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#hand for scale not banana
jenfoundabug · 2 months
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LONG
(Banana slug in Northern California)
Seriously just look at how large this creature is. And that face.
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skitskatdacat63 · 8 months
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And now Fernando in all his historical AUs !!
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In order with relevant info: Nandopoleon Alonsoparte(x), King Fernando I(x), Napoleonic Hussar(x)
Again: let me know your favorite <3
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moonchild-in-blue · 7 days
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Guys 🥹 Tomorrow I will come back with Proper™ pics of @a-s-levynn and @sleep-token 's Banana Vessels side by side 🥺🍌 Fret not!
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jonathanstims · 3 months
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the funny thing is that I keep in touch with my parents so little that sometimes I wonder how they think they know me at all, much more how they think they know me better than myself
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jaebeomsbitch · 6 months
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The Touch of a Prince (E.M.)
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Summary: You really really like your boyfriend's hands.
Warnings: MINORS DNI, smut, pure smut, explicit, lots of petnames, p in v, banana cream pies. Not edited like always
GIF credit: @foggystreetlights
A/N: just discovered the person who cosplays eddie and makes a whole bunch of eddie gifsets....
It was Eddie’s day off from the tattoo shop. He’d spent the day cleaning the house and when he was finally done he decided to work out an idea for a song. You’d come home about three hours into him practicing, a pencil in his mouth, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration but the one thing you could not get your eyes off of was his hands. The way the flexed with every movement, the way his veins popped when he’d move his hand up. 
“You almost done?” You murmur, eyes scaling your boyfriend. 
“Hmm?” He hums distracted but his eyes turn towards yours catching the tail end of your ogling. His lip immediately curving upward in a smirk. 
“Why? Is my princess in need of her valiant knight’s services?” He says dramatically. 
“Mhm,” you hum quietly nodding your head slowly as you scoot back on the couch. 
“Well if duty calls” he says, placing his guitar back on its stand. His heavy footsteps frantic as he all but practically runs towards you. He jumps on the couch with a thud, the springs creaking in protest. 
“You’re gonna fucking break it” you laugh. The two of you bought this shitty couch after moving in together. Before Eddie had become popular in the local tattoo scene. You could afford a better one but why waste something that is practically new? 
“I was told an urgent matter needed my services” he says pressing kisses to your neck. You can’t help but laugh as you’re pinned under his body. 
“Okay well not that!” You say pushing his face away. 
“Mhm, okay then what does my precious princess in need of?” He says still using that stupid accent. 
Your nose brushes his softly, eyes lashes fluttering against each other. “Do you trust me?” You whisper. A stupid smile adorns his face. 
“Course I trust you. Trust that you won’t bite my dick off  when it’s in your mouth. Did you know the force in a human jaw could do that? Like just cleanly” he rambles, getting distracted like he always does. He makes a chomping motion. 
“Take it right off” he says, getting off of you dragging you with him until you’re sitting with your legs across his lap.
“God you’re so…” you say, making a face at him with face annoyance but there’s a little smile on your face. 
“Hot?” He says with a smirk. 
“No-“ you try to say but he interrupts. 
“Charming? Handsome? God, keep going” he continues.
“Annoying” you say, interrupting him before he keeps going.
“Well luckily most hot people are annoying” he says nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders. 
“You’re insufferable too,” you scrunch your nose at him with a disgusted face. He decides to attack, his fingers pressing at your sides. 
“No! No-“ you try to seat his hands away but you’re laughing uncontrollably as he tickles you. 
“You don’t call me annoying or insufferable when I’ve got my cock in you” he laughs. 
“Please- stop!” You heave for breath seeking reprieve. He lets go of you with a chuckle, going back to his position on the couch as you pant for breath, your stomach aching from forced laughter.
“God, I was trying to ask you a question!” You whine as you sit up. Your hair all fucked up from thrashing around, face flushed. You lean your shoulder on the couch cushion as you look at Eddie.
“My name is actually Eddie,” he says with a smug smile. 
“That’s it! I’ve had it” you grumble a twinge of annoyance creeping into you as you cover his mouth and straddle his lap. 
“Oohh kinky,” he muffles into your palm. 
“Eddie seriously, I’m gonna lose my shit” you warn. He immediately holds his hands up in surrender. You let go of his mouth with a pointed glare, his hands finding their way to your ass. 
“Yes, Princess?” He says with a smile on his lips. 
“No, now I don’t want to. You’re being annoying” you grumble, crossing your arms over your chest. 
“Okay fine- fine I’m sorry” he says cupping your face and peppering your cheeks with kisses until you relax against him.
“What did you need?” He says softly, pushing your hair back out of your face. 
“I wanted to do something but you’re gonna find it weird” you mumble. 
“Weird? Like the time I let you hold my dick when I peed?” He says, one of his eyebrows quirked, clear amusement in his tone.
“Eddie!” You whine. 
“Okay, okay” he laughs. 
“Let me see your hand” you demand.
“You gonna read my palm or something?” he asks putting his right hand in front of you. 
“Something like that” you say, you fold his fingers in and unfold them trying to build the courage to do it. To do what you’d been thinking about doing amongst the other dirty thoughts in your mind. 
“You just wanted to play with my hands?” He laughs softly. You roll your eyes finally just sticking his pointer finger into your mouth. You lick at it, swirling your tongue around it. 
“What are you doing?” He asks, amusement lost from his voice. Instead he sounds out of breath, his free hand squeezes your ass, his eyes trained on your lips wrapped around his digit. 
Groaning, Eddie leans back on the couch, closing his eyes as you continue to suck on his fingers. You can feel the press of his half hard cock as you sit on his lap as he massages your ass with one hand. 
"God, you're driving me crazy," he mutters.
You pull his fingers out of your mouth with a string of saliva dripping down your chin.
“I’m not doing anything” you murmur laying your head on his shoulder. You spread out his fingers licking in between the spaces then take his pointer finger into your mouth sucking on it.
Panting, Eddie watches with difficulty as you lick and suck on his fingers, his cock throbbing in his jeans.
"Do you have any idea how sexy that is?" he asks hoarsely.
You look up at Eddie with your big doe eyes. Cocking your head to the side innocently as you take in his middle finger and start sucking on it. This was your payback for Eddie’s annoying behavior. 
Eddie shakes his head, rolling his hips up to gain friction. 
“Fuck, need to be inside you princess” he pants. You hum around his fingers, sucking on them harder at the proposition. His one hand fumbled with the button on his jeans and yet he perfectly undoes it and unzips the zipper. You look at him with a questioning gaze.
“What? I have a lot of practice” he murmurs, cheeks glowing red. He’s cute when he’s embarrassed. Nonetheless he pulls his jeans and underwear down, his cock bobbing out of the fabric. It lightly slaps against his stomach, smearing precum over his maiden tee. 
He slips his fingers out of your mouth, you can’t help but whine at the loss but he doesn’t give you a second to think. He’s yanking down his boxers that you’re wearing, thumb finding your clit as you kick them off. 
“S-shit” you moan pressing your forehead into his shoulder. 
“You’re so fucking far” he grunts, pulling you closer by the waist. You can’t help but laugh breathlessly but then his thumb is rubbing tight circles on your bundle of nerves, your thighs trembling. 
“F-fuck okay okay okay” you pant not even knowing why you’re saying okay but you’re hovering over his cock. Eddie holds it at the base aligned with you perfectly to sink into him like an animal in quicksand. 
“Not until I have your fingers” you whisper, swallowing hard. You feel like you’re slowly losing any semblance of humanity, like poison drips into your blood stream. Converting you into a primal cock hungry whore. 
“Always have to draw things out don’t you?” He pants while shaking his head. His thumb leaving your clit, middle finger slipping into your sopping pussy. 
“Mmm f—f” you stutter, the press of  his warm metal rings at your labias having you forgetting your name. You look down, the veins on his inner wrist flexing, the bracelet on his wrist slightly bouncing with the movement, his eyes staring at the way you take his finger then sliding in his ring finger. Stretching you out as you start rocking your hips against his palm. You grip his shoulders harder. 
“G-guh fuck Eddie” you moan, your head dropping in defeat as he curls his fingers. 
“That’s it, ride my fucking hand” he all but growls. If he’s gonna be tortured he might as well enjoy it. 
“Look so fucking pretty like this, Sweetheart. Got you all dumb from just my hand. I see the way you look at ‘em. Think you’re smart, huh? Looking away from me when I look over” he chuckles, his free hand gripping your hip moving you to ride his hand harder with each hard press of his fingers. 
“C-can’t help it” you moan. Heat pools at your core, the familiar burn feels like lava, your face pressed desperately into his shoulder. If it wasn’t for Eddie’s hand on your hips you don’t know if you could move. 
“Aww the poor little princess can’t help it? Can’t help imagining me fucking your pussy just like this? Getting your juices all over my fucking rings?” He grunts with the effort as he feels your muscles start to twitch. 
“That’s it, cum on my fucking fingers. Show me how much you fucking love ‘em” he pants in your ear. 
“S-shit. Oh fuck” you cry out, your nails digging into his skin as you feel the burn deep in your core. Your clit rubbing over his palm, his fingers ramming into your g-spot over and over again, the hard press of his metal rings. It isn’t long maybe a few seconds that you cum all over his hands. 
It drips down his thick fingers, smearing all over his rings, creating a small puddle in his palm. Fuck… you’d never cum this much and all because of his hands. He slides his fingers out of you carefully as you heave for air. 
The heat ghosting over his neck as you relax in his hold. 
He tuts, ”s’only your first own, Princess. Still gotta ride my cock like you’re riding a first prize stallion.”
“S-shit y-yeah just.. just give me a sec would ‘ya?” You gasp. He runs your back softly until you sit up on his thighs pulling back to look at his face. 
“There she is” he grins, using his clean hand to brush stray pieces of hair out of your face. You press a soft kiss to his lips. 
“Thanks for that” you murmur shyly under the intense gaze of your boyfriend. He looked like a man starved for days looking at his first meal. 
“That? Oh sweetheart… you’re not gonna be able to walk tomorrow when I’m done with you,” he says with a cocky grin. 
“Now, I believe I was told that my Princess likes my hands. Hmm? S’that true sweetheart?” He asks almost condescendingly. You nod meekly not knowing where this is heading. 
He grips your hips pulling you up. Your thighs tremble lightly as you’re back in the same position as before. 
“Think you can take it baby? Have a surprise for you, if you’re a good girl” he says, rubbing his thumb softly over your hipbone. 
“Yeah- Yes I can,” you nod. You shift closer, your knees pressing into the sides of his hips as you slowly sink down into him. 
“Oh- fuck” you whine, your pussy still sensitive from your orgasm. Your walls pulse around him, already slick with your cum, coating his cock in it. He tilts your head up to look at him. 
“Open that pretty mouth of yours Princess,” he murmur, his stomach straining not to fuck you hard like he wants. He knows you need him to be gentle right now. You oblige opening up your plump lips with uncertainty. 
He slides his cum covered fingers into your mouth forcing you to taste yourself. His other hand finding your hip slowly pulling you towards him in a gentle roll of your hips. You moan around his fingers for a second time. 
Your tongue laps up your cum gathering it on the tip as you start moving your hips on your own. Instead of bouncing you choose to swivel your hips, keeping a figure eight. 
This causes Eddie’s cock to stay buried deep inside of you, the meeting point of the two rings forcing his cock to press into your g-spot. You curl your toes, gasping around his wrinkled fingers. Fuck, you’re so sensitive. Eddie could sneeze and you’d cum again. Nonetheless you flex your stomach ignoring the way your pussy flutters around him. 
Like a deep primal urge in you knows, knows that you need your fill. 
“Fuck, that’s it” he pants, his desperation growing. He slides his fingers out of your mouth, the skull ring staying behind, you swirl it around your tongue cleaning it and bring it forward to show him just as he grabs your hips. 
“Jesus fucking Christ you’re gonna fucking kill me” he gasps out, his big hands forcing you to bounce on his cock. 
It’s like you lose all inhibitions as you feel the slam of his cock curving into you. 
“Oh- God. Fuck- fuck” you moan loudly. It gets harder and harder to stave off your orgasm as he presses his back into the couch pistoning upwards. 
“S-shit you’re gonna fucking break me” you gasp. Your stomach flexes painfully, your clit rubbing into the thatch of curly hair above his cock ever time he slams you down into him. You pull at the couch cushions behind his head desperately. 
“I- I can’t Eds” you cry, every fibre of your body is telling you to let go. Eddie feels the familiar tug at his balls, a shiver running up his spine. 
“Look at me,” he grunts. 
You try and strengthen your neck but all you can manage is to press your forehead into his. 
“You’re mine, always fucking remember that” he says fiercely. 
“I thought I was the princess” you laugh breathlessly.
“And I’m your fucking prince” he moan. 
You whine “don’t wanna cum yet.” You press up on your knees slamming down harder onto his cock. The only thing preventing you from falling is Eddie’s hands on your hips and your grip on his shoulders
“Love your cock to much wanna stay like this forever” you moan.
Laughing, Eddie pulls you closer, his lips finding yours. His tongue slipping into your mouth, tasting your cum on your tongue. 
"I love you," he whispers against your lips. "I'll never get tired of being inside you.”
“Fuck- come on princess, cum for me” he encourages. 
“No no no no no” you whine but the heat keeps pooling and shocks travel up your spine as you get closer and closer.
Hearing your desperate pleas, Eddie knows you're on the edge. He wraps one arm around your waist, pulling you even closer as he thrusts into you with abandon.
"That's it," he praises. "Just let it happen."
“No Eddie,“ you whine but your pussy still clenching around him, your stomach tightening with effort as you try to stave off your pleasure.
“Fuuuck” you gasp your neck flexing as you grit your teeth.
“That’s it, that’s fucking it” he grunts rubbing right circles on your clit. Your velvet walls clench harder around him, his cock making you completely dumb. 
You let go involuntarily, everything all too much. You cum hard trembling above him, collapsing into his chest. 
“Fuck-beautiful. So. Fucking. Beautiful,” he grunts. 
“Cum inside me,” you pant out. 
“What?” His eyebrows practically fly to his hairline. 
“Cum inside me” you say more urgently, shocks running up your spine. 
“Y- fuck you can’t say shit like that to me” his eyes roll back and his lips part. He cums inside you with a loud groan. 
You sigh as you get comfortable on his lap. His cum and cock still buried deep inside you. You press a soft kiss to the side of his head
“My pretty boy” you whisper. 
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rileyslibrary · 1 year
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Lift and learn.
Synopsis: You discover Ghost’s unique skill; estimating the weight of items just by lifting them. You decide to challenge his ability by giving him little tests and he (for once in his life) loves to show off.
