#again if it comes down to splitting time between them ill have a few months in each of them almost like 7 on bass. and they're similar | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kxxkiecxre · 4 months

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・❥・WICKED GAMES || Jeon Jungkook ・❥・

PAIRING: Jungkook x reader

SUMMARY: how does one mend two broken hearts?

SERIES: like a moth to a flame.

WARNINGS: arguing(bear with me please 😔), miscommunication, talks of illness(cancer not for reader or Jungkook), constant bickering, cold Jungkook, mean Jungkook, reader is also in the wrong:/, drinking, unprotected sex(you’re not that stupid please wrap it), oral (f receiving), cream pie :), nothing was actually figured out.

As always enjoy!!

Previously… Next…

It pained you to see the clear hurt on his face. It made your heart shed rays like a sun during a solar storm and it burned so bad. The sheer velocity of pain was making you feel like you’d die any second. It was his glass stained eyes that truly had you gulping down the knots in your throat. You understand, you haven’t been exactly fair when you left both of them. Without as much as sparing another word for two months after you’ve disappeared.

He leaned against the kitchen island, palms embedded into the edges as he scoffed and smirked in pure anger, head falling between the space of his arms. He swayed back into an upright posture, biting on his bottom lip. The little dimples that you adore visible In his cheeks.

“I’m having trouble looking at you,” he finally mumbled, “every time I do, you seem to kill me all over again.”

Your brows furrowed, “Jungkook I’m so sorry”

He shook his head, looking around the apartment, “don’t be,” he wasn’t even sure if you apologising is what he wanted. After all, both of you seemed to hurt one another every time one of you got too close. It seemed almost like you were in magnetic field and you and Jungkook were positive and negative, something that just cannot be in a field of neutrality.

“I don’t need an apology,” it wasn’t like he was trying to shame you, or punish you, more like he was trying to be clear, “I need you to look me in the eyes, and tell me truly and honestly, between those moments where it was just us and the night, did you love me?”

Your lips parted, a sigh leaving your mouth and you take a few seconds to reply, “yes.”

He nodded, swaying back and further, chuckling to himself before his eyes landed back on you, “I find that difficult to believe.”

Your heart sunk, hitting the pit of your stomach with so much force it made you feel nauseous.

“Because if you did love me, you wouldn’t have left me like that. You wouldn’t have left everything we’ve worked for and sacrificed, because of one hiccup. I get it, she was mad, after all, she’s Yeji, and Yeji is more than understanding. If we’ve given her space and time she would have come around-“

“Kook,” you shook your head, begging to keep the tears from falling, “I didn’t want to force this onto anything or anyone, it was pointless to push this onto her if we would lose all her trust, which in the process of our own selfishness we have betrayed her, already losing it. However, if I have left without picking sides, at least then, both of you could have worked it out and perhaps you could regain at least an inkling of her trust back. You know that once you lose her it’s very hard to get her back. I just didn’t want to hurt both of you like that”

He sighed closing his eyes, “what about us? Do we not get a happy ending? Do we not get a choice?”

Somehow this night reminded you of months ago when you committed the first of your betrayal on this very counter between you two. You didn’t want to relive this pain, but every word that you share between your conversation it seems like the knife gets dug further and further, pressing your heart, threatening to rip it right out of your chest and throw it out the window.

If you had stayed and chosen sides, it would have broken a bond between one of them and yourself. At the end of the day, all three of you would have ended up hurt and split. Between choosing platonic soulmates and romantic ones, somehow you have forgotten about yourself. That day before the argument happened. It seemed like the best day ever, and all of a sudden everything had burst into flames. You didn’t want to go through that again, better yet, put both of them through that again.

Somehow both you and Jungkook continue being selfish. Standing in the kitchen discussing what ifs about the relationship that you’re not even sure stood a chance, meanwhile your best friend and his sister is in the room down the hall sleeping, fighting a disease you didn’t even know she had. You were a shit best friend, that much you knew.

“Jungkook, she’s in the other room -“

“Y/N,” he spoke, his voice dropping an octave, “do we not get a chance? Is this what we’re destined for hm? Fuck it kills me not to have you in my arms when you’re within my reach”

“I don’t know what to tell you! Okay? What am I supposed to do? Tear myself in half and keep both of you happy? What about me Jungkook? What about me?”

It was quite yet again, he leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers against the bottom drawers while you held the cup of tea between your hands, looking at the orange colored liquid inside the glass as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“I love you,” he muttered, “it might be selfish of me, but I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I didn’t want to dream of you every night, to feel like this for the first time. With you.”

Your heart squeezed, trashed around in your chest to escape the hell it was going through, “I didn’t mean to either.”

You looked into his eyes, both of on the verge of crying, “I love you too, unfortunately.”

Her face was pale. The hollows below her cheekbones prominent as she sat on your navy couch, she brushed her frail hands across the fluffy pillow smiling to herself. Her hair was thinning, but it still managed to frame her face beautifully. When her eyes met yours, you could see the happiness and love within them. It made you feel warm inside, it had you smiling within seconds. That’s exactly how yeji works, she’s the sun and we’re all just orbiting her.

“Do you remember when we were 16?”

Your brows furrowed, “when exactly”

“Jackson’s 18th”

“Yeah”

“Do you remember when we promised to always be happy for the other person, even if we disagree?”

Your expression immediately fell. You were so tired, so tired of constantly being reminded of this aching grief within you. Even though nobody has died, you were grieving of what could have been of you and Jungkook, “yeji, let’s not talk about that.”

“No. Let’s.”

“Why?”

“When did you realise you fell in love with Jungkook?”

You looked down to your hands in your laps, playing with the loose string of your silk pyjamas, “when we had that big argument? I realised I didn’t have a crush on him, I was madly in love with him. That night when we made up, it really confirmed it for me.”

She smiled, “I think,” she clears her throat, “I was being selfish… I stood between love, and no one should ever do that. You would never do that to me. At the time when you told me, all I could think about was losing my best friend if something happened between you two, what I failed to realise is, that we are more than best friends. No one can ever come between us, and also, in the process, I could even gain myself the best sister in law ever”.

It wasn’t necessarily that she accepted Jungkook and you, that brought you to tears, it was the fact she set aside her own self to let you guys be happy. That is what breaks you, because Yeji is too good of a person for anyone. No one in this world will ever deserve her. She’s far too good for this impure world, for this universe that will only break your heart. yeji deserves everything good and best in this whole galaxy. No one will ever compare to her.

“I love you so much yeji”.

“I love you too, go get your mans girl.”

“He can wait” both of you laughed, and everything seemed right again.

Still as you caught up with Yeji, you worried on how you’d reconnect and mend things with Jungkook. Surely, he’s tired of all the arguments and the little things that’d come between you and now it all has you thinking. Thinking too much. Because you’re afraid and the more that you go over things, the more you realise that perhaps you’re not good for each other? Maybe you’re too toxic for one another.

All things aside you still love him more than you could ever love yourself. He’s the only person that could ever make you feel like all the stars exploded within your body and it was all just fireworks going off inside your chest. No one ever made you this happy, this overwhelmingly positive and no one’s ever made you feel as beautiful as he would every time he’d touch your body, every crevice his lips would kiss would ignite confidence and love in their wake.

Maybe that is why your heart still calls for him. Because you’d rather give him your heart, whether it was shattered into pieces and glued together and the last drop of your blood then live without him. So even if he was cold, even if he rejected you, you’d do nothing more than love every inch of him and devote your soul and body to him. Because no one’s ever had you this foolish within the desire for another’s heart and body like he does.

No one ever, loves the way Jungkook loves.

By the time things started to become normal, Yeji was finally fully cancer free and steadily recovering. Her cheeks started to become fuller, her skin regaining that healthy glow and her hair was growing and becoming bouncy just like before. In moments, you finally felt some sense of normality, like nothing ever happened. Until it came to talking to Jungkook.

Every time you’d direct your focus on him and speak to him, wether to have a conversation or to ask him a question, he’d either out right ignore you or be extremely short and cold with his answers, distant.

He’s become overwhelmingly distant. It was killing you inside, but at the same time you didn’t have the guts to confront him. Your guilty conscience was holding you back, reminding you that this wasn’t his fault. That he has every right to be upset with you and never talk to you again. It hurt, but you leaving him so easily must’ve hurt him even more. Because you know that if he did that to you, you’d be in shambles.

You tried your hardest to be happy, at the end of the day you’re in Aspen. There’s snow almost every minute of the day, everything is a white blanket of snow and Christmas lights illuminated the streets, glowing in different colours. It was like pure joy and ecstasy throw up within it.

The girls decided to go out for drinks to some club close to the cabin you were staying in, leaving the guys behind. Minho, Jackson, Lukas and Jungkook decided to stay back, start a fire in the chimney and drink beer watching some type of basketball you couldn’t really care about.

Slipping into the champagne rose coloured dress you sighed. It’s a shame nobody is taking this dress off you, because fuck was it beautiful. The satin material was so delightful, the dress was shorter than you’d usually opt for, but in all fairness, it did wonders to your curves. The neckline was deep, showing hints of your breasts, the hem of the skirt reached mid thigh, a dangerous length for bending. The back was exposed completely, aside from protecting the little modesty of your ass. A very flashy thin chain crisscrossed across your smooth back. Of course this type of dress required a warm coat, otherwise you’d suffer from frostbite. You’ll undoubtably will be extremely cold, but that’s a small price you’re willing to pay for this outfit.

Your coat was white and very fluffy, faux fur on the outside, warmed with wool inside. Classy and suits the rose coloured dress perfectly, your heels were high, also rose coloured material on the sides aside from the fact the foot was open, covered with blingy laces that tied up to your mid calf. You looked sexy, that much you knew.

“Suddenly, I wish I had a penis” you hear Alana behind you, her own black heels clicking off the wooden floors of your room.

You laughed, giving yourself a once over in the mirror before you slipped your bag over your shoulder. Linking arms with Alana, you walk down the stairs, where Yeji and Caroline waited. A low whistle is heard echoing the room, the girls stopped talking, smiles bracing their faces as they watched you walk down.

Jungkook watched you across the room, lazily slumped onto the armchair in the corner of the room. You looked so fucking hot and it had something inside the pit of his stomach stirring. He did not want you going anywhere in that outfit. Despite knowing he doesn’t own you or the choice of what you wear, he wishes he could just throw you over his shoulder and rip that dress off your body. He took a sip of his beer as he watched the way your smooth skin shone within the low lighting of the living room.

Good god did you look beautiful. If you were the only person in this room right now, he’d be on his knees right now. Worshipping your body the way it deserves to be, starting from your legs to your forehead he’d cover you in bruises made by his lips, he’d write his name on your body with the way he’d suck on your skin. God he’d destroy you right now, fuck you so good the only thing you’d be thinking about is his name. He wants to imprint his mark on your body, he wants you to reek of him so no man ever gets to come within half a metre of you. So no man can ever touch you again.

God he hates you so much.

Jungkooks a bad liar. He knows that, because his heart is only ever good for you. It only beats to the rhythm of your heart, every time it beats it pumps your name into his blood, injects him with the only poison he’d ever voluntarily ingest. The only medicine that could fix his fucked up head, yet the only thing that he’d let destroy him over and over and over again. He’d write your name everywhere you walked so everyone could know that the most beautiful human being walked the path they are on.

He’d shoot any sick fuck who dared to ever hurt you, he’d slice their throats in a split second to erase them from this world if they ever wronged you. Whatever you desired, he’d feed you it. He’d do whatever you wanted him to do, he’d sell his soul for you.

Even now as the boys compliment you all he does is shoot daggers there way. His eyes only softening when your own lock with his. His heart begins to palpitate, it begins to float only to slam down again, up and down up and down. It was insane the effect you had on him.

As the guys watch the game all he can do is think about you and what you’re doing. Are you having fun? What if you’re making out with someone… what if you’re fucking someone else? Fuck.

He grabs his keys, thankful for only drinking one sip of the cheap beer. Inside the rented car, he pulls his phone out, realising you’ve already been gone for almost an hour, he clicks onto your contact, cooing as he sees the picture he’s set for you, before he calls your phone.

“Yes?” He could already hear the slurring in your speech, his head thrown back into the seat, he closes his eyes trying to focus.

“Where are you?”

You giggle, “why kookie? Are you worried?”

To you, he sounded scared and you knew you shouldn’t mess with him when he’s worried about you. But you couldn’t really care, not when you’ve drunk so much alcohol in such a short period, trying so hard to mend your broken heart with alcohol when you know the only way you’d fix it is with his dick so deep inside you it’d reset you to factory settings. Just a little slut for him, just how he loves to tell you when he fucks you.

“Y/N, you better tell me where the fuck you are.”

You think for a second, taking this as a chance to ask him a question, better over a phone call than face to face, even if you’re going to see him in a couple of minutes anyway, “why do you hate me?”

“What?” He almost whispered in disbelief.

You sighed, blowing your stray hair away from your face as you leaned against the wall, “I’m in the club around the corner.”

That’s all you say before you hang up on him. He cusses, starting the car and pulling out of the driveway. He can’t believe you walked to this place in such cold weather in such a flimsy dress, or in heels in this slippy weather. Sometimes you really love testing the waters of how much luck you have. As he enters the club, his eyes swarm across the crowds trying to find you, he finally does. You’re swaying side to side, talking to some guy who seems like he’s also pissed drunk. He waits for a minute, locating yeji before he begins walking towards you.

He looked so good it hurt so much. He wore black slacks, and a black knit sweater. His hair perfectly laying on his head. The sleeves of his sweater were rolled up, his Rolex so shiny and perfect around his wrist. He looked so cozy and hot it wasn’t fair.

“Come on let’s go home.” He says. Draping his trench coat over your shoulders.

“You’re not my dad.” You scoff.

He gives you a look, telling you he’s serious. You roll your eyes, shrugging out of the jacket and brushing past him as you walk to Yeji. His warm woody vanilla scent wrapping around you and already sticking to your clothes.

“Your brother is annoying” you say, with a pout.

She glances behind you, smirking, “he saw your outfit and it probably freaked him out.”

“What do you mean”

“He probably thought you were gonna hook up with some guy, and he’s jealous so he came to collect his girl.” She winks at you, sipping her sprite with a lime on top.

“Oh please, he hates my guts. Ever since that he hates me.”

She shakes her head at your oblivion, “go with him before he chews this place up.”

You groan, taking your bag from her and walking towards the man with the stern face. You groan even louder when you’re near him, huffing and scoffing as he follows you outside. Following behind he smirks to himself, kicking himself to not coo at your little tantrum.

“I don’t know why I’m even listening to you.” You groan stomping your foot as he wraps the coat around you again.

He ignores you, face still stern and cold. What is wrong with this guy. He’s so confusing, “what’s your problem Jungkook! You come here to ruin my night, demanding I go home with you yet all you do is ignore me and you’re so cold to me but everyone claims that you love me. I’m so confused. What is your problem!”

He tilts his head to the side like a puppy, eyes glistening in the night, putting the stars to shame, “let’s just go home.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No!,” you stand your ground, “either you tell me what’s your problem, or I am turning right back around and finishing what I started with that guy” you nod back to the entrance of the club.

It was very sudden, the way he pressed you up against the car, his hand around your jaw, so gentle yet so dominating, “what did you do with him?”

“Enough to have you go crazy if I told you.” you smirked, lying through your teeth but you loved the way it riled him up. You’re just testing Yejis theory.

“What did you do with him?” He asks again, this time his voice has dropped an octave, his eyes darkening.

“First,” your lips pulled into a flirty smile as your hands tangled into the back of his hair, “I lured him into me, I danced with my ass pressed up against him, before he followed me to the bathrooms, that’s where I kissed him,” your lips get awfully close to his own, so much so that if you puckered them just a little more you’d peck him, your hands sprawled over his chest, eyes looking up into his own, “I then kissed his neck, before his hands started feeling me up. He touched my ass first, squeezing it-“

“Stop” he warned you.

“Then his lips kissed my throat, his hand-“

“y/n, i said stop.”

“Why? Are you not enjoying the way I’m telling you the story? Am I taking too long? Should I skip to the part where he fucks me?”

His body pressed against yours, forehead leaning into your own, hands smacking into the car behind your head, your innocent eyes continued piercing into his, “tell me you’re lying.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

You lean into him, all you had to do was reach up and wrap your lips around him. Taste him again for the first time in ages, “I lied.”

The force with which he kissed you, had you gasping into his mouth, clearly shocked by the way your body melted into the black Mercedes which you’re pressed up against. His lips were hungry, angry and so frustrated. He could taste the cherry vodka on your lips and it drove him to kiss you with such passion it had you moaning without him even doing anything. You could feel the wetness of your pussy dripping past your thongs and down your inner thigh.

“Fuck” you whined, he grabbed your jaw a little bit tighter this time.

“Don’t ever mess with me like that again.” He said, the door behind you clicking as he held it open for you.

You ran your thumb across your lower lip, wiping the messy lipgloss because of his rough mouth. Staring into his eyes with a menacing but such an innocent look. He really didn’t want to fuck you when you’re drunk but shit was he itching to stuff you full of him. As you sit inside the car, his tongue pokes his cheek. Your lipgloss reflecting of his lips.

“I’m going to go get your coat, stay here.”

Not like you had much of a choice. If you did leave he’d probably set this place on fire. So you sat on the leather seat, the bottom of it warm against your ass. Did he set it to heat up for you? That’s so sweet. That’s exactly what he does though, he does these little gestures to make you think you’re progressing only to give you the shoulder. It takes every inch inside you not to scream at him.

He returns shortly with your coat, holding it in his hand the other in the pocket of his pants. It was unfair that he gets to look so good without even trying.

Before he could even reach the car, a woman runs behind him. A stunning woman at that. She was slim and tall, skin as white as the snow outside and hair platinum blonde. Her eyes wore a smoky black eyeshadow, her body dressed in black from head to toe. She was so fucking hot, even you could admit that.

She seems to call out for him, he smirks before turning around to face the strange woman. They talked for a minute, and like some psychopath, you could see the smile on his face just from the back of his head. It had your pink nails digging into the leather seats, a scoff leaving your mouth. Fucking bitch. Surely she could see you in the car.

You were being irrational, you can acknowledge that. But something inside of you kept eating the anger like fire would with gasoline. It had you hot and bothered, so angry steam could be seen coming from your ears. Jealousy was the most infuriating feeling one could ever have to face. It had you out of the car within a second. Walking fiercely towards the man who conversed with the woman.

Your hand wrapped around his shoulders from the back, your voice becoming cute and sultry as you spoke to him, “come on baby, I’m cold I want to go home.”

The woman standing across you, smiled, her face dropping in disappointment as he turned his head towards you for a second, “yeah we should get going hm?”.

He so badly wanted to make you feel an ounce of the furiousness he felt just a few minutes ago when you were telling him about your little hook up. He wanted you to feel how insane it can drive you. Maybe he partly succeeded, but he wanted so badly for you to experience the pulsating jealousy he feels through his body, but he was better than that. He’d never embarrass you like this, not when he can clearly see you uncomfortable. Maybe even a little insecure. To which he’s not sure why, because he’s almost a hundred per cent sure every man and woman alike was staring at you.

He nodded a courtesy ‘bye’ to the woman before wrapping his arm around your waist and guiding you towards the car again, “what did i tell you about staying in one place? Where’s the jacket?”.

You roll your eyes, scoffing.

God you make him crazy, “I don’t want you to get sick, why do you never listen to me.”

You sat inside the car again, your body getting wrapped in a hug of warmth. So cozy and warm. You close your own door before he gets to do it, evidently not happy with him. He gets in beside you, starting the car and pulling off. Your oddly silent, not saying a single word to him.

“Are you warm enough?”

You don’t say anything, just continue looking out the window as he continues driving down the road. He smirks to himself for a split second, before wiping it off his face. He clearly got you riled up and fuck did it make him want you even more.

“So you’re ignoring me?”

He’s about to lose it. What’s the deal with you? What’s the deal with him? Why can’t he be a normal human being and embrace the fact that he can now freely be with you? Is it because of how you left? Without a single word? Without bidding goodbye? Is it perhaps because he had to mend his hurt and self pity but also his disappointment with his own self without anyone there for him? Could it be that he’s so hurt and betrayed that he cannot see past it? Hardly.

Sure enough as you reach the house, the other car is gone from the driveway. Jungkooks brows furrow for a minute, before he reaches for his phone, and sends a text. “The guys are gone out to join the girls.”

You don’t say anything, once again. You simply leave his car and head for the door of the cabin. The cold outside was bitter, a cloud of mist coming out your mouth with every breath that left you. You put the key into the door and open it, setting your bag down on the little black desk by the door. Along with your keys. Jungkook follows you, also discarding his personal items. The silence in the room was loud, it was screaming at you within each corner, it was something that would surely break the toughest soldier.

“Stop ignoring me, it’s rude.”

The scoff that leaves your chest could rattle the the roof right off this little cabin, “excuse me?”

You turn to face him, a rather nerve-racking look is on your pretty little face, and just like mentioned, it made Jungkook nervous.

Your eyes turned into slits as you slowly walked towards him, your heels clicking off the wooden floors, “you’ve got quite the nerve to tell me I’m rude for simply not being in the mood to talk to you, but you can ignore me for the last couple of weeks like it’s nothing. Fuck it’s almost Christmas, we’re leaving to go back home in three days, and the only time you’ve spoken to me within the three weeks that our group reunited is now. Now when I was finally going to try and move on, when I was finally going to stop being stuck on you and have fun. Even if it wasn’t going to be good. Even if it wasn’t with someone who I actually wanted, at least, I wouldn’t still be hung up on you.”

“Have fun with someone?”

“Oh my god,” you whined, “are doing this on purpose? You have me confused for weeks, you don’t talk to me and then suddenly when I feel a small faint of happiness you kiss me! You make me go crazy, I’m going fucking crazy!”

He scoffs, “and you think I haven’t? You left me without a word, you didn’t even have half a mind to talk to me. You just left me. I didn’t know if you were going to come back, if you were going to ever talk to me or yeji again. The moment you walked out that door you took my heart with you, and now you returned, and what? Did you want everything to go back to how it used to be?”

“I don’t know! Maybe? But at least we could have talked about it.” You said.

He walked towards you, hands stuffed in his pocket as he reached you. He looked down at you, so close and personal he could probably see every pore on your face. He made you nervous, the good type of nervous. It was honestly silly how quickly and simply he could have you forget what you’re mad about. How lightning fast he could make your heart skip beats and just how much you wanted him. His hand reached for your waist, grabbing onto the curve of your hip, scrunching the dress up.

“You really think, someone could ever make you have fun, like you do with me?”

Your eyes finally looked up, meeting his darkening gaze. The sultry look on his face had you picking up on confidence. That’s exactly how Jungkook worked on you, he influenced you so much. With him you felt like you could take on the world, like you were the only woman alive. He made you confident, and he made you feel so sexy.

Your eyes turned lazy, lips parting as you looked between his lips and eyes, “you really think I need you to have fun?”

He chuckled, his nose burying in your hair as he closed his eyes to the familiar scent, “oh I know you can have all the fun by yourself.” He smirked.

“Of course you do, at the end of the day, you liked watching me have fun,” your fingers wrapped around his chin, thumb running along his plump lip, “you especially loved watching me have fun when you couldn’t join”

Your hands were almost immediately grabbed into a tight grasp with his one hand, he pinned you against the wall. Your bare back meeting the cold wall had you arching into him with a small gasp, his hips pressed against your lower stomach, “and if I remember correctly, you loved it when I had my own fun with you.”

Your lips were sealed with his own, your breath was caught in your throat as you gasped right into mouth. His mouth was merciless, swallowing you like he was dehydrated. He was crazy, kissing you like his life was on the line. His grip on your hands eased, just so both of his hands could grab your hips, pressing you further into him and at that point you could feel his belt buckle right at your belly button, you moaned mid kiss, the vulgar sound sending blood to his dick and that’s when you felt him hard against your lower belly.

The butterflies that swarmed your stomach had you detaching from his mouth, your body arching into him as your head leaned into the wall, giving him ample space to latch his lips onto your neck, kissing so hard he surely left marks. He really was fucking crazy, shit.

“Fuck, we gotta move, they could be back any second.”

Without much effort, he lifted you up. Your legs wrapped around his waist, forehead leaning up against his as his lips sucked into your bottom one, nibbling at it. Your dress rode up, exposing your ass to the cold air and bunching up at your thighs. He took this opportunity to grab a good handful of your ass, slapping it gently. Groaning into your mouth. He walked into his bedroom, on the opposite side of the living room.

He laid you down on the bed gently, his body still against yours your legs relaxed around him. His mouth began kissing down your neck, leaving a bruise on your collarbone before he tapped your ass, “sit up,”

Obedient as always, you sit up. Letting him undo the dress from the back, unbuttoning the three buttons above your ass, “I hate this dress.”

“Do you hate it or are you just jealous?” You smirked.

“Less talking, more kissing.” He chuckled as he kissed you again.

This felt like Jungkook. The Jungkook you know, the sweet man who cares about you. The one that would set the galaxy on fire for you. He slipped the dress of your body, with one smooth move, taking your underwear with him when you lifted your hips up. Your ass still on the edge of the bed, you leaned up on your elbows, your mouth parting as he drops to his knees, and for a second, you thought he was going to take your heels off, instead, he set your foot over his shoulder, kissing your inner thigh, his mouth warm against your cooler skin.

Your head leaned back, anticipating his lips. He kissed right on top of your pussy, watching your reaction as his tongue dipped inside your wet cunt. Your mouth opened, a small smile playing on your pretty lips. His tongue licked from the bottom to the top of your slit, collecting your arousal in his mouth, moaning lowly as he attached his lips on your clit sucking onto you, the pleasure forcing your body back down onto the sheets. His tongue began flicking, earning moans as a response. Your hands tangling onto the sheets, he loved you liked this, immersed in your own pleasure.

His finger entered your pussy, the feeling had you whining, biting onto your lip as you moaned, “Jungkook,”

The vibration of his low moan against you, sent shivers down your spine. He added another finger in you, stretching you out and your heel began digging into his back and that in turn made his own moan resound through you, “fuck please I need you.”

He didn’t listen, instead his tongue worked faster on you, his fingers curled in a “come here” motion, rocking inside you with so much strength your body began moving with his motions. Your whines became muffled, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip and finally you came on his fingers.

fuck I missed you”, he said, coming back onto his own feet he impatiently took his sweater off, mouth wrapping around his fingers to suck your cum off them. Your stomach rose and fell, and he was too impatient to take all his clothes off, instead he chose to kiss your body instead, pecking randomly all over stomach, chest and face, “I missed you so much”.

Your hands unbuckled his belt, pulling his zipper down. You started taking of his pants, getting them past his ass and letting them pool around his ankles as you kissed him messily, “I missed you too”.

You pumped his cock in your hand, running your thumb over his tip, collecting the precum and sucking it off right after, “condom.” You say as he begins rutting his dick up your slit, “fuck I didn’t bring any”.

You groaned, his tip hitting your sensitive clit, “I’m on birth control, are you clean?”

His mouth was busy creating bruises behind your ear, “I haven’t slept with anyone since you.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He lined himself up with your pussy, his hands found yours, locking your fingers with his as he raised them above your head. His hips thrusted forward, entering you with a slight stretch. Both of you gasping in time with each other, lips hovering over each other. He took his time pushing inside you. Slowly, stretching you out and your body responded within a second. As if awaking from hibernation. Your hips moved with his as he bottomed out. Your eyes closing as he watched your beautiful face contorted in pure pleasure. He began slowly, his thrusts gentle before your breathy moans made him pick up his pace. His body thrusting with yours as your skin rubbed against each other.

The fullness inside your lower stomach was so good, the way his cock was dragging in and out of you with such precision. It had your toes curling inside your heels. Which made you wonder why he didn’t take them off you.

“You’re mine you get it? No one else’s but mine. I get to, fuck,” he moaned, your pussy clenching around him for a split second, “I get to love you.”

“Yes, fuck yes.” You agreed, your eyes so round and beautiful as they glistened, reflecting all his dreams and hopes in them.

His arm wrapped around your waist, and the force which he began thrusting inside you had you practically screaming, your nails digging into his bag as your chest and cheeks began blushing with your impending orgasm, the bed creaked with his merciless thrusting. His tip hitting something inside you so good that your moans silenced, sweat beading your body as the pleasure seeped from your head to yours toes, shooting electricity through your body as your pussy clenched around him. Leg shaking as you came without much of a warning, your voice choked up, “fuck”.

“Shit” his breathing was fast, moans resonating so deep inside his chest it felt like a rumble against yours. Face hiding in your chest as his thrust became sloppy, he chased his high, your overstimulation making tears form around your eyes as your moans drove him to cum inside you. His dick twitching, pumping hot liquid onto your walls.

“Don’t ever leave me again.”

A/N; so nothing was resolved really aside from some sex lol. I apologise for the slow updating I’m so busy. Masterlist is linked in my bio ;).

NO RECREATION OF ANY TYPE OR COPYING IS PERMITTED!

