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latibvles · 4 days

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AND — [ jacket ] sender takes their jacket off and hangs it on receiver's shoulders WITH viv and bucky because i need to see the tender side of bucky hehe 🤭🤭🤭🤭 THANK U POET !!!!!!!

jacket.

u ask for soft Bucky I give you soft Bucky . another post-bremen thing because for some reason if I write June and willie coping then I've gotta write Viv too. Anita (Rivera) is another character of who gets name dropped here — another pilot, woohoo! As is Ellie Harris. That in mind: soft tender Viv/Bucky feelings will be the end of me personally.

—

If there was one thing that’s been nailed into their heads, one thing Bucky learned the hard way, was that it rained in England. A lot. It came down hard and heavy and seemed to never end once it started. Tonight is no different: it’s raining cats and dogs and forcing everyone to stay in the Officer’s Club longer than they already do. No one wants to make the trek back to their huts and get soaked in the process, their shoes and socks filling with mud. So they order another round and take their time on sipping those drinks until the ice melts and dilutes the whiskey.

Bucky doesn’t hate nights like this, shitty weather aside, but for the first time in a while he eyes the door frequently, silently willing for her to show up. Or rather, to come back.

It wasn’t like Viv to be the first one out — more often the last one, rounding the stragglers of her crew up like a shepherd, giving him a playful promise to come by his hut and tuck him and Curt in. But instead, she exchanged quiet conversation with Willie, her co-pilot clapped her on the shoulder in a silent see you later, and then Viv bid them all goodnight with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. No jokes, no fanfare, no shepherding.

It is one of the only things that Bucky realizes he can’t quite shake with drinking and dancing — the rain started coming down a little after she left and his first thought was the unshakeable worry about her getting caught in it; slipping in the mud and hurting herself, or getting soaked through her clothes and getting sick.

It is this unshakeable worry of his that has him slipping out early — polishing off his drink to save face with an excuse about seeing if he could pull Buck from his cot tonight to join them. It’s not much, but it buys him what he hopes is enough time to poke his head in, make sure Viv is still up and kicking and possibly get a real smile out of her. Part of him wholly wanted to believe she was as unbreakable as the war goddess emblazoned on her old PT shirt, but Bucky wasn’t counting on that fact.

He’s never been more thankful for the hard leather of his sheepskin and how the rain slides off it, but he still wastes no time in jumping into his jeep and making his way down the road. It wasn’t coming down hard enough yet to completely obscure his vision; Bucky keeps glancing to the side in case he catches that tall silhouette of hers making its way back to the huts on the side of the gravel road.

But he doesn’t and Bucky’s slightly imbued with the small hope that she’s beat out the rain, that she could walk just as fast as she flew.

It doesn’t do much to shake the feeling though. His jacket might’ve been doing a good job keeping the rain out, but concern is already embedding itself deep in his bones like a chill he can’t shake, urging him to press on the gas in spite of the wheel’s trembling protests. He just curls his fists tighter until he rounds the corner — and then it’s a straight shot to her quarters from there.

Warm light pours from the two windows sandwiching the door to the hut, and Bucky doesn’t realize he’s hesitating until a fat droplet plinks onto his nose and he’s yet to knock on the door.

Lines were drawn pretty quick once the women joined them, this being one of them. Anita laid them out for him pretty plainly when he dared to ask: you don’t go with a guy to check out the inside of his fort, they have to wait outside the Hut, don’t bring any of them into our forts — they’d figured out all the ways the rules about fraternization could bite them in the ass and then filled in the holes before they even learned anybody’s names. Bucky, for all the trouble he liked to find himself in, was not in the business of dragging Viv or any of her girls into it.

But he can’t help it — the way his jaw clenches and his fists furl in undeniable frustration.

Fraternization be damned, is she not one of his to look out for?! They were a group, a team. He couldn’t shake that feeling of distance between himself and his guys after they’d gone up and he wasn’t there — and little else mattered to him than closing it before it got too wide. He’d be an idiot to act like there couldn’t be a gap there between himself and the girls too, now that they’ve been up. He’d never really asked her how she was holding up, did he?

Internalized guilt aside: she’d do the same for him; that much, Bucky is sure of.

So he opens the door quickly, stepping inside all at once and not letting the door slam behind him, because if he’s going to invade their space he might as well try to have some manners about the whole thing. Nothing could really prepare him for the sight before him, though.

One footlocker she uses as a desk, the other she uses as a chair. Her hair’s all saturated from the rain, stringy and sticking to the sides of her face. Her uniform’s a wet, crumpled pile on the floor. And he really doesn’t know what he was expecting, coming in unannounced, but it wasn’t pale yellow pajama shorts, Viv’s lips pulled into a concentrated pout, and her cheeks and nose pinkened from frigid summer rain. There’s something tentative about the whole thing, vulnerable.

The Vivian he knows is teasing and sharp-tongued; all smiles and quick remarks and quicker actions. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re the only two people in here, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s not used to her quiet; but he suddenly feels like he’s intruding in a way that he hasn’t really felt with anybody else. He whips his head to the side and starts sweeping droplets off the hard leather of his jacket, but he can see her lifting her head to look at him.

Unfortunately, it’s Viv, who is his friend, so he kind of has to look at her when she speaks — lest he make this all about him and his newfound sensibilities when it comes to women in their pajamas, apparently.

“Hey, you,” she tilts her head to the side, curious. “Didn’t know I was getting visitors.”

“Wanted to see if you beat out the rain,” he starts walking towards her and she tilts her head up to look at him, the flickering overhead lighting up her pretty features. Viv smiles, before letting it fall and giving him a half-hearted shrug.

“It caught me,” she admits dismissively, as if he couldn’t see it already. “Guess I should’ve invested in one of these, then. You got extra lying around?” She reaches up to pat his arm.

“You tryna match with me, Savorre?”

“Well if you’re gonna be my ball and chain we might as well,” She counters, swivelling on her makeshift chair and turning her back to him. “Was that it, though?”

To his credit, Bucky doesn’t mean to be nosey — Viv’s just got tragically neat handwriting and it’s something to look at that isn’t wet hair clinging to a lithe neck. But he pauses all the same, his brows knitting together, and the reason for her early absence hitting him all at once.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Harris, you may not remember me… starts off what looks to be a letter. And Bucky remembers the name like he remembers the burn of alcohol in his throat and that feeling of elation he got three days ago when Harding decided to graciously bump him back down from Air Exec.

Ellie Harris was a part of the only female crew that went down — no chutes. He met her, just like he met Viv and Anita: out on the runway in Utah, all chapped faces and pigtails, suspicious eyes. Nice girl, honey-haired and quieter than the other two. He didn’t know her as well as he knew Viv, or even Anita, but he knew her. He poured one out for her crew, too — Adams, Schmalenbach, Petrich, Harris, and all their brave men.

“Bucky? Did you need something?” Viv asks again, turning to look at him. Likely reading the expression on his face, she looks back at the letter, and then to him. She takes her lip between her teeth once his eyes resettle on her. “I know that this is… Kidd’s job or yours, technically, but I just figured…”

There’s a heavy silence that hangs in the air, a brief moment of guilt shared between them. Him, for not thinking of asking about Ellie when he realized she’d gone down — and Viv for probably something small. Like writing her family a letter. He doesn’t want to share this feeling with her but on all levels but physical: he’s effectively scrambling for a means to rid her of it. He comes up empty-handed.

“Her folks sent me and ‘Nita Christmas cards. I figured I owed it to them to at least give some personal condolences.” Her words feel like rain pelting against his skin, the way she avoids his stare turning it frigid. But it’s that imperceptible, barely there shiver of hers that nearly does him in. If he could take the pen and write the whole thing himself, he would, but she’d never let him do that and it’d defeat the purpose of writing at all.

Her back turns to him and he watches a droplet fall from the ends of her hair and run down her back, turning that flimsy yellow material translucent. His jaw clenches involuntarily. He’s shrugging his jacket off without a second thought.

She’d do the same, he rationalizes, if it were me, she’d do the same.

Viv almost seems to freeze entirely as he puts the sheepskin over her shoulders, thankful that the inside was still dry, that the worst of the rain was yet to come. It’s warm, he knows it is because now he’s realizing just how damn cold this hut is right now. Granted, it probably wouldn’t be so awful if his hair wasn’t wet.

She hardly even needs to turn her head much — Bucky hasn’t exactly straightened himself out yet, still slightly hunched over, fixing the collar to keep it out of her way. He’s close enough now to notice some gold in the brown of her eyes. She wants some type of explanation, a what’s all this for likely posed on her tongue and he knows that ‘just felt right’ is a piss-poor excuse.

“You were shakin’ like a leaf over here. Can’t have my wife catching a flu, not on my watch.”

“Uh huh. Right.” Viv retorts sarcastically, and Bucky can’t help the smile on his face as she rolls her eyes at him. Even as he stands up straight again, he doesn’t back away much.

Her fingers ghost over the collar of his jacket, doing little more than softly exhaling — Bucky can’t help it, he lingers in her space and she smiles up at him. Something full and appreciative of what he’s done — she’s given him that look a couple times now and everytime she does, Bucky can’t help but feel like he’s won something. She doesn’t even put her arms through the sleeves, content to let it hang off her shoulders. He likes the way it envelopes her all the same, at least two sizes too big.

There’s a thought that his smell might cling to her skin, and something about that makes him grin a little more.

“You know you’re gonna need this back, right?”

“Jesus, Viv, can you just let me do my marital duty?” He complains, melodramatically, and she laughs, a full sound as her fingers curl over his jacket to keep it on her shoulders.

“That’s not…” Her voice trails off, then she rolls her eyes and Bucky really can’t help how his smile grows at the sight of her. “Fine. Sure. Do your duty. You gonna tuck me in, too? Read me a bedtime story?”

“Depends. You like Guys and Dolls?” He retorts as he takes a seat at the edge of her cot. Viv reaches over to swat at him and he can’t help the chuckle that escapes.

“Don’t make me kick you out of here, Egan,” she threatens half-heartedly, before turning back to her letter. Ten minutes. He’ll let himself linger for ten minutes and let her keep the jacket just for tonight. It suits her better anyways. He can’t help his staring and he knows she feels it because she’s glancing at him from the corner of her eye and chuckling to herself. “What?” He has no excuse this time, so he shrugs and she laughs and mutters something about him being ridiculous.

The sound and the sight of her make him hope that these ten minutes go by slow.

#*poet writes #ch: vivian savorre #ship: viv/bucky #john egan x oc #masters of the air oc #john egan fanfiction #mota oc #mota fic

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thedeviltohisangel · 2 months

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I know your looking for meatball fluff ideas but an idea just popped into my head: you know how they had movies playing on the bases, I’m picturing Cass and John getting kicked out cause they end up making out instead of watching the movie and it’s Demarco who blows the whistle on them (it’s giving Lip telling Luz to shut up during the movie in BoB)

I love that as a group we have decided they have no chill. Decorum and sanity out the fucking window as soon as they are in proximity to each other.

Cass and John separately have a hard time sitting still for too long, they are always on the move and chasing their next hit of danger and adrenaline, so one can only imagine when they are together. I imagine them going out to dinner on a date and they sit across from each other but they are playing footsie and holding hands and John can't stop kissing her knuckles and maybe she steals a puff or two from his cigarette and before the entrees even come John is sliding into the booth next to her and throwing her legs over his lap and kissing her senseless for all to see. BACK TO THE MOVIES.

John normally sits up front but hears the door open after the film has started and sees Cass sneaking into the back row so he gets up to move (they all groan cause he blocks it for second) and he drapes his sheepskin over her shoulders when he sees she is a little chilly. Her head rests on his shoulder and for a little while they just watch the move but then his eyes keep drifting to her until he's just watching Cass watch the movie. He says her name to get her attention and he swears his intent was innocent but (as with any time these two get there hands on each other) it burns and burns until Cass is straddling his lap and her hands are tangled in his curls and she's about to ask him to take her somewhere more respectable before her hips get a mind of their own like this when Demarco chimes in:

"Bucky! Take your girl to bed like a real gentleman!"

I love the image in my head of fucked out John. Swollen lips and singularly focused eyes and swollen cheeks. That one curl dropping onto his forehead and his mind trying to regain control of his breathing. Cass feels so fucking satisfied when he gets like that. She loves making that man a mess.

Where else should John and Cass get kicked out of?

#masters of the air #john egan #mota #masters of the air fanfiction #john egan fanfiction #john egan x reader #john egan x oc #answered #cass and bucky

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ww2yaoi · 3 months

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tagged by @oatflatwhite to share some of my wip! thank you this is fun

I'm gonna tag @avonne-writes and anyone else who wants to do this

taking my stab at the buck(y) reunion scene and subsequent aftermath

Nine days. John thinks Gale is dead for nine excruciating days. No pain compares, not a wooden beam to the temple, nor the bitter forest floor he collapses upon. He prays for a quick death as he feels the barrel of a rifle dig into his back, but it never comes. By the time he’s being marched to the Stalag, his body is screaming all over. He probably has a concussion, some broken ribs, a skull fracture or two. His hair is matted with blood and his legs are throbbing. He can barely keep himself upright. He’s a dead man walking.

But then, there are familiar faces peeking out from behind barbed wire: Crank, Murph, Glen. John feels a dangerous glimmer of hope. His eyes search the crowd.

Buck, where the hell are you?

And then he hears it, just to his right. “John Egan! Your two o’clock.”

By some miracle, Buck is smirking at him, leaning against the fence with his sheepskin characteristically pulled up around his neck. John is swept up in the great undertow of relief. He smiles, suddenly alive again, and the aching in his heart abates, if just for a moment.

“What took you so long?” Gale asks and bites back a grin.

John wants to run over and kiss the breath out of his lungs, but the Krauts would probably shoot him dead if he tried. He falls into formation again, marching past the open gates and into the camp. His body pumps with adrenaline, his quick beating heart thwacking against his ribcage. He makes it a few more steps before the world suddenly blurs. Inkblots dot his vision and he collapses right there in the dirt. Gale’s ensuing shout rings hollowly in his ears as he loses consciousness, everything going blank.

John dreams of the mob like he has every night since the massacre happened. Sometimes he’s the first to get picked off, a swift gunshot to the temple and he crumples to the ground, blood oozing out of his ears. Sometimes the crowd descends on him like a pack of hungry dogs, tearing him open with dirty fingernails, ripping him limb from limb. This time, he watches each man die, their whey-faced corpses falling at his feet one by one. He wants to scream, but his voice expires in his throat. Then, the mob is on him again. He thrashes. Hands encircle his wrists to pin him down in the mud, viscous with blood.

Then, Gale is calling to him through the dark. “John, you’re okay. You’re gonna be all right.”

John chases his voice, his eyes opening. Soft light floods his vision as he tries to orient himself. He’s in a small, unfamiliar room, lying supine on a thin cot. His head swims as a deep ache shoots down the back of his neck. His vision is still blurry and his skin is burning all over. Voices he doesn’t recognize break up the quiet, and panic rises in his chest. He goes to sit up, but a hand gently presses him back down onto the cot. He has no strength to resist it. He can barely flinch away from its touch.

“Buck?” John musters after a moment, and his voice is a faint rasp.

“Hey, I’m here.” John feels warm, calloused fingers interlock with his own. “This is Doc, he’s gonna help fix you up.”

John lifts his head slightly to look at the man hunched over him, but keeping his eyes open for very long is hard. The man is older, with rounded glasses sliding down his hawkish nose. The bridge of them is held together with medical tape, and he’s dressed in the same holey clothes and burlap coat as the other prisoners.

It’s then that John realizes he’s naked from the waist up. Doc is examining his ribs, the skin surrounding them so deeply purple the bruises almost appear black. Doc runs his hands over his ribcage, gently pressing his fingers into the flesh as if to test its integrity. John groans in pain and Gale squeezes his hand.

It’s Crank’s voice that John hears next. “What the fuck happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” Doc says, “but his orbital socket is broken, and he has two or three fractured ribs, at least. We should bind them. There’s some aspirin in my kit, Gale. It should help with the pain and lower his fever.”

John is reluctant to let go of Gale’s hand, but he has to when Gale leans over to rummage around in Doc’s medical bag. He produces a small bottle. Crank hands Doc a tin mug of muddy-looking water.

“Come on, sit him up.”

John tries not to cry out in pain as Crank and Gale help prop him up against the wall. The only thing that stops him is Gale’s hands on his bare back. He wraps his arms around John’s middle and gently lifts him into a sitting position. Doc unwinds a spool of bandages around John’s abdomen and fastens them tightly. Then, Gale is pressing an aspirin pill into John’s mouth, fingertips nudging against his tongue.

“Take this,” Gale says and brings the tin mug to John’s lips. He tips it forward and John drinks gratefully, even though the water tastes strangely sour. “That’s it. Do you want to lay back down?”

John nods weakly.

“I’ve got him,” Gale says to Crank before lowering John back down on the cot.

He pulls the thin blanket up to John’s chin.

“Buck,” John mumbles, and it seems to be the only word he can say.

He feels half insane, like maybe he’s still dreaming. Maybe the mob really did kill him, and heaven just looks an awful lot like a Kraut prison camp. John forces his eyes open again and looks over at Gale. His face is soft but scarred, a bit thinner than he last remembers it. He peers over at John with such open worry that it knocks the breath out of his lungs.

Doc collects his things and closes his medical bag, standing up from his chair. “If his fever gets any worse, we can move him to the sick quarters. Until then, I think it’s best that you monitor him closely.”

Gale nods. “Will do, Doc. Thank you.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Crank says, then goes to walk him out.

Alone now, Gale’s hand finds John’s again. He raises it to his face and presses his cheek into John’s palm. John cradles his head with the little strength he has, fingers splaying out into his hair.

“Buck,” he says again and smiles. “You’re alive.”

“So are you,” Gale replies. He turns his head and plants a kiss on John’s dirty palm. “God, John, what happened to you?”

“Krauts,” John deadpans. “You’re the first pretty face I’ve seen in a while.”

Gale smiles softly at that, but it doesn’t seem to comfort him much. “When Crank and Brady and the others showed up without you, I thought the worst.”

“Can’t get rid of me that easy.” John laughs, but it makes his ribs cry out in response. He groans. “You don’t have anything stronger than aspirin, do you?”

“Afraid not,” Gale says. “You’re gonna have to dry out in here.”

John hadn’t even thought of that. “Christ, every bone in my body is broken and I can’t even get a stiff drink?”

“You’ll be okay,” Gale says, patting the hand resting against his cheek. “You seem better already. Enough to complain, at least.”

John rolls his eyes. He wants to playfully shove Gale, but he doesn’t think he could lift his arm if he tried.

“Get some rest,” Gale says. “I’ll wake you up in a few hours. You’ll need to eat something.”

He removes John’s hand from his cheek and tucks it against his side underneath the blanket.

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” John asks.

Gale shakes his head. “I’ll be right here.”

He leans over and presses a kiss to John’s hot forehead, then sits back down in the chair by John’s cot. John closes his eyes, and it doesn’t take long for him to fall into another fitful sleep.

#masters of the air #my fic

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vampyrsm · 2 years

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'The Forbidden Flame.' Chapter III Prince Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

Synopsis: Something is brewing in the night. Katsuki is troubled with his own mind, an eternal battle between what he has always known and the vast unknown. How will he proceed? Will he ignore it or will he pursue the only person he has ever felt genuine tranquillity around?

Warnings: Familiarial abuse, descriptions of violence/fighting, blood, some fluff (later in the chapter), diving more into the Bakugou backstory, a much lighter chapter after what I did in the previous one.

Word Count: 8181.

[Glossary] | [Masterlist] | [Previous] | [Next]

It started off as a dull pain, a gentle ache in the chest that would be easy to ignore. But it began to spread, branches of this aching pain wrapping itself around his limbs and crushing his bones. It felt like weakness, the kind of pain that came with a horrific wound acquired during battle. Sweat coated his body, dripping down along the dip of his spine and the defined lines of muscles, he couldn't stop the shaking in his hands as the pain continued to spread further and further until it engulfed every inch of his body.

Katsuki glanced down at his hands, surprised to see they were aged some but that wasn't the only thing that surprised him—it was the fact that his hands were doused in blood, how did this happen? Did he hurt someone? He doesn't remember it happening, he always remembered something when he was fighting even if he let the primal side of his mind take over. That's when the pain panged again across his body, like a nasty reminder that he was in the middle of something. He looked down, hissing when he felt his muscles tighten around his side and the pain shot through his body in waves.

His clothing looked different, more regal, but he couldn't focus on the details when his carmine eyes sharpened their focus on the dagger that was embedded deep in his side.

He tried to reach for it but the pain was too great, it was crippling. He slumped in his seat, had he always been sat? He couldn't make sense of what was happening, his mind fogged with confusion and as his eyes flickered up at the sound of receding footsteps, he couldn't make out any details of the person walking away from him, just a blurred outline of a shadowed figure.

...

