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arctrooper69 · 2 months

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As Iron Sharpens Iron

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17

Beta-read by @dragonrider9905

Chapter 12:

Previous // Next

Warnings: None

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This is already so much harder than Cid made it seem, you thought with a grunt as hills of gravelly rock slipped and slid beneath your feet.

The moon's perpetual dusky atmosphere made it nearly impossible to navigate the rough terrain without a headlamp.

And it's just my luck that this one is almost dead. The lamp flickered briefly but remained lit for the time being. At the rate you'd been replacing power packs on this thing, you weren't sure there'd be enough to last the journey back to the ship. The moon’s naturally emitted electromagnetic frequencies were not something Cid had mentioned.

No surprise there. Wonder what else she failed to mention.

You were glad Hunter wasn't here. This would be the death of him. You couldn't imagine the havoc it would wreak upon his enhanced senses - the pain it would cause him. Yet the sour taste of loneliness still faintly lingered, littering the background of all your thoughts.

A faint rumbling sound echoed across the rocky plain and you paused, listening. The strange, muted grumble became louder like the moon itself was warning you to leave and never come back.

Rocks began to quake as the ground rolled in a violent tremor.

“Well, that’s just wonderful…” you growled sarcastically. “Thanks for that!” you yelled out to no one, voice echoing strangely through the barren atmosphere.

The tremors subsided after a few minutes, though you waited a few more before starting out again.

You paused after a while, double checking the coordinates on your datapad. The screen flickered. It was a small inconvenience, yet one that landed precariously atop of so many others, drawing all the ire of pent up rage and hurt into one soul crushing cry of frustration that you’d been keeping down for so long.

“I hate this kriffing moon!”

You stopped, taking a few deep breaths.

Calm. Calm. You have a job to do.

The datapad screen blinked back on as you smacked the side of it with your hand.

Should be right around…. There.

The dimming light of the headlamp softly illuminated the entrance to a mine just ahead.

Here goes nothing.

You sighed, placing your bag on the ground before pulling out the necessary gear.

Grabbing the cable, you began to lower yourself down the dark, damp mineshaft. Without warning, another tremor rocked the ground again.

Stronger than the last, you noted, hoping that didn’t mean anything.

Another small quake sent a shower of dust and pebbles cascading down onto your face and hair. One arm let go of the cable, instinctively curling upwards to protect your face while the other held on with aching fingers, fighting how it swung wildly and out of control.

As if the vengeful moon had heard your angry cries, another rumble of the ground tore the cable from it’s resting place, pulling a terrified shriek from gasping lungs as you found yourself in a freefall, desperately clawing at the wall for any kind of stop.

Pain shot up through your shoulder as gloved fingers caught the edge of a protruding rock, dragging yourself to a more steady position, jamming your feet into crevasses in the wall.

Karking hells! You closed your eyes and let your head drop forwards to rest on the cool rock face where you clung, taking a moment to calm your screaming nerves.

You exhaled in disbelief, unsure of whether you should cry or laugh.

“Oh gods, this is not my day. This is really not my day.”

Whining to yourself, you looked down and realized you were nearly at the bottom.

Taking another breath, you pulled the cable from your belt and hooked it securely once again to the rock face, quickly gliding down the remainder of the mineshaft.

Damn. Absentmindedly stretching your sore shoulder, you crouched to place the pack onto the ground, hissing quietly as the action sent a shooting pain down your arm. You switched the headlamp off and waited for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. A dim light glimmered from a cavity in the wall on the other side of a small pool of bubbling water. They matched the description Cid provided on the jewels she’d tasked you with retrieving.

“Oh how convenient,” you scoffed, carefully scanning the area lest you be swallowed alive by some carnivorous rock or whatever else thrived in this hellhole of a moon. You chuckled dryly. That would be just my luck.

With trepidation, you stepped carefully over the small pool of water. Grabbing the small extraction tool you’d brought along, you sank down to your knees and began drilling at the glowing stones, counting each one as they popped free.

One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six…

You stood back up, carefully placing the stones inside one of the many pouches that lined your belt, and turned around to head back. A wave of sudden exhaustion pulled a sigh from your lips as it washed over you. This place was definitely not one you’d be coming back to in a hurry.

Pausing before the bubbling pool of water, you took one last look around, but your gaze was drawn right back to the pool in front of you.

Weird. A strange feeling of unease crept into your bones and you shivered. Could’ve sworn it wasn’t that big when I stepped over it before. You shrugged, certain that your mind was only playing tricks on you because when you looked once more, it was the same size as it had been before.

“This place gives me the creeps,” you muttered, looking around suspiciously. You glared at the bubbling pool and took a running leap over it just to be safe.

It was almost as if someone had pulled a rug out from beneath your feet. The edge of the pool caught on the tip of your boot and you came crashing down, a cry of alarm turning into a cry of pain as your shoulder roughly met the ground. You scrambled forward with a gasp, pulling your foot from the water.

“Did you just….” you spoke aloud, voice saturated with an incredulous annoyance, “Did you just trip me!?”

The ground rumbled lowly once again.

“Great! I’m arguing with a kriffing moon,” you muttered, shaking your head.

You sighed, four days of solitude and you were already talking to inanimate objects.

Your boot squelched as you dumped out the water that filled it. I hate wet socks. You wiggled your toes glumly.

Wrecker would find this hilarious, you chuckled to yourself. What would the rest of them think of this place?

You smiled, thinking of how Tech would be cataloging each tremor and tectonic abnormality, looking at everything through that endearing lens of curiosity. Echo would be working on a way to combat the harsh electromagnetic frequencies for himself and Hunter. His steadfast attitude wouldn’t let himself give up until he tried every option. Omega would wander, collecting oddly shaped rocks and staring into the strange bubbling pools. And Hunter…

You sighed, picking yourself back up, best not to think about Hunter. But you couldn’t help it. Loneliness settled into your gut, you missed them.

No. You scolded yourself. You’re a grown adult. You have made it in this galaxy on your own before and you will do so again.

But being on your own was a lot different than being alone.

You took a deep breath, willing that forever-heavy emotion back behind the locked doors of practical reality. It wasn’t worth dwelling on thoughts that only brought you down, and it took skill to lock them all away so efficiently - a skill you knew you’d better relearn fast.

Unwilling to stay and reflect any longer, you shot the cable up and climbed out of the mine.

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angelumcaedis · 4 months

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durge/astarion drabble: so, that exboyfriend.

(She/her drow dark urge, named Dahmira. Mild fantasies of violence. Past Durgetash. Mostly cuddling.)

“I didn’t like how he looked at me. Through me. Like he knew me, intimately.”

“Like an old lover?”

She gripped the pillow to her chest harder, dusky purple cheeks taking a deeper hue.

Astarion grinned teasingly at her. “It was hard not to notice, darling. He wasn’t exactly hiding it.”

“I don’t… know him. Not as who I am now,” she started. “But there’s a sense of recognition, almost…” she trailed off, cheeks flushing even more.

Gods, she was adorable when she was flustered, Astarion thought to himself.

“Almost what, darling?” He spoke softly, as though to a frightened animal, even as he leaned in closer, narrowing the gap between them. His grin widened just enough for his fangs to be on display. Dahmira instinctively leaned back, gaze still downcast and distant.

Voice low, almost a whisper, she replied. “Like my body knows him. Remembers him.”

Astarion took her face gently in his hand, thumb caressing her cheek. She met his gaze with wide eyes, breath caught in her throat.

“Would you like me to help you forget?”

“I… erm…” If possible, Dahmira was flushing even more purple than before.

“Seems I won’t have to try too hard if you’ve already forgotten the basics of speech.”

Astarion aptly dodged what was to be a face full of pillow as Dahmira swung at him. “You are an absolute menace, you know that, right?”

The vampire giggled, grabbing the pillow and yanking hard, pulling the unsuspecting drow on top of him as he sat back onto his veritable nest of cushions.

“Darling, I am nothing if not genuine in this offer,” he settled his hands on her hips as she came to rest in his lap. “Believe me when I say I would thoroughly enjoy making you forget every syllable of the so-called archduke’s name.”

The drow curled her hands around his wrists, hesitating. They still hadn’t crossed - well, re-crossed - certain boundaries since their commitment to trying ‘something real’. She searched his face, nose scrunched as she tried to read his expression.

Astarion gave her hips a reassuring squeeze. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was offering was something he was ready for, but he didn’t like seeing her so rattled. He wanted to reassure her that he didn’t judge her for what she did before they met. Gods, when he thought about it, if she hadn’t been that evil bastard, he would still be under Cazador’s thumb.

“We don’t have to do anything. I’m happy just to be here with you,” she said.

That something in Astarion’s chest warmed. She was always so concerned about him.

“I know. But,” he said, dropping the flirty demeanor for a deeper tone, “I didn’t appreciate how he looked at you either, darling,” he growled. “That privilege is mine alone.”

“Astarion…” Dahmira sighed, resting her forehead against his shoulder. “If I don’t kill you first, you might just be the death of me.”

“Only little deaths, we hope.”

“Astarion.”

“You are far too fun to tease, darling.”

The drow sighed in exasperation at her beloved. “I’m glad you’re having fun.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Astarion purred as he slid his hands up from her hips to her waist, rucking up her shirt on his way. His hands were cool against her skin, sending a shiver down her spine.

Her hands caught his, moving them back to settle at her hips. “I… I don’t know… not right now,” she said. “Could you maybe just… just hold me.”

If his heart had been beating, it might have skipped. “My sweet, there is nothing I would like more.”

Astarion held her tight as she drifted off into her usual fitful trance. As his own mind wandered, he imagined how it might feel to peel Enver Gortash’s smirk right off his face.

The thought warmed him to his cold, undead core.

#astarion/the dark urge #drabble #I have a longer version in my WIPs but it gets more dramatic and angsty and this version is just more lighthearted so I’m posting it anyway #astarion #the dark urge #ficlets #baldur’s gate 3 fanfiction #also this is. not beta’d and barely edited so. y’know.

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bearsandcigar-stories · 2 years

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Cigar Boy by Maelstrom (2001)

… a domination, forced change story

A boy gets more into cigars than he ever anticipated.

I had decided to treat myself to a night in the local leather bar, I had been spending more and more time there of late, the sight of the leather men surrounding me, the rich scent of their cigar smoke mixed with the masculine reek of sweat was working on me like a drug. And like a drug, I found I craved it in larger and larger doses.

After I entered, I found a little alcove I have become fond of. It's a little niche with a mirror on one wall and a chest high shelf on the other, facing the bar. I could stand behind the shelf and watch the rest of the bar, without being easily seen.

I got a beer and moved into my accustomed spot. The bar had a good crowd tonight, the sight of all those hairy, leather-clad men stirring the start of a reaction in my denim-clad crotch. Just beyond the ledge I notice a group of men talking and smoking, their words punctuated with draws on their big black stogies. I had always been fascinated by cigars and had recently been getting more so. I never seemed to go home with a man anymore unless he was puffing on one of those big tobacco cocks, sex without the ever-present smell was becoming incomprehensible to me. I had tried them once or twice, but it had never seemed right, my place was to be the cigar's worshipper, not its master.

One man in particular caught my eye, tall, with a naturally tan skin, covered with a thick coat of hair and beard. The sight of his heavy musculature moving under leather chaps and vest was making me hot and I rubbed my crotch against the ledge, feeding off the sight of my fantasy top.

Without warning the master met my eyes and smiled faintly. I could feel his gaze like a firm grip running up and down my body, evaluating me like a fine animal. I felt a faint sense of foreboding, some primitive instinct clamoring for attention. It went ignored as the master began to walk over, trailing a cloud of thick cigar smoke.

Moving into my little lair, the cigar master slammed the me against the far wall, moving us back into the alcove. His body was hard and rough against mine, the metal and leather of his vest pressing deep into my flesh. The end of his smoldering stogies was less than an inch from my face, the smoke drifting off the end and wrapping itself unnaturally around me. He took a long slow draw and breathed the smoke into my face, the white cloud emerging in a curling flow from his nose and mouth, working through his beard and mustache.

My cock swelled in my jeans, fighting the confinement of the tight denim. His presence was like a physical force, the ripple of dark skin and hair over his tight musculature a hypnotic pattern. "The boy likes cigar men, does he?" came his deep voice, his breath thick with smoke, "Yes, sir" I barely managed to whisper.

I felt his hands on my pants, ripping open the jeans with a quick motion. My heat engorged cock and balls flipped out as I moaned faintly with pleasure. I knew his friends were probably watching but the lightning rush when his put his hands on my dick drove out everything else. My attention was focused on his regular rubbing of my anxious meat. I could feel my cock swelling under the pressure of his regular motions, a curious stiffening sensation. This other hand rubbed my balls, separating them and pulling. My hands moved over his body, running through the thick hair of his chest. I buried my face in his beard, coarse and heavy with the scent of cigars. I wanted to lick every inch of his dusky skin, tasting the hot sweat and stale cigar smoke. The waves of pleasure moved my body in a sympathetic rhythm to his rubbing motions and I road it for several minutes before a the sound of faint scratching brought my attention back. "Feel good when I rub your cigar dick boy?" he asked his hands still moving on my incredibly stiff dick. "Yes, sir" I responded. My dick felt like iron, hard and rough. I could feel my balls swinging with our motion, they felt incredibly heavy, tugging on my crotch. "Yeah, you got a nice cigar dick, cigar boy" he returned and moved back a few inches, allowing me to look down at this hands on my genitals.

I was confused for a few seconds as I saw a huge black cigar in his hands, wondering how he had gotten it down there. Then I saw the other end emerging from my thick pubic hair and realized that the scratching was the sound of his hands moving over the cigar, hands I could feel on my dick. My hands shot down and grabbed at the cigar, easily 10 inches long and a 60 ring or better. I could feel my hands on my cigar dick, feel my fingers moving over the rough texture of my tobacco skin. I ran my thumb over the cut end, feeling the fine rolled tobacco where the mushroom head of my cock had resided moments before, feeling the rough grade of the tobacco, inside and out. With a small, animal moan my hands moved down, reaching beneath my tobacco dick to where my balls had once been. Instead of the warm sack I was used to, I found two hard rubber stems, pipe stems, leading to large, heavy bent bowls. My balls were two large bent briars, their stems feeding into my hairy crotch. The weight of the heavy pipes tugged as I swayed, sending small waves of pleasure through me as they lightly knocked together with my movements.

My master ran his hands across my cigar dick, running his fingers down and into the bowls of my pipe balls. I could feel every movement and the sight of my genitals turned into tobacco excited something deep inside of me. Where their should have been horror and disbelief were only pale shadows of those emotions and a deep, fear induced sexual rush. My tobacco cock rose in response and rubbed against his hairy abdomen. I wanted to rub my tobacco flesh through this hair, feel its rough texture on my cigar cock and hard briar balls. The master laid his mouth over my tits and began to suck, a strange but intense sensation that left me sweating and running my hands over his chest and crotch, wanting to pleasure him in return. When he removed his mouth to reveal a two inches length of wide cigar where my nipple had been I was not surprised. He began on my other tit and my body arched under the sensation as flesh became tobacco. My stogie dick pulsed and throbbed as I rubbed at it. Fondling it as I had other cigars, running my hands over my briar balls wishing I could stuff them with tobacco. As if on cue, my master pulled a pouch from his belt and began filling my pipe balls. I watched him slowly stuff rich dark leaf into my newly transformed pipe balls. The sensation made my cigar dick and tits jump as he packed the bowls. "Time for the cigar boy to smoke.", he said as he snapped two lighters next to my firmly packed briars. Taking my cigar dick in his mouth he began to suck, his tongue moving over the tobacco of my cock, drawing the smoke from the pipe balls into his mouth and releasing it through his lips and nose. The feeling of the smoke being sucked through me and the sight of him puffing on my cock, clouds of thick white smoke drifting through his beard and my dark public hair had me moaning in a combination of shock and lust. I began to rub the stogies projecting from my nipples, sliding my cigar dick back and forth as my master smoked his boy's tobacco cock.

Abruptly standing, my master rotated me to see myself in the mirror. "Look at yourself tobacco boy" he whispered smokily in my ear. The shock of the sight brought me back from the trance I had been in. In a fascinated horror I ran my hands over the huge cigar hanging from my crotch, rubbing the hard briar of my new balls. Smoke drifted in thick clouds from the smoldering pipes of my balls and from the end of my transformed cock. Once again the deep excitement came over me and drove out the other emotions. There was no way my tobacco genitals were ever going to fit into a pair of pants, but somehow the idea of spending the rest of my life this way excited me, I found I wanted to be my master's tobacco boy, the huge rods of tobacco jutting out of my crotch and tits excited me beyond turn on I had ever experience before. My master put a lit cigar between my teeth and I began to puff heavily, the smoke breathing in easily and flowing out of my lips and mouth, running down over the rest of my body. The cigar in my mouth felt natural and the breathing of the harsh smoke normal, sinking deep into my lungs and feeding my tobacco parts. I began to rub my cigar dick in a hard regular pattern, watching myself masturbate my tobacco cock in the mirror. My master stood behind me, rubbing his hands over my body and twisting my stogie tits. The sight all those cigars jutting out of my mouth and body pushed me my beyond my limit and I felt myself cum, huge clouds of smoke pouring from my crotch.