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the-way-of-words · 11 months

Text

You Can Have The Best Of Me

Noah Sebastian x OFC

Content warnings: oral sex, P in V sex, hair pulling, unprotected sex

Contains sexual situations with a fictionalized version of a real person. If rpf if your squick, feel free to hit the back button.

Follow up to If That's The Best That I Could Be, Then I Would Be Another Memory also fitting into @signs-of-ill-portent's 30 Days of Bad Omens prompt for Dive

My MasterList can be found here

She takes him to a dive bar the next time they see each other. They're in her city this time and as much as he tries to put on a relaxed air, he can feel his leg bouncing where it's perched on the stool he sits on. He missed her an unbelievable amount for some who's practically a stranger and he almost didn't call her when they finally made it to Denver. Thumb stuck above the thumbnail of the picture he took of the two of them that he set as her contact photo. The one he forgot about until three days after she left and his phone went off. No words, just the picture and a blue heart emoji underneath.

Noah tried to start a call countless times, typed and deleted texts varying in degrees from "hey" to "I miss you". He probably would have kept going like that too, if Nick hadn't gotten fed up with his shit attitude; telling him to man the fuck up and call her or forget about her, just as long as he stopped being an asshole to everybody in a five-foot radius.

The bar is a far cry from the bowling alley they met at, but it's nice. Dark corners with a few tall tables scattered about, a couple of pool tables, and a jukebox on the far back wall. Best of all is not once has anyone glanced in their direction with recognition in their eyes.

"You know," her voice pulls him from his perusal of the bar around them, turning his face to hers, "I was starting to think I wasn't going to hear from you again."

Noah looks down, self conscious, "You almost didn't, if I'm honest."

Her eyebrows knit together before one of them curls up inquisitively. "And what changed your mind?"

"My friend told me to man the fuck up and call you or forget about you…" he laughs, "So I figured I better call you. Forgetting you seems kind of impossible."

Even in the low light of the bar, he can see her blush a split second before she clears her throat. Reaching for the beer in front of her, she takes a couple swigs of the amber liquid before she stands. "Come on… let's see how well you do at pool."

You laugh as he, once again, tries and fails to hit one of his striped balls still on the green felt. Taking your shot, you sank the black eight, winning the game. Satisfaction fills your chest and you can't help but laugh at his face when he realizes he's lost for a third time.

"Pleased with yourself?" He asks, stepping towards you, placing his hands on either side of the table behind you, effectively boxing you in.

Your breath catches in your chest. This is the first time he's been so close since all those months ago in California and you can feel your body respond. Clearing your throat, you smirk up at him as you nod, aiming for calm when all you feel is the arousal gathering in your belly. It doesn't help that he seems to almost sense it, the air between you rapidly becoming charged.

His gaze is dark, the brown of his eyes almost black when he asks, "You wanna get out of here?"

Against your better judgment, you bring him back to your place. The cab ride home is full of heady tension, the warmth of his hand burning through your jeans where it rests on your thigh.

He's on you almost as soon as you enter your apartment, his big hands cupping your face and pulling your mouth to his the second you lock the deadbolt. Your hands fist in his hoodie, holding him close as he licks into your mouth. There’s an emotion pulling at your throat, desperate to break free, but you swallow it down, focusing instead on how his mouth feels against yours. How every swipe of his tongue against yours sends sparks to your core when you remember exactly how it felt when he licked into your folds.

He lets you lead him to your bedroom, delicately stripping the clothing from your body as you travel down your short hallway. By the time he's lowering you to the bed, only your panties remain. His hoodie is gone when he kneels on the mattress. The of his white tank top stark against the ink on his body in the lamplight as he lowers himself to his stomach between your thighs.

He takes you apart slowly. Mouthing at you over your panties before tugging at the waistband and pulling them off you. His fingers touch you insistently, spreading you for his gaze. You gasp when he sucks open-mouthed kisses into your inner thigh until his lips meet your center. Using his tongue to tease at your opening before sucking your clit into his mouth.

Your hips buck against his face and he groans against you when you grip his hair tight, holding him close to you as he gives you what you need. Two fingers work their way into your cunt, a third following when you breathlessly ask for more. They move lazily, stroking your inner walls intently until you feel your climax break against you. He doesn’t object when your legs close around his face. If anything, he welcomes it, using his free hand to grip one of your legs closer, moaning as he laps up your release.

Noah moves willingly when you tug his head away from your sensitive folds with a whimper. His face twisted in a pleased smile as he moved up your body. You pull the tank top from where its tucked into his pants, hands wandering the expanse of his torso as he removes it. He ducks his head down, lips meeting yours in a wet kiss before standing, shucking his pants and underwear to the floor. You tug on his hand when he kneels back on the bed, pulling him onto you while you reach down to close your hand around his cock. His eyes close with a contented sigh, forehead falling to yours as you jerk him slowly and it doesn’t escape you when his hips start rolling to meet the movement.

Soon enough his hand closes around yours, the other moving to your face, your eyes meeting just as he pushes into you. A sound somewhere between a sob and a moan bursting from your lips as your inner walls stretch around him.

“God, I know… I know,” he says, soothing you with a soft voice. He sounds as wrecked as you feel. Something about the way he fills you permeates an emotion into the room you have no idea how to deal with.

You clutch his back, keeping him close as he rocks his hips back and forth, starting a slow, steady rhythm. It shouldn’t feel this good, having him close like this, moving in and out of you like this. Yet there's no one else you think you would want between your legs, breaking you undone with every thrust into you.

“Can you cum again?” He pants, groaning when you clench around him. “I wanna feel you again. Please.”

And you can. You know you can. You can feel it moving throughout you, the spark of pleasure, and when it makes its way to your core, you cry out, hitching your legs about his side. Your orgasm rolls through you and he grunts, hips stilling as you feel him pulse inside you, emptying his release into your wet heat.

He rolls the two of you until he’s on his back with you perched on top of him, his arms hugging you close. His heartbeat sounds in your ear, the fast-paced thudding slowing to a calmer rhythm as you both catch your breath.

“How long do you have?” You ask quietly, as if speaking louder could shatter the moment.

He sighs, arms tightening around you. “I have to be back by seven tomorrow morning.”

You nod, reaching over to set your alarm before falling back into his chest, letting sleep take you under.

Noah wakes to a head between his thighs, her quiet voice whispering, is this okay as her breath brushes against his cock. He gives his ascent, an audible gasp bursting from his lips when she takes him into her mouth. His hand weaves into her hair, fingers tightening when she hollows her cheeks, mouth sliding up and down his shaft. Just like last time, she doesn’t object when he rolls his hips, thrusting up into her mouth shallowly.

“Can I?” He asks, and he feels her nod, her hand falling away from his shaft to brace against his thigh. His eyes close, trying to commit to memory the feeling of her mouth around him, how her hair feels between his fingers; the way her hands feel on his thighs.

He can feel his orgasm nearing and Noah tugs on her hair, pulling her up to straddle him, because if he’s going to cum, he wants to do it buried inside of her. Their mouths crash together just as she sinks down onto his shaft and she plants her hands on his chest. It’s desperate, hurried. He holds her hips in an iron grip as he helps her move and he hopes he leaves bruises, something to keep the memory of this alive as he moves to the next city. Her nails dig into his chest and he knows he’s going to cherish whatever is left behind until they fade away.

She cums just as her alarm goes off. Her pussy spasming around him until he has no choice but to follow after her. When she slumps on to the mattress at his side, he turns to face her. Cupping her cheek and tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, he takes in her face. Memorizing the shape of her lips, the slope of her nose.

All too soon, he’s dressed and nursing a cup of coffee in her kitchen while he waits for his cab. Emotion pulls at his chest, crawling up his throat and clogging it. He tries to shake it, but it seems he won’t be able to open his mouth with the words tumbling out when she leans against the counter in front of him.

“I like you.”

She smiles, huffing a little laugh. “I like you too.”

“No…” he starts, inwardly cursing himself. “I mean… I like you… as in I don’t want this to be all this is…”

Noah closes his eyes, trying to stave off the embarrassment that’s starting to curdle in his stomach as the silence stretches between them. He feels like a fucking teenager again, asking his first crush if she wanted to go to a movie.

“I — I would like that too.”

He leaves her apartment ten minutes later with a smile on his face, a promise to text her when they hit the interstate. Noah knows it won’t be easy, but there's something about the prospect of more than this, leaves him feeling optimistic.

#noah sebastian/ofc #rpf #bad omens fanfiction #bad omens fanfic #bad omens fic #bad omens rpf #noah sebastian fic #noah sebastian fanfic #noah sebastian smut

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ashmfyu · 9 months

Text

With you i feel at home. -----------------------------------------------

It has been a few days after the express crew and (name) split up in admist of the xianzhou chaos. Everything was hectic, for (name). As the healer of the Astral Express, she wasn't there to help her friends for the fight as the xianzhou needed assistant in the medical field as many soldiers that got hit by mara struck was being taken care of. "This feels like forever.." (name) kept thinking about how her friends are doing... 'where are they anyways? and how have they been doing? are they safe?' thoughts after thoughts kept coming through her head as her minds drifts off to her boyfriend, dan heng, when she first set foot to xianzhou she remembered on how dan heng refused to come with them due to his past. (name) despite dating the said boy for almost a few months, knew that her boyfriend might needed privacy and she was totally okay with it, afterall it takes time to open up past wounds. Her anxious look was seen by the vidyadhara healer that asked for her assistance. "Hey you okay there? you seem really worried." Bailu asked with a hint of curiousity. "Yeah im okay, im just worried about my friends.." (name) replied. Bailu tilts her head.. "Ah yeah about that i was about to take you to Scalegorge Waterscape, your friends are there safe and sound, so you dont have to worry about anything!" (name)'s eye widden in shock and relief, "please take me there now!" Bailu nods, "come on follow me!" As they both set off towards scalegorge waterscape.

"Here we are, ill go check on the soldiers, you can catch up with them." Bailu said, "Thank you so much!" (name) as she rans towards the center of the place. 'Please be okay.. please be okay...!!' "(Name)!!!!Here!!" As the voice of March rings through the ear. "March! You guys!!" (name) shouts as she ran towards her friends and hugs them. "I- im so glad you are all okay, i was scared and worried something might have happend.." (name) said in between breaths as she realized someone missing from the group hug.. 'wat where is dan heng?..' (name) thought as she looked towards a man with draconic features who resembles dan heng so much as her eyes widden. "Dan Heng.... is that you?" (name) said as she reaches to touch his cheeks. The said man just stayed silent, avoiding eye contact.. "You must have hated me now that ive been hiding things from you, im sorry.." He said with whispers as his eyes widden with the warmth that he feels as he looks down to see the beloved hugging him as if her life depends on it. "I dont care about anything, im just glad i can see you again." (name) said as tears ran down her cheeks. Dan Heng return the hug with his long scaled tail wrapping around her hips tightly as if afraid of letting go as he kisses her cheeks with a smile, "I love you.. ill promise ill make it up to you." (name) looks up to the teal colored eyes looking at her with affection and warmth as she said, " And I love you most, because with you I feel at home." The bystanders could only watch and stayed silent while smiling as to not disturb the moment.

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My first ever time writing in this platform and to start off with a Dan Heng scenario! I fear that i will never move on from the 1.2 cut scenes! Also sorry for misspelling cuz english isnt my first language! <3

#dan heng x reader #dan heng #hsr x reader #hsr #hsr x you #dan heng x you #imbibitor lunae #dan heng il

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void-writing · 2 years

Note

One Batfam and Danny interaction that just came to me:

Danny, pointing fingers: How come that you can control those powers already?! It took me months not to clip through the walls!!

Whether or not said Batfam member really has as much control over their new, Danny-given powers as Danny at first believes is a different matter. XD It's about his outrage.

Hahaha lol.

I haven't gone into power shenanigans yet (that'll probably be an extra story somewhere down the line) but my thinking is that the Bats had a fairly easy time with their powers because 1) superpowers aren't that unusual in the DCU, so they have not only real live points of reference but people they can turn to with questions, and 2) they really only have to deal with 1 power whereas Danny was dealing with 3+ simultaneously.

Of course, I haven't shown it yet but like Danny, the Batfam's new powers are largely stuck in the "on" position if they aren't passive, and even then there's something of an adjustment period.

Dick floats if he's not mindful of it and now frequently hovers over his bed when he's sleeping, The Exorcist style. He kind of just lets himself do it when he's alone or in the company of other Bats or heroes, so it's not too much of an issue so long as he's not seen doing it in pubic as a civilian.

Jason is going to have a hard time getting needles through his skin now, so he better be careful about exposure to airborne chemical weapons. And also getting yearly vaccines.

Tim's astral projection doesn't necessarily mean that he's fully resting. The energy is more split between his astral form and his physical body, so the longer he spends in astral form, the less restful his sleep is. Also, the activation of his power depends on how tired he is when he goes to bed. If he's exhausted enough, he'll just sleep normally and not project at all.

Damian definitely melts a few things in his hands when he's not careful (canon seems to portray ecto-blasts as heat-based attacks, so I'm going to roll with that even though Danny is definitely more ice-affiliated).

Cass slips into the shadows a little too easily sometimes.

Steph sometimes ends up blocking herself with her own shields.

Barbara has to be mindful of what her new telekinesis grabs onto and from what direction it's coming from.

Kate is fortunate that her duplicates can't make duplicates, otherwise she'd have a harder time hiding it.

Duke definitely underestimates his own strength for a while after the abrupt buff. He may not have super-durability, which would enable him to punch through things or crush them without hurting himself, but he does keep accidentally pushing and pulling things too hard. Doors are tricky for him for a bit XD

Bruce regularly keeps blinking out of the visible spectrum, if not the entire detectable spectrum all together. Basically, his power has two settings: plain vanilla invisible (where he's just not detectable on a visible light spectrum), and Super Invisibility (where he just plain stops being detectable period). He can only maintain Super Invisibility for a few minutes continuously before it starts to wear him out (and you can bet that every time he uses it, Clark is sending him a "you good?" text or just straight up calling him to make sure he's okay XD). Of course, his power wants to be "on" all the time, so he has to be mindful of keeping himself within the visible spectrum, lest he just blip out of peoples' perception for a while.

And a note on Alfred's power: He's not going to "de-age" past his prime. I'm putting his age in CiM at around late 70's, early 80's. What his new power is doing is walking his physical body back towards the top of the "physical aptitude" curve, so he'll look like late 50's, early 60's instead of his actual age, but it won't go further than that. And most importantly, he'll feel like he's in his 50's again too :)

To note, when I say "Alfred is immortal now" I mostly mean that he doesn't age anymore. He can still be killed or fall ill, but time no longer wears on him like it used to (and really, as far as CiM is concerned, time was the only real threat to Alfred''s continued presence, so functionally, he is immortal now lol).

One thing that I do plan on writing later is that Jason and Duke spar a lot both for training and for fun because their powers kind of balance each other. Jason can take Duke's hits and Duke can wrestle Jason on fairly equal standing.

But we will be seeing Danny's reaction to the Batfam's swanky new powers fairly soon :)

#void answers #change in management #dc x dp #dc #danny phantom #batman #i recently read 'Batman and The Signal' and i loved jason and duke's dynamic in it #jason was the tough love older brother for duke but you could tell they were pals

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luna-writes-stuff · 1 year

Text

CHAPTER XXXII

A Kili X OC fanfic

Previous chapter // Next chapter

Tw: Battle, mentions of violence through weapons, decapitation, Raewyn being a badass, Thorin battling dragon sickness, Bilbo and Raewyn part ways. Feels (IT’S BEEN TEN MONTHS OKAY I AM SORRY)

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Sure, she’s lost her mind last chapter, but she’s okay now, guys!

The mad king had proclaimed war. The end was nigh, all could feel it, but the king proclaimed war. Raewyn did not dare spare Thorin one look, scared she’d climb back up the moment she did. As the ranger neared her other friends, the ground began to shake catching the armies off guard. Looking up the hills, the crowds spotted tiny dots running down the mountains. Heavily armoured dwarves tumbled down in loud uproar, led by a single dwarf riding a pig, clad in equally heavy armour.

“Ironfoot,” Gandalf uttered, looking down at his two friends as they observed the commotion. Cheering erupted from Erebor as the dwarves watched their kin run to their aid. From the sidelines, Thranduil commanded his army to hold their shields up, a command they swiftly obeyed. Then, the elven king rode through his army whilst they took off from the gates of Erebor. It wasn’t until Gandalf began to walk as well, that Bilbo and Raewyn caught up.

“Who is that?” The hobbit asked to no one in particular. “He doesn’t look very happy.”

“It is Dain, lord of the Iron Hills,” Gandalf explained, to which Raewyn’s face shot white. Yes, now she recognized him. “Thorin’s cousin.” She continued for Bilbo, even though her speech was closer to a question asked to the wizard. He said nothing in return, affirming her suspicions.

“Are they alike?” “I always found Thorin the more reasonable of the two.” The wizard revealed. Looking up at him, the ranger rolled her eyes, exhaling deeply.

“Oh, joy.”

“Good morning!” A voice called, suddenly closer than anticipated. Gandalf urged himself through the crowd, the two smaller creatures trailing behind him. “How are we all? I have a wee proposition, if you wouldn’t mind giving me a few moments of your time. Would you consider…just sodding off!”

People began to move backwards anxiously, while the elves readied themself to engage. Raewyn subconsciously followed their lead, pulling a dagger from her belt, seeing as she abandoned her ax at Erebor.

“All of you! Right now!” In response to the dwarven leader, Bard encouraged his folk. “Stand fest!”

“Come now, lord Dain!” Gandalf spoke, announcing his presence to the said dwarf. Bilbo and Raewyn remained in the crowd as the wizard walked up front, nodding his head in acknowledgement when the dwarf recognized him.

“Gandalf the Grey!” He voiced. “Tell this rabble to leave, or I’ll water the ground with their blood!” “There is no need for war between dwarves, men and elves!” Gandalf interrupted sternly. “A legion of orcs march on the mountain. Stand your army down!” But the pleas went unheard. Or heard and ignored. Knowing dwarves, it was likely to be the latter.

“I will not stand down before any elf! Not least this faithless woodland sprite!” As he pointed towards the elven king atop his stag, Raewyn nodded her head to the side in mutual agreement, but kept her face blank. “He wishes nothing but ill upon my people! If he chooses to stand between me and my kin, I’ll split his pretty head open! See if he’s still smirking then!”

With that, he took off again, marching to his armies who halted halfway across the hills. “Dain, wait!” Gandalf called after him, but - yet again - the pleas went ignored. Once more, cheers erupted from the mountain, but they were this time joined by Dain’s army. Passing through the crowd, Thranduil moved forward, staring the dwarf down who disappeared in the distance. His head slowly turned to Bard, addressing him specifically. “Let them advance. See how far they get.”

“You think I give a dead dog for your friends, you pointy-eared princess?” Dain continued taunting as he finally joined his army. “He’s clearly mad, like his cousin.” Thranduil continued.

“You hear that, lads?” Dain responded, chuckling lightly at the spoken words. “Let’s give these bastards a good hammering!”

“Stand your men down. I’ll deal with Ironfoot and his rabble.”

With those words spoken, Bard silently urged his men to stand down, making way for the elven army. Shouts and commands were heard from the dwarves on the other side of the hill, before a second string rumbling filled the earth. Hordes of battle rams battered down the mountains, more heavily clad dwarves atop of them. In response, the elves formed a barricade in front of the rest of the armies. Drawing their bows, they awaited the words of their commander.

“This is madness!” Gandalf protested loudly, yet he took a couple steps back, urging his two companions with him.

Thranduil uttered a shout, causing the soldiers to release their arrows. Rains tumbled down upon the dwarves, before catapults were launched. As they flew, it seemed as if knives twisted at the end of them, cutting the elven arrows in half before landing in the midst of their army, cutting down hundreds of soldiers. Raewyn’s eyes widened upon the sight, harshly grasping Bilbo’s coat as she began to walk quicker.

She did not witness the second rain, nor the shock on the elven king’s face. The only next thing she remembered were the wide eyes from the people around and Gandalf shouting the following words. “Were-worms!”

“Kitum,” Raewyn mumbled on her breath. Finally turning around, she saw the huge worm-like creatures emerge from underneath the mountains. Their mouth filled with enormous teeth, sharp enough to cut through the rocks of the earth, making their way to the mountain. Behind them, an army filled with orcs came marching down. Staring at their new companions, the ranger turned back to Bilbo, nodding to his sheathed sword.

“Slash, don’t pierce. It’ll require more effort if you do.”

Confused, the hobbit looked up at his friend, resting his hand on the hilt of the blade. “I don’t wish to fight.”

“Nor do I,” She sighed, forcing an encouraging smile onto her face. “For your sake, but I fear you might have to. Stay with Gandalf.”

“What will you do?” Grabbing Raewyn’s sleeve, he stopped her steps halfway, forcing her to stay. She looked down at him in remorse, but stopped halfway when she heard the loud roaring of Azog. Her eyes followed the source of the sound, before she found him atop a tower on a hill in the distance.

“Fight,” She answered curtly, still looking at the creature towering over all armies. “I will not let the orcs divide more families. Their reign ends here.”

The dwarven army began to march towards the new threat of the east, the elves slowly standing down. The difference between both armies was apparent; the dwarves were in the clear minority.

“They won’t make it.” Bilbo whispered, mostly to himself, though he secretly hoped Raewyn heard it as well. She did. She simply chose to ignore him.

“Our ways part here.” She stated, silently cursing herself for leaving her axe at Erebor. She was left with daggers now, and though they were usually efficient, she wouldn’t win battles with them. She’d have to steal on from the floor.

“Raewyn-“ “We shall meet again, Bilbo,” She interrupted, looking back at her friend one last time. “Keep up hope. And don’t part from Gandalf. There is nowhere you will be safer.”

Then, Bilbo took a bold step forward, before wrapping his arms around the Asha’s middle, pulling himself closer. Almost immediately, Raewyn reciprocated the gesture, wrapping her arms around the smaller hobbit, placing a light kiss atop his hair.

“Your armour is really uncomfortable.” Bilbo muttered against the iron, but refused to let go yet.

“Kili insisted.” She tried to joke, though her face fell lightly upon the mention of his name. Stepping away from him, she gave him a last farewell nod. “Go!”

As Raewyn took off towards the dwarves, who had now formed a protective line in front of the mountain, she dared to risk one last look over her shoulder. But when she did, she almost stopped running. For there, over the other side of the hills, a second army began marching, but not towards the battlefield. They were heading for Laketown at Azog’s command.

“Bard!” She shouted over the chants and screaming of the fighting armies. Luckily, the man appeared to be listening immediately, his head turning towards the Asha hidden in the narrowing empty land between the elves and dwarves. “They’re heading for the city!”

His head turned around upon the words, looking on in fear as Raewyn’s words appeared to ring true.

“Azog - he’s trying to cut us off!” Gandalf agreed, having heard the ranger’s shout.

Bard took action, turning his horse around, speaking to his army in panic. “All of you, fall back to Dale! Now!”

With the men retreating to defend their home, Raewyn was somewhat relieved to see the elves fight alongside the dwarves. But even then, their numbers were scarce. Too scarce for a fight on this scale. She would have seconded it, was it not for the orc marching straight towards her. Making up her mind immediately, she clutched her dagger tighter. Diving to the floor, she missed the swing of his blade. As she rolled around, she used her dagger to stab his thigh, before kicking the creature to the floor. Grabbing the sword he had dropped, she fiercely swung it down, instantly ridding its body of its head. Though unbalanced and riddled with dirt and blood, the ranger opted to keep the sword now. At least until a lost axe was to arise somewhere.

Wrestling herself through the crowds of orcs and elves, Raewyn finally arrived in the midst of the battle. All around her riders on war pigs and dwarves ran, clearing the enemy before she could even try to reach them. Though their attacks may have been brutal, the strategy was poorly executed, or simply nonexistent. Where one orc fell down, it looked as if two more appeared. As if their army didn’t stop growing.

Her eyes fell on a particularly threatening orc, looming over the dwarven lord and his pig without his notice. Thinking quickly, she took the sword in one hand, grabbing her dagger again with the free one. Taking one quick second to calculate her line, she threw the dagger directly into the back of the orc’s head. On impact, it collided to the floor, uttering a warcall and a final whail.

At the sound, the dwarf whipped around on his pig, aiming his weapon threateningly at the woman. Yet, when he came to face her, it wasn’t an orc - as he had expected. She looked like a dwarf in that armour. But her face gave her away. He did not quite know what to do, but looked at her in disdain, rather than gratitude.

“Who are ye?”

“Raewyn Asha,” She answered swiftly, slashing her - or, temporarily her - sword towards an oncoming enemy.

“Asha?” The dwarf repeated, the gears in his head turning. His face morphed from disdain to disgust, now approaching her, the pig snorting angrily.

“You might not like me,” She explained, still occupied in her fight. “Thorin might not like me, but I am fighting for your kin.”

Silence passed between the pair as Raewyn resumed to fight off the orcs. Dain merely seemed nailed to the floor all of the sudden. He observed her for a short moment, before nodding his head. “Aye,” He ultimately concluded. “I hope yer father taught ye some tricks.”

The Asha only smiled at him, throwing her blade between the shoulder blades of an oncoming contender. The damage wasn’t nearly as high as she was used to, for the sword only managed to slice the skin briefly. Huffing in frustration, she tried again. Annoyed, the orc spun around, raising its own knife to end Raewyn. But she was quicker, more skilled. The sword was clearly not made for the slashing she was used to, but it was still heavy enough to dismember a thick-skinned orc. Its arms fell to the ground, quite literally, followed by its head.

“Ye could use an axe, though.” Dain called over his shoulder, fighting his own battle.

“That obvious?” The woman tried to joke, slowly forgetting about the ordeal on the mountain. The mind plays wonderful tricks once it’s in a life or death situation.

Slowly, but surely, the dwarves were being driven back more with every passing second. Raewyn began to notice it when the amount of dwarves in her area kept shrinking.

“There!” Dain suddenly called, his arm gesturing towards a discarded axe mere feet from him. Slaying the orc in front of her, she took off running towards the weapon, only dropping the blade once the axe was within her reach. It wasn’t structured in the way she was used to, but it would have to make do.

In the meantime, Dain had wandered back even more, now also taken notice of the scarce amount of dwarves around them. In his moment of short absence, the pig underneath his body gave out with a squeal, a weapon lodged within its skin.

“You buggars!”

More angered, he began to headbutt his enemies, clearing a path, though it wasn’t one forward anymore. Fatigue settled within him, Raewyn could see it. Frustration slowly turned into despair as he looked around the battlefield.

“Where’s Thorin?” He roared, bludgeoning many orcs encircled around him. “We need him.”

Almost ahead of him, the ranger whistled loudly, not gaining the attention of the creatures around her. She didn’t need to. From above her, Farris flew down to her partner, landing on her arm.

Fishing down in her boots, Raewyn pulled out her last dagger, the handle small enough for the owl to hold.

“Sent for the dwarves of Erebor.” She whispered, holding her up as Farris took off, now making way for the mountain.

——

Erebor had begun to grow silent under the shouts of battle outside. Thorin had locked himself away in the throne room, occupying the large chair, crown atop his head. Outside the halls, his companions looked onto the war brewing. A war their king had initially started. A feeling of dishonour had washed over all of them. All but one.

“Since when do we forsake our own people?” Storming into the throne room, Dwalin shot the king a helpless look. “Thorin, they are dying out there.”

“There are halls beneath halls within this mountain - places we can fortify.” The king concurred absentmindedly, staring off into the walls. “Shore up, make safe. Yes…”

Looking up, Thorin faced the taller dwarf, standing up from his throne. “Yes - that is it. We must move the gold further underground - to safety!”

With that, the mad king began to walk away, readying himself for moving his treasure somewhere safer. But the notion did not go warranted by Dwalin.

“Did you not hear me?! Dain is surrounded! They’re being slaughtered, Thorin.”

“Many die in war.” Thorin shot back, halting his steps momentarily. “Life is cheap. But a treasure such as this cannot be counted in lives lost. It is worth all the blood we can spend!”

“You sit here in these vast halls, with a crown upon your head, and yet you are lesser now than you have ever been.”

That seemed to tick him off. Angrily, he marched up to his old face, his face set in a dangerous tone. One Dwalin easily recognised as the one Raewyn often received from the same dwarf.

“Do not speak to me as if I was some lowly dwarf lord…” His voice wavered halfway, staring at his hands confused. But then, he spoke up again. “As-As if I were still...Thorin...Oakenshield. I am your king!”

In anger, the dwarf roared, pulling his sword. But his stance was unbalanced, his mind not entirely there, and he nearly fell over, dropping the sword in shock. Dwalin looked on in near sympathy, his shoulder dropping with his words.

“You were always my king. You used to know that once.” Bowing his head in sorrow, the dwarf continued. “You cannot see what you have become.”

Panting heavily, the king stared at his subject, his chest heaving with every breath. “Go! Get out...before I kill you.”

In defeat, the heavier dwarf retreated, leaving Thorin alone with his thoughts. A dangerous move to be made, for him and his mind could no longer be trusted. The king himself had realised it too, but the fight in him wavered. The room changed before his eyes. The golden floor remained its new colour, but the sky seemed darker. More threatening, almost.

