#he rebels against everything he ever was and how stifled he has been his entire achingly long existence | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honeytae · 3 years

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if you’re open for regular requests i’d love to request lil scenarios of the boys learning english alongside their english-speaking s/o! this is totally self-indulgent i’m doing the TEFL program and i’m going to south korea next year to teach :)

first of all, that’s amazing omg!! congratulations my love, i hope you have the best time over there and please don’t be shy in sharing your stories with us!!! i tried to stick to the boys actually learning english with their s/o but i strayed from that with a few members just bc i ran out of ideas lol but i hope you still enjoy!

fair warning....i’ve never ~seriously~ tried to learn korean, so i’m not entirely certain of the parallels between korean and english. i just hope these are wholesome enough to override that lmao

namjoon:

“You know,” Namjoon looked up from his phone, “I understand expanding your vocabulary, but why are there so many weird slang words?”

“Kids these days?” You shrugged, the man chuckling in response before flipping his phone around to show you what had puzzled him.

“If something slaps, that’s...good?” He wondered, watching as you suppressed a smile at the tweet he was showing you.

You could tell by the profile picture that the user was an ARMY, one of the many fan profiles on the platform, and the tweet was written completely in English.

Although there was a ‘Translate to Korean’ option readily available with just a tap of his thumb, you knew Namjoon never missed an opportunity to challenge himself to be able to fully comprehend what a native English speaker was trying to say.

You nearly snorted at the tweet’s content, smiling as you read it out loud.

“The Dis-ease bridge just saved my life. Seriously, this song slaps.”

Glancing at Namjoon, he raised his eyebrows, eagerly waiting for you to translate and explain what that could equate to in Korean.

“It’s definitely a good thing, Joon. They love it.”

At your interpretation, Namjoon grinned, nodding to himself as he pulled his phone back in front of his face to scroll through more reaction tweets to the new album release.

seokjin:

“What the hell is that?”

You picked your head up from your sketchbook when you heard Seokjin whine from beside you, eyebrows knitting together at his distressed tone. Taking a glance over at his laptop screen, you found his mouse bouncing from letter to letter on one of his weekly english lessons.

“What is that, like 15 letters? How do you even use that in a sentence?” He went on, obviously flustered by the word on the screen.

Pulchritudinous.

You placed your hand over his to stop his panicked counting of the letters, causing him to look over at you with a sigh as he frowned.

You nearly giggled at his reaction, but the genuine fear in his eyes made you stifle it as you soothingly held his hands in yours.

“It’s just an over complicated way of saying beautiful. I don’t know why they’re teaching you that, nobody ever uses it.” You assured him, his eyes going down in size a bit at your words before he nodded.

Watching as a smirk tilted his lips, you raised your brows at the sudden expression.

“What?”

“Well like, I could say I’m...that?” He said, eyebrows raised cockily as he gestured to the long word stretched across the screen.

“Well it’s actually not used like,” you paused, giving in with a shrug as you grinned back at him.

“Sure, love.”

yoongi:

“Why did I skip English class all the time?” Yoongi sighed, pinching his bottom lip between his fingers as he plucked at the skin in frustration.

“Because you were trying to be a rebel.” You answered without looking up from your phone, the man obviously not liking your answer as he reached over to where you were laying beside him to pinch at your hip.

Yelping, you scooted across the mattress to get away from his hand, whining his name with a scoff before looking over at his notepad.

“What are you doing, anyway?” You asked, leaning on your palm as you scanned the rows of scribbled English letters written on the page.

“I’m trying to get better at writing.” He admitted shyly, a small grin on his face to match the fond one on your own.

“Aw,” you pouted, Yoongi raising his eyebrows at your tone, “but I like your chicken scratch.”

“You’re such a brat.” He chuckled, adjusting the velcro on his brace with a grunt.

Since Yoongi’s shoulder surgery took away obvious straining activities like dancing and performing, he’d turned to studying English from the comfort of your bed during his recovery as one of the only safe activities he could partake in for a while.

It was now one of his favorite past times, learning new words and phrases he could potentially use in the future. It worked for you both because it took his mind off the pain and kept him motivated, and since you could speak both his and your language, you could help him out whenever he got stuck on something.

Usually he did lessons verbally on his phone, but it seemed today he had taken the old fashioned route.

“Your handwriting really isn’t bad, Yoongs.” You observed, the carefully placed tails at the end of each ‘a’ making you smile out of fondness for the man.

“My man has the prettiest handwriting.” You cooed, pushing a strand of his stark black hair out of his eyes as he blushed down at his notebook.

“Stop that.”

hoseok:

“Hey, babe?” Hoseok called for you, listening to your footsteps growing closer before you popped your head into the kitchen doorway.

“Yeah?”

“I’m having a little trouble.” He gestured to his open laptop on the counter, you recognizing it as an assignment from his English course.

“What happened?”

“Pronouns. Pronouns happened.” He pouted, his disdain for the new chapter quite obvious as he stared down his computer screen.

“What about them?” You asked, stepping closer to the man sitting at the kitchen island and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“I need to make ten sentences using proper pronouns and I feel like I’m doing it all wrong.” He explained, causing you to hum as you looked over his sentences.

“These look great, Hobi.” You smiled as you glanced over the first three he’d written, flawlessly executed on the document.

“Can you help me with the next one?” He wondered, you nodding your head as you took a seat on the stool next to his.

“What do you want the next one to say?” You asked, watching as he glanced off to the side in thought, slightly squinting his eyes at the tile floor beneath the sink.

“My house is next to,” He spoke in English, pausing as he searched his brain for what pronoun to put next.

“Theys?” He answered as more of a question, then shaking his head as he switched back to Korean, “wait, no.” He sighed, placing his chin in his hand in thought before glancing over to you.

“I know it’s wrong, I just don’t know what the right answer is instead.” He explained, you shooting him a loving smile as you pushed the dark raven hair off his forehead and pressed a kiss to the newly revealed skin.

“I’ll help you, Sunshine. No worries.”

jimin:

Flopping onto the bed, you let your tired body fall on top of Jimin’s hoodie clad chest, his arm encircling your body as he mumbled a soft greeting to you.

“Hm, what are you learning about today?” You nuzzled into his chest, peering at his phone propped up on his thigh.

“Animals. Birds, mostly.” He answered, briefly turning from the screen to press a kiss to your head before focusing back on the row of English words matched with pictures of popular birds glowing from the device.

The first was a robin, the next a blue jay, and then a dove.

You listened as the virtual instructor prompted Jimin to repeat after her, spelling out the letters before stating the whole word. You smiled as your boyfriend followed instruction, pronouncing the words the best he could after the microphone chimed for him to do so.

“D-o-v-e. Dove.”

“Dove.” He repeated, smiling to himself as the app announced he got the point with a little heart.

“That’s cute.” He went back to his native language, you humming in confusion as you lifted your head up off his chest to look at him.

“The heart?” You asked, reaching up to twist a stray strand of hair out of his eye as he shook his head.

“Dove.” He said again, making you tilt your head, not knowing what he meant.

“It sounds like ‘love.’” He connected the two English words, you smiling fondly at him in response before scooting up the bed to kiss the tip of his button nose.

“You’re so cute.”

taehyung:

Three knocks at the door announced someone’s arrival to your bedroom, causing your head to lift from the novel you’d been so immersed in. Taehyung was home, but you’d wanted to give him space because you knew he needed to work on lyrics for his mixtape in order to submit them on time.

“Hey,” he poked his head in with a small smile, “can you help me with something?” He asked sheepishly, stepping further into the room when you nodded.

“Of course. What is it?” You set your book down, marking your place before closing it to pay full attention to your boyfriend.

“Well, I’m trying to write this verse in English and,” he trailed off with a shrug, “you know.” He finished, you nodding in response with a gesture for him to come sit next to you.

He eagerly walked over to you with his notebook in hand, lowering himself to the mattress before rolling his way over to where you were leaning against the headboard.

Honestly, Taehyung’s English wasn’t bad at all. He was insecure about it, but you’d never really understood what the reason for that feeling was. His vocabulary was more than decent, his comprehension was good, and his pronunciation was great for having such a thick accent.

But there were many times where Taehyung came to you for guidance, as you were a native English speaker yourself.

And so, as he rested his head on your shoulder confiding in you about everything he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it, you patiently took him through what would work and rhyme best, smiling as he hummed the melody to himself to see if the phrases would work in his creation.

jungkook:

“Baby, can you read it to me again before we go on? Just one more time.”

You glanced over at your boyfriend in his makeup chair, several employees bustling around the man as they attempted to get him ready to go on stage while they had him seated.

With his arm extended backward to where you stood behind his leather chair, he offered his phone to you while shooting you a grin through the reflection in the mirror.

Taking the device from his hand, you opened it to the notes app where he’d written what he wanted to say in his statement on stage in just a few minutes.

You were in London tonight, which meant that all of the boys had been rehearsing their English so that they could communicate easier with their audience.

Jungkook, ever the over-achiever, was determined to do the toughest English tongue twister he could possibly find. Not only that, but in a British accent for his British ARMY’s.

“Betty bought a bit of better butter to make her bitter butter better.” You read from the phone, barely able to read the sentence yourself before you glanced up at Jungkook through the mirror again.

You watched your boyfriend nod as his brain took in the words you’d just said, taking a deep inhale before he began speaking the phrase back to you.

You gawked as the man effortlessly repeated after you, a few of the makeup artists stopping as well as Jungkook raised his eyebrows back at you.

“Was that okay?”

428 notes · View notes

dr3amofagame · 3 years

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idk why but i imagined vegas 2.0 as two soccer moms (the politics bois) trying to outdo each other while their sons are dragged into it (green bois) in a rlly fvcked way. e.g.

maybe big q reconsidering dream's usefulness by saying sam's enough as protection and has other things to offer to the team as well. wilbur steps in by suggesting a duel between sam and dream then, to prove it then. maybe while it happens, wilbur whispers to quackity a list of what is still physically broken abt dream post prison (so many unhealed bones, barely healed muscle, he can barely stomach food so he had like 1 steak in the past few days, etc.) and of course, he mentions dream's most powerful asset, the revive book :)

-🐇

LMAOO

this is hilarious and also accurate as hell ,, thank you anon because the image of c!wilbur and c!quackity as PTA moms is completely sending me. this prompt (as most vt2 related things are) was really fun !! it also kinda ran away from me, which is why this ended up being almost 6k words instead of my usual 1-2k for asks, but i hope you enjoy it regardless :]

tws: implied torture/abuse, death, violence, blood, injuries, conditioning, dehumanization, panic attacks, emotional distress, trauma, unhealthy relationships (so many unhealthy relationships), smoking, dark contents, dark themes, vt2 au is always really dark so definitely proceed with caution !! dark portrayals of c!quackity, c!sam, c!wilbur, and c!dream

It starts, as many things do nowadays, with a board meeting - which seems to be as much of a sign as any that everything is going to go to shit. Board meetings for Quackity, much like Wilbur’s stupid group therapy sessions, are just a thinly veiled attempt for the two to fight for control of pretty much everything - ranging from the casino schedules to the laws still being written for Las Nevadas to what food to stock in the vending machines. As Sam is still sitting on his false throne of moral superiority and therefore less inclined to indulge himself in the same blatant corruption that characterizes their discussions, and Dream - more than anything - knows his place (which hardly gives him any position to wrangle for power among the likes of Wilbur and Quackity), the fights for control more or less remain restricted between the two. More often than not, they devolve into proving their superiority over the other by using their control of Dream (which naturally never means anything remotely good for him as a consequence) so when Quackity strolls over, all tight-lipped smiles and a cigarette held between clenched fingers, Dream really doesn’t feel anything other than dread.

Still, orders by Quackity are still orders - Dream knows this fact better than he knows that he’s alive and breathing, better than the fact that he’s out of the prison, better than he knows his own goddamn name - and Dream is far too well-trained to ever consider trying to rebel. So when the time comes - 7:30 pm, sharp - Dream is in his chair, spine straight and head alert like a goddamn dog, and he waits.

It doesn’t take long for the others to arrive. Sam comes over first, leveling him with a heavy, distrustful stare as he sits down in the chair across from Dream, the expression nearly enough for Dream to roll his eyes if it weren’t for the fear that rockets through him, still, at the sight of the Warden so close to him. Sam has made it more than clear from the very beginning that he has no trust at all for Dream, that if he had his way then Dream would be locked up for the rest of eternity in a labyrinth of blackstone and obsidian, forever guarded by his ever-present supervision. Dream feels his ears burning with heat as he dips his eyes low to the surface of the table, wanting no more than to curl up and hide under the scrutiny of the Warden’s glare.

Quackity enters next, throwing open the door of the conference room loud enough to make Dream jump out of his seat, looking at him with an upturned corner of his lip when he comes back to himself enough to notice. Dream stifles a shudder at his visible good mood, all-too-aware of what that usually meant for him in the cell, stiffening further with a growing ringing to his ears as Sam and Quackity talk and Quackity sweeps past his side to get to his seat at the head of the table, carelessly brushing his fingers along the back of Dream’s neck in a way that makes him freeze, stock-still, in his chair - feeling his fingertips ease themselves over the ridge present there from a thick band of scar tissue, a deep, jagged thing that had been carved from the blunter back edge of Quackity’s axe when he had lost his temper and let the thing slam against the back of his neck, hard enough that it probably would’ve paralyzed him completely if it weren’t for Sam’s use of almost a full chest of regens. Quackity remains over him for a few more seconds, leaning over his chair to talk to Sam as he runs a light, possessive hand over the topmost bumps of Dream’s spine, before settling over into his chair, watching him with a small smirk as he keeps a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table.

Dream hates the prickling shame and terror that keeps his muscles tense as he stares at the table’s surface, still feeling the ghost of fingers tracing over skin and bone along the back of his neck, keeps his burning eyes trained on the surface of solid wood as he tries to steady his breaths. It’s all he can do to press down his flinch when Quackity, with a frustrated yell, slams his fist against the table a few minutes later, rage simmering underneath his words as he speaks.

“Where the hell is Wilbur?” His glare slides across the room, landing on Dream, making him shrink back in his seat, heart thudding in his ears. Quackity doesn’t stop staring at him even as he pulls a cigarette and lighter from his pants pocket, lighting it and bringing it to his lips and letting the silver-grey threads of smoke fill the room and press against the inside of Dream’s lungs. “It’s ten minutes til 8 - I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

Sam digs his fingers into his temples, already looking exhausted. “If you want, Q, we can always start without him and catch him up later. Depends on you.”

“No, then I’ll have to repeat myself and it’ll be pointless and ugh,” Quackity makes a vaguely frustrated noise as he finally turns his eyes over to Sam, making Dream’s shoulders shudder as he finally finds the air to take a breath, “We’ll just have to wait. Fucking idiot. I knew I shouldn’t have worked with any of these fuckers.”

In true Wilbur fashion, it isn’t until fifteen minutes later when the taller man finally makes an appearance, the entire time tense as hell as Quackity takes slow, steady drags of his cigarette and taps his fingers impatiently against the table’s surface. He offers one to Sam, who goes on to decline, making a short quip telling Quackity to watch his health for the future that promptly falls flat. Dream thinks he’s a fucking hypocrite, considering his whole deal with weednip or whatever Ant has on him, but doesn’t voice the thoughts as he sinks down in his chair, wishing more than anything to disappear. Against the fabric of his shirt, the right side of his chest itches, and he presses his palm against the place where he knows there is a small, irregular grid of pockmarked scars from when Quackity had taken smoke breaks in the middle of sessions.

“There you all are,” Wilbur smiles as he slides into the room, a covered metal tray held in his hands as he kicks the door closed and slides the tray onto the table with an awful screech. “I’m sorry for being late,” he continues, sounding not very sorry at all, “but I made some food to make up for it!”

He takes off the cover with a flourish; underneath, sunny yellow squares, nearly blindly bright, look up blankly under the conference room’s overly harsh lighting. They smell sugary and vaguely sour, stinging his nose slightly, and seem to be coated with a fine dusting of powdered sugar.

“Lemon bars!” Wilbur grins, just left of sincere, “they’re gluten-free!”

“God,” Quackity laughs, sounding slightly incredulous, shaking his head. Dream’s gut rolls at the sound, Wilbur’s smile growing wider, even more dangerous, at the tone. It’s familiar, the way the two of them challenge each other, and in a rare moment of solidarity Dream watches from the corner of his eyes as Sam’s shoulders hunch as well. The two of them always bring trouble, even normally, but when they’re in this mood? Actively challenging each other, toeing the line, trying to find the limits and push them just because they can? Dream shivers in his seat, grip tightening on his own arms; this, he knows, is when they are at their most dangerous - and he has the scars to prove it.

“Gluten-free, huh? Really leaning into the whole ‘PTA mom’ schtick today, aren’t you?” Quackity smirks. “Should I call you Linda from now on?”

“I don’t know, Quackity, I was just thinking that I would make a little healthier treat for all of us, you know?” Wilbur brushes off the remark easily, taking a seat and immediately kicking his feet up onto the table. “If you want it, of course. I would hardly want to get in the way of your professionalism, Mr. President- do you have one of those? Or are you going for a more authoritarian approach”

“Fighting words from someone who rigged an election as President,” Quackity drawls, “and couldn’t even win it, might I add. “

“Oh, Big Q! You fail to understand, I wasn’t criticizing you at all,” Wilbur smiles, jagged, “we agree, I believe, on the failures of democracy. Unless you’ve forgotten our conversation, already?”

“Of course not,” Quackity snorts, and Dream doesn’t miss how his gaze shifts towards the side of the room, landing on Dream and making him curl further in his seat. “I’ll save you from me trying to pick your brain, this time, but don’t worry. You make yourself…rather hard to forget.”

Wilbur claps, seeming satisfied with this round of verbal sparring, and the sharp sound of his hands meeting together nearly has Dream jumping in his seat. “So! Lemon bars- does anyone want any?”

Dream is keenly aware of two pairs of eyes landing on him, Wilbur and Quackity watching for his reaction with bated breath and narrowed eyes. Panic crawls up his throat; he knows the purpose behind their stares, knows that he’s once again become the object of one of their power struggles. Quackity’s orders rattle in his brain, his thoughts a messy jumble of pins all knocked loose from his time in the prison, hopelessly unorganized and running on little more than instinct. Wilbur is expecting him to eat, to give into his sweet pastries and sweeter words; the lesson not to eat, move, think without permission, hammered into him between chunks of potato and battered ribs and blood gathered in the crevices of his skin, keeps his hands at his sides instead of reaching towards the pastries still set in the middle of the table. Even with Quackity at the opposite side of the room, Dream swears that he can still feel the pressure of a hand against the back of his neck, pressing just hard enough to make itself known from the feeling of fingers pressing into either side of his spine - he doesn’t even quite feel himself shaking his head, only really realizes what he’s done when he hears Wilbur sigh in frustration and meets Quackity’s satisfied gaze.

“I’ll take one,” Sam says, sounding exhausted, eyes flitting from Wilbur to Quackity to Dream with an increasingly long-suffering expression. His face twists around the first bite of the bright yellow pastry, nose scrunching as he puts it down, missing a half-moon bite along one corner, and drags his fingers over the table to ease off the remnants of powdered sugar. Wilbur watches him, seeming amused, and Quackity rolls his eyes as he pulls a binder out of his inventory.

“Now that everyone is finally here,” he starts, directing a particularly dead-eyed stare at Wilbur, “we can finally get on with the meeting. I was thinking we could go over the budget, today, if that’s alright with the rest of you.”

It sounds innocent enough - which is the first sign of many that this meeting, whatever it is, is going to be anything but pleasant. The grin that steadily grows on Quackity’s face does nothing to assuage Dream’s anxieties, only pushing them higher as the man flips open the binder and messes with it for a few seconds longer before seemingly finding what he’s looking for.

“I think we all know that until Sam finishes with the bank, funds around here are going to be a little bit tight,” Quackity begins, waiting for all of them to nod before continuing, “And we really need to save wherever we can. I recounted the budget yesterday, just to make sure that we’re all on track, and- well,”

Quackity points to a circled series of red numbers that Dream doesn’t understand but can assume mean little good for them. Sam makes a low, considering noise, sounding strangely concerned, and Wilbur actually seems to close his mouth and lean forward in curiosity.

“We have a deficit,” Quackity continues when they’ve all settled back into their seats, “and we’ll get it all back once Sam gets the bank up and running, but for now our funds are...limited. I don’t want to stop progress on Las Nevadas, of course, we really don’t have time to waste. So I thought we’d have a meeting today to discuss the budget and eliminate any expenses that we might find-” Quackity gestures with a smooth twirl of his wrist, “expendable.”

Sam hums. “Do you have anything in mind, Quackity?”

“A few,” Quackity flips to the next page, where he’s seemingly jotted a few notes - different things that they can put off for the moment, it seems, and the money that would be saved for forgoing them temporarily. Dream reads down the list quickly, stilling at the last item.

“Quackity,” Sam sounds twenty times more tired already when he speaks, tone flat and a little irritated. “Why is Dream on the list?”

Quackity shrugs. “Hear me out, now- most of our money right now is going into living expenses for the four of us. Having more people here, until everything becomes more sustainable, is a huge drain on our resources. I’m just listing all our options.”

“So what do you want to do?” Sam huffs. “Throw him back in Pandora?”

Quackity shakes his head.

“Wilbur does have the revive book knowledge, you know,” he says, and Dream’s blood runs cold. He can’t run, can’t move; he’s stuck in his seat, heart hammering faster in his chest as the other three hardly spare him a second glance. Sam purses his lips, a considering expression flashing over his face, as Quackity presses on. “Seriously- listen, Sam. There’s nothing that Dream is really offering, at the moment, that the rest of us can’t handle. Wilbur has the revive book, you can act as security to take out any threats - really, we shouldn’t be pissing anyone off until everything officially opens, and we can always retrieve him then when we need him. He’ll be out of the way, which means he won’t be able to start any fucking trouble,” Quackity laughs, short. “It’s a win-win.”

“I don’t know, Quackity,” Sam says, the words slow, but the tone is familiar enough for Dream to know that he’s already mostly given in. “It’s a risk, isn’t it? None of us but Dream have really used the revive book, before.”

Wilbur doesn’t even look at him when he chirps a reply. “That won’t be a problem, Sam. I’d be very happy to test it out, if you want.”

Quackity leans forward, and Dream nearly gags; he’s preening in his spot, eyes dancing as he smiles up at Sam. “Anything else you can think of?”

