, my one" He left a bite on your shoulder, no teeth were deep enough to draw blood, but definitely enough to steal a delicious mewl from you.

His words made your heart roar.

You raised your head enough to catch a glimpse of his eyes, now sultry, half closed as his lips still rested on your skin, dropping sweet kisses right where he was.

"Mh, you sure?" You asked as your body basked in the attention he was providing.

"Like I've never been before. I dreamt for so long to have you wrapped around me" He moved again, until your chests were against each other, and your noses were meeting. "I want no one else but you. I want to know what having the love of your life so close, so vulnerable feels like" He placed a quick kiss on your nose. "I just want to get lost in you, to hold you like I've never held anyone" his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you tight to him, like he wanted to merge your bodies. "I want to be one with you" He whispered as he closed his eyes again, inhaling your flowery scent mixed with his.

Your heart was pounding so loudly against your rib cage that you would have sworn he could feel it without leaning in.

You wanted to sound louder, but as your lips opened to say that yes, the sound came in almost a strangle

by all your emotions.

Astarion's eyes glimmered with a light you've never seen before resting there.

He was gentle as he undressed you, every inch that was being revealed to his eyes, was met with his yearning lips, drawing all sorts of pleading sounds from you. Your body was already shaking like a lire string as it was touched, and your lips chanting a melody for him.

His descent was agonizingly slow, but what struck you was how his movements were.

You knew he was well versed in sex, but the way he was caressing, tracing, kissing, biting, was the one of a man that was trying to listen to your reactions, to savor the tiniest sensations, to learn his lover, such a difference from the confident man that fucked you senslessly in a forest three years prior.

It was no longer about repayment for the feed or protection, it was pure undevoted love in each touch.

Just with those miniscule attentions, your heart was swelling for him, and little did you know that he was hitting him as well, all your emotions flowing around you in the small space of the tent.

Your clothes were soon on the other side of the floor and you took your time admiring him in all his beauty: the way his chest was rising, the way his skin was covered in small old marks, so carefully healed that you wouldn't be able to discern them unless you would be trying to remember his every pore.

"Gods i wish you could see yourself through my eyes right now" He sighed. "I've seen you naked so many times, but right now? No goddess could compare next to you" He kissed your navel delicately as his fingers were grazing your thighs.

You could feel your cheeks igniting at the praise. You wished for a moment you still had that tadpole eating your brain, just for a second to show him the true vision. His body was so perfect in front of you, the truly breathtaking view. You could have sworn he would have made such a perfect painting.

Before you could open your mouth though, he was praising you again.

"No words would be enough for me to explain how every curve of your body makes me ache for you, my one" He leaned forward, placing wet kisses from your neck, down to your hips, over and over again until his name was a broken mewl from you lips.

He stopped between your thighs, taking his time to spread you wide open for him. He kissed that spot that caught his mind right away, that perfect dip of your hips, where stretch marks were concentrated.

He hummed as he couldn't help but graze them with his teeth, stealing one moan that made him almost melt.

Then agonizingly slowly he kissed the inside of your thigh, trailing kisses until his nose brushed against your clit. You wanted to beg for him to eat you, but his head turned towards the other tight, repeating the tantalizing trail of kisses until he reached for your dripping cunt.

"You are so ready for me" He kissed right above your clit, teasing you more and more. "But I have to dine first" a finger gently traced the outline of your lips, taking his time before dipping it between your folds, and earning a moan. It was so long since someone touched you, you could feel your whole body clench at the smallest touch.

He kissed your thigh again, sighing at the softness of your skin. You were so wet he just inserted another finger in you and started pumping in your pussy, drawing those perfect moans from you again, music to his pointy ears.

Then as he added another finger, his teeth sank in your plush thigh. All of your senses jolted up, amplifying everything as he started drinking from you.

His slender fingers reached right where he made you cry in pleasure, as you slowly gave in to the lightheadedness.

As he kept feeding, he still worked you like he knew every movement that would make you whimper, drawing always so near to your orgasm before pulling away.

Moments later he finally let go of your thigh, his teeth slipped away from the pricks they had made home in, and licked away the rivlet of blood still spilling from the new wound, causing your body to arch even more under his tongue. You were so close, so desperate to come you'd chant his name like a prayer, just so he'd taste you.

Instead he pulled out his fingers, taking one at a time in his mouth and sucking your slick off of them.

"You are delicious, my love" He moaned as he popped each finger out of his lips.

You were on edge, so tempted to take control and ride his face until you'd come on his lips, but you had to restrain yourself, you wanted him to guide you through it, you wanted him to have full control of his and your body.

His tongue reached for the rivlet of blood on his lips before pulling you in his lap, your thighs wrapped around his hips like they were made just for that. You could feel his erection press against your folds as he pulled you closer.

His lips and yours clashed together in something that was akin to a slow dance, your arms wrapped around his neck, while his held you by your hips.

You could drink the sighs he was letting out, the smile he grew in that intimate moment, the reason why he wanted you in this position.

For months he tried to imagine how he wanted to make love to you, how he'd feel the safest, and his mind always came back at the idea of your chests against each other, your lips so close he could kiss you, but also where he could hear your moans the closest. How he wanted you to rest against him as he whispered how perfect you were for him, he wanted you. All of you. All of your warmth, all of your skin, all of your sights, he wanted to see how he was affetting you, and how you affected him. He wanted to lift your chin, to kiss your neck, he wanted the both of you to find respite in the tight hold.

Seeing you so close to him, so vulnerable just how much he would be, it was how he wanted it to go, cause this for him was like a first time. He wanted to be overwhelmed by you, as you consumed him.

He wanted to feel his home in you. In you and only you.

He took a moment, resting against you, clinging to you like you were going to disappear from his grasp.

"If you want to stop, you just have to say it, my star" You whispered as you rested a hand in his hair, drawing circles on his scalp as he breathed in your scent, that was slowly mixing with the smell of sex.

"No my love, I'm just bathing in you before doing anything else" He admitted, placing a kiss on your neck, where he was resting his head.

"I don't think I could ever exchange this for anything. No power, or castle could compare to the home I made in your heart". His words were warm, caring, just like scorching fire against ice.

"I love you" You murmured as you caressed his cheek, and brought him back to you.

"I love you too, my one" He kissed you slowly as he guided you up. Bringing you to rest your forehead against each other as you slowly sank on his length. A gasp simultaneously filled the tent, so loud it could wake up everyone, but you didn't care. The air was pulled out of your chests, as you clinged on each other.

You both waited a moment before doing any movement, both overwhelmed by the closeness and the pleasure.

You wrapped around him so perfectly, he could barely keep any control over his body, his mind or his lips.

"Mh so perfect for me" He whispered sultry, as he guided you through the slow movement, allowing him to bottom out before having your hips meet his again, stealing another breathy moan.

It was slow, tender, so much that you could feel your eyes become glassy.

Nothing could ever compare to the fire that was spreading around your body as he picked up pace, stealing everything from you. Your air, your whimpers, your heart, over and over again.

He wanted to savor every inch of you, he would allow himself to fill you to the hilt, as he threw his head back.

"M-mine" He lulled as he couldn't resist the urge to go faster, his body loosing control of his movements.

It became all so sloppy, ragged as he grasped at you ass, his nails sinking into your skin as he slapped his hips against yours.

"This is what you do to me" He rasped as he lolled his head back. His hair wild as some curls fell on his face. His mouth agape as he choked praises.

Sweet gasps echoed between the syllables of your name, as he submitted to the pleasure.

He wanted to scream, to let everyone know you were his and no one could ever coax those sounds from him like you did, so effortlessly.

Your fingers twirled naturally around his curls, pulling his head to yours as you deepened the kiss along with your movements, savoring the taste of his lips and sweat as you made him see the stars.

You drank each other's moans with your lips as you completely gave away to the pleasure, as you gave all of you to each other.

You could barely register who was directing, cause your bodies just felt like one. Molten lava simply mixing as it burned hot like the hells.

You were so close, your whole body shaking as you could barely form a proper sentence. "L-love y-you" You muttered though your tongue felt indescribably heavy and light simultaneously.

You were drunk on him, your eyes rolling back as he hit that spot that could make you come undone. He worshiped every inch he could reach with his lips, making sure your body was left with a memory of the night, of his trust, of his love.

"You fill me so well" you praised with the last bit of your sanity, stealing the most precious sound from his lips.

Euphoria washed over Astarion as he was high on the feeling of your pussy clenching uncontrollably around him.

He pumped in you insatiably as you could feel it build up, the familiar knot as your muscles tensed up, feeling the heat rise and your legs shake.

You were not sure what it was, maybe it was the moaned praises, or his touch, or the way his hair bounced as he sank in your, but you felt your body being stripped of all the flesh, pleasure taking it's place as your orgasm washed over you. Your head rested on his shoulder as he was still lost in you, so close to his own release.

You knew that the only sound in the camp was your skin slapping, and the lustful sounds you'd make for each other.

The frenzy turned into a slow-burning passion, his hips rhythmically pounding in you as his lips met again with yours in a matching kiss, your moans mixing in the middle as you could feel it again, your orgasm building so quickly you barely had time to process how sensitive you were.

You let go of his lips to admire how his mouth parted, a series of whimpered moans fell from his lips as you could feel every inch of you being dragged away in the second orgasm at the sole sight.

His hips stuttered once, twice, before the arrogant orgasm sent him to the moon, spilling all his cum in your warmth.

He stayed in you for a few more moments as he processed how elated he felt.

There was no one else in the universe that would make him feel so safe, so loved. He was gentle as he laid with you in his arms, drawing shapeless lines along your velvety skin.

He couldn't hold back the tears that were forming at the edge of his eyes, as he held this night so close to his heart. For him, this was his first time, and it was with you, his other half.

You noticed right away when the first few tears started tracing his skin. You were so afraid of his reaction that this was like a shock to you, in a way.

You prayed the morninglord he wasn't already regretting the intimacy, maybe he didn't feel what you felt: that sense of belonging, the overwhelming love.

You cupped his cheek as you caught a tear with your thumb. "Are you ok, my star?" You whispered as you took away another and another with tenderness that made Astarion even more emotional.

He slowly met your gaze, his eyes so soft and his lips curled in a tender smile as the droplets still descended down his cheeks.

"I'm perfect, my love" He rested his hand on yours, clasping at your fingers and bringing them away from his cheek.

"Why are you crying?" You offered a reassuring look, the one he learned meant that you were a safe space where he could speak his mind unfiltered.

"I dreamt of this nights for months, how I would ask you, and how I'd hope this would carry out" He exhaled for a moment as he toyed with your fingers.

"And none of those dreams could ever get close to this" His smile was getting wider, accentuating those lines you loved so much.

"I don't care for sex, unless it's with you. Unless it's loving you with every inch of me, unless it means undressing ourselves and being exposed in all our vulnerability. Unless it means I get to feel you become part of me" You were absorbed by his words and his eyes, that you didn't notice he let go of your hand to hold you closer.

"You are the other part of me", He let out shakily. "I might even say you are the best part as well." He kissed your forehead tenderly. "You are my one and only" He whispered at last as he dragged the blanket he had left on the side, on your bodies. You murmured something between a love confession and a praise as he lulled you to sleep in his embrace.

You were fast asleep as he finally remembered what he was forgetting.

He summoned a mage hand, trying to be as silent as possible. The ghostly arm reached under one pillow and pulled out the velvety box, before shoving it in Astarion's backpack and dissolving its form.

"Tomorrow" He noted in his mind. "Tomorrow I'll ask you"

SINGULARITY

MIRAGE/READER

SUMMARY: You and Mirage have been pining for each other for a while now. A nasty summer storm drives you straight into his arms. Shenanigans ensue.

WORD COUNT: 18k. Sorry I’m insane

WARNINGS: 18+ and I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH!! Explicit PWP, fingering + oral (fem receiving), penetrative sex, mild spit kink. Reader is fem and uses she/her pronouns but is written fairly androgynous. No descriptors of appearance beyond the basics and no (y/n) used.

Familiar streets flashed by at increasing speeds, traffic and pedestrians flickering by and blurring together into a smorgasbord of color, all gilded by the setting sun. Unconsciously, you dug your fingers into the seams of the leather seat beneath you, worrying the stitches. Out of the corner of your eye, the radio blazed to life with color and that oh-so-familiar symbol.

“Hey, hey, easy on the merchandise, hot stuff,” Mirage crackled out of the speakers lightheartedly, and you immediately yanked your hands into yourself like they’d been burned. In your worrying, you’d seemingly forgotten about what — or rather, who — exactly was your ride.

“Oh— my bad, I wasn’t thinking,” you said, sinking your weight back and down, instead picking at your nails to give your hands something to do. God, you were so nervous, and for what? Mirage knew all these people— these bots, and knew them well. They were all friends! Or amiable towards each other, at the very least. And they were the good guys. Saved the world and all that.

So why were you so anxious?

“You’re good, don’t worry ‘bout it.” He slowed to a stop at a red light. Your leg started to bounce. “Sooo… you wanna tell me what’s on your mind? Save me a trip to Noah’s repair shop? I’d hate for you to start taking your emotions out on me, y’know.”

You scoffed, eyes sliding to the radio. The grin that pulled at the corners of your mouth was one you were helpless to stop. He just had that effect on you, where around him you became a slave to your laughter and, additionally, also became one half of a terrible joke machine that Mirage happily completed.

Leather creaked as you nudged the inside of the door with your boot to chastise him. “You love when I take my emotions out on you, dick. Don’t lie.”

“Only the good ones,” he shot back, and you could hear the grin in his voice. “You nervous about meeting the others?”

His probe was successful; you fought the urge to shrink at your feelings being read so accurately and so immediately. “I— yeah. I am, and I don’t even know why. I’m sure they’re all great, I’m just working myself up over nothing.”

Red faded to green. Carried on the tide of forward-moving traffic, Mirage rolled ahead, eventually slipping over to make a turn. You watched him twist his mirrors to check his blind spot.

“Ah, c’mon. Nobody could blame you, you’re meeting a bunch of aliens for the first time. Pretty trippy for anyone. ‘specially if those aliens are, like, double your size. And robots.” A short chuckle topped off his words.

“Right. I just don’t wanna fuck it up or embarrass myself, you know how it is. I don’t wanna embarrass you, either.”

“Oh, Primus, trust me. You’re not gonna embarrass me. I don’t even think that’s possible. Prime’s seen me in a lot worse shape than bringing you in to meet him.” The world continued to roll by. Brick buildings blotted out the sunshine in intermittent flashes. “You got good marks from your favorite bot, you’ll be fine.” The dismissive tone of his voice was working, in a weird way, to assuage your fears.

“Excuse me,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest pointedly. “My favorite bot?”

“What, am I not?” A downright theatrical gasp hissed out of the speaker. “Have you been cheating on me?”

Cheeks hot with a flush at even the joking insinuation of being together, you glanced away from the impassive Autobot symbol on the radio and out the window. Still, the laugh barked out of you was sudden and sharp, and quickly dissolved into giggles. “Yes. Mirage. I’m sorry. There’s another ten foot tall alien robot in Brooklyn that’s been vying for my attention. We’re done.”

“I should throw you out on the street right now,” Mirage fussed playfully, his evident pout tinging his voice. “For breakin’ my spark. Also I’m taller than that.”

“You wouldn’t dare. I’m fragile.”

“I dunno. Noah gets his ass kicked around pretty good and he’s still kickin’ it.”

“I am not Noah,” came your tongue-in-cheek rebuttal. “And Noah just refuses to give up even when it’s good for him.”

“Thought qualities like determination were supposed to be big things with you guys.”

“In moderation.”

Mirage barked a laugh. “Ha! Should tell that to Prime. He’ll blow a gasket.” You opened your mouth to reply, only to be cut off. “No, seriously, tell it to Prime, we’re here.”

The easy confidence that your playful back-and-forth had teased out instantly chilled into a dense mass in your stomach; Mirage was rolling slowly up to a nondescript warehouse buried deep within the old industrial part of Brooklyn, and the way the worn brick loomed over you even in the car made your heart rate pick up.

Now or never.

Familiar alien whirs and clicks of shifting and setting metal filled your ears as Mirage rose into his bipedal mode, the driver’s seat gently ejecting you onto your own two legs on the pavement. Following the motion, you took a few steps forward, but still balked a little at the half open door. Inside, you heard voices of varying timbre, and you fought the urge to turn tail.

Now. Or. Never. Gritted teeth accompanied the repetition of your thought.

The displacement of air behind you — and the soft, constant mechanical noises emanating from his body — signaled Mirage’s presence before his voice.

He said your name with surprising care, using a tone that only came out when he was really being sincere. You couldn’t help the way your face warmed at it as you turned, craning your neck up to meet his gaze. “Hey, you, uh, you want me to go in ahead of ya? Normally I’d be like ‘ladies first’ and all that, but you said you weren’t feeling too jazzed about going in—“

“Yeah, actually, if you could, that would be… great. That would be great.”

“Gotcha. Let you psych yourself up a little more before you go in, I see how it is. Let me do the talking,” he affirmed with an easy grin and a nod, bouncing on the balls of his pedes a few times before striding forward. His long legs folded easily under him as he ducked under the lowered garage door, and you traipsed after, smoothing your thumb over your knuckles repeatedly.

The warehouse yawned beyond you, orange shafts of light cutting gashes into otherwise brownish darkness. Old graffiti sprayed across the walls told you that Ramona had been there once, then Nick, then Darnell, and a million others. And you were there now, feeling impossibly small, yes, but a little more resilient with the fading sunlight at your back and Mirage, like always, at your side.

He’d become a permanent fixture in your life from the day you’d met him — when you’d strong-armed Noah into giving up his secret about his Porsche, and the mysterious car had ended up being a twelve-foot-tall robot with a literal motormouth that made a playful pass at you within the first hour of your first conversation. You’d been flustered out of your mind, but had just kept coming back out of unfettered curiosity and outright fascination. Aliens were real, and Noah was friends with one, and it— he could turn into a Porsche.

Mind-shattering observations on the surface, yes. Mirage tended to deflate the grandeur, though, because he never acted like aliens did in the movies or in books. There was no ‘We come in peace!’ bullshit. He was so easy. Everything with him was so easy. He was loudmouthed and extroverted and genuinely hilarious; you spent hours in Noah’s garage trading terrible jokes — mostly bad sexual innuendos — or buckled to Mirage’s driver’s seat as he flew down Central Avenue on the wrong side of the limit and blasted Haddaway so loud it nearly busted your eardrums.

Weird to say an alien robot was your friend, but he was. He gave you rides to work, to your lectures, to your labs, wherever; in fact, he got petulant when you dared to take the bus one day to give him a break, and made it a point to pry your routine out of you so that he could take you wherever you wanted, no fares needed. 

So infuriating. You loved it.

You loved… maybe more than just the back-and-forth. Maybe more than the bad jokes. Maybe more than the late-night drives. You were starting to think— starting to realize you loved big blue optics, and the rumble of a 260 horsepower engine when you made just the right innuendo, and broad, incredibly intricate servos that dwarfed yours in size but were so, so careful…

Man. You tried not to think about it too much. It as a concept made you laugh with its own absurdity. Poor human chick fell in love with the giant alien robot that made her laugh. It wasn’t… debilitating. You still functioned like a normal adult. Mostly. Except for that one night like two weeks ago where you’d been arguing with him about some stupid shit and he’d scooped you up, right off the ground, in both servos and held you there, digits interlaced against your back and thumbs on your front.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever held you like that — he’d done it a few times — but something was different that night… even if he’d only done it to gain an upper hand in your bickering. The air crackled with latent electricity, made your skin buzz in all the right places, especially when Mirage had gone quiet for once in his life as he stared at you in his grasp. When you’d prompted him with his name, he’d only responded by gently stroking a thumb over the swell of your chest, which had made you gasp air in so sharply that it burned in your throat. The metal left a tingling path on your skin under your shirt in its wake and immediately sent your heart rate skyrocketing past whatever the fuck was a normal BPM.

He’d snapped back to reality at the sudden expansion of your lungs and had attempted to play it all off as a joke. You remembered how you’d still stumbled when your shoes touched the ground, an absolutely insane feeling of genuine heat rocking you as your brain seized the feeling of his touch while it still sparked against your nerve endings and helpfully replayed it over and over and over again. Sure, the rhythm of banter came back after a stuttering beat, but you never really cooled the warmth on your face for the rest of that night — and when Mirage had dropped you off at your apartment, your door was shut and locked for about five minutes before your shaking hand was frantically worked beneath the waistband of your pants.

…Whew. Definitely something a little more than friendly there. Maybe even more than pure love, something a little slicker and deeper that buzzed against your bones and coiled low in your stomach. It made you feel a little weird — just objectively, because of what Mirage was — but damn if it didn’t feel good to indulge.

God, fuck, why were you thinking about that now, of all times? Escapist fantasies be damned, you were going to meet Mirage’s comrades-friends-coworkers and leave a good impression. Not drool over the worn-out memory replaying in your head for the thousandth time this week.

Out of the darkness and around corners, they emerged. The stealth wasn’t on purpose; you didn’t even think they could be stealthy. Oh, one was coming right for you now — tall was the only word your brain could muster. Tall and red and square were added to the list of adjectives as the stately bot approached, servos collected into fists at his sides and shoulders thrown back.

“Priiiime,” Mirage greeted warmly, throwing his arms out at his sides in his favorite pose. “Look, hey, I know what you said about bringing more people around, but I swear— Hey!”

Completely ignoring your friend’s (status pending) greeting, the bot— Prime, holy shit, this is THE Prime, was kneeling down, leaning forward, and he was right in your face. You fought the very biological urge to flinch. Blue optics considered you for a moment before narrowing and flicking to your right from his lowered position.

“Mirage,” Optimus started with a gravelly tone  from behind his faceguard that communicated exasperation above all else. “I explicitly stated that for our safety — and yours — that we were to come in contact with no more humans.”

“Sir, I gotta be honest with you. Kinda hard on a planet that’s got, what, five billion of ‘em? Six?” Mirage glanced at you for backup. You stared back flatly, refusing to say anything that might put you on the business end of a laser cannon.

“You were told to remain incognito so you could recover.” Optimus continued, his gaze returning to you. With a shunk of shifting metal, his faceplate slid away. His faceplates were weathered; the chipped metal around his optics gave the illusion of wrinkles and eyebags. Tired. He seemed tired. “This is not incognito. What is your name?”

You gave it after taking a beat to steady yourself. He repeated it back to you. “How did you come in contact with Mirage?”

“I, uh— Noah, Noah Diaz, he’s my friend. I basically pried it out of him,” you said with a nervous laugh. “So it’s not Mirage’s fault. I’m just nosy.”

At the mention of Noah, Optimus seemed to visibly relax; he moved back slightly, though he remained kneeling, and the narrowed, suspicious squint of his optics rounded out into something much softer.

“…I see. Then I assume you understand the… precarious nature of our existence on your planet.” he said, his tone grave and his optics searching your face.

You nodded, pressing the flesh of the inside of your cheek between your teeth for a moment as you came up with a suitably diplomatic response that still conveyed your friendliness. “I do, yeah. Noah told me most of it. What he could, anyway. I just wanted to make it clear that I’m not— I’m not a threat here. Like I don’t work with the, uh, the government or anything. Whatever you guys need help with, I’m available, even if that just means keeping my mouth shut.”

Christ, you were glad this wasn’t your day job. You’d be such a shit ambassador. I’m available. What the hell did that even mean? Fuck yes, you were available, your brain guffawed, thinking of broad metal thumbs brushing over your chest.

You blinked hard, squeezing your eyelids together until the world came back in a photo negative, to scold yourself.

Although you’d stumbled through your reply, Optimus seemed to approve. He rose with a great creak of metal off of his knee and backed up to give you space, though he still regarded you with those sharp blue optics that felt as though they pinned you to the concrete below. “I see Noah chooses his company well. I should have assumed his sentiments would extend to his companions.” He shut his optics for a moment and dipped his head, as if considering deeply what to say next. “I am not sure how much Mirage — or Noah — divulged to you.”

