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stemmmm · 2 months

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Stem's Thoughts on Harvest Moon 64

(that other title's too long so i'm cutting it down now)

Harvest Moon 64 opens on a scene of your character walking around the street, speaking to everyone in the village who’s come to the event. You quickly piece together that this event in question is actually your grandfather’s funeral, the same grandfather who’s farm you’re about to take over. This little scene beautifully sets up both the tone of the game, and immediately shows the player that this iteration is far more focused on the story and characters. HM64 tells a story about the lives of many people in a small, dying town. It is a story about life, and it is a story about death.

A short disclaimer before we dig in: I played this game before the idea to write these essays cropped up, and have not replayed it since then, so this will be mostly vibes. I will try to do my research to make sure I’m not straight up lying though. (Also all of the images in this one are from google because I don't have a means of getting images from my N64 other than photographing the tv screen and I'm not doing that.)

What’s new!

HM64, also called Harvest Moon 2 by HMGB2 and nothing else I’ve ever seen, is the direct sequel to HM SNES. It’s not a sequel in the usual way sequels are, where you’re continuing where you left off with the same character, but in that every main character is the descendant of their equivalent in the previous game. It’s not important to the story, in fact if you don’t already know this, you probably wouldn’t notice anything past some similarities. I played this game before I tried out SNES and it still took me a minute, plus having it directly pointed out to me to get it. Maybe I’m oblivious, who knows.

Gameplay-wise, this iteration is home of a few series firsts: For one, your house can be upgraded to have a kitchen! You can't cook though, only collect recipes. You can also get a greenhouse where you can grow crops year-round. Sheep are introduced as barn animals that produce wool. You receive a fishing rod you can use whenever you want, but as far as I understand, the timing is nigh impossible unless you’re playing on a CRT (I am not, and never managed to catch a single fish). There’s a mine you can access in winter for something to do while you can’t grow crops (there are fall crops, but not winter) where you can find about two key items and garbage otherwise. Tool upgrades are no longer done by magic, but by leveling them up through use! Which I think is very neat and feels very natural, like you’ve just become more proficient with them as a farmer through practice. Characters can now come to visit you on the farm at random times, for either special story events or just to say hi! Your farmer can get sick from working too hard in bad weather, just like your animals, and there’s now medicine for that, just like your animals. And there’s inventory menus that I'll discuss at better length later.

What’s the same is… Most things in a basic sense. You’re on a farm with a dog, planting crops, raising livestock. You can make friends with folks in town by talking to them and giving them gifts. The livestock mechanics, as far as I could see and as far as I’ve been able to understand from online forums, are exactly the same as they were in SNES, the exception being there’s no wild beasts that can kill your animals but they’ll still get sick if they aren’t fenced overnight– and they’re not going to eat any grass unless they’re out overnight anyways.

As for your farm, you’re set up with the usual: a small house, a barn, coop, and fodder silo, a wood bin to store debris cleared off your farm, and a big messy field that you have to clean up before you can properly use it. It starts with three new additions though; a doghouse, a bowl that you can feed your dog with by putting edible items in there, and a mailbox that you’ll occasionally receive letters and notices in! They’re small additions, but very, very charming. The one thing that’s been removed is the toolshed, now replaced by a tiny toolbox by your house.

The world outside your farm is like an enhanced version of the SNES map. Imagine the town and forest now have one or two extra sections tacked onto them, one in the town for some extra housing, and a couple in the forest to let you explore the mountain more and get you deeper into the woods. The mountain still has a cave in it (this time with Harvest Sprites, who have been removed from your farm) and a summit you can climb to for certain events, but it has been upgraded with little wild animals that wander around and can be picked up and shown to people for a few friendship points, if they like the animal. (This applies to your dog too, there’s a well known exploit to max out Karen’s friendship in one day by repeatedly showing it to her in the bar where time is stopped.) The crossroads zone is also expanded by having three new areas you can travel to– the ranch that you buy animals at, a vineyard that’s more of a story-area, and a beach that mostly comes into play for a couple of summer festivals!

On the visual side, this game is the series’ first venture into the new frontier of 3d graphics… kind of. The artstyle is made of isometric 3D models that are rendered into flat sprites and then projected onto the TV as if that’s not what’s happening. The game even lets you turn your farm around in 3D to face different directions, but it’s locked to only let you play in specific angles. Changing the direction made me forget where everything was and get lost on my own tiny farm, so I never touched that mechanic.

Due to the dramatic artstyle shift– not only being in 3D but also presented at a 45 degree angle, the game becomes a fair bit harder to play than either of its 2D predecessors. The controls are just a little clunky, and the bizarre shape of the N64 controller really doesn’t help. This makes the tedium of farming a little irritating to do, since it requires pretty precise inputs done over and over for every extra thing you’re trying to grow. Fortunately, you're not on the hook to ship everything before 5PM comes around like in SNES, so you get to move a little bit slower. The fickle farming experience also gets a little help from the new inventory menu that can be accessed anywhere and any time. It has multiple inventory slots for both tools and items, each type having a dedicated section so there’s no need to prioritize carrying tools versus turnips. Unfortunately, this actually ends up being a little more cumbersome than useful, as the menu takes a little longer than is comfortable to open and is pretty clunky to use. I mostly avoided it unless I was bringing gifts to people. But the addition of an inventory opens up the opportunity for something else which defines this entire game...

Key items– a set of unique, unsellable items –are most frequently found in random, secret places around the farm and town, and they give you a reason to scour every inch of the place. They can also be given to you by NPCs when you gain relationships with them, which is convenient because their entire purpose is to help you get even better relationships with each of them, and maybe even unlock little stories with characters. For example, there’s a music box you can dig up in your field that can be given to any of the girls for a decently sized relationship bump. There’s also an old weathervane in the shape of a chicken that you can find in the little mine. If you give it to Rick, he’ll tell you that it was a precious thing that belonged to his grandmother as a cute scene to deepen the town’s lore and connect it to the first game. Key items quickly become the most important and sought after things in the game because they act as a vessel to deliver that which the game is all about: stories.

Lots of people in a little town

The narrative premise is exceedingly simple: you need to fix up your grandfather’s ruined farm and make a new life for yourself in this town within a certain amount of time, just like its predecessors. Except, this game is a lot bigger than either of them, and it didn’t fill all the extra space with new things to grow on your farm. In my entry on the SNES game, I mentioned that the introspective style of writing turned the repetitive farming gameplay into something more like meditation on things going on in the town. This game takes that idea and runs with it! The town in this game may only be slightly bigger than it was before, but it has a lot more people in it, and every single one of them has a lot more to say, more to do, more festivals to go to, and more story events to take part in. There's even a new photo album that fills in with images for reaching special events or succeeding at certain festivals! Your given goal may be to successfully revitalize your farm, but that rapidly stops being the reason why you want to play. Farming is only a means to further the narrative of the town.

Story events are no longer a reward for reaching the highest heart level with a girl, but instead something that happens naturally in the world as you make better friends with people, or if you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. The world doesn’t only consist of you living it and things happening to you. Instead, you end up being a fly on the wall to other people’s conversations and life events, and you get to see how those events change the people around you. People will begin to say different things, go different places, live different lives without your input at all– often much better lives, as everyone in the town is pretty deeply troubled, whether they seem like it or not.

There’s an added depth, too. While the characters in this series have always been defined by their conflicts (in the first game, every big cutscene with each girl was exclusively about their major life conflicts), this game takes it further in multiple ways. Characters have conflicts with their families: you as the player have a conflict with your parents who can take you home if you fail to farm well, Lillia and Basil have conflict over their marriage and the fact that Basil leaves for half the year, and Karen’s family situation is…. A lot. Then, there are characters at conflict with things much more nebulous, like the Mayor who tells you that the town is going to die out but he can’t find any way to save it, or like the young boy Kent who wants to be a farmer just like you, but through a series of events is forced to learn that life isn’t so simple, people can’t just do whatever they would like, and it takes very hard work to get to do the things you dream of. And then there are conflicts that aren’t even necessarily conflicts unless they run into your long-term plans.

Instead of only having a bunch of girls in town who exist only as your prospective marriage candidates, there are also five boys in the town who will marry those girls instead of you, if given the chance. Like in SNES, there are 5 levels of hearts that the girls can have for you. Unlike SNES, each one of these hearts has a corresponding event you can have with the girl where there’s a chance of her liking you more afterwards, if you say the right things. In addition to that though, there are just as many events coming from the other side of the story, rival events that trigger if you happen to be good friends with the boys.

My favorite story by far is that of Harris the mailman who falls in love with the librarian, Maria, from just seeing her handwriting on the outside of all the letters that she would write. I frequently saw him in the bar at the end of the day and he would tell me the woes of his love, saying that he just needed to work up the courage to finally speak to her. Then one day, I happened to be outside of the library when he and Maria met face to face and she handed over a letter addressed to him. No longer did he sit in the bar forlorn every night, instead all he would do was excitedly tell me about Maria, and then when I visited the library, Maria would tell me about Harris!

While I’m on the subject of these characters, I think it’s worth going in a little more depth on who these people are past the grandchildren of the characters from the last game. See, you may be familiar with names like Karen and Kai and Gray, etc., etc. from a little recently remade game called Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which is a modern version of Friends of Mineral Town on the GameBoy Advance, which is a port of Back to Nature on the PlayStation. These are not those characters. At all. While the basic elements of these characters are intact– Popuri is cute and childish, Ann is a workaholic, Maria is shy and a little oblivious –nothing else is the same. They all work different jobs and marry different people than they are paired with in later entries, and in my humble opinion, it all works WAY better in this game, probably because of the fact that these characters were designed for this specific context!

As an example, Popuri’s exasperated mother, Lillia, runs the flower shop and Popuri was named by her father, Basil, who loves plants. She’s childish and sweet and loves flowers, but can also be a complete brat. She eventually marries Gray, Ann’s brother, who lives on the ranch run by his father, Doug, who struggles to understand his children. Gray is an angry young man who seems to have a particular dislike for you, but you don’t learn why until you discover he was a promising young jockey until he got a bad injury and had to give up the sport.

Am I gushing a bit and letting the game design part fall to the wayside? Sure probably, but I can only gush because the game does a brilliant job of making a cast of characters who, while simple on their own, have interconnected lives that come together to give every one of them so much more depth than they would have otherwise. It all builds a narrative, and while narrative design is definitely something different than game design on its own, this game is far more about the narrative so it’s impossible to not focus on.

The problems

The trouble with these events is that I nearly missed the chance to see that letter be exchanged. You have some control over the progression of the events, because you have to be decent friends with the boys in order for them to trigger at all, but unlike the girls who have a handy visual signal of how much they like you, the boys have no such thing, so you can’t really know if a new event is ready to fire off. There’s no way of knowing where or when they’ll happen either unless you look it up, and even then you have to get lucky because sometimes they just don’t trigger when you want them to. I had a lovely moment in my game where I managed to accidentally catch a cold from working too hard in the snow and lost a day to being bedridden, followed by the New Years celebration which takes a day away from you, then followed by Kai and Karen’s wedding– something that I had missed multiple events for and therefore had no idea was coming, which also took a day from me. After that three day chain of no work, I think I was extremely lucky my animals didn’t get sick and die.

This chain of events led directly to me never speaking to Gray again, even though he was the boy I was most interested in, because I wanted to marry Popuri and there was too much risk of him getting to her before I could. The reason why I didn’t go into more detail about the relationship between those two when I was talking about them earlier is because I straight up don’t know it, I couldn’t risk giving them a chance to get together.

The thing is, even if I hadn’t forced Gray and Popuri’s cutscenes to stop, I still wouldn’t actually know what their relationship is like, because I have not beaten this game. I know what the ending entails and I can reasonably expect I probably would not have gotten an excellent one, but I’m sure it still would have been fine. I stopped playing the game entirely before I even managed to get married. Why? Because I couldn’t get any of Popuri’s heart events to trigger. I had her hearts maxed out and had a blue feather ready to go in my pocket, so I could turn on the game and marry her right away anytime I wanted to. But I wanted to trigger the little events, even if they’re just a couple seconds of some pixels talking to me on a screen. They’re cute. And it made me sad that I couldn’t see them for some imperceptible reason. So I stopped playing and didn’t pick the game back up.

I don’t remember how close I was to the end of the game, I know I was at least in year 2, but I don’t even remember how much longer the game is after that. Probably a good amount. I had definitely gotten most of the events you could get at this point, since multiple other characters had gotten married, and the farming wasn’t something I really enjoyed so I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little bored by this point, but I wasn’t frustrated with the general mechanics of the game. The days were long enough, but not too long, that I had just enough time to go anywhere I wanted and do what I needed before night came. I could still talk to characters and go to festivals and play minigames. But I didn’t want to, because the game wasn’t doing what it seemed like it was supposed to for some arbitrary reason and that frustrated me enough to make me stop. When the fun of a game is found more in experiencing special events rather than anything else, the player feels cheated out of their good time when those events are too hard to find or can be missed outright, and that’s exactly what I experienced.

Parting Thoughts

The ending, according to what I've read, is very similar to the SNES endings, in that you’ll get different results based on all of the different things you’ve done. Whether you’re married, how many crops you shipped, how many animals you have, how well liked you are by the town… I imagine it’s not quite the victory lap that SNES’s ending was with its little cutscenes, since apparently all you get are comments on how well you performed by various people in the town, but it still seems nice and rewarding! At least like more of a reward than whatever the hell GB1 was trying to do. It seems like a perfectly good ending that it would be nice to see myself someday.

Despite all my troubles with this game, I believe HM64 is still the best one out there– at least that I’ve played yet. The events are plentiful and the content is meaty. The repetitive day to day dialogue still has the simple breath of life that SNES did, that manages to make the most out of a small amount. Don’t get me wrong, this game came out in 1999, I’m giving it a lot of praise but the characters still repeat the same line to you every day, and they still freeze in place until you leave the room. It’s revolutionary, but this is comparing it to a game on the literal Super Nintendo. Absolutely pick up this game to try it out, but keep those expectations tempered. That said, I never picked up this game nor knew a thing about it until I was well into my 20’s, but the moment I started playing, it hit me with a wave of nostalgia as if I’d known this game my whole life. At least to me, the look and feel of the game were like coming home to a childhood I never had.

Will I pick up this game again with the intent to beat it? Maybe! Hard to say for sure when I’m trying to play decades worth of games and write about them at a comprehensive level. What I do know is that this is exactly what I want more farming games to be. It’s a game that has thoughts about life, and about death, both good and bad. And I think this is the perfect context to share those thoughts.

#hm posting #harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon 64 #hm64 #m.txt

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mrsnancywheeler · 2 months

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i have returned with another idea

so in my head, i think that District 4 has a cute lil celebration every summer in that goes from 8pm to midnight. basically, in order to kinda boost moral for all 12-18 year olds in the District, an event is held every year at the plaza and it’s orchestrated by lots of the adults. the whole plaza gets decorated with sea shells and handmade decorations in a variety of blue colours. it’s all very ocean themed and they call it ‘The Ocean Festival’. It’s basically a huge party which includes, music, dancing, food and even some cute lil games like trying to hook those little plastic ducks.

But there is a main event. The day of the festival, the adults put the name of every single 12-18 year old on seashells (separately) and then all of the kids scatter them across the ocean. There is a singular crabbing pot that will pick up a random shell. it’s somewhere in the ocean that only one adult knows the location of.

Nearing to the end of the festival, that adult swims out and collects the crab pot, and whoever’s shell is inside is crowned as ‘The Oceans Chosen One’. It’s such a cute tradition because whoever is crowned literally gets this cool crown made of shells. Idk why but i always think of Voulez-Vous by ABBA when thinking about District 4- so i can just imagine that song playing while everyone is dancing around the ‘Ocean’s chosen one’. (like the dance in Mama Mia with Voulez-Vous)

But i think you can tell where im finally going with this. So when reader is 16, she is crowned as the ‘chosen one’ and of course everyone is happy because everyone loves her. so everyone is dancing around her and i can just imagine Finnick watching from a distance, just admiring her. Sadly, this was some time after he broke up with her, so he couldn’t be the one dancing with her in the middle of the circle. So instead, Conway was.

Finnick would literally be seething with anger as he watches Conway dance with his sweet girl in the middle of the circle. he’s spinning her, lifting her up and what not. Finnick just glares at Conway’s hands on readers waist as he picks her up and lifts her into the air. All he can think about is how he wishes he could be the one lifting his sweet girl up, and how beautiful she looks with the seashell crown on her head.

sorry for rambling but i’ve been thinking of this all day after listening to Voulez-Vous in the morning and i actually couldn’t stop😭😭

I love this so so much 💋💋💋💋

reader would totally be helping decorate with conway's siblings, just having the time of their life. swimming around to find what they all feel the best places are. and finnick is left to participate with his fair weather friends, he probably 'forgets' to put his in, he doesn't need to win anything else. but he's definitely got an eye on his sweet girl all night.

nobody's really dressed fancy, but it's their non-working, nicer clothing in blues and whites on top of their swimsuits. victors usually buy the food from the markets so the food is better then usual for most of the district. people play music, dance, eat, while waiting for 11:00 when the oceans chosen one is finally announced. reader is fluttering around in her flowy blue sundress, talking to nearly everyone, and even though he's surrounded by people finnick feels so lonely to know you'll never make your rounds over to him. the finally the time has come and it's your name, and finnick's ecstatic to see his sweet girl getting the attention she deserves, the sweet, loving kind from the children and people there.

you look so ethereal in the moonlight shining off the seashell crown, then it's time to dance and the chosen one always gets to pick someone to be their partner for it. and for a split second your eyes catch finnick's before you're moving on to grab conway's hand. and finnick wishes nothing more then to be up there with you, with his pretty girl. but it's you and conway, he just has to sit on the sidelines now.

(kind of a sick parallel for a year later her to be picked at the reaping with conway, while finnick is once again on the sidelines. the ocean chose her, but so did the Capitol)

and you're growing up, so is conway, and finnick can tell that's only made him love you more. with the way conway is looking at you, touching you, holding you, acting like he's the one who's meant to be there. even if finnick's view is obscured by the circles of people he can't bear it without thinking about how badly he wants to be holding his sweet girl's hand right now. so he makes up an excuse to go home to his so-called friends. and leaves, not before nicking your shell, the only part of you he can hold close now.

and when you notice he's gone it's almost enough to ruin your mood because having his eyes on you is the only way you've been able to have his presence in so long. but this is what your life is going to be, so you'll have to get used to it. even if it hurts that he can't celebrate with you.

I think district 4 is so abba coded overall, like idk how to explain it, they just are 💋💋💋💋

#wanda 💋#finnick odair x reader #finnick odair x y/n #the lakes #finnick odair #finnick odair fluff #finnick odair angst #finnick odair x reader fluff #finnick odair x you #the river #anon

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bradshawsbaby · 10 months

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Si Vis Amari Ama

VII. A Banquet to Remember

SERIES MASTERLIST

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Pairings: Rooster (Roman Name: Gallus) x Female Reader (Roman Name: Sabina), featuring Hangman (Roman Name: Carnifex) x Phoenix

Summary: A girl whose freedom was stolen to pay her father’s debts. A gladiator enslaved for the entertainment of Rome. A love they never thought possible.

Author’s Note: This one is another beast of a chapter, but I hope you all enjoy it!

Word Count: 15.2k

Warnings: Slavery in the ancient world, physical abuse, brief allusions to prostitution, unwanted sexual advances, violence, language, slow burn romance, alternating point of view.

Phoenix had been right in her warning about Domina’s temper when it came to preparing for a banquet. These past couple weeks had been the worst of your life since you’d been sold into the household. Everyone, from Hrodebert and the other chief stewards down to the lowliest kitchen maid, had been walking on eggshells since your mistress had announced that she and Dominus would be hosting a massive feast for the Roman elite to kick off the summer games.

Not that it did any of you any good.

Aurelia had been in rare form for the last two weeks, snapping at everyone and quick to lay hands on anyone who displeased her. Just the other day, she’d given Flavia, one of the kitchen slaves, a fat lip for spilling some of her wine at dinner.

“You fat, clumsy oaf!” Aurelia had shrieked, startling the rest of you who had been serving the evening meal. “Look at what you’ve done to my new stola!” she raged, lifting up the delicate material, now stained dark red. She didn’t even hesitate as she raised her hand and smacked Flavia across the face, one of her heavy rings catching on the poor girl’s lower lip and splitting the skin. “Is that how you’re going to serve guests at our party? What an embarrassment!”

Flavia stood there, trembling and lowering her head as she accepted the abuse that was heaped upon her. “I—I’m sorry, Domina. Please forgive—”

“Get out of my sight, you hideous beast!” Aurelia screamed, throwing her half-filled wine goblet at the girl. “Stay in the kitchens where you belong! I do not want to see your face again, especially not at the banquet!”

Tears streaming down her face and blood trickling down her chin, Flavia turned and fled from the triclinium, bumping into you in her hurried rush out of the room. Frozen in place, you turned to look at your master and mistress, the platter you’d been holding clutched tightly in your hands. You felt sick to your stomach.

“Stupid girl,” Aurelia huffed angrily, wiping at her ruined stola with a hand that was so gentle to behold, but which belied the violence it was capable of inflicting.

