-

Finally, after a full weekend of preparation, a full day of celebration, and a night of dancing, Kara slowly makes her way back to the head table to breathe. Alex and Kelly, looking stunningly beautiful, are swaying close together as the band plays one of the only slow songs of the night so far. Alex is whispering in Kelly's ear, who laughs in response, and Kara can't help but smile at the couple. She nurses her drink, deciding then that this should be her last one of Aldebaran rum before switching to water, and looks around the room.

The sun went down long ago, and the barn is lit up with white string lights and candles, giving everything a soft, flickering glow. Most people have taken the lull in dancing to take a break, refilling drinks or sitting down for the first time in a few hours. In true Superfriend fashion, the wedding reception has been quite a riot. The band is excellent at keeping everyone out on the floor, playing song after song that has all their friends singing and dancing and drinking to their hearts' content. Now, only a few couples linger around the newlyweds as the band slows down, and Kara can't help but feel a little relief after stepping away.

It's been a beautiful but exhausting day. She's happy to take five minutes to sit in her seat and simply observe.

"Now, does alcohol really affect Kryptonians, or have I just assumed you've been a heavyweight all these years?"

Lena approaches from her left, fingers curled delicately around a glass of red wine, and Kara smiles up at her, nodding to the seat next her in invitation. Their shoulders brush as Lena sags into the seat next to her. Lena, for her part, looks just as danced out as Kara, flyaways falling out of her intricate updo and shoes nowhere to be found.

But Rao, if she isn't stunning.

She's in a silky red dress that stops mid-calf with a devastating slit up the right side that exposes her smooth alabaster skin as she crosses her legs. Kara blames her inability to stop her eyes from trailing up Lena's figure on the alien alcohol, and promptly ignores the warmth spreading through her system at the sight of her best friend looking like that right in front of her. The thin straps and low neckline expose her collarbone beautifully, and Kara definitely does not follow the movement of her throat when she takes a sip of her drink.

She clears her throat. "Human alcohol doesn't affect me, no. But a few alien spirits do, and Alex happened to pull some strings to keep the bar stocked."

Lena nods and raises an eyebrow. "So every time we drank wine with our dinner you were just drinking bitter grape juice for fun?"

"Hey, I've become a bit of a wine connoisseur over the years," Kara defends, tipping her glass towards Lena. She glances down at Lena's drink and adds, "I do have to confess that I prefer white wine to red." She grins mischievously, and Lena scoffs in response.

"What? After all this time?" Lena's hand flies to her chest dramatically. "You wound me, Kara Zor-El."

She feels heat rise to her cheeks at the sound of her real name lilting over Lena's lips. She laughs it off. Must be the rum.

Lena breaks into a laugh and bumps her shoulder against Kara, perhaps a little affected by her drinks tonight as well, and Kara is struck yet again by how lucky she is that they can do this. Sit shoulder to shoulder. Laugh together. Joke about her secret. Kara's laughter trickles off. She tears her gaze away from Lena to look back onto the dance floor.

Alex and Kelly are still pressed close, foreheads touching. She loves them, she's happy for them, and yet she can't shake the loneliness that sits deep in her chest. She loves them and envies them all the same.

"Did I ever thank you for forgiving me?" Kara asks suddenly, still looking at her sister.

Lena jerks her head toward Kara but doesn't respond. The alien alcohol makes her honest, which is definitely dangerous for how much baggage she has buried deep inside her, ready to bubble up at any moment.

"Because I didn't deserve it, don't deserve it, but I'm grateful. I couldn't have done, well, a lot of things, if I didn't have you. So thank you. For this, being here with me. For me, I mean."

Kara is still looking at her sister, her married and ridiculously in love sister, when she feels a hand on her knee. She grabs it instinctively.

"Hey, we could go back and forth on this forever," Lena says. Kara stares at their interlocking fingers and swallows thickly. "I forgave you, you forgave me, and now we're here. We made it out, no more bad guys —"

"There's always more bad guys," Kara interrupts before she can stop herself, bitterness seeping out into her tone unexpectedly. She takes a big sip of her drink, fighting a cough as it goes down. As she looks back up to Alex and Kelly, she wishes just for a moment that this was their life. Uncomplicated, safe, normal. Just family and friends coming together for a wedding, not a team of superheroes taking one night off from their full-time job of danger. And she could just be the younger sister and maid of honor, not the Kryptonian on the sidelines with no one to grow old with.

Tears spring into her eyes, and she clears her throat to cover them up. Too much rum, she thinks to herself.

"Hey, look at me."

She slowly shifts her gaze to Lena, who's a lot closer than Kara anticipated. Kara can smell the perfume and hairspray mixed with sweat, and her eyes are round with worry and softness, and there's an eyelash under her eye that she desperately wants to brush away, and her thumb is tracing circles on the back of Kara's hand, and her senses are over overwhelmed with Lena, Lena, Lena. She swallows thickly and keeps her eyes focused on Lena's.

"We're all safe right now. Nxly is gone, we're all here together. It won't last forever, you're right about that." Lena squeezes her hand and Kara smiles. "So let's enjoy the peace while we've got it, yeah?"

At that, Kara nods, emotion and alcohol still making her throat tight and vision blurry. Rao, what she would give to feel any resemblance of peace. She sighs and rests her head on Lena's, who shifts even closer to glue her side against the Kryptonian. Kara can feel every inch of contact and wills herself not to react. Their fingers are still interlocked in Kara's lap, and she's hyperaware of the image the two best friends are displaying.

It's undeniably romantic.

If Lena notices a few of their friends glancing their way curiously, she doesn't mention it.

"Does this feel like an ending to you?" Lena asks suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

Lena glances down at their hands and back up at the crowd in front of them. More couples are coming back to the dance floor as the slower songs continue, dancing close to each other and smiling while they twirl around on the floor.

"We've been moving at break-neck speed every single day for months, and now we're . . . Not. I won't wake up early to get to the Tower. I won't stay up late in the lab creating some new tech. I won't be up all night worried about . . ." She trails off.

Kara moves her head to stare at Lena, who looks up at her with wide eyes, like she didn't mean to say that.

". . . Me." Kara finishes. Lena shrugs.

"I'm always worried about you."

Kara can't force herself to look away from Lena's intense gaze. She doesn't know how to respond to that. Of course, objectively, she knows the people in her life worry about her safety. Supergirl isn't the safest career she could've chosen. But to hear Lena say it so plainly, that she loses sleep thinking about her, has her frozen to her seat.

"Dance with me." The request bursts out of Kara without a warning, and they both startle backwards just an inch.

"What?"

"Dance with me," Kara repeats desperately, and in that moment she realizes she doesn't think she'll survive if Lena says no. "Please. Before we have to go back to risking our lives for some new bad guy."

Lena looks down at their hands, out to the dance floor, and back up to Kara. A smile grows on her face and she nods. "Okay."

Kara stands and pulls her best friend to her feet. They both kicked their shoes off hours ago, yet Kara still leans a few inches over Lena as they stand impossibly close. Kara pulls Lena behind her as they slowly drift towards the dance floor, nervousness bubbling in her chest. She ignores the clear looks of shock and excitement from their friends in favor of pulling Lena as close to her as possible. Lena's arms snake around Kara to rest on her shoulder blades while Kara places her hands on the small of Lena's back, pulling them as close as physically possible, foreheads touching as they breathe the same air.

This is new, Kara realizes, and yet it doesn't feel out of place. More like the culmination of everything they've been working towards. The connection they've felt from the day they met has never fizzled out, even when they were fighting. Working together the past few months has been noticeably different. There was always tension in the air when they worked together, as Kara tried to understand the totems and Lena practiced her newly discovered magic. It always felt like just the two of them in a room. A Super and a Luthor.

"You're right," Kara murmurs in Lena's ear.

"Hmm?" Lena doesn't lift her head from where it rests against Kara's cheek, eyes closed in contentment.

"It does feel a bit like an ending."

The worlds melts away and it's just them. Kara and Lena.

"But I've always been a fan of beginnings."

Lena pulls back to rest her forehead against Kara's, green eyes bright with tears.

"Think this could be one as well?" Lena whispers, looking up at Kara through her eyelashes, an undeniable glimmer of hope in her gaze.

"I've never wanted anything more."

It's unclear who leans in first, but in the end it doesn't really matter. Lena's hands slide to Kara's neck as their lips come together, and it feels like the world around them lets out a sigh of relief. Lena tastes like tart red wine and something akin to magic and Kara struggles to keep her powers in check to prevent them from floating.

Kissing Lena feels like a beginning to something that should have started ages ago. Kissing Lena feels like holding a cup of tea close to her chest and letting the warmth seep through her bones. Kissing Lena feels like the yellow sun dancing on her skin, radiating through her body and renewing her strength. Kara feels a contentment settle in her soul as they come up for air, noses bumping gently as they look up at each other. She blinks a few times as Lena's features come back into focus. The slope of her nose, the eyelash under her eye, the smudge of lipstick on the corner of her mouth. For a moment they just stare at each other.

And then, Lena smiles.

She smiles so radiantly, with that softness reserved only for her, that Kara can't help but lean in and kiss her again.

And then she hears the vague sound of clapping.

They break apart to see Alex and Kelly pointing at them while Nia and Brainy whoop from side of the dance floor.

"Are you really trying to steal my spotlight at my own wedding?" Alex shouts, and Kelly elbows her in the ribs playfully.

Kara blushes profusely while Lena just shrugs.

"Can't keep a Luthor out of the limelight that long, Mrs. Danvers," Lena jokes back, and then everyone is laughing, and Kara can't stop beaming, can't believe she is so lucky to have a family like this.

The band catches on to the newfound energy in the room and picks up the pace, and suddenly the dance floor is full and lively again. Everyone is singing and dancing with drinks in their hand and Kara catches a few of her friends tipping their glasses towards her in a toast. She laughs and twirls Lena around to hug her from behind as they sway to the music. She rests her chin on Lena's shoulder, still chuckling a little as she watches Nia reluctantly give Brainy a twenty dollar bill.

As she catches Alex's gaze from across the floor, full of love and pride for her sister, she holds Lena even tighter. She swears she's never felt more content in her life, holding Lena like this, surrounded by her favorite people in the world. Lena fits into her just right, like they were made for each other, and maybe they were, in some impossible cosmic way. Lena looks up at Kara, smiling so wide it takes her breath away. Kara presses a kiss to her temple.

"A Super and a Luthor, huh," Lena murmurs, eyes closing in contentment. Kara rests her chin on Lena's shoulder again and chuckles, any remaining tension leaving her body as she relaxes against her love. "Who would've thought?"

Kara smiles. "Well, I always hoped."