“A fair amount— well. Any amount that won’t get them in trouble,” you called up, taking in deeper breaths to project your voice up the two stories of height to his head. To your side, Mirage snorted. “I know your name— Optimus, I know that, and I know about the Autobots. A little bit about the— fuck, what were they called—“

“Terrorcons?” Mirage supplied, and you were impressed at how quiet he’d been otherwise.

“Terrorcons, thank you. Other than that, not much. How much should I know?”

“Your knowledge is sufficient. All we fear — and all we risk—“ Optimus added with a pointed look at Mirage, who looked incredibly sheepish. “—at the moment is discovery. So long as you maintain secrecy, no harm shall come to us… or you, for that matter.”

It almost sounded like a threat, but Prime worded it very much like a warning. You decided it was best to heed his word — not that you really had another option.

“Right. Okay. Well— I mean, it was nice to meet you. People — humanity, I guess — aren’t bad. Most of us aren’t, anyway. Just, uh, let me know if there’s something Noah and I can get or do for you.”

Prime’s gaze shifted away from you. In fact, it seemed to shift away from the warehouse in general, looking somewhere far beyond the now-shut garage door. “Your generosity is admirable, but it is not humans primarily that we are concerned with.”

Brows furrowed at his vague answer, you thought it over for a second — and then decided not to push it. He probably knew best when it came to whatever foreboding nebulous space threat loomed over your collective heads; you would leave it up to the experts.

“Oh, well, golden rule and all that,” you still offered in terms of a response. That got his attention. His massive head tilted downwards to look at you once more with curiosity. “If I crash landed on someone else’s planet, I’d want them to be hospitable, y’know? Just trying to make the best of a shitty situation.”

Like he couldn’t handle the terrible punishment of silence anymore, Mirage butted in. “See, Prime? I told you she was cool.”

A short jolt shook the broad, boxy line of his shoulders, and at first you had thought he’d coughed, and then you realized he laughed. It was barely anything, a huff of a chuckle, but you glowed with the indirect affirmation. Just made Optimus Prime laugh. Maybe you weren’t such a terrible diplomat.

He wasn’t looking at you, though, rather at Mirage, and you swore from your low vantage point you could see a barely-there smile on Prime’s faceplates communicating…was that smug amusement? As the tall bot carefully made his way past you, he stopped in front of your companion, and let a heavy servo land on the headlight adorning his shoulder.

“No matter what you may feel, you chose well, Mirage.” Optimus rumbled out, before removing his servo and traipsing off into a darker section of the sprawling warehouse, ducking through a much-too-small cutout and speaking to Arcee about something indistinguishable. However, you couldn’t care less about whatever her and Prime were discussing — what the hell did he mean by Mirage choosing well?

You turned your head towards said bot, mouth open for inquiry and one brow raised. Mirage looked mortified, in every sense of the word; he stood shell-shocked, lips slightly parted and servos up and open as if to defend himself. His head was whipped around to follow Prime’s departure from the room. A whir started, bouncing off the walls — Mirage’s fans came on and off intermittently to keep his ambient internal temperature at safe levels, but the steady hum of this fan let you infer that he was flushing something fierce.

“Mirage? What—“

Interrupting you by breaking, nearly jumping, out of his trance, he clapped his servos together and started talking at a million miles a minute. “Well, damn, look at that, haha, it’s late, ain’t it? You got work in the morning, right? C’mon, hop in, I’ll drive you home—“

“No, Mirage, hold on, what was he talking about—“

“Seriously, c’mon, he was just messing around—“

“You’re telling me Optimus Prime was joking? Is he even capable of that?”

He said your name with a finality that nearly made you flinch. “Look, I can’t really— Just drop it, please?” It wasn’t angry, nor was it even commanding; in fact, his eyes were wide and pleading with you out of embarrassment. You knew the feeling all too well, and in the interest of sparing his feelings, decided to let it go, despite your intense curiosity.

You put your hands up in surrender. “Okay. Dropped.” A few beats of silence passed while Mirage was still tamping down his fluster. “You wanna take me home now or are we waiting for Prime to come embarrass you more?”

“Please, let’s get outta here,” he affirmed, dropping into his alt-mode and popping the driver door for you. As you slid in, you couldn’t help the little mischievous smile that grew on your face as your brain cooked up some other joke to take the edge off.

The garage door opened on its own. Mirage rolled into the noticeably darker alleyway. The burnt umber glow of the sunset-stained sky was only visible overhead; otherwise you were boxed in on the sides by blacked-out buildings.

Stifling silence was broken by a joke. Your joke, actually. “…Can’t believe your dad made fun of you in front of me.”

The noise Mirage made was only comparable to a squawk. But obviously much more masculine, clearly. Still, his tires jerked on the road, betraying his surprise. “Hey— Prime is not my sire— or dad, or whatever you wanna call ‘em. He wishes.”

“I dunno,” you mused, arms crossed over your chest and back sunk deep into the seat. Brooklyn in transition blurred by in messy constellations of lit windows. “He got you pretty good there. Pretty standard dad behavior.”

“Hey, I don’t know what suddenly inspired him to go for comedy, but I do not appreciate it. That’s my thing. He’s stealin’ my thunder!”

“Maybe you’re just rubbing off on him.”

Silence.

The radio crackled. “Ew.”

Accompanied by the loudest eyeroll you could muster, you whacked the dashboard with an open palm, though you couldn’t stop your bubbling laughter. “Oh my god, you are so gross, Mirage! I hate you!”

“Ahh, don’t say that, c’mon! You love it here!”

“You wish.”

The rest of the ride home was spent that way, bickering like normal, and although you couldn’t let go of what Prime had said, nor his knowing look while he said it, you appreciated the return to baseline. When you got home, Mirage parked directly in front of your apartment building, and you lingered on the sidewalk for several minutes after you got out of the car. With the passenger door opened so it looked like you were talking to the ‘driver’ and not completely insane, you leaned on the doorframe and traded jabs with your ride until the humidity of the night air got a little too persistent to ignore. Damn you, Brooklyn. 

“See you tomorrow?” Mirage never said goodnight. He only ever asked when he could see you again, corny bastard.

“Tomorrow. My roommate’ll take me to work, don’t worry about it. I’ll just stick my head in the garage when I get home.”

“I thought we had a thing goin’, man!” His faux petulance returned. “You movin’ on already? You just met my folks!”

Your jaw dropped for a second at the fact he’d turned the damn bit around on you. “I met one folk, and you literally said he wasn’t your dad.”

“Maybe I was warmin’ up to the idea!”

Another lethal eyeroll. Your smile still remained locked on your face. “Whatever. Get the hell out of here, asshole,” you said, playfully shutting the door just a little harder than you needed to and slapping the roof like a horse you were trying to send off into the desert.

Even as you turned to walk into your building, you could hear the way his window shot down, far faster than a normal roll. “Ay! Merchandise!”

You stuck a middle finger over your shoulder, thumb out and all, to give him an idea of what he could do with his merchandise. Tires peeled against pavement as he screeched out of his spot and down the otherwise quiet street, letting you know in return how he felt about that.

Smiling like an idiot as you climbed the stairs to your apartment, you felt… airy. You were always smiling after hanging around Mirage, you couldn’t help it — especially as of late. But still, you were dying to know what Prime was talking about when he was messing with Mirage earlier. You chose well. Chose what? Your brain briefly entertained the thought of Mirage returning what you felt, and it made blood rush to your face.

It couldn’t really… work. You had made peace with your physical differences weeks ago. The both of you got along just fine despite the size difference, and it never impeded your normal interactions. But you doubted Mirage felt the same; no matter how familiar, how friendly you were with him, you could never shake the feeling of being just a little too alien. Your greatest similarities were in personality. The closest resemblance you held physically was the fact you were both humanoid in shape.

That didn’t stop you. No, not at all. It didn’t stop you from dropping into bed after a quick shower with a heavy sigh, your hand inevitably sinking beneath the covers as you thought of digits — Mirage’s digits, so well articulated for their size and so careful — playing with the hem of your underwear instead of your own fingers, pushing the fabric aside just a little roughly to explore your alien anatomy. It took very little time for you to grind yourself to climax; in fact, it was embarrassingly quick, and it left your face hot with some special kind of shame as you slunk out of bed to wash your hands. The entire time, you avoided your reflection in the mirror.

Even with the ancient AC cranked on and chugging away, it took you a long while to fall asleep.

Off in the industrial district of Brooklyn, meanwhile, Mirage was burning rubber as he took ninety-degree turns at sixty miles per hour. His processor was thrumming at max capacity, and his engine felt like it was about to either stall or explode.

Primus, it was all too much. Your teasing always got him some kind of hot and bothered, tight under his interface paneling, but the acidic rush of embarrassment still prickled at his cabling. Prime, come on, man. Mirage was still floored at the fact that Prime of all bots had embarrassed him like that, in front of you, no less!

He had it bad for you, and he knew it, but apparently every other bot in that warehouse knew it too. Ever since he’d met you, you’d stuck in his processor, the way the light glinted off your eyes and your all-teeth smile and the way he could get you to laugh. Sure, his flirts were only playful at first — and he only did them to mess with Noah, who’d harbored an on-and-off crush on you for a while — but the more he did them and the more you returned them, the more he started really… considering it.

It was so shameful. Primus, it was shameful. He’d barely ever interfaced in his life — there was just no time, especially not on Cybertron — and never with organics. After that one night where he’d hefted you up with ease in both servos and completely blanked when confronted with your soft, warm weight in his hold, he’d been on a spiral. It wasn’t just enough to be friendly with you; he was plenty friendly with Noah (though with the amount of stupid passes Mirage made at him, Noah would probably say too friendly) and he wanted something more with you.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d rolled into some long-abandoned warehouse or pitch-black deserted alley and scrabbled at his interface panel to pressurize his spike before he feverishly, frantically humped his fisted servo for relief, mental processors supplying increasingly filthy fantasies of your soft skin against his chassis and your mouth, Primus, your mouth on his own, on his spike, wherever, he didn’t care. Every single time, though, after coming down from his high with steam pouring off his lax frame, he felt just a little more discouraged than the last — because he knew that his fantasies would have to stay that way. Fantasies. Your friendship was enough, had to be, no matter how bad he wanted you, because he’d be damned to the Pit before he scared you off by being stupid and admitting his feelings.

Ugh. Ugh. He took another corner too hard and felt his tires shriek, let the burn travel upward and reverberate in his frame. The chaos in his mental processors quieted as he neared HQ. All he knew was that it was late, and he couldn’t be too loud or Prime would get on his ass for interrupting his stasis.

Can’t believe your dad made fun of you in front of me. Your voice played, unbidden, from some file that popped open in his memory bank. He willed it away with a vengeance as he rolled into the warehouse-turned-headquarters as quietly as he could, transforming as soon as the door was shut and stretching out his back. Clicking echoed off the walls as his spinal struts reset, and the residual burn in his scraped tires tingled.

Mirage turned, and—

Yelped. Bumblebee was standing right there, shoulder against the wall and fiddling with some holographic projection from his forearm. Mirage coughed into his clenched servo to preserve what was left of his dignity.

“‘Sup,” he greeted through gritted denta. “I, uh, didn’t see you there, man. How’s it hangin’?”

Bee gave him a flatly unamused look that communicated ‘No shit, you didn’t see me.’ very well. The projection phased out of existence and left the two of them in the dimmed space in some kind of standoff.

“Well, y’know, beauty stasis and everything, I’m just gonna—“

“I wanna know, what you’re feeling! Tell me what’s your mind!” burbled Bee’s radio in place of his voice. Mirage jerked back for a second, not expecting Information Society at whatever unholy hour of the morning it was.

“Look, man, I don’t really wanna talk about—“

“There are some things you can’t hide!” insisted the same song. Bee gestured for Mirage to talk. Clearly he wanted to know.

This was as good a time as ever to spill, he guessed.

Mirage groaned and clasped both of his servos over his face after explaining the bones of it, his head tilted upwards, optics fruitlessly searching the water-stained warehouse ceiling for a solution to his problem. His… very human, very embarrassing problem.

Not that he thought you were embarrassing— not at all, never. But Prime would have his head over falling for a human. Okay, well, maybe not his head; it was more like Mirage would be in for a lengthy disapproving speech about responsibilities and goals and distractions, and Primus, just thinking about it made the former option of decapitation the preferable one. Even though he seemed to approve of his choice, considering what he’d said earlier, the ‘Bots were still at war, and there wasn’t time for human distractions. Literal human distractions.

It wasn’t like he could help it. You were funny, okay? And smart. And you teased him in just the right way that made his cooling fans sputter, and you were so curious about… everything about him, he thought, remembering your impromptu Cybertronian anatomy lesson with a hot flash in his processor. He couldn’t help but be flattered by your attention.

“Ugh, Bee, I don’t know what to do, man,” he said despairingly after a moment, pacing in circles in front of said squat yellow bot leaned against the nearby concrete wall. “I mean, look at this, she’d be missin’ out if she said no,” he added, arrogance staining his words in an attempt to console himself. It didn’t work; insecurity eviscerated his bravado moments after he said it. “Or… I guess we’d both be, huh.” A short, self-deprecating laugh left him.

Mirage wasn’t entirely sure why he’d come to Bee of all bots for advice, but he was sure as shit not going to Optimus after today, and Arcee would have just told him anyway. Plus, considering that Wheeljack wasn’t even in the country at the moment, his options were slim. Besides, Bee had… experience with this sort of thing. Dealing with humans and all. Just… not in this way. But it was close enough, and Mirage was totally lost; if he thought about it by himself for any longer, his processors were going to fry.

Speaking of, Bee tittered through his gutted voice synthesizer to get Mirage’s attention. Expression drawn into a very human grimace, Mirage turned to face his friend, servos planted firmly on his hips.

“Well, you gotta tell her— wanna know what love is— want you to show me,” Bee’s radio clipped, first from a talk show, then from a nearby station, and Mirage felt energon surge to his face in a hot rush at a very personal song being blared back at him.

He had the words memorized at this point. The shape of them was practically burned into his memory files, considering how much he played it for you. It was reserved for days on both ends of the spectrum, bad and good; Mirage would pick you up in his alt-mode and take you for joyrides across the city, flying over the Brooklyn Bridge at daredevil speeds, all the while blaring music loud enough to make your head pound.

The two of you had discovered a few favorites, but the Foreigner song was at the top of the list, right next to Careless Whisper, of course. The sound of your voice belting at the top of your lungs, softened with that specific human accent, thrumming and reverberating through your chest— you sounded so alive, but so different from what he was accustomed to.

“Dude—” Mirage nearly barked, voice up a full octave before clearing his synthesizer into his fist and repeating himself. “Dude. I can’t just do that. Aliens— we’re aliens. Well. She’s an alien, too, I guess, but we,” he paused to gesture frantically between himself and Bee, “are the aliens here. I don’t really think humans are into the whole giant robot thing.”

“Noah?” Bee played a clip of Mirage’s own voice back at him questioningly.

“Yeah, well, Noah’s a different story.”

With a whir of his actuators, Bee shook his head and looked away for a moment, big blue optics considering the floor. With a soft clunk, he crossed his arms over his chassis.

“Come on, man, you gotta give me something,” Mirage urged, tilting his head to follow the other bot’s motions. “Should I just leave it? I mean, I don’t want it to be weird, I just—“

Bee straightened up off the wall, clearly done thinking. His arms opened out in a shrug and his optics squinted, communicating I don’t know what you want me to say, dude, far better than his vocal synthesizer ever could have.

His radio clipped again, this time a few seconds of a Beatles song and then Noah’s voice. “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah— right?”

“I don’t know, that’s the problem,” Mirage groaned, rolling his head back with a pained expression and letting his body follow the motion as he paced another tight circle. His faceplates felt hot at the insinuation. “And if I ask, it’s gonna be weird. And if I make it weird, I’m never gonna—“

He stopped rambling when a four-digit servo thumped on the headlight atop his shoulder, rooting him to the spot. Bee’s optics stared him down, wide and bright blue, and it made Mirage press his lips together firmly as he awaited whatever sage advice he was about to impart.

ABBA filtered through the radio first. “Should walk right up to her and say—“ What came next made Mirage’s brow ridges shoot up so high he thought they were going to fly off his helmet. “—when I get that feeling, I want sexual healin’!”

Mirage’s jaw dropped. Immensely flustered and ten times more frustrated at his friend’s useless advice, he shoved the other bot off. “Are you serious, dude? Primus, I never shoulda asked you. Thanks, I’ll go walk right up to her and ask to interface on the warehouse floor, that’ll go super well.”

Bee nodded quickly and gave him a double thumbs up with a series of approving beeps and chirps, the bottoms of his optics flattening into an amused look. Mirage dragged his servo down his faceplates in mortification, although his cooling fans kicked on a click higher than normal.

Sometimes he wished he’d been left on Cybertron with Soundwave and all his other goons. This was one of those times. As he dropped back into his alt-mode with an embarrassed mumble about ‘going on patrol,’ Bee whooped behind him, and the last thing Mirage heard before peeling out of the warehouse was “There’s nothin’ wrong with me lovin’ you, baby, no, no!”

Whoever gave Bee access to Marvin Gaye needed to be whacked upside the helm.

Knowing Mirage’s luck, it was probably you.

He stayed out for the rest of the night in his alt-mode, wandering the streets and staying away from your apartment, no matter how bad he wanted to go. The pool of people with any useful advice to offer for his predicament was steadily shrinking; after the disaster with Bee, Mirage just needed to stay away from that warehouse and let his processors cool.

Sometime in the morning he returned, though not to the warehouse. He almost immediately crashed into stasis as soon as he rolled into Noah’s garage, his simultaneously pent-up and exhausted processors eager for a chance to refresh themselves and defrag.

Ha, he thought blearily as he sank into stasis. Defrag.

You were waking as he was crashing, though you weren’t happy about it. The eight hour shift that loomed ahead of you on top of the bullshit from last night was a pretty potent combination for a headache of a day, especially when you couldn’t have your morning jam sesh with Mirage on your way to work. Thankfully, though, your roommate was a kind soul, and there was an extra cup of coffee waiting for you on the counter when you stumbled out of your bedroom.

As you sipped it, you wondered just how long you could keep the front up. By some small grace of God, your roommate’s schedule didn’t align very well with yours; you barely saw them in your daily life even before you met Mirage. It wasn’t on purpose, of course. It just happened that way. But on a few occasions, they’d been home when Mirage had dropped you off, and you’d been just calling him a ‘friend with places to be’ to excuse the fact that he never walked you to your door. Being somewhat prescient, they’d nudged you a couple times about this ‘friend’ turning into a boyfriend, but had never pushed it.

You just hoped it stayed that way.

Breakfast was a quick and quiet affair, though you traded a few jokes back and forth that had the both of you giggling into your food. The ride to your job was similar, and your roommate wished you a good shift before driving off leisurely — such a stark difference compared to Mirage’s affinity for peeling off into the street at Mach-fucking-10. Thinking of him made your face burn and your mind race. You tried not to.

Time was an especially cruel mistress today, though. You swore that people were actively winding the clocks back every time you looked up at them, and your shift felt like a thick slog, knee-deep, that you had no choice but to wade through. The worst part about slow shifts was that your mind wandered with nothing else to do, and like a moth to a flame— or rather, like metal to a magnet, your brain circled around to Mirage again and again and again.

Damn that bot. Damn it all. Every time you thought of him, it was some stupid joke he’d cracked or silly offhand comment he’d made or ridiculous flirt he’d lobbed your way — always accompanied by memories of his body, surprisingly lithe considering what he was made of, all legs and a dramatic waist topped with wide shoulders that made your own engine purr.

“Mirage, did you go upstate or something? You’re disgusting,” you’d laughed as you raked your gaze over his pecs, pretending to eye the dirt smeared there and not something else.

“Disgusting?! You gotta be kidding me, I’m not half as bad as the rest of ‘em. You should see Bee, dude!” He’d gestured out the door of the warehouse, where you assumed the other bot was lurking in dirt-covered shame.

“What the hell were you two even doing?”

“Pfft. Practicin’.”

“Practicing body-slamming each other?”

“Yeah, want me to show you?”

“Mirage,” you’d groaned, laughing despite yourself.

“C’mon, I know a few good ways to pin a bot down,” he grinned, winking at you. You fixed him with the most dead stare you could muster before breaking into a half-smile of your own.

“I’ll pass on the whole getting crushed thing, but I could be persuaded to spray you down by hand,” you flirted back, just for fun. 

No, not for fun. Real flirt. It was real, all of it was, and you couldn’t shake the memory of his optics widening, brightening, with eagerness and the way he’d pleaded. Playfully. Playfully?

“Please,” he begged dramatically, clasping his servos together, optics enormous. “I’ll be good! Maybe even stay still!”

You pinched your nose bridge between your fingers and tried to think about something else, because you were starting to press your thighs together a little and you were still at work, damn it. Professionalism was something you were aiming to maintain.

Hot. It was hot. That’s what you were thinking about. You’d glanced at the weather report earlier in the morning, and seeing a row of little sun icons clued you in on an insufferable heatwave that didn’t have any intention of breaking any time soon. Even now you felt sweat collect under your shirt and dot your hairline; all you could do was wipe your face with the back of your hand and keep working.

And working.

And working.

And. Working.

And then, eventually, you watched the clock tick over the last minute of your shift, and you heard angels sing a holy choir as you all but slammed your things down and sprinted to clock out. Well. You didn’t sprint, but you did speed walk, which counted for something.

Such was your haste to leave your workplace and talk to Mirage that you speed-walked headfirst into the lashing rain outside without a second thought. Genuinely caught by surprise, you stumbled back into the safety of the entryway, eyes wide as you watched the storm front swallow the last dregs of the golden evening sky and pour rain on the streets outside. Ink blots bleeding across paper. Rorschach tests. Some other poetic fluff came to mind over the supremely annoying realization that you were going to have to walk to the garage in wet clothes.

At least it was a quick walk.

Patience waning, you nearly considered calling Mirage — or even Noah — to come get you, but at the last second your roommate swooped in, pulling up outside and honking the horn a few times to let you know your knight in shining Prius was here to rescue you.

They cracked a few jokes at your expense when they saw your wet clothes, but it was nothing you couldn’t handle. Not after the trials and tribulations of Mirage. With a few clicks, the rest of your ride home was filled with Boyz II Men and intermittent conversation as you watched raindrops race each other down the window and considered what the hell you were going to say to Mirage tonight. 

Mostly, you were dying of curiosity to know what Prime had meant to get him so flustered. Thinking about that, though, just made you go down a spiral of what-ifs… especially considering that one of them was ‘What if he feels the same way?’

You could handle rejection. You were an adult who paid taxes. But just this one time, you weren’t sure if you could handle reciprocation. Especially full reciprocation.

Mirage’s friendship was something you felt privileged to have. You were just quite scared to fuck it all up and lose out on all the things that made being his friend worth it — including him. Jaw tightening, you blinked and looked away from the window. No use stewing in it.

At home, your dinner was quick and light — something in a Tupperware that you didn’t look at too hard after microwaving. When your roommate asked about your rush, you came up with some lame excuse about hanging out with Noah, waving your hand dismissively.

Don’t worry about me. I’m going to go break Hynek’s scale of close encounters. Don’t worry about it though.

“In this weather? You’ll be soaked thirty seconds out the door. You were soaked thirty seconds out the door.”

“I’ll bring an umbrella,” you said, barely listening to them over the cacophony of your own thoughts. Mirage. Mirage. Mirage. I’m seeing him tonight. I’m talking to him tonight. I’m not going to pussy out of anything tonight. Now or never. “The place is like two blocks up the street, I’ll live.”

“If you’re so inclined to catch a cold, I’m not gonna stop you. Not making you chicken soup, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” you snarked affectionately, and the last thing you heard before exiting your apartment was their familiar laughter. That bolstered you somewhat.

Even if the rain whipping at your face made you reconsider your stupid horny stubbornness.

