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thewulf · 4 months

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Not Just Pals || Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Summary: Request - Hello darling! I have a request for you if you don't mind... It's a hangman x fem! Reader pen pals to friends to lovers kind of thing. Like maybe when he was in the academy someone put his name in this program to write to college students but joke on them because he got paired with reader and they hit it off almost instantly... Read Rest Here

A/N: Whew! This one was for whatever reason really tough to write! I changed it up a little bit but I hope you guys still enjoy it. :)

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Female Reader

Word Count: 3.9k +

T/W : Self-doubt

October 9th, 2014

Hi There Y/N,

I’m not sure how you’re really supposed to start one of these things? How are you supposed to go about talking to somebody you’ve literally never met before? Although the Navy/Army pen pal thing could be interesting. I’ll be honest, my buddy signed me up and I didn’t think I’d actually write anything down but then I got the email with your name on it, Cadet Y/N Y/L/N. Consider myself intrigued.

What’s it like up in New York? Is it cold? Do you get a lot of snow? It gets awfully cold down here in Maryland, so I have to imagine how cold it gets up there. I’m from Texas so I’m still adjusting to this weather… four years later. It’s not easy. I think it’s the hardest part of living in the northeast. I’d rather run a marathon with a thirty-pound pack on than sit outside in the snow for more than twenty minutes. I hope to get stationed somewhere warm when this is all set and done.

Your ‘about me’ says you’re going into the Air Defense Artillery after West Point… which is the exact opposite of what I’m doing. Consider myself doubly intrigued Cadet. What do you do? Fire missiles and rockets at jets? That can’t possibly be as much fun as firing them when you’re in the air. It’s cool just not nearly as cool as what I do, know what I mean? Maybe a close second though.

Have you even been in a jet before? I bet you’d like it. I obviously don’t know you, but I haven’t met many people who didn’t like it. There’s something so freeing about flying 1,000 miles per hour in a tiny silver tube. You should try it sometime. If this whole thing works out maybe I’ll even take you up one day, who knows?

I guess that was my attempt at 20 questions. Hopefully you didn’t find it too annoying. Hope to hear back from you soon!

Jake Seresin

November 23rd ,2014

Hello Future Lieutenant Jake Seresin,

I’m thrilled you actually decided to write. I’m glad my name was all you needed to pick up that pen. I have to admit you made me giggle a few times. You seem effortlessly funny Mr. Seresin. Even for a soon-to-be Pilot.

I find it comical you’re asking me about the weather of all things, Midshipmen. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on an awkward first date? But to answer your question, yes it’s cold as all get out up here. But I’m from Indiana so I’m used to it. Doesn’t mean I didn’t wish West Point wasn’t in Georgia or something. Why’d they have to put all the Military schools in the north?

What was it like growing up in Texas? Did you ever see snow? One of my favorite memories from this place is watching my roommate (who’s from Florida) see and play in snow for the first time. She froze her ass off but had the day of her life. She also hates snow now. So, it looks like you warm people have that in common.

To sum it up I guess you can say we fire rockets and missiles. My professors always say, ‘If it sounds like rocket science, it is’. Basically, we need to protect the ground troops from the flying bastards aka you. Although we do love our American flying bastards. So, I guess that doesn’t knock you down too many pegs in my book. Do you think they matched us up because our jobs are the antithesis of the other? If so, somebody had a hilarious sense of humor.

I’ve never been in a jet, and I have no plans to either. I don’t think I’d enjoy it if we’re being honest. You’re talking to the girl who gets sea-sick on cruises and had to take a motion pill if we’re going to an amusement park. My lil brain can’t handle the motion. A character flaw as they say. I also have a sense that you wouldn’t go to easy on me, being Army and all. I’ll stick to my calculations and rockets.

Don’t tell anybody I wrote this, but I do think what you guys do is so badass. I work with a bunch of jealous Cadets who couldn’t make it into the Army Aviation division, they’re just bitter. When I was little my dad used to take me to the Blue Angels shows in Chicago whenever they made their way across the States. Kind of the reason why I wanted to be in the military in the first place. But only my dad knows that. And well, I guess you now too. So, keep my secret safe Mr. Seresin.

I know the weather is less than desirable, but I do hope you’re finding things you love in Annapolis! There are some of the best crab cakes I’ve ever had there.

Thanks for the smiles after a long week!

Your New Friend,

Y/N Y/L/N

February 16th, 2015

Future Second Lieutenant Y/N Y/L/N,

That has a right to it doesn’t it? Your name sounds good with a Second Lieutenant in front of it. Sorry it’s been so long since I wrote. Getting busy with graduation coming up and practical’s and all. It’s a lame excuse I know, but it’s all I got. I hope you know how big I smiled reading your letter to me. I read it about fifty times before I could write a decent response to you. You have a way with words that I haven’t read in a long, long time.

Was your father in the military? None of my family was. I also loved the Blue Angels when they came down to Houston for the air shows. I’d always beg and plead and finally my mom or sister would give in and take me. They’re also the reason I’m here. So, I guess we should thank them that we got to meet. Neither you nor I would be in these academies without them. Your secret is locked away in the drawer and safe in my head too. It’s super safe with me.

I’ll be honest, the food here is so damn good. I sure do miss my Texas barbeque, but the spread is better up over here. Plus, the snacks? I didn’t know there was different brands sold across the states and you guys have better girl scout cookies! That’s just not fair. I could’ve gone my whole life knowing that there were two versions of girl scout cookies and I got the worse version. I’ve enjoyed the move far more than I’ve regretted it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. It doesn’t guarantee I’ll be a pilot, but it means I’m one step closer to getting there.

What all schooling do you have to do after you graduate this spring? Are you up for deployment soon? I’ve got a lot left to go. If I get picked after I’ve got a few years of flight school ahead of me. Then I’ll really be off. Wish me luck I make it!

With Love,

Jake

March 13th, 2015

Mr. Seresin,

I was getting worried! I thought it was something I had wrote. I’m glad it’s your negligence and not mine for the lack of communication. I forgive you though. It’s been stressful up here in New York as well. I luckily don’t have any practical’s I need to worry about. Just a few nuclear engineering classes are standing in between me and graduation.

I just have a year of Officer School (if I get selected that is) after this is all set and done come June. We have to apply this April so I’m getting a little anxious about the whole thing. I don’t really have a backup plan that I’d actually like to do so I really, really hope I get selected. Enough about me though, let’s talk about you. You’re going to get picked! Don’t let any bad thoughts get in between you and your goal. I think you’ll make a fine pilot Jake. You seem to have your wits about you which is the first step a lot of people miss.

My dad was in the Navy, like you. Don’t gloat though, it’ll ruin the finely crafted image I have of you. He was a deck hand or something like that. I wish I could ask him some more about it, but he passed when I was just thirteen. I just remember he loved being in the Navy. He loved everything about it. He made it seem like anything was possible with a passion.

I’m glad you’re enjoying the food and the girl scout cookies. It took me by surprise when I got Peanut Butter Patties instead of Tagalongs when I was down south for a winter. I’m so glad I grew up where the real GSC are sold.

I hope this letter brought you as much joy as yours brought me.

With the Same Love,

Y/N

(P.S. – Here’s my number if you’d like to text instead of write. No pressure!)

It had only been a week since you sent the last letter. Sure, you hadn’t really known the guy all too well but there was something so exciting about sending written mail. You felt like a little kid on Christmas waiting for a response from him. Who knew throwing your name in something so silly for your class would bring you so much joy.

You sat down on your desk setting your computer out front of you to study. Jake was right. It was an awfully busy time of the year. Applying for your future. Studying for you exams. When you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket you truly didn’t think much of it. It was only hours later when you finally closed the laptop shut that you went to check it that your face scrunched in confusion. You didn’t recognize the area code. It was then that it clicked that it could be him.

No pressure at all text! Hi there (it’s Jake).

You grinned reading it over and over again. That was quick! Maybe you made an impression? You sure hoped so. You hardly even knew what the guy looked like. You might’ve gone digging a little when you got his name. He was cute. Handsome even. But he seemed like that type. That arrogant pilot type. But even in just the two letters you received from him you got the hint that he wasn’t that type of guy at all.

I didn’t think you’d actually text me. It’s good to hear from you.

The messages between the two of you were infrequent at best as the semester ended. But he never failed to put a smile on your face. When you needed a pick me up you went through and read the messages that popped up.

On your graduation day you sent him a picture of you and a few friends in a cap and gown with the text: Beat you! You’re also looking at your newest Officer Candidate too!

You didn’t have to wait long for a reply. Your face only grew with glee seeing his response: Congrats Second Lieutenant. And future Captain. Knew you’d do it. You look beautiful as always.

Typing a quick reply, you hid your smile away just knowing your friends would make a stupid comment about the mystery man that always had you so smiley: You’re making me blush all the way up here in New York. I better get a picture next weekend when you do the same, future Lieutenant.

He came through on your request. When you got the text you could only smile. You spotted him in the picture immediately, your eyes drawn to him. He was so damned handsome. How lucky were you to get paired with a guy like that? Your smile grew further when you read the message: Lieutenant (and future pilot) Jake Seresin reporting for picture duty.

The messages occurred naturally between through the years as you were deployed, and he was in school. Some months you texted more and some you didn’t hear from him at all. It never bothered you. The silly little thing called life happened for both of you.

Still, the two of you often made time for phone calls when the time was right. The first time you talked on the phone you thought you were going to quite literally throw up you were so nervous. But in typical Jake Seresin fashion he made you feel cool as a cucumber. You talked and talked and talked into the morning. It felt so normal. Like you were catching up with an old friend. Jake Seresin. Who was this man that was making it hard to date? He was quite literally everything you wanted and needed in a partner. The universe had a funny way of working sometimes.

It had been six long years since you received that first letter from him. He was off on a mission now. A dangerous one he couldn’t tell you much about. But he wanted you at his arrival back home in San Diego and you promised him you’d be there. Assured him. That’s how you ended up in here pacing in the hotel room contemplating whether you should really go or not. It felt too intimate, like you were intruding. But he did say none of his family would be there, they had other things going on as the mission was a bit of a surprise to everybody. The pilots were all instructed to keep it as quiet as possible.

Your hands were shaking as you parked your car in the overcrowded lot. Gripping the steering wheel, you took a long breath in. You could do this. You had to do this. For him, for you. You stepped out of the car and made you way to the dock. The aircraft carrier was already docked by the time you got to the meeting site. You stood back and waited. Watched and waited. It felt like an eternity then finally the men and women started pouring out in their Navy Whites. You’d always thought they looked the sharpest of the bunch, but you’d never tell Jake that. He’d make fun of your Army uniforms or something like that.

It felt like both an eternity and seconds later that you spotted him amongst the crowd of sailors exiting the ship searching high and low for you. You promised you’d be there. And here you were. He either felt your eyes on him or had an uncanny sense of timing as his eyes locked with your own. His smile had melted you right there on the spot. You felt helpless as you willed your brain to move but it wouldn’t. You only began to panic a little as he moved with ease through the crowd making his way right to you.

He stood in front of you. Jake Seresin stood in front of you, much taller than you thought, “I knew I recognized you. First Lieutenant Y/L/N.” His eyebrows raised as you gaped at him with wide eyes as if he wasn’t really there. Closing your mouth, you knew you needed to pull it together but that sounded much easier said than done. Jake freaking Seresin, your pen pal was really standing in front of you in real life. He was more of enigma in your mind at this point. Somebody you could have deep life conversations with so easily but never having actually met the man it was hard for you to grasp he was really real. And standing in front of you.

“Jake.” You smiled hoping it sounded somewhat normal. He was so much more handsome than the photos he sent through the years. How was that possible? Wasn’t it supposed to go the other way? You continued once your head finally could form coherent sentences, “Well it’s actually Captain now. Got promoted a couple weeks ago.”

He turned his head to the side just slightly, “You didn’t tell me that.” Almost looking offended you hadn’t told him.

“Never felt like the right time to divulge. With this mission and all. Had to keep you locked in.” You looked up to him now studying his face as you gained more courage talking to him. He was something your dreams couldn’t make up.

He nodded not daring to take his eyes off you. He too thought you were even prettier than he could have envisioned. You’d sent pictures and he’d followed your social media, but nothing could’ve prepared him. Especially in your civilian clothes, he was a sucker already. Deep down Jake knew you were the reason he was so non-committal before. He was looking for somebody just like you and couldn’t find her. Yet here you stood in front of him. You were so funny and witty and smart, and yet he couldn’t put it all into words. You are the whole package and so much more.

“You still could’ve told me. We talked enough before I left.” He grinned seeing that the tension was already easing from your shoulders.

You shook your head, “Wasn’t about me Seresin. I just wanted you to stay focused and safe. And thank goodness you did.” You admitted a little more than you wanted, but he just made you feel so gushy. Like you were a sweeter version of yourself you could hardly recognize. And the words just kept flowing out when he gave you that look with those green eyes.

“Oh yeah?” He challenged you a bit sensing that you were starting to feel a bit more comfortable with him already, “Didn’t think you’d be so relieved darlin’.”

Ignoring the sweet term of endearment you shook your head, “And waste six years of my life on nothing? Jake that’s so inefficient. Of course, I want you safe.” The words came fast, and they were snarkier than you intended. But you truly couldn’t help it. He had you relaxed within the first five minutes of talking to him. You felt like you could just be you.

He threw his head back in laughter. That same weight had lifted right off his shoulders when you snapped back at him like he was waiting on it, “There she is. My favorite mouthy girl.”

He said it so nonchalantly you thought your heart was going to combust on the spot. Your cheeks surely gave way to your reaction to his words. His favorite mouthy girl? Christ. He was trying to send you into a coma or something! Your brain quite literally short circuited as it failed to form any coherent sentence. He only chuckled in response seeing your cheeks heat up in a blazing blush.

“It’s so nice to actually see you in person. You know I’ve always told you this, but it rings even truer even now. You’re quite a stunner, Captain.” His eyes met yours before you looked away quickly feeling as though you were going to faint at those words. You weren’t sure how this interaction was going to go initially. But you really didn’t think he’d come right out and say that he found you stunning. The occasional letter and texts in between had grown flirtier the longer you had known him, but it never crossed your mind he’d be so outright with it.

You turned away out of sheer bashfulness. Never had a man been so bold with you before. It was foreign. Not uncomfortable, no. Nothing could be with him. He made it easier than seemed possible.

“You flatter me Jake.” You grinned up at him hoping your makeup would hide the darkening of your cheeks, “I should say the same for you. Handsome as ever.”

“Now you’re making me blush, Cap.” Sure as hell the faintest pink dusted his cheek, but he seemed much stronger than you. He kept the eye contact going.

You shook your head trying to bite back the big smile you had on your face, but it showed through anyway. How was he doing this? Making you feel so giddy just by looking at him. You knew this man but for the first time it actually felt like you might actually love him. You’d had the deepest conversations with him. When you needed a laugh you texted him. When you craved advice you called him. He was the guy you turned to. And it dawned on you that he never failed to answer you. He wanted to take your calls and answer your texts. He looked forward to it. He too had fallen for a woman he’d never met before.

You needed the change the subject and fast or more words would be tumbling out, “How was the mission? Everyone make it out okay?” You asked having no idea what you were getting yourself into. Jake hadn’t told you much about what they were doing, couldn’t tell you much. But now that it was over he couldn’t wait to tell you every nitty gritty little detail.

“I’ll tell you if you let me buy you a drink?” He gave you a smirk that sent nerves racing throughout your body. Jesus. This man was something else.

Giving him a curious once over you nodded, “Shouldn’t I be the one buying you a drink sailor? You coming home and all?”

“Absolutely not. I’ll never let you buy me a drink darlin’.”

Gosh, Jake was actually going to be the death of you. He was so good making his words come off so easily. You felt terribly high strung next to him, “And why not?”

“Because I’m trying to woo you sweetheart. When I get you to go on a date with me I have to impress you. Inevitably that’ll work and you’ll become my girlfriend. And I can’t have my girlfriend paying for my drinks, no. And it’ll only get worse when I get the pleasure of marrying you. If my wife thinks she’ll pay for a thing she had another thing coming.” He gleamed at you as if he didn’t just say all of that.

You gulped before a stupid smile grew on your face. Of course, you knew he was forward but again, he just took you on an entirely new adventure with that statement, “That’s quite a bold statement Jake.”

He shrugged, “I thought I should make my intentions perfectly clear. I think you’re one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And you’re perfectly you. Sharp as tack. Funnier than ever. You’re you. And I really like you.”

You let out a breath not sure if you really believed all of that, “So not just pals, huh?” It was all you could think of quickly but that did it for him. Sealed the deal. He knew he was going to marry you right then and there. You’d complete him in every way he needed you and vice versa.