Relationship: Simon “Ghost” Riley x F!Reader
Word Count: 1,381 (approx. 5-6 minutes reading time.)
Notes:
Mindless, platonic fluff with minimal plot.
Want more?
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The storage room is vast and poorly lit, with rows of metal shelves stretching into the distance. The air conditioning blows cool air throughout the facility, with only the gentle hum of the units and refrigerators breaking the silence. You and Ghost stand at the entrance, surveying the endless supply of crates and boxes ahead of you.
“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” you remark, kicking a nearby stack of boxes.
Ghost nods. “Come on,” he says as he walks between the shelves, “the faster we start, the faster we’ll be done with it.”
You follow him, walking down the first row of shelves, scanning the labels on the boxes and crates to see what they contain.
He checks the list you made with the food you’ll need for the mission, and he points toward the direction of the canned goods.
“Go look for the soup,” he advises, “and don’t lift the crate yourself.”
You turn to face him. “Why not, sir?”
“That thing weighs about 20 kgs,” he says, “you won’t be able to lift it alone.”
“Is that so?” you raise your brows. Ghost lets out a long sigh.
“I don’t doubt your abilities, soldier—I just know the box is too heavy to be lifted from up high,” he says. “I don’t want you to get hurt, and you don’t want to clean tomato soup off the floors now, do you?”
You roll your eyes and walk over to the box in question. You turn to glance at Ghost out of the corner of your eye—he’s ticking things off the list. You decide to give it a shot. You take a deep breath and grasp the box by its handles, attempting to pull it off the shelf. Your arms strain as you put all your weight into it, but the crate doesn’t budge. You try again, but it’s in vain.
Just as you’re about to give up, Ghost appears at your side.
“Told ya; it’s a heavy box,” he says, amused.
You step back, allowing him to take your place. He grips the box and lifts it off the shelf.
“That’s over 20 kgs.” He comments as he curls the box. “Around 24 kgs, I’d say.”
You stare at the box as it moves up and down, then at him. He approaches the large food scale and places the box on it. As he predicted, the box weights precisely the amount he estimated.
“Do you do this a lot?” you ask.
“No,” he says, chuckling, “I normally curl barbells.”
“Estimating the weight of something just by lifting it?” you clarify, “I saw you do it before when we were packing stuff from the armoury.”
“Ah,” he says, flicking his wrist, “it’s nothing.”
He surely doesn’t act like “it’s nothing.” He’s trying to portray himself as humble. But he looks far too cocky about it. He puffs out his chest and places his hands on his waist. His head tilts a little higher, and he squints his eyes, resulting in narrow creases at their corners. There’s also a slight stiffness in his upper body muscles. Is he flexing? Yes. Yes, he’s desperate to show off his skill once more. And, of course, you don’t waste the opportunity.
You gesture to a massive stalk of bananas. “How much does that weigh?” You ask.
He walks towards the bananas, his hands still on his hips. “Ah,” he says as he lifts the stalk, “this should weigh around 1.3 kgs.” He states and places the bananas on the scale. He waits for the scale to flash and then turns to face you when it indicates just a little over the amount he predicted.
“Wow, Lieutenant!” You yell and clap your hands together. “Do it again!”
He takes a sharp breath from his nose and gestures with his hands. “Give me something more difficult this time.” he says with pride.
You look around the storage room and spot a pile of sandbags in the corner.
“Okay, how much does one of those weigh?” you ask.
He redirects his gaze to the sandbags. He shrugs. “30 kgs.” He says.
“That doesn’t count, Lt.,” you frown, “you didn’t even lift them.”
“I don’t have to lift them, Y/N; we fill sandbags to exactly 30 kgs each.” He explains and turns to look at you with a you-should-have-knew-that expression.
You decide to step up your game.
“Okay, Lt., what about me?” you ask, pointing to yourself.
He raises his index finger at you. “I’m not lifting you.” He states.
“Why not?” You ask, and he goes on to explain how it put him in trouble on a deployment about a decade ago. “Bananas, don’t get offended when you estimate them to be a few grams heavier.” He explains. You promise him you won’t be insulted, and he brings his right hand to your face, squeezing your cheeks to stop you.
“O’ay,” you mutter through your pinched lips, and he lets you go. “See this cardboard box over there?” You ask, and he turns to look in the direction of a big, beige-coloured box on the ground. It’s taped shut and sealed with no hint or label of what it might contain.
“Can you estimate its weight without looking what’s inside the box?” you ask.
He gives a short chuckle and mutters something like “if I can, she asks” under his breath before walking to the box. He tilts his head, trying to estimate its weight by looking at it. He stretches his arms and cracks his knuckles, readying himself for what he’s about to do. He gathers his cargo pants from his thighs, and lowers himself to the ground in a deadlift position, grabbing the box by the handles. He takes a deep breath and pulls the box up with all his might.
But the box turns out to be lighter than you both anticipated, making Ghost lose his balance. He stumbles backwards, his arms flapping as he tries to regain control of his body. In his panic, he forgets to let go of the box which seems to defy gravity, and it flies through the air, driven by the momentum of his fall.
“Lt.!” you yell as you hurry to him, kneeling on the floor, “are you okay, sir?”
He stares at the floor, then at you, then back at the ground. You grab his arm to pull him up, but his ego is too bruised to allow you to do that to him. He gets up on his own and dusts his trousers.
“I’m sorry, sir,” you apologise, “I had no idea.”
He crosses his arms in front of his chest—he looks defensive. “Neither of us knew, soldier,” he says, trying to reassure you, and walks towards the box.
“Huh,” he says as he lifts its flaps. “I fell backwards by a rocket explosion before,” he recalls, “but never by a cardboard box filled with sanitary pads.”
You giggle, and he shakes his head. He picks one of the packages and shows it to you. “Will you need a couple of these during our mission?” He asks.
“Yes, sir,” you reply, lowering your eyes to the ground.
He picks up two packs and puts one of them under his arm. “No shame in that, soldier,” he comforts you and shakes the other pack, “these babies almost broke my hip about a minute ago.”
You smile in response—at least he can make a joke out of this uncomfortable situation.
“You’re impressive, Lt.,” you comment, “a walking and breathing human scale.”
“Eh,” he shrugs as he crosses the final items off the list, “it helps with missions and loading up the trucks.”
“Now,” you continue, looking at the boxes you’ve collected for the mission, “how about we fill up the truck before one of us gets hurt in this warzone of a storage unit?”
He lets out a laugh. “Yes, let’s get outta here,” he agrees, “I don’t want to get jumped by a bunch of Kleenex.”
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bitchesuntitled · 2 months
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Memories
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Summary: What happens when your husband, Dieter, forgets who you are?
Warnings: 18+ minors get outta here! Cursing, fluff, smut, feel good, oral(f receiving), fingering(f receiving), probably not like realistic medical knowledge but it’s fiction 🤷‍♀️
A/N: Thank you so much @papipascalispunk for editing. @jay-zzle for the idea AND the mood board 😍❤️ I really liked writing this and had a lot of fun with it. Hope y’all like it! @schnarfer(it's here!)
Masterlist
“Wait, who said we can’t have fruit bars anymore?” you ask, turning from the pantry to look at your seven year old daughter, Luna, sitting at the kitchen island.
“Daddy,” Luna states matter of factly, “He said that it’s fake food and we should only eat organic stuff.”
“Yeah, we need organic food,” your son Leo pipes in from the seat next to her. At three years old, he is currently in the copy everything big sister says or does phase.
“So, what do you want as a snack in your lunch box then?” you ask, raising your eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
“Uhhh… banana?” Luna shrugs, “Daddy wasn’t very specific on what I should eat instead.”
“Okay but get your breakfast eaten before your cereal gets soggy,” you say, pointing at both before starting on the dishes.
Of course Dieter would be the one to tell the kids not to eat certain foods. The man scolds you every time he sees your Bluetooth headphones – droning on and on about the effects it’ll have on your brain waves and how it’s going to damage your mind. Your relationship with Dieter was a bit of a chaotic whirlwind, meeting randomly on the set of one of the movies he starred in, one your friend was working on the set of.
“Well, hello there,” Dieter had said, standing next to you by the craft table. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Excuse me?” you asked, looking around to see who he was actually talking to.
“Or should I walk by again?” he said with a smile.
“Is that how you get all the girls?” you asked, picking up a piece of cheese and pointing it at him, “Because that shit was pretty cheesy if you ask me.”
“No, trying something new,” Dieter said, cracking up into a giant fit of laughter. “Sorry, sorry. That– yeah, that was pretty good.”
“Bravo needed on set!” someone with a headset shouted in the distance, frantically waving at him.
“Guess that’s my cue,” he sighed, “Hope to see you ar– wait, what’s your name?”
You introduce yourself and he takes your hand, kissing the back of it.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, repeating your name and winking, “Hope to see you around.”
That was the conversation that started it all nearly eight years ago. Within the first year of knowing Dieter, you were married and pregnant – and no – it wasn’t a shotgun wedding, as much as the tabloids tried to pin it as one.
“Dieter Bravo and Mystery Woman Seen Leaving Las Vegas Wedding Chapel”
“Dieter Bravo Expecting First Child with New Wife – Shotgun Wedding?”
“How Long Before Dieter Bravo Gets His First Divorce?”
You both just knew you were meant to be together. With the birth of Luna, he had sobered up completely. These days he hardly even drinks beer. It’s weird in a way, that he’s changed so much from who you first met, but still the same Dieter in every other aspect. Wild, spontaneous, creative, romantic, chaotic at times, and so loving.
“Good morning, my babies,” Dieter says, waltzing into the kitchen, giving each of his kids a kiss on the top of their heads.
“Hi, Daddy,” Luna and Leo exclaim.
“Hello, my love,” Dieter smiles, wrapping his arms around your waist giving you a sloppy smooch on the cheek.
“Ew,” Luna shouts, making gagging noises.
“Yeah, what Luna said!” Leo says, copying his older sister with fake gagging.
“Stop with the fake gagging,” he replies, looking at them, “You’ll make mommy sick.”
“Hi, babe,” you laugh, “Someone’s in a good mood this morning.”
“I want to start doing my own stunts like Tom Cruise,” Dieter explains excitedly, “And I think I’m going to crush it today! I’m supposed to scale a building, don’t worry, everything is going to be totally safe.”
“Seriously, Dieter?” you sigh, “You may say that it’s safe but I’m still going to worry – please be safe.”
Dieter gasps, putting his hand to his chest as if he were clutching a set of pearls. “Babies, I don’t think mommy trusts daddy!”
“Momma,” Leo laughs, perching up on the chair more, “Daddy be fine!”
“Yeah, momma,” Dieter says with a grin, “Daddy be fine.”
“Yeah, okay,” you say, snorting and shaking your head, looking at your watch you realize you’re going to be cutting it close in getting Luna to school on time. “Shit!”
“Mommy,” Luna scolds, “You shouldn’t say bad words like that!”
“Luna, hurry up with your cereal or else you’re going to be late for school again,” you say as you turn to Dieter who is rummaging in the fridge for his own breakfast. “What time do you have to be on set?”
“In about an hour, get her to school. My favorite son and I will be fine here at home. If need be, I’ll tell the director that I’m going to be late. Family first,” he says, “Not like they’d fire me at this point. I’m the entire reason people are going to want to see this movie.”
“I love you so much,” you say, giving him a kiss before ushering Luna out the door.
“Love you too, baby!” Dieter shouts.
“I’m back,” you announce from the front door.
“That didn’t take as long as I expected,” Dieter chuckles, “I gotta get headed to the studio though.” He scoops Leo up into a tight hug, “We'll play superhero when I get back home, okay?”
“Otay,” Leo says, pouting.
“Poor baby,” Dieter coos and glances up at you with a smirk, “You sure you don’t want another one?”
“Dieter,” you say, wrapping your arms around his neck, “We’ve talked about this. If it feels right, then maybe, but right now? No.”
“Fine,” Dieter groans, “But the moment you think it feels right, tell me?”
“Promise,” you smirk.
Dieter tells Leo goodbye with the promise of playing superheroes when he gets back home. Your mind begins to wander back to Dieter’s question about another baby as you go about your chores. You start smiling thinking back to when you first decided to start trying for a baby –  lying in bed together shortly after getting married.
“How many kids do you want?” Dieter asked, playing with the wedding band on your finger.
“I’d always imagined three honestly,” you smiled, “Why?”
“I want whatever you want,” he grinned, slotting himself between your legs again. “But if you wanted at least one I wouldn’t mind trying now.”
“D, we just got married a month ago,” you said, shaking your head, “Is that the only reason you married me? To have a baby?”
“Of course not, baby,” Dieter said, linking his fingers with yours and pinning them above your head, “I just know I really, really want them with you.”
“Oh yeah?” you whispered, tilting your head up to capture his lips. He moaned into your mouth, slowly grinding his stiffness against you.
“Yes,” he panted, breaking the kiss.
“Let’s do it then,” you said, nipping his bottom lip, “Fuck a baby into me, Dieter.”
“Fuck yeah, baby,” he groaned.
“Momma!” Leo shouts, pulling you from your thoughts, “Your phone.”
You had been so deep in the memory you didn’t even notice your phone ringing. It’s just Dieter, probably checking in to see how your day is going. He tends to do that while he’s on breaks at work.
“Well, hello, Tom Cruise,” you answer, giggling – except it isn’t Dieter on the other end. 
Instead, you hear his assistant, Andy, saying your name before, “Dieter’s been in an accident. I’m almost to your house, I’ll watch Leo so you can go to Cedars-Sinai medical,” quickly spills out of his mouth, “It’s not good.”
It’s been two weeks that you’ve sat beside his bed in this damn hospital, waiting for him to wake up. The doctors are all hopeful that he’ll wake up at any minute, but it’s been two days since he’s been off the ventilator, and nothing has happened yet. The kids keep asking where their dad is, and you don’t have any other answer than he’s sick. 
“Dieter,” you beg, holding onto his hand, “Babe, please wake up. We need you. Luna and Leo miss you – I miss you. Please just wake up.”
The nurse comes in to check Dieter’s vitals for the third time today. Since she’s keeping him company, you decide to head to the cafeteria to get some food, grabbing something simple before heading back to Dieter’s room. When you return, you notice a flurry of activity.
“Mr. Bravo, can you tell me what year it is?” a doctor asks, shining a small flashlight in his eyes.
“Of course I can, dumbass! It’s 2016,” Dieter snaps. “Now will you stop shining that light in my eye?”
“What’s going on?” you ask hesitantly.
“He woke up while you went to get food,” a nurse explains, “We’re trying to make sure mentally he’s with us.”
