#I don’t think that’s how you roast the leg of lamb

[mossiestpiglet]

I love it when there’s fireworks in my neighborhood at 11:23pm for no apparent reason

#willfully interpreting them as for succession sunday because I looked up if it was a holiday #and I don’t think fireworks are traditional for national roast leg of lamb day #I don’t think that’s how you roast the leg of lamb

[forget-you-morelike-fuck-you]

Heartwork- E.M. Pt. 2

I guess I should make it known that this fic is taking place in the Summer of 1991 around May/June just in case anyone was wondering. Love you all, Jess <3

1 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - Epilogue

Masterlist

You and Eddie go see a movie together.

TW- vague mention of drinking, cursing

Pairings- Eddie x Reader

Word Count- 1,581

(Gif not mine, credit to owner!)

You spend the day at your desk thumping your leg on the floor, not knowing why you’re feeling so anxious. Maybe it’s just because the night before, you were out so late with Eddie, and a little hungover. You shuffle your papers and try to stay focused on your work, but by the time the clock hits 5, you’re racing out the door, thankful that you can put your mind at rest for the rest of the day. You get yourself home and flop onto your couch to turn on your TV, but after a while, you find yourself flicking your eyes to the clock ticking on the wall every few minutes. Why are you so antsy today? 

Your heart leaps in your chest as the phone rings, and you jump up to get it. You pick it up and hold it to your ear. “Hello?”  

“Y/N! Honey! How are you?” It’s your mom.  

“I’m good! Just settling in,” You tell her. “Oh, guess who I ran into at the bar last night?”  

“Who? Was it Y/BFF/N!?” She asks excitedly.  

“No, apparently, she moved. It was Eddie! Eddie Munson!”  

“Oh! How is he? You know, he gave us a discount last year when your father needed to get his car fixed!” You smile at that. It’s so Eddie of him. 

“He’s good! Yeah, we just hung out and caught up all night. The bartender had to kick us out, actually.” You chuckle.  

“Oh, really?” Your mom laughs. She always used to tease you when your best friend and Eddie weren’t around. She thought you had a crush. Of course, even if you did, which you didn’t, there was no way you’d ever tell anyone. Eddie was Y/BFF/N’s. 

“Come on, mom! It’s not like that, and you know it! Eddie’s just a friend!” You assert, one hand going to your hip. 

“Well, all I’m saying, Y/N, is that Eddie is a very nice, caring young man. You could do a lot worse.” 

“Mom!” You laugh incredulously.  

“That’s all I’m saying! I’m done!” Your mom exclaims defensively. “Anyway, I was just calling to see if you want to come to dinner this weekend. I’m making pot roast, if you’d like some.”  

“Yeah, that would be great, mom. I’ll be there.”  

“Good! And if you see Eddie again, tell him I said hello. Bring him with you, if you want! I miss having all you kids around for dinner!” You chuckle, rolling your eyes. 

“I’ll think about it,” You mumble dryly, thinking of all the comments she’d make about the two of you. “I’ll talk to you later, mom. Love you.” 

“I love you too, sweetie. Have a good night.” You hang up the phone and breathe a sigh, looking to the clock again. 7:04. You feel your stomach grumble and trudge to the kitchen to find something for dinner. You decide on some chicken and a bag of frozen broccoli and start preparing it, turning on the radio to keep you entertained while you boil some water and season the chicken. After a little while, tongs in your hand as you prod the chicken in the pan, the phone rings again. You go to answer it, assuming your mom forgot to tell you something on your call a few minutes ago.  

“Hello?” 

“Y/N?” It’s Eddie. You smile. 

“Oh, hey, Eddie! What’s up?”  

“Not much, I just got home from work. Listen, I don’t know if you’d be interested, but me and a couple of friends are headed to the movies. We’re going to see Silence of the Lambs. You wanna come? It’s supposed to be really good.” He asks.  

“Yeah, sounds like fun! And it is, I saw it opening weekend a few months ago.”  

“Great! You wanna meet there or I can come pick you up if you want,” He offers.  

“I can drive, don’t worry about it. What time does the movie start?”  

“Eight.” You glance at the clock, just about 7:30 now. You’ll have to leave soon. “So, I’ll see you there?”  

You start smelling something burning, and gasp. Your dinner! “Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ve gotta go, dinner’s burning! Bye!”  

“See you—” You feel bad as you slam the phone down and run to the kitchen, but it’s too late. The chicken is completely blackened. You take the pan off the burner and set it aside, fanning smoke away with your hand. You can eat after the movie, you decide, and so you scrape the chicken and broccoli into the trash before going to put on some clothes to go to the movie. 

Thankfully, the movie theater isn’t too crowded on a Monday night, and so you find Eddie easily among the passers-by. Next to him, you spot another curly haired man. He’s a bit shorter and his hair is a lighter brown, and as he turns around you see a familiar face, more matured, but you’d recognize that wide grin anywhere. “Henderson?!” You shout as you approach. He turns to look at you, his million-dollar smile on display as he sees you. You rush to him and give him a hug. You haven’t seen him since he was a freshman in high school, and now look at him. All grown up.  

“Y/N! It’s so good to see you!” You take his face in your hands, your heart swelling at seeing how much he’s grown. His head is above yours now, not by much, but it’s still a big difference from when you were in school together. 

“Oh, my god! Dustin, you’re so big! How are you!” He laughs as you step back.  

“I’m good! I’m home for the summer from NYU. I got into the engineering program there.” You roll your eyes, but you’re still smiling. 

“Of course, you did! I wouldn’t expect anything else, you brilliant man, you!” He waves a hand dismissively.  

“Oh, stop. I’m not that great. The competition is definitely tougher than it was here,” he says. 

“Oh bullshit!” Eddie interjects, arms crossed over his chest. “You were just telling me how you were working on a project with Motorola for a digital portable phone. That’s insane!” Dustin’s face flushes with red as Eddie turns to you. “He got into this internship as a freshman, which is apparently unheard of.” You beam with pride at Dustin, and another familiar face rounds the corner.  

“Hey, Gareth! How are you?” You wave. 

“I’ve been good! I’m getting married!” 

“I heard! What’s her name?” You can practically see his eyes turn into hearts at the mere thought of her. 

“Nicole,” he smiles. “We got together right after high school. Met her at a concert, actually. She’s great! You should come meet her sometime!” You nod. 

“I’d love to! Maybe we can get the gang back together for a Hellfire sesh,” You suggest.  

“Oh, man. I haven’t played in so long. College keeps you busy,” Dustin laughs, and you nod.  

“Don’t I know it!” You all laugh. You glance at the clock, and it’s almost time for the movie to start. “I’m gonna go grab my ticket and something to eat. I didn’t get to eat my dinner earlier. You turn to walk toward the ticket stand, but Eddie stops you. 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your ticket,” he says, pulling two out of his jacket pocket. You raise your eyebrows in surprise, taking one from his hand. 

“Oh, thanks,” You say smiling. “Well, since you got me my ticket I think it’s only fair I buy the popcorn.” Eddie shrugs.  

“Well, I haven’t eaten dinner yet either. If you want, we can just go somewhere after.” You nod eagerly. 

“Can we go to the diner? I’ve been craving a good burger.” Eddie laughs, both of you start walking behind Dustin and Gareth toward the theater room.  

“Yeah, sounds good to me.” You suddenly remember the conversation with your mom from the dinner talk, and you giggle. Eddie looks down at you in question. “What?” 

“My mom called me a few minutes before you did. I told her I ran into you last night at the bar and she wants to know if you want to come to dinner this weekend. She’s making pot roast.” Eddie laughs as he takes the door from Dustin’s hand, allowing you to go in first.  

“Yeah, that sounds great. I miss having dinner at your place. Your parents have always been so nice to me.” You remember the days when most of the town hated people like you and Eddie. The outcasts, the freaks. Your house was always a sanctuary, and Eddie’s. Y/BFF/N’s parents, on the other hand, they were cordial, but they weren’t… warm, like your parents and Wayne.  

“Yeah, my mom mentioned you gave my dad a discount last year when you worked on his car.” You walk up the steep steps to find a good seat at the top, toward the center of the row next to Dustin and Gareth.  

“Ah, yeah I think I remember that. It’s the least I could do, really, for raising my best friend, and all.” He shrugs as he sits next to you. You grin at him, nudging his shoulder with yours.  

“So, I’m your best friend, huh?” Eddie shifts but doesn’t lose his easy smile as he looks back at you.  

“Of course, you are. Always have been.” You look down at your hands as heat rushes your cheeks. Then, the previews start, making both of you look toward the screen. 

@corrodedcoffincumslut @haylaansmi

#eddie munson fluff #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson #eddie x reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie the freak munson #eddie #stranger things #eddie stranger things #stranger things fic #dustin stranger things #stranger things 4

[aparticularbandit]

Finding Family: Part Five: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Summary: When America begins universe-hopping again to try and find her moms, she realizes that’s too much scope for her.  She looks for smaller scope, and instead she finds Wanda.

AO3

This time, Wendy doesn’t follow the sense of someone having a nightmare to Hook’s room; she follows the amazing smell of something cooking, something quite like the stews they had in Neverland, roasting the meat over a spit until it just fell from the bone, then stirring it into—

She’s nearly drooling by the time she makes it back to Hook’s room, and her knock is almost timid.

“Come on in,” Hook says from the other side of the door, followed by a lower murmur that sounds almost like, “You all do anyway.”  She turns her head as the door opens, smile slowly spreading across her lips.  “My little Wendybird,” she purrs.  “You came back.  Good girl.”

Wendy positively beams at the encouragement.  She knows better, and yet being told she’s a good girl makes her feel all warm and happy inside.  She shuts the door behind her easily enough and skips into the room, eyes roaming the kitchen for whatever smells so good.  “You’re cooking!”  It isn’t a question, although it should me, so much as it is a way to convey her excitement without being an incorrigible mooch…or at least without seeming like one.  She can be a mooch if she needs be, and she will ask for food if she must, but it’s better to just be excited and see what comes of it.

“Mutton stew,” Hook murmurs with a quirking twist to one edge of her lips.  “I told – Ash, was it? – that I could make enough for everyone if Wanda would let me fix that flock she has out there, but,” and here she sighs as though concerned, “she thought it was best to let the poor things alone.  How sad.”  Her gaze flicks out the window just long enough as though to focus on the flock itself and then returns to Wendy with that same twisted smile.  “There’s cinnamon pudding, too, just cooling. Perfect thing for two pirates like us.”

It’s impossible for Wendy to keep her stomach from rumbling, which doesn’t make any sense.  She’d had dinner.  It’d been a pretty good dinner, too, if a little too normal for her tastes.  Not even bland, just…normal.  Scarlet and Ash aren’t ever going to make mutton stew. The closest she’d get to that is if one of them decided to throw lamb chops in a crockpot and left it for a few hours, and that just isn’t the same as what Hook is making.  It’s all in the smell.  This is better in a way that her Neverland heart has been wanting for months and never quite been able to put her finger on.

She should be correcting Hook. Wanda’s not Wanda; she’s Scarlet. But somehow, that is of less concern to her right now.

Hook leans up against the kitchen counter.  She looks better than she did the last time Wendy saw her – not as hollow, not as carved out.  There’s a bit of color to her porcelain cheeks, and her eyes don’t seem quite as sunken in.  Her head tilts to one side curiously.  “Will you help me with something?”

Wendy’s eyes widen.  “Sure! Of course.  I mean, uh.”  She tries to regain her cool, but there’s no cool to be regained.  Still, her arms cross, and she tilts her head back.  The appearance of not caring when really, she does care.  Very, very much.  “What do you need?”

“My hair.”  Hook tries to run her fingers through her hair, but they snag almost immediately on one of its many, many tangles.  She presses her lips together and tries again in another spot, only to run into the same issue.  “I keep trying to brush it out, but it’s gotten so matted.  I don’t think I can do it on my own, and birds like yourself are so good at making nests, I thought maybe you could help me untangle it.”

“Oh, that’s easy!”  Wendy grins and leans forward slightly.  “It isn’t a poisoned comb you’re using, is it?” she asks, head cocking to one side.

Hook sits on her bed.  “Not at all.” She stretches her long legs across the mattress and then pats a spot next to her.

It takes a second before Wendy moves.  Hook’s dressed differently than she was last time; her indigo sweater has been exchanged for an oversized pastel lavender t-shirt that looks even bigger on her than it should, given just how thin she is, and her pants are....  Well, she isn’t wearing pants, which hadn’t been that much of a problem until she’d stretched her bare legs out across the top of the bed, one of them bent up just enough that the oversized shirt is almost – almost – not oversized enough.  Wendy can’t help the way her eyes follow Hook’s exposed skin, and she bites her lower lip, head tilting to one side.

“Enjoying the view?”

Wendy’s gaze returns to Hook’s face, only to notice that one of her brows is raised, and that quirky twisted smirk still lingers on her lips.  “Mmm,” she hums, nodding once.  “You’re really hot.” Her eyes meet Hook’s brilliant blue ones, and she smiles easy.  “But you already know that, don’t you?”

Hook concedes a nod and holds her hands out in a half-bow of a gesture.  “I don’t dress for any of you.”

“I hope not.”  Wendy crosses the room.  “Ash has John and Michael, Scarlet’s a bit preoccupied, and I’ve got Starlight.  Your seductive charms are no good here, villain.”

“You can’t blame a girl for trying,” Hook murmurs.  She scavenges in her bedside table as Wendy clambers onto the bed next to her and pulls out an ornate silver brush studded with small jewels on its back.  As she holds it aloft, Hook rolls her eyes.  “Wanda must think so little of me, giving me this.”

“Scarlet,” Wendy takes the time to correct her this time.  “She uses Scarlet now.  So that we don’t get confused.”

Hook just smiles.  “If I use your name, my dear Wendybird, and Ash’s name, then you know who I mean when I say Wanda.  Then no one is confused.”  Her eyes sparkle with brilliant mischief as she hands the brush over.  Then she glances around the bed, pretending as though she’s lost.  “Do you need me to move?  I just sat against the headboard without even thinking.  That’s no way to brush out hair, is it?”

Her cadence is off.  Wendy hears that Hook’s cadence is off, notes that there’s something ringing false and higher pitched in it, like she’s someone’s old housewife in one of those sitcoms she used to love.  It’s unnatural.  Forced.  “Are you okay?” she asks immediately.  “You sound weird.”

“I’m fine, dear.”  Hook lets out a sigh.  “I suppose I just spent so long playing at being Agnes that I can’t really be rid of her.”  A corner of her lips quirks back up.  “Father Darling, if you will.”

Wendy gives a solemn nod.  “It’s easy to get the roles confused.”  She situates herself against the lavish cherrywood headboard, spreads her legs out on either side, and then pats the space on the mattress between them.  “If you’ll just sit here.”  She glances up just long enough to meet Hook’s eyes. “And no funny stuff.  It’ll just be easier to get your hair this way.”

“Of course, of course.”  Hook gives her own solemn nod, although it feels intentionally feigned without feeling like a mockery.  She slowly moves to the space between Wendy’s legs and sits as she had before, then shifts, hunching over instead of leaning back against Wendy.  “Is that better?”

Wendy nods, although she knows Hook can’t see it.  “Much.”  She holds the hairbrush against her chin, considering where to start first, examining Hook’s tangled, matted hair like a knotted ball of yarn.  “This may hurt.”

“May?” Hook echoes.  “Don’t be so garish, dear.  It will hurt.  I know that.”  She takes a deep breath in and lets it out with a sigh, and Wendy imagines her eyes closing in silent preparation for what’s about to happen.  Then she flinches and presses a hand to her back. “Can I lean back, or would that get in your way?”

Wendy considers this for a moment.  “Would leaning to the side help?  We could turn?”

Hook presses her hand harder against her back as she glances to the headboard.  It’s only with her face turned that Wendy can see the grimace, the lines of pain etched into her face.  “Yes,” she hisses.  As Wendy shifts, Hook rearranges the pillows and leans heavily against them, moving her hair off of her shoulder, making sure that it isn’t pressed too terribly against the pillows, and tucking her legs underneath her.  “Can you still—?”

“Of course.”  Wendy moves her right leg between them, sole of her foot propped against her outstretched left leg.  She takes the hairbrush in one hand and slowly begins to brush through the tangles in Hook’s hair, starting with the edges and carefully working her way up.  Every now and again, when she pulls a little too hard, Hook flinches or lets out a soft hiss through her teeth.  Other than that, though, there’s silence.  Eventually, though, Wendy says, voice gentle, “Pixie didn’t have back problems.”

“I’m not Pixie.”

“I know.  You’re Hook.” Wendy separates out a part of Hook’s hair as much as she can, bites on her lower lip, and then continues, “Would she have?  Eventually?”

Hook snorts.  “Not like this.”  Her head starts to lower, but that pulls on her hair, and she flinches again.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you worry about it.”

There’s silence again, broken only by the occasional bubbling of the mutton stew.  The scent doesn’t grow as Wendy works, but she can feel her stomach rumble every so often.  It’s easier to focus on what she’s doing, on trying to be as gentle as possible as she slowly, slowly brushes out the nests in Hook’s hair.

This time, Hook breaks the silence.  “Did Wanda tell you I was here?”

“Scarlet,” Wendy gently corrects again.

There’s a moment of hesitation before Hook repeats in a tone tight enough to suggest that her teeth are gritted, “Did Scarlet tell you I was here?”

“See?  That wasn’t so hard.”  Wendy maintains her gentle tone, although it has less to do with appeasing the woman seated in front of her and more to do with what she’s doing.  It’s the tone of a mother gently correcting the child in front of them, suggesting through gentle discussion that perhaps it would be best if they cease the behavior that leads to – well, to tangled hair.  Only they aren’t speaking of her hair.  “No,” she says finally.  “No one told me.  I just knew. You had a nightmare, and I knew.”

Hook starts to nod and then stops herself as soon as she feels the tug at the base of her scalp.  “Nightmares, huh?  Is that everyone, or is that just me?”  She turns her head just the smallest bit so that Wendy can see her wolfish grin, so that she can see her wink.

Wendy giggles, smile bright, and presses a hand gentle on Hook’s back.  That stops the giggling all at once; Hook’s oversized shirt is too thin, and she feels the unnatural rippling across her skin.  She flinches away all at once.  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”  She cuts herself off.  “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

“Oh, no.  A little thing like that?  I’m fine!”  Hook says that, but her head is still slightly turned, and Wendy can see the way she tugs her lower lip between her teeth to hold back a hiss of pain.

That’s okay, though.  She won’t pry.

Wendy hesitates, then asks, “Does it matter?  If Scarlet told me, I mean.”  She runs her fingers through a separated lock of Hook’s hair, checking for any tangles remaining, and finding a very small one that the brush won’t help with, begins to try and brush it out with her thumbnail.

“No.  No, of course not.”  Hook glances down towards her lap and in the slightest shifting turns her face away again.  It doesn’t matter; what little of her face Wendy can see is unreadable.  She fidgets with the sheets, flattening out the wrinkles of them with one hand.  Then, with an almost bitter tone to her voice, she asks, “Has she ever mentioned someone named Agnes?”

The name sounds familiar, although Wendy doesn’t admit it at first.  There are a lot of places she could have heard the name – at the orphanage, for instance, or from one of her Lost Ones, before she’d renamed them.  She thinks back to the story that Scarlet told her, the one she had restructured and, in turn, told to Ash’s boys shortly after Starlight left.  “Yes,” she says finally, eyes lighting up with recognition.  “The witch from Westview!  Scarlet said she beat her.”  She glances around Hook’s shoulder so that she can see her face.  “Why?”

Hook’s jaw is clenched tight, lips pursed together.  “No reason,” she lies.

Without thinking, Wendy reaches out to try and feel Hook’s surface thoughts, but she feels nothing.  Her eyes search out the runes carved into the crown molding, and she scowls up at them. Then she takes a deep breath. “Was she important to you?  Agnes?”

“No,” Hook lies again, although this time, there’s less bitterness in her tone and something more…confusing.  Not quite sadness, but not something she can put her finger on. Regret, maybe.

Wendy shrugs.  “You don’t have to tell me.  I don’t mind.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Hook starts to lie again with that brisk, higher pitch to her tone, “except that Agnes wasn’t the witch.”  There’s a moment of silence full of heavy things unsaid before she says, voice softer, “Agnes deserved better.”

It takes a moment before Wendy asks, voice gentle but otherwise unchanged, as she remembers just what Hook said about Father Darling earlier, “Are you the witch from Westview?  Is that why she has you locked up in here?  Is that why they have the runes?”

“You’re the one who named me Hook, sister,” Hook replies through gritted teeth.  “You tell me.”

Wendy doesn’t say anything at first.  She just continues to brush the tangles from Hook’s hair.  Most of it is so matted that she has to take time with chunks at a time, and when a chunk is done, it’s all frizzy and frayed.  She pauses for a moment and holds the ends in her hand, rubbing them with her fingertips.  “We have some of those super sharp hair scissors.  Would it be alright if I—”

“No,” Hook interrupts, firm and angry.  She whips her head around, winces, and glares daggers from blue eyes that are suddenly ice cold.  “If you don’t want to brush it out, we’re not—”

“That’s not what I meant!”  Wendy holds up her hands between them in a defensive gesture.  “I was just—  Your edges are frayed and split, and that’s not good for your hair, so I just, when the tangles are all out, I just thought....”  Her face flushes, and she lowers her gaze and her hands all at once.  “You’d need to, um, wash it first, because it’s really oily and everything, or I could wash it, maybe, if you trusted me enough for that, but I wasn’t…I would never.”  She glances up again, meeting Hook’s eyes, and finds that they are still hard and cold.  “You don’t have to believe me, but I would never.”  Instinctively, she reaches around and grabs locks of her own hair, brushing her fingers through it.  “When the orphanage took us, Pan and I, we’d been on the streets for so long, and they…with my….”  She can’t even finish the words, gaze dropping again.  “I would never,” she repeats again, voice softer but no less insistent.

Again, nothing, and in that space, Wendy is afraid, although she couldn’t say what of.

