#//danke danke mate

[reflections-of-mobius]

Anonymous asked:

Resilience for Murk?

[Positive Psychology OC Ask Meme! | Accepting!]

RESILIENCE– How do they handle loss or failure? What helps them stay resilient and bounce back from loss or failure?

That mostly depends on the source of its failure. If Murk fails in a task that has no opposing force (i.e., a timed task or project for which he is not skilled), then he just accepts the loss and moves forward- with plans forming for how to better handle it in the future. However, if he's presented with a failure caused by another party (i.e., losing a competition, or the entirety of Sonic 06) then it hits him very hard. Think- willing to get revenge hard- but he's working on toning that down, especially now that he no longer has the goal of world-wide destruction/combining with Iblis to drive him forward.

For Murk, the thing that helps it stand back up after a loss is simply 'I will try again- and next time, I will succeed'. It's driven by a need to do its best. The loss brought about from Sonic 06 brought him low, sure- but it was also a freedom for him, and an awakening. It freed him from the chains of craving being Solaris- and it showed him what it was like to be the loser- something he had refused to accept, initially, when it was captured years prior for research purposes.

There were several of these, the others will all be under a cut!

Wisdom for Bless! Or is it Bliss?

WISDOM– Are they open to other people’s perspectives? Do they look to history and past mistakes? What kinds of internal dialogue do they have about difficult situations?

It's Bless, you were right on the mark! And Bless is usually open to other's perspectives. While he won't deviate from his own unless he finds the new perspective to be better, Bless would never cut someone down for having a differing outlook compared to him. After all, that's part of what makes life interesting- and you aren't always going to meet people you agree with! It's more fun to learn where the differences lie, and continue forward regardless.

Short of killing others, Bless doesn't look to others' past mistakes to judge them on. He knows that not everyone has a good life, and sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do- but he holds a line at taking a life. Unless it's for a damn good reason, i.e., because that person was intent on torture, murder, global domination, experimenting on sentient subjects, etc.,- he's against it. Of course, like anyone- Bless can also step over that line (try to kill his friends or his enbyfriend and you're fucked)... So he'd still be willing to hear someone out if they had a history of murder.

As for his internal dialogue- it's pretty upbeat! Even in rough situations, he's usually looking for a way to cool everyone down and diffuse whatever's got everyone up-at-arms. However, if it's a fight... There's usually a few dozen quips just on the tip of his tongue, alongside a general battle plan (factoring in everyone who's on his side and their abilities vs. the enemies' abilities, of course).

Leadership for Node

LEADERSHIP– Do they have clear, set goals? Do they take the consideration of others, or do what they will? Would they go out of their way to meet the individual needs of people around them, or create a more standardized all-in-one solution?

Node... Has no big, set goals with their life. Much like their boyfriend, Bless, they tend to just go with the flow.- With how many times Mobius has been threatened, and the amount of destruction that's unfolded, they worry about trying to set long-term plans, only for them to result in failure. However, in terms of little things, Node does hope someday to start selling their own homemade candles.

Node always lends a helping hand to those around them- often to their own detriment, actually. Even if they're burnt out or on the edge of collapse, they'll still try to help others... Something that has had Bless quietly trying to gesture for whoever's been talking to Node to say no.

As you can guess from the above, Node prefers to offer personalized solutions over generalized solutions. If they can, they'd rather make everyone happy by individualizing the solution as opposed to making something for the masses, that not all hands may enjoy.

Forgiveness for Tenebrosity?

FORGIVENESS– Do they obsess or linger on the bad things that someone did to them? Do they allow change to take place after they have been hurt, or do they fight against it? What negativities dictate or direct their decisions or life?

Me still with only the one icon for Ten, someone please get me off my ass-

Ten isn't one to linger on negativity, outside of being awoken from her naps early. She's the embodiment of everything dark- fear, death, destruction, violence, anger, you name it and she's got it.- Having to be the living embodiment of such things for Mobius means there isn't a lot of room for resentment, because (contrary to what one may think) Ten can understand the opposing party, usually quite easily. Just because she draws her power from the darker half of the coin doesn't mean she must enjoy it.

She allows change, but she's pretty slow at it- as much as Ten is decent with letting bygones be bygones (after having a massive blow-up, situation depending...). Change... Is not something Ten is highly accustomed to, having been locked in the same eternal cycle with her twin brother since the dawn of Mobius' first civilzation.

Ten acts as she does mostly out of guilt and regret for what she did when Dr. Eggman prematurely awoke her. Her rage spread all over the planet, literally ripped it apart- all because she got furious that she woke up early. The very idea that she nearly caused a planet-wide catastrophe many years too early... It makes her feel sick. She never meant to scare every citizen of Mobius so heavily, nor to give Dr. Eggman so much of her power- and she spends each day and night of her mobian life, at present, trying to make up for that enormous blunder.

However...

Tenebrosity knows, being what she is, that she is beyond forgiveness- no matter what she tries to do to make up for this one event, she will (inevitably) be awoken one day to cause far more damage...

Meaning for Tempest?

MEANING– Where do they believe they fit in the world around them? What provides them comfort? Do they think about their daily life and routine? Are they satisfied?

Tempest honestly isn't sure where she fits in the current world. Before she ever met Sonic, she was basically a shut-in- and she only grew to have friends because Sonic was the first person to reach out to her. She knows she is the living prison of both the Iblis Flame and Mephiles' Darkness- a living construct that has been reformed, in both body and soul, to keep the two entities forever separated, despite how close they may be.

In a way, Tempest views herself as merely an item- a place, and a monster. For all she has done for her Mobius, she failed in saving humanity. She failed in keeping Iblis in check- she nearly destroyed the world when she was Solaris, all because she was hungry. She is the prison. She is the jailor. She is Iblis and Mephiles' final resting place, and in a way, that is all she can bring herself to view herself as.

Tempest finds comfort in exploring ancient ruins. In a way, it's a reminder that while she did fail humanity... They still lived. They were transported to Earth, lived out their lives... Eventually, they were forgotten to time- but their legacy gave birth to a new planet- a whole new world. It's also where Tempest feels most at home, in general. Ruins have had a cornerstone in her life for some time now, from being where she finally felt emotions for the first time, to being where she realized humanity had not been erased by her Mephiles- merely misplaced to another world, a single universe away.

She finds comfort in her friends, as well.- Because unlike most of the mobians, Sonic and his friends don't see Tempest as a weapon or a bomb waiting to explode- they see Tempest as Tempest. Someone who's been through as much as the rest of them- and has a hard time expressing herself because she's afraid of what Iblis will do if she does.

Tempest thinks about her daily life and routine from time to time. It doesn't come across her thoughts all that often, since it's so normal to her... But it does show up, especially when she's wanting out of a situation.

Tempest is not satisfied with how her life has gone.- But she wouldn't trade it for another chance. She's grateful for the friendships and memories she's made, though she feels... As if what she tried to do wasn't enough. As though she has failed. Sure- Mobius is still here... But it's in tattered ruins. Humanity lived.- But on another planet. She still has the scars on her upper arms/shoulders and shoulder blades to remind her that, for all the good she has done- she is the vessel of evil. She failed when it mattered most, and had to rely on others for her saving grace. She wasn't enough.

#i’ve got nothing else to prove | asks #now you can only watch/as the fire burns ice cold | anon #I wish there was another way out/For you | Dark Gaia “Tenebrosity” #Shoot out the lights/There’s a fire in the sky/Burning it all/The black ash will fall | Tempest Lock #Hanging on the edge of tomorrow/From the works of yesterday | Sonic “Bless” the Hedgehog #Behind this soft exterior/Lies a warrior | Node the Fennec Fox #Sticks and stones won’t break my bones/But your name might crack me | Mephiles “Murk” the Dark #long post #//t'was fun!!! #//danke danke mate

[idiotthewise]

Legit.

#f knows #nope #i dont know #dank #meme #no #who knew #lol #mate

[raubtierfuetterung]

To be completely honest. Yes. I think I really do love him. I can imagine us married and living together. Can you imagine? Of course this isn’t an exciting, special and deep thought. I only feel human for loving someone like this. I like it when he looks at me. I’m almost sure he’d agree to do sth if I asked him out. But I’d much rather be asked out by him. Sure thing. Because I too am shy. And a coward.

#I want to be a vampire and make him one #no no no I was wrong I’m now completely convinced that he doesn’t care about me #maybe his mates even told him that I’ve been staring and he’s creeped out or sth #ich bin so hässlich und unsportlich und unsicher und eigenartig und faul und unergeizig und ich hab ein graues ungesundes Gesicht #er kann mich nicht mögen. Ich glaube er versucht mich zu ignorieren weil ich so schlimm und hässlich und unangenehm bin #dafür haben seine Kumpels mir hinterhergepfiffen. na danke. #ich glaub ich steh auf Leute die mich nicht mögen. weil absolute green flag. es kann gar nichts passieren

[beiasluv]

lego schumacher | m. schumacher (47)

a/n: i blame tiktok pov, now I’m obsessed with mick 🤭 enjoyy

yourinsta’s story

reply

landonorris: excuse me, you’re my racing engineerr

: going back rn 😦 stroopwafels?

landonorris: I’m going to tell Zak 😙

: I’m taking oscar next season :(

yourinsta

liked by oscarpiastri, mclaren and 367,552 others

yourinsta dear zak, this is my weekly report.

peace out, your favorite racing engineer.

view all 97,812 comments

landonorris why does oscar and mick get all the cool pictures??

yourinsta the worst the better! 😚

landonorris only because you’re my favorite racing engineer

yourinsta I’m your only racing engineer 😐

mclaren OUR favorite engineer! 🧡 thank you mick for joining the testing!

mickschumacher thank you for having me 😁

yourinsta come back soon!

mickschumacher 🧡

username mick is trying so hard not to send the red heart

username try not to flirt challenge

username we need them together ever since F2 😩

username we need more gen z racing engineer out there. restoring my faith in mclaren 😭

username nahhhh have you seen the “never back down never what” of hers and lando’s 😩

mickschumacher

liked by landonorris, estabanocon and 791,519 others

mickschumacher danke to my favorite photographer yourinsta !

view all 276,317 comments

yourinsta anytime :) - your favorite racing engineer ☺️

mickschumacher 🤍

landonorris you are not leaving mclaren 😦

username mick, blink twice if you need rizz help

username pleaseeee they are so blind 😩

username is she or he blind 😭😭

username girl. mick is trying so hard

georgerussell63 great pictures, mate 👊

yourinsta ikr???

yourinsta

liked by mickschumacher, f1 and 517,961 others

yourinsta happy birthday seb!! thank you for being my biggest supporter/mentor/believer/personal driver 😚 thank you for bringing me joy and comfort during my path in motorsport, miss you!

Ich liebe dich bis zum mond und zurück!

view all 175,781 comments

sebastianvettel thank you, liebing ❤️ (did you use google translate again?)

yourinsta you have to teach me some more german :(

sebastianvettel I know I have someone else to teach you 😄

yourinsta fair enough :( miss you seb!

username mick is punching air rn. I know he wants to call her liebing so bad.

username are we missing the point that mick is also in this??

username WE ARE TALKING about ‘someone else’ to teach her german???

username ikrrrr obviously who??? 🤭

yourinsta’s story

reply

yourinsta

liked by mickschumacher, lewishamilton and 862,418 others

yourinsta happy summer break!

view all 268,672 comments

mickschumacher I’m not a lego 😕

yourinsta yes, you are ☺️ missing angie alreadyyy

mickschumacher missing you more 🤍

oscarpiastri 👊 welcome to aus!

yourinsta thank you os!! see you next season!

username I pray to Tom holland for the manifestation that they’ll be together, amen.

username amen, sis

username going on a trip together isn’t enough to prove that they’re together???

username girl. It could be just a friendly trip, who knows?

username friendly my ass 😭

comment for part 2???? 😬🤭

edit: part 2 is out peopleee

like, reblog, anything if you liked it 😃 if not, then why da fuck not? jk lolll.

today’s a great day to take care of yourself!!

#formula 1 #fanfiction #f1 imagines #f1 x reader #lando norris x reader #lando norris x you #charles leclerc imagines #f1 fanfic #mick schumacher #mick schumacher x reader #mick schumacher x you #mick schumacher imagine #mick schumacher fanfic #mick schumacher instagram au #f1 smau #f1 imagine #mercedes #f1 fic #formual one

[pursuitseternal]

“Knowledge is a dangerous weapon:” Bookworm!Tav, Vampiric Spawn Powers, and Breeding—“Bites” Update 📚

Astarion x F!Reader | E | 4.6K of banter and breeding

Based on an anonymous prompt

(HBD @lipstickghoulie )

Summary: You have always loved your books and a challenge, when your Vampire Rogue learns his starvation has kept him from his full powers, you take him up on his challenge to teach him the skills that are his due. As you draw closer together, he finds that one bit of information you have failed to teach him… how to make a dhampire

CW: light mocking of Astarion’s ditziness, Spawn Spidercrawl, catching powers and feelings, flirty touching, creepy silent vampire moves, Breeding talk, no babies just breeding, Mating Press™️

Ao3 link | Series link | Masterlist

📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚

You always knew he was… dumb. Thick headed. Unobservant.

Okay, at times the comments from his thick, rosy lips were just plain stupid. “That lever… must do something…” That was a wonderful moment, one that earned him your eyes rolling so far back in your skull they hurt. “We have some words and some… circles…. Wonder what they do….” Another example of his unparalleled intelligence.

Not to mention the countless times he failed to remember any of the major gods and their shrines as you passed through crypts and defiled chapels.

For as handsome as he was, for as sultry and seductive as you found him, he was… smoothed-brained. But as your journey forced you closer together, you couldn’t help but think some of it may be merely pretense, he was a magistrate after all. He was abused and tortured for centuries, surely that does things to one’s mind. And he was always reading. Every day, every night at camp, his beautiful aquiline nose stuck in a book, crimson eyes devouring the words at a breakneck speed.

One to even rival your own thirst for knowledge.

Maybe it was that you allowed the poor Spawn a chance to drink living, thinking blood for once. Your own. Maybe that was what began to take his little, stupid moments and turn them into something endearing.

Not that he was gracious when you corrected his ignorance. Every time, he gave that adorable, grumpy harumph and then defended his comments, or… since he started feeding from you, he’d just look at your neck still freshly marked and lick his lips. That really shut you up. Set you on fire.

But it wasn’t until you needed him to reach that last little chest up on the crumbling ledge inside some dank cavern that you realized his ignorance wasn’t wholly pretend.

Astarion, vampire spawn, didn’t know just what he should be capable of. He looked positively befuddled when you told him to just climb the brick wall. His sass had been sharp, “I’m not some spider, darling.”

“But you can spider climb, you dolt,” you had laughed imitating his tone, trying to call his bluff on skills he should have, at least according to what you had read in your book. A Spawn should scale such a wall with immense ease.

He just narrowed his crimson eyes at you, a snarl on his lips as he shook his head. “I have never performed such an act, darling, nor have any of my brothers and sisters, those of us Cazador kept for his bidding. Better check your precious facts in your precious tomes before you throw your assumptions on my prowess… dear.”

You still shiver at that night. Back at camp. When you ignored the way he bristled as you approached him in front of his tent. He had sneered at you, readying his next acerbic quip for you… Until you sat so close beside him, settling the heavy book in his lap. Leaning in, you point to the page. Traits and Strengths of the Vampiric Spawn.

You felt him cease breathing, his left hand clutching at the edge of the book growing even whiter. “Astarion,” you breathed. Leaning in more, you looked into his eyes, his gaze scanning the words so quickly on the aged vellum. And then he shoved you by your cheek out of his sightline. He needed to finish this.

“Why, I should be positively remarkable, assuming your book is correct,” he sighed, as if he saw a vision, a dream fulfilled. One where he was powerful.

You nodded as his crimson eyes flashed at you, wide with wonder. “You mentioned Cazador never let you feed enough, and not from thinking creatures.” He nodded, skeptical even as his eyes fixated on your lips. “Well, what you did not know was that denying you a sufficient diet meant also restricting you from your full powers, even as a Spawn, Astarion. You should be able to climb up walls and ceilings, move swifter, lift boulders too much for even Karlach to manage. You should be able to heal almost instantaneously, without potion or feeding.”

“And now?” he replied, that little tremor of hope in his voice unmistakable as his hand traced over the page of your book.

“Well, it’s a difficult deduction, since you have our unwelcome illithid parasite. But now that you are feeding regularly, even from thinking creatures, you should find the effects more than just making you feel… happy,” you rambled on. Even as you kept talking, his eyes glued their gaze to your neck, your lips. If you weren’t mistaken, they even dipped down the v-shaped cut of your tunic.

“So… the more I drink from thinking creatures, the stronger and more powerful I will be?” he murmured, a slight grit in his throat as his eyes definitely darted down your bosom now.

“Y-yes,” you rejoined, sliding back just a touch.

And he slid that touch closer, and then some.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, darling? You’ll help me learn these skills? Give me all I require to access my full potential….” His eyes looked wet, the ruby irises glowing in the flickering firelight. “Please?” he adds with that smirk and that single arching brow of his made you stomach flutter and heart thump so hard in your chest.

“I…” you started, but he only seemed to lean ever closer.

“You know, when I was a Magistrate, back in the City, I would have craved someone with intelligence like yours. We would have been rivals, colleagues…” his eyes dip once more shamelessly up and down your seated body. “Perhaps lovers even,” he breathed. “I always surrounded myself with those of highest intellect, darling. Intelligence is so… undervalued by many, and knowledge is a dangerous weapon, but I see you, my darling. Won’t you please come to my aid now?”

“We… we can try,” you had whispered, barely able to the let the words from your lips with how you seemed to seize under the intensity of his stare.

“Wonderful,” he purred, catching your cheek, your chin in his cool palm. “I just hope we don’t have to wait too long…”

You squirmed as his thumb began to brush beneath your lip.

“…to put my new strengths to the test I mean, of course.” He smirked that little bit more twistedly. More seductively. And you knew he heard your heart beating in your artery, your blood rushing under his touch in your veins to pool lower. It was his nature, and you knew more of it than he did.

“Of course…” you breathed. “I’d be happy to help.”

“Then it’s settled,” his voice was thick in his throat, you relished the way his other arm stole around you, clutching at you back to bring you all the closer under his heady spell of charm and seduction. “All that’s left is to seal our new arrangement somehow…”

He pushed that heavy book off his lap, sliding to bring you into completely flushed against him. You’re sure your pulse was raging so loudly, it’s deafened his pointed and twitching ears. That chilled, corpse-cold touch under your chin tilts you up just… so…

You melted, closing that distance between your lips. Every logical thought dispersed in the wind of your desire, that panting breath that passed from your lungs into his.

That’s how this all began, and where it had brought you to this moment, where he clings to the ceiling of a massive cavern filled with both the stink of Gnolls and the vile creatures themselves. Dagger gripped in between his glinting fangs. He readies himself with a look of pure and dark excitement. He loves this. He misses this when it’s just you all back in the quiet of camp, where he tests his ever growing strength and climbing abilities, where he drinks from you every night before he hunts in the dark.

Where he slowly makes you more and more aware of your awakening body the more he touches you and caresses and kisses you. Always every night. Always between your increasingly intellectual discussions about vampiric powers and the moment he sinks his fangs into your skin to feed. He always leaves you after dark, his own belly sated, while you… you grow all the hungrier. Needier. You want more debate, more analysis, more of his body covering yours as he drinks you down.

But not anything more. Not yet. Even as you knew he was edging closer to asking you for sex. Even if he didn’t know all the… implications. After all, knowledge was a dangerous weapon.

You shake your head to free yourself from the longing thoughts of past nights and burning expectations of the night to come. You give him the signal, watching him release with flawless precision, dagger in hand now, as he falls from his spider-perch.

The Gnolls never see you coming, not before your endearingly ferocious Vampire Spawn lands with preternatural grace on their heads and vivisects them before you even reach their location.

He pants as you get at least one good shot from your bow, right for the last twitching body on the ground.

It’s not until you smile, satisfied, you notice that Astarion’s pale skin is riddled with scratches and tears from the beasts’ claws. He holds out his arms, rolling up his sleeves and smiling. Enjoying the sight of his vampiric body healing before his eyes. That crimson gaze practically glows as he looks at you over the carnage. “See something you like, my sweet?” he purrs, arching that brow, just for you, as if the others in your party aren’t even there.

“Ahem,” you clear your throat, turning to find the coveted chest of supplies, that Zhentarim sigil on it is no deterrent to you. Not when your Vampire Spawn can charm anyone to do anything now. “We better head back to camp,” you kneel before the strong chest, trying your hand to pick the iron lock.

“Tch,” his voice brushes your ear, physically tickling the small stray hairs that make you gasp. “You know I’m far more skilled with my fingers, especially when it comes to slipping inside…” You shudder to feel him crouching right behind you, his thighs pressed against your ass, his waist brushing your lower back. “…Slipping inside chests, locks, that sort of thing,” he adds louder, just to appease your unease. That dexterous touch has only grown all the smoother and stronger and sneakier now that he has fed well for a while.

He is so sneaky in fact, only one of his hands actually works the lock pick for a moment, the other quickly skates up your leg, tracing the inner seam of your buckskin breeches almost to the peak of your thigh. He laughs in your ear as you muffle a noise under your own palm.

“Soldiers, you really need four hands to pick one lock? Haven't you gotten better, Fangs, now that our fearless leader has let you suck on her and tutor you in being a Spawn?” Karlach chortles, her feet swaying side to side in that perpetual motion dance she seems to do.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Astarion throws the barb over his shoulder, letting you bury your face to hide the tweaks of ecstasy at the corners of your eyes as his fingers keep moving higher… higher. “Some silent performance only you get to savor, it seems?”

“If I didn't know better…” Gale’s pedantic voice draws closer.

“There now,” Astarion crows like the proudest rooster of them all, his hand quickly leaving the edge of your mound to twist that pick and pop the lock just as Gale peers from behind. “Look at all this loot,” he groans and stands, satisfied as he folds his arms over his chest. “Good thing you have a strong, well-fed Vampire to bring it back with us. Wouldn’t you agree, darling?”

He smirks down at you, hand extended to help you to your feet. Back to the rest, he flashes you that fang-toothed smirk that he knows sets your pulse galloping out of control. Pulling you up, he has to steady you in your legs, near boneless as they are with just that tease of pleasure. “Calm yourself darling, you're making my undead heart hurt sympathetically from all that… excitement,” he rasps right into your ear once you’re on your feet before him, releasing you in favor of bags of treasure and potions and loot to stuff in his pack.

Your mind is racing as your trod back towards your little camp well off the Risen Road for good measure. Thoughts scramble, worries peak their heads up, and you can’t stop thinking about the rest of what you have learned reading about vampires. Necessary research for you, particularly since Astarion has seemingly added flirtation and seduction into your witty repartee this last tenday. So far, you’ve managed to keep his wandering eyes from those pages when he glances through your tomes. He seems to prefer every little dip of your skin where he can see it at any rate. So far, you’ve managed to keep his hands in places on your body that are not too dangerous, yours on his as well.

But something inside you knows that tide is shifting. He wants to offer you more in exchange for more… and… well, if it doesn’t just make your body thrum with life in ways no books had and no previous interests had either.

He has beaten you back to camp, haphazardly tossed the loot for the rest of you to sort out in the center of camp. You know he’s waiting in his tent, now that the sun has begun to trek lower and lower. It’s time for your research, for your indulgence of his strength, and… whatever else might happen.

His tent is dimly lit as you enter, a mess of blankets and pillows, some fine and some in tatters. Stacks of books in the corners have replaced the blood bank bottles you first found here to clutter his space.

But no Astarion.

You tilt your head confused, settling down on one pillow, more or less intact, reaching for an apple he keeps in his stash of food just for you. Just to replenish you between his own feedings. As you bite into the hard skin, as the juice fills your mouth, you reach for a book, some ancient law book he found in the ruins of that village. Must make him think of his old life.

The pages are old and soft in your fingers, your eyes absentmindedly skimming the long words and complex sentences as you chew.

Peaceful. Until you realize it’s far too quiet.

You feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, that feeling of being watched creeping up your spine. Turning, mid bite, you peer into the shadowed corner of his tent behind you.

Two glowing red eyes stare at you from the dark, just a hint of glinting teeth as he smiles and drinks in your fear and surprise. He laughs to hear you hiss as you jump in your seat. “There you are,” he croons from his darkened corner. “I’ve been waiting.”

“F-f-for what?” you force a smile and force your breath to steady all at once. He slides closer, settling down right beside you, and you notice your worn book in his hand, the smile on his face is sultry.

And predatory.

And for a moment, you regret teaching him as much as you have about his untapped powers.

“When were you going to tell me about your little bit of… research… on the side?” his voice is chilling, his brow arching as he flips the book open right to the back.

Right where you had been trying so hard to prevent his eyes from skimming, his ambitious brain from devouring the knowledge.

Your body is hot and rigid, and you know from the way his pointy ears twitch, he hears your pulse. You know from the way that his nostrils flare that he smells your arousal, the slick that dampens your underthings just to be this close to him again after his little stunt today.

“If my observations are correct… and they usually are…” he purrs, even though the stack of evidence to the contrary is vast. But you bite your tongue as he continues, your heart leaping at the topic he is about to breach. “You sound and smell eager to discuss this topic if dhampires, my darling.”

You swallow, watching so heated and frozen as he slides so gracefully to place the weight of that tome in your own lap, his fingers removing the half-eaten apple from your fingers to toss to the side. Then he brings their sticky, juicy tips to his mouth to suck them clean.

You moan, unbidden, at the wet and vigor with which his tongue cleans every crevice of those digits.

“Now, I’d hate to be left wondering just why my intelligent, little darling would withhold such a vital… potent… part of my unrevealed powers as a vampire?” he sets your hand back on your thigh, a little extra brush of his fingers, returning to trace that seam inside your breaches as he had before. “Is she… curious? Afraid? Is this why she has been just so hesitant during our…” he grips your chin, turning your head with commanding force until there is nowhere else to look but his deep crimson eyes, “…late night trysts?”

“It’s not something one just… brings up, Astarion,” you try to flatten your tone, even as that one hand still traces up and around your thigh. “It’s just not… done…”

Something about his eyes softens, “It would be important to discuss, you know, for there is more that I would like to share with you than just witty banter and blood…” his tone dips low into a rumble. “It’s not something I would have known, not a concern I would have shared until I knew of it…”

“There’s more to it than you might know,” you squeak as his fingers press into that slot between your legs. “Now that you’re well-fed, you’ll feel actual….”

You swallow the word. His touch presses hard enough into your folds through your breaches to make them soaked. And you, wanton you, you give a breath and a buck of your hips to keep his fingers there.