"You like being tobacco, don't you boy" he demanded of me. "Yes, sir", I found myself returning. He rotated me and forced his tongue into my mouth, the thick taste of his cigar breath adding to the taste of the stogie still lodged in my own teeth. "You want to go all the way, you want to be a real tobacco boy?" Part of me wanted to scream No! to run with what humanity remained to me, but I found myself answering "Yes, sir, I want to be your tobacco boy, sir". "That's master's good cigar slave, boy, your going to satisfy me for a long time." His thick bearded lips moved from my mouth to my neck and down my chest, leaving a trail of thick cigar spit to warm my already sweat covered flesh.

My master began licking my body, covering it with a thick coat of cigar spit. I ran my hungry mouth over his in return, tasting his smoky sweat, running my tongue through his heavy underarms to such out every drop of his masculine sweat. By body felt stiff, and there was a curious prickling sensation in my skin but I ignored it in my quest to taste over exposed inch of him, to lick every drop of salty, cigar heavy sweat from his hairy skin.

He released me suddenly, moving back. I tried to reach for him, to grab his arms and bury my face in his thick smoky chest hair, but found I couldn't. With a quick turn he rotated me so I could see my body and a small cry of shock escaped from my lips. From the neck down was nothing but a huge black cigar, easily five feet long and a foot wide. I craned my head down, looking at the rough black tobacco of my new body, the sight of the rolled tobacco at the end, the large paper ring just below my neck. "Oh shit, I'm a cigar", found myself repeating over and over to myself, my mind refusing to accept the idea while another part of me was unbearably excited. I felt my master lay me in the corner, propping my cigar body so I could see myself in the mirror. "I'd fuck you boy, but you ain't got an ass anymore, do ya boy?" His huge erection, released during my tongue bath, was throbbing visibly under the regular rubbing of his hands as he moved to stand over me, his cock rubbing my tobacco flesh, sending hot arcs of pleasure. My new body was supersensitive, like a long dark dick, and everywhere he contacted my rough, dry black flesh created an almost painful pleasure.

He lowered me down between his legs and held my head in his hands, ramming his 10 inches of rock hard meat down my throat. "You are my tobacco boy, suck my big cock, cigar boy", he began chanting in rhythm to his thrusting. I felt his meat down my throat, utterly unable to resist him as he jammed himself again and again into my face. I could hear my cigar end scraping against the floor rhythmically and I wrapped my lips around him, craving the taste of his huge cock. I felt his meat begin to kick and throb and began sucking harder, looking forward to his heavy load. Suddenly he dropped me on the floor, his hand moving over his dick as it shot an inhuman amount of thick white cum over me and the floor. Wave after wave of semen splattered over my tobacco body, staining the dark leaf. I lay on the floor, completely unable to move, watching him cum all over my new body. The spurting torrent seemed to go on and on, the volumes getting larger and larger. I watched his dick over me, growing strangely greater and larger as it coated me in torrents of thick semen. Finally it jerked to a stop, hanging massively above me, small drops of fluid escaping from a piss slit that looked like it could devour me whole.

He slowed to a stop and knelt over me. "That was good boy, but you know the best thing after a good cum, is a good cigar". His now huge hand reached down and picked me up. He held me in front of the mirror for a moment, allowing me to see that I was now completely a cigar. 10 inches long and very wide, possibly an 80 ring or more, it was hard to judge from my perspective. He placed me in his mouth and I felt his warm lips close over my cigar butt. The feeling of being his cigar, an inanimate tobacco object completely in his control called to something inside me and pleasure welled through my new body. His teeth bit off my end and spit it out, but there was no pain, just a light euphoria as I knew my master was preparing to smoke me. He place me back in his mouth, his teeth clenching on my tobacco. With a click he brought up his lighter and for a moment I was afraid, but being lighted produced only a tingling sensation, followed by a deep rush as he drew smoke through me. "This is your new life boy, your a cigar now and there's no going back" I could hear him whisper to me, "I'll smoke you down and then grow back up again. Again and again for a long time boy. Your masters a heavy smoker and he's going to make good use of you. Then, when I'm tired of you I'll pass you around to my friends, you want to be smoked by all those leather men boy?" The sight of myself in the mirror, a huge tobacco cock in my master's mouth kept a constant air of sexual excitement, I wanted to be smoked by him and any other hot leather man he choose to give me too. I hoped my master would give me a few moment in my old body now and then, so I could pleasure him in other ways, but I knew that it was as a cigar that I could best serve my master, and that it was as a cigar that I would do so for a very long time to come.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050210135903/http://www.maelstromx.com/trans/stories/story1.html

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red-riding-wood · 1 year

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Verum Vindictae - II

Chpt. I, Masterlist, Chpt. III

Pairing: Marcus x OC (Josephine "Jo" Carlisle)

Fandom: John Wick (2014)

Summary: Bound by a blood oath she made fourteen years ago, Jo is desperately trying to escape a world she used to dream of when she is tasked with killing the infamous "Baba Yaga" and must face the truth of her past as everything she has ever known unravels around her.

WARNINGS: violence, language, eventual explicit sexual content

This story is part of my Willem Dafoe Challenge.

Taglist: @glitter-and-gasoline, @giona45-5, @imwithyoutiltheendofthelinebucky, @emilynightshade89, @wretched-mischief

13:28, October 19th

I’d been getting sloppier, careless.

I wanted out. It was all I’d wanted for the past fourteen years.

I was doing another man’s work, and I wasn’t even the one to claim the reward – not the money, not the fame. I didn’t get so much as a dime or a mention while my blood stained that marker that sealed my fate.

My finger tensed over the trigger of my Glock, the black barrel staring down the man who was blubbering like a child on the floor of the manor. He looked so pathetic, tears streaming down his wrinkled face and his wig set ajar, revealing a sheen of sweat across a bald scalp. In this moment, he didn’t look like a crime boss, didn’t look like the target I’d been sent to kill. In this moment, he was just a man – a man who was about to die by my bound hand.

I readied myself for the twist of my stomach when I pulled the trigger, by the nagging at the back of my conscience as I watched his blood stain the expensive floorboards.

“Please,” he begged me, spittle landing across his jaw. “Please, I’ll do anything. Pay you anything. What are they paying you?”

My lip twitched over my teeth, and I scowled. “Not a damn thing,” I said.

Confusion danced across his shiny, bright irises, and he nearly stilled for a moment.

I snorted, and the puff of air blew a dusky lock from my eyes. I was a fucking joke. A tool, a puppet. I delivered souls to the gates of the underworld and I was the one who had to pay the ferryman.

“Then… why?” the man sputtered in disbelief. “Why are you doing this?”

Fear was still laced so venomously into his teary gaze, and it softened my grip on the trigger.

I swallowed, and fitted the Glock back into my holster.

“Run,” I told him.

He was frozen for only a moment, and then he was scrambling up from the floor, shoes screeching against the floorboards for purchase. I watched as he fled, practically tripped over the bodies that lay haphazard against the spiral staircase, and I wondered if I’d made an awful mistake.

“There is no place in this business for mercy,” Cain had once told me.

Fuck Cain, I thought.

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17:32, October 21st

The entire room shuddered as the door slammed shut behind him, and I swung my head to catch the fiery streak of his amber eye as he stalked towards me. I had my feet up on the ottoman, a book in my hands that I slowly slid a bookmark through.

Cain stood before me, eye darting to my dirtied boots, and I could tell he was seething, his shoulders hunched forward and his nose twitching with fury. His eye met mine, and he growled,

“You didn’t fulfill the contract.”

I turned my gaze to the wall, my lip curling. “Figures,” I muttered to myself. “Should’ve known the old codger couldn’t’ve run far.”

But a part of me was relieved. I hadn’t let the old man go entirely out of mercy. A part of me had wanted my boss to find out, had wanted him notice that I was no longer doing as clean-cut a job as I used to. He hadn’t noticed the past five or six contracts that I’d half-assed. At least, finally, this had gotten his attention. At least, finally, he would listen to me.

I shut my book and tossed it aside on the couch, my boots landing with two thuds against the floor as I stood to meet his gaze. Even with his shoulders slightly hunched, he towered over me, and I nearly quailed under the raging fire of the sole lamplight that stared back at me.

“It’s been fourteen years, Cain,” I said, struggling to keep my tone even. “I’m thirty-two, and I’m still doing your dirty work. When will you fulfill my marker? When will I be free?” I was failing; my tone was shaking and its volume was beginning to spiral out of control.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he exploded; his eye flashed in a streak of brilliant flame, and his breath raked across my cheeks. “Do you have any idea what this has done to my reputation?”

“Your reputation?” I scoffed. “You would be nothing without me, Cain. Which is why you need to listen to me!”

“You’re just as irresponsible as you were fourteen years ago! Grow up. You have a job to do – one that you signed on for, with your own blood, and you’re throwing it in my face.”

“I didn’t know I’d signed over my life!” I exclaimed, fury twisting its way malignantly into my gut. “When, Cain, when will I finally to get to live my life?”

John had managed to leave this life behind, had been happy, with a sweet wife and a house out of town, with an SUV and a lawn kept freshly mowed by a jolly gardener. For five years. Five whole years, before I attended her funeral; the poor woman had been claimed by cancer, not by a bullet or a stab wound or a bashed-in skull.

I wanted what he had. I’d always wanted what he had; when I was younger, and he was in the business, I’d wanted in. And now, now I knew why he always tried to keep me out of it, because now I was trapped, and he was out, and I craved that domestic life that he had found.

Cain shook his head, the masked half of his face turning to me, and he began muttering to himself, “Ungrateful, entitled.” The words only scored deeper into my gut, weaving bitter tendrils of wrath.

But before I could say anything, he whirled on me, and blazing amber threatened to combust. “Are you forgetting that you begged me for this life?” he snapped. “Are you forgetting who made you what you are? Without me, you would be nothing!”

From the billowing pockets of his coat, he pulled a carefully-engraved disc of silver; to anyone else, it may have appeared to be a large, unusual coin, or perhaps even a pocket-watch; but to anyone in this business, we knew it to be a sentence.

“I’ll help you,” the man said decidedly, and reached a hand into the pocket of his coat. I stiffened; I knew little of these people, knew little of how they operated. For all I knew, he was about to pull a gun on me.

Silver glinted in the gentle light of the chandelier, and I flinched, imagining it to be a blade. But with a clink, he set it down. A rounded piece of metal, the image of a skull etched into the center of a labyrinth of vines, an array of stars, and three words that appeared to be some sort of Latin.

His finger pressed a button on the side, popping open the center piece that was framed by the lettering and stars, and from its crest a tiny, sharp blade emerged. My heart seized.

But all he did was push it across the table to me, slowly, gently, and an amber optic swept up to meet mine.

“In this world, we operate on blood oaths. I do you a favour, you do me a favour, and your marker is complete,” he explained, thumb idly tracing the edges of the tiny blade that protruded from the silver object. “Just prick your finger here, and press the print here…” he demonstrated by placing his thumb on one side of the line that split the parchment. “And I will change your life forever.”

At his words, my heart leapt with excitement. To be an assassin, to be revered like John, to kill the person who had stolen my life… it was like a dream come true. But I hesitated, as I reached my hand across the table, and asked, “What sort of favour?”

He smiled. “One never knows when they will find themselves in need. I cannot predict the future, dear.”

My hand retracted warily, and I bit the edge of my lip. What was I getting myself into?

“I don’t know…” I said, and stood from my chair. “Thank you, sir, but I think I’m in over my head here…”

“Where are you going?” he asked as I began to take my leave, and my heart fluttered in my chest. I stilled, fingers still resting over the back of the dining chair.

“Are you going back to John?” he urged, when silence hung thick in the air. “Are you really going to spend the rest of your life in his shadow? Are you going to get him to do your work for you?”

I swallowed. He was right. If I went back to John, he wouldn’t let me near my target. They’d be dead before the clock struck midnight. And I may never find a deal like this again, the chance to become something more, something deadly. To become one of the weapons that had fought so vicious yet free back in the Ruska Room.

And what was it, really? Some of my blood on a silver coin?

I turned back around, and took my seat.

The rings of my bloody thumbprint now stared up at me, and I cursed myself for not walking out that day, for being such a foolish girl.

Cain’s fingers trembled around the marker, and he snapped it shut, a grated cough springing from his lungs. It emerged whenever the weather was cold, or he strained his voice. It made him almost human.

He raised a hand to his mouth, and his fingers still trembled, as they brushed the leather of his mask, tracing the indents of the decorative cogs, as if remembering it were there. That mask… I had never seen what was beneath it. He’d never let me, didn’t trust me enough to. He preached about being the only one there for me, yet he kept secrets from me. For fourteen years.

And then that amber orb flashed, and caught my gaze as he snarled hoarsely, “And this is how you repay me. By fucking me over. By fucking the both of us over.”

The knot of wrath fastened in my gut, and I shot back with a vitriolic tinge to my tone, “I’ve long fulfilled that marker, and you know it. I’ve served you long enough, now let me go.”

Cain’s hand slowly fell from the edge of his mask, and something about him weakened; his countenance softened around sharp features, and an eye once alight with the flame of ire now became almost somber, the hue more akin to a dying leaf in Autumn.

“Served?” he breathed, his voice a ghost of what it had been moments prior.

“You think I stay for the tea parties?” I hissed, taken-aback. Why was he so hurt, so shocked by this? “I’m a prisoner here, always have been.”

“So that’s all I am,” he coughed, his chest wracking weakly. “Your jailer.” His lip curled, nose twitched, and he scoffed. “Fine. You want out that bad, Jo? I’ll set you free. I’ll complete the marker. If you do one thing for me.”

Past the rage brewing in my chest sprung a semblance of hope, and I was sure that my own expression softened. I stepped forward.

“What do you need?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation from my tone.

His countenance hardened once more, and we stood in silence for what must have been an eternity.

“I need you to kill John Wick.”

The room depressurized. My hope plummeted deep into my gut, tangling in the threads of bitter rage and making me sick. Betrayal, that was what I was feeling. Betrayal so intense that my head felt almost light and I could almost feel the fight leave me, feel myself wanting to sink back into the leather of that couch.

“This is some sick joke,” I breathed.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” he snapped.

I took a step back. “Why?” My own voice was coming quieter now, weaker. It was breaking. I was breaking.

“You know I tangle with all sorts of folk, Jo,” he said, a sigh escaping his chest with the last of a feeble cough. “Hell, you’ve met half of them. They’re not saints, no more than you and me are. One of my friends broke into John’s house the other day. Killed his dog. Stole his car. Idiot didn’t realize what he’d gotten himself into.”

So this is why he was asking me to kill the man who’d been there for me in my darkest moments, who’d practically raised me until I was eighteen, who’d begged me to come with him when he left this life.

“I’m not killing John because your friend is a nutcase,” I told him, that virulence emerging in my tone again. “It’s not my problem, and it shouldn’t be yours, either.”

“You’re not the only one with a debt to pay, Josephine. This friend, he has my marker. We’re all pawns in this game. You’re only just realizing that?”

“You’re asking me to kill my brother.”

“I’m asking you to kill a cold-blooded killer, same as you, same as every goddamn one of us. You can’t grant mercy to that scheming Rhittler who had more blood on his hands than a butcher and tell me you won’t kill John Wick.”

“He’s my brother!” I screeched, the knot in my gut pulling taut.

“And you’re the only one who might be able to get close enough to kill him. Anyone else I send after him, they’re doomed to Hell. But you, you can catch him off-guard.” Another sigh, and he stepped forward, his hand reaching for my arm. I jutted it back, shrinking from his touch.

“Jo…” he said, his hand falling dejectedly at his side. “I’m sorry to be asking this of you – genuinely – but I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t imperative.”

I glared at him from a stony gaze.

“We both know what happens when you refuse a marker,” he said, tone growing grave. “If John Wick lives, I die.”

A breath hissed from flared nostrils, and though a piece of my heart, for some unexplainable reason, fractured, I grabbed my coat from the arm of the couch and fitted it furiously around my shoulders.

“Then die,” I growled, tugging at the lapels. “And before you do it, repent, repent for all that you’ve done, so I don’t have to see you on the other side.”

That amber gaze trailed me as I left, and though he was wordless, his silence followed me out that door more vexingly than anything he could’ve said.

The cold buffeted me as I stepped onto the pavement, and as the door slammed shut behind me, I realized, that after all this time, when I’d finally claimed my freedom,

I was as good as dead.

#john wick #2014 #marcus #willem dafoe #fanfiction #fanfic #writing #my writing #oc: josephine #oc: cain #eventual smut #slow burn #mdni #verum vindictae

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writtenbywings · 2 years

Text

Battle Scars

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Draco Malfoy

Summary: Returning to Hogwarts as a professor, Hermione bitterly encounters Draco Malfoy as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, throwing everything into chaos.

Hatred and lust slowly begins to burn between them, though only as they recall their final, secret year at Hogwarts.

Chapter word count: 2k

Link: Battle Scars

Type: Slow burn romance

CHAPTER FOUR

There was little I knew about love, though when it came to a new hardback, I was just about curling my toes and batting my lashes.