He shook his head taking his arm in yours, “Not just pals.” Leaning into his gentle embrace you led him to your car where he would not let you drive. He insisted that it was a gentleman’s job even if he was only running off four hours of sleep. You’d appeased the man who was on his very best behavior. Not that you minded. Nope, not at all. You were thrilled that Jake was exactly who he seemed to be. Your Jake. Not just pals indeed.

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imaginesmai · 8 months

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Right around the corner - Azriel (5)

AHHHHH this is the final part and let me tell you I'm SAD. It was so hard to write the ending you all deserve after all this love, so I tried my best. Let me know what you think! Also, you deserve A LOT, so I made it long hehehe. Don't worry, a request about the RATH universe is coming soon! If you want one too, drop it in my inbox!

(1), (2), (3), (4)

Plot: The story of how Azriel fixed what was broken, and how you forgave him.

Warnings: this is sad, but has a happy ending! Also, mental health issues.

No one expected the sidra to froze that year, and against everyone expectation, one day Velaris had woken up to see the riven covered by a silver layer. Children had missed school to skate in the solid surface, parents watching carefully from the edge. Some couples were skating too, holding hands and giggling endlessly.

You had been watching the new scene unfold all morning. And while you usually loved snow and ice as much as any child in town, you were starting to get a little sick of all the noise.

It wasn’t your new employee situation, who had been staring at the river all morning. She had already finished her duties, but always the polite and nice girl, Elain Archeron was keeping you company.

When you spotted for the third time the familiar red-head through the glass and she didn’t say anything, just sighed, you decided you had enough.

“You should tell him to get in before he freezes to death” you commented, still busy with measuring the ingredients.

“Oh, no” Elain blushed and looked away from the window. “No. He’s just… He can wait”

“He can, but doesn’t have to. You and Lucien should head out, rent ice skates and have a fun day. You already finished here” you smiled kindly at her, and before she could reply, you added. “I’m fine, I don’t even like cold weather. And I still need to finish this, which you can’t help me with. So, go”

Elain stared at you with uncertainty, and you tried to look as convinced as possible. Would you have liked her to stay? After all, she was one of the few people you socialized with these days. She had turned in when you opened the bakery again, right after you posted the sign about looking for a new partner.

And even if you had had your doubts when you discovered she was Feyre’s sister and Azriel’s friend, you considered her your own friend.

So, yeah, you would have liked her to stay. Because you were still awfully sad all the time, and her company was one of the few things that made your day better. But you being sad didn’t excuse her missing a wonderful day with her mate.

“It’s not closing time yet” her eyes danced between the glass and you. “He was supposed to wait for me at the house”

“Guess he’s too eager to see you. He’s been dancing around the bakery for a good hour” you chuckled. “Elain, I mean it. Go. Have fun. I’ll see you on Monday”

“Y/N, I promise I don’t mind waiting. It’s not like it will unfreeze”

“And I promise I don’t mind at all. So, go, have fun and tell me about it on Monday” you gripped her hand softly over the counter, nodding to the waiting mal outside. “Come on, go”

Lucien was once more outside the bakery, the only visible part of him his red hair. He was covered in thick layers, but still managed to smile when Elain kissed your cheek and took her coat on the way out.

You didn’t have it in you to watch them be affectionate with each other, so you looked down at your task and decided it would be the last of the day.

It was hard watching all those couples walking hand in hand and remembering the feel of his warm, scarred hand in yours. To hear a man laughing and remember the unexpected laughs you dragged out of him sometimes. Even looking at the river was painful, because you could almost see the ghost of Azriel and you learning how to skate in a frozen lake in the Illyrian mountains a few years ago.

You had seen Azriel around a few times now, walking through your bakery and waving at you through the glass. Two times he had been waiting at the door when it was late at night, silently walking you home from afar without talking. Almost two months had passed by and your feelings were still as messed up as before.

Though you didn’t cry as much as before, and you were starting to get better, you still wondered.

If Azriel getting help would mean your relationship would be fixed, or if it was broken permanently. Deep in your thoughts, and used as you were to Azriel’s shadows, you didn’t notice how they tugged on your apron until the door sounded again.

Elain’s name didn’t leave your lips, because as soon as the door opened, you lost your breath. As if you had summoned him, Azriel walked through the door, beautiful as ever. He wasn’t in his usual training leather, but winter clothes that fit him as a glove. Instantly, you noticed he had lost weight. His shoulders were slumped and his body didn’t carry the usual grace of an Illyrian warrior.

“Hi”

His scarred hands, that had held you so many times and slaughtered so many enemies, were tucked in his coat’s pockets. You could feel the nervousness through the bond, the hesitance. Too stunned to answer, you only stared at him.

You had known that, eventually, he would talk to you. That you would have to do more than just wave at each other through the glass and stay silent when he sent you details through Elain. But still, you hadn’t expected it.

Unable to move, you only blinked.

“I saw Elain and Lucien heading out” he added, not looking away from you. “It’s a nice day outside”

Azriel hadn’t finished before one of his new shadows scaped his control, sneaking around the counter. The familiar ones, that had been by your side since he left, danced around the new intrusion. It lifted your apron, and crawled up your neck.

The cool feeling was the last of your worries, because no matter how much you willed yourself to say something, you couldn’t even tear your eyes from him.

The bond flickered between the two of you, once more. Knowing that it was one-sided, that he didn’t wear it like you did, made break your trance.

“She’s finished for the day” you explained, sounding way more confident that what you felt.

“It’s a nice day, yeah” he repeated, not giving you time to feel awkward before he continued “I thought that maybe you wanted to take a walk with me. It’s cold, but we could… get coffee. Or chocolate, if you want”

Azriel gave you a half, broken smile. Hearing his voice again made you take ten steps backward.

“I have things to do”

You looked down to your current task, which could be easily discarded. You had left much important things half-done because of him, and you would have done it normally without a second thoughts. But no matter how heartful the conversation at your door had been, you just knew you weren’t ready to have a conversation without getting angry.

You knew you weren’t ready to forgive him.

His new shadow gripped your wrist tightly before disappearing, and you heard Azriel’s doubt. He wanted to say something else, and you wanted too. Still, you fell back to your measuring and ignored the way your vision blurred, how your knees became weak again.

Maybe going back to your duties was the only way not to break down again.

The silence continued for a long minute. You couldn’t not feel his presence, the way his scent filled the bakery and made your stomach turn. Your heart recognized what you needed, what you wanted, and threatened to jump out of your chest.

Before you could regret your words, Azriel opened the door again.

“You’re forgetting the yeast” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

When you looked up again, he only smiled. You opened your mouth to tell him to wait, maybe to fuck off and never come again. You didn’t have time, because Azriel closed the door behind him and he was gone.

The first tear fell against the unformed dough, followed by many more. You wouldn’t be finishing the blueberry cake that afternoon, you realized, as you crunched behind the counter and cried.

There was a storm coming, and everyone in Velaris had had the same idea – run to the market, buy everything they needed for a few days, and crowd themselves at home with their loved ones. You were trying to follow the first part of the plan, not having anyone to go home anymore. And if that wasn’t enough reason to drag you down, the crowd was getting intense.

Velaris’ market was a beautiful place, full of shops and nice vendors. But that day, the space felt too small.

You already had a few bags with you, yet there were a few more to go. Wanting to finish as soon as possible, you had ignored the rational part of your brain and had gotten in the middle of the crowd. You had only managed to buy milk and pasta, and still had a long way to go.

After Azriel’s brief appearance, your life had been messier than before. He had come by the bakery at least five times more, always offering you some kind of plan you rejected. Going to the park, for a flight or to a coffee shop. Taking walks, watching the sunset or training together.

You lived now half-prepared to see him walking through your door again, and not having the heart to tell him no. You weren’t sure if that thought frightened or comforted you.

In your haste, you had almost forgotten to buy provisions for the storm, and had found yourself on the worst day to do them. Crowded, loud and suffocating, that was how you would describe the market at that moment.

The fact that most people ran with their children and family wasn’t helpful at all.

Most of the times, it was Azriel who did the last-minute shopping for you. He knew you didn’t like crowds, loud places, that you did best in your bakery where only five people were allowed at a time.

Another shove broke you down from your daydreaming, and you looked back to see a pregnant woman staring with her eyebrows furrowed.

“The line is moving” she spatted, pointing to the small space ahead of you. “If you don’t move with it, you should step out”

“Oh, no” you chuckled softly. You picked up the bags on the ground and took the two small steps that you were supposed to. “Sorry, I just thought I could take a little bit more space. It’s crowded here”

“I don’t mind crowds, so if you want to step back, let me get first. I’m in a hurry”

“Me too” you gave her a polite smile, mindful of her state.

The short distance that separated you from the customer on the front was certainly not enough, and she knew it. Still, she looked at you with disapproval. There were only five more people to go until it was your turn, you could buy your snacks and run to the next stall.

You thought you could ignore the glare at the back of your neck, and you did for a few minutes. Without meaning to, you thought how everything with Azriel was easier. Not only people wouldn’t dare to talk to him like that, but also, he assured you a good meter of distance between you two and the rest of the world with his wings.

The snacks on your hands almost fell when, not even two seconds after the man took three steps forward, you were shoved again.

That time, when you looked back, the woman was accompanied by her mate. His wings covered her from the people behind them.

“You should really step out of the line” she repeated. “You might have all the time in the word, but we are in a hurry”

“Me too. You can’t expect me to be glued to that man” you tried to explain, anxiety coiling in your stomach. “He just moved”

“And you didn’t, which proves my point. Besides, it’s obvious you only have a few things. We have more”

“Which should be enough reason to let me go first, not only because I was here before you” you shrugged, feeling even more uncomfortable when the male huffed a laugh. “Maybe it’s you who shouldn’t have come here today if you can’t wait in a line”

You weren’t a threat for the woman, and you were trying really hard to be polite and prove your point. Besides, being pregnant wasn’t an easy task, and you could tell she was far along. Maybe you should have let her pass, or maybe told her to fuck off.

But before you could argue further, something clicked in the male’s eyes, wide with recognition.

And you would have preferred for him to go full berserk mode on you. Because you recognized that look, you had been receiving them for a while now.

The male elbowed the woman’s side softly, pointing with his chin towards you. You didn’t have time to turn back and avoid the conversation, because he spoke.

“You’re the shadowsinger’s mate” he announced, loud enough to make a few heads turn.

“Oh” the woman finally connected the dots and lunged forward to grab your arm so tight you couldn’t shake her off. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry” you pushed your arm back, trying to let go.

While the woman apologized, you couldn’t help but listen to the whispers. The same ones you had heard in your bakery and through the streets. Some of them thrown in your face by rude or nosy customers that didn’t understand the concept of privacy, others by bystanders.

At the end, it was the woman who said it out loud, confirming what everyone in the small circle that had formed at the cue was wondering about. She finally let go of your arm and crossed hers in front of her body.

The look of pity wasn’t as bad as the confirmation.

“He rejected you, right?” it wasn’t a question, not when you didn’t answer and she continued. “We heard you’ve been mated for almost a century and he doesn’t want the bond. Is that true?”

It wasn’t true, but you didn’t have the heart to correct her. Instead, you turned around and used your wing-less privileges to sneak through the crowd. You kept your head down, as if that could stop you from hearing the comments or feeling the stares.

People had come up with an alternative version where Azriel and you had been mated for decades, for centuries. Where you had cheated on him or he had changed you for someone else. You had even heard that he had bonded with another person and had kicked you out of the house, and that you had been the one rejecting the bond.

Each version was farthest from the truth than the last one, but they all hurt the same. The crowd didn’t seem to get thinner no matter how deep you got in the market. Once the people who had heard the conversation were left behind, new people crowded you, worried about the girl panicking and running through the middle of the market.

There were a few occasions where you thought you would fall, where you tripped and almost embarrassed yourself farther. You had almost made it to the back entrance of the market when you finally realized you were tripping no more. There was no longer a crowd around you, nor whispers or hands reaching your way.

It took you another few steps to fully stop and assess the situation. When you looked back to see where the crowd was, you were met with a broad chest inches away from you. Through tearful eyes, you recognized Azriel’s wings tucking you away from people, his mere presence pushing them away.

You met his hazel eyes, full of worry and regret. His hair was longer, covering his brow, but you found comfort in his crooked nose, in his freckles, that you knew so well.

You noticed in his hands your bags that had been left in the stall, a new one with the snacks you were about to buy.

“What – what are you doing here?” you choked out, too grateful for the sudden moment of peace to wonder about anything else.

“I felt you through the bond, a few hours ago. Anxious and…” he stopped himself, his eyes scanning every tear that marked your cheeks. “I was just getting here when it got worse. I heard most of it. I’m –”

“Don’t say you’re sorry” you interrupted him. “It’s not your fault”

Out of the many things that were indeed his fault, people not minding their own business wasn’t his. You were used to him blaming himself for everything, from wars in other courts to people fighting in the street. The response came naturally.

Your nose was cold and runny, your hands frozen in your pockets, and your feet hurt. Besides all of that, you felt all wrong. Because you enjoyed his presence, because what they said, and because you couldn’t help but calm down when he was close.

Azriel didn’t say anything when you took the bags from his hands, thanking him quietly. He didn’t say anything as more people walked away from him, either because of his wings or because they recognized him.

“You don’t like last minute shopping”

It was a pointless observation, but it was better than to comment on how afraid he had been when, just outside the market, he felt the bond snap with urgence. His shadows knew where you were, and that you needed him, but even he had trouble running through crowds. Azriel also couldn’t talk about how mad he had been at everyone in that stall, how his new shadows had turned off every light and almost chocked them to death.

Azriel wanted to say that you were probably cold because you didn’t like your own coats, and most of the times wore one of his. He wanted to hug you, too, to feel you between his arms after what felt like an eternity and promise you that it would end well.

But he couldn’t say anything more than the obvious.

“I had to” you answered.

With a furious fist, frustrated at life, at him and at you, you brushed the tears off your cheeks. You could tell that he wanted to keep talking, and you did too. Since your last encounter, you had come up with more conversations you should have.

You stared at each other for what seemed forever. There were details that you had almost forgotten in your sorrow – like his long lashes, that you teased him about. Or the freckle that snuck up to the corner of his left eye. The way his mouth rose higher from the right, and the small scar on his ear from where Cassian dared him to wear an earring.

Only his face was enchanting enough to help you forget about the day, about the weight of your chest. It was the first closing call from the market, that sounded through the public speakers, that broke you away.

“I should go”

You talked at the same time, and you smiled softly when you pointed to different directions. You didn’t miss how his eyes fell to your mouth, how his own lifted up too.

“I could walk you back” he offered, not tearing his eyes away from your mouth. “If you let me”

You didn’t answer immediately. Those last words, that he had repeated so often lately, almost had you saying yes. You could almost imagine how it would go – him walking by your side, one of his wings behind your back. His elbow brushing yours, and his gaze fixed on you.

Your smile dropped when you remembered the times you had walked just like that, tucked together. The times you had waked by yourself through Velaris with his imprint on you, and the times he had left without a trace of your presence.

Azriel knew the answer before you said it, and his shoulders dropped slightly.

“Sorry”

That time, you decided to turn away before he could. Taking the back exit was a poor choice, knowing it was farther from your house than the main one, but you couldn’t picture yourself walking through the market without Azriel keeping the crowds a step away.

So you turned around, gripped your bags tight and didn’t tear your eyes from the ground during the whole way back.

It wasn’t Azriel who found you the time everything changed, but you.

The cold and winter were over, the streets were clean and the sun was out. It was a perfect day to spend outside, and Elain seemed fixed in throwing you out of your own shop. She claimed that the bags under your eyes were as dark as the night, and that your skin was so pale that she couldn’t tell the flour stains apart from it.

“Just for the record, you’re kicking the owner of the bakery out of the bakery” you stated, looking at her once more from the door. “You do realize that shouldn’t happen, right?”

“I’m helping a friend come out of her ghost-like season” she replied, still decorating muffins. “And you do realize that most shops close on Sunday’s, right?”

“Certainly not a bakery” you looked to the empty fountain at her right. “If we do it together, we will – “

“If you touch one single item of this bakery, I’m banning you from the kitchen for a month”

You doubted she meant it, she could. But still, you sighed and turned around to open the door. You weren’t an extrovert, certainly not an outsider. Since you were a child, you liked your kitchen, your house, and your space. And none of those things were outside the door.

But you actually feared what the fae you left behind would do if you turned back. Elain had already hidden your apron so you couldn’t put it on, and had threatened to mismatch the soy milk with normal one.

Giving her a last, tight smile through the glass, you walked towards the center of Velaris.

Not many people were outside that soon on a Sunday morning, but you were glad for her insistence the moment the sun kissed your face. The cold weather was disappearing and you could feel warmth across your cheeks. It was still cold, and it would be for at least another week, but the change in the weather promised a happy spring.