Chapter 24. Alex. (May 2001)

Alex was a member of a Russian trade delegation touring the region looking at various local companies; hubby's being one of them. The delegation was staying at one of the hotels in town and hubby, whose company was among the first to be visited, had arranged for us to meet Alex in the bar that evening. It was apparent from J's excitability that he envisaged more than just a drink!

When introduced to Alex I found him to be a really well-built guy, who spoke good English but with a strong guttural accent which I'm certainly not going to attempt to replicate here. I've no idea what hubby had told Alex about us but during the introductions the guy seemed to be undressing me with his eyes.

The conversation at our table seemed forced and stilted, as though we were waiting for something to happen. Eventually Alex stood up, and holding his hand out to me said, "Coming?

I looked at hubby and he told me to go ahead and enjoy myself.

"What about you?" I asked him.

"I'll wait here. The delegation will be in the hotel for three nights, so assuming your happy I'll get to watch another night."

Well the big Russian took me up to his room and immediately began undressing. For some unaccountable reason I was feeling a bit nervous and uncertain. Should I follow suit or would Alex want to undress me? God he's big though I thought, on seeing the barrel-chested Alex without his shirt. I ran my eyes over his torso, the rippling muscles of his upper arms, while he continued to undress.

"Oh my god!" I couldn't prevent the exclamation on seeing Alex's cock.

It was huge! Most definitely the biggest I'd seen.

"Big heh, you like?" He grinned aware from my response that I did.

I was on my knees in a flash, grabbing his thick cock by the root to run my tongue lovingly along its length and round the glans. The big Russian stood grinning down at me, hands on hips and feet apart, while I kissed and licked his cock. It was only when I turned my attention to his equally large and heavy looking balls, licking and kissing them, that Alex began to respond by uttering strange mooing sounds. Turning my attention back to the guy's cock I took it into my mouth with some difficulty.

My God I'm going to be fucked by this monster I thought, sucking on Alex cock. He was forcing his big cock further into my mouth and my lips felt stretched to breaking but I continued sucking almost desperately at it. Tasting pre-cum I stuck to my task but almost gagged when Alex came, forcing his cock right down my throat to release a thick torrent of cream.

Lifting me to my feet, Alex then placed me face down over the end of the bed and pushed my skirt up over my waist. Next he ripped my panties down and as he yanked them off I thought for a minute he was going to mount me straight away. Instead he sat on the floor and pulled my legs backwards onto his shoulders, one each side of his head. I squealed with delight when his tongue bored into my cunt to lap round and round. His hands were on my bottom and I knew instinctively where his fingers were going when I felt them exploring my flesh. As expected a finger drove into my anus while his tongue continued its gorgeous work on my cunt. Sucking at my clitoris, fingers drilling in and out of my anus, Alex brought me to a very noisy and violent orgasm before deftly picking me up to lay me full length on the bed. Then he mounted me.

My scream of delight when the guy's huge cock powered into me must have been heard the length of the corridor I should think and my ecstatic cries continued to ring out all the time he fucked me, culminating in another gigantic orgasm.

His cock thrusts continued and Alex pushed my top up before reaching around to unclip my bra, something he accomplished with ease. He seized my bared breasts, sucking and biting at my nipples, while continuing to fuck me lustily.

Suddenly he withdrew, flipped me over and raised me up onto my knees. It all happened in an instant and I barely had time to draw breath before the big cock powered into me again. Grabbing my dancing breasts Alex held on to them while fucking me, this time keeping going until he came, loud grunts breaking from his lips, cock jerking and discharging deep inside me.

Rearranging my clothing later I had to search the room for my panties, eventually locating them in the corner but they were torn and not worth putting on. I smoothed my skirt down as best I could but it still remained creased from being bunched up around my waist for so long and it was the first thing hubby commented on when we rejoined him in the bar. I don't know about Alex but I was really thirsty so hubby went off to the bar to fetch drinks for us. A grinning Alex groped and squeezed my thighs under cover of the table while we waited for our drinks. In fact he couldn't keep his hands off me and when we left, having arranged to meet him again tomorrow evening, Alex came out to the car park with us and put his hand up my skirt while J opened the car door. While hubby sat in the car patiently waiting, I stood with legs apart enjoying the feel of Alex fingering my cunt and thinking happily that I'd have his huge cock again tomorrow.

J wasn't as patient when I told him about the size of Alex's cock though; he could barely contain himself at the prospect of watching me being fucked by such a monster!

We arrived at the hotel early but Alex soon appeared in the bar and greeted us with a smile. No polite small talk tonight though, we went straight up to his room. This time I began undressing directly we were inside, the guys watching, and Alex slowly taking his own clothes off as he did so. Naked, I sat on the end of Alex bed waiting while he finished undressing and hubby's tense excitement was plain to see as he too watched, eager to see the cock I'd been so fulsome in my praise of. Alex slowly lowered his underpants well aware of the effect he was having. Hubby's mouth dropped open and he leaned forward to the edge of his chair when Alex revealed his mighty organ.

"Good God!" Hubby exclaimed standing up. "You had that inside you yesterday."

"And she will again today." Alex smirked.

Directly I saw his cock I spread my legs without thinking, a sort of automatic response I suppose. Alex bundled hubby aside to get at me, kneeling on the carpet and putting my legs up over his shoulders like yesterday but face up this time. His tongue bored unto my cunt and I lay back on the bed squealing. Again like yesterday I felt Alex's fingers seeking for, and locating my anus to probe inside. Hubby was beside the bed then, cock in hand. He couldn't see everything that Alex was doing to me but had a good idea by my wild and vociferous response.

After bringing me to orgasm Alex got to his feet, a big grin spreading across his face when he saw hubby masturbating. However it was J, quickly shedding his trousers and underpants, who suggested a comparison. The guys stood facing one another and the difference in cock size was plain to see, as was hubby's excitement when he realised that Alex cock was more than twice the size of his own.

"Fuck her, fuck my wife now. Let me see you do it to her!" J urged, his voice breaking with emotion.

Again the laughing Alex thrust hubby aside, almost contemptuously this time, before turning towards me. I quickly shuffled backwards until I was full length on the bed and reached out to him, spreading my legs wide as I did so.

There was something of a swagger about Alex now as lifting my ankles to double them back, he mounted me.

"Put my cock inside her then husband." Alex grinned down at me as he said it.

With my legs pinned down by his shoulders Alex ran his hands through my hair so I knew the fingers spreading my cunt lips must be hubby's. I felt the fingers guiding Alex cock into me and realised that J must have had to reach between the guys legs to accomplish it. Again Alex looked pleased with himself, his cock sinking deeper inside.

"Good, now stroke my balls husband while I fuck your wife." Alex snapped over his shoulder.

He was fucking me lustily now, stifling my ecstatic cries with his mouth pressed to mine. J stroked Alex balls the entire time the guy was fucking me and probably contributed to him coming quicker than he might otherwise have done.

When it was over Alex stood laughing while hubby masturbated, staring fixedly between my thighs and muttering about how open my cunt looked after the pounding it had received from Alex big cock.


Katsuki woke to a warm body moving under the covers—trailing dual temperature hands across his bare torso and sliding down his boxers.

“Thought I told you to give me back my key.” The only answer Katsuki got was the feeling of wet heat enveloping his cock. He groaned quietly and reached under the covers to fist at silky hair as his length swelled to full hardness. Shouto relaxed, letting the growing thickness press past the cavern of his mouth and deep into his throat—nose still buried in golden curls.

When he was sure Katsuki was fully hard he came up for air, sucking on the flushed head as he swirled his tongue and dipped it into the leaking slit. “F-fuck, Icyhot—shit, w-what a way to wake up…”

He felt a smile against his skin before his cock disappeared again and Shouto went to work bobbing his head as he massaged his sack. Katsuki didn’t even try to stop the low moans that spilled from his lips as his cock was expertly worked.

He loved how it felt when Shouto took him to the base and rhythmically swallowed, like he was trying to milk Katsuki’s release from him. He was so close, he could feel it in the way his balls tightened, tension building in his core.

Shouto went to pull off, but he fisted his hair harder, shoving him down and finally causing the little slut to gag. He was struggling, hands coming up to press at Katsuki’s thighs and legs shaking as saliva poured out from around the thick cock.

When he finally realized the struggle was useless, Shouto grabbed Katsuki’s testicles again and  squeezed—causing him to release a started shout. But dammit if he wasn’t a bit of a masochist because the sudden pain had him arching off of the bed, pulling even more roughly at mismatched hair.

Shouto’s face was pressed fully against his body as Katsuki filled his throat. He was so lost in his post-orgasmic haze that it took the sudden searing pain of Shouto’s left palm before he was releasing the suffocating villain.

Shouto pulled the covers off of himself and shot Katsuki a look that was probably supposed to be intimidating, but lost heat due to his red rimmed eyes and the cum leaking from his nose.

“God I fucking hate you.”

“Yeah, I know Icyhot. Not come sit on my cock like I know you want to.”

He narrowed his eyes before petulantly wiping his nose on the sheets and climbing on top of Katsuki. Shouto reached around, pulling a long plug out of his ass before sliding it back in. Katsuki watched him fuck himself, eyes closed and brows furrowed. He was biting his lip, working the toy quickly and the sight caused Katsuki’s dick to twitch.

The fucking brat  would choose to fuck himself like a goddamned tease while there was a perfectly good cock not 12 inches from his greedy little hole. It was all Katsuki could do not to force his cock in alongside the toy, really split him open and make him scream. He had an excess of pent up aggression given that Shouto had fucked up one of his jobs the past week by showing up and trying to kill him before he could take out his mark.

Shouto released a lewd moan and the last thread of Katsuki’s patience snapped. He growled low, strong arm coming up to curl around his slim waist as he flipped them. Katsuki slapped a cool hand away and swiftly pulled the toy out of the slut’s ass, causing Shouto to choke on his gasp.

In one smooth motion, Katsuki buried himself to the hilt inside of his slippery channel—basking in the way Shouto’s ass sucked him in like it was made to be fucked. He was  so fucking tight. It didn’t really help that the toy had been much too slim to emulate Katsuki’s thickness.

He pulled out quickly, twisting him at the waist and straddling a thigh. He spread Shouto wide, throwing the other leg over his shoulder and using it as leverage to fuck into his narrow passage. Katsuki pulled all the way out with each thrust, watching how the red rim slowly loosened until it was wide open and winking from the continuous assault.

For his part, Shouto was actually being pretty quiet, taking it like a good, obedient cock sleeve—well Katsuki didn’t want that. He removed his cock and grabbed the discarded toy from the bed, pressing it in to tease the bundle of nerves inside him. He worked the plug swiftly, smirking at the way Shouto grit his teeth, fisting the sheets as he fought the moans threatening to work their way from his throat.

