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peachdues · 10 months

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Tell Me to Stop: Part 2 (NSFW Kyojuro Rengoku x F!Ice Pillar)

A/N: oh man, it’s here. This took a lot out of me, so I hope that you all like it.

Part One can be found here: post-Mugen AU where Kyojuro lives; events take place post-Entertainment District.

Multiple POVs (Y/N, Shinobu, and Kyojuro). There are several flashbacks, which are in all italics and separated from the main text.

Massive TW: trauma/PTSD, anger, nightmares, descriptions of corpses, violence and violence between characters (shoving, grabbing/shaking). One character triggers another and it’s dubious whether it’s intentional or not.

CW: 16.7k words; explicit sexual content. Unprotected sex/oral (F!receiving), creampies, cursing, light scar worship, intimacy, angst.

For the song that inspired this, listen here.

Without further ado!

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N began her rehabilitation training within one week of awakening from her coma.

For those seven days of rest, Y/N had fielded all sorts of visitors — the Master, escorted by his two daughters; the Love Pillar, who had wasted no time throwing her arms around Y/N’s shoulders and sobbing in relief; and three of the Mansion’s youngest girls, all of whom crawled up on her bed and cried while hugging her.

Uzui had sent her a note by crow telling her he would be by to see her as soon as his wives finished making her favorite treat — red bean mochi — and said they could compare battle wounds in celebration of their feat.

Y/N had neither seen nor heard as much of a whisper from the Flame Pillar.

The Ice Pillar resolved to distract herself from the glaring absence of the man who embodied fire, though every day that passed without word from him only seemed to make that absence more pronounced.

Y/N had thrown herself into her rehabilitation training, as supervised by Shinobu. Because she was a Hashira, her recovery was vastly different from that of lower-ranked slayers, and she worked with the Insect Pillar directly, rather than with the haughty Aoi and other younger Mansion girls.

That particular morning, the Love Pillar had joined them in an effort to recuperate Y/N’s loss of flexibility as the result of the nearly two months she’d spent sedentary. Y/N cherished the one-on-one time she had with the other two women Hashira; the three of them had formed a tight bond with one another since ascending as Pillars, united amidst the predominance of male demon slayers.

“Good! Now just bend this way-“ Mitsuri Kanroji kept a steady hand at the small of Y/N’s back as Y/N arched over backward, teeth grinding as her stiff spine resisted her movement.

“Almost there! Just touch your other hand to the floor and hold it!” The Love Hashira said encouragingly.

Y/N stretched her left arm over her head as hard as she could. Her fingers had just graced the wooden grain of the training room floor when her body seized, and her legs gave out from under her.

“Oh!” Mitsuri caught Y/N effortlessly before she could crumple to the floor, gently helping her to sit while blushing at the stream of colorful curses that poured from the Ice Pillar’s mouth.

“This damn wound,” Y/N moaned, her hand pressing against the angry red mark that curved from below her belly button to her right hip. “You would think it would have healed by now.”

Shinobu frowned as she crouched next to the Ice Pillar, fingers lightly prodding at the scar left behind by Upper Moon Six. “It has healed; if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have scarred already.” Shinobu pursed her lips. “Though, I suppose it could just be a residual effect of the Upper Rank’s blood demon art – after all, it was no ordinary blade that he pierced you with, was it?”

Y/N shook her head, though she tried to suppress the memory of the demon’s cursed flesh blade ramming through her back and into her stomach. “The blade was his conduit for his blood demon art – but I think it was made from him.”

“How often does it hurt, Y/N?” Mitsuri asked, rubbing soothing circles on her friend’s upper back. Mitsuri was one of the few people Y/N knew who preferred to give physical comfort, and Y/N was grateful for it.

Y/N furrowed her brows in thought. “In a way, there’s always just this dull ache I feel, though it becomes sharper whenever I move a particular way.” Y/N pulled at the band of her uniform bottoms in discomfort. “And, it doesn’t help that these damn pants chafe and rub against it. I’ve even foregone the belt, and it still feels like they’re cutting into me.”

Mitsuri hummed in thought. “Have you considered one of the uniform skirts? They sit a little higher on the waist, so they’re less likely to aggravate it.”

Y/N scowled. “I would rather be stabbed by Upper Six again than request a skirt from that pervert tailor,” she said severely, “Sorry,” she added when she saw the Love Pillar flush with embarrassment.

“Lecherous Corps tailors aside, you may have a good point, Mitsuri.” Shinobu said, eyeing Y/N’s uniform pants in thought. “Y/N, do you mind if I brainstorm some designs for you? I can’t promise whatever I come up with will be suitable for public appearances or assignments, but I might be able to come up with something that will at least keep you comfortable while you heal and build back your strength.”

Y/N smiled as she stretched her legs out, bringing herself into a pose meant to flex her hips. “I’d be grateful for anything you could do, Shinobu.”

The Insect Pillar nodded. “Mitsuri, you know how to sew quite well, do you not? I’m afraid my proficiency with the needle is limited to sewing up wounds.”

The pinkette glowed with enthusiasm. “Yes! I have an entire room dedicated to sewing at my Estate – if you bring by your designs, I’m sure I could put something together!”

Shinobu smiled. “Then it’s settled. I’ll see what I can come up with tonight, and I’ll bring it by in the morning.”

Y/N’s heart swelled at the dedication her two friends showed towards her comfort and recovery. “Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.”

Shinobu’s smile turned wicked. “Don’t thank us yet, Y/N. You have agility training next.”

Y/N groaned and pulled on her uniform top, buttoning it over her bindings. As a Hashira, agility training meant that she was to meet the Wind Pillar outside of Kocho’s estate where she would endure two hours of having to dodge his relentless attacks. Y/N got along just fine with Shinazugawa – he’d even welcomed her back, and gruffly complimented her work in the Entertainment District – but that did not mean he eased up in his ruthless training.

By the time the Wind Pillar had dismissed her with a satisfied nod, Y/N had all but limped back to her room, wondering whether she could even summon the strength to bathe after such an arduous day. She almost decided against it, but when her newest scar began to pulse and throb once more, she knew nothing else would soothe it better than the hot water in Kocho’s private hot spring.

Y/N greeted the bowing Kakushi who guarded the entrance to the northernmost wing of the Butterfly Mansion’s hospital as she passed by, and she hoped that Aoi had remembered to restock her room with fresh towels so she could go straight to her bath from her room.

She drew short at the sight of a familiar figure which stood outside of Kocho’s office, leaning against the wall of the small hallway.

“Rengoku!” Y/N was startled, taking a step back in surprise at the sight of the Flame Pillar.

“Y/L/N.” The man who reminded her of the sun nodded in greeting, but his familiar, sunny disposition was noticeably absent, his face impassive and his voice detached.

“I am happy to see you in good health.” Rengoku spoke with unnatural formality; he’d never used that cold, detached manner of speaking to her, not once since she’d caught him staring at her right before the commencement of Final Selection all those years ago.

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“Ice Pillar Y/L/N!” His sunny voice boomed, and Y/N groaned. She’d just gotten her migraine to calm down.

“Rengoku,” she nodded politely, as her comrade came to stand beside her, all smiles and warmth.