Only two blocks felt more like two dozen as you tucked your chin to your chest and gripped your hood to keep the wind from snatching it off your head; in your other hand you white-knuckled your umbrella to keep it from tilting the wrong angle and washing water down your back. Thunder rattled your bones more than once and made you think offhandedly of Kris, the poor kid. He hated storms but refused to admit it out of pride; he was probably curled up in a ball under his covers right now trying to block out the worst of the noise. And you thought of Noah alongside him just out of pure association, and you weren’t sure what made your stomach turn, but it did.

God, you hoped Noah wasn’t with Mirage right now. You didn’t want to slam the door open to the garage soaking wet and wrestle Mirage’s true feelings out of him while Noah spectated. Wrestle. Soaking wet.

Fuck my life.

The side door to the garage was jammed like it always was, even after you unlocked it, and you huddled against it to stay under the mediocre cover of the awning as you shoved your shoulder into it to force it open. Old metal hinges wailed as you ground them open, and the blessed dry warmth of the garage — the temperature always heightened with Mirage’s presence — sighed against your freezing skin as you wormed your way inside. 

“Mirage?” you called tentatively as you leaned back against the door to get it to shut and latch. A beat passed before your senses came to you and your hand fumbled behind you to lock it. Not for sordid reasons, honestly. You just didn’t want anyone to even have the chance of walking in on Mirage when he wasn’t folded into a Porsche.

Speaking of, you saw him then, pacing around the garage and seemingly very involved in a conversation with himself. Although the rain outside provided a dull roar of background noise, the whirs and clicks of his actuators and soft whooms of his pedes against the concrete filled your ears with their familiarity. It was Mirage, and you knew Mirage, and it helped dull the edge of abject nervousness in your gut.

He cut a sharp figure under the hanging ceiling lights, making sure to duck and avoid smacking his helm on them. When those bright blue optics registered your existence, you swore they flared with delight; he said your name with such enthusiasm it almost made you excited. For what, exactly, you didn’t know. “Hey, sugar, what’s k— Primus, you, uh, swim on your way here? Or do I just make you that wet? Cuz I appreciate the compliment.” He grinned wolfishly at you. Sparks flew off your rubbed-raw nerves.

The unimpressed stare you gave him was lethal. “That is not how that works,” you said, shaking your umbrella off on the floor and setting it against the wall to drip dry. “All the wetness is— would be in one place, dumbass.”

“Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention during my anatomy lessons. Wanna reteach ‘em to me? I’ll behave, swear on my spark.”

A scoff. “When have you ever behaved in your life?”

“When it counts! C’mon, you know you like it,” he said, gesturing down the length of his body with a flourish of his servo. “I mean, what isn’t there to like?”

“If I answer that question, I’ll hurt your feelings.” Excess rainwater dripped off your jacket as you peeled it off. Mirage’s optics followed the motion intently.

Amber lighting nearly glowed against the sleek metal of his torso. So what if your own eyes had wandered down it at his emphasis? He’d invited it. Expressly. He loved your attention, loved flaunting everything about himself just for a glance his way from you, for anything you’d give him.

It took him a second to register your words. He gasped and clasped a servo over his chassis— his spark, you remembered that from your own anatomy lesson a few weeks ago. “Gonna break my spark talkin’ like that. I hurt your feelings or something, sugar? What’s got you so bent?” With his question, he sank into a deep squat, draping his forearm over his thigh and leaning close to you.

A deep exhale left you. Your shoulders deflated. “It’s not you. Just the weather.” A short huff of a laugh, barely humorous, left you. “I mean, look at me.” You held your arms out and spun in a slow circle, errant droplets flying in every direction. “I look like a drowned rat.”

The lightbulb over his head was nearly visible. “You, uh, want a hand drying off?”

You stopped dead in your tracks. Your hands fell to your sides. Something akin to lightning danced up your spine.

“What?”

“Hold on, hold on, I got an idea,” he said,  holding his hand out at you to tell you to wait, excitement ramping up in his voice. What the hell was he planning? Nothing good, you figured. Or hoped.

Otherwise harsh sounds of metal against metal were softened by the alien chirrs and trills of the mechanical viscera working in his chassis as he settled on the ground in a sitting position. His back was leaned against the wall, carefully adjusted so his darling paint job was away from the rough concrete. To keep his balance, he rested against his tires and scooched his hips away from the wall, kicking his long legs out with a flourish and gesturing at his lap.

Although he was shorter this way, it was still a climb you didn't want to make while you were damp and the general slip hazard was high. “Can you give me a lift so I can see whatever shit you’re planning?”

“I got you, sugar, don’t even worry about it. Just hang on,” came the reply, and your brain blanked just a little at the feeling of his servos on you again, picking you up just like they had done on that night two weeks ago. With zero effort — seriously, you didn’t even hear any mechanical creaking — you were scooped upwards.

Your damp clothes clung to your body, a fact both you and Mirage were painfully aware of; the chill of the soaked fabric contrasted against that fascinating living heat of your skin nearly made the sensors in his servos short-circuit. He’d thought about this, exactly this, so much that it had probably worn a path into his neural processors. So soft. You were so soft.

A shudder ran up his spinal strut and he prayed you didn’t notice.

You were set down with your feet firmly on the flat tops of his thighs, ignoring the slight wobble in your knees. Arms raised a bit for balance, you looked down at the living machinery beneath you. The flight paths of the butterflies in your stomach grew more frantic. Broad servos released you from their hold, but they didn’t leave; no, they skated down, down, down until they settled on the flare of your hips and stayed. They were so heavy.

A breath caught in your throat like a wild animal in a trap. “If I fall, I’m gonna be so pissed off. You know that, right?” Anything to make this more normal. You had no idea how you kept the shake out of your voice.

“Relaaax, hot stuff, I’m on it. I got it, I got it,” he replied, his voice a full octave lower than what you were used to. “‘sides, I’m Mirage, remember? Protecting humans is kinda my thing.”

You scoffed. “Not with the way you drive.”

“Hey, I drive perfectly fine! You’re the one who’s scared of fun.” His servos left your hips to brace themselves on the floor. “Mirage, don’t drive so fast! Mirage, that’s a red light! Mirage, there are cops behind us!” His voice pitched up into something high and nasally to poorly, poorly mimic yours.

It was your turn to be affronted, though your mouth was open in a disbelieving sort of smile. “I don’t even sound like that, you fucker! And sorry for trying to keep us from getting arrested!”

“I dunno, you all sorta sound the same to our audio processors.” He was lying, and blatantly so. He had the distinct tone and pitch of your voice memorized down to the wavelength. “And besides, we wouldn’t get arrested.” His own voice took on a smug, self-satisfied edge, accompanied by the raise of his brow ridges.

“Oh, really? Why’s that? Please, enlighten me,” you snarked, crossing your arms over your chest and staring him down. In response, he leaned his head in, closer to you, closer than you expected, and an insufferable smirk crawled across his faceplates.

“Cuz cop cars can’t drive that fast,” he whispered conspiratorially, like it was a clever response.

What should have been a minute movement — just a shift of the head — actually became very noticeable on a twelve-foot-frame; his hips repositioned of their own accord to account for the redistribution of weight, and the change was enough to trip you up. Especially when you had been leaning in already to match his movement.

The world tilted as you started to fall forward; fearing injury or worse by tumbling off your semi-precarious perch, you jammed your hands out in front of you—

And slammed your palms directly on his chassis. It was all very fast after that. Mortified, you stared down at the planes of metal beneath you, feeling heat creep up, up, up your neck and seep into your face. Mirage had cursed above you out of surprise, and you felt the displacement of air as his servo shot up behind your back and hovered. Right there. He was right there, and he always would be.

You raised your head and made eye contact, and you knew it was over. His optics were wide with surprise, and they searched your face for any expression of pain or discontent. They cycled once, seeing none, and then flickered down to your lips.

He was so done for. Something in his expression sagged at your proximity; in his field of view, he saw an alert stating that his internal temperature was rising beyond ideal levels, and he would have laughed if not for you. Finally. Finally. Finally. He was half-expecting this to be a dream, something cooked up by his fried processors that he would wake up from any minute now. 

His servo was still hovering over your back.

“Can I—“

“Yes,” you said immediately in a sharp exhale — before he could even get the question out — and there it all went.

He surged forward like a flood from a dam, closing the distance between the both of you with a hungry rev of his engine. Explaining the logistics of it would sound silly; all you could do was go with the flow, just like every other time you’d ever kissed someone. All you knew was that it was satisfying, supremely so, and completely encompassing. Every sense was filled by him, and you realized with a kick of your heart that you never wanted it any other way.

Though your hand shook, you shoved past the fear and indulged in everything you had wanted for weeks, let yourself sink deep into that pit of want and refused to come up for air. Your fingers skated his curves and edges; you brought your palm up to the sharp angles of his jaw and smoothed it upward until it ran over the curve of his cheek.

He reacted to your touch like it was a live wire. Minute jerks of excitement ran through his frame, and when your hand rested on the side of his face, he tilted his helm into the kiss with barely restrained excitement. He was so careful, it made something inside you purr. That kind of caution was only reserved for something precious. You were precious. He couldn’t ever risk hurting you. Especially not by his own hand.

First impression was that his lips were far softer than you’d ever assumed. Pliable, hot metal pressed greedily against your mouth — more, more, more was a mantra echoed wordlessly between the both of you. The hovering servo came to rest on your back, pushing your front against his chassis as you shifted up on your toes to keep the angle of the kiss correct. Digits splayed against the planes of skin they found there, pressing down to feel your warmth — your heart slammed against your ribs so hard that Mirage could probably feel it against his palm.

With a hot flash, you wondered if the metal of his lips would bear the dent of your teeth from a bite. So you bit. It was more of a playful nip than anything, but the reaction you got was so instantaneous it was like Mirage had been waiting for it. Again, his engine throttled, the powerful rumble surging through you as his servo pinned you to his chassis. Against your mouth, his lips ticked up into a smile.

Air. You needed air. He let you pull away with no resistance, though his head did trail after your mouth for a moment.

You let your forehead sink down and rest against the top of his chassis for a moment; the condensation from your breath fogged the metal. Out of nowhere, manic giggles erupted from you. They shook your body incessantly as you rose and fell in time with Mirage’s heavy vents, your knees feeling weak and mind frazzled. From one kiss. One.

Laughter rocked his frame too, short chuckles of disbelief as his thumb rubbed circles into your back.

“Oh my god,” you murmured into the warm metal beneath you through shocks of giggles.

“Not exactly, but, eh, I’ll take it,” Mirage replied above you, and while he laughed at his own joke, you groaned and whacked him lightly with a palm. It wasn’t like he was unaffected though — far from it, in fact, judging from the steadily heating chassis beneath you and the tinge of static fringing his words.

“Bring me up,” you said hoarsely, twisting an arm behind you to paw at the servo on your back.

Without question, his other servo came up and curled under your thighs, hoisting you up so that his face was easier to reach. With most of your body now resting on his chassis and very much secured in his grip, you grasped his face in both your palms; he leaned so far into your touch with a shaky ex-vent that your noses almost brushed.

“Again?”

“Yeah, again,” he agreed, and this time you pulled him in, fingers hooking in some unseen seam behind his jaw as you crushed your mouth against his. Hunger, latent and now finally triggered, drove you closer, as close as you physically could, until your skin was starting to hurt from the random edges being pressed into it.

Curious above all else, you licked your tongue into the front of his mouth. The searing heat inside surprised you; it teetered on the edge of uncomfortable and reminded you very much of your computer at home when it ran for too long, with that special kind of mechanical stress and burning warmth that only came with overworked processors.

“‘S like that, is it?” he murmured into your mouth with a grin, his engine kicking up a notch and the vibration of his chassis hitting you very nicely right where you needed it most. You made some soft noise, half-gasp, half-groan, and hiked one of your legs up so it was bent at the knee, flattening your hips against his chest and fuck, there it was. The consistent rumble of his motor pressed a steady vibration right into your cunt over the seam of your jeans; a particular grind made you gasp and falter as you rolled your clit against the line of denim and held it there.

“Whoa-ho-ho! Heyyy, hot stuff, something feel good down there?” His voice was bursting at the seams with some rich kind of excitement; you breathed into his neck cabling as your hips jerked a little against his chassis. One servo pawed at your ass, clumsy with its eagerness, gripping and massaging the soft flesh it found there with intent.

Experimentally, his servo pressed down, pushing your pelvis down with it, and the pressure on your clit pulled a groan of satisfaction out of you that had his cooling fans sputter.

“Fuck,” you hissed through gritted teeth, and before he could say something stupid, you leaned your head down and pressed kisses to the delicate cabling of his neck.

A delighted noise rattled out of him, and his helm rolled back against the wall to allow you more access. Impatient, your kisses soon turned to bites, playful nips that tugged at the sensitive wiring and made his body jolt beneath yours like he’d been shocked. To your utter delight, you found that Mirage’s proclivity for talking extended to situations like these, too — noises streamed from his mouth as your curious teeth and hands worked over such a fragile part of his anatomy in ways that only a human could.

“Oh, Primus, babe, babe—“ he stammered out, and you lifted your head for just long enough of a window to allow him to swoop down and kiss you again, feverishly now.

Something thick and wet prodded past your teeth experimentally. For just a second you balked— and then remembered it was his glossa. His tongue. Yeah, you remembered that from your anatomy lesson; he’d stuck it out and pointed at it in a dumb way then, but fuck if it didn’t have your thighs tightening now. The hot biomesh probed your mouth, and it was so big you inadvertently drooled around it — but Mirage didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, you were pretty sure the spit dripping from your mouth around him was getting him even more worked up, judged by the way his digits tightened their grip on your ass.

You had been cold when you’d walked in that garage. Keyword there was had. Now your skin seared with a deep flush and steadily increasing heat; mindlessly, your hips started a slow, staccato rhythm that kept your breathing heavy. The servo on your back slid upwards to the point where it encompassed the back of both your neck and head. He could not get enough of your taste. He wanted it burned into the sensors on his glossa, for all he cared. Spit and lubricant swapped between the both of your mouths — you found that the metallic taste that seeped into your tongue did nothing but turn you on further.

Pulling away again for a deep inhale of air, you propped yourself semi-awkwardly on an elbow to look at him. Open adoration was written across his faceplates, along with blatant want that made his optics cycle frantically.

“I thought you were— fuck, I thought you were supposed to be drying me off,” you said, breaking in the middle of your sentence as his servo carefully started to move you. Just barely — just enough pressure to keep your hips working against him and chasing your pleasure.

“You really wanna?” He grinned at you, spit shiny on his chin. “I dunno about you, but I think I’m likin’ you being wet more.”

“You’re awful. That was terrible,” you laughed, brain foggy with arousal and general swelling affection for the bot underneath you.

“How many more of those you got left in you before you start admitting the truth that I’m the funniest bot you’ll ever meet?”

“I mean, you don’t exactly have stiff competition.”

“Aaand the best-looking.”

“I dunno… Optimus is kind of—“

“Hey!” he interrupted, bringing you up for another kiss to silence your thought before you could finish it. You happily complied, laughing into the heat of his mouth and then moaning in the same breath as his servo ground you down against his rumbling chassis again.

Hot. You were getting really hot. The damp clothes sticking to your skin were not helping; in fact, they felt as though they were going to start steaming being pressed against your skin like this. Against your wishes, you pulled backwards again, bracing yourself against the warm vents that substituted for his collarbones. They cycled hot, dry air against your fingertips, though it didn’t burn. Not yet, at least.

“Mirage,” you breathed, and that got his attention immediately. “…Are we fucking?”

“Please,” he instantly replied, so eager that it made your cunt throb. His enormous blue optics watched you with such intent that it almost made you want to shrink away from the scrutiny — but you steeled your resolve. You had him, and you had him right where you wanted. Opportunity of a fucking lifetime. You were not about to waste it.

You glanced down for a reprieve from the eye contact. “Fuck,” you swore softly, staring at the metalwork beneath you for a few heartbeats before shaking your head and glancing back upwards at him. “Okay, well— I— Okay. Let me just— do this—“

Hands shaking slightly, you balled your fists in the hem of your work shirt and wrestled it up and off you; the damp fabric lingered and peeled off of you, which made Mirage’s motor throttle powerfully underneath you. Other than that, though, you got no reaction, which made all that heat in your abdomen cool rapidly into a dense ball of abject horror.

Oh, you made a mistake. This was too much, you were too alien, too different—

The servo not supporting you against his chassis slid around from the planes of your back to your front, and you gasped sharply as he did the same fucking thing that drove you insane the first time, however many days ago. His thumb, warm on the palm-side, gently passed over the peak of your chest. His optics narrowed in on the indent in your soft flesh his digit created. Nerve endings in the trail it left behind sparked.

“Oh, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he said reverently, voice steeped in a combination of awe and victory.

Oh-kay! You sucked a deep breath in, a litany of responses running through your head. The boost to your ego was very much appreciated, and it helped lighten the sinking mass of worry that had formed in the pit of your stomach.

Mirage nearly groaned when you placed your soft palm atop the junction of his digit and the heel of his servo. “Do it again,” you decided on, and that worked damn well.

As his servo groped at your chest, he leaned in, tucking his face under your jaw. To accommodate, you tilted your head up and away—

Only to swear into negative space as he very much returned the favor from earlier and began carefully sucking the world’s biggest hickeys into the skin of your neck. Breaths came harsh and choppy as the expanse of his glossa, hot and spit-slick, laved over the gentle bites he worried into your skin with his denta. 

“Ah, Mirage, Mirage,” you breathed; every mention of his name spilling from your bruised lips made his circuitry heat just a little more. It was so much all at once — his servos were so broad that their expanse covered huge swaths of skin at once, and his mouth on such a sensitive part of your anatomy wasn’t helping either. Your hands clawed for purchase against his helm and the back of his neck. One palm flattened as much as it could on the back of his head, trying with all of your laughable human strength to bring him as close as possible. The other ended up cradling the side of his head, your thumb brushing over the audial disk there. With no small amount of wonder, you watched the plates of his back ruffle at your touch.

Mirage wasn’t trying to be weird, but he could die happy so long as he had the taste of your skin still registering on his glossa. It was more addictive than any high-grade he’d had back home by leagues. That human flavor of salt and skin and some kind of sweetness had his processors thrumming at maximum capacity; you made his mouth flood with lubricant, a fact you could corroborate by the amount that spilled over your bare sternum. The feeling of his own spit sliding down your front between your bruised breasts made the muscles of your abdomen twitch. Fingers shaped like claws now, you pressed weak kisses against the smooth curves of his helm wherever you could reach.

Your jeans were just getting in the way at this point. The minute shocks of pleasure you derived from grinding your clit against the inseam were just that — minute. You needed something more now or you were going to get frustrated, and you’d dealt with enough sexual frustration over the past weeks to be very sick of that feeling.

“Oh, fuck, okay— Mirage,” you said breathlessly, giving him a light tap on the side of his helm to get his attention. Reluctantly, he pulled away from your chest, optics dimmed with pleasure. They cycled once and returned to their full brightness as he cleared the fog of arousal — barely — away from his processors.

“All systems go, sugar?” Static hissed underneath his words.

You tried and failed to stifle a snort of a laugh. “Corny ass,” you mumbled, although you were absolutely close enough for his audial sensors to pick up on it. He made a sound of indignation, but you pushed forward regardless. “I, um, I need to get these off.” Hooking your thumbs in the waistband of your jeans to emphasize your point, you glanced up at his optics again.

Blankness for a second. Then it registered. “Oh, right, right, of course, haha! You, uh, want help? Or you got it?”

“I think I can manage taking my pants off,” you laughed. “Just— let me sit on like— the top of your chest, there we go,” you instructed, and the hand under your ass pushed you up until you were turned around and seated on the lip of the top of his chassis. For a second, you wrestled with the denim — still not fully dried — but you managed to kick both your jeans and your shoes off. They were thrown somewhere in the direction of the door. God, you were so glad you locked it.

Underwear went next. There was a beat of hesitation — for what, you weren’t sure — but like you’d done so often as of late, you just ignored your trepidation and worked the elastic down your legs. A laugh barked out of you when you lifted the fabric up and saw the downright ridiculous wet spot that stained the gusset.

“Jesus Christ, look what you did to me,” you said with a faux accusatory tone, holding your panties out for Mirage to inspect. Two digits delicately took them from you; he held them up to his face, so close that it made you blush from sheer embarrassment.

“Wow. You weren’t kiddin’ ‘bout all the wet being in one spot, huh?” He examined them with no small amount of fascination, much to your mortification.

“Mirage! Put those down, oh my god,” you said, covering your mouth with a choked noise.

“What, I can’t admire my work?”

“No you can not.”

Mirage pouted at your denial, and mumbled something about you being no fun, but he still lifted you off his chassis regardless. Like he was helpless to your draw, he pulled you in for another kiss, though he couldn’t stop his mouth from wandering. Down, down, down, until his nose was nestled in your chest and he spoke into the soft flesh of your stomach. Shaky ex-vents tickled the damp skin there.

“Shit, baby, tastes so good,” he mumbled, and you were impressed by his ability to sound completely sex-drunk without even having done anything yet.

Your hips rolled against nothing; they bumped into his neck cabling and the top of his chassis fruitlessly, and a noise of frustration eked out of you. Mirage seemed to get the memo and pulled you away. Your body was brought down until your ass was sat firmly on his hips — his interface panel nestled right in front of your dripping cunt — and your back was leaned up against the flat support of his thighs; his knees were tucked up and his pedes placed firm and flat on the floor to give you the most stability. Fumbling for a second before you found somewhere to place your own feet, the enormity and absurdity of the situation brought more of those breathless giggles to your mouth that seized your chest and shook your shoulders.

Toootally breaking Hynek’s scale here. So beyond abduction. Way beyond abduction.

A few careful digits slipped around your knee, wormed their way between your legs. “Can I—“ 

Your thighs fell open without a word.

What had made you fall for Mirage the hardest was his motormouth. He never stopped talking; he always had something stupid to add, something to pitch in with, some silly joke to crack. There was a lightness he teased out of you that even you didn’t expect. But now? Now, for once, he was speechless. It made uncharacteristic shyness flare in your gut and heat your face as he studied your very bare, very human form with slightly parted lips and enormous optics.

His body caught up before his mouth did. The servo on your knee slid over it until it gripped your bare thigh; he watched the flesh shift back and forth under his touch with no small amount of fascination.

“Is it— it’s okay?” Your voice sounded very small. It was a special kind of insecurity to be faced with.

“Oh, yeah, it’s okay. It’s cool, you’re just— just different. A lot different.” He jiggled your thigh again playfully.

“Good kind of different though, right?”

“Very good.” To punctuate it, his engine snarled again, seemingly in response to the drool of your cunt on the hot metal of his interface panel. “Primus, you look good, babe. Shit.”

Ego boost! You smiled. Any other partner — any person — and this would be too much, this position too unflattering, your everything too open… With Mirage, though, it just felt like it always did. Easy.

One of your hands rested atop the servo still holding onto the meat of your thigh. The other slid down over your shining chest, passed over your stomach and pubic mound, and brushed past wiry hair, shiny with slick, in order to slide a finger up your folds. A whine ripped its way out of you at direct contact with your clit after mere heavy petting, and you couldn’t stop yourself from drawing tight circles with your fingers and twitching your hips forward to eke out more of that delicious pressure.

The servo on your thigh dug into your skin. Mirage’s vents became far heavier at the open display of your arousal; it has always been him vying for your attention. Now that it was the other way around, he wasn’t sure if he could handle it. Transfluid was seeping between the seams of his interface panel, joining your own fluids in a shiny pool that sent sparks up his struts. He made you like this, made you so wet you dripped, made your clit swollen enough to be visible, made your cunt tight with heat and Primus, he needed you on his spike so bad, he thought he might die without it.

He verbalized these thoughts with an unintelligible noise of adoration.

It was enough encouragement for you to slide down from your clit and venture two fingers into yourself. Zero friction. They glided. Christ, when was the last time you were this wet? You’d slept with a handful of people, especially in your first couple years of college, but you’d never been soaked like this. Mirage’s cooling fans choked at the sight of your fingers vanishing into you. His thumb dug into the crease of your thigh and hip as he leaned just a little closer to watch.