One of the perks of being accepted academically into Hogwarts was the riverine of literature that came with the title and salary. A luxury for me, and my parchment-savvy fingers– turning over the first crisp page and smelling the deep, musky smell from the spine.

Ah… dust, dark ink and a million old words.

I couldn't understand the new students, and their interest in funny spells and unicorn-hair wands.

Even as an older witch, all I wanted to do was lull in the library with a steaming cup of tea and crookshanks. God bless his furry soul.

I was most displeased when I found it was out of commission, given the new 'malicious potions' section, and its twenty-four hour surveillance. Until they employed a ghost or ghoul stupid enough to watch the library walls, it was a red-zone for any wandering eye.

Including my own.

I thought about this bitterly with my morning coffee, organizing through junk the previous professor had left behind, and the scattered mess of his office quarters. Now, formally mine.

I had etched the gold-plaque Professor Strider off the door, and replaced it kindly with Professor Granger - looped and cursive, with all the welcome of a true writer.

Inside, the walls were a drab and curdled cream– yellowed from age and dusty without the comfort of a feather to bat away the moths. The corners were stacked with unfinished registers, newspapers headlining old troubles (Sirius Black screaming on the front page of a few) and pictures of relatives from Professor Flitwick's previous teaching days. Things of importance, I stored inside a box and took to an old cupboard up in the south west of the castle– beside Hufflepuff's common room and a spiral staircase that led to a high tower. Whilst rubbish I disposed of, and carried all the way to Hagrid's hut where he used it as kindling for the foreseeable winter. Resourceful as ever.

On my way back to my new office, I grabbed a can of 'lush-lush-lavender paint' from the Artist's Quarter on the first floor– famous for the portraits around Hogwarts, and the lively personalities that continue to live through paint stroke and brush flick. Most of these creations were done by Elves, no wonder, and I tried not to pass a brochure on 'S.P.E.W' as I balanced my supplies.

One thing at a time, Hermione. I reminded myself in Ron's voice, now a daily mantra.

Twelve o'clock rolled into early afternoon, and the first coat of lilac was drying quickly with the aid of a few open windows– dust sheets covering the dark wood desk and its marrying old chair.

With the use of a glue gun and a little magic, I managed to decorate everything to the dusky color theme - the upholstered fabrics spreading like a dreamy sky, running from the lounging sofa in the corner, to the shelves where all of my essential hardbacks housed. A crystal lamp filled the room with pinkish light, and the ceiling was enchanted to glitter with stars and the northern lights - aurora borealis.

All in all… it felt as comforting as a cup of tea.

I had dinner with the students in the dining hall, opposed to the teacher's lounge – not feeling adult enough to discuss politics with Hagrid and Minerva just yet – and used this time to get to know a few big personalities in Gryffindor.

The head boy, who had a knack for brushing people up the wrong way with his wit and study ethic, was called Porth Watermaine. A handsome young prodigy who spent most of his time trying to impress the head girl– Valerie Mayson. Ginger haired and fair skinned, she reminded me most of Ginny.

Though that might have been like comparing a bush fire to the devil's inferno.

I chewed through a thick cutlet of gammon and smothered my potatoes in gravy, trying to get a sense of where the outcast group lay – a parallel to my trio, and the friendship that still kept me sane after all of these years. Though sadly, there appeared to be nothing of the kind– not even a specky boy or a ginger accomplice.

Alas, I'd keep an eye out.

I stayed for dessert and handed out itineraries for the foreseeable year, homework days color-coded and mock exams highlighted. The girls enjoyed this, though the boys frowned, asking instead where my 'boyfriend with the scar was.'

"You know," a feisty little lad asked, short enough to reach my knees, "the kid who killed

that evil, bald guy."

Ah, Voldemort… if only you could see the youth of today tremble in fear of you now.

On my way back through the castle, I bid goodnight to a few new faces, and inwardly applauded myself for an eventful day– feeling organized enough to deal with any issue that came my way.

As Draco Malfoy reared a corner, barging into my shoulder and almost taking me down– I cursed myself for being too positive. I hit the wall, staring with dumbfounded eyes as he continued walking, heading straight for the Slytherin common room, his black robes whipping like leather at his heels.

That cloudy eye reflecting all of the nothingness inside of him.

"Watch where you're going!" I exclaimed, not so much as pricking his attention. A few first years shuffled awkwardly around me - as if I had a bubble of thorns keeping them at bay. I swallowed the lump rising in my throat and dispersed, feeling all the happiness drain out. The metaphorical sewer of our memories flowing down the dirt pipes.

Really, what did I ever see in him?

And better yet, what had I done to warrant such anger and malice?

I climbed a staircase and found it gravitating to another, leading me astray from the trail back to my quarters.

"No." I mumbled, as if the steps themselves could understand my pain. I tried not to let my lower lip wobble, all the frustration wanted to find a way out. Unfortunately, I cried when I was angry, and now the tears were welling in my eyes, making everything glassy and blurry.

"Oh dear," One of the portraits tutted, "whoever has got you in such a state, Hermione Granger."

I ducked my head and climbed to the very top of the staircase, almost plunging off into nothing before a corridor clicked into place. With one hurrying step, I disappeared out of sight and ventured down the dark shadows of an unlit hallway, trying to rid my mind of blue eyes and white hair.

I wasn't attempting to make my footsteps quiet, and as I reared the corner to the Slytherin common room, I wanted to scream out in horror.

Really, what good had these enchanted steps ever done? I cursed, recalling the time Harry had been late to class as he was redirected to Professor Sprout's private quarters. It was as if they had some secret intentions to make life miserable!

The impending sound of footsteps came to disarm what was left of my pride, and scouring to see where a quick exit could be, I dove toward a locked door, whipping out my wand.

"Alohomora!" I whispered fiercely, hearing a satisfying click. Before the steps could reach me, I was inside and the door was clicked swiftly shut behind me– all that separated me from misery now.

Even if it wasn't Draco, would it do me any good for a Slytherin student to tell him I was lurking around the corridor? How desperate would I seem… how strange?

Voices came now, surly and loud.

"Though sir, she deserved it!"

"Do you not hear me? I said no, and in the world where I hold the power to your expulsion, that word is final."

My blood ran cold.

Malfoy.

"The boys and I already despise her after what she did, I thought you would understand that."

The footsteps stopped, and now they lingered outside the door.

"Tell me, what has she done to you?"

"She fought for Harry Potter. She fought against Voldemort."

The door slammed, and I fought everything inside of me not to squeal as it cried against its hinges, held only by a lock and my body weight. Draco had pinned the boy against the wood, it seemed.

I could hear the venom in his low voice as he spoke.

"You do not get to talk about a war you weren't involved in, just because your family lineage agrees so. Blood was spilt, decisions were made, and Voldemort died. The fact you speak his name so freely without a flinch proves you have no valid opinion on the subject."

"Sir, I'm sorry, I–"

"Enough. You remove the hex from Miss Granger's office and go to bed before I report this. Do you understand?" He growled through his teeth.

The student, whoever he was, scampered off in a series of pants that told me he was frightened.

As frightened of Draco as we had been of Snape.

What was it about the head of Slytherin inciting fear?

Still, I felt conflicted. Angry for his adamant dislike for me, after everything we had been through, though soft at the thought of him fighting my corner from the shadows.

Another thump hit the door, though this time, it sounded like he was leaning against it– deflated.

I pressed my bare hand to the wood and almost felt the electricity of his presence behind it, closing my eyes.

Malfoy sighed, a long and exasperated sigh.

"I'm going to end up dead before this year is finished." He whispered to himself, as private as a lone thought. I opened my mouth as if his secrecy deserved an answer, though before I could rethink my words, he sauntered off, and the door felt unknowingly cold.

Draco had said those words in my presence once before… though in a much different setting.

At a much different time.

I slumped against the wall and buried my face in my hands.

What was happening?

____________________________

"Hermione, put the book down."

"You don't want to do this."

"Think of the children!"

I burst out in a series of laughs as Ron sat on his knees, holding his palms to the sky as if he were praying to a higher power. Harry held his stomach as he chuckled, leaning back in his chair.

We were in the library, and trying to launch myself out of this funk, I had decided to do a bit of light reading. Ron had placed a bet on how long it would take me to read an actual page, and now he was almost out fifteen silver sickles.

Harry's pockets were jingling already.

"I can't believe you two have put my misery on a payroll." I snickered, leaning against one of the bookshelves. Ron scampered to his knees and crept over, trying to lightly pry the book from under my arm.

"We need entertainment after you know what. You're the best opportunity."

"He's right." Harry agreed.

I willingly let go of the book, and Ron lifted it over his head victoriously.

Harry's head fell back with a groan.

"Don't pay him yet. We still have tomorrow." I giggled, trailing out of sight. I shook my head in amusement as I heard them bicker amongst themselves, wandering to the back of the library where Crimes in Herbology sat. The lamps were dim here, and the tables were vacant– a known kissing spot for anyone old enough to know about it, with initial engravings marking the wooden book shelves. A little heart tracing each one.

Thankfully today, all was quiet– quiet enough that I flinched as I collided with a body, scattering the three books I had picked up to the ground.

"Sorry," I gasped, instinctually squatting to the ground to collect them. The body didn't drop down to help, though as I fumbled those three editions back into my arms, I came face to face with a pair of knees, and then a midriff, shoulders and jaw as I stood.

Malfoy.

"Oh, please." I sighed. "Are you following me here now as well?"

"Maybe I am." He smiled a crooked, amused smile.

The bruising had eased him from his face, though there was still a yellowish-green beneath his eyes.

"What do you want, Malfoy?"

He canted his head to the side from the exasperation in my voice, and his eyes lit with a game-like leisure.

"I can't talk to you in public now?"

"You call the kissing-corner in the library a public place for conversation?"

"I call it a good place to make a negotiation."

"A negotiation?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

He found my irritation amusing, and approached it like an invitation.

"I want to tutor you." He proposed.

I almost fell over in hysterics, though something in his voice told me he was serious.

"I don't need a piggy-back for my exams, thanks." I scowled, and placed back my books. I would get them from Professor Mcgonagall's private stock. This wasn't worth the effort.

I turned, though found myself rooted in place as Malfoy stepped to the side, brushing his body comfortably in front– close enough to feel the heat in his breath, the icy-bite from his blue eyes.

"I know you have all of the world figured out, though I mean this sincerely. You need a friend who has dealt with the after-effects of trauma, and not Harry Potter who has been the center of attention for seven years or Ron Weasley who has a million siblings to dry his tears at night. You're alone, you're an outcast, and I'm offering to tutor you in controlling your emotions."

This time, I did laugh– a hard snort that could be confused with disgust. Though in actuality, it was bother. I was bothered by how ridiculously true that was.

"I have my friends." I retorted.

"And I have mine." He said, his voice even lower. "Though that doesn't mean they stop me from killing a first year' with the cruciatus curse."

The words were like a knife to my chest, and I looked at him with the purest form of regret my mudblood heart could muster. Regret from almost doing the unthinkable… regret from almost hurting someone.

"Why?" I asked, as quiet as it was sinful to admit what I'd done.

"I'm going to end up dead before this year is finished, anyway." He remarked. "I might as well help someone before my time is up."

I watched in disbelief as he stepped away, creating a divide between us. He reached a finger forward and nudged my chin upwards– as if to stay positive, and as if to remind me he wasn't the bad guy. That after all we'd been through… he was as much blood, bone and magic as anyone here.

And he too, held regrets.

"Slytherin Tower. Tomorrow. Nine o'clock. Come alone."

He left me standing next to Wayward Herbology and Killer Weeds, volume one through five– and for the first time, I felt myself warm to him.

#dramione #dramione fanfiction #hermione granger #draco malfoy #hp fanfiction #hp #harry potter #draco x hermione #hermione x draco #draco edit #hermione edit #hermione gif #draco gif #dramione edit #fanfiction #fanfic

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moriavis · 1 year

Note

For kiss prompts:

Memir/Bele, "I need you now" kisses

Mick/Len, "maybe in another life" kisses

❤️💋

Here you go, bb! Memir/Bele kisses ahoy! (none of this is beta'ed, btw)

~*~

Bele's heart was thrumming in his chest like it wanted to escape out of his throat. Despite the rush of adrenaline and anxiety, he'd thought he'd been holding himself together pretty well… at least until Pan— Pan— pulled him aside and asked if he was okay, her eyes straight ahead and fixed on the dagger on his hip.

"I'm fine," Bele said, embarrassed and oddly touched; his feelings had to be written all over his face if Panacorin was trying to comfort him. He looked toward Memir, searching for him on instinct even though he knew for a fact that Memir hadn't quite yet moved from the table where they'd been having their meals.

Quarie caught his attention first, less because of his Fey beauty, the curtain of his shining dark hair and the net of sapphires woven between the strands, and more because he was reaching out and brushing a strand of Memir's hair away from Memir's jaw.

The season of his soul turned into burning summer, and he stalked toward the table, reaching out for Memir's hand and squeezing. Memir turned his attention to Bele immediately, his cheeks flushing into a dusky bronze— it made Bele catch his breath, how beautiful Memir was, even as satisfaction burned through him with the way Memir had immediately ignored their host.

"Borrowing my husband," Bele said bluntly, and Memir rose from his seat without a pause, his tail quivering slightly before it curled around his leg. A distant part of Bele was disappointed that Memir was tucking his tail away, but the rest of him didn't care as he turned on his heel and dragged Memir to the quarters they'd so generously been offered.

The door was barely shut before Bele hefted Memir into his arms, clenching his fingers into a fist at the small of Memir's back and clutching at the loose fabric he found there like a lifeline. Memir was already leaning in to kiss him when Bele raised his face, and Bele lost track of time as he pressed Memir against the door and ravaged his husband's mouth.

There was only the fierce press of Memir's lips, the heat of his tongue. Memir dug his fingers into Bele's braids, legs tight around Bele's waist, his tail curling around one of Bele's arms. They chased each other's breath, and Bele nipped Memir's bottom lip, tearing his attention from Memir's mouth to bite a trail of marks that flushed bronze, so pretty that Bele had to start over again and suck Memir's skin to a delicious copper tone, Memir's pulse fluttering wildly against the suction of Bele's mouth.

"Jealous?" Memir managed to push the word out as if he were surprised, and knowing that Memir had used their rings to peek into Bele's feelings twisted him in a strange way, relief and love combating with his possessive hunger.

He managed to nod, catching at the skin just above Memir's collarbone. "Didn't like the way he looked at you. You're mine. Gonna make sure he knows, make you scream."

Memir laughed at that. "You always do," he murmured, and he used Bele's braids like reins, guiding him toward their bed.

There was an inkling, a tease of an idea, that maybe Memir had let Quarie flirt with him on purpose, but Bele was okay with that. He loved giving Memir exactly what he wanted.

~*~

Next, we have Mick/Len in another life kisses, woooo!

~*~

Mick was going to die, which was a weird thought that bounced around in his head. He'd been alive for centuries with the Time Pigs, so thinking about death now was almost a relief. He'd go out stopping Haircut from filling out this last ditch attempt to keep the time stream leashed— not a bad way to go at all.

Only thing he had left to do was make Leonard leave with the rest of them.

Problem was, Leonard was still standing there, with that thoughtful, calculating look that always used to drive Mick crazy.

"Pretty boy said I gotta hold this stick for the ship to blow," Mick said, shouting over the noise of the battle around them. "So I'm holding this stick. Now leave!"

Something in Leonard's eyes softened, and he raised his hand, curling it around the nape of Mick's neck. "My old friend, please forgive me."

Mick frowned, torn between keeping his attention on the self-destruct mechanism and desperately wanting to have just one more look at Leonard. "For what?"

Leonard turned Mick's face toward him and leaned in to kiss Mick so gently, so sweetly that Mick knew without a doubt that he had to be hallucinating.

This was supposed to be the one secret Leonard pretended to let him keep.

Leonard pulled away, searching Mick's face with his eyes, and he pulled Mick in, pressing Mick's face against the fur of his collar. Mick's eyes stung, and he hid in the softness of Leonard's jacket, taking a breath of Leonard's sandalwood scent. Just one second. Just one more, and he'd make Leonard leave.

The cold gun cracked against the back of Mick's head, and everything went black.

~*~

#my fic #dnd fic #bele/memir #coldwave #cwtv

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undertale-writing-times · 2 years

Note

Don't mind ne just gonna pick up dusky and-

*walks away*

Mine!

Dusky lets out a little sound, then laughs and moves his tail to curl around your waist when you were walking. "Onward!" he was pretty heavy cause of how big he was but hey, you have to carry him now.

#Dusky #Nagakiller #Nagakiller Sans

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the-pixelated-stuff · 2 years

Text

I’ve been aching for you my love.

Not having him near.

No sound of his heavy breathing filling this dingy room.

No sight of his long dusky curls intertwined between my porcelain fingers.

No time to appreciate the things that make me feel so infatuated.

The softness of his lips and how they piece together to meet mine.

Those eyes, oh those eyes.

A pool of Amber in which I lack self-control over.

Hypnotic they are.

The desire to drag his cold and bony fingers down my thighs.

To fixate my eyes upon the art etched upon his skin.

I must confess that tonight I crave every single letter of your name.