“But a treasure such as this cannot be counted in lives lost...” His own voice echoed in his mind. As if listening to it, Thorin stilled his movement, seemingly nailed to the floor.

“A sickness lies upon that treasure...” Balin. His oldest friend.

“The blind ambition of a mountain-king…”

“Am I not the king!” His own voice. Again. “This gold...is ours...and ours alone...”

“Treasure…”

“I will not part with a single coin...”

“He could not see beyond his own desire...”

“That crown on your head means nothing…” His biggest taunting ghost: the Asha.

“As if I was some lowly dwarf lord…Oakenshield.”

“A sickness that drove your grandfather mad...”

“Oakenshield...”

“This is Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror...”

“I am not my grandfather…my grandfather.”

“You are the heir to the throne of Durin...”

“They are dying out there…”

“You cannot deny them the help that they deserve…”

“Take back...take Erebor...”

“Dain is surrounded... surrounded...is surrounded...Dain is surrounded...” His friend’s voice, begging for help.

“Take back your homeland…” The grey pilgrim.

“You are changed, Thorin...” Bilbo.

“I was a fool to consider you might have changed…” Raewyn.

“I am not my grandfather…”

“Is this treasure truly worth more than your honour...”

“I am not my grandfather…” The words were now spoken aloud.

“You can trust him…” Raewyn’s vow. Her vow for him.

Suddenly, the voices stopped, leaving a deafening silence. Shadows moved under his feet, below the floor. As he looked down, he saw the wings of the dragon. Its tail, its head, its paws, slithering from underneath him.

“This treasure will be your death…”

Screaming in agony, the floor beneath him gave out, sinking him into the golden sea. He tried to fight his way out, clawing at the edges, trying to out swim the gold, but it wouldn’t work. The sea won, and it swallowed him whole.

Gasping audibly, Thorin staggered, observing his surroundings. He was still there. Standing atop of the golden floor that had taken him seconds again. The crown on top of his head felt heavier than ever. In panic and anger, he ripped it off, throwing it onto the floor.

Finally, his mind had returned to him.

——

Taglist: @errruvande @writingawaymylife @justnerdystuffs @spidergirla5 @fallenangeloflight @bianavacker-is-bi-as-hell @lxdymormont @deathofafangirl01 @the-cranck-hobbit @chaoticpaintsplatter @zaddyluvr @bxtchopolis @derangedcupcake @radbarbariancupcake @gay-destiel

It’s been a while, so if you wish to be removed from the taglist, I can understand this. Send me a message to let me know and I’ll remove you from next chapter forward! <3

#tolkien #the hobbit #starcrossed losers #kili x reader #kili #kili durin #kili imagine #thorin oakenshield #fili and kili #kili x raewyn #raewyn asha #kili x oc #the company of thorin oakenshield #raewyn supremacy #the company #raeli #fili durin #fili #lotr

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fragilelittlething · 2 years

Text

[LONG POST]

TW: Dissociation, suicide

DEPERSONALIZATION DEREALIZATION DISORDER

When I first found out the name of the state I was in, I was terrified. Sure it was comforting to know there's a name and not only me experiences it. But it didn't mean I would gladly welcome and accept that I may have this disorder. I got scared because I knew what it felt and I didn't want to live with it every day.

But here I am, after four months of denial and forgetting about this disorder, I stumbled upon it again the other day. When I found an online community, I was relieved. However, I realized mine might be more worse than many. And that's the root of my fear, the cause of my surrender.

One day, I'll be gone. While I can still keep my sane state, I'll try my best to write down/record my experience for my fellow prisons of their mind and medical researchers who would use my experience for their study. I hope that this little information would reach people and make the other sufferers feel a bit comfort even for a short period of time.

BACKGROUND

My name is [redacted] and I'm [redacted] years old. I identify myself as female. I hate introducing myself because I don't connect with it. A few hours ago, someone asked my name unexpectedly (irl) and when I told him what it was, it felt like saying an ordinary word.

I live in a poor corrupt country where mental health is not a priority, is expensive, and difficult to access. Therefore, I wouldn't wait a thousand years searching for a doctor before telling myself "Hey, you have DPDR." The kind psychiatrist only said I have clinical depression. To be fair, I didn't tell her that I don't feel real because you know, I didn't believe I have DPDR at the time. Not to mention, many practitioners don't even acknowledge its existence. What more in a poor country. I've been living in a disconnected state for months and even memories of my life since I acquired this mental illness were blurry. I'm still hoping I get a proper medication and treatment but right now, it seems nowhere near possible. Most likely, death will come first. Hopefully, this month.

THE FEELING

I've described it a thousand times in my head and on my notes app that's why I also hate doing it all over again. I have too many questions about this disorder and even I wanted to share everything that may have caused this to develop in my personality, I feel like I can't. If I get enough engagement though, I might feel willing to share.

Right now, I'm not fully disconnected. Most of the time, I'm 40% in touch with reality. The constant feeling is that I'm not real. That nothing makes sense. Here are the list of the feelings I feel every day/sometimes (as far as I can recall): (I wouldn't elaborate them in vivid details because it's mentally draining.)

I feel dead. Obviously, when you don't feel your memories and emotions, there's also that feeling of emptiness and absence of self. I cried so hard when I realized I didn't have it.

I'm just a nameless entity. No connection with my name and memories. I hate my memories when I was normal because it reminds me of what I lost and probably never get back.

I feel like floating.

There was a rare moment that I felt like my body was melting.

I could never concentrate in the moment the same way like a normal person does.

Once I was reading a book, it was difficult to understand it when you thought the letters were just meaningless characters inked on a paper. And my vision would distort my hand holding the book.

I experience mild weird sensations in my head. One time my head felt it was being split apart.

I have weak to zero sense of time. I'd forget the time gap between the previous action I did and the current time as if waking up from a dream you barely remember. It happens when I'm lying on the bed.

I'm trapped in my head. There's the real me inside my head who holds all the logic, memories, and emotions that I have. Now, I'm just a shell of it who could not perform like a normal human being. Every day feels like I'm being reborn, or reincarnated. I still remember my past but seems like I'm a new person and those memories are not mine but a stranger's.

I can't recognize people. I know them but I don't feel them.

I have no interest in the future.

HOW IT'S AFFECTING ME/IT HAS AFFECTED ME

Lots of suicidal thoughts (vivid images)

Severe depressive symptoms

Unhealthy eating/starving myself

Isolation from people

I'm dumber now and more forgetful

Locking myself in my room

Not using my phone

Just crying (endless)

Irrational/intrusive thoughts

Insufficient communication with "friends"

Poor performance in uni (considering dropping out now but it's another depressing story personally, maybe next time)

Talking to myself (I have no one else to talk to)

Despising reality

Social anxiety

Feeling alienated. Or not human.

Loss of talent and creativity

Wasting time doing nothing

Trouble sleeping

Learning was a chore

ETC. ETC.

Some of these have not been happening in a while or not as severe as it used to. Not sure if it's an improvement because I always go back to the main issue of this disorder: not feeling real or present. I actually feel like I have given up that I'd recover. Seems really impossible. I will never have a normal life. I won't achieve my dreams. The future is something I don't want to think about. It doesn't feel like it exists. Maybe I don't exist. I'm thinking of cutting all my ties with all the people I've known because I couldn't accept this. I couldn't swallow that this is going to be my life every day. Same shit EVERY DAY.

Next post I'll be talking about the real me and the life I've imagined I would have. The community lessened my suicidal ideas but I'm still dead. I can't recognize myself anymore is few of the sentences I always whisper to myself.

THE ART

I made that one really quickly so I can have a picture in my post and it represents the symptoms of DPDR. No I wouldn't explain them. You understand it. I know that. Great thing that I was able to draw something again (especially an original artwork). I've been immobilized for so long. And I've been keeping it to myself. So difficult to find people who will believe me and accept me. Fuck. Even my dreams feel more real than reality itself. Better to be trapped in there and not here, in the reality but dreaming.

###

I'm new to this community because I've ignored I possibly have the disorder for so long. If you have a Discord server for people with DPDR, please reply with the link or send it to me through private message. I want to join. Or if there's none, I'll create one if I see enough people who can join it. (I have a feeling the psych ward is waiting for me. I'm defeated. Why do I feel like all of this isn't real? Nothing is real.)

Anyway, I can't change my avatar or header because Tumblr wouldn't allow me (even using my laptop, I can't!) so attaching my artwork makes me more credible at least.

Kindly PM me if you're going to use this artwork in your blog/articles. DON'T USE IT WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.

If someone wants to support my art journey so I can earn money and feel that I'm real by participating in money transactions in the capitalist world, please motivate me. I do hope this post reaches the right people because I don't trust the reality now.

#dissociation #dissociative episode #depersonalisation disorder #derealization #dpdr #dpdr art #depression #mental health #mental illnesses suck #depersonalisation and derealisation #what is reality #derealisation disorder #mental illness art #depersonalization #weird art #weird #let's talk about dpdr

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mybitchingandmoaningsafespace · 10 months

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28 years ago two humans decided to fuck in an old Ford Ranger. Around 9 months later, yours truely escaped the womb. Those two humans decided they hated eachother and I became a pawn in their game. Through all of my life my paternal grandparents have been a constant. I could almost give them credit for raising me. My grandmother passed when I was 12 or 13, and took my world with her. Now, my bond with my grandfather is the strongest bond I have with anyone in my life.

My parents seperated when I was two, a few years later their divorce was finalized. My mother got remarried to a man she met when he was about to go into a diabetic coma. He had 3 daughters from two different women and my mother took over their parenting. These girls sexually abused me, but I was too young to understand at the time, all I knew was I wanted to be accepted by them. Eventually,my nother divorced this man, as he was cheating on her. She had several boyfriends and was known in the town for her promiscuity. Several years ago she married ny current step father, who has been an absolute blessing. I got a new step sister, who I get along greatly with. My father went on to remarry a wicked witch, who made life a living hell. My father took her side, no matter how emotinally and mentally abusive she became. When I was 10, they had a child together who I raised more than they did. I continue to love that child with all my heart. The relationship between myself and my father and stepmother was always tense and my mother was my rock. At 13, I said I'd rather be dead than go back to my fathers house and was put in a psych ward for attempted suicide. During my stay there, was the first time I found myself attracted to a female. At 15, I found my first love. A boy who was just as damaged as I was. We damaged eachother even more with our on again off again dating and toxic behaviors. At 16, I had my first lesbian experience with my best friend. At 17, I was sexually assaulted by a guy my best friend was pining for. I lost my best friend and a part of myself all in one night At 18, I quit splitting my time between my mother and fathers households and ran away to stay with my mother full time. I was finally able to get enough distance to stop running back to the toxic relationship that had carried me through my teenage years. Life was finally looking up. I did a lot of soul searching and working on deciding the person I wanted to become. This meant coming to grips with parts of my past that werent pretty. Eventually, I started to rebuild my relationship with my father. My mother, who was once my best friend, became my enemy. We didnt have a common enemy anymore, so I became the person she hated. When I moved out to move in with my husband, she turned her anger on my stepfather-who does not deserve the treatment he gets, but refuses to leave her.

At 20, I feel in love with a new man. I was ready to give my heart to him. But he was still stuck on his old relationship. In a series of painful events, we split ways, and I met my now husband. We came up with great plans for our life, until life got in the way. At 24, I started to gain a lot of weight and get very sick. At 25, I was diagnosed with Crohns Disease and Cushings Disease. At 26, they removed a tumor from my pituitary gland in the hopes it would fix the Cushings. During all of this, I was struggling to hold down a job. My husband was trying to be helpful and supportive, but due to his own trauma, really didnt (and doesnt) know how. Although, we signed up for eternity, through sickness and health, neither of us planned on this.

Currently, life is a struggle as I am having issues with my health and my job again. Finances are shit, our home is falling apart around us, and everyday is another balancing.

This page is just going to be my bitchfest page, a diary of sorts. Maybe one day, Ill show it to my therapist and save us both some time.

If you have nothing kind or supportive to say, scroll on.

#diary #cushings #crohns #trauma #bisexual #marriage #mental illness #chronic illness #invisible illness #parental abuse #parental issues

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no-droids · 4 years

Text

Beginner’s Luck

Part Twelve of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 14.6K

Warnings: 👀👀👀 SMUT. Oral sex (male receiving), cockwarming, sexual acts in public, the use of blasters and other canon-typical weaponry

A/N: Twas the night before Mando season 2, and all through the house—NO IM JUST KIDDING SDKSFKSVS anyways I am so sorry for not being here for basically all of last month but I could not miss this incredibly momentous occasion for anything. Merry season 2 my lovely baby yoditos

***

“Well,” a modulated voice gruffs expectantly from behind you, clearly tired of waiting. “Turn around, let me see.”

“No. I look ridiculous,” you sulk from the corner of the hull, refusing to do as he says. You thought this was stupid from the very beginning and openly told him so, but you’re also a complete pushover for him with just enough backbone to be frustrated when you inevitably give in. “And don’t you ‘sweet girl’ me, it’s not gonna work this time.”

“Sweet girl,” Din’s deep voice lulls through the helmet, raspy and soft.

Fucking fine, if he’s gonna twist your arm about it. You spin around with a deep frown and a chrome visor stares back at you as you waddle forwards, and you don’t even need to look at the kid cradled in his forearm to know he’s smiling toothily as you clunk and rattle. Once you’re standing directly in front of them both, you blow the stray hair out of your eyes and plant your hands on your hips, just waiting for the inevitable response.

Only, you don’t get practically any response at all from him. He stays perfectly still and says absolutely nothing, and though the baby’s mouth falls open with happiness and he reaches for you, he doesn’t make a sound either.

“I told you,” you grumble after a few moments of pained silence. “I look ridiculous.”

Still, nothing. You purse your lips, shifting from side to side uncomfortably, and eventually your suspicion grows and festers until it finally bursts forth. Oh for the love of Maker—

“I know you’re laughing under there,” you accuse with a growl. He doesn’t move a single muscle but you don’t buy it, not for a single fucking second.

Then suddenly the helmet glances away from you and stares purposefully at the wall of the hull as the kid starts giggling, and you knew it. You fucking knew he was laughing.

“You look great,” comes tightly through the modulator after a moment, and you pull your lip up into a snarl, vindicated in your findings but not happy about it.

“Is that how this is supposed to protect me?” You wave your arms, hearing them squeak and clank like you’re a droid that hasn’t been maintenanced in centuries. The rough metal jerks up and smacks your chin with the shoulder movement and you grimace. “Make the bad guys laugh themselves to death?”

“It's bad,” Din finally turns back to you and admits with zero shame, and your cheeks burn at how stupid you must look right now. “Way too big.”

“Too big?” You blink at him. “That’s your criticism?”

When he presented it to you, your first impression was some sort of brown paint—but no. It’s fucking… rust. It’s damaged and scraped up and it looks like it’s been through the ringer and back, and not in a way that gives it character. There’s almost a literal hole in the fucking chestpiece and it’s dented so much that it actually creates more than enough space for your breasts, what the fuck happened—?

“You’re telling me you went from this—” You ask pointedly, knocking your knuckles against the ill-fitting piece of metal and feeling it wobble against your chest, “—to that—” you tap the pristine, gleaming armor strapped to his body that easily costs more than probably quadruple your entire life, “—without any go-betweens? It’s missing one of the shoulders, Din.”

He ignores you, flipping the chestpiece over your head with his free hand and letting the metallic clatter of it meeting the floor behind you ring out through the hull.�� “I’d hoped at least something would fit,” comes his filtered sigh. “This planet isn’t nice.”

That sobers you up a bit, and you feel your heart thump painfully. “Are we on Corellia?” You ask without thinking.

“No,” he tells you immediately, quelling your panic while pulling off your one singular pauldron. “Tatooine.”

You’ve never heard of it, but from the grave undertone of his voice, you know the drill. Different setting, same kind of people. Smugglers, rogues, criminals—the type he’s used to being around and knows exactly what to expect out of them. You always feel safe when he’s with you, but when he leaves?

“Oh,” you say, because you don’t really have anything else. It’s quiet for a little bit, but then he continues on before you can come up with something to fill the sudden uncertainty on your end.

“I know someone here,” Din murmurs, bending his knees and sinking down to start undoing and pulling the shoddy thigh braces off your legs. “Someone… nice. It’ll be safe as long as nobody sees me leaving or coming back, and the kid would be happy to see her.”

Your eyebrows pull inwards, something… unfamiliar settling inside you. Din doesn’t have friends, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t really like anyone that he knows well enough to introduce you to. Even when he’s lowered himself in front of you and is technically undressing you, you feel a spark of… no, not jealousy, that’s crazy. But for real, who is he talking about?

“Why can’t me and the baby just lay low somewhere remote like normal?” You ask instead, but he shakes his head.

“No such thing,” he grunts, pulling off the other thigh brace. “Tuskans or Jawas will find you even in the middle of the Dune Sea.”

“I like Jawas,” you blurt, having had many positive experiences trading with the little creatures on Arvala-7, but his helmet immediately tilts up to pin you in place and you shut up, feeling the tangible unamusement radiating from the thin blade of the visor even when the kid starts giggling again. “I mean I… don’t like Jawas?”

Din sighs and rises back up to his full height, finally handing the baby over to you now that you’re not weighed down by that ridiculous getup anymore. “You can either stay with her while I get the quarry or run the risk of pirates finding you drifting above the atmosphere,” he reasons bluntly, not mincing words. “But it’s not a good idea to be stuck on the surface without protection, someone will find you.”

You bite your lip, hugging the kid closer to your chest for a second. “Okay, that’s fine,” you murmur quietly after a moment. “We can stay with your… friend.”

You clear your throat and move to let him pass by to get to the cockpit, except Din doesn’t take a single step. You blink up at him and after what feels like an eternity of no response, the helmet slowly tilts sideways at you and… oops.

Was that not subtle? You didn’t know what to call her, genuinely, that’s why you hesitated. You didn’t want to use the word acquaintance, it felt too detached for the fact that he said the kid would be happy to see her again. That’s what’s called a friend, right?

Maker, why are you being so weird about this?

Thankfully, you end up getting away with it. After a few painful seconds of looking at every single thing in the hull besides him and humming a song you make up on the spot, Din slowly walks past and disappears up into the cockpit. You take a deep breath and gently rub the baby’s ears between your fingers as the Crest powers up with a ferocious rumble beneath your feet.

***

It’s bright. Fuck, it’s so bright here. You hold the kid to your chest with one hand and shield your eyes with the other as the ramp slowly descends, dust immediately kicking up around it. Din’s palm is resting against your lower back and his thumb gently brushes back and forth, but your heart decides to drop the very moment his hand does, and as soon as the ramp clanks against the landing platform, he’s striding down into the blazing hot desert sun without you.

Something in your chest squeezes and whispers to you that he probably doesn’t want to touch you when he’s about to see an old friend again, so you wait a few seconds of space before descending down the ramp behind him, not really knowing how you feel right now. But you’ve barely taken a single step to follow when a woman’s voice screeches out from across a vast distance. “Oh no, no no no—don’t you even think about it!”

Din slows to a halt at the end of the ramp and gives whoever it is a small nod, nothing beyond it, and if you weren’t purposefully looking at him for cues right now, you’d probably miss the greeting entirely. You stand on your tippy-toes from behind his cape as a fiery little middle-aged lady in a mechanic’s jumpsuit marches up to him with an attitude that more than makes up for the height difference.

“You’re not allowed here anymore,” she pokes his chestplate brazenly with one hand and props the other on her hip, clearly not excited to see him. “Not after the ruckus you caused last time, no sir, not on my watch.”

“That won’t happen again,” he gruffs shortly, not providing a single thing beyond it, and you blink. What… what happened last time?

“It sure won’t!” The strange woman agrees shrilly, crossing her arms and widening her eyes until she looks a bit like she’s been out in the suns too long. “I’m still recovering, Mando!”

“I compensated you,” he reminds her, a quiet edge of frustration beginning to creep into his voice.

She suddenly narrows her expression at him, going from manic desert lady to sharp and discerning skeptic within a split second. “How much do you think my life is worth?”

Din takes forever to respond, seeming to either be choosing his words very carefully or grinding his teeth under the beskar in frustration. Probably both. “I brought my ki—”

“You bring trouble!” She bursts out, stomping her foot on the dusty landing platform and holding her ground. “I don’t care how cute your little one is, go park your ship on some other poor soul’s hangar bay!”

He doesn’t say anything back, staying completely silent while you stand there awkwardly and wait for his response, and it’s almost like you… forgot. How quiet Din can be, how unnervingly little he can choose to offer to conversations until he deems the information absolutely necessary to provide. He allows you to forget that reserved nature of his. He talks to you. He never used to at the beginning, but somewhere along the way it just became increasingly common to hear his voice, both with a high-pass filter and blissfully without. Now though, there’s just too long of a weirdly tense pause in the reunion for you to handle without doing something about it.

So you step out from behind him with the child in your arms, giving her an apologetic smile with as much friendliness as you can possibly put into an expression.

“Hello,” you greet her gently, musically, lifting the baby’s hand to give her a companionable three-fingered wave from the both of you while he coos. “I promise I’m not trouble, but he did bring me along this time.”

Din and the woman simultaneously turn to look at you; her like you’re just as strange and jarring of a sight to see on this planet as the tiny unnamed boy in your arms and him like your voice by itself is enough to loosen his shoulders. Though neither one of them ultimately respond to you, you can tell by the way his fists unclench that you’ve at least helped him relax, even if the frizzy-haired lazy otherwise ignores your introduction entirely.

“Now just what in Maker’s name are you doing with a poor little stowaway like that?” She faces him and pokes his armor again. “You runnin’ a charity out of that battered piece of junk you call a ship?”

“Three hundred credits to let them stay with you for a week,” he turns back to tell her, cutting directly to the chase. Alright, so you don’t really understand their relationship at all at this point. He said she was nice? And yet he’s already bribing her that handsomely?

“Five hundred,” she immediately shoots back, and your heart sinks. Fuck, there’s no way. There’s no way he would spend that much, you’re going to have to find somewhere else to stay.

But… he doesn’t respond. Which you now remember with a jolt of surprise, means confirmation. Not wasting words agreeing, he’d say something back to her if he had an issue. Maker, five hundred credits. You’re starting to wonder if he’s really able to make any money at all doing this, or if the job is just… fitting for him, so he continues to do it. He’s spending more and more credits on you every single time you turn around, and while you don’t feel great about it, you know Din well enough to know he’s stable and independent enough to make the decisions he wants to make.

So you just stand there and hold the baby to your chest, unsure of your place, while Din eventually turns around to face you.

Sometimes, if you’re being honest, you almost find yourself wanting to… do soft things with him that you know you shouldn’t while other people are around. Granted, he’s never told you not to, but the last thing you want to do is undermine his reputation by unintentionally revealing his gentler side. You want to give him a hug and maybe hand him the baby to say goodbye, but you don’t know if that’s how he wants to present himself to company right now. Unfortunately, that ends up translating into you just looking at him and awkwardly waiting to see what he does. Your feelings won’t be hurt if he just takes off without another word now that you know that that’s his intent—you promise, they weren’t hurt the first fifty or so times he’s done it. You understand him, it’s alright, he doesn’t need to—

But then he leans in and lowers his voice until only you can hear it.

“I’ll be back soon,” he tells you, and you feel warmth creep into your chest.

You understand him. Which is why you feel like you could almost burst with how much he didn’t have to say that but chose to do so anyway. You already have a solid time frame—a week—which is more information than you usually get, and it’s such a small thing. It’s insane; if you made a list, you’d have 1) talking to you, 2) knowing his first name, and 3) seeing a glimpse of his forehead as your top reasons why he might care just as much about you as you care for him. That’s insane.

He takes a second to reach a glove out and rub the baby’s ear as he makes his adorable little baby noises up at him, before the helmet tilts back up just slightly to look at you.

“Be safe,” he waits for you to whisper back.

And you think now is finally the time to go, right? Except he waits just a few precious seconds more, just holding there, silently. Maker, you don’t want to miss him, why is he doing this to you? You’re trying to play it cool, see-you-later’s have been commonplace between you for nearing a full year now, so why does it feel like now is the first time he truly doesn’t want to go?

You hold the kid with one hand and start to reach for him the split second he turns to walk away, and you quickly drop it as the dry wind snaps through his cape. He leaves and doesn’t look back.

Still, you watch him disappear, until eventually you’re reminded of your host’s presence with the tap of a wrench against your shoulder.

“Hope you know your way around a hyperdrive,” the woman says with a smirk. Maker, Din didn’t even give you her name, you’re going to have to ask. “Gotta repair at least two of ‘em by sundown.”

You catch the hefty tool with your free hand and turn to her. “Pre-Imperial or post? Never done a restoration, but I’m a quick learner.”

She blinks at you like that was probably the last thing she expected you to say, but you give her the same friendly smile from before and look towards the entrance of the hangar for the ships needing maintenance.

***

So Peli is… a character.

She’s quick and entertaining and whip-smart, but you worry that if she had a whip, she might actually use it. She’s nice—she is, but she damn near works you to the bone once you prove yourself capable. You don’t think she expected the extent of your practical knowledge of mechanics, she went into it assuming you were going to be useless and did a hard U-turn that very first night. You both worked together to fix two malfunctioning hyperdrives by sundown, just like she told you she needed, but then she looked vaguely surprised and nobody showed to pick up until two days later.

The second day is more hectic, and the third day is worse. You cradle the kid on your hip while you work one-handed, smudged grease all over your forehead and sweat sticking your hair to your neck. Using Peli’s sonic shower never leaves you feeling clean no matter how many times a day you find yourself wanting to wash the dust and grime from your body, the same way yours used to back on Arvala-7, and you immediately get why her dark hair seems so frizzy and dry whenever you step out of the stall and catch sight of the similar rat’s nest on your head in the small mirror. Hypersonic waves dry it out more than the blazing hot suns on this planet—you look the same exact way you’ve looked for decades and while you don’t mind hard work, you can’t stand the complete lack of water on this forsaken rock.

Din was right, though. She is nice, but in a way that she never wants anybody else to find out about. She cooks you food every night but expects you to clean the whole kitchen after, she lets you have free reign over the caf maker as long as you remember to make enough for her, and she allows you and the kid to pass out on the beat-up sofa in one of the secluded back rooms for the time being. On more than one occasion, when she assigns you chores that require two hands and a steady focus to complete, you overhear her babytalk behind the control panel as she bounces the kid in one arm and plays with his ears. It fills your chest with a quiet, subtle kind of warmth, and you understand why Din trusts her with him.

At least you stay busy—which, understatement. She works you so hard that eventually she starts handing you tasks that don’t really seem… pressing. Replacing the spherical joints on her three pit droids, hand-scrubbing the grime off the pots and pans she uses to cook the same two meals everyday, polishing the dusty windows overlooking the landing platform even though they’re caked over with dirt not even an hour later. You realize soon enough that she doesn’t have nearly the workload here as she claims, periodically catching her playing cards with the droids while you’re busting your ass doing chores once all the real work has clearly been accomplished, but you’re not upset. You like being busy, it’s how you’ve lived most of your life. However, at some point, you actually end up running out of things to do. After that, it’s like she has to actively look for tasks she still needs completed.

One morning you find her in the parked Crest, ripping open the guidance systems paneling and talking to herself. You sip your caf and watch silently from the landing bay, hair pulled up in a messy bun and the baby on your hip as the suns rise on your shoulders and she mutters, whole sheets of metal being tossed out from the insides of the Razor Crest.

You've also learned she responds incredibly well to the prospect of credits, so you don’t spend too much time wondering what her goal is—find something in the ship for you to fix and then charge Mando extra for the materials whenever he comes back.

Hilarious though, as if there’s anything in your ship that actually needs fixing.

You spin around with a sigh and walk back into the hangar, knowing today will probably be the first slow day in awhile.

***

A few hours later, you’re invited to play a game of Sabacc for the first time in your life.

There are so many rules—so many suits and names to keep track of, so many values to memorize, only to be forced to choose one card after every round to keep just in case the rest of them happen to shuffle at random, which occurs at least once or twice every game. There’s too much luck involved to figure out any sort of strategy; you feel like sometimes you’re hopelessly lost and end up winning anyways or you wager nearly your entire stack of bolts on a perfect hand and then you lose the entire thing regardless.

It’s an unpredictable nightmare. But it’s something to do, and you’ve learned that playing just as stupidly as you bet allows you to easily stay in the game. The baby sits in your lap and plays with one of your rusty metal gambling pieces while your leg bounces, and Peli grumbles under her breath once it appears you get ahead of her in winnings.

“Beginner’s luck,” she tells her favorite pit droid quietly, who focuses its singular eye at you in a way that somehow feels unfriendly and nods on a brand new swivel, courtesy of yours truly.

You don’t argue, because there’s no point. The whole fucking thing is luck, but there’s no point. You know enough about this game to know that you might give something away if you speak, so you keep your mouth shut and let her fill the void. You know how to stay silent, you’ve learned from the best. Wordlessly drawing a card from the deck and tucking it in between two others of the same value, you decide to trade one of your other cards at complete random and hope it all just works out.