“Oh, for fuck sake!” Dieter cries out, “I’m fine, never felt better! There, she must be my new assistant.”
All eyes turn to you. This was a possibility the doctor had talked about before – temporary amnesia. Hopefully that’s all it is. The doctor motions you to follow him out of the room.
“He seems to have hit his head harder than we thought. In all honesty, I would try to play pretend with him for a little bit. Try thinking of things that might remind him of who he actually is today,” the doctor suggests. “I’m so sorry Mrs. Bravo.”
Dieter is having a conniption in the room while nurses are trying to calm him down. As you step back in, you see your husband frantically disconnecting and throwing the wires off of his body and onto the floor. 
“Where the fuck is my assistant?” Dieter yells.
“Dieter, D, baby – Mr. Bravo!” you shout and Dieter immediately freezes, eyes wide as saucers. “You need to calm down before you hurt yourself.”
“What happened?” Dieter asks, looking around at everyone.
“We’ll give you guys some space,” a nurse says quietly while ushering the others out of the room. You grab the chair next to his bed and sit down, reaching for his hand but stopping yourself as you notice your ring. Right now, this isn’t your husband. This is Dieter Bravo who believes it’s the year 2016.
“You were in an accident, you hit your head pretty good,” you start explaining to him, “You’ve been in a coma for two weeks now.”
“So, who are you?” he asks, looking you up and down with a raised eyebrow. “I knew my team wanted to hire me a new assistant since things didn’t work out with the last one – didn’t realize they’d pick someone so hot. Would you wanna have sex with me?”
“Dieter, I don’t think you’re cleared for those types of activities,” you chuckle, “I’m here for whatever you might need though.”
“Can you get me my phone?” he asks with those puppy-dog eyes he does best.
“Sure,” you reach for your purse digging around and find his phone, handing it over to him. “The passcode is 332016”
“The fuck? Why would I change it from the classic 42069?” he asks, looking at you with confusion.
“It’s uh… an important day to you,” you say, looking away, not wanting him to see the tears forming in your eyes. The day you met. 
“So, did I have an accident on set?”
“Yeah, you were scaling a building and the cable holding you snapped. You fell a good distance and smacked your head on the ground.”
“Wait,” Dieter says looking at his phone calendar, pointing it towards you, “Why does this say it’s 2024?”
“Because it’s not 2016,” you shrug, “It’s 2024.”
“How long have I been in a fucking coma?” Dieter asks, starting to panic again, frantically searching through the contacts in his phone, “Why can’t I find my dealer's number? I need coke. Wait, you’re my fucking assistant – go get me coke!”
“You’ve only been in a coma for two weeks and the only coke I’ll get you is Coca Cola,” you say crossing your arms, “I won’t let you have drugs in m– the house, Dieter.”
“Wait, my assistant lives with me?” he gasps, “You’re just supposed to come when I call you.”
“Different kind of assistant here.”
“Wait, I can’t have you in my house! I see that ring on your finger – I don’t want to get in between a marriage,” Dieter says, pointing at your left hand.
“It’s– it’s complicated right now,” you shrug.
“Fine, stay in my house, but stay out of my way,” Dieter sighs in frustration.
This is going to be a lot harder than you thought. He doesn’t remember who you are to him. He doesn’t remember getting clean when he married you. He doesn’t remember anything. Going home that night doesn’t help either because Luna wants to know what’s going on with her dad.
“Andy said that daddy woke up!” Luna says vibrating with excitement, “How come he’s not home?
“I had to leave him at the hospital because he’s still sick, honey.” You sit down on the plush couch in the living room, “Come here. I wanna talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” Luna hesitantly says, coming to sit next to you.
“Daddy is still sick. He looks fine but his brain is sick right now.”
“What’s that mean?” she questions, looking at you with the same eyes as her father.
“He doesn’t remember some stuff about his life right now,” you continue, “But we are gonna try to help him get it back. We have to think of the best memories we have with daddy so that maybe he’ll remember better.”
“So, we have to fix daddy?” she asks with tears in her eyes as you grab her into a hug, stroking her hair.
“Yeah, sweet girl, we have to fix daddy,” you say, trying not to cry yourself.
What was supposed to only be a few days turned into a week at the hospital. A week of playing Dieter’s assistant and having him boss you around. He was still adamant on getting drugs, but you put your foot down on that one. You weren’t going to let him ruin his seven years of sobriety just because he lost his memory.
“Alright Mr. Bravo looks like you’re all set to leave. Just need you to sign a couple of papers here and then you can be on your way,” the doctor says, handing him the papers.
“Fucking finally,” Dieter groans, “Not that this isn’t a wonderful hospital, but I’d much rather be home.”
“Of course,” the doctor says.
“Will you go ahead and bring the car around? I’d rather not walk too much considering my condition,” Dieter asks, looking at you.
“Of course, D– Mr. Bravo,” you grit through your teeth with the most customer service smile you can muster. That was a new development, Dieter wanting you only to refer to him as Mr. Bravo. You rush out of the room so that it doesn’t blow up into another argument. He’s already tried to fire you twice because of the no drugs thing. You had to make up some story of how you’re in a five-year contract that cannot be broken and tell him three times before he finally bought the story.
Pulling the car around to the front of the hospital, you see him being wheeled out.
“Thank you again so much for taking care of me,” he says, winking at the nurse, “Best care I’ve ever received!”
“No problem at all, Dieter,” she giggles. 
“Could I possibly get your number?” Dieter asks, looking expectantly at the nurse after getting settled into the passenger seat of the car. She shakes her head violently.
“No, sorry,” she says before running off wheeling the wheelchair back into the building.
“Well, that was fucking weird,” Dieter says, looking at you. “Did I do something wrong? Most women don’t literally run from me like that.”
“No, Mr. Bravo, you didn’t do anything wrong,” you growl, “Nothing at all.”
You begin to play a song you hope might bring back some sort of memory of you. With all the hope you can muster you hit play and hear Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz, one of the songs you guys would listen to while you got high together. Dieter starts to chuckle listening to the song.
“What?” you snap at him.
“It’s just this song,” Dieter said grinning, “It reminds me of someone.”
“Oh?” you ask, trying not to pry too much hoping he’ll just continue talking.
“Yeah, I can’t remember what her name is, though. Good lay, that’s for damn sure,” he says, laughing a little, “All I remember is she wasn’t even in the business, she’d call me out on all my shit, and we would smoke weed together listening to this song a lot. I think that’s why I liked her. Wonder what she’s up to these days?”
“Oh um… who knows, maybe she’s still in town?” Your heart swells realizing he’s talking about you, that he remembers some remnants of you. 
“No way!” Dieter says and sighs, “Way too fucking good for someone like me anyways. Probably found some nice guy, got married, has kids, the whole white picket fence shit and everything. She was way out of my league.”
Pulling up to the house you don’t even know what to say to him. He looks almost defeated in a way and then looks confused when he sees the front door opening.
“Oh no,” you whisper, watching Luna run to the car, “Dieter, wait here. Do not move!”
“Why the fuck are there children at my house?” he asks while you’re getting out, but you shut the door behind you, ignoring him.
“Luna, baby, I need you to go back into the house. Daddy’s sick, remember?” you say, trying to usher her back up the driveway.
“Mommy!” Leo shrieks, running to you.
“Fuck – I mean fudge,” Andy says, frantically running out to the driveway, “I was in the bathroom. She must’ve heard the car, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“The hell is going on here?” Dieter’s voice booms while getting out of the car, “I asked you why there are kids in my house.”
“Da–” Luna starts, but you cut her off.
“You two, inside. Now,” you say, ushering them towards Andy. Once they’re inside you whip around to look at Dieter standing by the car.
“You,” you snarl, walking towards him, “Screw what the doctor said. I’ve had enough of this shit. I’m not your fucking assistant so stop bossing me around. I’m your wife – those two are our children!”
“Wha–” Dieter stares at you with wide eyes, “D– DNA Test, I want a fucking DNA test!”
“Dieter, there isn’t a need for a DNA test because they’re your kids. I mean, did you even look at them?”
“Those are not my kids, they look Latino,” he argues.
“Dieter!” you yell, “You are Latino.”
“Oh, yeah,” he whispers, looking down. “So, you’re my wife?”
“Yes, Dieter, I’m your wife. I’m the girl that would get high with you listening to Clint Eastwood.”
“Wild,” he says looking at the house, the ground below him, the yard, anywhere but you “Wild.”
It’s been a week at home now, but Dieter is trying his hardest to regain his memory after you lay everything out on the table for him. You show him pictures of your Las Vegas wedding, your pregnancy photos, the kids’ births – he finally relents to the truth when you show him their birth certificates with his name listed under Father. Luna has been trying to show him drawings that she’s done for him, but nothing is working. Poor Leo just wants to play superheroes, but at just three years old, he doesn’t understand what’s going on at all.
One night, after you put the kids to bed, Dieter comes to your bedroom.
“What if we had sex?” he suggests.
“Dieter, I don’t know if that would be a good idea,” you groan, flopping onto the bed rubbing your eyes.
“I’m just saying, what if we did?” he shrugs, “Was just a suggestion, but I get it.”
“Come here,” you say, patting the spot next to you in bed. He reluctantly sits down next to you as you open your arms as an invitation. “How about we cuddle?”
He nods, setting his head on your chest. You can tell he didn’t know what to do with his hands because he’s so tense. You grab one of them and push it around your back, hoping he’ll understand your silent suggestion. 
“Like this?” he whispers, carefully adjusting both arms to wrap around you.
“Just like that,” you hum, stroking the curls at the base of his neck, breathing his scent in for the first time in weeks. Clean laundry, a hint of eucalyptus, and something that’s so specifically Dieter.
“I like this,” Dieter purs, rubbing his head against your chest, “I wish so badly I could just remember everything.”
“I know D, I know,” you sigh, continuing to gently stroke his head, “We’ll get there.”
Dieter moves so his head is in the crook of your neck. You feel his lips begin to place soft kisses against your skin.
“Dieter,” you gasp, turning your head to look at him, “What are you doing?”
“I wanna make you feel better,” he says, giving you those puppy dog eyes you can never refuse. “You’ve had to deal with a lot and this is the only way I know how to try and make things right.”
“Okay,” you whisper, nodding your head. As much as you’ve avoided intimacy with Dieter while his memory was gone, he’s still your Dieter and you miss him. 
He starts nipping along your jaw and down your neck. One of his hands moves to your breast gently kneading it. His lips move down your throat to your chest, making his way down to your stomach and pushing your shirt up. He places several kisses around your navel down to the top of your underwear, looking up at you again for confirmation. “It’s okay,” you nod, giving him the go ahead. He peels them off your hips and down your legs, throwing them to the floor.
Without warning he flattens his tongue, licking a stripe up your seam. Working his tongue against your clit and back down to your entrance. Up and down, up and down.
“Fuck, baby, I’ve missed this,” you cry out, running your fingers through his hair, “Feels so fucking good!”
Dieter starts humming, loving the praise you were giving him. His tongue continues circling your bundle of nerves, hoping to hear more words of praise.
“Taste so fucking good,” he says breaking away, “Best pussy I’ve ever had.”
You grip his hair tightly and shove his face back to your core. It’s almost embarrassing how quickly you can feel your orgasm approaching.
“Please don’t stop,” you moan, “I’m so fucking close!”
Dieter doubles down his efforts after hearing those words. He’s determined to get you off now. One of his hands makes its way to your center, teasing your entrance before plunging two of his thick fingers inside, curling them up to hit that spot only he’s ever been able to reach.
“Oh, fuck,” you cry out, back arching, “Y– yes, just like that!”
He starts grunting, rutting into the mattress, so badly needing to make you come. He knows you’re close, listening to your breathing and hearing the pitch of your moans. 
“D,” you moan, while he grabs your thighs, pulling you unbelievably closer to his face to completely devour you before sliding his fingers back into you. “I’m gonna come!”
“Give it to me, baby, come on,” he says, pulling away panting before diving back in for more, “I need it”. He feels the way your legs begin to shake, your walls fluttering around his fingers.
“Fuck,” you hiss, head thrown back against the pillow closing your eyes, “I– I’m gonna… god.”
Dieter feels your walls constrict around his fingers and hums, collecting your release slowly. He takes his time licking you clean before you push him away, feeling overly sensitive. When you finally open your eyes to look at him, you notice his smile and a glint in his eyes. He crawls back up the length of your body and you grab his face, kissing him deeply tasting yourself on his tongue.
“I can’t believe you married me,” he says, breaking the kiss and wrapping his arms around you again, “Love me forever?”
“Dieter, I’m pretty sure I’ve already proven that I’ll love you forever,” you softly chuckle, beginning to stroke his back.
The doctor keeps saying to just be patient, that it’s going to take time for Dieter’s memory to return. But it feels like it’s been forever as another week passes. Everyone is getting frustrated, especially Leo.
“Why is daddy broke?” Leo screams at the top of his lungs, “He no play with me!”
“Leo, Daddy just doesn’t feel good,” you try to explain.
“He no like me!” Leo wails, “He only likes Luna.”
“Leo, daddy does too like you,” you try telling him, “He loves you very much.” 
“No,” Leo cries as you scoop him up as he buries his face into your shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” you soothe.
It wasn’t that Dieter wasn’t trying with the kids, he just didn’t know how. His dad instincts hadn’t been brought back full-force. He was great with Luna –  engaged in conversation with her, drew pictures with her, watched her put on fashion shows. With Leo though, he didn’t know how to interact with a toddler. Leo would get upset and Dieter didn’t know what to do besides call you for help. Before Dieter’s accident Leo was his little buddy, followed him everywhere, would play with him for hours being superheroes or whatever Leo decided on that day.
You were able to get Leo to calm down and because of his tantrum he wound up falling asleep. After putting him in his bed for a nap you went to search for Dieter.
“Hey,” you sigh, seeing him standing by the window looking into the backyard.
“Hey,” he says sniffling, wiping his sleeve against his nose, “I’m so sorry.”
“Dieter, I’m not the one you should be saying sorry to. Leo misses you! I know that you’re trying, I do, but I need you to try harder for him,” you sigh, “I can’t pretend that I even know what you’re going through, but our baby boy is hurting because he misses his dad!”
“I know,” Dieter says turning around, you could now see the tears falling down his face, “It’s just… he scares me! It’s easier with Luna because I can understand every word she says, she can show me things, she doesn’t throw a tantrum every five minutes.”
“Dieter, he’s your son! Not some little monster to be scared of! He’s three and doesn’t know any better,” you scold him, “Like I said, I just need you to try.”