N-I-C-O-L-A

#spilled thoughts #spilled words #spilled prose #spilled poetry #spilled ink #sad poem #sad poetry #writing #poem #poetry

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arjaandsimoni · 1 year

Text

Return to Arcadia

The Barjar Residence, Jaipur India

The house was on high alert, all of Rajesh’s men had been called back on duty and had put the entire building on lockdown as the Jaipur police combed the jungle in search of Franklin and the rest of Clan Fullmoon. This had gone beyond just wanting to stop Eliza’s prophecy, the Temple of Hanuman was a historical location to India. Franklin risked even drawing the attention of the mundane government!

Inside the house however there was only silence. Simoni lay in the bed she and Arja shared, staring at the wall with red-rimmed eyes. Every so often she’d let out a small whistle, then bite back a sob as it did nothing, not a single thing. No wind, not even a breeze. Lupe was in there with her, the werewolf curled up behind her in her animal form. At Natasha’s insistence she stayed close to the now powerless garuda, to guard incase someone came back to finish what Franklin had started.

She stared at the wall, thinking back to the day that she and Stephy had fought back Isolde’s hedge beast and her fight with her mother.

‘I’d rather grandpa cut off my wings then have them and not use them!’

She curled up into a ball and whimpered, feeling so foolish. The reality of it was worse, so much worse…

Out in the rec room Arja sat on the couch grinding her teeth in fury. She wanted to find Franklin and claw his damn throat open, then belch fire down into it until he burned apart from the inside out… but in her current state the only way she’d be making any flames was with a box of matches.

Next to her sat a woman in a red silken top and long black skirt with dusky skin and a red dot, a bindi, on her forehead. Her mother, Iravati Barjar. She held her daughter’s hand but shared her fury. To her this was beyond just an attempt on her daughter’s life, this was a violation of the laws of reality! He had risked breaking the line of Hanuman!

“Is there nothing that can be done Nelen?” asked Iravati, looking up at him.

Nelen sat opposite Arja, the contents of his bag scattered around the room. Crystals lay here and there, talismans of different sorts, tomes stacked in piles almost as tall as the man himself, totems that seemed to shift and change when nobody looked at them, pouches of various powders ranging from basilisk claws, unicorn horn, and oregano (pizza joints never used enough in his opinion,) and such.

He was reading a tome so old and worn as to be nearly illegible, his lips moving as he tried to puzzle out what the words had once said, then finally he snapped it shut. “Okay, I may have something. Arja, he didn’t actually cut you or Simoni?” he asked.

Arja looked up at him, then shook her head.

Nelen nodded, “Okay. Now… I want you to bear in mind this is just a THEORY.” he warned, “The Mundane Blades have been lost for centuries, possibly even before Western Civilization came to be. Anything we know about them is from old tales of them, firsthand accounts would be something only the most ancient of vampires or other immortals could give us…”

Arja growled, “GET TO THE POINT!” she snapped.

Iravati frowned at her, but she understood her daughter’s frustration, “Please Nelen, we understand.” she nodded.

Nelen sighed, “Okay, so… what actually steals your ability to use magic is being cut by one of the blades. But since you two just got really close without it actually touching you… it may have just temporarily stripped both of you of your powers.” he said.

Arja’s eyes went wide, “So… we can get them back!” she grinned, moving to get up, then pausing as Nelen held up a finger.

“Not so fast Arja. I took a look at you both when Drusilla chased Franklin into the jungle. Your auras are a mess. I don’t think they can even hold magical energy in the state they’re in. That should heal over time… but…” he shrugged, “As for how much time, your guess is as good as mine. It could be a few days, or a few weeks or a few years…” he nodded.

Arja’s eyes bulged, “YEARS!? SIMONI CAN’T WAIT YEARS! SHE NEEDS HER WINGS NELEN! SHE NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO FLY AGAIN!” she screeched.

Nelen glared back, “YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?!” he shouted in response, “That’s my sister in there, remember?!” he pointed a finger to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. “The problem is that the mundane blades have all been lost for hundreds of years! Any texts on them were lost over the centuries or…” he held up the book to show the ink on the pages crumbling slightly just from moving it, the paper so dry and crackly that it could barely be touched. “… have worn to the point where we can barely read them at all anymore.” he nodded. “We’re in uncharted territory Arja. I think your powers will come back… but I couldn’t begin to tell you when if I tried.”

Arja growled, then slumped down onto the couch, folding her arms tightly over her chest, “Burn him… buuuuurn him…” she grumbled under her breath.

“Believe me girl, I share that feeling. Nothing would make me happier right now than seeing Franklin’s body infront of me, head attached optional.” he huffed as he started to put his books away. “But Drusilla said he disappeared into the jungle, and cyclopti are a type of giantkin so their noses are close to as good as Lupe’s.”

Drusilla snorted, “Cowardly little shit.” she grumped, leaning against the wall. It was true though. A cyclopti was a smaller variant of a giant, and as the poem said they truly could smell the Blood of Englishmen (fee fi foe fum.) Presumably Irishmen and such too, but the giants never really cared. It all came out the same anyways.

As Nelen put away his books however, a voice came form up the stairs. “Nelen! Something’s wrong!” came the voice of Stephen ‘Stephy’ Fullmoon. He, Tex, and Sammi had elected to stay in Jaipur for the time being. With Arja and Simoni rendered powerless this was a truly ‘all hands-on deck’ situation.

Nelen looked up the stairs, then stood and walked quickly up them as Arja and Drusilla followed. Stephy pointed into the room Sammi had been given, “Its Sammi, he’s… I… I dunno!” he said. Tex was standing nearby, looking into the room from behind Stephy, his face showing worry.

Inside on the bed sat Prince Samuel, but his body seemed… diminished. His eyes had thick bags under them, and his hair hung lank around his face. His skin looked deathly pale as well. “Wrong? Nonsense… just a bit… under the weather.” he grinned, or at least he tried to.l

Nelen walked in, looking him over. “The hells you are. You look a mess.” he frowned, “Stephy, run back down and fetch my bag. Quick.”

Sammi shook his head, “Nelen really, everyone is making a fuss about nothing… just… a little tired is all. Bit of rest and I’ll be right as rain…” he muttered, “Got a blasted headache though…”

Stephy came running in with Nelen’s bag over his shoulder, the warlock opening it up and taking out the same bit of crystal he’d used to see Arja and Simoni’s auras, screwing it on over one eye. He looked at Sammi, then at Stephy, then back. “Sam your aura is so thin I can barely see it!” he said. “Did Franklin run into you out in the jungle or something?!”

Stephy shook his head, “No! We just kept his men back until granddad sounded the retreat. They never even touched us!” he insisted. “I don’t get it, he was fine last night!”

Sammi shrugged, “Really now, I don’t want to be a bother here, quick nap and…” he started, then he began to cough, his entire body shaking all over as he did. It was not a good sound, it sounded like his lungs were melting from the inside!

Nelen frowned, “I’ve known more than a few changelings, but I’ve never seen anything like this… Stephy, is there anything about Sam that’s different that you can think of?” he asked.

Stephy thought, “Um… the only thing about him that I ever thought was unusual is that he was taken as an infant. Most changelings I’ve ever known were kids or even adults when the Fair Folk captured them.” he replied.

Nelen's eyebrows went up, “He’s been in Arcadia since infancy?” he asked, “For how long? Sam, how old are you?” he asked.

Sammi giggled a bit weakly, “A lady never teeeells…” he whispered hoarsely.

Stephy looked over, “At least old enough to remember the second world war.” he replied.

Nelen frowned, looking at Sammi again, “Stephy, he needs to go home.” he said finally.

Sammi blinked, “What? Oh no, no no I refuse… I don’t want to deal with mother again…” he huffed.

Nelen shook his head, “I don’t care. You’ve lived in Arcadia for so much of your life that your body has become dependent on glamour from it. I'm not going to mince words here. Sam, you’re dying.” he warned.

Stephy fidgeted, “Um… if he has to go back, we have another problem. I kinda made a pledge with him that requires him to stay near me, so if he goes… I’ll have to go too.” he muttered.

Tex, who had been standing with Stephy, frowned at that, “Darlin’… I know ya’ll wanna help Sam but…” he started.

Stephy shook his head, putting a finger to Tex’s lips. “I know. But… he did help us, multiple times. We had a rough start but I don’t want to just let him wither away.” he nodded.

Sammi frowned, sitting up in his bed, “… damnation… I suppose I should visit mother. She’s probably ready to send the guards out after me again anyway…” he sighed, struggling to his feet. “Stephy darling, be a dear. Go knock on the closet door. Three hard, two soft, then one hard.” he said, pointing a finger towards it.

Stephy blinked, looking at it, “Um, knock on it?” he asked.

“Yes yes…” muttered Sammi, “And think… thorns, and shadows, and whispers in the trees, that sort of thing…” he replied.

Stephy got up and walked to the closet, tilting his head, then knocked out the pattern Sammi gave him while focusing on thoughts… then paused as his ears twitched. “Something… is different…” he muttered, his hand going to the doorknob and opening it, then stepping back with a gasp.

Where the closet SHOULD have been was a path stretching out between thorn trees, a chittering sound coming from them. By doing this small ritual Stephy had turned the closet in Sammi’s guest room into a gateway to the Hedge!

“There…” nodded the princeling as he struggled to his feet, limping towards it, “Come along dear brother…” he muttered, passing the threshold.

Stephy looked around, then gave Tex a quick firm hug and kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be back, I swear it.” he nodded firmly, then ducked in after Sammi.

A while later, in the Lands Beyond the Fields We Know...

Through the Hedge the fae prince and princess walked… well, the princess walked, the prince mostly limped. Passing from mundane reality into the magical realm had restored some of the color to his cheeks, but he was still in very bad shape.

“I can’t believe it, I’ve never heard of a changeling who can’t survive outside of Arcadia…” murmured Stephy, glad he’d at least managed to throw on something worth travelling in. A pair of sandals adorned his feet, with a knee-length denim skirt and a loose summery white blouse on his top, his long blonde hair tied into a ponytail.

“Believe it my dear, I suppose I’ve just never been outside of mother’s lands long enough for it to become a problem…” he sighed, coughing a bit. Sammi was in a silken top and tight black slacks, a pair of ankle-boots on his feet. “But it does happen to lesser changelings who are gone long enough, just to a less fatal degree… I mean surely you’ve noticed.” he gestured to Stephy.

“Huh?” asked Stephy, looking over at him.

“Your hair, your eyes… when you first found me in the store there was no mistaking my mother’s touch on you. Hair that was so platinum blonde it may as well have been platinum, eyes like the blue of a sky in winter, but since midway through that mess in Texas… your hair is still blonde, but it’s the same blonde as your cowboy paramour, and your eyes are just blue now. Your ears still have their little points to my eyes, but otherwise you just look like an ordinary human.” nodded Sammi. “The mask hides it from mortal eyes, that’s probably why Tara and Tex never realized anything was amiss, to them you look the same as you did when you fled mother’s lands.”

Stephy blinked, tilting his head, “Huh…” he pouted a bit, he’d really adored how his hair looked when he first got back inspite of what he’d gone through to get it, and the fact that to Tex it simply looked normal blonde made him feel a bit sad.

Sammi sniffed a bit, licking his lips at the scent, “Oh do cheer up, I’m hungry enough as it is…” he muttered, “If you really truly wish for them to see your seeming properly there is a ritual… though…” he chuckled, “You may not wish to do it.”

“Why not?” asked Stephy, looking back at him in confusion.

Sammi smirked a bit, “Well, it requires a rose…” he started.

Stephy shuddered, “Got it, yeah, maybe not.” he nodded firmly.

Sammi smirked, “Heh… yes yes, it doesn’t automatically involve her… but if she’s watching, well… she could work some mischief on you two.” he nodded, then paused and looked up, “Ah, excellent timing. Stephy, do you see those?” he asked, pointing upwards.

Stephy looked up, among the thorns above were several large red fruits, the same red as heartsblood…

“Um, yeah?” he asked.

Sammi nodded to him, “Fetch some for us if you would please…” he sighed, “I’d do it myself but if I even try to call any frost it makes my head swim…”

Stephy looked back up, then whistled sharply and a blast of cold air snapped through the forest, shaking the boughs. A moment later two of the fruits broke free and fell down to the forest floor. Stephy collected them, looking them over. Despite the unnerving color they appeared to be very similar to apples, with lush green leaves growing from the stems. They were also shaped slightly like hearts.

“Heartsmend. One of the fruits that grows in the hedge. It won’t heal me entire, but it can keep me going until we get home.” explained Sammi, taking one of the fruits. “Something you’ll need to learn now that you’re one of us my dear.” he nodded, then took a big bite of his. “Mmmph! Always best fresh.” he murmured in pleasure, his lips staining red with the juices.

Stephy looked at his own, then shrugged and took a small bite, blinking as he did. It tasted sweet and rich, but rather than cool the juice felt warm in his mouth as if heated slightly. “Huh… tastes kinda like apples and cherries and…" he paused, looking up thoughtfully, "... something else I can’t quite place…”

Sammi nodded, “Perhaps its what apples dream of being, or maybe it’s the dreams of humans who remember when Arcadia and the mortal realm were closer… who can say?” he shrugged, finishing off his and chucking the core into the bushes. The bags under his eyes seemed to have shrunk and his face was less pale now, but he was still clearly unwell.

Stephy licked his fingers clean, tossing his own away as well, then wiping the last bits off on his skirt. “Huh… so there’s others?” he asked.

Sammi snorted, “Brother darling, it’d take more days than there are to list all the varieties of hedge fruits. Some are even unique to different realms of Arcadia.” he smirked, “The more common ones however… well… oh I’m sure that mother has a book on them in the library if you really wish to know…” he shrugged.

Stephy blinked at that, “Oh… uh, Sammi? I just realized something… we may have a bit of difficulty once we get there…” he nodded.

“Oh, why is that?” asked the fae prince.

“Well… when Tex and I… um… confessed our feelings and kissed… Lady Sera’s castle kind of… melted.” he admitted.

Sammi smirked at him, “Truly, I daresay she may be a trifle annoyed with you yes… however…” he stepped again, a bit more confidently this time, and there was a crunch of fresh snow under his feet.

Stephy blinked, then he realized they were standing in a snowdrift. Despite his sandals however it didn’t hurt, it just felt pleasingly cool. “Huh?” he gasped, looking up to the horizon.

They had returned to Champs de Nedge, the realm of Lady Sera of the Icebound Heart, and at the center of the small village where the massive icicle castle that scraped the sky had stood was now something far less threatening.

It appeared to be carved from snow and ice, like a huge snow sculpture, but it looked like something out of a more traditional fairy tale. Pennants flapped in the wind atop the towers and the rooftops were a pale blue while the walls were pure white.

“It seems you really did have an effect on her…” murmured Sammi, “I am genuinely impressed…”

Stephy nodded, seeming a bit dumbfounded by the change, as they both set off across the snowy landscape…

About midway towards the castle Stephy became aware of the sound of hooves, looking up to see a massive white carriage pulled not by horses, but rather by unicorns, their manes and horns as white as the snow surrounding them! The drive pulled on the reins, guiding them to a halt, and the door opened as a tall woman emerged. Lady Sera stood before them, in a gown resplendent as the snowfields surrounding her and a silvery crown of stylized snowflakes, her eyes going from Stephy to Sammi.

“You returned… and you have brought my wayward son as well.” she murmured softly.

“Well of course, I swore that I would did I not?” replied Stephy, feeling rather shy next to the faerie queen. She was imposing, even though he knew the secret of her bane.

“Yes, you did… and you Samuel… you…” she paused, looking at him properly, “Samuel… what has become of you child?!” she demanded, looking over her much diminished son.

Sammi coughed, “Appears I overdid it a bit mother…” he replied, giving a rueful smile.

Stephy glanced at him, then at Sera, “We found out he can’t survive outside of Arcadia for long stretches. If he stays away too long his body becomes starved for glamour and he starts withering away.” he admitted, “He should be fine if he stays in Arcadia for a bit, he just has to go back and forth if he wants to visit the mortal world.” he nodded.

Lady Sera frowned, “Truly…” she looked at the coachman, “You there, you will take us back to the castle at once, then summon a churgeon for my son.” she commanded, “Both of you, inside now.” she nodded firmly, pointing to the coach.

Sammi nodded to her, then whispered to Stephy, “You may wish you hadn’t told her that…” he murmured.

Stephy paused, then gulped. Lady Sera had promised to let HIM come and go, but Sammi was bound by pact to stay near him, and having found this out, her Ladyship may not let Sammi go which meant Stephy had given the fae queen a loophole. If Sammi couldn’t leave, neither could he.

Sometime later, inside the castle.

He may not be able to leave, but at the moment he wasn’t really too fussed about that.

Stephy giggled and swirled in the bedchamber that Lady Sera’s servants had crafted for him, wearing a gown of pearlescent white dotted with snowflakes to make it glisten in the lights, a long pair of gloves on his arms as well. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be SO bad taking a small break from the mortal realm. At least he knew his mad grandfather couldn’t reach him here. His dress was something that felt like silk of the highest quality, but unlike heavy silks was cooling rather than hot to wear, and it billowed with even the slightest movement.

“Oh this is GORGEOUS! What did you say it was made from again?” he squealed, floofing his skirts at his reflection in the mirror.