“Ship looks like it’s brand spankin’ new on the inside,” Peli mutters into her mug out of nowhere, and you pause for a moment, before silently nodding at the offhanded comment and trying not to show how pleased you are by it. “Was falling apart the last time I saw it.”

You keep bouncing the kid on your knee and fan out the cards in front of you, hoping his big black eyes aren’t reflective enough to reveal your hand. “I have a lot of free time.”

“I can tell,” she acknowledges, crossing her legs and leaning back into her chair. Peli sets the mug down and sighs. “You’re a good mechanic. I’d offer you a job here, but something tells me you wouldn’t even consider it.”

Now, you do smile. But it’s a hidden one. A fond one. One you find impossible to fight when you’re reminded of him. You miss him and ache for him and all those collectively angsty things, yes—but mostly you’re just… able to find a bone-deep solace in even thinking about him. Your heart tightens, but it’s far less constricting than it is a comfort, a firm embrace. It surrounds you in its safety; Din’s mere existence is your protection, wrapping around you the same way the beskar protects him. Nothing can touch you. You’re safe, from all the things you used to fear and all the new things you’ve learned to fear.

No, you’d never consider it. This planet is too much like Arvala-7, just slightly more populated and dangerous. You love the baby. You love him. You’d never consider it.

“Don’t you get bored?” She asks you with a raised eyebrow, and your smile admittedly drops the slightest bit. “Just waiting around for him to come back?”

You don’t have to think about your answer. Of course you do. If you’re being honest, it does feel a bit like your life is split between worlds—one with him, and one without. Whenever he’s not here, you’re thinking about how much you want him to come back, and whenever he is here, you’re thinking about how much you don’t want him to go. You’ve never experienced anything like that before. There were a few local farmers scattered far across the arid landscape of the place you used to call home, and three of your neighbors all had kids around your age. So you experimented when you were younger, since you never had much else to do in your spare time, but you never loved any of them. You’d always go back home and continue to do chores, continue to look up at the sky and wonder what you were missing.

“Yes,” you admit quietly.

But what you don’t tell her is that in exchange, you get to see the galaxy. You get to have experiences you’ve only dreamed about, take care of the cutest little baby you’ve ever seen and become part of a family. You don’t know of anything you could want more. Adventure, companionship, pleasure, and fulfillment. Sure, you get restless, and sure, you don’t necessarily feel good about the fact that Din seems to be your driving force even when he’s away, but you know independence. You know what it means to live for yourself. You’ve done it long enough that you’ll never forget how to, you’ve experienced it more than enough to know you’re happy about throwing yourself off the cliff and falling into something different. As much as it’s new and terrifying, it’s better. Now you have other people to live for, too.

You marvel at the change—not just from a year ago, but from a handful of months ago. He used to terrify you. You used to keep your mouth purposefully shut around him because you were scared of overstaying your welcome and being dropped off somewhere equally as remote as the place you grew up. Never could you have imagined that the fiercest guardian the galaxy has ever seen would decide you’re also worth protecting.

No, you figure, you just need to… find something in addition. Something else to also commit to, give yourself something to do. You can practice the new self-defense maneuvers he taught you, that’s a good idea. But maybe you can also…

You eventually decide to prompt Peli in a change in conversation. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“What do you want now?” She takes another sip of her caf as if you’ve been bothering her about this all day long, and… well, it’s times like these that you wish you had a helmet, too, if only so you could roll your eyes.

“I’ve got a few pieces of rusted metal in the Crest,” you eventually tell her, careful with your phrasing and not sure how much you want to reveal. “They’re in bad shape, but I want to keep them. Could I use some of your tools here to hammer out some of the dents, dissolve whatever crud is on the surface? I saw you have a forge back there that’s barely been used, just need the metal hot enough to be pliable without sacrificing its integrity.”

She furrows her eyebrows at you. “But I still need your help with…”

You wait, but she’s got nothing and you both know it. Still, you keep a pointed silence and wait for it, wondering if this’ll actually work. This is what Din does, right? Just refuse to say anything and make the other person crumble under the crushing quiet? Miraculously, it proves to be successful—you watch her flounder for a response, her will wavering the longer you sit there and stare expectantly at her.

“Fine,” Peli finally acquiesces, and you grin. “But only if you win this round. What d’you got?”

You set down your cards to reveal your hand. A perfect twenty-three if you’ve been counting right, unbeatable unless she or any of the droids managed to get the same, and you know it didn’t happen as soon as she takes a few seconds for mental math and then scoffs.

“Beginner’s luck,” you tell her kindly, pushing all your winnings back over to her side of the table with one hand and scooping the kid up with the other, before turning around and heading towards the Crest in search of Din’s old armor.

***

It’s late afternoon on day five and you’re on your back on a creeper seat, sweat dripping down your neck as you reach up to fiddle with the engine of a T-16, a Skyhopper similar to one you built yourself on Arvala-7. They're not space-faring vehicles, they’re only capable of reaching the upper troposphere, but owning one allowed you to develop solid flight skills without ever truly being able to leave. Honestly, you don’t think you’ve ever despised a ship more.

You know you’ve got engine grease all over and you feel like you’re boiling in your own sweat, but you’re almost done. After this, you’ll be able to go back to working on your side project.

As soon as you’d been granted Peli’s direct permission to do so, you mixed the chemicals necessary to eat away at everything besides the basic structure underneath, and then spent all day yesterday manipulating the metal to better fit someone your size and shape. You slaved over the wickedly hot forge and developed a whole new muscle in your arm from hammering and reheating, hammering and reheating. You had to repair the way the chestpiece was tapered into a concave point by folding the thin metal back in on itself multiple times, strengthening it without flattening it back into its original shape too much, and then you ended up melting down some of the extra material from the needlessly large shoulder and thigh pieces to fill in the gaps.

Granted, you still have a ways to go on replacing the crushed magnetics box that was falling off the chestpiece and filing down the rough scrapes and sharp edges, but you’re now left with almost a full set of armor that’s a uniform dull silver in color and molds way better to your general figure than before. You’re not a blacksmith or armorer by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re good with your hands and did what you could in the time allotted. It looks better than you ever thought it would, and without access to Peli’s enormous collection of tools and machinery, you know it would’ve been better off in the trash.

Still, you have to finish this engine first before you can rip apart the control unit wiring on the armor to see how the whole set fits together and what else needs to be repaired. You’ve been working on it for a few hours before you hear the door to the hangar open. Yet, when you don’t immediately hear Peli’s voice calling out to you, or anyone else’s voice for that matter, your heart thuds in your chest with sudden excitement.

“You’re back early,” you tell the engine suspended over your head, knowing he must’ve already thrown the quarry into the Crest parked outside before coming to see you. Right on time, footsteps approach and then a boot carefully catches the flat platform between your legs, slowly rolling your seat out from under the ship until the rest of the sunlit hangar is revealed to you.

You know you must look a hot mess right now. Your hair is a disaster and there’s not a clean spot to be found on your body—sweat glistens and pools along every curve you have and you’re probably drenching the spare jumpsuit Peli let you borrow, but Maker, there he is. Every time you see him is like the first time all over again, except this time the Mandalorian is looming like a giant over you, the helmet tilted down and silently taking you in.

Instead of settling you, his daunting presence gets you hotter than dual suns in the sky ever could. Fuck, he hasn’t said a word to greet you, and yet you’re already wondering if you can entice him to shove you back under here and join you.

You slowly push yourself upright and he steps back just enough to allow it, but not an inch more than that. You have to crane your neck up to keep looking at him, and he stands close enough over you that you wouldn’t have to reach far at all if you wanted to touch him.

And it’s crazy to think that… you absolutely could touch him, if you wanted. He radiates danger, he hunts and tracks for his continued survival, he’s probably got fresh blood staining the dark fabric of his cape and he’s so fucking intimidating—and if you wanted to, you could touch him.

Maybe you can partially blame your sore muscles as to why you immediately drop your head back down, but mostly you just want to stare at a part of his body that happens to align perfectly at eye level. And fuck, nothing stops you from looking. He doesn’t help you up, but he also doesn’t move so you can haul yourself to your feet, either. He just holds perfectly still with his body standing tall over yours, content to stay exactly like this while your hand slowly reaches out to wrap around one of his ankles.

He’s so warm, his muscles flex strong under your palm as you let it drift upwards, biting your lip as you flick your gaze back up to the chrome visor and then down again to the apex of his thighs. Your other hand comes up to scale the beskar strapped to his leg and you roll yourself forward slightly, wondering if he’d let you…

The black fabric stretching over his crotch just barely touches your fingertips before his hand is suddenly whipping out and grabbing hold of your wrist.

You gasp and jerk your head up to look at him, somehow equally hoping that you’re both in trouble and not in it at the same time. Din’s abruptly chest raises with a large, labored inhale, as if he wasn’t breathing at all that entire time, as if he just now remembered the setting, the fact that he’s not alone on the Crest with you right now. Peli and the kid have to be somewhere in the hangar, you know that, but…

“We’re leaving tonight,” he breathes out through the modulator, and you have absolutely no fucking problem with that at all. “But… shit, but…”

“But…?” You prompt, wanting nothing more than to let your hands reach back up to his pants again, but you settle for slowly dragging one palm up his forearm as his grip on your wrist tightens.

“Fuck, I wanted to take you somewhere first,” he groans like your feather-soft touch is actually hurting him, his hands suddenly dropping yours and pushing you away to clench into fists at his sides. “Maker—why do you always f-fucking do this to me…”

You raise an eyebrow at him this time, the curiosity starting to mix with the heat simmering down low, the kind that you'd feel even on a frozen wasteland of a planet as long as you were with him. All at once, you decide to channel him and his trademarked silence, enthralled by the incredibly slim chance that it will work equally as well on its creator.

“…Distract me,” he finally growls out an answer to the question you never asked him, sounding frustrated with you for reasons you still haven’t figured out, and your mouth is drier than the desert outside. Oh stars, you feel… fucking powerful. “From everything,” he goes on, talking honestly and openly, more words given to you in thirty seconds than he’s probably offered to anyone all week long. “Fuck, I feel like I can barely do fucking anything anymore, I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Your heart slams in your chest, wondering if he possibly feels the exact same way about you as you feel about him. Missing you whenever he’s gone, dreading the moment he needs to leave again whenever he’s with you. The thought alone is enough to set off fireworks through your veins, pumping hope and excitement from your fingers to your toes.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe out, biting your lip in a way that doesn’t look or feel sorry at all.

“No, you’re not,” Din grunts, before reaching out and hauling you to your feet, and even if there wasn’t a flat seat under you with wheels, it’d still be awkward and uncoordinated as fuck. “Shit. I… I need to clean up. Grab your things, go tell…”

Din trails off after a second, suddenly sounding at a complete loss. You catch your footing and stare at him as he falters. “Uh. Go tell…” He gestures with a sense of finality to the control room, as if he’s actually successfully communicating with you by doing so. “Her. That we’re leaving tonight.”

“What?” You ask him, thoroughly fucking confused. “What are you saying right now?”

“The woman,” he clarifies, clearing his throat. “The mechanic, with the… droids. Tell her I’ll pay her before we leave, but we’re g—”

“Peli?” You blurt, completely flabbergasted at this point. “Did you forget her name, Mando?”

“I…” he shakes his head slightly at you, like you should already know him better than that. “Never asked.”

“But you—?” You blink at him. “But you said she was your friend?”

“You said she was my friend,” he immediately points out, with—oh Maker, just biting accuracy. It wasn’t necessarily a jab or anything, but you still feel dizzy with how fucking spot on he is about it. Yikes, you absolutely did say that. You forgot.

“Oh…” you mumble, at a stunning loss for a response. “Ha. Oh. Yeah, huh.”

There’s too many beats of awkward silence after that, probably because he’s just so blown away by your way with words that he’s just attempting to analyze the wisdom. Stars, you’re making a complete fool of yourself in front of him, aren’t you?

“Were you jealous?” He suddenly asks, and you jerk upright, your heart kicking up to a gallop in your chest at the question.

“I’ll go tell Peli we’re leaving soon,” you quickly agree and go to scurry away in abrupt panic, but he catches your wrist and hauls you back before you can get far. You run into him with a gasp and immediately start to repeat your explanation for why you very suddenly need to depart, but the tips of Din’s fingers catch your chin and force you to look up at him.

“Hey,” he cuts your rambling short with a hushed murmur and the pad of his thumb brushes down your jaw. “Tell me the truth.”

You don’t have an answer that won’t be incriminating, and you don’t think you can get the delivery right on a lie, not to him and especially not when he’s got you so cornered. So you just keep completely silent and look up at him like a scolded child would. Innocent, wide-eyed and scared shitless about the unknown consequences of your actions.

His helmet slowly tilts as he studies you, watching you look up at him for help. His fingers gradually spread out across your jaw, flattening under the curve of your throat but so gentle, so careful that you’re almost worried he actually is mad.

“I’m sorry,” you immediately offer before he can say anything, your eyebrows pulling up in the middle. “I’m so sorry, it’s just—I just…”

His thumb carefully stretches up to brush your bottom lip, and you… Mind blank, no thoughts. Stars, you’ve got fucking nothing.

“I’ve got nothing,” you admit, giving up before you can even try. “There’s no reason. I was jealous. It’s stupid and I wasn’t going to say anything because I know it’s stupid, and I shouldn’t feel possessive over you but I do, and it’s stupid. I don’t want anyone else to know you the way I know you, and I’m really sorry if that makes you feel weird, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t have—”

Your chin lifts slightly with the gentlest movement of his hand and the subtle pressure is enough to cut your mindless oversharing off. Din’s voice lowers until it’s throaty and quiet.

“See that wall?” He asks, keeping the visor pinned to you while carefully turning his hand to the right, and your whole head easily follows the movement as he guides it. You have to blink your eyes into focus a few times, but then you immediately see what he’s talking about. It’s a partition separating the welding room from the rest of the hangar. He waits until you nod in the cradle of his palm, before leaning in and murmuring to you. “If we were alone, I’d take you around behind it and show you exactly how that makes me feel.”

You pull back from him with a startled gasp just as a voice calls out from the entrance of the hangar. “Well, look who finally decided to come back!”

Din slowly drops his arms and stares at you for just long enough to make you seriously worry that he’s going to say fuck it all and do it anyways, before finally turning around and greeting Peli with another silent nod.

She plants one hand on her hip once she’s standing right in front of him, cradling the kid on with her other arm, and you have to take a second to collect yourself now that you’re not at the direct center of his attention anymore. “Sure did take you long enough, didn’t it?”

“I’m two days early,” he grunts in his immediate defense, but it’s like she doesn’t hear him.

“You’re leaving soon I hope,” she drawls while handing the baby over to him, who makes an adorable little happy squeak at seeing his dad again. “You owe me five hundred credits.”

“It was five hundred for the full week,” he reminds her, and… he has a point. Though it was never part of the agreement, you wonder if she’ll be willing to accept less compensation for having the burden of your company be lifted early.

“Five days count as a full week, far as I’m concerned,” she shoots back, and your heart suddenly sinks when Din’s shoulders tighten and he doesn’t respond.

“Peli…” you sigh from behind him before you even realize you’ve spoken aloud.

Your host quickly sidesteps your bodyguard to eye you dubiously, and at the same time, you also jolt and wonder what your goal is here exactly. You’re ultimately just attempting to diffuse any tension sparking between them, you figure, knowing you’re probably the best mediator here. She looks at you up and down for a long time, hard and judging, before the baby babbles something wordlessly and she sighs.

“I suppose we can just call it even,” she finally huffs, turning back to him. “You’re lucky your girlfriend earned her keep, Mando.”

And then your jaw drops. Holy shit, is she serious? You assumed Peli valued credits above almost anything else, you never expected her to just… turn down the entire offer like that, so willingly. Clearly Din didn’t either, because you both just stand there for a moment in front of her in a baffled silence.

Also… girlfriend?

Is that what you are to him? Admittedly you haven’t talked to him about what to call your relationship, but then again, you’re a practical person and you never really saw a specific need to do so. You care about him, he cares about you—what else is important? You don’t need a title to recognize your value to him, and for some odd reason, calling yourself his “girlfriend” just feels like you’re a teenager again. If you were actually looking for a different word to use instead, you wouldn’t be able to find it, but you know that one just feels… not enough. Not old enough, not encompassing enough, not complex enough. It’s an elementary school version of what this is. And to refer to someone like Din as your boyfriend? Maker, just saying it aloud would probably make his eye twitch.

“Uh.” He stands there awkwardly, and you’re so blown away by both the sentiment and specific verbiage she used that you’re practically useless at this point. Shit, what’s beyond girlfriend, you wonder? Lover? No, not good enough. Partner? No. No, not wife, definitely fucking not— “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peli waves him away and spins around to leave, but not before throwing one final thing over her shoulder. “That ain’t an open invitation to come back, by the way.”

All of a sudden, you just can’t stop yourself from breaking out into a wide grin, tucking your chin in hopes that she won’t see it with her back turned and decide to pounce on the display of weakness. The three of you watch her stride out of the room and immediately bark an order at one of her droids to get back to work, who starts looking around in desperate search of something to do, and Din’s palm finds its usual place on your lower back as she disappears.

“What a nice lady,” you offer to him, and he gives you a wordless grumble in response.

***

So it’s a couple hours later and you think the kid might actually have the right idea this time.

You find yourself wishing you had a little hover pod of your own that followed Din around, one you could close the lid on and hide in while blaster fire whistles through the air around you like the baby is currently doing. You’re trying to listen to instructions—you’re trying, but there’s a lot going on here. Voices chatting, guns firing, targets being pinged, a lively little band playing in the cantina next door.

When Din first led you through Mos Eisley and inside this specific adobe hut, if you’re being completely honest, you had hoped for food. A comparatively large restaurant, perhaps? Peli didn’t starve you by any stretch of the imagination, but her dinners were the exact same every single night, and you’ve learned to thrive on new things. While you didn’t necessarily think he was going to take you on a… a date, or anything, you certainly didn’t expect him to take you to a shooting range.

Well. Now that you think about it, this might actually be a date.

Luckily you’re hidden away in the furthest firing partition from the door, but even without the near-constant barrage of gunfire to your left, the distractions are still plentiful. The kid actually reached down and pressed the button to close his crib himself as soon as the bright beams of plasma started zooming past and reflecting in his large black eyes, and oh how you wish that were you. You don’t necessarily feel like you’re in danger or anything, but you’ve also never seen so many guns in one place before and you’re worried you’re accidentally going to hurt someone else.

So far Din has taught you the fundamentals for any firearm—always keep the safety on until you’re ready to fire, never point at anything unless you’re a hundred percent willing to shoot it, yada yada yada—and also the safety fundamentals for blasters specifically. So, making sure there’s no leaks in the gas cylinder when you first load it, never letting a strong magnet get near the power pack, checking the surface of your target for deflection curves if you want to prevent a ricochet, or maybe in his case, inspire one. He’s taught you your stance, he’s taught you how to read your sights, now all that’s left is just to… shoot.

Your arms raise up in front of you and the metal feels too heavy and awkward in your hands, and you have to hold the handle in your left and creep your right index finger all the up the side of the barrel until you feel the indented safety switch. It clicks and you reset your grip to slowly ease your finger onto the trigger, staring down the sight, right at the bullseye. Din is standing directly behind you next to the kid’s tightly closed hovering pod, arms crossed and just waiting for you to pull it.

Come on beginner’s luck, come on beginner’s luck—

You fire, and… well. You don’t think you’ve ever seen a shot miss its target that spectacularly in your entire life. You’re almost surprised the beam of plasma didn’t somehow ricochet back into the booth you’re both standing in, that’s how spectacularly you missed.

“Try again.”

There’s no amusement in his voice, nothing mocking about it. Pure monotone under the helmet, as if he was just naturally expecting that to happen.

No, you think in frustration. You want to surprise him again, impress him with how quickly you can pick things up, turn him on like last time. You just fucking know that would get to him—seeing you easily hit the target dead center with his own blaster, you know that would get to him.

You adjust your aim and fire a few more times. Miss, miss, wild miss, miss. Fuck, so many distractions, plasma flying in the corner of your vision and an increasingly heavy gaze from behind you. Another miss, a miss, yeesh that’s a miss—

Alright, so you're just embarrassing yourself at this point.

“I think it’s broken,” you shrug in defeat, taking a second to find the safety switch and toggle it before going to set the gun down on the raised adobe platform separating the line of booths from the targets—but then Din suddenly snatches the blaster from your grip and extends his arm over your shoulder, firing off six rounds in rapid succession so wickedly fast that you jump backwards into his rock solid chest in surprise. He doesn’t give an inch under the collision and even wraps his forearm tight around your tummy as he hits the bullseye with such deadly accurate precision that even the char marks and the line of smoke left wafting from the target’s center are razor-thin.

“Works just fine,” he grunts, setting the weapon back down again before urging you forward a bit. “Go ahead, give it another shot.”

But you’re on a remarkable delay, just trying to process his sheer speed, how fluid and seamless the entire fucking motion was. Fucking Maker, blink and you’d miss the whole thing. He waited to grab the gun from you until you turned the safety on, but then… then how did he fire it so insanely fucking fast? That’s like five different things he had to do with one single hand within a split second…?

“I turned the safety on,” you blink down at the blaster, clearly just trying to process.

“Yeah,” he agrees blankly, as if he’s unsure as to what specifically you’re so stuck on right now.

“So how did you toggle so fas—?”

He picks it from the shelf gracefully and lightning quick—as if he just can’t help but go that speed around his weapon—and then he twists it on its side, flexing his wrist back until the barrel is pointed upwards and you can clearly see his index finger extend all the way up to the safety switch, flipping it up and down while his middle finger rests over the trigger guard.

“How in the f…?” You mutter, lifting your hand up next to his and positioning your fingers in the exact same L shape, only the tip of your index finger barely stretches an inch shy of the switch. “Psh,” you huff, dropping your arm back down again. “Design flaw.”

“For you,” he acknowledges, using the trigger guard to flip it back to its proper position in his hand like fucking spinning it like that is just the easiest and most natural way to handle the deadly weapon. “This gun was made for me, it’s a feature. Yours would be smaller and lighter, have the safety towards the back of the chamber instead of along the barrel.”

The words and the casual display of ability cause a rush of stirring excitement to burst forth inside you, suddenly giddy at the very thought.

“Wait,” you draw the word out with a grin, leaning back into him and gently nudging him with your elbow to make sure he knows you’re only mostly joking. “You gonna buy me a blaster, Mando? I did earn my keep this week, didn’t I?”

“Have to find one that fits a big enough sight first,” he mutters while setting the gun down on the table, and you scoff at him as his hands come to rest on your hips. They squeeze and try to guide you forwards once again. “Prove that you can at least hit the target with mine and we’ll see.”

“You only get to make fun of me if you give me a real answer,” you rule, planting your feet and refusing to budge.

“Okay, but we both know I’ll make fun of you anyways,” he sighs, and you have to dig your heels in and push back into him to keep yourself rooted to the spot.

“You’re not being a very encouraging teacher,” you accuse without trying to hide your grin. “In fact I feel very discouraged right now and I think that y—”

But then Din suddenly tips his helmet closer to your ear and lowers his voice, cutting you off. “Did you know that gifting someone a weapon is considered a proposal of marriage on Mandalore?”

Your smile quickly drops and you gasp, wholly startled at the implication and immediately trying to spin around to look at him. “Holy shit, are you serious?”

“No,” comes his modulated grunt, tightening his hold and keeping you firmly facing forwards. “Of course not. Pick up the gun.”

Okay.

Okay, so that one gets you.

You immediately start giggling, painfully aware that this isn’t the time or place for it, but that one actually fucking got you. Din easily guides and parks your gullible ass in front of the window carved out of dried mud before picking up the blaster himself and forcing you to hold it with your loose hands, grumbling under his breath.

Shit, okay, focus. Focus, you can do this. You clear the laughter from your throat and suddenly get deadly serious, staring your target down like it’s personally gone out of its way to ruin your entire life. The blaster feels cold in your palms but not when Din’s hands wrap warm and tight around the back of yours, letting you hold the gun how it’s most comfortable for you before gently settling his fingers down over yours. His chestpiece presses tight against your shoulder blades when he guides the gun up and out, and his arms are long enough to extend yours fully even though he’s behind you and still has some bend to his elbows. He uses his feet to kick your ankles apart until they’re shoulder-width and then you both carefully find the trigger together.

He’s quiet and slow about it and the whole thing is one giant fucking turn-on. Maker, chill out. Chill out, he’s teaching you how to shoot. This is important stuff, there are people around, chill out…

Din takes a moment to aim the barrel and his hold is so fucking steady, so unwavering and strong. You wonder if it’d be too obvious if you pushed your hips back a little, you might be able to feel his—

“Fire,” Din murmurs next to your ear, and you pull the trigger without a second thought.

The bright red plasma beam launches from the end of the blaster and hits the target dead center. You gasp, pulling the trigger again, and unsurprisingly, it’s another perfect shot.

He suddenly lets go of your arms and takes a small step back, but the second he removes his body from yours, the rounds start bouncing wildly off the edges of the target. Your eyebrows furrow and you try to emulate how you think the angle felt before, but you can’t find it anymore and you’re just failing spectacularly.

When you decide to pause for a second, Din steps up close behind you and wraps his arms around you once more. You can feel the exact moment he’s locked in his aim, and you fire wordlessly as soon as you know it’s going to hit. Bullseye, right on the nose.

This time, he lifts just his hands away from yours, staying perfectly still otherwise and you swear you don’t move a single fucking muscle in your entire body before pulling the trigger, but it still hits the far corner of the target.

“It’s broken,” you shrug once again, and Din drops his helmet to your shoulder with a sigh. “This gun was made for you, which means there’s obviously some mod you have installed that reads biometrics and ruins the shot no matter how good it—”

“Not even close, but that’s not a bad idea,” he tells you, watching you click the safety on and set the uncooperative blaster down. “I can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong. Are you just distracted?”

Uh, fuck yeah you are. So much is going on and more than that, he’s here and he’s just… fuck, you know what he meant when he said he felt like he was losing his mind. He’s your biggest distraction, all the time. He’s still standing so close to you and the baby is still isolated and tucked away in his hovering sphere, and you take a moment to think about it.

Yes, it’s… it’s possible that you may learn better by example than anything else.

“Can I watch you do it?” You ask him, and Din shrugs before reaching around you and quickly grabbing the blaster from its mud shelf. “Wait—” you tell him while he raises and extends his arm over your shoulder, and then you wiggle sideways as much as possible in the small booth to squeeze around behind him. He doesn’t say anything as you swap places with him and scoot up behind him, but you can tell by his body language that he’s confused. You wonder if he liked that position and watching you shoot his gun, even if you’re complete shit at it.

He stands in front of you for a second and you give him an encouraging, “Okay,” to let him know you’re ready, but then the helmet turns back to look at the target like he’s still unsure as to what you want specifically. You keep your mouth shut and let him figure it out. You meant what you said—you want to watch him shoot. You want to watch him where he’s infamous, watch him do what he’s best at and let completely loose in front of you.

As if it finally clicks for him, Din turns to face the target and suddenly throws the blaster into his left hand while reaching down and pushing a button hidden under the hollow platform with his right. You have to lean around his broad shoulders to watch the target slide backwards on its track easily triple the distance before squeaking and slamming to a stop. Din stretches his non-dominant hand out and subtly tilts his helmet before firing six times, easily hitting the bullseye with just as much accuracy as before, and you frown when you notice the only shots that have actually hit the target so far have all been dead center.

He sets the gun down and stands there for a second, staring across the range like it’s nothing at all to him and it’s… remarkable. Not that he’s a wicked shot, you’ve known that the second you laid eyes on his armor all those months ago. No, it’s just… you would think this is where he’d thrive, if anywhere. The entire place is full of smugglers, raiders, scavengers, mercenaries—occupations that define themselves by their grit. They’re talking as much as they’re shooting, conversing in languages you’ve never heard but suspect Din easily understands. But instead of fitting in, he’s just… there. He doesn’t look comfortable, but he also doesn’t look uncomfortable, either. He doesn’t look like he’s having any fun at all.

None of this is considered a hobby to him, you suddenly realize. It’s not fun because he’s too good at it. This is life. This is going back to school for the most basic fundamentals of a job he’s excelled at for decades—it’s not interesting, he’s gaining absolutely nothing from practicing.

You try to think of the last time you’ve seen him truly in his element. You think back on all the different settings—he looked out of place on Canto Bight, got into fights on Corellia, hated Coruscant, seemed stressed on Nevarro, and even on Naboo, even in the middle of paradise, he looked unsure if he actually deserved to be there with you. Now here on Tatooine, where he has real people that he trusts, where he’s surrounded by like-minded individuals shooting his favorite things in the world, it’s like he’s still not able to fully let go.

Is it just you, you wonder? Does he stand out more just because you’re the one looking?

No, you think. No. You have seen him relax. You’ve seen him laugh before, you’ve seen him be himself with you.