Beside her, Atticus said nothing, just continued to drink his wine and pick at his dinner. It was almost as if he had been completely deaf to his wife’s attack on Flavia. Standing there, staring at the both of them with wide eyes, you weren’t certain who you should be more afraid of.

“Sabina, don’t just stand there like an idiot,” Aurelia hissed, snapping her fingers impatiently. “What do you expect us to do? Sit here and starve?”

Considering the massive spread you, Phoenix, and the others had already placed on their low dining table, you highly doubted either your master or your mistress were going to starve any time soon, but you certainly would not voice that thought aloud. Swallowing nervously, you stepped forward and carefully placed the tray down. The smell of the eel, doused in a hearty helping of garum, was enough to make your stomach churn.

Before you could step away from the dining table, Aurelia suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of your wrist, her grip shockingly painful for such a delicate woman. You held back the gasp that bubbled up in your throat, trying hard not to wince.

“Look at these hands,” Aurelia murmured in disgust, carefully examining your palm and fingernails. “You look like a dockworker. I’ve never seen hands so rough in all my life. This is what you get for forcing her to work in that hideous ludus of yours. Now she’ll be an embarrassment to us when she serves at table,” she frowned, waving your hand in Atticus’ direction.

When you turned your head towards your master, you were startled to find that his gaze was already resting on you—and there was an intensity in his stare that you’d never seen before.

“I highly doubt our guests will be examining the state of our slaves’ hands, Aurelia,” Atticus told her dryly, his dark eyes never leaving your face. You felt a cold shiver snake its way down your spine. You had seen the way men looked at you when you ran errands at the market or when you served at table during dinner parties, but the look your master had trained on you now was not one of lust or desire. His was a hard look, a calculating look. It seemed that he was looking into your very soul, plotting. But plotting what? You couldn’t even begin to imagine. Either way, his gaze triggered a tight knot of fear in the pit of your stomach.

Aurelia just scoffed in disgust, tossing your hand back at you as though it was a limp fish. “Be gone,” she told you irritably, waving you away.

It almost felt as though Domina had been going out of her way to find fault with you as of late. Your hair was always too sloppy. Your tunic never sat right. The calluses on your hands were too rough. You never styled her hair the way she wanted. You were too clumsy with her jewelry. Your cleaning was never thorough enough. The list went on and on.

No matter how slight the offense, your mistress always made sure to punish you. “You stupid girl, when will you ever learn?” she demanded through gritted teeth as she pulled your hair and slapped you around, or threw the nearest object she could find at you. She’d once purposely smashed one of her make-up pots at your feet, just so that she could force you to clean it up.

The humiliation was often worse than the pain, though the pain could get pretty bad as well. Your face and arms were littered with so many bruises that part of you was glad preparations for the banquet had been keeping you from the ludus. You knew that Gallus would be enraged if he saw the marks on you, that he would want to do something. But what could he do? He was as much a slave as you were, and to lay a hand on Aurelia would mean instant death for him.

You missed him though. So much. You had gotten to see him sporadically over the course of the past few weeks, usually only when assisting Titus after the training bouts. But with so much going on at the villa, your evening visits to his cell had become nonexistent.

When you were young, your mother had once told you that absence makes the heart grow fonder. You hadn’t quite understood what that meant at the time. You’d assumed it had something to do with your father traveling for work. But now you knew exactly what Mater had been talking about. Though there was not much physical distance between you and Gallus, you felt the separation caused by your own busyness quite keenly. And it only made you long for his company all the more. You weren’t sure when it had happened exactly, but he had become more dear to you than anything else in your life, and the yearning for his closeness had become a physical ache deep inside your bones.

You knew Phoenix felt the same way about Carnifex. It had been just as long since she’d been able to rest in his arms, and it was clearly making her antsy.

“I can’t wait for this stupid banquet to be over!” your friend snapped one day, angrily throwing down the rag she’d been using to clean the tiles of the mosaic gracing the interior of one of the garden fountains. “I’m tired of this inane work!”

Sighing deeply, you dropped your own rag and wordlessly slipped an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her gently. “It’ll be over soon, and then you’ll get to see him again,” you whispered, making sure there was no one else in the garden to overhear you.

Phoenix looked as though she was about to cry. It unsettled you, seeing that look of fear in her dark eyes. Phoenix was never afraid.

“The banquet will be over soon,” she said flatly, looking directly into your eyes. “But then the games will begin.”

Despite the summer heat, your body felt cold all over and you could sense the hair standing up on the back of your neck.

Yes, the banquet would be over soon, but that meant a new type of worry would take over when Gallus, Carnifex, and all the others began competing in the arena once more. You closed your eyes and swallowed back the nausea you felt rising up your throat when you recalled the violence and brutality of the games as Phoenix had described them to you.

“It’s going to be alright,” you whispered soothingly, hoping you sounded half convincing. Gallus had promised you that everything was going to be alright, and you wanted so desperately to believe him.

Now the banquet was just one day away, and final preparations were underway. Alba had been in an even more sour mood than usual these past few days, the responsibility of preparing an unforgettable feast for over a hundred guests clearly weighing heavily upon her. You and Phoenix had been spending the majority of your time as of late in the kitchen, assisting with whatever was needed.

This morning, what was needed was several more ingredients from the marketplace. Alba had made a long list, which she’d promptly handed off to Hrodebert so that he could balance the books and give those doing the shopping the money they needed to cover the expenses.

Much to your relief, you and Phoenix were among the slave girls chosen to go to the market. Though you usually found the Forum overwhelming, with merchants trying to hawk their wares while politicians and philosophers angled for the people’s attention and priests and priestesses demanded offerings at the temples, at least it would mean a few hours out of the household.

“Here you are,” Hrodebert murmured softly, handing you and Phoenix the individual shopping lists he had composed for each of you. Thorough as ever, he had made neat rows numbering each of the items you were expected to purchase, and how much should be spent for each.

“Thank you, Hrodebert,” you smiled, slipping your list inside the pocket of your tunic and lifting your empty basket onto your arm.

Glancing over both shoulders, Hrodebert lowered his voice as he added. “And a little something extra, for each of you.” With swift fingers, he pressed a few small copper coins into your palm, and then Phoenix’s.

Phoenix grinned, squeezing your arm when you instinctively opened your mouth to question your friend’s actions. “Thank you, Hrodebert,” she said, her smile bright as she shot you a pointed look. “I’ll explain to Sabina exactly what we need to do,” she added with a wink, waving to him before pulling you out of the villa and onto the relatively peaceful streets of the Palatine Hill. There were some perks to belonging to a household in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Rome.

Knowing enough to remain quiet until you were far enough away from the villa, and from the ears of the other girls who were on their way to the market with you, you walked in companionable silence with your friend until you began approaching the center of the city, where the streets became more crowded and the noise of the people rose in volume.

“What was Hrodebert thinking?” you finally asked, the copper coins he had given you still fisted tightly in your hand. “Won’t Dominus find out?” Your master was notoriously tight-fisted about his money. “I don’t want Hrodebert getting in trouble on our account.”

“Calm down,” Phoenix assured you, threading her arm through yours so that you wouldn’t get separated in the growing crush of people. “Hrodebert knows what he’s doing. Whenever he can manage it, he gives those of us he trusts a little bit of personal spending money to use in the marketplace. Nothing too extravagant. I usually just buy myself something sweet that I can eat before I return,” she explained. She smiled as she nudged your shoulder playfully. “Clearly, you’ve earned his trust.”

You couldn’t help but smile at that. You liked Hrodebert immensely and you were glad to be able to count him as a friend. But that was why you were so worried about him getting in trouble.

“But doesn’t Dominus notice the money going missing?” you pressed, biting down nervously on your lower lip. “I know it’s probably nothing to a man as wealthy as him, a few copper coins here and there, but surely he’ll realize eventually?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Phoenix insisted, waving your concerns away with her free hand. “Hrodebert has a way of making sure that everything balances itself out.” She glanced at you out of the corner of her eye and looked as though she was about to say more, but then shook her head. “Believe me, Sabina. Atticus won’t know.”

Taking a deep breath, you nodded. Hrodebert was a smart and sensible man. Surely he wouldn’t do anything that would get him into trouble. And Phoenix seemed so sure. It must be fine, if this was something he did on a somewhat regular basis.

Squeezing through the throng of people, from slave to freedman to citizen, you and Phoenix stepped into the heart of the city of Rome—the Forum. All manner of business was conducted here, from commercial to political to religious, truly making it the heartbeat of the empire. It was a bit too noisy and crowded for your comfort, and you always had to be on the lookout for pickpockets and thieves, but even you couldn’t deny that there was a certain level of excitement to be found within the confines of the Forum. It certainly got the blood pumping, especially on a warm summer day, such as today.

You always found it rather funny, the way people from all walks of life seemed to converge in the Forum. Here, between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, slaves walked the same path as Senators. Foreigners could sell their goods, the same as Roman citizens. And just yards away from the Temple of Vesta, where the Vestal Virgins gave their lives to serve the goddess of hearth and home, prostitutes tried to lure men away to establishments of a very different type of worship. It all happened here, in the Forum.

Walking past the newly constructed Temple of Vespasian and Titus, which had been completed only a few years earlier by Emperor Domitian in honor of his late father and brother, you and Phoenix hurried into the marketplace proper, where countless stalls were set up, offering all manner of goods from every corner of the empire.

“Okay, you have your list?” Phoenix asked, pulling out her own list of assigned purchases.

Nodding, you pulled your list out of your pocket as well and held it up. The coins Hrodebert had given you to buy everything you needed were tucked securely within a pouch, tied inside your tunic.

“Perfect,” Phoenix grinned, glancing over both shoulders. “It’s busy here today. Probably a lot of people are coming into the city to watch the opening of the games.” She glared suspiciously at a young street urchin who stepped a little too close for comfort. He took the hint and backed off, in search of more distracted prey. “Let’s stick together. It might take us a little longer, but that way we’ll have more time out of the house,” she teased. “We’ll get everything we need first, then we can see how we want to spend those extra coins.”

For the next hour or so, you and Phoenix scoured the marketplace in search of the freshest lettuce, cabbage, leeks, asparagus, mushrooms, artichokes, and chickpeas you could find. You had also been tasked with hunting down more pears, plums, grapes, chestnuts, figs, and apples. Within no time at all, both yours and Phoenix’s baskets were heavily weighed down with all the produce Alba had demanded.

“My goodness, I’ve never seen so much food in all my life,” you groaned, lifting your basket up with effort.

“Just you wait,” Phoenix sighed, rolling her eyes towards the blue midmorning sky. “Everything is a spectacle with those two. This banquet is going to be an absolutely ridiculous display of their wealth, trust me. These damn Romans, always trying to one up each other with their money,” she muttered. Then she winced, and looked over at you. “No offense. You’re the only Roman that I like.”

You laughed, no offense taken. “And sadly, I have no money to show off,” you joked, which made your friend laugh in return.

Just as you both moved to look at one of the spice stalls, you heard someone calling out your friend’s name.

“Phoenix! Phoenix!”

Turning, Phoenix let out a delighted gasp of surprise when she caught sight of an older, dark-haired woman making her way through the crowd. “Penelope!” she exclaimed, putting her basket down on the ground for a moment so that she could embrace the woman. “It’s been so long!”

The two women began speaking to one another in rapid-fire Greek, which caught you off guard for a moment. You’d heard Phoenix utter a word or phrase in Greek here or there, but you’d never heard her converse with another person in her mother tongue before. She seemed so at ease and happy that it made you smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she cried, suddenly switching back to Latin and reaching out an apologetic arm in your direction, drawing you into the small circle. “How rude of me. Sabina, this is Penelope, Magnus’ wife. Penelope, this is Sabina. She works with me in the ludus, and she’s also one of my dearest friends,” Phoenix introduced you, smiling as she squeezed your arm.

“Hello, Sabina,” Penelope greeted you warmly, holding out her hand. She had a gentle voice and a kind smile, her beautiful green eyes meeting yours in a way that wasn’t intimidating or frightening. You liked her instantly. “It’s so lovely to finally meet you.”

“Finally?” you asked in surprise, taking her hand and shaking it firmly. Had she heard of you before? You couldn’t imagine how.

Penelope laughed softly at that, brushing a wisp of her dark brown hair out of her eyes. “Magnus has spoken very highly of you.”

Her words nearly knocked you over in shock. Magnus had spoken of you? To his wife? You couldn’t begin to understand why. He was always very polite and kind whenever you interacted with him, but that was rare. He was usually too preoccupied dealing with the men’s training. What could you have possibly done that would make him speak highly of you?

Sensing your surprise, Penelope smiled again. Her smile reminded you of your mother’s. “He tells me that you’ve been a great help around the ludus, assisting Titus and Phoenix,” she explained, nodding in your friend’s direction. “Magnus appreciates a hard worker. He also tells me that you’ve been very helpful where Gallus is concerned,” she added, shooting a pointed look in Phoenix’s direction. You noticed that your friend was fighting to mask a smile.

You felt your cheeks grow warm at the hidden meaning in her words. Were you that obvious in your affection for Gallus that even Magnus had taken notice? You were still shocked to learn that he had taken notice of you at all. And he thought you were a hard worker? The thought filled you with pleasure, but you were also a bit hesitant to accept his praise. You liked Magnus, from what you’d seen of him, but you had been wary of him ever since Gallus had told you the reason for their feud. You still couldn’t understand why, as a man who had himself earned his freedom in the arena, Magnus would block Gallus from gaining the same opportunity.

Clearly, Penelope was a perceptive woman because she seemed to understand the conflicting emotions playing out across your face. “Gallus means a lot to Magnus,” she said softly, as if she had just read your mind. “They all do. All he wants is to make sure that they come home, and that they live to fight another day.” She reached out to rest a gentle hand on your shoulder. “Please believe me when I say that Magnus had his reasons for doing what he did.”

Phoenix looked startled at that, glancing over at you. “Did Gallus tell you what happened between him and Magnus?” she asked, dark eyes widening.

“Yes,” you nodded, adjusting your hold on your basket as you glanced down at your feet. “But I promised him that I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Instead of looking offended, Phoenix just smiled impishly. “Hmm, interesting,” she murmured, nudging you playfully before hefting her own basket and stepping out of the way of a group of babbling merchants. From the way they were dressed, you guessed they had come from some part of Egypt.

Feeling your cheeks grow warm and desiring to change the subject, you glanced back up at Penelope, who was smiling at you knowingly. “So, Penelope, have you and Magnus been married for a long time?” you asked curiously.

“Almost ten years now,” she responded, stepping up to the spice stall and carefully examining the saffron. “But I’ve known him for much longer.”

“Penelope’s father was an admiral in the Athenian Navy,” Phoenix explained, stepping beside the older woman and haggling with the merchant for some pepper and coriander.

Penelope smiled, nodding at that. “My father moved us to Rome after he retired from the Navy and decided to invest in the shipping business. He’s managed to carve out quite a lucrative career for himself. I’ve been here since I was a teenager. The first time I laid eyes on Magnus was when I saw him competing in the games.”

“It was love at first sight,” Phoenix smirked, placing pouches of the spices she’d just purchased in her basket. “Penelope found out where his ludus was, and discovered ways she could ‘just so happen’ to pass by while he was training.”

Penelope laughed, an honest, hearty sound that made you like her all the more. “I’ll admit, I was a bit of a flirt. But so was he,” she grinned.

“And you fell in love?” you asked, your pulse racing as you found yourself thinking of the gladiator back home who had captured your heart.

“We fell in love,” Penelope confirmed, nodding. “But it wasn’t easy. He was a slave. He belonged to his ludus. And my father was furious when he found out. He even tried to have Magnus shipped off to another part of the empire.”

“So what did you do?” you asked, getting swept up in the drama and intrigue of their story.

Penelope sighed, shrugging her shoulders almost sadly. “There was really nothing we could do. We just tried to enjoy the times we did have together, whenever we could carve them out. There were periods where I went months and months without seeing him. I accepted that that might be our fate forever.”

“And then he won his freedom?” you questioned, arching a curious brow.

She smiled again. “And then he won his freedom. My father was still against the match though. It took another few years of Magnus breaking his back, finding whatever work he could, before my father finally agreed to let us marry.”

“That sounds very romantic,” you told her, imagining a young Penelope and Magnus sneaking around for their little rendezvous whenever they could. It made you view the Pugiones’ trainer in a different light.

“It was hard,” Penelope replied, making her own purchases with the spice merchant, who looked mildly disgruntled to be kept waiting. “But we were in love. And people often do crazy things—things they never would have dreamed of doing before—when they’re in love.”

Glancing out of the corner of your eye, you noticed the way Phoenix lowered her head, her jaw tightening and her throat constricting as Penelope’s words washed over the both of you.

“Oh, but I’ve held you up long enough. Magnus told me that Aurelia and Atticus are hosting a big banquet tomorrow night,” Penelope went on, gazing down at your baskets. “I’m sure you both must have so much that still needs to be done.”

“Well, you know how Aurelia is,” Phoenix muttered, scuffing the cobbled ground with the tip of her sandal.

Penelope smiled sadly, a mix of compassion and empathy in her eyes as she looked at the two of you. “Take care of yourselves, girls,” she murmured, touching each of your cheeks in a motherly gesture. “I hope to see you soon.”

“Goodbye, Penelope. It was nice to meet you,” you told her, Phoenix echoing your farewell.

Within seconds, the massive crowd swallowed Penelope up and she was gone from sight. Phoenix turned to look at you. “Penelope is great, huh?” she asked.

You nodded, feeling oddly bereft of the woman’s comforting presence. “She reminds me of my mother,” you said, tucking a loose lock of hair behind your ear.

“Mine, too,” Phoenix smiled, squeezing your hand for a moment before looking back at her list. “Well, I think we’ve got everything from my list. How about yours?”

You pulled your shopping list back out of your pocket and checked it over twice, not wanting to miss a single item. You weren’t in the mood for Alba’s wrath on top of everything else. “We’ve got everything from my list, too.”

“Oh, good! That means it’s time for some sweets,” Phoenix laughed, waggling her eyebrows teasingly as she tugged you off in the opposite direction of where Penelope had disappeared. “There’s a stall not far from here that sells the best stuffed dates,” she exclaimed. It looked like her mouth was watering just at the notion. “I get them whenever Hrodebert gives me a little extra. Just don’t let me eat them all, so that I can share some with him when we get back.”

Giggling softly, you traipsed along behind her, your own mouth watering at the thought of the sweet dates stuffed with walnuts and pine nuts and coated in honey. You hadn’t had a delicacy such as that in years. As you were following behind Phoenix, however, you got distracted by a stall you had never noticed before. The merchant standing behind the table, which was heavily laden with various carvings, trinkets, and pieces of jewelry, looked to be foreign. Certainly not Roman.

“Ah, would you like to take a look, dear lady?” the merchant asked, noticing your interest right away. His accent was definitely foreign, though you couldn’t quite place it. “Here we have some of the most exotic treasures from the farthest corners of the empire.”

Phoenix, realizing that you were no longer behind her, doubled back and came up beside you, tugging on your hand. “Come on, Sabina. Merchants like him will just rip you off every time for some worthless baubles,” she whispered in your ear.

The man, catching sight of your torn expression, pressed on, obviously not wanting to lose a potential sale. “Please, come see for yourself, my lady. We have prized ornaments from Egypt, Ethiopia, Hispania, Gaul, Britannia—”

“Did you say Britannia?” you asked, perking up immediately at the name of Gallus’ homeland.

The merchant’s eyes lit up at your renewed curiosity. “Yes, yes, my lady,” he nodded furiously. “Britannia. The homeland of my wife,” he said excitedly, indicating the table. “Please, come see. We have many beautiful carvings that may interest you.”

“Sabina,” Phoenix whispered again, shifting from foot to foot.

“It’s okay, Phoenix. Just a minute. I won’t let him scam me,” you assured her, stepping closer to the table, where the merchant was setting forth several wood carvings, all of which appeared to be of lovely craftsmanship.

“These are beautiful,” you complimented him sincerely, lightly running your fingers over a few larger pieces. “And these all come from Britannia?”

“Yes,” the merchant nodded, smiling once again as he picked up a carving of some type of bird. “Made from the finest oak the land has to offer. My wife carves them herself. Oh, here she is now!” he exclaimed, pointing at a woman who was making her way towards the stall from across the Forum.

She was tall, but slender, her body appearing as graceful as a Roman pine tree. As she got closer, you were struck by the fact that she had the same coloring as Gallus, the same ruddy cheeks and golden brown eyes, her dark hair falling in loose waves down her back.

“My love, this dear lady was just admiring some of your carvings,” her husband said with a wide smile. You found yourself touched by the fact that he appeared to be so genuinely proud of his wife’s work. Perhaps it was an act, but you didn’t think so.

“Ah, yes?” the woman replied with a smile, beaming at you as she stepped behind the table. “Did my husband tell you they are made from the oak trees of my homeland in Britannia?”

“Yes,” you nodded, looking again at the carvings that lay before you. “These are so beautiful. I have a friend who’s from Britannia. He hasn’t seen his homeland in so many years. I wonder if he would like one of these.”

You didn’t fail to notice the pointed look Phoenix shot you, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“How much?” you asked, pointing at the smallest carving on the table.

When the merchant named his price, your face fell. Of course it would be that expensive. You had been foolish to think you could buy anything for Gallus from a stall like this with only a few copper coins.

“Oh, I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” you murmured, embarrassed. “Thank you anyway.”