You walked aimlessly around Velaris, stopping to watch the Sidra move every now and then. Your feet carried you through unfamiliar streets, all of them filled with colors and smells. The longer you walked, the healthier you felt. Each step felt like a weight lifted from your chest, and you even smiled to a few usuals you found in the streets.

The main square peeked through the streets. It wasn’t your usual destination, too crowded and not as pretty as other parts of the town. But you still walked through it, feeling at ease and happy.

It had happened before, usually the days before you started your cycle, and you should have known the feeling of ease had nothing to do with the weather or the walk. It had happened and it happened again, just as you rounded a corner to walk in the square.

If, by any chance, Azriel hadn’t noticed you coming, the shadows that tugged him away from where he was standing would have made it obvious.

His eyes widened when he saw you, and you felt that peaceful feeling making its home for the day. There was no sorrow, no sadness, and none of the usual feelings that lately you felt when it came to him.

You cursed yourself stupid when you realized that you cycle was coming, and that every year you were in a mood until Azriel showed up, your hormones demanding your mate.

“Y/N”

Your name fell from your mouth and just by hearing it you noticed something different. It was new, and at the same time, you thought you recognized it somehow. You looked to his empty hands, to the syphons on his shoulders and chest and truth-teller on his side.

It looked like you had interrupted something important to him. But instead of running away from him like the last two times, you took a step closer.

“Are you going on a mission?” you pointed with your chin to his leather, eyes stopping at his chest. There was that thing, that you couldn’t name.

“Just came back. I was…”

Azriel looked to the building he just exited and for a moment, in silence. You had met a bunch of times since the incident in the market, and you had started having longer conversations. About the weather, about your bakery, and even about his family, who you finally knew officially.

Certainly, your relationship had improved, although it wasn’t just fixed yet. When he didn’t answer, you were reminded of all the times he had kept things to himself, either out of fear or doubt.

He seemed to doubt between telling you and keeping it to himself. Any other time, you knew, he would have kept it to himself. He had done it, in the past – when you asked him about his job, or tried to understand his past. Many times where he had evaded the truth or his emotions.

Your mood, that had been in a rush since you left the bakery, fell a little at his silence. He looked torn and you were ready to leave, before he answered.

“This is Madja’s house. I meet her here so we can talk, usually during the week” he looked back at you, watching the surprise of his statement. “But something happened and I needed to talk to her”

“What happened?”

Azriel’s lips were pressed tight, debating on whether he should tell you or not. He wouldn’t have doubted about it a year ago – he wouldn’t tell you, because in his eyes, it would only hurt you more than he already had. But he had learnt new things, and had realized that a relationship was built on trust. And that his fears, his perception of the reality, had broken yours.

He had cut the mission short when he had noticed, though he wasn’t sure he had ever done something like that. Azriel didn’t know what had triggered it, why it happened in the Winter court and not anytime sooner.

Madja, of course, had had an answer ready – an answer that had left him staring at her door for long twenty minutes before you appeared.

“Kallias should have sent something to Rhysand, but he didn’t” he started, not sure why he was traveling so far from the event. “So I went to check. Turns out someone must have taken it and, well, I tried to…”

He trailed off before he could finish, aware of your confusion. You never talked about what he did for Rhysand, in any court. No matter how big or small was the assignment, he didn’t tell you about it.

But that wasn’t what your confusion was about, at least not all of it. You couldn’t possibly notice because you had given it for granted since the beginning, but Azriel did notice. He noticed the change as soon as it happened, and babbled when he explained to Rhysand what he should have been feeling for years.

Had explained to Madja moments ago, who had given him a knowing smile and a proud nod.

“I accepted the bond” he confessed, continuing before you could say anything else. “I don’t know how, or why, but I was there and suddenly I was hit with – with this in my chest, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t happen sooner”

“You accepted the bond” you repeated, looking between his chest and face.

“I don’t know how, or why now. I was, thinking… And it hit me” Azriel smiled sadly, not saying what his thoughts were about – what they had been about since that night. “I didn’t want to tell you, because, this is, you don’t have to do anything now. Me accepting the bond doesn’t change what I did”

Azriel hadn’t meant to tell you, neither to be so vague and ridiculously nervous about it.

It had been a surprise when, in the middle of a conversation, he felt it. He had been thinking about you, because there were flowers and they were pretty against the cold weather, and to him, you were the prettiest thing the Cauldron had made. One moment Kallias had been going through the last movements of the package and the next the high lord was looking at him with raised brows.

Congratulating him for something that should have happened six years ago.

“It’s not that I didn’t want the bond before, Y/N” he continued when you didn’t say anything. “I promise you, I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know that I deserved it”

Azriel had thought, and he still wanted to, that you so pretty that you were meant for someone else. That it was borrowed time, that he didn’t deserve the bond just as he didn’t deserve you. With Madja and Rhys, they had had deep conversations about his mental health, about his version of life where he lived through a glass of pain and rejection.

As he stared at your surprised form, he tried not to let hope leak into his heart. He knew it didn’t fix what was broken, but he hoped it was the first step of a long recovery to win you back.

Only if you could confirm or deny, instead of stare at him.

“Say something” Azriel finally broke, almost begged. “Whatever you want. Just say something”

And you wanted to, because wasn’t that what you had wanted? You had fooled yourself lately thinking about may what ifs. What if he had accepted the bond in the bagging, what if he had told you that he wasn’t fine, that he was broken and needed help.

What if you had helped him and not rushed things when he wasn’t ready. Now, it felt like the Cauldron was giving you that opportunity, only that you didn’t know how to react.

You finally looked away from him and decided to give an experimental tug on the bond, to see if anything had changed.

It had.

“Az”

It was a chuckle, maybe the beginning of a cry. It was anger but also relief because what came back from that tug wasn’t what you usually felt. It was stronger, solid, as if there was a physical string between your bodies that kept you linked.

Usually, it was just an intense feeling that was enough for you. But now that you felt him tugging back, felt him loving you, you couldn’t hold back another laugh. He shoved down through it everything he felt – adoration, love, joy. Many fears that had you stumbling towards him, and pain.

So much pain that your smile dropped. His dropped too, and you felt the bond getting fainter.

“That’s another reason. I didn’t want you to feel… that” Azriel retreated the bond farther. “I have so many fears and pains here that I couldn’t even imagine sharing them with you. And that – “

“You don’t have to feel ashamed” you cut him off, your voice hoarse. “I love you the same”

Words were unnecessary when you hugged his middle and buried yourself in his chest. He curled around you, like he had done so many times.

The channel snapped open again, and you just closed your eyes tightly. It was an endless source of emotions, and it broke you that most of them were bad. There was rejection, from so many people that it felt like an angry, black bull coming your way. Sadness that felt overwhelming and never ending, always coming in waves when Azriel didn’t expect it.

You also felt disgust, and you only held him tighter when you discovered it was self-disgust. Not only at the things that he had done, but also at what had been done to him. The scars on his hands, the shadows around him. He had hated himself for so long he had forgotten how to love.

But then, at the bottom, there was something bright, and that part you realized it was only dedicated to you. There was his family too, but it wasn’t as intense as his love for you. Everything that he lacked during his life, that he yearned for, was tucked where it mattered the most.

“I love you” he whispered against your head, softly. “I love you”

You didn’t answer, just raised your head until you could brush your lips against him. Later, you would have time to blame the cycle, which you wouldn’t get for another two months, or the emotions of the moment. But you knew it was just what you needed, what you both deserved, when you felt him kissing back.

At the beginning, it was just his lips against yours, and it was enough. Your noses brushed each other, you got on your tiptoes and his wing cocooned both of you. His hands only pressed you tighter against his body when you moved your lips against his, brushing the edge of your tongue against his bottom one.

Azriel could barely keep himself straight when you silently asked for permission to open his mouth, which he happily obliged.

From that moment, it was crashing. The kiss was only a physical proof of your feelings traveling through the mated bond, so wild and intense you couldn’t tell which one was his or yours.

“I’m sorry, darling” he whispered against your lips, giving you no time to reply. “I’m sorry for hurting you, for being a coward. I’m sorry”

“I forgive you. We don’t keep secrets anymore” you managed to say between kisses.

“Never” Azriel answered while leaving kisses on your cheeks and nose.”

“And we’ll talk about our emotions, and feelings. You’ll tell me about your life when I ask”

“Always”

“You won’t close off to me” you pulled his head away and made him look at you.

While you held his face between your hands, Azriel smiled. It was a different smile from the previous ones, from the ones you had seen so far. It was carefree, loving, and yours.

Your thumb brushed the corner of his eye, his upper cheek, the border of his nose.

“I’m here, Azriel. Always. So you don’t have to hide anything from me, or to be ashamed or afraid. I’m here” you closed the distance once more, controlling the kiss by holding onto his face. “Right around the corner”

“Right around the corner” he repeated, dipping his head and sealing all his promises with another kiss.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

Right around the corner taglist:

@lesliemurillo @impossibelle @polli05927 @florencemtrash @going-through-shit @minakay @setayeshmohseni @torchbearerkyle @esposadomd @amysangel @kennedy-brooke @originalcrusadetrash @luvmoo @historygeekqueen @marriedtolike18fictionalmen @wallacewillow0773638 @tothestarsandwhateverend @kristalhi @knmendiola @nikt-wazny-y @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @wallacewillow0773638 @clara-geekhime @kalulakunundrum @saltedcoffeescotch @originalcrusadetrash @mel-wcst @ailyr92 @bubybubsters @chickensrock3 @tothestarsandwhateverend @topaz125 @wallacewillow0773638 @just-m-2 @theravenphoenix26 @glitterypirateduck @a-frog-with-a-laptop @justdreamstars

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lale-txt · 5 months

Text

❈ 𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐭 𝐰/ 𝐈𝐧𝐨 & 𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐛!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

where you and Ino are stuck due a snow storm and have to stay warm...

a/n: merry Christmas, my dear @mirkaaaluv (´⌣`ʃƪ)♡ i'm sooo excited i get to be your secret santa! you definitely passed the Ino fever onto me, how is he just so [incoherent screeching]? hope you'll enjoy this fic, i had so much fun writing this for you.

contains: ns.fw under the cut, afab!reader (no pronouns used, ‘cunt’ and ‘pussy’ used to describe genitalia), dirty talk, spanking, breath play, overstimulation, praise kink, fingering (reader receiving), creampie, breeding kink (no mention of pregnancy or babies), rough but loving sex, pet names (babe, baby, sweet little thing, darling)

word count: 3.1k

“See? A small fire and this place feels super cozy already. Imagine a little winter vacation getaway, just you and me–” “–and the hundred curses hiding outside within the temple, waiting to be exorcized…” “Babe, please… I’m trying to be romantic here…”

You can’t help but giggle when Ino takes you in his arms and kisses the bridge of your nose, rubbing your back to warm you up. He had managed to light up the old stove with some firewood, old newspapers and a pack of matches that you found within the abandoned hut. Now the crackling sound of burning wood filled the room, paired with the relentless howling of the snow storm outside. It was a miracle that you found this place during your mission, caught by surprise from the sudden snow. Judging from the simple but clean interior, someone associated with the uninhabited temple you were supposed to cleanse of curses has lived here before.

Now it is your safe haven in the midst of a storm. While the weather forecast didn’t look good, neither of you would have expected to get snowed in, but here you are. And still, you couldn’t even be mad about it–being stuck with Ino in the middle of nowhere wasn’t too bad, considering your occupation as sorcerers often didn’t leave you with much free time to spend together as a couple. Maybe the stars had aligned to grant you some time together, or how Ino said: A little winter vacation getaway.

Your partner seems to be all fired up about the situation you found yourself in, his protective instincts kicking into gear. He scurries around the hut, opening drawers and cabinets and gathering everything that could be useful in a pile; from blankets to an old kettle, he even found some dried tea leaves and pickled veggies (that would go along perfectly with the bread rolls Nanami had gifted you and Ino prior to your mission, a small souvenir from his latest bakery discovery). He also drags the mattress from the other room over, putting it in front of the stove from where you watched him with a small smirk curving up your lips. Within a few minutes the room already looked much cozier than before.

“We should probably get out of these wet clothes or else we’ll catch a cold,” you point out and Ino nods, a hint of mischief on his face before he peels out of his jacket and his black sweater, hanging both over a chair to dry. Both of you strip down to your underwear (not without a little peeking), then Ino is the first to sit down on the mattress, grabbing the biggest blanket and patting his thigh for you to sit on. You don’t hesitate at all, craving all the warmth you can get. When you crawl into his arms, you’re welcomed with lots and lots of kisses on your face down to the side of your neck, before you settle down comfortably with your back against Ino’s chest, letting him wrap the blanket around you both. He nuzzles his face in the crook of your neck, taking deep inhales of the scent of his favorite person in the whole world.

A comfortable silence falls between you two, and for a while you just sit there holding each other, watching the fire in the stove almost mesmerized, and listening to the sounds of the storm outside. Snow is already piling up on the windowsill while the sun is long gone, but you’re not afraid; you could never while being in these arms.

“I love you so,” Ino eventually mumbles against your skin before kissing your shoulder and hugging you a bit closer to him. He cups your hands with his, noticing how they were still not fully warmed up yet. He rubs them a little and places a few kisses on your fingertips. “Should I go find another blanket for you? Or make some tea?”

You shake your head and rest your head against his shoulder, looking up at him with a small smile. “Nah, I’m fine. Let’s just stay like this for a little longer. I already feel much warmer.”

Ino looks like he is about to protest, but then he opts to kiss you instead. He is gentle at first, his lips softly brushing against yours, but he is quick to pick up your subtle cues and kisses you harder, one hand coming to your chin while his tongue finds yours. His arm wraps a little tighter around your middle, pulling you closer to him, till there’s not even an inch left between your bare bodies. You can tell from his breathing that Ino is feeling the same rising heat from within as you do.

A quiet growl comes from his throat when you arch your back a little, grinding your ass against his boxers from where his cock was throbbing already, and it takes him every ounce of self-restraint to not just pull the fabric aside and sink you down on his length. Instead he makes sure you’re nestled tightly with your back against his chest, the hand on your chin wandering down slowly to your throat while his other reaches for your thighs, spreading them open till your legs are hooked over his knees. The blanket hides the damp patch in your panties that would otherwise be on full display, but by now Ino doesn’t need to see to know how aroused you are; your sweet little sounds and your squirming tell him everything he needs to know.

“Wet already? My sweet little thing is so eager for me, hm?” he hums in your ear when running his knuckles between your clothed folds, the fabric sticking to them. You whine a little, hungry for more of his touch, and he squeezes his fingers around your throat a bit tighter, not too much but enough to remind you of the position you’re in. “Tell me what you want, baby…”

Not giving you any time to respond, Ino’s big hand cups your cunt, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest when he feels you buck your hips against him. He starts to massage your folds a little, a thumb brushing over your sensitive clit and making your legs tremble, a finger hooked under the crotch of your panties and pulling them up. He always loves to tease you like that, your reactions making him hungry to devour you.

“Wanna cum on your cock,” you mumble in his ear, kissing every inch of him you can reach. His scent was so familiar, so warm, and a little intoxicating; you just couldn’t get enough of him, ever. “Wanna feel you all the way inside my tummy…”

“Oh, yeah? Gonna be so good for me, baby? Gonna let me stuff that pretty little cunt of yours?”, Ino asks, his voice low and husky. He’s planning on fucking you against every flat surface in this hut anyway, but he loves it when you use your words to say what you want. He can never get enough of the yearning and the desire in your voice, a melody for his ears only. Patience was never his strong suit though, not when you’re both so riled up, so it’s no surprise when he slides your panties down to your ankles and dips one finger into your wetness.

Your head falls back against his shoulder when Ino adds a second finger, then a third when he feels how your walls flutter around him. His breath is hot and heavy on your skin while he makes you fall apart in his arms, whispering needy words close to your ear. His hand around your throat squeezes tighter every time you clench down on his slender fingers, rubbing that sweet spot that pushes you over the edge so easily. You start feeling a little lightheaded, your whole body tingling.

“Cum for me, baby… need you all nice and loose so you can take me, okay?”, Ino mutters, pressing his fingers deeper into your heat. You’re dripping by now, your juices running down his wrist while you swallow him so greedily, close, so close–

Ino lets go of your throat once you gush around him, muffling your mewls and whimpers with a deep kiss that takes your breath away. He keeps teasing your clit throughout your orgasm, the overstimulation making you squirm, but you’re still nestled so tightly against him, there’s no escape. Ino can never get enough of the way you look when you’re wrecked with pleasure, but he’s no bully so he lets you breathe for a moment and slides his fingers out to bring them to his lips.

“I love how you taste,” he moans quietly against your ear, relishing the sticky mess you’ve made. Ino kisses you again and lets you savor your own juices. “So sweet. So delicious. Tastes like heaven to me.”