Then Hook reaches out, slender forefinger brushing along Wendy’s cheek as though to wipe away tears that aren’t there, then finally, gently, ever so gently, cupping her face, thumb sweeping along her skin.  “You really are a good girl, aren’t you?”

Wendy’s breath catches in the back of her throat.

Hook leans down and presses a soft kiss to Wendy’s forehead.  “I don’t deserve your kindness.”

“No,” Wendy says, hesitantly, “but Agnes does.”  She glances up, meeting Hook’s eyes just in time to see the pain flinching across the woman’s face.  Her lips curve in an easy smile.  “Right?”

“I’m not Agnes.”

“Of course, you aren’t,” Wendy replies, head tilting gently to one side.  “You’re Hook.”

Hook stares at her.  For a moment, it feels more like she’s examining her, eyes probing into her, looking for any weakness, any flaw in what Wendy is saying.  Then she seems to relax, lips twisting.  “Alright,” she says, voice only just higher than a purr. “I’ll be your Hook, then.”

 It’s later – although still early in the morning, when it is still dark outside, stars just poking through a haze of clouds – while Wendy works her fingers through Hook’s dark hair, slowly massaging her scalp, hoping the water in the plastic basin is warm but not too overly hot, that Hook murmurs, voice so relaxed as to be the purr it naturally should be, “You don’t know runes either, do you?”  She doesn’t lift her hand to point, doesn’t even open her eyes.  “That’s a basic protection spell, and you didn’t recognize it.”

“I know some runes,” Wendy says, fingers still working their magic that isn’t really magic as she washes Hook’s hair, “but Scarlet isn’t a very good teacher.  Ash tries, but it’s not the same.  Scarlet says it’s all about intuition; Ash tries to focus on her book learning, but she doesn’t have any of the books.”

Hook hums, and it’s a mixed sound of pleasure and sympathy.  “That’s rough.”

Wendy nods.  “I just want to fly.  Scarlet and Ash – and the others of us, in my dreams – so many of us can fly, but I…I can’t.” She pauses, half-cradling Hook’s head in her lap.  “Someday, maybe.  That’s what Scarlet says.  But I’m…honestly getting tired of waiting for someday.”

“I could teach you,” Hook murmurs.  “It isn’t hard.”

For the second time, Wendy’s breath catches in the back of her throat, although this time, it’s for an entirely different reason.  “Could you?” she asks, nearly breathless.  “Could you really?”

Hook opens her eyes, looks straight up, and meets Wendy’s eyes.  “Course. Can’t be my little Wendybird if you can’t fly, can you?”  She closes her eyes again, settling.  “Besides, you aren’t the first witch I’ve trained.  You’ll be the next Scarlet Witch in no time.”

#bandit fic #finding family with wanda and america #wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #america chavez #agatha harkness #mcu #queue

[rainhadaenerys]

When people say that Dany can't be Azor Ahai because it would be too obvious… I don't think they notice just how many "obvious" prophecies and visions GRRM writes.

1) He wrote a very obvious vision of the Red Wedding:

Farther on she came upon a feast of corpses. Savagely slaughtered, the feasters lay strewn across overturned chairs and hacked trestle tables, asprawl in pools of congealing blood. Some had lost limbs, even heads. Severed hands clutched bloody cups, wooden spoons, roast fowl, heels of bread. In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany with mute appeal. - Daenerys IV ACOK

It's not obvious to Dany when she sees this vision, and it might not have been obvious to the reader the first time they read it, but once you see the Red Wedding happen, it's VERY obvious that this is what the vision was about.

2) Jojen's vision of the Ironborn attacking Winterfell is also very obvious:

"I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell. I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle. Drowned men were floating in the yard. When I first dreamed the dream, back at Greywater, I didn't know their faces, but now I do. That Alebelly is one, the guard who called our names at the feast. Your septon's another. Your smith as well." - Bran V ACOK

It's not obvious to the characters what this means. Bran thinks that the sea is too far away from Winterfell. Mikken dismisses the warning. But it's VERY obvious to the reader what this means, because we know that Theon is coming. And once it happens, it becomes obvious to both the reader and the characters what the vision means.

3) The Ghost of High Heart has some very obvious prophecies:

"The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. Do you have gifts for me, to pay me for my dreams?" - Arya IV ASOS

The shadow killing the Golden Stag is obvious (Stannis' shadow killing Renly), it in fact already happened when the woman tells this dream.

The man without a face is not as clear, but not as obscure either. It seems to be a faceless man under the direction of Euron (the drowned crow on his shoulder) to kill Balon (who we know died by falling off a bridge).

The woman who is a fish and has red tears on her cheeks who wakes from the dead is not obvious to the characters or the reader at the moment we read them, but once we get to the end of ASOS, it's very obviously Lady Stoneheart.

The Ghost of High Heart also has this very obvious vision about Sansa:

"[...] I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." - Arya VIII ASOS

~

"Did you make the snow castle, Lord Littlefinger?"

"Alayne did most of it, my lord."

Sansa said, "It's meant to be Winterfell."

"Winterfell?" Robert was small for eight, a stick of a boy with splotchy skin and eyes that were always runny. Under one arm he clutched the threadbare cloth doll he carried everywhere.

"Winterfell is the seat of House Stark," Sansa told her husband-to-be. "The great castle of the north."

"It's not so great." The boy knelt before the gatehouse. "Look, here comes a giant to knock it down." He stood his doll in the snow and moved it jerkily. "Tromp tromp I'm a giant, I'm a giant," he chanted. "Ho ho ho, open your gates or I'll mash them and smash them." Swinging the doll by the legs, he knocked the top off one gatehouse tower and then the other.

It was more than Sansa could stand. "Robert, stop that." Instead he swung the doll again, and a foot of wall exploded. She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead. There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore. Suddenly she had the doll's head, Robert had the legs and body, and the rag-and-sawdust stuffing was spilling in the snow.

[...]

"It was my fault." Sansa showed them the doll's head. "I ripped his doll in two. I never meant to, but . . ."

"His lordship was destroying the castle," said Petyr.

"A giant," the boy whispered, weeping. "It wasn't me, it was a giant hurt the castle. She killed him! I hate her! She's a bastard and I hate her! I don't want to be leeched!" - Sansa VII ASOS

It might not be obvious to the reader at the moment they read it, they might expect the vision to mean something grander than it is, given the wording of a maid slaying a giant. Our expectations are subverted when it turns out it was just about Sansa "killing" a toy giant, but GRRM words everything in a way that makes everything very obvious and clear, that this is what the vision was about. You couldn't get more clear and obvious than "Sansa killing the giant that was destroying the snow castle".

In fact, the giant turning out to be a toy reminds me of an interview from GRRM in which he talks about a lord that was prophesied to die beneath the walls of a castle, but ends up dying in front of a painting of that castle:

Prophecies are, you know, a double edge sword. You have to handle them very carefully; I mean, they can add depth and interest to a book, but you don’t want to be too literal or too easy... In the Wars of the Roses, that you mentioned, there was one Lord who had been prophesied he would die beneath the walls of a certain castle and he was superstitious at that sort of walls, so he never came anyway near that castle. He stayed thousands of leagues away from that particular castle because of the prophecy. However, he was killed in the first battle of St. Paul de Vence and when they found him dead he was outside of an inn whose sign was the picture of that castle! [Laughs] So you know? That’s the way prophecies come true in unexpected ways. The more you try to avoid them, the more you are making them true, and I make a little fun with that. (source)

Just like in Sansa's example, the prophecy comes true in an unexpected way (in a rather silly way), but once it happens, it becomes obvious how the prophecy was fulfilled.

You can see that all of the prophecies above follow the same pattern: they might not be obvious to the characters (the sea invading Winterfell) or to the readers (the Red Wedding, Catelyn becoming Lady Stoneheart) at first, or they might come true in unexpected ways to the reader or the characters (the sea being the Ironborn, the giant actually being a toy giant), but once they happen, it's very obvious that they happened.

And this is why I find the argument that Dany being Azor Ahai is "too obvious" to be a bad argument. In fact, Dany being Azor Ahai follows the same formula of the other prophecies and visions: it's unexpected to the characters and the readers in a few ways, but in other ways, once you think about it, it becomes obvious. Lightbringer being a dragon instead of a sword is unexpected, but it becomes obvious once you see that the dragons are described in identical ways to Lightbringer, and that Dany pulled Lightbringer from the fire just like the prophecy said. Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa being gender reversed is unexpected, but it becomes obvious once we see that Dany used Drogo and Rhaego's lives for the birth of the dragons, and that Dany "woke dragons from stone beneath a bleeding star amidst smoke and salt" just like the prophecy said. It becomes obvious once you see the sheer amount of evidence that Dany is Azor Ahai.

And by the way, this is valid for other prophecies regarding Dany as well. Dany antis keep trying to twist these prophecies into something else, like insisting that the Sun's son is actually Aegon, or that the mummer's dragon is Jon (which makes no sense anyway, given that Jon is not posing as a dragon, he is posing as a wolf, so if he was a mummer's anything he'd be a mummer's wolf), because they want Jon to hurt Dany. One of their arguments is that the Sun's son being Quentyn is "too obvious", and that GRRM never writes characters being right about prophecies. but this isn't actually true. Let's remember Jojen's vision of the sea invading Winterfell. At the beginning, Bran doesn't know what that means, but once it happens, he correctly identifies that the prophecy was about the Ironborn taking Winterfell:

Jojen told it true. I am a beastling. Outside he could hear the faint barking of dogs. The sea has come. It's flowing over the walls, just as Jojen saw. Bran grabbed the bar overhead and pulled himself up, shouting for help. No one came, and after a moment he remembered that no one would. They had taken the guard off his door. Ser Rodrik had needed every man of fighting age he could lay his hands on, so Winterfell had been left with only a token garrison. - Bran VI ACOK

~

One of the ironmen handed Reek a sword, and he laid it at Theon's feet and swore obedience to House Greyjoy and King Balon. Bran could not look. The green dream was coming true. - Bran VI ACOK

Just like Bran, Dany initially has no idea about what Quaithe's prophecy means and gets frustrated with the riddles:

"No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal."

"Reznak? Why should I fear him?" Dany rose from the pool. Water trickled down her legs, and gooseflesh covered her arms in the cool night air. "If you have some warning for me, speak plainly. What do you want of me, Quaithe?"

Moonlight shone in the woman's eyes. "To show you the way."

"I remember the way. I go north to go south, east to go west, back to go forward. And to touch the light I have to pass beneath the shadow." She squeezed the water from her silvery hair. "I am half-sick of riddling. In Qarth I was a beggar, but here I am a queen. I command you—" - Daenerys II ADWD

But once the prophecy starts to come true, Dany correctly identifies that it's happening, just like Bran correctly identifies that the green dream was happening:

She found herself remembering her nightmare. Sometimes there is truth in dreams. Could Hizdahr zo Loraq be working for the warlocks, was that what the dream had meant? Could the dream have been a sending? Were the gods telling her to put Hizdahr aside and wed this Dornish prince instead? Something tickled at her memory. "Ser Barristan, what are the arms of House Martell?"

"A sun in splendor, transfixed by a spear."

The sun's son. A shiver went through her. "Shadows and whispers." What else had Quaithe said? The pale mare and the sun's son. There was a lion in it too, and a dragon. Or am I the dragon? "Beware the perfumed seneschal." That she remembered. "Dreams and prophecies. Why must they always be in riddles? I hate this. Oh, leave me, ser. Tomorrow is my wedding day." - Daenerys VII ADWD

There's no reason to believe that Quentyn can't be the sun's son because it's "too obvious" or because Dany guessed it right, because GRRM wrote plenty of other prophecies that become obvious once they happen, and because we already saw another example of someone guessing a prophecy right once they see it happening (Bran).

So all these theories denying the obvious because it's "too obvious" and trying to come up with far-fetched different theories really make no sense. GRRM's prophecies and visions are unexpected in certain ways, but they tend to be really clear and obvious once they happen. Dany's prophecies are no different. Quentyn being the sun's son is unexpected to Daenerys, and unlike you would expect, Dany should beware of him not because he had any ill will towards her, but because he ended up trying to steal a dragon and causing problems for Dany. Him fulfilling the prophecy is unexpected in these ways, but his identity as the sun's son becomes obvious once we see him and once Dany meets him. Dany is Azor Ahai might be "obvious" in terms of all the clues we are given, but it's unexpected in several ways as well: like Dany being a girl and Lightbringer being dragons.

GRRM puts his twists and subversions in his prophecies, but he is very obvious and clear with the foreshadowing and clues. And this is actually something that shows he is a good writer: he writes foreshadowing, he sets up his plots, and he follows through on what he sets up, instead of just changing everything at the last minute to "surprise" his readers.

#asoiaf meta #daenerys targaryen #my meta

[nelapanela94]

The image of Levi getting you on all fours had been loitering in your wildest dreams for quite a while. The stage was always alternating, though; sometimes it took place in his office, or your room, even in the middle of the forest, and definitely with much less clothes involved. Just your subconscious screening your inchoate feelings and carnal desires.

But it was nothing like this. Absolutely nothing like this.

You stood on your knees for a quick break and wiped off the beads of sweat off your forehead. “Don’t forget to clean behind the toilets” He nonchalantly said as you watched him leaving the bathroom.

A growl escaped from you. “How is tea supposed to taste, then?” you shouted. With a tight grip, you furiously grabbed the brush and continued scrubbing the mud off the floor, wondering why men were so gross. “Stupid shorty” you clenched your teeth. “Just for that stupid tea.”

He drove you crazy, yet you liked him. You just could not take him out of your head; not that you wanted, though.

“Why that shitty face, Levi?” You teased. “If you do your bit, we’ll have a wonderful weekend together” The rattling noise of the wooden wheels hitting the cobblestone was getting on your nerves, and the ravenette was your only source of distraction.

“Tch” He didn’t bother to glance at you; the view from outside the window should’ve been more appealing. “You always so loud and obnoxious, brat.” He rolled his eyes. “We’re in a mission not on vacation. The lump of shit you have for brain already forgot?”

“Ouch” you placed your hand on your chest, near your heart, and faked a hurting look on your face. “Why are you always so mean, Levi?”

“It’s not like you’re special” He finally turned his head towards you, crossing his arms over his chest. Because of Erwin, he was stuck with you on this mission. Your task was to formally request to Mr. Weber the funds to carry out the next expedition, and Levi was there to guarantee its success.

“I think you like me” You shot blatantly, and a black, thin eyebrow lifted at you.

“When will you stop pestering?”

You took a seat by his side; traveling sitting backwards in the carriage was worsening your motion sickness. Levi growled and moved the closest he could to the window.

“Once you admit you want to get under my pants” You drew right next to him, your thigh touching his.

“As if” He snorted, glaring at you. “Who’d like that?”

“There’re some guys in line” A smirked bloomed on your lips.

“Then ask one of them and leave me alone” He changed seats, and he was now sitting at the bench in front of you.

“You are no fun, Levi” you whined, and shifted your position leaning your back against the window, your legs stretched out along the seat. “The one I want is you” you muttered for yourself.

“What was that?”

“That you’re a pain in the ass”

Upon your arrival in Ehrmich District’s, the driver informed that due to a foreboded storm for the night, you should stay over and resume the journey to Mitras the next morning.

“I don’t mind sharing a room with you, Levi” you toyed with a lock of hair and winked at him. Levi rolled his eyes; you were exasperating.

You entered a small tavern near the inn as a low growl roamed in your belly and you were glad the loud atmosphere disguised your hunger. The eyes of the diners landed on you; military police officers, businessmen, craftsmen and workers frequented the place. A pretty woman in such place was a weird specimen. Their mischievous grins and lascivious glances soon faltered when they realized who your companion was.

Your eyes traveled over the menu again and again; everything looked good and you were indecisive.

“What do you want to eat?” Levi shot and you glanced at him, your chin resting on the palm of your hand, while the waiter was rocking back and forth on his feet next to your booth. “You would be my first option”

Levi ran his fingers through his hair and sighed in frustration. “Tch, roasted lamb for her” The young waiter nodded and jotted it down. “And an ale” you added.

Leaning back in the seat, you rubbed your belly when you finished your meal. “I don’t think I can move”

“Let’s go” Levi came back and offered his hand to help you to stand up. “Wait, I still need to pay my...”

“Let’s go”

“But... wait, don’t tell me you...” Your eyes beamed in excitement. “Is this a date?”

“Not even in your dreams” You walked side by side down the street on your way back to the inn.

“You know what? Under that armor, I think you’re a sweet guy” you confessed, your cheeks turning slightly pink. A snort left from Levi, and glanced at you searching for the last shred of sanity you had left. He needed to put an end to your madness.

Levi stopped on his tracks, and you turned around cocking your head slightly to the side, throwing him a questioning look.

“Listen carefully” He placed his hands on your shoulders and leaned closer, his intense gaze piercing through your soul. “I would never fall for a crazy, loud, obnoxious woman like you.”

You blinked twice at his harsh words; petrified for a moment everything you longed for began to shattered in your heart. You snapped his arms off of you and swiveled around, wiping off your tears with the sleeve of your dress. “Go get ahead” you maffled. “I’ll take a detour”

“Don’t be foolish” he snarled and tried to grab your wrist, but you shoved his hand away. “I’m being serious, Levi” and you resumed your way, taking a longer path.

It was far from a rich girl’s whim; maybe it began like a whim, but soon later, your feelings for that stupid shorty grew stronger and you needed him. Like everything else in your life, you either bought it, stole it or took it by force; nonetheless, you realized that the heart didn’t work that way. Thus, you attempted to learn about his interests; you tried to make tea even when you grew up without setting a foot in a kitchen, and despite having servants who helped you get dressed and comb your hair every morning you did your best on cleaning days. You read every book in his collection to take a glimpse at his soul, and paid attention to any detail that could reveal his odd habits and unique fixations.

You wanted to break into that shell and discovered his mysteries.

Maybe in another life.

He’d never regret what he said. It was for your own good he swore. Somehow, Levi had grown fond of you, but he’d never admit it. In fact, he wanted to lock those feelings away from him, he wanted them to leave him alone. But his head was playing tricks in his head, and the image of you always smiling at him invaded his mind anytime.

You were the granddaughter of a nobleman, surrounded by fine clothing, delicacies and jewelry; and him, on the other end of the spectrum, was a boy without a name who grew up not knowing if he would have food on his plate or clean clothes for the following day. He had nothing to offer you; someone like him would be a disgrace to your family, and doubtlessly you would end up out of the will.

He knew he had acted like an asshole, but it was for a good cause; without him you’d be better off.

However, this time he had a hunch, a bad feeling took over him, and he needed to find you.

A man in his forties and with a very dreadful appearance had you up against the wall, in a dark, dead-end alley. "For one like you they would pay very well" His deathly breath hit your face and you just wanted to vomit. With one hand he covered your mouth, while the other held your hands prisoner over your head. Tears rolled down your cheeks, and you just cursed yourself for the stupid decision to walk alone on those unknown streets.

Everything happened so fast. In seconds, the man was lying on the ground, blood gushing from his mouth as his insides became victims of Levi's merciless kicks until his crying ceased.

Levi ran towards you and took a quick look at your bruises “Are you ok? Did he...?”

“I...I’m alright” your voice was weak. Seeing you crying was breaking his heart but he was not the best when comforting others. His arms awkwardly wrapped around you and he let you rest you head on his shoulder.

Holding you so close to him and feeling your warmth was electrifying; his heart and body were yearning for more. It hurt to have you so close, yet so far.

Maybe one day he’ll let his heart win, maybe.

“You’re safe now” he whispered.

#levi ackerman #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #aot #snk #levi attack on titan #snk levi #levi aot #levi ackerman x you #levi ackerman x reader #levi x you #levi x reader

[ka-za-ri]

Press Play

It’s lunchtime somewhere. Have a sandwich. Pairing: Lucifer x Reader x Simeon Genre: PwP Smut Wordcount: ????     Tags: Smut, porn without plot, Demon sex, Angel Sex, Threesome, Toys, hand jobs, spit roasting, Sex Toys, Dom/Sub Undertones, sensory deprivation, temperature play, body worship, double penetration, size kink Summary: Lucifer and Simeon give you reason to look forward to movie nights with them.