But… only with you. A hardened bounty hunter that much prefers the company of a young woman and an infant to literally anyone else in the galaxy.

Fuck. Why does that turn you on so fucking much? It’s the display of prowess, the sheer skill he’s developed, how fucking deadly he is—and how you’ve felt him use that trigger finger to trace slow circles around your clit. The Mandalorian standing with his blaster raised has probably been the last thing too many people have ever seen in their lifetimes, and yet watching from this angle just makes you feel protected, guarded, and… so fucking horny for him.

“Do it again,” you eventually murmur, touching both your palms to his back this time just to feel it. You want to feel him shoot, you want to feel his muscles move with it. You want to touch how mechanically he’s able to aim, you want to know if he’s loose or tense when he fires, you just want to… feel it.

Din grabs the gun and as he extends his arms out, you slide your hands up his back to rest under his shoulders. He’s so broad, he feels so warm and strong, and his trigger releases are so steady that nothing above his wrists move.

Shit, before he’s even finished setting the blaster back down again, you’re already scooting up behind him as close as possible and carefully slithering your arms around his waist, hugging your body tight to his back. Din stays completely still while your mouth presses against the fabric of his cape and your hands begin to slowly slide down his stomach.

He doesn’t say a damn thing, which makes it even hotter for some reason. There’s no warning he gives you, no low growl of your name or sweet girl being dragged through the modulator. He stays completely silent and holds there while blasters continue to fire from stalls to your left, and it gives you the thrill of your lifetime. Big strong man holding perfectly still for you to touch in the middle of a crowded room.

Your hand slips under his waistband and sink down low until you can trail your fingertips along his cock, hidden from sight beneath the edge of the clay shelf. The small sound you make at feeling it already firm and at attention for you gets lost in the noise of the shooting range, but you wrap your palm around it and give it a good, slow pull upwards, feeling Din’s back expand with a breath from the sensation.

“Do it again,” you whisper into his shoulder blade, slowly playing with his cock in his pants with one hand while keeping the other wrapped tight around his abdomen.

Din immediately snatches the blaster off the platform and fires it the very moment he takes aim, and you can feel his cock pulse in your palm as he lets off the shots. Dead center, as always, but he clunks the metal back down with a bit more force this time and then lingers his fingertips at the sloped edge of it for a second, as if he’s considering whether or not he should hold onto it.

You’re already wet between your legs, but it gets worse the longer he allows you to keep doing this. His skin is furnace-hot and he throbs for you, and you trail your thumb up to check—oh, Maker, he’s leaking for you, too. You drag the pad of your thumb over the tip and gently rub the wetness along the curve of his head, before easing back down to give the shaft another slow pull.

A quiet puff of air comes through the vocal filter, but that’s all you audibly get out of him. Still, it’s more than enough to fill you with a wicked heat and a desperate desire for more. So you bite your lip and glance around just to double-check that nobody else has wandered over behind you and the kid is still tucked away in his crib, probably passed out in the secluded darkness at this point. And then you barely take a split-second to consider it before your knees are bending and you’re slowly sinking down the length of his body.

Din is a fucking statue. He doesn’t do anything to allow your wiggling underneath the raised platform anymore than he widens his stance to prevent it. Once you’re on your knees in front of him in the dim isolation of your hiding spot though, he takes a single step forward and pins his waist to the hardened clay above your head, and a thrill skitters through you at being completely walled in on all four sides.

You reach up to hook your fingertips in his hem of his trousers and begin pulling them down, so tight and achy between your legs that you want to shove your hand down between them already. You don’t though, not yet, because you need two hands to be extra careful in getting his cock out. You don’t even want the fabric of his pants to touch it, you want your mouth to be the only sensation he knows here.

At the very last second, you decide to pull the waistband down far enough to let his balls rest outside the confining clothing, getting increasingly hotter at the thought that this isn’t going to be sneaky and dirty, even if you’re in public. Din’s wide stance and the floor-length cape hide you perfectly from any prying eyes behind his back, so it’s going to be soft and it’s going to be slow and he’s going to be comfortable while you go down on him.

Your mouth is already watering, so you bend down just slightly and lift your chin to gently drag your tongue along the smooth skin of his balls before anything else. Honestly—you don’t think he’s expecting you to go there first, because his whole body suddenly jerks at the velvet soft sensation between his legs and you let out a low hum in response. He can’t reach you down here unless he tries to, so you scoot your knees up a little bit and just decide to go for it. This way he won’t be able to get it confused, he won’t pull you out from under here halfway through when you suck on his balls before anything else. This is what you want from him, what’s right here in your mouth.

You switch to the other one and Din twitches with a filtered breath, the skin already tightening up and responding gorgeously under your tongue. His hand hovers somewhere near the raised platform above your head, fingers curling in his leather gloves and caught right between stopping you and letting you continue. While he allows it, you ease your way up and make it just tantalizing enough to make him ache without providing any real stimulation, slowly trailing your tongue up the length of his cock and pressing plush lips to the flared head.

Din exhales a shakily while you take your time, tasting the precum as his body produces it, just kissing and licking and purposefully refusing to touch him with anything besides your mouth. Without being able to see the rest of him from this angle, you're left to your own devices—you’re so gentle and soft about the pleasure that you start to separate the man from the throbbing erection you’re currently playing with. You begin to enjoy yourself without thinking too much about the struggle he must be withstanding right now, you moan softly against his heated skin even though you know you’re being a tease at the worst possible moment, but no matter how you decide to take your time with it, Din continues to allow it. He endures. Silent, perfectly still, until you eventually decide to wrap your lips around the head of his cock and flutter your tongue up underneath it.

But then he jumps and your eyes open when a deep, unkind voice from the stall to your left calls out, “Hey, Mando! Gonna fuckin’ shoot or just stand there, huh?”

You can hear his immediate frustration in the blaster scraping against the shelf over your head, and you moan softly around his cock the second you feel him tense and start firing. The smooth skin pulses on your tongue and you slide your fingers around the backs of his knees, opening your throat and slowly taking him deeper.

And, for a man that has repeatedly fired six perfect shots every single time he picks up his gun, he falters after just three this time.

The heat of your mouth must be too overwhelming. Too fucking good, too detrimental to his focus and composure to even perform the most basic tasks he typically excels at. Like a seasoned mathematician that suddenly struggles to count to ten, a renowned author that can’t recite their ABC’s—Mando can’t even fire a weapon right now and it’s all because of you.

He has to keep trying though, he has to make an actual effort now that you both know someone nearby is paying at least some sort of attention to his performance. The sound of more plasma arcing through the air over your head slowly disappears into the background in a way that it never could while you were the one firing—you’re completely hidden and safe down here, you can moan low in your throat while keeping your hands around his knees and begin to bob your head without another thought or worry whatsoever. Handling it is all on him. He just needs to stay quiet, be still, and shoot his gun. It should be the simplest thing in the galaxy for him, right?

Wrong. So wrong. You hear the way the bolts are pinging off the sides of the target now, you listen to him grunt and let off a few more shots that also sound like they miss. Your soft palate lifts and you’re practically drenching yourself at how wide he stretches your throat while you take him down as far as you can, and there’s a moment where you’re holding there and you think about doing something about the dull ache throbbing between your legs. But once you pull off him for air and automatically touch your drooling tongue to your palm, you decide this is what you want more.

Your slick hand wraps around his cock and starts to slowly jerk him off while your mouth moves down to attach to his balls once more, your touch gliding strong and wet along his entire length. Din almost doubles over into the platform, his hips stuttering up for the first time at the hard stimulation you’re finally giving him. His skin swells and tightens in your mouth—you can feel the tension locking his thighs down, you can hear the shots above you start to decrease in frequency, and you know he’s already close.

So you move back up to suck on the head of his cock again and slowly swirl your tongue around it, continuing to use your hand to pull steady and firm on the rest of his shaft, and you just close your eyes and wait for him to give you what you want. His firing soon stops altogether and you squeeze your finger between your thighs and press hard against your clit, just needing to relieve some of the ache. You keep doing that, you keep drawing circles with your tongue while slowly jerking the rest of him off into your mouth, and at some point, it all just becomes too much for him.

“Shit,” Din gasps, along with the sudden sound of metal skittering against the clay above you, and your eyes pop open in surprise. “Ah, sh—shhhhh—”

Maker, did he just drop his fucking gun?

You start to pull back, but then suddenly a trembling hand shoots down and clutches tight under your throat, hooking hard behind your jaw to make sure you stay right there.

His cock starts throbbing and he shudders, slamming his other palm on the shelf and cumming hard in your mouth. You’re already swallowing before he even gives you anything but Maker, you’re fucking desperate for it that your hand moves to curl your fingers against the exposed skin at his hips as if that’ll somehow help you get it sooner. The first taste of him comes as soon as you dig in and drag your nails down his flesh, and Din is helpless to do anything else besides clutch your jaw tight and gasp raggedly while emptying himself down your throat.

He shakes and shudders and you don’t spill a single drop, clutching his hips and pulling him close to keep him in your mouth, and as he slowly comes down from that plateau, you lick every inch of him clean. His fingers gradually lose their rigidity around your jaw and eventually, his fingers drop down to press gently against your throat while his hips pull back.

He slips from your mouth and you wipe the wetness from your chin, staring up at his cock wistfully and almost wanting to keep going. Is that fucked up, you wonder? What would he think?

He hasn’t moved yet, why isn’t he moving? Your job is clearly finished here, no matter what kind of way you may feel about that. The coast must not be clear, you have to assume. Perhaps someone is wandering around behind him, maybe he’s still being cautious about the nosy person next door—all you know is that you can tell he wants to move but he isn’t, which likely means he can’t. You know his cock must be so unbelievably sensitive right now, but he’s not easing his body back far enough away from the shelf to tuck it into his pants. He’s keeping it right in front of your face and expecting you to stay there until he deems it appropriate for you to get up.

The longer you wait for him to step back and let you out from under here, the more your need sparks and grows. What would he think? That you’re so desperate for his cock that you still want it in your mouth even when it’s soft and spent? Maker, he’d be fucking right on the money.

At some point, you can’t stop yourself. You lean back up to slowly take his soft cock back in your mouth, and Din nearly spasms while you slip your hand under your waistband and widen your knees.

You don’t do anything spectacular to it—you’re not that cruel—but you do hold him on the heat of your tongue and keep him there, fluttering your eyes closed as your finger finally touches your clit. Air puffs shakily through your nostrils and you think Din is actually shaking harder than you are, his body fighting oversensitivity while yours starts the race towards bliss. He doesn’t stop you but it also feels like he’s purposefully trying not to, like everything in him is rebelling against the wet heat of your mouth but knowing you’re only doing this because you’re so painfully turned on. You’re doing this because you need it, in spite of the electric shocks of wicked sensation it seems to be inspiring in him.

Your finger speeds up and you start gently sucking on the warm, giving flesh, and his hand trembles as it grabs at your hair. Fuck, you don’t care if he thinks you’re desperate—you want him to recognize it, you want him to know exactly how much you love his cock—

That thought sends a dark thrill down your spine and pleasure burns bright and needy where you’re still rubbing your clit, dropping your hips and rolling them forwards against your hand. And oh, your only lament is that you wish he was the one doing this. You wish Din was building your pleasure instead of letting you use his body in search of your own, you wish it was his hand working between your legs and about to shove you over that ledge, but then again. Something about this whole fucking scene is just so… undignified. Debased. And you’re getting off on it, quicker than you ever thought possible.

When you cum, you’re good and you don’t make a single sound when you cum. You squeeze your eyes shut and your entire body jolts with every single shattering wave of ecstasy, and Din tugs a handful of your hair and slowly rocks his hips once, twice, fucking your mouth while you endure wildfire burning through your veins. By the time you finish convulsing on the fucking floor of a Tatooinian gun range, you know you can go for another and probably get it equally as quick as that one, but Din is already pulling his cock out of your mouth and shoving it back into his pants. You’re like jelly as your elbow is immediately caught in his arm and you’re hauled up from your hiding spot, dazed and disoriented.

The chrome visor stares you down and you want to shrink in on yourself, thinking he’s going to take your happy ass back to the Crest. You should be in trouble, you know you should be in trouble. Leaving the recesses of your dark cubby and coming face to face with your surroundings brings a brand new clarity to light—you totally should not have done any of that. He was trying to teach you, for Maker’s sake. He was taking the time to show you the valuable knowledge he’s gained regarding weaponry and self-defense. Fuck, you even told him on Naboo that you wanted to shoot a gun, and he brought you here to do just that.

Except then he just spins you around and picks up the blaster from the adobe ledge in front of you, placing it firmly in your hands.

“Okay,” he pants quietly next to your ear, breathing hard and shallow through the helmet. “Now you should be able to focus, right?”

Fuck… Fuck, is he serious? You can barely hold the damn thing, you’re shaking so hard. How does this work again? What does this do?

“Wh-What?” You croak—fuck, your voice is gone. “I… I can’t—”

“Try,” he encourages, helping your comparatively tiny hands flip off the safety but other than that, stepping back and leaving you to it. Completely and hopelessly lost, you weakly twist around to watch him stand next to the kid’s closed metallic shield. “Hit the target,” Din reiterates with a nod, trying to catch his breath. “You can do it.”

You look back out with unfocused eyes to see it still all the way on the far end of its track, and there’s just absolutely no fucking way. “I… can’t.”

“Hit the target and we can go home,” he tells you, and while you don’t exactly know what home is anymore, something tells you it’s somewhere in hyperspace. A resting baby, a metal floor, a pitch black hull, and your cheek pressed against a warm chest.

It sounds… wonderful.

Inspiring a newfound kind of desire in you, you lift your arms as best you can and work so, so hard to keep them steady. The target is in your sights and you do your absolute best—fuck, you really do, but you pull the trigger and the shot sadly bounces off the edge.

You drop your hands, already defeated and drained. “I can’t.”

“Hit the target and I’ll buy you a blaster,” he ups the ante, and you instantly lift your dead arms again. Fuck, come on, come on, you can do this.

You shoot. Nope. So you shoot again. And then you shoot again, and again, minutely adjusting your wrists purely based on where the bright red plasma is landing and ignoring the scope entirely.

“A nice one,” he continues over the pew pew pew of you just continuing to fucking miss, fucking miserably, over and over again. “Expensive. Hand-crafted, one of a kind…”

Miss, miss, miss, and—no. Just, no. There’s only so much glaring failure you can take before you snap. You finally stop shooting and growl in frustration, going to slam the metal down on its resting place. “Mando, I ca—”

“Hit the target and I’ll marry you,” he says quietly, and you freeze just before impact.

… What? N… No…

Miraculously, you somehow manage to calmly switch the safety on and set the blaster down before turning back to see the helmet staring at you, unmoving.

You… you know it must just be a joke, right? Just a stupid extension to the one he made earlier, it must be. You blink dumbly at him and flick your gaze between the visor and two large black eyes staring at you from the crib, wondering if you glitched or if you’re just hallucinating.

“Uh…” you hear yourself say, even though you’ve got absolutely nothing, but Din doesn’t offer anything else to fill in the gaps of your startled misunderstanding. If you didn’t have such a wild fucking reaction to the words, you'd probably wonder if he actually said them or not—that’s how much he gives away. Silent, so unbelievably silent when you’re begging him to give you at least something. Is he messing with you again? Is he just that confident that you’re going to fail?

It takes forever for you to turn back around and face the target, but you eventually do when he refuses to elaborate. Your heart slams in your chest and you wonder what you’re doing even attempting this.

The moment you lift your trembling arms is the moment you know your heart is pounding too fast—your finger twitches with the wild rush of blood flow and you end up pulling the trigger way before you’re ready. You fire before you’ve checked your sights, you fire before you’ve taken any sort of aim whatsoever, you fire spontaneously enough to surprise even yourself and it—

—it hits dead center.

Your stomach drops and a jolt of some rabid feeling punches through you, you have no idea what it is. You whip around so fast that you get dizzy, seeing him standing there, completely still.

“That was just beginner’s luck,” you quickly reassure him, suddenly feeling faint. Holy shit, holy shit, what the fuck just happened? “Listen—hey, no, listen, I can’t get it again,” you explain shrilly to the utterly dead silence from him. “Look, watch this, double or nothing.”

You spin back around, well aware that absolutely nothing about what you just said or what just happened made any fucking sense at all. Beginner’s luck when you’ve been consistently awful at this, telling him repeatedly to listen when you’re very, very fucking aware he hasn’t said anything, double or nothing on a literal proposal as if double marriage is something that actually exists?

No. Shut up. Don’t even think that word, don’t think about fucking anything. Fire, fire without thinking, just lift the gun and pull the trigger—

You do, and oh. Oh, no.

“Uh?!” Your voice comes out on a squeak, now in a complete fucking panic. What the fuck? No fucking way. Perfect, perfect, the odds are fucking astronomical—another deadly accurate shot. “Ah, um, okay, scratch everything I said—th-third time’s a charm?”

Wide-eyed and having absolutely no clue what you’re doing at this point, you fail to see Din slowly turn his helmet down and to the right as he stands behind you. You go to lift your arms and pull the trigger, but then he suddenly reaches out lightning-quick and bumps your elbow upwards at the very last second.

The abrupt push causes your shot to be angled off course spectacularly and you can’t do anything but look up and gasp in horror, worried it’s going to ricochet off the ceiling and land somewhere this building isn’t architecturally designed to absorb. There’s just enough time to wildly wonder why the fuck he did that—

—but then, like pure magic before your eyes… the beam of plasma adjusts itself in midair.

It fucking bends. Across the length of your entire firing lane, it curves in a downward trajectory and hits the target with absolutely impossible physics.

Your jaw fucking drops and you whip your body around in dumb shock to see Din staring hard at the closed shield next to him.

… that’s not closed.

The baby tilts his head at you and coos happily, one ear tipping up while the other tips down, and you’re completely blown away. Not only at the entirely unexpected demon-power display, but what specifically he was hoping to get out of it. You’re still stuck, blinking down at the adorable little goof with abilities you’ll never understand.

Only, a hand suddenly grabs yours and drags you back to yourself.

“We need to leave,” Din says quietly, switching the lid shut on the hovering crib and pushing it towards the booth’s exit while tugging you along behind him. “I don’t know how many people saw that, we need to leave.”

Sure enough, voices in the next partition over start picking up, likely the only ones in here who had a good enough angle to watch the physically unthinkable shot somehow meet its target, and your adrenaline quickly begins pumping while you keep your head down and power-walk your ass to the door. You don’t know the kind of consequences that could potentially arise from others witnessing the kid’s literal sorcery, but you know you’d rather not take the chance. The voices start growing louder as you three make your quick escape, beginning to ask others around them if they just saw that, but you’re already out of the rectangular adobe structure and long gone by the time anybody steps out of their panels to hear the uproarious accusations of cheating beginning to fly.

***

Stay tuned for the next part!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #star wars #fanfic #reader insert #no-droids

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that-foul-legacy-lover · 2 years

Note

Honestly, this is probably a mix of the adventurer au + domain au + chaos au but here's what I propose. Ok so after finding FL's domain and befriending him, you decide to go over to Mondstadt. When you reach Dragonspine, you would meet corrupted Albedo + Abyss Monster Kaeya (either separate or together. And maybe they were also locked into domains? Like when they were feral they accidently trapped themselves or someone else trapped them. Or maybe no domains because I'm not sure if they can get out once they're considered like the boss monster hmmm.) You thought that maybe you can take the two back to FL so they can all be friends! Firsts meetings can go any direction honestly. I would think that it would most likely not go well with all of them being over protective over you. Corrupted Albedo and Abyss Monster Kaeya are also likely overprotective over each other. You would have to step in before they killed someone and calm them down. Maybe also they get jealous over who gets your free time and to go on shenanigans with you. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe you and Kaeya can mess with the weather and make it all wintery without it being in the right season. Albedo would demand cuddles and possessively hug you tight. Childe would want you to nap together or brush his floof. Or maybe when they're used to each other, cuddle piles where you work on both of their floofs while petting Albedo's hair.

(dude i am so braindead right now i can't tell if this is a request or not so i'm gonna answer it like a normal ask i'm so sorry ;-;;;)

BUT OH MY GOD THIS??? RIGHT HERE????? it's beautiful it's a work of art a MASTERPIECE

perhaps Childe got the easiest domain of them, being sealed and sent to sleep until you finally reopened his domain, and he's so happy to meet you!!! it's lonely in this dusty abode, even if he's endlessly dreaming most of the time, so he greets you with delight and scoops you in his arms, nudging and trilling at you curiously until you have to leave. of course you promise to return, after a quick trip to Mondstadt! you need to pick up some supplies from the region, after all, and he lets you go with a hopeful rumble.

when you reach Dragonspine oh my goodness. the mountain's been almost entirely abandoned because of a mysterious new domain that suddenly appeared a couple months ago- people say they can hear horrid growling and shrieking coming from inside, and everyone took that as incentive to finally leave Dragonspine alone.

everyone except you.

opening domains seems to be becoming a trend for you as you slip your way into the new Dragonspine abode, and are immediately pounced on by a growling beast, warped and corrupted with navy blue hair and stars in his eyes. he hisses at you viciously, only loosening his grip when someone ELSE whines from behind him, and another figure creeps towards you. he's more humanoid than the other, with ashy blond hair and draconic features, but the veins running from the star-shaped symbol on his neck made you feel ill as they almost glowed with a sickly purple light. he's more curious and less violent though, examining your features and gently poking your cheeks with his claws all while speaking to the other creature in trills and growls. with a few scratches of his talons you learn their names- Albedo and Kaeya, a draconic and Abyssal beast respectively. Kaeya watches as Albedo fluffs your hair and examines your hands with little chirps and hums. only when you need to leave due to your legs slowly turning to ice does Albedo relent, looking at the ground sadly as Kaeya pulls him down for a nap. you promise to visit again, wondering how you'll split your time between them and Childe, and Kaeya's gleaming eyes are the last thing you see before you exit the domain.

a few days later you enter Childe's domain again, finally back in Liyue. he perks up and lets out a happy rumble at the sight of you, making his way over before he stops with a jolt, sniffing the air.

you smell like other people, other... beasts. who?

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tarosin · 3 years

Text

the great adventures of y/n tubbo jack niki and wilbur - racing across the sea

requested: yes/no

part 8 of the great adventures series

warning: cursing, anxiety about the sea

ever since the argument you and tubbo had become inseparable, he practically lived with you and your parents at this point, and your community was loving it. everytime one of you would stream, tens of thousands of people would tune into your stream to see what madness was going on and today was no different. the pair of you decided to stream a laugh and the stream ends challenge. safe to say you ended up changing the rules several times, you even made ranboo join the stream so you could have extra lives. not long after the stream ended you, ranboo, and tubbo practically dominated the twitter trending page. today however was tubbos last day at yours and shortly after you ended stream, the pair of you headed out to the train station so you could make sure your best friend made it onto the train safely. after you said your goodbyes, you decided to facetime jack on your way home to discuss vlog ideas, and just to talk to him, as you had been rather busy this past week going over plans with ranboo, tubbo, and all of your parents about the uk trip that was happening pretty soon.

a few days later, it was finally time to go film the vlog. you couldn’t exactly lie, you weren’t exactly looking forward to this, as you were told it had something to do with the sea and boats which oddly enough didn’t mix very well with your fear of the deep sea. you had no idea what’s down there and you didn’t want to find out, but hey at least you’d be with tubbo.

your parents offered to drive you there so you didnt have any additional stress from having to get a train then a taxi, this allowed you to have a pretty quiet journey to meet up with your friends. you sat in the back of the car on facetime with tommy who was the only one who knew about your fear and was rather confused as the why you would agree to do such a thing

“i’ll never understand what goes through your mind, you’ve got this though! you’re going to be completely okay, plus you never know it might help you get over your fear, you did tell me you had been working on getting over it.”

“I suppose you’re right, it can’t be too bad. I mean I love the sea. I just don’t like what’s deep down, you feel me?”

“i understand mate, but you need to remember jack wouldn’t put you in danger. as much as he acts like he would, and even if you do fall off the boat or some how end up in the water, you won’t automatically end up at the bottom of the sea. just try to enjoy yourself, yeah?”

“...yeah”

“call me when you get home you can tell me all about what happened, afterwards we can record a minecraft mod video.”

“of course, boss man.”

“you hang out with tubbo too much, you should hang out with me a lot more.”

the car pulled into the car park and within a minute of the car stopping tubbo was at the window shouting your name.

“right tommy, i should probably go, ill see you later bud!”

you said goodbye to your parents as tubbo opened your car door for you.

“what a gentleman, thank you, tubbo.”

“anything for you, now let’s go. jack began filming the intro and i really want the hat hes wearing.”

“you’re ridiculous.”

he stood with his arms crossed shaking his head, pretending to be offended before walking off with you not far behind him.

you stood with niki and wilbur as tubbo went off filming some of the intro with jack. the three of you stood talking about how you have all been and discussing more plans for your meetup.

“y/n, go control your friend, he’s stealing a hat!”

you ran up behind tubbo and stole the hat from him, putting it on your own head.

“why have you got the hat now?”

“i am now captain!”

“but i wanted to be captain!”

you and tubbo stood arguing back and forth over who was captain, ignoring jack trying to get the pair of you to stop.

“you have 5 seconds to stop arguing or you’re being separated 5...4...3...2...1 right.”

“jack no!”

jack pulled you aside claiming he has something really important to ask you.

“so did you bring something valuable?”

“yeah i did actually, i brought tubbo and the necklace tommy gave me for my birthday last year.”

tubbo overhearing the conversation walked over telling you both that he also brought a valuable item, in fact it was a family heirloom.

“i brought an urn.”

“why would you do that tubbo? what the fuck-“

“you two do realise if either of you lose it had to go in the sea?”

“poor grandma.”

“aye about that you will have to pry that necklace out of my hands in order to throw it in the sea!”

the three of you went up to wilbur and niki where wilbur stole the hat you stole from tubbo, and you were told that you were all about to race to the isle of wight.

it was unfortunately time to board the boat, you sat next to tubbo, so that you felt like you had some sort of control with what was about to happen. the others sat making jokes about what was going on whilst you were trying to get control of your breathing. as you all set sail, you thought you were doing a good job of hiding the fact you were potentially about to have a panic attack as no one seemed to notice, or so you thought. considering the fact tubbo was your best friend, he instantly noticed something was wrong and wrapped an arm around you, and decided that distracting you would be a lot better than making you focus on what was currently happening.

“hey y/n, i have an amazing idea for when ranboos in the uk. a 4 month sleep over.”

“heh?”

before you had time to fully process what was going on, all you could hear was wilbur now claiming to be captain then going on to tell you why portsmouth is called portsmouth. you couldnt help but laugh at the random things he was coming up with since he put the captains hat on.

“that is a cinema..i’ve been in this industry for a while now, isn’t that right?”

it was silent for a while until niki tried to steal the captains hat, but was unfortunately unsuccessful .

“maybe next time niki.”

“thank you for believing in me, y/n.”

you pointed out a castle which ended up with wilbur talking about how the planned executions there .

“are they dead?”

“...tubbo of course they’re dead. what kind of question was that?”

the other boat began getting closer to the boat you were all currently in, indicating that it was almost time for you all to split up into two groups.

“my boat is going much faster.”

“that is a sign of pollution.”

“wow jack you’re polluting the world, i hope you’re happy!”

the ride was pretty chill until jack asked what he had lost in the past.

“past relationships.”

“the love or host.”

“laugh you lose streams.”

“the waterslide races from when we went to the water park.”

you and tubbo continued listening things that jack had lost.

“okay. so i’ve lost a few things.”

jack looked towards the other boat.

“however, you two are about to lose each other.”

“excuse you?”

“no, y/n is mine!”

eventually wilbur had enough and picked tubbo up and took him to the other boat with him.

“TUBBO!”

“Y/N!”

you and niki sat laughing as jack and wilbur bickered about who was going to win the boat race. whilst jack was distracted, you felt niki tap your arm and told you to look over to the other boat where tubbo was reaching his arm out to you so you could quickly swap boats.

you quickly got into the boat and sat next to your best friend, tubbo knew you were still slightly nervous, so made it so you would be sat in between him and wilbur so you would feel a lot more comfortable. a few minutes later, your boat began to set off and all you could hear was a mixture of tubbos laughter and jacks yelling getting quieter the further you went.

“AY THEY CANT START WITHOUT US!. AND THEY GOT Y/N, WHEN DID THEY GET THEM?!”

you turned to face wilbur who pointed towards a building before announcing that it definitely belonged to the the three of you, and was renaming it reddit gold.

“reddit..reddit gold, are you serious?” you said through your laughter, the three of you sat together taking turns narrating what was happening .

“go on, y/n.”

“if this capsizes, were all drowning.”

“cheerful as awful.”

“do you think sharks are beneath us?”

“i’m not even answering that question.”

you looked over your shoulder to see that niki and jack were catching up to you all.

“i hope they don’t overtake us, otherwise it’s bye bye tubbo.”

“and grandma.”

“excuse you, tubbo?”

“he’s claiming that he brought an urn with him and if we lose our valuable item gets chucked into the sea.”

a little while later jacks boat was next to yours and you and wilbur started to shout how it was like romeo and juliet.