He nibbles on your ear and holds you tight in his arms until your heart rate slows down a bit. The whole time his aching cock is pressed against the small of your back, throbbing and desperate to be touched.

When you finally feel the strength in your limbs returning, you sit up slightly, the blanket falling down your shoulders and revealing your bare form. Ino’s eyes never leave your silhouette, he’s taking you in and admiring the shape of you with the eyes of a love drunk man.

“Fuck me.”

Your voice is barely a whisper, a little husky even. Dripping with desire. Ino pulls down his boxers and his cock springs free, resting heavy against his stomach. The pink tip is oozing with precum, he can barely hold back anymore. He starts stroking himself slowly while you get on all fours, facing the stove and presenting him your backside. You lower your upper body to the ground, your ass up in the air, spreading your folds with two fingers wide open for him. Ino lets out a shaky breath at the sight of yours, but he doesn’t dare to touch you yet.

“Please… need your cock. Need you inside. Fuck me, Ino, darling, please, fuck me…”

Your sweet please make your lover’s resistance crumble. Ino gets behind you, one hand on your ass to spread it apart even wider for a better view. The light of the fire dips him into warm shades of gold, and his hungry gaze lingers on you. You let out a needy mewl when he rubs just the tip against your cunt, almost making you jolt from being so sensitive still. You whine out his name and arch your back more to push yourself onto him, but he keeps you in place, his fingers digging deeply into your flesh. Ino breathes heavily, and then his hand comes down for a sharp smack, quickly soothed by more kneading.

“You’re dripping,” he mutters and teases your clit with the tip of his cock, charming out sweet moans from your throat with every move. “Tell me again what you want, baby, c’mon…”

“Need your cock, please, please, just fuck me already–”, you whimper, and cry out loud when another smack lands on your ass, the other side this time. The sharp pain burns so good, and this time Ino comes down to kiss the spot where a faint red mark blooms. Oh, how badly Ino wants to bury his face in your cunt, and lick and spit and suck till you choke on his name on your tongue, but for now he has other plans.

With one swift movement he grabs you by the hips and spins you around, letting out a small growl now that you’re under him. Ino leans down, one hand grabbing your wrists and pinning them down above your head, while his lips find yours again, kissing you feverishly. His cock rests heavy and twitching on your stomach now, as if to demonstrate you how deep he’s gonna nestle inside of you.

“Wanna see your pretty face when you cream around my cock, baby,” Ino sighs and looks at you like you’re magic; pure adoration and desire. It sends warm shivers throughout your whole body and makes your pussy throb, feeling empty ever since his fingers slid out. He lets go of your wrists to grab your legs and put them over his shoulders, making sure you’re comfortable while being spread wide open for him. Ino kisses the insides of your thighs, a few light bites in between, and groans when your hands come to his cock, giving it a few strokes before raising your hips slightly for him to slide in. By now your mind is blank, desiring nothing but to be stuffed to the brim.

The air is knocked out of lungs when Ino finally pushes his cock inside in one swift movement. You’re so wet and your walls swallow him greedily, fluttering around him as you let out a sigh of relief, the biggest smile curling upon your lips when he starts rutting like an animal, setting a merciless pace from the very beginning. While he first held your legs in place, Ino now puts his hands down on the mattress next to your head, basically folding you in half while he keeps on pounding into you.

“Fuck, you’re so tight, baby, feels so good, so pretty for me…” Ino growls and brushes a strand of hair out of your face to get a better look at your blissfully fucked out expression, your eyes rolling in the back of your head with every thrust of his. Your sweet moans and whimpers are louder than the snow storm outside and awake something feral within him; all he can think about is how badly he wants to breed you, how he wants to stuff you so full of his cum till it’s dripping out of your throbbing core, how he needs to fill you up till you remember his shape forever.

“Close… ‘m so close…”, you mewl, that familiar knot in your core once again dancing on the edge of snapping. You’re melting underneath him, your vision getting a little blurry when you rest one hand on your tummy and feel his cock stretching you out so deliciously. The words falling out of your mouth are drowned out in needy moans and whimpers. “Gonna cum… wanna cum with you, Ino… love you, gonna cum, gonna…”

Ino lets out an airy laugh, not mocking but so full of love, overwhelmed by his own emotions. He leans down to kiss you again, and to push his cock a little bit deeper inside of you as well until he’s fully bottomed out in your aching cunt.

“I love you. Love you so much, baby,” he babbles, his hips stuttering by now while he also chases his high, his thrusts getting harsh and sloppy. “Sweet thing… taking me so well… gonna let me fill you up, yeah? Want my cum? I love you. I love you. Fuck, you’re squeezing me, baby, feels good, feels so good… I love your pussy so much… love you. Mine, all mine… ‘m gonna…”

Your legs slide down from his shoulders and wrap around his waist, pulling him even closer to you, as if he wasn’t already bottomed out in your core, seconds away from falling apart. He moans into your open mouth and after one more brutish thrust you feel waves of pleasure rush throughout your limbs, a numbing and tingling sensation exploding within you. You cum so hard, it makes Ino take a sharp breath and whimper as your cunt milks him, and he buries his face in the crook of your neck when he cums shortly after you, spilling his hot load inside.

While your orgasm seems to last forever, neither Ino nor you make an attempt to move or pull apart, content in your tiny universe. The only sounds are your heavy breathing, your hammering heartbeat and the crackling of the fire wood. Ino still keeps on mumbling words of praise and adoration against your skin, until you muffle them with a kiss on his lips which he returns with equal passion.

You trace the scar on his forehead gently with your fingers while gazing into his eyes. They were a bit glazy, with the reflection of the flames dancing in them. Ino leans more into your touch, kissing the palm of your hand and down to your wrist. He doesn’t pull out, not yet, feasting on the feeling of you pulsating around his cock; his load and your juices slowly dripping down from where you’re connected.

“You’re not cold anymore, are you? I warmed you up really good?”, he asks with a grin and gently bites down on one of your fingers. His eyes sparkle with mischief. You let out a small chuckle. Sometimes he reminds you of a puppy, chewing on everything he could get a hold on, and so eager to get praised.

“Mmm, I’m not sure,” you think out loud and watch his eyebrows twitch in irritation. You laugh again and cup his chin with your hand, pressing another kiss on his lips. “I’ve heard it’s important to keep moving if you want to stay warm…”

Ino huffs and rolls his hips in response, twitching inside of you, getting hard again. He is so easy to tease, it’s adorable. His hands come down to your hips, and suddenly in one swift motion you’re lying flat on your stomach again, with Ino bottoming out inside of you. Being manhandled like this, plus the new angle, make you moan out loud and tremble from pleasure and overstimulation, and Ino clicks his tongue at your poor attempt to crawl away.

“Oh, I can keep you warm, my sweet,” he whispers close to your ear, pinning you down against the mattress. He lets out a small hushed moan when you arch your back further for him. “Will you be good and return the favor? Gonna let me keep my cock in your pretty pussy? You’re clenching so hard around me, baby, it’s like you never wanna let me go…”

There’s truth in his words, and that night, you definitely don’t let go; and when the sun rises again and the snow starts melting, nothing but love lies on the tip of your tongue, getting swallowed greedily by the one who has your whole heart.

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #ino x reader #ino takuma x reader #ino takuma #ino takuma x you #ino x you #jjk x you #jjk reader insert #jjk scenarios #jjk imagines

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weskin-time · 1 year

Note

I don’t t go here but how about sharing body heat with John price headcanons? Like if it’s cold outside and the both of you are stranded. Alone. 👀 (feel free to ignore just giving ideas haha)

i’m sorry this took. months. i love when i write and hit the save button only for it to not save. >:/ BUT I HOPE I DID YOUR ASK JUSTICE!

Captain John Price x GN!Reader

not beta read

Cold air curled into your lungs and made its home on your skin, burning the back of your throat and searing your flesh as if it was hot out, but it was freezing.

There was no snow, just dry cold air that made your sinus’s cry out in pain, no moisture in the air just a winter haze in a forest. Frozen dew drops clung to blades of grass, to the leaves shed on the forest floor like blankets, the dwindling light of the day promised an even colder night.

The twilight would have been peaceful if it had been a voluntary camping trip, if you weren’t stuck with your captain in the middle of the woods out in bumfuck-nowhere Russia.

It should have been easy, should have been an easy drive to a small town where the contact had been, but it was an ambush, a trap set up by Makarov to get you lot off his ass. Your small team was outnumbered and forced to retreat, but an explosion caused Price and you to be separated from Gaz and the rest of the small amount of men. A mine caught the captain and you off guard, causing the Humvee you were in to wreck, separating you from everyone, somehow Makarov’s men didn’t see you two slip into the woods that bordered the town.

“Damnit. You two are going to have to sit tight for the night.” Laswell spoke over the coms.

Good thing the army backpack your we’re wearing had supplies inside it, standard military issued foldable tent, a shitty sleeping bag, and then some. Price seemed to have lost his bag (or didn’t even bring it) in the explosion, meaning there was only one tent and sleeping bag to share between you two. Fun.

You barley paid any attention to the conversation going on behind you as you began to set up the tent, unzipping it from its little bag and trying to figure out how to set it up. It kind of reminded you like those folding frisbees you sometimes get at fairs or small events.

“Laswell-“ Price began to argue but was cut off.

“John it’s too hot right now to rescue the two of you, Makarovs men are still in the town, Im not going to argue with you. I’m sending a team your way before dawn tomorrow, you’ll be out of there in no time.” Her tone was final.

“Fuckin hell.”

The kept talking as you focused on the tent, tuning them out as you fed some tubes into the fabric of the green camo. Your nose felt numb, your fingers moved with a slowness of paralyzed flesh, the cold in the air seeped into your being freezing your blood. Your heavy fingers fumbled over the rough fabric as you sniffed your now running nose.

By the time Price was done complaining you had gotten the tent up. It was large enough for about 2 people, and thankfully the backpack you carried had a thin scratchy blanket to go along with it. Looks like you wouldn’t be camping warmly tonight.

“The tents up captain.” you called over your shoulder to where the man was just a few moments ago, jaw chattering slightly.

“Alright. Fuckin hell.” the last part was muttered under his breath.

———————————

It had been an hour since you set up the tent.

Twilight had come to cloak the forest in darkness, the birds who were chirping and singing earlier had went to bed, it was too cold in the night air for them.

The temperature had to have dropped a few more degrees by sundown because your toes ached in the combat boots you wore, you could barely feel them let alone move them in the confines of the shoes. Your fingers felt like rocks, slow to move and what could best describe it as ‘clunky’.

It’s weird how the cold burns. Your skin felt like it was on fire minus the heat, your thighs didn’t help warm up your hands as you pressed your legs harder around your fingers to provide any warmth at all, instead it just make your skin ache. What’s worse is you couldn’t make a fire.

Makarov’s men were still in the area Price had confirmed, while y’all were deeper in the woods to where it would take them a while to find you even if they tried to look in the forest, it would still be too risky to attract them from the smoke of a fire, and everything was too cold and frozen to have a smokeless fire, you needed dry wood with no bark for that.

You and your captain had huddled up in the tent for the night. Price was currently on watch, which left you alone in the tent to rest.

But it was too cold to sleep. It was too cold to even think. You sat in the fetal position with your arms around your thighs instead of your knees, pressing your fingers into the crevasse of your thighs to provide some warmth, but none coming to you. A blanket from the sleeping bag was wrapped around you, it was too cold to even lay flat in the sleeping bag, you had to huddle to stay somewhat warm, and even then you felt the buzzing, burning, numb feeling of the cold. You were able to handle torture if needed, but this? this was hell. The blanket did nothing.

“Shift change.” He announced before unzipping the flap and sitting fully in the tent ready to switch positions with you but he stopped when he saw your shivering state.

Your head was on your knees and you honestly couldn’t tell if you were shivering worse than he was. Your skin looked dull from what he could see and that instantly worried him.

He shifted over to you on his knees, shutting the tent flap behind him, “You alright?”

You weakly looked up at him only to be met with his sudden expression of shock and worry all mixed into one. You could barely see in the moonlight but you’d be able to sniff out the expression sense you haven’t seen him ever express it before.

Your lips were turning blue.

“Fuckin hell,” he groaned out a string of curses as he put down his gun and took off his vest and placed it with yours in the corner of the tent. You could barely understand what he was muttering, something about muppets? Fuck if you knew.

“Imma move you, right?” He asked full knowing he was going to do it regardless if you said yes or no, so you have a weak grunt in approval.

You didn’t want to move, moving meant you’d loose all the warmth you’ve built up be it not much. John sat down close to you and took the blanket off you, which you barely even noticed, and wrapped his large warm hands around your midsection and hooked his other under your knees, lifting you up to sit in between his legs. You were facing sideways against him with your shoes under his thigh as both of his legs wrapped around your frame. He pushed your head to rest against his chest and instantly your hands found their place resting against his ribs.

His arms wrapped around you with the blanket, draping it around the two of you as he held you against him.

If you were in your right mind you would protest against your captains actions, but survival was more important in this moment. Plus you honestly didn’t mind being this close to him, feeling his breath on the top of your head as he huddled into you, his strong heartbeat hammering in your ears in a calming manner, and slowly the warmth of the two of you beginning to grow under the trap of the blanket, making your skin feel as if it was thawing. You felt safe in his arms like this.

“That better?” Price asked resting his head on your own.

A whine of ‘mmhmm’ escaped your throat at the question.

“Get some rest ey? Gaz’ll be here by dawn.” Reassuring words from your captain almost put a spell on you as you instantly felt your eyelids grow heavy. You absentmindedly snuggled closer into his chest and shifted your weight to rest fully against him. A hum of contentment released like a balloons air escaping. You really should be embarrassed a little about this situation but you were too cold and tired to care, you were just glad you could feel your fingers again.

Right at the cusp of sleep where your brain was swimming in the ideas of a dream a soft pressure surrounded by what felt like fuzzy grass tickled your forehead.

John had given you a kiss on the head, “Sleep love.”

You’d worry about everything later in the morning when you’re rescued and after you’ve been seen by a doctor.

#tezi post #captain price #captain johnathan price #captain price x reader #cod #call of duty #mw2 #call of duty modern warefare #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #price x reader #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #mw2 x reader #mw x reader #captain john price x you #cod x y/n #call of duty x y/n

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mangoshorthand · 5 months

Text

Twelve Feet Away from the Mistletoe - Part 2 | Five Hargreeves / F Reader (Angst/Fluff) Words 3k

Requested by @fiannee. I managed to stop myself writing smut through the simple expedient of fading to black. #personalgrowth

<< Read Part 1

On Christmas Eve, he opened the front door looking a million dollars. He stood straight and authoritative in what must have been his best suit. Its clean lines skimmed and accentuated the breadth of his shoulders, his trim waist, and the shape of his legs.

You stared, dumbstruck for a moment, snow settling on the shoulders of your coat.

Five looked like he’d been dressed by Gianni Versace himself, and you were standing in out in the snow wearing a lumpy sweater featuring candy cane striped arms and a horrified looking gingerbread man with a huge bite out of his head.

“Nice sweater,” he said, apparently too distracted by the small glimpse not obscured by your coat to say anything else.

“Thanks,” you said, embarrassed.

You looked up at him for a second, there on the Academy steps, laden down by a large bag of Christmas gifts in your hand and a bag of clothes on your back, the cold air at your back rushing into the warmth of the entrance hall. You were suddenly unsure how to proceed. He was smiling welcome, but there was still a moment of uncertainty.

You’d had no contact with him since that night. How to greet him after what happened? A handshake? A hug? Surely a kiss was too -

But Five stepped back from the door and gestured you through it.

“Come in,” he said, “we’re about to order Chinese food.”

“Sounds good,” you said, smiling awkwardly as you maneuvered your lumpy bag of gifts through the door.

You stood in front of him for a second or so, waiting for the hug or handshake or whatever, but it never came. Instead, he closed the door behind you and went to lead you into the living room where signs of movement made it clear that his siblings sat.

You hesitated, and it made him notice your bag of gifts for the first time. He looked curiously down into the bag.

“Are these for-?”

“Just some gifts for you all,” you said, waving a hand to disclaim their importance. “I was just going to go dump them in the room I’m sleeping in and then-”

“Sure, sure,” he nodded towards the stairs, “you go do that. It’s the same one as last time,” he finished, answering your unarticulated question.

***

Alone in the spare room you’d been sleeping in last time you stayed, you looked in the full length mirror.

With Five looking like he’d fallen from heaven, the sweater suddenly felt like a bad move. Why did you always have to hide behind a veneer of childish humor? Why, when you came here hoping to be swept off your feet, did you dress like an idiot?

Ever since that kiss, he’d polluted your thoughts. Memories of the sensation of his lips on yours and the occasional touch of his tongue had always been followed by whether you should try to see him before christmas, whether to buy him a gift and exactly how you should pitch that gift. You’d agonized over it until you bought everyone a gift just so that buying him one wouldn’t stand out too much.