Movie nights with Simeon and Lucifer became a rather regular occurrence once Simeon discovered just how large Lucifer’s backlog of unwatched movies had become. The angel made sure Lucifer set aside time once a week for at least one meet up. It took some persuasion, and a lot of pouting from both you and Simeon to get Lucifer to agree. The meetups started off innocent enough. Lots of cuddling and laughs were shared between bowls of popcorn as Lucifer slowly got caught up to date with the movies he missed due to his hectic schedule. It was a time for all three of you to relax, to enjoy each other's company and to forget about the stresses of the world outside. It was hard not to look forward to the movie nights especially after a week of study and corralling rowdy demon brothers. On that couch, you were safe between the two of them. There was no chaos, just a movie and their arms around your shoulders. From time to time, Lucifer would feed you from the shared bowl while Simeon offered you sips of his drink. It was pure, innocent and comforting. Until one day while were fully invested in the film and not paying attention to what they were up to, they slowly guided your hands to their crotches. By the time you noticed what they had done, they were already half hard and using your hands to stroke their lengths. “Oh, don’t look away, the best part is yet to come.” Lucifer said, making sure you focused on the flashing images in front of you instead of the growing bulges beside you. “Yes, you don’t want to miss this.” Simeon agreed, curling your hand around his shaft and encouraging you to stroke him. Lucifer mirrored the action and as the movie reached its climax, you realized you had a more interesting climax at hand, literally. It wasn’t until the credits started to roll when you were allowed to turn your attention to what the men had started. They leaned in, kissing you at the same time while your hands groped and stroked their lengths through their pants. Eventually Simeon won out, claiming your lips while Lucifer trailed his kisses elsewhere, down your jaw, to your neck where he greedily sucked at your pulse point. Their hands guided your own, showing you how they liked to be stroked and you were overwhelmed by the information overload trying to keep up with the differing paces they preferred. “Wait, Is this... alright? I mean, Simeon, you’re... an angel and all.” Simeon chuckled softly, kissing your cheek and nipping your ear. “Oh Little Lamb, how cute you are. Do you think a little sex is a crime punishable with a Fall? Humans are so gullible.” He rolled his hips into your hand encouraging you to keep going. “Why would the Heavenly Father find something natural a sin? There are crimes more serious than pleasure.” “Something like a rebellion?” Lucifer joked, squeezing your breast and he was rewarded with a gasp of pleasure when he pinched your pert nipple through your top. “Hmm Something like that, yes.” Simeon agreed and he let out a breathy moan when your fingers squeezed the tip of his cock harder than he had anticipated. “So, you shouldn’t worry about me, Little Lamb. You should be more concerned about how you’ll make us cum at the same time.” At the same time. You weren’t sure how you were going to manage the different tempos they demanded, and your arms were starting to get tired of the repetitive motions; but you were definitely interested in seeing them both come undone by your hands. Just touching them through their pants wasn’t enough. Almost as if they shared one mind, they had divested themselves of their pants and both of them were kneeling beside you, their cocks tantalizingly bobbing in front of your face as you went back to pleasing them with your hands. Without the barrier of clothes, it was much easier to pull a reaction out of them and they no longer needed to guide your hands into doing what they wanted. Simeon preferred a lighter touch and long, careful caresses while Lucifer loved it when you gripped him tightly to go hard and fast on his cock. Though their rhythms differed, they worked in tandem somehow with your hands and came at the same time after you fondled their balls and traced the heads of their sensitive, dripping cocks. Their seed, covered your face and your hands in thick, hot ropes as their dicks pulsed and they groaned in unison. “Your turn.” Lucifer declared, licking the mess on your face while Simeon cleaned off your hands. Once all trace of their loads were gone, they turned their hungry gazes to your own aching crotch and they parted your thighs as they settled between your legs. “I’m hungry.” Lucifer announced before delving into your soaked core. “Snacks weren’t enough.” Simeon agreed before letting his tongue join Lucifer’s and you writhed as they greedily lapped at your essence through your panties. When they couldn’t get enough of you, the soiled scrap of cloth was wrenched to the side unceremoniously and their tongues licked up your juices, probed at your entrance and circled your clit. The combined heat of their breaths and the lewd, wet sounds coming from between your legs brought you to climax much faster than you had anticipated. “So soon?”Simeon asked, his bright eyes held a fair bit of glee. He pulled away and you could see your essence glistening on his chin. “The credits haven’t even finished rolling.” Without any further preamble, he dove back in with Lucifer to continue their post movie snack until the credits and the extra post movie scenes were over. “So, same time same place next week?” Lucifer asked once silence fell over the room and you were reeling from your third orgasm that night. “Y-yeah... that sounds like a plan.” ~~ To say that you were eager for your ‘movie nights’ going forward was an understatement. It was the driving force that got you through the weeks. The thought of being between Simeon and Lucifer again occupied your mind and often you were caught daydreaming about what you could get up to in the upcoming meetups. You came to know their desires very quickly. Simeon was a tease. He loved watching you squirm and writhe under the lightest of touches. He was a romantic, full of kisses and cuddles once you were doing being used. The angel had a mischievous side to him, preferring to take slow, deep strokes inside of you, forcing you to feel the bulbous tip of his cock drag itself across your walls and memorize just how good his cock could make you feel. He loved you on your back, sprawled on the couch and disheveled, moaning for him as he took his sweet time fucking you. All the while Lucifer would occupy your mouth, muffling those pretty moans with his member. He adored seeing your throat bulge with the outline of his cock as he fucked your face. The way you would always gasp for air after he came down your throat was so erotic to him and never failed to get him going for another round, switching places with Simeon who would kiss your bruised lips so tenderly before encouraging your tired jaw to open up and accept his own length into it. Lucifer was a rougher lover. He pounded into you without abandon anytime he got the chance to sheath himself in your pussy. You always needed to nurse bruises during the week after he was done with you; not that you really minded. Shameful as it felt, you loved the feeling of his nails digging into your flesh, marking you and reminding you of the times you shared with the two of them. Different as they were, they were passionate lovers and never ceased to have you reeling in pleasure every week. While the movie played in the background, they found new ways to please and tease you until the very end of the film. With how long they had been alive for, they knew just how to play you like an instrument, drawing out your pleasure for as long as they wanted. Some nights, they would fuck you without abandon from the beginning to the end, other nights, they would pass you back and forth until you were ready to pass out and your pussy was filled with their seed. Yet other nights, the three of you would be stuffed full of your favorite toys, riding and grinding down on them, passing the remotes to the vibrators to one another and teasing each other until you all were over stimulated messes on that couch. Pretending to pay attention to the movie on the TV was difficult when you had two exceptionally attractive men moaning beside you and stroking their cocks in time with the hand held fucking machine thrusting in and out of your pussy until the three of you came at the same time and indulged in copious amounts of cuddles and kisses before deciding to do it all over again. Their methods of pleasure was as varied as the movies they chose and every week it was a surprise until you swore you had experienced it all with them. You had a good grasp on what they liked and pleasuring them came easily to you now. As soon as the door closed and the movie started, the three of you would spend at least the first ten minutes kissing each other deeply, fondling each other through clothing before everything inevitably came off by the time the first act was over. From there, you could almost predict what would happen depending on how the week had gone. Some weeks, Lucifer would have you and Simeon bound and kneeling before him, demanding that he be pleased first before he even thought about allowing either of you to think about pleasure. Other weeks, Simeon would have you tied down and spread on the couch so he and Lucifer could spend the whole film kissing every inch of your skin and counting how many times you could cum before the movie ended. You were more than happy to adapt to their whims, listening to them without question and following their lead. You thought knew them like your favorite movie. That comfort and routine had you falling into complacent lull which was how you ended up making the mistake of thinking nothing they did could surprise you anymore. ~~ You should have known better that there was something off when Lucifer lead you to a more private quarter that week than the room they used for your regular movie nights. You should have noticed how well padded those walls were, how the dim light illuminated everything. It should have been an indication of how that they had plotted this for some time now when Lucifer cast an extra strong spell of privacy over the room. It wasn’t until you heard the rustle of clothes and feathers that you realized what you were in for. Both of them were glorious and their massive wings seemed to encircle you in a cage once they both approached you sandwiching you between them. “A proposition.” Simeon started, tilting your chin up so you were forced to look into his eyes. “How about we make our own movie this week?” He glanced to the side and your gaze followed his. Your heart skipped a beat when you saw the recording device set up on the dresser. You swallowed hard, unable to deny how much that thought turned you on, but also how much it intimated you. Being on camera, being recorded with such beautiful men felt wrong. “Oh, I know that look, Little lamb.” Simeon cooed, kissing your forehead softly. “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. Just follow our lead.” Behind you, you heard the rustle of clothing as Lucifer disrobed. He took your hand and brought you to the massive bed. You didn’t remember Simeon’s room being this spacious, nor the bed so large, but you didn’t have time to think about your whereabouts as your hands were tied above you to the headboard. Your legs were spread and tied to the posts at the foot of the bed. Once Lucifer was sure you weren’t going anywhere, he sat down next to you, his fingers brushed through your hair and his wings gently caressed your arms as he directed your attention to the angel in front of you. “Watch.” he commanded, and you could only obey. What followed was the most sinful strip tease. Simeon dropped the cloak he normally wore around his arms and let you drink in his angelic form. The white wings framed his body, keeping your eyes on him and only him as he traced all of his dips and curves through his skin tight clothes, peeling them off slowly, enticing you with every new inch of skin he revealed. You were practically drooling when his pants finally came off. You gasped when you saw his girthy cock and you shuddered, wondering if you could take something like that in you. Which suddenly brought the thought of Lucifer’s dick to the forefront of your mind. Glancing to the side, you took stock of his member and gulped at the monster between his legs. The demon chuckled, his fingers still stroking your hair gently and he leaned in for a soft kiss. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure you’ll be properly ready for us by the end of the night. For now, relax.” You nodded, but you were unable to take your thoughts away from the tapered tip of Simeon’s cock which gave way to a massive swell. You unconsciously clenched just imagining how wide he would stretch you out before you could get to the base. The swirling ridges and thick veins of his member were unlike anything you had seen before, at the base, you could make out a substantial ring of taught muscle you could only imagine being used to lock him into place once he was inside of you, similar to the hefty knot that sat at the base of Lucifer’s cock. “You’re thinking too much.” Simeon chided coming over to grace your lips with a soft kiss. “I promise you’re in good hands.” He reassured. Your body was still tense with intimidation, his words did little to alleviate the fear and he could see it in your eyes. Beside you, you heard Lucifer sigh and pad across the room looking for something. “I suppose we’ll have to find other ways to relax you.” He came back a moment later with a silken blindfold. Carefully draping it over your eyes, he made sure it was securely on before dipping down and kissing you deeply until you moaned into his mouth and were breathless. “Better.” There was a moment of silence between the three of you while the angel and the demon contemplated just how to relax you. Lucifer had been so excited to get you tied up, he had forgotten to take your clothes off and so the first step was working together to undress you, undoing the ties only when it was necessary to slip your clothes off. You visibly shivered when you were left bare in front of them, in front of that camera. “Better.” Simeon finally agreed now that all three of you were in a similar state of undress. You heard a soft popping sound followed by a sharp gasp from Simeon. You heard it again but this time followed by a quiet grunt from Lucifer. Confused, shook your head back and forth, trying to figure out what had happened. Your confusion stopped when you felt the softest tickle of a feather caress your skin. There was the sound of wings flapping as they adjusted to fit you in a feathered cage. “Did you know....” Lucifer drawled, dragging his feather across your skin and watched as you twitched under the light touches.  “You’re absolutely adorable when you’re at our mercy?” “You are.” Simeon agreed, teasing your spread pussy with the tip of his feather. “You’re so cute when you’re an incoherent mess for us. I can’t help but look forward to seeing what kind of faces you can make tonight when our cocks make you scream.” You shivered, struggling against your bindings but to no avail. The knots held tight and you were helpless. You could only focus on the tingling sensation that followed in the wake of their teasing. The feathers felt different from each other. The one Lucifer dragged across your body to tease your nipples left a trail of warmth, like a soothing touch on heated skin after being spanked. The tip of the feather prodded your nipples until they were aching and sore, the heat intensifying until it was almost unbearable. As soon as it got too much, he would move to your other breast, repeating the process in a cycle that had your mind reeling. Simeon’s lips were practically attached to your neck, kissing and nipping the sensitive skin there while his feather toyed your pussy. The cool, tingling sensation spread across your nether lips and down your thighs as he drew errant patterns across your skin, watching in awe as goosebumps appeared in the wake of his feather. Your clit was toyed with until it was almost numb, your essence coating the feather, soaking it as he continued to toy with your body. Then, they switched. The heat moved to your core and the chill traveled up your abdomen to tease your nipples. The drastic change in temperatures had you wailing and thrashing as the heat from Lucifer’s feather felt like a brand against your sensitive core. The cold on your nipples made them pucker and stand painfully erect. “Adorable.” Simeon cooed, admiring how you heaved and writhed under him. He reached to the bedside drawer and picked up one of the candles that had been illuminating the room. carefully hovering it over your chest, he watched with glee as the hot wax dripped from the candle and splattered against your skin, welting the skin and making you cry. You were too hot and too cold at the same time. The assault of sensations made your mind go blank and all you could focus on was feeling good, sounding good and letting them play with your body to draw out every sensation they could from you. They weren’t done yet, far from it. While Simeon focused on wax dribbling down your chest and carefully let hot droplets tease your oversensitive nipples, Lucifer had reached to the ice bucket which housed a bottle of wine. Finding a suitably small piece of ice, he dragged it across your thighs after his feather, making you shiver and moan. Pausing at the apex of your thighs for a moment, he let you catch your breath before sliding the melting ice into your waiting hole. His finger pulled back the fleshy hood of your clit and he pressed the feather directly against the bundle of nerves, rubbing it roughly, coating it with your essence and overwhelming you with heat and cold at the same time. “You can cum when the ice is melted.” He stated, assaulting your clit with the feather. His teeth found your collarbone and he bit down, hard, kissing your skin after he left his mark. Watching you come undone from their combined efforts was nothing short of a treat. The chill of ice within you faded as your own body heat melted the cold object. It felt like it took eons to do as Lucifer asked, but as soon as you no longer felt the ice in you, your whole body shuddered in completion, your inner walls collapsed clenching around nothing and your clit throbbed almost painfully as you rode out the waves of pleasure from your intense climax. Both the angel and the demon descended on your lips when you came, kissing you deeply thrusting their tongues into your mouth, moaning as they drank in the sounds of your orgasm. The blindfold was ripped off your face and you blinked to adjust your eyes to the light once more. They kissed you until you were breathless, tired and dizzy, but the night had only begun. You knew matter how tired you were, the two of them would push you past whatever limits you had until they too were satisfied. “There, nice and relaxed.” Simeon purred, carefully peeling off the dried wax from your skin and admiring the patterns it had left across your chest. He dipped between your breasts, pressing soft kisses on the tender skin while you were still wrapped in the afterglow of your climax. The ties that held your arms and legs were undone and Lucifer cradled you in his lap, fondling your tender breasts. Your limbs slowly regained feeling and your bleary vision cleared just in time to witness Simeon in front of you, stroking his length, eyeing your drenched pussy, licking his lips and dreaming of the moment when the two of you would become one. “I know you probably don’t feel ready, but I know you want this...” He leaned in to kiss you. Lucifer moved his legs to lock with your own, and spread you open for the angel. “I’ll make sure to go slow so you can feel... everything.” With one last reassuring kiss, he pressed the tips of his cock to your entrance, hissing from the residual cold from the melted ice. Your canal warmed up soon enough as you could immediately feel the swell of his cock push into you. There was no time to adjust, his shaft was nothing but a series of thick bulbous ridges that only got wider until it tapered off just a bit at the base where the muscular ring sat. You were stretched wider and wider with every inch, losing your breath at the sensation of taking Simeon in this form. “There, now. You’re doing so well.” Lucifer praised, pinching your nipples to keep you conscious of the current moment. “Look at that, he’s almost all the way in.” Lucifer guided your gaze down between your legs and your heart skipped a beat when you saw that he was correct. There was maybe an inch or two left before he would be fully seated in you. You took a deep breath and allowed the angel to make the final push to sheath himself within your walls. Simeon let out a low groan, nipping at your shoulder and he held you close to take in the sensation of being surrounded by you. “You’re so hot.” He whined, “So tight, so perfect...” He grunted, rolling his hips into you and your body shuddered at how deep he was able to reach. You let out a breathless whine grasping at the sheets below you, reeling at the sensation. “I’m so proud of you, I knew you could do it.” Lucifer praised, trailing kissed down your neck. He glanced over at Simeon and gave the angel an imperceptible nod, egging the angel to move more. Simeon didn’t need any more encouragement, slowly sliding his length in and out of you as he was wont to do. He never fully pulled out of you, just far enough to the widest point of his cock before sliding back inside of your snug, tight walls. The ebb and flow of being stretched and relaxed had you mesmerized and before you knew it, you could feel your climax approaching. He could feel your walls fluttering in anticipation of the end and that was when he stopped moving all together. You were left hanging just at the precipice and you could see the excitement in Simeon’s eyes as he too was enjoying the moment; but you couldn’t forget about the demon behind you. “I hope you’re ready for me too...” He murmured softly and for a moment you were confused about what his words meant. The meaning became crystal clear when the hard tip of his cock pushed against your already stuffed hole, seeking entrance to a space that was quite full already. You gasped, squirming away from him but there was no winning against his inhuman strength. “N-no... it won’t fit , It’s too much.” You protested Lucifer dragged his length up and down your soaked lips, coating his cock in your essence before pressing against your hole once again to join Simeon. He let out a low, dark chuckle. “Breathe, my sweet, trust us.” He reassured. “Just imagine how good and tight you’ll feel when we’re both all the way in you. That ridge of his and my knot buried inside, stretching you out, claiming you.” You could see the image in your mind, but feeling it was something else entirely. You were already at your limit, or so you thought. But Lucifer was persistent and with some coaxing, the tip of Lucifer’s cock eventually slid inside beside Simeon’s. Whatever limits you had were going to be tested now. Somehow, against the pain and the stretch you felt, you could feel your muscles clench, tightening against the new intrusion, accepting him, drawing him further into you. “That’s my Little Lamb.” Simeon praised, kissing you and distracting you from whatever pain your abused hole was feeling. “That’s it, take us all in.” Your mouth hung open in a soundless scream as Lucifer’s cock drove itself further and further inside of you. The long shaft going deep within, brushing against your cervix when he finally reached the base of his knot. “Amazing.” he breathed, marveling at the tightness of being together with you along with Simeon. “Simply amazing.” And then, they started to move within you. Their motions were perfectly synced making you see stars and the heavens beyond them. You clung onto Simeon, though your arms had long lost feeling. At this point, you only served to be a fuck toy for the two of them, something to be used for their carnal pleasures and you wouldn’t have it any other way. The way their cocks worked in tandem sliding in and out of your hole had you cumming almost immediately. But, they weren’t anywhere near done with you. Not until they claimed you and truly made your theirs. They went faster, deeper, harder until you couldn’t see straight. The sound of skin slapping against skin mingled with grunts and moans filled the room along with the sticky sweet smell of sex. “Oh, oh God!” You screamed when they slammed you down to the base of their cocks at the same time. “God is not here making you moan.” Simeon growled, digging his fingers into the supple flesh of your ass and gripping it hard, spreading your cheeks out to gain more access to your pussy. “There is no God here, just us.” Lucifer bit your neck hard, leaving deep teeth marks in his wake, nearly drawing blood. He seethed at the Heavenly Father’s name and it only fueled his need to claim you. “If you’re going to call out a name, why don’t you make sure it’s mine.” he commanded, forgoing any decorum and roughly thrusting into you, ignoring whatever semblance of rhythm he had with Simeon earlier. You cried out, tears streaming from your eyes, your voice hoarse from screaming and your body sore from the abuse it was taking. They made you feel like a sinner and a saint all at once, the mix of pain and pleasure too much for your mind to bear and eventually all thoughts faded to the background until there was nothing but euphoria. Your head lolled back, resting against Lucifer’s chest and you blearily looked up at the ceiling as you accepted your fate between these two men. They were nearing their own climaxes. Seeing you lose yourself in the throes of passion drove them to the edge they sought and your body reached its final trial. Their thrusting slowed as they pushed you down on the hard knot and thick ridge of their cocks. You couldn’t remember screaming, but you did remember thinking you were being torn in half. You clawed at Simeon’s back, drawing blood from scratching him so deeply. The angel hissed, his long lashes fluttering as he softly encouraged you to accept them, all of them. And then, there was pure bliss when you felt them securely embedded within you. It was a feeling of fullness, of contentment you had never felt before. It felt as if your very soul had ascended at that moment. With one final grunt from Lucifer and a breathy moan from Simeon, they released their loads into you at the same time. The copious amounts of their seed flooding your insides, causing your belly to swell as  you accepted their offering to you. The hot, sticky ropes of cum leaked from your pussy as they seemed to pump into you ceaselessly. You thought this surely must have been what paradise felt like as you yourself came around them one last time. As you felt your consciousness drifting away from you from your final climax. You remembered being gently lowered to the bed while both the angel and the demon were still inside of you. Their cocks were still hard and pulsing cum into you at intervals.  “You did so well, Little Lamb.” Lucifer murmured, using the pet name Simeon often used for you. “You deserve some rest.” “Yes, rest, my Sweet.” Simeon encouraged, pressing kisses on your forehead and your cheeks. “You were perfect.” “So... Does this mean same time, same place next week?” You asked tiredly. “I don’t mind shooting a sequel.” Simeon agreed wholeheartedly. “Why just a sequel? We could make it a proper... trilogy.” Lucifer chimed in, holding you close and wrapping his wings around you. Simeon followed suit and that night, you dreamed of what sort of blockbuster the three of you could come up with.

#Obey me #Shall we date obey me #Obey Me Lucifer #Obey Me Simeon #Obey Me Smut #Obey me Fanfiction #Lucifer x reader x Simeon #Welcome to the filthy sin bin that is my brain #Lucifer x reader #Simeon x reader #Read the warnings and tags above y'all been warned #unedited because yolo

[manonblaqkbeak]

Family Time

good morning/afternoon/evening/night. hope you’re all doing well and staying safe!!!! i have a rowaelin fic that i wanted to post before rowaelin month started since im focusing on those prompts atm

i cant wait to see what everyone has in store for rowaelin month, im very much looking forward to it!

enjoy! :)

1835 words

The day that Aelin had been looking forward to was finally here.

She and Rowan were going to spend a week in their spot in the forest. A week was longer than usual, but it was much needed. Not only had she and Rowan been working extremely hard to the point where they weren't going to bed until the middle of the night, his family was arriving to Orynth to visit for a few weeks in a week and a half.

And not just a few members of his family, almost the entire Whitethorn family was coming, with the exception of a few—namely Sellene, who would be gifting them with personal letters and presents, and those that were too old or just didn't feel like making such a long journey.

Aelin was looking forward to it, to meeting those she hadn't, to hearing others perspectives on Rowan's childhood. Her mate, however...not so much. Rowan was looking forward to catching up with the cousins that he liked, but not so much for the meddlesome ones. He warned her that whatever secrets that people were hiding wouldn't be secrets anymore, that the nosy ones liked to make a game to see who could learn the most secrets.

Aelin admitted that could be a problem, but in his letter, Enda claimed that everyone would be on their best behaviour.

Rowan wasn't entirely convinced. And not just because of that, he was worried that the conversation of when Aelin and Rowan were going to have children was going to be brought up as Rowan had written that they were forbidden from doing so.

Months ago, only several weeks after the war, after a meeting with the Lords and Ladies of Terrasen, Aelin and Rowan came to the decision to wait for a while to have children after Lord Gunnar had brought up the topic of heirs. Aelin could still remember the silence, at her speechlessness of how suddenly it was mentioned. How Rowan had turned to Lord Gunnar and demanded not just to him, but to everyone around them, that it was a private matter between the Queen and himself, and that it was not up for public discussion.