Nearby stood a maidservant in a traditional Victorian uniform. A long black dress with a white pinafore apron, black shoes on her feet. She was older than Stephy, at least in her early twenties, with long brown hair. The only odd part of her uniform being a silvery collar around her neck, marking her as Lady Sera's... well... property if you wanted to be blunt. That was just how things worked in Arcadia. “M’lady had it crafted from the snowfields surrounding her castle and the glow of stars on a winter’s night Princess.” she replied, inclining her head to him.

Stephy giggled, swishing his hips as the skirt swirled around his legs, “That explains why it feels cool against my skin at least…” he cooed at the feel of it on his body, making his way to his vanity table and leaning forward onto it with his elbows, grinning at his reflection, “Hah, ‘the saddies.’ Go kiss a thornbush Isolde…” he giggled, sticking his tongue out at his reflection, then turned to her, “And… its fine, you don’t have to call me ‘Princess.’ Stephy is fine.” he nodded.

The maid however shook her head, “Oh I couldn’t! That would be horribly rude, her Ladyship would be most displeased…” she protested.

Stephy pouted a bit, then sighed, “Okay yeah, I don’t want you to get in trouble…” he muttered, remembering what Sammi said happened to the servants who displeased Lady Sera. This girl had been very nice and helpful with the more complicated bits of his dress. He didn’t want her to meet a fate like that.

He didn’t want ANYONE to… but still…

“Well, what should I call you then?” he asked.

The maid tilted her head, blinking slowly as if she didn’t quite understand the question, and then Stephy saw the silvery collar around her throat stamped with a snowflake symbol.

He frowned at that, shaking his head, “Really need to have a word with her about this…” he huffed, “Do you not remember your name at all?” he asked.

The maid thought, then shook her head slowly. “I… am the maid. It is the only name I know.” she admitted.

Stephy sighed, “Well I want to call you SOMETHING… just saying ‘maid’ is a bit… well, I feel like it’s rude and I don’t want to be rude either…” he walked over, looking at her, “Hmm…” he squinted at her collar. Being the ‘daughter’ of the realm’s queen, he could almost see the name flickering across the surface. “There’s… something there… your name is…” he paused, tilting his head in surprise, “… Alexander?”

The maid blushed brightly, looking away. “Er… your mother told you of her sphere of influence did she not Princess?” they asked.

Stephy looked up, then thought of the other servants they passed, “Yeah… the embodiment of sorrow that children who were cast out by their parents feel…” he murmured, putting it together in his head, “You mean…” he stared.

Alexander the Maid nodded, “Yes… I cannot recall my true name, even now what you just told me is buried in my mind again, but… we all remember how we came to Lady Sera’s lands. It is our sorrow that feeds her after all.” they blushed.

Stephy frowned, “Okay, I really need to have a word with her about this! If she’s going to take your name she could at least help you move on from memories that horrible!” he shook his head. “So… what was it?” he asked.

The maid bit their knuckle, “I remember telling my parents I wished I’d been born a girl, that my body felt wrong to me. My father was a spineless distant thing, but my mother was furious. She screamed that the devil was in me and threw me out. I wandered homeless for a few days when I suddenly felt a chill, which was odd because it was May at the time… and then I was here…” they nodded.

Stephy pouted, “Huh… Well… what name did you WANT to have then?” he asked.

The maid paused, thinking, “I… once felt I’d rather like being called Julia…” they admitted.

Stephy smirked, “And mother assigned you to be my personal maid, correct?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. It felt right, something in the feel of what was going on tickled in the back of his mind.

The maid nodded slowly, “… this is true…” they murmured.

Stephy stepped forward, then lifted their chin to expose their collar, holding out his finger to it. A faint blue spark formed on the tip of his finger as he drew it across the silvery metal, the maid gasping in surprise.

“Jay… ewe… ell… eye… ae.” he nodded, “There! Julia. If you’re going to be my maid, you have a name. Mother can fuss at me if she wants.” he smirked.

The maid felt their collar, then wordlessly rushed to the mirror and examined it, engraved on the silver was indeed the name ‘Julia’ in a fine cursive script. “I…” she stared, her eyes watering a bit at the sight, “Its… my name…” she whispered. “Princess I…” she turned, but Stephy waved it away.

“I get it, truly I do.” he smiled, “Seriously though, how many of the servants in the castle are queer?” he asked.

Julia smiled and wiped her eyes, then thought on that, “I’d say most of us are. I know a good portion of the maids are… well… like me. We all share bathing quarters, hard to miss.” she blushed, giggling at that, “The older ones were cast out by their mortal parents for things like promiscuity, unladylike behavior, wearing trousers… but most anyone new… well…” she sighed at that memory.

Stephy pouted, “Yeah… that I certainly understand ALL too well…” he shook his head, “So, Julia, where is my brother? I do wish to check on him.” he asked.

Julia nodded, “Oh of course Princess, right this way.” she smiled, and Stephy could tell it was a genuine smile.

A few moments later...

Sammi was definitely on the mend, but was still not looking great. He lay stretched out on his bed, a pair of incense burners swirling with blue perfumed smoke nearby as he idly snacked on a bowl of what looked like crystal-clear grapes. “Ah, Stephy… good of you to join me on my sickbed.” he chuckled. “I was beginning to think you’d go through the entire wardrobe first…” he muttered. He was wearing a pale blue silken pajama set as he lay there.

Stephy smirked, swishing his hips in the dress, “Oh come on, can you blame me? Every girl on Earth dreams of being a princess, and dreaming was all I ever got to do!” he giggled.

Juila stood a few steps back, head bowed as she waited for Stephy. The boy princess had been bothered a bit by this, but as he said he didn’t want to risk her getting in trouble for breaking some sort of unseen protocol.

Sammi however, was quick to pick up on that. He stared past Stephy, lips moving, then raised his eyebrow, “You gave your maid a name?” he sighed, “Well, I suppose mother DID give her to you…” he rolled his eyes.

Stephy huffed, “Well why not!? Her ‘true’ name is still bound up in her collar, its not like I can undo that!” he replied.

Sammi frowned, “Stephy, dear… what do you think a true name is?” he asked.

Stephy blinked, looking at the wall as he did, “Er…” he paused, thinking on that.

“A true name isn’t whats written on some silly piece of paper. Its what’s in a person’s heart, what makes up the core of who they are.” he nodded, “Thank the Wyrd you had the foresight to engrave it on her collar, otherwise mother would become extremely angry with you. That girl’s birth name, whatever it may be, may as well be the sound of a dog barking as far as the Wyrd is concerned. That name you put on the silver, Julia, is as true a name as any.” he nodded.

Stephy blinked, then looked at Julia who was staring with shocked eyes at the fae princeling, a hand going to her collar, then he looked back at Sammi and folded his arms over his chest, pouting out his lip with a huffing sound, “I’m not apologizing.” he said firmly.

Sammi shrugged, “Very well… on your own head be it.” he sighed, breathing in the smoke from the incense burners deeply. “Infact, you should probably go present yourself to mother now that you’re properly dressed. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” he nodded.

Stephy nodded himself, “Yes, I do believe I will…” he murmured, “There’s a few things I need to discuss with her…”

Soon, Lady Sera's Throne Room

Stephy walked through the doors to the throne room, Julia in step a few paces behind him, as he approached the throne of the Icebound Heart.

“Daughter… I am pleased to see you returned.” nodded Lady Sera. “To see your brother in such a state was most distressing, perhaps I was unwise to agree to allow you to leave…” she murmured.

Stephy curtsied her, almost automatically, when he got close. He was a bit surprised infact, not realizing he was doing it until he stood back up. It was seemingly built in. “Well, afraid that’s the deal Mother. I can come and go, provided I will always return.” he nodded, wiggling a gloved hand at her with a giggle.

She leaned forward, “Do you truly wish to return to the mortal realm though? To hardship and pain among them?” she asked, “You could stay here forever, happy and safe from such things.” she nodded, and a chill wind rose, tickling over his hair.

Stephy shivered, and thoughts tickled across his mind; never having to fear Franklin or the rest of Clan Fullmoon again, never having to go back to school which had been a massive source of torment for him before, never having to fear Isolde’s desire for revenge or anything like that…

His eyes sparkled blue as a vacant smile slowly spread over his face… the idea seemed so attractive… spend his days within this land, where he was second only to the queen of the realm… every day he would have new pleasures, new delights that the mortal realm could never hope to match…

In his mind’s eye he saw himself seated next to his mother, beloved by all, the Princess of Everfalling Snow… each day a dress more gorgeous than the previous day’s, feasts of delicacies that no mortal could ever dream of… he saw himself at a ball, standing among the crowds, all around him the Fair Folk danced and spun, for him… all for him… and then he saw a hand extended…

He paused, he saw Tex’s smile, his hand extended.

‘Care if I have this dance, lil’ filly?’

Stephy shook himself violently, then let out a sudden bird-like cry and blasted away the glamour-laced breeze that Sera had blown at him. “MOTHER!” he snapped, frowning up at her, “If you do that again I will be VERY cross.” he nodded firmly.

Lady Sera was taken aback, the fae queen’s eyes wide. “I… you still love that mortal boy?” she asked, sounding confused. “Why… what can he give you that I cannot?!” she demanded, sitting up. “I offer you PARADISE child! Respite from all fear, all pain, all suffering! Why give it all up for one mortal boy?!” she shouted.

Stephy frowned up at her, “You KNOW why! You saw the force of our love Mother. It was bright and strong enough to melt your old castle to slush!” he nodded firmly, “Tex is not just ‘one mortal boy!’ He found me when I was alone and helpless and showed me kindness I’d never had before! He held me and told me that he understood, that he knew the hurt I felt and that I wasn’t crazy or delusional! He helped me and asked for NOTHING in return! He understands me! When he found out about me, when he sat next to me in my hideout back in the mortal realm was the first time I’d EVER felt like I wasn’t doing something horribly WRONG! That there were people that could really understand what I was going through!” he shouted, and all around him the floor began to steam slightly.

True Stephanie had helped, but she couldn’t truly understand what it was like to wonder if your body was just… wrong. If you should have been born another way, if maybe you should have listened to Tex’s offer to take a turn in the New U Clinic at the Nightside. Stephy still wasn’t certain, but Tex’s words that night meant more to him than anything he’d ever heard in his life before.

‘Well, now ya’ll got all the time in the world to sort that out lil’ filly, and I’ll be with ya every step of it.’

He still didn’t know, even now, even standing there dressed up like the crown princess of the land, what he felt he was… but knowing that Tex would be there through his journey meant more to the fae princess than all the wonders and glories of Arcadia.

True Love is a trite term, but it does happen. Its more than just infatuation, more than just physical attraction, and isn’t even always romantic. It’s a bone deep connection, a trust, knowing that no matter what someone will stand by you and that you will stand by them against all troubles the world could throw at you.

Lady Sera stumbled back, unable to meet his gaze, then sighed and slumped into her throne, glaring at him. “I still do not UNDERSTAND!” she scowled.

“I know…” he sighed, “I don’t know if it’s truly something that can be understood… mortals have debated it for centuries.” he nodded, “It could take entire lifetimes. But if you truly want to know what it is to be a mother, to feel this… you will have to be patient.”

Lady Sera sighed long and loud, then waved a hand at him dismissively. “Go then…” she muttered.

Stephy started to turn, then paused, looking back at her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t.” he frowned, walking towards her instead.

Lady Sera looked at him, raising her eyebrow, “What are you doing, daughter?” she asked.

Stephy shook his head, “I don’t know… but I feel like I may know… perhaps someone will tell me someday…” he murmured.

Lady Sera almost stood, but Stephy was quicker, the fae princess quickly jumping into her lap, pinning her to the chair, then holding her tightly and focusing his thoughts, his memories… on his mother, Diana Fullmoon. What he remembered of her. Her kindness, her warmth, her desire to protect him, her sadness at what his father was becoming… and his sorrow at her death, the loss of such things and the years of pain and sadness that followed.

The fae queen’s eyes widened in shock, her arms going to pull him off her, then freezing in place. “… augh..." she gasped out, sensing what he felt, seeing glimpses of his memories.

“It does hurt… knowing that we were cast out, knowing that we lost something…” he whispered, “But…” he screwed up his eyes, and thought of what he’d gained this past year.

Tex and Tara’s faces flashed through his mind, then Simoni, Nelen, and Dawn. Even Sammi’s face was there, in his mind, along with Arja’s. He didn’t know either of them that well yet, but he wanted to… he wanted to keep this going, keep these connections building.

Lady Sera stared, and the winter queen’s lips trembled. She saw the stillness and cold sorrow in a snowfield… but the beauty of the night sky above it, full of stars. She saw that even though blizzards may rage, that one could find shelter and comfort with others. Sorrow would come, but it could be soothed without giving into it entirely, without losing one’s heart to ice and cold and emotionless emptiness.

“I… this… I cannot…” she stammered, her hands trembling, as she moved to pull him off, but could not seem to get her arms close enough to do so.

“Can’t you?” he asked, “You are a queen of Arcadia, you are one of the most powerful beings in all creation. Are you scared to try? What is sorrow if one cannot feel warmth soothing it later? What is sadness if one cannot see the sun following the rain.” he asked.

So obvious to him, but perhaps in all her existence nobody had ever had the courage or sheer nerve to do this, to tell this to the faerie queen.

She slumped back in her throne, Lady Sera’s eyes staring into something perhaps only she could see. The Fair Folk may be incapable of learning or understanding, depending on who you ask, but perhaps simply showing them the possibilities was enough.

Stephy released her, sitting back and looking up at her. “Well?” he asked.

She blinked slowly, “I still do not understand… but I wish to daughter…” she whispered, her eyes wide.

Stephy nodded, “Then, first…” he waved for Julia.

The maid let out a little squeak, but quickly ducked towards the throne at his instruction, keeping her gaze down.

Lady Sera looked at her, cocking her head, “… Julia? You gave this one a name?” she asked.

Stephy shook his head, “I gave her the name she wanted Mother.”

Lady Sera frowned, “But… with a name they could disobey me or attempt to escape…” she began.

“I don’t think she wants to.” he nodded. “Julia? What do you say, answer me truly please.”

Julia hesitated, then replied in a small voice, “I… wish to stay. Even as a maidservant I’ve been able to live as who I wished the whole time I was here. Nobody has told me to cut my hair or called me horrible names or anything like that since I arrived.” she said meekly.

Lady Sera blinked slowly, cocking her head.

Stephy nodded, “You take people who have been forced from their homes, but if you give them what they want then they won’t WANT to escape!” he said firmly.

Slowly, Lady Sera guided Stephy off her lap and stood, standing twice as tall as anyone in the room. “This is truly so? Do… your fellows wish to have new names as well?” she asked.

Julia paused, she’d been trembling a moment before, but… Lady Sera didn’t sound angry. “I… believe so yes M’lady…” she nodded.

She nodded, “I see… daughter, I leave that task in your hands then.” she replied, waving him away. “Go now, I have much to ponder…”

Stephy nodded, “I shall leave you to it, Mother.” he said with a curtsy to her.

The Next Day...

By the next morning, no ‘maid’ or ‘butler’ or ‘coachman’ or anyone was left in the castle. There were now, however, several Marys, more than a few Alices, a brace of Bryans, a half-dozen Hollys, several Simons, and even one Mattimeo (appropriately enough, the librarian.)

Sammi was well enough to walk at this point, with a cane, the fae princeling watching the castle staff go about their duties, a new name inscribed on each of their collars. They had to wear them, Lady Sera would not budge on that but this simple thing, this affirmation of who they were, was a greater freedom to many of them.

“… if I did not see it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it…” he murmured. “You did in one day what I could never convince mother of.”

“I think it probably helped that my memories of Tex made it so she couldn’t stop me.” he shrugged, nodding to one of the maids, now known as Kimberly, as she walked past with a load of laundry.

Sammi sighed, “You do know she’ll never truly understand of course. She’s not human, she can’t understand." he shook his head.

Stephy shrugged again, pursing his lips, “Perhaps, perhaps not… I mean, has anyone truly TRIED to get one of the Gentry to understand?” he asked.

Sammi thought on that, then nodded, “Yes.” he replied.

Stephy nodded, “Has anyone truly tried to get one of the Gentry to understand and not wound up turned into something horribly amusing to them?” he corrected.

Sammi shook his head, “That one, no.” he replied, then shrugged dramatically, “But I suppose there is a first time for everything, even here. If there’s one thing that the Fair Folk cannot resist, its something new and the idea of a servant who doesn’t wish to escape is a very new thing for someone like Mother.”

Stephy nodded, “Mmhm, after all I’ve been through in the past few months it’s a bit hard to be afraid of trying things like this.” he giggled.

Back in India

Arja and Simoni stood before the doorway leading into the temple of Hanuman, Nelen and Drusilla standing by them like an honor guard.

Next to the door stood Akul, the Vanara elder nodding in respect to them both. “You have my eternal gratitude for protecting my granddaughter and her lover, both of you, but only those who are kin to Lord Hanuman and Garuda may go beyond this point.” he said.

Nelen nodded back, “I understand Akul. Iravati told me the situation, and I have to agree this is the best idea we have. Their auras are in tatters and their magic is gone, but maybe the magical energies of the mundane world just aren’t enough to fix it.”