All in all, the last couple of weeks had been a mess of doubt and nerves.

Mentally shaking yourself, you pushed these thoughts aside. You kissed under the mistletoe once: it was hardly grounds to expect romance. Maybe his invitation to come for Christmas had been friendly, and the kiss was just a bit of fun in the moment. There was mild mutual attraction and there was mistletoe, but outside that little bit of holiday mischief, you were just his brother’s friend.

Fuck it. You liked this sweater and you weren’t going to change it for a man. And you’d be damned if you let yourself get hung up on a man this fickle. Squaring your shoulders, you left the bedroom.

***

“I thought I heard your voice.”

Viktor’s smile from one of the armchairs was one of welcome, but surprise. Luther, Sloane, Klaus, Diego and Lila were watching you too, looking welcoming themselves but oddly expectant somehow. Five was nowhere to be found.

You felt the enquiry in their looks.

“Uh - am I early? Five said Christmas Eve but he didn’t say when.”

“Huh?” Diego said, uncomprehending. Their eyes on you felt uncomfortable.

“H-he told me to come over on Christmas Eve and stay a couple of nights. Did he not tell-?”

“Wait:” Lila said, loudly, “you’re telling us Five invited you for Christmas?”

“Yes,” you all but whispered, heat rising to your cheeks, “did he not tell you?”

“First I’m hearing of it.” Lila said, amused, “The sly old git.”

Putting two and two together, Viktor stepped in to cover your feeling of intruding on them.

“Sorry, I forgot to mention it to you guys. We invited her to come before she moved into her new place.”

“No problem here,” Klaus said, shrugging and throwing his sequined ankle boots up onto the table, “nice to have a different face to look at.”

After the other inhabitants of the room made sounds of agreement, or stated their welcome, you took a place beside Viktor.

When a bottle of champagne had been popped and poured by Sloane and quiet chat reestablished, Viktor leaned towards you.

“So are you and he-?”

“No.” you said, hurriedly, as a wiggle of Viktor’s eyebrows suggested what you and Five might be up to, “He didn’t really tell you he invited me, did he?”

“No,” he sniggered, But seriously - what’s going on? When did he ask?”

“My last night here,” you began, uncertainly, “you were asleep on the couch and -” you cast around for how to explain it, and then promptly chickened out, “- he asked me then.”

Viktor looked as if he knew this was far from the full story, but made no further comment.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you. I should have done.”

You shook your head to indicate that his apology was unnecessary, but were too preoccupied with one question to do more.

“Where did Five go, anyway?”

“Beats me.” Viktor shrugged. “We were about to order dinner but he disappeared.”

Disappeared?” you repeated, surprised into speaking more loudly than you intended.

This attracted the attention of Klaus, who watched you with interest from over his champagne glass.

Don’t get hung up on him. Don’t.

“Yeah,” Viktor said, clearly as confused as you, “he blinked away.”

“And we were just about to order food,” Klaus said, airily, “let’s give him fifteen and if he doesn’t come back, we order without him.”

You gave him an hour. And then you did order without him. And, by the time the meal came, he still wasn’t back. And, another two hours later, the portion of satay and fried rice Viktor had ordered for him was still sitting on the coffee table, completely cold.

You tried not to let it get to you. You tried not to let yourself dwell. You remembered the sensible conclusion you’d come to in your third-floor bedroom but still, a mixture of confusion, hurt and irritation began to fight for the upper hand in your feelings.

Even as you enjoyed the company of his siblings, joined in with their banter and laughed at their jokes, half your mind was engaged battling over their brother.

What had you done to make him leave like this? Why invite you over at all if he clearly didn’t want to spend time with you? Did he take one look at you and regret that kiss? Did you spend days agonizing about whether you should buy him that gift just for him to make other plans as soon as you arrived?

Fuck him. And fuck his mixed signals too.

You looked up at the felt mistletoe above the fireplace. Cheap and fake, just like that kiss apparently.

As the evening wore on, the snow got heavier and heavier outside, until snowflakes were falling in thick, heavy clumps past the windows, melting into slush as they came into contact with damp, dirty sidewalks and tarmac laid with grit.

And Five’s meal was still left uneaten, even when Luther began to campaign hard to get everyone to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.

“Five would agree with me,” Luther said, earnestly, “he loved it when we were kids.”

“Only because it was the only Christmas video tape we had.” Viktor replied.

“And he was six years old,” Deigo interjected, “you’re the only one who hasn’t matured since then.”

“You guys are grinches,” Luther said, sulkily. And then, face changing to curiosity as soon as the thought occurred: “where the hell is Five, anyway?”

“Search me,” Viktor replied.

“Should we be worried?” you asked, as Luther lost interest and continued to extol the Muppets’ many adaptational virtues.

“Nah,” Klaus said, “I’m more worried for the folks wherever he is.”

“Does he do this often?” you pressed.

“Oh yes. Cinco’s a little...unpredictable. Probably wanted to avoid being sociable. Probably couldn’t face Luther’s whining about this shitty movie.”

Pleading tiredness, you headed to bed before the movie began, Luther cross-legged in front of the TV accompanied by an equally excited Lila. As you bade them all goodnight, Viktor watched you with a look of mild concern.

“See you in the morning,” you said, trying to smile at him and put his mind at ease, but unsure if you were successful given that your brain had been a mush of rage and recriminations for the last four hours at least.

His sympathetic smile back was slightly too knowing for you to be comfortable.

So much for not getting hung up on him.

***

Quite how you woke up in Five’s bed the next morning, you would never know. And, as his warmth shifted beside you ahd he whispered a sleepy: “Merry Christmas,” into your ear, you found that you didn’t much care how it happened, only that it did.

It started with you alone in your room, having changed into your pajamas; still hurt, still angry and even angrier at yourself for being so.

How could you let one kiss do this to you? How could you let this man get under your skin?

Because how could you forget? How could you go back now, knowing the feel of his hair, the feel of his breath feathering across your lips? How could any kiss ever again live up to the one he’d given you so carelessly?

That bastard. That smooth-skinned, perfect-jawed, green-eyed bastard.

Muffled above your head, came a sound you nevertheless recognised: the static whoosh that signaled one of Five’s blinks.

So he’d been up in his room all this time? Perhaps using his powers to avoid you?

No. Fuck that noise.

As if you yourself had blinked there from your bedroom, you found yourself marching up the attic stairs and knocking insistently on his door.

“Yeah?” came his slightly irritated voice from inside.

That tone was like a red rag to a bull already butting against his confines. You thrust the door open and were over the threshold before he could acknowledge you.

“Why did you invite me here?” you demanded.

Clearly, Five’s response to your knock had not meant that it was fine to come in. He stood there in the center of the room, naked from the waist up, a sopping wet shirt falling from his hands onto the floor.

You felt your face heat up like a whoosh from a gas furnace. You didn’t stare, but the second or so you looked gave you enough of a glimpse of a firm stomach, subtly toned abdominals, and dusk-rose nipples erect in the chill of the attic room.

“Sorry,” you said, looking briefly down at your feet to give him a chance to dress himself.

“No problem,” he replied, briskly, though making no move to cover himself.

Eventually you looked back up at his face, careful to avoid your eyes lingering elsewhere.

“Why are you wet?” you asked, as he brushed away a drip of water running down his nose from his drenched, tousled hair.

“I’ve been out,” he said, as if this were obvious, “It’s snowing. It’s heavy sleet really. Almost rain by now.”

“Where?” you pressed, embarrassment quickly replaced by the irritation you’d come here with “And why did you invite me over just to fuck off all night?”

His lips tightened, shifting in apparent discomfort.

“I needed to run an errand.” he said, after a short pause.

“An errand?” you said, skepticism dripping from every syllable, “Come on. Don't bullshit me.”

“I needed to run an errand.” he repeated, simply and deliberately, “Take it or leave it.”

He raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest in a way that made the veins and muscle definition of his forearms look borderline pornographic. It was just like this asshole, to look so infuriatingly sexy when you were trying to yell at him.

You let out an angry huff of breath through your nostrils.

“Why did you invite me tonight?” you asked, again, more insistently this time.

“Because I wanted to see you for Christmas!” he said, frustratedly, as if this were obvious, “I wanted to see if you and I were going anywhere!”

“What?” you yelped, wrongfooted and jolted unexpectedly out of anger.

He stepped towards you.

“We kissed. I wanted to see if -” he gestured frustratedly between you, as if to indicate a connection in question, “-And when you turned up tonight, with all those gifts, I had to…”

His face worked, chewing his lips.

“I had to buy you a gift too.” he said, reluctantly.

You blinked, and he continued.

“Ever since that night, I’ve been thinking it over. Whether I should get you a gift and show you I’m serious about us trying something together, but I decided not to in case it scared you off. And then, tonight, when I saw a gift to me in your bag, I…”

He tailed off.

You let out a single breath: half laugh and half sigh. You could feel yourself trembling as you smiled at him.

“Viktor and I don’t usually do gifts,” you said, softly.

He looked confused at this apparent non sequitur, but his eyes crinkled into a smile as you continued, “I only got gifts for him and the others to make it look less weird to get you one. I didn’t want to scare you off.”

A breathy laugh escaped his perfect lips.

“So what have we learned?” he asked, expectantly.

“That we’re both weird and intense?”

“Correct,” he nodded, taking another step forward, and tilting his head insolently. “but it also shows that neither of us scare easy.”

He was effortlessly, devastatingly sexy.

You took a step towards him in turn.

“So we can be as weird and intense as we want to be?”

Your voice came out husky, now no more than a foot away from his perfect, half-naked form.

“Exactly,” he whispered.

And, leaning forward, he closed the door behind you with a decisive click.

Your mouth was on his before he could react. The whole world was his lips, his warm breath and the smell of his damp skin. Your hands sprang to his freezing torso, feeling gooseflesh as well as muscle beneath your fingers.

“You’re so cold,” you breathed, breaking the kiss.

“Then warm me up,” he growled, a wolfish version of his cocky, know-it-all smile curling his lips.

And you would have obliged him: you would have rushed him and ravished him. You would have pulled his hair and pushed him roughly onto his own bed…

Except he got there first. His nose crashed into yours, resuming the kiss roughly. Groaning low in his throat as you responded in kind.

All the restraint you’d sensed in his kiss beneath the mistletoe had clearly been abandoned, because now was all teeth, tongue and roaming hands as he steered you towards the bed.

***

You rolled over, a blissful smile on your face, and came to rest on Five’s shoulder.

“Happy Christmas,” you replied to his whispered greeting.

He leaned in for a kiss, a loving one this time, and then sat up in bed. He leaned over to reach for his abandoned, soaked jacket of the previous evening, rummaging around in it on the floor, inelegantly stretched across the rug, half in and half out of bed.

“What are you-”

“There we go,” he said, locating whatever he’d been searching for. He heaved himself back on the bed, a small black box in hand.

“It’s your Christmas gift,” he said, matter-of-factly, “It’s Christmas morning. That’s traditionally when you open gifts.”

Your eyes were fixed on the box.

“Oh god, it’s not jewelry is it?”

“Yes,” he said, eyebrows contracting.

You interpreted his expression correctly and tried to assuage his worry.

“No - no, I mean, I like jewelry, it’s just that - oh, give it here.”

You took the box from him and opened it. Inside was a delicate, gold mistletoe pendant hanging off a matching chain.

“Fuck,” you said, distractedly.

“So…wrong move?” he said, worriedly.

“No. No. It’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous, Five. It’s just that -” you looked up at him, face the picture of agony, I only got you a bottle of scotch!”

He broke into a broad, relieved smile.

“Which scotch?” he asked, curiously.

“It seems so stupid now," you moaned, mortified, “but I remembered you talking to Klaus about being in Edinburgh in 1988 and drinking -” “Glen Moray 12?” he asked, eyes lighting up.

“I didn’t even get the right year!” you whined, oblivious to the pleasure that would have been obvious to anyone else, “I could only get one bottled in 1987.”

He gave an incredulous, pleased chuckle, smile broadening even more.

“That’s perfect. My god, you’ve been hanging off my every word, haven’t you?”

“Shut up,” you muttered, feeling your face heat up as his smile became slightly smug.

“That’s pretty weird and intense,” he teased.

“No more weird and intense than buying a gold necklace for a girl you kissed once,” you shot back, finally catching his mood and teasing him in turn.

“Touché.” he conceded, and leaned his forehead affectionately against yours, "But is it acceptable now I've kissed you much more than once?"

"Hm," you said, in mock thought, "I'll reserve judgment."

Request masterlist >> HERE

Tag list: (please comment to be added or removed): @thebearmage, @nevbrooke-555, @fiannee, @abeeabee6969

NOTE: I take Five requests, I'm fairly versatile in what I write (fluff, smut, angst, psychological character study- I'll try it all) but I will consider them on a case by case basis. See masterlist for request status and more.

#the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy imagine #umbrella academy x reader #the umbrella academy five #umbrella academy number five #umbrella academy five x reader #umbrella academy five x you #five hargreaves x you #five hargreaves x reader #number five imagine #five hargreeves imagine #number 5 imagine #number 5 x reader #number five x you

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 5 months

Text

Silver Lining 6

Warnings: non/dubcon, speech impediment, bullying and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

Characters: silverfox!Bucky Barnes

Summary: You have an unpleasant encounter with an older man.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging.

You yawn as you look into the barren depths of your cup. Bucky sits up and rolls his shoulders, a dimple in his cheek. He looks you over as you furrow your brow curiously; do you have something on your face?

“W-what?” You bat your lashes.

“Should've got ya something with caffeine,” he says.

“Oh… little l-late,” you look over as the baristas wipe the counters. It's almost closing time, “s-s-speaking of-f.”

“Mm, yeah, I suppose,” he slides over his stapled papers, “you got all my notes. When I get back, we'll figure out the final draft and get the mic going.”

“S-sounds g-good,” you stutter and swallow another yawn. When you're tired, you can barely speak straight. “I sh-should head ou-out.”

You chomp down as yet another yawn rolls up your throat and your eyes nearly roll back. You smile as best you can and stand, grabbing your bag to pack up. He gets to his feet and pulls on his jacket.

“I'll give you a ride,” he offers.

“No, n-no, it's o-okay–”

“You shouldn't walk,” he looks outside as the night contrasts the white ground, snow still piling high.

“J-just as bad d-driving,” you comment.

“I got snow tires,” he insists, “really, I'd… I'd feel bad if you walked.”

“Y-you would?” You snort.

He gives you a look. That look. The one that warns caution. You put your hands up defenselessly.

“Fine, I-I'll let y-you drive m-me,” you surrender. “B-b-but you should know, I'm n-not that h-ho-hopeless.”

“Never said you were,” he pulls a beanie over his gray hair, “not a big fan of the cold myself.”

“Yeah, i-it probably m-makes your b-bones hurt,” you slide your arms into your coat.

“You making fun of me?” He scowls.

“No-o, I just… my st-stepdad always says–”

“It's fine. It does,” he sniffs, “cracked a few ribs playing ball in college. They never heal right.”

“Ouch,” you hook your bag on your shoulder.

“You got a curfew?” He checks his watch.

“Wh-what? I-I'm thirty,” you exclaim.

He chuckles. That takes you off guard.

“I know, I'm not too old to make jokes too.”

“Y-yeah, I w-wasn't–”

“Relax, it's fine. Better go before we're snowed in,” he leads you to the door, thanking the staff as he opens the door and waits for you to go ahead of him.

Well, there might blizzard brewing outside but he seems to be thawing.

🩶

You get home to a quiet house. Your sister, Kira, hushes you as you come upstairs, her children already asleep. She has a clay mask on as she hogs the bathroom going through her nightly routine. You dip into your room and hide.

You didn't expect them to wait up for you. That's ridiculous, but no one even asked about the job. It must be the excitement of a full house. Your sister does everything right so of course they'd want to focus on her. Maybe tomorrow.

You get in your pajamas and settle into bed. It’s hard to still your mind and the jittery energy still swirling inside of you. You put on a lofi video and let it play as you close your eyes. You have the weekend to make the last tweaks and you’ll finally be onto the next step. You hope.

You spend Saturday penned up in your room, hunched over at your desk as you go through the notes from your meeting. As the clock ticks close to noon, your phone vibes, drawing you back to the land of the living. You rub your eye sockets and groan. You need to eat.

You check your phone; you have a message. You flick your thumb up and blink at the text. It’s Bucky. You still haven’t saved him as a contact, recognising him only by the last four digits of his number.

‘Quick pitstop. Forgot to ask last night. How can I pay you?’

You chew your thumb as you think. That’s the awkward part. Even though you’re doing work, it’s still a bit strange. It isn’t like a company where the money just pops into your account on schedule.

