#Within a Budding Grove | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ceilidho · 7 months

Text

in the cauldron boil and bake

prompt: pretty little witch who lives in a cottage in the forest who sometimes eats wayward travellers but Ghost has some kind of magic repulsion aura that doesn’t allow her to use her powers on him. (ON AO3) tags: very nsfw, implied/lightly described violence, dubcon/noncon, noncon spanking, implied cannibalism (just in general, not with the pairing lol); 5.5k

He moves at a pace too slow for you to make out with the naked eye, but you feel it creeping through you.

The vision of him appears in a dream first, a premonition. A hulking figure trekking through the woods. You snuggle deeper under the covers and scrunch up your nose in your sleep. In the morning, you go outside to harvest the holly leaves and buttercup and return home dreaming of tender, slow cooked meat. It’s been awhile since you last had a proper meal. When you hang up the laundry to dry, you chew on peppermint cuttings and try not to salivate.

In the centuries you’ve lived in these woods, travellers have come and gone. You don’t eat every single one that happens to pass by—that would be a surefire way to get your forest branded as bedevilled and a longer route established circumnavigating your grove. You might be hungry, but you’re prudent, careful. Not like some other witches these days, greedy for any morsel that happens to pass in front of them.

No; you take care of your woods. You have to, if you plan on remaining here for the centuries to come. If a few travellers happen to disappear here and there, that’s simply life. Not everyone can make treacherous journeys.

You always have a sense of when a traveller is nearby. It’s as though your being is embedded within the forest itself, privy to those who dwell within it. You feel him along the outer regions of the forest, a lone traveller hauling not more than himself and a rucksack filled with the bare essentials. He appears to you in flashes in your dreams, not the full image of him but piecemeal, a shadow obscuring his full face from you. You see only tendons and meat on his bones, a rough hewn strength to his limbs, touch muscle and fat wrapped around his middle.

It makes you giddy to think of him circling ever closer to your spider’s web at the centre of the forest. After him, you won’t be hungry for years.

Your restless leg acts up the day you know that he’s close enough to approach. All morning, you sit at the little table in your kitchen and rip lavender buds from the stems, black shoes tap-tapping away at the floor. The broom sweeps by itself in the corner, sweeping the dust into a neat pile. When you snap your fingers, it’s brusque, impatient. The broom halts in midair and then clatters against the floorboards. The chair scrapes against the floor as you rise to your feet.

“Come, come, Asphodel,” you whisper to the black cat curled up on the windowsill, which barely lifts her head enough to blink at you. “No more dallying. Mommy’s hungry.”

In a show of great defiance and disrespect, Asphodel merely meows at you and lays her head back down. Insipid little familiar.

You go off on your own then, keen to see the travellers with your own eyes. Jowls growing tighter. Robe cinched tight around you and hair pinned back by a thin strand of velvet. The days have just begun to shorten, just begun to exhale frost and rot. The leaves however, by agreement, do not crunch under your feet and give you away. You are a phantom amidst the trees as you flank the lone traveller, following the breadth of him as he traverses past your homestead.

It’s fortunate that you are not beholden to physics because he is formidable. Broad as a man might be, no less sizable than in your dreams, but much more menacing in the flesh. He too moves quietly in the brush, with a care and precision that you have not seen many humans employ.

He conceals the lower half of his face with a black piece of fabric, which you had mistaken for shadows. Not so. It is a deliberate concealment, meant to unnerve. Without magic, you might not have approached.

His size alone isn’t enough to frighten you though. You are two hundred years old and you have eaten men twice his size when you were naught but a babe.

You step out into the clearing just a few paces from him, halting the man in his tracks.

“Hello,” you call out tentatively, raising a hand to shield your eyes. “C-can you help me? I think I’ve lost my way.”

At this point in your career, it takes a bit to hide the smile that threatens to break. You are like the spider posing as a fly. The show is half the fun though.

The man doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem shocked at your presence, arms loose by his sides. It makes your stomach clench, the script flipped a bit. It should be you, loose and limber, and the wayward traveller tense and nonplussed, then eager to help the lost girl. You wait a moment longer for him to respond, but he remains silent, blue eyes unblinking.

“Can you help me?” you repeat, taking a step closer. The tendrils of your magic slither out of you, snaking across the forest floor towards him. “I’m lost. Can you help me find my way out?”

Your magic finds his boots in the dirt like mycelium threads, the pulse of him rich and earthen. It makes the saliva pool in your mouth, hunger gnawing at your guts. He will taste so good. Meaty and huge, enough to last you the winter. You take another step closer despite his continued silence, a tad too eager. You only need a moment though, long enough for your magic to take root, to render him febrile and inert. When he collapses to the ground, you will float his body back and rend him limb from limb by your hearth.

Another step brings you closer to him when your magic suddenly recoils, unwinds from him. You frown. You try sending it back, but your magic shrinks away, an atavistic fear blooming up in you. It does not want near this man.

A cold sweat breaks out on your neck. The hairs on your neck and arms stand on end.

The masked man staring back at you tilts his head, the skin under his eyes crinkling with a smile that you cannot see. Suddenly eldritch, blood-curdling.