Akul sighed low, “Indeed… I cannot promise that this will undo what that honorless dog has done to them, but we will do everything in our power to restore what has been stolen. Arja, Simoni, come children…” he nodded, pressing his hand to a symbol on the archway and the door seemed to change.

What once showed the inside of a dank, ruined building now showed a massive primordial jungle, strange colorful birds soaring in a sky so blue it hurt, the Ganges visible from there flowing cleaner and purer than it had in centuries.

The Supernatural World, haven of the gods and beings who fled humanity’s advance.

Arja and Simoni squeezed each other’s hand tightly. Arja glared forward with determination, Simoni biting her lip with anxiety. This was their best chance… they were defenseless without their magic and they couldn’t put it past Franklin deciding to send someone to finish the job while they were unable to defend themselves.

Simoni glanced back and gave Nelen a half-hearted smile, “See ya later, big brother.” she chuckled nervously, and then she and Arja passed through the doorway… and out of reality.

#supernatural adventures #modern fantasy #fiction #faeries #lgbtq

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cainconfessionals · 1 year

Text

the sky above

My echeveria was dying.

I was pretty sure why, too -- I’d done everything right according to the Family Guide on Gardening. Watered it around once a week, whenever it’s soil dried up. Sat it by the windowsill, where it would get the full morning sun but be protected from the harsher, afternoon rays. It couldn’t have been the soil itself, because I’d just changed it recently. Even as I tended to it now, I sang a little Ella Fitzgerald to encourage it -- Reaching for the Moon.

I’d done everything right. There was no scientific explanation for my echeveria to be drying up and wilting, and yet, it was.

I picked up my cell phone, then paused. What could I do, really? I mean, it’s not like he really wanted to hear from me. The fact that we were friends at all was… Still hard for me to wrap my head around. We definitely weren’t the “close enough to randomly check up on each other” kind of friends.

But if I didn’t at all text to ask if everything was alright then what was the point of the echeveria anyway? I’d bound it to him so that it would respond to his emotional and physical well-being. Now that it was inexplicably dying, it had to mean something Was he okay? Was something wrong? Even if there was, was it really my place to ask?

My grip on my phone was gradually tightening.

Sinking onto my bed, I tried to focus on something else. Golden, dusky sunlight streaming in through my windows, drenching the world in glimmering varnish. The way my room seemed to glow as though this were its last chance to shine so brilliantly. Caught up in those fleeting minutes between daylight and nightfall, framed in the beauty that only existed in dying, ending moments. The way a flower bloomed and then wilted. The way love sparked and then faded. I let the warmth of the sun envelope me, breathing its life into me, it's last hurrah before surrendering to the moon.

My eyes slid close, as though they physically couldn’t bear to watch it all disappear. But the instant they did, he came bursting back in, engulfing everything else in his inferno. The way my name curled on his lips, the weight of his arm as he slung it around my shoulders, the way his eyes caught mine whenever we overheard someone saying something stupid, and the way it was like that spark in them was meant only for me. Was my heart really pounding?

When I drew my next, shuddering breath, my throat was raw and dry. I just... I didn’t want to think anymore. Especially not about the fact that he still hadn’t come and talked to me about the farewell letter I’d given him on the last day of school, or what it could possibly mean. I wanted to continue pretending that maybe we still had a chance, that I hadn’t imagined the difference in the way he acted around his other friends and the way he acted around me. It just… It couldn’t be the same, okay? And that had to mean something. I needed to believe that somewhere deep down inside him, his heart was beating for all the same reasons as mine. God, was I really crying?

My eyes were drawn back to the echeveria sitting on the shelf, the long shadows its own leaves cast upon itself. Beyond it, outside the window, twilight was brewing in full force now, purple and pink and the orange of a dying fire, blazing across the sky. It was so gorgeous. I could watch the sunset every single day and never see the same two scenes, the same two hues. Really, it was hard to believe that this was simply a natural phenomenon, and that the sun hadn’t exploded and scattered its remains as streaks in the sky. The sun itself was nowhere to be found, but oddly enough, I didn't miss it. I knew it would come back tomorrow. And look what beauty it had birthed through its absence. Look what it had created in relinquishing it's control over the sky. I swiped a hand across my face, wiping away the tracks my tears had made down my cheeks.

The palette of an apocalypse dressed the clouds. Another end to another day. The sun had exhausted itself in trying to warm the whole earth, and now it needed to stop, to rest for a moment. It needed to let go.

I didn't really think I would end up in the same class as him next year. We weren't just heading on two different paths, we had never been on the same one in the first place. And if I didn't see him everyday, would I really still love him? Without his touch to remember how he felt, or his voice to remember how he sounded, what would I really have left to love? And even if I could remember, what would I be remembering? The out of place sentiment I had attached to every last one of his actions? Or the signs I had so desperately wanted to see, that I had overthought and clutched so tightly they had crumpled and become something else entirely? How much of what I had loved about him had only been what I told myself to love? How much of our relationship was what it really was and how much of it was what I had wanted it to be?

It was just all too much.

My brain felt unbearably full. There were a million and one things spinning around, crashing into one another and forming new, terrifying thoughts that I barely had time to process. I was on the brink of something, teetering at the edge, and each question that came careening in tore another piece off my precipice, until I could do nothing but fall. And still they spun, faster and faster as I fell further and further down, air rushing through my ears until I could hear nothing else. And still, I clung onto the bits and pieces of him I could find, grasping for the remains of him that only really existed in my imagination, born of my daydreaming and fantasies. The only parts of him that belonged to me.

I fell, and I fell, and as I tumbled through each web of thoughts I found myself nearing the bottom.

I knew exactly what I would find there.

I opened my eyes, without realising I had ever closed them. The sun was nowhere to be found. An all-consuming, deep, dark blue was all that remained. It fell like a blanket upon my room, and upon the echeveria. There was no more clinging warmth, no more dramatic dance of blazing colour across the sky. Only this unending, expansive peace. That was what I had always loved about nightfall. The quiet that came with it, that promised you needed nothing else but what you already had. Unlike the day's warmth, which I'd desperately savoured for fear of losing, I could sink into the night's calm with ease, enjoying the chill on my skin.

When I had landed, I hadn't landed hard. There hadn't been the resounding thud, or the painful collision. The deep dark blue had simply risen up to meet me, to catch me and cradle me.

It was as though I had known all along the realisation that had just dawned on me.

He… He did not love me. He probably never would. For so, so long I had hoped he would, and eventually that hope became desperation, and it was almost enough to imagine he did. But… somewhere along the way, I had lost him to that imagination. And more than that, I had lost myself.

I had never truly cared about who he was. I had only ever cared about who he thought I was. All my thoughts and feelings of him were wrapped up in how he made me think and feel. And so when I had bound the echeveria… I hadn't really bound it to him.

And so I set my phone down. And I sat there, and basked in the quiet. For once, my mind was still. He made no cameos, no appearances. I had exhausted myself trying to warm the earth, and now I needed to stop. I needed to pause, and step away, into the twilight, because that was the only path to lead me to peace. If the sun could let go of the entire world every single day, I too could let go of this one boy. And I could only hope that in the mess left behind something beautiful could take place.

After all, my echeveria was dying.

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emikadreams · 3 years

Text

A gift from above

Sooo I did something, I saw the amazing fanart by ‪ Madison Schofield of Rhys and Nyx and I knew I had to write this... please be kind with me as I haven't completely edited this but hope you enjoy this 💕

Rhys held his baby in his chest and cradled him.

It was still very early and Feyre hadn’t risen yet, she was unbearably exhausted from everything that had transpired yesterday and Rhys had half a mind to get back into bed himself but his son-Nyx was in his arms, he still couldn’t believe that they had made it out, that after all the horrible things he had done to ensure the safety of his people and Prythian, the stars listened to his wishes and gave him everything he had ever dreamt off.

He looked down at the little bundle of joy that was sleeping in his arms and smiled. Nyx was a carbon copy of Rhys in everything except for his beautiful eyes and full mouth from his mother, according to Rhys, Nyx was perfection personified.

He looked down at his sleeping son and felt a tidal wave of love and affection wash over him. He had once thought that he couldn’t love anything or anyone as much as he loves his mate but the minute he held Nyx in his arms he knew that he would bring down galaxies if it meant that his son would be happy. Son, Nyx was Rhys’s son.

Rhys felt tears roll down his cheek as the realisation that he was now a father sunk in and if it weren’t for the babe in his arms his knees would have buckled from the feeling. He had dreamt of being a father but he never would’ve guessed that the dream would be a reality for he truly believed that for all the terrible things he had to do in his life, something as good and pure as a baby would be nothing but a fragment of his imagination.

The tears were now falling freely and Rhys was fully sobbing with the intensity of the love that coursed through every cell in his body and he held Nyx tighter and as the sun turned the sky dusky with its rays of hope, Rhys made a promise to his son,

“Nyx, I had wished for you before I even knew you, I had wanted to hold you in my arms ever since your mother was pregnant with you and I still cannot believe that you’re here. Son, I promise to always put your needs above mine, I will be the kind of father that I wished I had. I promise to always love you more than my crown, my territory and more than my people. You and your mother are the most important people in my life and I am forever grateful that I have you here with me. Son, I will never let you doubt whether you’re loved, you will never have to know what it is to wish upon the stars when all else seemed lost for as long as I live I swear to uphold this promise with all my power.”

Rhys gasped as he felt a tattoo take form on his fingers where Nyx had clutched it in his sleep and Rhys’s heart swelled with love as he saw three stars marked on his fingers but immediately checked for any on Nyx and breathed a sigh of relief when he found none, “Thank the cauldron, your mother would kill me if she found out that you already got a tattoo the day after being being born.”

He laughed finally being able to breathe without worry for the future for everything was perfect at that moment. “Rhys” Feyre called him and he turned to find her rubbing sleep from her eyes and he opened one hand and motioned her to come to him, she took the hand and curled onto his side. Eyeing their son, a smile gracing her face, “He is perfect isn’t he,” Rhys would’ve collapsed at the rightness of it all but managed to not break down as he said with a voice thick with emotion, ” Yes, everything is perfect.”

Feyre saw his face and smiled, without restraint and his heart nearly gave out at the sight, “To the people who look up at the stars and wish Rhys”

Rhys smiled back, love shining in his eyes as he repeated the words that were turning point in his life, “To the stars who listen - and the dreams that are answered.”

He held Feyre closer to his side and his son in his other arms and turned to look at the sun blossom over the horizon.

@story-scribbler @evolving-dreamer @feysand-loml

#feysand #feyre #rhysand #nyx #baby nyx #nyx archeron #acotar #family

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beinmybonnet · 4 years

Note

hmmm ok, joe/nicky "colour"

(classic seeing colour soulmates au BECAUSE ALL THE TROPES FEEL NEW WHEN YOU’VE GOT IMMORTALS)

- you see the world in black and white until the day you touch your soulmate. when they die, you lose the colour they brought to your life -

“Oh, that’s beautiful.”

Nile comes up on Joe’s right shoulder, mug of tea cupped between her palms.

“Thank you.” He shuffles over so she can sit beside him on the bench, moving aside his paints. She’s studying his work intently.

“The shades here are perfect,” she tells him, eyes darting between the painting and the view before them, “it’s like the shadows are lifting off the canvas. What colours have you used?”

Joe’s smile is wide, and he flips his paintbrush to gesture with the end. “Here, whites and greys for the houses at the bottom of the hill. Here,” he points the handle higher, “yellows with pink, and then some red here, just as the sun rose.”

“So, that would be orange right here? Pale though?” she points at the right splash of colour and Joe turns, brow lifting in surprise. “Art History with a focus on colour differentials,” she says proudly. “My professor said I had the best monochromatic eye he’d ever seen.”

Joe promptly slides the paints across the bench and picks his spare canvas up off the grass. “Join me?”

“Really?” Nile grins, bright and eager as he hands her a brush. She hovers over the paints for a moment, chewing her lip between her teeth. Her eyes rove determinedly over the unlabelled paints and the sky, before she plucks up a purple pot. Joe has to resist the urge to wrap his arm round her shoulders.

Back when Joe had first leaned to draw, colour had meant nothing to him. He’d had chalks and charcoals as a child and had lost hours to sweeping strokes across paving stones. He’d learned to differentiate between subtle shadows and muted tones, blending new greys between his fingertips to smudge over his clothing.

Black, white and the thousand shades between them were comfortable and sure. Colour was just, unnecessary. As he grew, he was gifted graphite and dark inks and a roll of rough parchment was always tucked against his hip. He could recreate everything his eye could see and his mind could form with the two fundamentals in his hands. All his most treasured early memories remain this way; his mother’s shining ebony hair, the smoky shade of her skin. The bright white of his father’s teeth as he spun her around in front of their home.

But there’s still no denying that colour changed everything. Colour that had come into his world with all the subtlety of the man at its source. Suddenly his life had burst into bold tints and fierce hues; endless possibilities for him to explore with paints and oils and pastels. Nine hundred years to experiment with the vibrancy of the world around him.

He and Nile reach for the blue together and smile.

Nicky’s got his eye pressed tight to his scope when everything fades.

He’s dialling left, settling his weight into his hips and then a curtain of heavy grey drops across his view. He rears back rubbing at his eyes, trying to force the colours back.

“Shit… just- Book, hold up!” Andy’s voice crackles out of the earpiece Nicky’s placed on the rooftop beside him. He scrambles to jam it back in.

“Andy-”

“Take the shot Nicky.” There’s shouting coming from below and Andy is swearing vehemently. “I’ve got him, just take the shot!”

He lurches back into position trying to clear his mind. It’s all wrong though, the shadows too dark and his depth perception is ruined -he’ll have to start all over. The dilution of his vision is making his heart thump erratically, and he has to count breaths in his head to keep himself still enough to reline up the shot.

Seconds later, the target steps out of the blackness and Nicky fires. The bullet cracks off the window frame, striking home at a cruel angle. He swears under his breath; it wasn’t clean, but he doesn’t care – the job’s done. He just needs to find Joe.

He takes the stairs at a speed that leaves his knees numb. At the extraction point, the van is already moving away as the door slides open. Nicky hurls his gear in and leaps after it. He gets the briefest glimpse of eyes too dark, and thick pewter stains across a torso before the door is slammed shut and he’s hauling Joe into his arms. They collide with a thump and Nicky quickly tucks his face against the grey skin of Joe’s neck with his eyes clenched shut. A hand burrows under the edge of his tactical gear until he feels the warmth at the small of his back.

Nicky pulls back to open his eyes and relief has him sagging further into the arms around him. Warm tawny skin shines against the dark khaki of Joe’s vest. He drags his mouth up the rich line of his throat, reluctant to break contact.

“Sorry.” Joe’s expression is chagrined when he lifts his head. “Got pinned down.”

There’s a smear of blood at the corner of Joe’s mouth, the newly crimson stain brash and mocking. Nicky rubs at it with a gloved thumb until the skin is clean and then presses his mouth gratefully to his favourite colour.

“A lilac ribbon in her hair. First colour I ever saw.”

The slight waver in his voice makes Nile wonder if she’s over-stepped again, if she’s put her foot in some unknown no-go zone and she opens her mouth to apologise. But Booker’s smiling, and that in itself is rare enough that Nile waits.

“It happened in a crowd. Must have been a hundred people in the square, easily…” his smile is widening. “God, it would have been so easy to have missed her. Soldiers were separating people, everyone was running and pushing and we just… brushed hands.”

Booker lifts his hand from his lap and turns it over slowly. “The back of her hand touched mine as she ran past. That was all.” He touches that spot, a glance of his finger. “I looked back, and her ribbon was lilac. But it was so busy, I lost sight of her in the rush.”

“But you found her again?” Nile has her head propped on her hands, trying not to sound too eager. Booker laughs gruffly.

“She found me. Came back for me.” He’s gripping his own hand tightly now, nails biting at the skin. “Lilac ribbon, hair like honey. Everything else came after that.”

“She sounds lovely.”

Booker looks up at her properly, and Nile’s acutely aware that whilst now they see the world in the same shades, it wasn’t always that way.

His voice is soft. “She was.”

Joe barely has time to shout before his world is plunged back into negatives, colour leaching from his vision. He’s scrambling, sliding in the pool of viscous grey he knows is blood as it spreads around Nicky’s skull.

He moves to cup Nicky’s face and can’t bear it. The sharp edge of his cheekbone throws dark shadows over his too pale face. Flecks and streaks of black over his skin; blood or dust or ash, Joe can’t tell anymore and the panic is rising in his throat. He can’t look at Nicky’s colourless eyes – he can’t- he’ll carry the sight with him too long.

He tears his head away, his own eyes clenched shut – but before he has time to pray, to plead, Nicky is gasping beneath him. The breath Joe releases is sticky and harsh, and he’s curling forward in his relief. Their hands collide quickly against each other’s forearms in an instinctive, accustomed clasp, and colours start seeping back immediately. The first to return are the shades of blue; bright aegean tones bursting in Nicky’s wide eyes, chased into existence by familiar notes of green. The weight lifts off Joe’s chest and for a moment he just breathes, air that tastes sweet and smooth as his other senses adjust to the disruption.