Very little time passed before it devolved into your fingers working inside your walls, crooking against that one spot that made your breath hitch and hips jump. Mindlessly, you ground against your palm, catching your clit on the heel of your hand with a sweet moan that nearly shorted out his processors. He had to hear that again. Without thinking, he moved his servo over, resting the digits on your lower stomach and gently, gently nudging the heel of your hand out of the way to replace it with his thumb.

“Ah!” spilled from your lips at the insistent, broad pressure of his thumb, and your hips jerked against it, working your fingers that much deeper. Tears pricked at your eyes from pure sensation. “Mirage, mmm, just— just rub, up and down— or circles, just move, I don’t ca—are,” you floundered, the last word breaking as he did as he was told, carefully sliding his thumb up and down on the bead of your clit and sending twinges of searing pleasure up your spine.

You found quickly that just your fingers weren’t enough. Not when the reminder of his servo lay heavily on your lower stomach, tips of his digits digging into the soft fat there insistently. Although you were loath to part with your hand, you pulled your fingers out with a sigh. Mirage froze, optics flicking to your shiny hand as you spread your fingers, examining the strings of fluid that connected them with a far-off feeling of pride.

“Sugar, you’re killin’ me here,” he groaned, and you saw, for one endearing second, a puff of actual steam rise from the vents near his shoulders as he ex-vented harshly.

“Okay, well, here,” you said, unable to come up with anything clever with the purr of arousal in your cunt fanned by the heat of his interface plate and consistent, maddening rumble of his engine. Your hand, still shiny and wet with your fluids, grasped the top of his servo and gently pushed it downwards, until the tips of his digits rested against your drooling entrance. To fight the whimper that threatened to claw its way out of your throat, you nearly chewed a gash into the inside of your cheek. A gasp of an in-vent jolted his frame in awe.

“You sure? I mean— it’s cool?” His flustered stammering was so damn endearing; supreme affection for him swelled in your chest. 

“I’m sure. Just— just go slow.” His adoration was fueling your bravery. You knew he wouldn’t hurt you; if he did, it would never be intentional, and it would never be something he couldn’t fix.

He paused for a second before remembering the position of your own hand and flipping his servo so it was palm side up; you dragged a large enough breath in to balloon your lungs fully at the sight. Anticipation danced in the burn of your spread thighs. For a few seconds, it was just exploration; his digits slid over your silky folds, collecting the gathered slick with minute trembles. One delicious slide all the way up from entrance to clit had you gasping. Mirage silently thanked Primus above that your whole set-up was similar enough to his valve to know at least some of his way around it. It was just hotter. Wetter. Softer. So much softer.

“‘Raj, just— fuuuck,” you groaned out, your head rolling back as the tip of one digit sank into you, soon followed by the rest as it slid all the way to the base. Stars flickered behind your eyelids. The width matched the two fingers put together you’d just pulled out of yourself, though the texture was so wildly different to anything you’d ever put up there that it made your brain stutter for several moments as your nerve endings processed the feeling. The individual ridges and articulations of his knuckles dragged against the silk of your walls in a way that pulled the breath right out of you; your chest rose and fell rapidly with shallow breaths as your thighs twitched.

You were a mess. Mirage was in love. “Holy shit, baby, I get you this bad?” It was only partly teasing. “l— fuck, a second one good?”

“Good, yes, please.”

All thoughts were wiped clean from the forefront of your brain with the addition of a second digit. Slick noises and the sound of dripping fluids landing on metal and concrete filled your ears over the steadily climbing racket that Mirage’s entire body was making — his cooling fans competed with his engine to make the most noise, over top of the typical whirs and clicks that came with his motion. You couldn’t look, could only feel with your eyes squeezed shut as Mirage pumped both digits in and out, in and out, in and out. One arm was thrown up behind you, hooking loosely around his knee to ground you somewhere. The other was occupied: your hand clutched his wrist like a lifeline, white-knuckling it even as your sweaty palm slipped over the metal cuff. When his thumb returned to your clit, swirling clumsy but eager circles on top of it, that only contributed to the tight, hot coil building in your gut.

Mirage had half a mind to pop his interface panel right then and service himself, because the sight of you, shining with sweat and slick with his spit as you rode his digits, was almost too much to bear. The plush folds of your cunt, tight with arousal, were so soft against the hard planes of metal that comprised his servos; the contrast was short-circuiting him. Under his paneling, his spike was already pressurized. Had been for what felt like hours. Your ass was beginning to slide back and forth just a little due to the transfluid collecting underneath you; the rippling motion of your flesh was driving him insane. As were your walls, Primus, your walls that sucked greedily around his digits as they glided in and out of the tight ring of muscle that made up your entrance.

Your name left his lips in a groan that was an octave too high to be suave. The thought of your cunt clamping down on his spike — so soft, so hot, so wet — like it was doing on his digit had his hips rolling against nothing, working fruitlessly for friction they weren’t getting.

Sweat collected wherever skin touched skin. Condensation fogged wherever skin touched metal. The combination of his digits stretching you, curling in you when he realized what a dramatic reaction it incurred, and his thumb working your clit was getting to be too much. Heartbeat roaring in your ears like the rain outside, you clawed a grip into a seam in his leg and jerked your hips against his servo with breathy noises and gasps that you certainly wouldn’t be proud of later. For now, though, all it did was fuel Mirage’s ego and go straight to his spike.

Almost there. You were almost there, grinding your way towards it, sweat beading on your hot skin—

He pulled out. He pulled his digits out. A keen tore out of you at the loss of feeling, tears springing to your eyes as the hot edge you were so fucking close to fell away, your hips working unconsciously against a servo no longer there. With a gasp of a breath, you wrenched your eyes open, blinking away the collected tears and nearly baring your teeth at the bot beneath you — until you saw what he was doing.

In utter astonishment, you watched as the digits that were just inside you slid into his mouth, peeks of his glossa flashing as it worked them clean.

“Oh fuck,” you said before you could stop yourself. One of your hands slapped over your mouth; you tasted sweat and metal. His optics slid to you, lidded and cycling frantically as he processed your taste. A harsh ex-vent slumped his shoulders — the servo not preoccupied with his mouth clutched your hip like you were something precious.

“Sugar,” he breathed, static grating on the word. “Fuck, c’mere.”

Servos hefted you up, and you clutched onto them out of instinct as he helped you up to his face. Without thinking, you lunged forward to kiss, your tongue seeking out his glossa and tasting yourself with a resurging thrum of arousal. He cut it short, though, ignoring your protests as he cupped your ass in one servo and held you aloft. 

For a second, you stared at him in confusion. “What are you—“ Then it hit you. “Oh.” Your heart rate skyrocketed.

The grin stretching his faceplates was downright devious. “Hang onto something, wouldja? Not that you’re gonna fall. Just want you to enjoy the ride.” A short, heady chuckle rounded out his words.

“You’re insane— oh!” Your lighthearted scold was immediately interrupted by the press of your hips against his face and the slide of his slick glossa over the entirety of your sex. “Oh my fuck!” sobbed out of you as your upper body jackknifed over his helm. One arm curled around it with clawing fingers; the other slammed, palm flat, against the concrete wall.

A groan of satisfaction rumbled into your cunt as the taste of salt and sweat and girl bloomed on his glossa — just like earlier but so much stronger now. The proud line of his nose bumped your clit for a second before his glossa followed, narrowing so he could flick at it experimentally. Lubricant spilling from his mouth mixed with your own slick and ran down his chin; his cooling fans sputtered and spun weakly for a second as he pushed up further against your hips, malleable mesh drawing shapes between your clit and your hole.

Your fingernails scraped against the wall as your hips jerked of their own accord; the edge stolen from you earlier had very much returned, and the feeling of his faceplates sliding over the plush, soft skin of your inner thighs was doing something terrible to you.

“Mirage, ah, ah— I’m— fuck, fuck!” Broken syllables and curses streamed from your lips as a substitute for real words. When he closed his lips around your clit and sucked, it was over. It was so quick, embarrassingly quick. The orgasm that had been building suddenly snapped free and tore through you like a fucking hurricane, leaving spasming muscles and a wonderful endorphin afterglow in its wake. As you sobbed out his name, he slid two digits of his free servo back into you just to give you something to clamp down on, and it made tears spill down your burning cheeks from pure stimulus. Mirage drank you; he wanted nothing more than this, to swallow you down and leave your taste buzzing on his glossa like high-grade. Several thundering heartbeats later found you hunched over his helm as his glossa continued to work lazily against you, forcing twitches out of your thighs from pure overstimulation.

“Okay, okay,” you managed to croak, voice hoarse from weeping moans and boneless from what was probably one of the most insane finishes of your life. You tapped out weakly on the side of his helmet. Reluctantly, he pulled your pussy away from his face and cradled you in both servos, one noticeably damper than the other, in front of him.

His chin was shiny with you, his grin wide and completely self satisfied, and his optics dimmed with pleasure. If you were being honest, he’d never looked better, but in your frazzled state you weren’t sure if you had the capacity to string together enough words to form a compliment.

“I gotta say, compliments to the chef,” he hummed, and you stared at him, words not processing.

“Did you seriously— you just gave me head and that’s what you’re gonna say?”

“Uhh, yeah, babe. And I meant it.”

A genuine laugh shook you. “Oh my god. Ohhh my god. Okay. Well, put me back down there, you corny fuck,” you said with a gesture back at his hips.

“Oooh, keep sayin’ that. I’ll start thinkin’ you mean it.” Your body, errant trembles still running through it, was set carefully down back near its original position. This time, you sat in something closer to a straddle, back straight instead of leaning.

The garage air had gone from temperate and warm to fucking scorching. Outside, the rain droned on, occasional rumbles of thunder sounding so far away that they may as well have not been real. Your entire world had been compressed down to one point — a gravitational singularity in this garage, crushing space and time down until only bricks and concrete stood between you and the oblivion outside. All you knew was living metal and Mirage’s voice, trembling with excitement and fuzzy with static, and that was all you wanted to know. His chassis was making so much noise that you probably, under any other circumstance, would have been concerned; if he blew a gasket fucking you, though, you would wear that with pride.

Pure adoration reflected right back at you from his optics as his servos settled on your hips, his thumbs stroking your slick skin. Any concerns he had about Prime’s reaction to you, or to this — well, maybe not to this specifically, but to the both of you being together — were completely null and void in your presence; the reality of your soft weight in his lap was enough to short out his circuits.

Your hands slid down from the cooling fan in his abdomen spinning at maximum speed towards his soaked interface panel; glancing up at him demurely through your lashes, you spoke.

“You gonna let me return the favor?”

“Huh?” He broke out of his reverie. “Oh, right, um— yeah. Yeah, please.”

A smile crawled over your face at the reminder that despite all the poetic words you could come up with in your head, Mirage was still, and always would be, Mirage. Dazed already, he ran the subroutines to open his interface panel. Machinery shifted with a few clicks, and there was a hiss and an outpour of steam as his spike swung up before you, clearly aching for some kind of touch.

You heard more plates shifting lower, too, and out of curiosity peeked downward; something slick glowed lower down, but the nervous shifting of Mirage’s hips and his closed thighs obscured it from view.

Probably better to just focus on what’s in front of you. Your eyes roamed the length of his array first, your mouth going dry just at the size of it. It was bigger than any toy you owned, anyone you’d slept with, and bigger than his digits, too. Still, though… what were humans if not persevering?

And flexible?

You wrapped a hand around it right below the tip, and a full shudder lanced up Mirage’s frame; it was so thick that there was still space between your fingers and thumb left over. Transfluid, milky in consistency but pearlescent pink in color, spilled from the flared head. Curiosity overtook you, and you swiped a thumb up to catch an errant bead of it as it trailed down the side. The fluid was semi-oily, and smelled… fairly innocuous. Metallic, sure, but that came with the territory.

The array itself was as impressive as it was pretty. Like everything else about Mirage, it was fancy, mostly chrome with blue striping up the sides that led to a fully blue head. The biomesh it was made of — similar to his glossa — gently throbbed with alien pulses as you stared at it. Oh, that was hot. Why was that so hot?

Exploration in full was rewarded with soft noises spilling unbidden from Mirage’s lips, his hips twitching uncontrollably as you carefully slid your hand down from the tip to the base in one fluid motion, feeling the transfluid slick under your fingers. “Mmph, I— ah,” he choked out through gritted denta as you observed him.

Oh. Oh. The realization of the power you held over the big mech made a special kind of arousal thrum through you. Another slow pump had his hips jerk up once and a servo clamp over his mouth.

“This was not included in your anatomy lesson,” you said pointedly, a cheshire grin on your face as you hovered dangerously close to his spike. It throbbed in your grip, working another bead of transfluid out of the tip.

“Oh shit, babe,” he groaned, rolling his helm back against the wall. “Uh— hands— hands-on learning?” he offered weakly, unable to focus on anything other than the soft, damp skin of your palm around his spike.

He made the mistake of looking down as you let spit drool out of your bruised lips and spill over his spike for additional lube, and he snapped his optics shut to avoid from a spontaneous overload right there. The noises he made as you slid your tongue over the head were pitiful.

“Fuck, baby, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hissed, spinal struts clicking as they arched. Primus, was he seriously about to overload in your mouth? Your lips closed around the head and sucked lightly, and he yelped. A servo shot out and carefully grabbed your shoulder, though the tremors running through his digits told you of the restraint he was barely employing. A string of spit and transfluid connected your mouth to his spike as you lifted your head, and he had to force himself to look away for a second with that same servo clutched over his mouth to keep steady. “‘m not gonna last like that, you— can we just—“

“Fuck?”

“Primus, yes.”

“Yeah, we can. I guess.” Despite the leap of excitement in your stomach, you rolled your eyes.

“Don’t even start with that, c’mon,” he said fondly, one servo supporting you as you lifted yourself above his spike and stared down at it with no small amount of trepidation.

It looked a little more manageable from above, but working with something the size of your forearm would cool anyone’s heels, even if there was slick drooling down your inner thighs. Mirage’s servos settled heavy on your hips and you braced yourself on first his knees behind you, then his wrists as you tilted your pelvis to align your entrance as best you could. You sank. The head pressed insistently against your hole. Relax. Relax. Relax.

A deep breath filled your lungs, then whooshed out, deflating your shoulders. Unable to help himself, Mirage inched one of his servos over and ran his thumb through your folds, rolling over your clit and jolting your hips enough to slip the head inside. A long sigh of  “Fuuuuck.” was all that managed to come out of your mouth, your toes curling at the stretch and then the pop of the flared head sliding past your entrance.

Mirage’s entire frame trembled. His vents became shallow and sharp, and the tips of his digits clamped onto the soft meat of your hips desperately as the sensors on his spike reckoned with the realization of just how wet and warm humans really were. “Babe, babe, babe, shit,” he stammered out. “That’s— um, fuck, that’s good!” A weak laugh escaped him as his chin sank down to his chassis, cooling fans hiccuping from stress.

“Hold on, just hold on, I can… shit.” Sweat-dampened palms slid off his wrists for a second before you resituated yourself and leaned back a little, letting your upper back rest against his tucked up thighs. Whatever you were doing worked, because you sank further, and you thanked whatever god was listening that you’d already finished once, making your body quite boneless and that much easier to maneuver.

Mirage, on the other hand, was as taut as a fucking bowstring, made helpless to his own pleasure and completely powerless to you. His optics first scrunched shut, unable to look at you for fear of overloading at the sight of you finally on his spike; then they flew open at the realization that he wanted this burned into his visual processors forever.

Your skin shone with sweat and lubricant; rivulets trailed down your body like a visual pointer to your slick sex, nestled within wiry hair and stretching so beautifully around his spike that it tore an honest-to-Primus whimper out of his vocal synthesizer.

“Mirage, I need you to— mmnh, fuck, I need you to just touch— please,” you gasped, his spike punching the air right out of your lungs. Although your words were broken, he seemed to get the memo, and despite his minute tremors, brought his thumb back to your clit and pressed down. Just the surface area alone made you sigh and roll your head back in pleasure, and it loosened you enough to take him right up until the head nestled against your cervix and your ass brushed his hip plating. There was maybe an inch or two left, but you felt immense pride at managing to work most of his spike in — and immense pleasure, too. If he moved his thumb at all, you were done; you were so fucking full you could barely breathe, and you felt the slow, rhythmic pulses of his biomesh throb through you.

Mirage had never been one for restraint. He did things all-in, one-hundred-and-ten percent, all with a flourish to top it off; the feeling of the hot silk of your walls flexing around his spike just sitting there was enough to quite literally kill his cooling fans via a micro-short in an attempt to divert more power towards keeping his hips still. Senseless praises streamed from his lips, voice whining and roughened by static fuzz. “Yes, yes, yes, sugar, Primus, that’s good— feels so good, please, can I move, please,” he fumbled, jaw slack and optics flickering with the power surges cascading throughout his frame.

“Just— let me start,” was your response, tears pricking at your eyes, and although Mirage groaned pitifully underneath you, he listened.

You had a fair amount of experience with riding toys, and you knew what felt good; the lightbulb above your head became apparent. A shift in your position pushed further weight to the back so that the ridges and nodes of his spike pressed insistently toward the front — though, to be fair, it pressed everywhere — and oh, fuck, right there. Now shoved against that sweet spot inside you, the pleasure teetered on the edge of pain, and you dragged yourself up with a vicious grip on the seams of his thighs behind you. Mirage whined and shifted his hips just slightly; it was enough to pull a moan from your lips as you slid upward. Thick, sluggish droplets of slick swirled with transfluid oozed down his spike. He watched — it was all he could do — with an open mouth and rapidly cycling optics.

The flared head caught against your entrance; a spike (ha!) of pleasure lanced through you. “Okay, now, you can— help me, please,” you stammered out, dizzy with pleasure already and feeling a loopy kind of open-mouthed grin situate itself on your face. 

Your words were all he needed. Although he desperately, desperately wanted to snap his hips up and chase the vice-grip of your slick walls, he’d rather take on Megatron alone with his servos tied behind his back than risk hurting you. Especially while interfacing. He did not want to have to explain that to anyone.

Thumb slowly working your clit, his servos gripped your hips just a little too tight and assisted; you could feel the tremors lancing up and down his arms as he helped you establish a rhythm. At a word, the dam would break, but for now, you maintained tenuous control over the mech and over yourself as you rode him with his help.

Well. Rode was a strong word for it; he all but dragged you up and down the length of his spike, earning each of you luxurious groans from the other, but your quivering thigh muscles assisted as best they could. Heat surged through your body at the drag of his nodes against your walls, and you realized with a hot flash that Mirage was going to fucking ruin you for anybody else, and you liked that. Which was good, because he could have stayed buried in your cunt for the rest of his life and offlined happily just like that.

It was good. It was really good. But even the overwhelming stretch wasn’t enough. Just like earlier — it seemed like light years away now — when you’d still had pants on and hadn’t been completely lost to metal-on-skin debauchery, the grind of your clit on the seam of your jeans had been good, but not enough. Your fingers clawed at his wrists. The burn of your thighs from exertion seared through you, mixing with the jolts of pleasure from your clit to create some new, terrible monster that had you twitching with shameless ecstasy.

“Mirage, Mirage,” you croaked, as he slid you down his spike again and pushed it into your lungs, “I’m— fuck, please, faster, please, please.” In any other scenario, your begging would have immensely embarrassed you; now, though, it seemed like the only viable option to get him to fuck you like you needed him to.

“Shit, baby,” he hissed, and you gasped as he kept moving you, legs jerking uselessly. “You— fuck, you sure?”

“Yes, please, just— oh, fuck!” The cry — and the air in your lungs — was knocked right out of you by a single desperate snap of his hips upward, his spike driven straight home. Your entire upper body crumpled forward, kept upright only by a tenuous grip on his wrists, and then he really started fucking you, and you were gone.

His cooling fans surged back to life as he slammed into you, power no longer diverted towards holding the actuators of his hips back. No, now he was fucking jackhammering into you, and you were barely moving as his spike pistoned in and out of you, slick drooling from your cunt. Like he remembered himself, his thumb began to work furiously against your clit, and you rewarded him with a gasp and more than a few uncontrollable moans of his name, which only served to fuel him more.

Not like he was being quiet, either. You were glad that the building was solid brick and the rain continued to pour outside, because the amount of noise coming from his chassis and spilling from his lips was worrying. Praises and broken mentions of your name streamed from him; he tossed his helm back against the wall with his optics squeezed shut to keep from overloading prematurely. It was too much— it was way too fucking much. Your poor overworked cunt was nearly bruised with sensitivity, barely able to keep up with the stretch of his spike as the nodes pulsing along it raked that sweet spot inside of you mercilessly. Neither of you were going to last long; not your fragile human body nor his torqued-up frame could handle much more of this.

Every sharp thrust paired with the frantic, messy circles he pressed into your clit brought you viciously closer and spilled tears from your eyes. All you could really do was hold on as Mirage wrung pleasure from both your body and his. Impossibly, his thumb worked faster, his pace got even more brutal, and you were almost seizing from pleasure as your nerve endings were frayed raw. That peak was building in your gut, that familiar tight coil of heat, for the second time that night, and you knew it was going to completely destroy you, and you wanted it to.

Without warning, Mirage spread his knees apart, slammed his pedes flat on the floor, and thrusted up. His spinal struts arched again to get his spike that much further inside of your yielding body, his overload imminent and warning signs flashing in his optics’ periphery. “Fuck, yes— yes, baby, yes, yes, ah, shit!” His frenzied whine rang in your ears as steam from his vents heated the air around you; the only thing that rang in your ears besides your thunderous heartbeat was the heady slap of skin against metal, everything slick with your combined fluids.

You responded in kind at the new angle with a cry of his name and some noises that resembled words, but the way he sheathed his spike inside you — fuck, was it all the way in? — and ground his thumb against your clit was too much— too much— you couldn’t—

You shattered. Doubling over from pleasure, you sobbed incoherently as your climax slammed into you. Pleasure crackled through your veins like lightning; a fog of pleasure dulled your senses until the only thing you could focus on was his spike pulsing in your cunt and his thumb still grinding against your clit. Tears pricked at your eyes, joining the ones already wetting your cheeks, as jolts of pleasure lanced up your spine. Maybe you moaned his name, maybe you didn’t. You couldn’t tell.

Mirage went soon after you, because the feeling of your walls clamping around his spike as if trying to suck him in impossibly further did him in instantly. His optics snapped open wide before slamming shut and he cried your name as the best overload of his life wracked his frame; the actuators of his hips trembled violently, along with his servos, as transfluid gushed into you and was immediately forced out by the pure lack of room inside your cunt. Engine snarling, cooling fans nearly spinning off their axles, he held your hips as flush to his as possible while the both of you rode out your respective climaxes, twitching around each other violently. Minute jerks of his hips attempted to work more transfluid inside of you. Brain still wiped blank with pleasure, all you could do was make soft noises and let the aftershocks spasm through you.

Consciousness eventually came back to you in gritty waves. Mirage had set your body down, leaned back against his thighs, his spike still seated within you but depressurizing slowly. Transfluid seeped out of your puffy folds, and you lifted a shaking hand to collect some of it and taste it. Metallic. Like you’d expected.

Enormous vents whooshed through his frame as he attempted to cool his chassis; coolant dripped from him, some of it turned to steam by the pure heat of his internal mechanisms. Body shaking and feeling very small and human, you stroked a thumb over his wrist where you held it, feeling both its ambient warmth and a surge of affection. And satisfaction.

You were absolutely going to feel this in the morning, holy shit. Thank God you didn’t have work tomorrow.

Mirage eventually came back down to earth, his optics cracking open and cycling a few times before they flared to their usual brightness. Lids heavy and a dopey grin on his face, he carefully lifted you off his spike — it slid out of you with a slick noise that made you flush — and brought you up to face-level. With one servo, he held you tight against his torso; he planted the other flat on the floor and resituated his hips so he could slump down further against the wall, his entire frame lax.

Self-satisfaction beamed at you from his faceplates. “Oh, that was good, huh?”

You scoffed, too tired to get riled up at his teasing; you knew he was feeling the same as you. “Yeah, pretty good. I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk tomorrow, to be totally honest.” An exhausted laugh left you.