“Pleasure,” he smirks, eyes scanning your face as your force your eyes back open, halfway at least. “Yes, I gathered as much. The more I feed, the more I come alive… alive enough to perhaps even bestow a new life…” he squints a grin at you, your mouth slack as he draws that touch just as hard again, “…perhaps one day.”

You arch your body, trying to slip closer. Your secret is out, your anxious thoughts over clandestine information dispersed in the air. And so, the next words from your mouth just build on all that you had been swallowing down.

“Yes, perhaps one day…” you sigh, leaning back on your hands to try to give him full access to your cunt. “Perhaps one day, we could test out those powers together.” Your voice shakes with excitement, it’s pressed with the sincerity you feel for him.

“Oh, my love,” he smirks and reaches both arms around your waist. That newfound strength pulls you flush into his lap, until your molten, silk-soaked center presses against where he’s hardening. “You always know what to say… Seems like quite the power that will take much preparation and proper timing…” He brings your fingers back to his lips as he kisses them softly. “I’d have to feed on more than just a bear and more than just sips from my little treat, sweet as you are…”

You nod, once or twice, before losing yourself in the bliss of his tongue on the tingling inner skin of your wrist. Barely more than a lap before his fangs pierce your skin and suck you down. Your very essence, your living blood pools in his belly, you feel it coursing in his veins. It fills him and hardens him beneath your hips in an instant.

“Well, practice makes perfect you know,” he croons, bloodied lips barely hovering off your own. “I can tell from your scent you are not… in season…. And I have only had the single little taste.”

You pant, writhing at the scratch of your clothing, you long to rip it off and toss it where your book has long since been abandoned. “Sounds right to me,” you hiss, arms tucking around his neck to lower those arrogant stupidly handsome lips to your mouth.

Astarion’s throat rumbles with a growl, the taste of your blood fresh in his mouth as he rolls you on your back. Primal. Feral. He’s your powerful vampire, blood in his body, lust in his brain. And you want to put it all to the test—your own little experiment to match his enthusiastic desire for you. His touch is lightening fast and strong, pulling off your clothing, swift and sure and careful until every inch of your bodies are bare.

Strength hums in his muscles, even as his hands gently caress your cheek, your neck still sore from all his feeding. His body presses you into the pile of blankets that cover his plank of a bed. His hips grind your belly, your thighs are pulled almost against your chest until you’re spread wide open for him. But for every jolt of his cock as it prods above you and drips his early cum on to your belly, his kisses on your lips are sweet, gentle. A silent movement of gratitude for all your willing aid. Those fingers drag their slightly warmed touch around your breast, kneading it tenderly. With every arch of your back, you can almost catch the base of his cock inside your folds.

And you shake. You quiver. You’d had a few lovers, mostly boring and few and far between. But never has your body burned for anyone like it does for him.

As if his vampire touch is calling your blood to pool beneath it. Not one traditional strength, but with Astarion, you aren’t totally sure he doesn’t have some unnatural ability to command your body. To make your blood pound and sing just for him.

“What a good girl,” he rasps, a grind of his hips to send that cock near your navel, over your skin. “I can feel your heat for me from here. Just waiting to be fucked full.” His mouth descends quickly but carefully, only taking a single nipple in his lips. Sucking hard, he pops off with a loud wet noise.

Almost as loud as your moan.

“So ready, aren’t you?” His question weighs you down, your eyes half shut to savor the way he drags back with that length, sliding it in just an inch or so into your aching sex. “I’m waiting…” he growls, and you sob as he pulls even that little bit of his tip back out.

“Yes, hells below, yes,” you pant, hands flying to claw into his ass. Pulling him towards your throbbing core.

That blunted tip prods just barely inside you again. “You want me to fill you?” he rasps.

You nod, your teeth biting your lip hard enough to bleed.

“You want me to fill your belly like you let me fill mine with your sweet blood?” he grips his arms around your shoulders, pressing harder into, cock sliding in another little bit. “Fuck you so many times, my cum will drip from you for days?”

“Yes, Astarion…” you breathe, his mouth devouring your words, ready to swallow your cry as he does, finally, fill you.

You feel the gravity of his body crushing you, his legs braced with every tendon taught as he snaps his hips into. It’s so deep, so driving the way he fucks. And every thrust slaps your flesh and smacks his balls against your ass, but you love it. His breath dampens your collarbone, arms wrapped so tightly around you, you can do nothing but hold on for dear life. Your thighs burn from how they’re bent into your stomach almost, your folds leaking with arousal, and the drag of his cock touches every part of your walls and slams against your channel’s end.

He licks your shoulder, wet tongue lapping up to the artery in your neck. Where it pulses and dances in time with his beat inside you. Flushed and boiling, speared on his length, you pant, suffocated deliciously until you burst. Your visions swimming and muscles contorting in his press, you scream for him. You can hear your arousal, your slick, coating his thighs as his thrusts only increase with speed.

Lifting his head, he sweeps a hand down your sweat-drenched belly, palm bracing just below your navel. His push is relentless, hard and gradual enough you feel it behind your belly, how he gives you resistance from outside against that constant ramming of his cock at your deepest point. It’s enough to throw you into another coil of bliss instantly. “Good girl, so wet and dirty and waiting to be filled…'' he finally speaks through his panting. And he pushes on your belly once more, grunting with each fuck as he comes undone.

As he thrusts and spills his seed, prodding the full length of him to the deepest point yet. You can feel it almost sticking through your skin as he pulses. As he spills, burst after burst, he still rams that end of your cunt.

Beads of sweat drip from his forehead as he looks down your body, and how your skin is wet and flushed and marked from where he gripped you so fiercely.

He smiles and licks his lips. You try to clamber out, but his hand only comes to rest on your shoulder. “Ah ah,” he tutts his tongue at you, slipping out, only to take two of his fingers to play in your mix of cum, slipping it back inside you over and over again. “You’ll need to practice too, and you’ll need to rest to keep all of me inside of you.”

You shudder, a smile wide on your mouth, aroused and embraced, half hidden behind the back of your hand as you cover your face.

“Tch,” he chides you, pulling that hand from your face, “none of that, my darling. I’ll watch every bit of your blush darken your cheek until you’re ready to go again.”

“Again?” you choke. Your hips already feeling stretched and sore, you lay them flat and try to ease the aches.

“Oh yes,” he purrs, “you’ll have to build your strength the old fashioned way, my treat. Now,” he gives your ass a little smack on the side as he lifts it, “on your knees, darling…”

You finally take a breath, freed from his wiry, heavy frame. One cool hand settles between your shoulder blades to have you rest your head on his bedding. But that other hand pulls your hips up, slipping through your juices and teasing your clit until you buck back against his belly. You breathe contentedly, savoring the way his fingers caress you, worship you.

You close your eyes, wriggle your hips, already craving that stretching fullness inside you. A future with him at your side during the day as your strong, well fed vampire… and on your back and knees and belly and any way he would want you during the long nights with your virile lover.

#astarion x reader #astarion x female reader #astarion x f!reader #reader x astarion #astarion smut #astarion spawn #astarion romance #baldur's gate 3 astarion #astarion bg3 #astarion #astarion ancunin #bg3 astarion #bg3 fic #astarion fic #astarion fanfic #bg3 smut #bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #baldur’s gate iii #balur's gate 3 #baldur’s gate 3 #baldurs gate smut #baldur's gate #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion

[skzdarlings]

bodyguard: the first guard | part one | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

part one | part two | part three | tba

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh's daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: sequel to the bodyguard (felix/reader). this is a new reader perspective. please note this story will contain a great deal of physical violence, some committed against the reader and some committed by her. this will include fighting, training, torture, and parental abuse. there will also be explicit sexual content. chapter word count: 7500 words.

enjoy <3

-

B E F O R E

Felix takes his place in formation.  He is the youngest in the youth regiment at only ten years old, but he is no less competent.  They all belong to the same special-ops program, a group of specially selected children raised for armed service.  They are in the employ of Mister Miroh – and he says they will save the world. 

The world is full of shadows, dank black holes and grimy stains so embedded that no regular agent can scrub them out.  The young subjects of the soldier program are not regular agents.  Their existence is their mission.  

Felix has no life outside of the house of Miroh.   

He stands straight.  He looks forward.  His feet are the appropriate width apart and his hands are folded behind his back.  He holds this position as the trainers scour the lined formation, studying the young soldiers and reprimanding any flaw. 

They need the best soldier for this mission.  This is the most important assignment the regiment will ever receive.  Felix has trained his whole life for this.   

“Miroh has many enemies,” speaks the head trainer.  It is a familiar speech, more important now than ever.  “But our target is his local rival.  This enemy family has been a corrupting force for generations, taking through inheritance what it has not earned.  Miroh is not like The Enemy.  Miroh is a solider like you.  He came from nothing, fought for scraps, and built his own business one brick at a time.  He understands the world and he will fix it through you. You will be his hands in the places he cannot reach.  Your role is an honourable one.” 

A trainer passes Felix.  Felix straightens his spine that last infinitesimal degree.  They touch his shoulder but do not reprimand him.  It makes his pulse hammer with anticipation. 

Felix is one of the best.  There is a possibility they will pick him, if only because the actual best has a habit of—

“Oh, cheer up, mate,” Chris’s voice comes from a few rows back. “You know what they say: all work and no play makes—”

He is interrupted by a whoosh of air, probably a trainer punching him in the stomach. Felix closes his eyes so he does not wince.

“Bang Christopher Chan,” the head trainer says, his voice booming across the facility floor.  “Step forward.” 

Felix hears a frustrated sigh, then Chris stomps through the lines to reach the front row.  Everyone looks at him. 

He is an unassuming character.  Not very tall but deceptively strong.  Curly black hair and dimpled cheeks.  Felix remembers that smile, the lilting and friendly, “Call me Chris,” when Felix was just six years old and first thrown into the regiment. 

Bang “Call Me Chris” Chan is the best soldier here.  Or he would be, if he did not hate the honour. 

Even now he is glaring.  Like the rest of them, he is dressed in combat clothes, the pitch black of Miroh.  Unlike the rest of them, he stands with a lazy hunch in his shoulders.  His dark hair is dishevelled and he scowls like a petulant teenager.  He is thirteen going on fourteen but he is far from a normal teenage boy.  Even compared to the rest of them, Chris is something special. 

“Bang Chan,” the head trainer says.  “You have been chosen for this assignment.  Congratulations.” 

Felix is not surprised.  When Chris is forced to apply himself, it is abundantly clear he is the best soldier in the program by a huge margin.   Felix is also not surprised when Chris responds with his usual verve and ire.   

“Yeah, uh, you can go ahead and shove your congratulations up your ass, mate,” Chris says.  He crosses his arms stubbornly.  “Even if we kill this guy, do you really expect us to believe that’s the end of it?  You’re putting us in the middle of a fight we didn’t start.”   

He addresses the soldiers behind him just as much as the trainer.  He even glances at Felix who glares back at him, unimpressed with the rebellious dramatics.  Chris never learns.  He gets more chances than the rest of them because he is so good.  If he wanted, he could be unstoppable.  He could use his strengths for good. 

Instead, he just looks at the trainer and shakes his head.

“Nah,” Chris says.  “You started this fight.  I’m not ending it.”

A few of the adult guards move towards him.  The gathered soldiers take a collective breath, watching with anticipation.  It is common knowledge that thirteen year old Bang Chan can take a regular adult guard in a matter of seconds.  When it comes to Chris, the question is not who will win, but will he fight at all? 

He stands there like he has no intention of fighting.  But before anyone can grab him, the door opens. 

Miroh enters. 

The room is so tense and silent, his footsteps reverberate like thunder.  Miroh is every inch a soldier even in his blazer and tie.  He walks with purpose, his face intent. 

Walking behind him, keeping decent pace despite her smaller frame, is his daughter. 

Miroh is a fighter who does not believe in unearned inheritance, so his daughter is trainee soldier like the rest of them.  She is the same age as Chris.  She trains with the regiment, one of the better agents, but she was not in contention for this particular job.  People have tried to kill The Enemy before and it did not work, resulting in the death of innocents.  Miroh wants a strong heir and he is not above putting her through the same grueling regime as the rest of them, but he will not recklessly risk her life. 

It is fair to Felix.  Miroh’s world makes sense.  He believes in it.  He believes in him.

So he is rapt as Miroh approaches. 

The adult guards fall back and the young soldiers stand at attention.  Miroh’s jaw is set with grim determination.  He stares at Chris.

Chris drops his crossed arms.  He is smart enough not to run his mouth at Miroh directly, but his frustration is clearly simmering beneath the surface.  His fingers curl and uncurl in little fists. 

Miroh stands in front of him.  He speaks loud enough to address the entire room.

“I do not begrudge your desire for information,” Miroh says.  “You’re soldiers, not animals.  I acknowledge that you wish to know about the long-term goals for this company.  But that is not your job or your purpose.  This business is deliberately compartmentalized so if one cog in the machine fails, the apparatus does not cease to function.  The results of your missions speak for themselves.  What we’re doing is good work. That is all that matters.”

“Says you,” Chris blurts.  Even he looks surprised by his own retort, though he does not take it back.  He looks Miroh in the eye. 

Miroh looks back.  Then he reaches into the holster beneath his long coat and draws a gun.  It is smooth, second-nature.  Miroh is used to getting his hands dirty.  His steady hand points the gun at Chris. 

The trigger has not been pulled but the trainers already flinch.  They know Chris is the best and they have worked hard to shape him, even if his stubborn mind is not molded as easily as his body. 

Chris, himself, does not flinch.  He stares down the barrel, unrelenting. 

“You don’t want to do that.” 

The soft interjection makes everyone pause.  Heads turn and eyes dart, everyone’s attention transferring to the thirteen year old girl in the shadows.   

Miroh does not lower the gun but he looks at his daughter.  Chris looks at her too.  Felix is not sure who is more bewildered. 

The girl, herself, is calm.  She has indubitably mastered a stoic countenance, not a hint of emotion anywhere on her young face. 

“He’s the First Guard,” she states simply.  “This is not worth killing him over.”

The First Guard.  The other kids in the regiment sometimes call Chris that, though he doesn’t like it so it is usually behind his back.  Chris does not like that he has been singled out.  Chris does not like anything about the program. 

This is Miroh’s second attempt at the youth soldier program.   The operation raises soldiers from childhood to fight, to withstand pain, to feel no fear.  This training is supplemented with medical treatments, hormonal injections that are only effective if administered in the crucial developmental years of childhood.  It aids in building a body for soldiership, to take a hit just a little harder than most. 

Chris is the only survivor from the first round of injections.  He survived every test that followed.  He is stronger for it, even stronger than the rest of them.  He is a singular asset.  He will never be replicated. 

Thanks to The Enemy, none of them will ever be replicated.  The Enemy recently attempted to recruit Miroh’s developers and killed them when he did not succeed.  Detailed knowledge of the treatment died with them.   

Miroh can never accomplish anything with his enemy on perpetual offense.  Felix knows the stories like the rest of them, the generations of corruption wrought by a single wealthy family with its iron fist wrapped around the country’s throat.  Miroh wants to free them.  Felix knows if they kill this one man, if the household is left to rot in the hands of its weak successor, then Miroh can finally set everyone free. 

It is a noble honour.

Chris does not see it that way.  He never has.  Maybe it is different for him, having watched those other children die.  Felix understands it was a sacrifice, but a necessary one.  The Enemy cannot be killed by a regular soldier.  So many more innocents will die if he is left unchecked.  Surely that is worth the price of a few soldiers.  Wars have casualties.  It will be worth it.

It has to be worth it. 

Bang Chan, the First Guard – call me Chris – takes a deep breath.  It sounds frustrated.  He glares at Miroh’s daughter who is unaffected. 

Felix looks between them.  Then his gaze lands on another soldier in the formation.  Seo Changbin is in the first row, a boy one year older than Felix.  Not the best soldier, not second best, but not the worst. His most notable trait is his humour and his friendship with Miroh’s daughter.  They are close – at least as close as anyone can be down here. 

Changbin is looking at her right now, his gaze searing with intensity.  Their eyes meet briefly and he shakes his head, a small motion, just enough for her to see.  Despite his clear warning to stop, she is not dissuaded from addressing her father. 

“With all due respect, sir,” she says to Miroh, “Eliminating Bang Chan would be a mistake.  He’s the best soldier in the operation.”

“The best,” Miroh says.  He presses the barrel of the gun against Chris’s forehead.  Chris goes tense and everyone takes a breath.    

His daughter is still unmoved.  She is a quiet character in general.  Felix has barely heard her speak never mind argue.  She keeps her head down and goes about her work obediently.  She is a good daughter and a better soldier.     

Maybe that is why Miroh hesitates. 

“He is not the best if this is how he conducts himself,” Miroh says. 

“Father, aren’t you the best at what you do?” she asks without hesitation.  “Surely a proper soldier like you should be able to control a little boy.  Are you saying you are not capable of that task?  It takes no skill to shoot a teenager.  What message do you send to the rest of us if you have to resort to desperate measures to keep your own army in line?”    

The silence is deafening.  Even with a gun plastered to his forehead, a little dimple of amusement pops in Chris’s cheek.  Changbin exhales.  Felix is sick of standing still but he holds his form despite the growing tension. 

The seconds feel like hours.  Eventually, Miroh lowers the gun. 

“Guards,” he says.  The adult guards are immediately at his side.  “My daughter has faith in our order.  I would be remiss as a father to fail her.”  He looks down at Chris and speaks with a snarl in his upper lip, “Let us all try our best to succeed.” 

Miroh snaps his fingers and points at Chris.  The guards swarm him, two of them taking an arm each.  At least Chris is smart enough not to struggle.  He is an indomitable force but he does not have an army at his call.  He lets himself be seized. 

“Take him to the Cell,” Miroh says.

An instinctive hiss leaves the mouths of a few soldiers.  They have all been trained to withstand various degrees of torture, but the Cell is one of the worst.  Even Felix shudders at the mention of it.  It is a small windowless room buried deep in the bunker of the training facility, a small prison cell with no light and no warmth.  Everyone has taken a turn in isolation, camped on the hard ground in the damp and cold and dark.  Down there, minutes feel like days, days like years.  At least literal torture causes sensation.  The Cell is a great black nothing. 

Chris does not argue, knowing it would be useless, but he does glare at Miroh as he is hauled away. 

“Take her too,” Miroh says. 

With a snap of his fingers, two more guards surface and grab his daughter.  Her stoic expression finally fractures, true surprise bursting on her face. 

“Me?” she asks. 

“As my daughter, your perspective is acknowledged and appreciated,” he says.  “As a soldier, you need to remember your place.  Throw them in together.  Double the people, double the time.” 

Felix would not want to be shoved in that tiny space with another person.  Certainly not if the trade was double the duration. 

But then, Felix does not like company.  He does not understand the exhausted look on Changbin’s face.  Changbin isn’t being punished, so why would he feel anything? 

Felix watches.  He holds his form even where others begin to wane. 

The guards and their prisoners leave.  The door closes and Miroh looks over the regiment.

“Who’s the second best?”  Miroh asks. 

There is a beat of silence, the scene settling.  The trainer finally clears his throat and looks down at his papers. 

“Lee Felix Yongbok,” he says in that booming voice.  Felix’s heart soars just as high.  “Step forward.”

Felix marches forward, keeps his eyes ahead.  Miroh approaches him.  Felix does not flinch, not even when Miroh circles him like prey.

“He’s young,” Miroh says.  “What do you have to say for yourself, boy?”

“I want to do good,” Felix answers.  “I’m ready.” 

They put a gun in his hand and a beanie on his head.  He enters the world looking like a normal ten year old boy. 

He puts a bullet in the head of The Enemy. 

He suspects one day he will be back for the son and granddaughter. 

He hopes it will be soon. 

-

P R E S E N T   D A Y

Despite your father’s remarkable propensity for making you feel like a child, you are a grown adult.  You are intelligent and conniving and dangerously competent.  In some ways, having been raised like a soldier beneath his merciless iron fist, you are more steadfast, more severe.  Your life is carved into his, your fates tethered as one to his success.  You are your father’s daughter, a Miroh, irrevocably a product of his upbringing.   

You do not show weakness.  You do not throw tantrums.  You might spend twenty minutes in the lobby bathroom, splashing cold water on your face, and you might spend another five minutes shining your shirt buttons, then ten more folding and re-folding the lapel of your long coat – but walking into his office almost forty minutes late is not the same thing as throwing a tantrum. 

You think you’re composed until you walk through that door, then the week’s anxieties expand in the cage of your chest.  You are capable but you are not stupid.  Miroh might be your father but he is a totalitarian man of influence and it would be foolish not to be wary of his power. 

You are more apprehensive than you appear, but you march in there like a soldier, shoulders back and head high.  You inherited your father’s marble expressions and stone stature.  No one would ever guess your palms were so clammy, your neck hot and damp with sweat. 

“I’m here,” you say by way of greeting.   You are not characters to indulge in artificial small talk.  There is no affection here and pretending otherwise is a waste of everyone’s time.  

“I won’t bother with pre-amble,” he says, predictably.   ”You know why you’re here.”

“I do,” you say.  “And I don’t agree with it.”

“I know you don’t.”

The argument ends just like that.  You knew it was a dead-end protestation before you opened your mouth, but you had to say something.  You are adamantly opposed to your father’s latest imposition.    

A personal, twenty-four hour bodyguard.   For you.    

The decision was not made lightly.   Your father’s business rival perished just under a month ago, the bloody circumstances extreme and mysterious.  Until Miroh can ascertain what truly transpired at that house on that fateful night, then he cannot be too careful when it comes to guarding his own legacy.

Your father is a military tactician and business man.  He is in the habit of bracing for every eventuality with a detached, pragmatic determination.   Of course he wants you watched. This bodyguard assignment is imperative in protecting his house. 

“I have a security team,” you say. 

“They are insufficient,” he replies. 

“I trained them myself.”

“They are too numerous.”

“I’ll cut down the roster.”

“Rotations open vulnerabilities.”    

“And who’s to replace them?” Your patience snaps. “One of your dogs?”

“You are also one of my dogs,” he says, voice soft for such a venomous retort.  It stings like a slash across your chest.  “I would not disparage them.” 

“Oh, of course, my apology.”  You speak with the same false gentility.  “What a thoughtful master you are.”

“I must be,” he says, “because the dogs still come when I call.” 

There is so much contempt in his voice.  He looks at you with more hatred than he ever directed to his worst enemy.   It makes you want to leap across this room and throttle him with your bare hands, like you can shake the animosity right out of him. 

You are too old to feel like a little girl on the verge of tears, demanding to know why her father does not love her.   You have long since accepted there is no easy answer to that question.  You would say that Miroh is simply not capable of love but you know that is not true.  He can love.  He just doesn’t love you.  

You are the perfect heir, his exact replica in ability and countenance, but it is not enough.  It will never be enough.  No matter what you do, no matter how faithfully you obey him.   You have bloodied your hands in the shadows while he takes the public credit.  You have helped build the reputation of the family name.  You have given him everything. 

He rewards you with this.   

You are not stupid.  Regardless of his excuses, he does not want you under surveillance for your protection.  You both know your personal training puts you leagues ahead of the overwhelming majority of agents.  Your security team is a superfluous accessory as is.

Miroh has just witnessed the collapse of a previously impenetrable legacy.  This does not put him at ease.  The battle technician accounts for every possible manoeuvre.  You know he foresees his own downfall just as easily as he sees his success.  Unseated before his time, reputation annihilated, replaced by someone as savage and persistent as him. 

A bodyguard will not protect you from the world.  It will protect Miroh from you. 

For all your inner turmoil, you are a steadfast rock, standing across your father in his office and exchanging a knowing glance.  You are just like him.  Of course he is scared of you.  Of course he hates you.  Of course he needs you.  

The feeling is devastatingly mutual. 

“Who is it?” you ask, calmly. 

“Agent Slump, step forward,” your father calls one of the guards posted at the back wall.  “This is your new bodyguard officer.  He will accompany you at all times, day and night, including your office hours and service train—”

The agent steps forward as your father speaks.  You draw your gun out of your chest holster and shoot when the man steps into your periphery.  It blows through his shoulder and knocks him down, all in a piercing shriek that reverberates around the small room.  The other guards flinch in the ringing aftermath. 

You look at your father and re-holster your gun.  You lay the lapel of your long coat back over your chest. 

“He leaves something to be desired,” you say.  “I would have thought you learned your lesson with these undertrained toy soldiers.  Maybe a better bodyguard would have kept your wife alive.” 

Your own mother died during complications in childbirth.  Miroh remarried a few years later, a woman he genuinely seemed to cherish, a woman who was killed in retaliation for a deal gone sour.  Nothing fills your father with more righteous fury than the mention of her.  Miroh loved her almost as much as he hates you. 

You know better than to retaliate with such childish rejoinders, but you want to hit him where it hurts, see something real on that stoic face.  It garners you a flicker of rage, bathed in all that loathing, and it makes you smile. 

“Let me know if you can find a competent replacement,” you say.  “Until then, I have work to do.” 

You turn heel and march to the door.  The guards move out of your way despite lack of command.  They have never respected you the way they respect your father, but they do fear you and it works the same way. 

You are dressed for the office but after an unproductive hour spent stewing in agitation, you give up.  The head of your security team accompanies you across town to the primary training facilities.  Hidden in plain site, here Miroh has trained and developed some of his most deadly assets. 

You are one of those assets.  You spent your childhood in this facility, training among an elite selection of children, raised for the purpose of violence and victory.  It was a unique program.  It has never been revived, the medicant administered to the children lost and yet to be replicated.  

You are one of the few still living. 

Your training was relatively more lax.  As Miroh’s daughter, the trainers could not let you die.  But neither he nor they had qualms with letting you suffer.  Miroh never admonished them and you never complained, at the time naively thinking that if you could prove yourself then he would care about you.

A foolish aspiration long since abandoned. 

But the training has served you well over the years.  It certainly comes in handy when you need to fucking punch something. 

Your security team is comprised of regular soldiers so it does not take much to best them in a fight.  The exertion is nonetheless liberating.  You have always felt more at ease in action than behind a desk.  Combat clothes are less stifling than formalwear.  There is a reason Miroh never paraded you at parties the way his late enemy did with his late daughter.  Your place is in a fight and always has been.  

After a few rounds in the ring, you stop to rest.   Your team knows when to leave you alone to brood.  You lay back on the mat, flat in the ring. 

There is a moment, as often passes, where you question your entire life.  It has been a long, vicious fight, clawing your way to your position, that the road back out seems like an impossibly arduous task.  Too much has happened, too much pain and loss.  It has to mean something. 

You cannot surrender now.  The very thought has you reeling, physically painful to even consider.  