“y/n, you studied this at gcse a while back, yell some quotes.”

“tubbo i didn’t listen to the teachers.”

“do it!”

“no!”

wilbur continued to talk to the others whilst you and tubbo sat bickering about William Shakespeare .

“tubbo my favourite character was benvolio and he fucked off halfway through.”

“what do you mean he fucked off?”

“he literally disappeared.”

wilbur was genuinely questioning what he was listening to he slowly turned around and tried to catch your attention; however you were currently in the middle of a debate about why benvolio disappeared, which was that last thing you expected to be doing on the boat. eventually your debate died down and you looked up to see wilbur shaking his head at you both, clearly confused as to why you spent 5 minutes arguing about romeo and juliet. an idea came to wilburs mind as he started laughing and pointing at the sea.

“drink some seawater, tubbo.”

you looked away as tubbo reached into the water trying to hold as much water as he could before bringing it to his lips and drinking the seawater.

“tubbo did you really just-“

“more tubbo!”

tubbo did the same as before, however this time brought his hands towards your face.

“drink it, y/n!”

“yeah, y/n, you can help desalinate it.”

“how wonderful, i’ll pass though.”

tubbo looked at you pretending to be upset and lifted his hands towards you again, this time you gave in and drank some of the water.

“thanks, tubbo, I can now only taste salt.”

jack noticed what you and tubbo were doing and looked at wilbur confused.

“im making them drink seawater!”

“what’s it like?”

“potassium!”

“salt.. a lot of salt!”

you checked your phone as you kept receiving multiple messages from tommy trying to get your attention, forgetting that you were currently on a boat with the others. you looked up from your phone to see tubbo drinking more seawater.

“AGAIN?”

you had no idea what was going on for jack and niki, but it sounded a lot like they lost hope as jack yelled asking if there was room for him on the boat while tubbo sat flipping him off in response to his question. jack continued to yell at the three of you however none of you could hear what he was yelling, so you kind of sat just nodding your head in agreement to what he was saying. wilbur pointed out that he could see the finishing line and how it looked like you were all going to make it. you looked over to see jack and niki recreating that one scene from titanic tubbo looked at you smiling, trying not to laugh.

“absolutely not one of us, if not both of us, would end up in the sea.”

the boat began to go significantly faster. at the start you were unsure how to feel, however a few minutes into it you began laughing enjoying how fast you were going.

“woahhh we’re turning!”

the boat did a loop before going straight on as fast as it could go.

“y/n, tubbo, we’re going. we’re going.”

“OH MY GOD!”

you ended up passing another boat you and tubbo instantly waved to everyone on the boat a few people waved back .

“they don’t wanna wave.”

“they know their boat is bigger than ours.”

“they could easily ram us and kill us all.”

“hopefully they decide against doing that.”

the boat began weaving resulting in you, tubbo, and wilbur constantly crashing into each other, not that any of you cared you were all having the time of your lives. you pointed at a boat which was cutting off the boat jack and niki were in .

“we’ve got this in the bag boys, victory is ours!”

your boat slowed down so it could dock.

“i think we’ve won!”

“we won”!

“holy shit we won! tubbo doesn’t have to go in the sea now!”

everyone got out of the boat so you could all wait for jack and niki to reach the dock, as the two of them approached you all tubbo began to sing.

“we are the champions my friend!”

“STOP IT!”

“i have to go into the fucking water!”

you pulled niki into a hug.

“jack you cruel man.”

“did you not have fun niki..we had a great time.”

you let go of niki and stood behind tubbo placing your head on his shoulder whilst jack explained to wilbur what was going to happen if they lost.

“oh, I thought we got to decide who was thrown into the water.”

“no no no no no no!”

“well i think considering we won..”

after a small discussion as a team, you all instantly agreed that jack should be thrown into the water, you all stood on the boat as niki argued that he cant throw her into the water. a couple seconds later wilbur walks towards jack handing him the camera before picking him up.

“are you ready?”

“i don’t think the bits that funny will, i don’t think the bits that funny!”

you all screamed and laughed as jack was thrown into the water. jack complained about the temperature of the sea as he climbed back onto the boat only to be pushed off again by you and tubbo.

“that’s revenge for trying to put us on separate boats!”

you spent the rest of the day together just hanging together as a group before you said your goodbyes.

the ride back home was you excitedly explaining what your boat ride was like to your parents, once you got home you ran upstairs to your room then called tommy on discord

“how was it then?”

“tommy it was so cool, honestly i wish you could have come with us.”

“i mean you’re coming with me george and wilbur to a water course next week, you don’t have a choice.”

“oh okay, it’s a good job i’d love to be there then, tom, also what mod are we playing just so i can check i have it ready.”

“rlcraft.”

the two of you spent a good hour talking before getting ready to film a video with charlie and jschlatt for tommys youtube channel.

taglist:

@l0ver0fj0y @etheriaaly @xx-smiley-xx @hawarun @kylobensgirl @cawcaw-pretty-thing @reverse-iak @c1loudee

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bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher · 3 years

Note

"I'm truly sorry, but I don't think we've ever met." memory loss angst? 👉👈🥺

anon... fam, this turned into an emotional rollercoaster and totally stole my braincell.

3.8k words. angst with a happy ending.

tw: memory loss, minor anxiety, repressed memories, idiots to lovers, whump, angst with a happy ending, angst with a fluffy ending

---

It’s been three hours, five minutes, and forty-two seconds since the frigid breeze whipped Geralt’s angry words at him, shattering his fragile, stupid heart to pieces. Every syllable rings through Jaskier’s head over and over, slamming into him from all directions and crippling him with a bone-deep pain far worse than anything he’s ever felt before. The ache ebbs and flows, lancing through him with every step. Not even Geralt’s first frustrated blow to his abdomen had been this terrible.

Geralt… That’s the problem, isn’t it? He hadn’t been smart enough to get out of the gorgeous Witcher’s long, silvery hair soon enough. He’d overstayed his welcome, fallen in love in the meantime, and is now very out of sorts (and also alone in unfamiliar territory). The bard laughs but it’s a hollow sound. Jaskier has reached the edge of hysteria, his intelligent blue eyes now vacant and unseeing. Even as he stumbles through the underbrush, all he can picture is the snarl on Geralt’s face as the Witcher yells at Destiny to take Jaskier off his hands.

Jaskier’s own hands are covered in sap and splinters from pushing tree branches away from his face as he traverses the darkening forest. His hair is full of debris and his clothes are torn and dirty; Geralt has all of his emergency supplies, still. Jaskier is pretty sure that his lute is still strapped over his shoulder but he realizes, with no small amount of surprise, that he doesn’t actually care.

He doesn’t have the capacity anymore.

He can’t care… caring hurts too much.

If only Destiny had taken him off Geralt’s hands. Maybe then it would be okay. Maybe then, if Geralt was well and truly free of him and his irritating presence, the Witcher could be happy. He and Yennefer will surely come back around, they always seem to, and Ciri will be joining them soon enough it seems.

There’s no need - no room - for a humble bard anymore.

Only five hours, thirty minutes, and twelve seconds after Geralt’s outburst at the top of the mountain, Jaskier’s delicate human body succumbs to the stress of the day.

He drops to the forest floor without a sound, grateful for the darkness.

---

Yennefer finds the bard in a heap a few miles away from the previous night’s elevated campsite. When she presses the back of her hand to his forehead she yanks it away almost immediately; he’s burning up, and his skin is clammy and sticky with sweat. The feathery bangs he flicks about and preens so much are stuck to his forehead and temples. He’s on the verge of shaking apart and Yennefer tosses her head imperiously, swearing.

“Damnit, Geralt. You and your incredibly foolish need to be alone all the time so you can brood and self-flagellate. Me, an ageless sorceress from one of the greatest magic schools on the Continent? I can handle a thorough tongue lashing. Fuck, I’m older than you and I’ve seen far worse but this… oh, you great lummox. You absolute bastard…” Yennefer mutters to herself as she assesses the bard’s deteriorating state of health, ranting to an invisible Geralt all the while. “You’re absolutely going to be hearing from me about this, Wolf.”

--- Three days, one hour, and fifteen minutes after Geralt dismissed him forever, Jaskier wakes up with a loud gasp and a violent shudder. He blinks slowly, allowing his eyes to adjust to the bright light streaming in through a window. Whatever he’s lying on is comfortable and the sheets smell fresh and bright, like lilac and freesia. A hint of gooseberry lies beneath it all, delicate and sweet. He glances around the space and finds it to be relatively bare; a guest room, perhaps. Maybe he’s a servant at some noble house?

Jaskier only really knows that his name is Jaskier and that he plays music. He’s also rather talented with floral arrangements.

Shortly after he’s finished purveying his (borrowed?) chamber, the very image of grace, beauty, and terror enters the room. The woman, whose coppery skin and enchanting violet eyes practically glow in the midafternoon sun, smiles down at him in a way that toes the line between Motherly and Shark-like.

“How are you feeling, Jaskier?”

“I’m alright. And you?”

“Just fine. Geralt really did a number on us, huh?” she asks, a playful grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. He has the feeling that something isn’t right; she shouldn’t be looking at him so kindly.

Her expression changes from friendly to horrified to confused in an instant, as soon as Jaskier manages to ask: “Who’s Geralt? And, pardon me, but I feel as if something is rather amiss. Who are you, my Lady?”

Whoever the gorgeous and terrifying woman is, she grimaces briefly. Then, as if by magic, the comforting smile returns. “I’m Yennefer, of course. I saved your life a few years ago, remember?”

Jaskier wracks his brain but cannot call the occasion to mind. “Unfortunately no, I don’t remember your no doubt heroic deed. Although I suppose that means I’m in your debt, doesn’t it? Do I work for you? Is that why I’m here?”

The woman blinks a few times, slowly, and then nods. “You’re my gardener and personal musician.”

Jaskier brightens, happy to have found himself in a safe environment.

“But you’ve had a nasty illness and your mind is clearly fatigued. Rest another day or two and then we can see about getting you back into the fresh air.”

“Thank you, my Lady,” Jaskier nods.

“Yen is fine.”

“Thank you, Yen. I don’t know where I’d be without you,” he grins.

---

Yennefer turns away to hide her pained expression. You’d probably still be with your beloved Witcher.

She makes her way to the kitchen to fix Jaskier something to eat. He must be hungry after spending three days in a deep, healing sleep. She hadn’t been expecting the amnesia, though; it was an unexpected but not unsurprising turn of events. Heartbreak had done stranger things than a little bit of fever-induced memory loss. When she’d delved briefly into his mind she hadn’t seen any sign of Geralt. His face was absent from the bard’s consciousness; she would have needed to dig to unearth those memories. Whatever the Witcher had done was grievous, especially if Jaskier’s mind compensated with something as dramatic as burying Geralt completely to save itself from further harm.

No matter, she decides, the bard can stay here as long as he likes. It’s the least I can do for all the upset Geralt and I have caused him. Where is that idiot Witcher, anyway?

The sorceress quickly clears her agenda and her mind before returning to her guest room with a large tray of food, a bottle of Toussainti red under her arm. “Jaskier, darling, let’s get your convalescence started in style!”

---

2 months later

---

Jaskier watches a strange man ride up the long path to Yennefer’s manor, the hilts of his twin swords glinting in the sun where they’re slung over his shoulder. He has long white hair and the most devastating jawline the bard/gardener (or ‘bardener’ as he says to irritate his darling employer) has ever laid eyes on. He’s clad all in black, from his plain linen shirt to his tight leather trousers; Jaskier thinks he’d also look rather lovely in dark blue or perhaps forest green.

In front of him, wrapped securely against his chest by one strong arm, sits a little girl with ashen hair and frightened eyes. Haunted eyes. Jaskier’s mind fills with ballads, some familiar and some oddly dreamlike, their lyrics half-obscured and hazy. Ciri, he thinks for no reason. Her name is Ciri. And she is a Princess.

The brunette scurries from the garden alongside the house to the kitchen, searching for the familiar cloud of Yennefer’s strong perfume. “My Lady?”

“Darling?” the sorceress replies, coming around the corner. She raises her perfectly maintained eyebrows and her lips quirk up into a smirk. “Did you sprint all the way from the west lawn?”

“There’s a- strange man- on the- drive!” he huffs. “White hair- horse!”

“Oh,” her eyes go wide with surprise. Then, in a split second, they narrow to slits. “Oh.”

“Do you, uhm, know him?” Jaskier asks, twiddling his fingers. “He’s rather handsome, Yen. Is he a former lover?”

“Unfortunately,” she growls. “I can’t believe it’s taken him two fucking months to get here. He’d better have a damned good excuse.”

By now Jaskier can breathe normally again and he straightens up, shaking his long, shaggy hair from his eyes. “He had a child with him. She looked scared, Yen.”

“Cirilla!”

Yennefer dashes for the front door and Jaskier follows instinctually. They’re always together and he can’t bear to let her confront this man alone. He’s spent every waking moment with Yen since he awoke that first day and she has grown to be his dearest friend; he’ll protect her even unto death. “Yenna, what’s wrong? Who is he!?”

“Geralt of Rivia,” she snarls. The name seems familiar; maybe from a ballad or story? Perhaps Yen has mentioned him before?

“What about Geralt of Rivia?” a low, rumbling bass asks from the front hallway. Jaskier and Yennefer arrive in the doorway together and the man, Geralt apparently, takes a shaky step back. He recoils a bit, as if he’s been slapped, and Yennefer’s smile grows cruel. His voice, still incredibly low but now with a slight tremor to it, stutters out; “Wha- Yen, what is he- Jaskier? I only came to ask for help with Ciri, I didn’t know- I didn’t-”

Geralt’s stammered speech tapers off into silence and Yennefer’s brow furrows a second time. When the sorceress sets eyes on the child, who cannot be more than twelve years old, her expression softens again. Jaskier watches the most imposing woman in the world kneel, taking one small, pale hand in both of her own. “My name is Yennever of Vengerberg, former Sorceress of Aretuza. I am honored to meet you, Princess Cirilla. Geralt has come seeking protection, no doubt, and it is easily granted. I will do everything I can to help you.”

“Thank you, Lady Yennefer. And, uhm… Ciri’s fine,” the girl replies. Her voice is high and reedy, shot through with anxiety. She’s so young, Jaskier frowns. And yet she seems to have weathered an incredible storm.

“Ciri,” the bard bows from the doorway, low and dramatic. He sweeps his arm out to the side and bends his knees as awkwardly as possible, “I am Jaskier, private troubadour and gardener extraordinaire, under the employ of the magnanimous and dangerous Lady Yennefer, here. It is my greatest honor to make your very mighty and very royal acquaintance.”

“You’re silly, Master Jaskier,” the child giggles, hiding her mouth behind her hands. Geralt’s eyes grow wide and dart between Jaskier and the girl. Yennefer makes meaningful eye contact before nodding toward the door. Jaskier looks down at Ciri again when she asks: “Do you grow lots of flowers in Lady Yennefer’s garden, or just herbs and things for magic?”

“I grow lots of things all over the property,” the brunette man steps forward and offers Ciri his hand, gesturing towards the front door with the other. “Would you like to come and take a look? I know all the scientific names, you can even quiz me if you like.”

“I know some,” she smiles shyly, accepting the offered hand. “May I go take a look at the gardens, Geralt?”

“Go ahead,” the Witcher nods dumbly. “Jaskier will take good care of you.”

“That I will. Now, let’s take a look at the flowers and let these silly adults have a chat,” Jaskier grins. He winks at Yennefer and disappears out the door, exiled Princess in tow.

The two lively companions have toured through all the medicinal herbs and are halfway through Yennefer’s large collection of rose variations when the two other members of the party approach. Geralt looks sheepish, his eyes downcast. Yennefer looks triumphant; she is radiant in her victory as always.

Geralt steps forward, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Jaskier, I’ve come to apologize for what happened when we parted.”

“Excuse me?” the bard chuckles, raising an eyebrow. "I don’t know what you’re apologizing for, exactly.”

“When I yelled at you after the dragon hunt. It was only two months ago, Jaskier, surely you remember?”

Jaskier blushes, glancing anxiously between Geralt and his friend, whose violet eyes are stormy with emotion, “I'm truly sorry, but I don't think we've ever met."

Geralt gasps sharply and takes a step back, as he did in the entryway. Jaskier winces, seemingly on instinct, and shies away from the larger man. “You don’t remember me?”

“No…” Jaskier sighs. “I really don't. Should I?”

“You don’t… You don’t even remember Toss a Coin?”

“Oh, that ditty from town?” Jaskier perks up. “I know that song! It always gets stuck in my head.”

“You… You wrote that song,” Geralt’s face crumples. “About our first adventure together outside of Posada. With the elves and the sylvan...”

“I’ve never been to Posada,” Jaskier laughs, waving his hand dismissively. “They hate bards. They prefer troupes of traveling play-actors. Posada is far too serious for my tastes.”

Geralt seems to be in agony. His chest rises and falls unevenly, as if he’s on the verge of tears but unable to shed them. Can Witchers cry?

How does he know that Geralt is a Witcher? Is it the two swords, the scars, or the strange eyes? How does he know that those are common Witcher traits?

His stomach lurches and he turns away from the group in case he needs to be sick. The ground spins and shivers in little ripples around him, unstable and impermanent beneath his feet. Yennefer is calling his name from somewhere far away and a pair of warm, strong arms are looped around his waist. Still, he can’t seem to breathe. Or focus.

There’s something missing.

He starts to hum, trying to remember the words of that damned song.

The rest of the world fades in and out around him, finally disappearing altogether.

---

He’s gorgeous.

Jaskier shoves another roll into his pocket. His eyes are focused on the man in the corner. He has long, snow-white hair and his shoulders are hunched forward protectively, as if he can hold the world out by sitting by himself. He’s glaring the table into submission, one fist clenched around his tankard.

I want to write him a thousand ballads. I want to know what his hair looks like when he wakes up in the morning, before he brushes it out again. I want to know if he snores. I want… he stops himself.

He makes his way across the room with eyes only for the stranger. “I love the way you just sit in the corner and brood.”

The man looks away and Jaskier notices that his irises are gold. “I’m here to drink alone.”

Gods, his fucking voice… Velvet and gravel all at once. Melitele, does Jaskier want. “Good, yeah. Good. No one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance… except for you.”

The man, the Witcher, Jaskier realizes, rolls his eyes.

“Come on,” he wheedles, sitting down across from the gorgeous stranger. “You don’t want to keep a man with bread in his pants waiting. You must have some review for me, three words or less.”

The man’s face stays stoic, expressionless. “They don’t exist.”

He realizes shortly thereafter that this man is not just any Witcher but the infamous Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia. He could try to disengage himself from such a daunting character; he could easily make some kind of excuse and disappear back to the troubadour’s path, heading towards civilization, but it’s already too late. He doesn’t want to leave Geralt’s side ever again; he wants to write all those ballads he was thinking about earlier, when he glanced across the room.

Jaskier has fallen head over heels in love. ---

Geralt cradles Jaskier against his chest and presses his nose deep into those chestnut brown waves. “Wake up, Jaskier. Come back to me, bard, it’s been too long.”

“Don’t you usually go all winter without seeing him?” Yennefer asks from the doorway.

“It’s hell,” he replies easily. There’s no point in hiding his feelings from her. “I miss him every minute of every day.”

“Verbose this evening,” she remarks, taking a seat by the fire. “He’s dreaming, you know. He’s remembering you.”

“He’d forgotten?”

“He’d repressed it all,” she shrugs. “When I found him that day, feverish and nearly dead on the side of that godsforsaken mountain, he was barely coherent enough to open his eyes. He just kept asking for you, Geralt. Over and over he called for you, reaching his arms up, weak as they were. Gods, it was pitiful to watch.”

Geralt swallows.

“I thought you were going to come back sooner. I was surprised when his memories didn’t resurface after two or three weeks. Short-term memory loss after a fever isn’t uncommon but repressing twenty years worth of feelings and experiences-” she whistles lowly “-it was impressive and tragic, all at once.”

“He forgot me?”

“Entirely.”

Geralt glances down, shame-faced. He adjusts Jaskier in his arms, holding him close and pillowing the bard’s head against his shoulder. “I deserve it, Yen.”

“He’s remembering now, though. He’ll probably be a little less than pleased to see you when he wakes up, but he knows who you are.”

“When will he wake?”

“Can’t say,” she shrugs again. “After I brought him back from the mountain it took three days for him to wake up. The first day was magically induced but after that it was just him… exhausted and heartbroken to the point of self-induced amnesia.”

“Fuck, Yen,” Geralt groaned, pressing his forehead into the soft warmth of Jaskier’s cheek. “How can I make it up to him?”

“Stay.”

“Hmm?”

“When he wakes up and he’s angry and upset, stay. Don’t stomp off or blow up or freak out,” she instructs. “If he asks you to leave, go, but otherwise… prove yourself, Geralt of Rivia. You wanted to be a knight once, didn’t you? Now’s your chance to play Prince Charming. Get down on your lovely knees and beg and apologize.”

“Hmm. How’s Ciri?”

“Fed, bathed, and put to bed. I’ll take care of her for as long as it takes you two morons to make nice again. Good luck, Geralt, I’m sure he’ll forgive you too easily for my tastes.”

She stands from her seat and leaves just as efficiently as she entered, carefully closing the door behind her. Geralt lays Jaskier back on the bed and takes a seat beside him on the mattress, kneeling just within touching distance, should Jaskier reach out for reassurance in his sleep. Geralt closes his eyes and slips easily into meditation.

The Witcher is pulled from his trance a few hours later when Jaskier makes a startled sound and tries to sit up. Geralt opens his eyes and splays one warm, broad hand against Jaskier’s chest, forcing him back against the goose down pillows. “Stay still, Jaskier. You’re feverish and weak.”

“I’m still dreaming,” the bard grumbles, reaching to rub at his eyes with the heels of his hands. It’s adorable and Geralt grins widely, warmth spilling into his chest from some newly discovered fount of happiness. “You’re being too nice to me, Witcher.”

“I’m so sorry, Jaskier, for everything.”

“What’s everything, Geralt?”

“I’m sorry for pushing you away when I was angry and confused instead of communicating with you. I’m sorry for hurting you with my brash words and foolish actions; you have always deserved so much better and I’m so afraid that I can never give that to you. I take the wrong step at every turn, it seems, and yet you stay by my side. I didn’t want to risk hurting you the way I’ve already hurt Yen and Ciri, by tying us together against your will.”

“Darling Geralt,” the bard sighs. The Witcher scoots slightly closer and Jaskier lays a gentle hand atop his thigh. “It has always been my greatest pleasure to travel the Path with you and write of our adventures. I appreciate your concern for my agency and wellbeing, dear heart, but I am quite happy spending my entire human life in your presence.”

“Hmm,” the Witcher frowns. “You’re going to die someday.”

“And? So are you. So shall Yennefer, maybe.”

“Not likely,” Geralt jokes. Jaskier grins and the sight of it is so heartwarming that the Witcher wishes he could break down into tears. At least then Jaskier could see just how deeply his feelings ran. “I’m sorry, Jaskier, for blaming you for things that I brought upon myself. I love you dearly, and I hope that someday you can choose to travel with me again.”

“Excuse me?”

“I hope that you’ll-”

“No, the other bit.”

“I love you?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Oh. Yes, I-” Geralt clears his throat and looks Jaskier in the eyes, gold and blue locked together, “I love you very much, Jaskier.”

“Fuck.”

“May I kiss you, Jaskier?”

“Yes,” the bard breathes.

And then Geralt is lifting him up into his lap, one hand cradling Jaskier’s skull so so fucking carefully. Geralt’s other arm supports his waist, holding him steady. Their lips come together softly, carefully, and Jaskier’s soul spirals up to the ceiling with joy, his body abandoned. He is merely a vessel for the happiness that comes with kissing his Witcher. When they pull apart, both men are grinning like fools. “Oh, dear heart.”

“Yes, my love?”

“Never stop calling me that.”

“I swear I won’t, my love.”

From downstairs, Geralt hears Yennefer mutter, “Fucking finally.”

It takes twenty-two years, seven months, and one day, but Geralt and Jaskier manage to figure things out.

#bounceacoinoffyouranons #geraskier #amnesia #amensiac jaskier #memory loss #rare species fix it #the witcher netflix #the witcher ficlet #geraskier fluff #angst with a happy ending #fluff and angst #whump with a happy ending #jaskier whump #yennefer #yen and jaskier are bitchy theatre bffs #and you can't stop me #anon you really got me fucked up

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debbierhea · 3 years

Text

and the world around us shatters / better call saul / wc: 2392 / kimmy jimmy omaha cinnabon reunion / special thanks to @kimberly-wexler for the beta <3

Summary:

She’d been searching. For years.

She’d been searching. For years. Hired a PI and then another. Scoured every database she had credentialed access to and then a few she didn’t. Even adopted a cat to soothe the loneliness, lull the throbbing emptiness she felt in her chest. She’d had one as a girl once, a stray really, whom she loved. But this cat was as sulky and capricious as she had become and no matter how committed she was to ignoring it, the ulterior motive of pet adoption was glaring, if not to anyone else, to her.

After three months of No. Not like this. You can’t. Leave it alone. Don’t get involved, the ill-tempered tabby was Kim’s foot in the door. It was a Thursday when she sat across from his veterinarian, cat on the exam table, and said, “I need your help.”

“What kind of help are we talking?” He eyed her, stroked the tabby between her ears.

“I’m looking for someone.” Silence followed.

“You’re gonna have to give me a little more than that.”

“You know him. Jimmy McGill.”

His eyebrows rose. More silence.

“Well, can you help me or not?”

“You know it’s not always a matter of can I help.”

Kim tilted her chin, raised her eyes to meet his, unflinching. “Does that mean you won’t help me?”

“Hm?” The cat was purring into his hand, licking his thumb. “Oh, no. Just that my price may be something you’re unwilling to pay.”

She swallowed. “That’s not possible.”

“Okay then,” he nodded, stuck out his hand. She shook it.

Now, she was wandering through a sea of midwesterners in puffy coats and mittens, dusting snow off their shoulders, chattering about the weather. She hasn’t been back to this part of the country in years and it oddly feels like a homecoming, though she stopped considering Nebraska home the moment she left. It was simply a place she had lived, never one that offered family or comfort or love. There were sparse memories of joy with the odd classmate and a fond recollection of the first grade teacher who encouraged her to read, helped her get her very own library card. But now as then, there never existed a sense of ease or belonging for her. Even so, the familiarity of the Casey’s General Store on the corner, the Runzas on menus across state rest stops, the flurries of snow reddening her nose and chilling her bones, fostered a small flame of hope deep inside. She could still recognize, even find comfort in, a place she so detested. After the passage of so many years, this place was still the same and, underneath the new high rises and parking meters and sushi restaurants, she could see the bones of this city. Maybe the same could hold true for other things in her life.

Looking over the map in the lobby, she cupped her hands before her mouth and blew into them. The chill rested deep inside her, the hope she fostered in her heart doing little to warm her weary bones. All her work was to lead to this: trudging up the tiled stairs in damp snow boots surrounded by people who knew nothing about pain, not really. Not pain like hers.

She smelled it before she saw it, curving with the second floor walkway past storefront after storefront of clothes and books and knick knacks. She had just side-stepped the man trying to give free lotion samples when the warmth of cinnamon and sugar wafted over her. Her footsteps stuttered and her gait slowed. It was like watching a car whose engine was stalling out. She was light-headed, unable to string a thought together, parse out what she was feeling in her body besides a deep urge to run. Her therapist would tell her that she wanted to run because of her fear of being vulnerable and then being left behind. Again. Kim pushed hair that had fallen loose of her ponytail behind her ear, took three deep breaths, and followed her nose.

A small line stood in front of the cash register, three or four people, waiting for a treat to get them through their holiday shopping. She contemplated her next step from across the food court. Anticipation fluttered through her, givinggave rise to goosebumps beneath her layers of knit and down. Then further, deeper, beneath the adrenaline, lived something twisting and gnawing inside of her chest. She knew this thing like she knew the location of every security camera at the Hinky Dinky or the route she took home after school when her mom got too lost in the liquor aisle to remember to pick her up. This thing she knew was fear—fear of hope, of the inevitable ache of a further bruised heart. She crossed the food court despite it.

Trying to slip back into her midwestern skin, move through this world unassuming and deferential, she stood to the right of the registers, observing the ebb and flow of workers behind the glass. Dough was being kneaded by one, another opened an oven to check the progress of the bake. A third manned the register. A second till was sat unused, cash drawer open and empty. She stood there, just outside the current of customers, twitching her chapped fingers, tapping them against the inside of her own palm. He used to tease her for it. Five minutes passed, then ten. The line grew longer. Her flame of hope was waning.

Then, a voice—a bellow, more like—broke through the low hum of conversation in the food court.

“Coming! I’m coming, Miranda!” Kim froze.

A man in an apron and mustache came through the door marked “Employees Only” and made his way to the front of the store, a full cash drawer in his hands.

“Sorry! For some reason the safe just wouldn’t open.”

Kim was drifting through the crowd, pulled toward his voice. Her eyes began to burn.