Katsuki clutched a hand to his side, furs sliding off of his sweaty bare chest. The fire crackled across the room in front of him, illuminating him in a faint orange glow. He glanced down quickly, certain to see that he had been stabbed with a dagger he had never seen before but was surprised to see nothing. Just old scars as reminders of the battles he survived.

He sighed, long and hard, it didn't feel like a nightmare. He had his fair share of those before, they often occurred when he'd come back from a long fight on dragon back. This felt... different. Like it was something he should be worried about, he scoffed at the fleeting thought that it was a vision. There were scholars of the realm who believed in such a thing, that the Bakugou's had unlocked a secret ability to see things that could happen once they bonded with their dragons.

Xol was the only dragon Katsuki had ever bonded with, and some suspected with it being the biggest of its brood that it would come with an ancient power.

Katsuki didn't believe a word of it, dragons were just dragons.

Deciding to ignore the odd nightmare he had, he pushed himself off of the bed. Thick bear belts slid away from his body revealing more of his bare upper body and the loose-fitting black sheepskin pants he wore for bed. They hung low on his waist, and he made no move to fix it as he moved around his chambers. His eyes flickered for a moment to the numerous books on his shelves, they would have a possible answer to what he had seen in his dream but then that would just give in to the fact the scholars may just be right.

Scoffing, he relaxed into the bay by his window, soft cushions pressed against his back and his eyes naturally wandered over the city that seemed so small from so high up. It was just starting to turn night, the city shrouded in a thick blanket of fog that had rolled in from the sea. The streets were mostly still empty, it had been roughly a week since the events of the festival and Katsuki had been caged up in his own room for that entire time. Some said it was for recovery but Katsuki knew it was his father's orders, to keep the man locked in his section of the Keep until he knew how to proceed.

It wasn't like killing was banned from the fights, if it happened, it happened. But that was usually in sword fighting or even jousting if they were accidentally impaled with a lance. Not fist fighting in such a brutal display of unfettered strength, it had scared the audience to see what the Prince was capable of doing with just his hands alone but he didn't give a shit about what any of them had to say about it. There was only one opinion that mattered to him, and that was yours.

He found it strange, to be seeking the opinion of someone he knew was lower in social standing than him, just a blacksmith's daughter.

And yet he found it more worthy than the opinion of the King himself.

Katsuki in truth wanted to seek you out the second he woke up that evening, lingering memories flashing through his mind of what he had done but when he saw Eijirou stood in front of his door in full armour with a sour look on his face, he knew he wouldn't get very far without having to put up a serious fight. So he conceded, he would wait in his room brooding, thinking of every possible thing he could say to you to make you see that he isn't as terrible as they say he is. That he is worthy of you, of your love.

Is that what he wanted? His eyebrows furrowed at the thought, he had never been loved before in his life. Sure his parents had "love" for him but he had never felt the loving caresses of someone he held dearly to his heart. He wasn't even fully sure if he did "love" you, he had never been in love before so how could he possibly know? It felt ludicrous, he hadn't even spoken to you yet his heart ached at the possible idea of rejection.

He couldn't handle all these questions, the back and forth of the emotions he was experiencing for the very first time. He had to see you, tonight. With his mind made up, he was quick to change into something a bit more suitable for walking out of the castle in, and something may have supplied in the back of his mind that he wanted to look good for you.

Since it was late in the evening, that usually meant Kirishima wouldn't be the one on guard duty but rather it would be Kaminari, and he was no match for Katsuki. He pulled open the door sharply, startling the man in full black shining armour who was staring with wide eyes at the Prince, Katsuki had natural height over Kaminari as well as muscle mass. Kaminari had no issues with backing down when his prince demanded something, but he knew Kirishima would have his ass for letting the Prince out.

"Your Majesty, you shouldn'—" Denki started, trying to keep his voice stern when Katsuki just delivered him a withering glare and pushed his way past the guard. "W-Wait! You can't lea—"

"Why not? Are you the King? Do you give me orders around here?" Katsuki snarled, still marching his way through the halls towards his new destination. Denki scrambled to try and keep pace, sweating building on the back of his neck as he imagined just how pissed Eijirou will be when he comes to swap shifts later.

"No, your Grace but Kirishima told me to make sure you stayed in your room tonight." Denki didn't miss the scoff Katsuki gave in return, nor did he miss the tightening of the fists that were curled at his sides.

"I don't give a shit, I'm leaving." Just like that, he whipped open one of the doors leading to the courtyard and eventually out into the streets of Corvos. He knows Kaminari will get an earful from the red-headed mountain of a man but even Kirishima knows it's nigh impossible to get Katsuki to do anything that wasn't his idea in the first place.

The oil lamps flickered, dancing his large shadow along the cobbled road and the brick of the homes of the people who were sleeping blissfully unaware that the Prince of Dragons was prowling the streets as if he were the beast himself. He doesn't know how he's remembered the route to get to the blacksmith he had seen you in last but it's like he's been here a million times before with how easily he turns corners and chooses which darkened streets to walk down in order to reach his destination.

The familiar sign that pointed to the old shop came into view and it was like a rush of adrenaline washed over his body, he felt excited to finally see you again to just bask in the tranquillity you provided him. As he turned the next corner, it was like a strange sense of deja vu when he heard loud shouting that he automatically knows is your father. But you're not outside like last time, the murky glass windows of the blacksmiths that also seemed to serve as your home were cracked open.

And just like the day of the tournament, it was like his heart was seized and all he could see was red. Something, no someone, once again laying hands upon what was his. But it was different to the time Katsuki had seen you slapped by your father and curled into Izuku's side for "protection", this time you were held what looked like a good few inches off of the floor with a tight grip around your throat.

This time, however, he did not hesitate in acting on his instincts. He launched himself forward, slamming his shoulder hard against the wooden door that held no resistance to the strength and stature of the large man. It splintered and fractured, flying off of its hinges to land with a harsh bang against the soot-covered tiled floor. The growl that escapes his throat is the furthest from human, and his eyes are blown wide when he hones in on the hand that is still squeezing your throat like a snake trying to constrict its prey.

Your father is quick to turn around in surprise at the loud noise, eyes widening at the man who was snarling. Katsuki quickly realises the man was drunk, taking out his anger and frustrations on his unsuspecting daughter and somehow that made it worse for Katsuki.

"Who the fuck do you think—" your father starts, drunkenly slurring his words and clearly not recognising the iconic ash blonde hair paired with eyes of red. Katsuki doesn't reply, simply lashing out when he realises the man isn't going to release you without some force. He leaps across the gap, slamming his arms around the man's midsection and tackling him to the ground with such aggressiveness that he has no choice but to let you go. Katsuki registers your surprised gasp, and the sound of you hitting the floor from the sudden release.

That's when he lets go of the side of him telling him to reel it in. His hand is curled into a large fist and is colliding over and over with the man's face below him, one hand gripped around his throat to hold him in place as he lays his fists laced with every ounce of his anger into the now bleeding man's features. He thinks he can faintly hear you shouting, pleading for him to stop.

It's not until he feels a hand against his shoulder, nails digging into his flesh through his shirt in an attempt to pull him off of the unconscious male. Your other hand is trying its hardest to wrap around the tensed muscle of his bicep, you're trying your hardest to pull him off but all he can do is bathe in the warmth that is your skin, your proximity. It's the first time he has ever been touched by you, and he never wants it to stop. Every part of his body is paying attention to you, listening to your hiccuping sobs as you try again with all your might to pull him back.

"P-Please! Get off him!" and you meet his gaze when Katsuki finally looks over his shoulder, his pupils dilate when they hone in on your face and you can't help but feel like you're being stared down by an actual dragon. Though it isn't as daunting as you might've believed, there was a warmth that was different to the kind you saw in green eyes just a week ago. This was genuine warmth, curiosity and an undefined softness to the way he gazed over your features for the first time. "Please.. you've won."

He finally listens, hands releasing the hold he had on the man's throat and he makes the move to get up off of the floor, you naturally stand with him and your head is craned back to look up at him. He hasn't said a thing to you yet but you can feel see the hundreds of questions dancing behind his eyes. "Are you okay?" is the question he picks first, eyes drifting to the imprint of a hand around your throat and his fingers itch at his side to feel the bruise for himself, to soothe over the irritated skin.

Instead, your hand brushes against the places he yearns to touch, and you hiss a little when you press against the indents of fingerprints. "I think so, you didn't need to trouble yourself with this your Grace." and he has to stop himself from visibly cringing at the title, right, he momentarily forgot about the status difference between the two of you.

"I wouldn't be a good Prince if I let a man lay his hands on a woman as beautiful as you." the words are easy to speak, and he even shocks himself at how easy it is to say such things. He was known for his harsh words and rougher treatment of those around him but he can't stop this warm fluffy feeling from filling his body, coating his mind until all he can think about is whispering sweet nothings into your ear all night long.

The man on the floor groaned, slurring something in his drunken hazy stupor. Katsuki's eyes shifted to something dark, glancing down at the man and then back up to you. He wasn't sure what the outcome would be if he went through with the plan he formulated in his mind in the last few seconds, but what he did know for sure is that if he left you here then you'd be on the receiving end of whatever your father has in store for you.

"Come with me," he breathes, eyes catching your own in the dim orange light of the nearly burnt-out oil lamp. He can see the surprise on your face, the way your eyebrows shoot up and your lips part as you try and form them to let you ask why, and what he even means. "Come with me to the Keep, promise I'll keep you safe there."

"But.." your eyes glance down to your father, the blood pouring from his nose makes you cringe. Not that blood has you queasy but the reminder of what could've happened if you didn't pull the prince away from him. "Will you not get into trouble? With the King?" and the innocent way you're looking at him has his stomach doing flips, swallowing thickly around the lump in his throat.

"Sweetness, do you really think the King could tell me what to do?" he has a smug grin on his face when he says it, and you believe him too. He had never been known to conform to the King's rules, always acting on his own—within reason of course. "Promise there'll be no issue."

You chew on your bottom lip, eyes dancing between his own as you try and gauge if he was telling the truth or not. He was a prince, and you were just a lowborn girl, what would a prince want with you? Does he want to know how the other half lives? To strip you bare and mock you for how you aren't as trim and proper as the highborn ladies he most definitely has bed before?

Katsuki could see the turmoil in your eyes, the way you gnawed at your lip in debate. His heart clenched at the idea of having to leave you here, he wouldn't force you to come with him but it would kill him to know he could've prevented whatever is to come if you refuse his offer. Just as he was about to try and convince you one more time, you stepped over your father and ultimately closer to him. "Okay, let's go."

For the first time in a long time, Katsuki smiled. Not because he was staring someone down on the battlefield, not because he managed to win an argument. But a genuine smile, a warm one that made his cheeks flush lightly and his canines just peeking past his lips. His eyes were warm molten pools of lava you let yourself be consumed by, followed his backward steps towards the open doorway until you were both back out into the street. "You ready for this? There's no going back if you come with me now."

You knew that, you knew that the second you made the decision to free yourself from the shackles of your own life and move on, you needed this more than anything. "Of course I am, do you doubt me, my prince?", it felt exhilarating to give yourself over to someone of such power, to let him guide you step by step until you were so far down the street you couldn't see the crooked wooden sign pointing to your store. Your heart raced with the prospect of exploring more of this feeling with him.

Katsuki grinned again, this time showing his gums with a wolfish grin. It would've been terrifying if you couldn't see the light pink tips of his ears nestled against his messy head of hair and the band of pink across the bridge of his nose. He wasted no time then, holding his hand out for you, the orange flickering light of the lamps bouncing off the numerous golden rings that adorned his hands.

You didn't make him wait. You slipped your hand into his, and the warmth that engulfed you was all-consuming, head-to-toe shivers rocking their way through your body with a soft laugh. And Katsuki just returns the gentle smile that made its way onto your face unknowingly, he hadn't felt something so warm in such a long time. He had been standing next to his dragons when they breathed fire and didn't flinch from the heat, but this kind of warmth that radiated from your now-linked hands was something he could find himself getting lost in.

"Hope you can run fast." He grins, and just as you whisper a quiet 'what?' to his question, his hand tightens slightly to make sure you don't slip away from his hand and then he's yanking you with him. He's much larger than you, one of his strides being two of yours and when he's running it's near impossible to keep up with him. The city goes by in a blur, barely able to take note of what route he's taking you to get into the Keep.

Katsuki glances over his shoulder when he hears you yelp when you barely just catch yourself tripping over one of the raised cobbles in the road, and ever the impulsive man he takes a moment to stop and sweep you off of your feet—quite literally. He has one arm hooked under your knees, and the other behind your back and hoisting you high off of the ground and against his chest. "So slow," and the tone he takes is playful, surprising you that the Prince is known to be so vicious, the one you saw smash a living man's skull with his bare fists, could be playful.

He's already moving again, not a full-out sprint but it's still much quicker than you have ever travelled before. You can see the way his muscles clench and feel the way his heart is beating against your hand that's pressed against his chest to steady yourself in his arms but he didn't seem to be in any sort of strain with carrying you as well as running. "Hey, not all of us are well-trained warlords."

He snickers, eyes not drifting down to look at you as he continues to manoeuvre through gates and darting between shadows to ensure he isn't seen just yet by the guards who are lining the walls of the Keep. "Warlord? Is that how you see me?" his eyebrow is quirked, and you can see the smirk playing on his face when the light graces his features every time he passes by an oil lamp.

"Are you not?" you make sure to quiet your voice down to just a whisper when you finally pass through grand oak doors that you had seen from a distance so many times before, the Keep was much warmer than you expected even in the dead of the night, was that because the royals were rumoured to have dragons blood running through their veins? Did they need the heat to remain comfortable?

You don't see much from how you're positioned on Katsuki's chest, his shoulders were broad but you could just see the beautiful marble work as you passed by, that's when you realise he's moving with barely any noise being made. You suppose it comes with the trade of being a seasoned fighter, you learn to make sure you're silent even in your footwork so your enemy never knew your approach.

"Not anymore, at least not right now anyway." He supplies, and you raise an eyebrow. Typically warlord was a title given to people who were the commanders of armies during wars, did that mean it was only during active wars? Not right now surely meant he was anticipating a possible war, it was definitely not your place to push for details on what he meant. You weren't important enough.

Katsuki abruptly stopped, his back pressing against the cool black marble wall just at the corner of the long hallway. You went to question him about the sudden stop when he turned to look at you, shaking his head quickly and mouthing a 'quiet'. Then you heard it, multiple metallic footsteps—multiple people.

"When I gave you one job, I fully expected you to be capable of doing it well." came the voice of one man you couldn't recognise, but Katsuki knew that to be the voice of Kirishima, and he sounded pissed. "You only had to stand in front of his door and make sure he didn't get out, and you couldn't even do that, could you?"

The next voice was not as deep, even a little whinier which sounded much more childish compared to the man who was giving the scolding. "Ei, you know I can't stop him. Why do you think you're the only one he sees as a challenge? Because you're huge! Like him!" Katsuki has to bite his bottom lip to stop the laugh at the ridiculous comment coming from one of his guards. Kaminari isn't wrong, Katsuki only ever saw Eijirou as a challenge when they came head to head.

Soon enough the voices were fading away, Katsuki keeping the two of you submerged completely in the inky black of the shadows before he's slipping around the corner and walked down a long hall that is seemingly empty. There are no other doors, only one large one at the end of the hall that you come to the realisation a little late that inside will be the Prince's quarters. With an adjust of his hold on you, he managed to shoulder the large door open wide enough for the two of you to slip on through.

It was just as lavish as you might've thought for a Prince's personal bedroom, it was much warmer in here than it was in the halls but you could see the large source of the warmth was coming from the gigantic stone hearth. Katsuki gently put you down on your own two feet, he didn't move until you did. He watched as you took slow careful steps further into the room, wide-eyed glancing between so many different personal artefacts of his. He had never brought another person into his personal bedroom before.

You meandered naturally towards the large fireplace, just above was a gigantic broadsword that you were certain no man could ever wield. It was jagged on one edge, partially melted as if it once belong to a much larger sword. Off to both sides of the fireplace were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were filled to their max capacity, a lot of them were nameless or written in some ancient text that was impossible for you to decipher. Next was a desk, just before the bookshelves that had been angled to face outwards towards the large window that was cracked open enough you could hear the faint sounds of the ocean.

Along his desk were many scrolls, partially opened or fully sealed ready to be sent off to whomever the Prince had to speak with. There was red wax ready to be melted, you had never seen the Prince as someone who would write their own letters—you just assumed they'd have someone who did all that for them. There were stacks of golden coins, more than you had ever seen in your life all lined up in perfect rows and amongst them were diamonds, actual diamonds and rubies that glistened in the flickering orange flame of the fire.

Katsuki watched you all the while, it reminded him of a new pet inspecting their new home, how you were carefully glancing around but not touching anything; just simply investigating to see if it were worthy. He hoped it would be, maybe he could eventually convince you to stay in here with him for a while longer. He can just imagine how beautiful you must look in the morning sun that would rise just over the horizon that his window is perfectly positioned to capture.

He watches with a sharp gaze when you wander past his desk, rounding around to a moderately large metal basin-like dish that was sat upon lumps of coal Katsuki had reheated just earlier than evening. You were investigating the various engraved symbols along the side, leaning closer to get a better look.

"It's a dragon egg," he starts, somehow much closer to you again without even noticing he had moved. You stand up to your full height in surprise, turning to look at him but his gaze was directed downwards towards the metal dish. "It's one of my dragons, but I haven't been able to get it to hatch." His tone is almost sad, and your eyebrows furrow together.

He lifts the lid off of the dish, a rush of steam billowing out to reveal a beautiful shimmering red egg, it was much larger than anything you had ever seen before—in terms of eggs, that is. "Why won't it hatch? Is it alive?" It made no sense for something to not hatch, didn't they have a natural timer for how long they should remain in their shells?

Katsuki hums, a large hand brushing against the egg, his thumb rolling over the grooves of the scales. "Very much alive, they're not quite other species that are born into eggs." his fingers tuck around the egg, hoisting it up carefully until he was holding it in two hands. You could see the steam coming off of it as he investigated it a little closer, he seemed just as intrigued by it as you; like a child with a special interest in something.

"You see, with dragons, they're actually unable to hatch until they find their rider." He moves around you, stepping closer towards the open fire and you follow close behind him, quiet as you hang off of his every word. "In the two years I've had this egg, it hasn't shown any signs of breaching. So that means I'll never be its rider, as much as I wish I were."

He carefully held the egg closer to the fire, angling it just so that when your eyes adjusted to the flame being so close you could see a faint outline. It was a tiny dragon, curled up in an egg and you could in fact see its beating heart. It was beating fast, Katsuki noticed it too and soothed a hand over it once again. "It's most likely missing the heat, that's the thing with live eggs. If they have no heat source then it will petrify."

"Is it possible to ride more than one dragon?" You asked quietly, scared to break the gentle air around the two of you as he carefully placed the egg once again in its nest of heated coals and replaced the lid.

He shrugs, "No one has ever documented it happening but they also haven't ever documented it not happening." His voice is much softer than it has ever been in many years, and he finds that it doesn't bother him as much as he thought it should. He doesn't feel like he's under threat, but rather it feels natural and peaceful. That anger he had grown up alongside is nonexistent when he sees the way you look up at him with such devoted curiosity.

He felt the urge to continue the conversation, to divulge you in your curiosities about the world of Dragons and their riders but he could see the way your eyes were slightly glazed over, and how you kept hiding a yawn behind your hand when you looked away from him. "You must be tired," he starts, moving away from you and towards the large fire putting another small log atop of the flame. "You can take my bed for the night."

You gape at the offer, he says it over the shoulder like it's some very casual thing but it's most definitely not—one simply doesn't just sleep in the Prince's bed. "Oh, no, I couldn't. That's your bed after all I—"

"I insist, are you going to refuse an order from your Prince?" he says with a glint in his eye, perfect eyebrow arched and if it weren't for the quirk of his mouth into a playful smirk then you might've thought he was being serious about you disobeying royalty. "I'll be fine, I have other places to sleep I assure you."

You churn over the information in your head, glancing at the much too large bed for a singular person, you were tired and you couldn't exactly go wander the halls like he could to find another place to sleep. "Well, if you insist." you finally relent and he smiles, genuinely, at you.

He moves towards a door on the far wall that you failed to notice, it was embedded so perfectly it blended in with the woodwork of the many shelves. "There should be some clean nightshirts in the chest just to your right, feel free to change into one for the night." and just like that, he pulls open the door and leaves you in the warm room, the fire crackling and hissing to fill the silence. But it didn't feel as awkward as one might believe, it was comfortable.

You wasted no time in opening the large dark wood chest to reveal an array of different coloured nightshirts, knowing the Prince would most likely not be returning tonight. Stripping yourself of the grimy soot covered dress made you inwardly cringe, had he really carried you like that? Embarrassed and shame-filled you threw the new nightshirt over your body, it was a large shirt naturally but on you, it was like you were wearing the shirt of a giant.