‘I can give details when you get back. Hate to add stress to your trip.’

You hit send and sit back, stretching your neck. Your phone buzzes again. You don’t expect a quick response.

‘Asking now. Will be heading into no reception. Wanted to pay you for scriptwork. Will pay rest after recording.’

Your stomach knots. You’re trying to be polite but you can’t deny that you could use the money. With Christmas tiptoeing closer, you should really get on gift shopping.

‘Right. I have Venmo.’

You tap the arrow and wait. He doesn’t answer right away. When he answers, it’s just the thinking emoji, followed by another text.

‘I’ll figure that out. Do I need your email or something?’

You sweep away the chat and tap into your app. You copy your payment code and paste it into the chat. You follow it with a quick message; ‘should prompt you how. If you need to wait, it’s fine.’

Thumbs up. That’s it. You accept that. To be fair, from him, it’s an improvement. It seems you’ve found a tenuous truce with him. You’ll take that if it means you’re not scooping into your savings.

You can hear your sister and mother gabbing as you leave your room. You stop at the top of the stairs and brace yourself. Things didn’t exactly leave off on the best terms.

You descend and sneak past the dining room where they sit and sort through your mother’s vast Christmas card collection. You’re careful not to draw any attention as you enter the kitchen and quietly pop a pod into the keurig and set your mug on the tray.

Your coffee brews with a grind, giving away your endeavour. You don’t look back as you hear the scuff of slippers. Kira enters and clinks her empty cup down on the counter not far from you. She couldn’t wait until you finished.

“So, how was your job? A bit late to be rushing off to work.”

“It’s f=freelance,” you say. “It’s g-g-good.”

She scoffs, “ah, well, that’s great. You can get out of mom and dad’s hair soon enough.”

“Y-yeah,” you agree, cheeks scalding with embarrassment, “w-working on i-it.”

“Oh, I’m sure. You know, Catherine called me the other day…” she mentions your previous coworker, her friend from college, “guess she got a promotion.”

You nod. She’s goading you. What does she expect you to say? Does she expect you to apologise for leaving a bad situation?

You take your cup of coffee and sidle away. She chuckles, the way she always does when you don’t feed into her drama. Her mug hits the tray heavily.

“I’ll tell her you say hi,” she preens.

You keep going without an answer. You yawn as you come upstairs and hear whispers ahead of you. You rush forward, sloshing hot coffee onto your hand as you approach your open door. Why didn’t you close it?”

As you get to the threshold, there’s a sudden clatter and you gasp. Jamie sits in your desk chair as your laptop lays face down on the floor. Casey is underneath the desk tugging on the power cord. You shriek and sloppily slam the mug onto the shelf mounted just beside the door.

“W-w-w-what are you d-d-doing?” Your emotion overwhelms your voice, “how–”

You hear footsteps rush up the stairs and Kira hisses as she marches down the hall, “shhh, my kids are sleeping.”

“No, th-they aren’t,” you hurry forward and take Jamie out of the chair. As you shoo Casey, your sister enters your room.

“Don’t hurt him,” she demands.

“Wh-what? I w-wouldnt–”

“Don’t touch my kids,” she comes forward and scoops up Casey then takes Jamie’s hand, “they’re just curious.”

You bend down to pick up your laptop. You turn it over and find lines streaked up in a spectrum. Smashed. Broken. Demolished.

“They b-broke it,” you whimper.

“Ugh, whatever,” she hauls her kids back to the door, “it’s just a computer.”

You stare at the ruins and shake your head at her back. What are you going to do?

#silver lining #bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #dark!bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #drabble #au #silverfox au #marvel #mcu #winter soldier #avengers #series

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seungmoonandstars · 6 months

Note

Oohhh okay! I have a HC idea.

Christmas/holiday activities with seungmin! ⛄❄

How to Build a Snowpuppy

(part 1 because I need to write more of this)

Kim Seungmin/female reader

wc: 1.4k

rating: fluff

—

Getting out of bed on mornings like this is hard. It's cold, and it's probably snowing, and you love snow--but it's cold, and the bed is warm, and you can feel Seungmin next to you.

He's awake. He's probably been awake for a while, but when you turn to face him, all you see is a mound of blankets. You watch for a moment until you see the rise and fall of him breathing. And when you grab the blanket and slowly pull...

"No no nooo, don't do that." He says it in a sleepy, playful voice,

You were wrong, maybe he has been sleeping all of this time. Instead of ripping the blankets from him, you slide your body down until you can get yourself underneath, too. It's much warmer here in his little cocoon.

Hands reach out in a half-assed attempt to search for you. You move the blankets around a little, but there are so many layers and so much to get tangled in.

Seungmin insists on too many blankets, too many pillows, and at least a few other soft, snuggly things in the bed, at all times.

“I can’t find you under here,” you lie, but you grab his hand when you see it.

“Well I’m not coming out. It's cold out there.”

“Even if I get up and start the coffee?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, what if I make you—”

“No…”

You pull and he groans. His arm is there now, poking out, and his fingers try to wiggle free of your grip. A leg slides slowly against the sheet and you feel it tap against yours, and then his knee pushes into your thigh.

Ouch!

“That did not hurt!” He laughs and the bed shakes. Seungmin is on you in an instant, but his blanket fort is still undisturbed. “Did it? I’m sorry.”

Warm kisses line your neck and jaw, your cheek, then back down. Your chest, your stomach—until he gets dangerously lows. Between him and the sheets, you can barely breath.

“No, but I can be dramatic, too.”

“What are you going to make me?” He falls down next to you and pulls at the blankets until you’re finally free.

You take in a big, cool breath of fresh air.

———

“It is snowing…”

Seungmin is gazing out of the window, chin resting in his hand. He looks like a kid from where you’re standing in the kitchen.

“It’s snowing a lot. Are we still going Christmas shopping?”

You know he’s been looking forward to picking out everyone’s gifts today, and you can’t possibly tell him no. He spins around and stares at you, eyes big.

There are only so many days you two have to do things together. You’d hate to let too much snow ruin one.

“I’m not sure. Do you think it’s too nasty out?”

“No, it’s very pretty. We should still go, we can walk.” He whines a little.

You hand him the coffee you made for him. He takes it and stares at it. “Hot?”

“You want iced coffee right now?”

He shakes his head and smiles.

“It’s very cold, so I don’t think walking all that time will be much fun either. And carrying stuff. How about we cuddle up on the couch and do some online shopping?”

Seungmin puffs up his cheeks and spins around again. You can feel his disappointment, but you know he’ll agree with you. He usually gives in, because even though he’s typically very practical, you’re even more practical. He likes letting you decide most of the time.

“Yes, you’re right, maybe just enjoying it from inside will be nice.”

“Well…we don’t have to stay inside.”

He’s on his feet, sipping his coffee, eyeing you over his mug. “I thought you were cold.”

“I am…come here.”

The room is warm, your coffee is warm, but Seungmin is so much warmer. He takes you in his arms, pulls at either side of his hoodie, and folds it around you.

That warmth will feel even better after this.

———

The snow is still coming down in big, fluffy flakes when you finally make it outside. Seungmin is pulling you with his gloved hand to find a perfect spot, and there are a lot of good spots here. There aren’t many people by the lake, either, and no little kids running around. You have the place almost to yourself.

“Look,” Seungmin stops and pulls you down until you’re both on your knees. “Snow ducks.”

“Snow ducks. Someone was already here having fun. Should we find another spot?” You ask.

He’s up again, hand still tight around yours, and his nod is very serious. “Yes, we need a clean area just for us.”

When he finds it, he’s back down on his knees and grabbing handfuls of snow. It’s heavy and wet and hard to get a good grip on at first, but it takes and holds it shape very nicely. “This is good snow!”

You kneel down next to him and start gathering your own pile. It is the perfect snow for making things, you just have no idea what he's planning on making.

Seungmin makes two giants piles, one on either side of him. It looks like he's making a fort; a snow one this time, instead of a blanket one. Very quickly, a body starts to take shape. What kind of body it is remains a mystery, though. He’s taking great care in getting everything as smooth as possible; adding snow, taking it away, getting in as much detail as he can with his cold hands.

“Minnie, what shape do you want me to work on?”

He puts his hands up on either side of his face, sticks out his tongue, “paws please.”

You smile at him and get to work, much more seriously this time. But his focus on this is unmatched, and you’re glad you decided to bring him out here today. But, you also can’t help yourself. You grab another handful and shape it into a ball. Just a small one, because you’re not that mean.

“I see you.” He doesn’t even look your way when he says it.

You throw it anyway, and as you expect, he ducks just in time. The look he gives you when he gets back up is innocent. but now you have to prepare yourself for him, and you really don’t think he’ll be nice.

Seungmin looks at you through narrowed eyes while his hands continue carving out the curves of his masterpiece. He’s going to wait until your guard is down, so for now you continue working on your paw. His paw.

It’s slowly starting to take shape.

Now Seungmin is working on the tail, and he’s regains his focus very quickly. Maybe he won’t take the bait—maybe now he’s more concerned about the outcome of his snowpuppy than he is with showing you who’s best with a snowball. You completely missed him, so there's no reason for him to try and even the score.

And then you feel the cold, horrible sting of being completely wrong. It was a big one, and he hits you right on the side of the face. If it weren't for the hat he shoved on your head on the way out the door, it would have ended up in your ear.

Lucky for you, though, he just gets your mouth, your eyes, and your nose. He’s ruthless.

“Do you want to try me again?” He’s on his hands and knees next to his puppy, pulling more snow toward him. Breaking it up, getting it ready to shape. He stops and smiles up at you when you don’t answer. “No? Come on sweetie.”

You take his bait, grab some snow, and start to pack it. But you take your time. Seungmin eventually gets tired of waiting and turns his attention back to his work, but you know he’s still watching every move you make.

“I’m gonna finish his ear.” You drop to your knees and continue to shape your handful of snow. And then you do what you say—you smack it against the side of the puppy’s head.

“That looks good.” He says sweetly.

You pull some more snow toward you and start the other ear.

“Should we do another—“

He doesn’t finish his question, because your handful of snow ends up partially in his mouth.

“Another what, sweetie?”

Seungmin is grinning when he wipes at his face. You know he wants revenge again, but he’s also a little impressed that you caught him off guard.

“Okay, we’re even.”

“Another puppy?”

He wrinkles his nose at you and crawls around to the other side.

“I can just cover you in snow.”

“I’m not warming you up later.”

“Liar.”

#kim seungmin x you #kim seungmin x y/n #kim seungmin x reader #seungmin x you #seungmin x reader #seungmin fluff #kim seungmin fluff #skz x you #skz x reader #skz fluff #stray kids fluff #kim seungmin #goblinracha #requests #prompts

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wayfayrr · 1 month

Note

Hello! Congratz for the 300💐! And happy holiday too!🌟

So indecisive to what to ask... the cozy of inside home or the fun outside the snow... but since it's a day to not be wasted may I get a soft buttered rum with panettone as takeaway, please?

thank you for the well wishes!! Even if it's been a little while since I got this ask lmao

but of course you may <3

“Can’t believe how hooked on the library you’ve gotten, I don’t even own a forge so I don’t know how you’re planning to use half of what you’re reading.”

“I’m just thinking about if we ever find our way back to Hyrule… learning more of your customs is fun anyway.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have pointed that out, he’s drooped a little bit but maybe I’ll be able to cheer him up. Maybe I should look more into a silver working course for him, there’s got to be something like that around here right? Even if we get on a train or drive out somewhere it’d be worth it for him. For now, though the trip to the library will have to do. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult to get there through the snow now that I think about it. It wasn’t supposed to stick as much as it ended up, there’s at least a foot of it out there.

“You’ve chosen one of the worst days to do this, you know right? Your coats on the hanger by the way.”

“Can’t exactly control when I need to take the books back can I, I mean unless you’d prefer to pay the late fee.”

“With how cold it’s probably going to be on the way there I’m honestly so close to just paying for a couple days of it. Couldn’t you just y’know split and send vio?”

Got rewarded with a smug grin and an elbow to the side for that.

“Splitting for such a small task really? Anyway you’d still have to walk him there, the others too cause you know they’d get jealous.”

“Well I could always spend some time alone with them later”

“You really don’t want to go out in the snow do you.”

“No-? It’s cold. Wait what are you - OI!”

Wiping the remaining snow off of my face I could now see that his smug smirk turned into a full shit-eating grin. Perfectly fitting for the fact that he’s standing just outside with another snowball ready to go.

“What was that for!??”

“You can’t say no to being in more snow now can you? You’re prepared for it.”

“I can absolutely say no.”

Met me with another snowball to the face. As he started to laugh and run off, like he’s taunting me to follow him. Not that it isn’t working.

“OH COME ON.”

“Come make me regret it then.”

#moss✧queues #linked universe #linked universe x reader #link x reader #legend of zelda x reader #the legend of zelda #lu four #lu four x reader #300 event

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clangenrising · 4 months

Text

Month 11 - Leafbare

“It’s getting worse out,” said Jagg, staring out over the fields. Ghost nodded and shuffled his feet to shake some feeling into his toes. The horizon was a hazy white blur, the mountains a smudge of grey barely visible through the falling snow that continued to amass on the grass and the trees and the distant houses.

“We should get started on some snow dens,” he said, mostly to himself.

Jagg looked over at him, her pretty silver pelt shimmering under the flakes adorning it, and tilted her head in confusion. “Snow dens?” she asked.

“They’re burrows in the snow,” Ghost laughed, enamored by her naivete. “They’re for keeping warm in. We’ll need them if we’re going to stay out here and watch the front.”

“Gotcha,” she said with a nod, filing the thought away behind her yellow eyes. They reminded him of Miss Smoke’s. “Do you think you could show me how?”

“To keep warm?” he rumbled suggestively as he leaned in to her. “How could I say no?” She laughed nervously and shoved him away - all in good fun, he thought.

“No, how to make a snow den,” she shook her head, still smiling. Tooth and claw, she was pretty. “Please?” That was just like her. Always seeking out knowledge, finding ways to take the world apart and put it back together. Sometimes he wondered if she only hung around him to pick his brain for useful things.

“Sure thing,” he chuckled and gave her a cuff over the ear. “Get the others together and I’ll show you. I’m gonna check in with Razor real quick.”

“Good luck,” she whispered, her unnotched ears flicking back against her skull for a beat. She shivered and not from the cold.

“Thanks, doll,” he purred. He shook his pelt in vain and started across the little camp they had made. It was more a clearing of trampled grass and snow than anything and it was always shifting, stretching deeper into wild territory every day. The openness of it was not ideal - they’d been attacked by a hawk the other day which Sycamore had managed to kill before it could get ahold of anyone - but that was the nature of war, or so Razor said.

The big grey tabby was talking with Sycamore and Tiger when he approached. Ghost paused just outside of earshot but within Razor’s field of view and waited. At this point he knew very well that Razor did not like to be interrupted. After a minute or so of conversation, Razor looked up and gestured for Ghost to join them, which he did.

“Just the cat I wanted to see,” said Razor. “I’m heading back to the city for a few days. While I’m gone, Sycamore is in charge.” The ginger house cat in question looked Ghost up and down, daring him to challenge his authority.

Ghost simply nodded. “Understood.”

“Tiger and a few of the others are coming back with me,” Razor continued. “Will you be good to manage the Chaff who are here or should we take them with us?”

“I was just about to get them to work making snow dens,” Ghost said. “I should be alright, this is a good crew.” Tiger smiled to himself as if Ghost had made a joke.

“Perfect!” Razor purred. “See? I knew you had it handled.”

“Have fun while you’re gone,” Sycamore said to Razor with a grin.

“Oh, you know I will,” Razor laughed. Ghost smiled to hide the eye roll that wanted to take over his face. Yeah, I’m sure Scorch will be thrilled to see you, he thought. The bitch. He almost hoped Razor gave her a good scar for the stunt she had pulled with Mystique. Almost. He still frowned on hitting girls, even if this one deserved it.

Before long, Razor and most of the Exalted had left for the city. Ghost made note of the cats remaining: Sycamore, Oreo, London, Humus, and Miss Bella. An interesting group to be sure, but not one that would give him much trouble. He headed to the other side of camp where Jagg had gathered the Chaff.

“You ready to get to work?” he asked, looking them over. Today it seemed he had Dandelion, Wicket, Lizzie, and Tadpole to work with. Not terrible, as far as groups went.

“Yes, sir,” Jagg said eagerly, her shoulders straight and proud. Dan nodded his head in agreement. Wicket snuggled close to Lizzie, his fur fluffed up into a big ginger ball. Tad didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Alright, let’s get to it then,” said Ghost. The den building went smoothly enough. Once he’d shown Jagg and Dan how to do it, they split up to show the others and it wasn’t too long until they had finished the first one.

“Well done,” Ghost said as he looked around the little room.