“Okay,” Dieter agrees, wiping the tears off his face, “When he wakes up from his nap, I’ll try.”
Dieter could hear Leo awake in his room as he slowly made his way there.
“Dad-Bomb an’ dude-bomb! To rescue!” Leo says, jumping off his bed with a cape around his shoulders. Dieter stands in the doorway observing him. Why did that sound so familiar? Dad-Bomb.
“Hey Leo,” Dieter says cautiously, “What are you playing?”
“Superhero,” Leo smiles, “Want to play with me?”
“Can I?” Dieter exclaims, “I’ve always wanted to be a superhero!”
“Yeah!” Leo shouts, running to his closet to grab something. He comes back out with a big purple cape with D-B on the back, handing it to Dieter. “Put on your cape.”
Dieter pulls the cape around his neck, tying it so it wouldn’t fall off. He notices Leo’s little green cape he was wearing also had D-B on the back.
“Do we have names, Leo?” Dieter asks, “I can’t help but see we have stuff on the back of our super-awesome capes!”
“I’m Dude-Bomb, you’re Dad-Bomb!” Leo gleefully exclaims 
“Dad-Bomb?”
“Yeah, like ‘da-bomb’ –  means super cool,” Leo giggles.This was starting to feel extremely familiar to Dieter. 
Leo scampers off to his closet again, rummaging through it trying to find something. He comes back holding a piece of paper and hands it to Dieter. Dieter holds it up, staring at it. His drawing of Dad-Bomb and Dude-Bomb, fighting crime together, and it all comes rushing back.
“Oh my god, Leo,” Dieter yells.
He picks Leo up, swinging him around. Hearing the commotion, you start running towards Leo’s room fearing the worst. Rounding the corner into the room, you saw Dieter crying, hugging Leo tightly and swinging him back and forth.
“Dad-Bomb and Dude-Bomb!” Dieter exclaims, grinning from ear to ear.
“Yeah, that’s you an’ me!” Leo announces proudly.
“Everything okay?” you ask quietly, looking at both of them.
“Yeah. March 3, 2016 – that’s the day I met you,” Dieter says, tears rolling down his face.
“Oh my god,” you gasped, “Baby.”
“Yeah, baby. It’s all back,” he says, setting Leo back down and rushing to grab you in a tight embrace, “I’m back.”
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Concept: inspired by @bluerosefox and they're work about danny demanding the jokers soul. I wanted to write the joker and Danny's interactions too.
Danny groaned as the next set of paperwork was slipped onto his desk.
Joker would soon croak.
He would slip on his own banana peel and fall down the stairs.
Gothem would celebrate that night with alcohol and music. The ghost zone would brace itself for the trial...
Honestly it was bound to happen. It wasn't that danny was surprised. But it would be a long drawn out case. When a human dies they become more of what they are after all.
It's like their souls are condensed to make up their ghostly form. As if their passions were their hearts.
For some that was amazing. Fiery passion can be useful in all sorts of situations, but for joker this would be a nightmare come true.
The ghost looked at him his eyes worried, almost teary.
"Should I alarm the Gothamites of the infinite realms."
Danny thought for a minute, let out a low hum, and thought some more.
He knew what he could do in theory.
If he was to judge the jokers soul in the room that he dies in, the ghost zone would be free from his wrath.
But if the joker defeated him in combat he shuddered at what that monster would do with all the power in the afterlife.
He didn't really think joker could take him down, but knowing others thought the same for him and his predecessor....
So Danny was left with one option.
"Call my knights," he commanded
The fright knight was captain. Head of the army and keeper of the soul shredder.
Danny only needed to borrow it, but when he explained the predicament the ghost dropped to his knees, the metal clang sound echoed through the office. The fright knight began to speak,
"You wish to spare me from looking into the eyes of evil, and I thank you my liege. But I can not and shall not send you alone to your second death."
Danny told him to rise to get off the dirty floor, but he continued.
"As captain of the guards my liege is only under my obligation to the knights under me."
Danny remembered the conversation that made that a possibility. That changed the priority of obligation completely and totally, hopefully for once and for all.
Danny hid a small smile and told him to get of the floor again
............
It didn't take long to find joker amoung the living. He was surrounded by weeping souls unable to move on.
Danny clutched his scale. A gift from clockwork, to a "good and fair king to continue to strive to be better."
Clockwork had, in the end taken up the role of advisor. As such he stood by Danny's right side, his captain to the left.
When they entered the room he was already dead.
The soul of the man was laughing hysterically.
He got louder when he spotted them.
Danny sighed and despite the noise tried to read him his rights.
He argued with each and every one in nonsensical logic.
The third time Danny slapped him across his ghostly face, leaving frostbite and cold crystals on his white cheek.
"I am not batman, I am death. I will not play as he does, I am the ghost king, death himself."
After the rights were read Danny peared into his soul, sticky and tar like, it made him feel ill. He put on the extra gauntlet brought and separated the dead from his deeds.
It felt like lifting a semi, and weighed him down about a foot.
The joker cackled with pride. Danny wondered if he didn't understand the gravity of the situation, or if he didn't care.
Then with the other hand he did the same to himself.
Both sets of deeds were set on the scale at the same time. Danny barely caught the peice of his own ghostly form.
The scale broke the table on its way down, jokers sludgelike, corrupted deeds stuck to it. The scale hadn't twitched once to the other side.
The knights went to pick up the piece of soul and put it back. It took three of them.
Danny put his deeds back were they belonged.
When everything was dead and done, joker was declared guilty and chained down, something he escaped out the window and around the block to avoid.
Danny took out the soul shredder.
It wasn't the fright knights job to play executioner.
Then the joker was blindfolded, he made this difficult via attempted biting, but once it was done, it was done.
Danny didn't ask for a last word.
He took the sword and swung as he had been taught. And as the jokers very soul was torn, the bells rang in Gotham for the first time in Years.
He didn't miss.
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Napoleonville [Chapter 6: The House Of Salt And Scales]
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Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.
Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, infidelity, Evangelical Christians, kids, parenthood, Willis Warning, (Mis)Adventures With Aegon, Targ family dysfunction, bodily injury, blood, alligators, ANGST!!!
Word Count: 7.5k.
Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.
Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 🥰🧁
“Did you hear that Willis is single again?”
Ugh. “Yes, Mama. I heard. You told me already.” You linger in the doorway with a white bakery box in your hands: your mother’s favorite, grasshopper pie, straight out of the 1960s. She allegedly ate through two a week when she was pregnant with you. Cadi has already dashed inside and made herself at home; she’s probably jamming the movie she got from Blockbuster—Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Amir recommended it—into the VHS player. “You told me, Willis told me, all his deputies told me, Cadi told me, my mailman told me, the checkout ladies at the Piggly Wiggly told me, literally every resident of Napoleonville has informed me in no uncertain terms that Willis is single again. And I could not possibly care less.”
Your mother sighs and presses a hand to her forehead, wounded and incredulous, like she’s just watched a 60 Minutes segments about a tsunami or a genocide. “I just don’t understand it. In my day, people married for life.”
You glance back longingly at your Chevy Celebrity. “Yeah. I know they did.”
“When your father, and God rest his soul, when he was young, he was a hellion,” your mother says, as if you don’t remember it, as if you weren’t there. “He’d get his paycheck every Friday and stay out all night with his buddies, sometimes he didn’t come home the whole weekend. I’d lay into him when he finally showed, I’d say, ‘Rene, how on earth am I supposed to put dinner on the table if I don’t have any fish in the icebox?!’ Once he punched a hole in the kitchen wall and I had to cover it up with a picture of President Eisenhower! And I never even thought about leaving. How could I have done that to you? Forcing you to grow up in a broken home? Mothers and fathers living apart, whoever heard of such a thing? It’s unnatural.”
You’re brainstorming recipes to distract yourself. Caramel pretzel cookies. Banana chiffon pie. Cheese Danish cupcakes with diced cherries and a hint of vanilla. “Everyone draws their own lines, Mama.”
“But it’s not just about you,” she implores, her eyes shimmering with sympathy she never had for other women. You remember what she said on the rare occasions you confided in her about your frustrations with Willis: Of course a man isn’t going to want you bothering him with your feelings when he’s had a hard day at work. Of course a man—after you’ve had his baby, after you almost died to do it—is going to be crossing off days on the calendar until you can have sex again. He keeps a roof over your head and he never hits you, what more could you ask for? “What about Cadi? What if she grows up thinking that her marriage vows don’t mean anything? It’s the foundation of society, marriage. If that goes, everything goes.”
It’s the foundation of a lot of coercion and unfairness and misery, that’s for sure. “I wouldn’t want Cadi to stay in a situation that makes her unhappy. Would you?”
Your mother throws her hands up, like you’ve told her you’re converting to communism and catching the next flight to the USSR. “Life isn’t just about happiness, sweetheart! It’s about commitment, it’s about responsibility! If everyone did what they wanted all the time, no one would stay married!”
“Maybe that speaks to the value of marriage as an institution.”
“And morality is already falling apart in this country,” your mother continues, ignoring you. That’s what she does when she can’t refute facts, logic, evidence. “Young people living together, women having babies with two or three different men, people doing drugs, people on Welfare, people shooting and stabbing each other, sex shops everywhere, naughty magazines at gas stations, men wanting to marry other men—”
“Okay, Mama. I really have to go now.”
“Alright, I’ll shut up. I will, I will, I swear.” She makes peace with a brisk kiss to your cheek like a stamp on an envelope. “Enjoy a nice quiet night to yourself. Do you have any plans?”
Well, Mama, I’m trying to resist the temptation to call my engaged dominant oil tycoon not-boyfriend and tell him to come over for kinky adulterous sex. “Not really. I’ll probably take a bubble bath and then watch something Cadi would think is boring, like 20/20.” You hand over the bakery box, and your mother’s face lights up.
“Grasshopper pie?!”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. You know it’s hard for me to make it myself anymore. This rheumatoid arthritis, it’s got me all twisted up.” She nods down to where her fingers grip the box, knobby and increasingly useless.
“When’s your next appointment?”
“I’ve got one in…oh…about three weeks, I think. I’d have to check my daybook. All the way over in New Orleans with some specialist that Dr. Cormier recommended.”
“Okay. Want me to go with you?”
“Yes, that’d be fine.” It would be more than fine; she wants you to go, though she won’t say it. You aren’t sure if she doesn’t want to impose or doesn’t want to admit how reliant she’s becoming upon you, like growing up in reverse.
“Mawmaw!” Cadi shouts from inside the house. “Hurry up! I want to watch Predator!”
“You quit your hollering, I’ll be right there!” Then your mother looks to you and offers one last piece of very unsolicited advice. “Just be kind to Willis, alright? Give him a chance. I don’t think he’ll ever find a woman he likes as much as you. That’s what everyone says.”
“Mama, he has no idea who I am.” And he’s not interested either.
“Sure he does. You’re the mother of his child, and you always will be. Maybe you’ll find your way back to each other.”
“I’ll think about it.” You definitely won’t. “Goodnight, Mama.”
“So long.” She shuffles into the house, and once she’s shut the door you hear her muffled voice: “Arcadia, come on over here and help me slice up this pie…”
You drive home with the windows down and blasting St. Elmo’s Fire. There’s still an hour or two of sunlight left; the world is painted in gold and blood orange, the soybeans, the sugarcane, the grass growing tall and wild, the Spanish moss swinging from the trees, the earth ripening as its revolution hurtles towards the apex of summer. Cadi is out of school until August. Amir will be announcing his looming departure to San Francisco. Aemond will be getting married.
The adolescent alligator that Aemond is so afraid of is in the far corner of the front yard, basking in the last of the daylight. You walk into your room, flop down on the bed, lie there staring longingly at the pink phone on your nightstand. You reach to pick it up, then stop yourself. Aemond hasn’t fucked you, hasn’t kissed you, has rarely touched you at all since you found out about Christabel. But he stops by your house and invites you to his; he stitches himself into your life like someone somewhere once sutured his face back together.
I can’t. It’s wrong. He’s engaged.
Aemond doesn’t know you’re home alone. It’s Friday, and usually Cadi would be here with you until tomorrow morning.
Maybe it’s not really cheating until he’s married. I mean, if Aemond and Christabel aren’t sleeping together, if they almost never see each other…is it even a real relationship?
Wistful thinking, yes, denial, yes; but with each passing minute your resolve not to pick up the phone weakens.
We don’t have much longer until the wedding. Our time is slipping away.
He’s a robber baron. He’s arrogant, he’s delusional.
And I want him. I still do, and I can’t stop.
The phone rings. You sit up, startled. It’s not Aemond, you tell yourself so you won’t be disappointed when it isn’t him. But it is.
“Hi,” Aemond says; he sounds out of breath. “I’m really sorry to bother you.”
“No, it’s okay, Cadi is actually having a sleepover with my mom. They’re watching Predator. My mom has no idea what it’s about, she’ll be clutching that Bible she got signed by Jerry Falwell a little extra hard tonight. What’s up?”
“This is going to sound random, but…you haven’t seen Aegon, have you? He hasn’t shown up at your house, he hasn’t called? You don’t know where he is?”
Aegon? Why would I know anything about what Aegon’s doing right now? “Um, no…?”
A long exhale, a lull that’s full of dread.
“Aemond, what’s going on?”
“He and my father got into it a few hours ago. They were screaming at each other, kicking furniture over, which isn’t all that unusual, honestly. But then Aegon ran away.”
“Wait, like, he’s gone…?”
“He stormed out the back door, went down to the lake, and then headed north into the trees. And I assumed he’d be back by now, but it’s getting dark and he’s not here. He never came home. His Porsche is still sitting in the driveway.” There is a pause. “I think he’s out there.”
“Out where?”
“In the woods,” Aemond says, shellshocked, terrified. “In the bayou.”
Your eyes dart to the window; the golden daylight is dwindling. “Aemond, he can’t be alone in the bayou. It’s dangerous. He could die. There aren’t just alligators, there are wild boars, cottonmouths, copperheads, snapping turtles, brown recluses, fire ants, I don’t think there are any black bears this far south but it’s always possible, he could drown, he could get trapped in quicksand, you cannot let Aegon spend the night out there.”
“I don’t know what to do.” You’re not used to hearing this in Aemond’s voice: the panic, the vulnerability. “No one else seems worried. They said he disappears all the time, and that’s true. They’re convinced he’s found his way to a strip club or a Waffle House or something and will drag himself home eventually. No one will listen to me. My father has forbidden me from getting anyone else involved. He doesn’t want gossip getting around town and overshadowing the new rig project or…you know. The wedding thing. My wedding. And I can go over his head, sure, I can make calls, but when investigators show up here to start searching my father is just going to tell them to leave. How is it even possible to find Aegon? At night in a fucking swamp? Is anyone going to be willing to go out there before morning? Do I need people with bloodhounds or a helicopter?”