“It’s been a while, Y/L/N! I was beginning to forget what you look like when you roll your eyes at me.” He laughed, and Y/N scowled.

“Perhaps I’ll pay to have my photograph taken, Rengoku. That way, you can carry it with you wherever you go.”

Rengoku turned to her, an eyebrow raised in surprise at her willingness to engage with his banter so quickly. “If that’s the case, Y/N, I’d prefer to have one of you smiling. It would do well to keep me warm on those cold nights away from home.”

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“I heard you were called away on another mission— some train?” Y/N asked him as they strolled through the Master’s garden following their meeting.

“Yes, we’ve unfortunately lost a number of slayers. Perhaps it’s an upper rank!” The Flame Pillar responded jovially, but he stopped in front of Y/N when he saw her frown.

“What is it?” His voice was gentle, and Y/N shook her head, focusing her eyes on the blooming wisteria saplings that had been planted.

A warm finger curled under her chin and tilted her face up until her eyes clashed with pools of golden ore. “My dear Ice Pillar, are you worried for me?” He was smirking, and his thumb lightly caressed the underside of her jaw.

Y/N gingerly took his hand and removed it from her face, though she did not let it go right away. “You are the Flame Hashira, Rengoku. If anyone is capable of defeating an Upper Rank, it most certainly is you.”

Rengoku smiled broadly at her, his hand nearly grazing her own. “For someone whose prowess lies in ice breathing, Y/L/N, you sure know how to start fires.”

Under any other circumstance, she would have changed the subject, or not said anything at all. But Y/N couldn’t help her sudden desire to flirt back, just to see if she could knock him off his feet as he so often tried to do to her.

“Yours is the only one I’m interested in stoking, Rengoku.” She said sweetly.

She’d laughed at the Flame Pillar’s beet-red face for the rest of the day.

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“And I, you.” Y/N responded, her eyes still wide with surprise as she came to a stop before him, maintaining a cautious distance between them.

A pregnant pause followed, and Y/N made to speak once more, but she was cut off by another deep throb from the wound on her lower abdomen, her hand unconsciously flying to press against it as she swallowed the gasp that threatened to leave her.

“You’re in pain.” It wasn’t a question.

Y/N shrugged in a feeble attempt at nonchalance. “I suppose it’s to be expected for a while yet. At least until I recover.”

Rengoku said nothing, and the silence felt suffocating.

“Would you-“ Y/N hesitated, and inwardly she’d never felt more embarrassed, or more uncertain than she did then as she stood before the uncharacteristically stoic Flame Pillar. “Would you like to sit down?”

Rengoku’s face remained impassive, and he turned away from her, dismissively.

“I cannot. I came only to retrieve a salve from Kocho.” His voice was just as cold, just as unfamiliar as the rest of him had been.

“Rengoku, is everything all right?” She stretched out a hand to touch his shoulder but was alarmed at how quickly he flinched away from her as if her touch could burn him.

“Everything is fine, Y/L/N. I need to be on my way.” Rengoku’s voice was flat, monotone, and wholly foreign to her.

“I’m sorry for not thanking you sooner — for everything you did to help me that night.” Y/N blurted, and to her relief, Rengoku froze mid-step, though he did not turn towards her. “I owe you my life.”

She did not miss the way Rengoku’s fists clenched at his side. “You owe me nothing. I would have done the same for any other comrade.” He replied, voice tight. “I must get going now. Farewell, Y/L/N.

She was so stunned that she’d not bidden him farewell back. Rather, she’d stood helplessly in her doorway, even long after the edge of his haori had disappeared around the corner of the Butterfly Mansion’s hall.

He had not looked at her once.

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(Kyojuro’s POV)

Kyojuro’s fists remained clenched the entire journey back to his estate.

He felt disgusted with himself. He felt like a coward.

It had nearly knocked him to his knees to see Y/L/N up and standing and talking because for so long, he had feared he would never again see the way she crinkled her nose when she laughed, or how she tucked that one loose strand of hair behind her ear whenever she was concentrating — the one that never stayed put in her braid.

But he had not been able to meet her eyes; couldn’t bear to bring himself to try, because he had been terrified of what he would see.

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Every night for the last two months, he has dreamed of her.

They were not pretty dreams, not like those he had before when he’d wrap her in his arms and kiss her until she laughed, the two of them living in a monster-free world and at peace.

Now, he dreamt of vacant eyes-tinged blue, unseeing and unblinking and frozen, just like the rest of her. He dreams of iced skin and blood and poison pouring from her mouth and her nose until she chokes, her chest rising once with a final rattle before it falls still.

He dreams of Upper Three, smiling deviously as he aims his fist to deal his final blow, and Kyojuro wrenches his blade down, desperate to finally win.

Only, his blade decapitates Y/N, not the Upper Rank demon and he is helpless to watch her head bounce pathetically to the ground. His hands are covered in her blood, and instead of disintegrating, her body falls uselessly to the side. Human.

As quickly as he kills her, the dream changes. He is in a lively street, filled to the brim with street vendors and women and men offering their services. It is night but the lights of the shops and gambling dens and pleasure houses are so bright that it looks like daytime.

He recognizes her by the back of her haori, and his feet move towards her, relieved to see her amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, her name whispering on his lips. But she turns before he can make contact, and though she looks healthy, her eyes — her eyes are white and unseeing.

I don’t understand, she pleads with him, it doesn’t make sense.

Kyojuro looks around in alarm and they are no longer standing amongst eager entertainment seekers, but among flame and wreckage, the once-ornately decorated stalls now smashed to splinters as fire slowly consumes the skeletal remains of the entertainment district.

He turns back to her right as a blade pierces through her gut, lifting her from the ground before letting her drop.

His hands shake as he reaches for her, desperate to check her wounds, but when she looks up at him, he stumbles back.

She is all wrong. Her skin is mottled and rotting from her face, and her hair is gray and matted. In place of her eyes are black holes, empty and cold.

Why can’t I come with you? Why can’t I go home, Kyojuro?

Please take me home.

Every night for the last two months, he awoke screaming.

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Y/L/N was alive; he knew that. He knew that if he looked at her, he would not see a corpse; but terrifying visuals aside, Kyojuro had not been able to look at her because he knew what his nightmares were telling him.

He’d been responsible for her near death.

If the Kakushi had returned with a box rather than a Pillar, it would have been his fault.

The thought that Y/L/N — his Y/L/N -- had almost obtained her own headstone in the Master’s graveyard had rocked him to his very core, for that had almost become a reality. She had actually died – for the briefest moment – in his arms; and it had been his fault.

Why can't I go home, Kyojuro?

And though Y/N had awoken from her slumber, her corpse still haunted Kyojuro’s dreams.

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(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N was sprawled on her infirmary floor, preparing her limbs for another day of rigorous recuperation training at the hands of her fellow Hashira.

She stood to stretch her arms and lower back, wincing slightly at the pull of her scar. “Don’t you start,” she warned her body, willing total concentration breathing to dull the persistent ache that threatened to derail her entire day.

Y/N sensed movement near her doorway and knew, without looking, who watched her as she warmed up her aching muscles.