Approaching the bed, it was gigantic, four large wooden posts holding up a sheer white material that hung like curtains each still tied around the four posts. Along the bed, were at least six grand pillows you could see and then large fur pelts that you realised upon touching were in fact bear and wolf. They were lovely and soft, but heavy, how did he not overheat sleeping with these atop of him with the fire still burning? Deciding to shimmy your way into the bed, trying to not disturb the neat layout too much you realised you may have fallen into a trap.

A comfortable trap. The bed itself was stuffed with some of the softest material you had ever felt, and your muscles instantly relaxed. How could the Prince give up a bed made from probably the finest sheep in the entire realm? The thoughts drifted through your mind slowly, soon succumbing to the weight of the many pelts and the crackling of the fire.

Just in the next room was the Prince himself, it wasn't an extra bedroom at all. It was a study, and the only 'bed' would be the large chaise lounge chair that he often used to relax into after a long day of organising the King's men. But he had no choice, so Katsuki relaxed into the chair with a huff, throwing an arm over his eyes as his muscles loosened reluctantly.

It made no sense still, this confusion was starting to piss him off. He didn't understand why he felt so calm around you, or why he felt compelled to stay in the very room next door instead of seeking out an actual bed in one of the many guest rooms. But just as that anger started to bubble over, he'd remember the way your eyes shone in his direction when he was talking to you about the dragon egg, and how you were so wrapped up in his presence that you missed how he was completely enamoured by your own.

Forcing himself to lay on his side, he stared out of the bay window staring at The Pandamonium in the distance until his eyes fell heavy and he was soon asleep. Dreaming once again, but this time there was no pain and no horrid visions of his impending future. Instead, he was gifted with a sight he can only wish to come true, it was you and himself, atop of his dragon and the wind blowing through your hair as you cling to him for dear life. He'd never let you fall of course, but he can't help but laugh at the way you squeal when Xol shifts to the side to catch a wind current.

He just hopes it to come true sooner rather than later.

...

Red eyes open slowly to the sound of seagulls squawking, bright sunbeams instantly causing Katsuki to groan and close his eyes again. It takes a moment for the blonde prince to realise he's squashed his large frame onto the chaise lounge, and that's why his muscles ache so much.

Then comes the flood of memories of you, his heart instantly picking up at the fact you were just on the other side of the door. It felt ridiculous to think about, how he almost felt gleeful like a young child being gifted his first sword. He'd never felt this kind of happiness towards another person before, but that didn't mean he wanted it to stop. If anything he wanted to experience it more, something unknowingly drawing him in.

Katsuki hadn't even realised he had opened the door, peering into the darkness of the once-lit room—the fire must've gone out during the night. He can see the small lump in his bed, bundled in all the pelts he had hunted himself over the years and something supplies in the back of his mind that you're finally safe here. There's no father to beat you, no predatory traitors to try and ruin your name and he had never felt more relieved.

Yet, he doesn't understand it and knows only one person who may give him an answer that will help him come to terms with this new warmth that's settled deep in his heart. He backs into the room he once came, hastily redressing himself in the same clothes as the night before so as to not barge into the room where you're sleeping.

The halls are empty as Katsuki stalks through them, it's hardly the morning but he knows the person he's looking for will most definitely be awake. He passes by large arches that look down upon a courtyard, eyes narrowing down toward the small commotion. It seems Kirishima has gotten Kaminari away early for his blunder the night before doing training drills.

Kirishima has his back to the blonde, but Kaminari briefly glances up in annoyance at having to do the hundreds of pushups he's been commanded to do to catch Katsuki's shit-eating grin and a mischievous glint in his eye. "H-Hey, wait.." Kaminari mumbles, earning a glare from Kirishima who barks at him to stop slacking off and that's when the prince finally takes the turn that will lead him to his possible answers.

The large oak door is wide open, a natural breeze floating through the botanical gardens and with it comes the sweet smell of so many flowers it's almost nauseating. Usually, Katsuki would turn his nose up in disgust at the sweet smells, much preferring the smell of smoke and ash that comes with riding a dragon but his mind is briefly supplied with the idea of laying in a field of wildflowers with you next to him, picking the tiny flowers he had trampled on his way down to lay with you, and the smile you're giving him is just as warm as the sun that is setting on the horizon.

He's shaken from the thought when he hears light chatter of multiple women he's come to recognise as the Queen's ladies in waiting, he stands with broad shoulders once he's close to the small sheltered area where his mother is sat chattering like a hen with the other women of the court, she loved to bring them all out here to her garden to talk about things men had no business knowing.

"Your Grace," one of the ladies in waiting supplies, Katsuki's eyes glide over to her and he nods at her, he knows her to be by the name of Mina. She came from Besouris many years ago seeking safety, and his mother had leapt at the opportunity to have such a beautiful young woman at her side. "My Queen, Prince Katsuki is here to see you."

Mitsuki finally glances away from the glass of freshly made orange juice to see her son standing there, and she definitely doesn't miss the soot on his shirt that is faintly in the shape of someone he had to carry. "Ah, my son. You're never up this early, and you never come into the gardens," she smirks when Katsuki rolls his eyes, but she realises he isn't snapping quite as quickly as he used to. "What can I do for you?"

"I have to talk to you about something," he starts, eyeing the way the other women his mother was entertaining for the morning all seemed to perk up once he speaks. "Alone."

His mother huffs, "Fine, if you could all give us a moment." she says and it's almost instantaneous how everyone gets up and is already moving out of the gardens after the Queen's request. He waits until he's certain even the handmaidens were out of earshot before he approaches, his large frame making the small wooden seat he settles in look comically small. "Tell me what's on your mind."

Katsuki glances at her from the corner of his eye, it's now or never. If he doesn't speak to her then he might never get the chance to ask again, he has to know just what is making him feel this way. "I'm conflicted about something," he sighs, running a hand through his hair before continuing. "I'm just so confused, I don't know why I can't feel angry around this one person. They make my heart hurt, Mother, it's like I'm suffocating every second when I'm not around them. Every part of my mind is occupied with the idea of them, being with them. It's intoxicating."

He's since buried his head in his hands, staring intently down at his dirtied boots and his mother is silent for a moment. His mind starts to wage war on itself, she must think he's gone crazy, that the years of fighting have taken over, that he's finally going to succumb to the madness—

Until she laughs, it's not a mocking laugh but light and it makes his heart wrench nonetheless, it's something he'd only ever hear when his mother was being Mitsuki, not the Queen. "Katsuki," she taps on his knee, and he hesitantly glances up from the ground to meet her eyes, and her eyebrows are pinched with a gentle smile on her face. "You need not worry with those thoughts in your mind, you're not going mad. You're in love."

Is that what Katsuki wanted to hear? His heart beats a little faster at the thought of being in love, but he had never felt this kind of pain in his chest before. Was it even possible to fall in love so quickly? He had hardly even spoken to you outside of last night, he had seen you across the arena when he was crushing a man's head with his bare hands and again when you were being beat by your father and yet, something in his gut told him his mother was right; he was in love.

"Do you remember the stories I told you when you were younger? About your uncle?" And Katsuki casts her a glare, of course, he remembers the stories of the curse. She never told him how it came to be but rather what it did to men like him, men like his uncle. Mitsuki doesn't let the withering glare deter her, "Maybe it's time I tell you the whole truth about that curse. It's up to you to believe the truth or not."

The Queen relaxes more into her chair, eyes finally drifting away from her only son to glance out at the sea that twinkles with the orange of the rising sun. She knew the day would come when she'd have to either explain the curse to him, but she imagined it would be when he was dying from it.

"The curse as you know has always been a hindrance to our family, the scholars say it's a price we must pay to have control of the dragons. It started with the first King of our house, Ken'ichi, a formidable man. The one who rode Udun and secured our place on top of the food chain.

It is said that the man was insatiable when it came to power. His pride and joy were his dragons, and when he was faced with the decision to choose either his wife or his dragons.. he chose the dragons. So his wife had travelled to Besouris on the next ship, venturing into the ancient cities to find the one she knew could exact the revenge she was seeking."

Mitsuki spares a glance over to Katsuki, unsurprised to see he was in fact scowling at her. He had heard many tales about what might be lurking on the other side of The Fading Sea, tales of witchcraft and other things that seemed more like childish stories.

"When the old Queen had found the temple she was searching for, she ran into a woman. A sorceress, apparently she dealt in blood magic," Katsuki can see the uncomfortable expression that spreads over his mother's face and it makes his stomach tense in anticipation. "You see, the sorceress said she could do this simple task for the Queen under one condition. Her firstborn son should be the condition, and of course the Queen was unsure of what to do, but the Sorceress revealed to her that she was already with child. Her firstborn son, believe it or not.

And so, the Queen agreed to the sacrifice. She just didn't imagine that it would entail her being cut open and having her child forcibly removed before he was ready to come into this world. The Sorceress was then said to place a curse on the line of firstborn sons of our house. One that apparently plagued the men with anger comparable to the Dragon he sits upon, and if he were to never find his "true one", he'd simply succumb to his madness and die. The Sorceress believed that no man with the power to control Dragons would ever find someone fitting enough to fill his appetite so it was essentially just a curse to kill any potential heirs of the throne."

Katsuki is silent for a while, mulling over the "truth" of the curse in his head. It wasn't entirely outlandish that there was a possibility of something happening like that in Besouris, it was the land of the "free folk", people who didn't live under one rule but different cities had their leaders. It was more.. barbaric over there than it was here, from the stories Katsuki had heard when talking to soldiers who had been forced to fight many years ago against the Besouri who tried to infiltrate Illgis.

Eventually, he scoffs, shaking his head and standing up. "You know that story is bullshit, they made that up to scare us away from stepping foot into Besouris." his mother just shrugs, she had told him it was up to him to believe it or not and she knew now it was up to him to come to the correct decision; she just hopes she's right about him being in love and that maybe her baby boy would be saved from a horrendous death.

He leaves his mother there in the garden, his only goal is to retreat back to his room so he ignores the surprised voice of Kirishima who calls after him, most likely about to demand an answer from the blonde as to where he had run off to last night. But Katsuki has always been much faster than the man who was coated head-to-toe in the finest armour, he rushes to get through the large wooden door leading his bedroom and smirks to himself when he hears Kirishima curse just on the other side of his breath, Katsuki will be sure to get him back for that when he next trains with him.

Whilst he's leaning against the door, ensuring that Kirishima is leaving, he's entirely unaware of the set of eyes that were widened in surprise at the sudden arrival but also at how young the Prince looked when he was smirking. It's not until he finally relaxes to the sound of metallic footsteps moving away and his eyes drift to look back into the room, and it's like everything stands still in time.

His eyes lock with your own, and he swears his palms get sweatier like he was some teenager once again, his heart is practically imprinting a shape of itself on the inside of his ribcage when he admires the way the much too large nightshirt is hanging loosely off of one of your shoulders and your hair was wet—had you bathed? Was he really gone for that long? He stands naturally taller, eyes unwavering as you scramble to make yourself more presentable and he finds it oddly endearing to see that you care just as much as he does about appearances when in front of one another.

"Uh, your Grace!" you smile, and Katsuki doesn't hide his facial reaction at the title but you continue anyway. "I hope you don't mind that I used the bath, I didn't want to make your room stink even more like a blacksmith."

He still doesn't find that anger, one that he should've probably felt about you going through his own personal items to have a bath but he doesn't. He feels a gooey warmth in his chest that you felt safe enough, that you trusted him enough to not lash out, and make yourself at home. "Of course not, you're more than welcome to do anything you'd like." It's true, even if it felt odd for him to say.

He's certain he'd do anything for you, and ensure you had everything you could ever wish for.

[Glossary] | [Masterlist] | [Previous] | [Next]

credit for the background image/banner: @vampyrsm please do not plagiarise, or recommend my work to places such as TikTok.

#bakugou x reader #bakugo katuski x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugo katsuki x you #bakugou katsuki x you #bnha fanfiction #katsuki x you #bakugo x you #bnha x you #bnha x self insert #katsuki imagine #mha fantasy au #fantasy au #long fic #series #The Forbidden Flame #'The Forbidden Flame'

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shittybundaskenyer · 2 years

Text

✹ ▬ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘

rating: Explicit

pairing: Arthur Morgan x F!Reader

summary: A curious evening in the Parlour House when you meet a certain deputy.

warnings: low honor Arthur (low honor arthur but he's not a total asshole), deputy Arthur, reader is a thief, strangers to lovers, lust at first sight, catching some feelings, smut, oral sex (female receiving), arthur eats pussy like a champ even if he's low honor, i’m kinda thinkin’ about a part 2?

word count: 5355

a/n: I first stared writing this for a request but it turned into it's own thing. I'm thinkin' about continuing this with another part...... with some more spice and some more thievery. (ღ˘⌣˘ღ)

MASTERLIST | ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN | NEXT PART

The new deputy looks at you across the crowded Parlour House, watching you from behind the golden rim of his glass, the whiskey quickly disappearing from it. Only a rock of ice remains, and the glacier-colored pierce of his stare, so blue, so distracting in the yellow evening inside the stuffy saloon. Rhodes' crimson earth bathes in navy shadows outside now, only broken by golden circles of lamplight. The sun is gone; dipped behind mountains far in the distance.

The deputy is alone, like usual, drinking away pains you don’t know about. Maybe he tries to drown the memories of past lovers into honey-colored poison, or maybe he’s just a drunkard like the rest of them, like the Grays who supposedly protect this town with their life. It’s funny, leaving lives of innocents cradled in the palm of fools. That’s why this place is your favorite to steal, to whisper lies with prettily painted lips into the ears of the menfolk playing cards upstairs. It's too easy.

But that deputy—he watches. Sometimes runs his gaze over you when you chat up the men dressed in nice suits at the bar, or when you order only a beer and sit in a corner, watching, waiting. For your prey of the night. A drunk lady with a silver chain around her neck, pearls and a nice hairpin, or an old man with wine-burgundy cheeks and a hundred dollars neatly tucked into his breast pocket.

Tonight, tonight he looks like he’s had enough of your games.

Your beer sits unfinished in front of you, piss warm now, the bottle’s neck dewy from the humid air inside. A large palm slides it away from before you on the table and it leaves a wet ring in the wood. It’s a well-worn hand, calloused around the roots of the fingers and at the heel of the palm, life-line divided into two. You look up and almost filch from the same pair of turquoise eyes.

Deputy Callahan.

The deputy sits down in front of you, blocking your view almost entirely with his broad frame. He wears no hat today, nor the six-pointed brass sheriff star. Honey-brown locks fall into his eyes as he leans over the table, circling a finger around the rim of your beer glass, making droplets of lukewarm water roll down the amber glass. You smile at him when your gazes meet, something like a lightning striking red earth, and your eyes glint.

“Can I help ya, Mister?” your voice is more sweet than the stolen candy tucked into your hidden pocket. He knows you’re playing a dangerous game, you can see it in the barely noticeable squint of his eyes. He watches you like a hunter watches a grazin’ doe. A game of predator and prey, cat and mouse. But you're a wolf dressed in sheepskin, and he knows it all too well.

He pulls a pocket watch from his vest, a golden, engraved little thing that tick-tick-ticks at the rhythm of your heart. It’s a distraction, one that works all to well, masking the frown pulling on his eyebrows as he looks down at it. It’s past eleven, the hour of magic. This is when you make a second round around the drunk patrons, chatting them up and robbing them blind while they’re too deep in the amber haze of whiskey and beer.

Deputy Callahan knows this.

"I ain't in the mood for your games, little Miss," he grumbles, startling you with his deep voice. Shit. He really sees through you. Probably spent his evenings observing you twirling around the saloon like an actress, a working girl, a bath girl, anything you wanted to be. Maybe he only played the role of a miserable fool, a drunkard deputy. Maybe he’s smarter than he lets on.

"You ain't in the mood for anythin', Mister,” you answer while you pull away the beer bottle from before him and swallow down the few gulps of warm drink. It pulls your nose into a small frown, and does nothing to calm your nerves. But this is your stage. You won’t cower before a man who thinks he’s the law now here. This is not how it works in Rhodes. “Besides, do ya see cards in my hand?" you fan your fingers over the table, nimble, clever fingers. You have the audacity to smile again, all sweet and pretty as you look up at him. "Yeah, you thought you was watchin' me, but I watched you, too, Mister Callahan," you say his name like it’s a secret, but he doesn’t flinch. Not in the slightest. He’s such a strange man. “Closely,” you add, quiet now.

"Is that a threat?"

He leans back on his chair, crosses his arms over his chest. They’re strong, well-muscled arms, dusted with brown hair and faint scars. He scratches his beard, eyes never leaving you. His watch still hangs halfway-out of his breast pocket.

"'Course not," you fan your lashes against your cheek and push a lock of hair behind your ear, the pearl necklace feeling heavy in the hidden strip of fabric sewn into your dress under your breast. “I jus’ thought you looked… sad.”

It’s the truth. Every heated evening the deputy only kissed the bottle.

“Well, it ain’t your goddamn business.” He could kill you with his voice. Spear you on it, talk you to death. It soothes you, makes the little, curious night bugs vibrate in your ribcage.

"You know, ya should live a little, Mister," you lean a little closer, over the table. The neckline of your dress in not too deep, but just enough that he flicks his eyes from your smile to your collarbones.

"What do ya know of livin', little Miss?"

"Come with me and I'll show ya."

So this is how you end up perched on the railing upstairs, looking down at drunk fools and chattering ladies like angels plotting the killing of gods. The deputy is silent beside you, his face still masked by that thoughtful frown. He can’t make sense of you. You confuse him, maybe charm him.

You don’t even think when you grab into his shoulder and make him look where you’re pointing downstairs. “Do ya see that man with that ugly hat?”

Mr. Callahan nods and you watch how his hair falls into his eyes from the movement. He’s a handsome feller, strong-jawed and tall. You wish he would be not so uptight.

“Yeah,” he drawls and leans on the railing, one elbow next to yours. It’s so warm it almost startles you.

“I always send him one more whiskey when he’s had too many already. He sings real nice to the ladies, about lace bloomers and garters and rosy lips,” you can’t be distracted so you share your little observations instead, and they spill from you like water from a riverbed during a storm. It’s good to finally have someone listen. “And that lady, she always hits his husband with her purse when he loses at poker,” you point to another person, sitting near the poker table with a flute of champagne in her hand. “Or those girls, they lure men into that room downstairs and you can hear him scream within like two minutes.”

He doesn’t say anything, the only reaction you get from him is a small twitch in the corner of his mouth when the two girls drag the feller they was chatting up into the secluded room back behind the bar, where a red oil lamp burns.

“All this civilization and we’re still livin’ like animals. Chasin’ the pleasures of the flesh,” you sigh. Mr. Callahan looks down at you, handsome face halfway-obscured by his shoulder.

“And killin’ each other for money,” he whispers. Gooseflesh blooms over your arms. He’s smart. He’s real smart. Maybe you’re in a lot more trouble than you first thought. “So, little Miss, you come here every night to laugh at folk?”

He’s mocking you. You just know it.

And that nickname, that’s what means you’re in danger. Even though it sounds sweet when it leaves his lips, it’s submerged in venom and masked with sugar. Cyanide inside a peach seed.

“I come here to have fun. To be someone else I’m not,” you’re spilling over, wanting to say everything and nothing. He’s—He’s just so good at listenin’, at judging you with only glances of glacier-blue eyes. Maybe you’ve been alone for too long, or maybe he’s just playing you better than you play him. Cat and mouse. Predator and prey. The roles changing every second you gaze into each other’s eyes. Maybe at the end of the night you can find his soul in there, masked by mirrors of blue-green lakewater, or maybe he can capture you, caught red-handed with your stolen treasures and a chain around your wrist.

“Are ya an actress?” he asks, still looking at you, still observing every twitch of your body. He reads between the lines, because even though you’re mostly sunshine and sweetness, there’s a secret you keep in darkness. A lie you live every day when the sun settles and the moon can’t see.

You think on your answer a little. Chew it like raw meat. If he’s really as smart as he’s not trying to be, than he will see through the mirage you constructed from cherry-tinted lips and soft fabric. You turn towards him and smile again, because you like playing this game. You like danger and you like him, playing along, letting him be pulled by a string dipped in honey, wrapped around your little finger.

“I’m anything folk want me to be. I’m a working girl, a wife, a lover, a bandit, a mother,” you tell him, quiet. Something glints in his eyes. Something like the euphoria of victory. “A chimera, an illusion.”

Mr. Callahan lays his open palm in front of you on the railing. You catch his meaning and lay your own onto his, fingers fanned out and a bit trembling from the warmth of him. He looks them over, swipes a thumb along your middle- and forefinger. Nimble hands. A thief’s hands.

“So a thief,” he murmurs, voice gone soft, like he’s not believing his eyes. You want to pull away your hand but he doesn’t let you. He digs his thumb in next to your life-line, not hard but firm. The line is divided in two, just like his.

A half-crescent lays in your skin in the wake of his fingernail.