This is where you belong.  It is an irrevocable truth.  You are a Miroh. 

“Yah, murder princess,” comes a voice and the thud of booted steps.  “Just three rounds?  Tsk.  You’re getting soft.”

You roll over, grinning even though you know better.  You look up at Changbin who is dressed in similar fatigues, his bulky arms crossed over his broad chest, his dark bangs brushing his smirking face. 

“I was waiting for a real fight,” you reply.  “Looks like I’m still waiting.”

He barks out a laugh. 

Changbin is one of the few survivors of your father’s special-ops program.  Unlike others who were imported from your father’s overseas operations, Changbin was raised right here alongside you.  You do not even remember meeting him; he has just always been there.  

He is a few years younger but he always held your attention, both because of his skill and his ability to retain a sense of humour.  It was an often sought breath of relief in the conditions of your training. 

You look at Changbin now, grinning and more jovial than someone like him should be.  It is a testament to his resolute strength that he can hold a dual personality inside him.  He has always been that way.  He can flip between a stoic soldier and goofy guy in the blink of an eye.  It is part of the reason you have never let yourself entirely trust him.  Though you are fond of him, he is like you: just a little too good at what he does. 

“Haha, the princess thinks she’s a comedian now,” Changbin says.  He nudges you with the tip of his boot.  “If you want to make me laugh, you should try fighting.” 

“Oh, I see.”  You cannot help but rise to his bait, like always.  He is a perpetual little brother even though he is not your real brother and certainly not little anymore. 

You swipe at him and he jumps back.  Just like that, the pair of you fall into a long practiced dance.  

It is not the gentle footwork of a real dance, but a violent collision and parry of limbs.  It is just as musical and in sync, and somehow almost as tender.  You know each other’s weaknesses as well as strengths.  You know how to beat each other and how to prolong surrender, where to give advantage so the other can continue.  You used to fight until the trainers called a tie, saving you both from selection for the loser’s punishment.  To everyone else, it looked like a fight.  To you, it was a conversation and consolation.  Even if you had been in solitude for weeks, in that moment you were not alone. 

Changbin reads you now, in every swipe and jump and dodge.  In your matching black clothes and matching strength you collide and converse.  Your frustration strains in every vein and his enquires are plain in the deliberate pause of his complicated steps.

“Daddy problems, ah, murder princess?” he asks, grinning. 

He catches your fist before it collides with that smirk, twisting your wrist so you are forced to follow with a heavy drop.  You roll together, a back and forth until you individually spring to your feet and face each other.  You wait for the next move with equal calculation.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” you say, batting a hit. 

“Really?” he asks.  “Because there are rumours in the pig pen that the general was looking for a big strong soldier to protect his little princess.” 

He lets you clock his jaw but it is a satisfying smack nonetheless.  A drop of aggravation is wrung out with your sweat.  You wipe your brow. 

“There was a change of plans,” you say.

Changbin laughs.   He is loud, always so loud for someone who can be so stealthy. 

“Of course!” he shouts.  “Keeping the doctors busy today, are you?”

He really knows you too well.  It is mutual.  You side-step a movement and body-check him. 

“Guess that’s what the general gets for choosing from the pig pen,” you say.  You infuse your father’s title with all the sardonic venom it deserves and pig pen with the same playful mockery as always. 

“Don’t be jealous,” Changbin teases right back, catching your taunt as easily as he catches your punch.  “If you keep practicing, one day you might be almost as good as me.” He has been making the same wisecrack for years, laughing to himself every single time. 

“Funny,” you say dryly. 

“I am the best,” he continues to tease, embellishing his movements with an unnecessarily dramatic flair.  “I’m sure that’s why the general doesn’t want me on bodyguard duty, right?  I need a real job, not protecting the princess.”

There are a few rapid-fire moves, too taxing for speech.  Then you manage, “Right.”  You take his offered opening and catch the back of his knee with yours.  “I’m sure it has nothing to do with your probation after the last field mission.” 

You expect to take him down but you do not expect the weight of his crash.  It is not like Changbin to fully collapse under you, almost like he was truly surprised. 

You are just as dazed by the impact.  You loom over him, staring bemusedly, like you have no idea how he got on the floor. 

It is not like Changbin to take a hit so personally.  Of all your father’s soldiers, he was always the best at shrugging off his individuality in favour of a mission.   He does not tend to dwell on his losses anymore than he lingers in his victories.  The past is a heavy thing to carry into battle.  He knows to leave it behind.  There is always another job around the corner. 

“You’re not still upset about that?” you ask.

The mission was shortly before the enemy’s downfall.  Years ago, one of your father’s child soldiers betrayed an operation.  Lee Felix switched sides and the enemy did not let your father forget it.   But Miroh is an ever-calculating general who knows which battles are worth fighting.  After one failed attempt at seizing the enemy’s daughter, he waited until the enemy came to him instead.  

When he finally did, you caught him.  You sent Changbin after his daughter and waited for the enemy’s imminent surrender.  He retracted his operation but Felix, that loose canon of a traitor-turned-bodyguard, fucked the Mirohs a second time and disappeared with her.  They all died a week later. 

Changbin was noticeably uneasy after the job, but you did not think much of it.   You were not worried about Changbin taking the mission too personally.  Yes, Felix was a former soldier in this regiment, but Changbin is not sentimental.  You chalked up his despondency to his loss.  It is not like him to let a target slip through his fingers. 

“Upset,” Changbin says.  “Me?”

You know him too well.  The joking tone is diminished, buried beneath the weight of his gloom.  He tries to smile but it does not fit on his face, too big and too wide of a grin. 

You tip your head, your regard scrutinous.  You have no idea how to talk to him with real depth.  You look at each other and understand it, but vocalizing it is another matter entirely. 

Like he can read your thoughts, his face scrunches up and he says, “Yah, you, cut that out!”  He shoves you as he gets to his feet, both of you stumbling.  “I’m fine,” he says.  “Come on, hit me again.” 

You are certainly better at conversing that way.

You take a starting stance but you are interrupted when someone from your security team whistles.  It is a warning whistle, the sharp tone a code for the arrival of your father.

You and Changbin straighten, turning to watch as Miroh approaches with a flank of armed guards behind him.  They are all dressed for combat in their black uniforms and black masks.  The half-mask is regulation for all field agents.  It covers the bottom half of the face and serves as protection in the event of smoke from explosions or exposure to noxious aerosols and gasses.

It also undoubtedly turns a human soldier into a less-than-human figure.  It obscures features, faces, flaws. 

Sharp eyes stare at you, every face uniform and expressionless.  There are half a dozen of them.  Your father’s usual security detail trails behind them.  Your security team eyes them in turn.   The whole room feels like a pot about to boil over.    

“What is this?” you demand.  

“This is my adherence to our agreement,” your father says. 

“Our agreement?” you ask.

“Yes.”  He stops in the middle of the room, standing straight and steady.  He looks at ease, like he barges in here with a small army every day.  “You tasked me to find a competent replacement bodyguard,” he says.  “So here is how this will go: whichever agent can beat you in a fight, right here, right now, will be your new bodyguard.  If you defeat them all, I will drop the issue and leave the matter of your personal security to you.” 

You look at his soldiers then at him.  You force yourself to composure.  It is not like you to instigate so much confrontation. You prefer to keep your head down and get the job done.  Your father does not love you but he knows your work is reliable.  Usually that is enough.

This entire escapade with the enemy has unravelled everyone.  The house of Miroh should be more stable than ever, your father taking over assets left behind by the enemy, but the whole world feels changed.  It is off its axis.  You feel unsteady, your body braced for attack with no reprieve.  You feel like you are looking at the world through someone else’s eyes.  Everything feels wrong.

In difficult times, you fall back on training and soldier instinct.  You are a battle technician, just as competent as your father.  He is not going to drop the issue and this is a fair compromise.  You can fight these guards.  Half a dozen well-trained field agents is a handful but not impossible.  Your body is built to be a little faster, a little stronger, to take a hit harder. 

“Fine,” you say, a single grating syllable.  You bite the word.  Through clenched teeth, you add, “Let’s do this.”

You and Changbin exchange a look.  He reflects your confusion, knowing you can easily take these guards, knowing Miroh knows that too.  It makes you feel even more uneasy.  Your father must be planning something but you do not know what.  But you cannot control him.  You can only control yourself.  You can fight these guys.  You can win. 

You take a swig of water then stretch.  The first guard takes a position in the fighting ring.  You brace yourselves with a starting stance, measuring the other. 

You wait, sweat dripping down your brow.  You feel their eyes on you, every soldier, your father, your friend.  Changbin stands off to the side, sitting in shadows.

It is where your kind belongs.  You are not regular soldiers. 

The fight begins and you take him down swiftly.  Your game with Changbin was just that, a game.  This is real.  This is a battle.  This is what your body was made to do. 

One by one, you take out the agents.  They charge at you, they swing at you, they even try to taunt you.  You deflect it all.  Your fist connects with a temple, your foot their knee.  You pop joints and flip soldiers and springboard back to action. 

You are getting tired by the last soldier but you do not let it show.  You sweat profusely, breathing hard, but you run at him and take him down.  Your bodies are a swirl of limbs and powerful movements.  Then he is on the ground, groaning, and you are rising, victorious. 

“Well?” you say.  You cannot help but grin, elated from the sheer exertion of exercise, and proud of your triumph.  There is a small, stupid part of you that hopes underneath everything, your father is proud too.  That he must relent and admit you are good.  

Miroh just stands there, unmoving and unaffected.  It dims your smile, frustration returning.  It simmers hot beneath your skin. It distracts you. 

Pain explodes in your left cheek, so sharp and searing it turns the world dark for half a second.  You see lightning flashes as you stumble, falling onto your side.  There is another guard in front of you, one you did not even see enter the room.  Did he drop down from the ceiling? 

He is a blurry shape.  You blink the stars out of your eyes, holding your throbbing head until clarity returns. 

Then your stomach drops. 

It is not a guard looming over you.  He wears the same black combat uniform and the same half-mask, but everything about him is different, everything from his build to his stance to the ice cold slash of his dark eyes.  Emotionless.  Empty. 

“Ah, I see,” you say, a breathless slur of words.  You cannot stop your voice from shaking.  “The First Guard.  I should have known.” 

There are only two living soldiers who can fight at your level.  The only two survivors of your father’s special-ops program.  One of them is Seo Changbin.

The other is Bang Christopher Chan. 

He stands over you in his combat gear, unflinching and barely human.  Even without the mask, you doubt you would see any humanity.  There is not a single shred of the boy he once was.  Chan was a problem for Miroh, once.  That was a very long time ago. 

That boy, Chris, is dead.  He has been dead for years.  The soldier in front of you is someone – something – else. 

You get to your feet, slowly and shakily.  He watches you.  He does not speak and he barely blinks, his gaze a meticulous perusal, his body braced for anything. 

Chan has the bloodiest, dirtiest hands of them all.  He does your father’s worst missions, assignments with details that even you are barred from knowing.  He is terrifyingly efficient, deadlier than any weapon in Miroh’s arsenal, and that is saying something because it is a substantial arsenal.  

Your own hands are dirty but it is nothing in comparison.  He is fast, he is deadly, and he feels nothing.  He looks at you like a machine scans a calculation.  A broken bone here, a fracture there.  You are certain he is already picturing a hundred different ways to contort your broken body. 

“Right,” you say. 

You are a strategist.  You know how to fight.  You know when not to fight.  But it is like instinct.  You look at him and something says fight him.   

You feel your father’s eyes on you.  You are not sure who is teaching who a lesson. 

You take a swing at Chan.  He dodges it.  He swings too, faster, but you anticipate it.  You tuck and roll, moving faster than you have ever moved in your life.  You are seldom pushed to the brink of your abilities like this.  Even half your skillset is double what most adversaries possess. 

But Chan is too much.  You spend the fight on constant defense, blocking swing after swing, hit after hit.  You take advantage of the smallest opening and crack your fist on his chest, only to realize he deliberately opened himself to it.  He grabs your wrist and twists you around before you can retaliate.  You are not used to such brute strength.  You follow his twisting to prevent a sprain or fracture, which he anticipates.  He grabs you by the throat and yanks you into him, right off your feet. 

You choke, blue swarming your rapidly blurring vision.  He slams you down on the ground, further disorienting you, still clutching your neck.

You dive somewhere deep inside your head.  You collect yourself as per your training, then swing your knee up between his legs.  It does not fully incapacitate him but it does discombobulate him.  He lets go of your throat and you slide between his legs, jumping up behind him.  He turns just in time to take a kick to the stomach, blasting him backwards to the end of the ring.    He prevents a worse fall by forcing himself down on one knee. 

You take the second he is down to catch your breath.  You try to calculate your next move but your adrenaline is dwindling.  Hopelessness settles in your chest.  You cannot win this fight.  At best, you can prolong it, but—

For the second time, you are blind-sided by pain.  It shatters down the right side of your body, a winded shove that blows right through you.   But it is not Chan.  Chan is still getting to his feet. 

You look up only for Changbin to bring his fist down in your face.  It knocks you off your feet and you land with a heavy thud.  Your heart races inside your aching chest. 

You have never fought Changbin like this. 

“What are you doing?” you hiss when he grabs you by the neck and drags you onto your feet.  You come to your senses and fight back, but you are hurt and tired and he has been recuperating. 

He punches you clear across the jaw and knocks you down again.  The world tilts sideways, spotted with black and blue.  Changbin drops on top of you.  You cannot even wrestle him, so disoriented.  He gets you flat on your front and pins you down. 

Then he takes a second to whisper in your ear, “Stop fighting me, murder princess.  Who do you want as a bodyguard?  Me or that thing?” 

If you were not so tired, you might have laughed. 

Your life is so backwards.  Changbin is helping you by beating the shit out of you.  But it is undoubtedly helpful.  He is right.  If Chan beat you, then Chan would be your bodyguard.  Your father would win.  He would have one of his agents glued to your side.  An agent you would never be able to shake no matter what you did. 

But it is not Chan over you.  It is your friend.  Someone from the same shadows as you.  Someone your father was not anticipating.

Changbin grabs you by the neck and yanks you up.  You look at your father with blood dribbling out of your mouth.

“I win,” Changbin says. 

Your father does not look happy.  That should upset you.  You and Miroh are bound as one. 

But it gives you a thrill.  His abomination of a soldier looms to the side, still staring at you, like he expects the fight to continue any second.  You suppose Chan’s life is one big fight and always has been. 

It doesn’t have to be that way for you, you think to yourself, a dangerous thought, one conjured by the feeling of your only friend holding you in his arms.  It looks like a death grip to anyone else, purely technical, but you feel it, the way he cups your injuries carefully despite his bulk and power.     

Miroh is scared.  He is getting desperate.  He wants you brought to heel.   In doing so, he is only stoking your resentment.

That pot starts to boil over.

“Well?” you say, in a voice as rough as gravel. 

“Yes,” your father says with a petty little snarl.  “I suppose you have won, haven’t you?” 

Changbin helps you off the ground.  You suffer through your pains.  You can feign steadiness for another minute, for long enough to retaliate.

You climb out of the ring.   You pass the other injured guards.  You walk right up to your father. 

Miroh stares at you.  You have identical glares, measuring each other.  Two soldiers with the same fire in their blood. 

You punch him.  It is a nice sharp shot across the face, using all the strength you have left.  You are one of the best.  Despite your injuries, it is still one fucking hell of a punch.

Miroh falls back in an undignified sprawl, hitting the hard ground with a painful thud.  He is good but he is not you. A fall like that would not have broken your bones the way it clearly fractures his arm.  

“Until next time, father,” you say. 

You step over him.  His security team immediately surrounds him, helping him up.  Your team comes to your aid as well.  Changbin follows too, coming right up to your side.  He grabs your arm and slings it around his shoulder, taking the brunt of your weight seconds before you would have collapsed. 

You look back over your shoulder.  The injured guards are tending their wounds.  Chan is looming in the background like a living shadow.  Miroh is clutching his arm and staring at you with fury pouring out of him.  You walk away, smiling despite your injuries. 

Your father should know better than to hit you.

You always hit back.

#bang chan x reader #chan x reader #bang chan x you #chan x you #bang chan fanfiction #bang chan smut #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #stray kids fanfiction #skz fanfiction #skz x you #stray kids x you

[two-white-butterflies]

call it what you want | m33

Description: After Max wins his first championship - he decides that it's the perfect time to propose to you.

Pairing: max verstappen/daniel ricciardo's sister-reader

20 MINUTES BEFORE D-DAY

Max Verstappen could feel the sweat trickling down his neck. A few hours ago, he was talking to your brother - nervous about what the officials would say about the race. He knew that if they decided to take away his points, then the WDC would be nothing but a wet dream. He wanted to win - he wanted to make you proud.

"Max Verstappen, you are champion of the world!" the interviewer yelled and he could feel his heart pump furiously. Everything began to happen in slow motion. He wanted to vomit from the sheer happiness that he was feeling. "Do I?" he pointed at the door, Charles nodded with a bitter smile. "Congrats, mate." he tapped his rival's shoulders. "Dank u wel," (thank you) he responded.

With a silent breath, he takes a step out of the room. Everyone's eyes were on him, anticipating every move. And for a small second - he smiles. He sees you.

He pulls you closer to his body, smiling as confusing spread throughout your features. "Aren't you supposed to be preparing?" you asked teasingly, seeing the podium behind you.

"I don't think you'll believe me - but I've never practiced winning the drivers championship before." he confessed, feeling Daniel put the ring in his back pocket. You press a soft kiss on his lips. "Not even in front of the mirror?" you teased, remembering the times he'd spend hours in front of your vanity - practicing his speech and all.

"I was uhh, practicing for something different." he lied, entwining your hands together. He reaches for his back pocket with his free hand. "What are you doing?" you giggle, seeing the technicians behind you panic as Max was already supposed to be up there. "I always promised to share everything with you - my bad moments, my good moments - and in my wins, I want you beside me. I want this to be your moment too." he began speaking.

"What are you doing?" you chuckle nervously, eyes widening as he began to get down on one knee. "(Your Name) Ricciardo," he began and all the cameras turn to your direction. "Maximus?" you grin.

"Will you marry me?" he inquired, and the grid erupts into a chorus of cheers. "Is that a question? Yes." you look down, helping him get up as he placed the ring on your finger. "I was so nervous," he wrapped you in a warm embrace. "I love you," you mumble - burying your face on his shoulder.

MAX VERSTAPPEN MOMENTS AFTER WIN. (by racecar1)

Interviewer: Did it feel like a double win for you? A WDC and an engagement all in the same night, must be too hard to process.

Max Verstappen: I've been preparing for this moment since the first time I saw her. The WDC was a cherry on top.

Interviewer: Did you intend to propose to her after winning? or was there something else planned.

Max Verstappen: I didn't think I'd win. I wanted to propose in my boat, but this was the perfect moment. [pulled by staff] Goodbye, have a great day.

Interviewer: Thank you, Max!

Max hands you a cold glass of soda.

"You'll drive us home?" he asked, seeing that you were the only one adamant to not drink alcohol. "Yes, I don't want to get lost in the middle of nowhere again." you joke, reminding him of the time when Daniel had to drive everyone home.

"It was the map's fault!" Daniel defends himself while taking a sip of his beer. "Yeah, sure." you mumble with a playful smile. "Have fun, this party is for you." you tap him, seeing that he had no intention to leave your side. "You too," he corrected pulling you to the dance floor.

#max verstappen #max verstappen fic #max verstappen x you #max verstappen x female reader #f1 fics #f1 #f1 imagine #max verstappen x reader #f1 fanfic

[violet-eng]

Neuvillette NSFW Headcanons.

NSFW +18 kamino eru did the 🎨

Since his work is exhaustive and drains a lot of energy from him, most of the time he is a bottom.

He lets you ride him because he knows you like it - and he doesn't have the strength for that.

When he's bottom he cums fast.

He's very, very, very vocal. You are going to hear him say your name many times, he murmurs, moans and pants a lot.

He always tells you how good you are at taking it.

He asks for more, he asks for it with tears in his eyes when you guys are on your third or fourth orgasm.

He cries during sex? YES, he cries because he likes doing it with you, because of the overstimulation you cause in him with your circular movements on his fat cock.

He cries and whispers "I love you, sniff sniff".

You ask for one more round, you lean over him and he accepts -with tears rolling down his eyes- even though he is almost drained. He would do anything for you… when he is bottom.

"Baby, I can't take it anymore," he would say, shiny pearls rolling down his cheeks. "Just a little more, Neuvi, please" you would say back.

---WHEN HE'S ON TOP.

If he had few judgments that day, he will come home early and if you didn't run away… pray, because you will be tied to the bed until dawn. It's now his turn

Neuvillette has high histamine…seriously, high. He is fit. And if his day at work didn't take much of his energy, then he'll pour it all out on you…and not just the energy.

He's good at pregame, he'd sneak up on you from behind while you're in the kitchen and start with wet kisses on your neck.

Lubrication is not a problem for him… Hydro vision…

He has a breast sucking kink.

He is a god, literally a god when eating pussy, like a starving man.

He grunts as the head of his fat cock begins to enter your tight, steaming little pussy. He growls a lot, it's almost animalistic.

Lots of compliments, damn, he praises your body a lot, especially your pussy for the way it sucks him.

His thrusts are soft: Neuvillete not only has sex, no… he makes love, and he wants to show you how much he loves and appreciates you.

Missionary is his favorite position when he decides to be on top, because he can see you cry for him, ask for more, he can also hide his face in the crook of your neck and let you hug him while he speeds up the pace.

He whispers a lot of "I love yous" as he cradles your cheek with his hand.

He likes it when you caress his hair while doing it, he also caresses yours.

He does it all... night... long... and then goes back to work the next day.

He avoids cumming inside because he knows that you are both busy and don't have time to raise children.

AH.... but when he's in heat!!!!! Gurl, look for a place to hide yourself…

He is a dragon, and he smells when you are ovulating.

That thing about not having children because you don't have time for parenting… it was a lie… Neuvilette in heat has a powerful breeding kink

If he is in heat, he notifies that he will not go to work, and at the same time he tells your boss, because girl… you are not going to leave the room for at least two weeks.

His cock grows at that time, perhaps twice its size, and his seed load the same… Hydro Dragon must make sure he has offspring, right?

He thrusts you without warning - almost always -

Puts you in mating press pose almost all the time, because that way he can get deeper

Dirty talk, but for real... who's this man? This ain't the soft Neuvi you know:

"Loving what your man's cock is doing to you, uh?" "You look so nasty from up here, awful, how is that you were a lady before this, moaning like a slut?" "Beg, y/n, beg for my cock in this danked pussy of yours "

Growls, roars, whimpers, calls you his, uses your name with a low low looooooowwwww and sexy voice.

His voice … Archons … the tone of his voice descends to levels that when he bathes your ear could make you cum asap.

He is rough, ambitious, energetic, intense, you feel that at any time he will break you in two.

Finds your point G almost immediately, and will not stop hitting it with its great, fat and long cock, even if you beg him to stop because of overestimulation.

Doesn't go slowly, moreover, you feel as if he was only faster, fuck, how much stamin does he have?

The thrusts are so strong that it is as if you felt it in your throat

He relies on the back of the bed for more power and stability, and you can see his muscles tense in that pose, attractive as fuck.

Leaves you marks. Many … marks. In the breasts, the thighs, the neck, the groin, the shoulders …

Doesn't stop. He loves your cock drunk face beneath him, and tilts his head while appreciating the view.

"Look at that face you're pulling. Looks like you love my cock, eh?"

He's aggressive, yeah, but when he rubs your clit he's just oh so lovely and tender. And that fucking kills you.

Touches the buldge that shows through your belly, where his fat cock hits your cervix, and it only makes him go faster, and faster... you almost faint a couple of times.

Cums a lot, inside of you of course, he wants to see your swollen belly with his child, and ensures that it stays inside of your abused hole.

And that's only for a day... the next 13 days... gurl... you better grab a wheelchair.

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin smut #neuvilette smut #neuvilette x reader #neuvillette #neuvilette genshin #neuvilette fanart #fontaine

[sofs16]

bewitched

will always use this style so get used to it haha

charles x singer!reader

fc : gracie abrams <3

━ yn just posted on instagram !

liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris, and 7,282,586 others yn danke, germany 🫀 next up, monaco !!!

view all 69,595 comments

landonorris See you again, y/n!

⤷ yn @ landonorris awww landooo! havent seen you in forever, see you!!

⤷ f1norr1s @yn @ landonorris since, uh, when! ⤷ ynupdater @f1norr1s y/n actually used to go karting and met lando there:)

━ you got a notification from lando nowins on imessage !

lando nowins

perceval

want to watch a concert with me and ricciardo before qual tomorrow?

|

charlie lecook but can’t cook

Who would we be watching?

|

lando nowins

An old friend of mine, y/n y/l/n. You know of her? https:///instagram.com/yn/dw373orj40302

| charlie lecook but can’t cook

Sure 👍🏻

[ lando nowins reacted with 👊🏻]

lando.jpg and charles_leclerc

liked by danielricciardo, yn, and 2,393,292 others

lando.jpg and charles_leclerc Y/n, you’ve done it again! You’ve come so far and I am proud to say I witnessed it since you were babbling Speak Now. You are a star! ⭐️

P.s. Charles made this a collab post because he was living in the moment and didn’t take any photos. view all 13,585 comments

charles_leclerc No need to out me like that, landoo😂 But good pics, I guesss

yn LANDO IM IN A PUDDLE OF TEARS 🥹 thank you thank you thank you for comin with your mates (thanks for enjoying charles) 🫶🏻 you’ve got a talent at photography, might have to hire you?????????

daniel3.jpg

liked by yn, charles_leclerc and 1, 374, 797 others daniel3.jpg I got cool pics too @yn

view all 13,585 comments

yn wait these are acc really good… THANKS DANIELLLL! hope u enjoyed 🫠

charles_leclerc

liked by yn and 4,282,595 others

tagged @yn charles_leclerc I got a few photos @ landonorris!

view all 1,383,282 comments

f1w4gs WAIT WHY WOULD SHE MAKE A GOOD WAG 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

landonorris That last photo is foul, Perceval…

yn thanks king charles 😴

━ danielricciardo just followed yn ! ━ charles_leclerc just followed yn !