“I don’t know,” Sam trails off, and Dream looks down, only barely staving off the panic squeezing around his lungs and tears burning in his eyes. It’s nothing he hasn’t envisioned before, nothing he hasn’t expected, but this- he feels like such a fool, for hoping- “If we get ambushed, Q, I really don’t know if gear is going to be enough. You remember what Technoblade did last time.”

Quackity huffs, sounding annoyed, but nods to concede the point. “That is...fair. But then again, we don’t exactly know how good Dream is either, do we?” Quackity finally leans over to look at him, and Dream feels himself choke on his own breath at the dangerous gleam in Quackity’s eyes, all-too-familiar in their scrutiny, looking at him the same way they had pinned him to the floor of his obsidian-walled hell. “Anything to say, Dream?”

“I-” The words shake on Dream’s tongue, and he only barely manages a dry swallow as he struggles through the rest of his sentence, shrinking back from the heavy weight of three pairs of eyes fixed on his own, “I can be useful, s-” he only barely manages to bite down the word, a new wave of shame making him shrink back further past the fear. Quackity’s lip twitches upward.

Wilbur twirls a pencil in one hand, looking spectacularly bored; Dream’s chest shrieks with a harsh spike of envy at his composure. “How about you prove it?” His eyes are laughing when Dream gets a good look at them, amusement clear at the idea. “Put on a show?”

Quackity rolls his eyes. “What do you have in mind?”

“You want to know if Sam can serve as an adequate replacement for Dream’s combat prowess, no?” Wilbur leans back in his chair as he talks, still focused on spinning his pencil over and between his fingers, “Why doesn’t he prove it? Let them duel, one on one. If Sam kills Dream, then you’re right, we’re done, and we can all move on with our days. If Dream wins, then he’s proved his worth, and we can figure out the rest of the budget after. What do you think?”

Quackity’s lips press together, seeming displeased, but he doesn’t say anything in return. Sam, ever practical, drums his fingers against the table.

“That sounds...fair,” Sam purses his lips. “How would we judge this? Equal gear?”

Wilbur only smiles wider as he shakes his head. “I was thinking we would make it a little more accurate to reality, if Dream’s services were truly to be needed. Sam, you can keep your own gear, and Dream should use his own. I guess on your end we can fight until you yield, but for him…”

The words are left unsaid, but Dream flexes his hands underneath the table as he catches onto the implications. For him, it’s a fight to the death.

Sam shrugs. “That works for me. Dream?”

He doesn’t really have a choice, does he? “Okay.”

“Wonderful!” Wilbur claps, bringing his hands to his chest and looking thoroughly thrilled at the prospects of the potential duel. Quackity glares at Dream but doesn’t say a word, and Dream hunches into himself, nearly folding himself in half as he ducks as far as he can down his seat. Sam pulls out his sword, flipping it around and testing its weight, and Dream doesn’t quite manage to suppress his full-body shudder at the sight. “Let’s get started, then.”

They move out in a roughly single-file line out of the conference room, Wilbur making idle chatter as Sam continues to examine his armor and weapons as they walk. They settle into an open space in the still-unfinished casino that Wilbur looks around for a second and then deems appropriate for the duel. Sam sets down an enderchest to gather his necessary materials, and Dream settles in front of it himself afterwards, shifting the lid open with shaking hands as he tries to work through his inventory.

He’s started the process of building up his gear again in his spare time, but he’s not had the time to finish gathering netherite for both himself and Wilbur - Wilbur meets his eyes with a sly wink before equipping the set of netherite armor that Dream had crafted for him, and Dream stifles a desperate snarl. He doesn’t even have the other set (still a gleaming blue from unplated diamond) enchanted, outside of a Sharpness book that he had slapped onto a diamond axe. He gathers the rest of his supplies with careful hands, trying to press down the increasing trembling of his limbs from his growing panic, flexing his arm around the weight of a shield once again and pocketing steaks and golden apples from his hoard.

He has no potions, no good weapons, not even a properly enchanted crossbow to offer the slightest bit of an advantage. Dream lets his eyes flick up to where Sam is waiting at the opposite side of the room, standing up straight with enchanted netherite covering him head to toe and a familiar axe slung over his shoulder, and tries not to break down right then and there. It’s too familiar, too reminiscent of obsidian walls and netherite pressed against his ribs and demands that he behave, and despite the glittering white walls and high ceiling and cold night air he swears he could fall just from the memories alone. Drowning within them, he distantly remembers a duel long-past under a bright blue sky, Sam laughing under a swirl of potion particles on the grass surrounding the Community House lake, and wonders which of the memories hurt more.

“Dream,” Quackity snaps, and Dream stills in his place, slamming the lid of the enderchest shut as his heart hammers in his ears. Quackity watches him intently, expression twisted in disappointment, and some beaten, instinctual part of him whines uncomfortably at the sight. “Hurry up.”

Dream nods, because of course he does, and stands with the results of his mad scramble to gather anything that could be useful in the duel to come - a few gapples, steaks, a sword, a bow lacking any enchantments at all, and an axe and shield. It’s a rather pathetic ensemble, but it’ll be enough. It’ll have to be enough.

“Ready?” Wilbur takes place as referee, standing off to the side with a smile on his face as Dream stands across from Sam, holding his axe with a white-knuckled grip as the Warden - expression unreadable through the shadow of his helmet and the mask fixed over his face - squares his own stance in preparation for the fight. “Good luck.”

Wilbur’s arm cuts a line in the air as it drops, and the Warden explodes into action, lumbering forward as he raises his axe over his head to bring it down. Dream tumbles in the opposite direction, letting a long held back, battle-trained part of himself take over as he rights himself back on his feet, swinging up his shield to catch on the downward arc of Warden’s Hammer, frantically pressing back the dregs of fear and panic staining the corners of his vision black as he moves.

The Warden hits slow but hits hard, too big and bulky to really avoid any quick attacks but too well-armored to be easily defeated despite that. He’s a classic tank - Dream skitters out of the way of another hit as he reaches for memories of him that won’t leave him gasping, information on his opponent that didn’t come from within the prison and all its horrors.

He’d dueled Sam before, he knows; it wasn’t the same, as Sam was trying out a Turtle Master potion and intent on proving the superiority of Resistance IV against Dream’s own combat prowess. He’d failed, then; Dream forcefully steadies another breath as the sound of the Warden’s armor clanking against the ground almost sends him into another panic. He’ll have to fail now, too.

Fortunately, he’s been allowed food to heal - without it, this fight would probably be near impossible. As it is, even without the potion, the principles of this duel are the same. Dream swings up his axe, catching the blade hurling towards him in the crook where the head meets the handle just long enough to pull himself out of the way and let the Warden’s weapon fall uselessly to the ground. Dream raises his head in the second he has, tracing his gaze over the Warden’s armor in search for places to exploit. Even the best defenses aren’t perfect. All he needs to do is survive for long enough to chip through it.

A fumbled dodge leads to the Warden’s blade skimming past his skin, carving a thin red line in the skin of his upper arm. He hisses as he dives out of the way of the next blow, the twinges of pain from the area almost enough to make his vision unfocused, almost enough to send him tumbling head-first into the part of him screaming submit submit submit if you don’t fight back they won’t hurt you more. He grits his teeth as he swings forward, knocking away the axe coming towards him with his axe long enough to push forward with his shield and knock the Warden further away from him. He can’t afford to flinch, can’t afford to let fear take control of his movements as it has so many times before. The keening desperation running through his veins is familiar, but desperation can fall both ways, can make him fight or flee - and there’s only one real option that will end with him getting out of this alive.

Dream stands and forces himself to meet the next swing hurling towards him dead on, raising his shield to catch the blade and pushing forward past the shuddering shock in his left arm from the force of the blow. His own blade arcs downward in the next second, scraping against the Warden’s netherite armor with a metallic screech. He manages to get in two more blows before the Warden’s next attack has him backing away to dodge, shaking off his arm to get his shield ready for the next attack.

He has to stay on the offensive, keep pressing the Warden back and forcing the other to play defense. He’s still weak from the prison; in terms of brute strength, he’s no match from the Warden, not after months of starvation and torture stuck in a box with hardly enough room to stretch his legs. All he really has going for him is his speed and his experience, neither of which will do him any good if he teeters over the edge into the panic attack he’s been trying to hold off the entire time. Dream runs forward, not giving himself more than a second to breathe as he rushes the Warden once again, switching weapons mid-leap to a sword that will allow for quicker blows in the time that he has the Warden off-balance enough to attack freely. He scores a series of glancing hits on the Warden, none doing any major damage but altogether enough to make the Warden back off, wary, with a gasping note of pain, and Dream shakes his head to force himself to focus before running forward once more.

The Warden pulls out a shield of his own, and Dream switches back to the axe and swings it squarely into the shield, then twists himself around to the Warden’s unprotected back to catch him with another heavy blow that leaves him reeling in the second he takes to recover. He’s clearly untrained with a shield, his left arm clumsy as he tries to block Dream’s blows, and Dream uses the opportunity to score another few solid hits to the Warden’s sides and legs, getting a good blow with the blunt side of his axe into the back of one of his knees, leaving the warden limping when he pulls away.

Dream has hardly come off unscathed in the fight - he wheezes out a heavy breath through his teeth, chest aching from a hit that had broken one of his ribs. The exertion and anxiety still pressing at the back of his throat has left him light-headed, and he bites through a crisp, almost sickeningly-sweet bite of golden apple to close a wound bleeding sluggishly on his side. Neither of them can go on for much longer; the Warden’s grip tightens on his axe, and Dream swallows past the shudder that arises from the sight.

Once again, he raises his axe and runs into the fight, parrying the coming strike and twisting out of the way to strike at a joint of the Warden’s armor with the flat of his blade. The Warden’s arm raises, and Dream bites off a yelp of alarm as the handle of his axe is levied against his unarmored side, knocking him off-balance and falling back onto the ground, too disoriented to catch himself. He lands on his left arm, and his vision goes white as it gives out with a sharp crack.

Through half-lidded eyes, he can make out the Warden stalking closer, axe raised and ready to end the fight - end him. His chest shakes in a pathetic wheeze for breath, arm completely useless from where it’s screaming in pain underneath him. He needs to move, now, if he wants to survive this - fear swells forward, unhindered as his focus is broken by the vice grip the pain has on his skull - he’s shaking, now, the terror so familiar he can taste it - salt and iron and sticky-sweet health potions against the backs of his teeth-

The Warden raises his axe.

No.

Dream raises his sword just in time to catch the blade hurtling towards his neck, uses his foot to kick against the Warden’s grip on the handle. The axe clatters out of his grip, falls forward - Dream rolls away, breathing harshly around the pain threatening to make him black out. Unarmed, the Warden takes a second to grab a sword from his inventory while Dream forces himself back to his feet and kicks the axe as far away as he can.

He’s so flooded with panic he’s choking on it, broken arm hanging limply by his side as he charges forward, sword in hand. He won’t die, not after all this time, not after all this effort - he throws himself at the Warden, batters him with jabs and thrusts that force the other man to back away and parry, snarling wordlessly as he brings his sword to slash forward again and again.

His attacks are messy, uncoordinated, but the Warden is tired and disoriented from the loss of his weapon - he flinches back as Dream hits him in the jaw with the hilt of his sword, only barely matching his blows as he continues to push forward. Any hits that he scores on Dream are brushed off with a growl of pain and his sword moving even faster in his fury, and it’s not very long at all before he’s knocked flat on his back with a sweep of Dream’s legs, gasping for air as Dream pins him to the ground with a blade pressed against his neck.

Dream meets his wide eyes with his own, lips curled back in the same desperate rage that had moved him forwards despite the black creeping into the corners of his eyes and the lancing pain tying its strings around his neck and leaving him gasping for air. The sword in his hand bears threads of blood along its edge, pressing deeper into the Warden’s neck and drawing crimson up to the surface - a thousand fearful, angry thoughts swell up to the front of his skull in a singular, white-hot point. It is the Warden underneath his feet, at the end of his blade, cowering beneath him as he had cowered before - the Warden, the cause of his pain, the reason behind the ache in his gut and the stinging pains in his limbs and the piercing agony from his arm and chest. It would be so easy to push just a little harder, to press the sweet blue blade down and down and down until the Warden is gone and the Warden is dead and the Warden can’t hurt him anymore-

“Down, Dream,” Quackity snaps, and Dream backs off immediately, losing his grip on his sword as the command has him dragged back by the neck like an invisible leash and collar pulling him away. Sam settles back in a sitting position, still wide-eyed, wincing as he moves and bringing a golden apple from his inventory to heal the worst of his injuries.

“Eat,” Quackity commands again, and Dream only barely manages a stiff nod through the nausea and dread curling around his chest as the adrenaline begins to fade away, fumbling with the golden apple he finds in his inventory and nibbling at it to tide off the worst of the pain.

“Bravo, bravo,” Wilbur grins from the side, clapping slowly as he walks back into the middle of their makeshift arena - he’s taken his armor off again, but it doesn’t make the sight of him any less intimidating. “What a show! We should do that more often, what do you think?”

No, Dream almost screams, I can’t- but Quackity beats him to it, glaring at Wilbur with an incredulous expression.

“We don’t have the time to waste on your fucking ‘shows,’” he snaps, crossing his arms as he swings his gaze over to Dream. “Fine. You’ve proved yourself. Now hurry up - we have to clean up all of this shit and then figure out the rest of this fucking budget.”

Dream pulls himself to his feet, watching from the side as the Warden does the same.

“Make yourself useful and clean off all your fucking blood from the floor,” Quackity meets his eyes with a vicious glare, waiting until he stammers his way through an agreement before turning to the other two in the room. “Sam, Wilbur - with me. I want to get this money issue figured out tonight.”

Dream watches them go as he shuffles to the cleaning closet, feeling a shudder crawl up his spine once they’re out of sight. Make yourself useful, Quackity’s voice rings in his head, and Dream bites his lip, only stopping when he accidentally breaks through skin and the taste of blood floods his tongue.

He has a feeling that those words are going to haunt him for a long, long time.

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starsinmylatte · 3 years

Text

Nightcall

Pairing: Thrawn x afab reader

Rating: Explicit (Very 18+)

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: established relationship, edging, praise k!nk, very slight dom/sub undertones, interspecies relationship

Summary: Reader has had a VERY long day, and Thrawn is away from the Chimaera. Or is he?

Author's note: Hi! I'm finally starting to post fics to Tumblr again. I've been away for a bit, but I am very excited to write more. All my stuff is also on AO3 here! Any comments or reblogs are always greatly appreciated (seriously y'all leave the sweetest comments and it makes my day). Have fun reading my first ever attempt at smut and lmk if you'd like to be added to my tags <3

Today had been hell.

Thrawn had departed the Chimaera days ago to handle some business on Coruscant, and, as usual, Konstantine was using his absence as an excuse to be a massive pain in the ass. The Grand Admiral relied on you to help keep order just as much as he relied on Eli Vanto, but he was currently as busy as you were. So, the ever-glamorous job of making sure the Seventh Fleet remained in orbit mainly fell to you.

It was the fifth day Thrawn had been gone, and you were already fantasizing about throwing Konstantine out of the airlock. It would undoubtedly save the remnants of your sanity. He usually wasn’t blatantly insubordinate, but today he seemed to make an exception.

“I simply don’t understand why the Grand Admiral is insisting on holding this formation,” he exclaimed. “We should be chasing the rebels back to their base by now!”

Another headache was definitely coming on. I swear on every star in this kriffing galaxy…..

Your reply was icy and tinged with frustration, “Konstantine, if you wish to question the Grand Admiral’s tactics, you are more than welcome to discuss it with him when he comes back. Until then, we will be following the orders he left us with.”

He momentarily met your piercing stare before realizing any further arguments would be futile.

“Fine. I do believe I’m needed elsewhere,” Konstantine huffed as he departed the bridge.

For the first time in hours, the bridge was blessedly silent. You sank into a chair, rubbing your temples. Kriff, I definitely feel that headache now….

A sudden hand on your shoulder made you jump. You were so distracted that Eli might as well have materialized out of thin air.

“Hard day?” The corners of his mouth twitched as he attempted to stifle his amusement. “I heard you gave Konstantine a well-deserved earful.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “Next time, it’s your turn. This is my fourth headache in the past five days.”

“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? You’ve been working harder than anyone else on the Chimaera for days.” He lowered his voice before adding, “He should be back soon.”

A wave of relief washed over you at the news. You and Thrawn had gone to great lengths to keep your relationship secret from the crew, but Eli was too good of a friend to be kept in the dark. Besides, he would’ve noticed eventually that his two best friends were slightly more than friends.

Eli must’ve noticed the change in your expression, “Oh, you definitely need a break.”

He shoved a datapad in your hands and started pulling you to your feet, ignoring the numerous protests you gave him. “Here, take this to Thrawn’s office, leave it on his desk, and then you’re taking the rest of the day off. No arguments.”

-----------------------------

Thrawn’s office was its usual freezing temperature. Even though your uniform had layers of thick material, the chill was easily seeping through them. Shivering, you placed the datapad on the large desk in the back of the room.

You turned to leave, but a pang shot through your heart as you looked around the empty room. It was normal for you to barely see Thrawn on the days he was especially busy, but it was always different when you knew he wasn’t on the Chimaera at all. Stars, you missed him when he was gone. Just knowing he was nearby on days you couldn’t see him was so comforting. “Soon” wasn’t a good enough time frame for when he’d return.

A sudden thought crossed your mind; nothing was stopping you from spending the night in Thrawn’s quarters. It wasn’t exactly an unusual occurrence for you to sleep here, and it would be comforting. Besides, with your headache, you didn’t exactly feel like walking all the way back across the ship to your room, and his private quarters were conveniently connected to his office.

You began stripping off your uniform as you walked into the room and made your way over to the bed. It was still freezing, but every layer you removed took the worries of the day with it. Soon, everything except your bra and panties sat neatly folded on the bedside table. In this moment, you weren’t an Imperial officer; you were a woman climbing into her lover’s bed for comfort after a long day.

As soon as you slid between the soft, black sheets, you instantly received the comfort you were craving. They smelled exactly like Thrawn, crisp and clean, but with a unique depth cut by the citrusy scent of his favorite tea. You could almost imagine that he was actually there beside you. A contented smile crossed your lips as you drifted off to sleep.

---------------------------------

You suddenly woke to a light caress on your cheek. In your groggy state, you didn’t fully realize what that touch meant until you leaned into it. You would have probably fallen back asleep were it not for the low, pleased murmur that followed your actions.

“Apologies, ch’eo bat in’a, I did not mean to wake you, but I was not expecting to find you here.”

Your eyes flew open in shock as you sat up and gasped, “Thrawn!”

The low light in the room illuminated the regal form sitting beside you on the edge of the bed. Thrawn’s usually unreadable expression was one of slight amusement mixed with another, softer expression. You couldn’t help but notice his beautiful azure-hued skin and luminous ruby eyes were only complemented by the dimmed light; you couldn’t help but think he was meant to be seen like this. He must’ve been tired from the constant travel, but nothing in his posture or expression gave it away.

You didn’t wait for him to speak again before reaching over to embrace him. Thrawn immediately wrapped his strong arms around your waist and pulled you in tightly. Pressing your face into his chest, you quietly murmured, “I missed you.”

He said nothing, so you assumed he didn’t hear. You both sat contentedly for a few minutes and savored the intimacy before he moved one hand to stroke lazily down your back and the other to run through your hair. As you leaned further into his touch, he grabbed your chin and turned your head so he could press his lips to your ear.

“You are quite endearing when you’re half-asleep. It’s beautiful,” he whispered.

The praise combined with the sensation of his warm breath in your ear finally did you in; a flame began to spark to life in your core. You had missed him, and every single part of you was screaming for you to let him know just how much.

Before you could even move, Thrawn trailed his lips down to kiss your neck, and the flame in your core blossomed. You let out a quiet, breathy moan, and he immediately stopped.

Bringing his lips back to trace the shell of your ear, he rasped, “Oh? It seems you did miss me. How fortunate that I was able to return to you already in my bed.” He paused to lightly trace the outline of your bra before continuing. “And in something so pretty too. A shame that it will soon be discarded.”

You whimpered at his words as his lips renewed their brutal assault on your neck and upper chest. For what seemed like an eternity, Thrawn was content to lavish affection on the spots that provoked the greatest responses from you as his hands held you in place.

“Thrawn, please…. Touch me….” you begged, hoping desperately for him to comply.

He merely let out a dark chuckle as he chided, “Patience, ch’eo ch’itiseb, for every protest that leaves your pretty mouth, I will be sure to make you wait even longer.”

You bit back a moan at his sinful words; his eyes seemed to glow even brighter, and his smile turned feral. The look he gave you in return was simply predatory.

He continued to suck hickies into the sensitive skin at the base of your neck and around your collarbones. His tongue licked a long, torturous line up the column of your neck to kiss the area under your jaw. With every kiss, caress, and touch, the flame in your core spread throughout your entire body. He bit down on the juncture of your neck and shoulder, and you melted even further into his arms.

“It seems you were able to learn an adequate lesson in patience, so now we may continue. Turn around for me,” he ordered.

You turned to face the wall as he returned to his previous position at the edge of the bed. He trailed his hands up your waist and around to cup your breasts. Thrawn may have decided that you could have more of his touch, but he still refused to dip his hand under the lacy fabric of your bra. Instead, he teasingly rubbed over the material to brush against your nipples. Your head fell back to rest on his shoulder as you pushed your chest out into his hands, still desperate for more.

“How very, very eager for my touch….” His tone was still infuriatingly collected for how quickly he’d reduced you into a moaning mess, but a slight accent began to mar his words. “Ch’itses’o euhn ei.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Thrawn unfastened and discarded your bra. Finally, he wrapped his hands entirely around your breasts. The sharp contrast between the warmth of his body and the room’s icy air only intensified the pleasure as he began to roll your nipples between his fingers.

You couldn’t help but moan his name again, loudly. Thrawn’s breath hitched before he let out a low, breathy moan, “Bun vn’inen’i. Let me hear you.”

His voice had always been profoundly attractive, but hearing him murmur filthy sentiments into your ear in his native tongue made you absolutely melt. You let out another gasp and rubbed your thighs together, seeking any friction you could find, keenly aware of the desire beginning to pool between them. In your desperate search for friction, you accidentally rubbed your ass back against him and felt his growing erection.

The contact made Thrawn hiss. In one fluid motion, he flipped you around, pushed your back flat against the mattress, and leaned over you.

It was moments like this when you remembered you were in the bed of one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. Thrawn’s ruby eyes glowed with lust as he gazed down at you. His feral smile returned as he studied his prize. “Allow me to show you just how much I missed you.”