“Gonna count that as a win.”

“You… do whatever you want.” You waved a limp hand at him dismissively, letting the rise and fall of his chassis with his vents rock you.

“Well, then, I wanna do this,” he purred, and brought you in for a kiss that communicated all his smug affection without any of his stupid jokes. You returned it gratefully, a smile on each of your mouths as you basked in that pleasant post-sex glow.

The rain still droned outside. A boom of thunder rolled through the building; the lights flickered. Both you and Mirage glanced upward. His optics slid back down to you first.

“You thinkin’ about going anywhere in this weather?” he asked, raising a brow ridge.

“I dunno, do I have a ride?”

“Nah,” he replied playfully, kissing you again, and you found that it could storm for the rest of your life, and you wouldn’t really care. So long as you had your favorite — yes, your favorite, not that you could ever admit around him — to keep you company.

Ohio Anti-Trans Laws (and what you can do about it!)

AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

Please educate yourself on the contents of Ohio House Bill 68 and other related Ohio Anti-Trans laws before giving into propaganda from either side. At first, I gave in to the propaganda without reading the bill itself; people told me the most outrageous and outlandish stuff. I've heard that it would: make people who have already medically transitioned de-transition, and just a lot of misinformation. These are not related to the bill, rather some other recent Ohio laws that will be detailed later.

I read the entirety of the bill, and, if I'm not mistaken, in summary, it will effectively do the following:

1. Not allow gender-affirming care to be legally given to minors in the state of Ohio, including puberty blockers and gender affirming therapy(continued care is allowed, but only if it was already started or the person is intersex)

2. Children in schools must stay in sports leagues of their biological sex.

The bill has some potentially redeeming ideas few and far between, but for a bill like this to be useful, they need to take into consideration the age of the child, mental health status, current hormone levels, and many more things that they do not have in the bill.

(Example for #1: The bill says that no minors will be able to get gender-affirming care or puberty blockers, with the reasoning that most minors “change their mind” about being trans as they get older. This statistic is factual but does not take into consideration specific ages, as it takes into account everyone under the age of 18. Teens, for example, especially the older that they are, are highly likely to “remain trans”, while people ages 0-12 are not, as they don't understand gender and sex, and may claim to not identify as their birth sex, not realizing fully what it means.

Example for #2: It may seem logical to vote for this because it keeps males claiming to be females from just saying that they are female and beating all the competition because of their biological advantages. However, it also excludes, for example, the trans girl who has been on hormones for 7 years and now has the same levels of testosterone an average cis girl or lower has, giving her no biological advantage. It does not consider that young children are nearly identical biologically. It also forces people with female on their birth certificates to stay in female leagues, despite them not having any biological advantage, which is the only reasoning given for this section, so it is very apparent this bill is directly targeting trans people for no reason other than hate. If the terms were very specific as to hormone levels and ages, such as what I have outlined, I could understand why people would vote for it.) Simply put, in its current state, House Bill 68 is not specific enough to do more good for the cis community than harm it will do to the trans community.

In addition to this giant bill being passed and taking effect on February 15th, Ohio governor Mike DeWine signed an executive bill on January 5th, preventing any transgender surgeries for anyone under the age of 18, no exceptions, taking effect immediately. He also proposed a series of outlines for more Anti-Trans laws to come soon. He wants to force transgender people to “out” themselves to the government so they can keep detailed information on trans people for further study. No thanks. He also made a series of declarations of how he wanted it to be MUCH more difficult for *adults* to get gender-affirming care as well, requiring them to see a bioethicist before medically transitioning. How many bioethicist do you know? None? Well, that's because they're incredibly rare. There’s two offices in Cleveland, one at Ohio State, and ZERO anywhere else in Ohio, so it would be next to impossible to start or continue medically transitioning, even as an adult.

We MUST oppose House Bill 68 and encourage others to join us or it has the potential to snowball into a series of anti-trans laws in Ohio and across the country, or perhaps even a genocide (if you study the ten stages of genocide, trans people would be on stage 5 or 6, halfway or more there if this bill and DeWine’s proposals passed.)

I don't typically make it an issue of mine to pursue political activism or politics in general, but this law will directly impact many people I hold dear, with some even already making plans to leave Ohio, while being decided by people it does not impact at all.

House Bill 68 and similar laws are available for public comment until Feb 5th so anything to oppose it has to be done NOW before it is too late. We must inform the government that we the people do not approve of the bill, and why it is objectionable. This is similar to a case in Arkansas that was nullified because the bill could be seen as an offense against the 14th Amendment, under the Equal Protections clause, so hopefully the same thing will also happen to the situation here.

Some things you can do:

1. Directly contact the governor's office (About the executive order and his proposals for bioethicists to be involved in the transition process) https://governor.ohio.gov/contact

2. Leave a message for the governor: [(614) 644-4357]

3. Send a message to Ohio senators through the American Civil Liberties Union https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-ohio-senators-stop-hb-68-veto-override

4. Email the Ohio Department of Health (ODHrules@odh.ohio.gov)

5. Email the Department of Mental Health and Addiction services (MH-SOT-rules@mha.ohio.gov), with “Comments on Gender Transition Care Rules” in the subject. These rules are about making sure trans people with mental health issues do not have access to gender affirming help.

6. Fill out this form of the Ohio Department of Health https://odh.ohio.gov/about-us/offices-bureaus-and-departments/ogc/resources/feedback-survey putting “rules 3701-3-17, 3701-59-07, 3701-83-61” in the field and explain some of the following: how you don't think Ohio should force medical professionals and therapists to keep detailed information on all trans patients about gender “incongruencies” with the patient’s birth sex (rule 3701-3-17), explain how trans people shouldn't have ludicrous restrictions on medically transitioning, (like making them go to a bioethicist to even start/continue hormones on an ADULT, much less surgery) anyone under 21 must additionally undergo mental-health screening before accessing care (with the implication that if you are mentally unwell in any form you will not receive care, and many trans people already have depression/anxiety stemming from how society views and treats them) (rule 3701-59-07 and 3701-83-61)

7. Stay updated to the current status of this bill, the executive order, and efforts against them. For more information, click here https://jessk.org/blog/things-you-can-do-right-now-for-ohio

Thanks for sticking up for peoples' rights, and have a nice day ;)

TLDR: Ohio House Bill 68 bans all gender affirming healthcare for minors, including therapy, and trans people aren't allowed to participate in sports.

A series of other Anti-Trans laws, along with an executive order from the Ohio governor plan to make medically transitioning or getting gender affirming therapy, even continued services, impossible in Ohio for adults, as well as creating a detailed registry on anyone that is identified as trans.

Herbicide and Hospitals

Characters: Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape

Gender: Neutral

Genre: Fluff

Word count: 800

Summary: Something goes wrong when you make a potion, and the two take you to the Hospital Wing.

"Today we will create a potent Herbicide. Do not let one drop find its way to the Greenhouses. Watch closely," Professor Snape snapped.

You nodded, and collected your book and quill, making your way to his desk to take notes with Hermione as he added ingredients into the cauldron. "Now be very careful to not touch the sp- Potter! Don't mess with those bottles!"

At the end of the demonstration, the class returned to their seats. You start adding ingredients as the book instructs you to, and as you grab one of the ingredients, it pokes into your hand, and you wince. You glance at the injury, blood welling up slightly, and decide that it isn't bad enough to stop working. You hadn't realized how sharp those were, but the bleeding was so minimal, it was nothing to be concerned about. You refocus on the potion, forgetting the sting as you dump ingredients in, mixing it into a foul smelling concoction.

The room started to heat up, with all the cauldrons boiling quickly. Was your cauldron on too high? It seemed very hot. You checked the flame. Normal. The heat spread across your arms like a blaze, going up to your head. You took your school issued robes off, leaving you in your shirt with a tie and your skirt/shorts.

"Just me, or is it getting hot in here?" You tug your shirt collar as you whisper to your nearest neighbor, who happens to be Draco Malfoy.

"Just you." You felt his gaze sweep your robeless body, and the burning implications but you couldn't pay attention. You felt… unsteady. Disoriented.

"Professor?" You called out, concerned. You felt yourself sway, unable to hold yourself up, and he caught you as you fell, stopping you from hitting your head on the solid stone ground. "Y/N, are you quite all right?" Seeing no response from you, he turned to the person next to you.

"Malfoy, what happened?" Snape demanded. Your eyes drifted shut, unable to think. A violent tremor went through your body, and you went limp. The students turned, wondering what happened. He held you, and picked you up bridal style. He overheard Harry talking to Granger about how Draco must have poisoned you, and he just rolled his eyes as he walked out of the classroom. He didn't have time to deal with that now.

"Malfoy, with me. We're taking them to the Hospital Wing, and quickly."

Draco nodded, rushing out of the classroom to follow. Every couple steps, Professor Severus Snape would check your pulse, breathing and temperature.

"I didn't see much. They just told me that they were feeling hot, called you over, and fainted."

"'Feeling… hot?'" Snape questioned.

"Warm, professor. That's what they meant, I'm sure, given the situation." Draco looked over your body, both concerned and wishing that he was the one holding you like his Professor. Wasn't Snape's left hand a little too close to your chest, and his right a little too close to your skirt? He never thought he'd be jealous of his favorite teacher.

Draco's gaze traveled along your body, your tie dangling haphazardly straight down. As his eyes took in every inch of your body, he saw a pinprick of blood on your finger.

Snape quickened his pace, and Draco held your finger up to see it closer. "Professor, I think they pricked their finger on something, see?"

"The lionfish spine!" He groaned "I forgot to warn this class, didn't I? Potter interrupted me! Stupid!" Snape growled.

Malfoy had never seen his professor make a mistake before. He glanced away. It was none of his business if his professor beat himself up over it. Still, Draco felt a pang of regret. He had known the spines we're dangerous, and he had been sitting right next to you! He could easily have stopped you. If only he was watching you more closely, instead of only sneaking small glances at you.

Draco was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn't realize where he was until he arrived at the destination.

Snape placed you on one of the nearby beds.

"Great heavens!" Madam said, upon seeing Draco's unconscious friend.

"Whatever did you do to them?"

"They were jabbed by a lionfish spine, poison, on this finger." Snape said, tapping your finger, and getting out of the way of the healer. He turned to look at his other student.

"Malfoy, you are to stay here with them, until they wake up, Is that understood?" Draco nodded, not being a brat for once. Snape's gaze softened. Y/N would be safe. "Ten points to Slytherin," he said, turning, making his way back to the classroom.

Hopefully none of his other students were dimwitted enough to stab themselves on an obviously sharp, dangerous, magical ingredient.

Hey guys welcome to my blog. It's going to be mostly me thirsting over Marvel and Harry Potter characters, aka writing smutty x reader fanfics. Lmk if you want tagged in anything, I take requests too.

✨ My Favorites ✨

-Severus Snape

-Draco Malfoy

-Loki

-Steven Grant

-Doctor Strange

♡~Masterlist~ ♡

~✿｡☆~✧✿~｡✧~✿~｡☆~☆｡✿~☆｡✿｡~✧~

Fics:

• Sweet and Sour Chapter 1 You are forced to ask Draco, of all people, to become your tutor. He agrees, but asks for a high price that compromises everything you strive for.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 2 Things between you and Draco take a drastic and spicy turn in the days before your study date.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 3 Malfoy's bitchy personality undertakes an odd change; maybe it's because you are destined to fuck him later today.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 4 You're losing control today, hardly able to make it through your study session in desperate need for Draco; he feels the same.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 5 Draco's payment arrives; you spend a steamy sex-filled night with the Slytherin Prince.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 6 Coming down from your first night with Draco, you can't keep your hands off each other, enjoying a comical love feast in the middle of the night.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 7 Waking up blissfully in Draco's arms, you are relishing your new relationship. How will your crazy friends react when they see you walking down the hall from his room?

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 8 Snuggling Draco on the Quidditch field after practice, he nips you off to a corner of the grounds to reveal yet another kinky side of himself.

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• Sweet and Sour Chapter 9 When things go sour between you and Harry after a failed attempt to tell him of your relationship with Draco, Draco proves to have more heart than the Gryffindor

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One Shots:

• Whimsical Comedic Insane Draco x Reader Smut

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• POV DomReader x SubDraco Smut drabble

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Imagines:

• Hot and Bothered Draco (masturbation)

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• Sex on the Hogwarts Express (exhibitionism)

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• Sex with Draco

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• Giving Draco a blowjob (rough)

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• Draco lusting over you in Class (masturbation)

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• Draco's ecstatic about you riding him

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• Draco getting aroused by your singing and dancing

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• Draco getting turned on by you being you

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• Draco wanting you in Class

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• Jealous Draco in Class (fluff)

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• Sexual invitation at the Malfoy's Dinner

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• Intense sex with Draco

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• Hogwarts Boys masturbation habits

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• Draco in love with Reader

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• Young Draco in love with Reader (fluff)

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• Draco noncon (dark)

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• Draco jerks off to you in the mornings

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• Draco and Theo are in love with you

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• Daddy Draco

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• Through the years with Draco

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• Yandere Draco kisses you against your will

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"Silly" things:

• Did I just wank to Draco at 3 a.m. ?

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• House to yourself?

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• Uncircumcised Draco~

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• Draco's Boggart (purely silly)

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• A one-liner to cheer you up~

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• Draco's b-day~

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• Theo wants you ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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• Draco's advice when sad

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• His walk

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Last updated July 29th 2022

Masterlist

My requests are open & message me to be added to my tag list!

My AO3

Oneshots:

The First Time (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

My first ever fic! I don't have a summary for it but its a mixture of smut and fluff

The Lords Prayer (18+ Priest!Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Loki wants you to worship him and only him. Will you succumb to the gods persuasion?

Happy new year (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After traveling to Asgard Loki is determined to court you in a proper way. Will you convince him to break with tradition?

The Best Little Pet (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Loki loves his little pet, your willing to do anything for him. But are you willing to pleasure two Loki’s?

Welcome Home (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After being away for a while on a mission will Loki still remember your goodbye kiss?

Save The Last Dance For Me (18+ Tom Hiddleston x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After being rejected from a dance with your ex-boyfriend, will you accept Toms hand?

Kneel For Me (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Loki loves to be in control, will he give up his power and let you take the reins?

Open The Bifrost (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After falling in love with Loki from afar, you ask Heimdall to open the Bifrost. Will he unite you with your love?

It Was Enchanting To Meet You (18+ Loki x Princess!Reader, Smut)

After attending a celebration as princess of Alfheim you collide with Loki, will your families accept your new love?

Bad Dragon (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After Loki refuses to fuck you in his Jötun form you decide to take things into your own hands. Will you finally convince him?

Good Girl (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

As Loki’s little pet you’ll do anything to please him, will you be able to take your king like a good girl?

In My Carolina Mountain Home (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After Loki finds himself being hunted by the TVA he becomes trapped in the mountains with a beautiful mortal stranger. Will he reciprocate your feelings for him?

Baking And Breeding (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

While making a gingerbread house with Loki things get a little messy, will he help you clean up?

Read To Me (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

While living in the avengers complex you begin reading Loki fanfiction, what will he do when he finds out about your little obsession?

In Sickness & In Health (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Loki’s worst nightmare has come true, his love is ill. How will Loki react when the girl of his dreams comes home sick?

A Touch Of Mischeif (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

You had always tried to keep your relationship with Loki a secret. But with Loki’s mischievous nature, how long will it be before someone finds out?

Liquid Courage (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

In your tipsy haze you approach your teacher Loki. Will he reciprocate your drunken feelings?

Little Princess (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Growing up in a palace was always going to be unusual, but falling in love with your best friend, Prince Loki, was never something you expected. What will happen when you confess your love for him?

Goddess (18+ Loki x PlusSize!Fem!Reader, Smut)

After Loki hears of your insecurities surrounding your body, he is determined to show you just how beautiful you really are

Too Darn Hot (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

After your birth control runs out in Asgard, how long will it take for a little ‘accident’ to happen (idk my brains not working, this is an awful summary but I promise the fic is good)

Just Friends (18+ Tom Hiddleston x Fem!Reader, smut)

After attending a New Years party with your friends, how will you react to Toms confession of love?

Happy Birthday, Mr President (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, President Loki x Fem!Reader, smut)

After being pulled from your timeline and thrown into the void you never expected to fall for one man let alone two gods. Will your shy nature get the best of you, or will you tell them how you feel?

Mr Mischief (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, smut)

Working as a cam girl always has its challenges, but when you start your new job at Stark Industries you never expect to meet your biggest fan, Mr Mischief.

Master Laufeyson (18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, smut)

Diving head first into BDSM you decide to see someone more experienced for your first time. 

Two-Parters:

His Colours - Part 1 - Part 2

(18+ Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

As Tony Starks only daughter expectations are high. Will you abide by your fathers rules or will you fall for Loki?

Paging Doctor Laufeyson - Part 1 - Part 2

(18+ Therapist!Loki x Fem!Reader, Smut)

Your therapist Doctor Laufeyson had always been easy on the eye but sternly professional. Will he help you discover your darkest desires?

Hostage Part 1 (Loki x Fem!Reader)

Taking place after the battle in New York, you are a Shield agent sent to capture and return Loki to the avengers.

Here’s some of my favorite comic book Moon Knight moments

edit: It has come to my attention that some of these are fake but i dont care because they’re hilarious and very in character and make me love him more

edit 2: literally just enjoy the funny pictures.

curse-breaker [part 3/3]

summary: You're the Mystic Arts' best and brightest when it comes to breaking ancient curses, and Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme...well, he's the Mystic Arts' best when it comes to everything else. But when a normal day together at New York City's Sanctum Sanctorum is turned on its head by an invitation from Tony Stark himself to attend this year's Stark Industries Gala, you find that you need to clarify what, exactly, you and Stephen are to each other, and not just to the world at large.

pairing: Stephen Strange/Sorcerer!Reader

warnings: Literally 90% of this chapter is just smut. We've got us some magical mind-reading and mind sex, sex magic, face-sitting, edgeplay, P in V sex, creampie...I think that just about covers it! DNI and DNR if you're under 18!!

word count: 11.9k

a/n: Finally, the smut chapter! Let's jump right in! If you're looking for earlier chapters, though, you can find them here: [part 1 here] [part 2 here]

“So we’re looking for a picture of a guy with tentacles on his face.  Anything else you can remember?”  Stephen asked, magically flicking through the pages of his book quickly.

“Not really,” you sighed, waving your hand again and again to skim through your own book’s pages rapidly.

“Mm.  Well, we’ll find it eventually,” Stephen sighed.  “Though I am very tempted to just use the Eye of Agamotto to get through this in the next two minutes.”

“Pretty sure you’re supposed to save that for serious problems,” you remarked.

“Yeah, well, I can think of a lot of other things I’d seriously rather be doing right now,” Stephen grumbled.  You hummed in quiet agreement, but, to your relief, Stephen didn’t actually reach for the relic around his neck; as much as you wanted to be able to focus on him, too, neither of you needed for him to create the potential for alternate timelines or altered reality or any of the other things that could come from the wanton use of a magical item that could literally rewind and speed up time.

You and Stephen soon fell into your own headspaces, all of your attention on the task at hand.  For a long, long stretch of time, during which you made it through the first 300 pages of your book, there was nothing but the sound of the two of you breathing and the steady swish of paper as each page was turned.

Abruptly, the Cloak began moving beneath Stephen, jostling him around. 

“Hey, what’s—I’m reading!  I’m doing the right thing,” Stephen protested.  “What are you mad at me about now?”  But the Cloak, being unable to answer, simply continued to ripple and flutter, pushing Stephen up into a sitting position and pulling itself out from beneath him.

“I think he decided he was tired of being laid on,” you said with an amused chuckle as the Cloak went to hang himself up on a coathanger kept by the bed.

“He messed up my robes,” Stephen grumbled as he was dropped back on the bed, shifting his hips and trying to straighten out the layers of his Sorcerer Supreme attire, which was now rumpled underneath him.  “Oh, fuck it, I’m just going to put something more comfortable on,” he muttered after a moment when it became apparent that fixing his outfit was going to be more bother than it was worth.  He waved his hands, and you watched out of the corner of your eye as his deep blue robes turned into his favorite baby blue Columbia hoodie and a pair of dark grey sweatpants.

“Better?”  You asked, amused.

“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, already back to flipping through the book he was holding.  You turned your attention back to yours, parsing through as quickly as you could.  Within another couple hundred pages, though, you found your shoulder and neck getting a little stiff from how you were propped up on Stephen’s pillows.  You shifted your weight, trying to wiggle into a comfortable position.

You thought you had it figured out until a couple hundred pages later, when you once again had to adjust yourself.  A whole day of teaching curse-breaking plus a couple hours of hunching over that little table in the library had really left you achier than you’d expected.

“You’re distracting me,” Stephen voiced from beside you.  “Can’t you stop squirming?”  You rolled your eyes, glancing over at him.  He always looked so undeniably soft and cuddly in his sweats, and right now was no exception, no matter how prickly he was acting.

Suddenly, an idea came to you.

You picked yourself up and turned your whole body, laying your head down on Stephen’s lap and stretching your legs out across his bed. 

“What are you doing?”  Stephen asked; you could feel his thighs tense beneath you, and when you turned to answer him, you realized that he was frozen in place, his hands stilling where they’d been magically flipping through the book, as if he was completely unsure of what to do.

“Getting comfy, so I can stop distracting you,” you replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“This is more distracting,” Stephen said under his breath.

“Mm,” you hummed.  “It’s comfier for me, though, so….”

Stephen was silent for a moment before dropping his hands and relaxing some of the tension in his thighs.

“Is it really?”  He finally asked.

You made a content mm-hmm­ in agreement, and Stephen let out a somewhat resigned sigh in response, making no effort to move you or verbally remand you for your decision.

You smiled to yourself, turning your attention away from Stephen and beginning to flip through your book again.  The steady swish of paper above your head told you that Stephen was doing the same.

You were coming up on finishing up the first thousand pages of your book (officially halfway!) when you felt something tugging softly on your hair.  When you turned to see what was going on—had you gotten your hair caught under one of Stephen’s legs, somehow?—you were surprised to instead find Stephen’s fingers, shaking as they tentatively played with one of your locks.

“Is this all right?”  He said, his voice low and quiet as his fingers stilled under your gaze.

“Yeah.  Feels nice, actually,” you murmured, your eyes soft as you regarded him.

“Mm,” he hummed in response, letting his fingers begin to move again, twirling and brushing through your hair in unsteady, tentative movements.  As you both returned to your books, he gradually became more confident, letting his fingers card through more and more of your hair, alternating between running it between his digits and smoothing it down in gentle, slow strokes.  Soon, his fingers were even brushing up against your scalp, providing soothing stimulation as he ran his fingertips through the roots of your hair.

You leaned into his touch as he did so, allowing yourself to make a small mewl of pleasure.

“You like that?”  Stephen asked, and when you glanced up at him, you were surprised to once again see that same eagerness to have gotten the right answer that you’d seen earlier, when you were both working hunched over the table together.  His lips were slightly parted as he looked down at you, desire and fascination intermingling in his gaze.

You were suddenly extremely grateful that the Cloak had cockblocked the two of you.  This was so much better than if you’d just fucked each other.

“I do,” you breathed, fluttering your eyes closed and letting your lips part as Stephen ran his fingers along your scalp again just to see the effect it would have on him.  When you opened your eyes, you were greeted by the sight of his chest rising and falling just slightly faster and harder than usual, his pupils blown.

God, he was a gorgeous, gorgeous man.  You wanted to absolutely wreck him tonight.  You wanted to twist him around your little finger, to experience the depths of devotion he obviously had for you, to watch him shake and shudder beneath you while you praised him and pleased him in turn—

 “I was, um,” Stephen began, his lips still parted as he continued to regard you.  “I was wondering what you thought about red and blue as our colors.  For the gala,” he clarified.  “I know I mentioned it earlier, but now that you’re officially going with me….”

“You want me wearing your colors for all of Stark Industries and the Avengers to see, is that it, Doctor Strange?”  You asked knowingly, though not without keeping your voice soft and low and allowing a lazy smile to pull at your lips.