As you turned, however, the merchant’s wife suddenly caught hold of your hand. “I have a few others. Smaller pieces with minor imperfections. Perhaps you’d like to take a look and we can agree upon a discounted price?”

Brightening slightly, you nodded. “Alright,” you agreed, waiting as she stepped inside a small tent for a few moments.

“Here we are,” she told you, setting down several smaller wooden pieces.

Your eyes scanned the table slowly, but your breath caught in your throat when you spotted one carving in particular. Bending closer to inspect it more carefully, you saw that it was, in fact, a carving of a wolf, its snout turned upward as if it was baying at the moon. But perched upon its nose was a tiny dove, its wings spread outward.

“Ah, an excellent choice,” the merchant’s wife murmured, lifting the piece you had been examining. “Very symbolic. The wolf represents the warrior—strong, loyal, a fierce protector. The dove represents peace, innocence, and purity. They make up two halves of one whole. You can’t have one without the other.”

Your heart fluttered inside your chest when you recalled the term of endearment Gallus had let slip that night in his cell—little dove. And he was very much like the wolf this woman had described—strong, loyal, protective. A warrior. You had to get this for him, you just had to.

“How much for this piece?” you asked, heart hammering nervously. You knew that in order to haggle, you had to maintain a calm and cool demeanor.

She named a price that was still too far outside your budget, and you offered a counter price.

“I’m afraid it’s still too low, my dear,” she said, shaking her head.

“I understand,” you murmured sadly, taking one last look at the lovely little carving.

“Wait,” Phoenix suddenly exclaimed, stepping in between you and the merchants. She offered a new price, double your counter offer.

The husband and wife looked at one another, silently discussing the transaction with nothing but their eyes, until finally the woman looked back at you and smiled. “You have a deal,” she nodded.

“Phoenix, no,” you said in a hushed tone, watching your friend reach for the money Hrodebert had given her. She placed it in your hand with a smile.

“I can get stuffed dates any time,” she told you with a careless shrug. “You don’t always come across a treasure like that,” she winked.

“Thank you,” you mouthed, turning and paying the merchants with the copper coins Hrodebert had given both you and Phoenix.

“I hope your friend likes the gift,” the woman told you, wrapping it for you and placing it inside your basket. “May it bring you protection and peace.”

“Thank you very much,” you smiled, waving to the couple as you and Phoenix walked off. “You didn’t have to do that,” you told your friend as the two of you began following the winding path out of the Forum.

“Of course I did,” Phoenix shot back, grinning. “I couldn’t let you not get that carving. Gallus is going to love it, by the way,” she smirked knowingly.

You felt your cheeks grow warm under your friend’s scrutinizing gaze. “I just wanted to get him something that reminded him of home. He seems so…lonely at times.”

“Mhm,” Phoenix nodded, hoisting her basket up onto her hip. “But he doesn’t have to be so lonely anymore—not with you.”

“Phoenix!” you gasped, your skin growing even warmer at her insinuation. “I haven’t—I mean, we’re just—”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Sabina. It’s certainly not the way he looks at me or any of his other friends. You’re different,” she said, her tone serious as she glanced sideways at you, carefully picking her way among the crowd.

You were quiet for a few moments, pondering her words. Were you really different? Did Gallus look at you the way Phoenix said? Could he really care for you, beyond the care of one friend for another?

“You’re special to him, Sabina, believe me,” Phoenix insisted, huffing softly as the two of you began to climb back up the Palatine Hill. “I’ve known Gallus for many years and I’ve never seen him act the way he does around you.”

Trying to hide your smile, you hefted your own basket onto your hip as you walked beside her. You felt your heart fluttering inside your chest once more, this time with hope. Maybe there was a chance that you and Gallus could be something more. The thought terrified and thrilled you at the same time.

“But be careful, Sabina,” Phoenix warned, biting down on her lower lip as she looked over at you. There was pain in her eyes as she said, “You know what Aurelia and Atticus are capable of.”

The hope that had been blossoming inside your heart suddenly wilted.

You and Phoenix walked the rest of the journey home in silence, the both of you lost in your own private thoughts. But as you approached your master’s property, Phoenix’s eyes suddenly lit up with an idea.

“Let’s enter through the ludus,” she said, grinning. “The boys should probably be on their midafternoon break by now, and we might be able to see them for a few minutes. Plus, you can give Gallus his gift,” she smiled, bumping her shoulder against yours.

“Okay,” you nodded, smiling in return. Your spirit was buoyed by her suggestion, and you felt the anticipation building in your stomach as the two of you made your way through the ludus gates that faced out onto the street, the guard on duty recognizing the both of you.

The training grounds were quieter at this time of day, most of the men either resting or eating a midday meal. Titus and Magnus were nowhere to be seen, which meant that they were probably debriefing with Atticus. As you and Phoenix moved in the direction of the Pugiones’ cells, you were surprised to find them huddled together in a circle, crouched low to the ground.

“What in the name of all the gods are you idiots doing?” Phoenix demanded with a good-natured smirk, lowering her basket to the ground as she stepped nearer to them.

Startled, they all lifted their heads and swiveled them in Phoenix’s direction as one, which was rather comical to watch.

“Look who’s back!” Felix grinned, glancing downward.

The circle of men opened up to reveal the object of their focus—a little orange cat lapping at a bowl of bean stew.

“Apollo!” Phoenix cried happily, falling to her knees immediately to scratch behind the creature's ears. “Oh, it’s been so long! I thought we’d never see you again!”

“He always finds his way back eventually,” Pollux grinned, chuckling when the cat lifted his head and began nuzzling against Phoenix’s hand, purring softly.

“He’s probably the best fed stray in all of Rome,” Carnifex smirked, his eyes meeting Phoenix’s for a moment before darting away.

“Who is this?” you asked curiously, kneeling down on the grass beside Gallus, your cheeks warming when he smiled at you.

“This is Apollo,” he explained, the orange feline strolling up to you and cocking his head to the side, as if wondering who you were.

“Oh, well, excuse me. Hello, Apollo. My name is Sabina,” you introduced yourself, reaching out a tentative hand to pet him.

“You can,” Gallus murmured encouragingly. “Trust me, he loves it,” he added with a grin.

“Apollo is a people person,” Caius jumped in with a laugh.

Laughing as well, you rested your hand on the cat’s soft head and began to stroke his fur gently, cooing softly. Letting out a purr of delight, he pressed himself more firmly against your hand, as if telling you to continue.

“Where did he come from?” you asked, looking up at the circle of faces surrounding you. No one seemed surprised by the cat’s presence, but you were fairly certain that you had never seen him before.

“Apollo? Oh, he’s been around for forever,” Phoenix replied, frowning as she tried to think back to the first time she had ever met the cat.

“He’s been coming around for years,” Felix nodded, chuckling when the cat suddenly turned and jumped into his lap, his tail swishing back and forth contentedly. “We’d see him around the grounds, chasing mice and trying to catch a bird or two.”

“We started leaving food for him, and the next thing we knew, he was showing up every day,” Pollux continued, giving the cat an affectionate scratch behind the ears.

“He disappears from time to time, sometimes for a long time, but he always comes back eventually,” Caius said, holding out his hand for the cat to lick.

“I think this is the longest he’s been gone, at least as far as I can remember,” Carnifex explained, trying to think back. “At least five or six months I’d say, especially if Sabina has never met him.”

“We were getting worried about you,” Phoenix cooed, lifting him up in her arms and nuzzling her nose against his.

Apollo let out a soft yawn, as if bored, and jumped out of Phoenix’s arms, returning to his bean stew.

“Oh, how do you like that? What a prince,” Phoenix laughed, crossing her arms over her chest and feigning offense.

“Maybe he came from Egypt, where he was used to being worshiped as a god,” you teased, charmed by the sweet little cat.

Caius perked up at that, smiling at you. “How did you know about that?” he asked curiously.

Sitting back on your heels, you explained, “In the last household where I belonged, there was an older woman named Anipe. She was very kind, and she used to look out for me. She was Egyptian, and she would tell me all about what it was like living there, and the beliefs of her people.” You missed her, but you didn’t dare think about what happened to her after your last master died.

“I was raised in Egypt,” Caius told you, smiling sadly. You remembered Phoenix telling you that before you’d officially been introduced to the Pugiones.

“Anipe always talked about how beautiful it was there,” you said gently, resting a hand on his arm when you saw the emotion clouding his expression.

“It was,” he nodded, clearing his throat. “But I wasn’t free there either. I suppose no place is really home when you’re bound in shackles there.”

You all grew quiet at that, privately musing about a time in your lives when you had been free, no matter how long ago it had been.

After a moment or two, Carnifex cleared his throat, looking up at you and Phoenix. “We haven’t seen much of either of you these past couple weeks. Have they really been keeping you so busy preparing for this supposed banquet?” he asked, raising a brow.

“Do you really have to ask us that question?” Phoenix scoffed, rolling her eyes. She always did that whenever the conversation veered towards your masters. “It’s Aurelia. Of course she’s been keeping us that busy. Thank goodness this banquet is tomorrow. I can’t bear the preparations any longer.”

As Phoenix went on explaining all that the two of you had purchased at the marketplace, Gallus turned to face you and smiled, almost shyly.

“It’s good to see you,” he said quietly, rubbing the back of his neck with one large hand. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” you admitted, your pulse accelerating at his confession. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to visit with you in the evenings. Domina has just been keeping us so busy and I—”

You stopped talking when you realized that Gallus’ eyes had zeroed in on a large bruise, partially healed, on your forearm. It was hard to remember, but you were fairly certain that one had come from Aurelia throwing a vase at you.

“She did that to you,” he ground out angrily. It wasn’t a question.

Swallowing, you glanced down at the bruise and tried to cover it with your hand, hanging your head in shame. “Yes,” you whispered in a small voice.

When you looked up again, Gallus’ expression had softened, his dark eyes brimming with concern. “Are you okay? How often does this happen?”

“I’m okay,” you assured him, your skin growing warm when he gently took your arm in his hands and began examining the mark. “It’s just—things have been particularly bad lately, but once the banquet is over—”

“I hate that she does this to you,” Gallus said, his hatred for Aurelia burning in his eyes as he looked at you. “I wish more than anything that I could stop her. I would—”

“Gallus,” you cut him off, laying your hand over his. He fell silent as you gazed at him. “It’s okay. Really.”

“No, it’s not,” he told you, his jaw growing tense as he bit back his fury. “I promise you, one day I’m going to make sure she never lays a hand on you again.”

You smiled at his gallant words, thinking once again of the carving you’d purchased. He really was the wolf—strong, loyal, a fierce protector. You wanted to remind him that he shouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep, but you didn’t have the heart to. And, deep down, you wanted to believe him.

“I have a salve,” Gallus said suddenly, as if he had just remembered. “In my cell. Titus gave it to me to use on minor cuts and bruises after my fights. It works pretty well. If you—um—well, if you’d like to come to my cell, I can—”

He looked almost embarrassed, his cheeks growing red as he fumbled over his words. You found it incredibly endearing.

“You’re always taking care of me when I get hurt,” he finally managed to get out. “Let me take care of you now. Please?”

Touched, you smiled and nodded, rising from the ground and walking over to where Phoenix was sitting beside the baskets, still talking to the rest of the Pugiones.

“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to borrow a salve from Gallus’ cell,” you explained softly, reaching into your basket for the small gift you’d purchased and slipping it into your pocket.

Phoenix, Carnifex, Felix, Caius, and Pollux all tried to avoid shooting obvious looks in your direction, but you could practically feel the awareness rolling off them in waves.

“Of course,” Phoenix nodded, trying to mask her smile with her hand. “I’ll be here.”

Feeling your cheeks growing hot once again, you fell into step with Gallus as the two of you made your way towards his cell, butterflies fluttering wildly in the pit of your stomach. You couldn’t help but be so entirely aware of him, of his large, hulking size beside you, of the heat radiating off his skin, of the way his eyes kept darting to the side and glancing down at you as you walked next to him.

When you walked over the threshold of his cell, the air inside so stiflingly warm, your head started to swim and you were thankful when he offered you the small stool that you usually sat on when you ate dinner with him.

“Just a moment, it should be right here,” Gallus murmured, rummaging through the small basket that he kept beneath his bed. “Ah, here it is,” he said, lifting up a small, round container that looked very much like something Titus would own.

Dragging the other stool across the room until it was sitting just a few inches away from yours, Gallus sat down and removed the lid, the smell of aromatic spices drifting past your nose. “Can you hold out your arm?” he asked, sounding a little nervous.

Smiling encouragingly, you laid your arm out before him, the bruise dark and visible even in the dim light of his cell.

Catching sight of the injury once more, Gallus gritted his teeth and his free hand balled up into a fist. When he saw your expression, however, he softened. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, sounding truly contrite. “It’s just—I think of her hurting you and I lose my mind,” he confessed.

“Please, Gallus, it’s okay. Really. I don’t want you getting upset on my account,” you told him, resting the hand of your uninjured arm over his.

“You deserve to have someone get upset on your account,” he said seriously, looking deeply into your eyes.

The air in the room seemed to disappear as the two of you sat staring at one another, your knees touching, neither of you saying anything. Slowly, your gaze shifted from his eyes down to his lips, so pink and perfect and lovely. And it looked like his eyes were resting on your lips, too.

The sound of a crow cawing in the distance shattered the moment, however, and Gallus suddenly cleared his throat, shaking his head as he looked back down at your arm. “It looks like it’s half healed already, but hopefully this will speed things along,” he mumbled, dipping his fingers into the salve and carefully smearing it across your battered skin.

You shivered at the feel of his calloused fingers brushing against your body, his touch so gentle it made you ache. You didn’t think you had ever been touched so tenderly in all your life.

“There you go,” he whispered hoarsely, pulling back and wiping the remnants of the salve off on his tunic.

“Thank you, Gallus,” you murmured in return, not wanting to leave this room. Not wanting to leave him. “Um, I have something for you,” you told him, resting a hand over the carving in your pocket.

“For me?” he asked, raising his head and looking at you in confusion. In a moment of heartbreaking clarity, it dawned on you that nobody had ever given this man a gift for as long as he’d been the property of the Roman Empire.

“Yes,” you nodded, smiling at him. “I saw it while Phoenix and I were in the marketplace and it reminded me of you.”

Rising off your stool, you reached into your pocket and carefully removed the carving that the merchant’s wife had wrapped for you. With trembling hands, you held it out to him, hoping that he really would like it.

Gallus just stared at the offering for a moment or two, as if he didn’t know what to do with it. He looked up at you for confirmation before slowly reaching out and taking it into his hands, holding it as gingerly as if it was a newborn.

“You can open it,” you told him with a soft laugh, twisting your hands behind your back to try to hide your sudden nervousness. What if this was a bad idea? What if he didn’t like it?

Swallowing deeply, Gallus carefully unwrapped the carving, letting the linen fall to the floor as he stared at the small oak carving of the wolf and the dove.

He was quiet for several minutes, unmoving as he just sat and stared at the gift, hardly even blinking.

You began to grow anxious by his lack of response, worried that maybe you had upset him. Maybe it was too much. Maybe it was a stupid gesture. Maybe he didn’t even like it.

“The merchant who sold it to me, his wife made it,” you explained, feeling the need to fill the silence. “She’s from Britannia, like you. She said that the carving is made from the wood of an oak tree in your homeland. She explained to me the symbol of the wolf and the dove—strength and peace, coinciding with one another. And I just—I thought you might like it. I thought it might remind you of home,” you stammered. And of me.

Gallus lifted his head slowly, several emotions battling behind his eyes as he gazed at you. He still said nothing, and you wanted nothing more than to run away and hide.

“I’m sorry if you don’t like it—”

“Thank you,” Gallus rasped, reaching out with one hand and closing his fingers over yours. “It—it’s beautiful. Thank you.”

Letting out a breath you didn’t even realize you had been holding, you squeezed his hand and smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“No one has ever—” He stopped talking for a moment, looking a bit overcome. “No one has ever given me a gift before. Not since my—not since my parents. I can’t believe you’d think of me like this.”

“Of course I would,” you breathed out, reaching out and touching his cheek. “I wanted you to have something that reminded you of home. And, I know this might sound silly, but it reminded me of the two of us, too. Of our friendship,” you quickly amended, not wanting him to think you too forward. “You’re the wolf—the strong and loyal warrior—and I’m the little dove,” you smiled.

“Yes,” Gallus nodded, reaching out to touch your cheek in return. “My little dove.”

The two of you stood there, touching each other’s faces and gazing into each other’s eyes, for the span of several heartbeats. You sensed something pass between the two of you, something that you couldn’t explain. You felt bonded to this man, connected to him in a way you never had before.

“Gallus,” you whispered, leaning in closer to him as he brushed wisps of your hair back with his thumb.

“Sabina!” Phoenix called out, knocking on the door suddenly. “We must go! Aurelia is throwing a tantrum, and Alba will start throwing one, too, if we’re not back soon.”

Your heart sank as the moment was shattered, Gallus looking as devastated as you felt.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” you murmured, loath to leave him, especially after what had just transpired between you.

“I understand,” he nodded, setting down the little carving you’d gifted him on his table. “Will I see you again soon?”

“Yes,” you nodded, hoping that it was true. “The banquet is tomorrow night, and then things should go back to normal. Well, as normal as can be,” you added, attempting a smile.

“Good,” Gallus murmured. Reaching down, he cupped your face in his hands for a moment and then pulled you into a tight embrace, holding you close to his chest for several seconds. “I’ll see you again soon then, little dove.”

“Soon,” you echoed, clinging tightly to him until he released you and led you to the door.

You slipped out of his cell without a backward glance, but as you and Phoenix hurried back toward the villa with your heavy baskets in hand, you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you had left your heart behind.

You had never felt so overwhelmed in all your life.

The night of the banquet had finally arrived, and you wanted more than anything for this massive spectacle to just be over. You had never seen such a display in all your life. Your previous master had thrown a few small dinner parties on occasion, but nothing that could rival the scene that was currently taking place in the household of Atticus Cornelius Juventus.

Phoenix had been able to sense your nervousness as you’d sat braiding each other’s hair, awaiting the guests’ arrival.

“Everything will be fine,” she assured you, squeezing your shoulder as her fingers deftly worked your hair into a neat plait. “Just keep your head down and try to stick to the shadows. They’ll barely even notice you’re there.”

You nodded, though you couldn’t rid yourself of the goosebumps that had risen on your arms. “I’ve never served at a banquet this large before,” you admitted, biting down on your bottom lip as you glanced over your shoulder at her.

“If you’ve waited on one rich Roman, you’ve waited on a thousand,” Phoenix assured you, adjusting her tunic. You’d all been given new tunics for the evening’s festivities—a pure white garment with a golden sash around the waist. “Trust me, it’s easier to blend in and hide when there’s so many people.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “You know how the men can be?”

Swallowing the shame and embarrassment, you nodded your head slowly.

“Just serve them their food and their wine, and then duck away as quickly as you can. If you have to hide in the kitchens for a little while, do so. Avoid the gardens.” Phoenix’s eyes darkened, and you knew the advice she gave had been borne of years of experience. “They can look all they want, but I refuse to let them touch me.”

You nodded again, heart hammering nervously inside your chest. Reaching over to your friend, you clasped her hands in yours and attempted a smile. “Carnifex would protect you, if he could,” you murmured.

Phoenix smiled sadly, pulling one hand loose to cup your cheek. “And Gallus would protect you. But they won’t be able to defend us, so we must protect ourselves.”

Her advice had proven useful throughout the course of the evening. Several guests, mostly lecherous old men whose money secured them positions of influence within the empire, were quite free with their hands as you served them their wine and dinner.

“You really do have a marvelous set of tits on you,” one of them commented as you bent forward to fill his goblet, his hand snaking out to grope at your breasts.

Startled, you ended up spilling some of the wine on his toga, which caused his friends to throw their heads back in uproarious laughter. They were all drunk.

“Stupid little bitch!” he exclaimed, frowning as he wiped the wine from himself, which gave you ample opportunity to scurry away. Recalling Phoenix’s advice, you decided to tuck yourself away in the kitchen for a while until he could forget your face.

With so much going on in the kitchen, it was easy enough to hide in one of the darkened corners without being noticed by anybody. Alba was frantically directing the rest of the kitchen slaves, in a hurry to send out platter after platter of venison, wild boar, rabbit, pheasant, oysters, and lobster. Each platter was more elaborately designed and decorated than the last. And to top it all off, Alba had even managed to prepare exotic delicacies such as parrot tongue stew and stuffed dormouse. Both dishes made you a bit nauseous, but the guests appeared to be devouring them quite happily.

“Sabina, take this out there at once!” Alba shouted, shoving a platter of shellfish into your hands.

Trying to avoid fumbling with the tray and spilling its contents all over your white tunic—Aurelia would surely beat you to within an inch of your life if you did so—you balanced it in your hands and set out swiftly towards the dining room, where the majority of the guests were sprawled across their dining couches, laughing lazily and exchanging the latest gossip with one another as they snapped their fingers at the slaves to refill their goblets.

You found yourself caught in a maze as you tried to duck around the Babylonian dancers Atticus had hired for the evening. Barely clothed, with little bells tied around their ankles and wrists, the women lithely writhed across the room, while their male counterparts kept rhythm with lyres, lutes, reed pipes, and drums. Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed the man you had spilled wine on earlier fondling one of the dancers and you shuddered, hurrying as far in the other direction as you could.