“Now, what are you?” he asks with a rumbling voice, rough from disuse, and takes a step towards you.

You trip over your feet scrambling back. Branches from a nearby tree scoop towards you, catching you before you tumble down into the soft dirt. He advances quickly on you, big hand finding now the hatchet strapped to his side and pulling it out, the thing dwarfed in his massive paw.

“Stay back—stay back—” you hiss, the branches listening to your fear and dragging you away from the man. “Leave—I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Do what?” he asks, taunting. Just a twinge of it, as if he can’t help that he has a predilection to mock.

He catches up to you fast enough, the strides of his long legs enough to eat up the distance. When you whip the branches towards him, they stop mere inches from him, giving him ample time to bat them away. The ones that get close enough meet his hatchet, a single cleave enough to sever them from the tree. You don’t feel the tree’s pain, but where his blade meets your magic—a thin coating along the branches, like extended, ghost limbs of your own—it stings.

“Stay back!” you shriek, heart pumping away ferociously. Your voice comes out like a caterwaul. He’s too close now though, towering over you, the bitter smell of old sweat and musk. Up close, he does not smell like anything you know. He smells sun bleached, the rust of old blood like the blades in your shed after a long season’s hunt.

“What sort of girl—” he starts, hand fisting in your hair and wrenching your head back, “—ambushes strange men in forests? Do you have a death wish?”

To have him touch you is singularly terrifying. You haven’t been touched in a hundred years, certainly not by a human. His touch sends you skittering back, but he has you trapped in place. Your shoes dig into the dirt when you try to push yourself away, hands pressed against his chest much to your distress.

“Men can’t kill me,” you hiss, fingers clawing at the hand holding you in place, scratching at him with the little nails that you never bothered to grow out.

You can’t see the whole of his face, but his expression is undoubtedly unimpressed. “I could kill you easily, girl.”

“I’m not a girl—I’m a witch.”

“A witch is a girl.”

“I eat girls,” you snap, so angry now that spittle drips from your mouth. You shrink back when he wipes it away with a gloved hand. “I eat men like you too. If you are a man.”

You say that because the way your magic curls away from him has you on edge. Humans may not scare you, but eldritch, ancient monsters do and they hunt little witches like you. Usually not in your own woods, but stranger things have happened.

“‘Course I’m a man. Look at me.”

He presses the whole length of his body against yours, dragging you so close to him by your hair that you almost rise up onto your toes. He’s solid all the way through, only a bit of give around his middle. There’s something distinctly hard pressing against your low belly. It leaves you flustered, hot under your collar. An unfamiliar heat in your core, legs clenching on nothing. You give in to the instinctive urge to look down, but pressed so close to him, there’s little to see beyond the wideness of his chest, covered by a brown tunic laced up the front.

“Means nothing. Plenty of things look like other things. I look like a girl but I am not,” you stutter.

“Were you trying to eat me then, witch girl?” he breathes, amused. You yelp when he gives you a little shake by the hair.

You flash your teeth at that, hoping he takes that as a threat. You have chewed off flesh far tougher than his. “Still might, human. If you don’t let me go.”

He stares down at you, eyes giving nothing away. “It’s not every day that a little girl threatens to eat me. Not very nice, you know. I’ve cut down men twice your size for less.”

“You like bloodshed?”

“I trade in bounties; it’s part of the job. But, yes, girl. I like bloodshed.”

It’s not reassuring to hear that when his hands are fast on you. You wish now you hadn’t dreamed of this strange man immune to your magic and left him to his wandering. There are bears in these woods that could have dealt with him for you.

“I’m—I’m not going to anymore,” you say, quieter now, hands falling back to his chest, trying to shove yourself just the slightest bit away. You don’t move an inch. “I’ll…I can find something else to eat. Just let me go.”

The man widens his stance, feet bracketing yours. In two hundred years, you haven’t felt small. You’ve felt tremendous, expansive, big as the whole forest; monstrous some days even. The most ferocious predator in the woods, the haunting lurching her way through the trees, belly hungry for iron blood and the ripe taste of fear.

You feel that fear now in your mouth for the first time, sour.

He smiles behind the mask again. “Maybe later. Need to teach you a lesson.”

“A lesson?” Maybe the fear hasn’t sunk in all the way because you ask that when he lets go of his hold on your hair and drops his hands to your waist, getting a tight hold there. Twisting you around while he walks you back.

“You all alone in the forest?” he asks instead of answering you. “Is there a house that I missed? Been here for months and haven’t seen one.”

“Of course, I—I live here.” You don’t want to say more than though, lest you reveal too much about yourself. You’re still wondering whether surviving this ordeal will be as simple as getting away. There’s something savage in his gaze now, the mealy taste in your mouth translating that look like the hunter looking upon the hunted.

There’s a tree stump that he guides you to, shaded under the canopy. When he tips you over the stump, the breath rushes out of you. The edge is rough against your stomach. You don’t even notice him pulling up the back of your dress until a few seconds later.

“Wait, hold on—that’s my indoor dress!” you cry out, the front of your dress scraping against the stump and sure to tear. “Let me go—stop it!”

Your drawers are next, slid down your hips while you squirm and wail, feet kicking out behind you.