“No, no Mr. Callahan,” you shake your head and let him touch you. You can’t run if the hunter in him pounces anyway. Callouses catch on your flesh. Trigger-trained, hardened by the polished ironwood grip of his gun. “An artist!”

It’s the truth, just colored into a rainbow. A con artist, a cheater, a puppeteer. That’s what you are. A lie so beautifully constructed you can almost believe it. But oh, he’s smart. So smart you want to hit him. To fuckin’ kiss him.

“And what are ya gonna be for me?” he whispers now, the question tickling the side of your face. You didn’t see him lean closer. He’s playing a game too, a game that makes blood rush into your belly, between your thighs.

“A friend maybe. Or more, if ya want it,” you pull away your hand, and make sure you brush his chest in the process. Yes, just there, in that small breast pocket, there’s his watch. His eyes still on yours, ocean-colored and glinting in the yellow light. You smile at him again, how could you not? You’re in your element still, he’s warm next to you and the golden watch fits just right into your palm. The corner of his mouth twitches, those full lips almost pulling into a smirk. Almost.

The watch goes right under your skirt, into a hidden pocket when you step back, playing the innocent girl, blinking once, twice, and just then looking up at him. You right the sleeve of your shirt.

Mr. Callahan didn’t notice. You still have your charm.

You stole from a lawman. If this doesn’t get you hanged, nothing will.

But the air changes. You can feel it, something heavy lingering above you; something blue inside the golden haze of the chandelier hanging in front of you. Mr. Callahan puts a palm over his gun belt, just where his six-shooter sits neatly tucked into a leather holster. That movement too, has a telltale weight.

"More you say?" He looks down at you while he pulls a cartridge from the belt. It's false-golden, not a treasure but a curse. He twirls it between two fingers, holds it up, just before your nose, and behind it, his sea-colored gaze watches. He unwraps you with his stare, claws down the layers of the measly disguise until nothing is left.

Just you.

Wide-eyed and caught in a trap so well crafted you didn't realize it was deadly.

The deputy smirks, pulls out his revolver and loads the cartridge into one of the empty chambers. The cylinder clicks back with a high sound, one that quiets the bubbling noise of merriment inside the Parlour House.

You stand there, like a deer caught in front of a roaring train at midnight, blinded by its light.

"Here's what you're gonna be for me," he says lowly, spinning the gun in his hand and then pressing its barrel above your kidney so fast you barely register how it happens. "Come with me."

"Mr. Callahan I—," you try to protest, but you're already in front of a door, no one bothered by the little scene you're causing. It's like the deputy is not even threatening you with a gun. There's only one god here in Rhodes, and it's not the law. It's the man who's holding a six-shooter to your back. It's violence. Money. Alcohol.

Lemoyne is a world ruled by vices.

"Shh. I'm not gonna hurt ya if you do as I say, little thief."

You gasp. You can hear it in his voice, the edge of knowledge. 'Course he knew. Handsome fellas like him know too much. Know what hides under a too pretty girl's skirt, behind her laughter, glinting in her eyes.

Lies. Beautiful, easy lies.

"I ain't no thief," you're not giving up this easy, even though you're in the B2 room now and he's locking the door. The key turns with a deadly click, like a buckshot fired.

"Yeah, yeah. Could feel your slender little hand just right under my vest," he brushes away your protests with a flick of his wrist as he comes closer, but the gun is back in its holster. That's good for now; the viper lulled back into sleep.

"What—"

"I may be a fool, but I ain't stupid, little Miss."

The deputy adjusts his gun belt and invades your space, stands just before you. You take a step back and find yourself pressed into the dusty wall with rotten, torn wallpaper and bug-eaten wood crumbling around you. The red gloom of the only burning oil lamp in the room makes him look dangerous. Makes him look like no lawman, more like a killer. Eyes too blue, teeth too sharp, hands too rough.

"Are ya gonna arrest me?"

"No," he shakes his head and it makes a lock of honey-brown hair fall into his eyes. Right now he looks wild like an animal, like the wind, like a man with no gods, nor laws. Maybe he too, is more than he lets on.

"Then what do you want?"

He grabs your arm, strong fingers wrapping around you like a cord of rope, and just as rough in texture. He turns you, makes you face the wall and you tremble from the compromising position. He feels so close, too close, his chest hot against your back.

He huffs a breath just behind your ear, making you shiver when he speaks, palms flattening out over your shoulder-blades.

"Don't move," it's an order and the voice that whisper-shouts it is an outlaw's.

“Thought you was playin’ me, ain’t ya, sweet girl?”

“I—”

“Shh, darlin’. No shame in losin’.”

One hand slides over the waist of your dress, a bit lower where it parts at the side. It's like he knows there are hidden pockets there. He pulls out a pearl necklace from one of them, twirls it around and drops it to the worn burgundy rug under you. Then a pocket watch.

His pocket watch.

"I'm gonna take this back," he dangles it beside you for a second, then tucks it away, back to its original place in his breast pocket. "I should take the others too. It's stolen property after all," he muses, for fun now, enjoying how gooseflesh rises on your neck when his lips almost brush your ear.

Christ alive, you're frightened and so fucking aroused it makes your knees weak.

You huff out something that can sound as a chuckle, and he takes it as your answer, emptying your pockets while your legs try not to buckle. He's not a deputy, you just know it. None of them is smart enough to know about hidden pockets under a skirt. To know about all of them.

"How do you know 'bout them hidden pockets so well?" you ask, make him stop in his movements. There are no more stolen goods. The hands retreat and you turn, eye-to-eye with him again. A smile hides in his eyes but never reaches his lips.

"I have a few friends who are experts in the art of fooling men into emptying their pockets and then some," he shrugs and even has the audacity to right your skirt where it rose up a bit.

"Are they in jail?"

You watch him while he puts your take into his satchel. Two pocket watches and nice jewelry. Ten dollars. A carved bone hairpin.

"No. They're pretty girls, just like you. With clever hands and doe-like eyes," he looks up at you when he says pretty, adding to the low burn of the fire stirring in your belly.

Who the hell is this man? And why the hell are you so mesmerized by him?

"Wanna know why I'm letting you rob people blind every evenin'?"

You nod, so quick your head spins a little. He gives you another twitch in the corner of his mouth. A smirk. The dangerous kind.

"Truth is, you make me go crazy. Every time I see ya twirling around this saloon I watch and I can't look away," he brings his hand to your face but hesitates before he brushes a stray lock of hair behind your ear. Shit, shit, shit! You know what he means, of course you do and Jesus, does it make you tremble. Is that want in his eyes? Is that your own gaze, just mirrored? Could be the lust bubbling up inside you a real sin? "And I ain't no lawman," he adds, leans in to whisper it into your ear, lips brushing the rapidly reddening skin. A shiver runs through you and you feel his smirk just where your hairline starts.

"Then what—"

"First, you gonna promise me that this stays between us two," he settles a hand against your waist, just brushing a circle with a finger. You knew he was no lawman. There’s no way someone like Sheriff Gray could be as clever as Mr. Callahan. "Then you gonna empty that breast pocket under that flimsy dress."

Fuck, he knows that too.

"Are ya an outlaw mister?" you ask while his thumb slides under your breast, where that little pocket lies. You want him to touch higher. You want him to touch you proper.

"Wanted in three states."

You stare at him and there's something that glints dark in his eyes. You reach into that pocket, feeling out the two hidden peppermint candies in it and then pulling out one. Mr. Callahan's eyebrows rise up as you put it into your mouth.

You hold the candy between your teeth, a flash of white and red, like bloody teeth, and you can feel him suck in a breath against you, stunned by your boldness. You grin and wait. For him to scold you. To steal away the sweetness. To kiss you, to kiss you so hard you’re no more tasting honey but rich whiskey and tobacco; tasting him.

"You're the first person who ever noticed," you murmur, munching on the candy.

"Noticed what?"

"That I'm just playin'," you crush the peppermint with your teeth and he watches how your lips shine as they move. His thumb resumes its movements, a bit bolder, a bit rougher. Restless night bugs stir awake inside your belly and they start to flicker.

"'Cause you play well. Just not as well to fool me."

You shake your head with a grin on your face. Maybe you finally found your equal. Equally wild and equally insane. A handsome devil disguised as an angel of justice.

"Ya like working girls, Mister Callahan?" The peppermint dissolves in your mouth and his hand slides higher, where your breast starts to swell.

"I like women who are a bit more… interesting. More stubborn. More clever. You're good with your hands, ain't ya?" He leans to your neck, murmurs the question right above the bare triangle of flesh on your shoulder. His free hand reaches for yours and guides it around himself until your fingers touch slightly curling, short hair on his nape. "But what if I tell ya I'm good with mine too."

He knows how to make your breath hitch, that's a fact. Your other hand grabs into his arm and squeezes, and the one on his neck threads into honey locks.

"There ain't no more pockets, I swear," you're so close now, close enough for your noses to almost touch. You exhale and he makes that gulp of air a part of his own body. Your lungs bloom peach flowers, swell with ripe fruits. Nectar and cyanide. The turquoise of his eyes.

"No, I know. I want to take another kind of treasure from you," one of his hands skims down your body, where your skirt parts for the hidden pockets and he cups your jaw with the other, calloused thumb brushing under your chin, tilting it up. He leans close to whisper, "but only if ya want me to."

"Fuck," you curse, burning from the inside out, poisoned by want. No, more. Need. So pure, scorching need that your hands fist into his hair and his shirt-sleeve. He doesn't want you to play a two-dollar whore. But he asks, in that clever, hidden way, that you give him something that's only from you, a metaphorical part of you, something a man wants and a woman has.

"Such a pretty girl with such a dirty mouth," he chides and swipes that thumb over your bottom lip, the rough skin catching on it. You want to kiss him. You want to punch him in the gut. You want to make him forget that he's clever.

"Ya want to ruin my good reputation?"

"Ain't no other soul in this room, jus' you an' me, darlin'," his thumb slides in, just barely, and you wet the tip of it with your tongue. Something in his eyes changes. Turns dangerous, like a predator ready to pounce. "Ain't no witnesses of your sins… Or mine."

You almost growl. "Then fuck it and kiss me!"

You don't have to ask him twice. He curls around you, molds you until you fit the broad shape of him, until you almost beg for his tongue to waltz with your own. But this dance is not slow. Not careful, nor sweet. It's a tango, a fight, a duel. You kiss him, and he kisses you back, and there's nothing else in the world anymore, only honey and poison.

He parts from you only to look into your eyes and ask for your permission, for his hands to freely roam, to keep his promise, to let him pick away everything, like how vultures clean a corpse down to the bones.

You nod, hasty and still hungry for his kisses, but it's enough.

You kiss and kiss and kiss, until your lips are sore and his own bleed ruby, bitten by your hungry teeth. He releases you for only a second, to wipe the blood away and whisper his name against your mouth.

Call me Arthur when I touch ya. That's my real name.

Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. King, knight. Of heaven or hell, you can't decide.

And then, just then, there's a rough heat against your thigh under your skirt, his hand, his goddamn calloused fingers slipping between, through the lacy waist of your bloomers to the wet seam of your cunt. Christ, his hand. That one thick, curious finger that parts your folds and makes way for another, and then for his thumb. You part from him with a gasp, your hand flying to his shoulder, fingers digging in.

“Will ya sing for me, little bird?” he murmurs onto the hollow of your throat now, before he leaves a gentle kiss there, and then nips the skin and makes it bloom with red. A bruise, marking that he was here.

You can't answer. Not when he's falling to his knees and inching down the fabric of your skirt. It pools around you, hidden pockets damned and all, and he looks up at you like how people look up in church and somewhere between the rotten roof plates they see a god. Those eyes—turned green in the red glow of the oil lamp, a complimentary shade so in high contrast with the room, it captures you and never eases its hold. You’re prisoned by him, the irony of it all, and he won’t let you escape, not when you know you will see these eyes even in your dreams.

You tremble when his hand is back between your legs, patting your thigh to open up wider. You know where this is going. Towards something so unorthodox and exciting, something that would make even the working girls downstairs blush. A man is kneeling before you, eyes glazed over and shaded by his lashes, lips shining wet from a kiss you just shared. And he's gonna kiss you there, too, where you pulse with want and heat, where his fingers just touched and left you fucked in the head already. Your back collides with the wall behind you and your lungs run empty. There’s no room for air anyway, it’s swallowed up by swamp butterflies and overgrown cypresses, filling the space your ribcage offers.

Your bloomers only make it to your knees before he has two fingers against your opening, not sliding in but teasing—gentle, curious touches that make you bite into your lip to keep in a treacherous whimper. The callouses on his trigger-finger catch on the soft flesh, create quiet little buzzes of need that crawl up to your belly like grape vines, bearing the fruits of want. Of need. You're rendered into a mess. A glorious, trembling mess. He likes you like this, all moldable flesh and heaving chest, a testament of decadence. Honey crystallized into sugar, grapes turned raisins.

And then he pulls your folds apart with those two fingers, makes space for his lips.

The kiss comes soft. Careful. No one has ever done this to you and it’s already the best thing you’ve ever felt. It’s strange. It’s so obscene it makes blood rush into your cheeks, down your neck, over your breasts. You bloom all over, dewy with sweat that form little droplets in the dip in your spine and the valley of a thigh, all from a few seconds of pleasure, of gentle, teasing kisses.

You want to bend over yourself, to open up wider, to close your legs around his head. Arthur holds you steady, holds you up and wide open, broad shoulders hot against your legs, even through his shirt; his beard a scrape you think you’ll never forget after this ends.

His fingers push in. First just one, getting soaked to the knuckle, and then two, a delicious little stretch, and you can’t keep your mouth shut anymore.

“S-Shit, that’s—” you pant, hands scrambling against the wall until Arthur reaches for them and gently pulls them towards his head where you can tug on those honey locks of his. “Fuck, Arthur.”

He thrusts his fingers in, watches them for a few seconds—how they sink in and then come out shining wet. Then he’s back with his mouth, kissing harder than before, giving gentle little sucks on that small spot where pleasure blooms into licking flames of need.

You break apart on those lips, tiny little pieces of you scattering around and evaporating into the red glow of the room and the peach pink fuzziness of his kiss, his tongue, his everything. Your body goes numb, empty, your soul flying somewhere above, floating like a water-lily on a quieter part of a river with duckweed in your hair.

Somewhere in the room a whisper of his name echoes. It comes from you, broken and breathless, but you enjoy how it rolls down your tongue. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.

“Good?” he parts from you for only a second, gazing into your eyes and finding only molten heat. He smiles, a real smile for the first time, and it’s something that’s even more arousing than his fingers gently rubbing you from the inside. Another material for your dreams.

"Yeah—," you gasp, and then down right moan when you feel his grin on the flushed skin of your cunt. “So good.”

“Then lemme fell ya,” he murmurs and he’s back to the kissing and sucking and licking and curling his fingers up, up into a sensitive spot inside you that makes you clench so hard around him that he can’t move. “That’s it sweetheart.”

The climbing pleasure feels like galloping towards the peak of a mountain, flying almost, so sudden and dizzying you pull on his hair a bit too hard and get a groan muffled into your cunt. You try to apologize but the words are trapped somewhere between your lungs and your lips, forever lost, but you smooth your hand over his nape, saying sorry with touch alone.

Arthur watches you when it’s too much.

He watches how your lips open on a silent scream, how the air gets trapped trembling in your chest, how his fingers squelch as they try to make it last for as long as he can. You whimper his name while fire licks all around you, melts the joints of your knees and bubbles out from your belly in forms of white-winged, palm-sized moths. No wonder the French call this feeling a little death. You’re reborn with the imprint of his smile forever burned inside your skull.

Arthur only pulls away when he’s sure you won’t fall to the ground, but he can’t help himself in giving you one soft kiss on your oversensitive cunt. His fingers slip out and they leave a line of creamy want tickling down on the inside of your thigh.

He wipes it away with one corner of your skirt.

You pull on the collar of his shirt until he stands, until you can kiss him so hard your teeth clink. He tastes of you, of whiskey and tobacco.

“Here’s what you gonna do, sweetheart,” he murmurs, barely parting from your lips, nose-to-nose. “Every night when you finish collectin’ your wares, you bring ‘em to me to that church ruin, you know the one, and give me a cut. If ya agree, I won’t bring you in for petty thievery.” It sounds like a threat, but it feels like a promise. A promise of more. A promise of future. “Watchu say, little Miss?”

“Okay,” you nuzzle him and touch a finger to his lips, still sticky with your want. Arthur kisses that fingertip.

“Good,” he whispers, and you get another smile, a secret one that is full with promises of nights like this.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #low honor arthur morgan #rdr2 fanfiction #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption 2 fanfiction

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lacrymatoryao3 · 9 months

Text

Redemption Was Just The Beginning

Chapter 4: Three Months Later: December, 1899

[1][2][3]

To the world, Arthur Morgan is dead. As he tries to face the idea, in a lush valley in Ambarino he comes face to face with a woman from his past, and they must reckon with an era long gone. Especially when she has secrets of her own.

(Rated explicit simply because eventually there’s smut in this.)

Tag: @photo1030

5,540 Words (AO3 Link)

Arthur awoke as the dawn began to break. He didn’t get up right away, lying in bed and finding comfort in the warmth of his covers and in the room compared to what he saw outside his windows. Once the winter came it seemed to never stop snowing for very long. The mountains were hard to make out, blanketed in white against the clouded sky. The mostly fur trees cascading down the land were so heavy with it the branches bent and sometimes it would slide off in sheets to the deep, icy ground. When the wind came through there was nothing but a freezing fog.

It made him think about those cold days and nights trapped within those dilapidated log buildings in Colter.

Arthur had to admit, as he was taking care of himself for the morning, there were some things about ‘normal’ life he was taking to easier than he had expected. He enjoyed having a bed instead of an old cot, having walls around him and a roof over his head once his instincts finally came to realize he was safe within. He now had a routine once Dr. Anderson deemed he was well enough to do so.

Still, his old life lingered in him. Fighting him.

Arthur shaved, mostly to please Ana, focusing more on the task than the man that was reflected back to him. He doubted she was up and around yet, but if she was she would comment about the things he usually muttered to himself. He applied a small amount of an aftershave she had bought for him. It had an expensive smell, though it probably wasn’t the case for the kind of town he was in, like a bunch of different herbs mixed with citrus fruit.

He put a bundle of plants into his mouth to chew, something to keep his teeth and mouth clean. She made the boy do the same. He slipped out of his night clothes and washed himself up as he worked the taste out of them. He opened his window and spit out them out, closing it it quickly to prevent the chill from entering.

He went to his dresser, looking at all the new things Ana had gotten him to decide what to wear. Even after so many years apart from him, she still remembered the kind of things he liked. She had picked out the same style of button down shirt in different colors and patterns, a few pairs of dark denim pants, and a couple of sets of buckled suspenders, socks, more union suits for the weather.

He simply threw on the first things his rough and calloused hands touched. She bought him more things to wear than he expected. Had he been able to go with her to the general store she would have treated him like a dress up doll. He was never one to care about fashion, but when he put himself together it made Ana happy. Which as nice, he supposed. In a way it was, having someone around who cared about him. She wasn’t as aggressive as Susan Grimshaw was, the poor woman, but she was about as bossy if she needed to be. Always was.

Hanging on hooks next to the door were three coats. For summer, which felt like an eternity off, there was short navy blue canvas coat. For spring and autumn a black knee length cotton duster. For the winter which everyone in Cain Valley was suffering with a chocolate brown sheepskin leather jacket lined with with cream colored wool. Draped over it was a scarf and in its pockets a pair of black deerskin gloves.

Arthur bundled himself up, putting a new hat on his head. It didn’t look much different from his old one that he gave to John, except it was made of fabric instead of leather and there was a fine silk ribbon around it rather than an old haphazardly tied rope. He carefully left his room, finding the kitchen dark and empty. He slipped out the back door, trudging through the frozen mounds and enduring the biting northern air to a roofed space with walls made out of piled of short logs. He picked up the old axe that leaned against a tree stump in the middle of them, gathering enough logs that would make a suitable amount of firewood. He placed a log on the stump, hauling the axe over his shoulder and chopping in in two with a single heavy motion. At first he needed rests between, but after a few weeks his muscle memory kicked in once he became accustomed to the monotonous chore again.

For a moment, it was like Arthur was with the gang again. Doing what he usually did when he was around, as everyone half alert wandered around him for a cup of coffee and Pearson’s leftover stew from the day before.

He carried the wood to the kitchen porch, dropping it into a rack. Returning inside the lights were on. Ana was at the stove, with a serious expression on her face at first that brightened when she looked at him.

“Good morning!” She said cheerfully, taking a ladle and pouring the hot type off coffee people liked to drink in Mexico made with spices and a cone of unrefined cane sugar from a clay pot into a matching clay mug. She placed it on the table for him.

“Mornin’ Anie.” Arthur replied, sitting at his place at the table. He took a sip from the mug. It had a flavor he found overwhelming the first few times he drank it, but now he enjoyed the taste of the sweetness and cinnamon that mingled with the cloves and a thing called anise.