He trailed kisses from your breasts down to your inner thighs, nipping at them slightly, then stopping to look up at you as he reached your panties. “These must go,” he murmured against your thigh. Thrawn took the band in his teeth and began to tug the panties off, using his hands to remove them fully.

Finally, you laid before him completely bare, and once again, he paused to appreciate your body. “Simply beautiful,” he cooed.

Thrawn returned to kiss your inner thighs before he spread your legs further. He moved to kneel on the floor at the side of the bed and pulled your hips to the edge. You knew exactly what was coming next. “Oh….”

You barely had time to moan before he swiped an experimental finger through your core. Under any other circumstances, you’d be embarrassed that you were already so wet, but Thrawn lit a fire in you that no one else could. Now it was his turn to let out a low groan at his discovery.

He didn’t waste any more time before moving one of his long fingers to lightly trace around your entrance. The torment of his delicate touch made you rock your hips upwards, desperately begging for more contact. Without warning, he pushed two fingers deep inside you, making your walls clench hard around them. You moaned and begged for more as he began to pump them in and out of your drenched core, causing your legs to shudder in pleasure.

“Look at you, I’ve only just started using my fingers, and you’re already shaking,” Thrawn groaned.

He brought you right up to the peak of pleasure before suddenly withdrawing. You sobbed in protest as he brought his fingers up to your mouth. “Clean them off,” he commanded. Hoping that he’d finish you off if you complied, you obediently took his fingers into your mouth and sucked all your juices off of them.

Thrawn was very pleased. He moved back down between your thighs and sucked another hickey on the delicate skin before returning his attention to your core. He slowly circled your sensitive clit with a finger before licking his way up to suck on it. Once again, he continued his attention until you were at the very edge before withdrawing. Being edged once was hard, but the second time left you an absolute mess.

When Thrawn looked down on you, covered in his marks, eyes glazed over in lust and absolutely begging for completion, he lost the remnants of his control. He leaned back up to murmur, “Ch’eo ch’itiseb, how would you like me?”

“Stars, Thrawn, I don’t care. I just want you inside me now,” you moaned back at him as you reached up to help tug off his remaining clothing. After a few moments, he was also completely bare and leaning over you on the bed again.

With how desperate you felt, any time at all was too long, but your pleas and cries finally turned into more gasps and moans of pleasure as he finally lined his thick cock up with your entrance. The feeling of being so gloriously stretched and filled as he pushed in made your walls clench around him. Thrawn moaned at the sensation and began fucking you at a leisurely pace.

He leaned in to capture your lips in a burning, passionate kiss as his thrusts grew faster and your hips rose to meet them. His hands roamed your body, finding their way to pinch and tug at your nipples. You moaned into his mouth as you grew closer and closer to the high you’d been chasing all night.

Pausing between kisses, Thrawn suddenly grabbed your chin and stared into your eyes with his burning red ones before returning to kiss you hungrily. The unspoken message was clear: you were his. This new intensity, combined with his thrusts that came faster and faster, finally sent you over the edge into a shattering climax. Thrawn’s thrusts grew more and more erratic until he finished soon after you, coating your walls with his seed as he came.

As you both lay there in the afterglow, Thrawn mused, “I may have to find an excuse to be gone more often.”

Tags: @pretty-with-andorian-shingles @mittheresabosen @handbaskethell

#also on ao3 #Thrawn x f!reader #Grand Admiral Thrawn x reader #Thrawn x you #Star wars fanfic #rebels fanfic #thrawn x reader

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amiedala · 3 years

Text

Something More (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 4: Protectors

Rated: Explicit (we’re FINALLY getting to the actual explicit stuff y’all!)

Warnings: descriptions of violence, mentions of stalking/hunting, descriptions of sexual activity

Summary: “Too bad,” you manage, finally, hoping that your voice doesn’t break, “you protect me, I protect you, give and take, Mando, that’s how this works—”

And then you stop because his hands are on you. So fast. Lightning quick. One grabs at your side, thumb pressing lightly against where your scar bottoms out on the left of your abdomen, the other on the right side of your face, fingers tangled in the mess of your hair. You gasp, shudder, and breathe out as he grabs you. As easily as he squeezes, though, his grip detracts to barely there at all, and he slowly pushes you back against the wall. Every nerve on your body is on fire. You breathe, uneven and desperate, as his grip on your hip trails up your side until he has both big hands cupped against your face.

He’s eclipsing you. All you can see in your line of vision is him, and, peripherally, the distorted reflection of your heaving chest pressed up against the cool beskar, everything swallowed up by him. It’s devastating. It’s everything. You can barely breathe.

You dream about him that night.

Well, you’ve dreamed of him every night. It started when you fell asleep face to face, and now he lives in your head. You think some crucial part of it has been wiped clean simply for the sheer space of memory that’s just him. You don’t even know his name. You don’t know how old he is. You don’t know anything about him except that he’s a Mandalorian, he seems to have had adopted the child, and that he has thrown himself directly in harm’s way for you twice now.

Thoughts like that live on while you sleep. Vibrantly so. Sometimes, the dream changes and you’re on top of him, or those huge hands are inside you, or you hear him gritting out your name through the modulator as he—

Somehow, you always seem to wake up before anything in the dream can finish. It’s maddening, to say the very least. Everything with him seems to overlap until it doesn’t.

It’s been a handful of days since your narrow escape on Coruscant, and both of you have healed from your injuries on the planet’s surface. You haven’t been as close to Mando since you slept face to face that night, his head slipped down on your shoulder. When you had woken in the morning, he was gone, and you frantically searched the entirety of the bottom half of the ship for any trace of him leaving before you heard him playing with the baby up the ladder, and when you ascended into the cockpit, you were back in hyperspace.

You’d been in the air for the most part, only stopping briefly down on planets to refuel and replenish whatever stock of food the three of you needed on the ship. You weren’t sure where you were going next. You don’t even remember asking him where the next planet was, just that you knew you were going somewhere. The two tracking fobs he had left to complete before returning the bounties to the Guild blinked from the dashboard, stuttering out of rhythm ever so slightly. You watched them in the dark, sometimes, when you slept upstairs in the cockpit and tried your best to not let your mind wander to the man sleeping a level below you.

Sometimes, more often than not now, your hands would slip absentmindedly into your pants and you’d find yourself conjuring up the gruffness of the Mandalorian’s voice when you touched yourself. Twice now, you’ve finished to the memory of him saying, “where did he hurt you”, and it’s an instinct so natural you don’t even realize that you’re getting yourself off to the rhythm of his words until you’re done. Once, he climbed the ladder almost immediately after you finished, and you had to wipe the warm slick off your fingers on your pants when he asked you to hold the baby. They’re still stained, and the thought of him noticing it—or walking in on you while you’re in the act—has occupied almost all of your waking hours.

It’s better on ruminating on how narrowly you escaped getting hurt by the thug a few weeks back, or on your mind reliving every single memory of how badly you handled being alone on Coruscant the last time you were there—two thoughts that you tried very hard to push away—until the Mandalorian brings it up, almost a full week later.

“You did good,” he says, and you have no idea what he means. For a split second, you think he’s talking about you touching yourself last night, and you have to stifle a yelp when you ask him what he means. “Back on Coruscant. The ship doesn’t handle easy.”

“Oh,” you say, “thank you. I think the Crest has something against me.”

He doesn’t laugh, but you almost think you’re hearing a lighter voice coming through the modulator. “It’s old.”

“As old as me?”

He looks back at you, and you swear you can feel his gaze locked on you again. “How old are you?”

You swallow. “Twenty-five.”

The Mandalorian keeps his visor on you for a second, and then turns back to the front, focusing on the space you’re hurtling through.

“The ship is older than you,” he confirms.

“Explains why it’s so cranky.”

He looks back at you, and you giggle. A few moments pass, and he says, “so am I.”

You don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that information, quite honestly. Are you supposed to ask him how old he is? Maybe he’s seventy under the armor. Until you saw his stomach back on Coruscant, you often wondered if he looked exactly like the baby under there, or if he was a Quarren or a Gungan or something else entirely alien.

It takes you a minute, but you finally ask, “Are you younger than the ship?”

“No.”

“Are you twice the ship’s age?”

The Mandalorian looks back at you again, and if you weren’t hurtling through hyperspace and the Razor Crest wasn’t mostly running on autopilot, you would have cracked a joke about distracted driving.

“No.”

“But you’re older than the baby,” you joke.

He pauses again. “The kid is fifty.”

“What?” you shriek, and turn, betrayed, to the little green child hovering innocently in his egg next to you. He coos. You look back and forth between them, incredulous, and then a laugh filters out of the modulator.

“I don’t know how he ages. But he’s definitely still a baby.”

“Maker,” you say, still flummoxed. “Baby, you don’t look a day over thirty.” He coos at you, and you grin, folding your knees up to your chest in the chair.

“The kid is older than me,” Mando says, and then all attention is on him again.

“Well,” you manage, “then we’re working with a gap of twenty-five years.”

It seems the conversation is over, and you’ve been preoccupied with the kid, when Mando finally speaks again.

“I don’t know,” he says, and you look at him, curious, confused, “how old I am exactly.”

You’re about to ask what he means when the ship lurches again, and both of you are thrown sideways. You had strapped yourself in this time. You didn’t want a repeat of Coruscant, in any capacity. The way the Crest handled was atrocious. It was an old, cantankerous piece of junk, and it seemed to defy every other order either of you gave it. It also decided to blindside you out of nowhere, which was… well, it was like both your dirty subconscious and your conversations with Mando that teetered on something more, right before you hit the impact. Mando hauled the navigation drive up, and suddenly you were all right side up again.

“What was that?” You manage, blowing rogue hair out of your face.

He pointed. “Asteroid field.”

You squinted out the window. “Where are we?”

The Mandalorian was silent for a minute, and you didn’t push him. You weren’t in any rush for him to leave again, if you were being quite honest with yourself, and were soaking in all the tiny moments of the two of you cohabitating the ship for as long as you possibly could.

“Jakku.”

You hadn’t ever been on Jakku. You knew that it was a dry, hot wasteland like Tatooine, but that all the Rebel connections here had dried up over the years, and it had lots of small outposts where scavengers could bring practically anything dug up from the sand to make a little money. It was also worlds away from Coruscant, which was probably why it had taken so long to get here. Truthfully, it sounded dangerous in ways that you’d always feared the heat for, and your stomach flipped over a little in the recognition that he was probably going to leave again. You had been so spoiled with the last few missions—they had taken hours, and not one had swallowed up a full day, let alone weeks. He had warned you when you first joined that he could be gone for a week if he were tracking someone particularly difficult to locate, and the small sadness that pained in your gut when you barely knew Mando was a blip compared to the wrench you felt whenever he left your line of sight now. Seeing him get hurt, having to pull him back from that—you hated it. You hated knowing that he wasn’t infallible, regardless of that big shiny armor and the combination of his stealth and quickness. You wanted to tell him it, sometimes, that you hated seeing him leave, but there was still that anxious twang that came attached to how deeply you felt every single interaction, how you make things out of nothing, and you don’t think you could take it if he ever rejected you.

“Is the bounty…difficult?”

Mando seems to deliberately not hear your question, and something flares deep inside you, allowing you to pretend his resistance is because he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t want to leave you, either, but you swallow and try to be patient.

“Not as difficult as the last one.”

“How dangerous is he?”

Mando takes a second with that one, too, and you aren’t prepared for him to turn towards you. His visor pauses on you, just for a moment, and you offer up a half smile. You have no idea if he’s reciprocating under the mask, when he finally answers.

“She’s nothing I can’t handle.”

She? That tiny, betrayed part of your mind screams, and you have to fight the urge to physically kick away your jealousy. He’s hunting her. Hunting her down, whoever she is, and bringing her back to the ship in shackles. Stop it, you chastise yourself, what, do you want him to hunt you down? Get it together.

Yes, your traitorous, primal possessiveness taunts. Yes, you want him to hunt you.

Maker. You were going to have to square up with this needy, animalistic part of yourself the second Mando left. You were going to kick its ass, because this was absolutely ridiculous—you still hadn’t responded to his last comment.

“You’re objectively…better than her, right?”

He looks back at you. “Expand.”

“You aren’t going to get shot again?”

Mando’s gaze fixates on you yet again. You swallow dry air.

“A blaster’s not really her speed.”

What did that mean?

The baby babbles. He’s reaching out his tiny green fingers for the ball that rests, perennially unscrewed, on top of one of the levers. Absentmindedly, Mando pops it off and hands it to him. The baby coos as he plays with it, trying to teethe on its smooth metal surface. You watch him as he finds so much joy from one small object, not paying attention to how quickly the Crest is dropping onto Jakku’s wasteland surface.

You don’t say much. Mando doesn’t say anything. If you try hard, really hard, you can imagine that he’s regretting leaving you and the kid as much as you’re dreading it. You don’t know why you can’t voice any of this out loud. It should be easy, by now, you’ve pretty much become a permanent fixture here. He fell asleep with his head on your shoulder, your fingers intertwined, a few nights ago. He’s offering voluntary information about himself to you now, which is a complete 180 from how stoic in his silence he was when he first brought you on board. He offered up safe delivery out of Nevarro and then refused to let you leave the ship anywhere dangerous. He let you fix a wound on his bare skin—something you know goes against the rumored Mandalorian creed. There’s all these signs, blinking and humming in the back of your mind, that the way you feel around him—something earned, something real, something more—is mutual. You know you attach big stakes to everything, that you think the galaxy has been leaving you signs, when there’s no higher power orienting you to some elevated purpose. But the way the air burns around him, how right you feel with Mando and the baby…you’d bet your life that he felt it too.

Even just a fraction. Even just in the back of his mind.

When you make your landing, the ship stubbornly creaks into the uneven sand, and you’re glad you’re still strapped in. The Crest had it out for you. You loved it in the way you’d love an old house—broken and creaky around the edges, but warm enough to still call home. The Mandalorian didn’t ask you to follow him down the ladder this time, but you did anyway, out of some habit you’re trying to force. The baby toddles around the lower deck as he flings himself to his father’s shoes, and you scrunch up your lips to the side, a sore attempt at mimicking his expression. You can’t ask Mando not to leave. This is his job. You’re lucky he didn’t let you get taken out by either of the men that tried to hurt you, or leave you for dead on Nevarro, or kick you out on Coruscant.

But stars, you want to.

Somehow, he breaks the silence first. “I’ll be back within a few days.”

Your heart sinks. “Days?”

He looks at you, the visor suddenly impenetrable. “She’s dodgy. I’m not expecting to be gone more than three.”

“What if you are?”

Silence swells up in the air around you both. Your amateur handling of the Razor Crest on the last planet was only possible because you barely had to get anywhere. Jakku was huge, and incredibly desolate, and you didn’t trust yourself enough to figure out exactly where Mando was if there was a dire emergency. And he’d never told you what kind of quarry he was tracking before, which gave you a sinking suspicion that he wasn’t confident that he’d come back completely unscathed.

“Here,” he says, finally. His voice is softer through the modulator. He hands you the commlink again, and you wrap it around your wrist, intentional. “Remember—”

“Only for emergencies?” you interrupt, and give him a soft smile. You can be lenient. You can pretend that you won’t be staring at it for days on end, waiting for his deep voice to crackle across the stars to you.

“Good girl.”

He turns, quickly, like ripping off a bandage, which is probably for the best, because you don’t want him to see your knees going weak at his two words, or how that heat he gives you rushed deep down in between your thighs, warm and wet enough to line your underwear. You stand there, mouth open, just gaping at his retreating figure as he walks out into the sand.

The baby pulls at your leg, and it takes you an embarrassingly long time to yank your jaw off the floor and pay attention to him. He’s started begging for lullabies now, with his big bug eyes, and so you oblige, singing past the devastation and tingling that the Mandalorian has left behind in his wake until the kid is finally asleep. You think he does it so much to self-soothe when his daddy leaves, because he’s usually always awake in his presence. You usually don’t like when the little guy fades off when it’s just the two of you, because at least while he’s awake you can talk out loud to him and not feel like you’re going crazy being cooped up inside the ship, but right now…right now, you have other priorities.

You make sure that the kid is sleeping soundly, and you walk up the ladder as quietly as you can, trying to get snug under your blankets in the makeshift bed you’ve made in the corner, and when you finally get yourself comfortable, you play the words good girl over and over again in your mind while you slip your fingers down your pants and into the slick between your legs. You try to picture him in your mind, the way he looks under that mask, his eyes trained on you—what color were they?—and rub tight little circles to the sound of his voice, etched in your memory.

Nothing comes. You can feel it building inside you, that gold rush that sends sparks down your body when you usually orgasm, but right now, it’s like you’re teetering right on the edge. You throw your head back in desperation, in frustration, and you remove your shaking hand for just a second to refocus on him, and when your fingers return to your clit you think this is it, this has to be it—Nothing.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” you exclaim, pressing both hands to your eyes as if the stars to explode there instead. You can feel it building, still, even while there’s absolutely nothing in the way, and no matter what happens, you can’t cum.

You’re frustrated. You’re very frustrated. In every version of the word. You huff, yanking up your pants too roughly and pacing around the ship’s dark hull. This is all you’ve wanted for days, this small moment of release, and he just gave you the words to get yourself off by just thinking about it, and…nothing? Really?

You pace and then slide back down the ladder. Maybe you can get outside, just for a few seconds, feel the heat on your face, and maybe that’ll force it to come somewhere else, and you’re tiptoeing past the baby and getting your blaster from the armory, and then you pass the alcove where Mando’s cot is hidden away in, and you’re about to open the airlock—

Wait. Mando’s bed.

Your heart catches in your chest, skips a couple beats. This is not good. This is wrong. This is a horrible, dirty, depraved, very bad idea.

But before you can stop yourself, you’ve pressed your trembling fingers to the button that reveals his bed, and the doors fly open. You throw yourself in quickly, as if that’ll lessen the impact, and you throw yourself down on your back, looking at the ceiling.

It’s so dark in here. It smells like him. It’s like his soap has scrubbed down the bed, the way it’s wafting through the air. In here, it’s like a holding chamber. If you close your eyes hard enough, you can imagine he’s right there with you, his body large and uncloaked of armor, his skin exposed everywhere but the helmet, his hands on your hips while you’re straddling him like you did the other day to patch up his wound, him saying good girl as he moves inside you—

Well. Your fingers didn’t even have to slip back into your pants for you to cum this time.

You bite down on the back of your hand as it ripples through you, your ears absolutely deafened by the way your body vibrates like static. You clap your other hand over the one you’ve sunk your teeth into to simply drown out the sound in hopes that it’ll recede.

It takes probably five minutes. You sit there, in complete darkness, shell-shocked. The embarrassment and the shame you feel of getting off in someone else’s bed doesn’t even compare to the feeling of doing it. Maker, you’re going to bad places when you die. Bad, dark, awful places. The internal chastising you’re trying valiantly to give yourself fades off into the background as you relive it over and over, imagining him telling you you’re a good girl again, back in this bed, wearing considerably less, when he comes back to you. Visions of him telling he’ll never leave you again dance through your head when, suddenly, you fade off into nothing.

You didn’t mean to fall asleep. You don’t remember doing it.

But you wake up, and you’re still in Mando’s bed. You’ve pulled his blanket up around your shoulders, and it’s rough and tattered compared to yours, but you don’t even care. Your skin easily irritates when it’s against fabric that hurts, but you’ll take on the rash for this. You are so snug, so warm, and then it hits you that you’re sleeping in his bed, the same bed that you came all over last night, and you sit up in a panic.

You check the sheets, and there’s no mess. You haven’t really disturbed the bed at all, really, come to think of it. You lay back down, still groggy with sleep. He said he was going to take a few days. There’s no reason why you couldn’t sleep here tonight, too, maybe you’d even take the baby in here with you—

The baby. You shoot back up in a panic, suddenly completely awake. When you throw open the door, and launch yourself out of the bed, you find him toddling around on the floor, with that little silver ball he loves so much in his adorable stubby fingers.

“Baby.”

He turns to look at you, making noises of recognition when you fall out of his father’s bed, and you pick him up, swinging his tiny green body through the air.

He coos at you, pulling on the blanket that is somehow still around your shoulders. Dank ferrik. That wasn’t supposed to come with you. You gingerly pry it from his grip. He looks at you, back at the blanket that’s been put back into the alcove, and then his big eyes well up and he starts to cry.

“No,” you whisper, and then, louder, “no, it’s okay, baby! You don’t need to cry! I’ll—here, I’ll sing you some nice little tunes, and we can dance—”

At this, he wails even harder, and you wipe away the array of tears with your free hand. He claws towards something, and you pull him into your chest before you realize he wants the blanket. You pull it back out and drape it around his tiny body. “Hey, bug, it’s okay.” You swaddle him the best you can, and then he wipes his tiny nose against the tattered thing, and you try to pull it away before you realize he’s not wiping his nose. He’s sniffing the blanket. The blanket that smells like his dad. And, more recently, you.

“It’s okay,” you say, soothingly, swinging him from side to side, bringing those big eyes in towards the crook of your shoulder. He clings to it, just a little, but it’s enough to know he wants to stay nestled up there. “You miss your daddy, huh, sweetness?”

He coos, muffled, against your neck.

“Me too,” you admit, with no one but the kid and the dark hull of the Crest to hear you.

Another day passes. Then another. You’re starting to go a little stir crazy. If Jakku didn’t scare you, you would have gone outside and taken the baby for a little walk, but you’re still nervous, jumpy leftovers from the last man who had boarded the ship, not to mention that it’s a desert, foreboding wasteland everywhere you could possibly go. You bring him outside at least once a day, though, not even fully on the ground, just down the gangplank, so that you can both have some fresh air and touch something that isn’t shiny metal or whatever scraps of food you’ve been feeding to you both.

You like the baby. Love him. He rocks. He’s the cutest thing in the entire world. You had sworn off starting a family back when your parents died, because missing them hurt too much and you didn’t want another possibility to make that hurt permanent, but you would sign adoption papers tomorrow if you meant you got to care for the little one forever. His dad was just the bonus, you’d almost convinced yourself, to satiate that hungry, aching, nervous pit in your stomach that grows bigger and bigger every hour Mando’s still not back.

You’ve cleaned the interior of the ship. Three times. Yesterday, you used the fresher twice, simply for the acoustics of that room, so you could sing and pretend you were giving a show at a cantina, and okay, maybe a little bit for the smell of Mando’s soap on your skin.