Atticus and Aurelia sat enthroned in the center of the room, surrounded by sycophants who clearly wanted to remain in their good graces to ensure another invitation to a party as elaborate as this. You had been purposely avoiding their dining table all evening, terrified of your masters’ cold and calculated cruelty. You had already dealt with enough of Aurelia’s vicious abuse as you, Phoenix, and several others had attended to her earlier in the day, preparing her for tonight.

Ducking your head and attempting to make yourself as small as possible, you scurried past their dining couches and served your platter of shellfish to the guests who looked the least intimidating and the least likely to feel you up. On your way back to the kitchen to return your empty tray, you bumped into Phoenix, tucked away behind a large potted plant towards the back of the room.

“There you are!” you whispered, stepping in beside her. “I was wondering where you had gone off to.”

“I’m hiding,” Phoenix whispered back, pressing herself further up against the wall. “One of Atticus’ stupid friends, Decimus has been after me all night. I’m trying to avoid him until he can set his sights on someone else,” she sighed. It was the sad reality of how these things worked.

“I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I spilled wine all over one of the guests after he grabbed my breast,” you told her, keeping your voice down to avoid being detected.

Phoenix snorted at that, her lips quirking up into a smile. “That’s my girl. By the gods, these men are pigs. And the thing that really gets me is that they truly think they’re some sort of Apollo or Ares. I mean, honestly. Have you ever seen such fat, disgusting slobs in all your life?”

You couldn’t help but giggle at that, covering your mouth with one hand as you peeked out at the crowd and took in the array of men lounging before your eyes. Phoenix was spot on in her assessment.

Sighing, you rested your head against the wall. Now that you had stopped for a moment, you realized just how exhausted you were. Your head was pounding, and your back and feet ached. And you could only imagine how much work would be involved in cleaning up once the banquet was over.

“Ugh, I wish they would all go home. How much longer do you think this will go on?” you asked, glancing over at your friend.

“Knowing Atticus and Aurelia? Probably until the early hours of the morning. Everyone will be rolling out of here and making their way to the Colosseum for the start of the games,” Phoenix groaned, looking exhausted herself as she rolled her shoulders backward. “Hopefully, we—”

Phoenix was cut off as Atticus suddenly rose to his feet in the middle of the room, clapping his hands to silence the music and the chattering guests around him.

“Friends, neighbors, esteemed guests,” Atticus began, his voice booming across the triclinium as he smiled smugly and gazed at the faces before him. “My beautiful wife and I are honored to host you in our home this evening for a humble celebration,” he said, holding out a hand towards a primping and preening Aurelia. As expected, the crowd tittered on cue at your master’s mention of his “humble” celebration. There was nothing humble about this loud and obnoxious show of wealth.

“As you all are aware, the summer games begin tomorrow,” Atticus went on, turning as he spoke so that he was encompassing the entire crowd in his speech. A cheer went up from the guests in anticipation of the blood they would get to see spilled in the arena. “And among those who will be headlining the fights tomorrow are my very own champions, my Pugiones!” he exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch and volume as the energy of the crowd began to grow.

The guests around the room began chanting the names of their favorite gladiators from the ludus of Atticus Cornelius Juventus, Gallus’ name being the foremost among them—or rather, “The Barbarian from Britannia.”

Atticus smirked, taking a pause for dramatic effect. The crowd held their breath, hanging on his every word. “As a special treat, and as a thank you for all your kind support, I thought that I might share with you a little preview of who you can look forward to seeing in the arena. I give you the champions of Rome. My Pugiones!” he shouted, raising a hand and drawing everyone’s attention to the entrance at the back of the triclinium.

Beside you, Phoenix gasped in horror. “No!” she moaned, covering her face with her hands.

Bile rose up your throat as you heard the people around you explode into thunderous applause at the sight of Atticus’ bodyguards bringing forward the stars of his ludus—the favored champions of Rome. Pollux was in the lead, followed closely by Felix, Caius, Carnifex, and Gallus taking up the rear.

You gasped in horrified shock when you saw that all five men were shackled like animals, their wrists and ankles in chains.

Atticus introduced them one by one as they were brought to the center of the room, put on display like the trinkets you’d been perusing at the marketplace. Tears filled your eyes as you looked at each one of them, these men who had come to mean so much to you. They stared straight ahead, a dark stoicism in their expressions. Gone was the laughter and the teasing and the stories of home. Gone were the men whose kindness had been so comforting to you as you cared for their broken bodies. They had slipped a mask into place, the mask of the cold, heartless gladiator, the killing machine whose only focus was to destroy, destroy, destroy, and all for the vainglory of Rome. There was a kind of death in their expressions—the death of everything that made them living, breathing men, the death of their humanity in the eyes of these people who would only love them so long as they were victorious, and who would forget about them the moment they were dragged through the Gate of Death.

You felt like you were going to vomit.

“Did they know?” you demanded, whirling around to face Phoenix, a furious rage bubbling up inside you. “Did they know Atticus was going to do this? Parade them through the banquet like this?”

Surely Gallus would have said something if he had known. Surely he never would have allowed this to—

“No,” Phoenix murmured faintly, tears pricking her own eyes as her gaze settled on Carnifex, who stood still as a stone as the guests began moving around him curiously, reaching out to touch him with greedy hands. “Oh, he’s such a bastard,” she whimpered, burying her face in her hands.

Like some kind of terrible carnage that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from, you turned back over your shoulder to watch as Atticus and Aurelia’s guests circled the Pugiones like they were objects rather than men, there simply for their amusement and nothing more. They had no shame at all as they ran their hands over the men’s glistening muscles and commented openly on their forms and physiques. Each of them was wearing only a short loincloth that left very little to the imagination. You could only imagine how humiliated they all felt. Even Carnifex, who Phoenix had once claimed loved the adoration of the crowds, looked distinctly uncomfortable as he stood up straight and stared ahead, his eyes unblinking and unseeing.

When your gaze shifted beside him to Gallus, you felt as though someone had just kicked you in the chest. Your strong wolf—that fierce, loyal protector who had stolen your heart—looked so ashamed as he stood there, half-naked and on display. Even from where you stood, hidden away in the corner, you could see that his powerful hands were balled into fists and his jaw was clenched tightly, his golden brown eyes sparking with a rage that you had never witnessed before. The fools who stood around him, ogling and groping, had no idea that he would happily tear them to pieces if given the opportunity. Did they not understand that the chains and shackles were not merely for show?

Even Atticus was afraid of his men’s power.

“I can’t believe this,” you sobbed, clinging to Phoenix’s arm with your free hand, the empty shellfish tray still clutched in your other. You hadn’t even realized you had started crying until you felt the tears dripping off your chin and soaking the front of your tunic. “How can he do this?”

Phoenix was crying as well, the tears spilling forth from her dark eyes as she turned her head to look at you. There was a bitterness in her tone as she spat out, “He owns us. He can do whatever he wants.”

“There you two are!” came Alba’s angry voice as she suddenly invaded your hiding place. “You lazy sacks of bones, thinking you can just hide back here. Get your asses moving now. Back to the kitchen. You think all this food is going to serve itself?”

Swallowing back your tears, both you and Phoenix began running towards the kitchen, avoiding the old cook’s angry slaps. Wiping away the tears from each other’s cheeks, you picked up more platters of food—food that was too fine to ever cross your lips—and made your way back out to the dining room to wait on people who didn’t deserve even an ounce of your respect.

Just like Gallus and the others, this was your life and there was nothing you could do about it.

He should have known. He should have known that Atticus was going to pull some kind of stunt like this. When he had ordered an early end to their training that afternoon, Gallus had figured that perhaps it was just because his guests would be arriving soon, and he wanted the gladiators out of sight.

How stupid he had been to think that.

He knew something was off when word came that the Pugiones were to be sent to the bathhouse and scrubbed from head to toe. And when he returned to his cell and found nothing but a small loincloth lying on his bed, he knew exactly what that something was.

Shackled and bound like some kind of beast—like the barbarian they all believed him to be—he was led into the sparkling villa where he was hardly ever allowed to step foot and put on display like some sort of circus attraction.

He could feel the humiliation rolling off his fellow Pugiones in waves, the shame of it palpable as they were forced to stand stock-still and silently accept the grubby hands and lascivious eyes of those bastard Romans. If one more giggling matron batted her lashes at him as she groped his thigh, he was certain he was going to break free of his chains and strangle every last one of them.

He thought that his shame could not get any greater, but then he saw you and he could feel his blood boiling inside his veins as his mortification grew all the worse.

You were standing just a few yards away, offering stuffed dates to a group of fat old men, but your eyes were fixed on him, a pain in them that he couldn’t bear to see.

You had never looked so beautiful. With your hair pulled away from your face and that pure white tunic hugging every one of your curves, you looked like a goddess come down to earth in human form. You were the most stunning woman he had ever beheld.

And you were watching him being fondled like a slab of meat.

He felt the rage building inside him, the same uncontrollable rage that filled him whenever he was released into the arena and forced to kill for sport for the entertainment of his captors.

He hated them. He hated them. Atticus. Aurelia. All the guests gathered at this ridiculous banquet. He hated them all with a burning fury that seared painfully through his chest. If he could, he would destroy them all. He would destroy each and every one of them, if only to see you set free from this life of unending servitude. He thought of the marks and bruises that littered your body, signs of the brutality of the miserable witch who controlled this home. He would burn it to the ground, with her inside, if he could.

If only he could.

His eyes followed you, tracking your every movement as you made your way around the triclinium, at the beck and call of these spoiled patricians. Phoenix had often complained of how handsy the guests could get, and he was determined to watch out for you, even from this perch from which he could not escape.

Exchanging your empty platter for an amphora of wine, your attention was drawn to a group of men who were snapping their fingers at you, holding their goblets up in the air like spoiled children.

Gallus’ eyes narrowed and he could feel his fists balling up more tightly as you moved towards the sniggering group of Rome’s supposed elite. He noted the way you attempted to smile, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes. You were uncomfortable. Nervous, even. He could tell from the rigid lines of your body, the way you were holding the amphora so stiffly in your hands. As you bent forward to fill one man’s goblet, another one reached behind you and smacked your behind, the sound of it ringing in Gallus’ ears despite the noise of the crowd around him.

The rest of them laughed as you frowned and tried to move away, a second man grabbing you by the wrist and tugging you towards his lap, while a third reached for your breasts.

The white-hot rage that had been simmering deep inside him came to a boiling point at that moment, and he could no longer stand by quietly. It was one thing for them to treat him like this, but he would not allow you to be handled so carelessly and disrespectfully.

Releasing a roar from deep within his soul, Gallus shoved at the people who were crowded around him, knocking them to the ground as they gasped and cried out in shocked horror. Though the shackles around his ankles gave him limited range of movement, determination alone moved him in the direction of the men who had dared to put their hands on you.

He could hear Pollux, Felix, Caius, and Carnifex calling out to him, but he blocked out their warnings, too focused on unleashing the ferocity of his wrath on those who had wronged you.

When they realized that “The Barbarian from Britannia” was barreling straight towards them, the men grew pale with fright and immediately released you, giving you an opportunity to run from them. But you only made it a few feet, staring with wide eyes as he made his way toward them. He could sense your fear, but he couldn’t control himself. They needed to be taught a lesson.

With his wrists chained together, Gallus couldn’t do much more than swipe his hands across their dining table, spilling their expensive wine and exotic dinner all over their laps and the floor. If they wanted a barbarian, then that’s what he would give them. He bared his teeth as he glared at them, enough hatred and savagery contained in that one look to send the men scrambling off their dining couches and cowering in fear.

The room was filled with the terrified shrieks of women and the angry shouts of men, no one quite certain what the barbarian was going to do next.

“ENOUGH!” Atticus bellowed, his voice slicing through the thick tension as a hush fell over the dining hall.

Even Gallus stilled in his movements, his chest heaving violently as he glowered down at the Romans at his feet.

“How did you all enjoy that little display of the Barbarian’s power, huh?” Atticus grinned, his business acumen clear as he quickly found a way to work this disastrous turn of events in his favor.

A few people let out some nervous titters, whispering and glancing at one another as their host’s words washed over them. Had this been planned?

Picking his way across the wreckage of the room, Atticus approached Gallus and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pinching his skin violently. But to the crowd, he still looked as calm and relaxed as ever, a serene smile pasted onto his face. “Decimus, you should have seen your face,” he chuckled, looking down at the man who had grabbed your breasts. “You looked like you were going to wet yourself when Gallus here came lunging at you.”

Decimus chuckled as well, though the older man was clearly mortified. “You truly had me for a moment there, Barbarian. I really thought you were going to tear my head off.”

If only I could, Gallus thought bitterly.

Aurelia began laughing as well, clapping her hands and acting as though this had all been a part of her elaborate plans. “Isn’t he an absolute delight? Truly, the finest specimen of fighter that the Colosseum has to offer. And that is why Emperor Domitian has personally asked my husband to ensure that ‘The Barbarian from Britannia’ is the main attraction at tomorrow’s opening games. Which you all will be attending, of course?” she asked, turning her sharp eyes onto her guests.

“Yes! Yes!” they all began shouting, laughter and applause replacing the screams and shouts as the idiotic crowd lapped up the lies that Atticus and Aurelia fed them.

Gallus stood still, still vibrating with rage, even as Atticus continued to dig his manicured nails into his shoulder.

“Just you wait until I get you out of here, you fucking savage,” Atticus muttered through gritted teeth, his fury palpable as he turned his dark eyes on his champion fighter.

Turning back to the crowd, Atticus smiled and waved to them with his free hand. “Ah, yes, well the champions do need their rest if they’re expected to be at their best tomorrow. As my wife pointed out, they will be headlining the opening games, at the personal request of Emperor Domitian, so you’ll see them all again very soon. I’ll just return them to the ludus and be back momentarily. Please, continue feasting and enjoy. Music!” he called out, snapping his fingers at the Babylonian musicians, who looked more than a little traumatized by the night’s turn of events. They hastened to lift their instruments and began playing a lively tune, the mood of the banquet shifting to one of joviality once more.

Silently signaling his bodyguards, Atticus gripped Gallus more tightly around the neck and began pulling him out of the dining room, in the direction of his office. When the others appeared, he stopped in his tracks and snapped, “Lucius, you come with me. The rest of you, get them back to the ludus and lock them in their cells.”

Carnifex, Caius, Pollux, and Felix shot worried looks in Gallus’ direction, but they had no choice but to follow their master’s bodyguards as they were dragged back towards the barracks.

Gallus took a deep breath as Atticus dragged him towards his tablinum, his largest bodyguard trailing behind. He could only imagine the punishment that awaited him. But he didn’t care. He didn’t regret a single thing he had done tonight. The only thing he wished he could do was wipe away the worried look he’d seen on your face as he’d been pulled out of the dining room.

Kicking open the door to his office, Atticus shoved Gallus inside roughly. He certainly was no match for the Briton in terms of size or strength, but he was solidly built in his own right and not a weakling by any means.

“Close the door, Lucius,” Atticus snarled, his bodyguard silently following directions. Despite the clever performance he had put on for his guests, Atticus was clearly enraged. Gallus wasn’t sure the last time he had seen him this angry.

After receiving an almost imperceptible nod from his master, the silent, hulking Lucius gave a swift kick to the back of Gallus’ knees, causing him to fall to the ground with a grunt of pain.

Now that he was on his knees, with his ankles and wrists still shackled, Atticus bent forward and grabbed a fistful of his hair, snapping his head backward so that he was looking up at him. “What the fuck was that?” he growled, digging his fingers even deeper into Gallus’ scalp. “Hm? What the fuck was that, you fucking barbarian pig?!”

Gallus remained silent, staring his master in the eye without offering a word of response.

“You fucking savage!” Atticus roared, hitting him hard across the face. “You think you can humiliate me like that? Attack my guests like that?”

Gallus blinked, the force of Atticus’ slap making his ears ring, but he refused to react or to satisfy his owner with an answer.

“I think you’re forgetting that I fucking own you!” Atticus exploded, a bit of spittle forming at the corners of his mouth as his face turned practically purple with rage. “I fucking own you, I fucking own all of them! All your little friends! Including that little fucking slut you were trying to defend!”

Though he tried to hide it, Gallus’ spine stiffened at Atticus’ reference to you. And for the first time, he felt regret sink like a stone inside his chest. He wasn’t afraid of what Atticus would do to him. But he was afraid of what Atticus would do to you. What had he been thinking? Atticus had already made his veiled threats when he’d offered to give you to him as a concubine. There was no telling where his calculated brutality would end.

“Don’t try to hide it, you stinking barbarian. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t know what goes on in my own household?” Atticus demanded, hitting him again for good measure.

Swallowing blood, Gallus bit back a retort that was on the tip of his tongue about how clearly Atticus was stupid enough to be unaware of what was going on in his wife’s bedroom. Instead, he just glared viciously at the other man.

“I see the way you look at her. I know what she means to you,” he went on, smirking cruelly. “Perhaps I should punish her for the little stunt you pulled tonight,” he murmured, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“No!” Gallus grunted, surging forward. His skin grew cold at the reptilian smile that spread across his master’s face.

“Mhm, that’s what I thought,” Atticus nodded, tapping his fingers on his desk as he stared down at Gallus. He was quiet for several moments before he suddenly lunged forward and smacked Gallus in the face for the third time, catching him off guard. The rage had returned to his eyes as he grabbed him by the hair once more, shaking him for good measure. “I should have her beaten within an inch of her fucking life and force you to watch!” he bellowed, the smell of wine and fish on his breath. “And I could do it, too. You know why? Because I fucking own her! She is my property and I can do whatever the fuck I like with her.”

Gallus seethed silently, his heartbeat racing inside his chest. If only he could break the shackles that kept him bound. He would kill Atticus without an ounce of regret.

“Let this be a lesson to you, Gallus, the next time you think about stepping out of line and pulling a move like the one you pulled tonight. If I ever see you doing anything—anything—like what you did this evening, I will beat her until she can hardly walk and then I will sell her to the nearest brothel I can find. Do I make myself clear? Do I?” he screamed, tugging roughly on his hair.

“Yes, Dominus,” Gallus spat out, digging his nails into his thighs to keep from clawing at his master’s throat.

Atticus let go of him and stepped back in disgust, wiping his hands on the front of his toga. “If you didn’t make me so much money, I’d sell you to the galleys. Get him the fuck out of my sight,” he hissed, glaring at Lucius, who had been quietly standing against the wall. “Take him back to his cell. Now.”

Dragging Gallus to his feet, Lucius wordlessly pulled him from the room and escorted him across the grounds, back to the gladiator barracks.

Both men walked in silence.

For the next few hours, Gallus lay in his bed, staring blankly at the wall and replaying Atticus’ threats over and over again in his mind. He felt like he was going to be sick. All he had wanted to do was defend and protect you, and instead he had put you in even greater danger. His affection for you had put a target on your back, and now your safety was at risk.

He knew that he should try to get some sleep, especially with the games beginning tomorrow. But he couldn’t even close his eyes. Every time he did, he just imagined Atticus and his bodyguards beating you as you begged for mercy and cried out for help.

He had known all along that he didn’t deserve someone as good as you in his life. All he did was maim and kill and destroy. He was good for nothing but death. And now you had been swept up in his wake of destruction. He would never forgive himself for that. Never.

At the sudden sound of timid knocking on his cell door, Gallus sat straight up in bed and stared into the darkness. Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe it was just the rustling of the wind. But when it sounded again, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and rose to his full height, reaching to light the small candle that sat on the table in his room.

“Who is it?” he demanded gruffly, pressing his ear against the door and listening for any sounds on the other side.

“It’s Sabina,” came your soft whisper, a tremor in your voice as you announced yourself.

Eyes widening, he immediately opened the door, letting out a soft huff of surprise as you flung yourself into his arms, burying your face in his chest.

Wrapping one arm around you, he used the other to shut the door firmly and then drew you further into his small cell. He could feel that you were trembling and, if the dampness on his skin was any indication, crying.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice calm and gentle even as he felt frantic fear bubble up inside him. “It’s not safe, not at this time of night.”

“Are you okay?” you sobbed, lifting your head to look up at him. His heart broke at the sight of the tears in those wide, innocent, beautiful eyes of yours. “I was so afraid. After everything that happened at the banquet—and when Atticus pulled you out—I just—”

“Sh, sh, I’m okay,” he assured you softly, reaching up to lightly caress your wet cheek. He was glad that the room was shrouded in shadows, even with the candle, so that you couldn’t see the marks Atticus’ fist had left on his face. “I make him too much money for him to punish me too severely,” he tried to joke, even as his heart constricted.

In response, you buried your face back in his chest, clinging to him desperately. “You shouldn’t have done that, Gallus! All those people! Do you know what they could have done to you?”

“Hey,” he murmured, cupping your chin in his hand and lifting your face so that you were looking him in the eye. “I don’t care what they think, or what they can do to me. I wasn’t going to let those men get away with treating you like that,” he insisted firmly, peering deeply into your eyes so that you could feel his conviction.

Your beautiful face crumbled as more tears began spilling forth. “I can’t believe what they did to you and the others. How you had to just stand there while those people—”

“Don’t cry. Oh, please don’t cry,” he begged, holding your face in his hands and thumbing away your tears. “Not for me.”