No way, you think as soon as the idea hits you. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. “I can think of someone who knows their way around the bayou.”
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s just after 7 p.m. when Willis arrives to pick you up: grinning smugly, mullet fluffed, Plymouth Gran Fury hauling his brand new 20-foot jon boat. He’s dressed for night fishing in boots, camo-colored waders, and a grey hoodie with SHERIFF printed across the front in black letters. You climb into the passenger seat wearing sneakers, denim shorts, and a blue raincoat over your Pepsi t-shirt. You haven’t been fishing since you were married to Willis, and you’ve never missed it. It’s a grisly business: hooks through lips, hooks through eyeballs, hooks swallowed and tangled up in some doomed creature’s guts.
Aemond is waiting at the mouth of the Targaryens’ driveway, just out of sight of the mansion they call The Last Desire. He gets in the back seat and sits there testily with his arms crossed, lips pressed into a thin line, glaring out the window as an indistinct blur of primeval vegetation passes by outside. He has on his Marlboro jacket, light-wash jeans, and Adidas sneakers. You hope he doesn’t ruin them; although you suppose he can always buy more. He could buy a hundred more, a thousand more, and it wouldn’t make a difference. You can’t fathom what it’s like to live that way. It seems to conflict with all the laws of man and nature.
Aemond speaks grudgingly to Willis, a quick flat statement that invites no conversation. He didn’t call Willis to explain the situation, you did. You’re afraid to leave them alone with each other. You aren’t sure who would be more likely to end up a corpse decomposing in the muddy silt at the bottom of Lake Verret. “Thank you for agreeing to help with this.”
Willis chuckles warmly, either oblivious to Aemond’s prickliness or unbothered by it. “Bien sur! It’s my job, son. We’ll hunt your brother down.” Then he glances over at you, smirking, prying. “So, sugar…how’d you two make each other’s acquaintance?”
“Amir and I baked the cakes for his engagement party.”
“Engagement party, huh?” Willis looks at Aemond in the rearview mirror. “You gettin’ married?”
Aemond is still staring out the window. “Obviously.”
“So you ain’t single?”
“Legally, I am in fact single until the day the marriage license is signed.”
Willis returns his attention to you. “So he ain’t the petit ami you’ve been so secretive about.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend, Willis. I really can’t be more clear than that.”
“Oh, I know you got one. I know all your looks, sugar. Some days you come ‘round my office lookin’ lovesick, like you’re just a-floatin’ on a cloud. Other days you’re real mean, like you don’t want me takin’ none of your time, like you got somebody more important to spend it on. And then sometimes you just look…” He smiles, mischievous. “Well, how can I put it? Satisfied. The cat who ate the canary. And I recall exactly what that looks like on you. It’s been a while, sure. But I remember.”
From the back seat, Aemond sighs irritably. You say to Willis: “Can we please focus on finding Aegon?”
“Sois calme, sois calme. That’s why I’m here. We’ll be in the water in ten minutes.”
There is no more discussion; the only sound is the radio, Holding Out For A Hero by Bonnie Tyler. Willis turns onto a winding dirt road that leads to a boat launch about a mile from the Targaryens’ property. He spins his Plymouth Gran Fury around and backs it down the concrete ramp towards the rippling, slow-moving currents of Lake Verret. It’s difficult to see from the driver’s seat—most people would have someone get out to guide them—but Willis knows the way by heart. He’s been on boats since before he could walk; Willis’ daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy knew the bayou, and his daddy did too, all the way back to before the Louisiana Purchase. Your family are newer arrivals (relatively speaking), having only been in Napoleonville for about 100 years and keeping mostly to the town. You remember your 11th grade science teacher saying once that alligators have been around since before the dinosaurs went extinct. Maybe that’s what Willis is: a relic of a distant time and species, afflicted with a cunning ruggedness that won’t allow his kind to go extinct.
When the trailer is mostly underwater, Willis gets out of the car to unhook the straps that keep the boat moored to it. You go outside to help and Aemond follows, though he doesn’t know what to do. He’s never handled a boat this size and it shows; perhaps a yacht would be more his speed. He stands aside and watches, frowning, hands buried in the pockets of his Marlboro jacket. His lack of expertise riles him. He’s not used to being the incapable one. He hates not having control.
Willis already has a tow rope tied to a metal handle at the bow of the jon boat; he lifts it out and gives the free end to Aemond. “Hold onto that, will ya? Don’t let her get away.”
“Sure,” Aemond replies ungenerously. Willis returns to his Plymouth Gran Fury to finish backing the trailer into the lake until the boat floats. Standing on the shore together, you and Aemond stare at each other, unable to speak honestly, unable to decide what you’d say even if you could.
The jon boat bobs in the water, and you show Aemond how to pull it away from the trailer using the tow rope. Willis drives the trailer back onto dry land, parks his car in a flat area near the boat launch, and then joins you and Aemond by the water’s edge. He walks to where the boat is floating just to the right side of the concrete ramp and, with some difficulty, clambers inside as the boat rocks under his weight. Then he stands in the middle of it and gestures for you to approach. “Let’s get goin’, sugar.”
You take Willis’ hands when he reaches for you and let him help you into the jon boat. When you stumble over a bench seat, he steadies you with a hand on your waist, familiar but in no way erotic; not for you, at least. Still, from where he is standing on the lakeshore with the tow rope, Aemond glowers venomously.
“Your turn, son,” Willis calls to him, winking. “And I promise not to get too sweet with ya.”
But Aemond doesn’t need any assistance to board the vessel. He has long limbs, good balance, and an ironclad determination not to let Willis see him falter. Aemond sits at the bow of the boat. You claim a spot in the middle. Willis takes a seat at the stern, starts the outboard motor, and guides the boat into the treacherous swampland that lurks like a stalking animal at the edges of Lake Verret.
In the bayou, the water is sluggish, currentless, thick with vivid green salvinia and duckweed. Towering bald cypress trees grow out of the opaque depths and are adorned with greyish, anemic bundles of Spanish moss like spiderwebs. Mangrove trees with their myriad of semi-submerged roots are sanctuaries for catfish, turtles, baby alligators. Larger gators—as big as the female that lives in your yard, and some up to seven or eight feet—prowl with only their nostrils and ancient yellow eyes peeking out from under the water. Great blue herons tiptoe along the shallow shoreline and stab at fish that unknowingly flit between their long skeletal legs. Cicadas shriek in the trees so loudly they almost drown out the hum of the boat’s motor. When the last of the daylight vanishes, Willis tells Aemond to turn on the spotlight mounted to the bow, and the water becomes a soupy, greenish, primordial witch’s brew beneath its glow. Aemond lights a cigarette and puffs on it as he ponders this alien corner of the world that he’s found himself in.
Willis has a number of items stowed on the flat aluminum floor of the boat, you notice now: nets, paddles in case the motor fails, bottles of water, ropes, fishing poles, flashlights, hunting knives, a few sturdy wooden walking sticks. He’s wearing his sheriff’s pistol on a belt fastened over his waders. This makes you uneasy, though you can’t recall ever seeing him use it. It seems wrong to be able to end a life with so little effort.
“Aegon!” Aemond shouts from the bow, using a flashlight to look to the sides of the boat where the spotlight’s luminescence doesn’t shine so brightly. You grab your own flashlight to help him search. “Aegon! Where are you?!”
There’s something burning in your nose and throat as you lean over the side of the boat to peer into the shadowy wilderness. Salt, you realize, but that doesn’t make any sense. Lake Verret is a freshwater lake. You turn towards where Willis is steering the boat with the rumbling gas-powered motor. “Do you smell that?”
“Yup. Sure do.”
“But…how…?”
“One of the rigs mighta hit a salt dome while they were drillin’, I figure,” Willis says. “There’s been talk for years that we got salt domes under the lake. But that don’t stop these oil companies.” He stares meaningfully at Aemond. Aemond glances back, rather abashed. “And ya know what that means. If the water turns brackish, most of the fish’ll die. And who’s got to live with that for generations to come? Not the Targaryens or the Rockefellers, that’s for sure.”
Aemond resumes shouting for his wayward eldest brother. A dark snake, perhaps six feet long, slithers down the length of the boat through the murky water. “Aegon! Aegon!”
“What did he and Viserys argue about?” you ask.
Aemond is cagy. “It’s…kind of personal.”
“Personal like he got a stripper pregnant or personal like he murdered someone in a drunken hit-and-run?”
“Neither. But closer to the first option.” Then he roars into the darkness: “Aegon!”
“Maybe the bon a rien already found his way back home,” Willis says. “Maybe—”
And then there is an echo through the bayou, faint but vaguely human, a ghost, a phantom. “Aegon!” Aemond shouts back. “Where are you?!” Willis cuts the boat engine so you can hear the reply.
Faintly, very faintly, his disembodied voice drifts out of the trees. “Over here! Help me! Quickly! Seriously, really really quickly!!”
“Keep talking!” Aemond yells. Willis is listening intently, trying to pinpoint a direction. His thick, dark eyebrows are knit together in concentration that is rare for him.
Barely audible over the screams of the cicadas: “What the fuck am I supposed to say?! Just get over here and save me!”
“We’re trying to figure out where your voice is coming from, so don’t stop talking!”
“Help me! Come help me!! Right now!! My arms are getting tired!!”
“What? What are you doing with your arms?!”
“I got him,” Willis says. He restarts the motor and steers the boat down a narrow corridor of the swamp. The path is only about ten yards wide and bordered by mangrove trees with nests of exposed, labyrinthian roots. The water is probably relatively shallow: five feet, ten feet, just deep enough for secrets. The breeze is cool and wet, almost chilly. On the shore, you spy a snapping turtle the size of a golden retriever. Its long prehistoric claws are coated with mud and green blades of marsh grass. It ogles you as if to say: What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is where the dinosaurs that survived the asteroid live.
“Aegon?” Aemond calls.
“Here! Over here! I can see you, I see the lights! Oh my God, I’m not gonna die! Thank you Jesus!”
Aemond laughs in relief. “I didn’t think you two knew each other.”
“Shut up and save me, you muppet!”
And then you see Aegon—the spotlight hits him, he is illuminated in a stark white glow—and your stomach plummets, your blood goes cold. In an alcove of the bayou, right where the water meets the shore, Aegon is up in a bald cypress tree. He’s about five feet off the ground and standing on top of a branch just thick enough to hold his weight. It’s too narrow to balance comfortably on; he is hugging the trunk to ensure he doesn’t fall, and a fall would be catastrophic. Sprawled on the muck surrounding the base of the tree are a plethora of alligators, all approximately ten feet in length. That’s big enough to be lethal humans. That would be big enough to kill a bear, a horse, a shark. When the spotlight shines on them, the gators begin to squirm and hiss, glaring with soulless reptilian wrath at the boat. Willis shuts off the motor, and the boat bobs placidly.
“Oh, fuck,” Aemond says.
“Yeah, exactly!” Aegon pitches back. He’s wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and tiny turquoise blue shorts. He is barefoot. “So what’s the plan?! By the way, hey, cake lady.”
“Hi, Aegon.”
Aemond says: “How the hell did you get up there?”
“I was pissed off about the dad thing and I was walking for a long time, then I realized I was probably in the wrong neighborhood for someone with two legs and no desire to get eaten. I tried to find my way back but then these pig-looking things started chasing me and I freaked out and climbed up here to hide until they left. But as the sun went down, alligators started showing up. And the more time went by, the more alligators there were. And that’s the whole story, can you get me down now?!”
Aemond asks Willis, petrified: “How do we get him down?”
Willis surveys the scene for a moment, thinking. “Alright. Here’s what I reckon. We can toss him one end of a rope and he can tie it to the branch above him, right at the base where it’s real thick. Then we’ll hold the other end of the rope, and he can kinda shimmy on down it into the boat.”
Aegon says: “But what if right before I get to the boat, when I’m like four feet above the water, an alligator jumps out and bites me?”
“They don’t usually do that,” Willis replies.
“Usually?!”
“Look, we don’t have a lot of options,” Aemond tells his brother. “We can do the rope plan now, or we can leave you here, backtrack all the way to the boat launch, get the car, get some help, and hope they magically have a better solution for you. Or you can wait up there until morning to see if the alligators leave. You pick.”
“Isn’t that the hick sheriff guy? Can’t he shoot them?”
“Gators got brains ‘bout the size of a walnut, son,” Willis says. “And if I don’t hit ‘em where it counts, I’m just gonna make them angrier. That ain’t good for any of us.”
“Okay,” Aegon concedes. “Throw me a rope.”
Willis grabs one from the bottom of the jon boat, hands an end to Aemond, and tosses the other to Aegon. It takes the eldest Targaryen boy four attempts to catch it; the rope keeps falling and smacking the hissing alligators in the face before Willis lugs it back to the boat to try again. Once he finally obtains the rope, Aegon knots it—double, triple, quadruple—around where the branch above him, just barely within reach if he stretches as far as he can, meets the massive trunk of the bald cypress tree. Willis tells Aemond: “Now ya gotta hold the rope real tight. No slack at all, or it’ll dip and he’ll end up in a gator’s lap.”
“Yeah, Aemond!” Aegon says, his voice shaky. “No slack!”
“Got it.” Aemond loops his end of the rope around his waist, makes a knot, and then grips it with both hands and tugs it until it forms a straight diagonal line from the tree to the boat.
“Ya sure you wanna do that?” Willia says softly, nodding to Aemond’s waist. “If somethin’ goes wrong and he ends up in the water, you’ll be goin’ in with him.”
“I’m sure.”
“Alrighty.” Willis grabs one of the heavy wooden walking sticks from the aluminum floor of the boat. “If a gator tries to cause a problem, I’ll whack ‘em good. Don’t let ‘em get their jaws ‘round ya, not an arm or a leg or nothin’. If they get ahold of ya, they’ll roll and rip your bones right outta the sockets.”
“Awesome,” Aegon says from the tree. “I’m so glad you told me that. Yeah. Great. Any more super helpful alligator trivia, Sasquatch?”
“Yes sir. If one chomps down on ya, poke it in the eye with your fingers. A whack to the snout or a poke to the eye is the best way outta a gator’s mouth.”
Aegon gulps and clutches the rope, steeling himself.
“What should I do?” you ask Willis. “Should I get a stick too—?”
“Nothin’. You don’t do nothin’. You just sit down right in the middle and keep the boat steady. And if your petit ami starts goin’ overboard, maybe try to snatch him. But don’t ya fall in. Ya don’t want to be in that water. If there are gators above the water, there are gators below too. I guarantee it.”