“Fuck—look at you. You’re taking this fake fucking cock so well. Bet your pretty little hole wants more, doesn’t it? Jesus, Icyhot—“ Shouto was slowly losing it, the aggressive stabs at his prostate too much to take. “You want more, don’t you? Want to be ripped apart.”

Katsuki stopped thrusting the plug in favor of lining up and pressing in beside it—spurred on by the scream that finally left Shouto’s lips. When Icyhot finally came untouched it was messy and loud and made the room smell like smoke as he burned a hole in the sheets.

It wasn’t long before Katsuki came too, pulling out completely and aiming each pump at Shouto’s stretched hole. He stood up, walking into the bathroom and turning on the shower. He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when an annoyed looking half and half bastard came striding into the room.

“Umm—what are you doing?”

Katsuki spit into the sink and made eye contact with Shouto through the mirror. “Bout to take a shower, the fuck’s it look like I’m doing?”

“ It looks  like you’re not planning on fucking me again, which is crazy, right?”

He rolled his eyes, stepping into the warm spray and wetting his hair.

“ I said, that’s crazy r—“

“Fuck! I know what you said, you needy bitch. I’ve got plans. Shit to do today.”

Shouto slung the shower curtain aside, earning a jump from him. “What plans?”

“Jesus fucking —I’ve got to go see the nerd!”

Icyhot’s look went from questioning to livid in less than the time it took Katsuki to blink the soap out of his eyes.

“Let. Me. Get. This. Straight.”  Well shit.  “You’re choosing to see Izuku,  instead of me?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You know, maybe if you hadn’t fucked up my goddamned job on Thursday, I wouldn’t have to see fucking Deku at all!”

Katsuki was so confused. What was the half and half bastard so pissed for? This was just a fucking truce, it’s not like they even got along.

“But Sundays are  our  days.” Shouto didn’t seem angry anymore. If anything he would say his voice sounded small, almost unsure.  Was he fucking pouting?

“What are you, my fucking girlfriend?” Katsuki punctuated the question by flicking water at him.

Shouto wiped his face, leveling him with a seething glare. “Asshole.”

“Spoiled brat.”

“Piece of shit.”

“Princess with daddy issues.”

“PSA for anger management.”

“Fucking multiple personalities having bitch.”

“Well at least my hair doesn’t look like an aborted dandelion.”

“And that bullshit you got going on is better, you fuckin’ Zuko ass candy cane!?”

Shouto slid the curtain shut and stormed out of the bathroom, stomping around loudly. Fucking hell, the two of them may have had a truce, but that didn’t stop Icyhot from breaking shit in his apartment.

Katsuki quickly rinsed off, slinging a towel around his hips and racing toward the bedroom. The bed was a mess, Shouto  and the toy suspiciously missing. A loud noise drew his attention and he followed it into the kitchen.

Shouto was dressed, banging through cupboards and pulling out a mug when he found them. Katsuki wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone brew coffee so passive-aggressively. “Is this really such a big fucking deal?”

Half and half wouldn’t look at him. He kept his back to Katsuki, staring at the coffee pot as it brewed. He rolled his eyes and walked up behind him, cupping his ass and eliciting the sluttiest moan from Shouto.  So that’s where the plug went.

“You fucking jealous, Icyhot? My little whore angry ‘cause I’m choosing to work instead of using you as a cock warmer all day?” Shouto didn’t respond but the way he leaned back into the touch said enough.

Katsuki dropped the towel, sliding his pants past the swell of his ass and running his fingers around the flared base of the toy. The tension left Shouto’s shoulders as Katsuki pulled it out, replacing it swiftly with his cock to ensure that none of his earlier release leaked out.

The sigh that left his lips at the feeling of being filled again was so damned contented that it caught Katsuki off guard. “Damn, you really fucking needed this—didn’t you?” Shouto nodded quickly, gripping the counter and pressing back into each languid thrust. “Shit—okay baby. If the jealous slut needs my cock, he can have it.”

Katsuki  really had to go see Deku today, but damned if Shouto didn’t know how to get his way. He pressed him into the marble countertop as he moaned, pounding into his used hole with the kind of brutality expected of him.

Sex in the kitchen turned into fucking against a wall on the way to the bedroom, which turned into Shouto riding him within an inch of his life; and by the time the half and half bastard was satisfied enough to let Katsuki go see the nerd it was late afternoon.

He got dressed, grabbing his jacket from the closet and his keys from the counter before turning to see why Shouto was following behind him like a goddamn lost puppy.

“Can I fucking help you with something?”

“Nooope.” He was rocking back and forth on his heels and Katsuki narrowed his eyes.  The fuck was he playing at? Much to his annoyance Shouto followed him the entire way to the League’s stronghold, staying quiet save for a few random comments. Katsuki chose not to acknowledge the clingy fucker, hoping that being ignored would cause him to go away.

“Ah, Kacchan! You made it!” Deku was beaming at him from his desk, situated behind a wall of monitors. “...and Shouchan? What are you doing here?”

“Just keeping Katsuki company.” Shouto sat down on one of the desks. His quiet moan was missed by the nerd, but Katsuki knew the fucking masochist was only sitting to put more pressure on the toy plugging him up.

“Oh that’s right! It’s truce day, isn’t it?” Deku went back to typing, not paying attention to either of them.

“Where’s the fucking file on Yamamoto?” Green eyes widened and the nerd shook his head. “Ahh—no, sorry Kacchan. I gave that job away.”

“You fucking what!?”

Deku gave him an apologetic smile, eyes flickering over to Shouto in the corner. “Well, after Thursday I didn’t think you planned on finishing the job, so I transferred the contract to Hagakure.”

Katsuki could feel his blood boiling. “You didn’t think I’d finish the job!? Who the fuck do you think I am you stupid fucking quirkless goddamned Deku? And to top it off you give it to that fucking John Cena bitch!?”

Shouto snorted at the nickname, earning him a warning glare from Katsuki and an affectionate smile from the nerd.

“Listen, I’m sorry Kacchan. If you want I can issue another contract, but if she gets there first then the money goes to her.”

“Like she’s ever gonna be able to get the job done. Tsk.” Katsuki reached out for the new file, yanking it out of Deku’s hand and spinning on his heel to leave.

“Just remember! Yamamoto is a very powerful man and I still haven’t been able to gather much intel about his quirk, so be careful—“

“You—shut the fuck up, I don’t give a shit what quirk he’s got.” Katsuki moved his finger from pointing at Deku to Shouto. “And you—get up, we’re fucking leaving.”

Icyhot obeyed, waving at the nerd as he trailed behind Katsuki.

“Bye Kacchan and Shouchan, try not to kill each other once truce day is over, finding competent contract killers is such a hassle!”

Katsuki ignored him, blasting through the door and making his way out of the maze that was the League’s base.  Fuck, he was pissed. He’d do the job alright, but not before taking out his anger on the very excited,  very willing man with him.

This time when Shouto followed, he wasn’t annoyed by it, just grateful that he didn’t have to physically drag him. On the way back Katsuki set several alarms for before midnight, he didn’t want to risk another incident like the week before.

They’d barely made it back through the door before Katsuki was pouncing. The two villains came together in a frenzy of limbs and teeth, stumbling toward the bedroom and discarding clothing as they went. Katsuki silently took back every insult he’d had about Shouto being needy, because in that moment he understood perfectly.

The sex that morning had been rough and wild and everything it normally was, but  this—this was manic, a feverish collision born from frustration and anger. Shouto was a messed up fucker, everyone knew it. Katsuki could see it in the shift in his personality, the way he went from hot to cold and back again just like his quirk.

It was no secret that he’d had a fucked up past—daddy  and mommy issues to boot. Most of the time the knowledge pissed Katsuki off. He might be a fucking villain, but he still had some morals, damnit! And that tiny little voice that was his shriveled up conscious told him that he hated Shouto’s parents for what they’d done to him.

The larger voice in his head, however, was currently thanking every fucking god he could think of, because Katsuki had unparalleled anger issues and Shouto took the abuse  beautifully—begged for it even.

Katsuki ended up confiscating the copied key and kicking Shouto out with forty-one minutes left till midnight. Sure, he could have cut it closer, but he had work to do. Thursday’s plan had taken over a week to work out the logistics of and had been completely fucked over by one petty half and half bitch in less than an hour.

This plan had to be flawless,  and if he timed it right, he could have the job done and still be able to fuck Shouto’s brains out next Sunday, given that nothing went wrong. But whatever happened, there was one thing Katsuki was certain of.

Yamamoto was a deadman.


 L.Felix

| X516.06.13 |

Greed had a more practical method of transport which was nice. Felix enjoyed flying, but it was nice to take a car and keep his feet on the ground.

"So where are we going?" Felix asked curiously, his eyes looking for anything that might hint where they were heading. They were on a side of town Felix wasn't familiar with though.

"Just a little shopping spree. There's a few things I wanna get you still."

"You don't have to ge-"

"I know, but I want to treat you." Greed insisted. "Once you make a final decision, I want to make sure you're properly provided for. I can't exactly trust my brothers will spoil you like I want to."

 Spoil? Is that really all he wants to do? He basically wants to be a sugar daddy?

"Well...I appreciate the generosity." Felix replied, hoping to kind of stay on the other's goodside.

Greed just let out a chuckle. "I wouldn't really call it generosity if it's more of a personal gain to me."

"And why would that be?"

Greed shrugged. "You'll understand if you pick me."

"Let's say, I do end up choosing you...what would that mean?" Felix asked, wondering if he'd get the same answer as he did from Gluttony. "What would happen?"

"If you chose me then I'd make sure you'd have everything you've ever wanted. We'd be together for all eternity and-"

"And what would happen to my friends?"

"My brothers would leave their bodies and your friends would return to normal." Greed replied. "I would of course stay and Jisung's soul would...pass on."

 Maybe this really is true then...

"And what would our future look like?" Felix asked, leaning more to favor the other's wants and desires. If he wanted more answers to more pressing questions then he'd have to be willing to play along.

"Do you really want to know?" Greed asked, Felix nodding intently. "I know you're curious and want answers, but I hope you remember that knowledge has a price. These answers you want will add up if you aren't careful."

A numbing tingle at his side reminded Felix of the deep cuts he received after viewing what his friend's witnessed. They weren't the most terrible things but he was sure his skin would always be scarred there.

Would each answer be worth only that much?

"I will say...you are a top choice on my list to pick. I'm just a little more curious on what our days would look like together." Felix tried to persuade, letting his fingers lightly caress the other's hand playfully. Felix wasn't a professional when it came to flirting, but he did have an advantage of knowing how to make his friends flustered. He only hoped the Sins might react the same, though he was doubtful.