━ yn just followed danielricciardo and charles_leclerc back !

yn

liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris, and 5,686,585 others yn decided to stay a little longer? @ danielricciardo @ landonorris ❤️‍🩹

view all 1,272,181 comments

charles_leclerc There’s room at the Ferrari if you’d like :)

⤷ landonorris SORE LOSER

⤷ danielricciardo Give up, Charles. Yn is a McLaren girl 😎🧡

⤷ charles_leclerc I’m being ganged up @yn

⤷ yn erm… goodluck to everyone ❤️🧡

scuderiaferrari

liked by yn, charles_leclerc, and 596,282 others

scuderiaferrari POLE POSITION AT HOME 🚀 #MonacoGP #CharlesLeclerc

view all 12,585 comments

f1wwwwaaaag y/n, what are you doin here!

landonorris

liked by yn, charles_leclerc, and 432,585 others landonorris P4 👊🏻

view all 65,393 comments

yn LETS GO NORRIS NO MORE LANDO NO WINS!

yn

liked by 4,373,484 others

yn tehe. view all 1,484,282 comments

landonorris … what…

⤷ yn nothin personal landoe, just visiting

⤷charles_leclerc and wearing ferrari merch

⤷ landonorris NOT COOL WHAT

⤷ danielricciardo Excuse me.. @yn.. mom???

⤷carlossainz55 She’s with us now ❤️

⤷ yn guys is it a bad time to say im a redbull fan and i jus wanna support u 😴

⤷ charles_leclerc what.

⤷ landonorris …

⤷maxverstappen1 Stop by the garage of your team 🏆

⤷ redbullracing Sending over a PR package 🫶🏻

⤷ landonorris Unbelievabe @ maxverstappen1 is this about me breaking your trophy?

mclandonalds the grid is so funny fighting over yn

yn

liked by 10,585,956 others yn listen, i love everyone. i love f1 - 05.28.23 a day to remember

mercedesamgf1 🖤

⤷ scuderiaferrari ❤️

⤷ redbullracing ❤️

⤷ mclaren 🧡🧡🧡

charles_leclerc But you love us more, right?

⤷ yn i’ll need a lot of convincing…

⤷ charles_leclerc can we discuss it over dinner if i win? ⤷ yn p1 and deal

landonorris what the fuck

charles_leclerc

liked by yn, and 6,383,585 others charles_leclerc P1 ! Worked hard for this one with the team ❤️ Had a little extra motivation today! #Tifosi

view all 1,122,282 comments

landonorris Yn?

scuderiaferrari Hope to see your lucky charm again soon ❤️

charlieyn AHAHAH EVEN FERRARI ADMIN SHIPPING

yn who’s that hot chick? ⤷ charles_leclerc Me? Slide one? ⤷ yn not who i meant but it works too🥲

⤷ charles_leclerc just kidding amour, of course you

charles_leclerc

liked by 4,585,484 others charles_leclerc A star in Belgium 🇧🇪 🌟

view all 1,333,222 comments

charlesupdates the fact his last post was 3 weeks ago and this is his comeback 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

yn last tour 🥹🥹🥹

ynupdates WHAT THE FUCK YN ANNOUNCED AN ALBUM ON THE LAST DAY OF TOUR

yn

liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris, and 31,383,585 others

yn for the last 3 months, i’ve been getting to know this vroom vroom guy a lil… and while learning about him, i discovered parts of myself i never thought existed. because with him, i feel like myself.

to quote pride and prejudice, charles marc hervé perceval leclerc, you have bewitched me body and soul and i love i love i love you. that’s why, my new album bewitched is coming out this weekend. it’s time the world knew my love for you ❤️

@ landonorris, i know we make funny jokes often but i’ll be senti for a moment. without you, i wouldn’t have met charles so thank you i love you

view all 4,474,696 comments

CH4RLES_ lord, when is it my turn.

scuderiaferrari A new Ferrari WAG incoming ❤️ Welcome @yn! charles_leclerc I love you, chérie❤️❤️❤️ Forever and always, as you say.

danielricciardo I was there too but.. congrats!

⤷ yn ahh danny sorry:( love u i will give u vip tix when i go back on tour 🫀

⤷ danielricciardo WOHOOO LETS GOOO

landonorris You guys are actually kind of cute🥹 Happy for you Y/l/n and Leclerc! @charles_leclerc TREAT HER WELL AND DON’T LET HER GO

⤷ charles_leclerc She’s stuck with me forever ♾️ And I will don’t worry 👁️👅👁️

⤷ yn never thought ud use those emojis but cute

#charles leclerc #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc x you #f1 fanfic #formula 1 #f1 imagines #charles leclerc imagine #social media au #charles leclerc 16 #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc smau #charles leclerc instagram au #charles leclerc one shot #charles leclerc blurb #charles leclerc imagines

[trashmouth-richie]

𝔩𝔦𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔥: 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔢𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔤

𓆙 crazy! lilith! reader x eddie

𓆙 same au as this that will now be referred to as the lilith au

𓆙 summary: the beginning of how eddie met lilith. based on this ask from @serasvictoria “Loved Lilith crazy reader (so good!) and I’d like to read about the moment where Eddie first went “fuck, I’m into this.”” hope i did you proud 🥹💋 i like to think eddie met her and couldn’t stop thinking about her.

𓆙 tw: 18 + only, smut p in v unprotected, violence, blood, demon themes, soul mates connecting. nicknames, weed, drinking mentioned. both eddie and reader are over 18. Billy makes an appearance 🙄

𓆙 3.9k words

The bar stunk like it always did. BO seeping out from the uniforms of the guys fresh from their shift at the plant mixed with spilled keg beer. The stench wafted through the dank air creating a reeking stench that was custom for the Hideout, keeping the well lined pockets of Hawkins rich away from the hole-in-the-wall bar. 

Eddie was in a mood tonight, and his friends could feel it. By nature, he was accustomed to breaking up fights with the drunks, offering whatever asshole with a clenched fist a joint if they would just leave it be. The Hideout was like a home to him, and he hated any sort of disturbance to the small peace the shitty bar had to offer. 

But tonight? He didn’t know he would be the one to start a fight, especially not after seeing you walk through the front doors. 

He had seen you there before. Always dressed like you deserved to be somewhere better, somewhere that didn’t smell like armpits and unwashed balls. Lips painted in a deep color but from the shitty lighting he never could tell if it was purple or black. 

He watched from a distance as you shrugged off one piss drunk guy after another, each leaving with their tails tucked between their legs, muttering shit like crazy bitch, she’s fucking insane did’ya hear what she said to me? Eddie stood by and laughed, admiring the mysterious girl who wouldn’t give anyone a chance. 

Setting up equipment last week Eddie’s eyes were trained on the time, having it down to a science on when you’d show up, and there you were. Rolling your eyes to the catcalls from the old timers and going straight to the bar, a glinted smile on your lips as you purred your order, one he had already memorized from watching you show up week after week. Eddie leaned back and hollered to Jeff, asking if he knew who you were. 

Jeff said what he thought your name was, claiming you worked with his sister at the Hideaway, the diner that served beer and home style food, you were a senior maybe? But neither of them had seen you around before. 

You were a mystery to him, and he was hooked. He looked for you in classes, down the orange and green brick painted hallways. Fuck, he even went to the Hideaway but could never find you there. It was almost as if you only existed in his dreams or at the Hideout. 

Corroded Coffin wasn’t performing tonight, instead the four guys leaned over the sticky table in the back corner, their table, tossing quarters into a shot glass and shooting the shit. Well three of the four were having a good time, the other was quiet, brooding behind dark eyes. 

You had walked in like you always did, 10 o’clock on the dot, only this time you weren’t alone. 

Billy Hargrove? Really? 

Eddie couldn’t help but roll his eyes, how fucking cliche could you be? Finding the first swinging dick in Hawkins with a loud car and immediately going on a date with him. Eddie was disgusted, but more so, jealous. 

Hours ticked by, and beer after beer, one gut rot shot after another, Eddie’s jealousy brewed into pure hatred. His dark eyes bored into you, but you didn’t even notice. 

He hated you. Hated your stupid smile, the way you kept giggling at Billy’s jokes. just wait til you see him naked, sweetheart, the laughing won’t stop there, he thought to himself. 

Loathing the way your black painted nails curled into Billy’s denim jacket, no doubt he probably fed you a line about how he works out. Eddie’s eyes roll back again and he breathes heavily through his nose, sucking the last shot of whiskey through his teeth, letting the bitter taste melt on his tongue and burn with each fiery drop down his throat. 

Trying to keep himself busy, he finds himself flicking open his switchblade, pressing the top of the blade into the black leather cushion, wishing it was Billy’s neck instead. He can’t hear what anyone is saying behind him, didn’t even notice that Gareth was talking about learning a new song. His full attention was on you. 

Billy gets up from his bar stool, the noise from the drag of the legs on the floor scratches against Eddie’s skin, adding insult to injury. He shoots you a wink and makes his way to the back towards the bathroom. 

Watching him disappear into the dark lit corner, Eddie stands on wobblier legs than he would have liked. Boots heavy and clunky as he stalks his way over to you. Not at all knowing what he was going to do or say, going on pure adrenaline. 

Your perfume hits him first, a warm note of vanilla mixed with a tobacco hint of camels. The red top you’re wearing is cut low, showcasing your pretty neck and plunging deep into the cleavage of your tits. A black leather jacket sits on your shoulders, the zippers shining with the warm light. 

Your eyelashes bat at him as he approaches your table, but you still don’t look his way, and he stands next to you like he’s known you for years, drawn to you like a moth to a flame. 

“I’ll take another one of these,” you say, pushing your empty glass towards him with your middle finger, “make it a strong one.” 

“I don’t work here,” Eddie scoffs, moving your drink out of his way and placing an arm on the back of your chair, glaring down at you “but you already knew that.” 

The air shifts when you look up at him, it’s heavier, thicker than peanut butter, and you almost choke at the way his Adam's apple bobs in his throat. 

“What makes you think I would know that?” 

Eddie shifts, the liquor on his breath is spicy and warm. 

“Because I've seen you here before, and not once have you ordered a drink from me.” 

A wicked grin coaxes its way to your lips and you cross your legs, the toe of your high heel touching Eddie’s knee, and you lean your elbow on the table closer into him. 

“Stalking me big boy?” 

“And if I was?” his voice is low, the ends of his hair sway as he dips into your space, eyes never leaving yours, making sure he was all you could see as he whispers, “something tells me you wouldn’t mind that.”

The toe of your shoe grazes his inner thigh and the tip of something hard, making the corner of your lip tease up as you pluck the stem of the cherry from your empty drink. Bringing it to your mouth, you never stop looking into his eyes, and his haven’t left yours either. 

The flesh of the cherry breached your lips and you lick the bottom of it, humming at the taste of the grenadine and sour whiskey on your tongue, finally biting the cherry, you toss the stem behind you. Chewing softly on the sugary fruit and leaning back, Eddie’s eyes taking you in. 

His ringed hand crawls up your stocking clad thigh, circling your soft skin, rubbing at the hem of your skirt. 

“am I right, sweetheart?” 

He doesn’t need you to say he’s correct because he already knows, your eyes speak for you, a dark glint to them, dripping with want, and he wouldn’t doubt if you were to open your legs that your panties would wet with a sweet heat he desperately needed to taste. 

“You’re pretty cocky for a guy who’s been staring at me for months but has never said a word until tonight.” 

It's Eddie's turn for silence when your pretty nails reach out to trace the handcuffs on his belt, shifting your legs so the left is now crossed over the right, each taking more and more from one another waiting for the first to break. 

“Why tonight? hmm?” your nails rubbing against the metal and leather, thumb grazing his zippered crotch, getting a devil hint of what he has hiding beneath. “Didn’t like seeing me with someone else? Already putting your claim on me, huh?” 

He didn’t need to answer because you already knew. 

The first time you laid eyes on him he was playing the solo to Master of Puppets, the cold air seeped into your bones from your walk from the Hideaway, and you needed a drink after your shitty shift.

Your eyes met and it was instant, a primal heat that drew you in and kept you coming back, waiting impatiently. Watching from afar calculating his moves, the way he held himself so confidently, his lithe muscles rippling when carrying band equipment from the stage. The way his throat vibrated when he sang, the quick jerk of his fingers as they strummed each key. How sweaty his hair would get after his set, shit you were infatuated. 

He dips low to you again, a hand landing on your hip, sending shivers to your spine. 

“You’re lost, sweetheart.” 

Confused, you look up at him, quirking an eyebrow, challenging him, “lost?” 

His fingers squeeze gently at your hip, his other hand moving your chin so you can look at him directly, his thumb moving over your bottom lip, pulling it down and almost groaning as it pops back into place against your teeth, “yeah, you’re supposed to be with me.” 

“Well well, if it isn’t the freak caught with his hands in the cookie jar.” 

Neither of you look at Billy, the heat between you still strong, sweltering. 

“Hargrove,” Eddie greets, eyes never leaving yours, “thanks man.” 

Billy shoots you a look, fists clenched, “for what?” 

Eddie stands up straight, hands leaving you to retreat into his jacket pocket, angling his shoulders back, “bringing my girl to me, seriously, I owe you.” 

Billy smirks and chuckles, “your girl huh?” 

“I didn’t stutter.” 

Eddie dogged the first swing, ducking and jabbing a brass knuckled fist into Billy’s stomach, sending him backwards into a table behind him, peanuts and beer spray up across the bar.  

Stalking towards Billy, the shine of Eddie’s brass knuckles gleam against his fist, matching the shine of the wink he shoots you, and he’s caught off guard when you re-cross your legs and lick your top lip, hooded eyelids flashing him a sinful look of lust. 

He chuckles at the sight of you, how you’re not afraid of him, how you didn’t run, the way you look like you’re almost enjoying this. Fuck.

Billy’s boot kicks Eddie square in the jaw, blooding up his bottom lip, sending him tumbling back a few steps, giving Billy the upper hand. 

Neither of them expect what comes next. Eddie didn’t notice you get up, planting your heels on the ground and grabbing the bar stool by the legs. He only heard the thud of Billy falling to the ground and the crack of splintered wood teetering across the ground, the remaining pieces of the stool tossed to your feet. 

Heels echoing across the floor, you tiptoe around the wood kneeling down to grab Billy’s blond hair between your fingers, twisting as his head raises from the floor. 

“Date’s over,” your voice is sweet with each word, almost pleasant in the delivery, “understand?” 

“Fucking crazy bitch,” Billy spits. 

The whip of a knife whizzes past your ear, catching on the meat of Billy’s hand, nailing him to the floor. 

Billy gasps and grunts mumbling shit under his breath. 

Turning your head you look up at the dark haired metalhead. His eyes are darker than they were all night, a twitch formed in one of his eyelids. The blood dripping from his chin was sticky against his pale skin. To anyone else in the bar he looked deranged, like a demon straight from hell here in a human form, but to you? He looked like a God, a fucking King. 

The look in his eyes caused a pool to form between your legs, the black veil of iniquity clouded your vision, a certain wickedness emitted from him and you were drawn to it like a magnet.

He stomps to both you and Billy, bending down he reaches a hand over your back, grabbing ahold of your hip, making you stand up with him. 

“Wrong answer.” Eddie grunts, his boot shoving the blade in further. 

He’s taller than you expected him to be, his broad shoulders are rolled back and he peers down at you, a dimpled smirk on his lips. 

Standing on tiptoes, you reach up to his face. His strong jaw ripples between clenched teeth under your fingers. Rubbing the cut on his bottom lip with your thumb, he doesn’t flinch, only breathes heavy when you smear the blood around, and pop it into your mouth. The devil’s smile on your lips as you hum around your thumb, the acidic burnt taste of his blood on your tongue.

He groans, squeezing your hips in his big hands, bringing you into him, his stiff cock pressed heavy against your middle. 

“Wanna get outta here?” your fingers walk up against his chest, fingernails scratching down until they land on his belt, lightly yanking the leather towards you.

“Your place or mine?” His voice is low, hungry. 

“I’m not picky.” 

“didn’t think you were, c’mon sweetheart.” 

Eddie grabs your hand and drags you through the front door, your laugh fills the night air, taking away any chill from it, your bodies serving as heaters.  He opens the drivers door of his van and you get in climbing over the center console. 

He climbs in behind you, almost choking when you throw a leg back over and sit firmly in his lap. 

“Fuck.” 

Your fingers work to the collar of his shirt, ripping it down the center, showing off his pretty porcelain skin etched with scrawls of a demon-like face and a black widow on his chest, heaving as he tries not to blow his load right there and then. 

Eyes rake over him, followed by the scratch of your nails, he hisses and groans as your lips attach to his neck, licking sweet and warm under his ear, “about time you talked to me..” 

Your hips move against him, his hands burning into the fabric of your skirt and lifting slightly, thumbs searing into your thighs, “looks like you just needed to get jealous, hmm?” 

Eddie’s hands work your jacket from your shoulders, groaning as the neon light from the bar hits you, illuminating the delicate skin of your shoulders, and the tight strap from your bra, he moans and yanks you forward, hands full on your breasts as his fingers roll against your nipples. His lips perched to the column of your throat. Your moans filling the van when his tongue salves across your throat, working a hickey into your neck, “that’s what I thought big boy, mmm, you’re easy to read.”

His dick kicks up when the pad of his thumb hits a steel ball on either side of your nipples, and he bites hard into your neck, causing you to yelp and moan, enjoying the pleasured pain. 

“course I was jealous,” Eddie groans against your skin, working his tongue along his teeth marks, “fuckin’ look at you, goddamn devil woman.” 

Your hand works to his jaw, wrapping closed around his throat and shoving him back hard into the seat. Nose to nose with him, your tongue darting out to catch the flesh of his lip, whispering hot against his mouth as you press your wet cunt down into him, “you like that? The evil inside of me?” 

His hand wraps around your throat, large rings cutting into your skin, pressing hard against the bite he put into your neck. Eyes rolling to white you hum a moan so pretty against his hand his dick kicks up again, straining beneath the denim. 

He brings you close to him, lips ghosting over your own, “Like isn’t the right word.” 

His lips crash into yours, a mix of blood, spit and clashing teeth. It’s primal, the way your mouths work together, licking, sucking, lapping at one another, hungry for more. 

Your hands move feverishly against his belt, and his fingers waist no time shoving your skirt up higher, showing off the sheen from your pussy lips, slick and bare, no panties. 

He groans when his fingers push past your puffy lips and circle your clit, trying to suck him in where you need him most. 

“Fuck,” he chuckles, “you’re fucking soaked, Eddie get you all worked up?” 

“Is that your name?” you quip, working his velvet thick cock from his jeans, spitting on the tip and rubbing it around with your thumb, you wrap your fingers around his shaft pumping him once, “looked more like a Diablo,” your hand works him again, “Lucifer…” you push his head through your slick folds, sinking down enough that the head of his cock disappears, “.. or daddy to me.” 

Eddie rolls his eyes back into his head, biting his fist, and moaning loud, “fuck, you’re gonna kill me.” 

You tut between your teeth, “not tonight, tonight you’re mine.” 

Your full weight drops down onto his cock and you sigh a moan the same time Eddie groans and squeezes his eyes shut, and you take a second to catch your breath before you adjust yourself so you can circle your hips. your nails press into his chest again, leaving scarlet marks in your wake, his skin pulled from itself and under your fingers, and he can’t get enough, 

The buckles on your bra straps are plucked like dandelion heads against the cup, threads frayed under Eddie's hands as your tits bounce from their confinements, pretty piercings glinting in the neon lights. 

“Tell me,” you groan, your own hands pushing your tits together and biting your lip from the pure ecstasy that’s laced into Eddie’s cock, “tell me how good this is.” 

“Fuck look at you, taking me so fuckin’ deep.” his thumb circles your clit as his hips buck up into you, eliciting more pretty moans that rattle the windows in the van, matching his grunts and sweat-stuck bangs. “should have, mm yeah shit just like that, fuck! don’t stop, scooped you up the first night I saw you.” 

He wasn’t like the other lame dicks in Hawkins, this one seemed different, better. You knew from the moment you saw him that he could keep up with you, wouldn’t be turned away from your demon lust or the darkness that permeated through your skin. Just as Billy had said, this guy was a freak. Like you. 

Eddie lifts you up and turns, slamming you into the seat so your face is pressed against the warm leather, ass angled up, pussy split open and weeping from his cock. 

He works his dick between your folds, relishing in the way you try to suck him in greedily, chuckling as you pout and scowl when he teases you some more. 

“what’s the matter pretty girl? You don’t like being teased?” 

“no,” you whine as he does it again, laughing at your eager pussy and desperate cries. A hand lands hard on the fat of your ass and you jump under his hand, moaning and pushing yourself back into him, “more, fuck, please.”

That’s all Eddie needed to hear before he’s deep inside you again, your gummy walls clenching around him as he bottoms out, His large hand printed on your skin. “fuck you’re nasty, such a dirty slut aren’t ya?” 

“yes, fuck.” your tongue licks the leather seat, eyes looking back to see the blackness cloud Eddie’s eyes and for a split second you swore there were horns on his head. 

He pumps into you faster, met by your hand circling your clit, he leans forward to suck into your shoulder blade, licking up the back of your neck, whispering into your ear as his hips jack knife into you, “come for me, fuckin’ come for daddy.” 

Wet floods your fingers and heat coils in your belly as your orgasm spreads, the back of Eddie’s seat has moon shaped indents on the left side as you claw into it, moaning against it. 

His fingers are grabbing you hard enough it will leave bruises on your hips, he grunts into you, working you through your leg shaking high. “Did so good for me, yeah you like this cock? gripping me like a fuckin’ vice honey, ’m gonna come, where you want me?” 

You twist beneath him, facing him to see his sweaty chest, hair sticking to his neck in places, dark eyes gleaming in a lust infused state of bliss, fat cock red and swollen. The demon of your dreams. 

The makeup on your eyes were smudged from sweat and your face grinding into the seat, you lick your lips and eye the pre cum on his cock, your slick soaking his length, coating the course hair at the base. “I wanna know how we taste.” 

Eddie groans, grabbing your waist roughly and adjusting you both carelessly to the back, shoulders knocking into the seats and whatever other bullshit was tossed into the void. 

He kisses you harsh, fingers tweezed around your nipple piercing, groaning at your little moans as you bite his split lip and shove him onto his back. Peering down at him with soulless eyes you work your way down his body, tangling yourself in between his legs, you wrap your lips around his fat length. 

The heady taste of your arousal and the brine of his precum mix on your tongue, marrying into a profound taste that could only be described as heaven and hell. 

His hips wiggle beneath you, desperate for more of your mouth, you giggle before swallowing him into your throat in one single move, working your hands up and down his shaft, in tandem with your swirling tongue. 

Groans replace your desperate moans from earlier, lewd sounds streak up the fogged fucked windows of the van, and it’s not long before Eddie is spilling into your mouth, muttering nonsense. 

You suck him clean, and he hisses at your wicked tongue lapping around him. 

“Fuck Lilith,” Eddie groans, sleepy little smile on his lips as he pulls you into his sweaty chest, skin to skin, “you’re out of this world.” 

You quirk a brow and push his bangs back from his forehead, “that’s not my name, Eddie.” 

“it should be,” he grins down at you, moving your neck to plant a kiss behind your ear, “it’s a variation of the Mother goddess of all demons… and after what we just did, fuck.” he grunts, squeezing your bare thigh and hoisting you higher up to him, “satan himself couldn’t tear you away from me.” 

A wicked grin paints your lips, and you surprise yourself when you push them into Eddie’s, fingers wrapped tight around his neck. 

Eddie was wrong, you weren’t lost, just missing a piece to your puzzle, needing someone to delve into the darkest part of your mind, to be enthused by your antics, applauding your wickedness. and that someone, was found at a smelly dive bar. Him. 

Ave Satani

pls enjoy another story in the same au here

♡tag list: @dashingdeb16 @emxxblog @mopeymopeymouse @pretendthisnameisclever @mommybaby-witch @eddies-acousticguitar @tlclick73 @figmentofquinn @eddies-stinky-battle-jacket @whenshelanded @micheledawn1975 @3rd-conchord * @leelei1980 @mopeymopeymouse @browneyes8288 @emilyslutface @mmunson86 @josephquinnsfreckles @eddiesxangel @elegantkoalapaper * @str4ngergirlw0rld * @corrodedcoffincumslut @nailbatanddungeon @katethetank @munsons-mayhem28 * @mandyjo8719 @joannamuns9n @littlebookworm86 @hunnybuns-world @feyremunson

+ a few lovely moots: @taintedcigs @eiightysixbaby @prettyboyeddiemunson @succubusmunson @eddieschains @eddiemunsons-missingnipple @littledemondani

#eddie munson #eddie x fem!reader #eddie x you #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie fanfiction #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson blurbs #eddie munson one shot

[bloodycassian]

Reborn - Reader x Azriel. AN - thank you anon for this great prompt!

Requested - I don't know if your requests are open but I wanted to throw something in just in case.

An Azriel x reader, where AZ and reader have never met before, reader has been tortured and experimented on by the court of nightmares ( Keir ) she could be a shadowsinger, and they're mates, when the reader is in the verge of death for refusing to work with Keir, AZ feels it and begins to grow hectic without knowing the reason,  everyone in the inner court is confused until elain comes out of nowhere and tells everyone that his mate is in danger. ( Vision )

I have this on the back of my mind since reading some of your amazing work and couldn't stop thinking about it.

No amount of masturbation, drinking, or sparring helps the agitation under Azriel’s skin. It’s a constant, burning, itching thing that’s like a fucking disease upon his being. 

Sleep is his only relief, but even then he’s plagued with pain and darkness. It reminds him too much of the dank basement he’d been forced into when he was young, so he stays up. He’s exhausted and brooding and quick to snap at anyone who questions him. He knows he’s being a dick but according to the five healers he’d seen, there was nothing wrong. 

Nothing wrong, just like how his shadows weren’t some kind of magic, according to them. 

He’d refused to believe in healers all that much since the explanation Madja had given him about his diseased pets. The writhing, tentacles of night were a ‘bodily mutation of the highest level, tainted with fae magic’. Tainted. The word felt right for what they were, but that didn’t mean it stung any less. 

“We’ll invade here, and be able to plant our…” There was a beat of silence in Amren’s quick words, then her voice cut through his busybodied task like a knife “Azriel, are you even listening?” 

Truthfully, he hadn’t been. He’d been consumed by the ache again, the broiling sickness beneath his skin that had every muscle flexed in tension. His mind had other battles to fight. 

“What does it matter? You’ll carry out your plan with or without me. Keep talking, make yourself feel important, Amren.” His ill-tempered response came quick and laced with venom. One glance towards the small not-quite-fae female and his mind gave a twinge of regret. 

A lick of her power radiated, filling the room with something vibrant and undeniable. Cassian sucked in a breath, and a word from Rhys had her firey gaze snapping to him instead. “Take your dog from the important business then, High Lord.” Her words were precise, hissed. 

Azriel straightened. The insult didn’t land as well as Amren had wanted, in part because he couldn’t care less, another because the fire under his skin was reaching a peak that he had no idea how he survived every time it came around. He glanced to Rhys, who gave him a nod. Good. Let him free of this cage. 