“Uzui retired. It’s time for you to do the same.”

Y/N who had been in mid-stretch, righted herself and blinked at the Flame Pillar. “Pardon?” Both the news of Uzui’s retirement and Rengoku’s words were a shock to her.

“Retire, Y/LN.” Rengoku repeated in that detached manner of his that she hardly recognized. “You helped take down an Upper Rank. You’ve done enough. Let someone else shoulder the burden, now.”

“I see no reason to retire, Rengoku.” Y/N retorted, voice hardening. “And unless and until the Master requests it or I perish, I see no reason to do so.”

Rengoku exhaled harshly through his nose. “You were injured — seriously so.”

“As were you, and yet you seem to have no intention of slowing down.” Y/N said, coolly.

Rengoku’s attention stayed fixed on the garden outside her window. “And I was only unconscious for three weeks. You were out for nearly two months, Y/L/N. That is unheard of and frankly, unacceptable for a Hashira.”

“What is your problem?” Y/N was growing more irritated the longer this inane conversation dragged on, and it wasn’t helping that Rengoku still refused to so much as look her direction, let alone meet her eyes. “Is this about what happened after you brought me here? Kocho told me everything — I’m not mad.”

Rengoku’s shoulders tensed. “It was necessary. Again, I would have done it for any one of my comrades.”

Y/N felt like she’d been slapped.

“You keep saying that, yet you won’t look at me— why?” Her confusion and hurt were beginning to melt into anger. “If I am just another comrade, then you should be able to meet my eyes.”

Rengoku said nothing.

“What Uzui did for me— that was what comrades do,” Y/N continued, her voice growing stronger as her blood grew hotter. “But you? You and I both know you were under no obligation to bring me back from the brink of death the way you did.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Y/L/N,” Rengoku answered after a long moment.

Y/N took a step towards him. “I want to know why.”

“It was necessary.”

Y/N felt like throttling him.

How long had they danced around each other? How many times had they caught themselves staring at the other for a breath longer than normal, had allowed an otherwise friendly touch during a spar linger?

How could he have held her, half nude for hours, putting himself on the brink of death all for the sake of keeping her alive — and then tell her she was the same as any other comrade?

“What are we doing Rengoku -- is this to be our destiny?” Y/N demanded, exasperatedly, her voice hard. “We continue to pretend like we don’t care about one another until one of us dies?”

Rengoku remained silent, back still turned away from her.

“We’ve each had a near-death experience in a matter of months,” Y/N continued, throat working hard to keep her voice steady despite the telling burn of angry tears in her eyes. “By all accounts, one if not both of us should be dead.”

“And yet, somehow, you expect me to act as though the fact you carried me back here— that you put yourself on death’s door to keep my heart beating — doesn’t mean anything?”

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense for him to fight so hard for her, to make her believe that someone valued her life that much, only to cast her aside.

She hadn’t wanted to wake up, initially; she’d felt relief for the hair’s breadth she’d thought she’d finally met her end. He was the one who dragged her back, and now he wouldn’t even look at her.

It didn’t make sense.

Y/N’s fists shook beside her, and she felt the venomous words fly from her mouth before she could stop them.

“You should’ve let me die.”

No sooner had she let the poison drip from her mouth had she felt herself flying backward, back slamming against the nearest wall of her temporary room.

“Never,” Rengoku snarled at her, his arm pressing firmly against her shoulders to hold her in place against the wood. “Never say those words to me again.”

Y/N’s chest was heaving, and she trembled beneath him, her fury threatening to explode out of her.

“There is no place on this earth where you could be in peril and I would not find you,” he said quietly, his eyes a simmering, fiery orange. “Where I wouldn’t find a way to bring you back home.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Y/N said softly, breath still coming hard from her nose but no longer from her anger.

“Doesn’t it?” Rengoku was close, dangerously close.

Y/N wanted nothing more than to lean in, to close the distance that barely existed between Rengoku’s face and hers and finally be done with all the nonsense. But he had spent so much time avoiding her gaze until that moment, and Y/N felt more lost than ever, set adrift by the look of heat and longing that was mixed with the burning rage in his eyes.

Something tugged incessantly at her gut and it would not allow her to move from her place against her recovery room’s wall.

Instead, her arms came up to rest against Rengoku’s chest before gently, but firmly, pushing him away.

“No, it doesn’t.” She repeated. “And I am tired, Rengoku.”

The Flame Pillar allowed himself to be pushed away, but he looked at her with a small, cruel smile.

“Then you’re right; it doesn’t mean anything at all.”

She flinched against the ugly slap of his words. Y/N had expected him to hit back, but she hadn’t anticipated his venom to sting as much as it did.

She felt all of the fight within her gutter out, leaving her with nothing but a heavy weight in her chest that she wished she couldn’t feel.

“Y/L/N, I-“ the Flame Pillar almost sounded remorseful.

“Thank you, for your clarification, Lord Rengoku,” she said numbly, formally, parroting his earlier tone with her. “And thank you for your assistance that night. Please, next time — don’t trouble yourself.”

Rengoku hesitated for a moment, his hand twitching as though he wanted to reach for her. He swallowed hard, and turned away, shutting the door to Y/N’s infirmary.

The moment the door at clicked shut, Y/N exhaled harshly, stumbling back against her bed as she hugged her arms around herself, and she tried to keep herself from falling apart.

It shouldn’t have hurt this bad. They were both in the Demon Slayer Corps; they saved strangers all the time without it ever meaning anything other than good will and a desire to exterminate all demons.

So why did his insistence that she was no different hurt so badly?

Because she wasn’t a stranger.

Because, while she’d always known she wasn’t his, she’d still thought she’d been something.

As Y/N curled against her blanket, an unsettling numbness began to spread from her heart, quieting even the dull ache from the scar across her belly, Y/N realized that she’d meant nothing to the Flame Pillar all along.

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(Kyojuro’s POV)

He hated himself.

He utterly and truly despised himself.

He’d been hurt by her insistence that she did not know his feelings even though he was the one who’d opened the door, yet somehow, it still felt like a rejection.

So he’d hit back, only for her to visibly recoil at the sharp blow of his words.

He would not forgive himself, for as long as he lived, for the way the light in her eyes had winked out.

He did not know what bothered him more: the fact that she’d assumed that he regretted keeping her alive, or that she’d said “next time” he needn’t bother. As though she were counting on there being a next time.

He knew he should turn around; knew that he should barge back into her hospital room, drop to his knees, and beg her to forgive his cruelty.

He knew that he should explain to her why he found it so difficult to admit his feelings for her — that he had watched his father turn into a shell of a man and abandon his children in the wake of their mother’s death, leaving them to raise themselves. That he had vowed, as he’d watched his father drink his days away, that he would never be like him, would never abandon those who relied on him most.

He’d promised that he would never be a coward, even if, in all honesty, the idea that he, Kyojuro, could ever love someone that fiercely only to have them ripped from his grasp terrified him to no end.

As he forced his legs to carry him to back to his estate, Kyojuro wondered if perhaps, in his desperation not to turn into his father, he’d become the old man after all.