His bed is much more uncomfortable than the nest you’d been sleeping in on the floor, but it smells like him, and it’s warm, and if you close your eyes and push up against the wall, you can imagine it’s him in the beskar enough to get you to sleep. Worry aside, you’ve slept better the past two nights than you have in what feels like years. It’s partly because you’re imagining he’s there, partly because you know you’re safe in here, and partly because this place feels more like home than any other one you’ve ever belonged to.

You’re starting to get worried, though. You know he insisted that the commlink was only for emergencies, and you didn’t want to distract him on his mission. Or bother him, more likely, the Mandalorian wasn’t a man who got distracted easily, but still, you thought about it. Distracting him. The baby wakes up sometimes, and you pretend to be completely engrossed in attending to his every need, because when he falls asleep or shows more interest in his ball than you, the silence and fear creeps back in.

Another day passes before you’ve gone on long enough without hearing word.

“Hey,” you whisper into the commlink. You’re in his bed. Again. You’re not proud of it, but you can’t pry yourself from it. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but—it’s been four days, and she’s dangerous, and I—the baby misses you.”

You press the button. You hope that’s sufficient. You just sit there, staring at the artificial light in the darkness, tummy flipping over every second that passes where you don’t hear from him.

It’s been full minutes, and you lay back down. You pull his itchy blanket up to your shoulder, huddle on your side. You’ll keep your wrist next to you in sleep, so he can talk in your ear and wake you up if he needs to—

“Are you there?”

His voice is quiet. Through the modulator and the link, you have to strain your ears in the vibrating nothingness to make out the shape of his words.

“I’m here,” you answer. It spills out of you, too fast.

“No emergencies,” he says, and you can feel your cheeks flush with the reprimand before you realize it sounds more like reassurance.

“No emergencies here either,” you manage. “The baby is still as cute as ever. You parked near a good radio station. I’ve been singing to him—”

“Careful,” he warns, and your heartbeat quickens before you can ask what. “The first word that comes out of his mouth is going to be sung, not spoken.”

You giggle, the air cutting through the darkness. “Would that be so bad?”

He’s silent for a minute, and you relax back into his pillow, the commlink pressed up against your face.

“I don’t think I could handle having both of you singing,” he says, and his voice rumbles through you in a way you can’t place until you remember the baby is fifty and hasn’t even spoken his first word yet. The Mandalorian is signing on for years with you, then, maybe full-on decades, maybe for life, with how slowly the kid progresses—you have to bite down on your lip.

“Maybe I’ll shut up when he starts.”

You can hear him shifting. He’s still so quiet. You wonder where he is. You wonder if he’s gotten close to his bounty yet, if she’s anywhere near him—that unfairly jealous part of you roils in your belly, and you push your fist into it as if to shove back the unreasonable thought.

“That’d be a shame,” he finally says.

“Do you like my singing?”

He’s quiet again. You listen through the silence. He speaks so sporadically, it shouldn’t surprise you, but being in anticipation of what comes next is almost as good as the words themselves. “I like your voice.”

Your voice. That could mean anything. That could mean your singing in the shower or the questions you ask him or the way he makes you giggle or the way you’d moan out his name, if you were ever lucky enough to learn it—you realize you haven’t spoken. “I like yours, too.”

He’s quiet. He doesn’t speak again. You know how late it is. “Have you slept?” you ask, quietly, just in case he’s fallen asleep.

“A bit.” You can hear him adjusting. “I’m close to town. I tracked her here.”

You nod, forgetting he can’t see you. “When do you think you’ll be ba—will have completed the mission?” you ask. You bite your lip in the surrounding silence.

“By sunrise,” he says. “You better fall asleep. I want you both awake when I return to the ship.”

Your stomach flips over in excitement, then in dread. “Do I have to hide from her?”

He’s silent. You slide your thumbnail between your teeth, breath bated in anticipation of his answer.

“Just be ready,” he finally says. “Don’t hide unless I tell you to.”

“I’ll anticipate it,” you counter. “I’ll be awake at sunrise.”

“Set an alarm.” His voice is quick, but you can feel the lightness to it. “Or three.”

“I’ll have you know,” you say sleepily, “that I can be wide awake at the first alarm when I need to be—”

“And,” he adds, interrupting you, “stay near my bed in case you do need to hide.”

Before you can say anything in response to that, the link clicks off. You’re in the darkness, again, that swell in your legs, the buzzing in your ears, the excitement in your heart. The last thing you remember before you fall back asleep is, he’s coming home.

Your name comes from seemingly nowhere, and you jolt up from where you’ve been sleeping. Very comfortably. You wipe sleep from your eyes as you fumble around from the source of it.

It’s the commlink. Of course.

“I’m here,” you manage, through your very groggy morning voice.

“I’m almost back.”

You dig a heel of your hand into your eye before all the moving parts click together in your mind. That’s Mando’s voice, and it must be close to sunrise, because if he’s heading back, he’s definitely got the bounty.

“I—where should I go?”

You don’t hear anything for a long moment, and you hurriedly slide out of his bed, trying to arrange the blanket and pillow in the same formation that it was before you defiled it, and can’t remember enough what it looked like almost five days before but you hope that Mando’s memory has been distracted enough by his hunt that he won’t notice. You find the baby, place him back in his egg, and shake your head firmly when he gives you his big eyes pleading to get down.

“Where are you?”

You sleepily survey your surroundings. “I am against the wall.”

He sighs. “Which wall?”

“The one across from the fresher. Near your bed.” You feel your cheeks flush with that admission, even though he can’t possibly know that you’ve holed up in there since he’s been gone.

“And the baby?”

“He’s beside me.” You pull your gun out, too, and loosely holster it in the belt around your leg. “And I have my blaster.”

“Good,” he says, and no girl follows it, and despite the circumstances, you feel a twang of sadness.

“How close are you?”

The link goes silent. Again. It’s become his modus operandi to just leave you in the lurch, right when you’re on the edge of the conversation, and while it’s hard to get frustrated with him when that pull of sureness inside you is always tuned to the highest frequency, you want to whine about it.

You cut yourself off. Nope. He’s bringing back a bounty. You cannot get distracted, not now, no matter how bad you want him. Not the time. On a whim, you run into the fresher and you splash water on your face, enough to wake you up and keep you alert.

There’s a noise outside the ship, and you immediately push the baby’s floating cradle behind you, fingers on your blaster. You could handle whatever was happening. You actually had your fingers on something tangible, and you were a good shot when it came down to it.

It turns out, the reason why the Mandalorian didn’t tell you how soon he’d be coming back because he was already pretty much there. You tense, then relax upon the first glimpse of the beskar on his helmet you got, and then tens again when the gangplank is lowered down to the hot sand of Jakku.

She…looks dangerous. She’s a Twi’lek. Long, and slim, a very dangerous shade of purple. The first thing you notice isn’t how alien she looks in comparison to the sand around the gangplank, or how she moves with a confident, seductive swagger, but the way her tongue dances in circles around her teeth. Her canines are sharp, pointed, hungry.

You didn’t scare easily. You had worked hundreds of jobs with people who had every intention to double-cross and discard you. You faced off against the intruder on the ship with your only instinct to protect the baby in mind, not your own safety. That’s why Mando had brought you aboard.

But you look at her, and you’re scared. It’s her teeth and the way her eyes lock onto you, immediately, dangerously, like she knows she could intimidate you. And then probably flog you within an inch of your life and leave you for dead. You’d been there before. You knew how it looked.

“What do we have here?” she purrs, turning around to face Mando. He shoves her, once, roughly, and she steps forward so that his blow won’t hit as hard, tongue tracing the outline of her teeth. “You got yourself a little pet.”

Your eyes glance in fear to the baby, but the way he looks back at you makes you realize that she was talking about you, not the kid. You thumb your blaster, stepping forward, trying to remain impervious.

“Hello, there,” she whispers, and you could feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You didn’t want to look away from her—you can just tell, instinctually, that she could strike instantaneously, just lying in wait for a moment of weakness—but you can’t help it. You look at Mando, hoping your raised eyebrow signals your fear and your level of discomfort, and the way his visor locks on you is enough to know he had calculated the risk and knew he could beat her. His hand is still outstretched, slightly, as she meanders over to you.

“Look, Mando,” she hisses, pointing back and forth between the two of you. Instinctually, you push the baby’s cradle back even further, putting your full hand on your blaster. You glance up at him again, and then catch a flash in the low light of the ship, and realize she’s handcuffed. Even shackled, though, you can see how her sharp teeth glint, how her eyes hold venom you’d never even seen. “Have you taken your helmet off for her yet?”

He stands there. You have absolutely no idea what you were in the middle of, but suddenly, it felt like you were the outsider here, not her. Your stomach flipped over with the possibilities. Had he taken his helmet off for the bounty? Had he betrayed his creed for her? You swallow, grit your teeth, loading your tongue behind them just in case whatever she gave you next could be responded to.

“She’s pretty,” she appraises, tongue finding her canine, and before you can react, she lunges close to your face, close enough that you can feel the hot wash of air, clicking her teeth menacingly right in front of your nose. You don’t jump, but the flinch of closing your eyes felt bad enough. You knew it was the wrong move the second your eyes squeezed shut. “Aw, look at that.” She sniffs. You don’t move. “She scares like a little Ewok, Mando, is that why you keep her locked away on the ship—"

Suddenly, a flash of beskar moves through the air between you two, and the Twi’lek is snapped back, recoiling and hissing at how hard he hit her.

“I don’t need to remind you that I have no issue bringing you in cold.”

You recoil at that, how detached and distorted his voice seems. You know that the modulator evens it out, for the most part, and that you tend to imagine his voice comes out softer and warmer to you than anyone else. But right now? Right now, his voice is stone cold. He sounds murderous. Dangerous. Scary. The kind of threat that scared off the man on Nevarro. The kind of threat that you know he gives to his bounties. The kind of threat he’s never once showed to you.

You swallow.

“I dare you,” the Twi’lek says, and she turns from you, just for a second, to slide up to him. So much of her skin is reflected in the beskar that it’s turning the entirety of the interior of the Crest purple. “Try to kill me. We both know you need me, whether you like it or not, that I’m still the best you’ve ever had—”

Before you can react, before you can do anything, the Mandalorian has a knife against her throat. You have no idea where it comes from. You want to react, to say something, to not sit there bumbling like a faulty droid, but you’ve got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

“Slice me with my knife,” she whispers, taunting him. “Do it. Put on a show for your little weakling girlfriend behind me and kill me. We both know you can’t—”

You unfreeze, suddenly, so quickly that you don’t realize what you’re doing, until you yank her slender shoulder back away from the knife Mando has in his grip and shove her headfirst into the carbonite chamber. She howls, but you press the button—that’s your one move, slamming your hands against things and miraculously making them work in the moment of truth—and her terrifying, hungry face gets swallowed up in the gas. You shove her backwards—well, the block of her—so that it slams into the other bounties that have been frozen in time in between your last trip to Nevarro, and it’s only when you’re sure she’s completely immobilized that you finally exhale, hands on your knees, chest heaving. The world around you is spinning. You check your arms and throat frantically, just to make sure she didn’t nick you with something sharp while you were frozen.

When your breathing regulates, and all your bumps and bruises only tally up evenly to the ones you had before today, you look up at Mando. He’s seemingly stuck, too, the sharp knife still in his gloved hand, completely immobile. You tap his outstretched hand to be sure you didn’t accidentally catch him with your fairly heroic carbonite rescue, and he only becomes responsive to your touch on his gloved one.

“Hey,” you say, softly, to not startle him anymore, “I’m okay—are you? Are you okay?”

“Thank you,” he says, gruffly, his fingers still clenched tight around the knife that came out of nowhere, and you just know that underneath his glove, his knuckles are white. You can hear it in his voice.

“What—oh. You’re welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t react sooner, that I let her go on like that—”

“I was going to kill her.” Even through the modulator, you can hear there’s something complicating his voice. You move forward, gently, trying to pry his fingers off the knife. Your body is so close to his, your neck straining as you look up from his hand to his helmet. You don’t know why this is so difficult for him to reconcile, when you’ve seen him take out at least twenty people, easily, since you came aboard. You don’t like the killing, but you understand his necessity, sometimes, and his disconnect from it. It’s what he does, it’s his job, his survival. You don’t know why this one was so different. “If you didn’t—I was going to slit her throat.”

You’re the one who’s silent, now. You have absolutely no idea what to say, especially considering that him needing solace over the thought of killing someone—not even actually killing them—is completely foreign to you. You inhale, exhale, and then take a half-step closer, moving his last finger off the knife. “You didn’t,” you whisper, earnest, slipping the knife out of his grip and reaching in closely behind him to put it safely in the armory. “You didn’t.”

He looks at you. Up and down. It’s dark in here, but you can track his visor. You have absolutely no idea what’s going on behind it. Despite all of this, despite the way you had both been moving in sync lately, despite how you felt the magnetic pull of the universe with him, he just went radio silent. None of this seemed in character. For the first time since you met him, you felt like you were in over your head.

“I was going to,” he repeats, and you nod, slowly. “She’s not worth anything to the Guild dead, but I would have done it in a second—”

“—You didn’t,” you interrupt, enunciating each syllable, “it’s okay, you can turn her in frozen like that, and we can get far away from her, you don’t have to be—”

“—to protect you.”

You come to a full stop, breath catching in your throat.

“I would have spilled her guts all over the floor in front of you—in front of my kid—to protect you. And then you protected me instead.”

You can feel your mouth falling open in shock. The baby, funnily enough, has decided to move his floating egg upstairs, and you’re glad he’s getting out of the line of fire. You swallow, looking back at Mando. “I did.”

“That’s not your job.”

You have whiplash. His voice has gone from detached to emotional to brash. You have no idea what you’re supposed to say to that, to say to any of this. You feel a familiar, dizzying rush, the beginnings of tears pinpricking at the corners of your eyes.

“Too bad,” you manage, finally, hoping that your voice doesn’t break, “you protect me, I protect you, give and take, Mando, that’s how this works—”

“That’s not your job,” he repeats, but now his voice is almost as ragged as yours is, and so you nod.

His helmet comes forward, slightly, and he presses it into your forehead. “What is my job?” you squeak out, trying to not go cross-eyed as you try to catch any glimpse of his eyes under the visor. You can’t, so you close yours, in desperate anticipation.

He removes his helmet from against your forehead, and you sway forward, already missing his grip against you, until, suddenly, his head is in the hollow of your neck. Your breathing hitches again. You try your very best to not imagine what his voice would sound like without the modulator, what his lips would feel like pressed up against your skin, when his hand drops from your chin and trails back down your body, past your scar, past the bruises on your belly, and then it pauses.

“To take mine,” he grits out, his voice swelling up against the skin of your ear, and then your body slumps against the wall, and before you can beg for it, for anything, his hand rises, meeting you in the middle, fingers fitting perfectly between your thighs.

***

IF YOU WANT TO BE ON A TAGLIST FOR EVERY CHAPTER, PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST OR SEND ME AN ASK WITH YOUR URL! i’m not sure exactly how to do this, so i will try my very best to get it up and running from here on out (and if anyone has any advice send me an ask or DM me!) <3

(and if you don’t want to be on the taglist and i’ve tagged you here, please just message me!)

CHAPTER 5 COMING SATURDAY JANUARY 23RD EST!!!! i hope y’all enjoy!!!

#early update <3 #something more #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #fanfiction #mando x you #mando x reader #smut #reader insert

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spell-cleaver · 4 years

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DAY 22: WHUMPTOBER: Do These Tacos Taste Funny To You? - Poisoned @whumptober2020

DAY 23: WHUMPTOBER: What’s A Whumpee Gotta Do To Get Some Sleep Around Here? - Exhaustion

DAY 28: WHUMPTOBER: Such Wow. Many Normal. Much Oops. - Accidents

DAY 10: ANGSTOBER: Poisoning @angstober

As you can see, this one covers several prompts, I was being thrifty with this, but here we are.

“You,” his partner told him, “are an excellent dancer.”

Luke smiled at her. “You’re not too bad yourself,” he told her, spinning her around again—and it was true. Leia had the poise to her that he would never been able to achieve, twenty years raised as his father’s heir or not, and she always made him look better when they danced together.

Which was just another reason to dance with her, as if the opportunity for clandestine discussion it offered wasn’t good enough.

The song ended and they bowed to each other, Luke smiling at her and about to ask for another one when he caught a glimpse of something over her shoulder—his father, watching him. He inclined his helmet ever so slightly and Luke took his leave of Leia to move towards him, gracefully turning down another courtier who tried to talk to him, picking up the drink he’d put aside for the dancing and taking another sip from it.

“How badly are you suffering, Father?” he asked, stifling a yawn now that he was away from the public eye. It was past midnight, he’d been here since sundown, and he was tired.

“Terribly,” came the response. “Every new moment in this ballroom is an agony.”

Luke laughed to himself, though his heart twinged at the fact he knew it was true, in a much more literal sense.

But that wasn’t exactly something he could help.

Vader eyed the glass in Luke’s hand judgementally and Luke took another sip, almost defensively. “Did you call me over here as a favour because you could tell how exhausted I was? Or was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Vader folded his arms behind his back and started walking—slowly, so Luke could keep up with his massive strides—towards and through the side corridor that led off from the ballroom. Luke hurried after him, frowning, very aware that Leia’s gaze was burning into his back.

“Father?” he called after him, then repeated when he’d caught up and was walking by his side. “Where are we going?”

“The Emperor has requested your presence,” Vader said. “Something about your composure at this ball.”

Luke frowned. “I was under the impression I was doing well—that was why he left me to my own devices.” Palpatine had sat and watched over the room for much of the night, at first, before he’d retired, claiming that it was time for the youths to have their fun. Luke had no idea what he’d meant by that, but he hadn’t partaken in anything near as fun as His Majesty seemed to have been expecting.

“And you were,” Vader said. “Perhaps that is what he wishes to speak to you about.”

Luke nodded. He was already tired—trying to untangle Palpatine’s machinations now was making him feel dizzy. He had a headache.

“That’s plausible, I suppose— Oh.” He blinked, and suddenly he was on the floor staring. The glass that had been in his hand was in pieces on the floor, his drink seeped across and between the flagstones, mingling with something red. He glanced at his hand and winced. Blood and shards, embedded in his palm.

He glanced at his other arm and found that had not been spared either—minor cuts grazed it all the way down.

“Oh,” he said, blinking slowly. “That…”

His father was watching him. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah… It was just an accident.” Luke blinked again, then gingerly pushed himself to his feet, wincing. The poor servants would have to see that and clean it up; he should probably go to the medbay to get the glass in his hands taken out, get some bandages…

But no excuse would satisfy his father’s master. Not if he was late. So when his father started walking again, he kept pace, and when they reached the grand double doors of the throne room he strode in without hesitation, hands still seeping blood.

Even when he noticed that no royal guards were in attendance.

He strode right in.

Palpatine was on his throne, though the shadows seemed darker and longer today than they usually did—Luke didn’t take a moment to dwell on why. Nor did he want to think about why he was suddenly so… weak, bowing and kneeling before his Emperor, his legs trembling, feeling like he was about to throw up.

He had nothing to fear.

He had nothing to fear, did he?

“Luke,” Palpatine said warmly, “how are you finding the celebrations?”

Luke kept his head bowed and respectful, knee still to the floor. “As spectacular as ever, Your Majesty. Though I grow more and more tired as the evening drags on.”

“Ah, yes,” Palpatine said, rising from his throne. “I imagine you had a busy day, committing treason.”

For a moment those words didn’t compute—then Luke jerked his head up in shock, mouth agape as he stared. “What? Your Majesty, I—ah!”

There were tight hands—solid, durasteel hands—around his wrists, constricting, digging the glass further in. He cried out.

His father did not release his grip.

“Do you deny it?” Palpatine continued, coming down the steps with a thud, thud, thud of his cape. “I am aware that the moment I left the ballroom, you were passing intelligence to the Princess Leia. Did you think you could get it past me?”

Luke coughed, head spinning now, pain clouding everything crimson. “Master— Father—”

“Do you deny it?” Vader rumbled, right in his ear. He sounded angry.

No, Father, no, I never meant to betray you, it wasn’t you I turned my back on, no—

He opened his mouth—to say what, he didn’t know—

“I have the princess in custody as well. Whatever you say, she will be searched—and if you are found to be lying, in whatever you say, she will be killed. I am certain that she is carrying smuggled information on her person, but if I am found to be mistaken, then the both of you will live. If you tell the truth, and you were both Rebels… I can promise her amnesty. Only if you cooperate.”

Luke swallowed.

There wasn’t any choice to make there.

“Yes,” he confessed. “I passed information to her.”

Vader constricted his grip and Luke cried out, blood running in rivulets down his wrists.

Palpatine raised an eyebrow at it as it dripped onto his polished floor. “Had a little accident, did we? My my, you don’t appear to be in your right mind—perhaps that is as good an explanation for treason against the men who gave you everything as any.”

Luke wasn’t in his right mind—he could see that now; or rather, he couldn’t see. Everything blurred in a cackling of colours and no matter how much he blinked, it would not clear.

But still, the realisation filtered through the haze.

“Poison,” he choked out.

“Yes. I never expected Lord Vader to be so talented at subtlety, but here we are.” Palpatine stepped ever closer, until his robes brushed Luke’s knees, towering over him. “We agreed that if I was wrong, we would give you the antidote. But if I was correct…”

His foot lashed out, then, and pain exploded in Luke side; he was shoved hard onto the floor, head hitting and ringing. He spat blood.

“Well, it would be wrong to give an antidote to a traitor. So enjoy your last few moments of life, dear Luke—I know you have been the Fulcrum agent in our midst for years. I know you have actively worked against us. I am sure your death with be painful enough to make up for all of that.”

Palpatine bent down to stare him in the eye, those sickly irises like searchlights.

Then there was a flash of red.

Luke shouted, yanking back as heat burned against his face, and— and—

Palpatine fell back with a wheeze.

There was something cold at Luke’s lips—he spat and choked and struggled, but then something cold was in his mouth and down his throat and in his head.

“What!?” He coughed, sitting up—when had Vader released him—and glaring. Everything still spun, but he was fairly sure that black blob was his father. “What— what are you— you poisoned me—”

“And you betrayed me,” Vader snapped, and Luke flinched. There was an entire maelstrom of fury there, just under the surface, and he couldn’t… “But you are alive. You had the antidote. The Emperor is dead.”

Luke, with his slowly clearing vision, glanced at Palpatine—and flinched at the body he saw there. “You…”

“Stabbed him. Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was going to kill you. You’re a traitor.”

“What? I don’t understand—”

“I poisoned you,” his father declared, and his words were a thunderclap, “to save your life.”