He flung open the balcony doors with his cursed gift and sprinted off the ledge, launching himself into the summer air. 

+

Rats nibbled at your toes when you slept, scurrying away before you could catch them. Your senses weren’t even close to what they had been months ago. Before, you’d been able to catch at least two a week for extra sustenance. 

You told yourself that they’d learned, that they’d gotten quicker at their biting and fleeing. Truthfully, you could feel your strength waning every day. 

Living was no longer hope, and more of an inconvenience. 

But it was an inconvenience to Kier as well. And that meant you’d keep on living out of spite. 

The next female would appreciate it. 

“Arms up, legs together.” The order came with unnatural casualness that you’d grown used to. If you didn’t follow the orders, you were beaten until you either complied or were unconscious, so complying was really the only option. Especially when you were attempting to stay alive for as long as you could. 

It’s for the next girl. You chanted to yourself when the keeper made the injection. It stung like hundreds of bees attacking the same place, but the pain was familiar. A friend you welcomed before everything went sideways and the nausea rolled in. 

The drug Kier’s men gave was like none you’d experienced outside this cell. An incredible high, with a disastrous low. 

You convulsed on the floor moments later, your body still barely able to take the amount they dosed you with. You’d seen the liquid inside the damn thing grow each week, they were marking your progress with every one of them. So, with each dosing you made sure to put on some dramatics for them. 

The clawing at the throat was false, the sound of your screams only half-forced. The real, unforced reaction though, was always the shade of pallor your skin turned after every injection. The darkness that radiated from you like a bubble, the pain made physical. 

It hovered over your skin like an aura, tendrils of it washing over your forehead when the sweating started. It always started like this, for the first few hours - or possibly minutes, you weren’t sure once you were lost to the pain - they’d observe, and sometimes Kier himself would join, looking like a disappointed mother. Then, once the shaking subsided, and you were able to breathe normally, they’d release a rabbit into your cell. 

The same rabbit almost every damn time. After the first two weeks, you’d grabbed the first one and snapped it’s neck, hoping that Kier would be happy with the accomplishment and you’d earn something. You’d felt awful as it died in your hands, but the pain… if it stopped the pain, you’d kill anything. 

But time after time, they’d send in another rabbit, and though you begged for some kind of explanation of what they wished with the damn thing, they’d only observe. After a few hours of investigating, it’d eventually be removed and you’d wake up alone again.

Kier did not make an appearance today, and after your shaking stopped, neither did a rabbit.

“Where’s dinner?” You croaked, the tears stinging small cuts on your cheeks. Your friend never laughed or spoke, hardly even moved when he was in the vicinity of your cell. It was odd, even for a freak who enjoyed drugging and torturing others.

The male only stared, writing in his little notebook. He could at least humor you and tell you what he was so keenly logging. Some friend.

He opened the door, but instead of the rabbit jumping inside, he stepped forward, past the barrier and wards keeping you from breaking through. Your breathing halted. 

“Your reluctance to learn your gifts has given us no other option.”

+

“Did you lose a fight?” 

Nesta’s words normally bounced and slid right off Azriel, but with how volatile he was feeling, it took all his restraint not to snarl at her.

“Come on Az, where’s that quick wit?” She chided, crossing her legs at the knee beside her sister. 

His eyes drifted to Elain, the warm blush of her cheeks. Her lavender nightshirt made her seem so much more vulnerable than she was. He knew just how lethal the female could be, and admired her for it. His eyes drifted to the soft hair and round features that he’d once dreamt of. How foolish he’d been, how full of hope and bitterness. Now here he was, merely a ghost. A shell for pain to be housed in and nothing more. 

And here he stared at a garden of hope and light. The female who’d haunted his dreams for years. The opposite of the steel bitch that sat beside her. 

A pang of guilt pinched at him. “You’re ridiculous.” Was all he could muster at her. Nesta was trying to help, in her own way, he supposed. She was testing his limits and temper, even while balancing comforting words and attempting to heal her little sister’s mental wounds. Not to mention navigating the strange, untrained gift of Elain’s.

It wasn’t often that Azriel came to the house of wind proper. When he did, he usually confined himself to the dining area and the war room, where the formal dinners and meetings were held. He hadn’t walked the halls into the large internal library in a long, long while. No wonder they both had turned their chairs to face him when he’d cracked the door to find them both here. 

The large windows seemed crowded with the amount of books that surrounded them. The only source of light, aside from the twinkling magic fueled ones above. The room had always made Azriel feel claustrophobic, and now it set him on edge in a way different than it had before. 

Especially when Elain’s eyes bored into his own. His skin felt like it was shifting, pulling and pushing from just beneath. He was beginning to wonder if the healers had somehow missed a parasite of some kind. Something new perhaps, something they’d never seen before.

Elain’s eyes widened, her cheeks going from the pink blush to sickly pale in an instant. Her expression was unfocused, hazy - as if she were drunk. Azriel suddenly felt like he was intruding, like seeing her so vulnerable was something reserved for only those close to her. 

Nesta placed a hand on her shoulder and rubbed her sister’s back comfortingly. It was about as tender as Azriel had ever seen her, even with Cassian. He watched the hands that rubbed the Seer, recalling the intense desire he’d once felt for her. Embarrassment coated his cheeks, distracting him from the physical pain for a moment.

He’d wanted to be that support for her, once. Nesta’s hand seemed to grow in his vision, the embroidered collar of Elain’s nightshirt with it. He blinked rapidly, trying to refocus. The blackness around his eyes did not recede though. His bones ached, and his headache stabbed at him like a branding iron. He rubbed his temple, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“She needs help.” Elain gasped, coughing on a breath. Azriel wavered on his heels, something hard hitting his back, crushing his wings. 

He could barely hear the high strung sound of Elain’s voice. “She needs help, Azriel!”

+

He tore though the court, dragging Kier kicking and frothing with him. He’d received a few severe wounds from the cruel male, but nothing that a few patches of his siphons couldn’t hold together. 

The gushing stab wounds could wait. He had something far more important to tend to.

“You’re a bastard, a low-born inconsequential bastard, Shadowsinger.” Kier coughed as Azriel dragged his broken body with him. The crowd pushed and writhed around them, but his outstretched dagger kept any of the patrons from advancing. Several dark looks, hisses of death closed in around him, but he plowed through them all, working his way to the catacombs behind the stone chair that served as Rhys’s dark throne. 

“I may be a bastard-” Azriel grunted through his pain, now more fevored and intense than before. It was a wonder he’d even been able to make it here, but it did explain his sloppy handling of Kier once he’d found the male. 

“But at least I didn’t sell a daughter off as stock.” He tossed the would-be-king to the locked door of the catacombs, a part of him enjoyed the thunk his head made against the stone floor, even through the intense agony that ripped through him. 

This was not the place to show weakness. If he let his shadows drop, let the air of anything but a cold hearted killer go for even a moment he’d be trampled by the crowd. 

Kier rose slowly, muttering curses while he pulled out a key and slid the door to the side. He sketched a bow, waving Azriel in. Spit landed at Azriels feet as he crossed the threshold, and he hesitated in his step. A hiss rang out behind him, shuffling feet a song as the crowd quickly scooted back. He held his stance there for a moment, collecting the wrath that built in him. It writhed and twisted in his mind, his guts, his teeth throbbing with the urge to tare out Kier’s throat. 

The blistering heat flared again, this time in his jaw and he moved down the hall, towards the cells that an unfortunate assistant to Kier had described. 

He’d made their death quick, painless. 

+

You couldn’t scream, could hardly breathe with the weight that seemed to be growing in your chest. 

Not weight exactly, more like pressure. Internal pressure, like there was lava built up inside you with nowhere to go. And every rattling breath seemed to give it more life. You wheezed, weak with the exhaustion of fighting it. 

Your friend had given you three more of the injections, and promptly left when you began struggling against the binds at your hands and feet. One of them had ripped, you only knew because that was the hand that you’d used to claw at your chest with. 

The blood made going any further too slippery and exhausting.

There were far away sounds, but it all seemed too strange, so disjointed to be real. Screams and sharp clangs of metal, breaking glass and thudding. 

Your eyes slipped closed, and relief washed over you. The pressure eased, and the squeaky hinges of the door opened. Had death finally come? Was this the end of your cycle, and now they were bringing in a new victim to Kier’s experiments? 

There wasn’t much of a goodbye to the world, though. As sad as it was to not be able to see your family again, you were just grateful that the pain was receding. That finally there’d be no injections, no innocent rabbit and certainly no Kier around. 

The sounds were strange, a choking, strangled sound like the first time you’d killed the rabbit. Your eyes cracked open almost involuntarily to see what had happened. 

Outside your cell in a glow of blue light was a winged male, his hand wrist deep inside your friend’s chest. 

+

Blood is hotter than most people think it is. Azriel takes joy in it though, when it’s the blood of the truly vile ones. The male with the syringes and log book reeked of something spiced and foreign, something Azriel’d never encountered before. He would have asked, would have talked to the male if he’d not pulled a knife and threatened to ‘kill her’ as he backed away. 

There were no thoughts after that. And as he fell to the floor, Azriel reveled in the male’s labored breathing. Relief and heat flooded him, prickling him with a soaring joy he’d thought abandoned him long ago. He could laugh, if it weren’t for the absurdity of how it sounded to laugh at this moment.

 He plucked the book from his hands and shoved it into his belt behind him, his chest thrumming with joy.

He’d never been so filled with glee before, so overwhelmed with it after killing… Had he become broken in a sick way? Was he no better than the male he’d just killed? He looked to his hand, twisting it in the low light of his siphons. 

A wet, weak cough echoed off the walls and he spun, knife ready. 

Then the blade was on the floor as he rushed to the bars of the cell door, ripping it free of the rusted hinges. 

The female was gaunt, and frail. Yet his chest sang and though she looked moments from death, he couldn’t imagine more beauty. 

She clutched her chest, the blood there crusted and dry. “Thanks.” She croaked, voice barely a whisper. Shadows mounted around him, enclosing them in complete black. He would have thought he was winnowing if it weren't for the sorry excuse for a bed that stayed beneath her.

Azriel’s lips were moving, but he couldn’t tell what he was saying, even to his own ears. His mind, his body was a rushing river of every emotion at once, all cascading through his mind, to his chest and thrumming in his blood. Her eyes went wide and wild, searching his for a moment. His heart thundered in his ears.

What had his life been until now? Why was this moment such a climax to him so suddenly? All of it, the pain the agony, the stark moments of joy against it all - the brief moments of shared happiness that made it all worth it tore through his body like a flash floor. 

Tears pricked his eyes, and it was a curious thing to see them fall onto her neck and wash away the blood there. 

Then, a wet sigh from her lips, and her eyes stopped searching his. The rush of joy and sense of sanctuary ceased. His blood went quiet in his ears, and the room felt suddenly cold. The room silent around him, not even his shadows dared whisper.

His fingers hesitated over her cheek. When her next breath did not come, he shook her gently. Her eyes remained, staring blankly at the ceiling. 

This was truly a tomb now. 

“No…” He heard his own words that time. The word clattered through the cell like a bell tolling, echoing.

“Take her back.” A shadow hissed over his ear, caressing. 

He shook her again, the tears boiling over now, panic gripping him. 

“We know how.” another said. This voice was different, the same whispered tone and suggestion, but this was not one of his pets. He sent his own shadows skittering away, and a group of them stayed, unbound to him and unmoving from the cell. His heart skipped, fear upon fear pulling him into the icy abyss of despair. 

His own shadows returned, a broken syringe floating to him on their behest. They mingled with the others, reveling and dancing together though Azriel felt that he was slowly sinking.

“What am I supposed to do with this?!” He shouted at them, at nothing. He had truly lost his mind, hadn’t he?

“Save her.” The strange shadows told him. Just like Elain had said, overtaken by her visions.

 A tendril of the foreign shadow wrapped around his hand, locking the glass pieces there and slicing into his palm. The needle aimed directly to her chest, between the ribs, only a few inches from the heart. 

And what did he have to lose? The silence that surrounded him now was almost worse than the pain had been. Wouldn't pain at least be better than complete nothingness? To feel completely blank and unwritten as a being?

With a breath, and a part of his siphon’s power to support the broken syringe, he pushed into her skin. His own blood dribbled down the sides, mixing with hers. Through and through - until he knew that he’d met the same depth of a killing blow to an opponent’s heart. 

+

“Side, block, strike.” Cassian’s orders came out in demanding, practiced tones. Each step, each swipe of your blade met with one of Azriel’s shadows as a shield. 

His were still much, much stronger than yours, even after months of practice with them. Even with him showing you very intimately just how much they were capable of. Your cheeks blushed at the reminder of that. 

“No distractions, keep that shadow talk in the bedroom, Az.” Cassian scolded.

A smirk played at your mate’s face, and he hit you with a surprise swipe at your feet, left unprotected by your own shadows. 

You fell on your ass, cursing. 

Azriel offered a hand, panting at the exertion the sparring had taken. You were proud of that, at least. 

The first six months of training had been dedicated to building stamina, gaining back weight and muscle while balancing training your shadows to obey you. Six months ago, being able to spar with your mate had seemed like a far off dream that you’d never be capable of doing. 

But with his training, and Cassian’s encouragement, you were almost able to take him on stride for stride. Almost. 

So, you took his hand and pulled him towards you for a kiss. Then knocked his knees out from behind with a wave of your own shadows.

You smirked, and offered him a hand while Cassian boomed with laughter.

He allowed you to help him up, but cleaned in close, pecking a kiss on your cheek. 

“You’ll pay for that later.” He said in an intimate tone. A lick of his shadow wrapped around your thigh, snaking upwards. 

“Promise?” Your eyes sparkled at him, and the pain all those months ago had been worth it for this. 

#azriel x reader #reader x azriel #acotar fic #azriel shadowsinger #shadowsinger #reader insert

[fretbored34]

Then again, she might eat you alive so 🤷‍♀️

#dank memes #fresh memes #funny memes #memes #lol #funny but true #so true #me irl lol #funny but not funny haha #oh no lol #adulting #dating #relationships #relationship #girlfriend #boyfriend #mating #tiger #dogs #that's not right #that's not good #so wrong #so right #out of my league

[gingernut1314]

The Hunter and the Hunted

Buggy x F!Reader

Summary: Buggy the clown annoys you. More than annoys you. It's been that way ever since you were both little and as a bounty hunter, it made all the sense in the world to dislike him. When you are captured by the Marines for crimes you had been trying to outrun for years, you find him locked up right alongside you and just as annoying as ever. But when the chance for escape presents itself, it comes with strings attached. Strings that test the very natural order between the hunter and the hunted--an order Buggy seems to have no regard for.

Topics: angst, smut (p in v), canon typical violence, enemies to lovers

Word Count: 5.3K

Commissioned by: @katelynwithpaint (Thank you for commissioning me, it was so much fun to write! ❤️ ❤️)

↞ to Buggy the Clown Masterlist | One Piece Masterlist | Request Rules | Blog Navigation ↠

You were thrown into the dank brig of a marine vessel, the force of the action enough to send you falling to the ground, your bound hands barking in pain as you tried to keep yourself upright. 

The two marines who had been commanded to bring you down here spat filthy insults your way. Insults you should have brushed off and forgotten about, but you have never been good at taking such things. Had always let them get under your skin--get you angry and upset. 

Snapping your head around, teeth bared in a nasty snarl, you watched the door slam shut behind you.

“You fucking spoon-fed idiots!” You hissed up at the two marines who had been ready to leave before you had spoken. “You know nothing of--” The taller one slammed his fist against the bars of your prison, causing a loud bang to ring through the metal walls. 

You hardly flinched. Hardly bat an eye. You’d dealt with some of the most terrifying big bads the East Blue had to offer. Big bads who thrived off chaos and ate babies for breakfast. These two goody-two-shoes marines would never in their wildest dreams live up to those creatures. Never utterly terrify you. 

“We know everything about you. We know of your failed run as a bounty hunter. We know you killed a respected and loved member of our community--you are a criminal. Nothing but a no-good pirate.” He shot down at you in an air of superiority. Like you were nothing but the dirt under his shoes. 

A criminal. A no-good pirate. Those few words were worse than any insult one could possibly conjure and spit at you. Worse than physically getting slapped in the face. 

You were by no means a good person, but a criminal--you were far from being a criminal. Not in the same sense as those you’d hunted down. Those who had done true evil in this world. Who had hurt innocent people--children. 

Criminals like their respected and loved community members. A, now-dead, marine commodore. A commodore who had gone too far in life without getting punished for his crimes. 

Crimes you punished him for. 

A crackling laugh filled the air before you could spit any sort of slights their way. A laugh that started off low, like a chuckling at oneself, but gradually grew into a wicked, bellowing thing. 

It was a laugh you were all too familiar with. One you had first heard as a fresh, new bounty hunter following your former master on her journey to take down Silvers Rayleigh, fearsome first mate of the soon-to-be King of the Pirates. 

Your master had been killed not long into the fight, but you had been too busy fighting off a red-nosed boy around your age to notice. You two had beaten the absolute shit out of each other, and would have continued till only one of you left victorious, but Rayleigh had stepped in, stopping you two before that could happen. He had spared you, despite your hot-headed vows of revenge.

You had thought all too much about that red-nosed boy as you continued across the East Blue. Thought about how he had been just as passionate and confident in his mentor’s skills--in his own skills--as you were. How he had been just as reckless and rash as you.

It wasn’t for another five years before you saw him again, still sailing around with your master’s killer, though you had given up on that revenge long before then. 

You had at this point in time found three other like-minded bounty hunters whom you joined up with. Hunters who had been tracking down a pirate unrelated to the boy you had battled with, though who just so happened to be celebrating some sort of victory on the same island. 

You two almost went head to head once more, had it not been for his calm and collected red-headed friend. A friend who had scared the shit out of you, despite his cool nature, so your fight ended swiftly and you left. 

More years passed and the more you ran into the clown. Each time you two found some way to fight--whether it be physical or verbal. A few times that red-headed friend was with him to help break it up, and other times you both were thrown out of whatever bar you had been in. 

You ran into him once more in some backwater bar, sitting alone and nursing a large pint of beer. He smirked your way when he spotted you and, to your surprise, bought you a drink. A drink you took reluctantly, waiting for the moment you would have to defend yourself against him. But instead, he merely talked to you. Told you how his captain had dissolved his crew, leaving him adrift. 

And there was hurt in his eyes. A sense of abandonment that had you carefully telling him of what had been happening in your own shit-filled life. Of a marine whose name you had just recently crossed off your list. How you had finally gotten him after years--gotten revenge for the lives he had taken from you in your youth. 

He’d laughed in something kin to understanding, insisting on buying you another drink to which you declined and went on your way. 

The last time you came across that laugh, you had just been left for dead by your so-called comrades--friends. Left to be found by the very marines you had crossed when you stumbled into a seemingly deserted town. A town you quickly found was overrun with freakish pirates. Freakish pirates who had managed to kidnap you in your weakened state and drag you into an equally freakish circus tent. 

The boy had grown up, just as you had. Had grown up to be captain of this band of freaks. One who had chained the poor people of that town up and used them for his own, sick entertainment. 

But when you saw him, that laugh sounding in your ears, you were reminded of just how much you thought of it. How many of your dreams had been haunted by it’s ring. Of how you, for whatever reason, held a sick sense of respect for him. And his eyes--they were all too bright looking upon you. All too seeing. 

After dramatically introducing you to his crew and captives, he had you dragged off into a back room where you were once more surprised when his freaks cleaned your wounds and gave you some water to drink. 

It was all very strange. It went against the very natural order of the world. The order between the hunter and the hunted. 

It had freaked you out all so much, you escaped before you had to face that haunting laugh and its owner. 

But here it was again, spilling from the red-painted lips of Buggy the clown, captain of the Buggy pirates, locked away in this all too wet marine brig pulling haunting ghosts from your past into the forefront of your mind. 

You kept your eyes trained on the two marines before you, watching them like a hawk. Watching for a slip-up. Something--anything that would help you in this situation. Something that would keep your eyes off the crazed clown and his grating laugh.

“If she’s a pirate, then that would make me one you shithead.” His gruff voice joked. The two marines shared a look between them. One that almost looked to have uneasy undertones to it. 

“You have no right interfering in marine business.” The second shot towards the cell just next to yours, only resulting in more insane laughter filling the air. The first marine just shook his head in growing annoyance. 

“Come on. He’s all locked up. That big-nosed freak can’t do a thing.” The laughter cut off sharply. 

“What did you just as say?” Buggy asked, his tone becoming all that much more serious. That more threatening--dangerous. The Marines bore shit-eating grins, obviously finding his growing pissed-off nature amusing. 

“You know, I never liked clowns. Freaky little fuckers.” The first said as they began heading for the exit once more. 

“This freaky little fucker is going to cut your nose off and force you to eat it when I get out of here.” This only seemed to tickle the marines further and they left without so much as another word. 

The brig was dead as a tomb for a moment you used to look about the confines of your cell, trying to find any weaknesses or things to make a makeshift weapon with so that you could escape sooner rather than later. Buggy gave an exasperated huffing sigh as your eyes locked onto something in the corner, just by the horrible-looking toilet. 

“Yeesh. Some people just don’t know how to have fun.” You all but ignored him, messing with the bit of scrap metal that had been idioticly left unfixed. “Whatcha got there, peach?” He said, using the nickname he had given you after you threw a peach you had mistaken for a rock at him when you had seen him that second time. He had used it ever since then and it’s continued to annoy you.

“Don’t call me that.” You snapped, finally yanking the bit of metal from its last hold on the base of the toilet. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. 

“That’s no fun.” 

“Since when have you ever thought of me and fun at the same time?” You huffed, working on trying to unlock the cuffs that had been slapped around your wrists. It took you a minute to even get the bit of metal into the small keyhole, and with your hands locked together as they were, you hardly saw yourself free any time soon. 

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you’re plenty fun. I think you do a fantastically fun job playing pirate bounty hunter.” You again ignored him. Tried not to even hear his all-too-chipper voice as you continued to work. “Playing pirate bounty hunter when you can’t even sail a ship. I think it shows your commitment to the part.” 

You finally snapped around to shoot a daggered glare Buggy’s way, whose usual red-painted lips were pulled up in a wide smile. He knelt before the bars separating the two cells, gloved hands clasped together before him. His clown-styled makeup was smudged in a way that told you he must have been here for a few days. You also noted the absence of his hat, which bore his insignia in the center, leaving him in his red and white striped bandana. 

You couldn’t help the small part of you that wished he was wearing it--the small part that thought it suited him all too well. A small part of you that you shoved down deep. 

Seeing him again after god knows how long was always--staggering. It brought back up such ugly feelings of hatred and utter sadness you’d felt after your master's death. Brought back up how surprised you’d been when he offered you a drink. Brought back up that equally as ugly feeling of respect and misplaced understanding. 

Buggy was an actor--a performer. Of course he would play the part he needed to get you to let your guard down--to not beat him into a pulp. 

It was all so aggravating. 

“It’s not some part.” Buggy rolled his eyes in a dramatic fashion that only made your frustration coil tighter in your chest. “And I can sail a ship.” Buggy let out a sharp mocking laugh. 

“I seem to remember my freaks telling me of the struggle you had trying to leave that small island I found you on.” 

“I had lost a lot of blood.” You said as if you needed to give him any sort of explanation. As if you needed to keep talking to him. Turning away from this intense green-blue gaze, you went back to work on the cuffs. 

“You know, I was rather upset you left without saying goodbye,” Buggy said in fake hurt. “You didn’t even get to see my grand finale.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” You said in equally mocking tones. 

“I accept your--”

“Fuck off, Buggy. I should have beat your ass while I had the chance. I should have killed you and freed those poor people you terrorized.” Buggy pulled a smirk to his lips. 

“Beat my ass? I seem to remember it was me who kicked your ass last time.” A scoffing huff spilled from your lips. 

“We were ten years old--” 

“Ten in a half.” Buggy quickly corrected like it truly mattered. You shot him a look that said as much. 

“It doesn’t matter. I had no skill back then. No discipline. I would kill you now without ever batting an eye.” That smirk never once left Buggy’s lips, his eyes shining in utter amusement. Eyes that had your gut doing annoying and tiresome little twists. 

“And collect what bounty? Our cheery new friends seem to think you’re nothing but a “no-good pirate” now.” Despite that shot of anger that flared in your chest, you pulled on your own smirking smile. 

“It wouldn’t be for any bounty. It would be for my own amusement.” 

“Peach, if you're trying to flirt with me, it's working.” He all but purred your way. You rolled your eyes and truly went back to unlocking your cuffs. 

No more distractions. No more annoying banter with that clown pirate who grated on your nerves like no other. You couldn’t get caught. Not yet. Not before you got revenge for yourself. Revenge against those who had turned the world against you. “Peach--”

“You truly are horrible.” You snapped, unable to ignore the obvious rise Buggy was trying and successfully getting out of you.

“When I escape and free you,” Buggy started, only for you to cut him off with a scoff.

“You’re delusional.” Buggy rolled his eyes dramatically. 

“When I escape and free you, you’ll have to repay me.” 

“You aren’t freeing me. I can do that just fine on my own.” You snapped.

“Oh, I think I will.” You shot him a glare hoping he would shut up. He, of course, did no such thing. “And after I get us off this ship, I’m thinking you’ll be so overrun with emotion you’ll do something sweet for me.” You shook your head, shoving the bit of metal this way and that within the keyhole. 

“I don’t find your games amusing. I actually find them quite boring.” 

“Now you’re just being mean.” The sudden sound of rusting metal squeaking open pulled your attention away from your work and back onto Buggy. Your jaw all but fell open upon seeing Buggy sauntering out of his cell, his hand popping back onto his wrist, a ring of keys laying there. 

You had watched those Marines. Hadn’t missed a single twitch or breath, so how had you missed Buggy grabbing those keys from around the holder's waist? How had you missed a flying, dismembered hand?

“How--” You watched him unlock your cell door in utter disbelief. Watched as he took the few steps across the way so he was standing in front of you. Watched with a fluttering, tingling belly as he knelt before you, that all too charming smile on his lips. You covered your strange feelings with that of familiar annoyance for him. 

“Peach, I’m gonna let you out, but,” He said, sing-songingly elongating the last word. “I want you on my crew.” That was the last thing you thought you would hear from his lips. It was enough of a shock to squash any and all irritation you held in your chest for the clown.

You two had no like for the other. Every time you saw each other, it was either a fight or a backward attempt to mock and tease the other. You were the hunter and he was the hunted. Why would he ever want you to be near him in such a way? 