“Behave.” It’s punctuated by the sudden sting on your cheek, bottom flaming red by his hand. Pain is such a foreign concept to you that it initially leaves you speechless.

He props you against the stump with little care for how your knees drag in the dirt and whether your underwear gets dirt on them. He keeps you pinned there with a big hand on the centre of your back. Your shimmying gets you nowhere, only planted farther into the dirt; it only scuffs up your knees and pulls wretched little noises from your throat.

The terror comes when you’re bare to him and he draws his hand back. You gasp at the first smack, shocked; it’s a broken, stupid sound. At the next smack, you react properly, going into a frenzy, twisting left and right to get away, but helpless under just a fraction of his strength. Your magic does no good for once in your long life either. You feel it sit on the periphery, unsure of what to do because it cannot come close to this strange man for some reason.

You yelp every time his hand comes down on your bottom. Red fills your vision. Tears do as well.

“I am going to—” you break off on a yowl, back arching, “—I am going to eat the flesh off your bones for this! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

His chuckle is bone-chilling, ices you right over. “You oughta at least know the name of the man you’re going to eat. They call me Ghost.”

“I’ll call you—” The caustic name you were about to call him is ripped from your lips by another well-placed smack on your ass.

You shriek so loud that the birds flee from their perches within the trees.

The worst part is the way your thighs flex together with every smack. Belly clenching. You can feel slick gathering where it shouldn’t, a high blush splotched across your cheeks as you pray that he doesn’t notice. It doesn’t happen often, only in the week following your cycle when you feel ravenous and flushed, skin prickly and raw until you go outdoors and roll around in the dirt under the moonlight. Always by yourself, of course, naturally.

Little panting breaths hiccup out of you, your cheeks overflowing with frustrated tears. After the first minute, you simply go limp. There’s nothing else you can do. Even trying to levitate does you no good, it only props your butt up higher into the air since Ghost’s hand on your upper back keeps your chest pressed to the stump. It only seems to amuse him, judging by the hoarse chuckle he lets out.

Without your broom, the little bit of levitation is more of a party trick than anything—and you haven’t even been to a party in fifty years, not since your coven’s last autumnal gathering. Not that it matters at a time like this. His hand comes down on your butt again and you wail, shoes digging into the ground and kicking up dirt. Your mind goes blank again, thoughts replaced by the looping ow, ow, ow that also falls from your lips.

“Does it hurt, lovie?” Ghost asks, hand coming to rest on your livid cheek. It makes you hiss, turning your head until your cheek is pressed to the stump’s inner rings. His voice is gentle, but mocking, like the voice you use when hacking into a screaming man, asking him if he’d like his hand back while you dangle it in front of him.

“It’s going to hurt so much worse when I dice you into little pieces,” you hiss. He gives a mocking pat to your butt, making you flinch.

“Learned your lesson yet?”

You keep your gaze stubbornly off to the side. Somehow, it would be worse to look over your shoulder and make eye contact with the strange beast at your back. “If you leave now, I won't sever your limbs from your body and roast your organs from the inside.”

“I take it you haven’t,” he says, another chuckle rumbling out of him.

His hand comes off your naked rear. Your ears perk up when you hear the sound of fabric over fabric, wondering if maybe he’s pulling your underwear back up, but you don’t feel anything. What you feel instead is the sudden heaviness pushed between your thighs, nestled right up against your wet core, so unfamiliar that it makes you jump. You stay put though, held down still by his hand.

“Put that back,” you say severely.

He holds it against your sex with his free hand and presses forward, coating himself with your slick. “You’re not in a position to make demands, girl.”

“I’m going to slice every bit of skin off your bones.” Your mouth salivates at the thought, thinking of all the thick, iron-rich blood from someone Ghost’s size.

Those thoughts disperse again like smoke when he ruts forward, the thick length between his legs gliding through your wetness. It makes you break out into a sweat, keen catching between your teeth, just narrowly bitten back. Ghost makes no effort to suppress his groans. They’re loud, a lustful, masculine pleasure that you’ve heard far off in your woods before—unfortunate couples come to copulate before meeting their end at your hands—but never so close. Never right up in your ear.

“It’s not fair,” you sob, emotional suddenly. “You’re just going to—to do that and then kill me.”

He leans his full weight over you, the rough texture of his shirt catching on the back of your dress. You’re sweating so hard now that the lace embroidery around your collar is thoroughly soaked, clinging to your skin.

“‘M not gonna kill you. What would I do something like that for?”

You sniff. “It’s what I would do.”

He chuckles again, the sound reverberating through you with him all pressed up against you. It would almost be pleasant if it weren’t for the cock pumping between your thighs. That brings you right back down to earth, mind torn away from the ravens perched in the branches of the tree looming over you, watching you from above. If you were able to pay them any close attention, you’d probably hear them chattering about the position their little witch has found herself in.

“C’mon now,” Ghost grunts in your ear, hips shifting back. “Be a good little witch and say a little spell—don’t wanna knock you up on the first try.”

You open your mouth to reply and squeal when he rocks back forward, the bulbous tip pressing into you this time. Your toes flex in your shoes, thighs spreading without any prompting from him. You don’t even notice the hand on your upper back travelling to your waist, both of his big hands gripping you there now to hold you in place. There’s no thought of trying to get away, just breathing around the immense stretch from his shaft driving up into you.