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(Shinobu’s POV)

Shinobu felt the Flame Pillar’s presence in her office before she saw him, though she was in no rush to give him his salve, especially not after what she’d overheard him spit at her friend.

“If you do not mind, I would like to send my crow to collect this from here on,” Rengoku said tightly, and Shinobu could sense his failing attempt to keep his fury in check.

“Very well then,” the Insect Pillar responded just as tersely, turning away from the papers and books on her desk to pull out the small tin containing the salve the Flame Pillar used to soothe the ache of the scar he now bore across his pectoral and shoulder. Rather than handing it to him, she tossed it through the air, the Flame Hashira catching it swiftly in his hand.

Rengoku nodded his thanks and turned to leave.

“I didn’t realize it was against Corps’ rules to care about our comrades,” Shinobu said icily, if not to signal to him that there had been spectators to his ugly outburst.

He couldn’t resist taking her bait. “Maybe it should be. It would be easier that way — for everyone.”

“Is that so?” Kocho sneered, no hint of familiarity or kindness in her features; nothing but that poisonous, deadly smile. “Well, if that was the case, then you would’ve preferred Uzui to leave Y/L/N for dead among the rubble in Yoshiwara, correct?

“You would rather us be searching to fill the newest Hashira vacancy, with her corpse barely cold in the ground-“

“Do not say another word, Kocho.” Rengoku warned, quietly.

But for Shinobu, anger was her vice, and so his warning only spurred her on.

“Tell me, Rengoku, if the new Pillar had been a woman, would you have held her the way you held Y/N?”

Shinobu’s smile was chilling as she relished the way the Flame Pillar began to tremble. “Or perhaps, would you finally confess to her, having learned your lesson from the missed opportunity with Y/N? Would you live out your days with her, while Y/N rotted below the earth, having never known someone loved her?”

“ENOUGH.” Rengoku roared, and for a moment, Shinobu thought the Flame Pillar might put his clenched fist through her wall. The silence that followed was tense and long as Rengoku struggled to calm his breathing.

“What do you want from me, Kocho?” Rengoku finally snapped, wheeling around to glower at the Insect Pillar, eyes half-crazed in his frustration.

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(Two months earlier)

Dawn was still far off, but the hall of her estate was a mess.

Shinobu knew that at any moment, another group of Kakushi would be coming through the hole Rengoku had left in her wall bearing the unconscious body of the Sound Pillar, and if they did so, they’d be stumbling upon the chaotic scene that had unfolded before.

Rengoku was still on the floor, legs on either side of Y/N, who was slumped against his chest and fully exposed from the waist up.

With some satisfaction, Shinobu noted that the dark purple bruising around Y/N’s chest was clearing, a sure sign that she had chosen the correct antidote for the Flame Hashira to slam into her heart.

But her hypothermia persisted.

Rengoku, on the other hand, was beginning to breathe rather loudly, no doubt as he continued to maintain his high fever for the sake of the unmoving woman braced between his thighs.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu crouched down next to the Flame Pillar, her hand coming to a rest on his shoulder, which burned beneath her palm. “Rengoku, we need to move.”

The man lifted his head up to meet her eyes, his own glassy and unfocused. Shinobu clamped down on the swear building on her tongue — he had fever fog.

Rengoku grunted at her before his head slumped back down, chin nearly touching his chest.

Shinobu tried again. “Rengoku, we are in the open hallway of the Butterfly Mansion. Others will be arriving soon. Y/N is completed exposed.”

That seemed to get his attention. Rengoku’s head lifted, his eyes narrowed slits, but nonetheless open. He grunted in some sort of acknowledgement and began to shift Y/N in his lap.

He turned the unconscious Ice Pillar so that her back rested against one arm that curled around her bare waist. His free arm slid to grip beneath her knees, shifting her into a bridal-style position to carry her.

Two of the Butterfly Mansion’s staff moved to help him stand, but Rengoku shrugged them off, surprising Shinobu as he managed to rise steadily to his feet, Y/N secured against his chest.

He looked at Shinobu expectantly and she began ushering him towards a secluded wing of the Manor, towards her private hall. Across from her personal office was a special infirmary room, walled off from the rest of the recovery ward.

Shinobu withdrew a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the heavy, wooden door.

“You two can stay in here until her body temperature returns to normal,” She said, as Rengoku made his way towards the recovery bed.

Shinobu watched as Rengoku, still wearing his zori and uniform pants, ever so gently lowered himself and Y/N down on the bed, repeating his earlier positioning of her between his thighs. He propped up one leg slightly to keep the Ice Pillar from slumping over, her back pressed to his bare chest. Rengoku leaned against the headboard so that Y/N’s head could rest against his clavicle, though it slumped instead towards her left shoulder.

Shinobu made to grab a blanket to throw over the two topless Hashira but stopped short as Rengoku made to move again.

He seemed to realize that Y/N, while also still in her torn uniform pants and zori, was still bare from the waist up, her body positioned towards the door. He frowned, his hand coming up to graze the side of her arm. He flinched slightly, no doubt at the persistent chill that lingered on her skin, and he moved both of his large hands down over the back of hers as they lay limply on either side of her thighs, intertwining their fingers.

Awestruck, Shinobu watched as Rengoku brought Y/N’s arms up to cross them over her chest, locking them in place by covering her arms with his own, as though wrapping her in a sweet embrace. Shinobu knew that he’d done so to avoid touching her bare breasts himself, or at least to do so as minimally as possible, while still providing her cover. And, due to the breadth of Rengoku’s muscled forearms, Y/N’s sensitive area was almost entirely obscured from view.

Rengoku had barely been clinging to consciousness himself, and once she was sufficiently hidden in his arms, his head dropped forward until his forehead came to a rest on Y/N’s shoulder, opposite of where she’d rolled her head.

To the unassuming eye, it would have appeared as though the pair of Hashira were simply engaged in an intimate moment, rather than one desperately trying to anchor the other to life.

Shinobu moved to place the blanket over the Pillars’ laps, before quietly exiting the private room.

“Seal this wing off entirely,” she murmured to Aoi, who had been waiting dutifully outside. “No one comes down here without my explicit permission.”

Aoi bowed to her before she ushered the other Kakushi out. Faintly, Shinobu heard the arriving shouts of the group bearing the Sound Pillar. She took a single deep breath, steeling herself once more, before moving to check on her incoming patient.

-------------------------------------------------------

Shinobu raised her chin, looking down her nose at him in disgust. “I’m waiting for the man who would have set the world ablaze to save Y/N to reappear.”

She cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m waiting for the man who used his own body as her lifeline, and who tried to smash open the infirmary door when he was delirious with fever because he thought that she had died while he was asleep.”

The Insect Pillar’s masked smile finally slipped from her face and her true rage towards the Flame Pillar shone through. “It is cruel to make her feel as though she’s done something wrong,” Shinobu’s arms folded across her chest. “And it is cruel to you both for you to pretend as though she does not mean anything to you. Haven’t you both been through enough? Are you not exhausted as well?”

A tortured look passed over Rengoku’s face. “It is better this way, Kocho. I do not want to be the cause of her pain, and I cannot survive going through what happened to her again.