“Here are some quarters for you. I figured you might be running low.” His eyes flicked up, scanning the crowd, estimating how many rolls they should throw into the oven. “I’ll open this one up and—,” his roaming gaze stopped. “And I, uh....”

She swallowed, her throat tight, eyes glassy. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He stood, slack jawed, staring.

“Um, Miranda I—Just, uh, just take this,” he handed the cash drawer to the teenager standing next to him, eyes never leaving Kim’s. “I’ll be right back.”

His shoes squeaked as he made his way around the counter and out into the seating area of the restaurant. Kim hadn’t moved, stunned like a deer in headlights on a Nebraska back road. He seemed as though he was moving in slow motion, each step towards her an eternity, and yet it was still not long enough to prepare herself for him to be standing directly in front of her. She felt like she’d just fallen through the ice into a glacial lake. No, she hadn’t fallen. She’d jumped. On purpose. And broke through.

He stood there, inches from her; she could see the gray in his mustache. He paused, just for a moment, then said, “Follow me.”

And she did.

They weaved in and out of tables and shoppers and janitors picking up fast food wrappers off the floor. He glanced back at her once, as if he was scared she wouldn’t be there behind him, as if she hadn’t been following him, chasing him, for what felt like her whole life. He led them down a hallway, empty save for a woman waiting on a bench between two bathroom doors, one labeled with a dress, the other a tie. Kim gave her a close-mouthed smile.

Jimmy stopped abruptly, reaching for the door to the family restroom. He held it open, looked into her eyes. Kim gave the woman another glance, cheeks reddening, and walked through the door before she could think or feel or do anything that would make her stop herself. She moved towards the far, tiled wall and as she turned, heard the clicking of the door’s latch, then the lock.

He paused then, there, gripping the door handle, his head resting against its grain. His body was tense, coiled and bound and, she realized, foreign to her. Stooped shoulders, billowing polo, slight waist cinched by an apron. Even from behind, he looked bleary, posture like a drooping flower on the sill. What happened to him?

Kim was grateful for this pause he was granting her. Everything seemed to be moving at a pace she was incapable of matching, an emotional marathon she had not trained for; she never did have much emotional stamina outside of simply holding them all in, like a child holding their breath in the deep end of the pool.

Then, he turned.

He was just as unfamiliar from the front as he was from behind, cheeks a bit sallow and stippled with five o’clock shadow, wiry glasses. His nametag read “Gene.” But Jimmy McGill was still the same in his bones and in the time it takes to exhale that breath you’ve been holding under the gentle waves of your childhood pool, the split second it takes for that breath to form a spray of bubbles racing you to the surface, they were in each other’s arms.

Centered on the yellowing, speckled tile, they grasped at shoulders and elbows, knees knocked, tears fell. Finally, Kim slipped her arms around his ribs and clutched him to her chest, nails digging into cotton and, beneath, soft skin. His face caught between shoulder and neck, he inhaled the scent of her, goosebumps rising as her puffy, down sleeves brushed against his bare arms. His hands roamed her back, skidding and sliding across slick fabric. It felt as if his hands had been frozen and he had finally found the fire he’s sought to warm them. Sneaking his right hand up and up and under the thick wool of her scarf, he hesitated just a moment before placing his fingertips to the soft skin of her neck. She gasped, a sob drawn out on a breath. His left hand pushed into the small of her back. She pulled him in tighter.

They held each other there, flushed and desperate and weepy, for a time—how long, neither could say. As the hand rubbing her back would slow, she would squeeze his middle gently as if to say Not yet and he would answer with gentle pressure between her shoulder blades. When her grip on him would loosen, his fingers would drift into the hairs at the base of her neck, pulling her impossibly closer, and she would let him. This is how they stayed, questioning and answering each other as only they could with little more than a sigh passing through their lips.

Then, Kim began to pull gently away. He stiffened the moment he sensed her movement from him, but she did not try to leave his embrace, this wasn’t her intention, not truly. She only wanted to see his dear face, maybe say hello. Placing one hand on his chest, she leaned ever so slightly back as his arms moved to circle her waist. Tears clung to his lashes and dripped from the tip of his nose. He swallowed hard as her eyes roamed his face, different but somehow entirely the same. She felt like she was back in the HHM parking garage bumming a smoke from the new guy in the mailroom. Hundreds of days and miles from then, he was still hers.

Bringing both hands up, cupping his jaw, brushing his cheekbones with the pads of her thumbs, she smiled. “Jimmy.”

At this, his eyes closed, Kim holding him tenderly in her palms. He hasn’t heard that name in years. When was the last time he thought of himself as anyone other than Saul Goodman? Saul the criminal defense attorney. Saul on the run. Saul posing as a Cinnabon manager. More tears fell free.

Removing his hands from her waist, he held her delicate wrists, one in each hand, his thumbs mimicking her caress across his skin. She gave the slightest tilt of her head and he answered with a reed-thin voice, a sad smile, “It’s you.”

She knitted her perfectly arched brows, that tell-tale wrinkle emerging between them, her eyes soft and wet, red-rimmed. She bit her lip and began to shake her head, never removing her gaze from his. After a moment, she smiled again, smaller this time, lips closed, and slipped one hand smoothly into his, the other onto his shoulder, not willing to break contact.

“Sorry it took me so long.”

More tears welled in Jimmy’s eyes as he rolled them to the ceiling, heart aching.

“Kim…I…”

“I know.” A pause. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Baby, I know.”

From shoulder back to his neck, Kim guided Jimmy with her hand, resting his forehead against her own, meeting in the middle, holding him there.

“Oh god—” a sob broke from deep in his chest.

Kim stroked his neck, shoulder, face, back. Jimmy wept.

Tears darkened the collar of his polo shirt and the tremors running through his body prompted Kim to wrap herself around him once more, burying her nose in his neck, focusing on the sickly-sweet scent of yeasted dough rising, cinnamon, and icing sugar over the pain so fierce living in the main between her arms.

As all things do with time, his sobs became weaker and fewer, until his breathing returned to a shallow, exhausted inhale, sniffly exhale. Kim lifted him from her shoulder and he raised his eyes towards hers. Her lips twitched, and then she brought them to his cheek. One, then the other, over and over, like salve to a wound she covered his drying tear tracks with her lips. Gentle and soft, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings did she kiss him. And then, she centered herself, hand threading into his hair, she moved to his lips.

“Kim,” he whispered, a breath from her lips.

“Yes?”

“What if you’ve come all this way to find someone who…doesn’t exist. Not anymore.”

Again, Kim knit her brows and shook her head. She placed her right hand over his heart, lifted her shoulders gently in a shrug.

“It’s you.”

#better call saul #bcs #mcwexler #my fic

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darylsgirl · 3 years

Text

Hes just like the Sun Part 2 Daryl x Reader 18+

Summary: Reader goes missing, Daryl gives up the search after only a few weeks and starts getting closer to another woman. When he finds sign of the reader again but rick is the one to save you. Daryl cant handle seeing you broken and pulls away.

Warnings: A lot of cussing, Domestic violence, Assault

*Hello my lovelies! This was meant to be one long chapter but I've split it into two parts so expect a part 3 :) As always please let me know what you think of this chapter and if i can improve! As always i hope your having a lovely day!*

Part one Part Three

It had only been 4 months since that glorious night with Daryl, Since he had professed his love to you and you to him.

He had spent every waking moment since then showing his love. Proving he would protect you against anything, He couldn’t have known that he would be away when you needed him most…

You had just been to the gates and waved Daryl goodbye. He had left on a run with Rick, Rosita, Sasha and Abraham. Sniffing slightly you headed back to your home ready to just get in bed and have his smell engulf you for a few hours before you needed to go to work.

You knew it was silly he would only be gone a week tops he said but that may as well been a century to you.

You also knew for the next week you would lay awake at night worried out of your mind wondering if something was going to stop him coming back to you. The thought crushed your chest. You couldn’t be without him now, He was your sun, Your every breath.

You made it back to your’s and Daryl’s bed wrapping your arms around yourself snuggling into his pillow, It was so strange how the smell of Motor oil could be so Damn comforting! You prayed silently to yourself that the first lead they were going to check out would pay off as that would mean he would be back to you within 2 days.

You lay there hugging yourself tightly for a few hours before begrudgingly dragging yourself into the shower and heading to work. The infirmary was bustling that day fortunately for you, unfortunately for your neighbours. There seemed to be a bug going around the town, Which is why Daryl had to leave you in the first place to go and get life saving antibiotics.

It was ironic that illnesses that could be cured with one pill before could cause so much death now when antibiotics are becoming so difficult to find. You looked around the room and silently pleaded with god to let them find something quickly!

It was pushing 10pm when you were finally on your way home after a final check on one of your elderly patients. You couldn’t wait to get in the shower and scrub the day away and knowing Carol she would have dinner waiting for you. You smiled thinking of Carol you really did love that woman, She had become like your mother taking care of you and always being there.

Distracted by your thoughts your guard was down and you hadn’t noticed him dart out of the darkness between the houses.

You looked around wildly fighting the arms that had clamped around your mouth and chest dragging you backwards. You froze,You knew the sound of that breathing anywhere, You could feel the ice in your veins. It was fucking Spencer.

Daryl’s POV.

It had been 8 days since he had left. Y/N was going to kill him for being too long and worrying her. He pushed his bike to the limits just like the first night he had met her racing back towards the gate, Where he knew she would be waiting. Grinning from ear to ear with excitement bubbling in his chest he saw the gates come into view.

When he got close he only saw Carol waiting for him, He never expected the news she was about to give him. The second the words “She’s….gone….Missing” crossed her lips he ran towards their home screaming for her. Carol hot on his heels, He charged into the house straight to their room “Y/N? Y/N?” he ran from room to room in the home screaming still for her before going outside and collapsing at Carol’s feet.

His fingers were ripping at his hair and face desperately trying to cling to anything he could. “WHERE IS SHE” He screamed up at Carol. She silently joined him in the middle of the road pulling him into her arms while he sobbed.

Y/N pov

You watched him through the hole in the black paint, It had taken you a while. The paint was thick but you had finally managed to make a hole big enough to see out of but small enough for Spencer not to notice.

Your heart broke watching your man screaming for you, You’d have given anything to be able to rush out of there and wrap your arms around him and tell him everything was ok, Just as he had done for you so many times. You had never seen him so distraught and you hated yourself for being the cause of that. You tried to scream but only a rasping whisper came out of you, It was like the nightmare you always had being so close to help but not being able to call out.

Then you heard it, The boots coming down the stairs you flung yourself into the corner hands covering every inch of skin you could. You heard the door at the bottom of the stairs open, Footsteps were closer now. He approached the door of the laundry room you were being kept in. The light hurt your eyes as the door flew open.

Daryl Pov

Once Carol had gotten him to calm down a little with the help off Rick and the others who had been on the run they pulled him into the house and to the kitchen Island settling him on a stool whilst Carol hurriedly made tea.

Once everyone had a cup, Rick finally spoke up “C’mon Carol your killing us here. What do you mean Y/N is missing. What happened?”

Daryl met Carol’s eyes now and listened intently as she started her explanation, Choosing to give just the facts as she didn’t think Daryl could handle much more.

“We realised she was missing around midnight on the day you left, When she still hadn’t come home. I went to find Denise who said that she had left work at half 9 and would be stopping in to see Mrs Turner on her way home. I asked Mrs Turner who said Y/N had left around half an hour later.”

“I’ve spoken to everyone in the town, Most were asleep at the time and No one has seen her since. So we know she went missing within those two blocks around 10pm that night. There is also no gear, weapons or food missing from anyone’s home so we know she didn’t just choose to leave”

Rick put his hand on Daryl’s shoulder, sighing “You should go get some rest brother, Leave it to us”

Daryl growled throwing Rick’s arm from him “I. Aint. Goin. Fuckin.Nowhere” He spat through gritted teeth. Rick looked over worried before deciding to let it go, God knows if it was him he wouldn’t have left either. “Ok so tell us Carol, Where have you searched so far?” Daryl had never paid more attention to anything in his life.

After formulating a plan between the six of you, Daryl pushed himself up from the island feeling grateful for a moment that you had arrived not too long after sunrise and you had a good few hours of sunlight left to search. He silently made a promise to her that he wouldn’t stop till she was back in his arms again.

Y/N

You woke in your basement cell shaking from the dreams of the night you were taken. The first few weeks had been the worst. He had inflicted every punishment imaginable on you trying to break you. He laid off those when he realised that wasn’t going to happen. As long as you knew Daryl was out there looking for you, You could keep going too for him. You had to keep hope in your heart he was going to find you. Spencer still took you everyday but you had stopped fighting it now and just became numb as you knew you had to just lay silent or face the cattle prod. He really seemed to like that thing.

You still saw Daryl in the street sometimes, At night sitting on the porch alone with a whiskey and a cigarette looking haunted staring into the night.

There was one day you dared to believe you could have been saved. You woke to hear him outside of your blacked out window, He had fought with Spencer and pinned him on the front lawn while Rick had searched the house. Finding nothing, She couldn’t understand how they had completely missed the basement! Every house in Alexandria had one! You knew if Daryl hadn’t been out there with him he would have known to check here, he would have found you. Every part of her was screaming for her to call out and scream Daryl’s name and begging him to save her.

She had tried a few times to scream but only a quiet rasping breath left her, Her throat was red raw and no matter how hard she tried nothing would come out.

Daryl had let Spencer back up still glaring at him While Rick explained “Look man we had to check, You’re the only person in this town that could of possibly wanted to hurt Y/N We had to be sure”

Spencer replied “I haven’t even looked at Y/N since that day. I did as I was told and kept to myself. I’ve done my job for Alexandria. I didn’t do anything, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep him away from me and leave me alone!” At that Daryl lunged for him again with Rick stopping him before he got to Spencer.

“Fair is fair now we’ve checked your house we’ll leave you be” Rick grabbed by the shoulders and walked him back to your house and inside to calm him down.

Spencer’s Pov

He watched them leave and darted back into the house, Stupid fuckin hillbilly he thought to himself, Walking into kitchen he grabbed a water and let his mind wander.

He had kept his head down and bided his time, Deanna, his mother had finally gotten rick to agree to let him move back into his home. Almost immediately he had set to work in the laundry room downstairs, Moving the machines out, Moving a mattress in, Adding a deadbolt to the top and bottom of the door. Perfect, Now he just had to wait a little longer for his revenge.

He was going to get that little bitch back for the humiliation, She didn’t get to make a fool out of him and then be happy! Making him watch them both across the road night after night all on each other.

He bet she knew what she was doing too, Teasing him like this. Flaunting herself all over town with him! What she was even doing with the dirty redneck he would never know when she could have him. He was better for her, She needed him and he was going to make her see it.

Two months, Two months he had waited and watched pretending to have no interest. When finally the opportunity presented itself, He was walking the back way home trying to avoid the eyes people now made at him when he saw her.

She was leaving Mrs Turners and walking alone down the empty dark street, He waited until she was about to turn onto their street where the houses were either unoccupied or all the lights were off when he sprinted towards her wrapping his hand around her mouth and dragging her backwards through the back gardens and into his, She started fighting again when she saw he was taking her into the house. He overpowered her easily taking her down the stairs and into the laundry room, He threw her on the mattress on the floor and left bolting the door behind him. She could scream all she wanted, No one would hear her now.

Daryl’s Pov

After a few weeks it was just Him, Rick and Carol still searching. They were all sitting on his front porch, His eyes scanning every blade of grass as he had been for weeks.

Rick cleared his throat “Brother you can’t keep this up anymore and I know what you're gonna say so don’t rip my head off but you need to rest. You need to sit down and eat a real meal or you will be in no condition to keep searching. We’ve looked everywhere in a 100 mile radius and there is no sign of her. I’m not sayin give up on her brother but you need to start taking care of yourself Y/N would hate it if she knew you weren’t”

Daryl felt the sobs coming up his throat, Rick was right there was nothing to go on. No tracks. No sightings. No sign of any trouble or walkers. She had just vanished into thin air.

Carol was at his side again consoling him “Ya right Rick, I hate ya but ya right” He let Carol guide him back into the house and to the spare bedroom, He hadn’t been able to set foot in their room, It just wasn’t the same without her.

She lay him on the bed and left to go grab him some of one of the many crock pot dinners the housewives of Alexandria had dropped off for him, Now they knew he wasn’t gay they were circling him like vulchers all vying to be the one to take Y/N’s place if she didn’t return. He had ignored all of their pity, They could keep it. He didn’t need it.

The only solace he had found over this time was Nicole, She was the one he had saved a few months back when they had stumbled across her alone in the street and brought her to the infirmary where Denise & Y/N had patched her up before the Town had decided to take her in.

He can’t remember how his unlikely friendship with her had come from she was just there always at his side, The only one to not look at him like a degenerate to be pitied. They sat in comfortable silence at first before they had started opening up to each other, She was pretty he guessed she had nothin on Y/N but he was still flattered when she had asked him for help with combat. He knew it was probably just an excuse to distract him but he was grateful for the distraction nonetheless.

Y/N pov

You couldn’t believe he had given up, for weeks he had heard him shouting her name and heard them sitting on their front porch discussing how they would find her tomorrow.. But Tomorrow never came.

He still sat on the porch every night but now he was no longer alone, He no longer looked haunted. You guessed you were happy that he looked happier, more relaxed and even sometimes laughed. You just couldn’t stand that Spencer was right. You had probably just been a passing fling to him, The memories you had of Daryl were becoming warped with you spending your days analysing everything to try to find a moment where that seemed to be true, You were a fool and fell hook line and sinker.

Now you knew he had given up on you, Spencer didn’t need to try and break you any more, You were already broken.

He had started letting you out of the room for longer. At first it was just to use the bathroom and then to make you cook for him. Soon you were out the entire time he was home and only locked up at night he would make you lie in the bed with him all night pawing at you or subjecting you to monstrosities you couldn't even fathom or dare to think about then lock you up in the morning before he left. This was the only time you could actually sleep, safe from him knowing he wasn’t here to bring you back out again.

Throughout you had refused to even give him the satisfaction of speaking to him or making a noise during any of this.

The routine became monotonous. Leave the cell, take birth control, make his dinner, sit on the floor by his chair, Wait to see if he gave you any scraps. Go to bed, Lie awake all night crying. Back to cell. Cry some more and then finally sleep before the routine started all over again. You had stopped trying to see him or anything outside, You just couldn’t take it.

You took a particularly bad beating this morning for burning his breakfast, Hugging yourself on the bare mattress you passed out from the pain.

Daryl’s pov

He still felt guilt for giving up the search but Rick was right, There was nothing to be seen. It didn’t stop his eyes from constantly searching for some clue that she had ever been here.

He looked down from the tower and saw Nicole approaching waving at him to come down. He took one last look out over the walls before climbing down to her

“Hey D.. Spencer’s been put on guard duty straight after you, Do you want me to take over?”

“Nah Girl i’m fine. His face won’t be if he tries to talk to me though”

She smiled up at him and reached forward giving him a lingering hug, Daryl cleared his throat starting to feel a little uncomfortable. She backed her head away from him slowly looking into his eyes and kissed him gently before pulling away fully and looking at her feet.

Daryl was still frozen in place not knowing how to react when she mumbled “Okay then, Well i guess ill see you later?” He just nodded and rushed back up to the tower. Guilt back in his chest. He hadn’t known that Nicole had felt like that about him and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. His heart still fully belonged to Y/N and he didn’t think he would ever have room for anyone else, not at least until he knew what had happened to her.

Daryl resumed his aimless search beyond the gates searching all the faces of the walkers who had been put down recently to see if any of them could have any of Y/N’s features. He heard Spencer talking to Rick and figured his watch was probably up.

Daryl climbed down from the tower and faced them both waiting for them to finish their conversation, He noticed Nicole heading over and tried to ignore her. He looked Spencer over and that's when he saw it.

Rushing Spencer grabbing him by his neck and throwing him against the gate. “WHERE IS SHE” Rick tried to pull Daryl off of him. “Daryl c’mon brother we searched his place he had nothin to do with it”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s this?” He reached forward ripping your sunflower from the lapel of Spencer's coat and offered it to Rick.

“This could be anyone’s Daryl, Let’s not jump to the wrong conclusion” Rick mumbled

Daryl Growled back “Turn it over, It’s got mine and hers initials on the back.”

Rick turned the pin over and saw it did in fact have the initials on the back. Giving the pin back to Daryl.

“Spencer, Why do you have that?” Rick said, pulling his gun out and training it on Spencer's head.

Spencer had gone sheet white “Yeah it’s hers, She left it at the house when she left me” He shrugged “Couldn’t have meant that much to her” He smirked slightly causing Daryl to jab him in the throat.

Rick pulled Daryl away “She were wearin it when I left Asshole, The day she went missin, Na tell me WHERE IS SHE”

Spencer was silent now, Holding his throat and gasping. Daryl turned to Rick “We needa search his place again, Naw!”

They both lunged forward and grabbed Spencer dragging him between them towards his home, On the march over a few of their original group followed. “What’s going on?” Rosita asked

“We found proof he knows where Y/N is” Rick replied shortly, still dragging Spencer. The group followed more urgently now. They threw Spencer on the ground in front of the house, “Watch him” Daryl growled at Abe who nodded in response.

They tore through the house searching again. “There’s still nothin here Daryl, We need to interrogate him get some answers''

“Nah she's here, I can feel it. Were missin somethin” Daryl’s eyes scanned the hallway “Wait, That bookcase... It aint meant to be there, Help me move it” They both grabbed a side and shifted it. “The basement, This has to be it” Rick said excitedly. They opened the door and ran down the stairs, Eyes instantly locking on the dead bolt on the laundry room door. “There” Rick pointed towards the door Daryl ran over “Y/N” He yelled.

Daryl unlocked the door and what he saw brought him to his knees. “Y/N” He said softly this time. Crawling over to you and shaking you. “Y/N Please Y/N Answer me” He sobbed. He stood up and backed out of the room into Rick. He couldn’t look anymore; he didn’t want to remember her like this. Naked and battered. Dead on a thin mattress on the floor. He was too late, She was still human so this could have only just happened. He was so close. She had been here only a few houses away all this time, He would never forgive himself for this “It’s ok, I’ll take care of it. Get outta here Daryl”

Y/N

Daryl? You tried to open your eyes but they were just too heavy. You were sure you heard him and it sounded close. You fought your eyes for a few minutes begging them to open when you felt something being dragged over you, Your hand instinctively reached up to protect yourself.

Hands grabbed at your shoulders and shook you. “Y/N...Y/N? Can you hear me?” You nodded your head slowly, finally managing to open your eyes. Your eyes roamed the room looking for Daryl. You were sure you had heard him. You tried to speak to ask where he was but all that came out was a painful croak.

Rick pulled you into his arms softly “It’s ok, It’s ok now. You’re safe. I got you” He muttered softly pulling you closer to him. “I’m going to carry you outta here now, Is that okay Y/N?” You nodded and let him lift you into his arms gently feeling his skin against yours as he had used his shirt to try and cover your nakedness. He adjusted the shirt so it was covering you more fully and carried you through the house to the front porch.

You saw Daryl now he was on his knees on the floor hands covered in blood, His head in Nicole's arms and in front of him was Spencer he wasn’t moving his eyes were wide, He was dead.

You tried to call out to Daryl again reaching your arm out slightly. “Shh Y/N Don’t try to talk. We gotta get you to Denise” Rick looked at you and saw the blood staining the shirt he had used to cover you. “Shit, We gotta go now. Stay awake for me Y/N Just stay awake”

He took off running with you still in his arms “DENISE, DENISE GET OUT HERE NOW” “Stay awake Y/N. Don’t you dare go to sleep on me” You gripped rick tighter with your arms trying to reassure him that you were still conscious.

Daryl looked up tentatively not believing what he was seeing, Two minutes ago he was so sure you were dead and now Rick was rushing you away, It made no sense.

They placed you on the examination table in the infirmary Denise quickly removing and assessing your wounds. “Rick grab me some morphine from that cabinet, I also need a needle, wire and some gauze should all be in there”

He hurriedly put them all on the table next to you and watched her start work, He looked down at you and realised you were naked again. “Uhm Denise if there's nothing else you need. I’ll go and update the guys waiting” You looked at him panicked now grabbing his hand and shook your head no at him.

“Ok Y/N, OK. I got you, I’m not going anywhere” He sat with you and held your hand the entire time Denise was working you over only letting go to help her or grab something.

“We’re done, Would you take her through to the other room and get her in a more comfortable bed? And I'll go grab her some food and water.” He nodded at her and mumbled an apology to you before putting his arms around you and lifting you back to his chest again.

You were shocked by how comforting it was feeling his skin on yours, You nuzzled your head into his chest as he carried you, Finally feeling safe in someone’s arms, Rick tried to put you down on the bed but you couldn’t face this feeling being gone, You knew if he did you would wake up and it would all be a dream.

Rick looked at you torn but ultimately decided to lie down with you letting you curl into his body. Denise was back then eyeing the two of you before handing over the tray with stew and a bottle of water, Rick nodded his head at her before offering you the tray. The stew was heaven going down you smiled up at Denise gratefully.

Washing it down with the bottle of water, You tried to speak again. “Daryl..?” Thank god you were scared after two months it may have taken a lot longer for your vocal chords to warm up. Rick just looked at you and shrugged “I thought he’d of been in here by now, I’m sure he will be along soon”

You took another drink of water “Did he ever love me?” You croaked out desperately. You felt the tears fall down your face, “He never loved me”

Rick cleared his throat “Any chance you can get her something to wear Denise?”

Daryl’s pov

He felt Nicole's arms around him dragging him away from Spencer, He had killed her so he had killed him. Daryl had promised him he would, He just wished he had done it sooner, If he had, None of this shit would have happened and he would be lying in bed right now with Y/N happy.

He was crying into Nicole's chest now wrapping his arms around her and holding on for dear life when he heard a commotion from behind him. He didn’t look. What was the point? Nothing mattered any more.

Nicole was shaking him then “Daryl, Daryl look” You followed her eye line and saw her, Her eyes were open she was alive?

He was acutely aware of everything now. He could hear rick screaming for help, Y/N curling arms around his neck as he ran. Carol at his side pulling him to his feet. “C’mon Daryl we gotta get you cleaned up.” He let Carol drag him home in shock. She turned to Nicole “I’ve got him now, I think you should get going. I need to get him to Y/N” She glared at her now, Nicole breaking under the glare “mm okay, I’ll come see you later D?”

Carol snapped back “I don’t think that’s wise, Bye now” She pulled Daryl into the house with more urgency and sat him down on the same stool she sat him on when she told him Y/N was missing. Carol then brought a wet cloth over and started cleaning his hands, Cleaning the cloth and repeating until the blood was gone, Next she worked on his face and neck removing all signs of the fight with Spencer.

As she was finishing up there was a frantic knocking on the door, Rushing over to answer she found Denise on the porch. “Hey Carol, Sorry to bother you so late! Any chance you could grab some clothes for Y/N and something for her to sleep in? Oh um also…. Daryl….Could Rick borrow a shirt?”

Carol smiled at her “Come in Denise, I’ll just be a minute” Carol disappeared down to the basement while Denise made her way to Daryl.

“You ok?” He briefly nodded back at her. “She is too, you know in case you were wondering?” Was she making it out like he didn’t care? Was she fuckin kiddin? Of course he cared. He just couldn’t face her yet, The shame was overbearing. She had been so close and he hadn’t been the one to save her.

Carol came back with a handful of clothes and gave them to Daryl. “Go on now, You’ll take these and let poor Denise get some rest!” He just nodded numb knowing better than to even try and argue with Carol. Getting to his feet he shuffled to the door and down to the infirmary. It took him 5 minutes of pacing outside the door before he could get up the courage to go in.

He knocked on the door Denise had told him they would be in and his heart broke again. There she was still as beautiful as ever, Still naked and wrapped in the wrong arms. It was a nightmare he would have most nights, He threw his shirt at Rick. Glaring at him, Rick tried to move away from Y/N now Daryl was here. “Noo, You said you wouldn’t leave me Rick” She croaked, Rick looked over at Daryl Apologetically before trying to calm Y/N

Daryl knelt on his knees at the side of the bed and tried to hold her hand, Y/N pulled away as if she had been shocked. Fresh tears running down her face.

She looked up at Rick again. “It’s ok Y/N your safe, He won’t hurt you”

Y/N’s POV

Daryl was here, He was really here after the last two months desperate to have him see you, You now didn’t know what to do. You were scared he didn’t love you, So why would he be here now.

You looked at his warily seeing the torment on his face when you pulled away from him and into Rick. Rick said it was safe but was it? You let Rick pull away this time. “Ok, If you say so. Could you uh give us a minute?”

“Sure Y/N i'll leave you guys too it”

You nodded a thanks and watched him leave throwing a shirt over his head as he went. You sat in silence watching the door Rick left through.

“Y/N” His voice was trembling. “Y/N please look at me” “Baby PLEASE” You flinched and wrapped your arms around yourself when he raised his voice.