It wasn't a very long conversation—they both wanted to have a family, but Aelin wasn't ready. She was having nightmares from her time with Maeve and Cairn, and throwing pregnancy in the mix just screamed disastrous.

Rowan took her hands in his large warm ones and promised that he would wait for as long as she wanted. Whether it was one year, five years, or one hundred, he would wait until she was ready and willing.

Aelin had never loved him more.

Since then, Rowan was taking a contraceptive tonic. It hadn't taken very long for it to spread around the castle, but neither Aelin or Rowan would let others opinions change their minds.

And it wasn't like they were completely without family. They had their friends and Fleetfoot, with the canine joining them on their week long getaway.

Aelin and Rowan helped the servants set up the Royal tent and the square wooden table where they would be eating and playing chess and card games. There were a few books that Aelin was very much looking forward to reading, too.

Aelin was excited for this week away, to forgo her corsets, dresses, pants and breast-bands. She was determined to stay in Rowan's shirts and her slippers the entire time.

So the moment that everything was set up, the trays of sweet and savoury foods on the table, and the servants and guards were gone, Aelin stripped down to nothing, swaying her hips the way that Rowan liked when she spotted him drinking her in and slipped on one of his shirts and put on her well loved slippers.

Grabbing the picnic blanket from one of the chests, Aelin turned to see Fleetfoot sniffing hungrily at the trays of food, moving closer with each second that passed. Just as she was about to inhale the food, Rowan took the pup out of her misery and feed her a handful of sliced fermented sausage.

Aelin smiled at the sight. Rowan might grumble about the mess Fleetfoot made and how she kept slobbering on his pillow but Aelin knew he loved her—even when she ate his socks.

Aelin set up the blanket and pillows against a thick oak tree, ready for her week of relaxation.

X X X X X X

Aelin's stomach was near to bursting. She hadn't intended to eat that much food, since there was a leg of lamb and chopped root vegetables roasting in the cauldron above the fire, but everything was just too good to have just the once. She ate and ate until there was nothing but crumbs left.

She didn't regret it, however.

She was close to sleeping as Rowan ran a free hand through her scalp as he used the other to read. Her head was on his lap, the sun was warm, and from the happy yips that were coming from the woods, Fleetfoot was having a fun time running around.

Aelin glanced at her husband, his face relaxed as he read his book. And she had no idea why, but she found herself saying: “What would you look like with a beard?”

Rowan blinked, the only surprise he'd show at the question. “Like an old man,” he answered after a moment.

“You are an old man.”

He flicked her ear, and then went back to running his fingers through her scalp. “I grew a beard, once, when I was young. I looked like my father.”

“So you looked very handsome, then.” Rowan had taken up sketching in the quiet moments. He had drawn his parents and they were a very attractive couple. Rowan inherited his fathers hair, eyes, nose and sharp jawline, but got his mother's lips, cheekbones and eyebrows.

They had died long ago, but Aelin would have liked to have met them. Rowan said that they would have liked her, eventually, as he believed that they wouldn't have known what to do with her at first.

Aelin gave Rowan a big smile as the question formed in her mind. And since Rowan knew her so well, he said, “No.”

“You don't even know what I was going to say!” She protested, but it was a lie.

“I am not growing a beard.”

“Please, for me? Just a little one?”

“No.”

“How about some stubble?”

He sighed, exasperated, knowing that there was no point in arguing. “Fine. I'll grow some stubble and that's it.”

“Mm-hmm. Whatever you say, buzzard.”

He sighed again, but there was a small smile on his lips. He returned to his book, and telling her what it was about when Aelin asked. It made her heart swell that her warrior found time to read, as he admitted to her months ago that he never really had the opportunity when he was sworn to Maeve.

Not wanting to ruin today with thoughts of her, Aelin grabbed her own book by her pillow and read, luxuriating in Rowan's warmth and love and in the company of a good book.

X X X X X X

Aelin was losing, but she made sure that the irritation that was coursing through her didn't show on her face. Playing chess with an experience strategist was an absurd idea, but she was determined not to quit.

Rowan had been wanting for her to make her move. Had been waiting for fifteen minutes. Fleetfoot was by her feet, but she was just waiting for the roast lamb to be done.

Five minutes later, Aelin finally made her move. Her eyes flicked up towards Rowan, but his face was stone. He made his move in a blink of an eye. “Checkmate.”

Fire coated her throat as Aelin screeched in frustration, which just made Rowan laugh. Fleetfoot howled and ran off.

Aelin grumbled under her breath as she put away the chess board (for now, they would definitely be playing again once Aelin had more food in her stomach) while Rowan put their dinner on the plates, smiling all the while. Behind him, his mate vowed that she would beat him one day at chess. His smile widened.

Rowan knew that if he said he could beat her even with a blind-fold on, she would go on about how big his head was.

Fleetfoot came back, getting in the way of his feet as he put his and Aelin's dinner down. He gave Fleetfoot the plate reserved for her, using his powers to cool it down, not missing Aelin's soft smile as he did so.

They ate dinner in companionable silence, with Rowan's thoughts on his cousins. He was sure that he wasn't going to get a single thing done while they were visiting. Or if he did, he knew that some of his cousins would want to intrude.

Thinking about it more, he knew that they were going to intrude. Enda had written in-between the lines that there were some cousins that didn't really believe that Rowan was King-Consort and would only believe it once they saw him in action.

That they would actually believe once they saw him in his crown.

And even then, he was sure that there'd be at least one or two that still wouldn't believe it.

Rowan would let them think whatever they wanted about him, it wouldn't matter to him.

Maybe he should have just invited Enda and his mate—but Aelin was looking forward to meeting his family, so he would just deal with it.

It would only be a couple of weeks, possibly three. At best, four, since it was a long journey. He could last.

Rowan could do it, he would just have to block them out if they became too much. He had done that in the past.

“If you keep furrowing your brows like that, they'll replace your eyes,” Aelin said, slathering a fresh slice of bread with butter and running it through the left over gravy on her plate.

Rowan grunted but tried to relax his forehead. It took him a minute longer than it should have.

Later on, they went for a late night swim. Which was slowly turning into something more, up until Fleetfoot jumped into the water with them, saturating them further.

It was the best first day that Aelin could have asked for, and was very much looking forward to the rest of the week.

X X X X X X

Aelin woke up to one of her favourite sights. Rowan shirtless, sleeping on his stomach, his tattooed arm curled around Fleetfoot who slept between them all night. The hounds golden head half on Rowan's pillow, her paws stretching towards Aelin, her furry face soft in sleep.

Smiling, Aelin shuffled closer, and wrapped her own arms around the pup, her fingers just touching Rowan.

Joyful, Aelin fell back asleep, a smile still on her face.

#rowaelin #rowaelin fanfiction

[sarahjkl82-blog]

Artistic Instinct Chapter Nine

Header thanks to the lovely @yespolkadotkitty

Summary: Marcus Pike and OC Anushka Pierce have been selected to work on a 5 eyes (Australia, Canada, NZ, the UK and US) intelligence team to track down art forgeries as a part of taking down an international white terrorism cell. Marcus is trying to escape his broken heart, Anushka is just trying to escape what the world expects of her.

Word count: 6500

Warnings: Language as always, warning of racist language (Nush talking about her mother's experiences), yearning, fluff to second base (yes, my darlings- IT IS ON!), alcohol is mentioned, food, anxiety attacks.

Pairing: Marcus Pike x reader (OC)

This comes with a MASSIVE THANK YOU to the lovely @yespolkadotkitty , who read, re-read, pointed out the constant flipping between tenses and gave me the confidence to try to write something. This is the first thing I have written since angsty poetry as a teenager. Apologies if it is shit!

People often think artists

Create with their hands

But really they create

with their hearts

So please be gentle

For we wear our vulnerability

On our sleeves

And freely give all we have

Hoping someone will fall

In love with the parts we offer

R. Evelyn

Chapter Nine

The sharp buzz of the door startles you out of your daydream. Laden with roughly the entire contents of your spice cupboard, vegetables, meat and prawns, your hands are crisscrossed with creases from where the weight of the totes has gouged at your skin. A smart-looking kindly gentleman greets you, “You must be Ms Pierce. Mr Pike has asked for you to wait here for him.”

Wow! Marcus’ place has a concierge - who did he have to blow to get a place like this?!

Throwing the bags onto one of the hotel lounge-like chairs, you slump into another as you rub soreness from your hands. A small ping tells you that the lift has arrived - you look over in the direction of the noise, a tremor of excitement rippling through you. An adorably scruffy Marcus, wearing old jeans and a t-shirt, steps out - his face utterly beaming on seeing you. “Hey! How are you doing?” he leans in to kiss your cheek twice - hang on, when did this start being a thing?

“Why didn’t you let me pick you up? You’ve carried so much over- lemme see your hands,” his brow knits on seeing the rapidly reddening welts as he takes your hands in his, brushing his thumbs gently across your palms.

“You live four roads away from me - they’re not that bad! And anyway, you can help me now- which floor do you live on?” You outwardly roll your eyes at the sweetness Marcus shows you, secretly enjoying the stroke of his fingers and the ghostly press of his lips still burning a hole in your cheek.

Marcus takes all of the bags from the chair, refusing point blank to entertain you helping him to take them upstairs - you watch as his arms twitch under the weight, enjoying the mixture of confusion and shock at your strength across his face, “you carried all of this?”

Nodding at him, you try to take a bag again, but he dangles it just out of reach, “Watch it - you do realise that I have two other brothers apart from Ads? I will think nothing of rugby tackling you to the floor and pinning you down,” you warn, enjoying the flush brought to his cheeks.

“You’ll be the death of me,” Marcus flusters as he calls the lift, handing you the smallest, lightest bag.

✪✪✪✪✪

Exiting at the top floor, you’re taken aback by the amount of light and quiet that washes throughout the building. Feeling so removed from the shadows cast from the tower blocks and the hustle and bustle of the streets below, the broad daylight offers a sense of serenity, a peace that invites itself into the soul and makes itself at home. As Marcus unlocks the door to his flat, you kick off your shoes at the entrance, “You don’t have to do that,” he offers through the keys in his mouth, holding the door open with his elbow, still refusing any help from you.

“Oh believe me, if I didn’t, my mum’s radar would go off and I would be cruising for a bruising,” you giggle, taking in the glorious spaciousness of his apartment, “I promise my feet aren’t too stinky and that I put on clean socks.”

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Marcus’ eyes crinkle at you, “Can I get you something to drink or eat?”

“A coffee would be ace - strong and black please,” you reply, your gaze drinking in the details of his home. Books line the shelves along one wall - such a mixture of titles ranging from airport bestsellers to obscure art catalogues - the relief to see actual paper and hardbacks adorning the shelves rather than trinkets and plants when so many keep their books electronically in their pockets.

A couple of large canvases lie propped against another - long hours preventing them from being hung - their bright colours sure to bring joyful hues to quite a stark room. There are a few photo frames dotted around - mostly pictures of a moment in time rather than poses - of people you assume are friends and family from back in the States. Handing you a steaming mug, Marcus looks over your shoulder as you look at a photo of an older couple dancing and laughing at a wedding, “That’s my mamá and papá at my oldest sister’s wedding. It was such a magical day - just so much love in the air.”

“You can feel the joy radiating from them,” you offer, lowering your gaze from him to grab the frame next to the picture of his parents, “Are these your sisters or cousins? You all look very alike.”

“Yeah, my little sisters,” he grins proudly. “This one is Beth - she’s two years younger and is a paediatrician in Texas. Has two kids with her wife, Sophie. And this one is Cat - she’s doing her own thing out on the West Coast as a musician. They definitely inherited all the clever and cool genes.”

“Hah! You’re kinder to your sisters than I am to my brothers,” you grin, “They’re all total idiots but due to some weird genetic and biological insistence, I still love them.”

Taking a gulp of your coffee, you turn back towards him, “Come on you, we’d better get to work if you want a curry this evening.”

He pouts, looking more like a sulky little boy than a middle aged man. You can’t help but laugh at the sad puppy dog eyes he is conjuring at the thought of work, “Oh poppet, what’s wrong?” you teasingly mock.

“I kinda hoped you were a magician who could just magic a curry outta nowhere so we could watch films til the others arrive,” Marcus grumps shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Well, there is UberEats for that but you horrible lot put me up to this so you’re going to help,” you wag your finger at him, “But as you’re the only one here, you get the honour of being the chief taster,” you add, tapping him playfully on the nose.

With a soft huff and a furrow of the brow, Marcus guides you into the kitchen where, whilst he was making your coffee, he has helpfully already put all the fresh produce in his fridge as the sides are delightfully blank apart from the bags of spices.

“What are we making today, Chef?”

“Ok, meat dishes are a spiced yoghurt leg of lamb, a keema - don’t you give me that look, a cardamom butter chicken, and, a prawn and courgette curry,” you turn to Marcus’ fridge to find the lamb, “Needs to come to room temperature before we cook it.”

“My tummy is rumbling already,” Marcus adds, his eyes glinting excitedly as he licks along his lower lip, the skin glistening damply. You have never quite figured out whether your love of his lips is due to their fullness or the association with the kindness of his words.

“Hah- you’re not getting away without having some veggies, too, mister,” you cluck as you hand him a bag of onions and several bulbs of garlic to skin, chop and crush for the various dishes.

“Ok, Moooom,” Marcus dramatically rolls his eyes at your dictate, “I admit, I’d rather eat sugary or salty things over green stuff but I can make an exception for curried veg.”

The arch of your eyebrow virtually reaches your hairline at him teasingly calling you mom, so you reach for the towel, twist it and flick him hard on what you’d hoped would be his hip but catch him square on his arse instead.

A yelp of pain and wide eyes greet your action, “Did you just…? Oh, it is on.! You might think you’re tough from your brothers but my sisters taught me sneaky tactics.”

“Come at me, bro!” you taunt from the other side of the kitchen, putting up a boxing stance.

Brandishing the hand without the paring knife in your general direction, he answers, “Nope, gonna use the element of surprise and attack when you least expect it!”

Tutting your tongue at Marcus’ weak ass response, you grab the spices you need to prepare under the power of your pestle and mortar. With the waft of roasting cumin soaring through the air and your battle with your boss at a supposedly declared ceasefire, everything starts to feel comfortable and easy again. You could be six years old and standing on the chair next to your mum, watching like a hawk as she lovingly prepared meals for your family with an ever burgeoning belly. It was then, during those hours shared in the galley kitchen that became your time with her when normally it felt pretty split between her work as a GP and your brothers.

What the fuck… You jump out of your skin when a warm, solid wall presses you out of your nostalgic reverie, “Hah! Pinned ya! Sneaky tactics- told ya they worked,” a deep, soft voice whispers in your ear.

Your heart flutters like a bird trying to escape its rib cage with the closeness of Marcus, the heat rising through your body from your proximity to him - a visceral response to the glorious cocktail of masculine smell from his aftershave and body wash.

What do I do next?

Why can’t I bloody think straight?

Wiggling yourself around so that you face him, his face now so close that you can feel his warm breath upon your cheeks. Your eyes playfully catch the steady gaze of Marcus’ deep soulful pools. It would only take the smallest of movements to reach forwards and kiss him right on that stupidly gorgeous, plush Cupid’s bow and crease. But… what if he doesn’t want that? He’s my fucking boss - that would be a stellar move to make…

Instead of the tiny incline forwards to press your lips against his as every inch of you screams to do so, you drop to the floor and crawl out from between his legs, “Not pinned well enough it seems,” you tease haltingly as your tongue sticks in your dry throat.

As you check the browning of the cumin seeds, out of the corner of your eye you see Marcus’ head drop sadly, hearing a small sigh - his hands still upon the work surface and feet not having moved from the position he had pinned you in moments earlier.

Did he want to...? No, surely not.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, Nush,” Marcus humbly apologises, pushing himself off the side, “I hope that I haven’t made things awkward.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” you softly say, pouring the roasted cumin into the mortar, ready to be ground, “I was the one who flicked you on your arse - I am the one who should be apologising.”

You beckon gently to Marcus, who has now taken refuge in the furthest corner of the kitchen from you - wringing his hands instead of chopping the onions, “Come over here - I want you to experience one of my most favourite smells of childhood. These are roasted cumin seeds and when you grind them, they release the most heavenly scent.”

After a few grinds, you offer the bowl towards Marcus’ face as he closes the gap between you, “I… Wow! I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a difference but it’s almost like you’ve entirely transformed it. See,” the dimple deepens in that right cheek of his, “you are a magician.”

“I love how spices - a bit like paint - can take on completely different characters depending on how you treat them. Leave the spice whole and you have this mild and fragrant taste. If you crush them, then their attitude comes back tenfold with a vengeance. Toast them, and they may as well be Clark Kent in a phone booth.”

Looking up you see Marcus gazing at you with a sweet half smile on his face - could he like me… like that?

“Sorry, you don’t need to hear me blathering on,” you fluster, waving your hand in a dismissive gesture as the heat rises through your face.

Shaking his head gently without dropping your regard, “No. No, please don’t ever stop. Your passion for things is beautiful.”

“Growing up, I didn’t realise that other people didn’t have whole cupboards filled to the brim with herbs, spices and seasonings. I mean, for all the damage the British Empire reeked, you’d have hoped that the spices would have entered more of their culture, but no! Apparently, my family was the weird one for having food with a flavour,” you shrug your shoulders at some of the ridiculous things you’d heard as a child - accusations of differences you’d never thought to be of note.

Marcus chuckles at your indignance, “It’s funny you should say that. I didn’t realise that my mamá had an accent until it was pointed out to me when I was a kid.”

Noting your slightly confused expression, Marcus explains, “She’s Argentinian- came to the States as a political refugee as she was a journalist following the disappearances during the Dirty War. Met my dad, and I came along very soon after, and the rest is history..”

You can’t help but laugh at the flush on Marcus’ cheeks as he recounts his personal history to you, “Love can’t be held back when it hits and it’s obvious that they’re still crazy about each other now from that photo.”

“Exactly, no point in wasting time when you know what you want,” Marcus grins, looking at his feet.

“My parents have a similar story. My dad is as English as they come - I mean we’re on a freaking island so there’s no true thing as being completely English. My mum is from Pakistan - Karachi - it’s in the South.”

“She came over due to the fighting between East and West Pakistan - the two countries that are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. It kept interrupting her studies to become a doctor so she came to England and restarted her degree here.”

Marcus’ brow creases in thought, “Why did she restart her degree? Could the credits not just be transferred to the college she moved to in the UK?”

“Hah- yeah. It was the seventies, during a time where all Southern Asians were P*kis - no matter where they were from on the Indian subcontinent- and thought of as dirty, lesser beings. There were constant race riots for anyone who wasn’t ethnically white or English. She would never have been taken seriously with her mediocre medical training from some Adobe hut in the middle of a jungle,” you fume, pounding the seeds into fragments. The mortar being threatened with the same fate too.

Marcus’ fingers wrap around your wrist to try and prevent your rage at the ignorance of others from causing you an injury, “I am so sorry,” he pulls you into a warm, tender hug, tucking your head under his chin, “How long before food can take care of itself so we can put a film on? I think we both need a rest.”

“Hmmm, ten minutes and then most things can simmer or be switched off ready for a reheat or proper cook this evening,” you say, leaning reluctantly out of his comforting arms to go check on the bubbling saucepans of food.

“‘K. I’ll go get things set up so you can flop for a bit,” Marcus touches you gently on your shoulder as he goes to set up the front room. You go to squeeze his hand but it’s removed from your shoulder too quickly for your response.

✪✪✪✪✪

“You ready?” Marcus calls through the wall as you turn off the heat from the final pans.

“Mhm,” you mumble in response to his question - double, triple checking that everything is off. Too many fire alarms ruining perfectly lovely meals or moments.

“What did you pick?” You ask, curling up on the other end of the sofa to Marcus, “Do you have no cushions?”

“Shit, no -I’m a guy, what can I say? - lemme grab the pillows from the bed,” Marcus jumps up, calling through from his bedroom, “Bet you have loads on your couch.”

“A fuckload, but, mainly to hide the fact the springs have gone. It’s like a precarious balancing act of comfort on there,” you surreptitiously sniff the pillow, inhaling the smell of Marcus’ shampoo, “Did you give me your pillow?”

A confused look is shot at you from the other end of the sofa, “Whaddya mean?”

“Smells of your hair,” you say as you squish it into the perfect comfy shape, “Like a mixture of lemon and eucalyptus.”

“That’s a sharp nose you’ve got. I gave you the other side though,” Marcus huffs through a chuckles he shakes his head at your somewhat strange comment, “Guess I’ve been sleeping across both sides then.”

“Best thing about sleeping alone- getting to starfish across the bed. Unless of course…”

Marcus can’t help but laugh at your awkward dig to find out whether he’d brought home the goddess from Friday’s antics, “So you wanna know if I brought home Kemi?”

“She was very beautiful. You’d have been mad not to,” you try to school your expression as best you can, keeping your eyes glued to Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly singing about true love, desperate to hide the jealousy coursing through your veins.

“Must be mad then. Didn’t even kiss her,” Marcus honestly answers whilst copying your tactic of staring at the tv, “She could see that there was someone else I liked so it would have been cruel to have done anything.”

You mull this over in silence, trying not to speak, to ask a million questions.

“Nush.”

“Mhm?”

“Can I talk to y…”

You both jump as an alarm goes off on your phone to remind you to turn the lamb down in the oven.

“Oh shit. Hold that thought,” you jump up from the sofa, heading in the direction of the kitchen with zero thought of what the man at the end of the sofa is desperately trying to tell you. Fiddling with Marcus’ ridiculously swanky oven until it looks like it is doing what you want it to do, you walk back in with two ice cold beers from his fridge.

“Raided your fridge,” you cheekily grin, holding one out to Marcus, the condensation running, down your fingers, “Hope you don’t mind!”

“Good thinking, Batman,” Marcus nods in appreciation, “Any more alarms set to scare us both?”

“Only due to go off when the film is done, so…” you yawn widely, “We’ve got a while yet.”