#whumptober2020 #whumptober #angstober #angstober2020 #luke skywalker #darth vader #for darkness shows the stars #sheev palpatine #my writing #random words on a page #flash fiction #flash fiction: star wars

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themurphyzone · 3 years

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Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Oneshot: Starlight

So this was the prologue to a multichapter PMD fic that will never be written, though I spent quite a bit of time creating the characters. This oneshot was sitting on my computer for several months, I just thought I’d share this with the Internet.

Summary: A lonely rich girl named Luna has been best friends with Penny the Meowth for years. But when Luna receives a series of strange dreams, she makes a decision that will change their lives forever.

AO3 Link

Penny nuzzled her human’s cheek, mewing helplessly as Luna succumbed to another nightmare. Not for the first time, she wished she could learn Dream Eater so she could take away the pain, the torment, the guilt that persisted in Luna’s eyes during the day.

Her human cried out, almost flinging Penny off her chest as she rolled onto her side and curled into a tiny ball. Her entire body was wracked with tension, and Penny stifled the instinctive rumble building in her throat.

Purring didn’t work. Luna would just think Penny was another Meowth crying for help. Purring was supposed to bring comfort, but now it just added to Luna’s stress.

Penny didn’t understand what brought the nightmares, nor was she privy to the content. Luna was tight-lipped and quiet on her best days, though Penny could easily bring out a giggle or two if she just batted a Poké Ball around.

If she listened too closely, she heard whispers of catastrophic floods, devastating earthquakes, and the faraway pleas of countless Pokémon who didn’t understand why their world was being torn asunder.

“I’m sorry…” Luna whimpered, a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead. “I don’t understand…”

Penny unsheathed her claws, lightly tracing the tips against Luna’s arm. Not hard to enough bleed, but just so Luna could feel the pricks and come back to reality. She left light, barely visible trails across Luna’s skin, withdrawing as Luna’s chest gave a sudden heave. Then Luna broke into a coughing fit, catapulting into a sitting position. A pillow and Clefairy doll fell from the bed, landing on the carpeted floor with a muffled thump.

Through a thin sliver of light in the bedroom, Penny saw the terror turn to relief in Luna’s eyes. Luna sighed, her breath hitching as she slumped forward and pressed her head against her knees, face hidden through a curtain of dark hair.

Penny retrieved the Clefairy doll and pressed it into Luna’s side.

“Thanks,” Luna whispered. She placed the doll in her lap and scratched behind Penny’s ear.

Penny released the purr she’d held back, resting her head on top of Luna’s other hand. Focusing on the vibrations of her throat, she tried to imagine a calming wave flowing into her human, though she didn’t know any healing moves.

Eventually, Luna’s breathing evened out. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, sitting at the edge for a brief moment before standing up, the Clefairy doll clutched tightly in her arms.

Without a word, Luna crossed the length of her enormous bedroom and flung the curtains open, allowing more moonlight to filter in. Then she settled against the cushioned windowsill and stared out into the night sky.

Penny jumped onto the windowsill, nudging the Clefairy doll aside so there was room for both of them on Luna’s lap.

“She doesn’t make sense,” Luna murmured. “A role to play…it means something, but I don’t get it. What role can I play when I’m locked in here?”

Penny bristled, hissing in frustration at the reminder of being a secret companion for a secret girl. Luna’s parents were important figures in some organization Penny didn’t care to remember the name of. Luna was unknown by the world beyond the manor grounds. And while Penny was allowed to stay in the manor, she knew Luna’s parents viewed her as a means to keep Luna compliant and out of the way.

Her parents certainly didn’t expect Penny and Luna to bond so quickly, but as long as Luna never expressed a desire to explore the world, they wouldn’t complain.

Luna loved stars and legends and Pokémon.

But she never experienced them for herself when so many others could. She was stuck with books, television, and the stars she could see from her windowsill.

Luna opened the window and a gentle wind blew into the room, chasing away the stifled air.

“The stars are so beautiful, Penny. See that cluster next to the moon? We have a clear view of the Perished Ones tonight,” Luna said, pointing to a group of stars that held some sort of pattern to her, but none to Penny. A breeze gently blew strands of long hair away from Luna’s face.

Her eyes sparkled, holding no traces of the haunted look she’d wandered around with for the past month.

A Meowth’s instincts were drawn to sparkling things, to hoard them and never let them go, and Penny was no exception. She held Luna’s gaze, waiting for her to continue.

“Long ago, a tower was struck by lightning and caught fire, which was then quelled with a cleansing rain. But not before three Pokémon perished in the flames. Ho-Oh revived them with his sacred ashes, and they were reborn as Beasts who roam the land. It’s said that Ho-Oh gave the remnants of the Beasts’ old lives to a deity with power over the stars, and she hung them in the night sky as a reminder of that fateful night. The trio of constellations became known as the Perished Ones.”

It was the most she’d said in a month.

Luna rested her head against her knees again. The contemplative look returned.

“Ho-Oh gave them new roles,” Luna whispered. “He cleansed their spirits and bodies so they could rule over lightning, volcanoes, and the north wind with no regrets.”

Though Penny only considered it a legend, it was clear that Luna was putting much more thought into the story than was necessary. She mewed in displeasure, pawing at Luna’s face so she would focus on petting the itchy spot that Penny could never reach no matter how much she twisted while grooming.

Luna gave a tiny smile, scratching Penny’s back until she fell asleep once more.

They slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

o-o-o-o-o

For once, Luna’s parents were home. But since they preferred to be left undisturbed by both staff and daughter unless there was an emergency, Penny and Luna rarely saw them. Because they had a reputation for firing staff for the slightest indiscretions and hammering them with lawsuits if they talked, nobody was keen on facing her parents’ wrath.

Until now.

Out of self-preservation, Penny did everything she could to dissuade Luna from an audience with her parents. Just as she was debating the pros and cons of knocking her human down and sitting on her until she got the message, Luna crossed the high archway that marked the parlor entrance and stood in front of the Master and Mistress of the Silano household.

Penny swallowed, but padded onto the expensive Kalosian rug that nobody was ever allowed on and wound her tail around Luna’s legs for moral support. Luna glanced down for the briefest moment, then returned her attention to her parents, who were still discussing some trivial matter.

“-Mr. A wants more funding towards the research department. Their top scientist believes he’s found a faster method that will boost a captured Pokémon’s power a hundredfold,” Master Silano explained with a long-suffering sigh, though Penny couldn’t tell if it was directed at Luna or his wife.

“About time,” Mistress Silano said, her manicured nails tapping at the couch impatiently. “He should’ve improved the field equipment a long time ago. Why waste time on common Caterpie when they could have the power of a Legendary?”

“You know he wants to maintain his reputation, Catherine,” Master Silano said. “It’s better to keep these sorts of activities under the radar.”

They ignored their daughter completely, and Penny knew Luna was having second and possibly third thoughts about her plan.

Luna stiffened, but she balled her fists and forced the words out of her throat. “Mother. Father. I’m interested in getting a Drowzee. I’ve been doing some research, and-“

Mistress Silano huffed. “A Drowzee! As if that mangy furball wasn’t enough for you!”

She glared at Penny as if offended by her very existence. But Penny lifted her chin defiantly, refusing to be cowed. After all, she was a prideful Meowth, loyal to those who earned her trust and uncaring about those who didn’t.

“Mother, please.” Luna’s voice quivered. Penny’s tail tightened around Luna’s legs. “I’ve done some research. Drowzee can sense and eat people’s dreams. They can even project the eaten dreams to anyone they trust. It…would be interesting.”

Penny disliked the Drowzee idea, but for Luna’s sake she kept the bouts of jealousy to herself. They both knew Dream Eater was their best shot at understanding the nightmares, but Penny wished that didn’t involve getting another Pokémon since she was meant to be Luna’s constant companion.

“We allowed you to keep that stray Meowth as long as you took responsibility for it. You don’t need another Pokémon.” Master Silano didn’t look up from the stack of papers. “You will not be gallivanting around Kanto doing whatever you want. One Meowth is sufficient for your needs.”

“I’m…I’m only asking for a Drowzee,” Luna said. She tried to copy Penny’s haughty act, but couldn’t keep her head up under Mistress Silano’s scrutiny. “Nothing more.”

“You heard your father,” Mistress Silano snapped, dismissing them with a lazy flick of her wrist. Several golden bracelets clinked with the movement. “Leave us. We have important business to discuss. Later, we will talk about this rebel behavior of yours. I assure you it will not be tolerated again.”

On the verge of tears, Luna spun on her heel and stormed away, abandoning her usual caution in favor of stomping on the floorboards. A rebellious act that would surely add on to her troubles, but Luna didn’t seem to care.

Penny flattened herself to the ground, slinking quietly behind Luna until they reached the modest dining room next to the kitchen. It was their favorite place to take meals. They avoided the large, lonely dining hall the Master and Mistress preferred.

“It’s not fair, Penny!” Luna cried. Penny’s ears flattened as Luna scraped the legs of her chair against the floor. She fell into her seat and slammed her head into the table. “Is understanding my nightmares really too much to ask?”

Penny jumped onto the table, not caring if she was allowed on the furniture or not. If they found her pawprints on the polished wood, so be it. Compared to the demands Luna had to put up with, obtaining a Drowzee was a perfectly reasonable request.

Penny rolled onto her belly and mewed pathetically. She hadn’t needed these deliberately vulnerable positions to garner sympathy and food since she was taken in, but it was the only thing she could think of.

But Luna didn’t move.

Penny’s fur bristled along her spine. She yowled at the top of her lungs and startled Luna, who jumped to her feet with an expression that would’ve been comical if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

“Don’t do that, Penny!” Luna shouted, her eyes blazing. “You have no idea what I’m going through!”

A growl escaped Penny’s throat. These dreams terrified her human and nobody else was aware. That’s all she needed to know.

They glared daggers into each other. Penny flexed her claws against the wood, leaving shallow scratchmarks behind.

Then a knock on the side door broke their concentration.

“Ms. Luna, are you feeling alright?” Michael called, his polite voice soothing as always. He opened the door as far as it would allow with the chain attached. He was an elderly man, tall and well-groomed, and he was the only other person in the manor Penny liked. “Do you require anything for yourself or Ms. Penny?”

Despite herself, Luna couldn’t help but laugh. Penny casually licked her paw and drew it over her ear, trying to appear nonchalant about being called ‘Ms. Penny’, but mostly she was just happy about Luna smiling for the first time in several weeks.

“I think we could use a light snack to settle our nerves,” Luna admitted.

Penny meowed in agreement, licking her lips at the promise of her favorite berries.

Michael unlatched the chain and stepped into the kitchen, nodding politely at Penny before pulling out ingredients and equipment for a light fruit parfait.

“I assume your audience didn’t go well,” Michael said, carefully dicing several strawberries with a practiced hand.

Luna filled a water bowl for Penny and grabbed a glass of juice for herself. “They didn’t listen to me. But it’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have said those things, Penny. I’m sorry.”

Penny purred, rubbing her cheek against Luna’s arm. Then she settled in front of her bowl, eager to quench her thirst.

“Ms. Luna, forgive my curiosity, but what reason do you have for staying here? You have a Pokémon. Most children these days would leave home the moment they’re of legal age for an official license.”

“My parents would hunt me down if I left. You know that, Michael,” Luna said. “Penny and I would be on the run constantly. I can’t make her commit to that.”

Penny scowled. Of course she would commit! She had claws and fangs for a reason.

Michael chuckled as he set the finished parfaits in front of Luna and Penny. “Ms. Penny seems to disagree.”

“She likes to contradict me,” Luna muttered, swirling the blueberries around with a spoon.

“It sounds as if fear is your only reason,” Michael mused. “But you were also courageous enough to request a Pokémon from your parents. Many staff members never would’ve confronted them directly.”

Luna dropped her spoon on the table. Yogurt splattered onto her sleeve, but Luna didn’t seem to care. She whipped around and stared at Michael in surprise.

“You think I’m brave?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Michael shook his head. He took a napkin and dabbed at the yogurt on Luna’s sleeve. “No, Ms. Luna. Bravery can easily turn to folly, and I know you’re not a fool. But I believe you display true courage when the situation arises. You found Penny as a critically injured stray who’d happened to wander into the garden, and you nursed her back to health.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luna said. “You were the one who took care of her.”

“You don’t wear self-defeat well. It’s not a matter of who took care of Ms. Penny’s needs, but rather that you chose to help her at all despite knowing your parents would disapprove. I would dare call that an act of true courage.”

“True courage…” Luna murmured. She finished the last of her parfait, giving the empty bowl to Michael.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Michael asked, raising an eyebrow.

Penny swiped the blueberry juice off her mouth, adding her own questioning meow to Michael’s worried tone.

“Yes, I’m sure.” Luna smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Thank you for everything, Michael.”

Penny followed Luna out of the kitchen. Her ears twitched at the running water and tinkling of dishes behind her.

“Likewise…”

Only Penny caught the sadness in his voice.

o-o-o-o-o

Luna wasn’t changing into her pajamas. And she always changed into her pajamas before reading a story to Penny.

Penny narrowed her eyes. There was an odd lilt in Luna’s voice, like she wasn’t enthusiastic about the story tonight. She was lost in her own mind, somewhere Penny couldn’t ever reach.

“’Awakened, the human dons the Pokémon hide to roam villages.’” Luna finished Sinnoh Folk Tales, then put it back on the shelf. She trailed her hand over the book covers, hesitating over a frayed photo of herself and Penny.

The camera had been nothing but a cheap disposable, but the maid who’d taken the photo was kind enough to get the picture developed somewhere. Shame she’d been fired. She’d made the tastiest poffins that Penny had eaten in her life.

Penny closed her eyes and burrowed into the blankets, leaving nothing except the tips of her ears poking out. She placed a paw over her face, flicking her ears as a light laugh filled the room.

But the atmosphere soon grew somber again.

Under the covers, Penny took deep breaths to fool Luna into believing she was asleep. She’d get to the bottom of this, no matter how much her human believed it was her burden to bear.

A Meowth never let anything escape her claws.

“Penny…I-I’m…” Luna’s voice faltered. “Please understand.”

Her footsteps sounded faintly on the rug, thudded against the floorboards, and slapped against the tile until the sound faded away completely.

Penny’s ears swiveled to the door, listening for Luna’s soft, cautious steps.

Five minutes passed, the Hoothoot clock marking every agonizing second with a faint click.

Her human just wanted a glass of water. That was all. She shouldn’t worry.

But the doubtful voice in her head told her otherwise.

Soon the waiting grew unbearable, and Penny finally threw off the blankets and stalked out the bedroom door. Her skilled paws slid over the ornate rug, but she had no time to be proud over the abilities she’d honed because of her humble beginnings.

Learn where to find food and water. Learn who to avoid. The two most basic rules of the wild.

Luna and Michael were good humans. Avoid the Master and Mistress. The rest of the staff were a gamble, though better moods generally meant less trouble.

Penny crept downstairs, then ran for cover behind a couch at the clack of a high heel behind her.

Luna’s dark hair streamed behind her as she moved into the garden of red lilies. Penny heard Luna’s ragged breaths, smelled her fear, but her steps never wavered. She lifted her face to the stars above.

“I’m ready, Gardevoir. Please guide me and test my resolve if I’m truly destined to be your world’s hero.”

A shimmering blue portal opened before Luna. She stepped through it, leaving no trace of her existence behind.

And Penny cried under an endless canopy of stars.

End AN:So planned concepts: Luna would’ve gone to the world of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, specifically Rescue Team. She gets transformed into a Skitty and teams up with a Charmander named Sunny, who’s the son of the Charizard on Team ACT. There would’ve been a concurrent plot with Penny dealing with the fallout of Luna’s disappearance from her world as well. Overall, the concept was fun to create, but it was too ambitious for me.

But I hope you found this enjoyable regardless.

#pokemon mystery dungeon #pokemon ocs #meowth #pokemon fanfiction #fanfiction

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turningtummyrubs · 4 years

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h+l (1)

(In which Henry gets a stomach ache during a dinner party...)

The discomfort starts at the same time as the gala, precisely 9 PM. It’s tolerable, at first. A bit of a nuisance but nowhere near debilitating. Simply a slight churning in Henry’s gut, some mild aching as he walks from guest to guest, mingling and welcoming them all. If he moves too fast, an occasional sharp twinge will pierce dully just below his navel, but it can be quickly dissolved with a strategic press of his fingertips.

“I do so love those petunias,” Miss Crackett coos, golden tresses pinned up neatly in two spiraling braids with delicate cream flowers woven through them like little splashes of vibrance. She’s been blathering on and on about their floral arrangements for the past ten minutes and, frankly, Henry’s growing quite bored.

He straightens his cufflinks and smiles the princeliest smile he can muster. “Why don’t you speak with my brother about the decor? He’s the one who oversees all that stuff. I’m sure he’d be ecstatic to talk with you about it.”

Crackett perks up immediately. “Really? Oh, I’d so love that! Where is he?”

Henry directs her towards his brother, who’s inhaling an entire tray of finger sandwiches. He breathes a lengthy sigh of relief, retreating to a secluded corner when he finally finds himself alone. Miss Crackett truly is a delight, but only in small doses.

He leans back against the wall and takes a long sip of the glass of water he’d picked up on his way across the room. He shifts with discomfort when the water falls heavy in his stomach, sloshing painfully. His stomach is now achingly tender to the touch, as if freshly bruised. Henry would really like to lie down, to give his poor tummy a bit of a rest, but alas duty calls and he’s forced to take his seat near the head of the table by his father when the bell rings, signalling dinner time.

His father, the King, gives a dull, lengthy speech to appease the elders before allowing everyone to eat. Henry almost wishes he’d spoken for even longer because the thought of putting food in his aching belly seems far too daunting a task. The churning in his belly picks up, as if sensing his anxiety.

Henry can’t just not eat though, especially not with Lucien, the prince from the neighbouring county, watching him like a hawk from across the table, searching for something to dissect and stab him with. That’s how they’ve always been, ever since they were young and first met. Their kingdoms have a barely civil relationship filled with passive-aggressive insults and thinly veiled disdain and it seems to have passed on to them. Usually, Henry would be more reciprocal of Lucien’s smouldering stare, but his stomach is far too distracting and it’s too difficult to concentrate on upholding their enemy status.

Henry resignedly loads a heap of turkey, some cranberry sauce, a lop of steaming, butter-y mashed potatoes and a helping of salad onto his plate. Just looking at it nearly triggers his gag reflex, but he knows he’ll need to toughen up and just force all of it down without complaint to keep up appearances. His stomach cramps. Ugh, Henry hates appearances.

He eats the turkey first, which settles like a boulder in his lower belly, rolling like a heavy barrel from side to side. The cranberry sauce that accompanied it was not a good choice. The sweetness sends his upset tummy into a twitching fit. His abdominal muscles burn with a searing soreness at the rapid convulsing. The salad goes down very slowly, and the mashed potatoes up the queasiness factor from a four to a solid nine, the rich butter agitating his strained insides even further.

He obediently drinks the traditional chalice of non-alcoholic cider placed in front of him. Horrendous nausea wells up at the sickly sweetness, and the bubbly fizz causes his stomach to burble like mad. He kneads at the cramps beneath the table, maintaining a polite, composed look on his face all the while.

Something shifts abruptly and his tummy suddenly goes groaningly tight, heavy discomfort pooling in his lower belly. He hesitantly presses his fingertips into the churning area and immediately regrets it when a horrid feeling of queasy nausea wells up his throat. He wills it back down which only succeeds in upsetting his unsettled tummy even further.

The King stands to deliver a final message and orders everyone else seated along the table to stand as well. Henry braces a hand against the table and slowly pushes himself up, face going pinched as his belly rebels against itself violently. His insides strain and burble against the tightness, demanding to be soothed and comforted. Henry swallows and keeps his gaze resolutely forward, which happens to be directly at Lucien.

Lucien's slate eyes bore into him, narrowed and assessing. Henry feels almost naked in front of him. His eyes narrow even further and Henry is certain Lucien's aware of his physical turmoil. Lucien's always been rather perceptive, far more than most. He probably knows more about Henry than anyone simply by watching. And vice versa, Henry supposes. He's not sure how he feels about that.

Henry's father sets down the chalice with a dull thud and, as people begin to disperse, Henry realizes with no small amount of relief that he's finally free to leave. The thought of retiring back to his bedroom actually isn't all that appealing, though. He won't have to pretend to be feeling all right and dandy anymore, but his belly will still be churning just as much and Henry can just tell this pain will last long into the night.

Something twinges low in his gut and he quickly hurries out the door, forcing a smile and waving half-heartedly at the people beginning to cluster around him. A maid—Luce—stops him just outside his door, wrinkling her brow, and says, “Are you quite alright, Prince Henry?”

His smile thins out and he nods shortly, voice clipped as he says, “Fine, thank you.”

She spots the hand hovering over his stomach and his tightly clenched jaw and raises an eyebrow. “Alright, but I’ll drop off a cup of tea and a heat pack just in case, okay?”

Henry smiles, a genuine one this time, small as it is. “Thank you, Luce. You’re amazing.”

She nods once, returning the smile, and scampers off.

Henry closes the door to his bedroom behind him and gingerly eases himself down onto the bed after shutting the thick purple drapes and turning on a tall, sleek, rectangular lamp that bathes the room in a pale white glow. He grunts, forehead creasing, as his belly cramps.

He leans back against the headboard and lightly rubs his belly over the clean dress shirt, breathing heavily as the contents of his stomach writhe and churn, straining against the drum-taut surface. Though his stomach is still flat as ever, everything inside feels heavy and packed, painfully tight and flooding his entire body with a pulsing discomfort.

As Henry tries his best to quell the twisting unsettlement in his stomach, he can’t get Lucien’s searching eyes out of his mind. Really, he can’t get Lucien at all out. As much as Henry loathes to admit it, Lucien is, well, very attractive. Pale blond hair, eyes like ice and marble skin. He holds a certain striking power that compels everyone to shut up the moment he opens his mouth. The chills that always run down Henry’s spine whenever Lucien speaks used to be mistaken for disdain, now he’s not sure what it is.

A soft knock sounds at the door and Luce pokes her head in, opening the door fully when Henry waves her in. She brings in a tray holding a steaming mug of peppermint tea and two slices of plain toast and sets it down on the nightstand along with a hot pad.

“I know you probably won’t want to eat right now, but something bland like the toast should help in the long run,” Luce says. She’s right. The thought of eating even more is nauseating. “And the hot pack should last for at least half an hour.”

“Thank you, Luce,” Henry says.