“Ooh, no, no—it’s too much,” you squeak, fingers digging into the sides of the stump, the wood cutting into your soft skin.

It is too much. It doesn’t even feel entirely possible. Even with the wetness leaking from you, his cock only manages to fit a couple inches in you before you’re too tight.

“You’re doing fine, lovie,” he rasps into your ear, drawing his hips back and then plunging back into you, deeper than before. “See? Not so bad, is it? Gonna take a little more for me, a’right?”

“No—no more,” you slur, tongue heavy in your mouth. “Can you just—just keep it right there?”

“Yeah? That enough for you?”

Your fingers unlatch from the bark of the tree, trembling when you reach down to wipe them off on your dress before dragging the palm of your hand over your clit. It makes you jump and whine. The skin of your palm is a bit textured from gripping onto the stump, but the friction makes your brain leak right out of your ear. Especially when you push your hips back just a little bit, nervously fucking yourself on his cock.

Ghost laughs and lets go of your hip to bat your hand away, then reaches back around to fit a big hand around your jaw.

He holds your jaw in a single hand, palm supporting your chin. “You ever going to do this again, girl? Go up to strange men in the woods?”

You almost don’t hear him over the blood in your ears. A thick cock spears into you for the first time in your life and the man rutting into you expects coherence? Maybe you babble something into the palm of his hand, but it’s lost to the world when he pulls your knee out to make more room for himself and tips your ass up.

He gives your cheek a solid pat. “C’mon, focus on me, lovie. Tell me what you’re gonna do from now on.”

Your breathing picks up, heavier. When you don’t respond again, he abruptly pulls out and stands up, hauling you up to your feet with him. All of the blood rushes from your head, pooling around your pretty black shoes. Leaves crunch under your feet when he turns the two of you around and sits down on the stump where you’d just been spread over. The hands on your waist turn you to face him and that’s when an inkling of struggle works its way back into your veins.

You hiss and snarl when he lifts you to straddle his thighs, particularly when you see the brutish, ruddy cock jutting out from his trousers. Ghost seems more amused than anything at your little attempts to escape, clutching you closer to him until your chests are pressed tight together, making it all the more intimate. All the more real.

“Quit fussing.” You jump at the sharp slap he delivers to your ass.

“Going to curse your whole lineage—” you grit out, wincing when he draws you back down over his length, cunt fluttering at the stretch. You can’t help dropping your forehead to his chest, shoulder hitched with a frustrated cry.

His groan makes you seize up, a hot flash darting through you. “Don’t be like that, lovie. Might be yours too.”

A haze passes over you when firm hands lift you up off his cock and plop you back down, emptying you of any thoughts like you’d tipped your head and all the water had poured out.

The worst is the way your body betrays you. Each time he shoves his fat cock into your cunt, a whine rattles out of you, snatched from your chest. Robbed from you. The nearby leaves rustle and swirl up into the air with an artificial wind, magic singing their edges. He reaches so much deeper inside of you like this, splayed on his lap, hands gripping onto his shoulders for dear life because it takes every bit of energy in your body to merely take his cock into you.

Your knees scrape against the uneven wood every time he drags you back down. They’ll probably be scraped raw by the end of it; you’ll need to tearfully smooth on ointment and wrap thick bandages around them when you get back to the cottage.

“There we go. Fuckin’ take it—come on,” Ghost grunts, dragging you down onto his length, just using your body how he likes.

The thick head grinds up against a spot deep inside of you, spongy and sensitive. You feel it all the way up in your throat. Every time his cock rubs against that spot, your nails dig into his shoulders. A violent shudder rips through you because this position also lets him grind your clit down against the root of his cock.

“Ghost—”

He ducks his covered mouth into the side of your neck. Even through the fabric, you can feel his lips press a firm, closed-mouth kiss there. “Bit more, bit more, love. Better than you thought it’d be, huh? Fuck. Only thing magic about you is this wet pussy. Fuck hiding this from me—gonna ride it twice a day from now on.”

“Never doing this ever again, you beast—”

Ghost bites you through the mask, the pressure dull but real. It says, try keeping it from me.

When you come, it’s sudden and sharp, painful like a cramp in your belly and then a wave of bone-deep pleasure. Ghost wrangles it from you with a thumb on your clit, pumping up into your pussy at the same time. He wrenches it from you like it’s his, like you have no choice but to come for him because he wants it. You press your whole body against him when you come, arms wrapping around his neck like you need him close. Heat unfolding and leaving you limp. No cauldron has ever boiled as hot as your flesh does now.

He pulls out of you before coming. You watch helplessly as he settles you close enough to keep the heat of your pussy on him and then wraps a firm hand around himself, giving it a few good tugs before a white rope of come spurts from his cock. Right onto your exposed pussy, spilling across your folds. Your mouth drops open on a soft whine as it stripes across your inner thighs and the front of your dress, painting it white.

His harsh pants ebb into something softer as his cock goes flacid against his thigh. You feel boneless, drained of all your energy. Even your magic only gives a pathetic twitch, the tendrils of it curling back up inside of you where it’s nice and warm.