He watched Ana check if the frying pan was hot, cracking eggs into it. As they cooked she prepared other things. On the plates she laid down warmed corn tortillas, spreading refried beans onto them. The fried eggs went on top before being smothered in a chunky red sauce made from tomatoes, onions, and chilies.

The smell brought Ana’s son trudging down the stairs. He scratched his head still tried and sat across from Arthur, not really noticing he was there at first. Once he did his posture changed, suddenly shy and looking cautiously at him. Arthur noticed he did that a lot around him. Arthur studied him every time, just as the boy was doing to him. His face didn’t have Ana’s features. He didn’t know what her husband looked like, but there was something oddly familiar about them. There was something in them that brought up a long, bottled up memory back to the surface. Then there was his eyes again. Not just their color, but the way they scanned him and took note of everything about the stranger in front of him.

“Hey there buddy!” Arthur said as gently as his drawl could, a tone he often did with Jack, “I don’t think we’ve really been introduced yet, have we?”

Ana set the plates on the table and sat between them. She shifted in her seat nervously, taking a deep breath, “You’re right! I’m so sorry I should have thought about that sooner!”

She reached over to the boy and rested her hand on his shoulder, “My son, this is Señor Callahan…”

Ana paused and looked at Arthur to make sure she chose the right alias she had discussed with him. He nodded and she went on, “He is going to be staying with us a while, okay?”

“Hello, sir.” The boy said softly.

Ana smiled and everyone began to eat, “I think you two will get along fine once you get used to each other. You probably have a lot in common! You both like animals, especially horses, hunting, fishing, shooting.”

“Outdoors-y kid, huh?” Arthur said.

“Oh yes! If I can keep him in here for more than 10 minutes I consider it a miracle.”

Ana was the one who mostly led the breakfast conversation. Mostly to distract herself from the myriad of thoughts in her head. She considered asking him if he remembered. At least, if his were the same as hers. She quickly answered that question: no, probably not.

She thought about the past a lot when she alone. Sixteen years old, fleeing into a country she never had been to and barely knowing the language. The night she met Dutch Van der Linde, a man she had after the years still respected. Though after what Arthur had shared, she felt he was no longer worthy of it. He saw her for what she was then, a girl all alone doing desperately what she knew to survive. Looking back it didn’t seem like an accident. Both of them targeting a drunk and fat rich man stumbling through the California city they wandered into, him agreeing to split whatever the fool had after she knocked him out with one punch. Was he really aiming for her? After all, he had a habit of taking the vulnerable under his wing, winning them over with his idealistic charisma. He bought her a meal. He offered a bed, safety, a community. All that silver tongue of his that dripped like a rattlesnake with venom, with the tone of a snake oil salesman peddling questionable cures of the street, did was take her from one gang into another. The cycle was exactly the same.

It wasn’t all bad. When she had met Arthur he was also young, still with a boyish face despite the rest of him being a broad and burly man. He wasn’t one to easily warm up to strangers, like her own son. He was wary of her, to the point of standoffish. He had always been watching her, scrutinizing her every move to learn what kind of person she was. It took months for him to hold a conversation with her. It took longer for him to trust her enough to work with him.

The night she left she considered it the last time they’d cross paths. Then like a miracle he was brought to her, on the verge of expiring. As he improved over the months she looked to see how much had had changed. It was hard to do at first. She had been so focused on him gaining weight, getting those nasty bruises to fade, getting his breathing back to normal. He did seem calmer, jaded by his old life, instead of the thrill seeking man he was when she ran with the Van der Lindes. Lord… When a robbery was a successful he turned into such a beast. Not in a bad way, as she could recall. There were times she would replay the night after he, Dutch, and Hosea had committed their first bank heist when she was comfortable in her bed.

The introspective sadness within him had now become his norm. It was there previously. She saw it after Mary chose her father’s wishes rather than her own, when they collectively mourned Hosea’s wife Bessie when she died, again after the murder of Dutch’s girl Annabelle, and the tipping point when he found out the fate of Eliza and that little boy she had with Arthur… Isaac, she thought he was called. It had started to become too much. Made him weary.

It wasn’t something she couldn’t feel in herself. He had been there when her brother’s men, ones he stole and corrupted when their father was hanged, had finally found her. He watched her slaughter them, men she once knew and trusted as an innocent child. He witnessed her come face to face with Fernando, planting a bullet between his eyes. An unforgivable sin… Murdering a sibling.

They were never completely different. They were both broken people. She just was the one with sheer dumb luck. Her loyalty was to herself and conditional to all others. He never would have gone willingly. Not for Mary, not for his son, not for her if her he knew what she was hiding from him for the time being.

The boy left for school as Arthur helped Ana clean up. The troubled face Ana had earlier returned. She took a deep breath, “Your death has reached out paper.”

“Did it now?” Arthur draped the dish rag over the sink and picked up the Cain Valley Review that was on the table. He looked at the article. It was on the front page, but not the top headline. Seeing the title ‘ARTHUR MORGAN, OTHER MEMBERS OF VAN DER LINDE GANG, BELIEVED DEAD’ made one of the corners of Arthur’s mouth twitched, his voice was low, “So it is…’

“You are, officially, dead.” Ana said softly, oddly sad to say it out loud, “Good thing you’re using a different name. At least for a few years, until people forget.”

Arthur put the paper down and started slowly scratching at his cheek, wishing he had a damn cigarette, “They ain’t gonna really forget me. There’ll always be people lookin’ for me, no matter what is said. Especially if they wanted my head.”

It hit him like a slap across the face. He knew it was happening when Blackwater failed. That life was all over. He thought he’d be happier about it, like he imagined. The world was changing… It didn’t want men like him any longer. Instead it left an empty feeling in him, like he didn’t want it after so many years of badly looking for a way to have it. Maybe because it wasn’t completely on his own accord. Too much business was left unfinished.

Ana took one of his hands, covering it with hers, “It’s not easy. You will mourn yourself, and there will be times you don’t think you can adjust. Trust me, for a couple of years it was almost unbearable for me… But I know you, Arthur. If anyone can do this, it’s you. You are one of the most adaptable men in this world. Of all the things you’ve managed to survive, you can get through this.”

“I guess…”

They wished each other a good day. Ana watched Arthur from the window making his way to the stables. She wished she could have held him.

In front of the large barn doors there was a man with fiery red hair underneath a green plaid flat cap clearing away the snow to get them to open all the way.

“Mornin’ to ya, Mr. Callahan!” O’Hogan greeted loudly in a thick Irish lilt, “Just in time!”

“Mornin’, Mr. O’Hogan.” Arthur replied while being handed a second shovel, getting to work.

O’Hogan made a dismissive wave, “Call me Owen. What’s yer name, anyway?”

“Arthur.”

That made O’Hogan laugh, “Really now? Like Mrs. Gardener’s boy!”

Arthur blinked, then he sighed and shook his head, “Oh yeah?”

“Around here all the time, he is. Hands on learner, and a fast one fer a 10 year old. Not wonder he hates sittin’ at a school desk.”

10… I swear Ana told me he was 9…

After a couple of hours they finally went inside. The stables were bigger that it looked on the outside. The stalls were large, roomy and very clean for the horses who stuck their heads out over the gates to peer at who arrived. Arthur was in awe of the amount it held. Every stall had a horse in it mostly, save for the ones the children took to school. They were segregated by their use, on one side the horses the stage coaches used that were cycled in and out, the other the personal horses. The coach horses were big and hardy breeds, ranging from the usual Belgians, Shires, and Suffolks. A couple were Cobs. The horses that belonged to the compound were branded with a diamond with a G inside. They were all fine breeds. Ana always had an eye for the pretty horses, Dutch Warmbloods, Hungarian Half-breds, Missouri Fox Trotters, Mustangs, Norfolk Roadsters, Thoroughbreds.

Arthur approached the familiar Dalmatian Appaloosa, “Hey there, boy.”

Enrique sniffed at his hand, lowering his head to let him pet him between the eyes. It sent Arthur back to when Ana obtained him. He was so angry. Horse theft an offense punishable by hanging, the gang had bigger plans than that. At one point.

“Yeah…” Arthur whispered, “Gettin’ old. Ain’t we all?”

Surrounding the heating stoves in the middle of the stable aisle were buckets upon buckets of warmed melted snow. Arthur and O’Hogan used them to fill the troughs in the stalls. They hauled in bundles of hay and buckets with special grains for feed. When the horses had their fill the stage coach arrived. The two men led out fresh drafts and replaced the ones running for hours, covered in sweat from their hard work. They dried them and brushed them, putting warming blankets on their backs. They checked their hooves and put them in the newly vacant stalls, refreshing their feed.

“So, hear you’re havin’ a baby soon.” Arthur said.

“Number six! Should be here any day after that new year! Hopin’ fer another girl ta even it out!”

The new year… 1900. Damn…

“Six?!” Arthur cried, “How the hell do you fit all them in that house of yours?”

“Boys share a room. Girls share a room. The wife an’ I have our own. Lot easier now, that our oldest Mary Bridget is 15. Gotta get her prepared, ya know? Besides, we came from large families. My ma had 10. My Rosaline was one out o’ 12!” O’Hogan explained, “What about ya, Arthur? Ya have any kids?”

Arthur went quiet for a moment, “Once. He and his mama died some years back.”

“Sorry ta hear that.” O’Hogan patted him hard against the back, “Always rough.”

The least pleasant responsibility dealing with horses was shoveling their shit. With as many as Ana kept, there was a perpetual stream of it, and a lot of it at that. They were constantly hauling out wheelbarrows of it to go inside a large covered chest. Farmers loved the stuff, apparently. O’Hogan told Arthur once the planting season came all of them around the town would stop by. They raked plenty of money from it.

During lunch Arthur and O’Hogan sat on the floor in front of stove.

“So how’d you get into all this, Mr. O’Hogan?” Arthur asked.

“Always did it. Started out with them English bastards with their fancy estates in ta Irish countryside,” O’Hogan said, “Got tired o’ ‘em. Came here ta find they like us about the same as ‘em. Mrs. Gardener was the only advert fer a job that didn’t say ‘IRISH NEED NOT APPLY’. Here I am, better fer it.”

A few of the personal horses needed their hooves trimmed and shoes replaced as the task near the end of the day. They split the four, Arthur first grabbing the halter of a Tiger Striped Bay Mustang. It came back to him how to do it instantly. He bent one of the horse’s legs between his thighs, removing the old shoe and nails before cleaning the hoof with a knife that had a bent tip stroking it downwards. The knife also worked to trim the frog overgrowth away from the sole. The large nippers came next, taking excess off the outer hoof. He filed the rough edges down, trimming the sole a bit before brushing it and feeling it. He repeated with the other hooves, moving onto re-shoeing them with a fresh batch Mr. Johnson had made the day before. He lined the shoe up, they were well crafted and heavy, tapping the nails carefully into the hooves.

He took another, O’Hogan taking the last. It was amazing how good the disposition was on the horses, even the wild caught ones. The training they went through was rigorous, with expertise that the rich often only enjoyed.

The stable doors opened and the group of children came in on their horses after the school day ended. They were led by Ana’s son on his own Paint. The others were on smaller, shared Morgans. The three of Liang’s were piled at the front and back, the oldest girl at the saddle and reins. O’Hogan’s two school aged children had the boy in front, the girl sitting modestly behind him. The two boys of Johnson’s holding onto each other on theirs. O’Hogan and Arthur greeted the children and took the horses before they ran off to their homes. The only one who took care of his own was Ana’s son, who quietly dismounted and led Josefina to her stall. He took the harness and saddle off himself, carrying it to the storage outside her gate. He went into his pocket and took out the boiled egg he saved from his lunch, cutting it in half to share with his horse while he brushed her and blanketed her.

“Mr. Callahan!” The boy called out to Arthur with his books and lunch tin in his hands, “Mama wanted me to let you know she would like you to bring Enrique and whatever horse you’d like to the house. She needs to bring you into town for help with something.”

“All right.” Arthur answered, “Thanks for lettin’ me know, uh, Arthur.”

The boy ran out. Arthur wiped sweat from his forehead, trying to make sense of the small details he learned about him. He gave up for the moment, focusing on what was at hand. He got Enrique ready, then studied the horses.

“I know just the one!” Mr. O’Hogan shouted to him, leading a white and gray brindle coat Thoroughbred mare out of her stall, “This little lady here is called Delfina! Think she’ll suit ya very nicely.”

Arthur’s eye brightened in a gleeful delight. Delfina was a large and proud horse, a refined creature with a well chiseled body for her athletic nature especially for racing. He patted her on the neck and whispered to her, calling her a ‘fine girl’. Her spirited-ness came out as she nuzzled his pockets looking for treats, huffing when she couldn’t sense any. She was tolerant being tacked and saddled. It took him a couple of tries, which was embarrassing for him, to hoist himself onto her. He adjusted himself a bit, getting re-accustomed to it after so long by his standards.

He wrapped Enrique’s reins around the saddle horn, leading him as he learned to handle Delfina to the house. Ana waited for him on the porch with something hanging in her hand, that old gun belt Hosea had given her around her waist over her tweed coat holstering the same pilfered Schofield revolver and the knife that came from Mexico with her.

She stepped down to him, exchanging what she was holding for Enrique’s reins, “I have something for you. All I ask is you don’t wear it in the house and keep it away from my son without supervision.”

He looked it over, a gun belt with its weapons still attached. It was a thick and heavy thing, elaborately tooled into the black leather to have flowers and leaves all interconnecting with long vines. Among them on the holster was something written in Spanish in flowing, commanding lettering.

‘QUIEN CON LA ESPERANZA VIVE ALEGRE MUERE’.

Arthur buckled it around his hips, “What the hell’s that mean?”

“One who lives with hope dies happily.”

“I take it this was your daddy’s then.” Arthur pulled out the weapons, inspecting them.

“Of course. My Tia managed to recover it when they hanged him. Better someone use it than sit in a box in my wardrobe. I’ve maintained them, but couldn’t bring myself to wear it.”

They were old, but still in good condition. The handgun was a long barreled Volcanic pistol. The handle was a polished turquoise, inlaid in the stone was a motif of a skull and a rose tangled together with thorny stems. The blackened metal was engraved with a baroque style showing the silver underneath. The knife was customized the same. It had a long and wide blade, despite a few nicks it was still razor sharp.

Ana watched him with an amused smirk, “Looks nice.”

Cain Valley had a similar layout to Strawberry as Arthur followed Ana. The only difference was an actual bank and more houses branching out from the bricked main road on side streets. It wasn’t a dry town either. The saloon had the biggest sign, touting itself as the first business in the area since 1856. It was a busy place for being so remote, especially for the season. He saw many confused visitors carrying supplies for winter sports, Ana stopping and giving them directions. That must have been the biggest draw. The place was too well settled for just mining, or logging, or agriculture.

Ana had a name for herself, like the unofficial queen of the town. Every local knew her, greeted her. It was no different at the gunsmith when they walked in. She flipped through the catalog, Arthur perusing the displays.

“What would you recommend for a hunting rifle?” Ana asked.

“It depends on what you want to hunt, Mrs. Gardener.”

Ana nodded, “Something for medium to large game, but good for a beginner. This is going to be the big gift for my son for Christmas.”

The gunsmith left the counter and gathered three rifle models from their displays, apologizing to Arthur when he unintentionally bumped into him as he looked at the repeaters. He set them in front of Ana. The rifles he offered were a Springfield, a Rolling Block, and a Carcano. The Rolling Block and Carcano included scopes, good for long ranges. The gunsmith explained the advantages, drawbacks, and powers of the weapons. Ana picked them up and handled them, carefully considering the best one.

Arthur noticed the subtle changes in her when she held them. She was no stranger to rifles. She was no stranger to any weapon that could harm and kill. That angry, violence searching girl was still in there. He had a flashback to the time when she fully showed it to him. A bounty hunter had tracked them, after a high value robbery. She had thrown her knife into his groin. As he screamed in agony rushed to the shotgun he dropped, using the bullet meant for Dutch to blow off hunter’s head in a scarlet spray and emptying the rest of its ammunition into the limp body.

“I think I’ll take the Carcano.”

“Good choice, Mrs. Gardener. I’m sure little Arthur will love it. Want extra ammo on top of it?”

“Of course, thank you. Can you box it up? I don’t want him seeing it.”

The gunsmith hoisted a nondescript carrying case from under the counter, laying the gun and ammo inside and closing it. Ana paid for it in full. When it was Arthur’s turn he bought an Evans repeater with a few extras. He attached a strap onto it, slinging it over his shoulder to take out.

The ride back was silent after Ana secured the rifle case to the back of Enrique with rope. Arthur kept it to himself at first, until it threatened to boil over.

“Arthur, huh?” He muttered.

“Hm?” It didn’t register with her.

“That’s the name of your boy.”

Ana nodded, still not getting what he was trying to imply, “It is, yes. Arthur Francisco.”

Arthur sighed heavily, “You told me he was nine. Everyone else is sayin’ he’s 10.”

“Did I?” The tone in her voice was puzzled, but he couldn’t tell if it was genuine or the one she would use when purposefully being evasive, “He’s 10. His birthday was a few days before you came. Why?”

They were too close to home for Arthur to push it, “Just tryin’ to figure it all out is all.”

The house smelled of the dinner Ana had left to finish before she left. A meat stew made with fatty beef called Birria. Arthur observed Ana’s, Arthur Francisco, as they enjoyed it. He often would scoop spoonfuls of it into one of the tortillas, folding it and eating it.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to start getting the boy to talk to him.

“How was school, Arthur?” He spoke up, feeling strange addressing the child with his own name. He has met others before with it, but it still felt different.

Arthur Francisco swallowed before he replied, “Fine. We learned more arithmetic today. Miss Svensson drew a star in my book for it.”

“That means you’re good at it then!” Arthur commented, “Hey… If you got four apples and I gave you three apples, how many you got now?”

“Seven.”

“Right! Clever!”

Ana smile and joined in, “And there was no problems with the Millers today?”

Arthur Francisco explained while preparing another tortilla, “Weren’t there today. Haven’t been all week. No one knows why. Not that anyone wants to know, since no one really likes them.”

Everyone joined in the cleaning up. Arthur kept going with the boy to get him to open up, even as they moved from the kitchen to the living room and up until it was his bedtime. Arthur Francisco wished Arthur a good night before following his mother up the stairs.

Left alone Arthur sat down at the secretary desk, pulling his journal out of his pocket. As he opened it he became distracted the windowed cabinet. Inside where many other ledgers and a few business related papers. Slipped into the corners where the glass met the wood were cabinet card photographs. He took them and studied them. One of them was a younger Ana, sitting with a spindly looking man dressed like those Bohemian dandies that wandered around Saint Denis. He looked at least twice her age, and he didn’t resemble her son much either. On her lap was a toddler who was probably no more than 3. He flipped the picture. Written on the back was ‘Mr. and Mrs. Jacob M. Gardener with son. 1892’.

“That was your husband?!” Arthur blurted out in surprise, as Ana returned and passed him to go to her chair.

“He did the job.” Ana said plainly, “He had money. He had land. He died not long after we were married. I inherited everything as his only next of kin, with the provision my son takes it over when he’s an adult.”

Arthur was struck by the lack of affection in her voice. It only gave him more questions about it. He put the photo back, moving on to the others. The next ones he had a slight recollection of. Mostly because he was in them. It had been Ana’s idea to do them those years ago. They made a decent sum going after a train and she had convinced him it would be fun. One was just of him, mounted on that prized horse of his Boadicea with a cigarette hanging from his lips and a rifle propped up on his shoulder. That one said on the back in Ana’s writing ‘Mi queridísimo – 1888’. The companion to it was of both of them. Ana sitting in her traditional Mexican dress, her hair loose down her back. Arthur was behind her, one of his feet resting on the same crate and his hands hanging off his thigh. That one was ‘Arthur y yo – 1888’.

He took a pencil on the desk and started scribbling down his thoughts from the day.

I am dead. I guess not many men can experience their own deaths. I had always thought about it. What it would be like. I understood it as nothingness. No doubts. No fears. Yet, I’m still here and the unknown of that scares me. I don’t know if I can manage living this way. There’s no relief in it like I hoped. I’m not alone in it, I know that. Annie had done it. She’s certain I can, but I’m just not convinced. She seems to do it well. Makes it look too easy despite once being a prized heir of her daddy’s revolutionary gang down there in Mexico, who got her wings clipped as soon as she posed a threat to that brother of hers. She won. She made it. Can I really do it? Death might have been easier. I deserved that path for being the awful brute I am. I’m a bad man, I shouldn’t pretend to be anything else. I still don’t believe in a God or a Devil. Maybe I should after all this bullshit. If there was I would unquestionably earned the burning.

On the opposite page he did what he knew best to get the nervous energy out: he drew. He sketched out his intended grave on that beautiful spot near the Wapiti reservation, that nice cross Charles had created with his own two hands. He wrote underneath it:

Does anyone except Charles know where it is? Did anyone else go there by now? Would they even mourn me?