You sit in the precise middle of the boat, using your weight to reinforce the vessel’s center of gravity as Aemond and Willis stand at opposing ends. Right before Aegon begins his descent, Aemond snags your attention. He makes a motion with one hand, a slicing, a prohibition. Don’t do anything insane, he means. Don’t risk trying to drag me back into the boat if I start going over.
“Whenever ya ready, bon a rien,” Willis says. And no one else but you knows that what he’s calling Aegon is a good-for-nothing.
Aegon begins scurrying down the length of the rope, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the bobbing jon boat. He passes above the hissing gators congregating at the base of the bald cypress tree and then over the water, where there are ripples that multiply out from epicenters and flashes of movement just beneath the surface but no homicidal alligator activity. When Aegon nears the boat, Willis seizes him and helps him into it; and then Aegon ruptures into hysterical giggles.
“I almost died, can you believe that?” he asks Aemond, who is untying the rope from his waist and beaming, the first real smile you’ve seen from him tonight. “Because I ran away from Viserys?! What an idiotic way to go. I’ll never let that bastard convince me to off myself. I gotta outlive him. I gotta do Jello shots on that motherfucker’s grave someday.”
“Yeah, you do,” Aemond agrees, squeezing Aegon’s shoulder.
“Goddammit,” Willis grumbles. He’s using his walking stick to jab at the water near the rear of the boat. “We’re hooked on a mangrove root or something.”
“Do you need help?” Aemond asks, headed towards him.
“Yes sir, if you’d be so kind. I don’t…I can’t see…what the hell is it stuck to?”
“The motor…? The blades of the motor?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re right. Yup. There it is. We musta drifted into it while we were preoccupied. Okay, we gotta push the boat off the root and then we can get movin’ again. Grab a stick, let’s start pushin’.”
“Should I get a stick too?” Aegon says, joining them. “I can hit stuff with sticks. I really want to get out of here…”
There’s a bit of a commotion at the back of the boat as the men try to propel it away from the mangrove tree. Willis is complaining that the water is too deep to touch the bottom with his stick. Aemond’s stick keeps slipping off the mangrove roots when he tries to get leverage. You aren’t sure what Aegon is contributing, if anything. The boat has begun to rock.
You look to the tree where Aegon had been imprisoned. The alligators are fully awake now; they are headed into the water and disappearing there, unseen, unheard, and yet all around you.
“I think we need to go now,” you say, but no one is listening to you. They’re still wrestling with the mangrove root. You rise, taking a few steps to the left to offset the boat’s listing towards the right. “Guys, we need to—”
The boat is freed from its organic jailor and lurches sharply towards the left. As the men cheer triumphantly—completely unaware of what’s happening—you are jolted off your feet and tumble backwards over the side of the boat.
The shock of hitting the water stuns you. It is cold and impossibly dark; when you open your eyes to try to find the surface, the boat, you can’t see anything. You paddle blindly. Something brushes your leg, and you scream bubbles of mute terror. You can’t breathe, you can’t think, you are picturing those ten-foot gators slinking into the water that you’re now thrashing wildly through. You swim towards what you think is the surface and strike unyielding metal—the underbelly of the boat—hard enough to put stars in your skull like the flashes of lightning bugs. You get turned around and don’t know where you are again. Something glides past your arm, and you gasp before remembering that there’s no air. Dark water—salt and silt and decomposition—surges into your lungs, your stomach, sinking you like an anchor from within. There is a whirlpool of motion around you and muffled shouting. Then something closes around your wrist.
The eyes! you think frantically. I have to poke out its eyes!
But the vice around your flesh has no teeth. It’s not a reptilian jaw, you realize now, but a human hand. It leads you and you obey.
When you break the surface, you cough bayou water from your throat and blink it out of your eyes. Willis is leaning over the side of the boat and stabbing at gators with his stick, shrieking at them in French. One lunges at him from the water, jaws snapping. Willis whips the pistol off his belt, aims it squarely between the creature’s eyes, and fires. The boom is deafening; the bleeding gator sinks into the water. Aegon is kneeling in the boat and offering his arms to help you climb up.
You look beside you. Aemond is barely keeping his head above water. “Go!” he orders you. “Get in the boat!”
With Aegon’s help, you heave yourself over the side and collapse to the aluminum floor, lungs aching, skull pounding, heart thudding mercilessly, soaked to the skin. Then you force yourself to your hands and knees to see where Aemond is.
“Aemond?!” Aegon is yelling. “Aemond, where are you?!”
He’s gone; you don’t see him in the water. You try to scream for him too, but the water still in your throat strangles you. Your hands close around the edge of the boat, and Willis grabs your raincoat to yank you backwards. “Other side!” says, pointing. “We’re gonna capsize, we need weight on the other side, go there!”
You scramble to the opposite end of the boat, sobbing now, still hacking up muddy water. Where’s Aemond?? Where is he??
Both Willis and Aegon are grasping for something. They’re shouting and stabbing into the water with their walking sticks. And then they’re hauling him into the boat: Aemond, blood pouring down the left side of his face, a gash by his temple, another on his forehead; something bit him or clawed him. He’s wearing only his jeans and a white tank top; he ripped off his Marlboro jacket before diving in after you. You don’t see his Adidas sneakers anywhere. They must have been kicked off in the water. His glass eye has been knocked out and lost in the muck. What’s left in its place is a void, gaping, pink; it’s difficult to look at, you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t. It has the visceral, gory quality of organs never meant to be seen. His fingertips go to the socket to feel for his prosthetic. When he confirms it isn’t there, he covers his face with his hands and moans.
He saved me. He jumped in after me.
You crawl to him. “Aemond—”
“No!” He pushes you away, and you see that there’s blood and ancient silt from the bayou in his empty eye socket. It will have to be cleaned out. Willis watches, astonished, bewildered. For once, he is at a loss for words.
“Aemond, please…” You’d do anything to help him. You don’t know how to help him.
He saved me.
Aegon reaches for Aemond. “Hey, hey. It’s not that bad. Hey…” He drops to his knees, presses his forehead against Aemond’s, stains himself with his brother’s blood. And when Aemond tries to pull away, Aegon doesn’t let him; he’s got his fingers tangled in Aemond’s wet hair. “Thank you for saving me. I’m always almost getting myself killed and you’re always saving me. What would I do without you, huh? None of us would be okay without you. Thank you, Aemond. You hear me? You’re not gonna get this again anytime soon, so listen up. Thank you. Thank you.”
“I’m just so—”
“I know.”
“I hate that I’m like this.”
“It’s not a big deal. You’ll order a new one.”
“You know what he’s going to say.”
“Fuck him. Why do you care what he thinks? Because you think he’s the one who gets to decide what you’re worth? He isn’t. He’s not qualified.”
Aemond nods, but he doesn’t seem to be convinced. He still doesn’t look at you. He turns so the left side of his face—bloodied, eyeless—is angled towards the water and out of your view. Willis goes to the motor, starts it, and begins guiding the boat back towards the launch where he parked his Plymouth Gran Fury.
Aegon glances over at you. “You okay, cake lady?”
“Yeah.” But your voice shakes. The rest of you is shaking too; now that the adrenaline is wearing off, you can feel that you’re shivering in your wet clothes.
“Put it on,” Aemond says softly, and at first you don’t understand. Then you see that he’s pointing to his Marlboro jacket, left hurriedly flung on the floor of the boat. You unzip your dripping raincoat and don Aemond’s Marlboro jacket instead. It smells like him: smoke, cologne, effort, secrets.
“Thank you,” you tell him, wanting to say more. Aemond doesn’t answer. He stares into the murky water, greenish under the glare of the spotlight, and says nothing to anyone all the way back to the boat launch. Wordlessly, he helps Willis re-hitch the jon boat to the trailer. He remembers the steps. He’s a fast learner. The blood on his face is drying; his right eye won’t allow itself to look at you. The only sound on the drive to the Targaryens’ mansion is the radio of the Plymouth Gran Fury, which Willis turns up to cover the silence: In A Big Country.
At the end of the cobblestone driveway, lights are on in the vast house called The Last Desire. Everyone gets out of the car. Willis shakes a rather puzzled Aegon’s hand, then turns to Aemond, who ignores him. Willis chuckles, more curious than offended.
“So ya are the man who’s been givin’ her that satisfied look. I knew it. Yes, I knew what I saw. What’s your secret, son? Ya must really know your way around a woman if ya got her so mad about ya with a face like that. Ya look like the Rougarou got ahold of ya—”
Aemond grabs Willis by his hoodie, yanks him off his feet, jacks him up against the side of the sheriff’s vehicle. Immediately, you and Aegon are shouting and trying to break them apart.
You plead: “Aemond, don’t!”
“Aemond, he’s got a gun!” Aegon screeches.
Fortunately, Willis isn’t grappling for his pistol. He holds both palms in the air, open and empty, like he’s surrendering; but there’s still a smile on his face. Aemond doesn’t act like he’s heard anyone. He leans in close to Willis, his voice low and dark and snarling, his sole blue eye glinting. “You had so much in your filthy fucking hands and you just threw it away.” Then he slams Willis against the car one more time, tears away from him, and strides up the porch steps and into the house.
Aegon hurries after him, casting you a quick glance and a beckoning wave. It’s an invitation. You coming? Aegon mouths, and then vanishes inside.
Willis peers up at the house: stained glass windows, immense white columns. You don’t see any signs of Vhagar the Great Dane. Willis speaks calmly and without looking at you. “I think he’s in love with you, sugar.”
Improbable. Impossible. If he was, he couldn’t marry someone else. “He’s not.”
Now Willis’ eyes flick to you. “All I’m sayin’ is that I’ve been fishin’ on that lake since as long as I can remember, day, night, sun, storms, and nothin’ on earth would have gotten me to jump into that water. Not even Heather Locklear herself.”
“Just go, Willis,” you say, exhausted, heartsick. “Thank you for what you did tonight. But please go now.”
“How ya gonna get home?”
“I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me.”
“Of that, I am incapable,” Willis drawls. Then he climbs into his Plymouth Gran Fury and is gone. You sprint up the porch steps in your soggy sneakers, searching for Aemond.
In the white-and-gold foyer, Viserys is just arriving. He struts across the marble floor until he is close enough to his two oldest sons to embrace them, to hit them, to extract their teeth with his knuckles. The others pour through the doorways—Alicent, Criston, Helaena, Daeron, Otto—but while they gape in horror and fascination, they don’t speak in anything more than murmurs amongst themselves. Viserys steals only a glimpse of Aegon, swift and disinterested, then examines Aemond: wet clothes, no shoes, grime and blood, dazed fury. When his cool, pale gaze reaches Aemond’s empty eye socket, Viserys flinches and looks away.
“So you lost another prosthetic,” is all he says. His face twists into a grimace. And you expect Aemond to do something, to jab back, but he doesn’t. He’s frozen, he’s paralyzed. His right eye is misty. He’s biting his lips so they don’t tremble. And suddenly you hate Viserys Targaryen, you hate him more than you can imagine hating anyone. You think that you could watch his entrails unspooled from his body without feeling a thing. The Targaryen family patriarch hasn’t spoken to you; you don’t register to him at all. You might as well be an oriental vase or a house plant.
“You’re the one who did it, Viserys,” Aegon says, stepping in front of Aemond seething and sharp like a blade. “You remember that part? I do. I remember. The North Sea, 1968. I remember him trotting around after you, always so desperate to prove himself, always doing anything you asked, anything you could dream up, worshipping you like you were God. And where were you when he was getting his eye socket debrided at Moorfields Hospital? In fact, where were you when he got his hands caught in a winch when he was eleven? Where were you when he fell off a pipe deck and broke six ribs because one of your idiot employees forgot to close a safety gate and he couldn’t see it? Where were you then? Where are you now?”
Viserys scowls down at him—revolted, repelled—but he doesn’t reply. He feels no instinct to defend himself. He is unable to internalize shame; it rolls off him like raindrops.
“You’d love me so much if I was dead,” Aegon says, grinning, baring his teeth like an animal. “How sick is that? You can love bones in a box, but not someone standing right in front of you. You love Aemma, a ghost. You love Baelon, and you never even knew him. You’ve got nothing for me. That’s fine, I don’t care, I’ll be alright without you.” He points to Aemond. “But you’ve got nothing for him either, and he’s everything you always wanted. You’re disgusting, you’re broken. You belong in a box too. The part of you that was human is gone. I don’t give a fuck about what’s left.”
Aegon shoves Viserys, hard, and then storms past him. As he crosses into the kitchen, Helaena grabs for his wrist. You can hear her whisper: “What the hell happened?!”
Then Aegon remembers one last thing. He whirls around and bellows at Viserys, his voice reverberating off the vaulted ceilings: “And I’m not getting my vasectomy reversed! You can’t make me! It’s bioethics! I asked the lawyer!” He stomps off and disappears, Helaena in tow.
Alicent shoots Viserys a hateful glare and then flees from the foyer, her long auburn ringlets streaming out behind her. Viserys goes in the opposite direction. Daeron and Otto share an awkward glance and then depart as well. Only you, Criston, and Aemond remain in the room, surrounded by treasures that might as well be handfuls of earth, flour, swamp water, salt.
Cautiously, Criston lays a hand on Aemond’s shoulder, on his right side where he can see it. “Aemond…”
“Don’t touch me,” Aemond says as he wrenches away. He leaves like a hurricane, like a flood, receding until there remains only wreckage and memory.
Criston sighs deeply, and then he asks you: “Do you need a ride home?”
You don’t respond. You haven’t decided how to yet. You stare at the place where Aemond stood, a void like a star that died out. Do I follow him upstairs? you think.
Do I?
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islandofsages · 4 months
Note
hi hi!! I would like to request the boys' (ill let you choose!!) reaction to gn!reader (Yuu) slipping on a banana peel and falling :D
characters: nrc + rsa students x gender neutral yuu
tags: relationship not specified, crack, imagines format
warnings: none
author's notes: i decided to go with this format bc it's fun :D and this is a fun prompt :DD sorry if this is too short but it is just pure crack so
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Is genuinely concerned for you and rushes over to you to see if you need any help
— Trey, Ruggie, Kalim, Jamil, Epel, Rook, Malleus, Silver, Sebek and Neige
Scolds you lightly for being clumsy but then extends a hand to help you up then tries to find the person who so ungraciously left a banana peel there
— Riddle, Leona, Jack and Vil
Laughs at you for a few seconds then helps you get on your feet
— Ace, Cater, Jade, Floyd, Lilia and Chenya
Helps you stand but then slips on the same banana peel himself
— Deuce, Azul and Grim
“L + ratio + gg loser + slipping on banana peels went out of trend years ago like what are you, a cartoon character-” you pull him down with you in the end
— Idia
“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain level?” “Eleven.” “Then we should take you to the hospital immediately!” “Wait, I was joking, ORTHO WAIT-”
— Ortho
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Note
Hi! I was browsing the Lord Shen tag and found your blog 👀. I loved the headcanons for ShenxReader through the wolf henchmen's pov ❤️.