Stephen ran his fingers through your hair again as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I do,” he murmured.  “I really, really do.”

Your smile grew at his words, and you reached back with one hand, slipping it under Steven’s thigh and gently rubbing the firm flesh you found there.

“That can be arranged,” you agreed, turning back to look at your book before the needy look Stephen was just barely disguising drove you absolutely wild.  “Are you thinking of a blue suit for yourself, then?”

“Blue suit, white shirt, darker blue tie.  Black shoes.  And Cloak, of course,” he added,  “for the pop of red and the levitation powers.  And because I don’t really go anywhere without him anymore.”

You began flipping through your book again, smiling to yourself.  He hadn’t just considered this offhand today; he’d thought about it. Thoroughly.

“And what about me?”  You asked, unable to resist.  “Do you see me in a blue dress or a red dress?”

Stephen was silent for a moment, and even without looking at him, you could feel his eyes on you.

“I see you in whatever dress you want,” he finally answered carefully.

You smiled at this reply.  He was trying.

“That’s a good answer,” you admitted, continuing to gently work the firm flesh of the back of Stephen’s thigh.  “But really, Stephen.  You said earlier that you don’t see yourself at the Gala without me, so I’m curious: what do you see me in when I’m there in your mind?”

Stephen drew in a slow breath, turning page after page after page of his book as he exhaled slowly.

“I thought red and gold at first,” he finally said, the hand that was entwined in your hair running through it once more, then smoothing it down, then repeating itself again, “but then I realized that Stark would probably take that as some sign that you were a huge fan of his or something, so I had to throw that idea out the window.  The last thing I need is Tony thinking my date is there for him and not me.”

You laughed quietly in amusement; red and gold had seemed like it would be a good choice at the start of Stephen’s sentence, but you definitely saw how those colors would be reserved for the host of the gala himself.

 “Blue, then?”  You asked, though you were already sure of the answer.

“Blue.  Though I envision a little bit more of a royal blue than my suit or robes, to bring out your complexion and provide a little matching contrast between us,” he replied.

“That actually sounds like it might work.  We could match my dress to your tie,” you mused, continuing to flip through the pages of your book.  “How do you know that royal blue would bring out my complexion, though?” 

Stephen chuckled at this, grazing his fingers along your scalp in the most scandalously delicious way.

“I told you I remember things about you with crystal clarity, didn’t I?”  He murmured, and you actually felt a little heat rise up to your cheeks at this.

You’d never imagined that Stephen paid attention to even these small, relatively insignificant things about you.  You couldn’t even be sure of the last time that you’d worn royal blue, though you were sure you had at some point over the years.

“Right,” is all you said, hoping that the way that you were continuing to flip through your book and rub Stephen’s thigh would conceal some of your own shock.  “Will you come dress shopping with me sometime, then?”  You asked after a beat.

Stephen’s hand continued its steady rhythm through your hair.  Stroke, rest, repeat.  For a moment, you were worried; as Sorcerer Supreme, the earth needed him.  Did he really have enough spare time in his day to take you dress shopping?

“I’d be delighted to,” he murmured, and you felt the anxiety in your chest loosen.

Something told you he’d always have enough time for you.  And if he didn’t have enough, he’d make more.

Literally.

“Next Saturday?”  You asked, turning away from your book once more to look up at Stephen.  You couldn’t help but feel a soft smile pulling at your lips.  You’d fought the Zealots, interdimensional monsters, and innumerable mystic threats with this man, but the thought of going dress shopping with him made you feel more excited than you had expected.

You supposed it had to do with the fact that the two of you lived such a hard life together, full of battle and teaching and training and investigating, always pushing back against the evil forces that threatened the world.  The chance to do something as mundane and romantic and soft as dress shopping together felt undeniably thrilling.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Stephen responded, his voice quiet and smooth.

Still smiling, you slipped your hand out from behind his leg and reached up for his hand, which was still running through your hair gently.  You carefully disentangled his fingers from your hair, then entwined your fingers with his.  His large, long digits shook and occasionally spasmed against yours, and the unusual ridges of his dozens of surgical scars felt foreign against your skin, but you didn’t care.  His hand was warm and comforting in yours, and you could feel his magic flowing through him and into yourself like a low undercurrent of electricity that hummed of his very being.  You imagined that your magic was flowing into him in return in a reciprocal energetic connection that spoke of the ways in which the two of you were becoming more and more intertwined with one another.

Stephen ran his broad thumb back and forth over your hand, his blue eyes soft as they held your gaze.  Finally, he returned his attention back to his book, and you did the same, reminding yourself to stay patient.  You and Stephen were in the last half of your books now; you’d be able to turn your full attention to him soon enough.

Fortunately for you, that moment came sooner than later as you flicked over a few more pages and saw a small inset image of a man with tentacles on his face.

“There he is!”  You exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and letting go of Stephen’s hand in favor of snatching the book out of midair.  “Fucking finally!”

“Where?” Stephen said, sitting upright too and scooting closer to you. You moved closer to him in turn until he was leaning over your shoulder so closely that your back was pressed against his broad chest.

“Right here,” you said, pointing out the small picture as you scanned the surrounding text for any clues as to who you were looking at.

“Chthon,” Stephen said after a moment, pointing out the text that identified the betentacled man.  “The world’s first black magician.  Said to be of the race of Elder Gods and brought back to Earth by Morgan le Fey.”

“No further discussion of this most foul, yet mighty, arcane being, nor of his legacy, the Darkhold, shall be had within these pages, for even their mere mention, though necessary, invites corruption, pestilence, and devastation to all those who read this page,” you said, reading the next line aloud.  As you did, a heavy dread settled in your stomach and a shiver passed down your spine.  Stephen must have felt it, too, for he wound one arm around your waist, pulling you closer to himself.

“I just got the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” you agreed.  His arm tightened even further around you.

“Whatever this Darkhold is, and whatever this Chthon has done, it’s ancient and powerful magic,” Stephen rumbled, and you could practically hear the frown in his voice.

“It is,” you nodded solemnly as you scanned the rest of the page.  Unfortunately, as promised, it never mentioned Chthon or the Darkhold again.  You made a mental note of the page number it was on, then closed the book and set it aside with a sigh.  “Well, at least we have a start.  We’ve got a face and a name.”

“We do,” Stephen agreed, setting his chin on your shoulder.  “And Kamar-Taj has Morgan le Fey’s personal journals in the Special Archives, so I think we’ll have a lot more than just that soon enough.”

The beginnings of hope stirred in the pit of your stomach with this new information, chasing away the sense of dread that had settled over you.  Whatever this was was bad—world-altering, life-ending bad—but as long as you had Stephen, everything would be okay.  If anyone could put together the pieces of this mystery, it was the smartest man you knew.

You turned in Stephen’s hold, settling your hands on the breadth of his shoulders and regarding him fondly.

“You’re pretty brilliant sometimes, you know that, Sorcerer Supreme?”  You murmured, bringing one hand up to cup the side of his cheek.  He leaned into your touch the slightest bit, his eyes fluttering closed as he covered your hand in his, pressing your palm to his skin more firmly.  As he did, you could feel the sense of dread that had settled in his body dissipating into thin air.

“I could never do any of this without you,” he rumbled, the vibrations of his voice echoing through his chest and into yours.  He turned and pressed a kiss into the open palm of your hand, then smiled against your skin, a small chuckle escaping him.  “In fact, that was reason number seven on the list of reasons why I wanted you as my date to the Gala.”

Something flipped in your mind at his words.

Maybe you did want to hear that list, after all, you decided as Stephen began pressing soft kisses to the inside of your wrist, the bristles of his perfectly groomed beard tickling and scratching your sensitive skin.

“That is a pretty good reason,” you admitted as he inched higher up the inside of your arm, giving you another kiss and another and another, even as his lips curled into a smile at your words.

“I knew you’d think so,” he murmured, blue eyes glancing up at you through his dark lashes.  You once again recognized the self-satisfied look he wore when he got something right; it was just barely disguising an underlying need to get more and more things right about you.

“What was reason number eight, then?”  You breathed, carding your fingers through Stephen’s hair as he began working his way up to your bicep, pressing kisses to the muscle and then to your shoulder as he worked higher and higher still.

He paused at your words, his lips now hovering over your collarbone.  He pressed a kiss there and then delivered another one before pausing again over your neck, his beard scratching over your pulse point as he smiled.

“Let’s, um, let’s actually start at reason number one,” he said, sounding a little sheepish.  Ordinarily, you’d wonder what the reason for his sudden hesitation was, but moments later, he began nipping and kissing at your neck, working his way up to your jawline, and your only thought became the need to tip your head back to grant him as much access as possible.

“All right,” you acquiesced, your mind beginning to grow hazy with desire.  “Let’s hear it, Stephen.”

“I like having you around,” he mumbled against the column of your throat, punctuating his sentences with kisses there, too.  “I like being around you.  And when I’m away from you,” he added, moving up to your jawline once again.  He pressed a kiss there, too, then hovered his lips over yours. One of his big hands tangled in the hair at the back of your head, holding you close but not quite close enough to give you the pressure on your lips you so desperately craved.  “I miss you.  I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else.”

 “Even Wong?”  You breathed, unable to resist being sassy.

A bubble of laughter escaped Stephen at this, his lips grazing over your own with the movement.

“Even Wong,” he agreed, and you laughed and pulled him in for a messy, clumsy kiss, bumping noses and your teeth clacking against his as the two of you laughed and held each other and molded your mouths together around your smiles.  The low, languid energetic buzz of the universe around you tumbled upwards, escalating in pitch the more your magic and laughter and mouth entwined with Stephen’s.  Your veins were on fire; your heart was burning, aching, searing from the fullness of feeling him—his magic, his energy, maybe even his very being—flooding into you.  You didn’t know which it was. It could be all of them or one of them; it could be that it was impossible to separate out Stephen Strange from his own magic.  Maybe, by now, he was magic.

But if that was true, he was your magic, and you were his.

You had to have him; you had to have all of him, and you had to let him have all of you. 

Almost as if you’d decided on it together, he began to lay back, and you pressed further into him, tangling your fingers in his larger ones and pinning his hands to the mattress by the side of his head just as you pinned his broader frame with your smaller one.

“It would have killed me to see anyone else on your arm at that gala,”  you admitted, speaking your words around your open-mouthed kisses to him.

“It would have killed me to go with anyone else,” he admitted right back as a flood of triumph surged into your system from him.

So this was what it felt like to be Stephen Strange when he got something right.  You could see how the mountain-sized kick of dopamine his system provided him could get addicting.

As his tongue slipped into your mouth, taking dominance of the kiss back from you, you had to admit: you could also see how he could get addicting.

“Let’s hear the second reason,” you said, pulling away from the kiss.  Stephen chased after you, craning his neck up to try to recapture your lips in his. It wasn’t lost on you that he left his hands pinned underneath yours, even though he could easily overpower you and pull you back down to take the kiss he so obviously wanted.  And oh, by the Vishanti, did he look gorgeous with his eyes half-closed, his expression already half-drunk on you as he yearned for you.  The things you could do to him, the ways you could wreck him and please him—

Stephen suddenly stopped chasing your lips, setting his head back on the pillow and regarding you with wide eyes and lips parted. You had to assume that, just as his elation at having done well with his first reason had spilled into your consciousness, your desire to see Stephen absolutely ruined for you, begging for your touch and praise, was flooding his mind.

“Second reason,” he repeated breathlessly, his fingers trembling as they squeezed yours just a little tighter.  “Second reason.”

“Second reason,” you repeated with a breathy laugh, squeezing his hands back as you lowered your head and kissed the strong column of his throat.

“It is astonishingly hard to remember what I’m supposed to say right now,” Stephen rumbled, his voice dropping into his low range, reverberating against your mouth.

“Use your all-powerful photographic memory, Stephen,” you snickered, sucking and biting at the skin just under his jawline, then soothing the mark you’d made with your tongue.

“I’m trying.  Fuck.  Fucking shit,” he hissed as you began thinking particularly hard about working your way further down his body until you were pulling his sweatpants and boxers down and sucking his cock.  You felt his hips buck beneath you as you imagined touching your lips to his tip—

And then, suddenly, your foot-in-mouth senses began going off, perhaps louder than ever before due to the fact that there was no distance between the two of you, physically or magically speaking.

“I’m bigger than what you’re imagining,” Stephen said smugly, apparently perfectly able to focus on that, of all things.

“Of course, you are,” you grumbled, immediately dropping the mental image you’d been conjuring up. It figured that Stephen would be cocky, smart, powerful, and hung.

“Trust me, you’ll be happy about it in the long run,” Stephen grinned beneath you as he sent a soft surge of magic into your palms, gently pushing your hands away from his.  Once his hands were free, he wrapped them around you, his fingers spreading wide as they moved across your back, holding you close and pulling you up to give you another kiss.  His open mouth met yours with a hunger that you didn’t know that careful, controlled, clever Stephen could possess, and you melted into him willingly.  “Second reason,” he said when he finally pulled back for air.  Your mind felt astoundingly clear for having just been kissed senseless, but moments later, you realized why.  “I told you this one earlier, actually, but when I’ve got you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

For the first time, you could feel what he felt when he held you.  You always felt calm in Stephen’s arms, but what he felt was a profoundly grounding experience, as if you could take all the chaos and energy and sheer force-of-nature power that was Stephen Strange and rearrange it into something cohesive just by your presence and proximity.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?”  Stephen asked, stroking your cheek with one thumb and looking at you admiringly.  “A lot of times, I can even tell where you are in the Sanctum based on this feeling.  But it’s strongest when I’m holding you.”

“It’s…” you started, your mind running a mile a minute.  Beautiful.  Electrifying.  Magical.  A thousand times better than my foot-in-mouth senses.

Stephen laughed at this, a low, almost melodic chuckle that you rarely heard from him.

“Having just experienced your foot-in-mouth senses, I agree with you on all accounts,” he grinned.

“I really got the short end of whatever magical stick we both got when we met each other,” you agreed, and another genuine, melodic laugh came from Stephen at this.

“That’s reason number three, by the way,” he said, the hand that had been on your cheek tangling into the hair at the back of your head and pulling you in for another kiss. His other hand slipped underneath your shirt, his fingers trembling slightly as they explored your back.

“What is?”  You asked as you pulled away from Stephen enough to slip your hands under his baby blue Columbia hoodie.  “My foot-in-mouth senses?”  As you sat back enough to do so, your hips rocked into his cock, which was straining against his sweatpants, already hard.

Shit.  He was bigger than you’d imagined.

“Told you,” Stephen said with a smirk, lazily grinding his hips up into yours.  You tried your best to remain mentally unperturbed by the fact that he was right; you didn’t want to give him that pleasure.  The last thing you needed was for Stephen Strange to develop even more of a complex than he already had.

But he did feel delicious against you as he ground up into your core.  The friction he could provide was tantalizing, and you couldn’t help but imagine, for the briefest of nanoseconds before you regained control over yourself, how good he’d feel, filling you and stretching you and fucking you.

A hit of dopamine flooded your system at this, and you knew that, despite your best efforts, Stephen had sensed your momentary weakness, and he felt fucking great about it.

“That’s it.  You’re gonna feel so good all full of me, baby girl,” he mumbled against your lips, his big hands sliding up and down the sides of your waist.

Oh, God, he wasn’t supposed to sound that good dirty-talking you.  He’d barely even said anything, and you were getting soaking wet for him.  Could you blame yourself, though?  His voice was so low and smooth, and his hands felt electrifying on you, and his cock was still grinding up into your core desperately—

“Third reason,” you said, your voice breathy and shaky as you skimmed your fingers along the sides of his waist in turn, up to his ribs and down to the sharp lines of his svelte hips.

A low chuckle erupted from Stephen at this, and moments later, you were hit by the awareness that you thought that you were going to be the one to have him underneath you, shaking and mewling and begging for praise, but he was going to do everything in his power to make you be the one coming unraveled for him.  His thoughts were leaking into your mind, visions of him hovering over you, his hair sweaty and sticking to his forehead as he filled you, rocking you into the bed—

That competitive bastard.  This was payback for that earlier thought about sucking his cock; you were sure of it.

If Stephen Strange wanted to try to play this game, he could go right ahead.  You were going to win it, though.

“I want to hear the third reason,” you repeated yourself with more confidence, trying to regain control of the situation by lifting your hips and lips away from his and resting your hands on his pectorals.  They rippled beneath you, lean yet larger than you’d remembered.  Since when had that happened?

Another hit of dopamine flowed into you from Stephen.  Shit, you thought, irritated with yourself.  You hadn’t meant to give him that satisfaction.

Stephen smiled beneath you, clearly very pleased with the dynamic emerging here.

“The third reason,” he said, sliding your shirt up and over your shoulders.  You pulled back from him enough to help him, once again sitting back on his cock as it strained against his sweatpants, “is that you’re literally one of the only people I find funny.  Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag.”  You tugged at his sweatshirt, pulling it up and signaling to him that he should discard it, and he sat up to help you strip it off of him.  “Even this,” he said, tossing his Columbia sweatshirt aside and wrapping his arms around you.  “This connection, this…whatever we’re doing.  I love it.”

You let your hands clutch at Stephen’s well-muscled shoulders as he pulled you in close until your chest was flush against his. A hungry look passed over his face as he lowered his head down toward you once again, slotting his mouth over yours.

He kissed you with that searing intensity and desire that you were learning lived deep inside Stephen, his hands pinning your hips down to his.  At the same time, he rutted up into you, his growing desperation to receive and give friction seeping into you.

Oh, by the Vishanti, it felt good.  Everything about this felt good; the steady drag of his cock against your core, even through your clothing, was just what you needed, but you could also feel Stephen’s pleasure and how turned on he was. Your consciousness was almost overcome with how excited he was to be finally grinding up into you, to be the one in bed with you, making you feel good—

Something clicked in your mind, and you decided you were going about this all wrong.  If you engaged Stephen in the battle of wills he was trying to bait you into, you were going to lose.  There was, quite simply, no one in the universe as strong-willed as the Sorcerer Supreme.  No, you were going to win Stephen over by giving into him.

It was remarkably simple, really. If you tried to keep pretending that Stephen didn’t phase you, you were just going to end up accidentally goading him into trying to prove to you and himself alike that he did, in fact, have the power to make you come apart at the seams.  But if you admitted how much you liked the things he could do to you, he’d spend all night chasing your high, doing everything he could for you.

If he was excited to be making you feel good, then God, you wanted him to know the full intensity of the fire he stoked in you and the electricity he put in your veins.  Foreplay with him was already worlds better than any foreplay you’d ever had with anyone else.  You’d never experienced this level of magical connection with another human—had never even known it was possible, even—and you wanted to let it keep going deeper, to let him fuck you just right and to take care of him and that perfect, absolutely gorgeous body of his until he gave everything he had to you.

Stephen’s mouth moving against yours slowed as his mind struggled to keep up with the onslaught of desire from you.  Finally, he pulled back, pupils blown and lips swollen from being kissed so thoroughly.

“You do think I’m pretty,” he rumbled.

It took you a long moment, but you finally remembered your conversation in the morning as you’d portalled yourself over to Kamar-Taj. 

Don’t you worry your pretty head over it, Stephen.

You think I’m pretty?

“I think you’re fucking beautiful,” you purred, no longer holding back your emotions.  As expected, a kick of dopamine hit your system from Stephen’s.  “I think you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever so much as laid eyes on.”  More dopamine.  “Even your grey hairs are the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.  Let me take care of you, Stephen.  My stunning, handsome man.”  Another jolt of elation and desire.

“I want to take care of you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice shaky.  “I want to fuck you so good.  Make you all mine.”

“You will,” you promised him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “I promise, baby, you will.  But you want to be good for me, don’t you?”

You waited a moment with bated breath.  If you were right about this—about the fact that he would only fight you for control if he felt like he had something to prove to you—he’d melt into your openness and unabashed passion for him while striving to overachieve and please you.

And if you were wrong, he was going to be in control, and you had a feeling you would be in for an interesting night full of power play after power play.

“Of course,” Stephen finally breathed. “Anything you want.  I’m all yours, darling.”

“My beautiful man,” you sighed, holding his face—his pretty, perfectly sculpted face—between your hands and kissing him hard.  As you did, you thought about how you wanted him to unclasp your bra and free you from it.

Stephen grunted, moving with all haste to undo your bra clasp.  His fingers shook violently as he attempted the task at first; it wasn’t until you felt him direct more of his magical energy to stabilize his fingers that he was able to accomplish his goal.  Once he did, though, you helped him shimmy your bra off your shoulders.  The moment he cast it to the side, you pressed yourself against his chest again, savoring the heat of his smooth skin on yours and kissing him deeply.

“Thank you,” you sighed into his mouth as you took his hands, moving them onto the sides of your breasts and moaning as his trembling fingers came into contact with your skin.  “That’s so much better.”

“Anything for you,” Stephen breathed, his fingers tracing your curves tentatively, though you could feel the overwhelming hunger that was at the core of him urging him to claim you, to bite you and leave marks all over the softness of your tits and inner thighs.

“What reason are we on?”  You asked as you pulled back from his chest just enough to allow your breasts to be bared to him.  Without his heat to keep you warm, you could feel your nipples pebbling in the cool air, and you longed for Stephen to play with them. Beneath yourself, Stephen’s cock stiffened even further, and an awareness of the fact that he was aching from being so hard for you, from craving your touch so thoroughly, filled your mind.

“The fourth,” Stephen breathed, fulfilling your desires by sliding his hands across the soft plushness of your breasts, savoring and groping at their curves until he came to your nipples.  A gasp left your mouth at the electric tingle of his magic that surged through his fingertips and into your flesh as he stabilized his hands enough to allow himself to roll your hardened peaks between his thumb and forefinger.  At your reaction, the briefest, most split-second feeling of shame and embarrassment trickled into you from Stephen.  Short though it was—blink and you’d miss it—it was powerfully intense, buoyed to the surface of his consciousness by fears that he’d never be good enough in bed for you, that he’d hurt you with his clumsiness or his magic, or that you’d be turned off by his hands.  You tasted all those fears at once, and then, abruptly, they were gone, pushed away from the surface and away from you.

Well.  You couldn’t have that.

“That felt really good,” you said, sitting back on Stephen’s lap so that you were on full display for the man underneath you.  Firmly and confidently, you put your hands on Stephen’s and redirected them back to your breasts.  “That tingle of magic…right…there,” you breathed, moving his scarred fingers back to where they had just been.  “Fuck, that’s…that’s really sexy, Stephen.”

Stephen’s lips parted as he watched you with lust-blown eyes, his gaze fixed on where your hands intertwined over your tits.

“You…you’re not just saying this to make me feel better,” he finally said, continuing to do his best to please you with his fingers and his magic.  “You like this.  A lot.”

“When do I ever say things just to make you feel better, Stephen?”  You moaned, biting your lip and clutching at his hands as they became bolder in their manipulations.

“I know, it’s just, I….they’re ruined,” he finally admitted quietly, his hands stilling for a moment.  “Why would you want—”

“They’re sexy, you idiot,” you fired back, though not without affection in your voice.  “You have big hands with slender, long fingers and dozens of mysterious scars from a tragic accident, and you pour magic into them to help them work.  And the magic feels good to me.  You’re in my brain; surely, you can see how this is a turn-on.”

“I…yes?”  He finally said, beginning to move his fingers again.  “I can.  I can,” he repeated, as if reassuring himself.

It helps that they’re yours, you added mentally.  Every part of you is gorgeous to me.

Out loud, however, you uttered a simple “good boy” as he began playing with your tits in earnest again.

Stephen’s mind reacted to both these things with fireworks, a rush of positive emotions flooding through him and through you as he groaned out loud, a beautiful, low sound in his chest.

Strong arms wrapped around you, hitching you up on his lap before pulling you back down towards him. He captured one of your nipples in the warmth of his mouth, his tongue working deftly to swirl and flick at your hardened peak while his hands moved down to grope and squeeze your ass.