“For all your talk about either of you dying, I’ve yet to hear you mention the equal alternative,” Shinobu sighed, gathering her papers and books. “The one where we win and you both live. What do you suppose happens then?”

Rengoku said nothing and so, Shinobu continued. “Suppose we emerge victorious – would you truly prefer for you and Y/N to go your separate ways – to never see one another again, or never acknowledge the bond the two of you share?”

“There is no guarantee that either of us survives, Kocho,” Rengoku said quietly, his eyes falling to his feet.

Shinobu smiled but it was no longer cruel or bitter; it was wistful. “And there is no guarantee that either of you die. That’s the fickle nature of humanity, is it not? The very reason we fight?”

The Insect Pillar gathered her papers and stacked them neatly on her shelf. “For the possibilities of it all.”

--------------------------------------------------------

The sun was high in the sky by the time Shinobu had a moment to check on the two unconscious pillars in the back room.

Uzui had required quite a bit of attention in order to stop the poison from becoming deadly, though the fact that her combination of the wisteria antidote with the amphetamine had been so effective on Y/N meant that Shinobu was able to administer the same to the Sound Pillar in half the time.

She was exhausted; the strain of the night’s events weighed heavily on her, but she had to check on Y/N’s temperature — if the Ice Pillar still had not recovered, she feared that hope was lost.

She pushed the door to the private infirmary room open and saw the two Hashira, still in the same position she’d left them in. Rengoku was deeply asleep, no doubt from the exhaustion wrought by his high fever.

Enclosed within his arms, Y/N remained unconscious but pink.

Shinobu felt the relief course through her, but she did not allow herself to relax until she reached out a hand to lightly pinch the Ice Pillar’s cheek.

It bloomed red beneath her fingers, and it was warm to the touch.

He’d done it. The Flame Pillar had staved off her hypothermia. Their only obstacle now lay in getting her to reawaken.

Shinobu laid her hand across Rengoku’s forehead, frowning at the scorching heat of his brow; his fever had worsened more than she’d anticipated, and he would need intervention soon. She turned to nod at the Kakushi who waited by the door to the recovery room, and the three of them moved to separate the Flame and Ice Pillars.

“Put him in one of the other single-recovery rooms. Tell Aoi to administer the fever medication I keep in my cabinet – it should dispel his fever within a few hours.” Shinobu ordered, as the Kakushi, with great effort, lifted the Flame Pillar from his position behind Y/N. Shinobu gently eased her friend down against the bed and pulled a blanket over her exposed torso. “I will also need a fresh hospital gown for Lady Y/L/N.”

The Kakushi nodded their assent and got to work, heaving the unconscious Flame Pillar towards the door when he awoke. At first, his eyes were dazed, and confused as they darted around him, but as he took in his surroundings, he began to struggle against the grip of the Kakushi.

“Please, Lord Rengoku, your fever is dangerously high! Allow us to help!” One of them cried, though his efforts to tug the Pillar away were futile. Shinobu supposed the only reason he had not yet succeeded in completely throwing them off was the fact that his fever had severely weakened him.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu said sternly, coming around from her position by Y/N to meet his eyes, though he only thrashed harder against the Kakushi as he began to mutter incoherently under his breath. “Rengoku, that’s enough. You’re safe. You’re in the Butterfly Mansion, and you have a high fever. Please, let the Kakushi do their job.”

But the Insect Pillar’s words fell on deaf ears as Rengoku began to hyperventilate, his muscles straining as he tried desperately to break free from the Kakushi’s hold. Shinobu was at a loss; her comrade did not merely look frantic – he looked terrified, desperate, and utterly beyond reproach or reason. His heart rate had spiked considerably, and his breath was jerky and uneven, as though he could not fully understand where he was or that he was amongst friends.

As she strained to make out what the Flame Pillar repeated, over and over, under his breath, Shinobu realized that his eyes were not unfocused at all; they were locked on the unconscious Ice Pillar in the bed behind her.

“I can still save her!” he roared.

It all made sense then.

Shinobu realized that he thought they were moving him not because he’d successfully thwarted her hypothermia, but because he had failed — and that she was now dead.

“Rengoku,” Shinobu said sharply, trying to force the irate and delirious Flame Pillar to meet her eyes. “Rengoku, Y/N is alive. Her body temperature has returned to normal. She is safe.”

But the Flame Pillar seemed not to hear her, as he only struggled harder against the Kakushi desperately trying to usher him out of Y/N’s room.

Rengoku was becoming more violent, even as the Kakushi finally managed to shove him through the doorway of Y/N’s room. Just before they’d managed to slam the door shut, Shinobu caught Aoi’s eye and nodded, the younger girl quickly disappeared into the Pillar’s office.

Shinobu watched in stunned silence as the Flame Pillar broke free from the Kakushi and began hurtling his body against the door, Y/N’s name falling from his lips in an anguished chant.

Rengoku was so delirious in his fevered panic that he did not notice Aoi slip behind him and plunge a syringe into his neck, depositing a thick stream of the clear liquid that Shinobu knew would have a near-instantaneous effect on his consciousness.

The Insect Pillar felt a strange sense of pity and remorse as she watched her friend slump to the floor outside of the infirmary room, a final cry out for the Ice Pillar falling from his lips before the sedative lulled him back to sleep.

-------------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV – three days later)

He didn’t know why he’d returned to the Butterfly Mansion.

Kyojuro tried to convince himself that it was because he didn’t want to wait for his crow to return with Kocho’s salve, but he knew it was a pathetic excuse. He’d sworn to himself that he would leave Y/L/N alone after their last argument. He’d vowed that the door between them had been closed for good, and they would only ever be colleagues. Nothing more.

But he couldn’t stay away. Perhaps it was because he’d spent the last few days stewing over their last argument, and somewhere, amidst his endless supply of self-hatred, he’d also grown angry with the Ice Pillar.

Angry, because she had put herself in harm’s way when he’d specifically told her not to.

Angry because she’d nearly died, and she’d threatened to take the last vestiges of his sanity with her to the afterlife.

Angry that she insisted on remaining in the Demon Slayer Corps despite having given more than enough of herself to their cause; angry that she didn’t understand why he couldn’t yet do the same.

Angry because she didn’t seem to understand his feelings at all.

Perhaps in another life, they could have had each other. Had they both been born into a world without demons, then maybe they would have still found each other and maybe, just maybe, he would have been able to love her the way she deserved.

But for Kyojuro, their relationship would always be defined by a series of maybes, and nothing more.

--------------------------------------------------------

It would have been a lie for Kyojuro to say he’d not been struck dumb by her.

She was stretched out on the steps of Kocho’s engawa, legs dangling off the edge of the porch as she leaned back on her elbows, eyes closed dreamily as she kept her face tilted up towards the cooling night air.

Long, lean, bare legs, he realized, an uncomfortable heat creeping up his collar. He couldn’t help running his eyes up their length, fixating hard on the supple curves of her thighs.

Why were her legs bare?

She looked…so unguarded this way. Her haori was draped around her shoulders, one of its sleeves hanging loosely to the side and exposing her bare shoulder – how exposed was she, the idiot – and her hair was completely unbound, falling in a silken river to her waist.