After she leaves, he settles the hot pack at the base of his stomach where the tightness lets up to lurching and churning and leans back against the headboard again, shoulders tense as he shifts with discomfort.

He takes a sip of tea and his belly gurgles as the hot tea sloshes down into the pit of his stomach. The warmth feels nice for a moment before his tummy begins cramping around it, prompting him to wince and lightly roll his knuckles over the shifting area. The motion incites lots of achy burbling and he flattens his palm firmly against it in an effort to calm the upset rumbles.

After a moment, Henry readjusts the hot pack and takes a bite of the toast with great trepidation. He forces down the two slices, apprehension growing all the while. He intersperses every few bites with a sip of tea.

The first minute after he’s finished, the agitation in his stomach has started to settle down, but then, to Henry’s great dismay, the new food combined with all that he’d had to consume during dinner strains terribly at his insides, rolling and seizing with abrupt pain. All he can do is sit there and helplessly try to soothe the sick noises coming from his upset tummy.

As the tightness builds, his palm suddenly dips down into a particularly achy spot and a painful burp leaves Henry’s mouth. The churning worsens considerably after that as he frantically attempts to calm his belly. The heavy pressure of the rubbing only succeeds in pushing up a few more nauseous burps, which he stifles with his palm. No matter how hard he tries, he can never seem to locate the spots that will provide more comfort than pain.

The heat pad loses its warmth and the small comfort that had lent him leaves. He pushes it off, the weight now making him queasy and uncomfortable, and kneads at the spot, shifting onto his side. Every roll of his knuckles sends a bout of painful sloshing throughout his belly accompanied by a slew of sickly gurgles.

The bread and tea have now solidified into a tender lump in his stomach, sore to the touch. He lies flat on his back with no small amount of pain and rubs his entire stomach in broad, sweeping circles. He does so very, very lightly with only the tips of his fingers because any further pressure makes his belly squeeze sickeningly with discomfort. He gives a little more attention to the tense, aching knot beneath his navel, groaning miserably when the hesitant palpitations work his burbling insides up further.

Henry’s about to call Luce back to bring him another hot pack when a knock sounds at his door.

“Come in!” he says, suspecting Luce is some sort of mind-reader. Only it’s not Luce. It’s Lucien. His eyes widen before narrowing suspiciously, shoulders tensing. “What’re you doing here, Lucien?”

Lucien enters the room and shuts the door behind him. The dim light faintly illuminates his face, making him look like a statue of some sort of Greek god. He raises a brow. “You’re sick.”

Henry figures it won’t be any use arguing the fact. He sure as hell won’t be able to prove it. “And?”

Lucien takes a seat on the side of the bed Henry isn’t currently occupying as if he owns it and almost arrogantly says, “And I’m here to help, obviously.”

Henry’s brow furrows. “What? Why?”

“You’re the only interesting thing at all these boring parties,” Lucien says plainly. Henry isn’t sure whether to feel insulted or flattered. He supposes it depends on what Lucien’s definition of interesting is.

He’s about to ask when his tummy clenches abruptly, the roiling stirring up a painful storm in his gut. Everything just won’t stop moving. The contents of his stomach constantly straining and shifting beneath the drum-taut surface of his belly, pushing and twisting and lurching, loud and noisy.

Lucien slides Henry’s shirt up, exposing his flat, tanned abdomen, and raises a brow. “May I?”

Henry frowns in confusion but nods.

Lucien’s large, rough palm comes to rest at the base of his stomach, warm and supporting against the cramps. His thumb presses in and up, in and up, from lower belly to navel. He slowly slides his palm down and in a firm circle before pushing up and the heavy pressure coaxes up a burp that leaves Henry sinking back into the sheets with relief, some of that aching tightness alleviated. Lucien continues the massage, rubbing steadily against the roiling unsettlement.

Henry’s stomach suddenly spasms, a quick, sharp convulsion, and he gasps breathlessly, a soft moan leaving his lips.

Lucien frowns and has him sit up further before saying, “We need to get a bit more food into you. You’re not digesting things properly. I think applesauce would probably work best.”

Henry’s cheeks flush in dismay. “No, it will not. It’ll only make it hurt more.”

Lucien sighs. “Yes, but it will help in the end.”

“Do I have to?” Henry asks, feeling very much like a small child.

Lucien raises an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth softening slightly. “If you want to feel better, yes.”

Henry sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fine…”

Lucien calls Luce back and sends her off to the kitchens for a cup of applesauce. The quickly growing anxiety inside Henry makes his tummy even more upset and Lucien patiently rubs back and forth at the churning, hand pressing in further whenever he feels the contents of Henry’s stomach shift a certain way. Lucien’s right, Henry realizes. All this packed heaviness won’t go away on its own, so no matter how hard it’s going to be, he’ll have to finish all that applesauce.

Luce arrives with a small bowl of applesauce a few minutes later, and, to Henry’s great disappointment, Lucien quits his soothing ministrations to get up and take it, thanking Luce. He sits back down on the bed and holds out a spoonful for Henry to eat. Henry’s fingers tighten in the sheets with apprehension, but he takes a bite of the applesauce. His face crumples as the sickly sweet mush slides down his throat and settles in his stomach, nausea welling up his throat.

He realizes, panicked, that this time the nausea is truly coming. Lucien must realize, too, because he swiftly grabs the small trash can by Henry’s bed and places it beneath the side of the bed where he’s suddenly lurched over.

“I don’t wanna… I don’t—” Henry pants, eyes stinging with the effort it takes not to throw up. It’ll feel horrible and gross and his tummy will feel so upset afterwards.

Lucien settles a hand on Henry’s back, rubbing broad circles. “Come on, Henry, you’re just going to have to let it out.” He slips his hand beneath Henry’s shirt, directly on top of that soft burbling area, and abruptly presses in with the heel of his palm. That’s what does it.

Henry flops back against the bed after he’s done, miserable and thoroughly spent. Lucien gets up to go retrieve a glass of water and a washcloth. His stomach is so upset now it’s churning like a whirl pool, the contents twisting and spinning rapidly. He doesn’t even bother trying to quell the heavy discomfort. The thought of any further disturbance makes him want to throw up all over again.

Lucien returns and helps him back up into a sitting position, the covers pooling at his waist. He hands him a glass of water and Henry drinks it greedily. Lucien then picks the bowl of applesauce back up again and feeds more of it to a miserable Henry. After every spoonful, Lucien smooths his palm against the distress building in Henry’s stomach, hand sliding smoothly back and forth along his tummy.

After Henry’s completely finished with the applesauce, groaning and squirming with horrible discomfort, Lucien can feel his suffering tummy begin to take its course. As if to signal the start of digestion, it starts making loud, sickly noises. Every press of Lucien’s palm brings with it a distorted gurgle, louder in the areas that make Henry more nauseous.

Lucien kneads gently but firmly at the tight area directly beneath Henry’s ribs, coaxing up some alleviating burps. Then, he massages the gurgly sick areas, palpating quickly with his fingertips at the cramped heaviness and cupping the burbling shifts and lurches with his rough palm, smoothing it all up. Every firm stroke brings up a small, nauseous burp that leaves Henry groaning with pain, face crumpling momentarily each time.

Lucien presses and rubs the particularly nauseous, achingly tender area of his belly directly above his waist, bringing up the most painful burp yet that, after a moment of anguish, leaves Henry sighing with relief.

After that, Lucien rubs away the rest of the minor aches and twinges with broad circles, clockwise to help aid the gurgling digestion. Once the pain has settled into a faintly dull ache, he moves behind Henry and instructs him to lean forward, dropping his head. He rubs large, warm circles into his tense back, then slides his hands up and down, stopping to squeeze his strained shoulders each time, until Henry is pliant and relaxed, warm and content as his belly gurgles away.

———

can’t say i’m too proud of this one, unfortunately. it’s some pretty old work (lmao only like a month old) but i’ve definitely grown a lot since then. anyway, these are my ocs henry and lucien! there’s no real plot to any of my stories so they don’t have a grand storyline or anything like that, but i like them haha

#belly kink #belly rubs #my writing #oc #bellyache #henryandlucien #bellykinkwriting

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fireinmoonshot · 4 years

Text

REBEL | ARMITAGE HUX x READER | PART EIGHT

CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX | PART SEVEN Summary: Armitage Hux finds himself strangely fascinated by you, a Resistance fighter and pilot, even though he knows he shouldn’t. You know that there’s much more to him than you see on the surface. Pairing: female!Reader x Armitage Hux Fandom: Star Wars Word Count: 2221 Warnings: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS. A/N: Happy New Year! This is essentially the celebration I’m having for the beginning of 2020 here in Australia, as it’s currently 12:40am on January 1st as I’m typing this A/N, and 1:22am as I’m posting this... I hope this chapter brightens up your New Year even more. I know it’s shorter than usual, but there is a reason for that, and it’s just because I didn’t want to drag it out too much with filler before getting into things after a small time jump in the next part. Enjoy, and I wish you all a very Happy New Year too! Read it on Ao3 here.

The moment your X-wing touches back down on Ajan Kloss, you know you’re home. Around you, people are hugging and cheering and crying and laughing already, and you can’t wait to be among them. You climb out of your fighter without hesitation, and as soon as you set your feet on the ground, a passerby claps your shoulder with a hand and flashes you a grin.

R6-LE5 whirs up behind you, and you crouch down in front of her.

“Thanks for having my back out there, couldn’t have done it without you.”

She beeps happily, and you grin in return and let her go.

For a moment, you just stand and watch. Your face is starting to hurt from smiling as you look at everyone – at their happy faces, at their excitement at having won against the First Order, against Palpatine, after all this time. You’re itching to push through the crowds, to try and find your friends, but you made a promise.

A promise that you would meet Armitage in the same place as before.

And right now, you’re standing there.

Finn finds you before Armitage can, though, and after he runs over to you, you can’t stop yourself from pulling him into a hug and holding him close. He’s shaking a little, and you assume it’s from the adrenaline. You can tell he’s just happy to be alive, as you all are. You’re happy he made it out alive.

“What you did back there, you were incredible, Finn– or should I say General?”

He pulls away from the hug with a laugh. “FInn is fine. I’ll let you save General for the more formal moments, but I don’t expect you to actually use it,” he chuckles. “Hey, I’m glad you’re safe. I was worried for a second there… but…”

“But we made it.” You finish his sentence for him. “We made it.”

His smile returns. “That, we did.”

He gives your shoulder a squeeze before running off to find Poe, Rey and Rose, and you’re left alone once more, waiting for Armitage, though you don’t really feel alone with the excitement coursing through him. You’re hoping Armitage won’t be much longer and glance around to look for him when you finally spot him.

Armitage looks rough. Much rougher than he’d sounded over the comms on Exegol and the way back to Ajan Kloss. His hair is messier than you’ve ever seen it, he’s got a little blood on his cheek and his uniform is charred with ash and dust. He looks like the perfect picture of a Resistance fighter, and for the first time you see him as that entirely. Whatever he still had left in him that was General Hux before the assault, he’s let die along with the First Order.

He’s still looking around for you when you take off running.

Your feet are carrying you before you can even think about what you’re doing. But you’re friends now. And friends can be glad to see each other. And friends – well, friends can hug, or at least you hope, because seconds later you’re hurtling into Armitage’s arms, your own arms wrapping around him for the second time in a day, and he’s stumbling backwards with the force and shock of the hug.

And then… then he’s laughing.

You nearly pull away from the hug just so you can see it on his face.

“This is quite the warm welcome back,” Armitage smiles.

“I think you deserve it.”

You keep a hold on him for a few more moments before you pull away and look up at him. He doesn’t look as bad from close up, but you still reach up with a hand and gently take his chin, turning his head from side to side to make sure there are no serious injuries that he’s hiding from you.

His cheeks slowly start to redden at the contact.

“I– I’m all right, actually. There’s no need for that.”

Eyes narrowed, you relent and let him go.

“How did everything go on the destroyer? How was it, being down in the middle of combat like that?” You inquire. You feel like you’re bombarding him with too many questions, but you’re intrigued. You want to know how it felt, how he feels after taking on such heavy combat like you’d seen. “You didn’t chicken out?”

Armitage scoffs. “Chicken out?”

You fix him with a look.

“No, I did not chicken out. I think I held my own rather well.”

“I can attest to that.” Rose appears beside you and briefly wraps you in a hug. “He saved my life out there… never thought I’d be saying that… but he did,” she admits, and then she looks at you. “I’m glad to see you’re safe.”

And then she’s off, running straight into Chewie’s waiting arms, and you’re entirely dumbfounded as you look up at Armitage again. He’d saved her life. He’d saved Rose’s life, and she was grateful for it. You thought you’d never see the day.

He can tell what you’re thinking before you even say it, just from the look on your face. “It was nothing, really. Just a Sith Trooper sneaking up on her that I saw first.” He’s downplaying it. He doesn’t know why he is, he was always one to talk up his achievements, but here, now, it feels like the right thing to do.

You entirely disagree.

“You saved her life, Armitage. That’s not nothing.”

His gaze drops to the ground again, but this time you’re fast – you’re forcing him to look up at you again, to meet your eyes once more, and as he does, he swears he can feel something inside him crumble at the look in your eyes.

He’s never seen that look on you before.

For the first time ever, he allows himself the luxury to think about how beautiful you are.

“We don’t forget those things around here, not ever. You saving Rose’s life, that’s everything.” You make sure that he knows it. “You’ve come a long way from the man I met on that ship back when you first started giving us information. I’m proud of you.”

His lips curl into a small smile. He’d never really had anyone say that to him before. “Thank you,” he hums. “It was rather satisfying to see that ship go down, and all those on it go down with it.” Allegiant General Pryde, he was glad to be rid of in particular. That man had always been a particular kind of terrible, the last tie to his father. And now he never had to see him again.

–

Hours have passed when you start to finally tire after the day you’ve had.

Around you, as you sit at a small table with your friends, the Resistance are still celebrating. Drinks have been passed around, joy has been shared, and all of you are taking it in before things settle down the following morning, and you know they will.

You’ve won, but there’s an entire universe waiting for what comes next. People are rising up, there are bound to be First Order sympathisers who aren’t and those who were harmed by them are likely still in recovery. The real mission, it starts in the morning, and it seems you’re all eager to keep that as far away as possible.

Beside you, Armitage notices that you’re starting to tire when he watches you stifle two yawns in a row. He’s amused by your attempt to stay as awake as possible, but then he’s grateful when you finally stand and announce your departure.

He stands up alongside you.

“I’ll join you. I think it is time to call it a night.”

You don’t object.

It’s only when you actually both reach your quarters after walking in silence there the whole way that you realise that Armitage doesn’t have anywhere to sleep. You pause with your hand on the door and look up at him.

He furrows his eyebrows. “Is everything all right?”

“You don’t have anywhere to sleep.”

“I– I don’t. You’re right.”

You laugh at the lapse of realisation. “I guess we just forgot about normal human things like sleeping before, when we were too busy saving the entire universe from certain doom,” you chuckle. “You go on in and wait, I’ll find some pillows and blankets. You can sleep in my quarters. I’ll take the floor.”

He hopes you hear him as you walk away and he yells “The floor? No, you won’t!”

–

Armitage gets his way.

You make up a makeshift bed for him on the floor of your quarters with blankets and pillows that you’d sourced from the Tantive IV and elsewhere. He seemed to be happy enough with it – at least until he lies down on it.

It’s certainly not as comfortable as his bed had been on the Steadfast.

But it’s good enough.

And that night he drifts off to sleep for the first time in a long while entirely content. He dreams of a life in the Resistance, letting his previous life in the First Order go and then, strangely, of you hugging him again.

–

When he wakes up the following morning, you’re nowhere to be found, and so he gets himself ready for the day in silence. You’re a busy woman, but you’ve left new clothes for him at the foot of his bed despite that, and he changes into them, happy to be rid of the dirty other ones. These ones seem to fit him a little better, and he’s grateful for the change.

He finds you sitting out with Poe, Finn, Rose and Rey, with a plate of some sort of food in front of you. It doesn’t look particularly appetising. You’re sat just out the front of the Tantive IV at a small table, the exact same place you’d all celebrated the night before.

“Hugs! You’re awake!” It’s Poe’s voice that calls out to him.

You throw him a look. “Poe, really?”

Armitage pulls up a chair beside you and narrows his eyes. “I knew you were saying that on purpose. I wasn’t impressed then, and I will admit I’m not entirely impressed by it now. But I’ll allow it this once.”

The smile on Poe’s face grows. “Why, thank you.”

You turn to Armitage. “How’d you sleep?”

“Entirely well. It’s no First Order bed, but for now, it will do.”

“Good,” you hum in reply. “I figured you could use a bit of sleep, and you didn’t wake up when I was getting ready, so I just let you sleep a bit more. And I have a feeling we won’t be getting too much more sleep in the next few weeks.”

Poe raises his eyebrows. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

“Poe.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

You glance back at Armitage apologetically. “I meant that with everyone splitting up to travel around to planets directly affected by the First Order, we’ll probably be on the move a lot. I was thinking about where I want to go just after I woke up.”

Finn raises his eyebrows from across the table. “And where is that?”

Part of you was hesitant to tell Armitage, to admit it to him, but the rest of you was just itching to tell him what you’d come up with. You could only hope that he thought it was a good idea – and he had been the one to suggest it anyway.

“I was thinking,” you meet Armitage’s eyes, “that you and I could go to Arkanis.”

He’s a little taken aback by your suggestion.

When he’d suggested visiting Arkanis with you the previous day, he hadn’t expected that it would be planned out this soon. He’d thought it would be in the future – perhaps so far in the future that it never happened at all. And the idea of visiting his home planet and probably not even recognising it… it slightly terrifies him. He clears his throat and stares at you for a moment, fumbles over his words for a few seconds, before he nods once, and then twice.

“When– when would we leave?”

You shrug a shoulder. “I don’t know – a few weeks, maybe? I want to stay here for a bit, get things sorted out and help the people that are going to stay here make it a real base. I’ll be flying to and from here for at least that long.” An idea suddenly comes to mind, and then you’re grinning up at him. “I could teach you how to fly!”

Armitage blanches. His cheeks redden. “What?”

“I could teach you how to fly an X-wing, or whatever you want, really.”

Poe snorts from across the table. “I can see this ending very well.” His words are entirely sarcastic. Finn elbows him in the side and he winces at the impact.

“Perhaps we should just… take things one step at a time,” Armitage gently suggests instead. “Plan this trip to Arkanis, organise things for the base here… let’s not take on too much responsibility so soon.”

His words make sense. “One step at a time, then – Arkanis first. What do you say?”

He supposes the trip might not be so bad as long as you’re with him.

–

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#rebel #star wars #armitage hux #armitage hux x reader #general hux #star wars x reader #general hux x reader #armitage hux x you #tros #the rise of skywalker

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blarrghe · 4 years

Note

“don’t look at me like i’m a hero. you’ll only disappoint yourself.” For my stabby revolutionary Lavellan Lyanna? Born to a clan, but grew up in the shadow of Halamshiral. I’d love to see how she gets along with Taren and Theo. ❤️

Oh what a badass! I hope you don’t mind that there’s quite a lot of Taren/Theo in this and not a huge amount of Lyanna, I just thought this made a very excellent introduction line for her! Also I haven’t written them fighting together yet so that was neat.

“Who are we going to meet again?” Theo asked the question through a long, drawn-out yawn, stretching his arms over his head as they walked. The road was clear of travelers still, and a thin fog was being slowly lifted from the ground with the rising sun.

“Don’t you ever listen when I talk?” Taren scolded in reply, walking ahead of Theo. There was a brightness to his step, despite the fact that they had both only just woken from sleep.

“Not when it’s this early.” Theo grumbled behind him, shuffling in the way that he thought was more fitted to grogginess. Not that Taren would know anything about grogginess. Maybe all those mean spirited letters were on to something, and his brother really was some sort of insane demon who never needed rest. More likely though, it was the entire pot of coffee that Taren had opted to take for himself, after Theo had rejected the bitter liquid, that gave him his pep.

“Leliana only gave a nickname - “Fox” - but she claims some link to us.” Taren explained again, and Theo distantly remembered hearing the information before. He raised an eyebrow at “us”. Taren meant the Dalish us, not the Inquisition. The latter connection was a given for Theo, these days, but his inclusion with the former was more complicated.

“You mean the clan.” He countered quickly; not a question, more a reminder. Neither he nor Taren had been in the company of their clan since the breaking of the world began, but for Theo, the connection had been tentative long before that.

“Yes,” Taren replied, some of what Theo teasingly called his Keeper Voice breaking through in the remark, “that us.”

Theo sighed, it was too early for an argument. “So why are you bringing me?”

Taren shrugged. “I needed a scout,” he answered, “seemed like your sort of job.” Theo nodded along, already forgetting to listen to the answer to what he had just asked, as his mind attempted to wander away into sleepy daydreams again. Taren stopped and looked back at him, waiting for his attention to return; the bobbing of his head must not have been a very convincing response. “And you do have some connection to the clan, too.” Taren’s words were pointed as he linked one of his arms with his, keeping his gait quick as Theo stumbled to keep up. He was talking about himself, Theo realised with a pang of regret. Of course he hadn’t meant to exclude that.

“Did you know her?” He asked, letting Taren lead them on with his quick steps. It wasn’t that hard to keep up, his long legs could outpace Taren easily, if not for his endless supplies of energy.

“How would I know? All we have is a nickname.”

Right. He had said that. Did Taren not realise that it was still not even really dawn?

“Leliana thinks she could be a useful ally, and if the reports are right, I agree.” Taren was still talking, and Theo nodded along again, more of the information returning to his memory.

“Because she works for that elf you met in Orlais.” He had synthesized Taren’s explanation of the political machinations of Orlais into some few simple notes for his memory - elven revolutionaries were fighting against imperialistic nobility; everything was pretty much terrible, and it was mostly the shemlens’ fault. Taren had a somewhat more balanced view of things, one that took into account the relations of other countries, various historical battles, and all sorts of secret knowledge gained through complicated espionage. He appreciated that it was complicated, and if it wasn’t so early he might even have been willing to dedicate real intellectual thought to the discussion, but for his current purposes the categories “elven rebels” and “human jerks” made sense of things well enough. They were off to meet an elven rebel. He supposed that was indeed “his sort of job”.

“Didn’t sound like she works for anyone, from the report. But yes, she has a reputation.” Taren said.

“And you think you can get her to work for you.” Not a question, he knew exactly how Taren thought; and he knew Taren would be there anyway, even if he didn’t want the revolutionary’s help.