Then Nicky’s rolling. “Let’s go, Andy.”

They’re stood close enough to see the tremble in Andy’s arm as she reaches for Quynh’s face for the first time in over four hundred years.

Joe is frozen at his side, and Nicky’s breath is jammed somewhere in the base of his throat. He can’t believe this is actually happening.

Andy’s hand falters just shy of Quynh’s cheek with a ragged sound, fingers hovering. She opens her mouth to speak but Quynh reaches up and clamps the hand desperately to her face with her own. They shudder so violently Nicky wonders for a moment if the ground has physically quaked.

He knows the sensation well; that fierce swoop in the stomach. Like he’s stepped into free fall as the world saturates around him at Joe’s first touch. When they can reach each other quickly after a death, colour comes back in slow, precious increments; the shining browns of Joe’s eyes, or the dusky pink that rises in the shell of his ear. The longest they’ve gone after a death was four days. Four days in an east Indian jungle trapped in wet, translucent tones of black and white, the frustration building until he’d screamed at the sky. When he’d finally gotten his hands on Joe, grasping desperately at his bared shoulders, colour returning was an immediate detonation that had left his whole body throbbing for hours.

Nicky can’t even begin to imagine what Andy and Quynh feel in this moment.

They go down as one, limbs folding together as they collapse into the dirt. Clutching at each other as their worlds transform. Quynh has Andy’s face trapped between her own palms now and is sobbing, laughing, trying to pull her closer. Andy’s tears are silent, but steady. Her eyes flitting over Quynh’s face in awe while she runs trembling fingertips over rosy cheeks she can see.

Joe is squeezing his hand so tightly his fingers have gone numb, but the rush of joy in Nicky’s chest is golden and fierce. To stop himself moving forwards to pull Quynh into his own arms, he steps behind Joe and tugs him back, arms looping firmly around his middle.

“See? We are meant to find each other,” he whispers. Joe chuckles wetly against him.

On the ground, Quynh is smiling through her tears. “You’re beautiful Andromache,”

Andy hums hoarsely and runs her hands over Quynh’s arms, coming up to cradle her collar through the thick fabric of her coat. Her fingers rub at the material and Nicky knows the scarlet shade must be iridescent to her eyes. Andy lifts a thumb to Quynh’s lower lip.

“Red always was your colour.”

adriana i’m so sorry this took so long. i physically couldn’t stop it getting longer and longer and then i got really stuck and it was a whole mess.

#the old guard #the old guard fic #joe x nicky #andy x quynh #soulmates au #userkayla #usermarwan #usercacau #tuserceleste #userbones #userlyde #usershan #tusermj #idk what happened here #can't write 5 sentences like a normal person #mine #prompt

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juminly · 3 years

Text

The Death of Me (Nobunaga x Reader)

Fandom: Ikémen Sengoku. Pairing: Nobunaga Oda x F!Reader. Summary: After being away from you for a while, Nobunaga finally comes back... and he misses you so.

Rating: Explicit. (Minors, DNI)

Warnings: Fingering, Teasing, Nipple Play, Dom/Sub Undertones, Slight Exhibitionism, Very Very Light Choking, Dirty Talk, Marking, Implied Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Doggy-Style. –♥– ”Why is my queen looking up at the midnight sky when she should be waiting and watching the woods, seeking my arrival?”

His low husky voice swept into your ears without warning, it was unclear whether it was the sudden gust of wind that sent your skin shivering or if it was the sensation of having your Devil King pressed against your back, hovering behind you as he settled his chin on your shoulder and his hands found home on the top of your thighs. You knew better than that, feeling the minuscule movement of his hands as they began to travel up your body. He murmured against the column of your throat but all you wanted to know was if your Nobu was safe and sound and if his mission was successful. When you parted your lips to speak, the way his name fell from your lips in an inquisitive tone, your lover knew exactly what you were going to say and what was going through your mind and reassuring you was absolutely his top priority before anything else. He was still human after all and you would fear for his life, even from a mere cold and he has seen it with his own two bloody eyes.

“Tsk, when all my victories are sure and certain, my Queen, you worry about such trivial matter when it seems that my apparent claims of territoires that are exclusively mine and occupied by myself have been fading?” His hands meandering over your supple curves squeezed your small waist, right over the obi that had the kimono you were wearing tied together, tearing your mind away, wondering what your Devil King was talking about and what he was planning to do to you.

"I suppose my fireball is due for a reminder since she's been fiery enough to be wearing my clothes upon my unexpected return." The heat of his breath increased as you felt his lips part against your skin, his teeth grazing ever so gently before sinking into your flesh as he soon sucked on you as gently as he could. Not.

This was only a preamble to what he had planned for you and having spent over a week away from you already had him reeling and aching for a taste of you. The thought finally clicking in you brain, the blemishes that clearly marked you as Nobu's were no longer there. And the thought did not please him in the slightest. However, there was a silver lining. Now he could claim you over again, as he had many times before. As he will continue to do so as long as he is able to breathe.

Sucking in your breath with an audible hiss, you could feel the blood rushing through your veins as Nobu began so diligently marking very visible spots, tactically choosing the lands in which he wanted his claim to be the most apparent. His breathing seemed to be controlled yet you could feel his heart beating fast, hard and strong against your back, his hands were now cupping your breasts, over the fabric of the kimono of his that you had so brazenly worn, the same kimono that you had worn from the desire of wanting to be surrounded by them, the feeling of having him on you, his scent... anything of his.

It was all you needed, especially when he was away. You looked beyond delectable to him...The fact that you were dressed in a piece of apparel of his taunted him in inexplicable ways, especially since you did so when he had been away. What were the thoughts that you had of him when he was away? Were you thinking of him as much as he had been thinking of you? There had been so many thoughts whirling through his mind even as he had been so immersed in his role as King during his mission, yet deep down, nothing could change the fact that he was your lover and he would yearn for you, in any time, any place. He was irrevocably yours and the way you had occupied not only his heart and soul but his mind as well spoke volumes. Someone had to pay and it had be both of you.

His lips were ruthless on your skin, visible dusky spots appearing in his wake as his tongue teased your earlobe as he sucked on it ever so gently and whispered in your ear. "Is my queen glad that I have returned or maybe we shall allow your body to speak for you, hm?" Tracing a wet trail over the seams of your earlobe before speaking once again, every word from him blowing on it and eliciting the slightest of trembles while his calculated motions only caused the sleeves of the kimono to slowly fall off your shoulders, slowly but surely exposing more of your chest, the fabric barely even covering your breasts.

He could feel your pebbled nipples as he gently brushed his fingers over your breasts, the hardened beads noticeable even through the barrier that had dared to separate you from your lover and almost, excruciatingly so, he finally allowed the fabric to fall and unveil what you both sought.You wanted nothing more than his hands on you and he wouldn't even fathom the thought of depriving you of that wish.

Finally, his calloused fingers flicked over the sensitive pebbles while he palmed at the tenderness of your mounds, every part of you hanging on every word he spoke as you were aching to turn around and be utterly consumed by crimson, a pool of darkened blood that had every ounce of your being screaming in yearning. You knew the moment you looked upon it, you would then be rendered completely helpless, not that you already were. You were lying to yourself. As you tried to wriggle in his grasp, wanting to act upon your thoughts, Nobu pinched you, hard enough to elicit a small gasp from you and gentle enough not to hurt you.

"Nobu, please. Let me hold you. I've missed you and I want to just.." Pushing you against him as he pressed you against the railing of the balcony, you couldn't help but squeal, a surge of adrenaline mixing with the desire rushing through you. "You better not let me go, Nobu. I've waited long for you. Let me have you first and then you can let me go."

Nobu chuckled, the resounding sound making your heart fluttering with happiness as if it were a bell that chimed in reaction to the blissful echo coming from the depth of his throat. ”My fireball has enough energy to tease me even in a compromising situation such as this.”

Finally turning you around, you were finally able to lay your eyes upon your lover. Finally taking him in, knowing that he was safe, knowing that he was back where he belonged, in your arms. You were expecting to see that devilish smirk of his, that expression that made your skin tingle and a deep knot being tied so tightly in your stomach. Yet, you were welcomed by a serene smile and eyes shining with emotions that you could only identify as affection and adoration. Bringing your hands to cradle his face, he leaned down and greeted you with an enrapturing kiss, his tongue stripping you from any thought that wasn't of him in your mind while one of his, hastily slid over your midsection and over the obi that was the only piece that kept the kimono on you, traveling down to smooth his hand over the apex of your thigh.

A deep chuckle resounded from his chest. You, out of everyone in Japan, being able to read his mind on specific occasions and especially in intimate ones, knew what he was thinking and aiming for. As he pressed himself harder against you, pinning you against the railing so you couldn't even move, even if you wanted to, the imprint of his hardness becoming imminent as you felt it probing your waist but you were far more distracted by what he planned to do with those fingers that had been teasing the softness of your inner thigh.

Right when you broke the kiss to catch your breath, Nobu pushed two fingers inside you and curled them immediately, caressing your inner walls and watching you with a fierce gaze, with bated breath that matched yours. “I know how the fire of impatience burns within you, love, I can tell by feeling how wet you are for me. But patience..." His smile grew wider as he watched your back arch and your mouth fall open as he easily slid in a third finger inside you.

"You shall find what you seek. See, I have all the intention to ravish you after I watch you fuck yourself with my fingers and tell me how much you have longed for me in my absence. Move, my love. I want to see your hips thrusting down on my fingers, bringing yourself over the edge, using me just for your own pleasure." One of your hands gripped his hair tightly when the other scratched at the skin of his nape, not even eliciting a wince from him as he watched you with a pleased smiled while you hump his hand, his thumb finally joining to drive you even closer to your climax.

"May the past lie in the past yet I can’t help but find myself curious and jealous of the thought of you not thinking about me the way I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve rode miles before my men as I left them to rest just so I can be here with you, my warrior Queen." Noticing how you had bitten your lips, the influx of sensations coursing through you, your legs quivering and barely managing to keep you standing, your grip around his shoulders even loosening as your strength is slowly drained out of you with the sheer intensity of your desire. His lips crashed down on yours, biting your lower lip and prying your mouth open, taking in the delicious sweet and soft moans that you were making in your kiss.Taking your breath away, his lips still hovered against yours, his eyes now even closer to yours, an unmistakable yearning in them.

"This nonsense of you being my future Queen than actually being my Queen is nothing I want to hear from you. Especially when you know the power you hold over me. People know you as The Queen that reins over the Devil King himself and that is not something that I'm saying.” What he told you were not just mere words, coming from him, they meant more, they weighed so heavily on your heart as you continue to get more acquainted with how deep his love truly runs for you. Brushing his lips gently across your cheeks, he whispered in your ear.

"It is what the people say. And I can tell you... It's true." And that's when you snapped. Your vision blurred as the waves of pleasure came crashing down on you, your core clamping down on his fingers which he was now pumping in you, helping you ride out the aftershock of what was just the prelude of the night. And he wasn't going to stop there.

"You're going to turn around for me, Queen of mine and let me fuck right under the midnight sky, so that the Heavens can look upon us and watch me as I claim you as mine and no one has a single say in it but me... and you." He spoke as he licked your slickness that dripped from his fingers, his attitude as haughty as it had always been but there was so much more in it than that. The vulnerability dripped from every word he said, the way the crimson of his eyes shined for comfort, for solace that he could find within and with you.

Removing your hands from around his shoulders, he brought of your hands to his lips, kissing your hands and your palms before turning you around and placing them on the rails of the balcony. "Since you had so eagerly took it upon yourself to decorate your body with a kimono of mine, you will not be taking it off until I am through with you." Pushing the fabric of the kimono to the side and exposing the lower half of your body to the cold wind, shivers ran over your skin but soon, you would have enough to warm you up.

"Nobu, I don't think I can stan... Ahh..." With a swift thrust, your King had completely sheathed himself inside you and began rocking his hips against yours, the slap of his skin against your behind joining the chiming of the cicadas that accompanied you in your intimate reunion. Your slick from your previous release only aided him in thrusting in and out of you at an intense pace, each time he plunged deep inside of you, the head of his cock would brush that sweet spot of yours and your body rocking forward with the sheer force of your warrior.

One of his hands were wrapped around your neck when the other had been placed on your lower stomach, his middle finger running incoherent and cruel circles over your sensitive nub. By the end of that night, you knew that you would be shaking from overstimulation and it was clearly bound to happen. Squeezing his hand around your throat briefly, Nobunaga growled against your neck. "Right after I'm done fucking you on the balcony, I'm going to carry you to my room and you're going to show me exactly what you were thinking of doing to me while I was gone." He chuckled lightly and kissed your cheek, the gesture almost a little too sweet for what he was doing to you. Completely and utterly wrecking your body.

"I'm going to watch you 'bounce on my dick' as you always say in the middle of your sleep, your naughty thoughts always revealing themselves to me. Shamelessly. And I wouldn't accept otherwise. Just like how your body tells me how much you want me. Your cunt is milking my cock so good... Gods... What are you doing to me?"

Gripping you a tad bit tighter, he turned your head so he could kiss you senseless, his hold on you the only thing keeping you both seemingly grounded. "You'll suck both your cum and mine off me, looking at me with those fiery eyes as you devour me whole and show me how determined you are to make me weak for you. Hah... Before I... take you all over again... Until you are completely spent. Don't you know how weak for you I am, my love? You... If I'll allow anything or anyone to be the death of me, it would be you..."

Only you... –♥– Tagging: @delicateikemenmemes, @sweetlittlemouse come get your man... again hehe. Please feel free to leave some love in the comments or some feedback!💜 You can also check out my Masterlist !

#nobunaga oda #ikemen sengoku #ikesen #nobunaga x reader #ikemen sengoku smut #nobunaga oda smut #ikesen smut #ikemen series #ikesen nobunaga

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nervousladytraveler · 3 years

Text

@veryflowerobservation asked me for a little story with a very specific plot line. While I doubt this is what they had in mind (apologies in advance) this is what came to me over my morning coffee. Also, I’ve been reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, and am indebted to her for the world (and tone) of that novel that I borrowed here.

---

She was already seated at a table in a quiet back corner when Ross entered the restaurant. A sandwich sat in front of her--untouched. How long had she been waiting? Ross hadn’t been late. In fact he was rather pleased with his timing.

He’d only just found her note a mere half hour before he was to meet her. He’d almost missed it--a small piece of folded paper deposited on his desk and no one claimed to have seen the messenger.

Dear Mr. Poldark, it read. Please meet me, if you can, noon today. The Drake. Important item to be discussed. Yours, Miss D. Carne. The ink had smeared a bit revealing an impatient or untidy author.

He remembered Miss Carne. Often, if he were to be honest. He smiled at the physical feelings associated with the memory and was on his feet shuffling for his coat before he’d thought it all through. After a late breakfast, he wasn’t hungry yet his curiosity was piqued by such a veiled message. Then again cryptic was the nature of their business, he supposed.

Ross hadn’t wanted the job but was cajoled, battered--railroaded really. But his gallantry in the previous war and in his off-the-record jaunts in between, not to mention his Good Family (“So many Poldarks already in the high ranks, you know”) were all tallied up. If Ross was trying to slip away from duty unnoticed, it seemed he was his own worst enemy. And if he had a choice, he’d have preferred to return to the army, but his ankle still bore shrapnel from ‘17 and apparently he wasn’t needed in that capacity.

“We need trustworthy men inside, Poldark,” some smart Undersecretary and an older but oh so reputable Colonel had huffed. They nodded in agreement with one another, and without waiting for an answer, had begun making plans for Ross in an unmarked office at the end of a serpentine hall in That Building.

The last thing Ross wanted was to be trusted with someone else’s secrets and yet, there he was--working for the War Time Government, which he soon learned was a very different machine than the one they’d elected in times of peace, the one everyone thought they knew. And once he saw the ways the gears really moved, Ross was certain most would prefer not to know much about this one at all.

Miss Carne, the author of the note and the guardian of the untouched sandwich, was one of the girls in the unmarked office. The department that didn’t really exist on paper needed scores of young women to keep it running.

She was different from the other girls. Not just a typist but clever--she was always solving problems, often before they were discovered, and saving the men who didn’t really exist on paper from very real embarrassment.

Ross hadn’t many dealings with her. Well, not until that one night when he got to know her quite well.

It had been a Thursday and there had been cocktails out--what had been the occasion? War had already been declared so it was quite unusual to have held a work do. Why was she even there?

He remembered the dress she wore--blue satin--and the way it fit her. Like a glove. No, more like water in a stream rippling smoothly over immovable stones. It made him feel at ease to look at her and he knew how the night would end.

In the all the secretarial pools across the city, few girls had their clothes tailored--who had time or money? So when they ventured out after work, they sported those subtle signs of economy--gaping necklines or tight stretches across the middle. Their one good dress hadn’t been replaced in so many years but their bodies had changed with the war. Rationing had left them scrawny or cheap gin had left them bloated.

Oh but those girls tried, didn’t they? They carried on the best they could. With their lips so brightly made up they could violate the black out, they were hell bent on keeping up the spirits of the lads. Wartime made for an interesting and furtive nightlife. Of course the nice girls, the ones with breeding and good dress makers weren’t out much at all these days.