It was a stark contrast to the braided crown she wore at the base of her neck. It hit him that, not counting the night she’d nearly died, he had not otherwise seen her with her hair down.

He liked it. A lot.

“I finally rid myself of one migraine only for another to appear,” Y/N’s lofty voice snapped him out of his reverence, as the Ice Pillar opened her eyes to glare at him.

“If you’ve come for Shinobu, she is not here. She’s on an errand and will not be back until early morning.” Y/N turned her attention away from him and back towards the garden, her voice stony.

At that moment, there were a million things Kyojuro could have said to the Ice Pillar.

How are you?

I missed the way you glare at me.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Any of those options would have been far better than what came tumbling out of his mouth.

“I hadn’t realized you were indecent. My apologies.”

Y/N’s head snapped back to him, her eyes chips of ice. “Indecent?” She rose from her seat on the engawa and faced him fully, and Rengoku nearly groaned.

Indecent, indeed.

Y/N was showing more skin than Kanroji did on a regular day. As she stood, Rengoku saw that she was hardly wearing any clothing at all, save for the haori draped loosely around her frame.

The Ice Pillar wore no top but the bindings around her chest, leaving a sizeable swath of her midriff exposed to the summer air. Whatever she wore as bottoms could hardly be labeled as “pants,” given that their hem ended just short of the middle of her thigh, leaving the vast majority of her legs exposed to anyone who would happen to walk by.

The Flame Pillar felt as though he were overheating, and he tugged uselessly at the collar of his uniform shirt. As he looked over the scowling Ice Pillar, Rengoku found himself unable to remember why he had come to the Mansion at all.

------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N’s POV)

(Earlier that day)

“Ta-da!” Mitsuri sang as she pulled the small bundle from behind her, a grin wide on her face. “A gift from Shinobu and myself!”

Y/N peered down quizzically at the small, folded bunch of cloth in the Love Pillar’s hands. “What is it?”

“A new take on the Corps’ uniform,” Shinobu replied crisply, sitting down on the tatami floor of her office. “I designed it myself, and Mitsuri sewed it.”

“But what is it?” Y/N pressed.

Mitsuri joined Shinobu on the floor. “Your new training pants. Altered, so that you have more flexibility and less irritation against your wound.”

Y/N held up the tiny scrap of fabric between her index finger and thumb. “Are you telling me these are pants?”

Mitsuri and Shinobu nodded, smiling.

Y/N looked incredulously at the two women. “But where are the pants?”

Mitsuri laughed. “Think of it as a cross between the uniform skirt and pants, but more modified.”

Shinobu nodded. “I used the same material that our uniform is made out of but designed it in a way to be more flexible – it will mold to your body rather than require you to use a belt to keep it up.” Y/N unfurled the cloth and gaped down at it. “They likely aren’t suitable for public, but around here and during your training, they should be perfectly adequate.”

“Perfectly adequate?” Y/N repeated, turning the garment over in her hands. “Shinobu, these are underclothes! Not pants!” The Ice Pillar could not stop herself from giggling. “My legs will be entirely exposed!”

“Try them on!” Mitsuri urged. “Shinobu and I estimated they would hit around mid-thigh, so you’ll still have some coverage.” Mitsuri looked down at her own skirt in consideration. “Slightly more so than I do.”

Y/N groaned but removed her uniform pants and slid into her friends’ gift. She was surprised at how comfortable they felt; they had a similar feel to the chest bindings most of the women in the Corps wore, in terms of fit. The black bottoms had no true waistband, but fit snuggly at the dip of her waist, before hugging her hips and thighs until the hem cut right above the middle of her thigh.

“How do they feel?” Shinobu asked as Y/N inspected the new garment.

Y/N turned from side to side, testing their flexibility. “Good. They don’t seem to rub against the scar at all.” Y/N smiled devilishly at her friends. “Even if they do leave little to the imagination.”

MItsuri giggled. “I hadn’t noticed Y/N, but you have – oh, what did Uzui call it?” She scrunched her eyebrows in thought. “Oh! An ‘easy and deliverable type of butt!’” The three girls laughed, carefree as Y/N wiggled her hips suggestively in front of her friends, her heart warm at the care and consideration they had put into their gift.

------------------------------------------------------

Y/N mused that Mitsuri’s assessment of how she looked in the undershorts had been correct as Rengoku’s eyes raked over her as she stood tall before him, an unmistakable glint of hunger glowing in his amber pools.

Until they snagged on the thick, curved gash that extended from the band of her bottoms to just over her belly button.

In an instant, simmering fire of the Flame Pillar’s gaze had been snuffed out, something harder and colder taking over as he glared at where Upper Moon Six had buried his poisoned sickle within her.

Under any other circumstance, Y/N might have felt self-conscious at the mixture of frigid contempt that pulled on Rengoku’s face as he ran his eyes over her scar, but at that moment, it only made her blood boil.

“You should return to your room. You shouldn’t be out here exposed like this.” Rengoku said after a moment, his eyes moving away from her to stare over her shoulder, resolutely avoiding her gaze.

Y/N wondered briefly if it were possible to make someone combust with the fire of their stare. She was so tired and so angry at the way in which he demanded she stay at arm’s length yet felt utterly entitled to boss her around.

She decided then that she would not comply. Instead, Y/N took one step and then another, and again until she pushed past him, marching intently up the path she knew led away from the Butterfly Estate and to a secluded, grassy, hilled clifftop.

“Stop — Y/L/N” Rengoku growled, lunging after her, but Y/N, despite her injured state, was still faster than he, and she twisted out of his grasp before he could grab her and haul her back to the Mansion.

She probably looked insane, and maybe she was -- barely dressed, hair unbound, and striding towards that grassy hill up the winding path from Shinobu’s estate like she had any idea what she was doing.

The Flame Pillar followed.

—————————————————————--------

Apart from her close friendship with the Insect Pillar, there was another reason Y/N spent so much time in and around the Butterfly Mansion — its view.

Though she supposed this secret area she’d discovered couldn’t really be counted as part of Shinobu’s Estate — it was, after all, up a rather steep and twisting climb from the western-most point of her friend’s manor, and one could scarcely see the lights of the house once they ascended the small cliff.

Her thighs ached after nearly two months of disuse as she stormed up the steep incline, narrowly avoiding the sharp, twisting branches of the ancient trees that had concaved over the beaten path, forming a tunnel of gnarled wood that forced her to duck her head to navigate.

Y/N’s chest tightened as she neared the end of the path, the steady beat of the Flame Pillar’s footsteps trailing closely behind her.

When she finally emerged from the thicket of branches, she felt as though she could breathe again.

The path had given way to a cliff-top clearing. Soft, emerald grass covered the earthen floor, peppered with various wildflowers in vibrant hues of periwinkle, white, and pink. Towards the center was a thick, ancient oak tree, with a trunk as wide as a small hut, Its leaves ruffled lazily in the slight summer breeze. Fat hotaru floated idly above the grass while the crickets hummed.

The clearing extended to a point before dropping into a rocky cliff. Had it been a night of a new moon, Y/N would never risk coming out here for fear of stumbling too close to the cliff’s edge. But that night, the moon was full and its silver light was so bright that Y/N could see all the way to the opposite of the clearing, down to the summer irises swaying in the warm night air.