Would you mind sharing some headcanons but from the pov of the fluffy Lord peacock himself?
Hi Anon, thank you so much!!
I'm so sorry that my Lord Shen Masterlist slipped my mind - I'm fighting tumblrs atrocious tag search to find my previous writings for him and get them on there for you. In the meantime please - have some more!
Lord Shen x Reader Headcannons
- This stuck up, mithery, hairpin tempered ball of anxiety and condescension is officially your problem now. I mean. You chose this, so I’ll leave it to you as to what end of the bad choices scale you’re landing on, but man. You sure picked.
- I also can’t get over the fact that – in China and most of the East: white is associated with death and sadness, and mourning. You not only picked the unhinged genocide gun bird, you picked the only person in all of China to be literally born emo via albinism.
- I will get back to the above, but I’m mcfucking losing it over the image of Shen being. The smaller of the two of you.
- Like if you were a smaller creature he could properly get his elegant noble stride on, nose in the air and tail gently swishing behind him as he circles you, admiring every angle and relishing the nervous, excited little glances you give him. He might not be a strictly predatory species but he sure loves that thrilling edge of not-quite-stalking. He’s too high class for the genuine article, that’s what he has the wolves for.
- But if you had the audacity to be larger than him?!
- He’d grind his teeth if he had any. He wants so badly to intimidate you – making sure to step with an extra click of metal coated talons, words honey-barbed and sticky as he looks for chinks in your armour, having to crane his head back and up to look you in the eye and- look- could, could you just- just lean down? Lean down for goodness sake just- there. There. Lovely. As he was saying…
- Shen going to go bananas planning the perfect courtship. Everything must be. Exactly. As he plans it. God forbid you trip on the stairs. If you bribe the guards to move all furniture two inches to the left you’re going to have a great time watching Shen’s eyelid twitch for twenty minutes as he tries to figure out what’s ticking him off.
- Want a shortcut? Say nice things about his cannon. No seriously, it’s not a euphemism (though it could be-)
- The cannon is the culmination of Shen’s ambitions, the reason for his exile, the demonstration of ingenuity that set him apart. Seeing you run a hand smoothly over the intricate castings and complimenting his life's work is going to fill him with so many butterflies he’ll have the wedding ready by noon.
- Of course he does, underneath all the royal snobbery and sass, really, genuinely like you. More than he ever thought he could ever like another person. Go you.
- ...He can’t contain the terror that you might not like him back. Not because of all the murder, no, that’s clearly not the issue. But because he isn’t perfect enough for you. Because he’s not enough.
- Shen popped out of his egg all but rocking the 2007 bangs and MCR soundtrack of his time: born the colours of death in a house and species traditionally all the colours of the rainbow will have been like a self fulfilling prophesy – unspoken but not forgotten as he grew up and internalised his inadequacy by striving for excellence in literally everything else in life.
- Excellence in the form of weaponry, security, excessive control and genocidal ruthlessness. Combined with ingenuity, high intelligence and paranoia: all wrapped in a package of straining courtly manners and a need to constantly have the upper hand.
- You keep taking the fucking rug out from under him by reversing the script and being nice. Even his nanny (soothsayer, who has having a great time munching popcorn and giving incidental commentary) gives him shit and drives him up the wall – yet you’re out here, smiling (how dare you-) and- and saying he looks good (he knows, knows he looks sickly and out of place, a reaper amongst royalty-) and – of course you want to hand his hand really, who wouldn’t (who would?) - he’s fine, he’s fine-
- If he dared to let you go, he’d shatter like a discarded doll.
- How does it feel, reader, to hold the fate of all China in the balance of your smile?
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copperbadge · 2 years
Text
Jonathan Adler, A Tour
Somehow, in the last year or so, I ended up on the mailing list for the Jonathan Adler catalogue. It’s a high-end furniture and interior decor catalogue featuring the ugliest tat you’ve ever been asked to pay thousands of dollars for. Can I offer you a giant wicker banana in these trying times? 
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[ID: A photograph from the Jonathan Adler catalogue, featuring an enormous banana woven from wicker, with a wicker elephant head in the background. The text reads “Our slyly suggestive tribute to surrealism. Blown up proportions add just the right amount of extra appeel.” It has a price tag of $995.]
Come with me on a journey, friends.
The company really loves acrylic, which I was given to understand was not a super expensive material, but this giant acrylic hippo begs to differ.
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[ID: A large, stylize hippo made of amber acrylic, somewhat translucent; it has very dainty front feet, a huge muzzle, and a giant ass. It is $850. Nowhere is it shown with anything that might give a sense of scale to back up the “Giant” claim.]
This candelabra, made from green acrylic and chrome, I actually really like. I would pay $30, maybe even $35 for it at a vintage market.
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I would not pay the $600 they want for it.
[ID: An acrylic-and-chrome candelabra, which looks like a branched set of water pipes with silver fixtures on the ends. I bet it only takes special sized candles.]
Moving on from acrylic, would you perhaps enjoy seeing the ugliest $3,700 credenza they offer?
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[ID: A small set of cabinets on raised legs, the whole thing done in wood; each of the three cabinet doors looks like an antique television, with blue linen panels that look like switched-off TV screens. Text reads “Aspen Credenza. Faced with three organic, sculpted doors inlaid with teal linen panels on tubular legs.”]
Tell me this apartment belongs to rich lesbians without telling me this apartment belongs to rich lesbians. 
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[ID: A photograph of a living room interior, with a coffee table center; on the coffee table is an orchid plant, sitting atop an Allegra Hicks art book. Next to the book is a small bowl in the shape of a cupped hand, and behind both is an enormous acrylic sculpture of a hand with middle finger tipped forward slightly. I looked up the hand on the website, it’s about $1300.]
Lastly, I would consider buying one of these if they had an Adderall, but unfortunately the catalogue caters to upmarket downer lovers.
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[ID: A series of pillboxes in gold and silver metal; they are designed to look like enormous pills themselves, stamped with Xanax, Ambien, and Prozac brand names.]
They do actually have an Adderall pillbox on the website, but it’s $225 and also it’s in the form of a THIRTY, which I didn’t even know existed. Thirty milligrams of Adderall sounds like jet fuel, and I say that as someone who is extremely happy taking 10mg twice a day. 
There is so much more to see and boggle at in the catalogue, but I leave you with this last taste, so that if you desire you can search out more on your own:
Store your rings in a secret brass vagina.  
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duskymrel · 1 year
Text
Lilia Vanrouge teaches Sex Ed
Synopsis: You and Malleus have been dating for a month or so. Lilia walks in on you two making out, and decides to embarrass the both of you.
Warning: Mentions of sex, Sex Ed, fem reader, light cursing
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You were in Malleus's room, sitting on his lap. The two of you were kissing, and god, you couldn't get enough of this man. The two of you had been dating for a month or so, and it's probably the happiest you've been. Hell, even in the middle of making out with you, he was so sweet and gentle. It was just such a wholesome moment.
Until Lilia ruined it. 😒
Grandpa walks in to ask Malleus something, but completely disregards it when he sees what's happening. He surveys the situation and smirks, seeing a golden opportunity to embarrass the two of you.
(He's such a little bitch istg)
He clears his throat and you're so startled you deadass fall off of Malleus's lap. You get up, redder than Bob the Tomato. Lilia chuckles and says,
"It seems like I need to have a talk about the bats and the bugs with you two, hm?"
You blush more and Malleus somehow gets even paler than he already is.
"Lilia, that is not necessary. I am an adult, I do not need to have such a talk."
"Hush, Malleus. I raised you, I'll talk about whatever I want. Now, who wants to know what a clitoris is? 😃"
You swear Death could come for you right now and you would jump into his arms and thank him.
You and Malleus sit through 2 hours of: "Do what you want, but you should at least trim the bush" "Remember, Malleus, the female erotic zones are: neck, fingertips, inner thigh, nipples, ears, and palms!" "Now this is an ovary." "If you get her pregnant I will boil your teeth and pickle your balls and have them casually sitting on my desk as a reminder to never cross me 😇" "Take STD tests just to be safe!" "Now, when the sperm meets the egg-" "And this is a testicle." "Some of the most popular positions are..." "Remember, kids, don't forget to wrap it before you tap it! Speaking of which, Y/N, here's a banana and a condom to practice."
"That's not big enough. Shouldn't it at least be to scale so she has accurate practice?"
"Oh my God, Malleus. Shut up!!!"
"Fuhuhuhu, that's a good idea Malleus. You're really getting into this~!"
Honestly throughout most of it you and Mal-Mal are just dying of embarrassment, and you hold hands while blushing madly.
When Lilia's finally done, he leaves with a satisfied grin on his face, having thoroughly made the both of you die inside. You and Malleus agree to never speak of it again.
"Hey, babe?"
"Yes, my love?"
"Do you maybe want to... put some of that into practice~? 😏"
~~~~~~~~~
Suggested by a friend.
Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to make requests. :)
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entomolog-t · 10 months
Text
Finding Strength
Finally finished a G/t July Prompt; Impulsive! I’ve been planning this story for a little while based off of this post, and I’m so happy for an excuse to start posting it! 
- - - -
Next Chapter: Chapter 2
Word count: 2715
CW: Adult language
Life was good, thought Tamius, and he needed it to stay that way. The tiny man slipped out from the small hole he’d made behind the fridge, with more than just a little skip to his step. He found himself dancing as he trotted out from beneath the appliance, some peculiar human song stuck in his head as he strutted out in the open. Like clockwork, at 4:01 pm he had heard the human clamor down the stairs, apparently giving up the hunt for some misplaced bottle of perfume, followed by the thud of the door as she darted out of the house. A near identical scene would play out almost every other day; Always in a rush. 
This human's apparent lack of time management leading up to whatever it was humans did when they left their homes was the greatest blessing he could ask for. That titanic fool would pick up her phone, notice the time and barrel out of the house, hastily leaving whatever it was she had been doing unattended. Most days this was usually in the form of food left on the table, alongside whatever they had been doing on their laptop. 
He quickened his pace to a jog, the air around him filled with the scent of something absolutely divine awaiting him on the kitchen table. His parents had been so worried about him going out to find a place of his own- but man, they were worried for absolutely nothing. All that fretting and bothersome nagging about safety protocols and potential dangers had nearly had him question if he was ready to go out on his own- but this was so easy! He’d somehow managed to stumble across the easiest human imaginable; The epitome of obliviousness. This colossal oaf a woman was scattered, unorganized, and inattentive; the perfect combination in his mind. Scavenging was always plentiful, and even better yet, she never noticed a single thing he took. 
A total ditz, he thought. 
His luck hadn’t stopped there either. Even with her chaotic nature, this perfect mess of a human was somehow still wonderfully predictable; Out of the house by 4:00pm nearly everyday, back by 7:00pm, in bed by 10:00pm.
But the best part? That enormous twit was the least intimidating human he’d ever seen. He had watched them countless times, almost pitying them as they struggled with each step up the stairs. Their movements were perpetually stiff and sluggish, as if they were perpetually exhausted… The only time he’d seen any sort of energy from them was when they’d dart out of the house. 
He tossed his hook upwards, a smirk playing across his face as it caught the edge of the table on the first try. Oh yeah, this borrowing stuff is a cakewalk. Hand over hand, he scaled the length of kitchen twine he’d swiped a few weeks back, loving how its rough texture provided him extra grip as he climbed.
Heaving himself up, he surveyed his score. He could have kissed that bumbling idiot. There it was, a half finished stack of banana pancakes, complete with chocolate chips and maple syrup. His mouth watered. He walked up to the plate, hands perched on his hips. He had brought a wad of cling wrap to take back food in his bag… but…
Fuck it. 
She wouldn’t be home until 7:00, why not enjoy a meal at the table?
Tamius continued to hum that strangely catchy human song, reveling in the freedom of being out in the open. He found himself bouncing along to the rhythm, anticipation building for the oh-so-sweet bounty before him. Nimbly, he danced around the plate, his skillful movements filled with lighthearted vigor, as he avoided stepping in the pools of syrup. He ripped off a large and syrup soaked chunk of pancake, and proceeded to stuff his face. Thank God for dumb huma- 
His thought was interrupted by the slam of a door and a myriad of expletives. He felt his body go rigid.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m going to be late.”
Fuck was right. 
Deep breath. He hastily scanned his surroundings. Kleenex box on the table. Cup to his right. Bag on the chair- Bingo. 
He dove. 
Tamius landed in the open bag with a soft thud, rolling into a stand. 
He felt a familiar cocksure grin creep back onto his face. Too easy. This human could throw no curveball that could catch hi-
For the second time in the span of less than a minute, his thoughts were interrupted. His world lurched and he was flung back, narrowly stifling a yelp.
Oh- oh no.  
She had come back for the bag. 
It was his turn to curse; a torrent of expletives slipped from his lips, whispered fiercely through gritted teeth. Where the fuck was he supposed to hide?? He was trapped. Unknowingly caught. No. This couldn’t be happening. His heart pounded in his ears, nearly drowning out the thunderous steps taking him further and further away from his home. He felt his throat tighten. Fuck. He ran trembling hands through his hair, pulling at firstfulls as if should he pull hard enough he’d rip an idea straight from his scalp. The booming slam of the car door pulled him from his spiraling thoughts. 
He needed a plan, and he needed one now. 
Breathe. Scan. Asses. Decide. He inhaled deeply, and tried desperately to ignore how his breath quivered in his chest. He was fine. Not scared at all. This human was an absolute ditz. The epitome of human idiocy. He just needed to figure out how to keep out of that colossal ditz’ line of sight. The car engine roared to life and Tamius felt as his every muscle stiffened. They were leaving.  He steeled his nerves. 
Think. Don’t focus on the car. You need a plan. 
His legs seemed to move on their own, as if trying to keep pace with his frantic thoughts.
Okay, so I’m trapped. We are driving away from the house. If I stay in the bag, the bag will get brought back to the house around 7:00…
He chewed his lip. Three hours was a long time to lay in wait in the stupid confined space of the bag, but what other option did he have?? He could try to escape while that big oaf was driving, but then he’d still need to get back in the bag to get back into the house… The house that was growing farther and farther away by the second. 