Sniffling softly, you looked into his eyes as you told him, “You deserve to have someone cry for you.”

In that moment, he felt his heart split open inside his chest. For so long, he had been so certain that anything good left within him had been wiped out, decimated in the name of Rome. He had become convinced that he was incapable of love, of any soft feeling whatsoever. There were people in his life that he cared about—Phoenix, Hrodebert, and the Pugiones, for example—but he hadn’t believed himself capable of truly giving his heart to another person. How could he give what he didn’t have?

And then you came along. You, with your softness and your goodness and your innocence and your light. You, with the peace he had been longing for for so long. You were everything he had ever wanted, but had never dared to hope for.

Cradling your delicate face in his hands, he brushed his thumb against your soft lips, wondering not for the first time what they would taste like. Sweeter than honey, he was sure of it.

At the sound of the soft whimper escaping your lips, his eyes flew to yours and the breath was knocked out of his lungs at the sight of the longing in your expression. Was it possible? Could you really long for him the same way he longed for you?

Could you really love him the way he loved you?

When you leaned in closer, your eyes fluttering closed, he felt frozen. Did you want him to kiss you? He stared down at you, savoring the feel of your perfect lips beneath his calloused thumb.

It took his breath away, your innocence and your trust in him. Everyone else saw him as a barbarian, as a savage animal who was to be feared and avoided, not loved and cherished. But here you were, risking your own safety to come check on him in the middle of the night. Offering those perfect lips to him, trusting that he wouldn’t hurt you.

As he leaned in closer, his breath mingling with yours, Atticus’ words came flooding back to him in startling clarity,

I fucking own her!

She is my property.

I will beat her until she can hardly walk and then I will sell her to the nearest brothel I can find.

Gasping, Gallus pulled back and looked down at you in horror. What was he thinking? He couldn’t kiss you. He couldn’t love you. To do so would just be to put you in more danger than ever before.

If he truly wanted to keep you safe, he had to keep you as far away from him as possible.

Opening your eyes, you looked up at him in confusion and he felt what was left of his heart shatter to pieces.

Removing his hand from your face and taking a step backwards, Gallus stared at a point just over your shoulder as he told you, “I think you should go.”

The pain and humiliation on your face were too much for him to bear, and so he turned away from you, fighting like hell against the agony that was burning inside him. “Please, Sabina. Just go.”

He waited until he heard you turn and flee his cell, your footsteps receding into nothingness, before he turned and slammed the door of his cell shut, pounding on it with vicious fists until he felt the blood seeping between his knuckles.

“FUCK!” he screamed, lifting a stool and throwing it across the room, shattering it on the opposite wall.

He had never felt so trapped in all his life. He wanted you more than anything else in this world, but he knew that the only way to keep you safe from Atticus’ vile clutches was to distance himself from you as much as possible.

But how could he live without you? Now that he had you in his life, he didn’t know how to go on without you.

“FUCK!” he bellowed again, his chest heaving as he let loose all his pent up rage. He searched for something else to throw, something else to smash in his wild frenzy. Reaching out blindly, he picked up the nearest object he could find and was about to hurl it against the wall when he suddenly realized what it was he was holding.

His vision clearing, Gallus stared down at the small carving of a wolf and a dove, the carving made from the oak trees of his homeland. The carving you had gifted him, the one sign he had to cling to that there was someone in this world who cared about him, someone who saw him as more than just a barbarian.

Clutching the carving to his chest, Gallus fell to his knees and began to weep in earnest, the pain he’d been carrying inside for decades spilling forth as he sobbed into the night, alone as always.

Without you, he had nothing left worth fighting for.

TAGLIST: @callsign-magnolia @eli2447 @lt-spork @dlea203 @cherrycola27 @mikpieboo @callsignblondie @morgan108 @aprilwithapricots @up-thereinthesky @gigisimsonmars @na-ta-sh-aa @fav-fanficssss @lewmagoo @kmc1989 @inky-sun @je-suis-prest-rachel @amortentiadrops @jostyriggslover96 @nolita-fairytale @roosterscock @bradshawsbitch

#bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster x reader #x reader #x female reader #hannix #hangman x phoenix #top gun #top gun: maverick #miles teller #Ancient Rome AU #si vis amari ama ⚔️

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on-my-vigilante-sht · 11 months

Text

You’re Losing Me

Finnick Odair x Reader

Summary: Inspired by Taylor Swift’s “You’re Losing Me.” How Finnick loses the best thing he’s ever had

Warnings: So much angst, the angsty-est thing I’ve written in a long time. Not spellchecked and originally types on my phone.

Word Count: 1.3k (sorry it’s short, I’m getting used to writing one shots again)

Masterlist

I sat quietly in m- Finnick’s home in Victor’s Village. No matter how long I lived here and how many assurances I had gotten in the past that it was my home too, it never felt like that. I’m not a victor, just a girl who had been lucky enough to never be reaped. But because of my luck I felt like an outsider in my boyfriend’s community here in 4. As for his life in the Capitol? That was uncharted territory I never wanted to touch. As much as he tried to shield me from the issues I was keenly aware of Finnick’s role in the Capitol as well as the conniving souls that dwelled in it.

As I was stewing in my thoughts Finnick entered, clearly exhausted from his time in the Capitol. “Hey,” I called softly, not bothering to look up since I knew he wouldn’t.

I got a grumbled greeting as he continued into his bedroom. His dismissal stung but I had mostly gotten used to it. I wasn’t sure what changed. Maybe he was just exhausted now, maybe someone else has replaced me in his mind, maybe he has gotten tired of my presence, I didn’t quite know. All I knew was that three months ago he had gotten back from this year’s games and he was completely different. He wasn’t the doting boyfriend who was eager to see me anymore. But I just took it because I knew my heart couldn’t take losing him and yet I felt like he was losing me. I could actually feel my affections slipping away, it was like my heart wouldn’t start for him anymore. It wasn’t hell, it was purgatory.

Sighing I got up, heading to the guest room seeing as there was no point in me sitting up.

By morning I was up early, way earlier than Finnick. So I went to the market in an effort to avoid the crowds and get groceries before the sun had a chance to spoil them.

Returning to the house I found Finnick standing in the kitchen in half-dressed disarray. “Y/N,” he breathed as I stepped into view. I stared at him blankly, unsure what to make of the situation. He stumbled over to me, kicking off the half laced up shoe. I couldn’t even comprehend what was happening, still unsure of myself when he threw his arms around me. My own arms unable to move both because my brain was still catching up and my arms were weighed down by heavy grocery bags. “You didn’t come to bed last night,” he whispered in explanation, “and then you were gone this morning— Y/N, I love you so much.”

A part of me was relieved to have his attention again but my logical side was saying that this man had disregarded me for months. I scoffed, “How can you say you love me when you didn’t even know I was dying for the past three months? Or didn’t even acknowledge it.”

He stepped back, looking down in shame. “I’m sorry, I just- I couldn’t admit that we were sick.”

“You made us like that. You just stopped acknowledging me.” Tears were slipping out of my eyes now.

“I was trying to protect you,” he admitted. “You know how the Capitol feels about me.”

“Stop, you’re losing me. I know how they felt about you even before we got together. It’s something else,” I confronted him. I waited expectantly but Finnick just stared at the floor. Exasperated and feeling every emotion in existence I filled the silence. “Do something, say something, lose something, risk something, choose something, anything just don’t ignore me,” I begged. Realizing he wouldn’t do anything I spoke again after a beat of silence. “Well if you won’t fight for us… then let me go.” My heart shattered with those words.

That finally got Finnick to respond as he looked up. “What?” He approached me before dropping to his knees, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Y/N please don’t. Please stay, I’m sorry,” now he was crying and begging.

“Look, I wouldn’t marry me either,” I confessed, “but I just wanted you to see me. But I gave you all my best, and all of my empathy but you just watched me bleed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t.”

“Why now?”

“Because we’re just sitting in darkness and it’s time. Finnick,” the tears were coming so fast I could hardly speak, “I could never lose you but you’re losing me so please, I’m begging you, let me go.”

I felt his arms wrap tighter around me as his body wracked with sobs. “Goodbye Y/N.”

“Thank you,” I sobbed, running my fingers through his hair one last time before stepping out of his grasp. As I grabbed a couple things I watched him fold in on himself sobbing.

Finnick felt empty, he had for the past several months now that Y/N was gone. He knew it was selfish but he wished he hadn’t let her go because if he hadn’t uttered those words, she’d still be in his home right now.

Instead, he’s sitting in a bar in 4, ready to get blackout drunk when she walks in, hanging off the arm with an old friend, Ronan Hayden. A guy Finnick had had continuous issues with while he was dating Y/N.

Finnick tried to swallow his anger in the form of his first shot but it only made him angrier. So he ordered a beer, thinking that a slower drink may take his mind off of it.

After stewing for an hour and with his inhibitions lowered by the alcohol, Finnick had had enough watching Y/N laugh at Ronan’s jokes. Taking another shot for courage, Finnick stormed up to her table.

As the angry blond approached, Y/N finally seemed to realize her ex was in the same establishment she was. “Finnick,” she acknowledged in surprise.

“What the hell-” Ronan began angrily.

“Y/N, I’m sorry,” Finnick cut him off. “I really am and I know no amount of words can undo the pain I put you through but I have to try to atone for what I did. You know how they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone? I’m so so sorry I couldn’t appreciate you then but I can now. I’ll spend the rest of our lives appreciating you and trying to make up for what I did and for the months we lost because I was acting like a dick. And- and,” Finnick was nervous and rambling now, sobriety seeming to kick in, “I’ve thought about what you’d do or say when you saw my face again. Whether you’d have me back or tell me to go fuck myself,” he chuckled awkwardly. “But I needed to try.”

She pursed her lips, looking conflicted before she looked down at the table, both men eager for her affections waiting with bated breath. “Finnick… for months while we were still together and weeks after I tried to restart my pulse but my heart just won’t start for you anymore. You wouldn’t choose me and I’m not convinced you’d consistently choose me if I took you back. All I wanted was for you to see me but you kept running in the other direction. An- and honestly,” she stuttered out nervously, turning to look at Ronan, “I’m falling in love again.” The man visibly melted at her words while Finnick deflated. “I’ll be honest, our breakup devastated me,” she looked back up at her ex, “it was like a plane was going down but Ronan here turned it around. I’m sorry Finnick, but you lost me.”

With those words she cemented the door shut and completely tore out Finnick’s heart. He solemnly nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry I lost you.”

Masterlist

#finnick #finnick odair #finnick x reader #finnick odair x reader #thg finnick #the hunger games #the hunger games x reader

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nyctophiliq · 1 year

Note

hello i am the person who asked for ashley :) i’ve never done this before but there is barely any ashley x female reader stuff and it makes me sad because i have a fat crush on her😞 id love it if you could do something where reader is in the place of leon if that makes sense?? leon still exists but reader is the one on the mission to save ashley (reader is in closer age with ashley than leon is). sorta the same dynamic how ashley has a little crush on reader and doesn’t know she feels the same way because she has to act professional. something Nsfw maybe on the mission either castle or island⁉️⁉️ i just loved ur other ashley thing and this has been an idea in my head as i’ve played the game🤭 thank u for putting out good ashley content u are doing god’s work❤️❤️❤️

☆ ➣ TEMPT WITH PLEASURE. ashley graham

— “can you confess what i feel for you?”

content warning/s — nsfw content, female reader, sex under the effects of las plaga, reader acts like a pervert or a horny teenager, implied dacryphilia, nipple biting/sucking, fingering, talk of face sitting,

a/n — a/ns now moved to the end for stories, check it there !

“MAYBE I SHOULD STAY ON YOUR SIDE AT ALL TIMES.”

a gleeful sigh leaves you when you finally see ashley in one of the crimson rooms, sitting on the couch and… crying? the smile on your face quickly fades away as you hear her muffled sobs. you slide your gun into its holster as you hurry to her side, afraid that she was crying because after what happened at the gate she got hurt coming up here.

“ashley…” you breathed, glad that there were no visible injuries on her and she was probably just scared. you tried to sit down next to her, take her hand in yours to calm her down but she put her hands up and fended you off. “no, no, stay back! i might hurt you again…” she cried, yelling at you causing you to take a step back and put your own hands up in the air.

“i’m so scared, when that happened… i wasn’t myself anymore, i was something else!” you nodded, completely understanding what she was referring to. there was an uncomfortable feeling in your chest, tightening as you continued to stare at her and felt bad about what was happening. you shouldn’t have insisted on being the one rescuing her, rather let someone who had no prior relationship of any kind with her. it was selfish, but you couldn’t stand the thought of not being there for her, when her life was in such danger. she was still struggling, trying to regain her lost composure from having been drenched by her own tears after losing control over her body and thoughts.

you felt sick of yourself, for not being able to make out words of comfort, and that her tears dropping from her eyes made you so... excited for some reason.

"it’s okay to be afraid you know.” you finally spoke up. she turned her head to you, looking into your concerned eyes as though they held the answers to all of life’s problems. “but you can’t run, we gotta keep moving forw-” you tried to assure her, smiling softly to yourself while wiping her tears away with your sleeve, but she caught you off guard with her lips on yours, cutting your sentence in half.

“maybe this isn’t the time…” you didn't know how to react. she had just kissed you; it felt more than anything like a dream come true, yet you were shocked and confused, to say the least. “i’ve been waiting for this, for a while, not really in the mood to stop now.” she whispered against your lips, pulling away from you with a faint smile and red tinted cheeks, waiting for any kind of reaction for you.

your mind was... confused. you have known ashley for a while, not too long but just enough to realize that there was something about her that you just liked, more than you should have. she was your boss' daughter for god's sake, it goes against your contract and anything you believed in when you took the job at the white house. but then again, she looked at you with those beautiful blue eyes...and you just couldn't help yourself from catching feelings.

"i'm gonna get in trouble if this g-gets to your father." you stuttered, gulping when you felt her fingers running up and down your upper arm. she smiled, a genuine smile that made your heart beat a little faster, making it difficult for you to speak clearly and properly, but somehow, everything seemed alright. "i can be very persuasive, you don't have to worry about a thing." she assured you, leaning back in for another kiss. this time you were ready for it, and met her halfway once more, wrapping your arms around her neck and holding her close to your body, relishing the warmth that was emitting from her. she moved your hand slowly down to rest around her waist.

"this is crazy…" you muttered between kisses, and she chuckled. “it's only crazy if you don't stop talking.” she said, pulling away slightly, a smirk on her face before kissing you once more and biting on your lower lip, hard enough to leave it red and swollen, which sent shivers down your spine. you grabbed onto her hair, gently tugging it to force her closer to you, and she obliged. she bit harder on your lip once more, before pulling away slightly, a smirk on her face that you were starting to notice whenever you would look at her; it was almost like she wanted to tell you something without saying the words out loud.

she pushed you down onto the couch, helping you move your legs up on the cushions and undoing the belt around your waist, also quickly pulling the pouch on your thigh off. "how about we take our clothes off, hmm?" she asked, staring at you from across your body with lustful eyes, biting her bottom lip as she ran her hands down her thighs, pushing her skirt higher up to reveal her toned thighs, making you blush slightly. you swallowed thickly, watching as she pulled the scarf from around her neck and then shake her jacket off of her back.

"okay..." you breathed out heavily, watching her every movement carefully before her hands' delicate hands slide your shirt out of your loose pants. "this shirt is sure tight, just for my luck." she chuckled as she pushed the fabric further up, revealing your sports bra under. "i'm not good at this." you admitted quietly, staring at her. she giggled lightly, shaking her head in response.

"oh trust me, you'll be fine." she told you, moving her hands down to unzip the zip of your shorts. she slid her fingers inside, letting them glide across your sensitive areas until she reached your most sensitive area, causing your breath to hitch and your hips to involuntarily buck upwards. ashley smirked as she felt your arousal through her fingertips, slowly dragging it across, sending waves of pleasure throughout your entire body. she stopped for a moment, glancing down at her fingertips before bringing it to her mouth, and licking the tip of it lightly. “you taste better than i thought." she mutters around her finger.

"d-don't say that or be this unf-fair..." you stutter, finally having the courage to reach for her orange top, pushing your fingers around the rim and tugging it upwards like an impatient child. ashley pursed her lips after taking her fingers out of her mouth, nodding with a smile before reaching to help you with taking her shirt off and revealing her white lacy bra.

lust was cursing through your whole body, flustering every inch of it but heating your cheeks up the most as she put the top on the backrest of the couch before moving up from your thighs to just above your waist. "better?" she gave you a cheeky smile as you nodded vigorously, eyes on her boobs, staring at them like a horny teenage boy.

"you can touch them you know, i've always wanted you to..." she trails off, sliding her hands along the side of your hips, massaging them gently. "you're so fucking sexy... do you have any idea?" she asks, looking at you intensely as her hands go behind her back, undoing the clasp of her bra and sliding it off. "they’re so soft, you could use your mouth on them..." she says, trailing off for a second, before leaving down, her chest in your face, grabbing your hand and positioning it on her breast. you gasped as her nipples hardened immediately and you began sucking them, rubbing your thumb over the bud and hearing her moan. you felt a rush of heat go through your body, as you sucked her breasts roughly. you never wanted it to end, especially not if it meant seeing her this way.

her boob that was in your mouth muffled your surprised moan, her finger back in your pants and teasing your entrance. you could feel your stomach getting tighter and tighter with anticipation. "ah," you moaned, pulling away slightly to catch your breath. "yes... fuck... yes, please..." your voice cracked, your throat dry due to all the saliva that was currently dripping down your chin.

"right here?" she asks as she pushes two fingers inside of you, no warning, no more foreplay just her digits sliding in and out of your clamping walls. you closed your eyes tightly, trying your best to hold back any sounds, biting your tongue harshly as you tried to keep your breathing steady, the pressure of her finger going deeper and deeper inside of you was enough to make you squirm beneath her.

"yeah... ah! fuck yeah!" you yelled, panting and clenching your teeth against the pain. you felt like you were going insane. "ashley!" you moaned desperately as your eyes opened. she was staring intently at you, a grin etched onto her face, her eyes full of lust as she stared at you with a hungry gaze. you could hardly contain yourself and the noises you were making, taking her nipple back between your lips to fight against your embarrassment.

"already close, huh pretty girl?" she observed, your eyes glued shut and your hand still grasping onto her breast tightly.

with one quick motion, you felt a wave of pleasure wash through your body as you came undone underneath her, screaming her name loudly. ashley grinned, pulling away from you to remove her panties with her other hand as she watched as your orgasm wrecked your body, whining as you gushed onto her digits and begged for her tits to be back in your mouth. the warm air hit your heated skin, making your core tighten even more, causing a few whimpers to escape from your mouth.

"god, ashley..." you groaned as the smoke cloud of ecstasy disappeared, feeling a bit weaker than ever before. you lay there, completely exhausted and spent, sweat dripping down your forehead as you looked up to see ashley staring at you, her hand still buried deep inside of you. "you're really sensitive." she pulls out of you, mocking you with not only her words but with her eyes as she takes her fingers into her mouth once again, sucking them clean.

gulping, hooded eyes scanning her hot body, taking note of the small twitches of her hips against your stomach. fisting your hand, trying to regain your strength and get rid of the numb feeling in your arms as you reached for her hips. "can i..." you had to take a second, you never had to be this forward before and she was just so goddamn beautiful, she deserved nothing but the best.

"i s-swear i'll return the f-favor once i get you safely h-home, okay?" you rush your words, fingers digging into her hips as you try to compose your thoughts. "it's just that... we need to go now and if i make you sit on my face i d-don't think i would be able to stop." you finished, giving her a shy grin and she nods softly, her hand coming to caress your face.

"i'll hold you to that. promise you won't back down after you shake hands with my father?" she chuckled, not even taking herself that seriously after once again mentioning her father. you laugh alongside her, nodding your head, "i promise."

AUTHOR'S NOTE ! i did my best, i rewatched the game a hundred times to get it right because my brain is always short cuts HOPE YOU LIKED IT ANONIE, sorry it took so long but it’s over 2k words so i hope that made up for it :)

#📗 — written by moss !#resident evil ashley graham x reader smut #resident evil ashley x reader smut #ashley graham smut #ashley graham x reader smut #ashley graham x reader #re4 ashley #resident evil 4 x reader smut #resident evil x reader #resident evil ashley graham x reader #resident evil ashley graham #re4 ashley x reader #re4 ashley graham x reader smut

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astrobolical · 11 months

Text

When you’ve got a cold-

Content Warnings: None— fluff, colds I guess?

Reader: Gender Neutral

This isn’t proofread, and I’ve been sick since Saturday so this is purely self indulgent. I just hope it makes sense. Just headcanons because my brain is in a fog and I can’t get out of it. ;;

» Leviathan had been confused when you weren’t answering your D.D.D. when his new game came in— did you suddenly realize you were too good for him? Did you find someone better to spend your time with?!

» After grappling with the flood of negative thoughts, though, he goes to see you, hearing a muffled ‘come in’ from behind your door after he knocks

» He was surprised to find you curled up on your bed, sluggishly moving to sit up as he entered, bundled up in your comforter like a lil’ human burrito

» When you explain that you’re sick he feels a rush of relief (you don’t hate him!!) and worry all at the same time— humans are fragile! Are you going to come out of this?! Is it curable? Surely you need a doctor!