You laughed in his face. Laughed wholeheartedly in your unbelieving at his words. Laughed so hard it shook your shoulders. 

“You’re full of it. I despise pirates. I kill your kind for a living.” You snapped at him once you’re laughter subsided. 

“Past living.” You’re disbelief quickly turns back into that of anger. “And you’re perfect.” His words caught you off guard once more. Had you all but freezing up, unable to conquer up your anger.

Perfect. No one had ever uttered such a thing to you. 

It was…strange. You and him--it was all too strange. 

“I collect outcasts, those thrown away by society. Those hurt and betrayed and left to die, bleeding out on some hopeless island.” You felt your eyes suddenly prick in the remainder of your inner wounds. Wounds created by those you had thought were your friends--family. Those who you had loved more than you had ever loved anything in this world. 

Buggy saw all of this with those intent green-blue eyes. He saw this and he understood, despite your many differences. Because he had experienced it too. Had been hurt and left to rot by those he had cared about. 

“My freaks--my crew--don’t turn their backs as easily. I don’t turn my back that easily.” 

An actor--a performer. That’s all he was--all he ever would be…but damn if he wasn’t speaking to your soul. Wasn’t utterly pulling you into those green-blue eyes and that charming smile of his. 

“I--” You didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. You should tell him to fuck off. That you would rather stay here and let the Marines drag you off to some prison to be forgotten in. But…but you didn’t say that. Your traitorous heart didn’t let you. “I am no pirate.” You all but whispered. It was a confession rather than a biting hiss.

Buggy smiled, his gloved hand coming up to grab hold of your chin in a grip that was just tight enough to keep you from looking away from him. It was all too much. It felt all too--too right, having the roles switched. Being the frightened sparrow and he the smiling chester cat, ready to snap your neck between his sharp, smiling jaws. 

“Oh, I know.” He whispered back as if it was a secret. “But I think you’ll like it. I think your cage door needs to be unlocked so you can fly free.” Before you could even open your mouth to try and pull together a rambling stream of words, the marine ship shook violently, the sound of cannon fire echoing down into the brig. That wickedly charming smile pulled onto Buggy’s lips. “Right on time.” He pulled his hand from your chin, the absence of his warmth leaving you annoyingly wishing for it back--wishing for more. 

What a strange, strange predicament you were in. What strange, strange emotions. It was all too confusing. Too much.

Buggy dangled the keys in front of your face as the ship was attacked once more. “How about you think on it while I take care of this, peach.” He said, dropping the keys into your lap before standing to his full, towering height. “Though, don’t strain that pretty little head of yours too much.” And with that Buggy left the cold, dank brig. 

You wasted no more time than you had, quickly unlocking the cuffs, which had been rubbing painfully against your skin, and heading in the direction Buggy had disappeared in. 

The next few moments went by in a flash. You getting to the deck and finding Buggy’s freaks had boarded and were mowing down marine after marine, leaving no survivors in their wake. Buggy laughing insanely as he fulfilled the threat he had shot their captor's way. You finding where they had stored your weapons, as well as Buggy’s hat. You killing anyone who got in your way as you found yourself heading for the edge of the ship--found your body had a mind of its own as you jumped, landing on the deck of the circus-themed ship Buggy commanded. 

This was your best and only escape route, you told yourself as you rushed around the ship, trying to find a place you could keep away from the rest of the world so you wouldn’t be found out. That place ended up being the large tent near the back of the ship, washed in shadow and thankfully empty. 

You passed the time by looking around the large area, finding it was very similar to that of the tent Buggy had set up on land all those years ago. 

Finding a pair of stairs, you winded up them, finding a singular chair sitting in the center of the raised platform. A throne, you realized. Buggy’s throne. You traced your fingers over the designs engraved in the wooden seat before sitting down, finding it would be the best place to wait out the fighting and think about your strange predicament. 

“That's my seat.” Buggy’s gruffing voice sounded in your ear a little less than an hour later. It didn’t startle you, his sudden appearance. You had marked his footfalls when he thought he had been sneaking into the tent to do just that. 

“Take it. It’s uncomfortable.” You murmured, pulling yourself from the throne which was, despite your words, rather comfortable. Buggy was much closer than you had originally thought, so close you had to tilt your head up just the slightest bit to look into those green-blue eyes of his. Eyes that never once moved away from your face as he flopped down on his throne, legs spread in some show of dominance. 

“So, tell me peach, what is your answer?” You moved your eyes away from Buggy’s intense stare, looking over his hat which you had taken with you off that marine ship. 

“Why free me?” You questioned, glancing back towards the pirate, whose eyes never seemed to have lifted from your form. 

“Because I’ve been looking for someone to fill the role of knife thrower in my performance. You are good with a blade.” It was a lie. You could tell it was a lie. And it ate at you despite your utter dislike for this pirate. You took a step closer, those green-blue eyes watching your movements. 

“That I am…but tell me something; what makes a pirate buy a drink for a bounty hunter?” You took another, calculated step that the clown marked. He shrugged as if it was no big deal.

“Why not? Getting you drunk seemed like a fun idea at the time.” He cracked a mischievous smile. “Still does.” You gave a small nod, pausing just before him. “You’re dancing around my question, peach. Maybe that's what I should make you.” 

You leaned forward the slightest bit, his knees brushing against your legs, being as close to him as you were. 

“You let me out of my chains. You dressed my wounds when you could have let me bleed out, and for those things, I owe you my life.” Buggy gave a small nod of his own.

“I feel a but coming.” 

“But I can’t be free yet. Not when those who betrayed me are still breathing.” That smile of his stayed in place, but a seriousness you had never seen before filtered into his eyes. A seriousness that spoke of understanding. Of respect. 

Strange--this was all so strange, things between you and him. Between hunter and the hunted. 

“And then?” He questioned. You moved ever closer, you’re legs fitting between his in a strange sort of puzzle. Buggy watched and allowed you to gently tug his hat back onto his head, his breath tickling your lips.

You thought of the way his hand on your chin felt. How it had all but drove you crazy. How you had wished, no matter how absurd, to have it back there--to have more. 

“Tell me why you saved me.” You spoke softly so that Buggy and Buggy alone could hear. “Why do you want me on your crew? Why, when you should have killed me--when you’ve wanted to kill me ever since we were young?” Buggy’s eyes fluttered down to your lips as they moved. A small action that had that buzzing in your body stirring alive once more. 

“I think you know.” He spoke just as softly in that gruffing voice of his. A voice that had been bouncing around in your brain for longer than you liked to admit. 

“I don’t think I do.” Buggy’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit like he was annoyed at your comment. An annoyance you wanted to drag out of him. You knew he didn’t want to admit it. Knew that he probably had never had to explain himself before. “Because I am still under the impression that I am the hunter ready to collect that sizable bounty on your head.” 

“You think my bounty is sizable?” He smirked, continuing to dance around the topic. 

“Enough to get me a ship that floats and an expensive bottle of wine.” You said in an attempt to get under his skin. You saw that flash of irritation in his eyes that made your own smirk pull to your lips. 

“A ship you couldn’t even sail?” He teased, moving closer so that his lips were mere inches away from your own.

Your mind raced to wonder what they might feel like fitted against yours. How it might feel to have his hands running over your skin--to feel his skin. 

It was all too strange, the things he was able to pull from you. Such strange feelings. 

“You annoy me.” You jabbed his way, your eyes fluttered every so often to those red-painted lips of his. 

If you kissed him, would your lips come away just as red?

“You’re eyes annoy me, your laugh, your voice.” Buggy looked as if he was trying to figure out if your words were supposed to be meant as an insult or some backwards complaint. You wondered this as well. 

“And it annoys me that you understand. Say you understand.” You found yourself saying in a biting manner. The pirate looked over your face, seeming unsure of what to do next. Unsure of what to say even when you had just spelled it out for him. 

His hand reached out and took hold of your chin in his solid grip. A grip that sent your stomach fluttering uncontrollably. “I understand.” Was all he said before he was pulling your lips flush against his own. 

You hardly had control of yourself as you kissed him back in a frenzy, all sense of self-control and reason flying out the window. A kiss fueled by your strange, strange feelings for this clown. Feelings a mix of dislike, annoyance, understanding, and respect. Feelings you’d been harboring deep within yourself for a long, long time. 

His kiss burned through you, had your hands grabbing at his jacket and all but ripping it from his body, feeling over his strong, exposed arms. His skin was warm and felt so nice against your own. Skin you wished to feel covering your whole body. 

Buggy hands moved along your body, pulling you closer. His touch sent your skin on fire. A fire that hat engulfed your entire being, demanding to be satisfied. 

Your hands moved downward, over his equally strong chest and abdomen until they found the edge of his pants, your fingers fumbling to undo his buttons. Buggy mimicked your actions, finding and unfastening the buttons there. 

You pulled away from Buggy long enough to hasten along the process of shoving your pants over and off your legs. A process you had hardly finished before Buggy was grabbing you up once more, claiming your lips in a hot, needy kiss. A kiss that felt more like a fight for dominance. A fight the two of you never could seem to truly finish. 

Buggy’s hands took fist fulls of your ass, guiding you up and onto the throne with him, your knees straddling either side of him. Reaching down between the two of you, your hand disappeared into Buggy’s pants, taking hold of is hardened cock and giving it a few good, teasing pumps. He gave a throaty groan that had that heat shoot through your core, making your pussy throb in just as much need as the rest of your body. 

As quickly as you could, you pulled his cock free from the confines of his pants, hardly waiting before you were descending downward, a sweet little moan spilling from your lips. 

Fuck it was good. It felt so good being connected this way. In a way that was slowly filling that yawning need within you. A need you had been holding at bay for a long time. 

“F-fuck, peach.” Buggy moaned into your mouth, his hands moving to hold onto your hips in a near steel-like grip. A grip that guided you further down so that you were fully seated on top of him. “So fucking good.” 

You moaned your own pleasure as you began to move up and down, slowly at first so that you might feel every last inch he had to offer. A pace that gradually quickened, finding that need within you all but commanding you to do so. Grabbing hold of one of Buggy’s hands, you guided his gloved fingers to find that small bundle of nerves that all but begged for his attention. Silently told him just how you liked it to be touched and, surprisingly, he was a quick learner. 

It was good. Almost too good. Never would you have imagined this happening--you fucking this vastly annoying clown. The very clown you’d fought for years. But then again, this was just another sort of fight. A fight for dominance and submission. A fight you much rather preferred over that of brute force and stabbing words. 

Buggy’s lips left yours only to latch onto the soft flesh between your neck and shoulder, sucking and biting in a way that drove you crazy. That sent you quickly spiraling closer and closer over the edge. 

“Oh god--Buggy, I’m--I’m…” His fingers kept circling your clit, bringing you all that much closer to your finish. 

“Come for me, peach. F-fuck--you’re such a sweet little thing.” You moved your face so that you could press your lips against his once more, moan after moan vibrating through your throat. 

So much--too much. It was all so good you’re legs began to turn to jelly. Began to give out under your own weight. Buggy seemed to understand this and pulled away from your clit only so he could grab you up in his strong arms. Arms that held you up as he fuck into you mercilessly.

You spiraled up and up and up until your pussy was clutching around his cock and pure bliss was shooting through you. Buggy’s name flew from your lips as you held onto him for dear life. The pirate gave a few last, grunting thrusts before he was spilling into you. 

Buggy buried his face in your chest, his chest heaving up and down just as your own, both of you fighting to take in the thick air around you. 

The tent was filled with nothing but the sound of your mixing breaths for a long moment. A moment you took the time to run your hands over any and all exposed skin Buggy had to offer. Warm skin that brought you such strange, strange comfort. 

“And then?” Buggy asked, taking you by surprise. It was the same question he had asked you only moments ago. A question of what you would do after you had avenged yourself. You pressed your cheek against the side of his head, your lips brushing over his right ear. 

“Then I will return,” You breathed, feeling Buggy’s body go just that much more still against yours. “And I will be free.”

#buggy x reader #buggy x y/n #buggy the clown #buggy one piece #one piece live action #buggy live action #opla buggy #buggy smut #one piece smut #buggy x you #captian buggy #the hunter and hunted #one piece marines #commission #buggy x female reader #buggy x f!reader #buggy pirates #x reader #banner by cafekitsune #opla smut #one piece #one piece fic #buggy #opla

[yeyinde]

lavender skies | Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x GN!Reader

Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him.  (And that, maybe, you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)

tags: friends to lovers (but the type of friends who are basically already dating and everyone knows except them - until suddenly they do), mutual pining. Slight Kent bashing, oops. Golden Girls as a coping mechanism. warnings: none. very tame, considering who I am as a person. Heavy make-out sess, though. word count: 6,6k notes: This has been sitting in my requests forever (I lost the original, but the gist was: Gaz + pining + idiots in love). You can blame a lot of this on summer rain and 80s city pop. Been going to the pier and listening to it while I wrote this. Not my best, sure, but it was fun.

The Tinder date he warned you not to go on (and seriously, mate, who uses Tinder anymore?) ends like this:

Your date, the biggest gentleman in Kent, as proclaimed in his bio (a red flag in hindsight—there's no such thing as a gentleman from Kent), sneaks his number to the waitress, and then leaves you behind in downtown Manchester to go bar hopping with a group he just met. 

It's not a great loss. All things considered, it's not even the worst date you've ever been on. It was just a spur-of-the-moment whim—equal parts anxiety and megrim: the sudden fear of being single forever (and no, despite what Kyle might say, it has nothing to do with the wedding invitation you'd gotten on Facebook, or the three others that came before it)—and therefore, there isn't much to be upset about. Not really. 

But the world doesn't work on half-hearted lies and shaky truths, and on a dank little corner in Manchester, abandoned by your ride home, your abysmal date who barely looked at you, you can't deny that it hurts. That it's a little bit of a hit to your self-esteem in a way that makes you angrier than you were before, because, honestly—he wasn't even a catch to begin with. 

Stupid. 

You should have listened to Kyle, to his immaculate wisdom and emotional maturity far beyond his years, but you hadn't because—

Well. Sometimes the world should work on little lies. If only to the ones you tell yourself. Ones like:

It's completely fine—really it is—if your friend of nearly eight years is moving on with his life. And it's totally, absolutely okay if your best friend meets some flighty barista in Amsterdam and won't stop talking about her for the meagre three weeks he's been back from his impromptu trip to the Netherlands, then to Mexico. It's fine. It's all fine. 

Because maybe you are, too. 

And maybe that's the reason you went out with David from Kent. 

From Kent? He texted, only hours before your date. (Hours because he'd been busy with this thing for his job—his boss is corrupt and the world is, too, but at least Amsterdam Barista is doing fine). You can do so much better than that, birdy.

You wanted to say, what? Like someone from Amsterdam instead? but you're doing this new thing where you try not to sound as mad as you think you are. Zen, maybe. Internal peace and happiness. So, instead, you say:

He's nice. I like him. 

Words that, of course, have come back to bite you. 

He isn't nice. He wouldn't stop staring at the waitress, and talking over you, or just generally ignoring your existence. He left you downtown, stranded without a way home. You don't like him. You really don't even think you were that interested in him. 

But it makes sense.

Kyle is moving on. Your friends are getting married. 

And where does that leave you? 

Well—

It leaves you stuck downtown with shoes that were intended to be used for aesthetics, the kind that means standing entirely still and immobile, and not walking the fifteen kilometres to your flat because you'd spent all your money on this super flattering outfit and these unfunctional shoes, and can't afford a cab or an Uber. 

Sometimes, you pretend you're a functional adult—one who knows how to navigate everything with ease, and you live in the present, the real world, where time is fluid and unchangeable, and things make sense (maths and geometry and physics) unless they don't (black holes and the vastitude of space and fate)—but moments like these remind you that you don't. That you live, instead, somewhere in the parentheses of both. 

The indigo sky, murky black and void of any stars, seems to grumble along with you as you turn toward the street, readying yourself for the long walk home. Except the groan sounds less commiserating and more ominous. A noise that seems to reverberate through the crowded street, and right into your bones.

Some have the wherewithal to find shelter. A smart move because almost a moment later, the heavens split, and a summer deluge drenches the street. It's unrelenting in its downpour, soaking everything in its path in a shrill roar. 

Caught in the middle of St Peter's Square, there are not many places to duck under for sanctuary, but you find an alcove beside a store, and dart toward it. The non-functional boots are pretty to look at, but with each step, you feel the hard synthetic rubber grind against your heel. Blisters form, break. The burn makes you inhale sharply against the pain, hobbling now on tender feet. 

The wall is slick with condensation, but you lean against it to keep your feet from taking the brunt of your weight. 

It reminds you, quite suddenly, of that night in Cardiff with Kyle. When you'd drank three-dollar margaritas at some downtrodden bar with your friends and ate rather limp-looking fish tacos (a mistake, of course, and Kyle still can't look at corn tortillas the same way), and laughed until your belly hurt at something he'd said—the words lost to alcohol and faded with time—and then leaned over, promptly throwing up in a bush. 

You still can't drink tequila without giggling (and gagging) at nothing, a phantom memory, and the thought presses against a tender spot in your chest in all the wrong ways. 

Time is fluid. An unavoidable truism that you can't escape. 

There are people you've known since you were a child whose faces you can barely remember. Ones you promised the world to, to always be together, who you hardly think of anymore. 

Moving on. Moving forward. 

You think, then, of Kyle. Of the distance that lingers between you both, widening each day. It's nothing you've done, nor he; it's just—

Life. Concurrent. Everpresent. 

It hurts to lose a friend, you'd always think. A small moment of grief, of loss. But not like this. Never like this. 

Stuck in a downpour in the middle of Manchester, you realise you miss him. Have been missing him. 

Huddling under an awning, you fish your phone from your soaked pocket, and pull up the only person you want to be around right now, in this moment of vulnerability. Loneliness. 

You send him a quick text, date was a bust. Stuck downtown. Are you busy?

Kyle's reply comes three breaths later. For you? Never. Send me your location. 

You send him your pin. 

Another message pops up: stay put. I'm on my way. 

You met Kyle Garrick at university. 

It's one of those things in life that just sometimes happens. A happy accident. An eventuality that makes the world feel a little less daunting. A lock and key sliding into place. Sunsets in pretty ochre. 

Someone you knew and someone he knew (two people who are now best man and groom in the upcoming wedding) decided to invite all of their friends out for a night, and it was then, slightly tipsy on cheap ale when you realised the boy in the back—a head taller than everyone else and more befitting inside the glossy pages of a magazine—was different, somehow, from anyone else you'd ever met. 

It started when some stupid kids decided to pick on another. A smaller boy with a blue cap. 

Kyle was the only one who noticed. The only one who seemed to care. 

It was his anger that drew you to him in the first place. Moth to a flame. It's quick—the sizzling flame of a lit match: suddenly burning the wick and nearly uncontrollable. But it's short. A flickering star, burning bright, burning hot, and then being tempered and swallowed down until it's smouldering. Still hot, still dangerous, but—

Managed. 

It was a snap. He was laughing, jovial. Telling jokes, and having fun, but still maintaining that enviable enigmatic persona: reserved but kind. Funny, but mature. And then it crumpled in an instant, folded away into anger. Bright and blistering. He walked to them, eyes blazing, and didn't wait for any excuses when the kids noticed him, just quickly decimated their foundations, and crushed their feeble lies between his teeth. 

"Bullyin'? That's a pretty foul thing to do, innit, mate?" 

And that was that. 

He handed the kid back his hat—the one the others knocked off into the gutter—and told him, clipped, that he was better than them. 

Just keep your chin up, yeah? Fuckin' losers, that lot. Don't go messing about with them anymore. Fucking pricks. That's a nice hat, too. Where'd you get it? Really? Oh, that's mint—

It was that moment when, unprompted and unnoticed, he easily slipped away from the group to help some kid he didn't even know that you realised you were very keen to get to know him. 

"Fancy a kebab, hero?" You asked, smirking up at him. 

A grin broke across his face. Sharp, feral. "I could always go to a lamb kebab."

The rest, really, just came quite naturally. Your best friend. The person you go to for anything—even terrible dates that leave you stranded in the rain. 

You just wish you knew when it all began to change, to fall apart. 

Kyle meets you near St Peter's Square. 

You spot him first from your hiding spot beneath the awning, catching sight of his form moving through the (now) empty streets, hands shoved in the pockets of his denim trousers, the bottoms tucked, sensibly, into his fawn-coloured boots. 

Even with the hood of his windbreaker pulled low over his brow, you can pick him out of a crowd with an ease that is as warming as it is jarring. 

You wave him over when he stops on the mouth of Mount Street, looking in toward the Starbucks on the corner. 

He finds you just as easily. And oh, his expression makes your toes curl in your misshapen boots. 

Anger pinches the corner of his mouth, and hangs off the furrow of his brow, the divot between his eyes. 

"Unbelievable," he huffs when he reaches you in the middle of the street, and sucks his teeth when you open your mouth to protest. 

"It is what it is," you offer, playing the peacekeeper. You fall into step with him, trying not to wince. "I'm over it." 

"Yeah?" The shadows across his brow deepen. "Are you sure? 'Cause… I'll fuck him up for you." 

Setting your friend on a man from Kent feels entirely too vindictive, despite how much of a rush you get at the thought of seeing the man cowed a little bit. You shake your head, playing the part of a reasonable adult. 

"It's okay. I'm just—I'm just, over this, yeah? Can we—"

Kyle stops you with his hand against your shoulder. "You alright?"

"My feet hurt," your smile is strained. "Terrible shoes." 

"Take 'em off."

"Are you crazy—?"

"I brought slides for you. Figured you'd wear something stupid." 

"Okay, fair. But—ouch? We can't all be crazy good-looking Armani models. Some of us have to work for it." 

Kyle snorts. "Just take your shoes off, yeah? Throw 'em in my bag."

You can't deny it feels blissful when you lean against the slick wall outside of a shop, toeing off your tight boots. Aching feet freed from their prison. The sigh you let out makes him glance up at you from the pavement, bent over the rucksack he brought. 

There's disapproval in his gaze—maybe at your choice. Choices. The date he warned you about. The boots. The socks he spots are stained with blood on the knob of your foot. 

He tuts. A soft admonishment that cuts through the silence of the empty square. But it's all he says. He swallows the rest and drops the shoes he grabbed on the pavement in front of you, slowly pushing them forward with the tip of his toe.

You try not to grin when you see them.

Crocs. The ugliest ones you could find in Schuh. You'd bullied him into getting a matching pair with you. Neon yellow adorned with little clips. 

You slip them on as Kyle reaches down to grab your boots. He pauses with them in his hand, eying them with something that taints the air with his disdain. 

"When did you buy these?"

"On Friday." When he was sleeping off his impromptu trip to Chicago. He brought you home deep-dish pizza, frozen, and promised that it tasted much better fresh. "For the date."

"Why?" Is all he asks. 

You shrug. "They're cute…?"

His eyes stray to your shoulders. The wet fabric of your shirt. His chin lowers slightly, but his eyes stay fixed on your flesh, on the goosebumps that bubble to the surface, spreading over your exposed skin. Eyes flicker, catching a droplet of water you can feel running down from behind your ear, falling over the slope of your neck. It breaks against your collarbone. He watches it all. 

There's tension in the air. Static. The pressure builds and reeks of ozone when it presses into you, knuckles digging into the hollow of your throat. It renders you unable to speak—locked in a paradigm where the world beyond the honeycomb of his eyes ceases to matter, to exist almost. Thick honey ensnares you. Molasses. It clots against reason, logic, and makes you feel weightless. Floating, unmoored, in this unfamiliar abyss that closes in around you. 

Except—

It isn’t. 

There’s something aberrant about it, anomalous, that you can’t ignore; but beneath it sits a preternatural sense of familiarity that bends the paradox into knowns. Into tangibles. Concretes. 

This is the same tension that has been simmering—festering, almost—since before he joined the miliary. In Cardiff when he leaned against you in the taxi, boney shoulder digging into your arm, and said, ‘dunno what I'd do without you, y’know? 

It was the hazy smear of neon from the shops perched on the street. An ethereal gold hue streamed in from the window, cutting across the tenebrous in an asymmetrical chiaroscuro. The light was soaked up by him. Warm honey, the perfect compliment to his eyes, to the soft pink of his lips. 

How could you possibly describe the feeling that spumes in the pit of your stomach outside of undiluted comfort? 

Home.

It feels like like in shades; muted. A soft undercurrent that lingers inside something else, something deeper—

Moments in the foyer when he was heading back home for the evening. When he’d linger in the doorway, shoulder balanced against the frame, arms folded over his chest, and warned you not to watch Taskmaster without him. 

He’d know, he said. 

When you asked how, he just said:

“Because I know you.”

It feels like that. Like that and something more. Everything, all of it, coalesces into this. Into this moment where you can’t stop staring into the flecks of mahogany and charred birchwood in his eyes, and he can’t seem to decide where to keep his, vacillating between the slope of your neck and matching your stare. A lurch, a flash of something in your chest when your gazes meet. The deep sfumato of a bare forest in the middle of winter—rich browns, raw topaz, honey and amber in a sea of white. A sleepy hinterland. Solemnent and peaceful. Dreamy. Hypnogogic. 

The world always seems to shudder into a deep slumber whenever he’s around. 

He dips closer, swaying into you. Gravity, maybe. Tidally locked satellites on the same rung. Something bubbles in your chest. Unwinds from its dormant perch between the gaps in your ribs, and climbs up your esophagus. Ready, you think, to be free—

In the distance, tyres squeal against the pavement. 

—and all at once, the moment burst, breaks. Shatters into a million pieces, cosmic dust, and you watch them fall around you, blinking rapidly, as though you’ve just woken. 

It feels like slowly coming down to earth when you quietly gather your things, words now stuck in your throat. In their prison. 

Kyle tears his gaze away from your bare skin, clearing his throat. 

"Hardly." He murmurs after a moment and slips his jacket off his shoulders before wrapping it around yours. It smells of rainwater, wet rubber. Beneath the polymer, you can smell Kyle—vetiver, cypress, jasmine; sweet and heady—and you bury your nose in the hood when he turns back to the empty street. “Well, uh—”

You can’t speak. Not yet. 

He seems to understand. 

"Yeah," he nods, and reaches out, tugging on the end of the drawstring. "Let's get out of here." 

The rain lightens into a muted drizzle, soft droplets that fall, almost rhythmless, on the wet pavement. The town sleeps, the streets bare. Empty. The only sounds come from your slick footfalls, a horn in the distance. 

It’s an easy silence that lapses between you—not at all unlike the lulls before, when things were easy and featherlight and endless; when you could talk to him about everything, anything, and all of the worries in your life were saved for something else. Never him. Never, ever him. 

But it tugs at something in your chest. The same pressure blooms at the edges, lingering in the periphery. You think of the spell you fell under—quiet yearning—and shake your head, desperate now to break it. 