Your cunt feels tender, puffy when you reach down and touch it. You flinch when his fingers graze against yours, also feeling around your swollen lips. Ghost knuckles your fingers out of the way and scoops up the mess he left between your thighs, pushing two fingers just past your entrance. You don’t even have the energy to yelp, only wince and mewl.

He shushes you. “Didn’t even come inside. Quit whining.”

His words are belied by the way he scoops more of his come up into you.

You really don’t like that he follows you home. The march back to your cozy cottage nestled in the middle of the forest feels like a death march, one you might have witnessed in the hundreds of years that you’ve lived here. Worse still because your legs are still wobbly, your sex achy and raw. Still, whenever you pause for a moment or lean against a tree, he nudges you forward with a hand on your back.

“This is unfair,” you snivel, eyes tearing up. “You can’t—this is my forest.”

“The woods don’t belong to anyone, girl,” Ghost counters.

“Yes, they do. I’ve been…it’s been mine for two hundred years.”

“Of course, lovie.” You can almost hear the roll of his eyes. It makes you grit your teeth. You can’t wait to bury him in the backyard with all the bone mandalas.

It doesn’t take long for him to settle in, making himself nice and comfortable on your plush couch with the intricate doilies knitted by your grandmother draped along the back. Your poor couch almost collapses under his weight.

Your cottage is far too small for someone of his size; you built it to accommodate someone of your size, not the behemoth that’s taken up residence in your house. You know that Ghost is more of a man of action than words, but he’s plenty happy to grumble about needing to redo the door to make it big enough for him to come inside without having to duck his head.

“You aren’t going to touch a single brick of my house.”

“I’ll take apart the whole damned thing if I want.”

You keep trying to lift him up with your magic but it does nothing to him and only tires you out because using magic is exhausting. You’re sweating and panting at the end of your efforts while Ghost just stands in front of you with his arms crossed over his chest and a single eyebrow raised. It’s humiliating. You used to be a powerful witch. You still are.

He lets you yell at him until you’re red in the face and then drags you down for a rough fuck. Arguments with Ghost often end that way—you, sore and satiated in your bed, the window opened to let some fresh air in. Him, spread out next to you and dragging you close, playing absentmindedly with a nipple until you pinch his side. That always gets you a meaner pinch, one that leaves you teary-eyed and hot all over again.

Magic might not work on him, but he’s still mortal, so you try to work with that. Bear traps by the windows and doors. Hemlock in the soap. Poison in his stew. He’s stealthier than you anticipate though and seems to have a sixth sense for death.

It’s demeaning and humiliating to be punished for your ‘bad behaviour’ but that’s what he calls it when he passes by the kitchen and catches the stew burping out the telltale skull shaped steam. You’re taken off kitchen duty after that, but the worst part is being trapped under him on the bed with your hands pinned over your head, bottom exposed to him yet again. He laughs a little later on when you squirm around on your hard kitchen chairs because you refuse to sit on his lap.

Sometimes when he has you trapped under him when you’re sleeping—because, of course, he commandeers your bed like it was built for someone his size when truthfully he should be in a bed twice as large—he wakes up to you gnawing at his shoulder and he has to hold you jaw in his hand and rumble out “No biting” before going back to sleep. You stare over his shoulder petulantly, not even bothering to fight the pout. The kettle whispers in the kitchen, fueled by your frustration.

Ghost only lets out a dry, husky laugh. It sends a shiver down your spine.

Asphodel takes to him like a new favourite thing, winding around his legs while you glare from the other room. Damned familiar.

You only start to lighten up when your senses tingle one day when you’re out picking berries in the woods and you come back to find him ruthlessly butchering a band of raiders that had been trampling through your woods. He slaughters them methodically, almost bored. Almost like he does this every day.

You can’t help the way it makes your pussy ache.

He catches the look in your eye. You’ve been alone for far too long in the woods; everything you feel is laid bare, open for anyone to see. Ghost is just always looking.

He grins under the mask, blood splattered across the front of his shirt. “Go on, lovie. I’ll be inside in just a few.”

Molten slickness drips from between your thighs. You bite your lip before you slip away, blood growing feverish when you glance back down at the mangled bodies bleeding out in the red-orange leaves. There’s a severed eye that’s rolled off to the side and your stomach gurgles.

You lick your lip and look up at him from under your eyelashes. “Save me some for supper?”

Ghost’s eyes soften, a sharp contrast from the gore and viscera piled around him. “‘Course, lovie.”

The world seems different with the arrival of him. Cranberries beneath the sycamore, the russet moon on harvest's day, the scent of soldering iron, the laughter woven between your many faces. With him, you feel like the cynosure of all eyes.

In the twilight hours, he presses a hand to your forehead and laves your belly with his tongue like he might push something back in there. The curtains draw shut and the lights flicker off.

#cod mw2 #ceil writing #cod x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #cod simon riley #ghost/reader #ghost cod

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itsabouttimex2 · 3 days

Note

Plot twist: the moment d!reader is set free from both of the circles at the end of the journey, they dissapear into the night, never to be seen again...or not.