» After some coaxing (and a small coughing fit) you manage to explain to him that it’s nothing life threatening, just a cold and that you’d be fine after some rest and some medicine (courtesy of Solomon)

» Though unhappy you went to Solomon first, he does understand why (he also does acknowledge he’d have no clue what to give you as far as medicine went)

» He insists he’ll at least spend time with you, even when you explain that you’ll really just be sleeping a lot and that you don’t want to get him sick, too

» He almost relents, but a burst of envy has him a little more demanding. What if one of his brothers found you like this?! They’d never leave you alone! So how could he?

» So, in order to save you from his brothers’ antics he insists on you coming to his room— the safest place to hide out, as far as Levi is concerned. He insists he’ll be fine, he won’t catch some normie, human cold

» That’s how you found yourself watching Levi game from a comfortable mess of blankets and pillows propped up in his bathtub

» It was comfortable for both of you— you could rest when you needed without interruption, or watch him play his games when you were awake and converse if you felt well enough. Levi got to give you a safe place to recover, and the pleasure of your company

» It never mattered to Levi if you were both doing the same thing or not, he just loved having you around him, knowing you were opting to stay with him

» Since he’s always staying stocked up in his room he doesn’t have to leave very often, he’ll have whatever you could want or need at your fingertips— and he’ll even make trips out for you if you ask! That’s just how much you mean to him!

» Will absolutely melt if you use his lap as a pillow while he’s sitting on the floor playing on his consoles, especially if you fall asleep on him— how cute!!! MC!! That’s too cute!!

» Does take a few photos, but he’ll never show them to anyone, ever! He just can’t get over how much you trust him even if you’re in this weakened state

» Will never turn away your affections, even if you hesitate due to not wanting to pass this onto him— don’t move away! It’s okay! He swears if he gets sick it is what it is! But he won’t. (Lies)

» In the end he keeps you hydrated, entertained and well… very protected. No one bothered you while you were in his room. Only once and the threat of Lotan had Lucifer telling his brothers’ to leave MC to rest where you choose (and you chose HIS ROOM, so HA)

» He’ll absolutely cuddle up with you in his tub, either to sleep beside you or to have you lay on his chest while he plays something on his D.D.D. Or a handheld console. You’re a tangle of limbs, pillows and blankets but you wouldn’t change it for the world— especially how his tail curls around you and keeps you close

» When you do start to recover and have a bit more energy to spare Levi will be ecstatic to show you the new game he got!! Now that you can enjoy it, you can ride out the rest of your cold with him and this game he got for the two of you

» Be prepared though, despite his protests he’s absolutely getting sick

» And he has no idea how to handle human colds, so please pamper the boy and return the favour— he went out of his way for you!!

» In the end though, you both end up locked away for a solid week and a half until both of you were finally clear of any illness

» As much as getting sick sucked, Levi tells you the next time you get sick you should absolutely come right to him! His room can be your safe place

» Though when you go out next you’re dogpiled by his brothers who’ve been missing your attention (and were also worried!), so maybe go out in intervals next time…

#obey me leviathan #obey me shall we date #obey me nightbringer #obey me x mc #obey me x y/n #leviathan x mc #leviathan x reader #leviathan x y/n #~take time to relax #I’m so tired of being sick ;;

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acatalystrising · 1 year

Text

I have FINALLY returned! Life have been nuts but I’m getting back into the swing of things. I have a lovely requested one shot in the works, and I absolutely cannot wait to share it. I want it to be perfect so I’m taking the time it needs to be just right. In the meantime, I have something a little less…sweet…and moreeee…indulgent. Yeah, that’s it. LOOK, I’ve been missing my green tin can man, and I have had THOTS.

So without further ado, please enjoy this purely filthy oneshot of ROTJ bounty hunter Boba, in his prime, just because I felt like it. (And iffff you really like it, there may or may not be more hehe)

(Obviously this is NSFW, minors DNI. Predator/prey, dom Boba x sub!reader, reader is a virgin, dirty talk/praise, slight voyeurism if you squint, and Boba just being…well, Boba. *Because we all know younger Boba is a menace okay*)

Oneshot: Reckoning

Your uncle had trained you for this moment.

Had prepared you for the day this nightmare would arise. You knew a hunter would come, the only question was who. But no amount of training could compare to standing face to face with him.

Boba Fett.

Of all the bounty hunters in the Galaxy, fate had deemed to send the best. You’d heard of him, of course, but nothing could have prepared you for a face to face encounter with the armored hunter.

The T-visor was black and inhuman, boring into your soul, and you had the distinct worry that he could read your panicked thoughts. He stood before you, head to toe in chipped green beskar, path barred only by the counter between you both - but you weren’t a fool. You knew it offered you no safety. If he wanted you, he’d get you. But he wasn’t here for you…and yet, that did nothing to ease your frayed nerves.

“Garrett Dal’isk,” the bounty hunter’s voice was deep and coarse, with an odd accent that burned like fine wine in the back of your throat. “Where is he.”

This wasn’t posed as a question. He knew this was your uncle’s shop, probably already knew where you both lived. Might have been watching you for an unknown span of time before striking. Kriff, what if he’d overheard the plan? Maybe he was just toying with you in some sick game, maybe you were doomed and-

“I asked a question, girl.” His voice hardened like iron, nearly a growl. He patted his gun with his free hand, held at the ready. “Won’t repeat myself.”

Shit. It was now or never.

“He went to get more wares,” you kept your tone even, but were unable to hide the tremor in your voice. “In the nearest town, that is.”

Boba Fett was silent for a moment, his helmet tilting slightly to the side, a lone finger tapping on his weapon. He clearly wasn’t satisfied. You’d barely given him anything to go by. And he had said he wouldn’t repeat himself, hadn’t he? Maker, you’d get yourself killed if you kept this charade up.

“It’s Dask,” you let your words rush faster, embarrassment flushing your cheeks when he took a step closer, spurred footsteps clinking, like nails hammering into your coffin. “Five miles west of here. He’ll be at Olly’s, getting more supplies. Big blue building, you can’t miss it. And if he’s not there he’ll be-“

“That’s all I need,” his voice was sudden and sharp, though you could have sworn you detected a touch of amusement in his tone. You were probably imagining things. “So quick to betray your uncle, hmm?”

You swallowed hard, heartbeat pounding rapidly in your ears as horror flooded your stomach. How’d he know that?

“I…he…” you took a compulsive step backward, true fear overtaking your chest. “He…”

Fett chuckled, but it was a dry, humorless laugh that crackled through his vocoder like dry reeds in the wind. He took another step forward, as if following you, until he was leaning against the counter, helmet tilted to peer down at you, gloved hands mere inches away.

“You’d better be telling the truth,” his helmet tilted again to the side, and you flinched when he lifted a hand and brushed a fleck of dirt off your shoulder, “if you’re not, I’ll still catch him. Then I’ll deal with you.”

He stepped back, unseen eyes boring into you, giving you a final glance before promptly turning and walking back out the way he came. You heard his spurs even after the door closed, punching through the silence.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

And then they faded away to nothing.

You slumped against the counter, heart hammering, and promptly dry heaved into the trash can.

Oh maker, you were a dead woman walking.

The last hours of your shift were absolute hell.

It had been so…quiet. Barely any customers, leaving you trapped with your thoughts. You’d nearly bitten off all your nails to the point of bleeding, too anxious to stop pacing. But time passed by, as it always did, and there was no sign of Fett, or your uncle. Eventually, you closed up the shop and headed home…hoping for your sake your uncle was long gone.

Even as your speeder slowed to a stop in front of the quaint house you two shared, the anxiety roiled in the pit of your stomach like a growing storm.

There were no lights on inside.

Swallowing down your growing dread, you slipped in the house, and judging by the silence that awaited you, you were alone. Your shoulders sagged in relief as you piled your belongings on the counter with a sigh, walking down the hall toward your room. Maker, you were tired. Your uncle had been a fool, stealing those credits from the wrong people. Now you both would pay for it. He was your only family, really, but you still didn’t want to die because of his mistakes.

You stepped inside your dark room and turned to shut the door, when a familiar rasping voice broke the tense silence.

“You’re not a good liar, girl.”

Oh gods no.

You shrieked, twisting the doorknob to bolt, but a hand much larger than yours slammed the door shut. You were wrestled against it and pinned there, face pressed to the wood, one impossibly strong hand on your shoulder, the other around your throat.

“Tried to throw me off the trail? Nice try, not good enough.” Boba Fett’s voice was rough, right next to your ear, and you winced when you felt the cold beskar brush against your skin. “Your uncle hadn’t even made it to the shuttle. Shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

You could feel his body pressed against yours, the sharp edges of his armor digging into your much softer flesh. Despite the precarious situation, something about the low register of his voice and the position he was holding you in caused a completely different reaction then the fear currently flooded your lungs.

“Are you going to kill me?” When you finally spoke, your voice was small. The fear nearly chocked your words. You felt him shift against you, and you squeezed your eyes shut, expecting to feel the muzzle of his blaster against your temple.

But Boba Fett merely pulled back far enough to flip you around so you were facing him, those big hands pinning you to the wall by your shoulders.

“Any reason I shouldn’t?” His voice was a growl, the helmet predatory in the dark. He lifted a hand to your chin and you flinched, feeling his grip tighten ever so slightly as he tilted your head back. “Would be a shame, though, to waste this pretty face.”

You should have been enraged. Offended. Disgusted, even. And if it had been any other man holding you this way, you would have let lose a string of profanities. But for some reason, his words rendered you mute. You openly gaped at him, feeling betrayed by your own body as your cheeks heated up in a blush.

“Come now, don’t be shy,” Fett’s voice had taken a distinctly rougher tone, and you shivered when his thumb brushed against your throat. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you. Beg for it.”

You opened your mouth, but no words came. Stars, you were going to die. Boba pulled away, removing his hand from your chin, and you whimpered when he lifted his blaster into your line of sight.

“I said beg,” he gestured at you with a flick of the weapon. “Won’t ask again.”

“I…” you stammered, heart pounding. Maker, he was strong. “My uncle is…he…he hurts me. I only helped because he, he forced me to. Otherwise I…I would never. Never get between you and…and…your prey. Wouldn’t dream if it, no. I’m smarter…then that. Absolutely smarter. Would never…”

The grip on your shoulder tightened, and you winced when he leaned closer. He smelled of leather and blaster smoke, and you found yourself staring into that black visor as he closed the distance between you.

“That’s right,” Fett holstered his blaster with a practiced twirl, grip loosening ever so slightly on your shoulder. “Be a good girl and act like it.”

Oh gods.

You couldn’t stop the shudder that rippled through your body, and you desperately hoped he saw it as fear, and nothing else.

You should have known better.

“Liked that, hmm?” He pulled you away from the door, into the middle of the room. He released you from his clutches and slowly circled you, movements calculating, precise. “Should be scared for your life, but no…bet you’ve soaked your underwear, too. Dirty, dirty girl.”

You shivered, arms crossed over your chest, face assuredly flushing the brightest red as he stopped before you again, arms held loosely at his sides.

“I could kill you. Would be easy,” he stated this more as a fact than a threat, once again reaching for your chin. This time you didn’t flinch. “Must be really desperate, to be turned on by an old hunter.”

“You don’t…don’t seem that old,” you dared to speak, voice shaking, and swallowed hard. “I’m sure everyone begs and tries to get away. But I’m not…not a bounty. There’s no profit in my death, so please don’t kill me, I never…asked for this.”

Fett was silent for a moment, thumb ghosting over your skin before slowly stroking your throat, making your breath catch in your chest. Maker above…

“None do.” He pulled away, and you stopped yourself from leaning forward, feeling dizzy from his mere touch. “Stay out of my way, little one. Won’t be as merciful next time.”

Little one? Was that a pet name? You blinked, too stunned to speak.

Next time?

You frowned when he walked around you and opened the door as if he lived there, casually glancing back with a tilt of his helmet.

“Will I…see you again?” You felt the words leaving your lips before you could stop them, desire still overriding fear.

Stars, you swore you could feel the smirk hidden behind the helmet.

“Better hope for your sake you won’t,” Boba Fett gave you one final glance before walking out of your room and exiting your home, leaving you with an entirely different problem to deal with.

Two weeks had passed, and there hadn’t been a sign of your uncle or Fett.

You’d run the shop as you’d planned in a worst case scenario, managing to keep the roof over your head. You’d be damned if you didn’t try to make it despite the poor hand of cards fate had dealt you. But for some reason, you couldn’t get the armored hunter off your mind.

Maybe it had been his voice. Or the armor that made him look so menacing. Perhaps it was the way he held you, and spoke those words that made you shudder. Words you couldn’t get out of your head, try as you might. Words you were replaying, even now, as you lay on your bed and had your fingers buried in your aching heat, so desperately close to release.

What would he be like? Rough, you figured. Strong, bending you to his will. Not that you knew much of such things, but a girl could imagine. Imagine his lips on your neck as he filled you, reaching the places you couldn’t, bringing you to a shuddering orgasm that rivaled those brought by your much smaller fingers.

Would he kiss you? Keep his helmet on? Or even fuck you at all? Maker, you needed to move on, but as heat began to flood your core, you felt his name slipping from your lips in a pathetic plea. You were so, so close…

“Oh Boba…”

A loud crash broke your concentration, and you yelped, pulling your hands free and jumping to your feet, pulling your pants back on. What the hell? Was it your uncle? Fett? A robber? You reached for your blaster even as booted footsteps pounded down the hallway. Fear twisted in your gut as your door burst open, revealing a stranger.

You screamed, raising the blaster to fire, and the man smirked, his own blaster aimed at you.

“Don’t even try it, girlie,” he pointed at the ground with a sneer. “Drop the weapon and come along quietly. I’ve had enough difficult bounties for one day.”

Your eyes widened. Bounty?

“You…you’re looking for my uncle.” You didn’t drop the blaster. “He was already taken. You’ve got the wrong person.”

The man only smirked and withdrew a tracking fob, pressing a button, revealing a small holographic picture of your face.

“Looks like a match to me.” He tucked the fob away, gesturing at you with his weapon. “So put it down. You’re not getting out of this.”

Panic coursed through you like lighting, horror numbing your brain. Maker, what was happening? Why would you be wanted? What could you have possibly done to warrant…

Shit.

This had to be your uncle’s doing.

“What did I say? Put it down!” He went to take a step forward, bearded face twisted in a dark glare. “You’d better listen or I’ll-“

A plasma bolt suddenly slammed into the man’s back, dropping him to the ground. Smoke wafted from a charred hole between his shoulders, and you shrieked when none other than Boba Fett stepped into the doorway, deftly stepping over the body.

“I didn’t do anything, I swear-“ you immediately launched into a plea, but he held up a hand, inspecting the body in silence.

You watched, terror rising renewed in your chest, as he approached you, chipped armor gleaming in the sunlight. He stopped a mere inch away, helmet tilted down toward you, and you couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran down your spine.

“Had I known you’d be using my name to get yourself off, I’d have done the job myself.” His gruff tone was uniquely coy, and despite your terrible situation, your cheeks burned furiously.

“I…I…did you watch?” Embarrassment flooded through you and you tried to turn away. “How long have you been here? Who would be so…so vile?”

His hand lashed out faster then you could blink and latched onto yours, pulling you against his armored chest. You thudded into him with a wheeze, hands pressed against his armor, and could only stare up at his helmet with wide eyes.

“Next time you’re gonna take care of business, don’t leave your window open,” his voice was a growl, one that sent heat pooling straight to your center. “I was tracking the idiot trying to take you. Now, where were we?”

“I shouldn’t have a bounty. I haven’t don’t anything, I-“

A gloved finger pressed against your lips, silencing you.

“Not that, little one. We’ll deal with that oversight later.” Fett drug his finger down your lips in a near caress, stroking your jawline. Damn, he must have paid attention to how it had affected you. “You didn’t finish.”

“Finish? What do you-“ your eyes widened when the implications of his words hit home. “Oh. OH. It’s nothing, it’s fine.”

Fett released you, and you nearly stumbled, watching him with wide eyes as he set down his blaster, helmet still trained on you.

“I won’t force anything on you.” He regarded you with a slightly tilted helmet, voice low, even. But not entirely unkind. “But I can help you, if you want.”

Stars, you felt like prey. Cornered, trapped. But maker, you could only stammer, words stumbling from your lips like a baby deer taking its first steps. Since when did the prey want to be hunted? To be captured?

Oh kriff, you were doomed.

“But I…I…umm, well you see…” you flushed, meeting the visor’s blank, yet intent stare, afraid you’d ruin whatever this…was. “I’m…well, a virgin.”

Boba Fett was silent. Silent when he slowly approached, spurs clicking on the floor. Silent when his fingers once again found your chin, tilting your face up to meet his.

“I came all this way for a kriffing virgin?” His voice was rough like hewn stone, ragged like a beast barely restrained.

You nodded, wide eyed, too scared and ashamed to speak. Would he reject you? Kill you if he lost interest? But Boba merely stroked your cheek with his thumb, an uncharacteristically gentle gesture, breaking the silence with a deep chuckle laden with promise.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, mesh’la.” He traced your jawline with a gloved finger, dropping to your neck, stopping right at your pulse point. Your breath was ragged, huffing, waiting, wondering what he would do next. “Say no, and I’ll walk away. This never happened.”

Oh maker, but you didn’t want to say no. Heat coiled in your stomach, growing like a wildfire between your legs. You swallowed thickly, eyes wide, gaze fixed on that impassive visor.

Damn it all, chances were you were going to die anyway.

“I…on one condition,” you nearly flinched when he took another step forward, pinning you against the wall, so very close.

“Depends on the request,” his answer was nearly a purr as he drug a finger across your lips.

“Kiss me.” Your chest was so tight you could barely breathe, much less speak. “If I’m gonna die, or get fucked, I at least want a kiss out of it.”

He paused, as if the request was unexpected. You watched with bated breath as he seemed to calculate a response.

Boba Fett chuckled, a dark, low rumble from his chest that settled in the back of your throat like fine wine. Stars, he was dangerous. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through your hair, pinching a lock in-between his thumb and index finger.

“Little princess has a dirty mouth, hmm?” He gripped your hair tighter, pulling ever so slightly. Heart pounding, you did your best to stifle a moan. “What would your uncle think? His little girl being so filthy with a bounty hunter. Begging for him to fill her. Wanting him to be her first.”

“Don’t…don’t care.” You swallowed again, daring to sneak a glance down at his codpiece.

Boba’s hand lifted from your hair and returned to your chin, directing your gaze back at his helmet.

“Curious mouse.” He chucked again, running his other hand down your side, stopping at your hip. “Think you’re brave, girl? Asking for what no one gets. Is that right?”

You nodded, heartbeat pounding so loud you wagered he could hear it. His grip on your chin tightened, bringing your focus back on him, and him alone.

“Use your words, princess.”

“Y-yes…” you didn’t look away, even as your pulse thrummed beneath his touch, betraying just how much he affected you. “Sir.”

He grunted, the hand at your hip dropping lower, thumb hovering dangerously close to your crotch. You wriggled against him, anticipation rising, nearly muddling your thoughts to complete disarray. Maker, this man would destroy you…and you’d let him.

His helmet pressed against your cheek, and when he spoke, you felt a shiver run down your spine. He slowly lifted a hand to the side of his helmet, unlocking the clasp with a soft airy hiss.

“Good girl.”

#boba fett #boba fett x reader #boba fett x female reader #boba fett x f!reader #boba fett x fem!reader #boba fett x reader smut #boba fett x you #boba fett smut #daddy boba fett #rotj boba fett #bounty hunter #star wars #acatalystrising writes #my writing #look I know this is filthy but can you blame me #I’m suffering in boba drought #but I can write #and ohhh I will

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atinylittlepain · 2 months

Text

Part Two

climbing expeditionist!steve harrington x f!oc

series masterlist

Past, present, and future dance and daunt in the shadows of Mount Everest. He just wants to get home. She just wants him home.

chapter warnings | 18+ angst, pregnancy, commentary on eco-tourism, steve is a little depresso at 17,000 feet, non-invasive descriptions of altitude sickness and the injection of medicine to treat it, tispy steve is a menace and requires a warning

word count | 3.8K

.....................................................

April, 1996 - Boulder, Colorado

Time starts to warp and reel in on itself, she finds. Somehow, it’s already been a month since he left. And even though the days seem to stretch and thin, interminable, the nights too, she can’t fully account for the last four weeks.

Somehow, April, the middle of it. Somehow, spring, the snow starting to melt, flowers pushing up from dark, damp earth, life bursting and buoying forth in Colorado. She takes her students outside for class as much as she can, they go for walks around the school while asking and answering questions about book reports and vocab quizzes. They’re reading The Little Prince as a class, she asks them what they think about the fox and the pilot while they meander in the cool air. The other teachers say that it’s a brilliant idea, but she knows that she needs that time uncloistered just as much as the students do. And because it makes her the cool teacher, of course the kids know what she does, what Steve does, and is doing. Mrs. Harrington climbs mountains and her husband is on top of the world.

Teaching had seemed like the most efficient job to accommodate what she loves, weekends and summers off, and a handy deal worked out with the principal to take off at the end of March, what she had done for the past two years years. Not needed this year though. Instead, the kids ask her where her husband is, when he’s coming home. It had nearly knocked the wind out of her when one of them, a boy in all his young earnestness, had asked her can he breathe up there?