It’s just as easy to slip into familiarity. To tease, and taunt. And so, you do. 

"I'm surprised you haven't said I told you so by now. That's so impressive self-restraint."

His gaze slides over to you. "Well, you know, it's implied."

"Oh, is it, now?"

"Yeah, like when you messaged me and told me about it and I said—"

"Who even uses Tinder?"

"—that he's knobhead, and you're gonna get hurt."

You scoff. "He's from Kent, so."

"Even worse," he makes a face, derision contrasted by the jaundiced lamp spilling over the pavement. "A Tinder date with a guy from Kent? What's next? Moving to Bristol?"

"It's a nice area." 

He rolls his eyes. "Sure. As nice as Essex, maybe." 

"The two are not even comparable—"

"'Dunno why you're rushing into anything, anyway,” he angles his chin toward you. “If this is about Carver's wedding, I said I'd go with you, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but…"

"But what?"

"That's sort of—like, you just have your own thing going on. I don't want to get in the way."

"I've always had my own thing going on. So have you. But that's never stopped us before, has it? What's changed."

"What about—" you swallow down something thick, bitter that wells in the back of your throat. "You know. Amsterdam. The Barista, or whatever."

His brow knots together. "And what about David from Kent?"

You sweep your hands out, motioning morosely toward your Crocs, your damp outfit. "This is what happened with David from Kent. Not exactly the fairytale meet cute you have with Amsterdam—" he makes a noise, like he means to interrupt. You cut him off. Bury it. "And besides, you should take her. I'll just—" 

"I want to go with you."

"Why?"

Kyle falls to a stop near the Kebab shop you usually go to whenever he comes back from his missions, when he's craving good, hearty food that will rot his insides and clog his arteries. A small comfort from before, when everything he has now was just a dream, and you were struggling students in university who could barely afford a meal each and would split a lamb dinner over ale and terrible movies from the noughties back at your flat. 

The suddenness of it all makes you blink beside him, slowly angling your chin up at him. A questioning noise wells in the back of your throat, but when you finally turn your gaze to him, it does out. A snuffed flame. 

He brings his hand up, finger scratching at the soft patch of skin on the bridge of his nose where it starts to arch up. The look on his face, hidden, slightly, by the night blanketing overhead, but just illuminated enough by smears of neon and flushed street lamps for you to see it clove into something slightly flustered, hesitant. Sheepish, almost, like he hadn't meant to say what he did, and now doesn't know how to proceed forward. Cards tucked tight to his chest. Does he play his hand or fold? 

You blink. Then blink again. Struggling, almost, to take in the suddenness of his flustered state. 

Because the thing is:

Kyle doesn't get embarrassed or sheepish. 

A running gag in your mutual friend group is that Kyle is twenty-eight going on sixty-five. An old man crammed inside the body of a young adult. He runs hot—passionate about his beliefs, quick to temper when he thinks an injustice is being doled out; a disciple of loose stoicism, but of a new age variety that is half parts stereotypical stoner chillness and ripe maturity—but he rarely is ever caught unawares enough to become embarrassed by something. He just has a perfect gauge of himself and those around him, able to quickly make friends with anybody he meets, and self-aware enough to know when he's in the wrong, when he needs to dial it back. 

Being his friend for so long, you know the nuance of these expressions. His mien is ingrained in your head: known and catalogued. Nothing about Kyle is a mystery to you except the things you're barred from knowing (his second life away from home, you often joke: wholly confidential, entirety draped in secrecy). 

But the look on his face is entirely alien to you. An expression you hadn't thought him capable of making. 

It's jarring. It bludgeons into you with a ferocity that takes your breath away. 

You know the man standing beside you, but this, everything else, is so unearthly. So foreign. 

"Kyle," you hedge, taking a small step closer to him. You're not sure why. Maybe to reacquaint yourself with the man standing before you. Maybe to find something of familiarity within him to comfort the sudden crescendo of your pounding heart because even just the heady scent of his cologne—vetiver, amber—quells the sudden bloom of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. "Are you—?"

"No," he mumbles, then huffs out a soft laugh. It sounds mean, in a self-deprecating way, and your heart lurches for him. "Yeah, no. I'm alright. I just—shit, you know? 'Course I'd wanna go with you. Should be kinda obvious, no?"

Sure, you want to say. Sure, no, totally. Very obvious. And maybe had he not stopped, not made this peculiar expression on his face—like he isn't sure what to do when he always knows what he wants, what he's meant to do—you might have said them. Might let them tumble from your lips, equally self-deprecating and a touch forlorn despite never really knowing why, but that would be a lie, now. 

Because you do. 

The look on his face is upsetting—not because Kyle never makes that expression, or because he's never uncertain about anything, ever, but because you don't know it. It's not something you've ever seen before. And it hurts. 

It's stupid. This whole thing. It shouldn't make you feel some sense of loss when he does something you don't expect. He always does. It's his brand, now—jettisoning across the world to catch bad guys and slap the trite American sense of justice and liberty for all across the faces of anyone who tries to oppose it—and you're very much acclimated to this side of him, the one he hides away from you, giving nothing at all about where he's going, what he's doing, what he's done, until he's back in England, safe and sound, and texting you at six in the morning for an English spread because he missed home. And maybe, maybe he missed you, too. 

Those quiet moments are tucked into a cosm where it's only you and him, and greasy food, and reruns of Golden Girls together with your feet in his lap as you sit on the chaise and pick favourites (his is, of course, Rose) until the sun goes down, and he heads home because he has a debriefing in the morning in Hereford, and you have work. It's bereft of unease, of tension. Time slips through your fingers fluidly, and you hardly notice it's been hours since he first arrived. Comfortable, wholly, in his presence and in your skin. 

Soulmates, everyone used to joke. You just get each other. Near finish each other's sentences. 

Except for lately, where there has been this undeniable tension simmering between the two of you—a sense of fragility that you can't comprehend.

Growing apart, you thought. And then: guess it's time to do the same. 

It made sense to make the first move. To download Tinder—much to his chagrin—and start looking for your—

Your Barista from Amsterdam. 

And oh. 

Oh. 

Maybe it's the way the street light frames the angles and plains of his face, or the shadows that run deep lines of tenebrous across the valleys in his eyes, the sharp slope of his lips, the soft pout. The inscrutable expression that rents a jagged divot between his brow, and an unsure twist of his mouth. Maybe it's everything. Nothing. 

But the only thing you know right now is that you know him. Have known him. Deeply. Intimately. In a way that goes beyond the boundaries of bodies, of flesh and blood. Bones and marrow. You know his soul. His essence. The foundations of who he is cobbled together in a lonely kebab shop over cheap ale, commiserating on an endless stream of papers and assignments; the eventuality of ever after when you hand in the final one. Over beans and toast in the afternoon, a whole day spent lounging in your flat watching reruns of Golden Girls, and petty arguments over Taskmaster that always seem to go a little bit too far, and never far enough. Fights that end two days later when he shows up with Greggs and a complete box set of that show you said you wanted to watch but never had the time for. Bargain shopping in Tottenham on an early Saturday morning because there's this chair, you see, one that you saw on their Instagram page and you simply must have it. 

Soft moments in between, brackets where life doesn't seem to wrap its cold hands around your throat. Time spent in each other's company just for the sake of it. 

Climbing onto your roof—a thatched mess of moss and straw and broken asphalt shingles that will one day give under your weight—and watching the stars, always searching for one that rockets across the sky while he murmurs beside you, quiet in this stillness that falls like snow in the dead of night around you. A hushed whisper as he relays the places he's been—all stars, he rasps, hand brushing wide strokes across the raspberry sky, dusted with light pollution: I'll take you there one day to see. Best fucking beer I'd ever had, too, just don't tell my cousin because he thinks the shitty lager he makes for his bar is good—and you try to picture it amongst the grey clouds. A life on the opposite side of the world. Just the two of you. Always. 

And that's what it's always been, hasn't it? Just you. Just him. 

It's sometime past midnight on a street corner in Manchester. Your feet hurt from walking all night, and your clothes are damp from the rain that caught you off-guard. A summer downpour. It clings to your skin in a way that's both freeing and wholly uncomfortable, but you're not thinking about that. You're not thinking about anything at all, not now. Not really. There's a silence in your head as the world falls into pieces, breaking like the jaundiced light that cuts crevasses and canyons in the tenebrous that colours sharp valleys of his face. He turns, then, a gentle list of his head as he takes you in, breathes your silence and questions the wideness of your eyes, the soft parting of your lips. The movement makes the light spill over the arch of his nose, the slope of his brow. The dawning of a new day. A new world. The untouchable of the moon where no light shines now burning hot under the sun. 

Then suddenly, and all at once, there's a loudness in your head: a hundred whispers echoing in time to the same off-beat rhythm, full of memories and moments shared between you, threads woven throughout the years all buoying to the surface as you realise you're a little bit in love with him. 

(And maybe you've been a little bit in love with him the whole time.)

So, you say it. You whisper all the words that bubble up, impatiently waiting between your teeth, effervescent and burning white-hot as they throw themselves over bone and flesh to be free. 

Confessing goes like this: 

Molten agony in your guts as the secrets you barely understand yourself dissolve into the atmosphere, spoken aloud and born on cobblestone and petrichor. Wide-eyed shock, uncertainty, as a new quiet falls over your shoulders, louder than anything you'd ever heard. Guncotton in your nose. A million detonations in your ears. 

You've never much liked the silence. You break it, then, with your bare hands. 

"...and that's basically it." 

It isn't much. It isn't poetry. You're not even sure the words were real. A figment of your imagination, broken free because of baristas in Amsterdam and losers from Kent, abysmal dates and the unending fear of being wholly alone in a world you're not prepared for, all without the person who makes you feel a little bit better about the nothingness that permeates around you. 

And sure. Sure. You don't need him. If Kyle decided never to speak to you again, you'd cry and you'd hurt, but you wouldn't be less of a person because of his absence. He doesn't complete you in the same way you've read about in thick books with strong-willed protagonists and an abundance of petty misunderstandings, but he compliments you. Elevates the good and stifles the bad. You want to experience things with him—not because there's some grand force at play, red strings knotted around your fingers that lead you back to him—but because you like his company. His thoughts. His mind. His presence. His essence fills you with joy in the same strokes it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes. Good and bad. You want it all. 

You want it. Want him. 

And he—

He's taking you home a little past midnight where you'll make yourself beans and toast and maybe try and sleep, or turn on the television to watch four women you're intricately connected to eat cheesecake and solve each other's problems. He could be at his own flat right now, playing that video game he said he wanted to try when he got back, or watching that movie he was supposed to with his flatmates, his friends. He could be talking to some barista in Amsterdam. 

But he isn't. 

He's here with you. Still. Still. 

"I just—," you say, or try to. 

But the rest is a muffled gasp against soft lips when he presses his against yours, stealing the words out of your mouth. 

You can feel your heart beating through your lips. Taste him on your tongue when he draws you closer, hands reaching, grasping. Pulling you into him, into his body. You fit against him, tucked safe between the parentheses of his arms. He tastes of cardamom and cornflower. Lavender notes between his molars. Hints of milk on his tongue. You drink him down and know, then, that this is what they mean they talk about love being a feast because you chase this taste for the rest of your life and never be satiated. 

He loops his arm around the small of your back, dragging you closer still. As if any atom between your bodies is an affront. There’s no hesitation in the action, in the way he burrows into your skin. No trepidation. 

And maybe it would be silly for there to be any. You know him—every iota, every inch; secrets whispered at midnight in a shallow breath and dreams uttered at noon. To be known, to know, is a powerful thing. You feel it ghost across your flesh, featherlight, and reach for it with your bare hands. Seeking, searching. You don’t stop until the tips of your fingers meet his warm skin, curling around him. Anchoring yourself to him. Stuck, now, in permanence. 

You find spots that were untouched before. Behind his ears, the dip of his brow, the curve of his nose, and the slope of his jaw. Cupping it in the palm of your hand, a plinth for him to rest his chin. 

Your canvassing makes him groan, makes him tilt down into you as he begins his own exploration, chasing you in a mad pursuit. Sliding over your valleys, your plains. Running over the rugged mountains and the steep cliffs. He scours your topography with eager, nimble fingers. It’s slow, languid. There’s no rush with this, a consensus you both seem to come to rather quickly when he pries open your mouth and tangles his tongue with yours. It’s sweet, soft. His hands mimic his chase, sliding along your body as if he means to commit the entirety of you to memory, searing it in his brain. 

It’s only when he comes to a crossroads at your navel, pushed flush against his body, does he stop. You moan in despair at it, wanting more and more, not ready to give up this taste that curls over your tongue—saccharine sweet, salty—and Kyle echoes the noise with a groan, a quiet plea for air that both of you desperately need but can’t quite make yourself take. 

“Fuck—” he groans again, breath stuttering out in sharp, deep gasps. “Can’t bloody tell you how long I wanted to do this for, fuck—”

His words seem to peel back the dreamy gossamer of a slowly burning sensuality. It ignites in a blaze, not at all unlike the swiftness of his anger. The sharp, sudden strike of a match. The crackle and hiss of flames renting the air. 

The blaze starts at the point where your upper lip touches his, and almost immediately, it consumes you. 

It's frenzied when he kisses you again—feral and wild: all teeth and tongue and nips against your bottom lip but the moment you sink into the fervour, Kyle changes it. Slows down. Chaste pecks to your sore lips amid a sensual onslaught. A languid roll of his tongue, soothing the burn his teeth left behind. 

The way he kisses you feels like a paradox. 

It's organised chaos. Refined madness. A cluttered mess of finesse and deliberate suckles; an artist's masterstroke. 

You can't keep up. His rhythm is fierce and uncatchable. 

Each step seems to stutter. An avartan you can’t keep pace with. Elongated taals, dips. A crescendo of harmony that is matchless, unreproducible. You struggle along with his swift current, his unerring tide that sweeps you away; unmoored, adrift. The tentative exploration ends. He knows you, now. All of you. And this is his summit. His scramble to the top. It’s biting passion; roaring flames. 

You cling to him, holding tight to the liferaft he offers in a slow huff, a gust of mirth across your lips and into your lungs, slowing down to accommodate you. Malleable, now, he lets you lead, lets you take over, and move seamlessly with him. In tandem, parallel. Equilibrium brings you to heel, and you sigh into his mouth—a deep exhale of everything that has been building and building, tipping the scales around you until it was unbalanced and precarious. Teetering on the edge a precipice unknown. 

His hand roams across your known geography—hills and streams, rivers and canyons—until he reaches your hand still bracketed around his cheeks, slowly peeling it away from his flesh to slide his fingers between yours, holding tight, and—

Kissing is immaculate. Bending at an altar, and making an offering to something bigger than yourself. It’s the spark of lightning flashing overhead, static in the air. Magnets drawing closer and closer until they snap together in the middle.

But holding his hand?

It feels like coming home. 

The world tipping back into place. Amber warmth in your veins; the softness of a jasmine petal. You suck in a deep breath at the shock of it all. 

You think of missing puzzles and loose sea ice drifting alone in the vastitude of the ocean. You think of a life where he isn’t in it and find yourself shuddering at the wrongness that emanates from it. 

You want him. Want him—

It’s Kyle who pulls away first, resting his forehead against yours. You blink slowly, eyes catching dark amber, honeycomb. It draws a smile from you, full and deep. Giddy on the taste of him, of this. 

The only thought in your head is finally, finally.

You see his lips curl in response, eyes lidded and heavy. Blooming with want, affection. Adoration. 

"What, ah—," he laughs a little, then, breathless and happy, and the noise anchors itself to your breastbone, pressing into the hollow of your ribs. A place you'll keep it forever. "What now?"

He hands you the starless sky, and places it into the cup of your palm. Breathes laughter in the air, paints the moon with his joy. You think about the places he wants to take you, and the ones he swears you'll never go. You think about aeons from now when the world is gone and the stars all die out, when there's just the hazy lavender of endless abyss you can't make sense of. You think of him, and you think of you, and you wonder when it started to just make sense for there to always be two. 

Maybe that night in Cardiff when he held your shoes and gave you his coat. When he draped his arm around your shoulders, laughing at something stupid you'd said. A year before he joined this task force he makes cheeky remarks about but never goes too deeply into detail. When it was just endless summers spent working and drinking and eating good food. 

He'd asked the same thing, then, half slumped over in the taxi, and three sheets to the wind. It made his eyes darken, endless pits. Black holes. The expanse of the sky is framed by brown lashes, and drooping lids.

And you'd said—

"Beans and toast?" It feels right. It feels good. "We can—"

He huffed, too, just like he does now, and squeezes your hand once, tugging you along. 

"We're not watching Golden Girls."

You watch Golden Girls. Kyle wraps his arm around your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his side. He steals kisses from you when Sophia says something that makes you laugh until you're breathless and trembling. 

When David from Kent texts you, he grins wide, and whispers in your ear, think I've always been a little bit in love with you, you know? 

Yeah, you say, and kiss back until the taste of him is etched into the space between your teeth. Since Cardiff. For you?

"Since Uni for sure." He smiles again, sheepish and a touch flustered. It glitters on his brow and nips the apples of his cheeks. "You stole my heart when you devoured four lamb kebabs and then ate my tabbouleh. Said to myself, yeah, that's the one for me, innit?"

"On second thought, what's that Barista's number? Might try my luck instead."

"Nah, you're smitten," he presses his lips into the hollow of your throat, nips his teeth against your pulse point. "And you're all mine. No take backs."

"Ah, for fuck's sake—"

Ahhhhhhhh. Sappy romcoms are my kryptonite and it shows.

COD MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION

#kyle gaz garrick x reader #gaz x reader #cod gaz x reader #cod mw2 fanfic #ehhhhhh #these are my sloppiest tags #i didn't feel like making a gif so i threw this together real quick #will fix in the am #when my eyes aren't on fire

[mirandasidefics]

But Home is Nowhere- Pt2

Lucien x Plus Size F! Reader, Azriel x Plus Size F! Reader

Part 1

Part 2 Summary: Lucien and Rhysand argue over Reader's imprisonment, only one cell is traded for another. Lucien reaches out to an unlikely alley for support in getting Reader free.

A/N: I was too excited to wait the full month so here is part two a bit early! I apologize that this gets a bit dialogue heavy at the end. I may fix it later. This is going to be a long slow burn fic with a lot of angst. This will also have crossover with some of the Crescent City characters. It also probably goes without saying, but this will not follow canon past the events in HOSAB. Comment on this post if you want to be included on the tag list.

Content Warnings: Mentions of injuries, mentions of self harm, mentions of body issues/insecurities.

*******************************************************************

Seven days. Seven days he’d been arguing and advocating for her release with Rhysand. For seven days he listened to the same rehearsed list of excuses as to why Rhys wouldn’t budge in his decision.

“You and I both know that the gate to Velaris was sealed with blood magic. Only those whose blood is linked to the seal can pass through, which she shouldn’t have been able to do. On top of that we don’t know what world she came from. I’m not risking the lives of my family-my court, which includes you- on what equates to no more than a hunch.”  

While the High Lord’s statements were reasonable and valid points, his insistence she remained confined in that dark and dank cell was not. Lucien hastily made his way down the main steps that lead into the catacombs, thoughts of his last spat with Rhysand swirling in his mind.

“Why do you care so much about what happens to this woman?” Rhys had questioned. Lucien had asked himself the same thing; but how could he say that it was less about her and more about what she represented? That when he saw her cowering form in the corner of that cell, images of Feyre, Elain, and Jesminda flashed through his mind. He had failed the two sisters. He had failed his first love. He would sooner have the Cauldron blast him from existence should he fail to protect another innocent female. He’d kept his composure standing in Rhysand’s office at the River House long enough. A simmering rage permeated the space as the raven-haired male stared him down. A silent challenge in the already tense atmosphere.

“How can you stand your own hypocrisy?” He seethed, “You sit there thinking of yourself so high and mighty, yet a simple human frightens you? You allowed Feyre into Velaris the second week she spent with you. You allowed Bryce into your home within minutes of her crashing into our world. Yet this human…this woman scares you so much you have her imprisoned in one of the most dangerous areas of your court?”

“ENOUGH!” Rhysand bellowed, his own violet orbs simmered with rage. Lucien felt his flames rise up and encircle his palms. Rhysand’s High Lord command held no sway so he continued.

“Are you that much of a coward that you could not have just asked her a few simple questions? You couldn’t have just looked into her-”

“I could not enter her mind!” Rhys’ breaths were ragged. “Something is protecting that mortal, and it is strong enough to keep me out. So long as those shields of hers remain impenetrable I cannot trust her. I must keep my mate and child safe.” Lucien scoffed, his fire dwindled. “Which is not something I can say I see you doing for your own.”  

Lucien could still feel the cracking of bone and cartilage of Rhys’ nose as it connected with his fist. The argument surly would have resulted in them demolishing the entirety of the business wing had Azriel’s arrival not stopped the two males in their tracks. The Shadowsinger’s haggard appearance set them both on edge, but his words allowed Lucien to breathe a sigh of relief.

“I’m done with this Rhys. I cannot keep hur- I cannot do this… she knows nothing.” The High Lord merely looked between the Emissary and the Spymaster. Expression relaxed and revealing nothing, even as blood dripped over his lips.

“Bring her up to the Moonstone Palace,” the commanded was towards his brother, “Since Lucien is so smitten with the woman he shall remain with her there for the time being.”

Lucien soon found himself outside of her cell. Only darkness and cold emanated from beyond the door. He paused his own breathing, wondering if she was even still alive. The last time he saw her, she hadn’t hesitated to slice open her own skin. Azriel wasn’t far behind and pushed past Lucien to enter the room. Lucien’s breath remained caught in his throat as he took in the mangled sight of her.

********************************************************************

You had no idea how long you’d been in the darkness of your cell. Hours had turned into days, but just how many days you weren’t sure. You had gone silent on what you assumed was the third day. You knew nothing of how you got there, and you had no idea where to begin when Azriel-who’s name you gathered early on-asked you about the world you came from. Its not like he would believe you if you said your world had no magic, at least not in the same way it was here. Then again, that was clearly an incorrect assumption on your part. And after everything that has transpired you determined that this was no dream. It was a nightmare come to life. You weren’t sure how much more your psyche could tolerate. Surely death would be better than the horrors that would plague your mind for years to come if you were allowed to live. You prayed silently to whatever deity would listen to let you die. You started as the metal hinges of the door screamed into the darkness. 

“Mother above,” The horrified yet soft baritone drifted to your ears and you strained to open your eyes. You recognized the voice and Lucien’s warm body was immediately next to yours as you dangled from the ceiling. The male made quick work of the metal shackles holding your wrists high above your head, a bright light flooding the small space making you hiss. His large hand encircled your wrist and you could feel the skin repair itself. Lucien slowly lowered your arms down.

“Her name is (Y/N),” Azriel’s voice was barely above a whisper, as if he was ashamed of the space his normal speaking voice would take up in the small cell. As if what he said would break you further. Lucien held you up, warm hands around your rib cage holding you steady. 

“(Y/N),” His testing of your name tentative, “(Y/N), my name is Lucien…I’m going to take you out of here.” His arms wrapped around you, and you could have sworn you felt your skin get warmer, the cold melting away like ice. His grip never lessened, which you were grateful for as you weren’t sure your legs could fully support your weight.

“Do you feel safe enough to come with me?”  You couldn’t speak, couldn’t move your head in agreement. Couldn’t specify that you felt safe with him. You could only muster enough strength to cling to the front of his shirt, hoping it conveyed your trust towards him and him alone. Your eyes burned with tears. He shushed you as one of his hands rubbed up and down your spine. A footstep echoed in the chamber, and then you felt Azriel’s shadows attempt to wend their way over your bare feet. Your flinch was followed by a low warning growl, one that you felt more than heard.

“Follow me,” Azriel’s swallow was audible.

“Can you walk?” Lucien’s hand lowered to your waist, pushing you back far enough so he could meet your eyes. They felt swollen and your vision was unfocused and hazy, but you tried to keep them open so he could see that you would try your best. You shifted your weight back onto your heels and slowly slid your right foot in front of you. A lightning like bolt of pain traveled up your leg. Air harshly sucked into your lungs.

“I’ve got you,” his voice was reassuring as he continued to support most of your weigh in his arms. You took another step forward. Then another and another. His hands never faltered from their place on your torso as he moved himself to walk behind you. Ready and poised to keep you balanced and catch you should you fall. “Good girl,” he praised, “Let’s get you cleaned up so I can heal you yeah?”

           ***************************************************

The walk up from the catacombs to the palace proper was brutal. Your legs burned from the muscle strain and you were regretting not accepting help from Lucien while you bathed. However, the last thing you wanted was to have anyone see you naked. Lucien had helped enough with getting the large sunken in bathtub filled. The scent of vanilla and lavender contrasted with the grime and dirt that filled your lungs for the last week. You had specifically asked for the water to be scalding, wanting it to burn away the memory of everything that had been done to you in the dark. The deep cold that laced your bones was finally seeping out in the hot water. A soft knock rapped on the stone archway leading into the bathing chamber. Unable to move your neck freely you covered your chest and turned to face the male. He walked over to the bench set near the tub, a bundle of cream-colored fabric in his arms. Unless it was a bedsheet you doubted that any clothing he found would fit you. Then again, magic existed so its possible that the fabric could be altered instantly. He sat on the bench and set the garment next to the towel that awaited you.

“Are you certain that I can’t be of assistance?” He looked beyond you towards the open windows that overlooked the absolutely stunning expanse of wilderness below the palace. A darkened city jutting out from the base of the mountains the only thing that disrupted the sight. You were thankful for Lucien’s offer. Truly you were, and despite the feeling-knowing- that you could trust the male, your self-conscious nature surrounding your body was too strong.

“I-” You cleared your throat of the gravel you were certain had lodged itself inside from screaming against the rocky surface of your cell, “I’m good.” The vibration of your vocal chords felt like sandpaper as they rubbed together. He looked at you then and reflexively you squeezed your arms tighter around yourself; gripping your elbows as you dipped down into the water until everything below your neck was submerged. You were grateful for the tub size making you look small. It could easily fit two full grown adults and deep enough to reach your waist when you stood to full height. It almost reminded you more of a jacuzzi rather than a bathtub.