Marcus’ hand that was slung over the back of the sofa, lifts to stroke your shoulder, “You sleepy? C'mere, you.” With a soft tug of your t-shirt sleeve, he pulls you into his side - your willingness to sink into his broad chest very apparent. Your ear is pressed against him, his heartbeat singing a lullaby to you as his fingers stroke and caress the silken waves of your hair. You wonder at how this man - a total stranger a week ago - has seemingly knitted himself into becoming a cocoon of safety for you, his gentleness and calm offering a haven of tranquility in your otherwise cacophonous world, as the light in the room slowly fades to black.

✪✪✪✪✪

“Uh oh.”

“Hey, welcome back, sunshine!” a gentle pair of fingers stroke back the hair that had drifted into your face as you dozed.

“Sorry for falling asleep. Again,” trying to finesse your way through the heat flaming your cheeks, you offer an awkward grin towards your chuckling pillow, “Guess we’d better start getting things finished as we’ve only got a couple of hours until everyone arrives.

“Oh, don’t give me that look, Marcus! I don’t want to move either but this curry won’t finish cooking itself.”

“Spit spot, there’s work to be done,” Marcus trills as he adopts his best attempt at a British accent.

“What the fuck was that? Did you just turn into Dick Van Dyke or something?” You tease mercilessly at the appalling sound coming from those lips, choking back laughter at his mock offended face.

“C’mon, you’re right. We’d better get moving,” Marcus stands with a stretch and a creak before reaching back to tug you to your feet.

Back under the glowing lights of Marcus’ kitchen, his presence is now constantly close to yours as you glide together around the space - stirring, chopping and checking. Every time he passes, above the general aroma of cumin and coriander, the onions and garlic, you can smell the cedar and amber upon his skin- a deliciously masculine scent that only seeks to entangle your senses further.

“Here, try this,” you hold out a heaped teaspoon of mince curry to Marcus, “This is the keema - I promise that I only put in the two chillies you chopped for me, this time.”

“Mmm, that’s so good,” he says thickly between chews, stealing the spoon from you as he dives in for a second, third, fourth spoonful.

“Hahaha! Leave some for the others- and you need to try it with some raita and fried onions too,” you check through your dog-eared, yellowed and slightly sticky recipe book that your mum had handed you the day you’d left home at eighteen - a memo of all the times you had cooked them together.

“Shit, I’d better start the chicken,” going through the spices in front of you, you search for the cardamoms that would make the butter chicken sing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Marcus’ head snaps up from the green beans he was preparing towards you, “What’s up, sweetheart?”

“I can’t find the cardamoms for the butter chicken - gah I knew I’d fuck this up!” you cry, scraping your trembling hands through your hair, eyes flashing around the room wildly as your cortisol rises, making you want to run and scream at your failure to feed your friends.

“Whoa - where’s this coming from? C’mon, look at me. Look at me, Nush,” Marcus has his hands on either side of your shoulders, squeezing them gently, “There’s enough here to feed our whole office for the week with the daals you prepared yesterday, the vegetables we’re about to make and the meats that we’ve cooked up already here. Andy is bringing all the rice and naan, Kiri is bringing beers and Dian is on gin and tonic duty. You have done more than enough and I will not allow you to get this upset over one missing ingredient especially when there is a small store downstairs that I’m sure will have it, if we cannot find it after we look for it together.”

After seeing your numb nod as an agreement, Marcus moves his hands to the side of your head to focus your gaze on him rather than the panic seeping through you. As he strokes his thumbs across your cheeks, you allow your eyes to close and your breathing to regain a normal pattern.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologising?” Marcus searches your now open eyes.

“My reactions are ridiculous. Most people tell me to stop being so stupid and that just whips the storm inside my head even more,” you whisper, “But you. You know how to slow everything down and stop the spinning.”

The corner of Marcus’ mouth twitches, “D’ya wanna know a secret?” You nod at him, “As you know, I was married before. When it ended, I totally spiralled. The world kept spinning too fast and I experienced constant anxiety, very nearly burning out of my role.

“I was lucky. My boss was understanding but made me promise to get some support. He knew of someone mental health trained within the FBI who was there for mainly hostage negotiations - not part of the true psych team but someone who could help without it turning up on your record.

“Kwame worked with me for almost a year - pretty much to the point my decree absolute came through. Our sessions were done on a track - by running with me, he was teaching me the skills I needed to control my fears. By my feet hitting the tarmac, he was grounding me. By going over running techniques, he was teaching me how to control my breathing- taking longer and deeper breaths. And running is just repetition. A mindful repetition that allows your brain to have a bit of a break.

“So when I see you start to spiral, I try to give you the same steps he taught me. Get you grounded, opposite me so you copy my breathing and hope that gets you on the right track.”

“Thank you,” you drop your head forwards, relaxing onto his chest. He feels so - safe.

“You don’t need to thank me. Well, okay maybe you do as look what I’ve just spotted,” Marcus holds the offending spice aloft.

“Oh my god, I could fucking kiss you. You have just saved the curry,” you dramatically declare, clutching the cardamom jar to your heart before placing it next to the other ingredients on the counter.

“Go on then.”

What?

His comment makes you snap your head over to catch Marcus’ tremulous gaze, his eyes darting between the floor and your lips. He takes a small step, closing the small distance between the two of you, threading his fingers between yours. Each slow movement offers an unspoken opportunity for you to step away. To tease him and move on with the day.

But why on Earth would you?

With your heart racing faster and faster, you lure him ever closer with your eyes, soft but absolute in their conviction of what was about to pass between you. A small part of you understands that when you kiss him, something will change forever. That within his lips you may find the place to call home - the aching in your stomach may cease and life could start to make sense again. The anxieties of the week washing away, the pain of your collective pasts and the hint of a brighter, happier future before you.

When he doesn’t move again, you seize the moment. Pushing up onto your socked tiptoes, you tilt your chin, inclining your face until your lips come to rest upon his in the sweetest, chastest kiss. Drawing back slightly to check that Marcus is okay with a raise of your eyebrows and widened eyes, he holds your gaze steadily, similarly stunned - a mirror of each other with racing hearts and slightly parted lips. It’s like in that moment everything around you ceases to exist as anything other than extraneous nonsense - all the noise inside your head silenced by that one touch.

A small dumbstruck smile creeps across Marcus’ lips before he lowers his head to press another gentle kiss upon you. Then another. Then another. Each press of your lips a little longer. A little deeper. Your lips part to allow his tongue entry as every single thought is quietened by the taste of him. Dropping hands for his to cradle your face and yours to thread through his hair as your bodies press together tightly.

Oh the taste of him is utterly exquisite! From where you’ve been using him as chief curry taster, there’s an element of spices with the tiniest hint of mint. And how you have missed having that beautifully solid warmth of his body next to yours. Inhaling his breaths that fall upon you, your hearts match each other’s rhythms as your lips explore each other, every sensation drawing together to create a humming ball of energy, like you are standing at the point where lightning strikes the Earth.

✪✪✪✪✪

Hands fisted tightly in each other’s clothing - both stuck in the quandary of wanting to tear the fabric from your bodies but also frightened of pushing the other too far. Finally pulling apart, you gaze upon Marcus - all lust blown pupils and dopey smiles. Your foreheads come back to rest against each other, unable to quite let go just yet, not wanting to break the spell and return to reality.

“I have wanted to kiss you since perhaps the first time I met you,” Marcus murmurs as his lips gently ghost over your cheeks, “Maybe even from seeing the photo in your file when Andy drove me here from the airport.”

“Was the person, me?” You quietly ask, finally with the confidence to finish that conversation, “The reason you didn’t kiss or sleep with the goddess?”

He drops his eyes as he gives you a small nod, “Normally, I’d have just asked you out but I was scared of fucking up. It’s been a long time since I felt a spark with anyone.

“You’ve entered my life in this whirlwind of intelligence, beauty and tenderness - I didn’t want to frighten you or make you feel uncomfortable if you didn’t reciprocate.”

A thousand thoughts flood your mind as Marcus says those words. All at once, you want to tell him how safe he makes you feel. How much now that you’ve started kissing him, you never want to stop. How the cruel critics of slumber, silence themselves when you feel his heartbeat against your cheek.

Instead you stand there, silent.

Trying to stroke out the creases you’ve created in his t-shirt as you attempt to find words to put into a logical order, you notice his face twitching when the material under your fingers makes contact with his sides, “Oh Marcus, are you ticklish?”

“Um, no,” Marcus tries to deny breezily as he takes a small, hesitant step back from you, pretending to steady himself.

Making a small movement towards him, your hands at the same level as the point of the bunched fabric - you ask, “Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah,” Marcus is now eyeing you suspiciously - desperate to kiss you again but also a little worried as to what havoc your fingers might reek.

“Then, why are you moving away from me?”

“No reason…” his usually deep voice now a little tighter and higher, “Nush… What are you about to ARGH!”

His knees crumble beneath him as you attack his sensitive sides, “Gah! Quit it, woman,” he weakly commands between wheezes and hoots of laughter.

Taking full advantage of Marcus’ prone and vulnerable position, you take the opportunity to straddle him - effectively pinning him to the floor, “This is how you pin someone.”

“I let you pin me,” Marcus corrects you with a wink.

“Oh really?” you contest, entirely unconvinced by his bravado.

“Yeah,” he says with a small wiggle, bringing his hands to the back of your head, “Cos y’see, I can flip our positions quite easily.”

Suddenly, you find yourself flat on your back in Marcus’ kitchen with zero air in your lungs to form any sensible thought other than to kiss him hard. His large hands cradle your head as he props himself gently above you on his elbows. You feel his entire body covering yours. Deliciously pressing against every single inch of you and oh how it takes every bit of the minutismal amount of self control you have to not beg him to fuck you senseless into that floor.

✪✪✪✪✪

“Shit, is that your door?”

“Fuck,” Marcus pushes himself up to kneeling between your legs, “Can we pretend we’re not in?”

The harsh realisation of an evening with your colleagues, albeit lovely people, sinks in to you both.

“Nope,” you groan, popping the p with a deflated gusto, “Hang on, don’t buzz them up until I’ve tucked my boobs back into my bra.”

“I dunno, makes for easier access,” Marcus lopsidedly grins with a wink as he heads for the door.

“You certainly didn’t seem to make hard work of it earlier,” you mumble at him, before you affix a smile to your face, “Hey! How are you all doing?”

A sea of never ending hugs envelopes and separates you from Marcus as everyone piles into his apartment. The stupid grin still firmly in place on your face since you’d first kissed, you find that every time you look over at him, he’s gazing right back, mirroring that lovestruck smile.

“Oh my god, it all smells so amazing,” Dian waxes lyrical, squeezing you tightly as she inhales a lungful of exotically scented air, “What’ve we got?”

You take her by the hand into the kitchen to show all the different things you had bubbling away. Andy ducks into the kitchen behind you, laden with bags filled with pilau rice, naan and chapatis, and a beautiful small bunch of spring flowers in his other hand - tiny tête-à-tête daffodils with multiple heads along each stalk, brilliant yellow and red tulips standing like soldiers and the otherworldly looking stems of hyacinth, wickedly scenting the air under your nose as he thrusts them under there.

“Hey pretty girl, here’s all the bits you asked for. You deserve a much bigger bunch for what I’ve roped you into but I know you love the early blooms,” he offers by way of apology, sticking a kiss to the side of your forehead, “Smells fucking good though as ever. Hope you don’t mind but I’ve brought a box to take some home for Greg - he was a jealous arse this evening so I suppose I should share.”

“You know the way I cook, enough for several small armies,” you wonkily grin at him, truly thankful for the part he’d had to play, “‘Fraid there’s no easy way to say this and you will have to be the one to break it to Greg, but there’s no butter chicken tonight.”

“You’d better have a damn good excuse for this slatternly behaviour, madam,” Andy gives you a serious side eye for this infraction.

“Well…”

“Initially Nush couldn’t find the cardamoms but then we ran out of time. Plenty of food here, though,” Marcus answers for you, his hand gently holding your hip as he reaches around you to grab a couple of beers from the fridge.

You see Andy catch Marcus’ hand lightly stroking your side as he walks back to Kiritopa, but are entirely grateful when his expression and mouth say nothing. The light chatter in the kitchen, whilst Dian dips a teaspoon into all the pots, is interrupted by a small knock at the door. Sticking your head around the kitchen door, you spot Marcus opening the door to a nervous-looking Harper. Andy sidles past you, to pull her into the main room, rather than her previous position of standing on the doorstep, utterly awkward and obviously feeling quite out of place.

“Hi, I hope you don’t mind me coming. I know I wasn’t there Friday but I don’t really do large crowds and drinking.”

You walk over to her amidst the chorus of “not to worry”s and “lovely to see you”s, “Fancy something to drink now? Got plenty of soft options and I think I’ll stick alongside you as I’ve got to make sure I don’t burn stuff.”

“Including yourself, this time,” Harper retorts quickly with a small smile and a raise of her eyebrows.

“Hah, chance’d be a fine thing,” Andy laughs, slapping your shoulder before turning back to clink bottles and talk with Kiri and Marcus.

✪✪✪✪✪

Through the full length doors of Marcus’ balcony, evening spring sunshine streams through, bathing the group of your co-workers in a gentle, diffused light that flows around the room coating you in a golden glow. You all eat your fill and then some, with full tummies and tired eyes - the kitchen still full of half eaten dishes.

“Can we make this a weekly thing?” Kiritopa asks through a mouthful of food, hopefully.

“Not unless we take it in turns or get a take away - I don’t have the physical or emotional energy to make this level of curry every weekend,” you pointedly remark, looking up from your coke to meet Marcus’ eyes.

You’ve spent the evening barely speaking to each other for fear of alerting the others but surreptitiously brushing past so that you can sneak touches. Tender hidden strokes that feel like the kindest stitches on hidden, gaping wounds.

Marcus stands up to help usher the evening to an end and get you to himself again, “I have some boxes for y’all to take food home as otherwise, I’ll be eating this for weeks - delicious as it is.”

Everyone thankfully takes their boss’ hint and head into the kitchen to grab platefuls to reheat after long days. Slowly saying their goodbyes, your friends drift off in the direction of their homes as you throw yourself in an exhausted heap of bones on his sofa. Two strong hands grip you under your arms, to drape your torso across his lap.

“Hey tired girl,” you slightly open your eyes to spy a smiling Marcus gazing down at you. His fingers draw lazy patterns over the sensitive skin of your neck.

“I’d like to take you on a proper date this week. Wanna do this properly. Make a bit of a fuss.”

“Yeah? Not just pin me down and ravish me on the kitchen floor?” you grin widely at him.

“Well, I’d hardly call that a ravishing…” your eyes widen, eyebrows raising at Marcus’ comment, excitement pooling in your tummy, “Yeah, I saw there’s an Argentinian restaurant in Blackheath so how about steak, Malbec and homemade ice cream before I bring you back to either yours, or mine, for another, even better ravishing?”

“That sounds amazing, although with the amount of food in my belly, I may never have to eat again,” you give your stomach a rub, “But the ravishing…”

Hauling you up to sitting across his lap, you protest loudly, “I am going to crush your legs.”

“Stop making ridiculous comments and c’mere,” Marcus demands as he gently turns your head towards him, stealing a delicate kiss from you.

“I...should… - argh! Stop kissing me for a second,” you beg halfheartedly, “I should go home.”

“Stay.”

“Please stay,” Marcus desperately entreats you, “I’m not expecting anything but I’d love it if you stayed. I know you’ve got nothing here but give me two minutes and I can have a spare toothbrush for you. I’ll drop you home early tomorrow morning so you can grab some clothes and then we can go into work together?”

It feels as though the wind is knocked out of your lungs with the depth of Marcus’ need to be around you.

How does he do it?

“There’s no games with you, are there?” you twist in Marcus’ lap so that you now straddle his thighs, placing your hands on either side of his ridiculously handsome face.

“No,” he shakes head slowly, all the while holding eye contact with you, “I’m too old and I know what I want.”

“What’s that?”

Stroking his hands up and down your sides as he nuzzles your neck, he clearly and confidently declares,

“You.”

Tag list of glory (as ever, please ask to be put on or dropped from the list): @astroboots @silverwolf319@sirowsky @leonieb @disgruntledspacedad @bison-writes @the-ginger-hedge-witch @danniburgh @sugarontherims @green-socks @tardisfangurl @absurdthirst @pedropascalito-deactivated20210 @mouthymandalorian @mrsparknuts @zukoyonce @agirllovespancakes @yespolkadotkitty @lunaserenade @theravenreads @lv7867 @songsformonkeys

#pedro pascal #josé pedro balmaceda pascal #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal #ppascaledit #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x reader #marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #the mentalist #the mentalist fanfic #marcus pike x oc #marcus pike x oc reader

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Blood calls to blood.

It Does My Heart Good: Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 || Chapter 7 || Chapter 8 || Chapter 9 || Chapter 10 || Chapter 11 || Chapter 12 || Chapter 13 || Chapter 14 || Chapter 15

“That’s it, Rab!”

Jamie almost doubled over, breathing heavily, beaming with joy as his six-year-old son pedaled down the road on his bike, wobbling just a bit.

“No training wheels, Da!” Rab shouted, almost not believing it himself.

Jamie took deep, heaving breaths. “Claire!” he croaked. “Where are ye?”

Claire poked her head out of an upstairs window, peering down at her husband and son in the street. “What? Everybody all right?”

“Mama, look!” Just then Rab pedaled back to the house.

“Oh, lovie!” Quickly she darted inside, raced down the stairs, and flew out of the door, almost colliding with Jamie who still clutched to the mailbox to hold himself steady. 

Rab absolutely glowed, smiling ear to ear as he pedaled back and forth in front of his parents. “Look, Mama and Da!”

Slowly, carefully, Jamie pulled his phone from his front shirt pocket to take a video of Rab racing up and down the street, giddy with joy. 

“Has he fallen yet?” Claire asked, trying to not sound worried.

Jamie shrugged. “He’s a boy. It happens.”

“That’s not exactly comforting - ”

“Have ye had a message from Bree today?” he interrupted uncharacteristically.

Her brow furrowed. “No. Why?”

Jamie held out his phone so that his wife could see the screen. It was a text from Brianna, sent about half an hour previous: I need to see you and Claire tonight. We’re fine. I’ll explain later.

Silently Claire counted to five before responding. “Well I’m worried.”

Jamie watched as Rab ground the bike to a halt at the end of the road, stood up, caught his breath for a bit.

“I hope it isnae the bairn. She’d tell us, aye?”

Brianna and her husband Roger were expecting their first child - Jamie and Claire and John and Isobel’s first grandchild. It had been a surprise - Brianna had become pregnant only about three months after her wedding and six months after starting her new job, and although the two of them were young and early in their respective careers, they loved and cared for each other. And they could provide for a baby - a baby that clearly they both wanted.

Claire nodded. “She would. Same if it was some kind of problem with Roger. I know it’s been stressful, and that they’re still trying to plan for what they’ll do when she goes back to work.”

Jamie tucked his phone back into his pocket and wrapped an arm around Claire’s shoulder. “The puir child has four grandparents to care for it, not to mention two decrepit great-uncles who have gladly said they’ll be full-time carers.” That was true - Lamb and his partner Fez had told Brianna as much during the dinner they’d organized to celebrate her pregnancy. With Lamb retired and Fez on sabbatical for the next year - and with Isobel Grey only working part time, and with Jamie himself fully in control of his schedule at the bookstore, this child had an entire network of people to ensure his or her comfort and care.

“I can’t help but worry.” Claire sighed. 

Jamie squeezed her shoulder. “You’re her Mam. It’s your job to worry.”

Rab raced his bike down the road again, whizzing past them, hitting a rock, and wiping out in spectacular fashion.

“Thankfully he’s wearing his jeans today,” Claire muttered before racing over to her son, too drunk with joy to feel any pain.

---

“That’s a huge scrape you’ve got there,” Brianna politely observed as her brother showed off his skinned knees.

“Yeah. And I was even wearing pants! Mama said it was a good thing I didn’t wipe out in the dirt.”

Bree smiled, rubbing her six-month-pregnant belly. “That’s certainly true.”

“How old were ye when ye learned to ride a bike?” Jamie spooned up the last of the peas Claire had made to go with the roast chicken and mashed potatos she and Bree had cooked for dinner.

Brianna frowned, thinking. “I think I was about seven. It was the summertime, I remember that. I was wearing shorts, and my legs were covered in bruises and my arms were covered in mosquito bites.”

Rab wrinkled his nose. “Gross.”

She laughed. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

Jamie swallowed his last bite and stood, pushing his chair away from the table. “All right, wee Rab. Help me clear the dishes. Bree - you and Claire can sit in the living room if ye like?”

Carefully Bree stood, stretching. “Sounds like a great idea.” 

Claire stood too, and took Bree’s hand. Bree squeezed it, and together they retreated to the soft chairs in the room off of the dining room.

For a while they sat next to each other on the couch, not speaking, listening to the low hum of Jamie’s voice speaking quietly to Rab and the clink of dishes and silverware as they washed and dried. Claire wanted Bree to make the first move, but soon enough Bree spoke.

“I had a realization this morning. Well, two, really. And I wanted to talk to you about it.”

Claire nodded. Patient.

Brianna looked down at her lap as she spoke. “The first is...I almost feel terrible for saying this, but I’m glad not just that you’re a doctor, but that you’re my mother, and I can talk to you about being pregnant and all of the weird things about it, because I can’t talk to my Mom about it.”

“Because she was never pregnant,” Claire said softly.

Bree nodded. “I feel terrible even thinking that - she’s the greatest Mom, and she’s known me all of my life, but -”

“But it helps to talk to someone who has experienced it firsthand. I understand.”

“I remember when you were pregnant with Rab - I  remember asking you all about it, and learning about it. Because I’d never had that growing up. But it’s all so different now.” She paused. “I feel terrible even saying that about my Mom.”

Gently Claire rubbed the back of her daughter’s hand. “Don’t feel bad. I think she’d understand. And I’m so glad that I can help you, Bree. That this is another thing we can share.”

Bree swallowed, still not looking up at her. Claire felt her daughter’s hands shake with emotion.