It was a pity that instead of feeling the warm serenity she normally had when she came out to her little hideaway, she felt nothing but boiling anger and a growing headache.

“You need to go back inside,” Rengoku said from behind her. Y/N ground her teeth, turning sharply on her heel to face him.

“Why do you care — I thought you only did that when I’m unconscious.” She bit back, and it felt good to see him be the one who flinched for once. “Or maybe it’s when you think I’m dying?”

She laughed, derisively. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve long since forgotten the rules of your game. You change them so often, you see.”

“Go back to the Butterfly Mansion, Y/L/N. You shouldn’t be out here. Not in your current state.” He said, voice as hard and unforgiving as stone.

“I’ve told you already that you are not in a position to order me around!” Y/N snapped, her words and her eyes chips of ice as she glared at him.

He was so infuriating — he had told her, in so many ways, that she meant nothing to him, and yet here he was, glowering at her as though her very existence incensed him.

“You’ve been nothing but unkind to me since I awoke, and you’ve given me no explanation!” She took a step towards him.

“Stop,” the Flame Pillar bit out, barely concealing the way he trembled with rage. “Do not take another step. Turn around and go back inside.”

If Y/N had looked pissed before, she looked downright furious now.

“Why did you come to see me while I was unconscious?” Y/N demanded, shaking. “You came every day, yet the second I wake up, you stop?”

His refusal to answer her, to even look at her, only made her seethe.

“You’re a coward, Rengoku.”

Rengoku’s teeth gnashed together, his fists balling tightly by his sides as he drew upon every ounce last shred of sanity, of restraint, left within him.

“Go. In. Side.” He ground out dangerously, his voice dropping into a growl on the last syllable.

But the Ice Pillar took another step towards him, her eyes blazing with a fire that could outburn his own.

“No.”

Rengoku’s jaw flexed. “Y/L/N-“

“I said no, Rengoku.” She was now within arm’s reach of the rigid Flame Pillar.

His eyes met hers, cold and hard, but she did not balk. She went in for the kill. “You have no say over my choices when my life is meaningless to you.”

Y/N watched the blow land, and land hard.

“Meaningless?” Rengoku looked at her and there was a new fire in his gaze, a hot, angry fire that threatened to burn the grassy overlook around them to cinders. “You believe I think your life is meaningless?”

This time, it was Rengoku who advanced towards her, bringing her within an arm’s length, and forcing her to tilt her head up to hold his raging stare.

“Do you have any idea — any at all — what it was like to see you, half dead in Uzui’s arms?” Rengoku’s voice dark, and harsh as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Or what it was like to have to carry you to Kocho, not knowing whether your heart would give out before I could get you there?”

Y/N refused to cower beneath the intensity of his gaze, her chin lifting defiantly. “Do I know what it was like?” She hissed; hackles raised.

“Thank you Rengoku, truly — thank you.” Y/N laughed, but it was devoid of any humor. “I am so glad that you’ve finally given me something to work with — so those are your rules, are they?” She was toe to toe with the Flame Hashira, glowering down at her.

“Well since we’re keeping score, Rengoku, do you know what it was like to see you broken and bleeding out on Kocho’s table after the incident on the train?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Rengoku shot back bitterly.

“How the fuck is it not-?”

“Because it wasn’t your mission to take!” Rengoku finally broke, his voice rising to a shout. He could not stop himself as his hands shot out and gripped Y/N’s shoulders, shaking her lightly in his torment.

“You have no idea how it felt to know that you had died — no matter how briefly — because you went on a mission in my place!”

“To know that — that you could still die because I had been too weak on that fucking train. Your death would have been my fault, Y/N!”

----------------------------------------------------

(Kyojuro’s POV)

And there it was: the truth that he had tried so hard to suppress, laid flat out in the open.

Everything that had happened to Y/N, the whole entire mess — had been entirely his fault.

His fault because he had been too weak to finish off Upper Moon Three, too weak to do anything but let the demon’s punch a hole through his chest like it was nothing.

Y/L/N and Uzui had saved themselves in the end; they’d completed their mission, defeating not just one, but two upper ranks. They hadn’t succumbed to their injuries until after they’d fulfilled their duties.

But him? He’d only been saved by the grace of the sun and the tireless efforts of the Kakushi.

He’d nearly lost his life and he had nothing to show for it. Rather than do anything to further the Corp’s ultimate goals, he’d only set them back, and nearly cost them something priceless in return — their Ice Pillar.

The woman he loved.

He had no right to love her, of course — not when his reprehensible weakness had forced her to be offered up to two upper moon demons on a silver platter.

She’d been there, the morning he awoke from his three-week-long coma. She’d been right by his bedside, a sob choking from her throat as she’d called for Kocho to come quick!

At first, he’d been confused, because he hadn’t understood why she was crying. He’d tried to reach for her, to wipe the tears spilling down her cheeks when the pain had slammed into him, causing him to seize, arm suspended in mid-air.

Never before had he not been in control of his body; it had sent him into a panic.

“No, Kyojuro, please don’t move!” Y/N had cried, calling him, for the first time, by his given name. a warm hand wrapping around the one he’d stretched out towards her, lowering it gently down to the bed. “Your injuries are too grave!”

He didn’t remember much after that, only what Kocho had filled him in on later — namely, that he’d begun to panic, his breathing flaring out of control as he’d tried to fight off Y/L/N, a Kakushi, and the Insect Pillar.

His recovery had been long and slow. His wounds from the Upper Three demon had resulted in significant muscle damage that had required weeks of intensive care and training in order to build it back up again.

Those long days spent at the Butterfly Mansion had given him time to stew; to rage against himself. He’d been frustrated, so unbelievably frustrated over his inability to swing his own sword for more than five minutes that he almost considered giving in and retiring.

And then Uzui arrived, and he’d mentioned an upcoming mission to the Entertainment District, that they had discussed prior to Kyojuro leaving for the damned train, and the Sound Pillar revealed that his intel suggested the possible presence of an Upper Rank.

Kyojuro had promised to accompany him, and then he’d woken up in Kocho’s hospital, and that mission had been taken off the table and given to her.

The panic he had felt had been indescribable; he had narrowly survived an encounter with an Upper Rank, but then he was forced to watch the woman he loved walk straight into the wolf's den, and he had been incapable of convincing her to stay behind.

While she had been gone, he had railed against and prayed to and cursed at the gods, begging them to bring her home, to let her come back to him alive and whole.

Instead, they’d sent her back as a near-corpse and had laughed at his pitiful attempts to save her.

And then, she had straddled that narrow divide between life and death for nearly two months, and he had been as helpless as a cat chasing a string — his desire forever in sight yet somehow always just beyond his reach.

After his brush with death, he’d made a commitment to himself not to think of his battle with the Upper Three demon, to not waste his skill and energy on the past, but rather focus his fury on ensuring that when they did meet again, he would emerge victorious. He’d certainly not given any thought to the demon’s slime-tongued words.

He’d been disgusted when the demon had propositioned turning him into its like — and outright offended that those creatures could ever compare to the beautiful transience of humanity.