"Oh really..." The other inquired, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Well, let me treat you to a shopping spree without declining anything, and I'll give you an answer."

Nodding as the Sin parked the car, Felix unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the vehicle. Greed was already at his side after the blonde closed the door, reaching over to intertwine their fingers as they walked which Felix allowed.

 Greed might be easier to persuade than I thought...

 If he just wants to buy me stuff than-

A pull in the back of his mind stopped his thoughts.

"Felix?" It was Jeongin. "C-Can you hear me?"

 Yeah, I can. Is something wrong?

"I just...the others are resting, and I saw you with Ji-I mean Greed, so I wanted to make sure you're okay." Jeongin replied. "And Chan said he was able to visit you and I just...I wish I could too."

Felix found himself smiling. It was rare for the younger to express his worries verbally, so it made Felix wonder just how much stress the other was feeling.

 I'm doing okay, Jeonginnie. I hope you are too.

"Yeah, I'm doing fine...I guess." Jeongin said. "We're-"

"Here." Greed stated, extending out a pile of clothes in his arms. Confusion was all the other could show as he tried to remember even walking into and picking stuff out. "You spaced out again, didn't you?"

"Sorry."

"And here I thought you were really going to give me a chance." Greed pouted.

"I am, I just...all these clothes are a little overwhelming." Felix lied, hoping it was a decent enough lie.

A mischievous smile grew on the other's face. "Are you insinuating that you need me to help you?"

Felix quickly shook his head. "No, I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

Felix nodded with a weak smile as he entered the dressing room stall. He closed the door behind him and locked the door. It was set in his mind that he wouldn't try on everything but he would humor the other for a bit to continue to act interested.

Pulling the white t-shirt over his head, Felix picked up the first shirt in the pile.

"Lix?" The connection returned quickly, Felix feeling his head throb a little.

 Hyunjin? Is Jeongin still there?

"Yeah, he's sleeping now..." Hyunjin replied. "I just wanted to apologize for what's happened to you. I feel-"

 You don't need to apologize. I know it isn't really you.

"But it's still my body. It's still my-"

 But it's not your intention and it's not you.

Felix couldn't express himself enough. Hyunjin was just as much as a victim as he was. They all were.

"I just...I love you." The older confessed. "I never wanted to hurt you ever but...I was scared. I was scared I'd lose you."

 I love you too, Jinnie. I always will.

"I mean it, Felix. I love you...as more than friends. We all do and we just..."

There was a bit of frustration that Felix could sense growing in the other's tone.

 I know, I-

"You don't know!" The other suddenly snapped. "You have no idea how much it hurt watching you be so cuddly with the others. How much I hated seeing you give attention to anyone else when it wasn't me. Are you that much of an attention whore? I bet you knew exactly what you were doing when..."

There was a silence, Felix unable to even form words. Was that really how Hyunjin felt? Did Hyunjin really see Felix that way?

Using the back of his thumb, Felix wiped away a few tears that slipped down his cheeks.

"I...I didn't mean that. I don't know what came over me." Hyunjin quickly stated. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of that. I...I don't know what's happening. I don't-"

 How long?

"What?"

 How long have you guys liked me? In the romantic sense?

"I'm not sure about the others, but I know it was probably around the same time. After you collapsed from overworking yourself, I knew right then how I really felt." Hyunjin admitted. "I...I'm sorry."

 Don't be.

"This place it's...I think it's doing something to all of us and-"

"Felix? Are you sure you don't need help?" Greed asked from the other side of the door.

"I'm fine." Felix replied. "I was just going through the pile is all. I'm almost done."

"You didn't want to show me any?" Greed pouted.

"I'll show you the next one." Felix promised, feeling the tug in the back of his mind disappear. Hyunjin was gone.

° ° ° ° ° ° °

 Lust

| X516.06.13 |

It was boring without Felix around. The Sin liked teasing the blonde, seeing his blush. It was cute.

His brothers had their chances with the blonde and Lust felt it was his turn. He'd wait for the blonde to return before making a move of his own.

Felix would pick him at the end of all this. Lust was certain.

Smiling to himself, Lust closed his eyes. His powers were manifesting much more now, the Sin confident of what he could do with just one look. His brothers wouldn't stand a chance.

° ° ° ° ° ° °

 L.Felix

| X516.06.13 |

Almost dropping five of the bags, Felix was glad they were heading to the car. They had spent the whole day at the mall, Greed insisting on buying pretty much anything Felix said he liked or anything Greed loved on the boy. It was more clothes and accessories than Felix knew what to do with.

Putting all twenty plus bags into the trunk of the car, Felix felt thirty pounds lighter. Getting in the passenger side, Felix let out a heavy sigh as he relaxed.

The sun was setting and Felix was glad the day was almost done, he was ready for bed.

"Are you ready for that answer now?" Greed asked, Felix raising a brow.

"Answer?"

"You stuck to our deal by not denying anything I bought for you so I'll give you an answer to that question you wanted. What our future would look like if you picked me."

 Right...

Felix had forgotten he asked that. He wanted answers but was that really one he wanted to see?

"Can I change the question?" Felix asked curiously, knowing there was a bigger question he wanted an answer too.

Greed pursed his lips for a few seconds, thinking.

"I guess. I think I know what you're going to ask for so just give me your palm." Greed instructed. "A few of my brothers showed you so I might as well be next, right?"

Taking one of the keys, Greed let the ridged side cut across the pad of his finger, Felix wincing for him. Blood flowed up to the surface, the Sin reaching over and holding the back of Felix's hand as he let his blood draw out the familiar symbol.

"See you soon, Lixie." Greed winked, drawing one last line before things went dark.

Opening his eyes, Felix wasn't surprised to be in a void of darkness, the chill even colder than last time. He took a step forward, shielding his eyes as the white light consumed him, warming him.

There was a slight breeze that reached his skin, the air warm.

"You can open your eyes now." Jisung chuckled, Felix slowly letting his eyes peek open. "Surprise!" The other cheered quietly as Felix took in the feast in front of him. It all looked so good.

"I thought we said no surprises this year." Felix said, his mouth moving on its own as the words formed without thought.

"I know, but I couldn't help myself. After you made me like three cakes yesterday for my birthday, I figured I should do something nice too." Jisung insisted, his arms wrapping around the other's waist as he rested his chin on the younger's shoulder in a loving back hug.

Felix could feel all the warmth from the past two years in the older's embrace, the blonde trying to piece together what he missed.

"So you made all this?" Felix asked, amazed. Some reason he knew the other had never cooking in their two years of dating.

"Ha, of course not." Jisung replied. "Believe me, I tried, but things weren't quite working out. I even had Minho try to help me, but he even said I was a hopeless case."

Felix chuckled, lightly patting the other's head for reassurance. He appreciated the effort.

"So I ordered from your favorite restaurant and compiled it into a picnic." Jisung concluded, removing himself from the other and sitting down on the blanket.

"Thanks, Jisungie." Felix grinned as he sat down beside the older, excited to eat.

Jisung wrapped and arm around Felix's waist, keeping the boy close as he reached over for the box of fried chicken. It wasn't exactly the fanciest meal but Felix didn't mind at all. It felt more...natural and intimate this way.

"I was thinking tomorrow we could have a game night with everyone? I know they wanted to get together this week to celebrate all together." Jisung suggested, taking a bite from a piece of chicken first

"Sounds great to me." Felix replied, allowing himself to take a bite from the food Jisung offered.

The two ate peacefully together, Felix feeling comfortable in the silence between them. Jisung kept an arm around Felix the whole time which was comforting.

Felix continued to eat his share of the food, his attention currently on the water beside him.

"I've been thinking about this for a while, but I think I'm ready now." Jisung began to say, Felix placing down the cup in his hand. It sounded serious and he wanted to give Jisung his undivided attention. "I know it's only been two years since we started dating, but we've been friends for so much longer. I know the kind of person you are through your good and your bad, and I want to be by your side through it all. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I hope you want the same. Lee Felix, will you marry me?"

The older opened up a small ring box revealing a gold ring inside. Felix was genuinely shocked, the words unable to leave his mouth. In that instant it was as though all the things he missed out on flooded his memories. All the dates. All the intimate moments they shared. All the laughs, smiles, tears, and arguments. They all came back and the blonde burst into tears.

He loved Jisung. He could feel it in his heart that he did so genuinely and the older felt the same way.

Felix could only nod as he wiped his tears, Jisung cooing as he wrapped the boy in an embrace.

"I'll take your tears as a yes?" Jisung asked with a chuckle, petting the back of Felix's head to try and calm him.

"Y-yes." Felix stuttered, trying to hold back his tears. "I love you, Jisung."

"I love you too, Lixie."

Squeezing his eyes closed Felix suddenly felt cold again, Jisung's arms now gone. Opening his eyes, the blonde found he was in an unfamiliar place...a home.

"Felix, can you get the door?" Jisung called down from the upper floor.

"Yeah, I got it." Felix called back, walking over to the front door. He fumbled with the lock before pulling the door open, quickly getting wrapped up in a hug that almost sent him falling to the floor.

"Happy birthday slash anniversary!" Hyunjin cheered, squeezing the life out of Felix as the rest of the group tries entering the house around them.

"Thanks, Hyunjinnie." Felix managed to mutter out. "How have you guys been?"

"Bored." Seungmin replied, closing the door.

"Ever since you and Jisung moved away, we don't hang out as often as we used to." Chan admitted. "But we try about once a week."

"Are you saying Felix and I are the life of the party?" Jisung questioned as he came running down the stairs.

"I mean, there's only so much fun I can have teasing Seungmin and Hyunjin." Minho said. "I need more variety to work with."

"Then I guess we'll have to visit more often." Felix replied with a smile, feeling a little sad to hear they don't hang out often anymore.

"Space was needed for a while anyway." Seungmin admitted. "I mean, you remember how upset we all got when we found out you guys were engaged."

Felix furrowed his brows, the memories not quite there.

"But we're happy for you both." Chan quickly assured. "Just had to get over the little heartbreak."

"As long as I can still get some brownies, it's all good here." Hyunjin stated, walking off towards the kitchen area it seemed.

Jisung's hands found Felix's shoulders, his thumbs massaging out the younger's shoulders.

"Well, there's pizza and stuff in the kitchen so help yourselves. I'll get the game console turned on." Jisung announced, the group quickly racing to get to the kitchen before Changbin while Felix and Jisung stayed behind.

"I thought we said no surprises this year." Felix said, his words on autopilot still.

"I figured this would be a present for the both of us." Jisung replied, leaving a kiss on the blonde's shoulder. "I know how lonely you were without them. I was too."

Felix grinned, turning to face his husband. He let their lips meet again, leaving just a peck before embracing the other tightly.

"Thank you."

"No need to thank me. I love you."