“Are you all right, honey? Is everything all right with Roger?”

Bree let out a breath. “Oh, Claire, he’s so wonderful. He takes such good care of me. He’s a goofball and it’s really, really endearing.”

“I’m so glad you have that love in your life. Having a child with the man you love - it’s an incredible experience.”

Inexplicably Bree began to sob. Working from an instinct she couldn’t even begin to name, Claire leaned in to hold her daughter close. Comforting her, sheltering her as she cried and cried and cried.

“What’s wrong?” she crooned softly. “You can tell me anything, lovie.”

Brianna hugged Claire even tighter. “The other thing I realized today,” she whispered, “is that I can’t even begin to imagine my life without this baby in it. And then I realized that that’s exactly what you had to do, with me.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Claire rubbed her back soothingly. “That was different. I was unmarried and alone.”

“But still - I feel such a bond with him already, and I can’t imagine disrupting that. For most of the time before I was born, you knew me - and you knew that you wouldn’t be able to keep me.”

“Yes. But I made that choice. Jamie and I made that choice together, because it was the best choice we could make for you.”

“I can’t even imagine making that choice.” Bree took a deep, shaky breath. “And it really, really hit me today. I feel like I finally understand. And I want you to know...” Now she pulled back to look at Claire, wiping away the tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I want you to know that I love you so much more for what you did for me. Because I don’t know if I’d ever have the strength to do that.”

Tears welled in Claire’s own eyes. “Jamie said something to me, before we left each other in Glasgow, during those few precious weeks we had together when we knew you were coming and before I came back to Boston. He said - love forces a person to choose. You do things you never imagined you could do before.”

Bree smiled tearfully. “He’s right.”

Claire wiped away her tears, and cradled her cheek. “Of course he is. I kept saying that to myself over and over and over before you were born, and after you were born, and after I’d moved to North Carolina.”

“I’m sorry if I scared you earlier today when I texted Jamie. I just - ”

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

Just then Rab darted into the room, oblivious to his sister’s tears. “Ice cream for dessert?”

Bree sniffed and looked at her watch. “Roger should be here in fifteen minutes or so. Mind if we wait until  then?”

Rab careened out of the room, intent on setting another place at the dining room table.

“Had I not made an adoption plan for you, Bree - I never would have had Rab.”

Bree turned to her mother, incredulous. “Oh my God. You’re right.”

Claire smiled tightly. “So. Everything is worthwhile. You never know the happiness that will come from the sadness.”

Bree squeezed her hands. “My life has become so much happier with you and Jamie in it. And Rab, too.”

Claire’s heart soared. “Oh, lovie. Ours too. Ours too.”

#;mod gotham #adoption au #Anonymous

[hope-to-hell]

A Possession, part three: Dissolution. August Walker x Henry Cavill. Warnings for the entire fic: possession, dubcon (possession-related; our hero never asked for this), mentions of past torture (prior to story events), some degradation, praise kink. Roughly 6k words altogether. Section heading titles largely pulled from whatever music I was listening to at the time. This is it: the last chapter. A little smut, a little angst. Nothing lasts. Part one is here, part two is here

—-

Shake, shake

—-

Somehow, impossibly, you make it more than a week without touching him. And somehow, you figure out a way to exist in the same space. Thank god for quarantine, at least, so you have an excuse to stay at home, to keep this weirdness out of the public eye.

Walker turns out to be a surprisingly competent cook, but hesitates when you ask what his favorite foods are. And despite everything, it’s so hard to shake the feeling of being a host, of providing for your guest, however uninvited he might be. So you make a grocery order and start in on the best dishes you know: pies and roast lamb, hamburgers, risotto, whatever comes to mind when you think of meals you’ve enjoyed. He eats them all dutifully, but it’s not until you hit upon rainbow trout in parchment that you get your first real sigh of pleasure. Huh. You would’ve pegged him for a red meat kind of guy.

And everything you do, everywhere you go, he’s there, watching. Considering. Ten feet away.

It’s like this. One evening he braces one hand against the wall of the shower and drops his head in a pose you know so well. You don’t mean to look, but Christ, he must want you to. Must, because he draws open the shower door to stare straight at you from under his sopping curls as he fists his cock. Must, because he kicks his legs apart to press hard behind his balls with his other hand. Must, because he hisses your name like a curse when he paints the bathroom floor white. And the whole time his eyes are locked on yours.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he says again, and somehow you find the voice to answer.

“Wouldn’t mind isn’t good enough. You’ve got to tell me you want it.” And you have the satisfaction of seeing August Walker poleaxed, however briefly. He hmms a little, thoughtfully, and brushes past you into the bedroom, water droplets shining on the curve of his ass. His gait hitches as he approaches the limits of separation, and you hurry to follow, clean enough to get by for another night but feeling filthier than you have any right to. And when you slide carefully under the covers, he inhales deeply, like he’s scenting you. He smiles, victorious, in the half-dark as you lie there with both hands fisted in the sheets just like you have for days, but now you know exactly what he looks like when he comes.

Fuck.

He escalates, because of course he does. He waits until you’re soaking up sunshine in the kitchen window, then presses in close to cage your body against the counter. He brushes scarred fingertips down the side of your face, and it’s like your mind has been ripped straight out of your body. You feel him touching you, and fuck. You feel him touching you. It’s the strangest sensation, touches doubling and echoing. Licking into his mouth and tasting your own tongue, pulling him in by the hips and feeling matching bruises rise on your own body. And from the way he surges against you, he must feel it too.

Remember. Your nerves are my nerves. You want me to say it? Here it is, directly from my mind to yours. I. Want. This.

This is the part of the movie where it fades to black, where the last thing the audience sees is the lovers, entwined, maybe a flash of light on a naked thigh. This is the part where the music swells, climaxes, spills into silence.

This is the part where the next scene is either a soft, affectionate embrace or a hasty exit from the bed, a quick redressing and an angsty downtempo tune, maybe a walk in the rain.

This is the part where he starts to rise, where you wrap your hand around his wrist and whisper, “stay.”

—-

Untethering

—-

It isn’t clear, at first, what’s happening. A little extra hair in the drain is easy to explain away; you’ve got two people sharing the shower now. Same with the bruising that appears on his arms, his back, his ribs, because for all he grips at you, you give back in equal measure. And if he takes a little longer in the shower than before, if he seems to spend an awfully long time just leaning back and letting the spray hit him, well, maybe he’s finally relaxing a little.

It’s days and days of rutting against one another, of watching in the mirror as he takes you apart. And he loves it, that grinding ache in his fingers as he presses them inside you. He loves it, and you know because you feel it; you feel an answering ache in your own hands and a twinge in your cock that’s almost but not quite unlike anything you’ve felt before (it’s close, so close, to the first time, when he was still just a voice in your head).

Somehow, it’s still a surprise when he shakes you awake and hisses, “Get inside me. Now.” And when you reach for him, a little hesitant because you’ve had each other in nearly every way except this, you taste something strange and metallic, chilly on your tongue. He’s anxious, desperate. The metallic taste increases in its intensity as he surges at your mouth, licking into you with savage competency.

“Are you—“ are you sure is what you want to say, but he’s pressing lube at you with one hand while trying to tear your sleep pants off with the other, and it feels like he’s got half a dozen hands roaming all around you, and it’s unfair because he knows exactly what this does to you, exactly how you respond to every touch. It’s overwhelming, and soon you lose that peculiar metallic taste in the static that sparks hot down your spine and right into where you swell and pulse with the sudden desperate need of him.

And you want to watch his face, watch those eyes shine in the darkness, want to rub your face against his as you open him but he’s turning away, over, hitching a knee under himself and reaching blindly back for your hand. “Now,” he grits out in a voice like the bottom of a dry well. And it’s too soon, has to be, before he’s demanding two and then three fingers and then “godfuckingdammit, that’s enough. Get in me already.”

And when you press into him it’s, fuck, for a moment your vision whites out and you are nowhere, hurling aimlessly through a great expense of nothing, and it’s simultaneously the most terrifying and exhilarating thing you’ve ever felt. Is it like this for him? Can’t be, he’s always so controlled, so precise. It’s impossible even to think like this,

I’ll think for you. Don’t worry, just act.

so you don’t think, and when you return to your body it’s to find yourself draped over him, clinging, rolling your hips like a ship in a storm. Desperation doubles back and builds on itself until you feel as though if you don’t come right now you will die. And you don’t want to die, but you also aren’t sure what the rules are, so you try to withdraw and that’s when his hand closes around your wrist, hard and tight and don’t you fucking dare.

And that’s it, that’s all it takes, his touch and his blessing, before you’re spilling inside him in long shivering pulses. And even then, even when he clenches so tight around you it’s like he’s pulling all the blood from your body, he doesn’t let you go.

You stay with him, in him, until you soften and slip free, and when you wrap an arm over his belly he lets you. He feels warm, as relaxed as he ever gets, and most of all relieved. “Better?” you ask, and in return he twists his neck, rolling his shoulders back till he can reach to kiss you. It’s soft, but almost mathematical in its precision. And he still tastes like metal.

—-

Waves and light (how bold I was)

—-

He’s stopped sleeping. In the night you reach for him and find the bed cold. He’s there, of course, ten feet away, staring out the window. He’s all hard muscle, luminous in the moonlight, a demigod or an avenging angel. He turns and tilts his head, and you can see his breath hang frosty in the air. You wake in the morning to find him still standing at the window, and for a split second you could swear the light passes right through him.

He’s stopped sleeping, and he hovers a little closer than he used to but he doesn’t touch, not until you sigh and tell him to “get over here. C’mon. I don’t have to touch you to know you’re worried about something.”

So you enclose him in the circle of your arms, bump your face against his scars to feel that little spark, that staticky sensation from nerve damage, to feed him the pleasure that touching him brings. You breathe softly, saying nothing, until he relaxes by degrees.

He smells like blood, but then again he always does. Chaos and death are embedded into every fiber of his being. If he were to shed his skin, to slither pink and naked into the world as a man reborn, maybe it would be different. But he is who he is, and you are who you are, although tangled like this it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. One of you sparks a slow-burning arousal, the kind that takes hours to come to a head if it does at all, a slow soft yearning. You sigh into it, nuzzling at him a bit, feeling your stubble scrape across his cheek. Like this, you can almost forget who and what he is.

And he hears you, huffs a little. What I am doesn’t matter anymore, not outside these walls. And I—

He sucks in a breath, harsh and wet, sucking air up from your lungs. It burns, scraping bloody up your throat.

Metal again. And pressed against him like this, you can catch the echoes of fear, of a strange sort of dissolution. Light through greasepaper, snow drifting through broken windows. Shoulders straining against his jacket. Blood and bone and a lonely valley. Trying to breathe but the shards of his ribs dig into his lungs—

Oh.

Oh fuck. You realize, then, that he’s dying, pulled back to that moment. None of this mattered in the end; all it did was delay the inexorable march of fate. You can almost see it happening, scars brightening and blooming into wounds, bruises rising where he hit the ground. And you hear it too, the slow scrape of metal across the floor, the heavy tread of boots and a soft susurration of fabric. She’s here.

And it’s strange: you’d expect her to revel in this, finally capturing this soul that’s eluded her for so long. But it’s almost like she’s trying to be comforting. Things fall apart. Entropy comes for us all, in the end. And you got more time than most.

Listen, I don’t want to you have to go. His fingers tremble against yours, coppery fear blooming heavy on your tongue.

I’m not unkind, you know. It’s just the way it has to be. Think of this as a gift. Better than falling apart piece by piece, isn’t that right?

Is it? Maybe, with more time, you could figure something out, maybe if he took just a little more, a few of your years, you don’t need that much time, you could spare him that—

No. Hey. We. We had a good run, didn’t we? Just, remember me. Please.

He’s terrified, pulse rabbiting in his chest, fingers clutching yours as the scythe descends. And you feel it when the connection breaks, tension dissolving as he fades, the cruel hard core of him pulling free from your chest. Your hand is your hand again, grasping at nothing. He manages a smile, almost, shimmering through a film of tears. Hey, listen. I—

And then he’s gone, nothing more than motes of dust in the air, as you blink hard, trying to pull him back into your sight.

—-

Epilogue (the last thing inside the box was)

—-

You see him sometimes, a flash of cold eyes in the crowd or a particular way someone has of standing. You listen to the wind, and watch frost crawling up the windows in winter, and you miss him.

You return to the world, you smile and wave and show your teeth. It’s not a real smile, not quite, but you’ll get there. You always have.

You bake trout in parchment, and American biscuits, and you eat alone.

On a wintery afternoon you climb aboard a packed train, mercifully anonymous in the crowd. Your bare hand brushes against a stranger’s. You feel a spark, pins and needles, like a waking limb.

#henry cavill #august walker #my fic #mission impossible #mission impossible fallout #Henry cavill fic #august walker fic #Henry cavill smut #august walker smut #august walker x henry cavill smut #august walker x henry cavill #mission: impossible fallout fic #mission: impossible smut

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

tapestry 👑 X

Warnings: eventual dark elements (tags to be added as fic continues)

This is dark!(king)Steve and explicit. 18+ only.

Summary: King Steven had a wandering eye but you never thought it would fall upon you.

This Chapter: The court celebrates the last hunt.

Note: Okay, so I called in today because of my anxiety at the suggestion of my boytoy and he told me to sleep in a bit. He’s not a doctor, but he’s got a PhD (pretty huge dick) so I have to listen. But I got this chapter done last night so y’all still get your fix, lol.

Also, I have to thank you guys, I really can’t thank you enough. I am in love with this fic and truly in your discussion of it bc yall seem as invested as I am and I just love all the possibilities and how these characters are turning out and it’s all been so much fun. So please, enjoy and remember that I love you (but I will not leave my wife for you, sorry).

(also open to new moodboards for the fic or even playlists for inspo if anyone’s interested. memes always welcome.)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋 You guys rock!

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply! Love ya!

You were never one to stand out among a crowd. Were it not for the sling around your shoulder, that would still be true. You suspected, without the king's interest, that would be even more true. But despite your simply cut gown, you could sense the eyes as you entered the hall.

The trestles were set with scarlet cloth and silver plates. You followed the other unwed ladies to the table opposite the lower lords. The king would sit at the high table with several favoured lords and ladies and those of the council not among them would sit along the next. 

You were surprised to spot your father along that group of men, though he did not wear the pin that the other counselors wore. He nodded at you from across the room as he took his seat. You were stopped before you could go behind the trestle by a servant in royal colours. The other ladies glanced over but quickly hid their curiosity.

“My lady,” The servant said. “You are to take the place of honour at the high table.”

“Pardon?” You stepped aside to let Joan pass behind you. 

“The king has declared you the Maiden of the Forest. You must take your proper seat,” The servant insisted. “If you would follow me, my lady.”

“Um,” You glanced to the ladies as they sat along the bench then to the table where your father sat. His eyes narrowed at you as he listened to Lord Callum. “Certainly. As you will.”

You waited for the servant to lead you. You climbed the short steps up to the dais that held the king’s table. Diana and Mable sat with their husbands, Anthony and Samuel, and Lord Barnes stood next to an empty chair to the right of the king’s. The royal couple themselves were upon a short platform that held them another half foot above their guests. 

The servant gestured towards Barnes. “Just down there, lady.” He explained. “With Lord Barnes.”

“Thank you,” You nodded to the man and he quickly departed for his other chores.

As you walked along the table, behind chairs both occupied and not, you stared at the king’s chair. The thought of spending the feast next to him filled you with dread. A blur of movement caught your eye and you found Lord Barnes awaiting you with a smile as you drew nearer.

“My lady,” He took your hand and bowed to kiss your hand dramatically. “The venerable Maiden of the Forest.”

“You mock me,” You accused. “Though I should wonder how a man in such a smock could find the gull to do so.”

“Oh but any silk not dull as stone would seem gauche next to your attire, my lady,” He quipped. “As a second daughter, I am certain you expected a convent but you’ve escaped the habit of yet.”

“I thought you the king’s man, not his jester,” You returned. He politely shifted the chair back for you to sit. “Though perhaps a fool’s cap would suit you better.”

“As much as a bolder shade would bring out your complexion, my lady,” He remarked as you sat. “Do you truly seek to deter the king or is this truly what you consider fashionable?”

“This is what an earl’s daughter can afford,” You said sharply. 

“If only half this court was as self-aware as you, my lady,” He sat beside you, “Perhaps then it would not be so turbulent.”

“Oh, if only,” You agreed.

“The sling, however, does brighten the look,” He added. “How does your shoulder fair?”

“Tender but not so insufferable as my company.”

You looked across the room. Rose was not among the ladies. You hadn’t seen her since before the hunt and heard even less of her. ‘I will see that she is dealt with’, those were the words the king had spoke. The promise he’d made to you though you could not untangle his meaning.

“Oh my lady, I do remember the scene in your chambers,” He intoned. “I am not the worst you must suffer.”

He grinned as you looked to him. Your retort was curtailed by the sound of a horn. You stood at the announcement of the king’s arrival and all bowed as he entered. He wore a rich green brocade slitted with gold silk. The queen’s dress was a similar shade though she did not bear the same poise. Her sharp eyes scanned the hall and fell on you. She pushed her shoulders back and averted her gaze with detest.

Barnes shifted on his feet and peeked over at you out of the corner of his eye. You raised your brows and shook your head. He was not so unconcerned as he pretended to be. The king and queen made their entrance to the blaring of the horn and ascended the dais as their subjects waited and watched.

You kept your head forward as they passed behind you and the queen’s skirts brushed against the legs of your chair. “Snake.” She snarled under her breath for you to hear. You struggled not to flinch at the word and listened as her heels clicked up the step to her perch.

“You handle it better than most.” Barnes whispered as the royal couple sat and their guests followed suit.

“What else can I do but bite my tongue and keep my eyes forward?” You returned as he reached for the decanter and filled his goblet. 

“Wine?” He offered but did not await your answer before he poured it in your cup. “And let me say, I’ve seen a dozen or so women in your position and they often resort to boasting, arrogance even.”

“In my position? And you think--”

“Oh, I know of your modesty,” He assured you as he sipped and servants appeared with platters and began to set them out between silver plates. “Though such restraint is almost unknown at this court. I suspect that’s why the king has remained so persistent.”

You drank from your cup and glanced over at the king. You worried he would overhear. He was entirely distracted by Eleanor’s whispers though barely entertained. He scowled as his eyes swept the ceiling and he huffed in response.

“He has persisted before, has he not?” You kept your voice low.

“A month, maybe two, and only after he obtained his prize.” He paused as a platter was set between you. “You only expedited Rose’s downfall but you didn’t cause it.”

“Is that your expectation? A month, maybe two for me?” You wondered. “It is not that I do not expect the same treatment, only that I’d hope to avoid the same end.”

“I don’t know what to expect,” He shrugged as he speared a slice of venison from the platter. “For so long as I’ve known the king, I’ve not quite seen him as I did in your chamber.”

“Surely he must’ve promised the same to other ladies.” You took a smaller piece and scooped some roasted veggies upon your plate.

“Jewels and fancy baubles only,” He said. “Eleanor is a princess herself, even without the marriage. What he intends is not so easily done as said.”

“And you think he truly means to do it?” You hovered your fork above your plate as you stared at him. Despite the edge of his tongue, he proved to be the most honest at court.

“I think he means to have you,” He cut into his venison, “And there is little that can stop him once he has his mind set.”

You looked to your plate and pushed a piece of potato around the silver. Your stomach knotted as you pondered cutting your meat with one hand.

“My lady,” A whisper distracted you. You looked over as the king leaned down. “I should ask after your health.”

“I am well,” You assured him. “My arm does not bother me so much but I must avoid straining it further.”

“Well enough to dance?” He ventured as his eyes lit up. “Being the Maiden of the Forest, it would be expected you take up the boards.”

“A dance.” You assured him, “But not many more. I fear the sling would make me far more ungainly than I already am.”

“A dance, a smile, I relish in all that you allow me, my lady,” His eyes flicked down for just a moment. “And what of the gifts I have given you?”

Your eyes rounded for a moment before you recalled the opal necklace still hidden in your trunk. “Oh, your highness, how forgetful I am. It has all been so hectic I’ve not even the thought to wear it, though it is the finest piece I’ve ever owned.”

“I should like that you would,” He reproached. “As a marker of my love for you.”

You looked down and nodded. “I will have to remind myself,” You said quietly. “I do forget myself so often.”

“Oh, but lady, do not punish yourself,” He said softly. “For I bear you no anger, I only wish to see you well.”

“And I do thank you for your concern,” You looked up at him. “It means very much.”

“I think of nothing else,” He assured you, “No one else.”

He bowed his head and sat up. The queen’s eyes glared across the room as she ignored her husband’s conversation with you. You sat back and took another drink. Barnes was smiling as he swallowed his mouthful.

“While I admire your grace, I know you are rather adept at rancor. Perhaps you would be best to prove the same to him.” He mused. “Oh, it might solve many problems should you speak with more than a lamb’s tongue.”

“I am honest--”

“Oh but you coat it in honey,” He interjected. “Our king is wise. Should you bite him once, he might just leave you alone.”

“And should he choose to swat me down instead?”

“Despite what you’ve known of him, he is not entirely irrational,” He said coolly. “Perhaps he might realize his wife is not so vile after all.”

“Perhaps,” You mulled as you prodded a slice of carrot, “Or perhaps it is too late for even that.”

👑

The night wore on. Your shoulder ached; from the tension, from the stiff chair, from your general discomfort. The king would lean down to speak to you every now and then and as he did, all in the hall would notice. Though they tried to be subtle, you did not miss their intrusive eyes.

Lord Barnes did not hide his awareness either. At times, he'd lean back and speak to the king around you. The queen's malice radiated from the other side of the king but she would not acknowledge her husband's obvious disregard.

When the meal came to an end, the horn sounded once more and the platters were cleared. Several courses had left guests joyous and half-drunk.

The king stood before the band could begin to pluck. He held a hand up as he waited for silence. His subjects hushed their chatter and looked to him. He smiled back, a beacon of kingly grace.

"And so we close another season. This marks the beginning of winter and the end of our most bountiful season." His voice carried easily across the hall. "As is tradition we must crown our Maiden of the Forest."