Dan smiled under the praise and ran his tongue over his paws a few times. “Thank the Folk,” he said, “I don’t think I could dig much more!”

“Why don’t you two go check on the others?” Ghost suggested. “You can settle down in that den when it's finished.”

“Why can’t we stay here?” Tad asked flatly.

Ghost frowned. “Because the Exalted need a place to sleep. Now, go on.”

“They can use the other one,” she flicked one ear. Dandelion shifted, starting to look nervous.

“It’s fine, Tad, we can go,” he said.

“You’d better watch your tone,” Ghost scowled. “If the Exalted heard you, they’d wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving as I am.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dad,” Tad droned sardonically, “I forgot how gracious you were.” Ah. So she was one of his. He searched his memory for any chance that he already knew that. Luckily for him, Tad got up and headed outside, glaring dully at him as she passed.

Dandelion popped up to follow her and said, “you’ll have to forgive her, Sir, she’s just cold and cranky.” Ghost looked the tom over, his memory straining. His scruffy cream fur was ticked with brown and his face was round and inviting, home to a pair of bright, yellow-green eyes. He reminded Ghost of someone… Daisy? Lacey? He couldn’t remember. He wondered briefly if he’d lost the memory to age or if he hadn’t cared to learn in the first place.

“You’re her brother?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir,” said Dan.

“And your mother, she was…” Ghost trailed off, trying once again to dredge the name from the depths of his mind.

“Maisie, Sir,” said Dan.

“Maisie,” Ghost nodded as if that had made everything perfectly clear. To tell the truth, the name did nothing to jog the rest of his memory. After a moment, he refocused his gaze to realize Dan was still waiting obediently for him to continue.

“Uh, that’s all,” Ghost waved him off. “Go get yourself warm.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dan smiled, then bounded after his sister.

Ghost shook his head, disappointed. In what, he wasn’t sure. His memory? Tadpole? Something else? The edges of that thought made his muscles tense and tighten, like they were anticipating a fight, and he pushed it away with another, more jarring shake of his head.

Stepping out into the snow, he called to Sycamore. “The den’s ready.”

“Finally!” Humus cried, bursting from his spot in the snow to race towards the shelter like a jingling, brown striped rabbit. Oreo followed shortly behind without a word of acknowledgement to anyone.

London brushed his tail against Ghost as he passed and said, “Thanks, pal.”

“Yes,” added Bella, “I was certain I was going to freeze to death.”

“Maybe they’ll be faster next time,” Sycamore said, leaning against her as they made their way into the den. He looked at Ghost out of the corner of his eye, ginger tail twitching.

“We will certainly do our best,” Ghost dipped his head. Sycamore huffed but said no more. Once the Exalted had disappeared into their burrow, Ghost let out a sigh and looked up at the thick white flakes starting to come down faster and faster. It was going to be a rough night, snowed in and stuck with a bitter daughter in a small space. If the snow didn’t let up by morning they were going to have to go hunting in the storm which he was not looking forward to. Luckily, he had the authority to delegate that sort of thing.

Shaking the snow off of his muzzle, he turned and went inside, resigned to a tedious evening and a long, quiet night.

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swordcreature · 6 months

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waaaaoug I am back in your inbox w tiefling idea

So idk if it canonically snows or gets cold in elturel/the gate but I’m gonna pretend it does and ask if you think they have any cute traditions for the winter months?

(If you wanna involve Christmas/the holidays that’s cool but ik not everyone celebrates and half the planet doesn’t even get cold in December lmao)

so!!! in d&d lore, baldur's gate would probably celebrate a winter holiday during midwinter which is the 5 days between the months of hammer and alturiak. for the most part there isn't like a constant holiday during this time but a lot of religions have something going on. info from here.

on that note, i just wrote based off of the idea that the city spends the 5 nights celebrating and basically people of all religions do their own thing with how they celebrate. hopefully that makes sense!

i had a lot of fun with this!!! hope you like it and ty!! <3

Dammon, Rolan, & Zevlor - Holiday Traditions

How the tiefling boys celebrate the winter holidays

Dammon:

Dammon loves the Midwinter festivities and has fond memories of attending them with his family back in Elturel. He hasn’t really gotten to enjoy them properly since he was young, with work and what not keeping him busy – as well as the whole descending into the hells thing.

When he sets up in Baldur’s Gate, he makes a promise to himself that he is going to set aside time to enjoy the celebrations. After everything he’s been through, he’s learned to take time to smell the roses, to really enjoy life. The work will still be there in the morning.

He decorates the outside of the forge with a couple decorations. Nothing fancy, and certainly nothing so in the way that it could cause an accident – I mean he is walking around with molten metal every day. Can’t exactly have paper frill and tinsel everywhere unless he wants to start a fire.

Even though it’s cold out, he still wears his normal ensemble, except now with a slightly thicker scarf. It’s homemade and has snowflakes on it, given to him by someone very special. His infernal blood runs warmer than most and being around the open fires of the forge make anything heavier unbearable.

Dammon actually loves the weather during this time. Maybe it’s because he thought he would never get to see it again, but he thoroughly enjoys the snow. At night he watches it fall through his bedroom window and during the day he’s even been known to stop and throw an odd snowball at one of the tiefling kids should they run through his neck of the city.

As the celebrations start throughout Baldur’s Gate he’ll wander around the streets, watching as different religious groups do their own traditions. But he never really sticks to one spot. For him, part of the allure of this time of year is how beautifully diverse the city becomes. He’s not religious himself so it’s more fun to take in the sights than to join in.

But at the end of each night, he’ll make his way to the closest tavern to enjoy a spiced ale. He’ll sit and listen to the sound of the rowdy patrons singing their motley assortment of Midwinter songs until his drink is gone. Then he’ll head home appreciating the silence of the snowfall.

Rolan:

Bah humbug. That is all.

But in all seriousness, Rolan hates the cold weather. Snow and ice and slush make his warm skin crawl. He avoids going outside as much as possible, using the portals between the tower and Sorcerous Sundries more often than not. On the odd days when he absolutely must go outside, he is bundled up from horns to tail. And he complains the entire time.

Cal and Lia are a bit better than Rolan, but not by much. This is the one thing the siblings all agree on: fuck the cold.

As for Midwinter celebrations, he doesn’t particularly participate in anything himself. Back in Elturel, this time of year was harder for him. The colder weather meant working harder to ensure the family stayed warm and taking care of everyone when they got sick. So most years they didn’t do anything special to celebrate.

The first Midwinter they spend in Baldur’s Gate, though, he puts on a show. Sorcerous Sundries is decorated from top to bottom with festive décor and the tower lights up at night with an enchantment that makes it seem like the stars hand from the observation deck.

Each night of Midwinter, he ends the evening with a show from atop the tower using both magical lights and fireworks to light up the sky. It can be seen from the entire city, even the docks of the lower district.

In subsequent years, he doesn’t go as crazy with the decorating as he did that first year, but everyone in the Gate has come to expect the light shows. Long after Rolan is gone, the new owners of Ramazith’s Tower take on the responsibility of putting on the display – it's become that important to the Baldurian people.

When asked why he went so wild that year with the decorations he gives some flimsy excuse. He was trying to stake a claim as the new master wizard in the city, or he wanted people to see how much grander the city would be without Lorroakan. But those closest to him know the real reason. He wanted to give Lia and Cal their first real Midwinter celebration now that he had the means to.

Zevlor:

Now, Zevlor doesn’t hate the cold, per se, but he could do without it. Even back in Elturel he was not severely fond of the winter weather – if it were up to him, his uniform would include a nice, fluffy scarf and plush mittens instead of steel plates and leather straps.

But he does actually like the snow, in theory. It’s beautiful and it reminds him of change. How fall turns to winter and then back to spring once more. Then it touches his infernally hot skin and remembers why he keeps the barrack’s fire going 24/7 this time of year.

Back in Elturel, he used to love the Midwinter holiday. As a commander in the Hellriders, he was often asked to attend celebrations on behalf of the organization, making appearances to appease the different religious groups in the city. He loved going from celebration to celebration and seeing the joy it brought people.

He spent a lot of time doing charity work too, especially because during the five days of Midwinter, there typically was not much to do to protect the city. Helping others was his favorite part of the holiday.

The first year in Baldur’s Gate, he almost misses Midwinter entirely. When he finds himself in the Open Hand Temple those first few months, he can't even conceive of having something to celebrate. So, he does the one thing that brings him peace, helping those around him. He assists the temple priests with setting out food and necessities for those in the city still struggling in wake of the Absolute and offers his meager aid in constructing housing across the city.

Every year he continues to celebrate by helping those he can.

He holds a dinner at the temple every year, a feast for those who cannot afford to feed themselves, so that the people of the Gate can make merry regardless of their religious affiliations. He collects donations for the city’s homeless population and even works with local businesses to gather supplies to hand out to those entering the city for the first time with nothing.

He isn’t being heralded in the city as the commander he once was, but being able to help the people who need him is good too. In fact, it’s even better.

#bg3 #bg3 dammon #bg3 rolan #bg3 zevlor #rolan #dammon #zevlor #baldur's gate 3 #my writing #requests/suggestions #cakeboxie

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iwriteloveletters · 22 days

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Manmade Weapons (Karl Heisenberg x Reader One shot)

TW- BODILY INJURY, NOT PROOFREAD

Words- 608

You ran as fast as you could through the cold forest, the snow wetting your skirt and causing your ankles to go numb.

“You can run but you can’t hide.” the old man's voice boomed throughout the forest.

You heard whacking and metal hitting trees follow you behind you, he was launching whatever metal scraps and screws he had on hand to try and get you. It felt as though your zig-zag movements are what saved you from being impaled with no regard of where it’s going to hit you. You couldn’t tell if he wanted you dead or alive.

You don’t know what he wanted from you, you were afraid of what he wanted from you or what he wanted to do to you. He was one of the lords afterall, everyone in the village was afraid of them and what they were capable of.

But you, why were you the one he targeted? The one he bullied in the freezing woods.

“I’m not aiming at you for a reason, I'm actually enjoying the chase.” He said, the man otherwise known as Lord Karl Heisenberg was not too far from you but luckily you weren’t in his reach.

“Why are you doing this to me?!” You cried out, you felt like a helpless animal on the run from the predator, the much stronger and larger predator behind you.

He said nothing in response to that, he wasn’t at all obligated to answer your question.

All you knew was that you were going to die now.

You kept running, you kept fighting, you wanted to live and not become whatever monster he wanted to turn you into. No one fully knew what came out of his factory but everyone knew it wasn’t good.

You were now outside of the village based on how long you’ve been running for your life.

All you could hear behind you was the man-made monster laughing and talking about how it was good for him to get away from that dreadful place every once in a while.

“Leave me alone! Please, I’m begging you!” You yelled in between breaths, you weren’t anything compared to him. You were human, you were ordinary. Your stamina was nowhere near his, it felt like he could run to the ends of the Earth for you and you were thirty more feet away from collapsing into the snow. Letting him carry you off, hoping wherever he takes you gives you a few seconds of warmth before you perish.

“Why would I do that?” He said as he sent a screw right through your calf. He laughed, he enjoyed this more than he should have been.

You let out a guttural scream as you landed in the snow, you were so far from the village it’d be impossible to be saved or have anyone intervene. You highly doubt anyone would have helped you against Lord Heisenberg himself. You were the defeated prey.

His footsteps inch closer to you by the minute and eventually the second.

“Aren’t you a pretty one?” He crouches down to get a better look at you.

The state he left you in prevented you from being snarky in response to him talking to you like an animal.

The screw he shot you with went right through you, this was his makeshift bullet. He has no need for a gun when he himself is the gun. You were being hunted by him.

“You know, I’ve never been one for a chase but this was fun.” He says as he gets closer to your ear, “maybe when I fix you up we can do this again.”

Again?

Hello hello!! This is my first time writing for a character that isn't Eren but don't worry I still have plenty of love for him, I'm hoping to update soon teehee or put anything new out!! Anyways I hope you enjoy - Cherub

#yandere #tw yandere #self shipping #self insert #self insert x canon #canon x self insert #karl heisenberg they could never make me hate you #karl heisenberg #karl heisenberg x reader #karl heisenburg fanart #karl heisenburg x reader #re8 village #resident evil village #re village

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onlycosmere · 1 year

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OUTSIDE by Brandon Sanderson

Snow is falling. So I look up.

The world mystifies when you stare up through falling snow. Even standing still, you can soar. Even alone, you are surrounded. Even mundane, you find magic. I’ve spent my life chasing the fantastical, yet everything I’ve ever imagined can be casually matched by someone tilting their head up. The soft. Settling. Aspiration.

Of snow on an otherwise ordinary day.

When I was eighteen, I moved from Nebraska to Utah. Here, snow is fleeting, embarrassed to be an obstruction. But in Nebraska, snow squats. It claims land, builds empires. You fight it all winter, carving pathways, reconquering your sidewalks. The cold digs inside, frosting your bones with a chill that lingers, even after you return to warmth.

I often think of those snowy days, now that I live in a desert. But each year my memories are a little less fresh. We build our lives with layer upon layers of years, like falling snow. And like the new snow, most experiences melt away. In interviews, I’ve been asked to recount my most frightening experience. I struggle to answer because it’s the lost memories that scare me—the unnerving knowledge that I’ve forgotten the majority of moments that made me who I am. Those dribbled away when I wasn’t looking and joined the spring runoff of life.

Fortunately, some experiences do remain. In one, I’m fourteen, and it’s a cold night in Nebraska. My best friend at the time was a boy we’ll call John. Though we went to different schools, he was one of the only other Mormon kids around, so our parents often had us play together. When you’re very young, it’s proximity—not shared interests—that makes friends. This often changes as you age. By fourteen, John had found his way to basketball, parties, and popularity. I had not.

On that day, after a youth activity, another friend suggested we leave to go have some fun. I don’t remember where. Strange, that I’ve lost what this was about, though the rest of the scene is etched into the glacial part of my brain. One of us was old enough to drive, so we headed out to their car.

Five seats. Six teens. They’d already counted.

Without a word to me, the others climbed in. John gave me one hesitant look, then settled into the front passenger seat and closed the door. They left me on the curb. The car vanished, taillights flaring in the night like lit cigarettes.

The memory settled in for the long winter. That night. Watching. Remembering John’s face, which was so strikingly conflicted. Half ashamed. Half resigned.

I was no stranger to being outside. It happens when you’re one of three Mormon kids in a large school. You’ll be at a birthday party, and the wine coolers will come out. Everyone stands there worrying you’ll judge them—while you just want them to stop staring. But you leave anyway, because you know they’ll enjoy themselves more if you and your unusual morals aren’t there to loom.

It should have been different that night though, watching John and the others drive away. They were in my church group—ostensibly, my tribe. They’d still left me outside.

This event shocked me in how dramatic it was, as I wasn’t generally bullied. I tended to be adept at social settings. People generally liked me. At the same time, there was something I’d begun to notice. Something distancing about me.

It happens still. It isn’t that people shun me or don’t want me around; indeed, they seem to appreciate me. When I join a group, I generally end up leading it in some way, and I never sense resentment to this fact. But I also have an air around me. Some writer friends call me the “adult in the room.” I tend to attack projects too aggressively, tend to be the one who steps in and gets things done—even when they don’t need to be done immediately, and when everyone else would rather relax.

This comes, in part, from a certain…oddity about me that started in my young teens, around the time that John drove off. As my friends grew hit puberty, they became more emotional. The opposite happened to me. Instead of experiencing the wild mood swings of adolescence, my emotions calcified. I started waking up each day feeling roughly the same as the day before. Without variation.

Around me, people felt passion, and agony, and hatred, and ecstasy. They loved, and hated, and argued, and screamed, and kissed, and seemed to explode every day with a pressurized confetti of unsettling emotions.

While I was just me. Not euphoric, not miserable. Just…normal. All the time.

Often, it genuinely seems like I exist outside of human experience. It’s not sociopathy. I’m quite empathetic—in fact, empathy is one of the ways that I can feel stronger emotions. I’m not autistic. I don’t have a single hallmark of that notable brand of neurodivergence. It’s also not what is called alexithymia, which is a condition where someone doesn’t feel emotions (or can’t describe them).

I care about people, and I feel. I’m not empty or apathetic. My emotions are simply muted and hover in a narrow band. If human experience ranges between a morose one and an ecstatic ten, I’m almost always a seven. Every day. All day. My emotional “needle” tends to be very hard to budge—and when it does move, the change is not aggressive. When others would be livid or weeping, I feel a sense of discomfort and disquiet.

My emotions do go a little further than this on occasion, maybe once a year. It takes something incredible—such as being deeply betrayed by someone I trusted.

I’m not looking for sympathy; I don’t want to be fixed. I appreciate this aspect of my makeup—and it’s part of what makes me so consistent at writing. When everyone else is in crisis, I’ll just steam along. At the same time, when everyone else is elated by some good news…I’ll just steam along, unable to feel the heights of the joy they feel.