"I love you more."

"And I'd love you both more if you'd keep the PDA to a minimum." Minho cut in, both boys turning to see a few of their friends occupying the door frame.

"So you're saying we can't do this?" Jisung asked, turning Felix's head and crashing their lips together. The kiss was quickly deepened, Jisung's tongue slipping past Felix's lips as he lightly tugged at the blonde locks.

The sounds of exaggerated gagging could be heard, Felix pulling away first from Jisung.

"Wanna mess with them some more?" Felix whispered, earning a nod from Jisung. "Then take me..."

The world began to fade, Jisung's presence becoming nothing but a cold afterthought as Felix shielded his eyes from the bright light.

Opening his eyes again, Felix was in the place with the altar. It still looked identical to the previous times with the pillars and strange mirrors.

Jisung's quiet sobs could be heard echoing around as Felix began to move forward. He wasn't quite sure what to prepare himself to see, but he wasn't that surprised to see his body a bit mangled and bloody.

"Why did you have to run out like that? Why did you run into the road?" Jisung muttered angrily. "Why did I have to...why did I have to be the one that made you upset?"

Looking to his right, Felix saw Seungmin at the altar, Hyunjin at an altar to the left.

"I never wanted this. I never wanted to..." Jisung broke down again, Felix resting his hand on the other's shoulder even though he knew the older wouldn't feel it. "I'm so sorry. I just wanted you to be happy. I just wanted..."

"You wanted to keep him safe. Wanted to protect him." Another voice echoed, Felix feeling the pull again.

Gripping Jisung's shoulder, Felix hoped it would keep him grounded long enough to at least get more information from what happened next.

"I can help you with that. I can make it so you never have to lose him like that again." The voice continued, Felix's eyelids beginning to grow heavier.

"He's already gone." Jisung cried, sounding disgusted that someone would suggest Felix was alive.

"He's not. The body you're holding is merely a figment of your imagination. A dream." The voice continued. "The real Felix is still alive. He's looking for you actually."

Felix tried hard to fight his conscious state but eventually the pull was too strong. His eyes closed shut and he was enveloped in darkness once again.

Shooting awake, Felix let out a whine as the stinging pain near his hip felt ten times worse than the other three.

"That's what happens when you try to learn more than what you're supposed to know." Greed chuckled, dabbing a napkin over the wound to try and collect some of the blood. Felix continued to whimper at the pain, trying not to squirm away too much.  "But I don't blame you for your curiosity. It's only natural after all. I just hope it doesn't kill you."


James tries not to think about it.

It’s a dangerous thought, at least for the present, and it’s a tricky one to shove down and forget about. Looking at their very young intruder is just like looking at a picture of himself at age fifteen. Except his green eyes. A feature that makes it even more difficult to ignore the thing Sirius insisted on bringing to his attention the entire trek up to the castle.

He’s unable to stop his thoughts once they start spiraling.

His brain processes the evidence of the kid’s striking appearance so fast, like he’s let go of his broomstick and is free falling through cold, winter air, only to hit the ground with a sudden jolt as the next logical conclusion smacks him in the face.

Fifteen is the right age.

That boy - the strange one laying flat on the hospital bed in front of him - he’s fifteen.

 He’s Harry .

And Harry’s come back. Just like Lily always said he would.

But James can’t think about it, can’t let that hope well up inside him.

Not yet.

He shakes it away, even while he stares at maybe-Harry, and watches those daring green eyes narrow in on Tom as he enters the room, approaching them both wearing his usual scowl. James can’t say he blames the Headmaster for walking around like a perpetual dark cloud.

It’s been a stressful decade of fighting, the war is nowhere near over, and they’re all tired of it.

Tired of this, most specifically. Tired of dueling and interrogating brainwashed kids that should be students wandering around Hogwarts and getting themselves into the safe kind of trouble.

Their intruder grips bits of bed sheets between his fingers, and doesn’t look at Tom long before adjusting his gaze back down into his own lap, refusing to make any further eye contact.

“Right,” says Tom, letting go of a weary sigh. He looks down at the boy, and something flashes across his face. He’s landed on the same conclusion as Sirius. James can tell by the way Tom’s eyes flicker from the boy and back to him, again and again. “Let’s get straight to the point, and then we can all go to bed. What are you doing here? Why has he sent you?”

“Uh,” says the boy. “Nobody sent me. I - I don’t know how I got here.”

“You don’t know?” questions Tom, a note of disbelief coloring his voice. “It’s very hard for me to believe you stumbled across the Forbidden Forest and Hogwarts by accident. This castle - “

“-is protected by many charms, yeah, I know,” he says, irritated. He sounds just like Evan and Prim after being told off by Lily. But  no.  James isn’t thinking about it. “I was in the Department of Mysteries being chased down by  your Death Eaters, then suddenly, I’m in the forest.”

“And what does Dumbledore want from the Department of Mysteries?” asks Tom, softly, while James is hung up on that term again. Death Eaters. It sends a chill down his spine.

“Not Dumbledore,” he answers. “It’s you that’s after it, actually.”

“I have little use for the haphazard work of the Unspeakables,” says Tom, coldly. “Whatever Dumbledore has told you is no doubt another lie to get you to do his bidding. What is your name?”

It’s clear the kid doesn’t want to answer. He breaks eye contact with Tom, and refuses to look at him or James, redirecting his stare at the blanket covering his legs once again.

Another horrible thought slices through James as the silence settles over the Hospital Wing. It’s entirely possible that this boy is Harry, that he  knows he’s Harry and what that entails, and doesn’t want anything to do with him or Lily. Maybe, he even hates them.

It’s just like Dumbledore to manipulate children, and maybe-Harry has had eleven years to be conditioned by a mad man. What sort of  things had Dumbledore taught him to think about people like James? About his own parents? What sort of person had Dumbledore raised his son to be?

 No.

He’s getting ahead of himself. Again.

“You’ve met my friend James,” says Tom, a bit impatient. James notices a flash of something dangerous in the kid’s eyes. It’s the same look Lily gets when somebody is threatening someone she loves. “He’s got a very interesting map.”

“Very interesting,” says James, conversationally, though he’s fighting back dread and nerves. “Very informative.”

“Finding out who you really are would be as easy as -”

“-A simple passphrase and the tap of a wand?” asks the kid, cutting off Tom. “Let me guess, something like ‘I solemnly swear I’m up to no good?’”

“How… how do you know that?” asks James, letting emotion drip into his voice for the first time.

“Interrogating me isn’t the fun type of mischief, though, is it?” maybe-Harry keeps going, ignoring him. “Someone should let Fr -”

“-James,” Tom cuts in, and the kid’s voice dies off, as if he had been waiting for a reason to stop talking. Tom’s hand bumps against James’s arm, nudging him towards the double doors of the Hospital Wing. “Let’s step away, shall we? Have a talk privately.” He turns his head, looks at maybe-Harry. “You stay there.”

Maybe-Harry narrows his eyes, but doesn’t protest them leaving. He keeps a watchful, suspicious eye on them from his hospital bed, and James feels a pang of sympathy.

Fifteen is too young to be a soldier, and it’s sure as hell too young to be a prisoner of war.

“I think you should let me speak with him,” says Tom, in a low voice. “Alone.”

James frowns.

Tom isn’t one to confer with others about his actions before carrying them out.

Usually, with much annoyance from James’s superiors in the Aurors office and other high-ranking officials in the Ministry, Tom acts without permission, without seeking counsel, or at least, that’s the way it appears from outside the small, separate army that Tom had formed to fight against Dumbledore.

If Tom’s seeking his permission to use legilimency on the boy, it can only mean one thing. The thing James is avoiding.

“And you’re asking because -”

“-This one is yours,” says Tom. “Don’t live in denial, James. The truth is written all over his face. And his eyes.”

James sighs, and lets his shoulders drop their tension. He looks back over at maybe-Harry, who quickly adjusts his gaze to the open window, as if he were trying to pretend he hadn’t been watching them the entire time.

“I don’t know what any of this means,” admits James, quietly. He’s a mess of mixed emotions. Happiness. Relief. His son is alive, in the room with them, but he belongs to Dumbledore. And nothing in this war, nothing done by Dumbeldore, is an accident. Was the return of his son supposed to be a taunt? A trap? “I don’t know what Dumbledore’s playing at.”

“Neither do I,” says Tom, grim. “But Harry can help us shed some light onto it, whether he wants to or not. The situation may not be as grave as it seems.”

His missing son’s return shouldn’t be described as grave.

James knows this, logically, but he remembers what it was like being an Auror out in the field, dueling with teenagers wearing masks, teenagers fighting for their master Albus Dumbledore. Harry might have been one of those kids. Might still be.

“He doesn’t seem like the others,” Tom offers, letting his dark eyes drift back over to the boy. “He may be able to be rehabilitated.”

James nods, choosing to agree with Tom for the moment, because it’s easier than voicing his doubts. Maybe-Harry hadn’t seemed very keen on offering up any information to James before Tom had entered the room. He hadn’t even told him who or what he’d been running from.

“There might have been someone else out in the forest,” James tells him. “Sirius and I think he may have been running from someone.”

“That’s… interesting.”

“Whoever it was, they’re gone now,” says James.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” says Tom, leaving James by the door, and re-approaching the boy on the bed.

James slips out from the Hospital Wing and steps into the corridor, releasing another deep breath as the door shuts behind him. He doesn’t know how to feel. It’s a miracle shrouded in a dreaded mystery, one James prefers not to investigate but knows he must.

*

Sirius is waiting for him out in the corridor, leaning against the castle’s wall and watching him with intent. James knows what he’s about to say before he says it.

“We’ve got to check the map,” he says, for the thousandth time that night, though this time is different.

This time James agrees without hesitation. Seeing the truth laid out on the map is, perhaps, the only way he’ll get over his reservations, his reluctance to fully accept that this is happening.

He pulls the map from his cloak, taps and says the phrase the kid impossibly knows. He and Sirius huddle together, their heads almost touching as their eyes trail towards the Hospital Wing. It’s spelled out in maroon ink. Two footprints labeled Harry Potter are stationary next to two more labeled Tom Riddle Jr.

Something light and warm washes over James, and for a moment, he allows himself to forget about Dumbledore, about all the complications that have been plaguing his mind since seeing the boy out in the forest. This is what he’s wanted for eleven years. This is what Lily never gave up on, and now it’s happening.

“I have to tell Lily,” says James, now that the truth has hit him. Now that he’s ready for it.

Sirius is still staring at the map. At the Harry Potter footprints. “Do you think he remembers me? Or any of us?”

“I don’t know,” says James.

Admittedly, he doubts it.