You gulped and looked to Barnes. He smirked at the king's words and scoffed. He leaned back and watched nonchalantly as Steven continued. A servant appeared at the wave of his hand.

"If you would, my lady," He nodded to you as he took a circlet of vines and petals from the servant.

You rose stiffly. He offered his free hand and you took it as he guided you up beside him. The queen kept her head high and you peered out across the hall. Your father was turned around in his chair watching proudly. The servant helped remove your cap.

"In the name of the hunt, I name you our Maiden of the Forest." The king announced as he placed the crown of flowers upon your head. "May you reign this night with grace and joy."

"Thank you, your highness, " Your voice was brittle as your head swayed.

"And to close the old season and open the new, let us dance." He declared. "Maiden, would you grant me your first dance?"

You nodded. At first, your throat was too tight to speak. The queen's hand was balled in a fist upon the table. "Yes, your highness," You managed, "If you can forgive my shortfalls, it is yours."

"Then let us dance!" He boomed.

For a moment, no one moved and then all at once, the band picked up and the nobles began to rise from the tables. They filtered out to the floor as the king led you behind the chairs and from the dais. Barnes did not rise and poured himself another cup.

The king pressed his palm to yours as you came to face each other. You felt awkward and unbalanced with your other arm in its sling. As he moved his feet, you shuffled around him. You hadn't thought your dancing could get worse.

"My lady, I am glad to see you well." He cooed. "I admit I was restless with worry for you."

"Your highness." You said curtly and looked around at the other dancers.

He was silent for a moment as you followed the music.

"Have I wronged you, my lady?" He asked.

"Have you? Oh, how can you not see what you do to me? This court reviles me due to your humiliation of the queen. Your declarations that would allude to adultery."

"My lady, I only mean to honour you and your virtue--"

"What you mean and what you have done are not the same. You would crown me with your wife at your side. You would overlook her for me. You would sully my virtue as you claim to protect it." You glanced over at Barnes as he remained at the table. He looked into his cup as he sloshed it around. "And I have treated you with nothing by reverence and yet you persist."

"I have promised you anon that the woman who claims herself as my wife is none such." He hissed. "But I must gather my evidence before I can make it known. Before I can right what is wrong."

"You promise me what you cannot give. You would rob me of my future for your present desire. Your highness, I cannot hold my tongue further and tolerate you as you are so blatant in your disregard." You pulled away from him. A little bite to warn him; to scare him away. "Your majesty I must return to my former chambers and return to you your gift accepted only under duress for I cannot demean myself for you any longer. Not so long as you sit in sin."

He reeled as if you had struck him. You stepped away as he stared at you, his nostrils flared as his eyes searched you. He lingered between fury and despair.

"My lady, you do mistreat me."

"The truth is not always painless, your highness," You said sternly. "And I do not wish to remain the victim of rumour." You lowered your hand. "It cannot be… good night, your highness. "

You bowed and spun on your heel so quickly you nearly slipped. You lifted your skirts to scurry between the bodies. Your flesh was afire as you fled into the corridor.

You took a breath and continued along the stone floor. You heard the door and looked back to the shadow that followed you. The king found you through the flicker of lanterns and turned to trail you. You rounded the corner as you picked up your feet. 

"My lady," He called after you as his boots echoed on the stone. "Please, do not run from me."

You moved as quickly as you could, the motion jolted your shoulder painfully. He was close as you reached the next corner and he caught your hand before you could evade him. He drew you to face him as he looked down at you.

"Why do you spurn me? Why do you accuse me of spite when all I've shown you is kindness?" He pleaded. His grip slid to your wrist and he squeezed. "Why do you delay me if you do not yearn for what I promise you?"

"You're hurting me," You gasped as his hold grew firmer. "Your highness."

"I give and I give and I give," He stepped closer until you were against the wall. "And you withhold yourself from me."

"You scare me," You breathed.  

"I promise you a union, a crown, and all you could desire and yet you reprimand me and let me suffer so," He was against you. He pressed his body to yours and you felt a hardness beneath his belt.

"And I have not pushed you. I have not violated you. I have waited." He ground his pelvis into you as he crushed your injured arm. "I have not taken you as I have dreamt. I have not come into your chambers as you sleep and taken what I desire." 

He let go of your wrist and grabbed your chin. He forced you to look at him. "Because, my lady, I have decided that I will have you. Not just as my mistress, but as my wife, my queen. Because I don't just want that treasure you hide beneath those skirts," He bent so that his breath was upon your face."I want everything you have because you would deny me of the one thing I asked. "

You gaped up at him and trembled. You winced as his weight pushed on your sore shoulder. He leaned in until his nose touched yours.

"And though, at this moment, I could gather your skirts and take you against this wall, I will not," He pushed his hips harder against you. "Because when I do take you, I will be certain that you shall never elude me again." 

He pressed his lips to yours as he held your jaw in place. You struggled as he seemed like to devour you. You were trapped against the stone; terrified and helpless. He pulled away slowly and rubbed along your cheek with his thumb. 

"My lady, remember my benevolence for my restraint frays." He growled. "Though in the end, my desire will not."

#Steve Rogers #tapestry #dark steve rogers #dark!steve rogers #dark steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers x reader #series #au #Fic #medieval au #dark fic #dark!fic #mcu #marvel #captain america #bucky barnes x reader #Bucky Barnes

[drwcn]

The tragedy of a touch screen is yesterday at 3:08 am I thumbed the little “x” on my screen and deleted an entire answer I’d already written for this ask by closing the browser........I..........am an idiot.

This time, I will save draft.

See, three days ago, I wasn’t gonna even make this lil hc of mine into a thing, but because I am a spiteful creature already living off of coffee and desperation, I thought hell, what else do I have to lose? So it’s a thing now.

“The Price of Promise”!Verse: The first time Lan Qiren saw the woman who would one day be his zhang’sao, the woman who he would proceed to hate and blame for more than half his life, he was just sixteen years old. And she - she was just an assassin dressed in black, perched atop the shingles in Cloud Recesses, on a dark moonless night.

Characters: Qiu Baiti (Madam Lan), Lan Cenrong (Qingheng-jun), Lan Qiren, Zhao Zhuliu (Wen Zhuliu).  

Foreword:

The story, as Lan Xichen knew it, came from an account of this:

“Lan Cenrong, do not force my hand. If you take another step, you will meet the same fate.”

Lan Yueling was there when they finally found Elder Lan Yang, lying crumbled there in the dense wooded valley outside of Gusu.

Lan Yueling was the first on scene, and this was what she saw: the rogue cultivator known as Qiu Baiti stood over Elder Lan Yang’s body, their sect master Lan Cenrong’s sword in her hand, its point at his throat.

Other disciples arrived, one after another, juniors and seniors alike. They froze, gasped, and collectively became witnesses as Qiu Baiti swung Kunlong through the air and pierced Lan Yang with a single, lethal stroke.

The blood that coated Kunlong’s gleaming steel dripped black and thick into the earth.

The witnesses screamed, drawing their weapons and lurching forward, but one gesture from the rogue cultivator had them all flying backwards, like paper dolls caught in the easterly wind. Only Lan Cenrong stood his ground.

You murderess. The disciples cried. You murdered Elder Lan Yang!

Apparently the old man was beloved. Hm. 

Qiu Baiti did not deny their accusations, but Lan Yueling, having gotten there first, was pretty sure Lan Yang had already been dead before they arrived.

Sect Master disarmed Qiu Baiti. Or more truthfully, she allowed herself to be disarmed, choosing to offer no resistance. Sword in one hand, Lan Cenrong took a step closer, his arm coming up to wrap around her waist. That, she allowed too.

Concussed from being thrown back so forcefully,  Lan Yueling struggled to lift her head, but even so, she managed to catch the last sight of Lan Cenrong and that woman before they disappeared in a scatter of pale blue light. There were tear tracks on both their faces, but for what, she could not know. Frankly, she did not want to know.

If Elder Lan Yang were not slain by Qiu Baiti, then....then... The alternate was too frightening to think about.

Soon, Cloud Recesses learned of the murder. Lan Yang’s body corpse was retrieved and honoured, and Qiu Baiti’s guilt was deemed irrevocable. For a week there was no news and they all feared the worst, until on the eighth morning, Lan Cenrong returned with the murderess of his en-shi, who was by then, his wife.

-- The story, as Wen Zhuliu knew it, started much earlier.

Some twenty five years before Lan Yang met his end in that forest, he went on a three-year long journey away from his home in Gusu to cultivate somewhere far and removed from the secular and the distracting. In the mountains of the south, he met a kindred spirit named Guo Lei, a cultivator like himself, but sectless, wild and free.

What happened between them...no one knows, but it had left Guo Lei wasted, decrepit, and bitter until his last days.

That was the man Wen Zhuliu remembered. Neither he nor his da’shijie Qiu Baiti ever knew the bright young man who had invited a rain-soaked Lan Yang into his humble abode in the mountains. The man who had taken them in, raised them, fed them and trained them, the man who they had loved as dearly as a father, was post-Lan. This was a man betrayed, who had the worst happen to him, and had no more forgiveness left to offer the world.

Wen Zhuliu’s da’shijie melted her first core when she was just eleven years old. Shifu had been so proud. He padded her on the head and treated them both to a lamb leg roasted on the open fire. Zhuliu and his sister fell sleep that night under the open stars. Shifu brought them inside to be warmly tucked in, carried them on his back despite his bad leg.

Back then Wen Zhuliu was just Zhao Ming, just xiao-Ming. xiao-Ming was small for a five year old, his golden core barely taking form inside him. Shifu had found him when he was very young, and he did not remember a life before shifu, before shijie.

Those were happy days.

Eventually, xiao-Ming grew up. On his tenth birthday, shifu named him Zhao Zhuliu, and then within a month, shifu died.

They, Guo Lei’s only disciples and only family, buried their shifu behind the house where once he hosted Lan Yang. Shijie dressed them both in hemp mourning robes, and taught him to give his four bows of goodbye before Heaven and Earth. On that hot summer afternoon, they burned stacks upon stacks of joss paper, and when the papers turned to ash, shijie wiped away his tears, took his hand, and led him - led them - onto their path of revenge.

Shifu didn’t leave them much; he’d already given them everything he had. Now, it was their turn to give back, to fulfill the one wish that Guo Lei still had unrealized.

Tear-choked, shijie had knelt by their shifu’s death bed, holding his thin weathered hands in her own and swore upon her life. Lan Yang’s reckoning was coming and she would be the one to deliver it. This, she promised. 

If Zhao Zhuliu had known then that this was a mistake, that as youths they really didn’t know the world for what it was, that sometimes evil disguised itself as kindness and kindness appeared evil, he would have begged his sister to leave it all behind. Powerful as they were, they could’ve gone anywhere, done anything. But shijie was a filial disciple, a good daughter, and above all, she kept her words.

I promise, shifu, I promise that bastard Lan Yang will pay for everything he’s done.

Zhao Zhuliu hadn’t known, but it was a promise that would cost Qiu Baiti everything.

-

Or perhaps, the story could be told like this:

Qiu Baiti came to Cloud Recesses the same way that she left: silently, Bichen at her side, on a dark moonless night.

Lan Qiren remembered both nights well. He remembered the latter because one simply did not forget the sight of one’s beloved brother being utterly destroyed. Lan Cenrong had held his deceased wife in his arms and cried and cried and cried. But Lan Qiren remembered the former because of the terrifyingly embarrassing fashion Qiu Baiti had, within seconds of crossing swords with him, knocked him off the roof, sending him crashing into the shrubbery below, flat on his bottom. 

 Young Qiren had never been so humiliated, so enraged, and so impressed in his sixteen years of life.

He gave chase, across roof tops and watch towers, but the assassin donned in black was fast and agile and impossible to see in the dark. Very quickly, he lost all track of her. He realized then as he desperately searched the ground that he was near his brother’s quarters. A jolt of fear shot up his spine.

xiongzhang!

Panicked, he rushed to Lan Cenrong’s chamber and knocked harshly, mindless of the rules.  

The door cracked open ajar. His brother blinked sleepily at him. “Qiren? What’s wrong?”

“Xiongzhang, forgive the disturbance, but an intruder was spotted while I was patrolling. Are you well?”

“An intruder? In Cloud Recesses? How did he get through our wards?”

“That, I’m not sure, and...I’m not sure it’s a he. As the security officer, this is my oversight. I’m very sorry, xiongzhang. I will call for a thorough search immediately.”

“Ensure our disciples and Elders are safe. Qiren,” Cenrong placed a calming hand on his on his shoulder. “You could not have predicted this. Do not be so harsh on yourself; you’re still young.” 

Qiren smiled, comforted, and rushed off. Through just a half open door, he could not have known about the sharp point of Bichen pressing threateningly into the back of of Lan Cenrong’s neck this entire time. 