“No baby no, Ya aint gotta be scared of me, Please i’d never, I couldn’t. I love ya Y/N”

Your eyes flared feeling the anger “No you don’t, I could see you. I saw you give up on me. I saw you laughing and getting closer to her. I was made to watch all of it, While he told me how much you didn’t care and all the things you were doing that I couldn’t see…. He said….He said you didn’t love me..,You can’t love me...Look at me Daryl who could ever love me now”

You felt the bed sink as he climbed onto it with you, You tried to squirm away from him but his arms found you first, He pulled you into his chest and you instantly felt calm...That damn motor oil smell mixed with him was enough to make you melt. You hated that he had this effect on you even now.

“I’m so sorry baby, I should’ve been here to protect ya, I should’ve been the one to save ya.” He was hugging you tighter and tighter now “I thought ya were dead, I was gonna join ya” He murmured into your hair.

“I never gave up on ya, not really. I searched every face i saw waiting for ya to come back to me”

You still stayed silent, too scared to interrupt him you knew he wouldn’t open up like this to you again and as much as your mind was telling you he was lying to you, Your heart was opening up to him again. You wrapped your arms around him suddenly sobbing.

“I aint ever stop loving you sunflower, Ya my whole heart”

“Why...Look at me i’m ruined” You stuttered

“Ya aint ruined, Ya strong, incredible beautiful”

“I’m not Daryl, I let him break me. You don’t know the things he did if you knew you’d hate me”

“I’d never hate you Y/N, No matter what he did it wouldn’t change how I feel. Ya can tell me anything.”

You lay in each other's arms till morning in silence both wide awake just grateful you were in this moment together. When the sun started coming through the windows he broke the silence.

“Let’s get ya dressed k?” You nodded and let him help you out of bed and pull your pyjamas over you. Once you had finished Denise walked in. “Good morning Y/N How are you feeling?”

“Sore...Tired… Can i go home now?”

“I’d really like you to stay here for a few more days so i can keep an eye on you but you know your body. D’ya think you will be okay?”

You nodded quickly to her “Can you took me home? I’d really like to be in my own bed - I mean your bed….If that’s okay?” You looked up at him nervously half expecting him to tell you it was no longer your home.

He nodded at you. Denise piped up again “Fine but complete bed rest, I’ll be checking on you every few hours i don’t want to catch you on your feet, not even once until you’ve healed more”

Daryl pulled you into his arms sweeping you off your feet. “Ya heard the lady stay off your feet, Thank ya Doc”

He strode out of the office quickly happy to have you back in his arms again. It seemed the whole town was out to see you leave waiting on news, Daryl growled at the ones who tried to approach and carried you home as quickly as he could, He paused at the door to the basement. “Ya sure Y/N?” You nodded at him happily “I’m sure”

He carried you down the stairs and lowered you gently to the bed. You noticed there was a thin layer of dust in here his pillow was even exactly as you had left it.

Daryl rubbed the back of his head nervously. “Ya uhm i haven’t been in here since well since you were” You grimaced the thought of him in this bed was one of the thoughts that had gotten you through.

“I’ll let ya sleep Y/N Ya don need me hoverin”

“Daryl I need you here, I need to know that when I wake up it wasn’t all a dream and you’re still here. Please don’t leave me” Silently he went to his side of the bed and lay down, Arms pinned at his side. You giggled slightly and stopped the feeling and sound so alien to you now, He looked at you curiously as you touched your lips in awed confusion.

You lifted your head naturally as you always did, This was your prompt for him to squeeze his arm through the gap. You were happy when he followed suit and pulled you to him.

He breathed in the scent of you “I’m here now baby” This was the moment you had been longing for the entire time you were apart you smiled as you drifted asleep in his arms.

You had listened to doctors orders for the first time in your life allowing Daryl and Carol to take care of you, You had seen Nicole come around for Daryl a few times with Carol shooing her away. You couldn’t blame her, Even if it did make you a little jealous. He was intoxicating. After the fourth day on bed rest you asked Daryl to help you shower. His eyes grew hard when he helped you undress the pain crossing his face when he saw you fully. He carried you into the shower and left to take off everything but his boxers and vest. He got back in with you and cradled you for a little while letting the water wash over you both before he started to gently wash you.

Feeling his hands run over your body was electric, You couldn’t believe you were capable of feeling such lust for him still. After everything your body had sustained it still wanted him with everything you had.

He was careful not to touch you too much as he washed your body and then your hair. You could feel him growing hard on your back before he quickly moved his core away from you.

He left the water on carrying you out of the shower, grabbed a towel wrapping you tightly and brought you back to the bed and leaving you to change. Taking a shirt and some lounge pants with him back to the bathroom. You could hear his wet clothes hit the floor, Knowing he was naked with water cascading down him in the next room was almost enough to send you over the edge. When he came back he was dry and fully dressed again any hint of his growing erection gone. You were sad to see this but also knew you weren’t fully ready for anything to happen yet.

Daryl joined you in bed again still not speaking a word pulling you into his arms and allowing you to drift peacefully to sleep.

You awoke suddenly his arms were gone and you could hear rustling on the other side of the room, Allowing your eyes to open slowly you looked over and there he was in all his glory back turned to you looking for a pair of boxers. You couldn’t have stopped yourself even if you had tried, He turned to you as you approached, wrapping your arms around him wanting to feel every inch of exposed beautiful skin.

He gripped your arms pulling you off of him and quickly dressed.

Finally he looked at you “Doc says you’re off bed rest now and Rick needs me on guard duty. I’m sorry Y/N but i need to go” You nodded sadly at him, You were being selfish keeping him to yourself all this time. It had probably been killing him being locked away with you not being able to help the group. That was your man. Completely and utterly selfless.

He kissed you briefly on the forehead before turning and leaving, Calling over his shoulder. “Carol’s waiting upstairs for you, She made breakfast”

Smiling to yourself it had been too long since you had had some quality time with Carol, Getting changed quickly and lacing your boots up and walking into the kitchen. Your smile grew wider when you saw her and the food on the counter.

“PANCAKES!” You rushed to the plate “Thank you thank you thank you” You exclaimed digging in immediately.

You could hear Carol chuckling next to you. “It’s so lovely to see you still love these”

Then with a wink “I’m still not telling you the secret though” You groaned happily “I’ll get it out of you one day lady”

She regarded you thoughtfully “Well how about a trade?” You raised your eyebrow at her. “What kind of trade?” You asked with a full mouth

Carol tutted at you “Y/N don’t talk with your mouth full!” She scolded. You grumbled “Sorry!”

You smiled at her again, eating the pancakes as quickly as you could, Washing it down with water.

“Sooooo….What kind of trade?”

“I’ll tell you my secret ingredient if you tell me what happened down there” You froze panic rising through your veins. She was at your side instantly arms around you comforting you “Y/N i’ve told you about Ed and when i started letting people in and talking about what he did to me it no longer defined me and i was able to move on. I just want the same for you. I won’t push but when you're ready to tell me. I’ll always be ready to listen”

It was your turn to regard her thoughtfully this time. Sighing you started from the night he took you and forced the words out, Forcing yourself to get it off your chest. Carol looked at you in horror and tears in her eyes when you had finished.

Pulling you closer she choked out “I’m so sorry Y/N I promise he can’t hurt you any more, He’s with my Ed now. Rotting in hell”

She had been right once you had spoken about it and shared your horrors. It felt like she was carrying some of the weight for you. Breathing deeply, trying to enjoy the lessening of the pressure on your chest. You spent at least another hour with her just holding you while you both cried.

Over the next few weeks you found yourself opening up to Carol more and more everyday. You knew that you would never fully be over it especially now things had gone back to how they were before you and Daryl had gotten together the first time. He came home at night wrapping you in his arms and left at first light barely speaking two words to you.

Your head was wrapped in thoughts of him again when Carol spoke up.

“Ok enough of this now Sweetie, we're getting you out of this house” Carol smiled at you wiping your face with her hand. Jumping to your feet “Yes please!” You left the house arm in arm ignoring the stares from the neighbours and occasionally stopping to say hello to someone or have a quick conversation. You both stopped at the gates looking out. Carol looked up at the tower seeing Daryl was gone.

“Now for the fun part! We’re going for some smash therapy!” She nodded at Sasha who handed you a bag with weapons, Discussing the small herd on the west side of the fence who were causing a little trouble. Sasha flung the gate open quickly and you both ran out. Laughing, finally feeling free outside of those stuffy gates you quickly turned serious, running after Carol gripping the two machete’s in your hands.

You worked together drawing a few away at a time and swiftly taking them down. Exhausted but happy you made your way back to the gate knocking on the front. The gate opened sharply.

Shit… It wasn’t Sasha..

Daryl’s POV

All this time he had waited for you to be back in his arms, He was torn. He felt like the luckiest man on the planet and also like the worst one. He felt so guilty every time he saw her face and what that monster had done to her beautiful body.

When Denise had come to say that Y/N was cleared to resume as normal all he could think about was getting away from those mixed up feelings for a few hours and was even more grateful when Rick had asked him to go back to guard duty.

He was just about to pull some clothes on when he felt her grab him, He pulled her arms from him pinning them to her side and quickly dressed feeling ashamed. He wanted her more than anything but he knew if he had felt her skin on his for even a moment longer he would give in to his primal urges and after all she had been through he couldn’t risk that now.

He ran out telling her about breakfast nodded to Carol and headed to the guard tower not thinking in his rush. He climbed up to the top and saw Nicole waiting for him “Uhm Hey Stranger” He smiled “Hey yaself” he reached over his shoulder to grab his - Shit. “I’ll be back gotta go get ma bow” Nicole nodded at him and turned her eyes back outwards.

He climbed back down and ran back to the house. Not wanting to disturb Carol & Y/N he opened the door softly and crept into the hall, He was inches away from his bow when he heard Y/N talking “He forced himself on me night after night Carol and if i fought he made it a thousand times worse, He would cut me or use a cattle prod on me and if they weren’t close enough it was whatever was closest at the time.” Daryl froze in the hall her words washing revulsion over him.

He didn’t want to hear anymore but he couldn’t make his legs move so he stayed in place just listening to her talk wanting to kill the son of a bitch all over again. After what felt like an eternity he heard Carol console her and he was finally able to move his limbs again. Creeping back outside he felt the sickness come over him and darted behind the house loosing his breakfast.

He made his way back to the guard tower trying to forget all the things he had heard. He found it even hard to look at her now the shame was becoming a part of him tearing him limb from limb every time she looked at him. He was sure she felt it too, How she didn’t hate him for what she had been through he didn’t know Daryl despised himself.

He kept out of her way only coming home to sleep and comfort her in the night when it was too dark to see those beautiful eyes staring up at him.

Nicole had become his solace once more, She was easy to be around and made him laugh, Forgetting for a few moments about the hidden guilt he carried with him now.

He was with her coming onto guard laughing as usual with Nicole's hand on his chest when he saw them return. Y/N had to be covered head to toe in walker blood. Seething he ran to the gate pulling it violently open.

Y/N Pov

“WHAT THE FUCK Y/N YA TRYING TO FUCKIN GET YASELF KILLED?” He screamed at you. You froze walking back into Carol in fear.

She walked inside with you covering your body with hers. “Daryl, Enough!” Carol snapped at him.

He roared eyes dark “NO ITS NOT ENOUGH, YA COULDA OF DIED Y/N. I WASN'T THERE TO KEEP YA SAFE, YA’D BE DEAD AND I WOULD BE HERE” He choked “Alone...Alone again” Nicole walked forward and put her hand on his shoulder.

You were sobbing now, Rick had wandered over hearing Daryl’s shouts. You darted over to him. Instinctively wrapping your arms around him and burying yourself in his chest. Rick had checked in on you everyday since he rescued you and you found yourself being drawn to him, Not in the same way as Daryl he wasn’t quite the sun in your universe. But he was comforting to spend time around, He listened to you and it was only him and Carol that didn’t look at you like a wounded animal.

Rick wrapped his arms around you protectively. “Daryl quit your hollerin, What's goin on here”

Daryl watched you seek protection from him and it was just too much, He turned and walked away muttering to himself. “C’mon you two, Come tell me what just happened” Rick said once Daryl had disappeared with Nicole following him.

You all walked back to Rick’s home that he shared with his son Carl and infant Daughter Judith. You happily sunk to the floor hugging Judith. There was something so comforting about being around an innocent that didn’t know of this world and its pain yet. You wished you could protect her from all of it.

Carol sat with Rick and guiltily explained what the two of you had done. You could tell Rick wasn’t happy with it but let it go when he saw that you were both completely unharmed.

You had tried to talk to Daryl after that and he had pretended you didn’t exist. You were grateful that because of your growing friendship with Rick he had let you stay with him and the kids.

You found yourself spending more time watching Daryl wishing he would just look at you but he never did.

It was on one of these nights watching him that you saw it and he broke you all over again..

<---- Previous Chapter Next Chapter ---->

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herenortherenearnorfar · 3 years

Text

This Tornado Tolerates And Respects You

A little story about Gothmog and orcs that I’ll probably put on other sites later. But for now, a tumblr exclusive! CW for the terrible reproductive politics of evil (implied reproductive coercion, forced childbearing, light eugenics), orc awfulness, disdain for incarnates, radiation poisoning, chemical weapons, Fingon’s fate, mentions of cannibalism, malnourishment, ear cropping, and all of the above with the implied harm to children.

Orcs, Lord Melkor’s special pet project, a blasphemy first and a strategic asset second, didn’t make the best troops. They could swarm over a target in a useful mass of bodies but they lacked skill and drive. For the Captain of Angband’s own force of fire and shadow, spirits sprung free from the tyranny of the Valar, orcs were a sea of troublesome bodies, cluttering up the field of battle. More flesh to whip through, barbed wire quick, more lungs to choke with lime gas. An annoyance, not an ally.

He didn’t have very high expectations of them as a source of soldiers and there were very few individual orcs who he respected. Gorfaunt was one of those rare exceptions.

They’d fought on the same battlefield under the taunting stars, in those blissful days before the heavens changed, and he’d been impressed by the orc commanders ability to marshal troops. Very few in that division ended up trampled beneath Balrog feet. Even the retreat was prompt, almost orderly, without sacrificing that wild spirit which was one of the orcs’ few redeeming qualities.

When it came time to capture the stripling-king of the elves he’d requested Gorfaunt’s orcs in particular. Once again they’d proven their mettle and the commander had become of of the Captain’s favorites. If orcs had to be stationed next to their betters it was preferable that it be Gorfaunt’s orcs, who knew how to comport themselves and could fight near Balrogs without dying in droves.

Now with the latest glorious battle (and another successful collaboration, the Captain still glowed at the memory of the Noldor’s latest king cracking open to spill his red insides over his silver banner) behind them and Lord Melkor demanding Nargothrond and Gondolin, they met once a month to strategize, share intelligence, and complain about everyone else. To an outsider they might have passed as friends. There was less formality between the two of them than another high general of the iron fortress might have demanded, they sat at the same table and spoke freely.

(The Lieutenant still asked commanders to bow before him; that was why even his own troops called him Sauron behind his back. Gothmog was a superior appellation, less insulting, more fearful, but he still didn’t hasten to encourage its use.)

Despite their surface level amicability and the handful of tried-and-true inside jokes—mostly having to do with how enemies had died— they could bat at each other, they knew very little about each other’s lives. Meat and smoke only mixed when making a brisket, trying to relate two such different ways of being seemed impossible.

But when he saw Gorfaunt waddling into their monthly kvetch with a belly round and swollen like a tick’s, the Captain felt driven to say something. He was the marshal of Angband, he couldn’t let his king’s forces go to seed.

“Are you ill? Cursed?”

Gorfaunt managed to pull out a chair, made for a Balrog three times the size of an orc, and hoist themselves into it with rangy arms. “No? Just five months with a baby kicking around in my insides. The little bugger’s finally starting to show itself.”

That took a second to decipher. “You’re having a baby?”

Of course the Captain knew the basics of how incarnates made more of themselves. It was a topic of great fascination in the old days, when Yavanna was first figuring the system out, and of course the Lieutenant would prattle on about warg breeding to anyone who’d listen. They had sex— another thing that did not come naturally to beings of spirits, though some Maiar had made astounding progress in the field, for pleasure was pleasure and even Nienna’s acolytes sought catharsis and comfort—then there was lots of squishy biology on a level invisible to the incarnates themselves, then a little parasite was somehow blessed with Erú’s fire, to be nurtured until it could nurture itself.

He also knew that orcs, like elves and dwarves, had little distinction between men and womenfolk. Useful when it meant you could channel your entire adult population to battle. Startling when you realized that a key ally had been quietly pregnant for months without you, a greater being able to perceive stalactites growing and the scales on insect wings, noticing.

In truth he’d been doing a lot less noticing of late. His senses were dulling. Perhaps it was the light of the cursed gems, which painted everything in blinding, indistinguishable holiness. Or he was just losing his touch.

If he focused now he could see it. It was easiest to sense on the plane of wraiths. There was Gorfaunt, a guttering candle; wheezing, weak. All orcs had that fire, however dim. No one had managed to fully extinguish it though it had been much suppressed. Tucked against her, nearly imperceptible, was a little spark. Not much yet but given tinder and carefully fanned it could grow. “You’re having a baby,” he marveled.

Gorfaunt’s face was… orcs were hard to read at the best of times, bubbling over with noisy pain and anger that obscured their true emotions, prone to skin diseases and horrendous eye infections that muddled their expressions. She didn’t wear her gas mask around him anymore, though most were quick to cover up around any Maia of Morgoth. It helped little, her face was still opaque as the mountain itself. “Yep, Captain.”

“Good?” You congratulated an ally on a new weapon, a new bond, a promotion. Which one was an infant classified as? What was the correct form?

“Hopefully it’ll be over and the little goblin will be in the caves with the old’uns by the time we find either of the cities.” Gorfaunt provided, only barely contextualizing his felicitations. She was chewing on the inside on her cheek; sometimes she would gnaw until she spat black blood. “Terrible time for it. Terrible time. But the high ups are worried about reinforcements down the line, I suppose.”

Orcs came from orcs. It was a fact so simple it barely bore considering. Another department handled it. The new ones just showed up, springy and long limbed, faces still soft and unmarred. “Goblins” he’d heard older orcs call those fresh pale creatures. Barely even monsters, more like stunted, crepuscular versions of the elves and dwarves they fought.

“How much longer?” They had a few good leads on Nargothrond, a promising word about Túrin Turambar. The Captain could not sack that city himself, the honor had already been promised to the sulfurous worm. Apparently they wanted to test the mettle of these dragons. But Gothmog could assign a few good orc commanders to supervise, make sure the worm was not overstepping his bounds.

Dark blood trickled out of the corner of Gorfaunt’s mouth. “Five months, I’m told. Could be more, could be less. Then I have to wait until the thing is independent enough to leave alone, that’s another few months.” She was probably counting months as the orcs had started to, by the moon. Wretched traitor, Tilion, who’d laughed with them at the idea of running away then turned his face when the time came to flee for freedom. They hated it as much as everyone else but in their hatred they were aware of its cycles. They rejoiced when it went dark.

“You’ll still be able to manage your underlings?” Orcs, and freed Maiar, were fractious. They did not respect a leader who lacked the strength to force them to obey. It could be exhausting. And Gorfaunt was already so round. The Captain did not wish to lose her support over one orcling.

“I think so. So far… in old days you’d den up somewhere for a year, avoid everyone prowling for blood, but I don’t want to fight my way up the ranks again. I’ve got an ax and I’m using it.” Despite that she sounded tired.

Long heartbeats stretched between them, that exquisite embarrassment of two coworkers suddenly forced to talk about private affairs.

“This is your first,” the Captain didn’t reach the tone of a question with that one.

“Yes. The recruiters were getting growly so I grabbed a fellow. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

“You don’t want a child.” Again, not quite a question. He was feeling it out as he goes along. This is the longest conversation about orc reproduction he’s ever paid attention to, for the Lieutenants diatribes we’re always dull.

It was no matter to him, except that this was the only orc commander he could tolerate working with and she was chewing through her own cheek in discomfort.

“They take something from you,” Gorfaunt admitted. “Dame and sire both, but worse for the dame since she has to carry the clot. You go… stretchy. Bleached like old bone. I’ve seen soldiers and after twenty children they’re not good for anything but shoving onto a line of pikes. Raw meat for the wargs.”

That didn’t make sense to him, but he was never a scholar of flesh or spirit. He knew how a skull split and how a soul fled, how this matter-sprung life withered, how it died. That was all that counted. He also knew how to value a resource.

“There won’t be any after this,” he said firmly. “Not if you don’t want them.” If need be he’d escalate to Lord Melkor, frame it as sapping strength from their command structure and propose making officers off limits from breeding programmes.

“As you command, Captain,” she said with a bowed head, but she looked gratifyingly relieved, and their conversation could finally move on to the latest stories of occupied territories and the search for the hidden cities.

The next few months Gorfaunt somehow managed to get bigger and bigger, until she was no longer able to swing herself into a chair and had to take their meeting standing. Her leather armor no longer fit and with just a thin layer of rags over her distended stomach it was easy to see the squirming creature inside.

Ferocious little animal. It would go so still and then kick out again, as if it could burst free of its creator by force of will alone. The kernel of its mind was forming too, a hazy bubble of sensation and half formed emotion. He could see what had the Lieutenant fascinated. It wasn’t his field but it was morbidly interesting, seeing the shape of something new and moldable come together right in front of you.

But he had not been made a sculptor or a craftsman. He’d been born a wild thing, a tornado, a volcano, every disaster meant to fell cities, and though he had not known the words yet he’d sensed in his core, seen in glimpses in the song, that he was a creature of war. Like many other wild things—Ossë, the simpering coward tied up in Uinen’s tresses, excluded— he’d found his way to Melkor in the end. Oh, he’d idled for a time with Vána, heard Námo’s dolorous call, but it was Melkor who he came back to and Melkor who he picked in the end.

Melkor taught him so many more ways to be. The smoke, the blood, the screaming not in sorrow but in anger. He taught the others who came to him as well. In the Captain’s little squad alone there was one who learned the slaver’s whip and the threat of fire, one who learned the ooze of pus and malodorous air, one who came to appreciate the ravenings of rabid beasts. From the dragons in the treasure-caves to the cat in the kitchen to the vampires in the highest towers, they were all Melkor’s creations.

Gorfaunt, born and raised here in the shadow of his ancient power, was even more Melkor’s than most. This was how the Captain rationalized his continuing fondness for her as she weakened, his interest in her spawn. Works of the same maker might gravitate together. They could see parts of themselves in each other, the way he could once see himself in other Ëalar born of the same bit of song.

When Gorfaunt came in four months after their revelatory meeting with a sagging belly and a bundle nestled against her chest he was excited to finally see what had been made.

It took a bit of coaxing to get her to show him the baby but no orc would outright refuse an order from anyone stronger than them, they knew better than that. The newborn was dutifully unwrapped and presented, though Gorfaunt’s expression suggested that she considered this all a silly waste of time.

It was a rumpled wet creature; mostly skin and bones, with a cranium as big as its rounded torso. Small too, barely bigger than Gorfaunt’s hand, and Gorfaunt was smaller than all elves and many humans; based on overheard complaints failure to grow was an ongoing issue with their kind. When it was unswaddled sticklike limbs flailed out and began batting at the air ineffectually. Despite this wriggling its face remained in a sleepy scowl. It wasn’t until Gothmog moved one cherry-hot finger closer to it that it opened its hazy grey eyes and tried to focus on him. Even then the dismayed frown stayed put.

An unscarred orc was always an interesting sight; for it revealed the scale of their reworking. How much orcishness was self-replicating, as the Lieutenant liked to claim, and how much had to be beaten in? This one had a droopy brow bone and already peeling corpse-grey skin but it did not look much like an orc besides that. It even had hair, which most orcs lacked (aside from a few lank patches). The fine red down covered its whole body, thickest on the head and face and arms.

“It’s supposed to fall out,” Gorfaunt said, “Everyone says it’ll fall out soon. Even the prisoners lose their hair after a while, especially in the deep mines.”

That was probably because of the miasma of decay that emanated from the ores of Angband. Not macro-decay, of skin and bone (that came later) but the infitesimal decay. Every piece of metal— every piece of existence, when you got down to it— was made of little stars. There was a gaseous center of energy and little orbiting specks around that, spinning in probabilistic loops. Like stars some were bigger and some were smaller and some were ready to collapse. Ilmarë loved to speak of supernovas. The yellow and blue metals below the mountain were full of little stars collapsing, reforming, giving off energy in great sums as they did so.

The Captain had noted the negative effects of this energetic output on incarnates some time ago. Elves sickened and humans just died— Lord Melkor had moved the man he hoped would give him the location of Gondolin far from those mines for a reason. A few of the spirits with natures inclined towards metal, salt, and industry had already incorporated the burning energy into their signatures. The Lieutenant doubtless had some wicked little experiment running with it. It was a part of life here, that background hum of a trillion crumbling particles, and the Captain never thought of the effect on orcs, though they were exposed from birth.

Now that he focused he could see the little crumbs of decay glancing off the baby.

Hmm.

It would probably be fine.

It was already rubbing its eyes and going back to sleep, one hand curled next to a crumpled, not-yet-cropped ear.

“Are you recovered?” he asked Gorfaunt.

“I’m fit enough to fight,” she said shortly, defensively, as if afraid he’d snatch her command from her. “I’ll be better soon when this thing is gone.”

The Captain’s huge palm hovered over her infant. He knew better than to touch; his ability to change forms was not what it once was, he could not stop being a bipedal avalanche, to strong, too close, too dangerous. Even just containing the noxious gases— the pustulent yellow and choking green— simmering inside this war shaped body was difficult. If he kept a few feet distance the chaotic heat of his skin faded into the air and the baby wriggled contentedly in the ambient glow, like a little lizard.

“And how long will that be?”

Gorfaunt’s hand twitched. Another few months, till it can manage worm meal and listen to the grands.”

It seemed impossible that anything could be big enough to leave alone in such a short time; but incarnation was not the Captain’s specialty. “And that’s the accepted practice?”

“A little young, but safe now that the master put a stop to the baby eating problem.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a concern,” the Captain said very seriously, even though his fingers curled slightly around the baby’s limp body. “We can make modifications if the child must stay longer.”

Gorfaunt glanced down at her sprawled offspring. “I don’t— I don’t want this to last any longer. I’d rather have my life go back to normal.”

That, at least, he could understand. It has been a rather troubling experience overall. Revelations are not always useful and though he’s gained some knowledge it’s not very practical stuff.

“One more question, commander, then I’ll drop the matter. What is it named??”

That nascent mind bubble had sharpened with time and experience but was still comprised mostly of sensation. He could not even grasp at a basic sense of self. The child’s mother should know what if calls itself, if anyone did.

(He wanted to remember the name, for forty years from now, when he needed more good orcs. All those rants about the fundamentals of inheritance left him with some ideas about how incarnates develop traits. Another Gorfaunt would be a helpful tool to have on hand.)

The question left Gorfaunt unimpressed. “It doesn’t name itself anything yet, it hasn’t got the common sense. And no one’s given it a name because it hasn’t done anything interesting.”

“It has an interesting look” the Captain pointed out, “Tell them to call it Red Cap,” he slipped into the elf tongue, which had better color words than the one the Lieutenant devised, and in the process accidentally named the child after a former king of the Noldor. “Or something like that.”

Gorfaunt apparently had a better memory for politics than he gave her credit for, or perhaps just a distaste for the elf cant, because she quickly translated it back into Angband’s crackly tongue . “Rotbint.”

“Yes.” A Balrog, even the chief of Balrogs, could not give much to something so soft and incarnadine. A name, incorporeal, existing in the plane the Captain knew best, was the only thing he could offer. “Now, to business?”

Gorfaunt wrapped the little creature away— it woke halfway through the rolling to stare at them once more— then tucked it against her chest.

The Captain was sad to see it go, though he couldn’t say why.

He remembered that he had come to this physical world for a reason once. He had wanted to see all there was to see, to feel and taste everything, chew chunks of Arda up and spit it out new. Disasters hungered as much as anyone. Yet all he’d had lately was war fare; blood-soaked mud and rage-tinged fear.

Deprived of fresh experiences, he clung to the potential, the novelty, of new life.

Perhaps Gondolin would see him out of his funk, he thought. It couldn’t hide forever.

“We’ll find it, Captain,” Gorfaunt assured him stubbornly. “And we’ll tear it down brick by brick, raze their gardens, fill their streets with blood.”

Even with a baby trying to gum her collarbone her firm tone allowed no questions.

Orcs were, as a rule, bothersome, unruly, walking corpses. Fractious, ugly, difficult, bothersome, recklessly stupid. The Maiar serving under the Captain were sometimes stereotyped as simpleminded brutes but at least they were able to perceive the world around them, even if few bothered to use that perception. In comparison orcs were stumbling around in the dark. They were inefficient as well, you needed three of them to take down any decent enemy. But when they were well made they were well made. Those were the ones that made it all worth it.

It had to be worth it. This was freedom, after all.

#the silmarillion #gothmog #orcs #silmarillion fanfiction #angband #fanfic #Sauron gets some mentions

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