Taren shrugged. “She’s still a Lavellan.” Good old predictable Taren, putting on his Keeper Voice again.

The conversation was interrupted by the sounds of a violent commotion ahead. Horses neighing, shouted voices, and the clashing of steel echoed down the road, and a flock of birds lifted itself noisily from the trees. Theo and Taren sprang apart, each quickly reaching for their weapons. Taren cast a barrier over both of them while Theo nocked an arrow, and cautiously, keeping to the edge of the forest which lined the road, they approached.

The commotion was caused by an ambush of highwaymen, who had apparently jumped out to rob a caravan which traveled down the road. The victims of the attack appeared to be but simple travelers - refugees, probably. Theo saw pointed ears poking out of hoods, small bodies huddled behind larger ones. Two of the older looking travelers had shoddy weapons in hand, struggling against the bandits.

His throat tightened, anger flooding him as loosed his arrows at the attackers, catching one in the face before the brute could bring down an axe on a struggling civilian fighter. He wasted no time in joining the fight, aiming careful arrows at the gaggle of unlucky bandits. Taren had sprung to action as well. More protective barriers sprang up around the refugees without weapons, and roots and rock rose and shuddered from the ground under bandits’ feet.

Then as they fought, another entered the fray. She seemed to drop from the sky, two long blades flashing brightly in her hands. She moved quickly, zigzagging her way from one bandit to another, leaving them clutching bleeding wounds or lying motionless in her wake. One of the men ran, and Theo found himself in close combat with the large brute, wrestling against his arms to try to keep a blade out of his face. A couple stabs to Taren’s barrier over him had weakened it, another would likely break through. Their faces were close. The man was big and burly, with dirt-caked skin and wild hair. A sinister grin spread over the bandits face. Theo was taller, but not as broadly built, and his arms wouldn’t be able to hold back the blows for long. He shoved a knee into the man, staggering him long enough that he could attempt to draw his own short blade from his belt, but the bandit rebounded before he could land another blow, and he narrowly dodged a swing of his dagger.

Before he could dodge another blow, the fast fighting woman spun quickly in and out of view, shoving the bandit away, spinning around behind him as he struggled to keep his footing, and stabbing him in the back - a quick succession of stabs under the ribs - the bandit dropped clutching his wounds, tense, and then limp.

Theo took a couple steps back, catching his breath, and looked up at the woman who had come to his rescue. Bright red hair and eyes still narrowed for a fight. The rest of the attackers had fallen now, and Theo let out a breath. “Thanks.” He said to the woman, whose expression was changing now from a grimace to a proud smirk. “That was amazing.” He could have gotten out of it, of course, but credit where it was due: this woman could fight.

“Don’t look at me like I’m a hero, you’ll only disappoint yourself.” Replied his saviour casually, turning away from him to stoop over the now-dead bandit’s body, she rummaged in the man’s pockets, adding what coin was there to her own. As she went about pickpocketing the dead, a small fennec scampered over to her, following her and making circles around her legs.

“But you are one, aren’t you?” Taren stepped toward her, his eye scanning the scene. Theo looked again at the fennec. Oh. Fox. Taren went on talking, listing a few accomplishments that Theo again vaguely remembered from an earlier briefing. The woman stopped gathering spoils and stood to meet him.

“And who the fuck are you?”

Theo tried not to laugh at Taren’s expression. To anyone else, he seemed always to do a remarkably good job of staying calm, but Theo saw him twitch. He was really starting to like this Fox woman.

“Taren Lavellan,” he answered her with stress on the clan name and without giving his title. Not that he needed to, everyone in the world knew his name by now. But maybe he was spending too much time in Orlais, because it seemed to Theo that the words Taren chose when he met people always meant something.

“Oh.” She sounded surprised, eyes widening a little as she spoke, but Theo couldn’t tell if it was a happy sound. “No offence, but I expected you’d be taller.”

That time, he did laugh. He tried to stifle it with his sleeve, but it didn’t matter, Taren was laughing too. The woman’s smirk returned to her face, and her eye landed on Theo. He cleared his throat, banishing the rest of his laughter.

“Theo Lavellan,” he offered in introduction, “I uh, work for the Inquisition.”

“Lyanna.” Replied the woman with a curt nod. She returned her smirking gaze to Taren. “Can I help you, Inquisitor?”

“Actually,” Taren began with a smirk that mirrored hers, but it was amused, more than cocky, “I think we can help each other.”

Introductions over with, Taren broke the conversation to help the refugees return to their feet, and Theo heard him making generous offers of aid as he sent them on their way again. Lyanna was watching him work, the smirk not leaving her face even as her eyes narrowed again in careful consideration. Theo, meanwhile, watched her fox, and idly wondered where he could get one of his own.

#lyanna lavellan #lavellan bros #theo lavellan #just let all the elves be friends ok #my writing #dragon age fanfic #dragon age #dai #writing prompts #I hope u enjoy!!#midnightprelude

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one-of-us-must-be-crazy · 4 years

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You cannot bait us with Samuels as a parent and then tell us you're never going to write it!

I said I wasn’t going to include it in Lucky Star, but I’d write a one-shot. I just don’t think with the technicalities of things that they’d pursue it long term. Between the “this laboratory smells like eugenics” aspect (I mean…it is technically a dystopia), and the fact that Samuels doesn’t age, and the fact that Amanda isn’t exactly the type I’d see as a parent in the way she’s presented in Lucky Star. And “very tiny fragile human child” tagging along with space pirates and alien hunting doesn’t sound safe–I can’t see them making the, frankly in their case, selfish choice to have their own kid.

But yeah, Amanda as The Cool Parent™ and Christopher the human (kinda) embodiment of Paranoia? I love. I looooove it so much. At some point I’ll write a proper one shot for it, but in the meantime to apologize for the emotional duress I apparently caused you, here you go:

A vaguely Amy shaped lump on the bed groaned in pain again, and he flinches at the guilt that tugs his central power distributor chord in his chest. She has a high pain tolerance, the medical center’s synthetics told him as much, and the one human doctor that was present at the late hour had repeated it. But from the time they arrived home, and he was finally, finally able to kiss them both (they hadn’t ever experienced it with someone who wasn’t a friend, by the synthetics there recognized what he was immediately, and assumed he was merely an assistant), Amanda hadn’t been quite right.

Christopher wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe that he had only put his hands on the outside of hers as she held the impossibly small human, but took a subtle step back when she tried to let him hold her.

Now that very tiny, very strange creature was crying in a voice so small and quiet that if it was emitting from a synthetic, he’d be urging it to seek audio repairs as soon as possible. Even Amanda’s human crying wasn’t so fragile sounding.

“I’ll be up in a second…” a slightly slurred voice said from the bed. Amanda sat up slowly with a hiss of pain.

“Amy–what can I get for you? is the bottle still hot? There’s another two hours before you can take anything else for pain, but I could fetch a half–”

“You’re not–” she let out a small, stifled sound of pain as she wriggled over to get up, “–my medic, despite what the tin can assholes thought. You’re my husband. And I get it. You’re fucking scared. Fine. I’m in pain. A fucking ton of pain, and forgive me if I’m slightly pissed off that you’re the one who’s idea this was, and I’m letting you name her, and you’re….”

“I–What if–she’s…” standing, statuesque and silent over the tiny sleeping thing, he had watched for hours to be sure that it was still breathing.

Amanda appeared in his line of vision and picked her up, her voice soft as she tried to quiet her.

“Chris. Please. We had a list…if you’re not going to hold her, or sleep with me, then–think of a name? I’ll pick a middle one. I loved all the ones on the list, it’s…” she set the infant back down in her little crib, small as a doll’s, and slowly retreated to bed again, tugging a hot (now merely warm) water bottle to her abdomen that she wished was the form of her lover standing coldly to the side.

Barely an hour passes before the baby’s fussing again, and as much as he’s medically aware of human behavior at all life stages, their emotional processes always catch him relatively off guard, and he’s not sure what’s got the poor thing upset this time. Small, uncomfortable mummers quickly turn again into that weak cry and she’s so pitiful and small.

Weeks spent, months spent, running numbers and genetic coding, structuring and restructuring broken down strands of his partner’s human DNA, I have brown eyes, her mother had brown eyes, theoretically I could have had two parents with eyes like hers but I know she wants even odds on that, a clone, nearly, entirely formed from her own DNA however altered.

Amanda said before they even started home, quietly to avoid the ears of the synthetics or the human doctor in the halls, “I really didn’t think you were going to even the odds on her eyes,” even new born, a hour old, the girl’s eyes were darker than her mother’s.

He hears Amanda make a motion to get up, and every ounce of his programming rebels in multiple directions yet again; help her, help the crying human, the human in bed should stay in bed and is best helped by silencing the crying human, don’t touch the crying human, it’s not dying and that’s the only time a non-fully medical programmed android should ever be handling humans under five years of age, you could kill her too easily, you could–

Amy sniffs a little, and even in the dark he catches the long slow blinks that she does when trying to hide the fact that she’s crying.

“Shh, no more of that,” he says, low as his audio can get, and carefully, slowly goes to lift the girl from the crib. “What’s so upsetting out here? You’re not wet, you just ate,” a half finished, comically small bottle sits on the nightstand. Amanda had been against nursing her from the start. My mom tried to. They sent her out on a job before I was weaned, at least that’s what my grandmother told me when she tried to convince me she was a shitty mother. Sounds more like a shitty job. I wouldn’t drink until I was too weak to cry.

“She’s scared.” Amanda said lowly, half sitting, propped up on a few pillows, the room-temperature water bottle hugged to her lap and belly.

“It’s too loud here isn’t it? Strange and silent, and cold, and everything’s too big…” he holds her a little closer, a little firmer, and she quiets. “Things will seem better once you’re well rested precious…”

He’s not sure how he didn’t notice, but Amanda had gotten up, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I love you.”

“You can go back to bed, I’ll be right there,”

“No, no I…”

“You need sleep, badly, probably more than Jess does,”

“Jess?”

“Jessica.”

“I honestly thought you’d go with Elena,”

“Do you want–if you’d–”

“Chris no, I like it. I told you.”

At first he thought to hold Jessica with one hand, and usher Amanda back to their bed with the other, but at the fear of dropping the still-fussy girl he stopped. Amanda painfully, delicately, climbed back into bed.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“No, just…sleep at this point. You’re right–” she stopped as he eased back onto the mattress too, still holding Jess. “What–if one of us–”

“I’ll stay awake and hold her, you won’t crush her,” it was sweet, to see her worry, to see her fret in situations where it wasn’t causing her stress or panic and he almost realized why she liked to tease and toy with him so much. “And I think she’s asleep again,” he smiled, a very quiet breath and heartbeat–steady and healthy, despite their softness–emitted from her.

“Thank you,” Amanda settled at his side, kissing Jessica, rubbing softly at her few little hairs (fair, for now, but she thinks she’s awful light to ever look like his), and then kissing her husband’s cheek, and then his mouth when he turned to face her, and smile against her lips. “For everything. For not being scared, for being here at all. It’s–”

“Darling–”

“I’m supposed to be alone. That’s my story, that’s all I’ve ever been, and without you I’d either be dead, or still alone and asking and wandering…You and I, and–”

“It’s the meds, luv.”

“We’ve done pretty good I think,” she smiled a little, pain constant, but livable, it was all livable, even when she didn’t think it was, all her life had been like that. “She doesn’t seem too fucked up yet.”

“No, not at all,” Jessica clung to him faintly, and he adjusted his internal temperature to suit. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,”

“I know,” it wasn’t a joke, not like their usual exchange, but honest in her exhaustion. Christopher smiled, listening close for his humans’ vitals.

#annie gets anons #Jessica McClaren AU

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wormy-business · 4 years

Text

The Genesis Child

Chapter One - The Test

Fic Summary: After a late night with Beelzebub, Gabriel finds himself in the strange predicament of being with child. Reaching to help from a pair of traitorous rebels seems to be their only option, along with reading lots of parenting books. But what will the mommy blogs advice be when your child is the all-powerful offspring of an angel and a demon, who begins to develop incredible powers at a young age?

Word count: 1,390

Read on A03

As Gabriel sat on the bed of a rather fancy hotel, he tapped his index finger against his temple wondering why things could never just be simple. Ever since the world didn’t end, he felt like he had no direction. Before it was easy, prepare for war, train, and on the not-so-rare occasion be diplomatic with his counterpart in Hell. But his world had been turned completely on its head and he’d had absolutely no time to prepare for it. He had been with Beelzebub in the past few months more than he ever had previously, and though the initial subject of their meetings were always work related it would be a lie to say nothing ever escalated, and an Archangel knows better not to lie. The two fo them had had a bit of a romp several weeks earlier, and since then things just hadn’t felt right for Gabriel. He heard a click, and the door to the hotel room swung open, accompanied by a gentle buzzing made from the fly who sat atop Beelzebub’s head. They walked into the room and looked Gabriel up and down, a smirk stretching across their face.

“You zeem eager, calling me to a fancy hotel like thiz.”

Gabriel felt a warm blush reach across the bridge of his nose and out to his cheeks. It was golden and sparkled, just as all angel’s do.

“It’s not like that! I, I called you here because I’ve been having some, issues.” He squirmed nervously in his spot on the bed, and Beelzebub took to a chair just across from him.

“What do you mean?” They asked, their head falling lazily to the side.

“I mean, well,” Gabriel’s entire face was beginning to look golden, “I trust you remember our meeting a few weeks ago?”

Beelzebub raised their eyebrows at him. They had been decidedly adventurous that night, Gabriel had requested they try something new and Beelzebub had been happy to indulge in his wishes. They remembered alright, damn did they remember.

“How could I forget? I had you in a whining puddle on the bed, had to tie you down and everything so you’d let me-”

“YES WELL!” Gabriel interjected suddenly and loudly, his entire face down to his neck shining with a golden blush. “I seem to be having some, issues.”

Beelzebub slouched back against the chair again. “And what might those be?”

“I can’t make it go away.” Gabriel made a vague motion at his crotch, garnering an eyebrow raise from Beelzebub.

“Well what do you want me to do about it?” They asked, starting to sound rather annoyed.

“Well, I don’t know! This has never happened before! Is this a normal thing when one manifests, those parts?”

“Don’t know, never had one.” Beelzebub began smirking again. “You sure you’re dispelling it right?”

“Of course I am! At least, I should be. I’ve had this form for over six thousand years, I have only once been discorporated, I know how my body and my magic and my miracles work.”

“Apparently not.” Beelzebub was doing their best to hide their laughter, but the fly atop their head was buzzing with excitement.

“Please be serious, I am very much concerned with this.”

“Gabey baby, I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Help me!”

“And how do you expect me to do that?”

Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest, then winced and pulled them away to lightly brush a finger over his chest. “Ow. . .” He muttered under his breath.

Beelzebub furrowed their brow as they watched the Archangel. “That’zz not my fault, izz it?” They asked, their tone immediately shifting.

“What? Oh, no, no I don’t think so. We didn’t do any of that last time.” Gabriel watched as Beelzebub’s body relaxed again. “But thats another thing! Some of these weird pains persist even after I heal them. I’m a little worried, Bee.”

“Can’t you just go to some proper healer? Is Sabriel too busy or something?”

“I can heal! Sure it may not be as good as Sabriel but I know my own self well enough I should be able to heal myself. Besides, they would ask so many intrusive questions of me and I don’t really want to tell them why I have manifested,” Gabriel cleared his throat and spoke rather quietly the next few words, “womanly parts.”

“Just say vagina!” Beelzebub blurted out through stifled laughter.

“This isn’t funny!”

Beelzebub took many deep breaths, their fly still buzzing loudly. “It’zz, a little funny.” They stated before clearing their throat. “Really, I don’t know what you want me to do! Next thing your gonna tell me is that you’ve been having morning sickness and you’ve mizzed your period.”

Gabriel turned his eyes away from Beelzebub, something akin to shame written on his face.

“What’s that look for?” They inquired.

“I, well I have been feeling rather, unwell these last few days. Of course, I don’t sleep so I can’t say exactly when it occurs, but.” He didn’t finish his sentence, he just made a vague motion with his hands.

“Gabriel,” Beelzebub asked, standing up as their fly became silent. “Are you pregnant?”

“What?!” Gabriel exclaimed in shock, then shook his head. “No! No, I can’t, of course not! Don’t be ridiculous, Bee.”

“Are you sure?” They prodded further.

“That, is that even, possible? An angel and a demon? No that can’t, that couldn’t happen, could it?”

“It sure zoundzz like it’z happening.” Beelzebub sighed and walked to the bathroom, ignoring Gabriel’s calls after them. They returned with a glass of water they had filled at the tap, and they handed it to Gabriel. “Quit whining and drink thizz.” They spoke in a rather demanding tone.

Gabriel sighed, deciding not to argue with Beelzebub and drink the water. “There, are you happy?” He asked, placing the empty cup on the bedside table.

“Wait here, I have to go get zomething.” Beelzebub spoke as they walked in strides to the door.

“Get what?!” Gabriel snapped at them.

“Juzt zztay here!” Beelzebub snapped back before leaving.

Gabriel grumbled, and laid back on the bed. His mind was racing. He could barely hold onto a single thought for too long before it was replaced by another. Was it possible for an angel to become impregnated by a demon? Nothing like this had ever happened before. What would the child look like? What powers might it be able to possess? Should he ask God about this? No, he couldn’t even tell Sandalphon or Michael or Uriel. None of the archangels could know. They didn’t even know if he was pregnant yet! But what would they do if he was? He didn’t know the first thing about babies or raising children, and he doubted Beelzebub was much more knowledgeable on the subject. He couldn’t stay in heaven with a baby, where would he go? Would Beelzebub even want to stay with him? What if they didn’t? What if they were angry? It wasn’t entirely his fault, if he even was pregnant, Beelzebub had helped in the process.

So consumed by his thoughts and anxiety, he didn’t register the sound of Beelzebub returning to the room. He only noticed when a box was thrown haphazardly at his face, causing him to shoot up in bed. The box fell into his hands and he looked at it, reading the text “at-home pregnancy test”. He looked up at Beelzebub, who motioned lazily to the bathroom.

“You have to piss on it.” They explained, monotone.

Gabriel made a face, disgusted by the thought of expelling waste from his celestial and holy body, he felt the urge to dry heave for a moment and covered his mouth, garnering a scoff from his partner.

“Quit whining!” They chided, giving Gabriel a smack on the thigh as they sat back down in the chair they had taken when they first arrived.

Gabriel grumbled about how revolting it was to consume matter and later expel it from one’s body, leaving Beelzebub to nervously tap their fingers together. The fly on their head buzzed louder and louder with each minute that passed, waiting for Gabriel to return. When the door finally opened, Gabriel presented the results of the test to Beelzebub.

Two lines, clear as the rain pattering against the hotel window. Gabriel is pregnant.

#ineffable bureaucracy #archangel gabriel #beelzebub #good omens #good omens fanfiction #The Genesis Child

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shortmania · 5 years

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If Olga had children, what do you imagine they would be like?

Oh, I created a batch of those years ago. This pic’s from 2014:

To create OC kids, there’s a lot of junk you have to consider. Mother, father, family, parenting styles, income, environment, and all the ways these things might come together to form a person. And thinking about Olga as a mother has always been… fucking hysterical, honestly. Like can you imagine? Can you stand it? I’ve only ever been able to think about it in short bursts because it’s too much for me. It’s too much.

There’s also The Patakis to think about, and the ways Olga is likely to change as she gets older. Lucky for my sanity, I see her developing into a calmer, wiser, less chaotic sort of person. Less luckily, I don’t see this being a particularly significant development. It doesn’t matter if she’s 20 or 50, she’ll always be Olga Pataki and Olga Pataki is ridiculous. I don’t want to say she’d be a bad mom, but… she wouldn’t be a very good mom, either? She’d do some things right and other things very wrong. I’ll get into that, but lemme just do a quick rundown of the other basic considerations here: dad, income, and environment.

I created a husband for Olga around the same time I made these kids, but I never developed him very far past a few basic traits and a general backstory. So he’s very basic, but he works. Charles was a good friend from Wellington College (in England) who shared most of her English classes, was the only one to maintain contact with her after she transferred to Bennington, came from money, raised by nannies, bit of a nervous wreck but hides it well because that’s how he was taught–to be pent up and twitchy. His fam wanted him to be a lawyer or business man but he quietly rebelled by becoming an English major instead, knowing full well how useless a degree it is and not caring at all. He eventually goes on to be a successful playwright, though, and Olga performs in all his plays. So, income would be decent verging on very decent, and their kids would grow up somewhere teeming with theatrical opportunities. Probably somewhere really crowded and loud and pretentious.

Getting right into it then, from left to right, we have Angelique, Helena, and Genevieve, because Olga’s That Bitch. They attend(ed) a fancy private school because Olga’s That Bitch. They’re all very well-read, well-traveled and “well-behaved” because Olga’s That Bitch. But since Olga is, as specified, That Bitch, her kids didn’t escape her influence unscathed.

Tbh, I do think any kids Olga would have would be Pretty Good Kids™– barring her having any with an absolute scumbag like she so easily could, but that’s another question entirely (I write fluff and comedy, so these kids reflect that) – but. Hmm. I see Mom!Olga being extremely affectionate, extremely emotional, and frequently selfish; generally hella overbearing; definitely stifling. And she wouldn’t want to, but I can’t see her not on some level perceiving her children as extensions of herself, and thus incapable of coping with anything less than Excellence on their parts. Not to say that I think she’d be a monster. I don’t think she’d force them into things or demand they win awards or anything like what Bob or Miriam did to her, but being in the same room as her with a less than impressive report card would be… uncomfortable. And that’d be on top of her always being in their business, looking over their shoulders, and constantly trying to spend quality time with them. Even when they don’t want to spend time with her, and so help any of them that say as much, because Olga’s incredibly sensitive. So layers upon layers of bad, there.

Some rebellion would be expected, then, so Genevieve gets into the goth punk scene. She’s more casual about it as an adult, but Olga doesn’t understand her. Helena uses comedy and misdirection as a defense and smiles very big and very nervous when her mom’s lip wobbles at her a little too expressively. Angelique straight up hides from her. She used to be sweeter, used to gently comfort her mom whenever she inadvertently did anything that upset her, but it took a toll on her and she can’t handle crying, or disappointment, or criticism, and she hates explaining herself so she avoids ever needing to. She’s a little emotionally underdeveloped, as a result. Not good for anyone to avoid conflict.