At the very least, work eats up the weekdays, grading tests and lesson plans and rushed lunch hours in her classroom. Phone calls come fewer and farther in between, and she knows that they have to because he’s getting ready for the push off from base. And then, well, there won’t be any phone calls for at least three weeks, just updates from Robin still at base, a roundabout game of radio relay. So for now, she’s grateful for the lost sleep, for the phone ringing in the middle of the night, him telling her about the shifting Icefall, the strange new crush of crowds around the ladders over the crevasses. She asks if Eddie’s using oxygen this year and he tells her he is. Getting older, he says, getting smarter, she replies.

Steve has been keeping meticulous track of the weeks, and she knows him, knows that when he asks after how she’s feeling, what she did that week, that he’s writing it down somewhere, a habit of his she learned early on. Not wanting to miss anything, trying to pin down time with pen and paper. Before she can even tell him that her 24-week scan is on Thursday, he’s already asking after it, my Friday, right?

“Yeah, in the morning, I’ll fax the scans over soon as I get home.”

“I know we’re not supposed to, but I’ve been keeping the ones you sent in my jacket pocket when we’re climbing. Been showing them to anyone who will give me the chance to whip them out. They’re perfect, honey.” And then almost as an afterthought, he breathes out thank you. When she asks him what for he laughs, just once, just thank you, that’s all.

“Are you pushing off soon?”

“It’s looking like this Saturday is gonna be it.” Quick catch, quick drop of her heart into her stomach before it slings taut and tight up into her throat. She swallows hard before she responds.

“Oh, that’s early isn’t it?”

“We’re trying to get a jump on the crowd here. It’s gonna be a jam if we don’t, Josie, a total mess.” She doesn’t like it, not at all. Mid-May, there’s a reason everyone aims for mid-May, and even the difference of a handful of days can spell a quick-weaving fabric of disaster, of weather that would make even the best of them turn around, or die trying to persist. But she knows she can’t say that to him, knows that he needs her confidence right now. So she says okay twice, okay, okay, takes a deep breath before saying any more so that her voice is steady when she speaks again.

“Well, it sounds like early is best then. Just a few days shouldn’t snarl anything too bad, right?”

“That’s the hope, a nice clean send to finish things off here.” He sighs, he’s tired, she knows, she can hear it. The push before the push, packing out oxygen tanks and checking ladders and ropes, and making sure the clients are keeping their own packing light and aren’t getting sick, coordinating with the other guides. Of course he’s tired, starting to wear thin around the edges, so she makes her voice light as air alright, baby, better let you go, and yes, send the scans over and yes, love you, love you so much, call before Saturday, before you leave. The phone clicks and she’s suspended into silence again, the darkness of her bedroom. Hand on her stomach, little life answers with a kick.

“That was your dad on the phone.”

…

May, 1990 - Camp Four

At first it was pain, and getting used to it. Weak and wan, cold all the time, a rattling cough that seems to get worse the further up they trek. Food became tedious somewhere along the way, trying to keep down instant noodles and peanut m and ms, about all he can stomach, and the errant thought that it’s because his body is quite literally shutting down the higher they climb. The nights are sleepless, wind whipping at the sides of their tents, fabric walls closing in around them, the only sound rising above the howls being the cacophony of hacking lungs in the night, deep pauses whenever someone takes a pull of oxygen from their mask.

It’s no longer pain, it’s something past pain. It’s sheer endurance at this point, a numb sort of will to continue, to see this through. He didn’t think he had romantic notions about this climb, did plenty of reading about what happens to the body after reaching a certain altitude, reading about the bodies left behind, frozen into the face of the mountain, about ice blindness and hallucinations, vomiting blood and swelling brains, gone mad in the cold and the wind. But still, but still, there are some things not even the imagination can reach.

If there is a perfect distillation of agony, he thinks it would be this, curled up in a tent, willing sleep while he coughs so hard he thinks he might start to puke, and knowing that the next morning, he will push himself even further, even higher. They all will.

There’s a shout of his name, and he’s nearly certain his mind is crafting it out of thin air, but then the flap of his tent is coming unzipped and it’s her, it’s her, ducking her head in and holding out a first aid kit. Past the point of pretenses, of any sort of peacocking, he simply shrugs over to the side of his tent to make room for her to crawl inside, breathing hard, ice in her eyelashes and around the neck of her jacket.

“Do you want pills or a shot?”

“What?” She doesn’t look at him, just keeps rummaging through her kit, pulling out a box of pills and a syringe with shaking hands, her head lamp laying between them, casting strange shadows over her face, the walls of the tent.

“You sound awful, Steve.”

“We all sound awful.”

“Yeah, but your tent is next to mine and I can’t fucking sleep with you hacking up a lung. So, shot or pills?” He knows what it is, though he hasn’t had to take any yet. Dexamethasone, acetazolamide, nifedipine, take your pick, some kind of anti-inflammatory, considered cheating by some (Eddie) and a necessary evil by others.

“The shot works faster, doesn’t it?” She nods, smiles just a little, one that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, too tired, too cold, too bloodshot, and he’s certain he looks the same.

“Gonna have to pull your pants down for me, I need a thigh.” He doesn’t think twice about it, not with the near promise of even a little relief, fumbling to unzip his sleeping bag, tugging down one leg of his pants, enough that his ass is out and his thigh is too. And Jo works with a studied precision, uncapping the needle and leaning over him, her hand on his hip and okay, okay, he can’t hear it over the wind but he can see her mouth move around the words, quick pinch that he barely notices, taking simple pleasure in the brief closeness of her warmth, there and gone as she leans back to re-cap the needle.

“That should kick in pretty fast.” Quick to tug and zip everything back up if for no other reason than the cold, what clarity is left in his mind kicks up with a halfway giddy thought of how close she is, shoulders hunched and sitting on her knees. He offers her his oxygen mask for a breath that she happily takes, leaning in again, so close he can see that freckle beneath her eye before she pulls away.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m dying. Par for the course, right?” He can’t argue with that, shrugging a little and trying for a smile that he’s pretty sure looks more like a grimace.

“You take anything?”

“Two pills, dying less. You ready for tomorrow?” Tomorrow, right. The final ascent, the top of the world, the thing, the final thing that they have all been in this death march toward.

“I don’t know, I hope so. Are you?”

“Mmm, to be seen, I guess. I, uh, I like being near you when we’re moving though, it helps.”

“Helps?”

“You move very steady, very sure. I figure as long as you’re confident in where you’re stepping, I can keep my ass in gear.” She leans in for another breath, a murmured I owe you some inhales tomorrow that he shakes his head at.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing about you, for the record. You’re impressive.” She shrugs, pauses for a cough that shakes her whole body, eyes scrunched closed, enough to make him wince and offer her his mask again. She shakes her head, wave of her hand, and he watches the rise and fall of her shoulders as she works another breath into her lungs.

“Just trying to keep up with the mountain. Are you feeling a little better now?” He is, he tells her, cough simmering into something more manageable, the pain dulling into something more like a second heartbeat.

There’s a beat, a breath, within which both of them stare at each other in the shared absurdity of where they are and what they are doing. He knows she needs to get back to her tent, back to her own oxygen tank, and he knows that he’s being selfish by asking her another question to keep her here for an answer longer. That trite question that essentially amounts to why are you here? Why did you decide to be here? Why, here? And she smiles, big and everything, really, tilts her head and doesn’t answer him, but asks him the same thing. And he says that thing, that thing that any self-respecting climber knows because it’s in the blood of their history, Patagonia t-shirts and North Face ad deals slinging it around like a mantra, like a prayer, like a war cry. The thing that George Mallory said, 1923, before he would try for Everest for the third time, and die doing it. Why, why, why? Because it is there.

She grins even brighter, repeats it back to him with her hand held out, and he takes it for a moment.

“I’ll see you bright and early, Steve, get some sleep.”

…

April, 1996 - Base Camp

“At dawn tomorrow morning, you are going to begin your ascent toward the summit. We have this meeting the night before to make sure that everyone understands what is coming over the next two weeks.” Take no shit, no prisoners either, Nancy has always had a talent for this talk, he thinks, holding both the crew and the clients in rapt attention as she runs through her lecture with the efficiency and steel of a military commander, pacing at the front of their main tent with a map of the mountain behind her. She had gotten to base a week after them, Eddie wrapping her up in his arms, a smacking kiss to her cheek, her mouth, and doctor wife, so good to see you. Steve still has a hard time summing that equation up, but somehow they make it work.

“You’ll begin your climb through the Khumbu Icefall, which I understand Ryan has been taking you through over the last two weeks. From there, you’ll set camp at about 19,500 feet, you’ll spend a lot of time at this camp, making acclimitzation trips further up the mountain and coming back down in between, before passing up through the western cwm to get to camp two at 21,350 feet. It is imperative as you continue to climb that you pay attention to how you’re feeling. Nausea and fatigue are expected to a certain degree, but if you’re feeling dizzy, or lethargic, you need to let one of the guides know as the risk for cerebral pulmonary edema increases with each altitude jump.”

“You’ll move over the Lhotse Face to get to camp three at 23,500 feet. You’re not going to want to eat or drink at this point, but it is imperative you continue to do so. Stick to simple carbs and small sips of water, as the digestive tract will begin to slow down with the rest of the body at this altitude.” Her rundown fades in and out of his focus, eyes glancing up from his journal every now and again to make sure the clients are listening. He’s heard this many times before, after all, knows it by heart.

“After you leave camp three, you will be in what is known as the death zone. Your bodies will begin to rapidly decline at this point. Everyone is going to need supplemental oxygen at this altitude–”

“I heard Munson did it without, twice!” One of the clients, American, trying to earn a few cheap laughs. Eddie looks sheepish across from Steve, and Nancy doesn’t smile.

“Well, he does now if he wants to stay married. Everyone will be using supplemental oxygen and guides will have first aid kits if medication is needed. The push after camp three will be quick. A brief stop around the south col to camp, and then the summit. You’ve probably all heard this, but it bears repeating, the tricky part won’t be getting you up there, it’s coming back down that’s going to be difficult.” He’s heard this too, lived this too. By the time you get to the summit, you’re usually half-blind, half-suffocating, and half-human from the adrenaline coursing through your body. You’ve touched the top of the world and you’re nearly certain you’re going to die and also live forever because of it. You’re not thinking about the next step, the next rope you need to clip onto, the next hold of your ice ax, as you make your way down. You’re thinking about going home, about a warm bed, a warm meal, about never doing that again. That’s when mistakes happen, he knows.

“We say all this not to scare you, but to make sure you know what you’re about to face. It’s our goal to make this experience as safe for you as possible. Steve and Eddie will be your lead guides with Ryan assisting. Robin and I will be here at base, coordinating and watching the weather.” There’s a glance, always a glance exchanged between him and Nancy and Robin and Eddie, and Ryan too this year. The new hire, and he likes him well enough. Young guy, capable, Robin says he looks a little like Matthew McConaghy. All Steve knows is he’s good at his job and friendly enough to want to suffer with. And so the team is set, eight clients and three guides, and one local sherpa that they work with every year, reliable.

They dismiss the clients early, advising them to get as much sleep as they can, and when the last stragglers are out of the tent, Eddie drums his hands on the folding table, grinning wide.

“Well, birdy bird told me you got a very important fax today, so let’s see the little dude.” They all circle around him, Nancy and Robin, Ryan too, who Steve learned has two little girls back at home. And it feels good to take the folded piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his fleece, good to spread it out on the table and have everyone fawn over what amounts to black and white smudges, something prideful feathering and fanning up in his chest because that’s their kid, that’s their kid.

“Oh they’re perfect, Steve, look at that. How is Jo? Did you talk to her today?” Yes, he tells Nancy, on the phone that morning, told him to wish them all luck for the next morning. Eddie whistles a low sound, shaking his head.

“Phew, have a feeling we’re gonna need it without her. Ryan, if you think Steve’s the boss, you should’ve seen those two working together. A thing of beauty, I tell you, and probably the reason we’re one of the only outfits that hasn’t lost a client.” That spurs a groan out of Robin, don’t even say that, Ed, don’t even like, put that into the air right now, seriously. Always the superstitious one, he already knows she’ll be wearing a particular pair of socks tomorrow to send them off.

“I bet you’re ready to get home, Steve.” It’s quiet, Ryan says it with a smile that tilts into something sad, tired eyes that pull at the corners, a knowing. He nods, shares the same smile with him, he knows he feels it too.

…

May 1990 - Base Camp

“What’re you doing out here? Party’s in there.”

“I can see you’ve been celebrating. How much have you had to drink?” He laughs a little, stumbles over his feet as he comes to sit down next to her camp chair, his legs sprawled out in front of him and his head lolling to the side, and that’s enough of an answer for her. Meanwhile, the sound of music filters out from the main tent, all the other climbers and crew inside, yawping and whooping in their merriment. They made it up, and mercy, they made it back down to base. Everyone all in one piece, and she knows that’s something of a miracle.

“Just a little, warming myself up.”

“Uh-huh, right.” He grins, face cast in shadows from the camp lanterns, his eyes crinkled, shamelessly staring at her as he lets out a contented-sounding sigh. She isn’t sure what to make of him, him, with his long hair, and his silver hoop earring, and his bright blue Patagonia pull-over, and his pretty little smile that she admittedly thought about for large portions of their ascent. Pretty boy, wild boy, beautiful boy that she probably won’t ever see again.

“Is Jo short for something?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Steve is short for Steven.” His words are a little slurred, a little buoyant laugh on the end, giddy with lingering adrenaline and booze no doubt. Awful, she finds it endearing.

“You don’t say.”

“Jody? Joanne? Joanna? Jo–”

“It’s short for Josephine, if you’d really like to know.” He says it once, slow around a smile, leaning in toward her with his arms hooked over his knees, and she finds herself leaning closer too.

“Does anyone call you Josie?”

“Oh my god, no, my sister did when we were little, but not any more.” Too late, Steve is already humming a tune before warbling into a slurred rendition of the lyrics, Josie and the pussycats, long tails and ears for hats. She would like to hate him for it, him and his smug grin beneath his dark beard, him and the little laugh he lets out at the scrunch of her nose, him, singing that stupid song at 17,000 feet, tapping out the beat of it on her knee with his wind-bitten fingers, and making her laugh with it.

“Can I call you Josie?”

“Hmm, maybe, but only sometimes.” She says it like they’ll see each other again after all this, after parting ways in Kathmandu, her going back to Colorado, and him returning to wherever he’s from. It’s easy to grant promises when you’ve just touched the top of the world.

“Josie, how are you feeling after checking that one off your list?”

“I think I feel a lot of things. Mostly calm, grateful for JIF peanut butter, I feel tired, but in a good way. What about you, Steven, how are you feeling?”

“Lucky that I’m here with you.” And he says it so bluntly, so plainly, without hesitation, that it shocks a laugh out of her. But he just keeps looking at her, his smile slanting, and she knows he’s being earnest, honest, tongue loosened by whatever dark liquor Art packed out.

“Oh my god.”

“What?”

“You can’t just say stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Stuff you’re going to regret saying when you’re not so drunk.”

“I’m not gonna regret it. I meant it.” He’s hooked his finger around one of hers, a simple sweet thing that she shouldn’t let him do. But she does, but it feels nice.

“What am I gonna do with you?”

“Keep me.” His eyes glittering and smile veritably impish, she scoffs at him, wow, as he shrugs, unabashed and unashamed. Meant it, meant it, meant it. She needs to change the subject before she does something stupid.

“When are you gonna shave this off?” A little dare and daunt, she tugs at his beard, his brows raising, she’s surprised him, and she likes it.

“I don’t know, probably when we get back to Kathmandu, gonna be there for a few days before I fly out.”

“I’m sticking around for a few days too.” His eyes light up at that, oh yeah? She nods, something bright unfurling in her chest.

“Maybe you and I can, you know, Kathman-do.” Waggle of his eyebrows, she has to laugh.

“I think you need to go to sleep.” Never admitting this, but she finds herself a little disappointed when he sighs and nods, unfolding himself and standing up with a groan, though he smiles at her again before shuffling off toward his tent.

“That wasn’t a no.”

“Goodnight, Steve.” He tips two fingers at his temple toward her, walking backwards with impressively minimal stumbling. And she knows that she likes him in a way that could be a problem. Awful, she really would like to keep him.

“Goodnight, Josie.”

#steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington angst #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington stranger things #steve harrington series #steve harrington au

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feyhunter78 · 1 month

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Personal rant about an issues I’m having with my best friend under the cut, TW mentions of past sexual trauma both fictional and IRL

Thinking about how Alicent and Rhaenyra coded my best friend and I are, (minus the gay undertones) she’s headstrong, beautiful, confident, feels like she deserves what she wants no matter what and has no fear that her father won’t be there to catch her when she falls. But it makes her ignorant to the deeper plights of others and she lacks the knowledge to look further into things, and weigh her opinions and options before she speaks. She’s so strong and confident that she refuses to accept that her thoughts and opinions can be wrong, and she never does any research.

She was like “I’ve heard Andrew Tate talk some and I think he might be right” and I was like friend???? The man is a sex trafficker who has been quoted saying that women who aren’t virgins are damaged goods, and his OWN SISTER doesn’t talk to him. And she was like “oh I didn’t really look him up or anything” like motherfucker are you serious????

Then you’ve got me, quieter, more traditional, (still beautiful, but my goodness my best friend is a different level) always trying to do what’s right, do what I was supposed to do, trying to make sure everyone is okay, that my words and actions won’t harm and if they do can I take them back or make up for them?

I’m more agreeable, people see me as soft and kind, easy to talk to, but it comes with this guilt, religious, personal, social, whatever I’m always, always watching, always considering the other side because I know what it feels like to be powerless. And I do my fucking research because you have to know the rules!!!!

We’ve argued over TG or TB and she just refuses to accept that Alicent’s actions are motivated by valid reasons, that she was a child victim and was a victim until her husband finally died. She also blows past the fact that Daemon groomed and assaulted Rhaenyra because “they’re so hot” and I just???? I could not and cannot understand how she can overlook the pain and trauma these characters went through and act like it’s absolutely nothing.

Then we got in a bit of a thing because she got into booktok smut and I tried to warn her about the trigger stuff in some of the books and she’s like “oh it’s fine, yeah he like rapes her in this one part, but he basically makes it up with his words in the end” and I’m ????

Like yeah I like my dark stuff too but not a love interest who’s a rapist💀 there is no coming back from that for me????

And the fact that she just doesn’t care, doesn’t even stop to think about how her lack of care for the atrocities committed towards female characters in literally any media affects her is just so concerning to me. It’s like because nothing like that has happened to her then it’s not real??? Or it’s just like “not that big of a deal”????

Like y’all who read Pink Pastels know I went through shit, not a full assault but something similar that I left out of the fic because it was too much and I hadn’t really accepted what had happened. And the fact that what is it one in five women have been assaulted??? Statistically speaking she knows women who have been!!!!

So it makes me sick to my stomach that she’s so blasé about this stuff. To be fair to her, I never told her about it but I have now and I haven’t gotten a response yet so I’ll hold judgment until I do. (She hasn’t seen the Snapchat yet)

I just it really frustrates me because she is such a good friend outside of this stuff but she just lives such a different life from everyone else (her family is super rich) and I feel bad because I really want reality to knock some sense into her with a baseball bat. She just doesn’t understand that people actually suffer this stuff it’s not all just fun in games and ha ha giggles oh he’s so hot!!!

Like bestie I’m here, standing in front of you, asking if you fucked Daemon in a pleasure house (if you really are going to keep reading and flaunting your love of these dark, violent, terribly written books) while I’m trapped with your old ass father who’s been assaulting me and ignoring the children he forced me to have (carrying and trying to sort out the multitude of trauma from my ex) begging you to tell me that you didn’t and you still see me as your friend (that you aren’t a horrible pick me girl who doesn’t actually care about the pain and suffering women go through just because you haven’t experienced it)

#meg talks #I’m just having a hard time tonight y’all #she’s really a good person but sometimes I’m like ???? you are so fucked up #like your apathy is vile #meg that’s so personal of you

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xxaraaq · 1 year

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𝘽𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧

Sorry that I didn't post anything for like three months, but it dont matter anymore, cus I'm here now

MILF! Ochako Ururaka x Black!Fem!reader

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

At the ripe age of thirty two, Uruaka Ochako would consider herself to be a great mother. But with her boys, nine, seven, and four – she’s so fucking tired. Tired of not being able to catch a break, tired of not being able to live her life as a young woman, and really fucking tired of having a man child of a husband who couldn’t give less of a shit about her and their kids.

She’s tried to be okay with it, but she just cant be. But when she voices it, all she's met with – ‘it’s not like he's cheating on you, he probably just doesn’t find you attractive anymore.’ or ‘just lose some weight or offer to do more, he’s obviously distant for a reason’. And she’s tried all these things, so, so many times. But nothing ever worked, so she’s just given up. And maybe she just had shitty friends, but the two of you first, she had actually felt something.

“So wait – you're telling me that you haven’t had sex in how long?” You whisper, choking on your drink “Eleven months.” She sighs, taking a drink of her mimosa – she hadn’t touched her husband intimately in almost a year, and it was getting to her. She was getting antsy, and she was getting tired of pleasuring herself on her own.

“I would commit suicide, like, actually kill myself. Are you ok?” and Uruaka knows that she’s not, but there isn't anything she could really do.