Harry was only four when he was taken. He probably doesn’t remember any of them. Probably doesn’t know them at all outside of the stories Dumbledore and his followers have told him, if they’ve bothered telling him anything about where he’s come from.

Sirius laughs, sudden and booming and real, like they were teenagers again, like they were roaming the corridors after curfew, playing harmless pranks on the uptight Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Riddle.

“I can’t believe he’s come back,” says Sirius, still smiling. “And he’s taken out a chunk of the Forbidden Forest as his grand entrance.”

“Accidentally,” muses James, a soft smile forming. He still can’t figure that one out. How a teenager could accidentally cast a dark curse that powerful without meaning to. “I still like to know what he was doing here in the first place.”

“Does it matter?” asks Sirius.

James wishes it didn’t, but it bugs him, nags at him. He doesn’t want to get Harry back only to lose him a second  time.

“Maybe he was running away from them,” says Sirius. “Maybe he does remember, and knew coming here was a refuge.”

Before James can ponder on that, the doors to the Hospital Wing come open and Headmaster Riddle steps out, a perplexed expression on his face. He doesn’t speak until the doors close again.

“This is going to be more complicated than I thought,” Tom tells him. James and Sirius wait for him to elaborate. Tom opens his mouth, and shuts it, several times before he settles on the right words. “He thinks he’s from another reality.”

“What?”

“One where I’m a homicidal maniac, and don’t have a nose.”

“Did he at least bring any pictures?” laughs Sirius, which earns him a disapproving glare from Tom. Sirius straightens out, but the humor is still in his voice. “It’s a clever lie-”

“-he isn’t lying,” says Tom. “He really believes it, or is actually, dare I say, from another reality. I suppose it isn’t impossible.”

“In his reality,” starts James. “Where are Lily and I?”

“Dead. Both of you,” says Tom. He turns and looks at Sirius. “You were in prison until recently, which is just about the only part of that world that sounds remotely appealing.”

“Tom, you don’t actually believe this,” says Sirius, blowing off the jab with an effortlessly elegant smile. “There’s no travel between dimensions. Even the Unspeakables -”

“-It’s never been done before,” says Tom, with a slight roll of his eyes. “I don’t think it’s very likely. But the boy believes it, and he believes it for a reason. I suspect Dumbeldore’s been messing around with his memories. They’re too blurry and vague for me to make sense of…”

It’s unsettling that Tom had been shifting through Harry’s brain, attempting to read his thoughts and his past, more so now that James knows he’s definitely Harry. Though, it’s even more disturbing to think about all the ways Harry’s mind had been violated before now, for him to be so confused and misguided about the world around him.

“Do you think… Do you think it’s fixable?” asks James. “His memories?”

“Most things are,” says Tom, brightly. “But we’ll need time to wear him down, and we won’t have any if the Ministry catches wind of us capturing an intruder who managed to break onto school grounds undetected and burned down a part of the forest in the process.”

“Then we’ll keep him hidden,” says James, without thinking.

It isn’t the first time they’ve had to hide captured kids from the Ministry, who rather chuck them into Azkaban than deal with rehabilitating them. They’re criminals, technically, but misguided and young, and nobody really deserves the wrath of the Dementors, especially kids who never had a choice or a chance in the  first place.

“Lily and I got a spare room in our quarters. He can stay there.”

The room had stayed empty since the Potters had permanently moved into the castle. Ever since Lily got a job as a Professor, and James had been assigned as a guard. They never really closed the space in their lives that Harry had left behind, and now, James supposes that it's a good thing that they didn’t.

Tom nods. “He’ll stay a secret. For a few weeks, at least, then Sirius can tell the Ministry he rescued him during a raid. We’ll keep it between us, Lily, and Poppy.”

“And Remus and Peter,” insists Sirius.

“And Severus,” says Tom. “Don’t look at me like that, Sirius. He’ll be useful. All three of you need to grow up and get over your childish differences. You’re all on the same side of this war, for Merlin’s sake.”

James silently disagrees.

He’s willing to work with Snape, just for now, and only because Tom likes and trusts him, but there will never be a time James believes, not even for a millisecond, that Severus Snape is fully on their side.

For this, though, it doesn’t. This is something they need to keep hidden from the Ministry of Magic, not from Dumbledore, so James bits his tongue and doesn’t say anything. It’s easier that way, with Tom, who can’t have sense talked into him when it comes to Snape.

“Fine,” says Sirius. “But if he breathes a word of it, it’s me who’ll be throwing  him into Azkaban, personally.”

“Noted,” says Tom, through gritted teeth. He releases a frustrated breath, as if he’s a long-suffering parent without a clue as to why his kids can’t get along. As if one of them doesn’t have SPY written across his face. “We won’t be able to leave Harry unsupervised until we’re sure he isn’t dangerous.”

“Remus and Peter can help us keep an eye on him,” says James.

“And I’ll keep him company while you tell Lily,” offers Sirius. It’s confirmed with a nod. There isn’t anyone else James is willing to leave Harry with at the moment.

Sirius disappears into the Hospital Wing, and James forces his legs away from his son, starts towards where Lily is no doubt waiting up for him. Tom stops him one last time.

“James,” he says. “I know it’s Harry. I know he’s your son, but… we’ve got to be careful. Dumledore - well, the old man’s always got something up his sleeve, doesn’t he?”

*

The living room is lit and warmed up by the fireplace when James arrives home.

Lily’s curled up on the couch, with a book opened, and when she sees him, she smiles, until she looks at him long enough.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. She sits up, and puts the book face down on the coffee table. “Why does your face look like that? What’s happened?”

So, James sits down next to her on the couch, and he takes her warm hands into his cold ones, and he tells her that Harry’s back. That he may be a different Harry, from a different world, but that Tom believes it’s some kind of ruse.

That it’s likely Dumbledore had been twisting and distorting Harry’s reality.

Lily listens with a creased forehead, and once James is done explaining the absurdity of the night, the living room is quiet except the crackling of the fire eating away at the logs.

But it’s lighter now. The truth. Both of them shouldering it together shines a brighter light on the whole situation.

“Lily -”

“-is he tall?” she asks, finally finding words after the shock of what had just been said. “Does he still look like you?”

“Fortunately for him, yes,” says James. Lily laughs, wipes away a few tears. “But you were right, Lily. You always said we’d get him back.”

Even as James fell into a depression, and crawled out of it only by accepting that his firstborn was probably dead. That he’d never see him again. But Lily always believed they would.

“He’s been without us for eleven years,” whispers Lily. “Without any of us, James, he might be so - he must feel so lost. It’s no wonder he believes any of Dumbledore’s lies… I - I need to see him.”

“Sirius is bringing him,” James tells her, and then explains about their son’s injured leg and that he must stay there as a secret. Nobody can know. “Not even Evan and Prim. At least not right away.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, softly. “That’s for the best, anyway. Let him adjust before we introduce them all.”

It’s a jovial idea.

One James never thought would be a reality. All three of his children meeting. His family together and whole, and something warm, like content, spreads in his chest. A dangerous feeling considering all the ways this could go wrong.

But it’s as if Lily can read his mind, read the worry seeping into his relief.

“This is the best night, James, really. It will work. We’re all together again, and that’s all that matters.”

James allows himself to think about it.

All the ways that this could go right. With Lily’s hands intertwined with his, he believes her, catching a bit of her hope, and with that, he lets himself fall.


It will come as no surprise at this point in my story that I will state this: I like rooftops.

‘As you all know’ narrative device—

Shut up. That doesn’t apply here.

Not when I’m overlooking my adopted city from my own rooftop, the cold wind of early evening rustling my hair behind me after letting it loose as I grasp the white, metallic railing in front of me with both hands.

There are a few buildings taller than my own, breaking up the skyline with jutting spires of concrete, steel, and glass, but most of Brockton Bay is below me, particularly when I look down the slope that ends on a beach that should be more of a tourist attraction than it currently is.

Even from here, I can see the sand is too uneven, patches of almost white marred with detritus, and flotsam, surrounded by the brown that was always the natural color of this area and that the local government no longer has the funds to cover with ever diminishing, prettier sand.

It’s a very Brockton beach: the echo of better times trying to endure as the underlying poverty is laid bare, growing with every day that passes.

It’s also dirty.

… And probably has quite a few corpses and needles buried in it.

Yeah. Very Brockton.

Behind me, the door to the roof opens and closes with that gentle forcefulness that is so quintessentially Taylor as she first throws the door open and then remembers herself and pulls on the handle, accompanying it back so that it closes with a click rather than a crash.

My girlfriend, everyone: a careful bull in a china shop.

I guess I’m the china in this instance.

Or so it would seem when the gentle tips of her fingers lay on the right side of my back, below my shoulder, near my spine, just… just barely enough that I can feel the reassuring pressure, her presence, through my white jacket.

“Dinah is back with her parents,” she says.

I nod, the wind rustling in my ears when I change the angle, the sea briefly disappearing from my view before I hurry to look back up, to see the unending stretch of blue darkening as it nears the horizon, the shadowed part of a world getting away from the light of the Sun.

“Lisa—”

“Your wording,” I cut her off.

She pauses. Then she steps near, her palm following her fingers, the pressure increasing.

“Yes?” she says.

I close my eyes. Take a deep breath.

“Back with her parents. Not ‘I escorted her back to her home,’ or ‘She’s safe,’ or even ‘Dinah is still worried about you.’ No, you specified that she’s back with her parents,” I tell her in a clinical summation.

“I did,” she answers with all the detachment of somebody who can hide her feelings in a swarm.

“Which was… a prompt. A non-intrusive way to get me to talk about my parents, except I’m me, and you may as well have screamed what you wanted.”

The hand leaves my back before it drops on my left shoulder, and Taylor pulls and spins me around until the cylindrical railing digs into my lower back, and I look up into her seafoam green eyes, remembering a young, beautiful woman reading to me from a book with tall, hard covers. Telling me of a mermaid who became seafoam because she didn’t want to hurt anyone, because she had already lost her voice, yet didn’t want to lose her soul.

I wonder what Taylor would’ve done? No. No, I don’t.

Because I know.

“Sometimes, it’s really hard to be your girlfriend,” she says, still inexpressive even as my chest presses against hers, and I can feel our mingled heartbeats over her immobilized arm.

“Some?” I ask with all the eyebrow arching such a statement merits.

“Yes. Some. Because loving you is… it’s easy, Liz. You’re… you’re light, and wit, and beauty. You’re the kind of girl I never wanted to be, because it was a ridiculously unachievable goal. You’re the main character in a fairy tale, evil dragon included—”

“Coil was—”

“Snakes count. And yes, I realize the irony of me beating the other dragon before meeting you, but I’m still more suited to the role of prince than that of princess, but…” Emotion is now in her voice, reverberating across it, and I stare in fascination at green eyes unveiling yet another thing they kept hidden from me. “But I don’t mind. I no longer mind, Liz, not if it’s you who is the princess.”