I'm sorry i just, as much as i love yanderes, i want to see them suffer. At least a bit.

Ps. You're an amazing writer and i really enjoy your fics. Also, you really helped in getting my friend into yandere, so thank you for that🙂

Taken Aboard:

Running Away

(I’m super glad that you enjoy my fics! And I’m glad your friends enjoys them, too! Yandere is a really fun trope to play with!)

So, in the case that you do pull a runner at the end of this long and arduous journey, Y/N… your biggest enemy is now yourself.

Because, as hard as you might have tried to fight it, you have been civilized. You have grown accustomed to society. You have started to care. This journey has changed and bettered you, as it has all your companions.

You are no longer a mere demon tending to monsters great and mighty, no more a child planting seeds and spreading spores.

You can’t ever go back to being the wild little creature you once were.

If you’ve ever read Gilgamesh, I’d say Enkidu is a good comparison for your development. After he’s been ‘civilized’ by Shamhat, Enkidu can no longer return to the home he knows and loves, the animals who once accepted him now fleeing on sight.

Now, if you leave before the journey’s end…

You run, devastated and distraught that so much of yourself is gone and lost, never to be reclaimed. The forest may not be the home you know, but some part of it is still familiar.

You purge the hunters and loggers who have taken up residence within the Emerald Grove, violently spilling their nourishing blood across the hungry soil, pitch their flesh into the mouths of ravenous beasts.

It doesn’t make you feel better- you know that at least some of these men and women were trying to feed themselves, their children.

But at least the forest is newly quiet, contented by a fresh meal, leaving you in peace to mourn.

As for hoping to ‘never being seen again’…

Sun Wukong’s Golden Vision has a little something to say about that.

Within hours he’s stalking back to the Emerald Grove in a huff, hauling his way up the tallest tree he can find and unhappily making his way over to you.

The Great Sage snatches you off the bark and tosses you over his shoulder, clambering down the tree as you kick and scream. You demand to be released and removed from the group, biting and pounding your fists agains his invulnerable back.

“Being naughty today, bud? Here I was, thinking you had finally gotten past this ‘running back home’ phase.”

“I am not a baby,” you scream, digging your teeth into the base of his spine with all your demonic might. “PUT ME DOWN!”

You manage to draw just a few drops of blood, not that it phases the simian. He doesn’t even seem to notice.

“You’re making things harder for all of us, you know that? And you keep setting us back with all the running away nonsense. But I had Master call a certain someone up to maybe settle this for us all, bud.”

Against your angry protests and endless assault does the Great Sage drag you back to camp, switching to hold you in his arms instead of over his back.

Immediately do your screams of anger turn to pained wails, the sound of a holy sutra hitting your eyes. The blessed bands around your wrists tighten, scraping the skin they compress to rawness.

And before you stands not only the holy monk who tricked you into wearing these golden hoops, but the goddess who gave them to him.

“Sun Wukong, please place the child down,” she lightly instructs, her tone even and polite. “Might I speak to them for a moment?”

The Handsome Monkey King obeys, nudging your towards the goddess after he releases his grip on you.

Guanyin comes to you slowly, kneeling to take your face into her soft and gentle hands.

And you bite her.

“You- you call yourself a goddess,” you scream, fangs wet with her divine ichor. “Of mercy and compassion! But all you do is hand out tools of torture and punishment! I wanted to stay in my forest! I wanted to stay with my friends! A hard shove, nearly knocking her over. “And you helped Sanzang take me away! You gave him these awful bands and he pretended they were gifts to get me to put them on! But they weren’t! And you let him! And now he uses them to hurt me! I hate you! I hate him! I hate all of you!”

Finally you collapse, sobbing openly into your hands.

Tang Sanzang watches in horror as heavenly blood feeds the ground, causing new and gorgeous growth to break from the ground, flowers blooming in massive clusters.

Wukong seethes that you could be so disrespectful to the one and only god he actually cares for, the only one he finds to be tolerable and kind.

Everyone else just recoils in both fear and hurt, your last words ringing painfully in the ears.

But Guanyin approaches once more, kneeling to level herself with you. There is no retribution or anger in her touch, placing a light kiss onto your forehead.

“You’re right, aren’t you? This journey has not been easy, nor has it been kind- and for you especially, perhaps it has been cruel. And I too, have been unkind to dabble in your affairs. Will you allow me to ease the burdens of your travel?”

From a silk pouch does she procure a mirror, pushing it into your shaking hands.

“My child, I give to you this heavenly mirror, which has been forged from blessed steel and holy sand melted to glass by dragonfire. To look upon it will show you your beloved forest, and all those you have left behind.”

(Now, this is super important- Y/N’s involvement in the journey is incredibly unfair. The others come because they seek personal growth or redemption, but Y/N?

They had to come. They were tricked into thinking those golden tightening bands were gifts and eagerly asked Sanzang to help put them on, jumping up and down in excitement at receiving something so pretty. The only reason they agreed to wear these ‘generously’ gifted bands was because they thought it was an honest gift.

So there’s already a sense of betrayal about the whole thing, that their first gift from anyone was actually just a trap to pull them along on a lengthy and dangerous journey.