He moved on to his next sentiment.

There’s something about Annie’s son. There’s something she’s not telling me about him. I don’t think even he knows. I hope it isn’t what I think it is.

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flowercrowncrip · 1 year

Note

2. do you use any type of disability aid other than mobility aids? (service animals, splints, glasses, inhaler, hearing aids, nebulizer, glucose monitors, hearing aids etc.) if yes, show us!!

3. if you have chronic pain, what’s your “normal” on the scale and what do you consider a good day on the scale?

- @areynobodytoo

3. I do have chronic pain. A bad day is anything over six, an average day as a five or six, and a good day as below five. I don't think I'm ever below a four though. I have bad days 2 to 3 days a week and good days less frequently.

2. My disability impacts my upper and lower body so I use a lot of different aids. These are the main ones I can think of.

I have resting hand splints that I have to wear 5 hours a day – they suck big time and I’m not the best at wearing them. I’m meant to wear ankle foot orthotics overnight as well but they were far too painful so they just live under my bed now. My hand splints look like this:

[ID: a cropped photo showing Echo’s hands and torso. Their hands are in resting hand splints which hold the hand open and immobilised. The inside of the splint is fake sheepskin and the outside and straps are blue fabric. The brand name Chaneco is visible on them. /End ID]

I have an adapted water bottle that attaches to my wheelchair and has a positionable straw so I can stay hydrated without a carer helping me all the time.

[ID: a stock photo of a giraffe water bottle. It is next to a holder which can be attached to a bed or wheelchair. It has a long silicone straw surrounded by a series of black plastic joints which make it positionable. /End ID]

I also use different assistive technology to use a computer. Software wise I use voice recognition software (Dragon on my laptop and built in software on my phone). The software isn’t perfect for controlling a computer so I also use an adapted mouse and keyboard for when I have to use those instead of my voice:

[ID: a tray with an adapter mouse and keyboard in front of a desk with a laptop which is just visible. The keyboard has larger buttons than usual. The mouse looks very different to a regular mouse. It has a large yellow roller ball about the size of a pool ball in the middle and two blue buttons at the top. The brand Infogrip is visible on the mouse. /End ID]

In my bedroom I have a ceiling track hoist, profiling bed and sliding sheet system. (A hoist kind of counts as a mobility aid, but not really in the same way as a wheelchair so I’ll include it here)

[ID: a photo of a profiling bed with bed levers. It has a sliding sheet system with a satin under sheet and a green and white check top sheet. On the sheet is a yellow and grey universal toileting sling. In the top of the picture is a ceiling hoist which runs along a track which goes across the room and over the middle of the bed. It is supported with a metal pole which supports it from the floor. The pole has stickers on it. /End ID]

I also have a tilt in space shower chair that is similar to this one:

[ID: a stock photo of a white and grey tilt in space shower commode tilted back to an almost horizontal position].

#echo answers asks #physical disability #wheelchair user #ceiling track hoist #ask game

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socially-awkward-skeleton · 2 years

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Tagged by @chadillacboseman and @clicheantagonist (for six sentence sunday) and tagged back by @marivenah

tagging: @poetikat @direwombat @roofgeese @strangefable @confidentandgood @clonesupport @natesofrellis @incognito-insomniac @natesofrellis @sstewyhosseini @schoute and anyone else who has anything to share (I wasn’t sure if any of the far cry mutuals would want to read this so...)

In a move no one saw coming I have some Uncharted stuff this time around (none of my Far Cry stuff is worth reading yet). I enjoy writing the fluff when it comes to Sam and Sia so I went with the trope to beat all tropes - “Just One Bed” (somehow in all of my years of writing I have never used it):

The door swung open, a creaky old thing. It was barely able to hold on to its hinges during the winter storm they were caught in. If there was too strong of a draft it would likely be blown away. The train had been cancelled, cell service was next to non-existent, and since neither Siobhan nor Sam had the same cash flow as Rafe this was the best they could do on short notice. A small one room cottage, cramped and musty, fit more for a marooned fisherman than a thief and a researcher. The mattress was lumpy, the curtains dusty, and the shower was built for a hobbit and not a man who was over six feet tall.

She dropped her luggage in the doorway, staring at the room in dismay as rain dripped down her nose. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

From her tone alone he expected cockroaches to be climbing up the walls and the sink to be on fire. He pushed his way into the room as freezing water ran down the back of his neck from the gutter of the roof. "Oh come on, Sia. It's one night, I'm sure it's not that -"

One bed. It could have been worse, but considering the two of them had barely spent more than a few hours with each other this would certainly force them to get acquainted a little more intimately.

"Shit.” He rubbed at the wet spot on the back of his neck, rain water drenching the ringlets that sat there. He was fine with the situation but he wasn’t so sure the bookworm would be. “Well I mean, it's still better accommodation than I was staying in for the last decade."

She pulled her luggage into the room, dumping her suitcase on the old table by the door. She tied her hair up into a low bun and pulled off her coat, laying it over the back of the chair. Wiping the fog off of her glasses with her sweater, she chuckled while shaking her head, flicking the wet strands of hair off her face. "Should we leave that on the review, Samuel? Better than a Panamanian prison."

Shrugging his shoulder, he gave her a cheeky grin. "At least I'm allowed to smoke in the room." In the inside pocket of his sheepskin lined jacket he grabbed his pack of cigarettes and lighter.

"You can feck right off with that.” She snatched the cigarette pack from his hand, shaking the paper packet at him. “You wanna smoke? On yer bike.” She looked up at him with a furrowed brow, barely coming up to his chest.

She was the crankiest little thing on two legs he’d ever met, but he wasn’t stupid enough to ever say that out loud.

"Yes, dear." He swung the duffel bag off his shoulder and down onto the table. He was relieved to be free of its weight. Hopping on to the bed, sinking down into the old mattress, his chin pressed to his chest as he watched her pace. "So which side do you usually sleep on?"

Her lips pursed, forehead wrinkled like a basset hound. "I'll take the couch. Thank you very much."

"The hell you will.” He sat up, resting on his forearms. “I'm not listening to you complaining for the rest of the trip about how your back hurts."

She moved closer to him, hands pressed to the back of her hips. Nudging at his foot with her knee. "Oh, so the ex-con thinks he can rough it better than I can, eh?"

Sliding forward on the bed, he sat upright on its edge. He’d never been at this angle with her before, having her look down at him with her mossy green eyes.

"You've been around too many toffee-nosed tea drinkers, it's rubbed off on ya.” He pulled off his coat and hung it over the footboard, water dripped off of it, pitter-pattering against the old wooden floor. “I'll take the couch."

Walking over to the old chesterfield in the corner, his face fell at the sight of it. There were stains on it so old he could have sworn it could be used for Rafe’s next archeological dig and that was only after you scraped off the fur coat’s worth of dog hair.

Staring down at the mess, they both looked at each other, not another word needing to be said.

"Ah, be off with ya. Share the bed."

"You sure? I don't want God smiting me for touching someone so pure."

She looked up at the ceiling above, holding her own communion with the Lord above, hoping he’d grant her the strength to make it through a night with this man. "Sure sounds like you really wanta be sleeping on that couch, Samuel."

#wip wednesday #tagged #fan fiction #uncharted #sam drake #samuel drake #oc: siobhan #sam x sia

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valsfashion · 2 years

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#jenni kayne #jenni kayne fashion #white trousers #white pants #sweater #brown sweater #sheepskin slides #sheepskin shoes #autumn fashion

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polutrope · 2 years

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Envy

for @tolkiengenweek Day 1: Family - Mentorships - Community

Rating: G | No Archive Warnings

Characters: Maglor, Elemmírë, Maedhros, Fëanor, OFC

Words: 1900

Summary: Even the greatest artists struggle with petty jealousy.

Read on AO3

“Aaaaaghhh!” Macalaurë groaned and rolled onto his back, one arm flung across his face. He struck the floor with his other hand, the emphatic gesture unsatisfyingly muted by the sheepskin rug he was sprawled upon. “I don’t understand it!”

Maitimo exhaled as quietly and steadily as he could, glancing up at the open door and hoping his brother’s dramatic cries would not summon their mother or father. Though nearly grown to maturity, at this moment Macalaurë had regressed to infancy and the last thing he needed (despite it being what he most wanted) was more attention. Maitimo sat on the edge of the bed and gripped his knees.

His voice now muffled under the draping fabric of his sleeve, Macalaurë elaborated, “She is not that good.”

Maitimo said nothing, and after a pause the arm slowly lifted from Macalaurë’s face and round grey eyes peered up expectantly.

“Well, Nelyo?” he said. “Did you think that performance was ‘a triumph in choral innovation by a peerless minstrel, a jewel of the Eldar indeed – one might say Melyanna herself has returned to Valinórë!’”

“Elemmírë–” Maitimo had barely said the Vanya bard’s name before Macalaurë drowned him out with a long whine, remarkably tuneful for all its misery.

“Pleeeease, do not say that name!” In one abrupt motion, he jolted himself upright and crossed his legs, facing Maitimo and pointing a finger. “I am sick of hearing it!”

The dark, wavy locks of his hair dangled messily around his flushed cheeks and Maitimo almost felt sorry for him, forgetting for a moment that he was looking at an Elda well into his thirties.

“All right,” Maitimo said, gripping his knees tighter, “she is an established poet and minstrel, she has a particular style that people enjoy, and a following. You cannot compare yourself–”

“Me? This is not about me!” Macalaurë raised his brows and held a hand to his chest. Maitimo bit down on a chuckle.

“Of course not, little brother,” Maitimo said, meeting the swirling emotion in his eyes with as much calm as he could muster. “I simply wanted to make it perfectly clear that I think your talent for music is–”

He was interrupted by the thunk of the sliding door being pushed all the way open and their father standing in the doorway with his fists planted on his hips, his whole face flickering with impatience. Fëanáro’s eyes dropped down to where his second eldest sat pouting on the floor.

“Canafinwë!” he shouted. “Get up off the floor! And stop shouting. I’m trying to write and you can be heard four rooms away.”

Macalaurë scrambled to his feet. “I am sorry, Atto.” He paused, scanning their father and considering… “But have you heard what they are saying about Elemmírë’s performance? Melyanna come again! They are deluded!”

Fëanáro’s expression underwent a rapid transformation from hard-set exasperation to pinched disbelief. “What.” he snapped. “That trite, sycophantic warbling we sat through at the feast in Valimar?”

“Yes!” Macalaurë said. “That!” He turned to Maitimo, still seated stoically on the bed, seeking some acknowledgement. Maitimo tried to smile but probably only managed a grimace.

“Who is saying this?” Fëanáro was glowering now, bracing himself for the worst. “None of the Lambengolmor, I hope?”

“None of them,” Maitimo cut in before Macalaurë could make his reply. In truth, he did not know the source of the accolades, but it would be best to keep both of them from finding anyone to blame – another log to toss on the fire of their mutual outrage.

“Well, that is preposterous.” Their father showed himself into Maitimo’s bedchamber and strode across the floor.

“Yonya,” he shook a finger at Macalaurë as he passed by, “we are going to have your lay performed at the next festival. I don’t care what Ingwë says about it, the attendance of the House of Finwë will depend upon it–”

“No!” Macalaurë cried. “No, please. The lay is not complete and in any case this is not about me. The point is Elemmírë is not worthy of–”

“Of course it is about you!” Fëanáro puffed. “You are far more innovative than that insipid Vanya. Your work has emotion, it has life! The technical skill will come, no doubt.”

Maitimo caught his brother’s posture shrink at the implicit criticism.

“Perhaps proving Cáno’s superiority is not what is needed,” Maitimo offered.

They both turned to him, Macalaurë with hope and Fëanáro with surprise. He was still not used to his eldest son regularly expressing differing opinions.

“Perhaps,” he continued, “we should ask Elemmírë if she would allow him to accompany her next time she performs.”

“What!” they both said in unison.

“Well,” Maitimo said, “Macalaurë says he does not understand what others see in Elemmírë’s compositions. I have already said much of it is simply related to her reputation and seniority among the minstrels of Valinórë, and not necessarily to superior talent.”

His father and brother stared at him with nearly identical flat expressions. He often forgot how alike they looked, for all their differences of character.

“If he sings with her, not only will more people take notice of his talent, but it will also be an opportunity to study more closely what it is about her music that is so appealing to others and incorporate that into his own approach. Assuming popularity is of importance to my brother.”

They both continued to stare, contemplating the idea: Fëanáro with increasing confidence, Macalaurë with increasing unease.

“It is not a bad suggestion,” Fëanáro said, his temper cooling. “Canafinwë, why don’t you write to Elemmírë about it? I will have Rúmil commend you to her as well, I believe they are friendly.”

At that, he was out of the room, the vibration of his energy swirling out the door after him.

“What kind of suggestion was that?” Macalaurë hissed as their father’s footsteps retreated. “She won’t want to play with me. She probably has no idea who I am! Write to her…” He sighed loudly and shook his head.

Maitimo patted the bed, inviting his brother to sit. “Of course she knows who you are. Everyone knows who we are.”

“Then why don’t they notice me?” he blurted and then flushed pink with embarrassment. He plopped himself onto the bed beside Maitimo and fell back onto it.

“I’m sorry for being such a child,” he muttered. “It is just so frustrating when I do not hear what others do in her music! Am I stupid?” He sat up. “Am I a bad person?”

“Come here,” Maitimo said, wrapping an arm around his brother and pulling him to his chest. “You are not–” he began, but trailed off. Denying the sentiment was not helpful.

“I love you,” he said.

* * *

An exasperated huff preceded Nicamírë’s sister’s exit from the bedroom, silk underskirts trailing behind her.

“Look at this!” Elemmírë flicked a parchment in her hand and scrunched her face in disgust. “Now I know why Rúmil was going on about him. Fëanáro’s precocious little singer wants me to accompany him!”

Nicamírë clamped her needle between her lips as she rearranged the threads on her sister’s gown, which she had been dutifully repairing all morning so that it would be ready for the evening’s performance.

“Have you accompany him?” she mumbled around the needle. “Is that what he says?”

“‘Dear Elemmírë’,” her sister read. “‘Let me begin by expressing my greatest admiration for your work,’ et cetera, et cetera, then… here, he says: ‘It would be an honour to join you on stage at the festival this evening for a few’ – a few! – ‘a few songs of your choosing.’”

She tossed the letter onto a table with indignant flourish, only for it to slide off and drift gracefully from side to side as it fell to the ground.

“And he suggests tonight!” she continued, ignoring the letter and pacing around the table. “Of course he would. He needs no rehearsal. Easy enough for a vocalist.”

“Does he not also play the harp?” Nicamírë asked, pushing her needle through the thick green velvet.

Elemmírë’s head snapped in her direction. “What does that matter? Everyone plays the harp. He’s explicitly asking to sing.”

“Everyone sings,” Nicamírë said. “Though not as well as he does.”

There were blazing blue eyes boring into her, but Nicamírë just smirked.

“I think you are jealous of him,” she said, shaking out the sleeve she was sewing and smoothing it over her thigh.

“Absolutely not!” Elemmírë protested.

“You are still the better harper,” Nicamírë said. “And lyricist. Though he is still young.”

Elemmírë gaped. “You are no help.” She threw her hands up and then crossed them in front of her, pouting. “As my sister, you should take my side, you know.”

Nicamírë glanced up from her work to look pointedly into her older sister’s eyes. “Really? Sides?”

“Nevermind,” Elemmírë muttered. “No, no. That is just what all those proud Noldor would want: a rivalry.”

“Most certainly,” Nicamírë agreed. “A rivalry that everyone, Vanyar included, would find far more entertaining than either of your actual artistic outputs.”

Elemmírë pursed her lips and propped herself up against the back of a chair. Her half-coiffed heap of golden locks fell over one side of her face, the other side already pinned up with emerald-studded combs and silver threads. She looked quite dishevelled, Nicamírë thought, and resisted laughing at the sight.

“Very well,” her sister said. “I’ll have him sing with me. But I won’t let him know until we see him there. Let him wonder.” She swept out of the room and returned to her bedchamber.

“I really think you should tell him beforehand!” Nicamírë shouted after her.

* * *

Macalaurë was buzzing with satisfaction. It had been his best performance by far, he was certain of it. He had no idea how rewarding it could be to sing with such a gifted musician – to not have to worry about his own fingers fumbling, or to have his concentration broken when another musician missed a note. No – after a single verse, Macalaurë had been entirely confident in Elemmírë’s skill, trusting her to carry his voice through the music just as he attuned to the vibrations of her harp strings.

As the audience roared their applause, he turned to Elemmírë and she, too, had an enormous grin on her face. They beamed, sharing the intensity of the moment and silently confirming with each other that yes, each had felt it: that intangible magic of creating something that had never been done quite that way before.

Afterwards, as they cleared the stage, Elemmírë tossed a glance his way and smiled.

“You know,” she said. “I have envied you for your voice ever since I heard you sing as a child. It is a gift I never received.”

“What!” Macalaurë instinctively protested.

“No, no, it’s true. I can sing tunefully enough, but you will be one of the greatest. Are one the greatest.”

Macalaurë grinned, and then, recalling suddenly how pettily he had whined about Elemmírë before this, looked down at the floor sheepishly. He scuffed it with his toe. “I should confess…” He glanced up. “I must confess I didn’t understand before tonight what made your music so… well-liked.”

He grimaced, realising how poorly he had phrased that, but Elemmírë laughed.

“Oh, I don’t often understand it either!” She clasped his hand and squeezed. “Come, Macalaurë, let’s go greet our admirers.”

#tolkiengenweek #maglor #elemmire #my fic

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ursfur · 1 year

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anoriathdunadan · 2 years

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Where the Stars are F***ing Strange

Pairing: Aragorn-Estel-Strider / OC Rating: Explicit Genre: Modern OC in Middle-earth, reader insert, gender neutral reader, 25th Gray Companion, copious references to The Princess Bride (because why not?) Warnings: so much swearing, canon levels of xenophobia and violence, character death, feral chickens Summary: Plucked like a fish out of water, you try to make the best out of a bad situation in Bree. Then, one day, this Hozier-looking dude showed up at The Pony.

Chapter 26: The Fire Grotto

Yo, fish is sick! - Soupsavvy16

You don’t succumb to your illness and leave Estel behind to mourn you.

Listen, I know, I know. It’s just, you know, things might have been looking a little bad there and, you know, you were starting to look kind of, well, nervous -

Yeah, okay, okay, all right. Maybe you were just a little, you know, “concerned,” but, seriously, I mean, you’re not going to die at this time.

Maybe later.

But not right now.

Right now what you do is wake up to someone snoring directly into your ear.

When you open your eyes it is to find Estel tucked up against you in the dim light. His chin digs into your shoulder and his arm lies heavily across your chest, his hand tucked up against your neck as though he put it there like some kind of alarm that would trip if you wake up and move. It does not work. He is out. Like flat-out exhausted, bruised and scraped-knuckled, open-mouthed, tonsils flapping in the wind of his own making, dead to the world asleep.

You, on the other hand, feel more coherent than you have in days.

Yeah, okay, true, that’s not saying much. Your bones ache. Your feet are all sore. It feels like someone is sitting on your chest. Your lungs rattle like a china cabinet in an earthquake and attempting to raise your head and look around is wearing you out fast, but, hey, you can put one thought in front of the other and they stay there. That, in itself, is a vast improvement.

It seems that Estel, Lord of the Rangers as he is, has a thing for open-concept living spaces. Wandering bunch of rough and ready vagabonds who regularly sleep in ditches so that they might collect leaves and twigs in their hair who apparently just randomly build halls that are big enough to fit a couple of your huts inside.

Yep. All making sense now.

Huge crossbeams and columns of wood bending from the floor to the peak of the roof like ribs of a ship, a long fire pit dug into the floor in the middle, a dais of planks of wood along the long sides of the hall on which to sleep. Shaggy-furred sheepskins, spears, battered wooden shields, nets, coils of rope, baskets, bow saws, axes, spades, and other tools hang from the walls. There’s another dais across the fire pit, but Estel has built up a mattress of springy pine branches and rolled out his quilted sleeping rug atop it on this one and is tucked up beside you where he’s spread your blankets and - hey, look, is that fur tickling your nose - over the both of you.

It’s warm. It’s dry. There’s a distinct lack of people threatening you, which is nice. A fire slowly dying in the pit sends shadows chasing across the rafters. A cast iron pot nestling on three legs within the ash ticks and pings as it cools and another dangles over the hearth from a chain attached to a crossbeam. Estel’s chest rises against your arm and the pine boughs beneath you are surprisingly comfy and smell like winter.

Okay.

Good enough.

And so you lay your head down and let Estel’s snoring lull you to sleep, his breath puffing against your jaw and your eyes full of the shadows and smoke drifting high in the rafters.

And then you jerk awake, your chest burning and your heart thumping like it’s trying to bang its way out of your ribs.

Fuck. Your head feels like it’s in a vice.