“Then I’ll leave you to bathe in peace,” He stood and clasped his hands behind his back, “I’ll be in the room just beyond these arches. Just call our if you need anything. I’m here to ensure that you’re taken care of.” You nodded your understanding and turned towards the side of the tub lined with soaps and lotions, his foot steps retreating against the stone tiles. While you had difficulty with your range of motion, you managed to rid yourself of the dirt, grime, and dried blood from your skin. Your hair felt silky, soft, and light compared to the heavy oily mats from not washing it for a week. You had also found a razor nearby and took the opportunity to shave, savoring the feeling that you were becoming a person again. Drying off was easier with the relaxed muscles. The vanilla scented lotion felt like heaven as it penetrated your dry skin. You surmised that the bath had really only removed one layer of nightmares as you scanned your form in the mirror on the opposite wall. Your eyes first saw the plethora of cuts in every size cover the expanse of both your arms, shoulders, and collar bone from the dagger-Truth Teller-that Azriel had used during your interrogation. Next you took in the dark red and purple bruise on the left side of your jaw. The discoloration spanning from the joint below your ear to your chin. It was a miracle that he hadn’t knocked any of your teeth out or broken your jaw from the force he hit you with. Eyes trailing further down you saw a second healing bruise, its blue-green hue spanning the length of your ribs on the right side of your body. Laying down on your side was going to prove difficult still. Finally, your eyes landed on the only injury that you yourself were responsible for. The shadows had played too many tricks on your mind, too many whispers promising to break you. The psychological and emotional pain was worse than the physical injuries and honestly became too much for your soul. Something in you broke. You still couldn’t figure out exactly how you managed to grab Truth Teller from him, too focused on plunging the black blade into your left inner thigh and dragging it along the flesh. You couldn’t reach your throat, so you had been aiming for the next major artery you knew of in the hopes that you’d bleed out fast, but Azriel was quick. His attempt to get the blade back from you pushed it away from where it would do the most damage. That was the last day that Azriel brought any form of weapon with him, and the last day he put his hands on you. Rhysand had only managed to stop the bleeding, but a large and deep jagged slice remained. Had you paid more attention you may not have doubted the guilt that lined his features as he worked to heal you. You didn’t want this to be real. You still held out hope that if you somehow managed to end your life you’d wake up on the cold concrete of the path leading up to your front door. You didn’t belong here.

You shook the memories from your mind and picked up the fabric on the bench. You expected the intrusive thoughts and nightmares, but you didn’t think that they would be plaguing you so immediately. You slipped on the airy cotton tank top and loose-fitting matching shorts. You were indeed surprised they fit as well as they did, let alone fit at all. Your bare feet padded along the cool stone floor and entered the massive bedchamber. The room encapsulated a warmth with its cream and ivory base colors. Splashes of blues, teals, and turquoise giving it a calming effect.  The dark cherry wood of the four-poster bedframe provided an interesting accent color adding to the space. Lucien sat on an ivory colored couch that faced a white marbled fireplace. Sadly, the flames did nothing to help illuminate the space and only seemed to cast heavier shadows. You glanced around the room again and noticed that the bedsheets had been turned down for you, for whenever you were ready to sleep. But you knew you wouldn’t be able to get any real rest with your injuries being what they were. Rhysand had only stopped the bleeding in your thigh. He did nothing for the other injuries. So, Lucien stated he would heal those for you. Carefully walking over, you sat your self on the couch, keeping enough space for another person to sit between you and the crimson haired male. He turned towards you with a slight smile that quickly faltered as he took in your appearance. He moved closer towards you and examined every inch of your skin. His one real eye held no warmth even as a flame seemed to ignite the iris. He took your chin in his hand to get a better look at the bruise on your jaw. His touch was gentle, but even you could tell that the male was furious with what he saw.

“I had hoped some of this had been dirt,” He turned your head to the side, a finger tracing down along the side of your neck. A metallic scent permeated the air as the hand cupped the left side of your face, covering nearly the entire bruise. His gaze slowly traveled down to your shoulders and the cuts that littered and marred the skin of your arms and shoulders. The skin warmed and tingled under his gentle caress. His eyes paused at your torso, no words needed to understand that he wanted to see the injury to your ribs. You carefully gathered the material and lifted as high as your stiff shoulder and neck muscles would allow. His fingers traced the outline of the mark, and you cringed at the touch of his hands moving your fat rolls out of the way so his palms could lay flat against the skin. Embarrassment colored your cheeks. Lucien continued his healing wordlessly. He motioned for you to stand, grasping your calf and propping your leg on the cushion of the couch. Your inner thigh completely exposed to him allowing the full extent of your wound to be seen. You watched as skin healed almost instantly. His gaze then shifted to the healed scars on your upper thigh, near the junction where it met your hip. “Um…y-you can leave those,” you brought your leg back down to stand before the male, “Thank you Lucien.”

“You’re most welcome,” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. You started to pick at your already blunt nails, a nervous habit you used to ground yourself. You glanced around the room for the third time, almost not believing that you were no longer in the cold and dark. The white walls and bedding opened up the space.

“Is…is that for me?” You pointed over towards the massive bed covered in decorative pillows. Lucien’s red hair swayed with the movement of his head as he followed your gesture.

“The bed is for you,” He stood and walked over to the small bedside table to the left of the headboard, “As is this sleeping draft.” He picked up a deep cobalt vial, giving it a slight shake before setting it back down. You hummed and nodded, but didn’t move from your spot in front of the couch. It went without saying that the potion would be needed after what you experienced over the past week. And you would only feel guilty if you woke him in the middle of the night.

“There’s water for you as well,” His voice softened as he noticed your hesitation. You chewed on your lower lip. The sun was still up, but you didn’t know how its position revealed the time of day. Depending on the time of year and how far north, or south, on the planet you were, you estimated it could be anywhere from 3pm to 9pm. You supposed it didn’t really matter as sleep was sleep and you’d likely remain unconscious for several hours, Gods willing at least.

“I will be in the room next to yours,” He pointed over to a door opposite from the entrance to the bathing chamber, “If you need anything, anything at all you come to me. We’ll get you some food in the morning.” You nodded again as your eyes started to water. You didn’t want to be left alone, but you also didn’t want to take up his time more than you already were. So, wordlessly you forced your feet to move and made your way over to the bed. You crawled in under the blankets that had been moved aside. You grabbed the vial from the bedside table and uncorked the stopper. The scent of chamomile, lavender, and something unknown wafted to you. Before you gave yourself time to reconsider you downed half the contents and set it back down. Lucien was patiently waiting at the door and smiled his first genuine smile towards you.

“Goodnight (Y/N).”

“Goodnight Lucien.”

*******************************************************************

Lucien had answered all your questions, to the best of his ability, during your first day in the Moonstone Palace. He filled you in on the basics of the Night Court and Prythian. For each bit of information he provided about the land or himself, you matched it. He also informed you that while here, Rhysand insisted that you work on finding any potential information of your world and how to get back to it in the texts that he sent. A new stack of books was brought into the small library within the palace every morning. So far, your hours of reading yielded no results. Then again, you could only read a fraction of the texts given to you. Most were in languages that you couldn’t even begin to understand. Still you scanned the tombs for any words that even looked remotely similar to names of places within your universe. Sadly, all you could find was information related to a Midgard, which was frustratingly NOT the same as the mortal realm described in Norse mythology. Lucien then explained that they had already received visitors from this Midgard that were set to return to Prythian soon. You had gathered that one of them was Bryce, but you’d not been given names for anyone else.

In addition to the books you had also been gifted a small wardrobe filled with clothing in your size. It had been awkward when the half wraiths appeared to measure you. But you were provided with some simple dresses, pants, shirts, and under clothes. Nothing fancy, which you were grateful for. Lucien explained the clothes were an apology gift from Rhysand. You told Lucien that if the High Lord was truly sorry he could at least express as much to your face. You couldn’t complain in the grand scheme of things. Rhysand wasn’t obligated to house, feed, or clothe you. He could have easily dumped you in the Mortal Lands, leaving you to fend for yourself. Although, Lucien stated that he knew of two people that would have taken you into their care. Regardless, you did as Rhysand bid, reading for hours day after day and never asked for anything in particular.

Another two weeks went by and you and Lucien developed a little routine. Breakfast followed by hours of research. Then lunch and various exercises and tests to determine if you held any sort of latent magic. Lucien explained that his initial assessment of you that first day showed nothing, but that didn’t mean you were completely without power. Truth be told you felt he was keeping something from you. Then came dinner, after which you were free to spend your time however you wished. Mostly you spent time on the veranda studying the night sky, letting the wind caress your face and hair. There was one night you swore you heard voices held within the breeze. A song encouraging you that you would find peace again. In your world the night time hours used to provide a comfort, but here there was nothing familiar about the constellations that dotted the dark sky above. Instead, the lack of familiarity just made you feel all the more alone. It wasn’t that Lucien wasn’t good company, you just felt bad that he was stuck with you. He tried really hard to get you to relax and fall into the playful banter he likely needed to survive his own punishment. While he never said as much, you had gathered that his babysitting duty was linked to your release and apology from the High Lord. Lucien made your days easy, filled with witty remarks and a warmth that felt natural. An easy friendship had definitely taken root.

However, the nights were hard. You already suffered from extreme insomnia without the added fear of night terrors. So, your sleep cycle was suffering greatly. The first two nights were dream less thanks to whatever Lucien had given you. But the third night resulted in his bursting through the doors of your bedroom at the sound of your screams. As much as you hated yourself for feeling weak, you begged him to stay in the room. He obliged, of course, and slept on the couch. His presence helped slightly. It didn’t chase away the nightmares, but it did make the darkness that permeated the night more tolerable. You had never been fearful of the night before, having even preferred it to the hustle and bustle of the day. You had always the quite of the night to bring you a comforting serenity. But since your time in the cell…you insisted on a fire in the hearth and the faelights to remain lit, believing the light would chase away the shadows that plagued your dreams.

You felt bad forcing Lucien to sleep on the couch. But you also didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable if you offered to share your bed with him. He told you about his mate, Elain, and you felt even worse that your arrival took him away from her. Even if he explained that their relationship wasn’t what would be expected between mates after nearly 4 years of being in each other’s lives. So, you kept the offer to yourself.

Today started out like any other. Lucien and you sat down to a breakfast of eggs, toast and jam with orange juice. You never really cared for tea and coffee appeared to not be available in Prythian if your companion’s confusion was anything to go by. The only difference today were the two additional place settings.

“Are we expecting visitors?” You asked. You immediately wanted to kick yourself for asking what was an obvious question.

“Yes,” Lucien answered, pouring a cup of tea for himself, “I’ve asked some people to come and meet you. As much as I enjoy our time together, it seems that the High Lord still needs convincing that you should not be kept in a cell.”

“I’m not in a cell,” You countered. However, you didn’t miss the fact that his glare told you that your new cell was just a lavish one.

“Our guests may be able to help me make a stronger case for you to be able to move freely about the court, if not Prythian as a whole.” You pondered who he would have contacted. To your understanding, not many members of the High Lord’s “Inner Circle” particularly cared for the emissary. There was also no way that members from another court would be able to hold any sway over the inner workings of the Night Court.

“So, what do they need to know about me?” You asked, spiking the yoke of your egg. In the time spent with Lucien you were able to be yourself for the most part. You held back on your swearing, meme related jokes, and slang, but tested out your sarcasm and dry humor. One of the main things you were worried about was how to speak with others. While you had manners, you had no formal etiquette training. Something that Lucien found utterly hilarious when you asked for clarification on how to address him.

“Relax, its an informal introduction,” His gentle smile reassured you, “Just be the sweet girl that I’ve come to know.” His smile widened. You gave him a doubtful look, tucking your lips into a thin line to suppress a laugh. He batted his irritatingly long eyelashes and the two of you broke out into a fit of laughter. While you weren’t cold or bitchy by any means, you also weren’t a sweet and demure woman either. No, Lucien quickly pointed out that you had a fire within you…at least on your good days. The laughter was cut short by the sound of a thud in front of you on the stone patio. Your eyes immediately tracked the large bat like wings and you stood from your seat. Metal and glass clanged against the stone as your thighs hit the lip of the table. Your chair knocked to the ground, causing you to nearly trip as you backed towards the metal railing. Blood rushed in your ears and your vision started to tunnel. Lucien was next to you in an instant.

“Hey. Hey," He gripped your right shoulder to keep you steady, “Shh, it’s okay. It's not him. You’re safe.” Your gaze remained fixed on the unknown winged male that looked on with worry etching his features.

“See what you did,” the voice of the female he’d been carrying was distant in your ears. Lucien’s other hand cupped your face, forcing you to turn towards him.

“Eyes on me (Y/N),” He encouraged, “Breathe. There you go.” Your eyes focused on his features; the jagged scar-raised and tight, the deep reds sprinkled amongst the warm honey brown iris. Your breath evened out, and you covered the hand on your cheek with one of your own to let the red head know you were okay. You took another breath and released Lucien. However, his hand remained on your shoulder. You turned back to the couple that stood on the opposite side of the space. At first glance, the winged male held features that you noted were similar to Azriel in regards to skin, hair, and eye color. Although, Azriel’s held more flecks of green than the honey gold of the male before you. The unnamed male was taller and broader, his shoulder-length hair softly jostled in the breeze. Your eyes wandered over to the female that was with him. Her striking blue-grey eyes would have reminded you of steel had it not been for the soft sadness that shown in them at your display. You hadn’t expected to react in the manner you did. Your heart still hammered in your chest. You cleared your throat and smoothed down the front of the simple sage green dress you wore.

“I-I must apologize,” You started, “I guess I…sorry.” You wrung your hands together and looked at your feet.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the female spoke up, "It’s this idiot’s fault. We should have given you a warning.” You nodded slightly in acknowledgment. Lucien’s hand trailed down your arm to your hand. He gave it a quick and gentle squeeze before he bent down to pick up the chair you’d knocked over in your haste to get away.

“(Y/N),” He motioned for you to sit back down, “This is Cassian, the General of the Night Court’s Illyrian army, and Nesta Archeron, Valkyrie, sister to the High Lady and fellow emissary.” Lucien gestured to each as they took their own seats across from yours.

“It’s nice to meet you,” You reached across the table, your hand extended to shake theirs. When neither returned to gesture you pulled back. “Sorry, I’m used to hand shakes as a form of greeting in my world.”

“So, you are from another world?” Cassian asked, scooping some eggs onto a plate and handing it to Nesta.

“Yes, we call it Earth,” you searched the table for a spare fork, yours having fallen to the ground. When you couldn’t find one, Lucien handed you his. You raised your eyebrow at him, but he just shrugged and began to spread a blackberry jam on his toast. “And before you ask, there is no magic, at least not the same as what you’re familiar with. Also, creatures such as fairies-the Fae- shapeshifters, vampires, mermaids, nymphs, and so on - are all non-existent. Just stories that have been reduced to myths.” The two regarded you closely, listening to your spiel. When they didn’t say anything you continued, too nervous to allow silence.

“I’m not sure how I got here. There are stories of humans traveling through portals into the realm of the Fae or other worlds, but they are simply stories. Ones made to keep children out of trouble or explain natural occurrences. All prior to finding scientific explanation, of course. Like the changing of the seasons,” You realized you were now rambling, “or fairy rings-rings of flowers or more often mushrooms…” The three non-humans stared at you.

“Don’t Lu,” you warned as the corner of the male’s full lips ticked up, “Yes, I talk when I’m nervous. Yes, I’m nervous because I really don’t know how I got here. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t understand why…I just…want to go home.” Lucien took your hand in his again, his grip reassuring and comforting.

“That’s what we’re all working on,” He assured, “There is a library that, should we manage to convince Rhys-”

“Wait, she can’t leave here?” Nesta interrupted, her eyes blazed. Cassian tensed in his seat and gave Nesta a warning glance. It was clear that not everyone knew of your predicament.

“She’s restricted to the East Wing of the palace,” Lucien clarified, “There are barriers up that she can’t pass through. Just like what Tamlin did with your sister.” If Nesta had been upset before, she looked down right lethal now. Of course, Lucien had filled in you in on what transpired with Feyre and his former home in the Spring Court. Cassian cleared his throat, his gaze falling to the other male.

“What is it you need from us exactly?” He looked to you, seemingly trying to figure out why you posed such a threat that you required to be locked away.

“I need your voice in your High Lord’s ear. I have no magic, and we’ve tried various ways to test that out.”

“Which you’re welcome to see,” Lucien interrupted.

“Yes. I don’t really know how to use a weapon, nor do I have much interest in doing so. And, as I already mentioned, up until a month ago I firmly believed that yo-the Fae were not real.”

“What did my brother say his reasoning was for holding her here?” The question was directed towards the other male.

“He can’t enter her mind.” Cassian’s surprise was not well hidden, “He believes that something or someone is guarding her-” It was your turn to interrupt your friend.

“If I was being guarded or protected, then whatever was responsible has already failed me,” Your voice was soft. A silence fell across the table, and most of the food had grown cold. You didn’t know what else to do or say to convince the General and the Valkyrie of your innocence. All they had to go on was your and Lucien’s word. Even if you were to demonstrate the exercise that Lucien put you through each afternoon with no results, how would they believe that you weren’t just pretending. A ruse to fool them. You desperately tried to quell the pinpricks of tears behind your eyes. You feared that if Lucien’s efforts failed you’d be sent back to the catacombs or worse left to rot on that-

“(Y/N),” Nesta’s clear and calm voice cut through your thoughts, “I’d like to hear more about where you’re from.” You nodded.

“What would you like to know specifically?”

“Let’s start with you. Your family, your up brining.” She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed comfortably in her lap. You swallowed and nodded again.

“I can do that.” You spent the next few hours pouring every detail of your life to the trio. Most information Lucien already knew, some he didn’t. You talked about your family and your friends. You briefly talked about your work and academic studies in music. This caught the oldest Archeron’s attention, which launched a discussion regarding your dissertation topic. The two males excused themselves as you continued to talk with Nesta. The topic changed to books and Nesta promising to bring you some of the spicier romance novels that she found to enjoy the most on her next visit; to which you were grateful as you desperately needed a reprieve from only reading books provided by Rhysand. Cassian and Lucien eventually returned as you made a raunchy joke that had you and the female High Fae laughing loudly.

“It’s time to go Nes,” Cassian set his hand on her shoulder. He looked to you and smiled. The expression was genuine. After spending the few hours you did with the male, you had concluded that he was much less frightening than the other Illyrian. At least for the time being, that is. Nesta rose from her seat and joined her mate.

“I will speak with my sister,” She told you, her features hard with determination, “It’s not right that you’re kept any where against your will when you’ve done nothing to justify imprisonment.”

“Thank you,” You smiled, “I hope to see you both again soon. I’m certain this fool is getting tired of having to entertain me.” You gave the male a wicked teasing grin. Cassian let out a booming laugh as ‘your fool’ placed his hand to his chest in mock offense.

“And here I thought you loved my company,” He stated. You laughed as you stood to join him at the patio entrance.

“Yeah, yeah,” You brushed him off, the smile still plastered to your face. The two of you said your goodbyes and watched as the guests flew off in the distance.

“I think that went rather well,” you looked to Lucien, “Don’t you?”

“Yes, it did,” He held his arm out for you to take, “Cassian agreed to speak to Rhys. He said that he and Nesta would allow you to stay in their home or at least help you get in and out of the library.” You hummed in response as you slipped your arm around his. Your mind wandered, and you felt lighter than you had since you’d been here. He walked you to your room and began prepping the couch to be his makeshift bed for the evening. The sun was quickly setting, and you hadn’t noticed that you spent the entire day talking. You paused near the entrance to the bathing chamber.

“Lu?” he hummed, looking up at you while shaking out the quilt. “Thank you, for everything.”

“Of course, sweet girl,” You rolled your eyes at the term of endearment.

“That’s sticking now isn’t it?” His russet eye brightened with mischief.

“Now that I know it irks you, yes.” You leveled a glare at his to which he just laughed. You huffed a breath.

“If you’re just going to be mean, you can leave,” You stuck your tongue out at him as you made your way into the bathing room. He continued to laugh as he excused himself to his own rooms. When he returned, you were already snuggled in your bed, breathing deep and steady.

Part 3

Tag list: @jenniferpendragon @impossibelle @sweet-chai-amore @myheartfollower

#acotar x reader #azriel x reader #lucien x reader #acotar fanfiction #lucien vanserra x reader #plus size reader #lucien vanserra x plus size reader #azriel x plus size reader #BHINfic

[redheadspark]

Can you pls do #1 and #12 from hurt and comfort prompts with Azriel? 🙏🙏🙏❤️

A/N - SO CUTE FOR HIM! Thanks for requesting this, dear!

Safe

Summary - Azriel's old haunts come back to him.

Warnings - Mostly angst with a hint of fluff

In all your life, you’ve never heard your mate scream out during a nightmare.  

Watching him shake in the bed, sweat along his forehead and his eyes scrunched tight, you were panicking that something was seriously wrong with him.  You reached up to frame his face, feeling how cold and clammy he was against your war hands as you were perched over him on the bed, avoiding his wings that shot out and were rigid.  

“Az…Azriel wake up for me, sweetheart,” You said in urgency, Azriel whimpering and shaking violently as his hands were curled up so tight your bought he would draw blood.  You called out a name a few more times, running a hand through his ink black hair while he was finally loosing his voice from the scream that endured.  

You were only thinking the worst since Azriel was a heavy sleeper and was not prone to nightmares.  He craved his sleep at night, turning all day at the camps or being out on a spy mission, he would fall asleep instantly when his head would hit the pillow.  It was quite comical to see, soft snores and wings hanging limp all the bed with his eyes closed and not a care in the world on his face.  

But not this, this was not him at all.

“Azriel…come on baby.  Open your eyes, come on,” You said in a rushed tone as he was finally slowing down in his shaking and whimpering.  You reached down to uncurl one of his hands, lacing your fingers together to have him feel your palm against his while your other hand was cradling his neck.  HIs pulse against your hand was rapid and intense, his eyes finally opened in the dankness of the room as he was blinking awake in worry and almost panic.  Those hazel eyes finally saw you, perched over him almost like a predator about to kill, but there was softness in your eyes as you finally smiled in relief.

“There you are, Az,” You said in a softer tone, stroking his hair away from his eyes.  

“Did I wake Sam up?  I-i-is he—“ He was stuttering as he looked over at the slightly open door that lead to the hallway.  You shook your head, seeing the fear in his eyes of waking up is infant son from his screaming.

“No, he’s fine Az.  Sleeping away and snoring just like his father,” You reassured him.  You were inwardly glad that your son Samuel was a heavy sleep as well as his father, being the ever calm baby that was easy to handle and care for.  You were more of a light sleeper yourself, able to hear when Samuel wake up fussing or in need of a changed diaper.  Azriel was worried in letting him sleep in his own room when he was big and old enough, worried of the worst that could happen throughout the night.  Being the ever protective father that he was, Azriel would never dare have any danger happen to his son, he loved him too much to have any pain some his way.  

You were thinking that you made it over the small hump that just occurred with Azriel, and you were about to coax him to lay back down to bed.  Yet within a second, you saw tears coming from his hazel orbs and his voice was almost choking.  You looked in concern, about to ask him what was wrong when he sat up and hugged you close.  Hiding his face in your neck and his wings almost gong around you both like a shield.  You were frozen, not understanding what was going on and why he was reacting like this over a simple nightmare.  

But nothing else matters since you felt tears along your neck and you heard him silently crying.  

“Hey,” You said, finally finding your voice while you are gently holding him.  It was a contrast in how he was keeping you tight against him, your arms were instead loose like a halo around him., “Shh, It’s just a nightmare.  You’re safe.  You’re okay and you’re safe here with me, okay?  I got you right here,”

You were trying to bring him comfort, make him feel at ease with whatever he was dreaming.  Yet it sounded like you made it worst, feeling him shake in your embrace and his tears were still flowing as his fingers were digging into your shirt.  It scared you, to see and feel Azriel in such a state since he was always cool and composed.  He never showed any kind of emotion, nothing out of the ordinary.  Being a spymaster, he had to remain calm at all times and never had a small moment of emotion 

“Did I say—“ You were about to ask him since it felt like you triggered something deep inside of him.  The last thing you wanted to do was hurt him when he was still vulnerable, but he shook his head before you utter another word.

“My mother,” He said, his voice muffled in your shirt as you paused.  Looking down at him in shock, you were seeing him finally take his face away from being covered up.  Tears streaking his cheeks, his face flushed and almost pale, but he was softly looking up at you, as if you were come being descending from the heavens.  

“What?” You asked in a gasp.

“I dreamt of my mother,” He said in a hoarse tone.  You reached up cup his face as he was still talking, “The night I got my…my scars,”

He took his hands away from your waist, looking down at the scars there and flexing his fingers a few times.  You knew of that night from what he told you, along with what Cassian and Rhysand filled you in with.  It was a night of terror for him as a little boy, who was tormented by his own family and step siblings.  It broke your heart to hear that happened to him, when you knew Azriel was filled with nothing but goodness and warmth.  

Even as a deadly Spymaster and menacing Shadowsinger for Velaris and The Night Court.  He was still kind to those who needed kindness, empathetic to those who were struggling, and he was filled with love for those close to his heart.  You were one of them, seeing a beautiful soul under the tough exterior.  

You knew he got that from his mother, and you wished you would have met her to thank her for such a gift.

“She held me after it happened, and she used to help me with my nightmares,” he said as he was taking in a shaky breath, you still having his face in your hands as he kept his stare on you, “And when you said that…I felt…I felt safe like I did when she would help me,”

You leaned down to press your head against his, noses touching one another and you simply letting him still unwind himself a bit more in your embrace.  Being vulnerable was something Azriel couldn’t do most of the time, he had to hide away the fears and the small moments of sadness in his line of work.  

But he liked bring vulnerable when it was just the two of you, hiding away in your small little home that was both cluttered and roomy at the same time.  Letting his guard down as you two would read side by side,  even letting you be the one to hold him as you two slept throughout the night.  He felt safe with you, for the first time in a long time he felt free to be open and free.

“You don’t have to hide your tears from me,” You reminded him softly as he was trying to sniffling away the tears that were still coming, “You’re safe with me here, Azriel.  You’re always safe with me here, okay?”

He nodded rapidly, now letting the tears fall since he had your permission to be raw.  He felt like a release deep inside of him, as if his chest that was burdened with so much weight and agony was now flying out of him with their own set of wings.  He cried into your chest as you held him, thinking of such a contrast for a simply fat to be consoling and holding a strong and powerful Illyrian being.  But you both felt safe for each other to let this happen, to go against the mold and the grain of what should be.  

Azriel fell back asleep in your arms as your held him close, and he no longer had a nightmare that night but a sweet dream.  He dreamt of the day he met you and felt his heart swell in love.  

The End

Hurt and Comfort Prompt Session

#azriel shadowsinger #azriel x reader #azriel x you #azriel x oc #azriel acotar #azriel spymaster #a court of thorns and roses #a court of mist and fury #a court of silver flames #acotar #acosf #acomaf #acowar #fanfiction #writing