I also see Olga babying the hell out of her kids, so that would be another reason for Genevieve to rebel and Angelique to be Babey. In some ways, it’d be good, like they’d be generally very sweet kids, but I’m not sure how emotionally stable they’d be. Better than Olga, at least. Their methods of coping with heartbreak and life’s little every day tragedies would be… interesting, though. I sense a lot of Beethoven’s 5689574th and other general dramatics. Dancing, ice cream, black mourning veils being broken out over the smallest things. Either that or just complete repression.

Since you asked specifically how I imagined the kids, I’ll go ahead and give a messy little bio on each.

Genevieve: I wanted to play with the dichotomy of the Posh Gifted Nerd archetype and the Cold Badass Rebel archetype. Bob has an influence on her in that he’s something of a military enthusiast (I guess?), and I see Genevieve being lowkey into that as a kid, until she gets older and learns more about what goes on overseas and how much carbon emission hummers give off. Incorporates a lot of her old camouflage into her goth punk looks as a mocking salute to that now. Proudly rides on the outskirts of society in her down time, but she’s the most academically-driven out of her sisters and was absolutely Valedictorian. Reads a lot of books, a lot of Smart Person magazines, and listens to a wide range of music (classical, alternative, showtunes, punk, jazz). Creative. Loves history, but especially the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian periods of Europe. Super into black pearls and lace. Bit nihilistic, but cares a lot about everything. Always gets into very interesting conversations with Helga, but Olga has no clue how to talk to her.

Angelique: I already kinda rambled about her, but she’s my All Natural Girl. No makeup, no piercings, had to be talked into using conditioner, almost gave up shampoo once (bad month for everyone). Shy, sweet, sensitive. Concerned with the world at large. She tries to be an academic like her family but she’s really not. She dresses and behaves like a perfect little nerd, but school doesn’t interest her, and she feels hella guilty and self-loathing about it. All she ever really wants to do is watch trashy made-for-TV dramas, cook/bake and moon hopelessly over guys. DIY af, buys nothing new. Is Babey. Soft clothes, soft eyes, a little messy and chaotic. Constant low-level thrum of anxiety. Rumpled button-ups and over-worn sweaters energy, forever jeans, rarely in skirts because skirts are stressful. That character you forget and underestimate but shocks you with insight from time to time. Will probably end up a baker or smthn. The oldest of the kids, actually, though she rarely acts like it.

Helena: That girl who raids your fridge, chews twelve sticks of gum and paints your nails whether you want her to or not. No sense of personal space, very touchy-feely, always wants to braid hair and thinks makeup on dudes is the greatest invention ever. Goes against the dress code at her school very brazenly but gets away with it because her work is excellent and the teachers adore her. Attitude in spades but she’s a sweetheart. Lots of friends. Loves her mom to death but tends to avoid her without quite meaning to. More Daddy’s girl, though she avoids him, too. Parents are no fun. Thinks her Aunt Helga and Uncle Arnold are the absolute shit, because why would we want to live in a world where she didn’t?

And that’s my take. There are lots different ways Olga With Kids could go down, but Intense and Stifling are pretty much the two things I see as being universal variables in the equation. So, yeah. Maybe a little less fluffy than originally intended, but Idk. These are old designs. Other drawings and further information on these kids here and here. Shown pic here. I hope this was helpful anyway. Have a good.

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swinfinities · 5 years

Text

Long Live the Queen: Part Thirteen

Four years later

Padmé gently daubed the sweat from her forehead with a white handkerchief. She still wasn’t used to the humidity of the fourth moon of Yavin. After a decade in the thin, dry air of Tatooine, this jungle should have seemed like an oasis. But it felt more like drowning with every breath. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really been dry since she arrived here.

A small hovercraft sped by, on its way back into the ancient temple that this fledgling group of rebels had converted into their base. Most of the soldiers on the transport offered a stiff nod toward Padmé as they passed. Some of the younger ones gave awkward salutes. It made Padmé cringe inwardly, but she kept a smile on her face and nodded back to her troops. She didn't like salutes. She never wanted to be seen as a military leader. She was, first and foremost, a diplomat, not a warrior. But as a leader of this rebellion (or whatever it was that you would call a bunch of fed-up farmers, bankers, and engineers with guns) acting as a general instead of a senator was unavoidable. Some of the other leaders—Dodonna, Raddus, even Senator Organa—weren’t as afraid to get their hands dirty, and Padmé was thankful for that. And of course, there was Ahsoka, known to all but a very select few as Fulcrum. She was always off somewhere, fighting unknown dangers and finding those who were willing to speak up against the Empire. Padmé had nothing but respect for her old Jedi friend but certainly did not envy her. Padmé’s place was here, serving among her people, not on a battlefield.

Soft footsteps approached from behind. Padmé knew those steps—each footfall was deliberate, calculated, but so smooth it was as if the feet simply glided over the pavement like a boat over water. It was the product of a lifetime of practiced poise and elegance.

“Senator Mothma,” Padmé greeted the fiery-haired woman as she approached.

“Good morning, Padmé.” Mon Mothma replied. More than anyone else, Padmé knew, this woman carried the weight of this rebellion on her shoulders. It showed. She always put on a strong face (and, indeed, she was strong) but in her eyes, a deep-seated sadness and pain had begun to show. Already, there had been so many losses and so few victories.

“Any news from Lothal?” Padmé asked.

“Yes,” Mon replied. “But it isn’t particularly good news. According to Fulcrum’s reports, our friends on Lothal have been forced to flee. Governor Tarkin has ordered a blockade of the entire system. I’m afraid we are shut out of that sector for the time being.”

Padmé sighed heavily. “You’re right. That isn’t good news,” she said. “Were there many losses?”

“Blessedly few, considering our opponent.”

“What do you mean?”

“Darth Vader.”

The air around them suddenly turned from stifling heat to ice cold.

“Vader? Vader was on Lothal? This is his first appearance in months and he attacks Lothal? Does Ahsoka know?”

“She does. She was able to successfully direct a rendezvous between the Lothal group and Phoenix Squadron. But yes, Vader’s appearance is… unexpected. But I prefer to think of it as something of a good sign. It means that our actions are starting to draw the Emperor’s attention. It means that he is beginning to see us as a threat.”

“It also means that the fighting is only going to get worse from now on.”

“It will. But someday, perhaps, all the fighting will mean something. Until then, we must keep pressing on.”

Padmé was silent. She shook her head softly. She just couldn’t push the images out of her head—images of Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight, a noble warrior, and a decorated general. Her husband. But now he was out there somewhere, murdering children, burning villages, and decimating armies of soldiers that Padmé herself had sent to their deaths. Maybe there was something she could have done, some words she could have said to stop him from going down this path. Would Anakin still be here if she could only have loved him just a little more?

No. Padmé stopped such a dangerous thought before it could really begin. Every so often, these sorts of thoughts would try to creep in, trying to lay hold on her mind like the choking roots of a noxious weed. But she was always able to pull them out before they did any damage.

So far, anyway.

“I want to talk to Ahsoka,” Padmé said.

“Of course,” Mon replied. “I’ll have Bail set up a call—”

“No. No calls. No more secret transmissions. I need to see her in person. We need to talk.”

“About what, may I ask?”

Padmé paused. A plan—or at least the beginnings of one—was forming in her mind. To what end, she didn’t yet know, but she knew it could lead to something important.

“About Anakin,” she said.

The corners of Mon Mothma’s lips turned up slightly, the closest thing anyone could call a smile from the senator.

“My dear friend, you do not answer to me. You may do as you wish. I only ask that you travel in secret. We cannot risk you being discovered. Not after everything we’ve built. Not after we just got you back. Frankly, it’s a miracle that the Emperor hasn’t discovered you yet. If he were to find out you are still alive—”

“You needn’t remind me, Mon.”

“I’m only asking you to be careful.”

“I will. I’ll wear a disguise. I’ll have Reymus take me in his old Starhopper. We’ll be invisible.”

“Of course. I’ve learned by now to never doubt you, Padmé. Fare thee well. And may the Force be with you.”

“And may the Force be with you, Senator Mothma.”

*****

There is no emotion, there is peace.

A stone coming at chest. Swing left. Block.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

Another stone, coming at head. Swing up. Block.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

From behind now. Swing. Block.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

Two stones. Duck one. Swing down. Block.

There is no death. There is only the Force.

Luke Skywalker repeated the mantra in his head. He was blindfolded, yet he could see through his mind’s eye the stones flung in his direction. His father’s lightsaber felt alive in his hands. The weapon swung effortlessly, hanging on the invisible eddies of the Force. Back and forth it swayed, the vibrant blue blade meeting each stone midair, cleaving them in two.

There is no death, there is only the Force, Luke repeated in his mind. Around him, everything was alive, singing aloud with the same voice, the same harmony that rang throughout the universe. It was the song of the Force. He had learned to hear it. He was just now beginning to learn how to sing with it.

And yet there was something else drumming behind the song. Not singing, no. Something discordant. Chaotic. Less a pleasing hymn and more a scream of agony. It was the Dark Side. Luke had felt it before, creeping through the Force like a dank fog.

Luke thought he could see a figure emerging through the mist. Something tall and broad, like a lumbering monster. The thing was steeped in the Darkness—it dripped with it, oozing hate and anger from every pore of its miserable body.

“V-Vader,” Luke said, through trembling lips.

He opened his eyes. The song of the Force fell silent as his concentration is broken. A large stone hit him right in the gut. Luke doubled over in pain. He could see Yoda drop his head in disappointment.

Again.

Obi-Wan walked over to him, helping Luke up out of the mud. Luke stood. He was taller now. Nearly as tall as Obi-Wan. He had grown broader, too. Stronger. His face was now less than that of a boy, and more of a man.

“You saw him again?” Obi-Wan asks, but it isn’t much of a question.

“More and more now,” Luke replied. “Sometimes it almost feels like every day.”

“It is a troubling time for you, Luke,” said Obi-Wan. “Your strength in the Force is growing. The Dark Side is beginning to tempt you. Every day, it will try to pull you in, to bend you to its will.”

“So how do I defeat it?” Luke asked.

Yoda chuckled at that.

“Defeat it?” Yoda said. “Defeat the Dark Side, you cannot. Defeat yourself, you must.”

“But Master Yoda, what does that mean?”

Yoda shook his head softly.

“Explain this lesson, words cannot. Learn through the Force, you must.”

“What are you saying, Master?” Obi-Wan asked. “Do you think he is ready?”

Yoda closed his eyes, meditating for a few moments.

“Ready, the boy may never be,” Yoda said, opening his eyes and looking at his student. “But time it is.”

“Time for what?” Luke asked.

“For your trial,” answered Obi-Wan. “The final trial on the path to becoming a Jedi knight.”

#Star Wars Infinities #Star Wars #Luke Skywalker #Padme Amidala #Obi-wan Kenobi #Yoda #Rebellion #Empire #Alternate History #alternate timeline

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analisegrey · 5 years

Text

Februwhump Prompt

“Cauterization” (Read on AO3)

And Home Before Dark (a direct sequel to Into the Woods)

Caleb is upright.

Mostly.

That’s in no small part due to the arm Molly has braced around his waist; the healing potion Molly’d fed him had brought him back from the brink, but it still very much feels like he was shot- a lot- and it’s quite painful. That’s to say nothing of the beating he’d taken before they’d fled the battleground; the barbed bolts were just added insult.

He can feel time flying past as they trudge through the woods. He’s fairly certain they’re heading in the right direction, and therefore back toward help, but Caleb’s not entirely sure they’ll get there fast enough. He hasn’t told Molly, but his wounds have started to bleed again from the movement of walking, wet warmth making what’s left of his shirt cling unpleasantly to his skin. More worrisome, as far as Caleb’s concerned, is that he knows nightfall isn’t far off. Another hour at most, though full dark will hit them under the tree canopy much faster. Caleb’s already having difficulty seeing where he’s going; he tells himself that’s due to the low light, and not the dizziness of blood loss.

He considers his options. He knows they have no potions left- if they had any, he’s certain he’d have been forced to drink them by now. Neither he nor Molly are gifted with healing magic, and Molly has already done his best to bandage Caleb’s wounds with his and Caleb’s shirts before they’d gotten moving. If there were anything else to be done, Molly would have done it.

That doesn’t mean that Caleb has done everything he can, yet.

He knows Molly is going to argue with him. It’s the best possible solution, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good solution, and he’s only considering it because he’s relatively certain getting back to town before dark is incredibly unlikely, and he in no way wants to be caught in the dark woods while leaving a trail of fresh blood behind. It’s asking for trouble, and neither of them can handle any more of that right now.

“Molly- Mollymauk, wait please.”

Molly comes to a stop, looking over at him. “Do you need a minute? We shouldn’t stop long, but we can rest a moment if you need-”

“Molly.” Caleb gathers some of his dwindling strength and projects more confidence than he’s feeling. “The bleeding has started again, and if I do not stop it we will attract predators and it won’t matter how close to town we get. Something else will find us first.”

“Wait, you’ve started- why didn’t you say something, Caleb?” Molly breaks off into muttered curses, lowering Caleb down to sit so he’s propped against a tree before reaching for the strips of shirt he’d used to bandage Caleb’s wounds. Caleb catches Molly’s wrist before he can make contact.

“This is me saying something. Molly, the bandages are not enough. Neither of us can heal, and there are no potions left.”

Molly frowns at him, barely visible to Caleb in the growing dimness. “Then what would you suggest we do? You said we had to stop the bleeding-”

Caleb shakes his head, lifting a trembling hand to let a small curl of flame lick over his fingertips. “No, not ‘we’, Molly.”

Molly’s expression goes from confused to understanding to horrified in quick succession. “No. Absolutely not. We can’t be that far out from town now; we’ll get there and get you help. No need to do anything foolish.”

Caleb snorts a laugh, then winces at the resultant spikes of pain. “I think we are well beyond pretty lies at this point, Mr. Mollymauk. Even if we move at full speed, it would be a close thing to get there before dark, and we both know we’re not going that fast. I am leaving a trail even the stupidest of predators could follow easily. That is all of course beside the point that I am slowly bleeding out. If we are to make it safely out of the woods, something must be done to stop it. We have tried dealing with it in more traditional ways, and they have failed.” Caleb looks from the flame flickering on his fingertips down to the blood-stained bandages. “Trust me when I say this is not a choice I am pleased to be making, nor one that I make on a whim. If I thought there was another way, I would happily consider it.” Caleb glances back up at Molly in the failing light and gives him a pained smile. “Mr. Mollymauk, if you have another suggestion, now is the time.”

Caleb can still see just enough of Molly’s face in the flickering firelight to see the anguish and indecision written across it. “Caleb, there has to be a better way than-” Molly gestures down at Caleb’s hand. “-what you’re proposing.”

“If there is, I cannot think of it. And unless you’ve been holding back an idea, I think I would like to get this over with quickly, please.”

Molly’s face twists, and he spits a curse in Infernal that has Caleb flinching back. Molly holds his hands up in apology and composes himself before running a hand over his face with a frustrated huff. “No, no I don’t have any other ideas.”

Caleb nods, stifling a groan as he settles himself more firmly against the tree. “Alright.”

Caleb’s been hurt a lot in his life, in many different and horrible ways, but there’s something uniquely awful about the way burns feel. They throb, the pain penetrating and inescapable, and by the time he’s on the last wound, he hesitates, his fingers hovering over the injury. The three he’s cauterized already are screaming flares of agony, and realistically he knows adding one more won’t make much of a difference. If anyone deserves this kind of torment it’s him, but part of him still rebels at the thought of willingly putting his fingers into the last wound and searing it closed. He needs to focus, to do this and get it done so they can get moving, get somewhere safe, but there’s a part of him, a treacherous whisper of thought that wonders if his parents had felt this, or if the smoke had taken them first-

“ Caleb .” There’s a burst of pain against Caleb’s cheek, snapping his head sideways; he blinks, Molly coming into focus in front of him, his arm lowering. “Are you with me?”

He isn’t, not entirely, but he’s present enough. “Ja. Ja, just-” He jams his fingers into the last bolt hole with a choked-off noise and lets his fingers ignite before he can think about it. The pain is immediate and nauseating, and he viciously bites down on the scream that wants to rip its way out of him. When he’s sure it’s done he lets his hand drop to his side, his head thumping back against the tree, and he takes a moment. It’s not until Molly’s hands settle over his and squeeze that he realizes how badly he’s shaking.

“Caleb, mo chuisle, are you alright?” Molly’s voice is laced with concern, and Caleb is sure his face must match, but the light’s dim enough now he can’t see more than the basic shape of Molly in front of him. He responds with a gently unhinged laugh and a shake of his head.

“No, probably not. But time for that later, ja?”

“Caleb-” He can easily hear the frown in Molly’s voice, but chooses, as he does with many things, to ignore it. He pulls his hands away from Molly’s and gets one on the tree behind him, the other on the ground, and pushes himself up with a groan.

“Gods above, Caleb, you stubborn arsehole.” Molly’s hands are on him in an instant, helping steady him once he’s upright. “You could have taken another minute. A minute won’t matter.”

“We can’t know that, Mollymauk.” Caleb gives him a tremulous smile. “Let’s get going.”

There’s a brief pause in which Caleb can feel the weight of disapproval from Molly’s stare, but Molly doesn’t say anything, just takes one of Caleb’s arms and flings it over his shoulder, wrapping his arm around Caleb’s waist to steady him before they start walking again.

“One of these days,” Molly huffs as they walk. “We’re going to have a long and probably unpleasant conversation about that deflection thing you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“You-” Molly pauses then says, “When you’re hurt you brush it off, like it doesn’t matter, or- or like you’re trying to get us to ignore it. You did it a little when we first met, but you do it more now.”

Caleb’s momentarily stunned. He thinks back on his interactions with the Nein, with Molly, and he can see what Molly’s talking about, the trend; it causes a painful curl in his gut, and gods, he doesn’t have the energy for this now.

“I’m not one to pry.” They go around a small boulder, Molly leading him deftly to the side and forward again. “You’ve never really dug into my past beyond that first time with everyone else, and I appreciate and respect that. A person should get to keep their own secrets, and only share what they like.”

He thinks Molly’s going to drop it, and is just starting to relax when Molly says, “If it weren’t for you almost getting killed so frequently, I’d leave it alone. But I’m scared one day we’re going to ignore something we shouldn’t, and you’re one who’ll suffer for it.”

Caleb has a number of responses he could make to that, but none of those will appease Molly, and would in fact probably just make him more worried than he already is. Caleb’s grateful for the low light; Molly can probably see him, but it’s easier to pretend he can’t when Caleb’s mostly blind. It soothes the crawling under his skin he gets when people look too closely, when they see him, not as he pretends to be, but as he truly is.

Caleb considers his words carefully, and Molly- wonderful, ever-patient Molly- gives him the time to get his words in order. “It’s complicated.”

Molly’s arm tightens ever-so-briefly around Caleb’s waist. “Then explain it to me.” His voice is gentle, and Caleb’s heart squeezes, wondering how he deserves someone so kind.

“When we first met, the group of us, I was not in a good place. Nott helped, she always helps, but even she, as much as she tries, can only do so much.” Caleb huffs a laugh, and brings his free arm around his middle when the laugh jostles his injuries. “That’s not to say I am perfect now, mind you, but I was much worse back then.”

Molly is quiet, but Caleb thinks he sees him nod.

“I- I care now, in a way I did not before. Back then I didn’t know you all the way I do now. We were all just a group of asshole strangers thrown together and-” It’s getting harder to think clearly, to articulate the muddy swirl of his thoughts. He sighs, leaning more heavily against Molly. “Now that I know you all better, I have a clearer idea of our strengths, our weaknesses. My priorities have shifted.”

“What changed? You know we all care about you, right?”

Caleb drops his hand from his stomach to find and pat the arm Molly has around his waist. “Ja, I know you do, schatz.”

“Then why? Why don’t you want us to help you?”

Caleb aches from the subtle hurt in Molly’s voice. How does he begin to explain? How does he tell Mollymauk that he doesn’t want them wasting resources on him, doesn’t want them using a potion on him that might keep one of them alive? He’s come a long way in terms of how he views things, how he views himself.

But.

If it comes to a decision of whether it should be him or someone else who lives, he just doesn’t see it as a very complex choice. He doesn’t want to die, but he will so someone else can live.

“It isn’t that I don’t want you to help me. I appreciate the care you show me. I just have a better idea of how to deploy our often limited resources.”

“You know you’re not any less important than anyone else, right?”

“Molly-”

“No, you listen to me.” Molly’s voice goes hard, and he comes to a stop, forcing Caleb to stop as well. Molly angles to face him, even though Caleb can’t properly see him at this point. “You’re just as important as anyone else. Your safety is important, your well-being is important, your health is important- physical, mental, or otherwise. You can say your priorities have changed, and I can’t tell you what to do or how to feel, but that doesn’t mean my priorities have changed.” Molly sighs, shifts a little more, and Caleb startles at the touch of a hand to his face. “I can’t believe we’ve gone through so much, experienced and survived all that, just for you to decide that we shouldn’t care for you for whatever reason you’ve got built up in your head.” The hand on Caleb’s face flexes, and he leans into it as Molly’s thumb runs up over his cheekbone. Molly’s voice sounds closer and softer when he continues. “I know to you it makes sense, but believe me when I tell you I want to know if you’re hurting. I want to know if you’re unwell or in pain or just having a bad day. You’re part of my family. I love you and care about you. Please don’t shut me out.”

Caleb swallows past the lump that’s taken up residence in his throat and nods. He doesn’t trust his voice, but does trust that Molly can see his response. The cauterized wounds are pulsing, hot and insistent like small fires in his belly, his whole body aching with the edge of fever, but none of it hurts the way Molly’s quiet plea does. He wants to give in, desperately wants to give Molly everything and anything he wants. He can readily admit his life has improved greatly since Molly came into it, since the whole of the Mighty Nein came into it, but there are still things he has to do, things he must accomplish before he can even begin to deserve the kind love and affection Molly shows him. Molly is still waiting, expectant, and Caleb sighs wearily.

“I- I will try, schatz.”

“That’s all I ask, love.” Molly leans in and kisses Caleb, a quick press of lips to his forehead, and Molly hisses as he pulls back. “Fuck, you’re burning up. It’s time we get going. Sooner we get back, sooner Jester can have a look at you.”

Caleb steadies himself as best he can, takes a shuddering breath, and braces himself to move again. “Ja. That- that is a good idea.”

Molly tightens his arm around Caleb’s waist, and together they find their way out of the woods.

#analisegrey fics #februwhump #Critical Role season 2 #caleb widogast #mollymauk tealeaf #widomauk #wound cauterization #whump #spoilers: mentions of Caleb's backstory #critical role spoilers

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