Then, where the others were either entirely willing (Sanzang) or had to redeem themselves for crimes or mistakes (Wukong), Y/N was forced to come along with their worst crimes being: fighting off invaders and killing poachers. And all for that, they are ripped from home and forced to leave behind everything they’ve ever known and loved.

And Guanyin does three things here:

1. Acknowledges your anger/sorrow.

2. Validates your feelings without hesitation.

3. Actively works to soothe them.

With the mirror in hand, you can look upon the Emerald Grove and see your old animal friends, know that they’re safe even without you, and put your fears to rest.

It’s not perfect.

But it’s a good start to get you to actually care about these pilgrims, given that you don’t spend every night in flurry of nightmares, thinking fitfully of your beloved forest.

#Platonic Yandere #Yandere Lego Monkie Kid #Yandere LMK #Yandere Tang Sanzang #Yandere Sun Wukong #Guanyin #Taken Aboard #Journeyfam

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philosophors · 9 months

Text

“If a little day-dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.”

— Marcel Proust, “Within a Budding Grove”

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rune-writes · 2 months

Text

Ephemerality

Fandom: Love and Deepspace

Word count: 1827

Rating: G

Pairing: Xavier/MC

Summary: In the outskirts of Linkon City, there is a park listed as one of the Top Ten Romantic Parks of Linkon City. Xavier invites MC out for a Valentine's Day date.

Notes: A belated Happy Valentine's Day~

I wanted to write a cute Xavier/MC fic for Valentine's, but alas, I could only finish it now, and... it ends up not being very Valentine-y either haha.

Read on AO3.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Mind your step.”

Xavier offered his hand as we came to a slope, pebbles rolling loosely over a steep incline. It wasn’t particularly treacherous. At least, not for me. I was a Hunter, and I was equipped with hiking boots and pants. A measly slope couldn’t outdo me. So I ignored his hand and said, “I can manage just f—” I couldn’t finish my sentence before I felt my foot slip.

The wind rushed out of me and the world upended—

Xavier caught my wrist and pulled me up, giving me leverage to fix my posture and land on his side. I gasped, heart racing within my ribcage.

“What did I tell you?” he said. His voice was carefully leveled, but when I chanced a glance, I caught the mirth behind his pressed lips. His eyes couldn’t lie.

“Thanks,” I said tartly.

He released a playful scoff under his breath, then shifted his hold to my hand, his long fingers enveloping mine in a secure grasp. His smile finally on full display, he said, “Don’t let go now.”

Any counter or retort I had ready evaporated instantly at sight of his disarming face.

This hike had been his idea. Well, mine if we’re talking about technicalities, but I had only made a passing comment on a passing article I was reading—Top Ten Romantic Parks in Linkon City. I knew most of the ones listed; some were popular spots in the city proper even for single people, which I had been one until recently. The tenth one on the list, however, was a place I had never heard of. A clearing out on the hills in the outskirts of the city; it was a hike at the end of an hour train ride. I’d asked Xavier if he knew the place.

“I do. I often pass by it on my way home,” he’d replied. I had learned not to pry exactly where he had gone. As far as I knew, there weren’t any no-hunt zones in the area. He’d leaned over the couch and I’d shown him my phone. He’d nodded, confirming the place. “It’s a bit far, and you need to climb a fair distance. I can see why it’s not a popular date spot.”

“It looks pretty,” I’d said, looking back at my phone. Rosalea Park: a fenced-in clearing with beautiful cherry-blossom trees overlooking the entire city. It’d make a perfect spot for flower viewing, if they were in the cherry blossom season. I’d looked at the panoramic photographs the writer had attached before I closed the tab and noticed Xavier’s gaze. I’d met his eyes.

“Do you want to go there?” he’d asked.

And so our plan had been born. Fast forward one week later, I now found myself holding Xavier’s hand as he led me down the trail with groups of cherry-blossom trees flanking us on both sides. It’d take another month or so to see the pink buds bloom and grace the crown of every tree on this hill. Apparently, some decades ago, someone had planted an entire grove of cherry blossoms on the hills outside Linkon, providing the citizens a magnificent view when spring came around. I liked to watch them from the window of my apartment. It was like being surrounded by an endless, undulating pink sea. Magical. But the flowers didn’t last long. The blooms would fall once the season passed and be replaced by an ocean of verdant green. But that would take another couple weeks. Now, however, the trees around us bore white flowers, small and delicate, creating a sort of mystical mirage with their ephemeral beauty.

I gazed at them, transfixed. I didn’t realize Xavier’s stare until I heard his breathy laugh.

“Do you like them?” he asked.

“They’re pretty.” I reached up and caught a falling petal on my palm. “They remind me of you.”

“How so?”

“They’re quite hardy, and they foretell the coming of spring,” I said. “But they’re also brittle. A single touch could make them fall from their branch. Blink once and you’d miss the beauty they offer.”

He paused, then said, “Do I seem brittle to you then?”

I looked up and met his backward glance. I couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. I didn’t think my nonchalant observation would catch his attention. But then a breeze caught the petal in my palm and I watched it dance in the wind alongside other loose flowers. One landed on Xavier’s head, and I giggled, reaching up to brush it away.