“Don’t. Move.” 

~~~

zhangsao 长嫂 - oldest sister in law.  en-shi  恩师 - esteemed/respected teacher 

Lan Yang - 蓝杨 Guo Lei - 郭磊 Lan Cenrong - 蓝岑嵘 Qiu Baiti - 丘百啼 Zhao Ming 赵明， xiao-Ming “little Ming”  *don’t @ me, I know Ming is literally the laziest name I could’ve come up with but I’m tired guys*

《kunlong》 坤隆 - name of Qingheng-jun’s sword  《bichen》 避尘 - Qiu Baiti’s sword, which she left to her son Lan Wangji  

Note: I had originally intended for this to be a background story to my Discordance verse, but then I thought... to hell with it, it works as a canon divergence on its own. I mean... it still is the back story of Lan parents in Discordance, the only thing that is changed is what happens to Wen Zhuliu. Without Wen Ruohan, Wen Zhuliu is alive in Discordance and we’ll get to see him there. Soon. >:) 

#cql #the untamed #gusu lan #qingheng jun #madam lan #wen zhuliu #lan qiren #cql ficlet #corie fics #discau #tpop

[thefamouswhitewolf]

It was hard for Jaskier to hide injuries from Geralt, due to the Witcher’s keen sense of smell. A stab wound from a drunken brawl in a backwater tavern meant enough blood for it to bother Geralt, forcing them to find a healer for stitches and a washerwoman to do their laundry. The scent of Jaskier’s blood was like an acrid sting to his nose and Geralt wanted it gone, even if it cost him decent coin to pay for the washing. 

Sometimes when they kissed, especially after Geralt had had a run-in with some beastly foe, Geralt kissed too hard or nipped too sharply and drew accidental blood from Jaskier. It didn’t smell as bad as panicked blood, and Geralt chalked that up to Jaskier’s overwhelming scent of arousal whenever they really got into it after Geralt fought anything and anyone.

They’d gotten into a fray outside of Posada a decade after they’d first met there, and Jaskier wasn’t exactly showing distress as they settled into their evening routine at their campsite. He got the fire going as usual and drew fresh water from the stream for boiling potatoes to go with Geralt’s swift kill of a young fawn, the task of preparing it keeping the Witcher busy.

Geralt got the meat roasting and washed himself off of the fawn’s blood at the stream, but returned to camp with a wrinkled nose now that it wasn’t filled with the smell of deer blood.

“Jaskier,” he barked, too commanding and a little worried, letting the mild panic colour his tone. “Shirt off. I think you’re hiding something from me.”

The bard looked over with a mildly guilty look on his face and didn’t even refuse in the slightest, removing his doublet and undershirt to reveal his pale, hirsute self and a slowly bleeding knife wound in his side. He tossed the clothes into the grass and winced as he stretched to look down along his own side, feeling the pain but not letting it bother him too much. Might’ve been a shallow cut, but it bled from his continuous movement and lack of care to the wound.

Geralt rumbled in his slightly angry way and went to the saddlebags for a fresh bit of cloth and the bottle of spirits Jaskier used to clean wounds. 

“You know better than to hide these things from me,” he complained, allowing Jaskier to stand while Geralt himself kneeled beside him for a better look at the wound. 

It was shallow, but it also smelled like infection already. Likely a filthy knife from one of the assailants and not an infection picked up along the road in the few hours since the fray. Geralt prodded at the wound and got a hiss from Jaskier, as well as the bard’s hand fisting in the shirt at Geralt’s shoulder. 

“That hurts, you brute!”

“Good. Means you can still feel it. Wound smells sour and I thought it might be a numbing poison. Seems it’s just dirt.”

He dabbed the clean cloth only once into the still-cold water the potatoes sat in, and dabbed at the wound to clean around it. Pouring the spirits onto the now-stained cloth, Geralt curled an arm around Jaskier’s hips to keep him still and pressed the soaked cloth hard against the wound, ignoring Jaskier’s wail of pain from the sting of the alcohol and dodging the slaps the bard was offering as he flailed.

“That hurts worse!”

“But it’ll clean it, now shut up and tolerate it,” Geralt growled right back, dabbing lightly at the now-disinfected wound. He tossed the bit of dirty cloth into the fire and watched it catch immediately from the addition of the spirits, not wanting to wash and keep it in case the wound had still been poisoned somehow. It wasn’t worth the risk of infecting either of them at a later date just to save a bit of cloth.

Geralt stood back up and went back to the stream to wash his hands in case there was poison there too, then returned to Jaskier spreading a bit of poultice onto the wound to keep the dirt out. He complained less and less about the lamb’s fat poultices because they worked.

“Come sit while we wait for dinner,” Geralt said softly, sitting down on the laid-out furs on the smokeless side of the fire. He parted his legs so Jaskier could sit between them, and let the bard make a decision on how he was to cuddle up.

Strong arms circled Jaskier’s waist once he sat back-to-chest against Geralt, stealing the Witcher’s body heat despite the fire before them. 

“Your wounds could get worse when you ignore them, sweet thing,” Geralt whispered, his nose against the warm skin behind Jaskier’s ear. “Please don’t think of them as a burden to care for while we’re on the road together. I’d rather have to make camp and treat your wounds, than suffer through burying you.”

Jaskier hummed, the warmth making him a little dozy. “Couldn’t dig a hole deep enough for me, what with the ground still being frozen. I understand.” 

He was teasing but also being maudlin for maudlin’s sake. They’d been attacked that day, and his mood wasn’t as joyous as it could’ve been. They didn’t die, which should’ve been a plus.

“Just wait until dinner’s ready. You’ll be happy as a pig in its own shit once you’ve got venison and potatoes in your belly.”

Jaskier snorted, a small smile gracing his face. “You do know how much I love a nicely boiled potato.”

#geraskier #musings

[freefallingup13]

Toni AU; The Organization pt. 2

Hey, man, you know those awkward dinner table moments with the family where somebody says something you just... don't agree with and ya'll gotta deal with that for the rest of the meal? Yeah. Yeah that.

Part 1 here

Part 3 here Part 4 here Part 5 here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The clanking of soup spoons against emptying bowls filled the room, cutting through the silent tension. Toni was able to maintain a slightly pleasant demeanor, but Derek's expression was dark as he stared at the centerpiece, stirring his bowl absentmindedly.

"What's wrong, my son?" The figure at the head of the table asked. "Cat got your tongue?"

Derek scoffed as his bowl was taken away and replaced with the entree, a few slices of leg of lamb, with roasted potatoes and creamed kale. "Are we resorting to jokes now? Is that the status of our relationship with each other?"

His father sighed as he picked up his fork. "Well, it certainly seems that you've brought your temper to the table..."

Quietly, Toni sliced off a piece of lamb and placed it delicately on her tongue. Rosemary... garlic... lemon? There seemed to be honey as well.

"Why are we here, father? We've already given you our reports for the day, and I have more work to do. For a man who prides himself on efficiency, you sure are wasting time."

The man smiled at his son. It was not the same smile as earlier. Toni could feel it. Cold. Degrading. She dared not look up, staring at her plate.

"Well, as for the status of our... relationship, I'm glad you were able to get that part across. It will be important in the future, son."

"Cut the crap." Derek seethed, dropping his fork on the plate. He had only taken a bite of the potatoes, Toni noticed. How unfortunate. "I asked you a questio-"

"And I would like to remind you to watch your tone with me, young man."

The other servants in the room froze, and Toni put her fork down to set her hands in her lap. She would most likely have to go soon. Shame - she hadn't yet figured out the kale recipe. She would have to ask later.

Silence returned as Derek glared at his father, debating whether or not to continue to directly challenge him. Toni studied the food on her plate, waiting for them to continue.

"Now." The man pierced the silence, glowering at his son. "As I was saying.

"You understand that as my son, and more importantly, second in command of this organization, that you're going to be taking over the business when I'm done. As I get older, the chance of me letting my guard down will increase. There is a chance that I will be killed or otherwise removed from my position." With the last statement, he cast a glance around the room at his servants, who shifted nervously. Even Toni looked concerned. She knew they had enemies, but she didn't think that he suspected his own employees.

"Oh, that would be too soon..." Mocked Derek, putting his head in his hand and stabbing a piece of meat on his plate. "What a pity."

Toni took a deep breath as she tried to calm down. Derek wasn't fond of his father, but he usually wasn't this offensive unless he was particularly stressed. It seemed as if he'd been overworking himself after all.

"Too soon, indeed." Derek's father replied calmly, though his jaw was clenched. "But you are old enough now that I can set my affairs in order with you in mind."

Derek groaned and dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. "Get to the point, old ma-"

"You're going to be marrying Toni."

Silence stunned the room. A few of the servants dared to whisper to each other, spreading the revelation to the kitchens. All of Derek's attitude vanished into thin air as he stared at his father, who continued speaking. "Besides that, you'll begin receiving tutoring on the weapons we create. You've clearly been working enough that you're well-acquainted with the business and marketing side of the enterprise. As for your day trips, both you and Toni will be-"

"Are... Are you serious?" Derek narrowed his eyes at his father, trying to see if his father was about to laugh, or had any hint of a smile on his face. "About marrying Toni?"

Toni's heart began to sink into her stomach. "Of course." Derek's father raised an eyebrow. "I'm not one to joke around."

A nervous laugh escaped Derek's throat, and he ran a hand over his face. "Why..."

"No clever words? No silly comebacks?" It was now the father's turn to be smug as he leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. Gulping, Derek slowly shook his head, leaning back and slumping in his chair, the knuckles of his fingers pressed against his forehead. Toni looked at him, unable to hide the confusion and pain on her face as his father continued speaking about combat and tactical training. Why did it trouble Derek so much? Was it that wrong for them to marry each other?

"Did you have any idea about this, Toni?" Derek's gaze met hers, slowly getting angry. Not annoyed, this time. Truly angry. "Was this your idea?"

The question stunned her for a few moments, and she waved her hands, completely forgetting the food flicking off of her fork onto the table. "I- No, Master! I had no idea. I… I didn't know!" Desperation invaded her voice as he glared at her, unconvinced. He opened his mouth to speak again, standing up, and her voice died in her throat. Why was he so angry?

"Calm down, Derek. Toni didn't know that this was my plan, and the idea was my own," spoke his father from the end of the table. "You can stop suspecting her now."

"Your plan!?" Derek yelled, slamming his hands on the table and directing his anger at his father. "Your plan is to take away my free will and write my entire life for me!?"

Oh. Thank goodness. Toni began to relax, putting a hand on her chest. He wasn't angry about marrying her, he was angry abou-

"Why would I marry Toni!?"

... Oh.

"Watch your tongue," His father snapped, casting a glance at Toni. "Honestly, have you no heart?"

Derek's nails scraped into the wood of the table, growling rising in his throat. "Look, no offense, but I am not marrying Toni. She's practically my sister! That'd just be so fu-"

"I said watch your tongue!" The man shouted as he slammed his fist on the table. "Toni has demonstrated nothing but complete loyalty to you, and to our cause. It is only natural that-"

"Natural how!? No, you know what? I don't want to hear any more. I'm leaving, and I'm going to eat dinner by myself, like I planned!" The chair screeched against the floor as Derek thrust it away, grabbing his coat and storming out of the room.

Toni wanted to go after him. She really did. It was technically her duty to do so. it was always his best interest that she had to keep in mind. Tonight, though...

"Toni."

She jumped, gasping at the sight of Derek's father standing next to her chair. He wore an expression on his face, which he didn't often do. It was a sad one.

"Come, child, dry your tears. It'll be alright."

Like a stranger's, Toni's hand floated up to her cheek to touch it. It was wet, and her lips parted in surprise at the droplets on her fingertips as she pulled them back. Holding back a sniff and gulping instead, she rubbed her sleeves over her eyes. "I... Sorry, Sir."

He shook his head. "There's no need to be sorry, Toni," he noted glumly. "In fact, I'm sorry it turned out this way. I didn't expect such a reaction from him. You two are so close, I honestly thought it was on his mind already."

Toni nodded softly. "I... I'm sorry to speak out of line, Sir, but... Derek doesn't focus on such things like marriage, and especially not relationships. He's... He's quite enamored with his work."

"Oh, forget about that! You two live together and spend so much time with each other. You accompany him on every day trip he has, and keep a far closer eye on him than is necessary by your position. What I meant was that surely you two have some sort of feelings for each other. After all, I can tell you do."

Her fists clenched as she dropped her gaze to her lap. "I… I...."

"Toni. Look." He pulled out her chair to face her towards him, and put his hand on her shoulder, which directed her eyes back upward. "I mean what I said. You have demonstrated nothing but complete loyalty to Derek for all the years you've been here. You've kept him in line and even discouraged him from doing things that would lead to... disastrous results."

Memories flashed in her head of Derek talking to others in whispers, and the fight they had the night she'd found out what he'd said. She didn't know how his father had found out about it, but at the same time it felt only natural that he had.

"Unlike any other employee here, you are the best fit for my son strictly because of how deeply you keep his best interests in mind. Somebody needs to stay by his side and help keep everything in order. To keep him safe. Do you understand?"

"I... Sir, I..." Eyes blinking fast, she held a hand up, her voice stuck in her throat.

He raised an eyebrow and brought his hands behind his back. "Permission to speak granted, Miss Mallory."

She gulped as the words instantly cleared her head. She always rehearsed what she had to say when she asked him permission to speak. Now the phrase made it easier to find the words she was trying to say. "I... Sir, I could do any of that without being married to him. To Master Derek, I mean. A-After all, I do it now."

Toni shifted nervously as he took a deep breath and sighed. "Toni. Please understand.

"I have lived my life alone since Derek's mother died in that crash. You never met her, but she was just... absolutely wonderful. I want that for Derek. That dependability, that loyalty, that love. Having him choose just whatever woman he meets on a day trip could lead to trouble. She could leave him and sell our secrets, or she could dismantle our entire operation from the inside out simply because she is bored. She could be weak and unable to stand up for herself, let alone the organization. That kind of chance I will not risk. I have worked far too hard for some silly little girl to come in and tear it all to the ground.

"You, however, have worked hard for your place. You were never supposed to be anything more than a servant, yet you've become an astounding scientist and third in command should anything happen to Derek and I. Once all this training is said and done, you will be just as fit as Derek to run the Organization. I have absolutely no question about your loyalties to this operation, and even fewer questions about your loyalty to my son. There is nobody better for the role of Derek's wife than you."

She understood. His father was a man of efficiency, after all. Of course he'd think like this regarding his son's future. If it weren't for Derek's reaction, she would be inclined to agree with him.

But this development had made Derek unhappy. Angry. And because of that she couldn't agree with this decision at all.

Not the slightest bit.

Not at all.

Even she couldn't convince herself that it wasn't true.

#Toni AU #The Organization AU #emotional whump #whump #unrequited love #unfinished series

[kiissme]

          “So...” She started, an uncharacteristic nervous smile on her lips, “D’you think she’ll like it?” Faye wasn’t anywhere near a five star chef, Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t exactly hire her anytime soon but also she was adept enough that she wouldn’t be called a donut or a stupid sandwich but it still did little to calm her nerves down. This was only their third date with Alix, but she had wanted it to be a home dinner sort of date, as the three had gotten along really well over the past two weeks. Two dates in two weeks being an exercise on incredible restraint from them both, having really got on with the other woman. Faye had offered to cook, instead of ordering some big meal from the restaurant, though she must admit, it probably would have been less stress, though Keith was more than willing to give her a second pair of hands when it came to dinner. “D’you think roast and oven potatoes are a bit basic, maybe? I could’ve gone for the lamb? I mean, I could’ve, they’re just so fuckin’ expensive, couldn’t believe the price and we made that gravy nice and good. And I think it’s a bit fancier to go with the fingerling potato medley, yeah? More color and all that....” She let out a sigh, “Or should I have added some veggies? No, that’d be weird. Maybe carrots, though, the multi-colored ones? I’m spiralin’ aren’t I?” she said as she watched her husband start to move toward her, his hands on her hips, “Aye, I’m spiral—” a cry leaving her lips as Keith lifted her up, holding her close and prompting her to wrap her arms around the back of his neck. “Save me.”

           “A y e, I’m always gonna save you from yourself,” hoisting her up a bit, hands cupping her arse and making the skirt of the simple sundress she wore to ride up her legs to his delight. “You made the perfect meal, yeah? Smell that? Take a good whiff. The only thing makin’ my mouth water more than that, is this cute lil’ dress you’re wearin’ right now,” the both of them chuckling at that. “And I bet Alix would say the same. The only way any of us would overlook the masterpiece you made tonight is the urge to throw you down on this table and our way with you. I can promise that...” Both of their faces smiling as he brought his lips to hers in a kiss — slow and tender, a breathy sigh escaping her as his tongue slipped into her mouth. A hum from them both before parting their lips, slowly peeling flesh from each other. No matter how many years they’ve been married, that passion still lingered, and both hoped it never went away. Both giving soft nips against each other’s lips, Keith chuckling, “And...anyway, my dear, if she isn’t impressed with the meal, tell the audience what you made for dessert.”

          A light little laugh came out, pressing her forehead against his and let out a sigh. “Chocolate ricotta cheesecake,” she said as he hummed, “With...strawberry puree on top,” kissing his lips once more for a soft peck, “With cut strawberries layered on top of that with a chocolate cookie crust.”

          Humming soft, he shook his head in appreciation, “See? You got this. You’re crushin’ this. She’s gonna be impressed, I already am.” Putting her down, his lips found hers again, his hands still at the curve of her arse, giving a nice squeeze as the kiss deepened. A light little twitch of his cock, a happenstance when kissing his wife, a groan as he felt her teeth bite his bottom lip. Squeezing her arse again in warning as he pulled away, giving an equally warning look. “Steady.” Though he gave a kiss to her cheek before pulling away. “Question, though. Don’t remember you puttin’ any of this effort over me, what gives?”

          “Well,” she let out, taking off her apron and letting out a laugh. “I mean... She’s hot.”

          An offended look crossed over him, crossing his arms in front of him. “And I’m not?”

          Putting the apron away, she beamed over at him, amused by this now and feeling less nervous about it — which was probably his intention. “You are, but, y’know.” She gave a shrug, “You’ve been hot, she’s like... New hot.”

          Well, he raised his eyebrows at t h a t. “New hot? She’s new hot?” He wasn’t sure if he was offended or not, though his smile was wide. “New hot, then?” Was he old hot?

          “Yeah, you get it,” smiling as she went by him, giving him a kiss on his lips. “Gonna freshen up, lemme know when she gets here, yeah?” Patting him at his arm, a little smack to his arse before bounding up the stairs. Leaving him slightly bewildered still, yet nodding.

          A soft little laugh escaped him, brushing his hand over his face. “New hot,” making a facial shrug. “She’s new hot. Alright.” The doorbell rang, then, bringing him out of his thoughts and making his way toward the front door. “She’s here!” he called up the stairs before reaching toward the door, and turning the handle, a smile on his face as Alix came to view. “Right on time, you look lovely, come in, Faye’s just freshenin’ upstairs. Hope you’re hungry? We made a lot.”

hope you’re hungry, @ofxinnocence​. for alix with the marrieds

#ofxinnocence #with every kiss we're closer to a masterpiece ( interactions ) #timeline — its us against the world on this team of ours ( the marriage story ) #faye x alix x keith — 001 #this is so long but i wanted to show how cute they are

[indiavolowetrust]

The Obey Me Boys as RPG Bosses: Frostheart

CHAPTERS: Prologue + Beelzebub and Belphegor , Asmodeus, Satan, Leviathan, Mammon, Lucifer, ??? (YOU ARE HERE), ???, Endings

You are one of many hunters in a land cursed with everlasting winter. You yourself have become rime-touched after an attack by your fellow corrupted hunter, an incident that left you traumatized and lame. Even your hunter’s guild has resigned you to a life of mere cleaning and upkeep duties, and you have spent the last seven years in the depths of your guild’s archives.

Then the White Witch spirits your little brother away into her castle, taking with her the only family you have ever known. Armed with your trusty hunting knife and bow – and aided by your senior hunter, Simeon – you set off into the rime-cursed lands to find Luke and end the White Witch’s reign once and for all.

**Very loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.

Word Count: 2,369 words

TW: Blood, Violence, Gore

[???]

Despite the spread of the curse, you find that your skin grows numb at his touch. His hands -- his perfectly carved, crystalline hands -- cup the sides of your cheek with a strange tenderness, his fingers tracing the soft line of your jaw. A gentle sort of scrutiny. Then there is the matter of the man himself: his form appears to have been carved from ice, translucent as he is, and the smile that graces his delicate features shows no sign of cracking the surface of his skin. An ice sculpture brought to life, it would seem. While you’ve heard of the strange corruption that encompasses the White Witch’s realm, you would have never expected it to procure such a being.

The White Witch’s subjects have only ever attacked you. You had fought them off again and again, nearly losing your life every encounter -- and yet you can’t help but feel as if something is missing from the recollection. As if something dear and important has been torn away. You must have an audience with the White Witch, yes, but why? What could have compelled you to undertake such a dangerous journey? Why does your heart feel so hollow?

Stay away, some buried part of your conscience whispers. Your rime-touched eye discerns only an emptiness where his desires should be, the curse somehow barring you from looking within him. He’s --

“What a joyous day!” he cries, pulling you into a frigid embrace. “We’ve been expecting you, my dear. Oh, and don’t mind the castle guards -- I can always conjure up some more.”

You only blink up at him when he finally lets you pull away, confused. While it is nice not being attacked for once, you must have an audience with the White Witch. You try to make the demand in the most polite manner you can muster. Whatever reasons you may have for coming here -- you’ll certainly remember them on the way to the throne room, won’t you?

He only gives you a bewildered look. “You’ve had quite the journey, my dear! I’ll not have a guest see Her Ladyship in such an exhausted state.”

His name is Michael, you learn. While he handles many tasks in the castle -- almost too many, he says in a jesting tone -- taking care of the White Witch’s guests is highest priority. They don’t receive many guests, after all. You are led through massive halls carved from ice, pass windows and walls draped with expensive tapestries, and walk beneath cupolas adorned with reliefs of various animals. Images of serpents, oxen, crows, and more are scattered about the place. It is all you can do not to gawk openly at the sheer opulence.

You are whisked away by servants before you can protest. The ice-carved handmaidens draw a warm, rose-scented bath for you, washing away what feels like weeks of blood and grime from your skin. The clothes that have been set out for you have been sewn from fine silk, the sleeves trimmed with white fur, and it takes no less than a moment for you to note just how perfectly tailored the garments are. As if you are a mere doll, you can’t help but think. The thought settles like lead at the bottom of your stomach, an inexplicable, deep-seated worry making itself known.

Yet your misgivings are completely dispelled an hour later.

You’ve never seen such an array of fine dishes. Calf’s heart in cream sauce, pan-fried liver served with mushrooms, and cold slices of veal. Caramelized onions atop minced beef, grilled lamb with dry herbs, and a whole roast goose with golden skin. Crispy potatoes, egg-cakes, and tarts filled with root vegetables. Best of all, platters of stewed apples and berry compote topped with fresh whipped cream sit just to the side, waiting to be served. It is too much for two people to eat -- much less one person, judging by Michael’s lack of a plate -- but you don’t care. It only takes one encouraging gesture on his part for you to begin picking at the dishes, trying bits and pieces of everything. Each bite is more flavorful and perfect than the last.

A crystal goblet is placed in your hands halfway through the meal, its contents a clear, vaguely saccharine liquid. Mirrorwine, according to Michael. Some part of your conscience tells you not to drink it.

“Oh, there’s no need to be shy,” Michael assures you, handing out his own goblet for a servant to attend to. He raises it in your direction. “I believe it’ll do you some good, my dear. It is said that mirrorwine eases your aches and pains, whatever they may be.”

You wait for him to take a sip before you do -- only to find that it truly does lessen your bodily pains, just as he said it would. A single sip draws away the nagging soreness of your lame leg, and even the strain of carrying the crystalline limb seems to have disappeared. Michael gives you a knowing smile when you all but exclaim in astonishment, encouraging you to have more. If it is to your liking, he’ll call for a servant to fetch another bottle of it.

You take another long sip of the mirrorwine, feeling something like a knot unravel within you. Again there is that hollow sensation -- whereislukewhereissimeonhowcouldyouforget -- but you push it aside, enjoying the coolness washing over you. The carved chamber glistens, and Michael’s ice-like body seems to lose that strange, off-putting quality. There is only an unparalleled beauty when you look upon him, much to your surprise. How had it gone unnoticed before? How could you find fault within such a perfect being?

A third sip. A chill permeates your bones, runs its icy fingers along your spine, and embraces the confines of your weak body. You need to -- no, that’s not right. You don’t need to do anything. Why would you ever want to step outside of the castle again? You belong here. You’ve only ever belonged here.

A hand rests upon your shoulder. You look up to see Michael eyeing the empty goblet with amusement. “I would have never expected you to be such a carouser, small as you are,” he remarks.

You apologize out of embarrassment, but he merely waves it off. A gesture towards an ice-carved servant sends them scurrying out of the room. Another bottle of mirrorwine is to be served, it seems, but you don’t think you need another. Surely that would taking advantage of --

“Nonsense! You are an esteemed guest, my dear.”

A soft kiss is pressed to your brow -- a burst of winter, piercing and unyielding -- and your heart embraces the frost.

* * *

You hum happily as the comb passes through your locks, enjoying the sensation of the carved bone against your scalp. It is a wondrous thing to be tended to so well -- and by such a breathtaking creature, no less -- so you do your best to sit still. The crystallization of your lame leg seems to have spread, but Michael reassures you that it’s nothing to be worried about. It is merely a part of the process.

An ever-present feeling tugs at your thoughts at all hours of the day. You came here for something, didn’t you? You came here to see the White Witch. You must see the witch, and you do your best to remind Michael.

“But you aren’t ready yet, my little doll.” A frown graces his wonderful, perfect face. “You’re happy here, aren’t you? Do I not tend to your every need?”

He does! He does, it’s just that --

“Fret not,” says Michael, pressing a kiss to your cheek. Your thoughts scatter. “You’ll see her when you’re ready. And you do want to be ready, don’t you?”

You nod obediently.

* * *

You gaze upon your reflection in the bath. Has your skin always been so bloodless? So blue? Have your eyes always been afflicted with that strange color? You blink, and your eyelids move seamlessly against the layer of hoarfrost.

* * *

“That Luke of yours has quite the natural talent for baking, wouldn’t you agree?” Michael plucks a macaron from the display, eyeing it with an almost scholar’s interest. “No experience with such delicate ingredients, no training -- and yet he is still capable of such perfection. Isn’t that wonderful?”

You only give him a confused glance. Who is this Luke? Is he a new pastry chef?

“Oh, do forgive me, my dear. That little detail always slips my mind.”

An ice-carved servant enters the room, bows, and whispers something into Michael’s ear. You pout. While Michael always takes his leave at this time, can’t he spare you just a second longer? As if sensing your thoughts -- or perhaps only expecting them, given how he’s learned nearly everything else about you -- he presses a kiss to your temple, promising to return in a moment. That intoxicating chill fills your body once more, and you let out a sigh of satisfaction.

You peruse the options on the table before you. Berry compote seems a bit too sweet to accompany the tea, as are the crepes. The rice pudding is beholden with a bit too much salt, the lemon custard has too little rum, and you’ve had stewed apples too much recently. Your gaze draws to a strange loaf on a plate on the far side of the table, and you ask a passing servant to identify it for you.

“That would be rye bread, miss,” says the ice-carved servant. “Shall I take it away for you? It is most unsightly.”

You were merely curious, you tell her. There’s no need to remove it just yet.

You as you pick up the loaf, turning it over in your hands. The bread is the color of spruce bark and almost as dense, its insides studded with seeds. While you should find it unsightly -- Michael tends to place appearance over taste when it comes to dishes -- you find that you can find no fault in it. There is only a strange sense of nostalgia.

You’ve lost something, haven’t you?

You tear off a piece of the bread with care, staring at it for a moment. Waiting. The seeds crack against your teeth when you bite down.

* * *

He smells like flour, you think, but it’s a nice smell. A comforting smell. The blizzard howls outside, Luke shivers and burns beneath his blanket, you haven’t eaten in days -- and yet you can’t help but be comforted. The baker’s eleven year old son holds you close as he wraps another one of his father’s spare blankets around you, bundling you up. Despite that, the tears still run hot and unending down your cheeks.

Stop being a crybaby, you’re seven! You’re supposed to be a big girl now! You scold yourself over and over again. How’s Luke gonna see you as his real big sister if you can’t even stop crying?

“Don’t cry, it’s okay,” he soothes you. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m not going to leave you.”

But everyone’s already gone! Mama’s gone, Luke’s parents are gone, and now there’s no one left! If it weren’t -- if it weren’t for that stupid witch and the rime and the monsters, then --

The baker’s son only hushes you again, pulling the blanket tighter around you. You sniffle. You can stay and hide here in his family’s shed, according to him -- but how much of what he said is true? How do you know he won’t be dragged away into the woods like everybody else? How do you know he won’t just leave? The baker’s son rocks you back and forth for a few minutes before finally pulling away. There’s something he needs to get for you, apparently. Something that you’ll like.

The baker’s son returns a few minutes later and hands you something wrapped in cloth. A burnt, uneven loaf sits within it. Despite your hunger, you can’t bring yourself to want it.

“Made it myself this morning,” he says, beaming with pride. “It’s burnt, but I’m pretty sure it’s still good. I can bring more stuff tomorrow.”

You thank him, trying to discreetly wrap it up again -- but a quick glance in his direction tells you that’ll hurt his feelings. Your teeth scrape awkwardly against the burnt loaf, sinking into a particularly crunchy, scorched spot, and you try to chew as politely as you can.

He smiles.  “Well, what do you think? Good, right?”

You nod wordlessly. Your mouth is sore enough to take your mind off crying, at least for now. 

His name is Simeon, you learn. His name is Simeon, he smells like flour, he’s a terrible baker, and he promises he’ll be one of the best hunters ever. Luke is four and loves listening to his stories when Simeon can sneak away for a night. You get used to Simeon’s terrible rye bread at some point, because you would do anything for the people you love. You would do anything to protect them, even if that means telling them their rye bread is good when it nearly breaks your teeth.

* * *

The tears carve their way down your cheeks, cutting through the layer of rime. Your tea cup lies shattered on the ground, the contents spilled against the icy floor, and the body is horribly, unbearably cold. It is only then that you realize just how thin your clothes are: the silk raiment that Michael has dressed you in is paper-thin, your feet are covered only by a pair of woolen slippers, and there is no cloak in sight. Your supplies are gone.

The crow-beast had taken your dearest, most fond memories in exchange for freeing Simeon. Simeon had been let go, you remember, but where had he gone afterwards? Where exactly is Luke and what have they done to him? That ice golem -- how long has he bewitched you? How much longer do you have until the curse of the rime takes hold of you once more?

The door creaks open. Michael, the doll-maker, has returned. A knife sits beneath one of the platters at the table.

Tip: You are fighting [Michael, the Doll-maker]. Bide your time and pretend to be spellbound until you have an opening. You have only one chance.

[NEXT: ???]

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me! #obey me simeon #obey me luke #obey me mc #obey me michael #om simeon #om michael #om luke #om mc #frostheart #blood tw #violence tw #gore tw