Jesus. Something about clambering up the wall of a cesspit in the pouring rain before the muck slides from beneath you and you plunge into a brew of filth below that closes over your head.

Welp. No need to think too deeply to figure out what that was all about. You got a lot to choose from. Just throw a rock into the recent past and you’re sure to hit something that contributed to that particular set of nightmare fuel.

Here in the waking world, luckily, the sun streams in through the double doors at one end of the hall. A fire crackles briskly in the pit and there’s the sound of clucking just outside the doors.

Something smells fucking amazing.

The wooden slats beneath your bed jog with Estel’s movements, jostling you lightly and rustling the pine needles. He’s got his back to you sitting on the edge of the dais. There in a pool of sunlight streaming down from a hole in the roof, he skims his knife along the edge of a length of wood, hacking at knots in between running the pads of his fingers along its surface or lifting it up to eye level to peer down its length before he goes back to his work. Chips of wood leap and spark in the light with the movement of his blade. You watch as the muscles play along his back and arm under his shirt with his work, drifting there in that hazy world between sleep and awake.

You’re just starting to entertain the idea of snuggling up against his back and taking advantage of all that warmth from all that sun he’s been soaking in when Estel’s hands fall still and he twists about, studying you intently.

And that’s about it. Just a flash of his eyes on you and then, welp, that’s all you’ve got in you and there you go again, you’re out.

There’s been a lot of moments like that, glimpses of sunlight or the fire of the hearth bright behind Estel and his form dark against the flickering light, urging you to drink and holding a cup to your mouth when the smell makes you gag. He latches his fingers about your ankle as he dabs at the skin of your feet and you twitch and yank against his hold to pull away from the sting. He steeps strong-smelling herbs in a pot and lays a blanket over your heads and wafts the steam your direction as you lay half collapsed on his lap before turning you on your belly and very gently but very thoroughly beating the ever-loving shit out of you, tapping on your back and chest until it sets the whole dais vibrating. You cough and you cough and spit up gunk out of your lungs, and he cleans you up, forces food in you, wraps up your feet and tucks you in, rolling you onto your side. You’d say something but you’re too worn out and you give up and sleep surges up and drags you back under again.

Shit. That’s some fucking deep you’ve been rolling in lately.

The next thing you know someone’s rubbing their palm up and down your back, their callouses catching and dragging against the linen of your shirt. They’re speaking gently to you, urging you to awake. It must not be all that much longer since the last time you opened your eyes because something smells just as awesome as it did earlier.

“Naught comes into this place without my knowing it,” is the first thing Estel says when you open your eyes and roll to your back, shrinking away from his hand.

Shit!

You blink at him.

Oh.

He’s all fuzzy. In the daylight streaming in a bright column behind him it’s hard to make out anything other than the strings of his sleeve undone and dangling from his wrist here, an eyebrow there, dark hair pulled back into a tail at the nape of his neck, a couple day’s growth on his jaw, and the placating hand he is holding palm out toward you.

“Do you know me?” he asks warily.

Yeah. Well. Isn’t that the question of the hour.

You rub at your eyes, trying to get rid of whatever the fuck it is that’s clinging to your eyelids and gumming up your vision.

Ow. Your eye and cheek are still pretty tender.

Estel’s weight shakes the pine boughs when he gets up, thrusting up from your side and rustling busily about somewhere near the hearth.

“Well,” you say and then cough, clearing your throat, which, also ow, feels like you’ve had the Niagra Falls of postnasal drip. You try not to breathe too deeply cuz there’s a lot more goop where that came from.

Water rushes from around where Estel must be located.

“My name is Hala. We’re apparently in a super secret Viking batcave somewhere four to five days east of Bree. It’s probably somewhere around noon given that the sun is pretty much right overhead. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out of it, so I’m guessing it’s some time after the fourteenth of Winterfilth (who names these things?) of the year 1715 as it is reckoned in Bree. The king has yet to reclaim his throne in the North and I doubt you have presidents or anything, so I’m guessing you’re the closest thing to whoever’s in charge.”

There’s a soft exhalation of breath that comes from somewhere in Estel’s general direction, then his boots crunch over gravel and you blink at the jostling and shaking of the evergreen bed when he settles next to you.

“’Tis the sixteenth,” he says to all of that and you get a glimpse of his face before he tilts your chin up.

Well, shit. That’s longer than you thought.

“Close your eyes,” he commands and warm water lights on your face and pools in the corners of your eyes as he squeezes the cloth over you.

He uses a light touch to wipe away the gunk gluing your eyelids together, getting up to refresh the cloth and squeezing it out to let the warmth of the water do most of the work. You just kind of let him.

He’s smiling a little shakily when you finally open your eyes. He presses his lips together tightly when his fingers skim over where your face is bruised, his look stricken, as if, now that you’re obviously going to be okay, he’s just started to give himself permission to feel what he’s been stuffing down. Just when you think he might turn away and hide that crumpling thing that’s going on all over his face, he takes in a swift breath and comes close. He leans over you, and, soft and slow and gentle so you could turn away if you wanted, kisses your forehead.

It is a sweet, chaste kiss, a bare lingering press of the lips. It’s everything you could have wanted, the way his fingers linger at your temple as he cups your face in his hands, that look of relief on his face when he draws away. Your heart is pounding and you’ve broken out in a sweat.

Fuck but he’s beautiful, from the tendril of hair escaped from its tie and tickling your jaw to the warmth coming off his skin. It’s the stuff of your dreams and you are so deeply, utterly confused you cannot decide whether to return his kiss or not.

And so you do the absolutely most healthiest thing imaginable. You stuff all that mess back down in its box and slap the lid firmly on top.

Nope. Can’t. What the fuck are you going - nope. Nope nope . Uh-uh.

Estel lifts his head and takes you in, obviously waiting to see if you have something to say, cuz it’s not like you’ve ever failed to deliver chapter and verse of your opinions before.

“How’s your nose?” you ask for lack of anything better that you can come up with. I mean, true, he does have lovely swoops of purple and green going on under his eyes.

Estel blinks, a resigned look flashing across his face, quickly hidden by a wry smile when he eases himself off you and to his feet.

“I confess I was most pleased once I found I could breathe through it again,” he says as he tosses the cloth someplace at the end of the dais. “I have prepared somewhat to eat.”

Yep, you’re still an asshole. That’s not changed.

The ‘somewhat to eat’ turns out to be chicken soup. It tastes even better than it smells.

“Can you sit?” he asks as he comes down to kneeling on the dais, balancing a bowl in one hand, with the spoon tucked beneath his finger pressed to the bowl.

“Yeah,” you say and well, kind of?

Yep, okay, up you go, the pile of evergreens not giving you much leverage, wiggling underneath the weight you put on it and, whoo-boy, damn, where have all your muscles gone?

You’re a lot shakier than you thought you would be and you end up doing this graceless slithering and crawling thing off the mattress and onto the dais where you discover why your feet are all wrapped up in strips of cloth.

Ow. Rocks. Ow. Feet. Rocks. Feet. Ow.

Shit.

Down you drop your butt onto the dais with a thud and try to find a spot to put your feet that doesn’t involve raw skin and gravel.

Yep. That went well.

Pretty sure that whole act is why Estel comes to sit close beside you on the edge of the dais with his own bowl, casually lending you his side to lean on while you eat.

Damn, it’s good. There’s like these fluffy dumplings that taste of onion and pepper and the meat’s all shredded and tender, with thyme and thin-cut ribbons of greens. You take your time, taking small bites, sipping the broth, and chewing slowly as you savor the taste. In fact, the only thing wrong with it is the unsatisfactory amount; barely enough to cover the bottom of the bowl.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” you say and Estel makes a noise around his mouthful in response, scraping at his bowl, which was super full, by the way, fuck you very much.

“You had so little I deemed it impolite to decide how it was to be used.”

Yeah, you suppose that’s fair. Poor dude suffered through your cooking without complaint. You have to give him credit for that.

“Wait, no!” you protest when Estel gets up, tugging at your empty bowl which you were quite prepared to lick clean. You clutch at it, doing your best impression of a workhouse orphan. “No, dude, c’mon. I’m still hungry. You had a huge bowlful and I barely had any!”

“Later,” he says in that goddamn soothing tone of his as he slips the bowl out of your hands and sets it aside. “I could not bring myself to deprive you of somewhat to eat after so long a fast, but I do not think you shall wish your belly to be full for this next.”

“So not fair,” you protest and groan.

Big mistake. It sets off a round of coughing in which you attempt to expel your lungs. You double over, doing your best to swallow back the tickle and just breathe through it so you don’t trigger a gag response and lose all that lovely soup you just ate.

You lean over your lap when done, just hanging there. At some point Estel pressed a cup and a cloth into your hands and you use the linen to wipe at your eyes. So fucking miserable. Couldn’t you just skip this part of recovery? You know, the phase where you’re awake enough to feel every part of how much it sucks?

God, your back and sides hurt. Shit. Apparently you’ve been coughing nonstop for so long that your core muscles are sick of it and have tottered off in search of a fainting couch someplace.

For lack of anything better to do or, well, rather, the energy to do it with, you listen to Estel putter around the hearth, shaking out a blanket and slinging it across his shoulder as he lifts a pot of boiling water off its hook.

Estel motions to you to scoot over once he’s got everything set up, sitting down on the edge of the dais together with a small pot of steaming water between your feet. He throws the blanket over your heads and fusses with it until you’re pretty much enclosed in the dark. You set the cup aside and sit next to him, laying against his back with your head on his shoulder, riding his movements as he rips leaves of various herbs into small pieces and casts them into the pot and stirs them about.

“Do not come too near the water ere it cools some,” he says, scooting back and laying aside the spoon. You squirm about, resettling on his shoulder and, with that, the two of you fall silent while he wafts steam your direction.

“I’m going to make you sick, too,” you say, snuffling back snot after you’ve had a chance to wheeze and hack your way through the resulting silence.

“Nay, you shall not. I have not yet taken ill and have no intent of doing so,” he says like it’s an act of will or something.

Fuck. Who knows. Maybe it is for him.

“Come,” he urges, nudging the pot closer to you with the toe of his boot. “It must work its way fully into your lungs to have effect.”

Like a good little patient you do your best to comply. Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s really not so bad, the smell. Honestly, it’s a lot like walking through a pine forest and it tickles going in but there’s something else you can’t put your finger on.

“I bet you’re relieved I’ve finally shut up,” you say but he gives you a sharp look over his shoulder.

He then turns away and, after a while, takes your hand and drags it over into his lap. There he rubs his thumb along the tips of your fingers and studies them in the dim light.

“Aye, the fever may have loosened your tongue at the first and I despaired atimes of hiding our flight hither because of it,” he says softly by way of explanation, “but then you fell quiet.”

Oof. Damn, you’re not even sure what you owe him for that.

“Sorry,” you say, but he shakes his head.

“It is past.”

And that’s about it. He rubs his thumb back and forth over the edges of your nails, refusing to release your hand, and you lay against his back and breathe in the steam and let it do its work.

You’re not sure how long it’s been when you jerk your head aloft from where it had been skating down Estel’s arm.

Ugh.

You yawn, your jaw popping and then Estel catches it and you can feel his neck straining with the effort to contain the impulse to open his mouth and suck in air.

You squirm about, wondering how long until you can convince Estel to get on with the rest of the routine.

“I think it’s your turn to tell a story,” you say, your voice muffled against his shoulder and he makes a soft noise in response.

“What wish you to hear?” he asks, turning his head and straining to catch a glimpse of your face and you shrug. Fuck if you know.

“Wish you to hear of the Fall of Númenor and the coming of The Faithful, my forefathers, to the Northlands, the founding of the kingdom of Arnor and the tale of my people of the Dúnedain here? Or mayhap we shall return to The Lay of Leithian where last we left the tale.”

You shake your head. “Tell me a story about you,” you prompt, figuring that that might give him a nice, wide, humongous field from which to choose.

He’s not saying yes. He’s not saying no. He is silent a moment, turning his head and peering at you as if attempting to divine what exactly you are not saying. But then he turns away and his back lifts with his breathing.

“After my father died, when I was but an infant,” he begins, his voice humming against your ear where it is pressed to him, “my mother fled with me to the Hidden Vale. There we took refuge under the charge of its lord, who brought me into his household and fostered me, caring for me as were I his son.”

Well. Shit.

Foster-son of Big Name Elf-lord. Yeah. Okay.

Shit. Major Fucker was more right than he knew.

Like, seriously, what the fuck are you going to do?

Estel has fallen silent, his face solemn as if caught up in the memory. He’s still rubbing the pad of his thumb against your fingers as if he could wear a groove in the skin with the edge of your nails.

C’mon. Pull in air. Nice and steady. Cuz there’s plenty of it. Lots of air. All right here.

“’Tis a place of singular beauty and wonder,” says Estel and you use the cover of his voice to hack into the cloth he gave you. Nothing to see here. Just doing an impression of a fish completely out of water, that’s all.

“One day I hope to bring you there to see it.” He turns a soft, wistful smile on you when he glances at you and then away.

“But no child had been born to the folk of Imladris in nigh an age,” he says. “Nor had my mother borne any other child before my father’s passing.”

You snort, your brain short-circuiting and distracting you from your attempts to distract Estel from the fact you were distracted.

Oh god. Of course Estel was an only child. It explains so much.

“Aye,” he says with a huff, as though he had divined the source of your reaction, “it would be thought I had all I might desire. And did I not?” He spreads his hands in illustration of all he had. “My mother’s attentive care, food when I wished it, work to strengthen my body, enrichment for the betterment of my mind, and the love of the Lord of the Hidden Vale that watched over me?”

“Yeah,” you say, clearing your throat and coughing through the words, “but you must have gotten tired of being the only non-adult around sometimes.”

“Oh, aye,” he allows. He lets your hand go when you pull it away as you resettle. “Ever the one untempered and unlearned where those about me were masters of both themselves and their crafts. My mother offered me her pity but could but say ‘twould not always be so and she hoped I would understand when I was full grown.” He shrugs. “Thus, when my time was my own I would escape to the forests deep within the Vale, there to play my games where I could do so unwatched.”

He stops here, dragging the blanket against your back as he leans over and fusses with it.

Yep. Itty bitty Estel here strapped his itty bitty knife securely to his waist and marched out into the woods to build a fort to end all forts out of fallen trees and evergreen boughs and a carpet of moss, you just know it, complete with interesting rocks and slingshots and cast-off snake skins and squirrel and fox skulls in a box he carved himself, tiny, hypercompetent, feral fucker that he would have been when you stripped away the little lord Fauntleroy veneer.

God, part of you hopes his foster parent and mother despaired of ever keeping him and his clothes clean.

You open your mouth to say something of the sort when Estel turns about, slipping out from under you.

“Come. The water has cooled some,” he says, lifting the blanket from about you. “Lay upon my knee where you might take in the last of it ere it has lost its virtue.”

With a flip of the blanket and a bit of squirming, you end up tucked against his thigh, your cheek on his knee were the steam lights on your face and cools there, his hand on your back right at the shoulder blade rubbing in circles as he encourages you to breathe deep. His touch is all tender and slow, like he’s being extra careful to not move too fast and giving you the chance to pull away if you like. You might be inclined to fall asleep like this, if your back didn’t tense up every time he moved and your throat didn’t ache so much.

Asshole.

“Thus the years passed,” he says, taking up his story again, “until there came a company of dwarves from out the Wild, led there by The Gray Wanderer to rest and receive counsel.

“Dwarves, I knew,” he goes on, “but ‘twas then, when about in the woods, I caught sight of a figure who seemed of my own height. He spied me not and I followed and kept myself hidden, for I thought him a curious creature. He seemed to me a man full grown in features, though beardless, but what knew I of such things? I had not seen another child and knew not how to judge. They were as strange to me as the tales of orcs and trolls and dragons must be to you.”

Okay, yeah, hide out and spy on a hobbit. Of course.

Wait.

Wait. Who was that dude from the Shire? Hangs out with dwarves… tunnel-load of dragon gold? Damn it. What was his name? Something like, uhm, not Brandybuck, like, uhm, “Mad Hatter,” or “Mad Bag” or like “Dildo Boffin” or something.

“He walked without care upon the paths within the forest, but still I was unsure, and so kept myself hidden. The more I gained upon him the swifter he fled, until he was fair running as fast as his stout legs allowed. But still I followed until we found ourselves at the bottom of a fall of land where ran a stream fed by the melt of the winter’s snows and there was no further upon the path he-“

“I’m sorry,” you say, interrupting Estel, because, omg. His hand falls still on your back. “Are you seriously telling me an “oh-so-cute story about how you chased down a hobbit in a strange woods until you had him cornered and he had nowhere else to go?”

This is greeted with rather more silence than you thought it would.

You twist about and poke at the blanket to find Estel peering down at you with a most curious look on his face, as if it had just dawned on him that, you know, perhaps this story wasn’t exactly as charming as he thought.

“In my defense,” he says, “I was a lad of but ten years at the time.”

“Dude!” you exclaim against your better judgment and you’re forced to squeeze out the rest against the resulting spasms in your throat before you start coughing. “You are seriously in need of some better social skills.”

He frowns. “I do not know these ‘social skills.’”

“Yeah, no kidding,” you say, banging your fist on your breast bone and swallowing hard against the tickle in your throat. “Listen, I know this may be difficult to believe, but running people down and giving them a heart attack may not be the best way to endear yourself to them.”

He grins, his face lightening. “Nay, I think, mayhap, you are too little judge of these social skills to chastise me so. ’Twas not I who came upon you when first we met. Had there been aught of chasing and seizing upon a person, ’twas not I who was guilty of it.”

“Yep,” you say, “hunting people through the woods and scaring them or bleeding out in a ditch and scaring the Good Samaritan who happens upon you into making friends with you. You should be proud of yourself. Awesome range you got there. Hey, maybe next time you find yourself in want of hobbit friends, you should try staring from the shadows and then looming all six and a half foot plus of yourself over them and scaring them into burning desire to get to know you better, you know, for their own good. Excellent plan. I’m sure they’ll be extra super motivated to find out who the hell you are.”

“Aye, aye,” Estel says, his voice placating, “mayhap ’twas not my most gracious attempt to make myself known, but, still, he has forgiven me the fright I gave him and we are great friends to this day.”

Yeah. You just bet.

“You are much like,” he goes on. “He has a fondness for food and poetry and jests, and I am most oft made the humbler for them.”

“That’s me,” you snap, “your little Jiminy Cricket in your pocket.”

Oh, wow. That came out more bitter than you were intending, didn’t it.

You pat at his thigh. “Don’t give up hope, Estel. Maybe someday you’ll be a real boy.”

When he scoffs at that, you glance at him. “Not so pleased I’ve woken up and started talking again, are you.”

“I know naught of the tale of this cricket,” he says with a wry smile in return. “Though my friend is a great smoker of pipeweed, which you are not.

Okay. Enough. The pot is cool. The story is over. We’re done.

“You’re seriously going to fuck your lungs up with that crap,” you say as you sit up, fumbling at the blanket. Where the fuck is that corner and what is it wrapped around?

“’Tis not my lungs in need of remedy,” says Estel as he halts your attempts and drags the blanket over the tops of your heads until you both look like you just woke up.

“Yeah, well, it’s my stomach that really needs more remedying than anything else,” you grumble, cuz it’s gotten through that tease that was your lunch and is starting to get cranky and demand more.

As much as you were longing for a breath of fresh air, it’s kind of chilly now that you’re not all wrapped up anymore, what with the breeze coming through the open doors.

Estel must think so too, because he strides over to them, biting the leather thong from his tail in between his teeth as he runs his hands through his hair and captures all the fly-aways. He nudges the doors closed with his heel and there’s a flurry of protesting chicken noises when they bang shut. The hall goes dim but for the column of light streaming from the roof, but at least it’s not so cold now. He’s got his hair all tied up again once he returns to the hearth, where he pokes at the fire.

You are definitely not looking forward to this next part. Your back is already killing you and this is so not going to help.

God, he’s going to have to manhandle and touch you all over, isn’t he. You scrub at your face.

Fuck. You are so not ready for this.

Nothing for it, though, so you drag the quilted blanket, rug, camping mattress or whatever it is of Estel’s off the pine branches and onto the dais to give him a hard surface against which to pound the hell out of you. And that is what he does, tugging at your shirt to pull the fabric taut and pressing his ear to your back, moving from one spot to another.

“Breathe in,” he commands in the grand transdimensional tradition of doctors everywhere. His head lays warmly against your back listening for the crackling in your lungs.

Shit. He doesn’t need to press his ear against you. You can hear them yourself. But, he doesn’t hurry the process, moving deliberately from spot to spot in between laying his hand flat on your back and thumping his fingers against it to find the best place to start beating on you.

C’mon, c’mon. Just get this over with.

You start groaning even before he cups his hands and begins his drum solo.