“I still owe you that fourth reason,” he said, moving his mouth over the soft expanse of your breast, kissing and biting you in his bid to mark you as he intended.

“Let’s hear it, then,” you purred, grinding yourself down onto Stephen’s still-clothed cock and carding your fingers through the greys of his hair.

“I want to make you laugh,” he said, then moved over to your other breast, marking it the way he’d marked the first.  “And get you drinks.”  Another hickey, followed by his tongue soothing your skin.  “And hold you in my arms.”  A soft bite and a soft, slow kiss to your flesh.  “And dance with you.  You, and no one else.”  At this, his mouth covered your other nipple, lavishing it with the attention the first side had received.

“Oh, Stephen,” you sighed.  “Say that again.”

You didn’t have to clarify; you already knew he could understand what you were thinking about.

“You, and no one else,” he repeated lowly, his hands squeezing your hips and pulling you as close to him as was physically possible.

Then, to your surprise, he sent a tingle of magic through his tongue as he closed his mouth over your flesh once again, and you swore your vision went white with bliss and shock for an instant.

The first thought you had that broke through the pleasure was that you wanted him to try that somewhere else.

Stephen laughed at this, closing his mouth over your nipple again and sending his magic through his tongue once more as he flicked and toyed with your peak.  You whined and squirmed in his hold until he finally pulled away, scraping his teeth on your nub as he went.

“Does my pretty baby want to ride my face while I do that?”  He asked, his hands squeezing your hips encouragingly.

“Yes,” you gasped, and Stephen’s smile grew wider.  “Oh, Stephen, yes.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he rumbled, his hands moving to slide your leggings and panties down.  You lifted your hips to help him, only to eventually find yourself irritated enough by trying to strip while kneeling to just magic them away into a pile on the floor.  Stephen chuckled at this, his broad palms moving over your soft thighs as his eyes raked hungrily over every last inch of you.  “You’re beautiful,” he practically purred, his hands skimming back up to your hips.  Magic flowed through him and into you as he lifted you like you were feather-light, pulling you up over his shoulders until your core was situated over his face.  He breathed in and out, the air from his lungs hot and teasing on your core, and you could feel, in your own mind, the way he was savoring the scent of you.

You’re so beautiful.  Stephen’s voice, clear and strong and deep, murmured into your thoughts as he turned to bite and suck at the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.  You squirmed and squealed at the sometimes-harsh contact and the bristle of his goatee on your skin, but nevertheless, you allowed him to mark you the way he wanted, especially since he was slowly working his way inwards toward your dripping pussy.  You have no idea how beautiful I think you are, do you?

As he finished the thought, you were hit by a rush of memories, all photographic, picture-perfect in a way that your mind was not capable of achieving.

You, coming down the stairs at the Sanctum Sanctorum first thing in the morning, your pajamas on and the sunlight illuminating your face.  A smile crossed your sleepy features when you saw Stephen had just come back safely from an emergency visit to the London Sanctum, and you felt the way his heart ached at the thought that another man might be the one to see that smile every morning and not him. 

Beautiful, Stephen thought.

You, shielding his battered and magically paralyzed body with your own, your knees on either side of his chest and the muscles in your arms and shoulders flexing as you struggled to contain the strength of the energy and rage building inside you, channeling it into a spell to vanquish your enemy.

Beautiful.

You, laughing at some dumb joke he’d made.  You, your nose buried in a translation book, the setting sun framing you in the library window.  You, standing tall as your hands worked quickly, sorting through magic runes as they floated and twisted in the air, fighting to break an ancient curse as the ground beneath the two of you shook.

Beautiful.

You, covered in mud and the smell of smoke and little specks of Styrofoam, beaming from ear to ear as you told him all about the sorcerers you’d been working with today.

Beautiful.  You’re beautiful, inside and out, and that’s reason number five, because you make the world light up everywhere you go.

His nose gently parted your folds as his hands held your hips firmly, and finally, finally, his tongue darted out to lick a slow, almost gentle stripe up your core. Satisfaction with the taste of you surged through him and, in turn, through you.

“Stephen,” you breathed.  He moaned into your pussy, a delightfully low, deep reverberation that had you gripping his hair and grinding down onto his mouth for more friction.

You shine, Stephen thought into your brain as he began eating you out like a man starved.  You shine in every single way, and I want the world to see that. And tonight, I want to worship you for it.

God, you wanted his worship in a way you didn’t even know you could.

Yes, you thought back to him.  Be good to your pretty baby, Stephen.  Make me feel so good I can’t even remember my own name.  You can do it.  If anyone can, it’s you.

His tongue was perfection against your cunt; being in your brain the way he was, he knew everything you wanted, the perfect angle and pressure to apply, and where to move to provide you with just the right stimulation. Thanks to the magical connection between the two of you, he knew you as intimately as you knew yourself. As you grew wetter and wetter under his care, soaking his chin and his goatee with your juices and his saliva, you could feel your ever-mounting pleasure seeping into his brain, rebounding into yours and reverberating between the two of you like a building echo chamber of bliss.

“That’s my pretty baby,” Stephen moaned aloud into your pussy.  “Letting me have her perfect little pussy, telling me exactly how to make her feel good.  Do you feel good, beautiful?”

Oh, by the Vishanti, he knew you did.

“I want to hear you say it,” he rumbled, and you swore you saw stars at how good the vibrations of his deep voice felt against your heat.

“I feel so good,” you affirmed breathlessly, only for an ache of wanting to reach through you.  Stephen wanted more of your praise, and he wanted you to say his name while you praised him.  God, he ached for your praise in a way that almost hurt.  “Oh, Stephen,” you crooned, carding both your hands through his hair as his cerulean blue eyes flitted up to make contact with yours, even as his tongue began fucking in and out of your hole.  “My good boy.  My beautiful, gorgeous, perfect man.  Who’d have thought you have a perfect tongue that knows just where to be on me?  You make me feel so good, Stephen.  Better than even I can make myself feel.  You’re making my pussy so wet for you, so ready to be filled and taken.  You will take me, won’t you?”

Stephen’s grip on your hips tightened.

“Gods, yes,” Stephen groaned into your core.

“You’ll fuck me out of my mind with your tongue, and then you’ll fuck me and fill me with your cock, won’t you?”

“Please,” Stephen said, his voice strangled.  “Please let me.”

“I’ll let you, Stephen,” you promised him.  “I’ll let you.  My good boy.”

 Stephen’s efforts to please you only increased at this.  You rapidly became blinded by pleasure, a coil beginning to build in your stomach more quickly than ever before thanks to the way your pleasure became his became yours again.

After a long moment of basking in the tumultuous climb to your peak, Stephen removed one of his hands from where he was firmly holding onto your hips and keeping them pressed into his face.

Watch, he ordered you, and you obeyed, turning over your shoulder to see what he wanted you to see, though, in a sense, you already knew.

Still, it was a delicious sight to watch Stephen move slowly, pushing his waistband down inch by inch.  You could see it snag on his cock, could see the way his hard thickness was being pushed down slightly into a smattering of immaculately groomed, short, dark hair as his waistband inched ever further away from you.  He wasbig, nice and girthy and veiny; oh, by the Vishanti, you wanted those thick, manly veins and that fat, heavy cock in your cunt so badly. You needed him, needed that perfect cock that you could only see some of and that you already knew you loved.

The pleasure that shot through you from Stephen at this was almost enough to make you cum on his lips right then and there.

“Shit,” he mumbled into your cunt, hand stilling for a moment as he panted heavily.  “Shit, I almost came, too.  Didn’t ex…didn’t expect you to want it so badly.”

The thought that you had almost just made the Sorcerer Supreme of all of Earth nearly come in his pants without so much as actually touching him crossed your mind, and you had to admit, you were pretty into it.

That’s what you do to me, pretty baby.  You drive me wild, he thought back to you, taking a deep breath as he watched you move your hand to your clit, which was beginning to ache with the lack of attention it was receiving while Stephen focused on not coming just yet. 

 Finally, he began moving again, mentally imploring you to watch, and you did, moving your fingers on your clit faster as his cock finally sprang free of his sweatpants, bobbing up against his stomach.

You wanted so badly to touch it, to touch him, to run your fingertips along that big vein and give his tip kitten licks before taking the whole thing into your mouth—

Just before you managed to get started, though, Stephen poured magic into his tongue, and you became practically boneless with pleasure as he replaced your hand with his mouth and began teasing and flicking your clit faster than ever before.  His magic was fucking into your cunt and pleasing your clit so sweetly, so deeply, hitting places far within you that nothing physical could ever—or had ever—reached.

It was all you could do to brace one hand on the headboard while your upper body practically gave out on you.  Your pleasure, once again, reverberated into Stephen’s mind and then back into yours, and you soon found yourself sobbing his name, your other hand gripping his hair so tightly it had to hurt.

Through the haze of pleasure, though, there was something else: an iron will, a determined sentence being repeated in his voice again and again and again.

Don’t come, Stephen.  Don’t come.  I can do this.  I can ride out her pleasure.  Don’t come.

The realization hit you suddenly that if you were this close to your high, you must have been taking Stephen right along with you.  He was fighting with every ounce of his not-inconsiderable willpower to avoid tumbling over that edge with you, but what could he do against this rapidly rising tide?

“Stephen,” you gasped, fighting to pull your hips away from his beautiful, clever mouth.  His strong hands held you there in an almost bruising grip, but when you exclaimed his name again, this time with more determination and less of a keening tone, he finally let go.

“What is it, beautiful?”  He asked, his eyes full of concern for you.  “Did I hurt you?  Please tell me I didn’t hurt you with my magic, I—I didn’t—”

“No,” you reassured him, moving your hands to float yourself off his face and back over his hips, your pussy coming to rest over his shaft.  “You didn’t hurt me, Stephen; your magic felt amazing, actually.  I just don’t want you to come just yet.”  As if to emphasize your point, you ground your slick wetness up and down along his length.  “After all, I promised to let you fuck me and fill me, didn’t I?”

Stephen drew in a sharp breath, his hands returning once again to your hips, where his strong fingers fought to still your movements.

“You did.  I—just give me a minute to recover a little,” he requested, moving one hand up to your cheek when you stopped rocking your hips to let him settle back down from the precipice he’d found himself on.

“Of course,” you breathed, though you were already beginning to feel a deep ache that spoke of how empty you were at the moment.  You needed him inside you, needed the stretch of his big cockhead pushing its way into your entrance—

Fuck, pretty baby, I need you to think of something else, he hissed into your mind.

“How about reason number six, then?”  You asked, letting Stephen pull you down into a kiss that was somehow slow and languid yet hot and heavy all at once.  “I think that’s the number we’re on,” you added when you pulled back for air.

“It is,” Stephen agreed, wrapping his arms around you and holding you in a tight embrace.

Something in his energy shifted at this, and for a moment, you were worried he was going to retreat from this connection with you entirely.

Something was wrong.

“Stephen,” you breathed, chasing him as his magic pulled away from you.  You captured his energy before it was gone, and you held him tightly, desperately, both on the mystical plane and the physical one.  “Don’t go.  Don’t—don’t—just tell me what’s wrong,” you pleaded with him.

Had you hurt him?  Had you upset him somehow?  What had you done?

He stopped trying to retreat from you, and a swirl of complex emotions flooded through you, too multifaceted to be able to sort out immediately.  The one thread you did manage to identify—the one that jumped out the most at you—was an odd sense of grief and regret and fear.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen Stephen afraid of anything before.

“It’s not you, beautiful.  It’s just…I know I’ll never be able to offer you a normal life,” he finally said, burying his nose in your shoulder.  “Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are and what we do.  There will probably never be a time when we’re not dealing with mystic threats, and that’s especially true for me, because I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme.  But you…you could walk away from this, if you needed to.”

“This is a really, really weird reason to want to take me to the gala, Stephen,” you said in a feeble attempt to try to make light of whatever the hell was going on here.  “Gotta say, I don’t get it.”

Unsurprisingly, your attempt at humor didn’t work; his heart remained heavy, and you swore you felt tears pricking at your eyes that weren’t your own.

“Being with me is a risk.  An extraordinary one,” he continued, his goatee grazing the skin of the crook of your neck as he spoke.  “People who are close to me have already gotten hurt or killed, and I’m sure they’re not going to be the end of it.  So if there comes a time where you decide that this life isn’t for you—the Mystic Arts, the Sanctum, me—I’ll understand.  But in the meanwhile, if we can share even one night of being together like a normal couple, of getting to…to forget about who we are and the Mystic Arts and just be together, dressed up on a night out…then I really, really want to do that with you.  I want that memory of us, together.”

An undercurrent of emotion swept through you from Stephen.  There was a longing to have just been your non-magical, rich doctor husband, to have somehow met and immersed you in his world before it was turned upside down by his car accident.  There was a fear that the day would come when you’d need to leave the Mystic Arts, and there was a fear that even separating yourself from all you’d known, from him, might not be enough to keep you safe.  Along with that fear came a powerful urge to protect you, to become the strongest Sorcerer Supreme the world had ever seen, to make sure that you were never, ever separated from him by the machinations of another.

And underneath it all, there was a deep surprise that he was being so emotional about this.  When he’d written this reason out earlier, it hadn’t seemed like too big of a deal.  One normal date together could last him a lifetime, if he needed it to, and besides, people moved on all the time.  He’d done so once already.

But now, having been connected to you in this way, he knew that being separated from you would be like tearing half his heart out.  He had always loved you, but he’d never known how deeply that love ran, and now that he had finally recognized it, he was all the more profoundly affected by the fear of losing it.

It was, perhaps, the thing he feared most in the world.

“I don’t plan on leaving you or the Mystic Arts, Stephen,” you breathed, your voice shaky and tight.  “And I don’t plan on letting you be taken away from me, either.  Not again,” you added, thinking back to when he’d gone to sacrifice himself to Dormammu in order to save all of Earth.  “But all we have promised to us is the present, so let’s not worry about these things just yet.  Let’s just be together and love each other.”

He was silent for a moment, taking your words in and thinking on them.  Then, you felt earth’s master of time put aside his powerful fear of the future.  The heavy weight of it shifted off of you, and though you knew Stephen likely wasn’t over his fear entirely, at least he could focus on the present instead of dwelling in realities that were yet to manifest.

You had to admit, you were proud of him for that.

“Let me love you,” he finally rumbled, grinding his hips up into yours.  “Let me make love to you, beautiful.”

You didn’t need words to give him your consent; you let your desire for him flow through yourself and into him, and he responded with that powerful hunger that you were learning was at the core of Stephen Strange, both in his magic and in the searing kiss that he gave you as he slotted his mouth against yours and continued to grind himself into you.  You bucked your hips in turn, rubbing your wetness all over his shaft, pausing as your entrance met the bulge of his cockhead.

You couldn’t tell if you had the thought or if Stephen did, or if the two of you were thinking in an almost startling synchrony now, but the yearning to feel his thick tip stretching your walls open as he pushed inside your core flared true and strong once more.  Stephen bucked at this, groaning into your mouth as you continued to kiss him, thoughts filling his mind—and, in turn, yours—of how he was going to fuck you into the mattress, nice and slow and gentle for as long as the two of you could hold out, then fast and hard until you found your shared high together. He was going to fill you with his cock and his magic and his adoration and love for you, the way he’d been wanting to for years.

The two of you rolled together, words completely unnecessary as you both mentally agreed that Stephen would need to be on top to fulfill your shared fantasy.  Once you were underneath his broad frame, you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist, hungrily holding him close to you, and he reached down between your bodies, lining his cockhead up with you and rubbing it up and down through your folds and slick.

“Are you ready?”  Stephen murmured lowly, and you mewled and nodded, urging him on with your hands on his shoulders and your legs around his waist.

Gently, he pressed himself into you, his fat cockhead stretching you out just as you thought he would.  Stephen gasped at the sensation, wonder written across his face as he pushed slowly into your core.  The stretch you were feeling grew stronger, becoming almost painful in that tantalizing, give-me-more type of way, and Stephen stilled himself, waiting for a moment and watching you intently.

You’re not hurting me, Stephen, you reassured him in your mind.  I need you.  Please.

His lips fell apart as he drew in a shaky breath, then pushed the rest of the way inside you, hilting himself in your core.  You pulled him down into another kiss, this one gentle and soft as you struggled to make sense of all that you were feeling.  He was so full and heavy in you, and similarly, his cock felt so snug and warm and wet in you.  You were better than he’d imagined; your pussy was beautiful, perfect, his.

You mentally implored for him to begin moving, and he did, entwining his hands (shaking) with yours as he began moving his hips in gentle, slow thrusts.  His heavy cock dragged along your inner walls in a way that had you squeezing your heels into his back to encourage him to give you more; at the same time, you could feel your own pussy holding his cock like it was made for it. Like you were made for him.

Stephen dropped his head to your breasts, licking and sucking at them and sending his magic through his tongue once again.  Through it all, he refused to pick up his pace, continuing to slide in and out of you in languid, though not unattentive, movements.  You wanted him to give you more, to fuck you faster and harder and take you up to that peak that you hadn’t been far from reaching earlier, but this desire was drowned out by an increasing possessiveness from Stephen.  You wanted more of him, but he wanted to spend all night buried within you, fucking your perfect pussy nice and slow and claiming it as his with every stroke, and, as you’d said earlier, there was nobody in the world with a more unyielding will than Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

“Take it,” he groaned into your chest.  “Take all of my big cock in that pretty pussy of yours.  That’s my pretty baby.  Being so good for me.  Gonna let me fuck her as long as I want, because she’s all mine, isn’t she?”

“All yours, Stephen,” you gasped as he continued to rock in and out of you inch by tantalizing inch.  “I’m all yours.”

“All mine,” he growled, moving his hands to hitch up underneath your knees and press them to your shoulders.  “Mine.”

You expected him to fuck you harder in this position, but he continued to draw in and out of you in slow, tantalizing movements, his eyes often flitting down to watch the way his cock disappeared inside of you.  Despite his slow pace, your mutual pleasure stoked higher and higher, buoyed by the way you could feel everything he was experiencing and vice versa. Still, it never reached a fever pitch; when your pleasure began to escalate, he slowed down even more, creating an intense ache and need within you.  By the second time he did this, you were aching for more stimulation so badly that tears were pricking at your eyes, his name falling off your tongue in sobs.

“You’re being so good for me, pretty baby,” Stephen said, kissing away your tears.  “So good.  You can keep taking me, can’t you, pretty baby?  Or do you need me to fuck you hard and fast now?”

“I can…I can keep taking you like this,” you said around a hiccup, and a low moan tore from Stephen’s throat at this.

“What a good girl,” he murmured, once hand reaching up to stroke your cheek gently before returning to the backside of your knee.  “I’m going to take such good care of you.  Promise you’ll feel so good in the end.”

“I already feel so good, Stephen,” you said, and it was true.  As agonizing as it was to be denied release again and again, there was something incredible about being in your body and Stephen’s at once when you both wanted more of each other, when it felt as if your desire for one another could literally never be satiated.

Stephen’s iron will held true as he fucked you relentlessly slowly, refusing you your release again and again and again until you were out of your mind with need and desperation and pleasure.  You were reduced to putty in his hands, crying out for him with tears in your eyes, your own consciousness sometimes in your body and sometimes in his and sometimes nowhere at all.  When you flickered into his body, watching yourself sob and reach and claw for him while getting fucked, you became dimly aware of the irony that you’d thought that you would be the one making a mess of him, and now here he was, reducing you to this.  In the end, though, you (he? You couldn’t tell who was thinking what anymore) were going to absolutely ruin him, send him over the edge in a way that he’d never experienced in his life.  Even now, he was holding on to his connection to his body only through sheer determination to make you his, to make this last as long as it could, and, above all else, to fuck you more thoroughly than you’d ever been fucked in your life.  In fact, the further Stephen slipped into your mutual pleasure, the more you found him clinging to his absolutely, wildly desperate desire to please you and make you pleased with him in turn.

It wasn’t unlike when he’d sought out your approval in the library.  Everything came down to you, in the end.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when he called out to you, his voice thready and his lips puffy from all the kisses the two of you had shared.

“Pretty baby,” he moaned.  “I need you.”

You understood his meaning immediately.

“I need you, too, Stephen,” you keened.  “Take me.”

Take me how I know you want to.

Stephen’s hips stuttered against yours for a moment, and for one last instant, you were in his body, watching your drooling cunt be split apart by his red, needy cock.  Then, his hips moved fast and sharp, snapping against you with a loud slap, and you were sent back into your own mind.

He leaned more of his weight onto your aching, doubled-over legs as he rutted into you hard, his heavy balls slapping against your ass over and over again.  You clutched at the bedsheets, at his forearms, at anything you could hold to as the wet sound of your skin slapping together filled the air and his cock reached deep into that place of you that had you seeing stars.

Then, to your surprise, his magic was there, too, deep in your cunt and on your clit, hitting you achingly sweetly.  Within moments, you were breaking apart at the seams for him, pleasure gushing through you and through him, the coil in your belly snapping and wave after wave of sheer hot ecstasy rolling through you.  You went limp; your vision went white, and there was no sound, only silence.  There wasn’t even a you; there was just the connection between the two of you and pure electric bliss racing through it, reverberating back and forth.  Just when you thought you might come back to your body, Stephen’s orgasm rolled through the magical connection between the two of you, sharp, deep, heavy bursts of pleasure exploding as he shot his load deep within you.  You were him, feeling his balls tighten and empty themselves, his cock spasming as your pussy throbbed around him, milking his orgasm out, and you were you, feeling the way you clenched around his thickness, the way another burst of pleasure began anew as you came on his cock again, your orgasms an echo chamber for one another.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over you and Stephen like this; each time you thought you were coming down from your last high, the bliss that reverberated into his brain started him up again, and then, in turn, you were soon coming again, and vice versa.  You were vaguely aware that he was coming without pumping any seed out; he’d completely emptied himself within you, and yet, you were still throbbing around Stephen’s cock again and again, begging for more.

 When you began to come down from your shared bliss, the waves becoming less overwhelming, you were surprised to find yourself babbling and sobbing and screaming for Stephen, and in turn, he was grunting filth into your ear, moaning and calling for you, his voice low and desperate.

Finally, his arms gave out above you, and he slumped against you entirely, letting your aching legs fall down as he wrapped his arms around you and buried his head in the crook of your neck.  You held to him tightly, feeling the weight of his body on yours. It was blissfully soothing and reassuring.  You were warm and safe, folded up in the arms of your man, the only man you could ever trust to experience such a powerful, deep connection with.  You were exhausted magically and physically, your eyes fluttering shut despite the slick and sweat and cum staining the sheets all around you and Stephen’s softening cock still within you.  Through your still-open connection, you could feel a similar level of post-orgasmic exhaustion in Stephen.

“I love you,” he murmured, moving his hands clumsily and magicking all the filth the two of you had created away.  “I love you so much.”

In the wake of the bliss and emotion you had both shared, you didn’t need to hear anything else.  You moved your hands, too, magicking the blankets up around the two of you.

“I love you too, Stephen.”

As you began drifting off to sleep, though, you heard him murmur something quietly.

“There was one other reason.  An eighth reason.”

Through the haze of your exhaustion, you remembered that he hadn’t wanted to tell you that reason earlier.  Now feeling too exhausted to speak, you let your curiosity seep through your magical connection.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are at that gala and realizes you’re with me.”  Stephen’s voice, husky and almost asleep, was nevertheless full of pride and satisfaction.

I’m yours, Stephen, you promised him with your thoughts.  All yours.

Mine, he thought back, and to your surprise, he added, and I’m all yours.  Have been for a long time.

You smiled to yourself and fell into a comforted sleep, feeling certain that here, in the Sanctum Sanctorum, in your home with Stephen, in his strong arms, was precisely where you’d always belong. [A quick ending author's note: I couldn't keep Stephen's reasons straight in my mind while writing this, so I had to write them out for myself. In case you want to see them all and get some feel-good fuzzies, here they all are, from Stephen's perspective!