But this one, Miss Carne, with her red hair--real, not from a bottle--and a fitted dress the colour of the sea at twilight, was different. Demelza was her name. It sounded like some yet-undiscovered gem. Rare as hell and essential to keep out of enemy hands. She didn’t seem to belong in either world--not the world of well dressed would-be fiancees nor the seedy boîtes, that were filled after hours when the good girls were tucked up in their bunkers.

The hotel Ross had taken Demelza to after they’d left the party was nice enough. Not the Savoy but it had a toilet ensuite and the sheets were clean. She was not Ross’s first affair so he knew how to be discreet when signing the register. He needn’t have bothered--the concierge clearly hadn't cared.

He remembered the sound of that blue dress as he unfastened it down the back. A crisp zip in an otherwise quiet room. That and her breathing and his heart beating in his chest. The sounds of anticipation. Before the dress slipped from her shoulders and his hands clasped her naked body to him.

Today she wore a stiff woolen frock the colour of filing cabinets. It reminded him of a wall of sandbags, protecting a hidden softness beneath. Still the zipper would sound the same.

“Miss Carne,” he smiled and held out his hand to her. He contemplated kissing hers when it was finally offered but sensing some unspoken chill, he refrained. He sat down opposite and gave his serviette a merry snap.

She twisted her lips when she spied the gold band on his left hand.

“You're married?” she began, raising one perfect brow. Was it naturally arched or was that her own artistry?

He might have wanted to scrutinize her face, to map out what was artifice and what was real, but at that moment he didn’t dare look her in the eye.

“Yes, I am,” he said, just a decibel louder than a mumble. “And yes, I was married when we…” He took a gulp from his water glass.

“And yet there was no ring that night,” she mused. She had no problem with eye contact, her blue eyes remained fixed on his face.

“We...uh...we were in the midst of a separation then but the war has made us rethink things…”

We. Us. There wasn’t really an us. Elizabeth was merely feeling scared and lonely, between lovers, and suddenly liking the idea of a strong husband about. But since then her plans to retreat home to Cornwall, first spoken of as a ‘hypothetical perhaps’, had started to come to fruition. She’d been packing a trunk for some days now and was fretting about whether to take just some of her furs, or all of them. She was clearly planning to stay away. Ross’s response was to arrange a driver.

“Well then,” Demelza said and pushed away her plate. “That will complicate things but doesn’t change reality one bit,” she continued crisply.

It was an office voice. With it she would manage the girls under her with confidence and efficiency. No time for emotion, yet it wasn’t sour. Must keep morale up. They had jobs to do and every memo taken, every letter filed, was a fulfillment of their duty.

It was not the soft, easy voice that laughed in his ear as she lay next to him on the pillow in the blacked out room. The dusky voice that had whispered his name as he crawled up her body like a soldier crawling through mud. On a mission. Towards his target.

“It seems, Mr. Poldark, that I’m to have a baby.”

He held his glass aloft and stared at her.

“What?” he spat. “Well, it can’t be...I didn’t…not in...” Of course he couldn’t utter those words in daylight. Not over a sandwich at lunchtime. One needed a stiff drink before dissecting the mechanics of love. Yet somehow he knew it was possible. He thought he’d been careful not to leave seed in the field. Now it hit him he’d in fact laid a land mine.

“Well it doesn’t really matter what you believe you did not do, because apparently whatever you did, was enough,” she responded coolly.

He didn’t dare ask if there were any others who might stand accused with him in the dock. His gut told him she wasn’t that type. And though she hadn’t confirmed it during their night together--nor had he looked for evidence later--he suspected she’d been intact before he took her to bed. Oh, she’d been a quick learner!

He also sensed that she’d rather be sitting across from just about anyone else than talking to him now, so she certainly wasn’t trying to trap him.

“Are...are you sure? I...I need to think,” he said, aware that he sounded like an old Spitfire whose propeller couldn’t quite get going. So much sputtering.

She lit a cigarette, took one long drag, then ground it out carefully in the ashtray. No doubt she’d revisit that same fag again later, at a time when she was less impatient, when she could enjoy it alone.

“Well, you do that then,” she said, and gathered her handbag, ready to take her leave.

“Wait! Where are you going? How can I reach you?” His words came out in a fast and frantic stream. The engine had started--the sputter became a steady buzz filling the room.

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head lightly. Today her hair was held back with tortoise shell combs on either side. Tidy, discreet, and appropriate for an unmarked office. Or any office.

He recalled his hands getting lost in a sea of those curls, fistfuls he’d grasped in passion. An unexpected lifeline, it had seemed at the time, that prevented him from drowning.

He felt himself going under again.

“Now you want to reach me, Mr. Poldark?” she said archly.

“Hey--you left me! You were the one who waltzed out of that hotel room while I was asleep, without so much as a backwards glance,” he growled. He’d been rankled that she continued to call him Mister Poldark, especially when he could still hear her hiss in his ear--Ross--while her body bucked under his.

“I assure you it wasn’t a waltz,” she said. And that was all she said. At least she didn’t claim she’d been trying to save him the embarrassment of a morning after. “I share a flat with another girl in Kingley Street. We don't have a telephone but you can find me at the office--unless I get reassigned in the next few days. There are changes coming, I’ve been told.”

She rose to her feet and towering over him, nodded.

Ross tried to stand up quickly--to plead with her to stay? To follow her out? He couldn't say what his intentions had been but it mattered little. He was too slow. His legs got twisted under the narrow table, his chair scraped awkwardly, and the remaining lunch things began to tip before he caught them with his broad hands. He narrowly avoided one mess, aware that he had quite another still to be cleared up.

And just like that she was gone. Leaving her entire sandwich and almost-intact cigarette behind afterall.

In a strange flash, Ross was surprised she didn't offer to pay for her own lunch. Of course a gentleman should pick up the bill for a lady no matter the circumstances, but there was something so determined and iron about her now, that he couldn’t imagine her allowing anyone to help her.

And yet help her he must. Somehow.

He felt his pockets frantically for a scrap of paper but only found a stub of a pencil.

Kingley Street, he scrawled on the back of a matchbook. He had no house number, nothing else to go.

Could he ask someone to watch the street? He knew some blokes who would do a job like that--a stake out--for the right price. Or was he better off handling this himself, intercepting her at work? Even if she did get moved to a different sector--one that also did not officially exist--he might have channels to find her.

He sat back in his chair and reached for her cigarette. He imagined it smelled like her but he lit it anyway. It helped him to relax for just a moment while he planned his next move.

Ross knew he had a duty to this woman--to their child if one was to be--and while that was an overwhelming and unforeseen realisation, he was taken aback by a different unexpected sensation.

Desire.

He wanted her. Again. Now.

And he had to find her.

#poldark fanfic #poldark modern au #london blitz #ross poldark #demelza carne #blue dress #fastens down the back

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katsukikitten · 4 years

Text

A/N WELP THIS HAPPENED I GUESS THIRST TEXTS ARE HERE TO STAY Please let me know if this one was too long or if I neglected Kiri with such a short word count last time.

Warnings: NSFW, Adult Themes, 18+ AU/Pro hero, Adult AU. [Revised]

One of your best redeeming, and most damning qualities was how blunt you were.

The world faulting you for knowing what you want, when you want it and exactly how you want it.

Never shying away from voicing your needs either.

So an "I'm horny" text to your boyfriend would be nothing new or unexpected as your thumbs fly across the screen. You could see him now, rolling those gorgeous eyes while locking his phone.

He was anything but your past lovers, male or female all it took was a string of special emojis, 😜😈👅💋💦💦, and they would come running.

Showing up at your door with dinner and intentions to give you exactly what you wanted.

But your special hot head needs just a tad bit more convincing, especially since he's always so "busy" with hero work.

So shopping with your pro hero friends was the best way to have fun and kill time. But if you were being honest you wanted, no needed, your hot headed boyfriend to pin you against the wall by your throat and fuck all of his frustrations into you. Rutting into you so harshly, so deeply, you saw stars. God you hate to admit how addicting that caramel spiced bastard was.

So you struggle to think of a good enough text to send, biting at your lip in annoyance.

"Y/N!" Mina calls as she motions for you to enter the next store, your eyes go from a blinking cursor to a glass case holding troves of mannequins adorned in smooth lace. A devilish smile settles on your lips as even more devilish thoughts form in your head, each clack of your heel is a promise to sin.

"What can I help you pick out Mina?" You pur as you browse for yourself picking out items here and there to try on.

You were already wearing a black thong that would match any bra or lacy little thing you would want to try on. So to say this man was about to be weak in the knees was an understatement. He better be stiff in his pants.

"Hmm I'm not sure...." She gravitates to the bright pinks and you push her gently to moodier colors.

Deep purples and blacks would make her seem more mature while you guided U-san to blushes and dusky rose colors to play up her "innocence." Although from the stories you've heard over too many shared daiquiris you knew they were far from innocent. Their men would definitely be weak if they took the items you were picking up for them home.

"Let's try them on!" You announce, overly eager to get into the ambient lighting that would insinuate the curvature of your body and the lust in your eyes. The three of you enter into plushly carpeted floors that lie behind tall black with golden inlay doors.

Luxury to remind women they ARE luxury themselves, you lock the door before setting out your items.

You picked the perfect thing, you truly did. You compliment yourself as you undress half tempted to send him a picture of your perfectly rounded ass before you talk yourself out of it.

One thing you learned quickly in this game of cat and mouse is that the anticipation of what could be underneath was enough to drive any lover mad.

So it was time you presented his meal properly.

You adorn yourself in a lacy and see through bra with strategically placed floral. The garment had more of a sweat heart neckline than a plunge, your tits fit perfectly as you adjust the straps that remind you of a cafe maids apron. The black color perfectly matched your bowed choker with the little silver bell.

You slide on the garter that sits just above your natural waist, the middle bare save the string that holds onto the sheer matte tulle that gives it a softer feminine look than what you normally wear.

Your thong matches perfectly and you smooth out the garter straps to bisect your thick thighs.

You twirl for a moment before lightly biting your bottom lip for more color, your core slowly heating as you think of the things he would do to you in this.

You angle yourself perfectly after a few tries, toulsing your hair this way and that before getting the perfect picture.

You looking needy as you press two fingers against a greedy pink tongue, eyes filled to the brim with want as your mouth forms the perfect O.

The same one that makes a lewd pop when removed from your favorite snack.

You smile to yourself before hiting send.

"Doing okay loves?" You call out to your friends that sing song their confirmation, "Like anything yet?"

"I'm uh not sure just yet." U san calls out

"I'm checking with Kiri on what to get." Mina says devilishly, a shutter of a lens can barely be heard in fitting room over.

Your phone pings and you lift it with feverish hands.

"Gonna have to do better than that if you're trying to get me to leave, Kitten."

Your face sours into an angry pout as you rack your brain for a way to make him eat his words. You needed to look submissive, but not too innocent. He wasn't a brat handler for nothing, Kamisama above knew just how much of a handful you were.

"But aren't our men in a meeting?" Uraraka asks and you can practically see the blush forming on her cheeks.

Your lips curl up in a cat like smile as a plan formulates in your head. You place your heeled foot on top of the plush pink chair before using it to vault yourself over the top of your dressing room into Uraraka's.

"Y..Y/N." It is not as if she is unused to your brashness, it is more that you have no shame. You interrupt her before she can finish.

"You look killer, you know that right?"

This was no lie or flattery but full truth as she attempts to hide.

But there is no hiding her curvy body, especially not beneath the strappy mesh bodysuit she wears in the perfect mauve pink, a darker in hue floral pattern tastefully hides her nipples, her navel and becomes thick over her final goods.

The rest is mesh with side cutouts to remind you of just how beautifully plush she was, if Izuku were here now he would be salivating.

Begging for a bite.

The plan solidifies as you look over her thick frame, devilish smile returning to your plush lips.

"Let's send some to Deku?"

"T..together?!" She almost shrinks and you straighten her posture with your hands.

"If you're uncomfortable that's fine. But I would love to take some with you and maybe send them to Bakugou..." You almost pout and she confirms there is no one living being on the planet that can deny you when you give THE look.

"Ah...okay we can send one to Deku. M..maybe Bakugou. Do you think it will hurt Izuku's feelings?"

"I think it will entice him the same way it will entice mine when I pose us. Do you trust me? If you're ever uncomfortable you'll tell me right?"

"Always." She says it with confidence, and you squeeze her shoulders before setting up your phone to the perfect angle of you two and the mirror.

You count down silently with the timer on the camera before you snatch your phone showing U-san first.

She nods.

"S..send it to Izuku first?" She asks sheepishly as if it would bother you.

But it's not you who will be bothered.

"Imma send it to you and then let me see your phone!" She obliges and let's you type out the message beneath the sinful image.

An image that makes it to Deku quickly, he spys that it is a message from Uchan.

She did promise that she would send Izuku a picture of her lunch, especially since the trio of women announced they were going to be getting cattachinos from the new cafe on main.

Izuku eagerly unlocks his phone, wholly expecting a bright coffee and strawberry cream cake but instead his face ignites into a fiery red.

It is far from coffee but it is still dessert.

A photo of his girlfriend entangled with...with...oh no entangled with you.

Why did it have to be you?

He cannot peel his eyes away from either of you, but especially his girl. Your back is to the mirror showcasing your ass and back, lustful eyes looking over your shoulder but what you're doing to Uchan is what's driving him mad.

Your body blocks a quarter of hers, shoulder to shoulder as one hand is shoving fingers onto a pink tongue suggesting what she can do, pink lips in a soft O while her sweet innocent cheeks BURN.

Dusting her in blush all the way to her breastbone.

A delicate hand grasps onto a deadly forearm pushing up Uraraka's pretty tits that Izuku worships. He bites the inside of his lip, emerald eyes flash to scarlet across from him before flying back to the sinful glass.

Your phone pings and you snatch it up. Smirking over the reaction.

"You're out with Moonface right? Why is Deku blushing so God damn hard and why does he keep looking between me and his phone?"

You ignore the response for now, leaving him on read purposefully before snapping another picture.

Deku's phone again demands his attention and he cannot deny it.

Somehow his face becomes a darker hue, his large hand palming the ache in his pants as he tries to push through the droning meeting but the photo on the screen makes it that much harder to focus.

He cannot believe what he sees.

The push pink chair is in the center and turned to the side. His favorite ass sits in the chair beneath thick thighs that sit atop of another thick pair.

Deku bites the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning as he looks up from his favorite ass.

The two of you are profile to him as you straddle his intoxicating girlfriend, one of your hands is gripping onto the breast furthest from the camera while the other seems to dip deep between the two of you.

Right between Uraraka's legs.

Your heads tilted slightly away from each other, both sets of cheeks heavily flushed as you pull slightly away from a dazed chestnut haired woman.

Both of your tongues peeking past naturally rouged lips, a little saliva string connecting the two pink points.

Not once in Deku's 23 years did he ever think he would come close to cumming in his pants from an image.

But shit this was close.

He cannot peel his eyes away from his phone. And he does something he's never done before.

"Director I'm sorry I need to take this call." He lies as he stands, pretending to put his now locked phone to his ear.

Suspicion burns hot in Bakugou's blood and it is shown in a text you receive.

"Kitten, if you ever want to cum again, you'll send me whatever the fuck you've gotta be sending dumbass Deku."

His voice plays through your speakers in a hush, his voice low and husky. Threatening even, as you can see him standing in the hall just outside of his meeting. The thought of his scowl paired with the sound of his voice had you more molten than your shared kiss with Uraraka san.

"You okay?" You ask a very flushed Uchan who smiles happily before she reads you her received text.

"'Baby you've got me fucked up. I'm in the men's bathroom right now. Can you guess why?'" She smiles before adding, "Then it's a picture of him stroking his cock. Y/N. I'm so turned on right now..."

It takes her a second to hear what she's admitted out loud before you smile devilishly.

"I guess I'm finally rubbing off on you." You smile before grabbing onto the pink chair once more using it to vault yourself back into your dressing room.

"I can send the last picture to Bakugou right?" You ask, because her body,her rules, no matter what kind of punishment you might receive.

"Yes I hope it does half of what it's done to Izuku!" She answers with joy. Humming as she redresses.

More than going to buy what you picked out.

"Meet us at the restaurant? We'll text you!" Mina shouts, "We're starving and text us what you want you heathen."

"Yea, yea." You dismiss, as Mina assumes you're about to take more pictures. Well she wasn't wrong, you were going to take more pictures.

You lived to remind yourself, and the world, that no matter what your mood or what you wore, you were sex embodied.

And God Damn it your boyfriend was going to notice even if it got you in a little hot water.

Another text comes in, this time sans voice memo. You won't lie, you become a little crestfallen.

"KITTEN!"

And you can hear the lustful furry even through text turning you into jelly.

It's a good thing you're wearing your own underwear, as your thighs are beginning to become slick. The thin material doing nothing to sop you up.

A picture comes through and your heart begins to race as you look it over.

It's a black door with gold inlay, a little strip shows into the room. Showing off a pair of legs and nicely manicured toes.

A tattoo identical to yours and your heart hammers into your chest when a second ping comes through.

"Open the door, Kitten."

@lady-bakuhoe I guess I can share my husband with you for this😘

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