It makes people uncomfortable sometimes. Makes them think I’m judging them. While I’m absolutely not, I do try to be careful how I talk about my condition. Not as something to fear. Something, instead, I’m proud of—not because it makes me better than anyone else, but because it’s me. I like being me.

My neurodivergence came up in a recent interview I did. The interviewer latched onto the fact that I don’t feel pain like others do. (More accurately, some mild pains don’t cause in me the same response they do others.) I asked the interviewer not to mention it in his article, as I felt the tone to our discussion was wrong. I worry about my oddity changing the way people think of me, as I don’t want to be seen as an emotionless zombie. So I try to speak of it with nuance.

As the interviewer ignored my request, I thought I’d talk about it here. Profile myself for you—because this aspect of who I am has deep ties to another happening from my teenage years. In this, I want to answer a big question for you, the one everyone wonders about. The key to understanding Brandon Sanderson.

Why do I write?

Why do I write so much?

Why do I write so much fantasy?

Let me tell you about the first day, that beautiful day, when I found myself inside.

It was when I opened a fantasy novel. I was an isolated kid whose emotions were doing something bizarre. Even John leaving had left me feeling…disturbed more than angry. Alone, and outside. Then I opened a book where I found emotion.

In that story about dragons, and wonder, and people trying impossible things, I found myself. I felt a variety of powerful emotions through the characters—emotions that I remembered from when I’d been younger.

I hadn’t tried reading fiction in a long while, so I was blindsided by this perfect book. The experience transformed me, quick as a boy tilting his head back, looking up, and finding a new world.

When I read or write from the eyes of other people, I legitimately feel what they do. There’s magic to any kind of story, yes—but for me, it is transformative. I live those lives. For a brief time, I remember exactly what passion, and agony, and hatred, and ecstasy feel like. My emotions mold to the story, and I cry sometimes. I legitimately cry. I haven’t done that outside of a story in three decades.

Stories bring me inside.

My second published novel is called Mistborn. It’s about a world where ash falls like snow, and I can linger, looking up through it via a character’s eyes. Near the beginning of Mistborn, the teenage protagonist finds herself standing outside a room. It is full of light and laughter and warmth. But she knows, she knows she doesn’t belong inside that room.

She’s wrong.

Nearer the end of the book, I linger on as similar scene—only now, she’s sitting with the others. Light and laughter. Warmth. Mistborn was the first novel I wrote after getting the call offering me a book deal. Finally—after slaving over a dozen unpublished manuscripts—I knew I was going to be a professional writer. With that knowledge, I wrote Mistborn, the book about a girl who learns to come inside.

While writing Mistborn, I changed. Now that I’d made it inside of publishing—now that I’d joined those authors I’d loved for so long—why would I keep writing? I needed a new goal, and I discovered it that year.

So let me tell you why I write. It isn’t about worldbuilding; that’s a mistake everyone makes about me. Assuming I write because of worldbuilding is like assuming someone makes cars because they love cup holders. It’s also not because I’m Mormon, as some profiles bizarrely conclude. My faith and cultural heritage are both important to me, but if I were any other religion, that aspect of me would rightly be a footnote—not a headline.

I don’t write for plot twists, or dragons, or clever turns of phrase—though I enjoy all of these. I write because stories bring people inside. And I sincerely, genuinely believe that is what the world needs.

Lately, I’ve seen a resurgence of something that genuinely disquiets me: an attempt by some members of our community to hold others outside. Science fiction and fantasy is forever gatekeeping what constitutes good or worthy stories. Like my old friend John, who sought cooler friends, we renounce anything accessible—part of our perpetual (and largely fruitless) plea for legitimacy with the literary establishment.

Thing is, I can’t really get mad when someone does this, because I’ve done it myself in the past. The unfortunate truth is that we all probably have at times. The moment a group finds cohesion—discovering the warmth and peace of being inside—we decide there aren’t enough seats, so we start muscling and pushing. Readers who came in because of the latest popular teen novel? Outside. Fans of the film version of a story, instead of the book version? Outside. People who don’t look the same as the supposedly conventional fan? I suspect they know this struggle far better than I do.

To use a thematic metaphor, it’s like we’re dragons on our hoard of gold, jealously keeping watch, worrying that if anyone new enters, their presence will somehow dilute our enjoyment. The irony is that there is infinite space inside, and if we open the way, we’ll find many of these newcomers are the very treasure we’re seeking.

Fantasy, out of all genres, should embrace the different, even if it doesn’t match our specific taste. This is the genre where anything can happen—and should, therefore, be the most open genre. Only fantasy offers me the full range of emotion. The wonder of exploration. The magnificent highs of epic scope and the miserable lows of cataclysmic terror. In writing it, I can learn. Monomaniacal, I hunt experiences of people different from myself, then explore them in prose until I feel—in some small part—what they do.

This is why I write. To understand. To make people feel seen. I type away, hoping some lonely reader out there, left on a curb, will pick up one of my books. And in so doing learn that even if there is no place for them elsewhere, I will make one for them between these pages.

Those who interview me seem to have trouble understanding this fundamental part of who I am: that writing for me isn’t so much about performance as it is about exploration and elevation. I love prose both literary and commercial. And I think I write great prose. I’ve slaved over my style, practicing for decades, honing it for crisp clarity. My prose is usually intended to convey ideas, theme, and character, then get out of the way—because this is how I strive to bring everyone inside.

That said, I know my goal is impossible. Occasional strolls through the outside are part of being human, and I can’t eliminate that. And even I have to admit that there are lessons to be learned on those lonely paths. For example, contrast is the only way to appraise growth. Emotional alien I may be, but that very alienation has motivated me to understand. I value the connections I’ve made so much more for that struggle.

Moreover, I find that occasionally looking in through a window at everyone else gives a person a more complete perspective. Inside, things can get messy, and a streak of color finds it hard to comprehend the painting. I’m a better writer because of my time spent looking in. I don’t know that I could have written Mistborn if I hadn’t been left on that curb.

This isn’t to discount the pain of those who have been forced outside. Nor is it an advocacy for extended periods spent in the cold. I also don’t know if I could have written Mistborn if the wonderful people of the science fiction and fantasy community (including many of the friends I now work with) hadn’t latched on to me in college and—at times—forcibly pulled me inside to be with them. Beyond that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve found people like Emily, who love me in spite of (and partially because of) my quirks. Blessedly, because of this, my times outside have been increasingly brief.

My goal here is merely to point out (as I’ve had occasion to remember recently) that beautiful moments do accompany the isolation. You can only watch the snow fall when you’re outside. Only then can you look up and experience that mystifying world, where fragments of the sky drift past and lift you toward the heavens.

I’m forty-seven now, enjoying desert snowfalls in early April. The man I am is separated by distance and time from that boy who stood on the curb, and I’ve forgotten most of the steps that led between the two. I still don’t feel strong emotions outside of stories—but I did tell an interviewer lately that I sometimes cry when writing scenes in my books. They just aren’t the scenes that I thought he’d expect.

I don’t necessarily cry when characters die, or when they marry, or even when they find victory. I cry when it works. When it all comes together, and in a beautiful shimmering burst of humanity, I feel what it is to be that character. At those times, I remember what I learned twenty years ago writing Mistborn. That there’s a reason I do this. And even if I’ve lost more memories than I retain, each of them had a point, because they collectively brought me here.

So when you find yourself in the cold, know that sometimes, there’s a purpose to it. Trust me; I’ve been there. I might be there right now. Feeling the cold on my cheeks—but these days, no longer in my bones. Knowing that this will pass, and that it might be for my good. Most of all, looking up so I can appreciate it. The still. Solemn. Perspective.

Of one who stands outside.

#brandon sanderson #cosmere #cfsbf #root #branderson #wob #kind of #long post

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sl-newsie · 6 months

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Snow Day (Carlos de Vil x Silvermist Daughter) *Christmas Special* 🎄

'Can I request a Carlos descendants holiday fic with friends to lovers/everybody knows but them tropes? But the reader is an AK, adopted daughter of Silvermist.’ Here we go!

“No! Cut it out, Elvin!” I shout as I sprint through the icy wind. “You know I don’t like the cold!”

The white-blonde boy behind me jumps up to lean off a lamppost. “What’s the matter? Too afraid to have fun?”

I give an annoyed huff and hug my cape around me tighter. “Just because you’re the son of Jack Frost doesn’t mean you have to make my life a living nightmare with your pranks! Now for the last time, leave me alone!”

In a final effort I let out a water blast that sends Elvin flying into a snowbank, then dash down the street to hide inside Miss Muffet’s Bakery.

“Oh- Sylvia! Hi! What’s going on-?!”

In my haste I almost run into a familiar face, though this is one face I am always excited to see!

“Shh!” I hold up a hand to silence Carlos. “I’m hiding!”

His eyes widen. “Oh!” He joins me behind the cookie display. “May I ask from whom?” Carlos whispers back.

“Ugh. It’s Elvin Frost. Son of Elsa and Jack Frost, and an icy pain in my side. He’s visiting from Arendelle, and has become the reason why I hate snow days.”

“Hate snow days?” Carlos laughs. “How could anyone hate snow days? I mean, look around!” He gestures to the billowing snow swirling around the window. “It’s so- so…”

“Magical?”

“Exactly!”

Ever since Carlos came to Auradon last summer, I’ve always been fond of his childlike energy. Not many kids in Auradon appreciate the little things like he does, so it goes without saying that we’d become friends. Mom’s always so busy controlling the water elements she didn’t have time to look after me, so she sent me to be adopted by Jack Beanstalk. But like Carlos, I’ve learned to enjoy other things. However, snow isn’t one of them.

“My wings can’t stand the bitter cold. If I stay outside too long, they freeze and wither away. It also doesn’t help that my water powers freeze in the winter. Water and cold do not mix well for me.”

Carlos’ face falls. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.”

I wave it off. “It’s alright.”

“It’s just that… we didn’t get snow on the Isle.”

That’s why he loves the snow. I can’t be mad at him for that. How could he have known anyway? It’s his first Christmas in Auradon, so he wouldn’t know.

“I guess if you’ve never seen it, snow can be very magical,” I attempt a cheerful smile. “I’m glad you enjoy it! You should go play outside.”

Carlos still isn’t convinced. “But it’s not as fun if you’re not there, Sylvia. Would you maybe wanna stay here for a hot chocolate?”

My spirits lift and my wings start fluttering. “That sounds wonderful! I’d love to!”

“Great! Um- maybe we could sit down instead of hiding behind the counter?”

I nod eagerly and start flying to a nearby table, too excited to remember not to use my wings indoors.

“Oh- right.” I flutter down, and my height difference shows. Since I’m the descendant of a fairy, I’ve been short my whole life.

“That never gets old,” Carlos comments with a grin.

I tilt my head in confusion. “What?”

“Your wings. I think they’re beautiful.”

His kind words send us both into blushing messes, so I try to change the subject.

"Where's Dude?"

Carlos chuckles. "He hates the cold, so he's currently sleeping in front of the fire in my dorm."

By now a waitress shows up to take our order.

“What’ll it be, hon?”

I don’t miss a beat. “A large old-fashioned hot chocolate extreme with peppermint dust, whipped cream, and marshmallows, please!”

Carlos’ jaw drops.

I roll my eyes. “It’s my favorite holiday drink, I don’t care if it gives me a heart attack.”

“It sounds fantastic! I’ll have one too!” He smiles at the waitress, who just nods and walks off.

This snow day just got so much better!

Evie’s POV

“We’ve got to get them together!” I huff as I pace the dorm room.

“But they are together,” Jay states bluntly. “Haven’t you seen them around?”

I roll my eyes. “I mean, they need to know that they love each other, right? It’s like they’re completely oblivious to it!”

Jay lazily gets up from the couch and walks over to the window. “I wouldn’t say they look too upset.”

“What?”

I dash over and peer through the frosted glass to see Carlos and Sylvia walking hand-in-hand through the snow, each holding to-go mugs.

“Oh my God. Are they on a… date?”

Jay shrugs. “Guess we don’t gotta step in after all.”

I’m still unconvinced. “No, no. It’s been going on like this for months! They look happy hanging out together, but won’t confess their feelings! Come on!” I grab Jay’s sleeve and start dragging him out the door. “I want to see this for myself!”

Sylvia’s POV

Ok, if all snow days involve drinking hot chocolate with Carlos then I want one every day!

“What’s been your favorite snow activity?” I ask Carlos, who keeps looking at the snow outside as if we’re in a real-life snow globe.

“Definitely making snowmen. Or snowball fights! Wait- have you ever ice skated?”

I let out a carefree laugh as I sip my cocoa. “Yes, it comes very naturally when I can control water.”

“What’s your favorite snow activity?”

I come to a stop in the flurrying snow, remembering how much I used to love winter as a kid.

“I… I liked making snow angels,” I whisper.

Carlos gets an unreadable expression. “Why don’t you now?”

I shake my head and gesture to the frozen ground. “I don’t like risking direct snow contact with my wings. Plus, all the snow that melts under me begins to freeze to my cape.”

The freckled VK looks distant for a second, then seems to get an idea.

“Wait a sec!” He quickly slides off his own coat and lays it on the fluffy snow. “Now you have a double cover!”

I smile sadly at his thoughtful gesture. “Carlos, that’s really sweet. But I’m not sure-”

“Come on, it’ll only be for a second!” Carlos takes my hand and pulls me closer. “We’ll head straight back indoors, I promise.”

I must admit, Carlos’ pleading eyes combined with the sparkling snow is all too taunting to pass up despite my usual refusals.

With a deep breath, I hug my cape tighter around me and turn around to gently lie down on the soft blanket of snow. The cooler surface is refreshing, flooding my mind with childhood memories. Slowly, I bring my arms out to form the angel, and when I do I feel Carlos lay down beside me.

“Are you having fun?” He asks sincerely.

“Yes,” I answer in a relaxed tone, then seem to rethink something. “Carlos… Do you like spending time with me?”

Carlos doesn’t take more than 2 seconds to respond. “Of course! You’re always so full of fun ideas, and having a water balloon fight with you is one of the best things ever!”

I nod. “Does that mean… you enjoy my company? You like… me?”

By now we’ve both realized where this conversation might be going, but thankfully Carlos doesn’t seem weirded out by it and doesn’t slide away.

“Ok, don’t water-blast me for this,” Carlos takes a deep breath. “Would you be mad if I said I did like you? Maybe… as more than a friend?”

Is this what I think it is?

“So is this a date?” I stand up and my wings start getting excited, threatening to shake loose from my cape. “Oh no- I can’t be out too long!”

Carlos sees my panicked face and stands up with me to dust the snow off my cape. Then out of nowhere, he sweeps me up bridal-style and rushes me across the grounds to the dorm building entrance. We don’t speak, there’s no need to. I trust him not to drop me. Through speaking with actions Carlos shows me just how much he cares, and it sends my spirits soaring. I don’t know if it’s the sugar in the hot chocolate or my dilated emotions, but my heart’s racing like a rabbit!

When we get inside and the warmth engulfs my wings again, Carlos gently lets me down.

“I supposed I did mean for this to be a date,” Carlos admits. “I’m sorry you got too cold.”

For some reason my stubborn eyes can’t leave his cute face. “It’s my fault, I got too excited. I just wish I could stand the cold longer so I could enjoy it with you,” I say in a sad tone.

“I’d keep you warm.” Carlos leans in closer and wraps his arms around me, firm enough to show his affection but not too tight to damage my wings.

Using what courage I can muster, I turn my head up. “I know you will.” And with that, I press a soft kiss to his cheek.

Carlos’ face goes as red as a cherry, and immediately I regret being so bold.

“I’m sorry! God, I’m so bad at this- I just messed everything up- and now you’re mad-!”

Carlos cuts me off by leaning in to kiss my lips and my eyes close on instinct. If it weren’t for my wings going into hummingbird mode, this would be a really tender moment.

When we break apart to breathe, I hear Carlos let out a surprised gasp.

“Sylvia, um… As much as I love your wings, would you mind letting me down?” He jokes.

My eyes pop open and I look down to find that my wings have lifted us up a good 5 feet in the air.

“Oh! Right. Sorry about that,” I gush as I lower us down, with Carlos still hugging me to him.

“Does this mean we can have more snow dates?” I ask in a timid voice.

Carlos grins. “That sounds fun! I think I just found my new favorite snow activity!”

I mirror his happiness with my own smile and grip his hand. “I think we’ve had enough snow for today, so how about watching a Christmas movie?”

“Perfect!”

Carlos starts leading me back to his dorm, and when we pass by Evie and Jay in the hallway I swear I hear Evie mutter “It’s about time.”

God, I love snow days!

@laylasshiftingtonight

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