Reasons why I want to take you to the gala:

1. I like having you around, and when I’m away from you, I miss you. I’d miss you the whole night long if I were at that gala with anyone else. Yes, even Wong. 2. When I hold you in my arms, I feel calm, like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. And I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot of calm at any party that Stark is putting on. 3. You’re literally one of the only people I find funny. Trying to banter with anyone else is like talking to a wet rag. Please don’t make me suffer through a night of having to pretend that everyone else’s terrible jokes are funny. I don’t think even Stark has enough alcohol to help me survive that. 4. I want to make you laugh and get you drinks and hold you in my arms and dance with you. You and no one else. 5. I know I’m not supposed to talk about the fact that you’re beautiful, but you are beautiful, inside and out. You make the whole world light up wherever you go. You shine, and I want everyone else to see that. 6. I know I could never offer you a normal life. Our lives are constantly in danger because of who we are, and I’m forever bound to my duties as Sorcerer Supreme. But if I can give you even one night of just being a regular couple and getting to dress up and forget all about the Mystic Arts, then I want to do that. 7. And related to that, I could never do any of this without you. You’ve been there with me since my first days at Kamar-Taj, and now that I’m Sorcerer Supreme, I have no idea how I would survive holding this title without you around. Why would I want to go to the gala without the person who made—and makes—all of this possible? 8. Lastly—and I’m so sorry, but I have to mention this—I’m absolutely dying to see the look on Stark’s face when he sees how gorgeous you are and realizes you’re with me tonight. If you're interested in seeing more of this reader x Stephen pair (maybe at the gala?) please feel free to let me know!! Either way, thank you for reading! <3]

Masterlist

Started: 14/06/2022 Last Updated: 04/07/2022

Marvel Doctor Strange

One Shots

The Man You Are (Smut / Angst) Let Me Take Care Of You (Fluffy) Give Me Some Attention (Smut)

Headcanons / Imagines

A Study In Defender Strange's Personality Losing Your Virginity To Defender Strange (Smut)

Series

The Point Of No Return Part I (Smut / Angst) Part II (Smut / Angst) Part III (Angst)

One Shots

Don't Let Me Go (Angst / Smut) Two Stephens (Smut)

One Shots

Two Stephens (Smut)

---------------------------------

Spotify Playlist (Songs that inspired my stories)

A/N: I know this is very simple but I am happy I finally figured out how to do it. (I had some help, I confess) ;) Probably I will start writing for others Benedict Cumberbatch characters as well, but it may take some time. I 'll probably write for Tony Stark too as soon as possible.

I tag people at my fics, just let me know if you want to be tagged.

Ok but why is Disney / Star Wars focusing on these random mini series? They know we just want a series about R2D2 and C3PO.

Competitive Advantage [Loki x Female Reader x Thor] 18+

Relationship: Loki Laufeyson x Female Reader [+ Thor, but also not really]

Summary: In the Avengers compound, Thor has turned his sights on you as his next conquest - but little does he know his brother harbours much a much deeper obsession. When he suggests a race to sleep with you, you are caught up in an afternoon which can only be described as very eventful. Some fluff, some angst, also smut (because of course). 

Warnings: 18+, minors please DNI! Language. Coercive behaviour. Smut peppered all over the place. Thor is a bit of an arse.

Word Count: 4.5k

There is now a PART TWO to this little escapade…link at the bottom :) 

—

‘All I’ll say is that for a Mid-Guardian woman she is…enticing’

‘for a Mid-Guardian woman??’ Thor brought his fingers to his forehead in a frustrated crest, ‘brother I have travelled all nine realms and bedded many maidens and I can tell you, with Borr as my witness, that is the finest piece of arse I have laid eyes on north of Muspelheim…’

Loki brought his towel to his face, wiping away ribbons of sweat that fell from his forehead as his brother kept talking. A little too loudly, as usual.

The gym at the Avengers compound was busy this morning. Clattering of knives and batons could be heard sharply over the smack of limbs as heroes and agents sparred together. He and Thor sat on a bench at the side of the arena, arms reddened with combat each resting on their knees as they caught their breath. Well..as Loki caught his breath.

‘…I mean really, brother, how can you look at her and not want to ride her into battle like a valiant steed? Norns, have you seen her fight? She is a Valkyrie reborn. Perhaps she is…it would explain a lot. Her arse, for one thing-’

‘Would you shut up about her arse?’, Loki snapped, rolling his eyes. It was embarrassing really, how crude he could be.

Loki raised his gaze as his brother, blessedly, closed his mouth for two seconds.

There you were, strong legs straddled around Clint Barton as you pinned him to the ground – his knife out of reach, defenceless under your tight control. Loki shivered. His eyes roamed your body as you elevated yourself from the man below, the curve of your legs and the toned muscles which pressed against your leggings as you rose threatened a groan from his throat as he swam in the stolen voyeurism where he could worship you safely. You pressed your fists to Clint in post-spar tradition, your bare midriff glistening with sweat…how he wanted to lick it off from your navel all the way up to your perfect brea-

‘…Brother.’

‘What?’ Loki turned to Thor, eyes blazing, his question delivered with a low tone of menace that threatened to betray the lust simmering below.

‘I was asking if you wanted to go another round, but I suspect that there may be another partner you have in mind now…’, his meaty elbow nudged Loki’s ribs with the subtlety of a bulldozer.

‘Don’t be absurd. You’re the one that’s obsessed with her arse’.

‘Indeed, brother. Although I am obsessed with a lot more than her arse. Her INCREDIBLE bosom for examp-’

In a flash, Loki’s forearm was at Thor’s throat, pinning him against the wall as he choked on his words beneath him, his eyes burning into the squirming god caught off guard.

‘Guys, no family drama in the gym…come on’, you said loudly as you sauntered over to pick up your water bottle, the scene unfolding before you, ‘take it outside, or to Asgard…not here please’.

You looked on, pleased with yourself, as the dark-haired god released his brother. Thor looked to you with jovial amusement as he rubbed his neck, his gaze drawing up and down your body, a wicked promise in his eyes which remained behind his lips.

‘How are you today, Agent Y/N?’  Loki said calmly, his demeanour a stark contrast from only moments ago as he had his brother in a vice which would have killed an ordinary man.

‘I’m well, thank you’, you replied warmly. The Asgardian duo had always remained on an outside circle to you, where you only observed them from afar. Social interactions were taken in snatches where you could, for one of them in particular whose attention you craved though you would never betray it. You turned with a small wave as you made your way back over to Clint, who would definitely be taking no prisoners for round two, feeling the weight of the gaze of a pair of eyes over your body like the musk of sweat in the air. You hoped it was him.

‘I think it’s high time we had some new sport, what say you Loki?’, Thor turned to his brother as he said it, looping his long hair behind his ear revealing a devilish smile.

‘Go on?’

‘Well, it seems increasingly obvious to me that we both have our interests set on Agent Y/N, so why don’t we make it a little more interesting. What say you?’

‘Brother, you still haven’t actually said anything’, Loki rolled his eyes defiantly as his stomach churned.

‘A competition!’, he exclaimed cheerfully, ‘the first one to bed her, wins’.

‘Don’t be absurd.’

Thor’s laugh echoed around the gym as Loki began packing his weapons into a kit bag.

‘You’re right Loki, it is absurd. How could you triumph in such a contest when I have the clear competitive advantage…’

Loki’s hands stilled as he processed the jibe, every pulse of blood warning him not to rise to it and yet thrusting him on, ‘competitive advantage?’ he sneered, ‘please tell me you’re not talking about your reputation for jackhammering across the nine realms, collecting the riddled notches on your bedpost’.

A thick hand landed on Loki’s shoulder as he focused his attention on fastening the bag zipper, hoping Thor would simply disappear.

‘No brother, although I’m sure she is aware of my legendary status as a lover. No, I am referring to the fact that I am worthy’, he paused…waiting for a reaction, ‘for surely if I am worthy to lift Mjölnir then I am worthy to lift her legs around my waist’,

Loki’s head whipped round to meet his brother’s eyes, the mirth in Thor’s met with steel malice as he considered the proposition.

‘Fine’, Loki spat as he stood abruptly. He looked up at where you circled Clint, your fists raised, your hair coming undone from the morning’s efforts, your eyes focused on your target as your mind searched keenly for his weakest point, ‘consider your challenge accepted’.

_____

 The early afternoon sun blared through the glass in the empty compound kitchens as you counted spoons of protein powder that fell lacklustre into your sport bottle. Four, Five, Six

‘Thirsty, are we?’

You jumped, as the voice announced it’s owner behind you. You didn’t even have to look.

‘Hi Thor,’ you smiled as you spun the top on the bottle, ‘twice in one day, lucky me…’

‘Indeed, sweet Y/N. Lucky indeed. My, you do look ravishing today,’ you heard him inhale theatrically, ‘and pray what is that heavenly scent you’re wearing?’

You turned, taking in the bemusing sight before you as you stifled a laugh. He was leaning awkwardly against the refrigerator, his bulging arms crossed (was he flexing?) against the naked expanse of his chest, puffed out as he smirked. A pair of loose grey shorts hung low from his bare hips, revealing his taunt angular muscles as he looked at you keenly, awaiting your response.

‘I um…I haven’t actually showered yet since earlier so…’

‘Ah! Your natural scent, then. How delectable. My my, I can only imagine how good you must smell once you are well and truly dirty…’ his voice lowered as he stared you down, and you suddenly felt very underdressed…or overdressed…for whatever this was.

‘So what’s happening lately with the A-team?’, you cleared your throat, ‘have you guys got any big missions planned that you can tell me about?’ you began shaking your water bottle in your palm, dispersing the protein powder like you wanted to disperse with this conversation.

Silence rolled around you in the empty kitchen as you politely awaited his reply, realising far too late the association he was making with your provocative hand movements to what was tucked within those revealing shorts.

‘Agent Y/N, I must tell you something, ’ he strode across the kitchen, leaning one enormous, muscled arm against the cupboard over your head before you had a chance to think.

‘…I am…consumed…with thoughts of you. Your mortal body. Underneath my godly body. A union fit for the cosmos. Your perishable curves have pushed me to the edge of desire. We should be lovers. Allies…in fucking. Would you like that?’, a thin smile graced the corner of his mouth as his eyes bore down into you, willing you to concede. You couldn’t contain yourself.

Your hand shot up to your mouth as you began to laugh, the ridiculousness of the situation falling like a satellite from the sky. Confused, Thor took several steps back from you, checking behind him that no one had born witness to the scene.

‘I’m sorry’, you gasped between staggered breaths, ‘I just…’ and you collapsed in on yourself again, howling with painful laughter as he began to retreat.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he huffed as he made his way down the hall, spinning around in an attempt to extinguish the sounds of mirth which taunted him, ‘I am worthy...you know…’

__

Loki smirked as he heard your unmistakable peals of laughter ringing through the corridors, followed by his brother’s footsteps, heavy with rejection. Fool. How could he have thought that you would fall for the brash display of wanton brawn that he no doubt set out for you. But, Loki reminded himself, this all played to his advantage.

The truth was that Loki had been utterly infatuated with you for months, observing your patterns, interests and relationships around the compound as you went about your daily life as an Agent of Shield, his clandestine operation fuelling his fascination with you behind the curtain of apathy. All coolness played out towards you in daylight hours was made up for tenfold under cover of darkness, when his hands reached between his thighs for relief.

He had imagined you in boundless situations together, a collection of fictions in his mind that lived and breathed and sighed his name under the ministrations of his hands, his tongue, his cock, as desperate with need for him as he for you. In his fantasies, you would come to him by night, a pilgrimage to his rooms, where you would find the salvation you sought. He would absorb you, worshipping every part of you in the flesh as he did in his mind. Your honeyed words would drip out of you as he lapped at the font of your secret devotion for him, hidden all this time.

His thousand yard stare was broken by the sound of light footsteps approaching, right on time.

__

‘Loki!’ you exclaimed, ‘Jesus I can’t get rid of you two today…your brother isn’t here is he?’

You quickly checked your surroundings for any signs of your would-be suitor as Loki reclined casually on one of the large sofas within the common area of the compound, reading a book.

‘No, he is not’, he replied politely, ‘if he were, I would not be’.

Satisfied, you settled on the opposite sofa, setting your drink down on the table as you watched the infamous god of mischief thumbing over a page. An hour passed in peace as you closed your eyes, drinking in the sunlight streaming through the window, gloriously warming the surface of your skin.  

‘You look like a goddess’, Loki murmured quietly, his words breaking the lengthy silent sea, barely distilling through your meditative state.

‘Hmm?’ you questioned, the words he spoke not bridging the gap to your brain currently occupied by delicious warm restfulness.

‘I said, you look like a goddess’, every word was calligraphy in deep velvet tones. You opened your eyes, locking immediately with the man across from you, staring at you inquisitively.

‘The light’, he gestured, ‘it glows on your skin just so…like a goddess, I would know’, a smile reaching his eyes. That was new.

As much as you had tried to deny it initially, your feelings for Loki had not gone away as the days and months ticked on from his arrival at the compound. His aloofness only served to make you more determined to uncover what lay beneath those layers of cool cynicism…and leather, and tight gym clothes.

He was a high-risk recruit, and not one which you had not been cleared to over-socialise with…so you kept your distance. You watched as he warmed to those around him, as he became accustomed to life in this new world. You made a note of the books he had read and made sure to read them too. Just in case. He liked reading. He liked a lot of things. You hoped he liked you.

When your days were done, your fingers found your way between your thighs and Loki was the only thought in your mind. Oh, the things he had done to you. His fingers had traced every line on your body, explored every crevice for points of pleasure that brought you to ecstasy under his touch. He loved the way you wound his long curls in your hands as he pleasured you, his face buried inside you as he delved to your very core with his tongue. He had taken you in every position, in every available surface of your rooms as you called his name and he yours, his perfect face contorted with the overwhelming passion he felt for you in those moments as you were one.

‘Y/N?’, his soft voice broke your daydream as you came back to reality, ‘Yes.’ you replied, too quick to be believable that you had absolutely not been in another world where he was desperate for your touch.

‘I’m leaving now’, he said soothingly, ‘but I very much enjoyed your company…’

Your heart fluttered at his words, your body responding with a flush of hormones straight to your loins as he gazed down at you from above, his eyes an untameable sea of emotions you were unable to read as he touched your hand lightly and drew it fluidly to his lips, your fingertips ghosting the object of your desire as he pressed them against you, moist from where he had recently licked them.

‘I’ll see you l-later?’, you stuttered, it came out as a question although you had not meant it so. Or had you?

‘Perhaps’, he purred, ‘I am always at your service, Lady’. He lowered your hand, and with a curt bow he moved gracefully towards the exit.

___

You definitely needed that shower now. A cold one. It had been two hours since you finished sparring with Clint and you’d been awkwardly propositioned by one demi-god and given a primal hot flush by another, simply being his inimitable self. The door to your apartment clicked open and you headed straight to the bathroom, the promise of the cool stream of liquid pressure on your body calling you as you stripped from your tight clothes and stepped in to the tub.

Refreshed, you pottered around the apartment you called home at the compound, a thick white towel tucked around your frame as your damp hair brushed your shoulders, earlier events of the day feeling more like a dream with every moment that passed.

Knock Knock

You looked up from your laptop screen, confusion knitting your brow as you checked the time on your phone. You had nowhere to be, no emergency alerts from Fury. You made your way to the door, holding one hand to the towel concealing your modesty as it swung open before you.

Of course.

Thor leaned theatrically against your door-frame, one rippled arm extended above his head as he took up as much space as possible, looking down as his tousled blonde hair fell around his face. His eyes raised slowly to meet your stare of disbelief, ignorant to the effect his display was having on you.

‘Like what you see?’ his voice rumbled, saturated with the same misplaced confidence as the kitchen encounter,

‘I like that you’re wearing a t-shirt now’, you quipped casually as you glanced past him to check for witnesses, Thor’s eyebrows furrowed as his smile turned to a pout processing your words.

His suspicious eyes travelled the lines of your body, naked only for the towel that encased you. Your bare face framed by your wet hair, traces of moisture still clinging to your collarbone as he stared at you hungrily, ‘Norns, you are Rán personified’, he mumbled lustily, ‘goddess of the sea…she had nine children, you know’, he winked.

You stared at him, arms folded, your voice not betraying the pounding of your heart beneath the Egyptian cotton.

‘You’re the second person to call me a goddess today’, you quipped, ‘so I must be doing something right’.

Thor’s arm slid from above him through his hair, curiosity flaring in his gaze, ‘the second?’ his eyes flickered towards the bicep now bulging to his side, willing your gaze to fall upon it in awe.

‘Y/N, I understand that my revelation earlier may have come as a shock to your mortal mind…it is not every day that a figure of legend expresses his wish to bed you and so I am willing to offer you another opportunity…’ he trailed off as his thick hands found their way to his hips pointing towards where his, surely enormous, cock sat concealed, squarely posturing his triangular frame in your field of vision. Impossible to ignore.

‘To fuck you?’, you stated. This was becoming too much and your patience was wearing thin.

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that but, yes, if you wish…’, his eyebrows raised as a smug smile danced at his lips.

You cleared your throat, ‘as flattered as I am, son of Odin, I have to decline your offer’ you spoke purposefully, watching the muscles in his face morph from expectation to bemusement with each syllable passing your lips.

‘Y/N I don’t think you understand the honour I am bestowing upon you-’

Without another word, you closed the door.

This was bad. You paced the floor as you pondered your limited options, willing that your pursuer had the sense to leave the situation as it stood. Blessedly, no further protests came from beyond the door that separated you from him, as thoughts of Loki raced through your mind, unbidden.

Surely, he would be able to call his brother off? They were not the closest of kin but his word would likely hold more weight, and believability, than yours. Your mind flashed back to the scene of Loki with his muscled forearm pinning Thor against the wall this very morning, your pussy clenching as you remembered the fire in his eyes in response to the unknown misdemeanour his brother had inflicted. Loki’s words earlier today floated through your memories like pollen, ‘I am always at your service, Lady’, his well-timed promise the final nail in your resolve.

You pressed your ear against the door, satisfying yourself that you could open it without another unwelcome encounter. Hurriedly you scampered down the hall, your bare feet cool against the linoleum floor as you made your way to the apartment you had only fantasised about as you passed it each morning. You knocked gingerly at the door, praying that he was inside.

The door opened almost immediately, revealing the god of mischief looking at you with a perplexed amusement on his angled features. His gaze drew down your body briefly as he straightened, his eyes quickly returning to yours, ‘you are aware that you are wearing only a towel, Agent?’

Oh god.

‘I’m sorry,’ you stuttered, embarrassment soaking through your consciousness like liquor, ‘I needed to see you, I forgot…’, you trailed off as he ushered you inside his rooms, the mischievous glint in his eyes now laced with concern.

‘Tell me’, he stated regally as you paced the floor, not knowing how to begin.

You recounted your meetings with Thor that day to him, as he ran his hands through his hair concealing a smile.

‘I don’t think it’s that funny, actually’, you huffed as his grin finally broke across his face, ‘he’s after me like a horny dog…it’s Thor…what the hell am I supposed to do?’

Loki crossed his arms, resting one long finger on his chin as he pondered your words, ‘have you considered conceding to his request?’ he asked, smoulderingly, ‘you may enjoy it’.

You rolled your eyes as you absorbed his words, how foolish you were to have thought he could help. That he would help. He didn’t care about you, they were as bad as each other. Your heart dropped at the revelation, the object of your desire unknowingly pushing you into the arms of his brother. His rival. You seethed.

‘I can categorically tell you I would not enjoy it. You of all people should understand that…’ you drew yourself up to full height, stoically tightening the fit of your towel as you held your head high, ready to make your defiant exit.

‘Y/N…’ his voice cooed gently, ‘sit down’, he patted the sofa next to where he had planted himself during your display of resolve. You eyed him suspiciously as he gazed at you, no trace of haughtiness in his eyes now.

‘Please?’, he murmured. Your resolve melted.

Cautiously you sat on the opposite side of the sofa to the handsomest man you had ever seen in your life, the one whose voice made you wet with desire, the luxe furnishings he had conjured for himself a stark contrast to the ridiculousness of your appearance. You felt the luxurious fabric beneath you graze against your wetness as you settled, the length of your towel not conducive to the new position you found yourself in. Lord, you hoped you wouldn’t leave a mark.

He cleared his throat.

‘Y/N, my brother is an arrogant oaf, that you know I am sure’, you nodded at his words, ‘however there is another reason for his particularly boorish behaviour today, for which I apologise for my part in it…’

‘Go on…’ your heart quickened, a fizz of anticipation building in your stomach as he spoke.

‘This morning my brother revealed his…intentions…to me regarding you. In his mind, it became a competition of sorts between us, one which he was confident that he would emerge victorious, and I fear my actions only spurred him on…’, Loki looked up at you from hooded eyes, unspoken words clouding them as you drank in his gaze.

‘A competition?’ you repeated…the connotations ticking through your mind,

‘Yes, Y/N, and for that I am sorry…you do not deserve to be treated as such’, his lowered voice tinged with reverence made your pussy throb with need.  

Words formed on your lips before you had a chance to vet them, dripping out of you like the wetness forming on your intimate folds, ‘but…you didn’t compete’, you turned to him – noting his pupils that were widened as he leant towards you, the space between you shortening as you felt your breath become heavy.

‘Didn’t I?’ he purred darkly, ‘…you’re here aren’t you?’

Your head spun. You could feel your hips beginning to squirm minutely beneath you as your pussy keened for attention, the weight of his words only adding to the melody of his breath in your ear, thick with innuendo you wanted to rut yourself upon.

‘Loki, I have to tell you something…’ you started, turning to him as he closed the space between you. His lips moulded to yours as he encased your cheek in one of his slender hands, the other making its way to your waist as you gasped into his kiss. His tongue breached your mouth with ease, twisting around yours with needful passion held back by careful restraint as he measured your response.

He withdrew, his eyes fluttering open to assess the situation. Your eyes were closed, a dreamlike expression on your face as you registered the absence of his touch, a slight frown ghosting across your forehead.

‘Y/N…’ he whispered seductively as you opened your eyes, ‘I too wish to bed you, but for reasons quite different from my brother’, he re-considered his words… ‘somewhat...different to my brother..’

You looked at him with disbelief, was this happening? Were you about to wake up alone, a hot, sweat-ridden mess tangled in your sheets?

‘I have admired you from afar for many months, although I admit it was the gauntlet thrown down by Thor this morning that spurred on my resolve to test your feelings for me, to see if there was a chance that you could feel the same…’, his fingers traced up your thigh as he said it, his light touch making you shiver as you slid your legs wider apart, involuntarily, 

‘…and from your actions just now, it seems I may have arisen victorious from our little bet…’, his eyes flashed as he crashed into you, pressing you to the sofa as his lips ravaged you with finesse.

You moaned wantonly as he moved his attention to your neck, sucking the delicate exposed skin to mark you as his prize, the cock you had dreamed of so vividly in your fantasies hardening against your naked thigh through his sweatpants. One of his hands slid down your chest, pulling your towel aside as it went, gracefully sliding down your body. 

Two fingers brushed through your folds, your desire evident as his eyes lit up at the feeling, ‘darling you are absolutely soaking,’ he moaned in your ear, his hot breath igniting every nerve in your body, ‘…so wet for me and I’ve barely touched you’, you groaned as his fingers slid inside you – gasping as they curled against your clenching walls, ready for everything he had to give you.

‘I’ve thought about this a lot, Loki’, you sighed against him as he manipulated your body to his will, your senses coming undone as reality fell away around you, ‘I’ve felt the same way about you…all this time–’, a low moan escaped you as he began to thumb your clit in slow circles, observing the woman he worshipped beneath him, writhing under his touch – finally.

‘Mmm,’ Loki murmured as his seidr glowed, his clothes disappearing in a shimmer of green as your eyes widened at the sight of his chiselled body coming into view, his long cock pressing against your skin tantalisingly as your hips keening into his fingers massaged it against your naked thigh with every thrust, 

‘well then,’ he growled, the lust in his voice breaking as he lowered his face between your legs, ‘it seems it was I who had the competitive advantage after all…’

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Link to Competitive Advantage [Part 2] (I mean c’mon we can’t just leave it there can we? no.)

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