“You’re not brittle,” I told him as I picked the stray petal from his hair. Holding it between my thumb and forefinger, it quivered as the wind fought to keep it aloft. And then it broke free, and I felt a part of me fly away with it. “You’re…elusive. I fear that if I close my eyes, you’ll be gone from my side.”

Xavier didn’t break his gaze away from me. I looked ahead and found that we’d reached the edge of the treeline. I tugged his hand, urging him to go faster. And then we were outside, and the view took my breath away.

We were at the top of a hill: Rosalea Hill, judging from the sign they’d propped just outside the line of trees. But the trail didn’t stop there. It went on past the sign and into the clearing, winding around a plethora of flowerbeds in circles, squares, or crescent shapes. A mingle of scents greeted my senses. It felt like I was back in the flower shop Xavier liked to visit, except the smell was richer here, the colors more abundant and vibrant.

We weren’t the only ones visiting the park either. Couples were already setting up picnic mats and several were taking pictures on the benches or by the wall overlooking the city. I let go of Xavier’s hand and rushed over to it, leaning over and peering down the stone structure. We were so high; the park ended in a steep slope that could easily break someone’s neck were they to fall over. Or, well, at the very least sprain their ankle. The slope wasn’t too sheer that your feet couldn’t find purchase, but I could imagine someone slipping over the terrain.

Like I had just moments before, to my mortification.

Xavier entered my line of sight and I grinned up at him. “Look,” I said, pointing at the entrance to the hiking trail at the bottom of the hill. “That’s where we came in, huh?”

“It appears so.”

”Doesn’t seem like this place is unpopular,” I added, noting the crowd that was still trickling into the entrance.

Xavier chuckled. “I never said it’s unpopular. I only said it might not be a popular date spot.”

Well, there were a lot of couples. Either Xavier was wrong, or they’d all fallen victim to the same article I’d read.

I followed the road, all its winding way back to the nearby train station, then finally to the city in the distance. Under the sun, Linkon City’s numerous skyscrapers glinted brilliantly, towers upon glass towers piercing the sky all the way to where Skyhaven hung with its gilded spires. I could spot the parks—clusters of little green dots sandwiched between rows of buildings. I could hazard a guess where our apartment was, though I couldn’t very well see the building from so far away. I saw the river, a sparkling blue line winding through the settlement, cutting right at the heart and finally draining into the sea beyond. Pristine ivory shores rimmed the city’s western edge.

The place where I grew up looked so different from above. So serene and timeless, as though we had crossed over a threshold and were now gazing at a frozen sculpture. “It’s so beautiful,” I said breathlessly. Too beautiful, in fact. I couldn’t help the slight pang in my heart knowing that one day, things would change.

I pushed myself from the wall and took a few steps back, breathing in the scent, absorbing the view. I might have stayed like that for all eternity if I hadn’t heard the shutter of a camera going off. I looked to my right and saw Xavier directing his phone camera at me. He smiled sheepishly at being caught.

“Let me borrow your phone,” he said, stashing his away.

I blinked. “What for?”

He didn’t say anything, only held out his hand in silent inquiry. I indulged him, fishing my phone from my bag and placing it on his palm.

“Now come here.” He drew me to his side, maneuvered us so that we had our backs to the city, then directed my phone at us to take a selfie picture. “Smile.”

The shutter went off again.

Even with the impromptu nature, it was still a pretty good picture. He managed to capture the city in the distance while also still capturing our smiles. He fiddled around with my phone for a while longer before giving it back to me. I looked at the screen—

—and realized he’d changed my home screen wallpaper to the photo he’d just taken.

“Now even if you close your eyes, I’ll always be by your side.”

I stared at my phone, then at his cheeky smile. “I want another one.”

“What?”

“It’s not good enough. Better yet, I’ll just take a picture of you ‘cause you already took mine.”

“Wait—”

I pushed him to the wall, had him pose for me several times. After a while, Xavier could only smile in resign.

“Happy now?” he asked after his photo session ended. “You know, I only took one photo of you.”

“And I took five.” I scrolled through my album. I couldn’t quite keep the grin out of my face. He looked so handsome in his jacket and turtleneck, and so cute when he pouted at the last picture because I couldn’t decide what pose I wanted him to do. I decided to use that for my homescreen wallpaper instead.

“Why are you grinning at a picture when the real one is in front of you?”

I glanced up, and true enough, the hint of a pout was already forming again in his otherwise poker face. I beamed from ear to ear. “Oh please, as if you wouldn’t look at my picture when I’m not looking.”

His response was a guilty, breathy laugh.

I grabbed his hand and led him away from the wall to a quieter area. “Come on, then. Let’s set up our picnic mat. I made a lot of delicious meals this morning. I can’t wait for you to try them.”

Later, Xavier told me that the park was even more romantic at night. They had lights stringed around the flower beds, and around the paths and walls as well. Like artificial fireflies, he said. He promised to take me here again to see it. Perhaps, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

~ END ~

#love and deepspace #xavier #xavier love and deepspace #love and deepspace xavier #l&ds #lads #lnds #l&ds xavier #lads xavier #l&ds fic #xavier fic #lads fic #fanfiction #lnds fanfic

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