She stops, just looking at me, her free hand gently pinching my chin, redundantly making sure that I can’t look away.

Not from her.

“Yet, sometimes…” I prompt her.

And she sighs with a weary, smiling exhalation.

“Sometimes… I know that you know. I know that you get what is hidden behind a gesture or a particular word choice, that you’ll always know. And so, when I try to be indirect, it’s in the labyrinthine fashion of somebody just saying aloud that they’re going to say something and that it should be taken as indirect.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I tell her with my own chagrined smile.

“It usually works. But then, sometimes, you get in a mood, and outright ignore us both knowing that you know. You act out, treating the conversation as something different than intended, just because on the surface it is, and I… I don’t like it when you do that.”

Her fingers are still gentle on my chin. Gentle enough that I can close my eyes and lean forward until my forehead rests on the side of her neck.

And the arm wraps around me with trembling, suppressed strength.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur, my breath warming the air trapped between the two of us.

“I know. Or I think I do.”

She rocks back on her heels, making me sway in an ancient, soothing rhythm that is sometimes found near big, tall books with hard covers and black-and-white engravings of a woman with a fishtail and a lost voice.

“You’re no garden of roses either,” I tell her with something akin to my usual smile.

“Shut up. I’m trying to love you with all my heart at the moment,” she says with…

With something quintessentially Taylor.

So I clutch my arms around her waist, keeping her close to me, no longer wanting to feel cold on the open expanse of my top laid bare by my jacket.

This high? Atop one of the tallest buildings in the city? There are no smells. Nothing but the slight hint of concrete powder being lifted from the gravel roof by the wind sweeping in from the open sea.

I could imagine it reaching us, adding to our slight rocking the sound of gentle, lapping waves, splashes of saltwater comfortingly stinging sun-heated cheeks. I could imagine the two of us floating, surrounded by nothing but blue that becomes darkness below, a bright sky above us.

I could imagine fishtails twinned and a foolish prince being forever forgotten after my lover decided not to give up her own voice.

I…

“I love you. I don’t even have to try, Tay, it’s… It’s like breathing. Something I do. Something I need to do,” I say, still breathing air that flows between us like water through craggy rocks.

Her arm tightens, our chests pressing harder.

“You’ll be all right,” she says, declares, even as she asks.

And I…

I slide my cold hands beneath her own jacket, the black blazer I bought her what seems like years ago, the one I deemed suitable for ‘hot college girl Taylor.’

She doesn’t shiver. I suspect power shenanigans.

“I don’t know how you did it,” I finally say. “Every day, going back, passing by that locker, seeing them. I don’t know how you were able to confront your trigger every day, without rest, when a single visit has left me… like this.”

She kisses the side of my head, pushing forward through wind-swept hair until her lips meet my scalp.

“I didn’t. Not really. I… I was there. I saw it all, experienced it, but… but I didn’t confront anything. There was… There was this wall between me and the world, Liz, this wall made of daydreams about a life they could not touch, being a hero who was above it all, away. I… I never really thought about… I thought about them. About their cruelty, their monstrosity, the utter pettiness of their entire existence.

“But I didn’t think about me.

“I didn’t think about my wounds.”

I shudder in something that has nothing to do with the chill of the wind coming from the ocean, and I press my cheek against her collarbone.

“Didn’t. In the past,” I tell her, mirroring my earlier picking apart of her statement.

She… chuckles.

“I… I am with you, Liz. It’s impossible not to be introspective now, even if by proxy,” she condemns me with a smile and another kiss, this one on the side of my forehead.

My eyes are still tightly shut, the darkness behind my lids maybe redder than that of a deep ocean.

Yet Taylor’s voice…

It’s about right for a mermaid.

“You’re braver than I am,” I whisper.

“That’s not true,” she almost brusquely answers.

“I ran away, Tay. I… I left my home, my family—”

“You left, and that took more courage than it would’ve for many to stay. And then you got here, and… you know what you’ve gone through. I’ve seen you fight with your life on the line, Liz. I’ve seen you offer your life up for me.”

I remember. I remember Taylor bleeding, her life dripping away from me, my fingers only steady through Power’s reassurance that we knew what we were doing, that we could stop death from claiming my love.

And I remember standing up, facing Victor, my arm stretched out in an offering, a bargain.

Tay wouldn’t have been able to operate on me.

I knew.

Yet I forbade myself from thinking about it.

“More cowardice. I feared living without you.”

The palm lying on my back rises and clutches my hair before pulling back, making me let out an embarrassingly surprised gasp.

And then I’m looking yet again at angry, seafoam green eyes.

“Don’t you dare do something like that ever again,” she says.

And kisses me.

And… It’s the kind of kiss I dreamed about when I was young enough to remember all those tales between hard covers and with engravings rendered in black and white. The kind of kiss girls dream about when they still believe in true love.

In fairy tales.

It’s the kind of kiss that burns through you, that consumes you without harming, white ashes being carried by upward drafts of heated air until, amidst the blaze, only something… something purer remains.

Something worthy of being loved with such intensity and devotion.

I do my best to return it.

I don’t know if I manage.

But that’s all right: we have a whole life to practice.

***

I love my apartment. It’s the first thing that became mine after I was trapped, and I made it more so with every little touch, with accessories, and furniture, and paint color.

So I clung stubbornly to it when Victor breached the safety it represented. I claimed, ‘This is mine, and nobody will force me ever again to abandon something of mine.’

Fuck you, Panacea.

“I didn’t even realize there were so many of them,” Taylor mutters as her Beelzebubian host crawls, flies, leaps, or is otherwise transported into partitioned, opaque cages.

With the ease of long practice, I refuse to shudder.

… I admit the jumping spider on Taylor’s shoulder adorably waving at me helps a teensy, tiny bit.

Their mating habits are horrifying, but, well, that’s nature for you.

Aaaand this is a very bad time to ponder just how much mental feedback Tay gets from the creatures psychically linked to her in this allegedly psionics-free world.

Right. Just return the friendly waving to Taylor’s emissary, and go back to carefully choosing which piles of clothes go into the suitcases and which should go back to the closet they were hastily pulled out of before I attacked them into neatly organized stacks on top of my bed. Not because I’m a neat freak or anything, but—

Exerting control over environment while undergoing stressful—

Yeah. That. Thanks for ruining the subtext, jackass.

Zoological unlikelihood of—

Don’t make me laugh. My girlfriend already thinks I’m enough of a weirdo after our last vocalized exchange.

Taylor Hebert’s propensity to liking behaviors usually categorized as ‘adorkable’—

Don’t make me blush, you jerk—Taylor’s hugging me.

From behind.

And you distracted me.

Anthropomorphizing of parahuman interface abilities—

I don’t know whether to feel mad or mushy.

“We’ll come back. Soon,” she says as her arm crosses in front of my breasts so she can brush my hair behind my ear to lay a soft, lingering kiss on the outer ridge of it that makes my toes curl before tension leaves my shoulders and I lean back against her.

…

Mushy. I’m settling on mushy.

***

Of course, the mushiness only lasts for so long.

It is, thankfully, replaced by hilarity.

“No. No, please, no,” Brian says, metaphorically paling if not physically.

“Look, I pay you, I pay for your living accommodations, and I know every single one of your darkest secrets. There’s absolutely no reason why being roommates once again could ever lead to something you’ll live to regret,” I calmly tell the broad-shouldered man standing in the open doorway to the former site of Redmond Welding.

“… That must’ve been the most worrisome phrasing you could have come up with on the way here,” he says, showing once again why we worked so well together.

“Not even in the top ten! Now, unless you want a breakdown of my greatest hits, how about lending me a hand with carrying the luggage in before Taylor is too much of a Taylor and does it herself despite still being under hopeless orders to rest from two of the world’s greatest Tinkers?”

Brian’s eyes shoot up as he looks to the back of the hastily rented U-Haul, where, of course, Taylor is struggling to single-handedly dislodge one of my suitcases from the pile, and, being the white knight that he is (heh), he rushes out to help her.

I look at them for a brief moment, at the spark of comradery, at Tay no longer shooting furtive looks at biceps that seem to swim below the short sleeves of his Yale blue shirt (somebody was feeling ambitious—or the color ran out in the washer, one of those two).

So, with a peaceful look at the two of them arguing over upper body strength, I…

I step back into my former lair.

“Back again?” Rachel asks, rubbing Brutus’ belly as the ecstatic dog wiggles over the floor, rubbing his back on the rough concrete as he struggles between the urges of receiving a vigorous scratching and pleadingly looking at the collar and leash Rachel is taunting him with.

“Yeah. Taylor and I will stay for a few days. Maybe a couple of weeks,” I tell her with a soft, slow smile that I manage to keep at the level where she doesn’t feel threatened.

She looks at me from where she’s kneeling on the floor, her fingers stopped just below the orange patches of fur at the top of Brutus’ chest, and her eyes meet mine for a stretched period of silence that only breaks with the petulant whining of a dog reclaiming his owner’s attention.

“Good,” she says as she resumes her foremost duty.

And I…

Well, she’s not looking at me, so I’m free to smile a bit wider, a bit more like myself, as I start pondering just how to better mess with Alec’s global ranking on Call of Douchery.

And with his games. That too.

==================

This work is a repost of my second oldest fic on

QQ

, where it can be found up to date except for the next two chapters that are currently only available

elsewhere

. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a weekly rate until it’s finally over (or my brain is consumed by the eldritch manifestation of the DVB, whichever happens first).

Also, I’d like to give a particularly enthusiastic “thank you” to my credited supporters for going above and beyond: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon!


It was the time of year for clothes shopping. Once winter set in and everyone realized how woefully unequipped they were to face the coming onslaught of snow and ice, they flocked to stores to restock on essentials. That, and of course, the holidays were coming. Stede needed a new pair of gloves, and he had promised Mary he would pick up Christmas gifts for Alma and Louis. Ed needed a new pair of work pants. Both of them were sorely lacking in wool socks.

Of course, whenever Ed went clothes shopping with Stede, they never restricted themselves to buying what they needed. “We’ll just have a look around,” Stede would say, before they inevitably walked out with more than they had planned for. More clothes to stuff into their wardrobe, which by now was surely reaching such levels of internal pressure that it would explode at any minute.

Ed didn’t mind this so much. It felt nice to pick things out for pleasure during what were supposed to be utilitarian shopping trips. This time, however, he wasn’t having much luck. He thumbed through the clearance rack, stopping every now and then to pull out a potential pair of pants only to get a good look at them and immediately put them back.  Boring, won’t fit, hideous, he thought as he replaced them. Surely there must be something decent available that he wouldn’t have to pay full price for.