“I’ve been so stressed out that I don’t know what today is, I’m not even joking.” She says, the fatigue apparent on her figure

“I seriously don’t know why you won’t get a divorce, I will literally move in with you to help out with the kids if that’s what it takes.” And your serious, the look in your eyes directed right at her

“If I could just get one day, that’s all I would need.” She groans, dreaming of the day where that happens

As the conversation goes along, her husband, m/n, comes up. “Hey honey, me and the boys are gonna go watch the game at Mikey’s house. I’ll be back later.” He says, turning away soon after. With an eye roll and shooing hand, she sends him off with malice in her heart.

“He really gets on my fuckin nerves.” You say, side eyeing him as he walks away with his friends.

“I genuinely don’t care anymore.” Ochako says, getting up to go to the kitchen

Following after her, you close the door behind you, pulling down the blinds

“What’s wrong?” You say, opening your arms for an embrace

“I am so sick of him.” She says, a shake in her voice

“I know baby, I know.” You say, rubbing soothing circles on her back

“I get that he doesn’t care about me, but can he at least fucking act like it.” She cries into your chest

“He doesn’t deserve you, not like I do.” and she knew it was true

“Lemme make you feel better, how bout’ that?” You ask, pulling back from her

“W-what?” She, wiping the tears from her face

“You heard me, Ochako. Let me help you, you need it.”

The both of you know that anyone could walk in at any moment – but that didn’t stop you from kissing her – nor did it stop her from kissing you back. By the time she gained her senses back she was in her shared room.

“We can’t, everyone’s outside.” She says in between kisses

“We already are, and who cares, no one’s gonna come in here.” You shush her, attacking her neck with hickeys

She moans, grasping your hair in her hands – she doesn’t know why she keeps denying herself, she can’t even remember the last time she came by someone else’s touch.

“Fuck.” She moans, the feeling of your hands traveling over her breasts driving her mad.

You pull down the top of her light blue sundress, exposing her front to you.

“So pretty.” You groan, capturing her breast in your hand, rolling her nipple in between your fingers

Ochako whimpers at the feeling of your fingers toying with her, her getting wetter by the second.

“Take it off for me, yeah?” You ask, tugging at hem of her dress

Nodding, she quickly strips down, throwing it to a random spot in the room.

“So fucking gorgeous.” You utter, hands finding rest on her hips

“Don’t be weird.”She says, wrapping her arms around neck

She kisses you – passionately – as you lead her and yourself onto the bed. You suck on her neck as you make you way down to her thighs, lifting one onto your shoulder.

“Can I?” You ask, playing the fabric of her underwear

“Don’t ask me stupid questions.” She groans, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear as you smile

Taking her answer as a yes, you pull her panties off onto one ankle, licking a slow stripe up her slit. You rub slow circles on her thighs as you continue your assault on her cunt.

“Ohhhhh fuckkkk” She whines, throwing her head back in her ecstasy

“Tastes so good.” You mutter into her, the vibrations of your voice going straight to her core

She doesn’t know why she hasn’t let you touch her sooner – the fluid movements of your tongue making her delusional. But the best part is, all she has to do is sit there and take it.

You massage your thumb around her puckering hole before inserting two into her. “Shitttt” she mewls, holding both her legs up to her chest

“I can’t, s’ too much.” She slurs, her legs shaking as you slurp and suck up her excess

“You can do it mama, cum for me.” You say, moving your fingers in and out of her at an even quicker pace

“Shittttttttt” She screams, squirting onto you and the sheets

“Damn, I didn’t know you could squirt like that.” You say, licking her off of you

“I, I didn’t know either.” She exhales, letting her legs drop onto the now wet sheets

“Uh uh, why’d you let go.” You say, rubbing slow circles on her now puffy clit

“W-wait, we can’t keep going, everyone’s still outside.”

“And they’ll stay outside, I never said I was done with you. Eleven months is a long time y’know; I can’t let go now.” You explain, Entering her once more

Ochako moans as she thinks about what she got herself into. And she really, really hopes that everyone knows exactly where the bathroom is.

┕━☽【❖】☾━┙

Yayy I post. Dont expect me to post until summer now byee.

-Nene

#Nene #boku no hero academia #urakara ochako #bnha ochaco uraraka #mha ochako #x reader #mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha x fem reader #mha x black reader

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padfootagain · 10 months

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You and the King (III)

Chapter 3 : Fighting with Words

Hi lovelies! Here is a new chapter for my Caspian series! Y/N is getting fierce, and I love it. Also, troubles are coming…

I hope you like this new chapter! Let me know what you think!

****

Pairing: Caspian x reader

Warnings: None… insults? Is that worth a warning?

Summary: Sequel to The King and You – After meeting Caspian in your own world, you decide to follow him to Narnia, your love for him too strong for you to keep your old life. But as you discover the magic of Narnia, you soon realise that this extraordinary world is as dangerous as it is magnificent. Will your love for Caspian be enough to defeat your new enemies?

Word Count: 3740

Masterlist for the series – Caspian’s Masterlist – Main Masterlist

Dalia was far from stupid.

After refusing to attend your first meeting the previous day, she was expecting Caspian to call for her and ask for explanations. It was part of the plan, actually.

Caspian was an amazing man, a great king. But he was also a little naïve sometimes, a little bit blind. She blamed it on his kind heart. He had a tendency to see the good in people before he could see the bad. And that was the cause of her worry now.

She took a deep breath before opening the door of Caspian’s private office. It was barely dawn, the light still shy, golden, almost orange in a sky tainted with pink. The Castle was waking up, servants hurrying back and forth to prepare breakfast, guards sleepily walking to take their posts. A ballet she knew by heart, that she had known all her life, growing up side by side with Caspian and the royal family.

A ballet you knew nothing about, and yet…

“Come in,” Caspian’s voice was loud and clear as it answered to her knock on his door.

Her face was unreadable as she stepped inside the room, and Caspian was not surprised. She excelled in this art of pretends, of hiding emotions and thoughts. She had been raised at court, after all, she had learnt to wear a mask, just as he had.

He hated that she still used her mask when he was around though. Despite the many years of friendship between them, it felt like she still didn’t fully trust him.

“Good morning, Dalia,” Caspian politely greeted her, but she didn’t fail to notice that his tone was colder than usual. “Take a seat.”

She complied, sitting on the opposite side of the desk. The long, wooden piece of furniture was buried under parchments, documents, maps…

Caspian had been busy. She guessed that he had tried to catch up with his duties during the night, to compensate the day he had spent with you.

She hated you for the dark bags under his eyes.

“You wanted to see me,” she spoke slowly, her voice perfectly calm and polished.

But Caspian wasn’t fooled. He knew her too well for that. And he knew about the ways of the court as much as she did. He was used to tear these masks apart now.

“You know perfectly why I’ve asked you to come this morning.”

“Let me guess… it is about your new fiancée.”

He frowned at her tone. It sounded a little cruel, disrespectful, full of disdain…

He hated it. The very sound in her voice, but now more than ever because the poison was aimed at you.

“I don’t like your tone,” he answered in a cold voice, staring intensely at her.

“I’ve never really cared…”

“You should, Dalia.”

A heavy silence settled across the room. Dalia broke it with a scoff.

“I apologize, My Liege.”

But her tone was mocking still.

“We are friends. We have been for a long time,” Caspian spoke his words slowly, with a heavy frown and a weight on each of the sounds. “But that does not mean that I am not your King. And that certainly does not mean that you can so blatantly insult me and get away with it.”

“I can hardly call sarcasm an insult.”

“You did not come yesterday. How do you call that?”

“I was sick.”

“Now, Dalia, do not play that game with me. I know you are lying.”

He was angry. He was glaring at her and she hated it. She hated every second of it. She didn’t back down though.

“Do you truly want to know why I did not come?”

“Yes, I do.”

She leaned forward a bit, coming closer to him, as to try to catch his attention and put more weight into her words.

“I believe that you should reconsider your decision about Lady Y/N.”

Caspian frowned hard.

“What?”

“You barely know each other, you are going too fast.”

“I am not…”

“There is still no treaty with Lord Cirvan and his men. And you are making things worse with their lands, refusing to marry Cirvan’s daughter to announce your future wedding less than a day later. You are making a mistake.”

But Caspian narrowed his eyes at her.

“You know perfectly well that if I made an announcement about my engagement with Y/N, it is precisely because of Lord Cirvan and his men. Because I need the assurance that he will not try to marry me off again…”

“But Caspian, this wedding presents no political advantage.”

He clenched his jaw. He was beyond angry now, and Dalia knew it. She couldn’t claim she had not been expecting this, but it still hurt to see such fire in his glare aimed at her.

He didn’t say a word though, and let her continue.

“I know that it sounds cynical, but your wedding is an incredible opportunity to build lasting alliances with other kingdoms, and powerful lords, and you are endangering our borders by acting stubborn and letting a strange girl manipulate your feelings.”

“Manipulate my feelings? Do you even hear yourself?”

“I do. And I know what I am saying. You are a King, Caspian. Women try to seduce you for the throne every day.”

“Y/N is different.”

“Because she made you believe in one of the old fairy tales? The great love stories? Those are good for Doctor Cornerlius’s books, not for us who are dealing with real politics. You are making a mistake by wanting to marry this stupid girl…”

She fell instantly silent when Caspian stood up, jaw clenched and eyes glaring.

“I understand your worry about politics and Lord Cirvan,” Caspian spoke, words slow and voice deep, clearly struggling to remain calm. He was leaning over his desk, palms resting on the map splayed across the wood. “But, Dalia, I will not have you insult Y/N, do you understand?”

“You are being manipulated…”

“I am not,” Caspian answered, voice firm and decisive. “You do not know Y/N, you have spent less than an hour with her. Why do you not trust me on this?”

“Caspian… you are King. People will try to manipulate you. Does it not sound strange to you that all of a sudden this woman has fallen madly in love with you, in barely more than a month, and has decided to leave everything behind to join you here, in Narnia? Do you not think it weird that she might leave her ordinary and rather pointless life behind without thinking for a second about the fact that you are King? Do you not think that it is precisely the reason why she did this? She left because she could become a queen. And you were too foolish to see it. Blinded by… I do not even know what could have blinded you… she seems completely ordinary.”

Dalia fell silent, waiting for Caspian’s reaction. She hoped she could shake some sense into his head. She hoped she could make him see that you were not fit to be queen. What by Aslan’s name was he doing? You had worked together so hard to get him there, as a stable king on a Narnian throne, and now he was falling into such a silly trap?

He stared at her with eyes of stone, icy cold. She searched through her memories but didn’t remember him ever looking at her this way. Of course, after so many years, they had fought countless times, he had been angry against her before. But she had never seen such a rage, it was mingled with something protective that she hated, because you were the source of it.

“You know nothing of Y/N, Dalia,” Caspian repeated in this same slow tone of his. “She has given up on everything to come here…”

“That is what I am saying! If not for the throne, then why should she come?”

But he frowned, a little taken aback now.

“Because she loves me, Dalia.”

He let out a wry laugh.

“So, do you really think me such an awful man that no one could love me for who I am? That the only reason anyone has ever showed any interest in me is because I am King? Well, thank you for the compliment…”

She shook her head, her expression softening.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Then why is it so difficult for you to imagine that Y/N has chosen to come here because she loves me? Nothing else. Dalia, do you realize what it means for her? She has left everything and everyone she has ever known, she has been thrown into another world she knows nothing about and is so different from her own… If she wanted money or power she could have tried to earn those in her world and it would have required less sacrifices from her. She came because she loves me. And I love her, Dalia. I love her more than anything. Had I not been King, I would have not come back to Narnia.”

Her eyes grew round.

“What?”

“I came back here because I am King. Because my people needs me. Because I cannot abandon Narnians. Because Aslan, Eustace, Peter, Lucy, Edmund and Susan trusted me to take care of this land, because my father died for this… But without this responsibility, without so many people I would have failed by leaving for good… I would have stayed with her in New York. I love her enough for that. I understand her choice, Dalia. I would have done the same, but I couldn’t.”

He let out a deep, worried sigh as he stood straighter again. He seemed tired more than angry now. Dalia hated seeing him like this. She wished she could take all his worry away.

Still, when he walked around his desk to stand next to her, leaning against the piece of furniture, his presence was still reassuring, strong, kingly. He ran a hand through his hair to brush the strands away from his eyes, and she wished she could have been the one to tame the rebellious strands…

She remembered how soft his hair was. She had touched the gentle strands a couple of times, always thanks to a silly excuse, always hidden behind a lie. There was something in his hair, it wasn’t tied properly… no matter the lies, they were worth it.

Did he let you touch his hair as much as you wanted?

“Dalia, I know what I am doing. I want to marry Y/N. I have never been more certain of anything in my entire life. She loves me. She loves me, for who I am. She loves me despite the crown, do you understand? She is terrified by all this. By the Narnians, by this place, by our ways, by the prospect of having so many responsibilities and power over people... She is not craving it, Dalia, she is afraid of it. And I need your help, I need you to show her our ways so this place can become her home too. And I love her, Dalia. I know that marrying her will not fit into any kind of political scheme, and I do not want it to. I love her, and that is enough. Do you understand?”

Slowly, she nodded, but she didn’t seem convinced. And indeed, she wasn’t. When he asked for her help again, she nodded anyway, promised to be more open-minded, to give you a chance.

But she had no chance to offer you. Not when Caspian looked so handsome in the early light of dawn…

“Alright, let us go through this again, shall we?”

Doctor Cornelius was kind and patient, and you felt grateful for him being your first teacher. So far though, you felt a little stupid.

You knew a few things about Narnia, because of what Agatha told you back in New York, because of Caspian’s stories… But their tales did not include any concrete information about Narnia, about their custom, about their land…

It was an awful lot to take in.

First, you were taught about Narnian currencies, basis of geography, and the current relations with other kingdoms and lands surrounding Narnia. Later on, you would be taught about Narnian laws and traditions.

“Dalia will smoothen up your manners to fit the court,” the old teacher had told you. “But I will make sure you understand what is happening around you, and that no one will make a fool of you during a conversation.”

Tough job, indeed… because as you tried to memorize the list of names set before you, you felt utterly brainless.

You had been working for almost four hours now. There was a bright sun outside, happy and inviting, but you were stuck there, in this dusty room, with a terrible headache…

And you felt like you would never make it. Never be ready…

You started as the doors of the library opened, and you recognized Ammos accompanying lord Baras and Luis towards your table. You struggled to swallow…

… they could only mean trouble.

You offered them a warm smile anyway, and they bowed before you.

You were unsure how to react, but Lord Baras spoke before you could decide what to do or say.

“My Lady. I see that you are busy this morning.”

Small talk. It called for something more important, and you assumed, less pleasant as well. You cautiously nodded.

“Yes, Professor Cornelius is helping me learn about Narnian ways.”

“It must be quite overwhelming.”

“Quite,” you admitted.

But your voice was cautious. You were new to Narnia, but you were not an idiot. Baras smelled of trouble. His smile was too sweet not to, too honeyed, as if it would turn sour soon.

“It is noon already, My Lady. Lord Luis and I wondered if you would like to join us for lunch. I am afraid our King is busy today, but we do not want you to feel too lonely for your first days in Narnia.”

You looked for an excuse to refuse, but couldn’t find any. You didn’t want to let anything slip that could compromise Caspian in any way. He had warned you that the court could be ruthless and would be filled with rumours.

But there seemed to be no way out of this, so you nodded with a smile, and followed the two Lords outside the Library after bidding the professor a good day.

They guided you throughout the fortress, and you didn’t fail to notice the annoyed glance they threw over their shoulder towards Ammos’s tall figure.

You wondered if Caspian had asked your bodyguards to remain by your side all day simply because he feared for your safety, or to have a spy…

There was small talk for a while, a rather boring exchange of questions and answers, until you reached a small room, where a table had been set for about ten people. It included three women, who looked at you with fake smiles and judging glances. You felt unbearably self-conscious under their stares.

But you were too old to be intimidated this way. Instead, you merely shot them a tight smile, and followed Baras to take a seat by his side around the table.

You noticed the stares, they were not as friendly as the day before, when Caspian was by your side. You were not surprised though…

There were a few other Lords that you recognized, but they didn’t seem friendly either.

You guessed they were all great at hiding how they felt, and make happy faces for their king.

“Oh, it is delightful to finally meet you, Lady Y/N! Or should I say… Queen Y/N,” one of the women told you after introducing herself as Velma. You didn’t fail to notice the sarcasm in her voice.

Your smile was tighter again. You weren’t sure if you ought to react or not. You wanted to snap back at her, throw a witty remark, but you didn’t want Caspian’s reputation to falter because of your behaviour. So, you merely remained silent instead, and looked down at your plate, filled with appetizing food.

“I hope your royal chambers fit your needs,” Velma went on, insisting on the word royal.

“It’s perfect,” you answered in a neutral tone, tightening your hold on your fork.

“How strange that the King has made an official announcement out of nowhere,” she went on, turning around as to not be talking to you, even if you were in the room. “I would have expected more restrain.”

“You mean, more wisdom,” one of the Lords said.

You recognized him, but couldn’t recall his name. He went on.

“A period of courting is needed, may the lady come from another world or not.”

He glanced over at you, but didn’t speak directly to you, and you hated it.

You planted your fork in your carrot with a little too much strength, but you didn’t care.

You would answer the next jab made at you, you knew you would… and you reckoned that you would be right to do so.

“The king must be eager,” Velma shrugged. “Even though… she doesn’t look like much…”

You clenched your jaw and glared at the woman.

“I am sitting right here, in case you haven’t noticed,” you spoke between gritted teeth.

“I know, my Lady. I am simply discussing a fact, that our king seems eager to marry you… for some reason.”

“Because we love each other? Is that not a good enough reason?”

But they all laughed at you. Even Barras, who had tried to remain neutral and seemed to merely study you. Except for Ammos, of course, who remained perfectly still behind you.

“You are quite naïve. Or optimistic. It is quite refreshing,” Luis chuckled.

“I don’t see how.”

“You seem to have much to learn about political alliances, then.”

You looked down at your plate at that. Of course… royal weddings… they ought to come with a political arrangement. That’s what Caspian almost did with Cirvan and his daughter…

“Emilia was a good choice. A shame he changed his mind.”

You felt a sharp pain cross your heart at that, but you didn’t let it show.

Instead, you let your anger find your next words.

“A chance you’re not in charge of the decision, then.”

“Indeed,” Luis went on. “I would have advised my king to be more cautious in his choice of wife.”

“It’s true I don’t bring lands or money to the table. Sorry about that. You’ll have to be contempt with my striking personality instead.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, surprised. You didn’t care. You were too annoyed and tired, and this headache of yours… it was getting worse.

Your nostrils were tickled by the scent of something burning, you wondered where it came from. But it wasn’t improving your painful head, that was for certain.

“My lady, I am certain your personality is delightful, of course. Why else would the king have chosen you? I can see no other argument in your favour.”

You looked down, unsure why the mean reply hurt you so much. Perhaps it was because you felt uneasy, when the ladies by your side seemed perfectly at ease… and it didn’t help that they were ridiculously beautiful, too.

“It will not, however, change the fact that we have lost a treaty so that the king could bed you.”

Your head snapped back up, feeling heat creeping over your neck and cheeks.

Had Velma truly said that?

You shouldn’t be petty, but you reckoned that she deserved it.

“Wow, that was classy, at least.”

Everyone around you frowned, but you didn’t really care. The manners you were trying to behave with were slowly leaving you, just like your patience.

“I’m sure you can do better than that,” you went on. “If you want to play the insult game, then at least make it a challenge. Or did you never find anything clever to say after you stopped being an idiotic teenager?”

Velma stared at you with wide eyes, her mouth slightly agape, and you reckoned that you had won the duel, for now.

“Now, I am grateful for the invitation to lunch, Lord Baras,” you went on, turning to the man right before you. “But if this was merely meant to spend an hour insulting me right into my face, next time, be free to let me eat on my own. I’d rather have no company at all than an awful one.”

You tried to sit as straight as you could, and with as much dignity as you could muster.

“This kind of words are not expected from a future Queen,” Baras commented, but he had a small smile tugging at his lips. “Is it how you act in your world?”

“In my world I would have thrown my plate into your face. I am mustering all my restraints to not break anyone’s nose.”

You were surprised when he laughed, but Baras did. It was hesitant at first, but when you raised an eyebrow, he let out a bright wave of laughter.

“Forgive us, my Lady. We have underestimated you, it would seem,” Baras said, and there was something a little strange in his gaze, like he kept on studying you but seemed to have detected a worthy opponent instead of an innocent sheep.

You weren’t sure you liked that look though, but for the rest of the meal, no one dared to attack you anymore, or at least, not so openly. You reckoned it was some kind of success…

It didn’t prevent the gnawing feeling in your chest to make you feel miserable as you walked out of the room. You waited until you were alone in a corridor to let your shoulders drop though, rubbing at your temples because of this bloody headache of yours. The burning smell lingered, you wondered where it came from. Perhaps from the torches?

You wondered how much time you would have before Dalia would arrive. You weren’t sure to be ready to see her, she would not try to make you feel better, that was for certain. You wondered what could be the cause of her animosity towards you, but then again, you had an idea. You just hoped you were wrong about that…

A rival was the last thing you needed.

***********************************************

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