I mean, it is less like Screamo and more like a cover of Red Red Wine by a reggae band from Upton Snodsbury, if you’re being completely honest. But there’s all this coughing and your throat is already sore and your back and ribs hate you enough as it is. You’re all wobbly after a while and you can’t quite catch your breath while you tap out and he lets up so you can try to bring up a lung, and it’s all gagging, spitting, fuck, “What was that you just hacked up into the cup? A fucking minnow?”, goop the color of which you never wanted to imagine coming out of you, omg you can’t breathe it’s stuck in your windpipe, attack of the killer blob coughing.

Oh my god! You can’t fucking breathe. Like, seriously, you can’t breathe!

Fuck!

You try swallowing and, well, that goes nowhere. Fucking glob of glue stuck like a rock at the top of your chest. Suck in? Spit out?

Fuck!

You flail about, grabbing onto Estel’s vest and yanking hard. A glimpse of his eyes all wide and fixed on you and then your vision goes watery and distorted. Your chest burns and everything goes muffled and cold and strong hands grab onto you, clutching and dragging you about until you don’t know which way is up.

Fuck you! Get off! No! Fuck off!

You lash out and there’s a grunt when you make contact.

Motherfucker! Let go!

There’s a sudden wet-sounding pop and you drag in air so hard you might have strained a muscle in the back of your throat, your back aching from where Estel must have given it a hearty thump.

Oh god. You’ve got a lump of snot hanging from your lips and onto your chin.

So fucking gross.

You pat about you blindly, your fingers lighting on the sleep rug and wood before something hard gets pressed into your hand, but you’re shaking and having a hard time figuring out where everything is. You can’t even bring the cup up to your mouth until something warm envelopes your fingers and Estel helps guide your hand so you can scrape and spit all that nastiness into the cup.

Fuck.

“Hush,” he soothes, rubbing at your back, and that’s when you clock to the fact that you’re sobbing big fucking snot bubbles out of your nose, the muscles of your face all screwed up and aching.

Oh god.

“Stop,” you try to say, but it’s unintelligible to even you and he keeps on being all gentle and attentive, shh-ing you and brushing your hair back and cleaning you up with a damp cloth.

“Stop!” you say and his hands fall still on you.

“Estel. God! Stop touching me!”

You pull the rag out of his grip and hack into it.

Fuck. Tears and snot and spasms in your throat and you’re just making it worse with your crying.

His hands lift away as he eases himself apart from you. You just kind of curl up then, sitting on the dais and holding your head in your hands.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

You should. You really should. You should break it off with him. And you know it. If you had anything resembling common sense you’d do it. You’d cut him off and end it right now.

But you can’t.

Damn it.

You love him. The big, lumbering, stupid, beautiful idiot. Him and his stupid beautiful face and stupid looming and loneliness and yearning and stupid lack of social skills and stupid arrogance and goddamn, fucking honorable… honorableness.

God!

Horde of assholes out there trying to wipe him and his people off the face of this god-forsaken planet. Fucking proverbial Dutch boy with all ten of his fingers deep in the dike and growing gangrene as we speak for how long he’s had them jammed in there. He’s all protection and tenderness and regret and relief and it. Fucking. Hurts. It hurts. And you don’t know what the fuck to do, because you know, you know why he did it. You know. The whole fucking trifecta. The everything bagel. All of it. You dead. Him dead. His people dead. You get it. And you know he feels awful for what happened or he wouldn’t be treating you like you’re made of glass and putting up with your shitty attitude. But he did it. He sent you out there without a fucking clue. On. Purpose. Massive leap across time or space or whatever and when you get here some assholes try to drown you and you la dee dah’d right into the middle of a fucking war zone, knowing fuck-all. And you didn’t have to.

He had all the intel. You didn’t. He did that. And. It. Hurts.

“I had wished to tell you myself,” he says when you gather yourself enough to wipe at your face and ease back onto the sleeping rug. He’s all hunched over on the edge of the dais, worrying the hell out of his fingers where they’re clasped between his knees.

Yeah, you babbled your head off about everything when you were out of it, didn’t you.

Fuck.

You drag your arm over your eyes, not even pretending that you’re not hiding. If you can’t see him, he can’t see you, right?

God you feel like shit. You could sleep for a whole ‘nother week. Your sinuses and ears ache and squeal and throb now, because of course they do.

“Remind me to teach you the Heimlich maneuver someday.”

“Hala, I beg you,” Estel says, desperation and resignation and reproof all wrapped up together.

Yeah. Okay. You’re not that cruel, keeping him hanging like this. You suppose you’re going to have to make words after all.

If only you knew what you were going to say.

“They kind of beat you to it,” is what you come up with. Maybe not directly to the point, but, you know, in the universe of things you should probably talk about. “They weren’t exactly sure, but they wanted to cash in and apparently you’ve got a price on your head.”

He greets this with a weary huff. “I do not recall a time I did not.”

Damn. Well, that sucks.

“They knew some dude named Sharkey who said he was going to pay up if they brought you to him.”

He considers the gravel around the hearth for some time before he rubs at his face with both hands, his callouses rasping against his beard. He stops with a harsh, bitter sound.

“I have no knowledge of this ‘Sharkey’ nor what he would do with what intelligence he could wring from me, nor can I spare the men to discover it.” He stares at his open hands dangling on his knees, hunched over where he sits on the edge of the dais.

He laughs sharply.

“I had resolved to spurn you, Hala, when you awoke,” he scoffs.

Of course he did. The great big emotionally-constipated lug.

“Estel -“

“Nay, Hala,” he says, “I do you no favors -“

“Yeah, don’t oversell yourself, dude.”

“This is but a taste of what is to come! I burden your heart when you should be free to choose what path you would, no matter - “

“You can cut out the martyr act any time now, you know.”

“It shall be my death, Hala! It need not be yours!” he yells, raising his voice so loudly it practically echoes in the rafters.

You peek out from under your arm.

Shit. His face has gone all red and his chest is rising and falling like a bellows, and he still can’t face you.

Fuck. Yeah, awesome. You are an awesome person. Maybe you should just shut up now.

“It will be my death,” he repeats, his voice hard, “like it was for my father and his father and his father even ere that, aye unto the first of the chieftains who survived the breaking of Arthedain and took its folk under his care.”

He scoffs bitterly. “They fought amongst themselves, my forefathers, petty feuds that broke our lands and divided our people, ripening fruit ready to be plucked by the hand of our enemies. They hoarded power and died leaving the waste of their neglect for other hands to remedy.”

He rubs at his thighs like he’s trying to grind something off the palms of his hands before launching himself to his feet. He yanks on a series of chains and pulleys to lift the simmering pot of soup off the flames in the hearth. He stands there with his back to you, staring at the fire until he’s no longer grinding his teeth or drawing in sharp draughts of air.

“But so it is. I have made my peace with it.” He’s not shouting anymore, but he is certainly no less adamant. “Should the folk of the Dúnedain have one day more than would have been theirs I will be satisfied, even should I not reach it with them or never know had my efforts borne fruit.”

Damn. That is… Okay, you have no freaking clue what to say to that. How could you even raise your child knowing this was what was waiting for him? I mean, seriously. How?

He sighs and turns away from the hearth, coming towards you.

Well, fuck. If that’s where his head is at, you’ve got a pretty good idea what’s coming next. You sit up, cuz this is not a discussion you are going to take literally laying down.

He’s taking his time getting to it, snatching up the cup and rag where you left them, his face grim. He wads up the rag and three-pointers it to the end of the dais where you can only imagine there’s a growing pile of laundry. The contents of your cup sizzles in the fire, which, yeah, so so gross, and you wait while he crouches down by the hearth with a bit of hot water and soap to clean it out. It’s not until he’s tossed the water onto the gravel and the cup hangs upside down on one of the pegs jutting from a column that he wipes his hands on a cloth and then comes over to lower himself to sit cross-legged on the dais across from you. He studies you first, before speaking.

“Hala,” he says, his voice soft, “I know of your complaints of me, and, aye, I am over-proud and unyielding atimes.”

It’s seriously not the time for it, but you really really want to snort at this. Cuz, yeah, understatement.

“But not in this,” he says, his voice grim. “My head is no longer full of high tales and hopes. I know what I am and what life is mine to offer.”

He stops here, his eyes suddenly glinting in the reflected light as he turns away, his lips pressed together tightly until they go white at the edges.

“And yet I would still cling to you,” he gets out tightly before he draws in a ragged breath. He works hard at it, and once he masters himself, he scoffs wordlessly and his hand rises and then falls into his lap, open and unmoving as he sits there with his shoulders slumped. “I am bereft of all will in this matter. I have no pride, Hala.”

Okay, that’s it. It’s all a pointy lump in your throat, stuck there, pain radiating from it as it blocks anything else from going in or coming out, but, still, you reach out to him.

He lets you lay your hand on his.

“Estel,” you say, “if you’re counting on me to engage some kind of instinct in self-preservation and take this decision away from you, you’ve got a long wait ahead of you.”

This, shockingly, does nothing to reassure him.

He grabs up your hand and, holding it between both of his, presses it to his lips, where he sniffs, blinking and trying but failing to get something out.

“Ai, Halayana,” he finally says, low and choked. “You know not what you say! I failed where I had given you my word.”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

“God damn, Estel! Quit beating yourself up before I get a chance to do it, yeah?” you say and he blinks.

“Hala!” he protests. “Had I not misread the signs-

“Estel -” you say, cuz that is so not the issue.

“You paid the price for it! What right have I to ask more of you?”

“For fuck’s sake, Estel!” you shout, waving your free hand about as you speak like that’s going to clear things up. “I am not your mother or, or your foster-father, or Ruby. And I’m sure as hell not your princess, either.”

Well that shuts him up. He just kind of stares at you over your clasped hands like he’s forgotten what words are and how to form them. You’re not sure who’s more confused by your outburst, him or you.

“I know this,” he says, his voice very very small.

“Then stop treating me like them,” is what pops out of your mouth.

It does not clear things up.

He squeezes your hand in his and, wearily, lays his forehead upon his knuckles.

Damn it. He’s so fucking confused. And it’s not like you’re really any clearer on the issues involved.

“Hala,” he asks from behind your hands, “why do you turn from me?”

You sigh, because, god damn it, yeah, okay, you weren’t being terribly subtle about it, were you.

He raises his head, looking at you earnestly. “Do not deny it, I beg you. You have been angry and impatient with me even ere you awoke.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right,” you say and squirm, the linen bandages around your ankle becoming suddenly very fascinating. You rub at the fuzzy threads along the edge where he had ripped the linen into a strip. Fuck. Yep. You’re an asshole.

“I’m not,” you start and then halt, frustrated. You pluck at a loose thread like it’s going to get you somewhere.

God, it’s like poking at something in jello; just keeps squirting out from beneath your finger the closer you get to it.

C’mon c’mon. Just spit it out. Whatever it is. Just… go!

“God!” you shout at the rafters and draw your hand out of his so you can wave both of them about. “I’m not the maiden in distress that you have to make all the decisions for and shelter and protect all on your own. And, and, and I’m not, like, the child of Bonnie Prince Charles or something, who will, I don’t know,” you stop and fling your hand about like there might be something out there in the air that illustrates your point, “like create alliances and send you care packages and letters with lines of poetry and a lock of hair, and watch over you from afar from that pedestal you’ve put me on.”

He’s watching you intently from over where he’s got his chin tucked in his fists, his eyes bright in the sunlight.

“I fucking hate pedestals!” you spit and he winces. You halt, surprised.

Oh. Wow. Where did that come from?

Well, sounds right. Go with it.

“They’re lonely and unstable and the fall is a long fucking way down! I mean, seriously, do you really like it up there, trying to make decisions for everybody and keep them safe all the time?” you go on and he blinks, something pained flashing across his face.

You sigh.

You have no fucking clue what you’re going to do if he doesn’t get with the program, here.

“C’mon, Estel,” you say, motioning in the air between the two of you. “Can’t it be just, like, you know, you and me?”

He doesn’t say anything, but considers you solemnly, the skin around his eyes tightening like he’s computing all the implications.

You sigh. Well, fuck.

He may be an asshole. But he’s your asshole and it’s not like he’s a power-hungry asshole. He’s got good reasons for the secrets he keeps.

Okay. Shit. Might as well go for broke since we’re here and everything.

“I need for you to share this, Estel,” you say, taking in the tools and implements hanging from the walls that speak of everything but family and comfort and lives lived in their fullness here in a glance, and, fuck…. “And I mean like everything, the good, the bad, the easy, and the hard. You can’t put it on me, you know, whether or not that’s something you can do. That’s your decision. It’s not up to me. No more cop outs about being all helpless cuz I’m, like, you know, a snack and you’ve been hungry your whole life.”

You swallow. Well, that fell flat.

Shit.

Okay, the rest, you need to say the rest. Even if…

Shit.

C’mon.

Fuck. You gotta say the rest.

“And it’s my decision, what to do if you can’t,” you say and, fuck, your throat hurts. “Cuz you can’t send me out there like that again, you know?”

He licks at his lips, his face fallen, like he knows what he needs to say but he’d really rather cut out his vocal cords than do it.

“I just-” you say and then halt, stammering, cuz fuck, what the fuck are you going to do? “I, uh, well, I dunno.” You clear your throat. God, your chest hurts. “You knew things that would have helped me understand why, and you, uh, you…”

Shit.

Things go all blurry and fuck you’d sure like to breathe.

You clear your throat again but you get nothing but a clicking sound when you swallow. Shit. You swipe your nose with your sleeve.

Guess that’s not coming out anytime soon.

Oh god. You’re kinda glad you can’t see Estel about now, cuz you’re not so sure you want to know what’s on his face.

“I shouldn’t have had to figure it all out on my own, you know? What you would ask me to make that kind of a sacrifice for? Cuz-”

And that is all you get out. Next thing you know Estel’s got you all wrapped up, his huge freaking hands cupping your jaw and thumbs rubbing at your temple, shushing you and pressing his forehead against yours.

Fuck. That glimpse of his face as he launched himself at you. He looked like he had just taken a knife to his gut.

Fuck. Fuck fuckfuckfuck.

His fingers tighten on you because, yeah, you’re flapping your hands in the air like you’re trying to shake off a bee or something and babbling. What the fuck else would you be doing?

“Like I don’t need to know the specifics,” you keep on and maybe he’s saying something. Fuck if you know. You can’t make it out for the blood pumping in your ears. Fuck. “Like, you know, if they find out x, then when you solve for y it reveals that ‘the people who count on me to keep them safe live at 36.2 degrees latitude and 55.9 degrees longitude and the password to the gate is Fuck off Nazi scum.’”

“Hala!” he says, his voice growing more urgent, like maybe this isn’t the first time he’s called your name.

“I just need to know why, you know? Just, you know, I get it’s a fucked up game you’re being forced to play, but don’t treat me like I’m some fucking pawn, okay?”

“Ai, Halanya!”

And that’s all you’re going to get out for a while because you’re getting the stuffing squeezed out of you. He’s got you all pressed up against him with his arms around your back and your head tucked under his chin and whispering something that sounds like maybe he’s begging your forgiveness. It’s awkward and your back is killing you but you’ve grabbed great big honking handfuls of his vest and fuck if you’re going to let go.

“Aye, Hala, aye,” Estel says, nodding against the crown of your head. “I understand now. You have the right of it, aye. Forgive me, I beg you.”

Oh. That’s what he’s been saying over and over again.

Oh god. Thank fuck.

Okay, okay. Maybe you can do this after all.

And that is when your stomach decides you’ve been terribly negligent not listening to it and it is done being polite.

Laughter through tears is actually a pretty good look on the lord of the Dúnedain.

“I am really fucking hungry,” you protest. “I mean, you were such an asshole; made this awesome soup that I could even smell in my sleep and you got to eat a whole freaking bowl of it and all I had was scraps. Not fucking fair at all.”

“Aye, Halanya.” Estel chuckles against your hair before he presses a kiss to your scalp. “I will prepare more for you and you may eat until you are full and your stomach quits its complaints.”

He refuses to let you go, and, well, it’s not like you’re pulling away either, excellent chicken soup or no.

Fuck, this is nice. I mean, your back is all rusty knives and chainsaws, and if you don’t blow your nose soon the surface tension in all that goop building up in your nostril is soon going to give way and snot on your upper lip is not a great look when a certain someone may be thinking of kissing you, but this is nice.

“I think, maybe, you’ve just been so used to being the one everyone leaned on all the time since you were a kid, that you forgot.”

“Aye, mayhap,” Estel says softly after a moment in which he cradles you against him, his breath running warm against your head and his heart beating in your ear. “I grant your point. And, aye, I would take all you might have it in you to give me and be glad of it, even should it be but for a little while. But, Hala, consider closely should you wish to tie your fate to mine. It is quite like the best we might hope is that you live a long life as you should, but I die in my people’s defense and leave you to mourn me as did my mother my father.”

o. m. G!

“Okay, okay,” you say and squint up at him with your free eye. “But what if, like, you didn’t.”

“Hala, that makes naught of sense.” He shrugs without moving his arms from around you. “I am no different than those who came before me. There is naught that” - he pauses, looking about as if searching for the right phrase - “that sets me apart or increases my chances.”

“Okay, okay, yeah,” you insist, “but, well, listen to me.”

He sighs, the big idiot.

“Estel,” you say, “what if you didn’t?”

He greets this with heavy silence, as if he knows just how much it hurts, having to live with that smoking hole where he used to keep hope, and is unwilling to be that asshole who can’t let other people cling to it.

“You know, like Ancient Estel shuffling around on his arthritic feet with his breeches pulled up to his nipples trying to keep his saggy butt-cheeks from flapping when he walks,” you say and he lets loose a soft bark of laughter.

“Such indignities you have planned for me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “Just because you don’t have a whole lot of old-fart role models doesn’t mean you can’t be one yourself.”

You can hear him thinking, what with the deep rise and fall of his chest. You got him there, you know. Fucking dead fathers and elves and their immortal youthfulness. When was the last time he really loved someone so old that they farted with every step as they walked?

“C’mon, it could be fun,” you say when he remains quiet. “You know, shaking your walker at the young-uns and yelling at them to slow down, there’s kids that play around here, dontcha know, or grumbling about how zoomers are ruining Hip Hop with their mumble rap and god damn avocados on everything, before muttering your way back to your rocker in a patch of sun.”

“I understand but half of that,” he protests. “Aye, Hala, though it appeals, my end is sure to be as my fathers’ was,” he says as if that were that.

For fuck’s sake. Spare you the whole powerpoint presentation.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” you snap. “The ‘average lifespan of a lord of the Dúnedain is 100 years old’ factoid is actually based on an inappropriate choice of the arithmetic mean to represent the central tendency of a nonnormal distribution. The median lord of the Dúnedain dies at about 40 years old because Spiders-Estel, who lived to a ripe old age of 372, is an outlier and should not have been counted.”

Estel frowns against your head.

Okay? All right? Did you maybe get something through that cast-iron skull of his?

“I do not understand how spiders enter into it,” he says.

Omg. So fucking stubborn. Seriously, you’d think the dude had a death-wish or something.

“Do they live so long a life as this where you come from, these spiders?” he asks.

Oh.

Fucker.

“Shut up,” you say.

“Nay, I shall not,” he says, rocking you against him. “Should you be well enough to pester and bother and tease me I shall do the same to you.”

“I’m sick. Leave me alone. And you’re bigger than me.” When he chuckles you go on, “And really seriously outrank me, what the fuck.”

He snorts. “I cannot think any attempt on my part to assert authority over you would proceed quite as well as I might hope.”

“You’re right, there, big guy, and don’t you forget it,” you say, poking him in the chest before you snuggle in closer, mollified, a little, enough for now, anyway.

He hums into your hair, and you are content to just stay there, snot-glazed lip and protesting spine be damned.

“Come,” he says, pushing you away when you lose your grip on his vest and your hand slides down his back. Your head jerks up.

Oh, shit. You drifted off there. Fuck. Seems you used up all your energy for the day.

Estel pulls you to your feet, perp-walking you to the pine mattress where you teeter on your sore feet as he pulls the fur over the pile of evergreens and helps you lay back down. You don’t protest.

You rub your face into the fur.

Wow. That’s super soft. Nice. Why the hell would you protest?

“Don’t forget. You promised me more soup,” you grumble when Estel spreads a blanket over you.

“Sui aníradh,” he says with a fond smile as he tucks the blanket in under your arm. “Rest here. I will prepare it for you.”

So nice, just laying here as you listen to Estel putter around the hearth, the gravel crunching beneath the soles of his boots, the scuff of wood and ash when he kicks at the fire, the clank of the chains and soft squealing protest of the pulleys far overhead, and the clink of wood against wood of the bowl and spoon.

You wait for the sound of soup splattering into the bowl, but, nope, never comes. Cuz, guess what? You are out. Dead to the world asleep because that is exactly what kind of day you’re having.

God damn it.

Fucker better not eat all of that soup.

#LOTR #fanfiction #aragorn #aragorn/oc #aragorn/reader #reader insert #gender neutral reader #Where the Stars are F***ing Strange

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