He stopped when he moved the next hanger aside. Someone, whether out of carelessness or as a joke, had hung a skirt up in the men’s section. It was a rather simple garment; black and pleated like it was part of a Catholic school uniform. It probably would have covered him to just above the knee. He should have pushed right by it, but something about the skirt had captured his attention. There was an itch in his hands, a compulsive tingle that told him to grab the skirt, feel the fabric, imagine himself in it.  Try it on, something in him urged.

Ed looked up. Stede was still looking over the shirts, carefully searching through them to find a color and texture combination that he might actually like. There was probably no other task that Stede approached with such single mindedness. Stede was so wrapped up in it, Ed was sure that he could slip away to try the skirt on and Stede wouldn’t even notice. He could put it on, ask Stede what he thought, and then they would laugh about how ridiculous he looked.

He snuck off to the dressing room without a word.

He toed out of his shoes and shucked off his pants. He took the skirt off the hanger, looked at it, and briefly thought for a moment,  man, what am I doing? before he went ahead with the whole charade.

He stepped into the skirt and slid it up his body, feeling the pleats drag over his leg hair. When he got the thing up to his waist, he did up the zipper on his hip and turned to consider himself in the mirror.

He supposed it wasn’t that much different from wearing shorts, length-wise. It was quite a bit looser, and there was the space of air moving between his legs, but he didn’t really mind that. It was cool and pleasant. He did a little turn, felt the pleats of the skirt lift away and spread around him like petals. He felt a delightful little  woosh  of air against his bare legs.

Ed giggled, a quick little laugh that bubbled out of him unbidden. Stede would probably tell him he was being silly.

When he came out of the changing room, Stede was still bent over the rack, diligently picking through the shirts.

“What do you think?” Ed asked. He struck a pose, putting one hand on his hip and the other behind his head.

Stede turned around, smiling. “What’s that, darling?” He asked, and froze when he saw what Ed was wearing.

Ed laughed at Stede’s mildly shocked expression. He expected that Stede would recover and eventually laugh with him, but he didn’t. Stede just stared, and at first Ed was unnerved. Did Stede hate the skirt that much? But then Stede started looking him up and down in the middle of the department store like a goddamned meal, and Ed felt a sudden heat in his cheeks. When Stede stepped towards him, Ed saw his eyes were dark, his pupils wide and hungry.

“Like that, do you?” Stede asked, voice low.

Ed did a little  swish  with his hips. “I’m thinking about getting it.” He said, rather enjoying the blush in Stede’s face.

“Oh, you’re definitely getting it,” Stede said. He grabbed Ed’s wrist and pulled him back towards the changing room.

“Where are you going, love?” Ed asked.

“Oh, I saw a button was loose on your skirt,” Stede explained, voice breathy, as he pulled Ed into the stall. “I’m going to help you with it.”

“I don’t think this skirt has buttons, love.” Ed teased.

Stede answered by pushing him up against the door. Stede kissed him roughly, running his hands over Ed’s pecs down his torso to his legs, pushing under the skirt and grabbing the bare flesh of Ed’s thighs. It was the same way Stede kissed him when he had been traveling for work and they hadn’t seen each other for a week, like he needed Ed more than air to breathe or water to drink.

“You’re so fucking sexy in this,” Stede growled into his mouth, gripping the hem of the skirt in his fist. “I  need  to fuck you in it.”

“Right now?” Ed asked.

“I thought about taking you home first, but honestly I can’t wait that long.”

Ed was pretty sure it wasn’t the best etiquette to fuck people in the dressing room at your local department store. That being said, Stede’s mouth was blistering warm and wet against his, and Stede was rubbing his cock through the fabric of his underwear. Plus, Ed had to admit that he loved the way the skirt felt and it was honestly kind of doing it for him. He kissed Stede back. “Fuck it, let’s do it,” he told him.

Stede knelt, kissing down Ed’s body as went. Ed felt Stede’s hands under his skirt, pulling Ed’s boxer briefs down to his ankles. Ed whimpered when he felt Stede’s hand close around his rapidly hardening cock, rubbing his thumb over the head. Ed had to actively stop himself from moaning when Stede burrowed under the skirt and took Ed’s cock in his mouth, licking him from base to tip before enveloping him completely.

He imagined wearing the skirt at home. It would be so much easier for Stede to suck him off. No messing with buttons or zippers, no pulling pants down. Ed could just spread his legs, open and aching, and Stede would be there, ducking under the skirt and sucking Ed’s cock whenever he wanted. He imagined Stede in a skirt of his own, so he could return the favor.

Ed bit his lip as Stede began to bob his head. Sometimes he would stop at the tip and swirl his tongue or lap at Ed’s slit, and Ed would have to bite the back of his hand to ensure that some poor department store employee wouldn’t have to hear him moaning like an overly dramatic porn star. His other hand would be in Stede’s hair, tight in those golden curls and holding on for dear life. When Ed hit the back of Stede’s throat, he cried out and wrapped one of his legs around the back of Stede’s head, the edge of an orgasm drawing dangerously near.

Ed got his breathing under control and kept himself from coming, tortuous though it was. He pulled the skirt back, far enough so he could see Stede’s face again. “Fuck me, I want to come on your cock,” he panted.

Stede was up in an instant, pulling Ed’s shirt off of him and kissing his neck and bare chest. “God, I love the sound of that,” he groaned, biting down on Ed’s neck. Ed wanted to ask him to bite harder, but he also understood that it might look a tad odd if he walked out of the store with a new array of splotchy purple bruises on display.

Suddenly Ed’s face was up against the door, and Stede had rucked up the skirt, exposing Ed’s bare ass to the cool air. Ed felt slick fingers slide between his cheeks, moving over his hole in rapid circles.

“What the fuck, do you have lube on you?” Ed asked.

“I keep a little bottle on my person for emergency purposes when we go out.” Stede said, voice casual as if he was doing anything other than sliding a first finger into Ed.

“Oh, so you were planning on fucking me in Macy’s today?”

“No, darling,  that  was a happy accident. I just like to make sure I’m always prepared.” Stede was working in and out of him now, spreading him open. Ed felt Stede’s hand splay on his back, holding him against the door while Stede fucked into him with his fingers. Ed tried to stifle his moans as Stede curled his finger, added a second. He was positive it wasn’t working.

Ed heard the clink of a belt buckle and the zipper of Stede’s trousers. That was all the undressing Stede could be bothered to do before his attention was back on Ed. Knowing Stede was still almost entirely clothed while Ed was left in nothing but his skirt, that Stede wanted him so badly that getting completely undressed was a distraction, it sent a bolt of pleasure right to his cock.

“Look at you, love,” Stede breathed, gripping Ed’s ass and spreading him wide. “You’re so pretty in your skirt for me.”

Ed felt the heat of Stede’s cock bumping against his hole before sliding in, slow and heavy and raw.

“Fuck,” Ed gasped. “Call me that again.”

“What, ‘pretty?’” Stede asked as he began to thrust.

“ Yes. ”

“Oh, my darling Ed, you’re so pretty.” Ed felt Stede grip his ponytail and pull.

“So pretty with your hair up high, so pretty with my cock in your ass, my pretty girl.” Stede snapped his hips forward, punctuating the last word by hitting Ed’s prostate and making Ed whine. They were being much too loud, certainly someone was going to hear them, but at this moment the only thing Ed could bring himself to care about was how Stede’s words made his entire body pulse with pleasure.

Stede pressed up against his back, his mouth right up against Ed’s ear. Stede was breathing hard, and his voice was hoarse with need. “I bet you’ll be even prettier with my come in your mouth,” he growled into Ed’s ear.

“ Fuck! ” Ed was amazed he didn’t come then and there, but he was getting close again. He wrapped part of the skirt around his cock and began to jerk himself off, relishing in the slight burn of the coarse fabric against his hot, sensitive flesh.

Stede kept talking as he thrust into Ed. Where Stede found the stamina to do so, Ed would never know. He was amazed he was coherent enough to hear Stede’s words at all, given the delicious way that Stede was hitting his prostate.

“I must say, darling, if you wear one of these around the house, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“Oh really?”

“Really. You’re so easily accessible like this. The moment you bend over, I’m done for.” Stede’s fingers were digging into his hips, and as much as Ed tried to stifle his moans, the slap of skin on skin was deafening.

“Maybe we ought to get you some pretty panties to wear under your skirt, hm? Or maybe a pretty new plug with a jewel on the end. Pretty accessories for my pretty Ed.”

“Stede,” Ed whined, desperate and so close.

“My pretty, perfect, amazing Ed.”

“I’m gonna-”

“Come for me, darling.” Stede said, and kissed the back of his neck.

A moan was ripped from Ed as he came into the fabric, soiling his skirt. It was a good thing it was black.

“Yes, darling, that’s it.” Stede moaned. “Oh, I’m close-”

“Pull out,” Ed told him.

When Stede withdrew completely, Ed spun around and sank to his knees, marveling that his orgasm had left him with enough fine motor skills to allow him to do so without falling over. He gripped the base of Stede’s cock and sucked him into his mouth. It only took a few bobs of his head for Stede to tip his head back towards the sky and fill Ed’s mouth with a silent scream.

Ed sat back and waited for Stede to catch his breath. When he saw he had regained Stede’s attention, he opened his mouth to show off Stede’s come.

“Fuck,” Stede breathed.

Ed swallowed.  “How did I look? Prettier than you expected?”

“Darling, if I were a younger man, I would have you up against the wall right now.”

Ed smirked. “Maybe you’ll recover by the time we get home.” He looked down at his skirt, saw a faint wet patch from his come and felt the stickiness from inside. “Well, I guess we have to get it now.”

“Oh, most certainly,” Stede agreed. “I’ll get you a second one too, though. You deserve to have more than just a stained skirt.”

“It’s probably going to get stained anyway, mate. Stains kind of tend to happen when we fuck.”

“Well, you can keep the stained one for fucking, and the clean one for everyday wear,” Stede said.

“Really? You won’t think it’s weird if I wear one?”

“Why would I?” Stede helped Ed get to his feet. He kissed him gently, once on the lips and once on the nose. “If you like it, you should get it. I think it makes you look rather dashing.”

Some part of Ed was still expecting Stede to be joking, that this was all a fun game to initiate a very daring round of sex, but when he looked in Stede’s eyes all he saw was earnestness and warmth. Ed smiled, kissed him back. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

Stede beamed at him. “Wonderful, I know you’ll look just lovely.”

“But you can’t just bend me over wherever you want when I wear one. Only when I wear the sex skirt.”

“That will be quite an arduous task,” Stede said gravely, “but I’ll try to manage it. Now come on, let’s get out of here before they call security on us.”