What if he had to abandon the bag? He had no idea where he was. Even if he did, the distance to get back would be insurmountable. His heart hammered in his chest. Leaving the bag was not an option. There was no way in Hell he was leaving this easy life behind. He would figure something out… He had to. 
Tamius scanned his surroundings. The bag hadn’t been zipped all the way, and there was just enough light pouring through the opening that he could aptly assess his situation. He sat atop a towel, a pair of shoes to his left, haphazardly thrown in. There was a water bottle beneath him, along with various articles of clothing and a mishmash of smaller items scattered about; pens, deodorant, a granola bar, lip chap, perfume... He let a small smile creep on his face. This human was a mess, and he would not let himself be unintentionally found by someone incapable of intentionally finding their own belongings. If this idiot would just put things in the proper pocket, she’d have no- 
Thats it!
He took the small knife he’d fashioned from a discarded razor from his hip. That massive idiot never used the proper pockets! Carefully, he crawled towards the front of the bag. Closing his eyes, he tried to visualize how the pockets were oriented on the bag. In his mind's eye, he saw it; the pouch that sat at the lower half of the front of the bag. Yes! This would work! Opening his eyes, he cautiously judged the distance to right and left. He was dead center. Perfect. 
Taking his knife, he sliced methodically, keeping the incision as small as he could manage, lest his handiwork be noticed before returning home. Gingerly, he cut his way into the front pocket, clambering inside. He breathed a sigh of relief;  it was completely empty. She had no reason to peek in this pocket. He was safe. 
Tamius barely managed to finish his sigh of relief when he felt himself lurch forward as the car came to a halt. He clenched his teeth. Everything is fine. There’s nothing to worry about. The dumb human was just going to do dumb human things for a few hours and then he’d be back home, safe and sound. He just needed to wait it out. 
His world was jostled as the bag was haphazardly lifted up and slung around the human’s shoulder. He gripped onto the internal fabric of the bag’s front pocket to avoid getting sent flying around. His stomach felt as if it dropped farther and farther with each step, and he swore he could taste the sweetness of the banana pancakes rising up in his throat. Tamius swallowed hard. 
Enough of that. This was pathetic. He’d found a safe spot. All he had to do was wait around for what? Like 2 hours and change? A total cakewalk. Baby Food. An absolute nothing. This was fine and he was fine. 
He listened intently, trying to gather any information he could about his location and surroundings. The sound of a door closing shut... Foot falls echoing… Voices… Voices with a particular resonance. He grimaced. Wherever he was, it sounded like a large open space. As he continued to listen, his scowl deepened. He counted the voices; one, two.. Three… four, five, six… seven… 
He stopped after he reached 10. Suffice to say there were too many humans. 
The feeling of dread was overwhelming. He couldn’t see a damned thing, and though he doubted he wanted to see his predicament, the lack of sight gave him a creeping feeling of being vulnerable. The booming voices resonating in an open room so far above him… he felt so small. 
No. 
Not felt. 
He was so small. 
Of course he knew he was small. He’d never stood taller than a coffee mug for the entirety of his life… and yet… he never truly felt small. Not like this. This was overwhelming. The mental barrier he'd work so hard to wedge between his conscious mind and the primal fear that lurked just beneath the surface shook under the realization of his own insignificance. Just the presence of beings so astronomically larger than himself made his stomach churn. His head fell into his hands as he struggled to keep himself from shaking. God, he felt pathetic. Just a few hours. He could manage. He would manage. 
The booming chatter died down as the sound of human music filled the room. A strange rhythmic thundering coincided with the change in ambiance. He could feel the floor shake beneath him. As strange as the surrounding noise was, he welcomed the sound of human music. 
You could never know what it's like
Your blood, like winter, freezes just like ice
And there's a cold, lonely light that shines from you
You’ll wind up like the wreck you hide behind that mask you use
He found his voice joining in, shaky and soft,
"And did you think this fool could never win?
Well, look at me I’m coming back again, 
I got a taste of love in a simple way, 
And if you need to know while I’m still standing, you just fade away,”
As he sang along softly he felt his anxiety melt away, slowly but surely. The minutes dragged on, punctuated by changes in songs, and occasional muffled shouting, indistinguishable from the surrounding noise. Tamius tried to calculate how long he had left by adding up the approximate time of each song… two minutes here, four minutes there - 
Thud. 
A tremor far more impactful than all those preceding it shook him from his thoughts. He heard a distinct grunt, and then, again, another thundering sound of impact, like something colossal crashing down. The noise was far greater than any foot falls he’d ever heard. 
Thud. 
He heard a human speaking somewhere above him. Though muffled, he recognized it as his enormous dolt of a human. She had muttered something about needing to use more.. hip?? Surely he couldn’t have heard that right. 
Thud. 
“Better, but like, I feel like I’m not getting any pop, you know?” What??
Another voice muttered something in apparent agreement. 
“You mind if I try one more time?” 
This piqued his interest. Carefully he gripped the rear of the zipper, opening the front pocket just a fraction. Just enough to see what could be causing such a commotion… and what it could possibly have to do with hips and popping??
As he laid his gaze on the pair of humans the fear he felt was instantaneous and palpable (tasting strangely like banana pancakes). He knew no amount of quiet singing would quell the rising panic from what he’d seen. For a moment, it was as if his brain refused to register the scene before him, as he stood unmoving, mouth agape. He saw his human, but it was as if he was truly seeing her for the first time. 
Her messy hair, slick and soaked in sweat, and tied back revealing sharp and focused eyes. Her figure, no longer drowning in her typical oversized clothing, was not at all what he had expected. Her broad frame had always seemed to suggest she was heavier, and he'd assumed they had just been soft, or chubby… Looking now, she was certainly broad, but the size she carried was overwhelmingly muscular. Each thundering step caused her legs to tense and relax, giving Tamius flashes of muscular definition. He swallowed numbly. Awe and horror swirled in his mind. He wanted to look away… pretend he'd never seen the sheer power that had been sitting underneath her lazy attire, but he couldn't. This couldn’t be her. 
She was smiling; saying something to another human towering above him. He hated how familiar it was; her smile, her laugh… it was undeniably her, yet it was as if he could barely recognize the behemoth standing before him. He stared up at the pair, mind somehow both racing and numb simultaneously… And then they moved. 
He felt like the wind had been sucked out of him. 
Humans were supposed to be slow. His human especially. But the reality he had become so accustomed to seemed to crumble around him. The other human reached towards her, but with uncanny precision, she redirected the incoming arm before it could touch her, her body moving with obscene fluidity. Tamius found the ease of her movements disturbing, as he watched her clear past the oncoming arm, stepping in flush to the other human's side. Her free hand reached around their body, with her trailing hand snapping around the opposite side, locking her grip tightly around the other human's body. 
Before Tamius’ brain could catch up to what was happening, the human was airborne. 
Thud. 
His whole world seemed to shake. Both physically and metaphorically. 
No. 
No. No. No. 
He felt bile creep up his throat. This… this couldn’t be her. She's a mess. An idiot. A ditz. Not.. not this!  She fucking threw another human with such well practiced ease as slinging a bag over her shoulder. His knees trembled for a brief moment before giving out entirely. He fell back into her bag, tension rising as reality set in around him. 
That human was a threat. 
He looked down at his hands. They trembled. Stop.... Stop. Stop! STOP! FUCKING STOP! It felt as though he was pleading with his body, begging it to submit to him. His hands never stopped shaking. Hiding was all he had, wasn't it? Not strength, not speed, not agility… The only thing keeping him safe was the fact he was too small to be noticed.
And he needed it to stay that way. 
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thehollowwriter · 2 months
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The Official Bio of Silas Clearcove
Basic Info:
Name: Silas Clearcove
Homeland: The Coral Sea, though he was originally born in the Abyss
Species: Cookie cutter shark mer
Birthday: 12th June
Age: 60
Height/length: 153cm
Dominant hand: Right
Occupation: Butcher
Unique magic: Silas never gave it a name, but he can drain other people's magic (or life force of he really pushes) to fuel his own magic and get rid of blot. He almost never uses it.
Family:
Son: Finn Clearcove
Son: @/distant-velleity 's Chrysos Pendentif (adopted)
Husband: Morrigan Clearcove (deceased)
Unnamed mother-in-law and father-in-law
Unnamed grandfather (deceased)
Sister: Mei (deceased)
Unnamed mother and father (deceased)
Several unnamed siblings and cousins (deceased)
Preferences:
Hobbies: Reading, gardening
Likes: Cooking, music, puzzles, learning new things
Dislikes: Tight spaces, large crowds, the more human appearing mers
Favourite food: Clam Chowder
Least favourite food: Triggerfish
Appearance:
Silas has amthyst eyes and long, curly dark purple hair and beard. His skin, scales, and tail are dark purple with peculiar black markings in some places, and his enture body is riddled with scar tissue. His fins are full of holes and tears. His claws are long, sharp, and black. His teeth are long and sharp and scary. He has visible stretch marks, and he's (finally) starting to get a bit chubby.
Obviously, as a mer, he doesn't wear clothes, but he does wear both his and his husband's courting gifts to each other (necklaces of orca teeth and shells) and both their wedding jewellery as well (nautilus shell earings and rings crafted from bone and coral, as well as some hair ornaments)
Personality:
Silas is a gruff, quiet, and serious man with a bit of a sadistic streak. He does have a general no-nonsense attitude, but he is very warm and loving to Finn (and later on Chrysos) and does his best to raise Finn with the love and support he needs. He wants Finn to make friends and is the one who encouraged him to go to NRC in the first place. He's very protective and is aggressive on rare occasions (unlike when he was younger). He's clever and is prone to sarcastic or dry humour. Don't be fooled, he's quite kind when he wants to be, just few get to see it.
Some Fun Facts/Extra Info:
•Silas supplies Mrs Ashengrotto (and later on Azul) with fish along with other meats for her restaurant
•He has a deal with the tweels' parents in which he disposes of their unwanted "prey" (cough enemies cough) in return for their protection
•He is a very powerful sorcerer that is well versed in Abyssal magic
•He can see Finn's siblings as well and doesn't know what to do about them. He wishes they didn't scare Finn so much
•Azul is quite intimidated by him, lol
•Silas likes the octotrio and considers them a good match for Finn
•He allows older teens looking for extra income to work for him part-time
•He's got a soft spot for kids (teens count as kids too to him)
Fic Masterlist
Tagging: @distant-velleity @krenenbaker @cyanide-latte @boopshoops @the-banana-0verlord
@kitwasnothere @officialdaydreamer00 @whspermy-name @theleechyskrunkly
@oya-oya-okay @cynthinesia @minteasketches @elysia-nsimp @skrimpyskimpy
@the-trinket-witch @offorestsongs @ghostiidasponk, here's Papa Clearcove!
If anyone wants to draw him, feel free to! Just be sure to tag me ^^
@poisoned-pearls @ramshacklerumble
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spacequokka · 4 months
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Kookies | Day 20
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Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Genre: Roommate AU, Fluff Rating: PG Summary: Your roomie needs help in the kitchen. Word Count: 0.7k Warnings: Language.
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Gray, cloudy skies loomed over the city, heavy with the promise of snow. Festive lights twinkled on every corner, but the threat of a winter storm brought a sense of unease to the bustling streets. Amidst the revelry and holiday cheer, you'd been focused on finishing up an article for a client. Just as you'd submitted it for review, a knock on the door drew your attention from your computer. "Yeah?"
Your notoriously mischievous roommate, Jungkook, poked his head in. "Hey. Um, how busy are you on a scale of one to 'please help me?'"
You turned in your chair toward him. "What have you done now?"
He pursed his lips like he wanted to defend himself but thought better of it, settling for "It's not what I've done, but what I need to do."
Now he had your attention. "O-kay. What do you 'need' to do?"
With a straight face, he said, "Bake twelve dozens of frosted sugar cookies."
You waited for him to crack a smile, laugh and say "sike", but he didn't. When it was clear he was waiting on your response, you nearly choked. "I beg your damn pardon?"
He pushed the door open. "Okay, so Jimin said I can't cook to save my life. I wasn't gonna let him talk shit so," he took a deep breath, "I bet that I could and he put me in charge of bringing cookies to his Christmas party tomorrow."
You blinked a few times. "The only thing I've ever seen you cook without burning it is ramen."
"That's something I like to eat!" He threw his hands up. He'd clearly heard that retort already. "But that's not the point. I can bake the cookies, but I need help decorating and packaging them good enough to make the trip." He gave you his best puppy eyes. "Please help me. I know I can't mess it up if you're by my side."
"Why do I feel like the Shego to your Dr. Drakken?"
"You know what--I'll take that. Just say you'll help me, please? I'll do anything you want for a day."
"Just a day? That's over a hundred cookies--"
"Okay, a week! A whole seven days of whatever you want."
"Hm." You pretended to think about it. He dropped to his knees and put his hands together, poking his bottom lip out. "Meh, okay. I'm in."
"Oh, thank fuck." He stood up and grabbed your wrist, pulling you out the chair. "I got the premixed stuff because the YouTube short I found called for too much shit." His words ran together worse than in your room as he led the way to the kitchen. Everything you needed was laid out on the kitchen table. "The first batch is cooling here and the second batch is in the oven. You can start bagging the icing and I'll start on batch three."
"Holy shit." You picked up a piping bag. "You're actually on top of this." You grabbed a spoon and scooped vanilla into the bag. "Do I get music to work to, boss?"
He preened at the compliment and nodded with a grin. "Of course!" He dug his phone out of his pocket. A few swipes later, "Jingle Bell Rock" started to play. "Good?"
"Yessir." You nodded as you swung your hips to the song and added red food coloring to the icing. "Any particular request for the decorations?"
"Nope. Go wild or be as basic as you want. I just want them done so I can shove them in his stupid face."
"Aye aye." You saluted him. You both fell into a production line with him baking and you decorating the cookies.
Jungkook watched in amazement as you effortlessly piped intricate designs onto each cookie. "You're really good at this," he commented as he attempted to decorate a snowflake with blue frosting.
"It just takes practice," you replied with a smile. Once all the cookies were cooled and frosted, you packaged them in festive boxes for tomorrow's event. As you finished up, Jungkook thanked you profusely for your help.
"It was actually kind of fun," you admitted with a grin. "Much better than dealing with bananas."
"Yeah? Maybe next time we can bake something more challenging together," Jungkook suggested with a mischievous glint in his eye.
You laughed and shook your head. "We'll see."
But deep down, you knew that spending time together like this was becoming one of your favorite things about living with Jungkook. And as the snow began to fall outside, creating a winter wonderland scene, you couldn't help but feel grateful for having such a chaotic yet fun roommate.
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