But then he’d cradled Y/N, broken and dying in his arms, and for the first time, Kyojuro had understood the appeal of the Upper Three’s offer.

Because he would rather have lived in a world in which Y/N had been turned into his enemy than in one in which she did not exist at all.

The very thought had shaken him to his core; because it meant he was not fully dedicated to their cause. He had no right to call himself a Hashira; nor did he have any right to claim to love Y/L/N. Not when he’d so easily damn her out of his own selfishness. So he had run.

A coward, after all.

--------------------------------------------------------

(Y/N’s POV)

Y/N was panting, her fury rippling off her in near-tangible waves.

“So, this whole thing,” she seethed, her voice shaking. “Your whole fucking attitude — has been because you’ve had your head so far up your ass, that you thought my injuries were your fault?”

It was unbelievable. It was ridiculous. And yet it was so Rengoku that it made her ears ring, made her see red as she tried to keep herself from imploding.

Rengoku said nothing, but she could see the way his eyes shuttered closed, his walls flying back up as he remained intent on keeping her out. He turned and began walking back towards the path back to the Estates.

“I was right — you ARE a coward!” She shrieked after him.

He froze. She stood there, heaving, daring him to turn around, to face her.

“Do not call me a coward again,” he said quietly, his back still to her, but his shoulders tensed, his fists balling once more at his sides.

Y/N smiled ruefully. “Then exactly what would you call what you’re doing now?.” Her lip curled into a sneer. “Run away, Rengoku. It’s what you do best.”

A flash of orange and white clouded her vision as Rengoku turned on his heel and closed the distance between them before she could draw another breath.

Y/N did not have time to react before his hands gripped either side of her jaw as he slammed his mouth down against hers, furious and heated.

It was not gentle; it was an angry clash of lips and teeth, but it also stoked a fire so hot in Y/N’s belly that she did not care, and she fully gave herself over to the bruising press of his lips against hers. She gladly opened up to him so that his tongue could slide into her mouth as one of his hands snaked behind her head to press her harder to him, demanding that she let him take and take until he was sated.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. They broke apart with a gasp, leaping back from one another as though burned. Their chests heaved as they stared at one another.

There was a line drawn in the sand between them. If either of them crossed it, there would be no going back.

He was a coward, but she wasn’t. And she’d grown tired of this tedious dance of theirs.

Yet it surprised her all the same that he reached for her at the same time she moved for him, the two of them colliding like magnets as their mouths clashed together once more.

Rengoku kissed her like he was drowning, and she was his lifeline.

Y/N threw her arms around his neck and tugged him down closer to her, determined to take from him as much as he wanted to take from her.

The pair of them stumbled back against the ancient oak tree that sat back from the grassy cliff, Y/N caged against its bark by the Flame Pillar.

His hands gripped fistfuls of her haori as though he couldn’t decide whether to pull her closer or tug her away. His lips devoured each breathy moan he pulled from her as one hand tangled in her hair and pulled, allowing him to deepen the kiss.

She ran her hands through the fiery strands of his hair, gripping and tugging it as he explored her mouth was his demanding tongue. Y/N, emboldened by the way his fingers dug into her haori, let her hands roam from his hair and to his neck, and then to the rocky planes of his broad chest before settling on his hips as she tugged him flush against her.

His control was slipping, and fast. “Y/L/N, I can’t- I won’t be able to hold back.” Rengoku moaned into her mouth, his hands scrunching the fabric of her haori, his fingers desperately seeking to hold her closer to him. “Tell me to stop, Y/L/N.”

Y/N’s hands only buried deeper into his hair, tugging him harder against her as she slid her tongue into his waiting mouth.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered against his mouth between breaks for oxygen. “Never stop, Rengoku.”

Y/N pulled back from him, just enough to unlatch his hands from where they were buried in the back of her haori, and moved them inside its folds, right on her bare waist.

The burning weight of his hands felt exquisite.

Rengoku shuddered as he felt the smooth, soft dips of Y/N’s waist, his fingers digging into her flesh as he sought to touch more of her, his hands running across every inch that was not covered by her bindings or those glorious undershorts.

Lips still moving furiously against hers, Rengoku bent slightly to run his hands down the silken expanse of her thighs, gripping under her knees before hoisting her up to carry her away from the tree and lay her down in the velvety grass below.

Y/N felt as though she were on fire. The ache between her legs was almost maddening, and she was desperate to have the Flame Pillar sheathe himself inside her, to make her forget even her own name.

If she could not have his love, she could at least have this.

Her hands dragged down Rengoku’s front, coming to a rest at his belt before she began fumbling with the clasp. Y/N had just managed to undo it when Rengoku’s hands — large, warm, and much stronger than her own, wrapped around her wrists, stilling her.

“Not yet, you impatient woman,” he smirked against her mouth. He moved one wrist to join the other in his left hand before bringing her arms up over her head, pinning her to the ground.

Y/N whimpered and rolled her hips against his, impatient and demanding, wanting desperately to feel some relief as her core clenched wildly around nothing.

Rengoku chuckled darkly, the rich timbre of his voice causing her blood to nearly boil with her want, as he made his way down her body with his lips.

He first came to her chest bindings, growling in impatience as he nipped at one breast over the tightly wound fabric.

His fingers brushed against her sternum as he ripped her bindings straight down the middle, Y/N shuddering as the warm summer night’s air caressed her sensitive skin, her nipples pebbling at the change in temperature.

She waited for him to lavish her soft mounds, but the Flame Pillar paused, eyes narrowed on the valley between her breasts, right on the pale, lilac mark where he’d plunged Shinobu’s antidote into her heart.

Y/N felt a lump form in her throat. He’d reacted poorly to the ribboned scar on her lower belly already, and now her once chance to finally have Rengoku in the way she’d so desperately longed to have him was about to be ruined.

But instead of pulling away from her in disgust, he leaned forward and pressed his lips softly against it the healed wound.

“I hadn’t realized I wounded you,” he murmured softly, reverently as he kissed it again. Y/N watched in bewilderment as he pressed his ear against her chest, letting his head rest there for a moment.

Listening to her heart hammer against her sternum.

“The sweetest music,” he whispered, pulling away to look at her not with lust but with unbounded tenderness.

Don’t look at me like that, she silently begged, don’t give me hope.

But as quickly as the moment had come, it passed and the esurient flame in Rengoku’s eyes flickered back to life. His lips continued down her abdomen, hot and needy until he reached the source of her near-fatal injury.

His mouth paused at the scar left by Upper Moon Six, the one he’d so callously glared at not even an hour before. This time, he ran his tongue along it, from the top to its base near her hipbone, pressing a fierce kiss against its end before continuing his descent.

“I will either have to thank my old Tsugoku the next time I see her,” Rengoku whispered darkly as he pulled at the soft waistband of Y/N’s undershorts with his teeth. “Or I shall have to burn her sewing room to cinders.” Rengoku’s fingers slid beneath the short hem of her bottoms, pulling them down inch by inch to expose her sensitive flesh.

Rengoku groaned when he saw Y/N was not wearing anything else beneath her scandalous bottoms. “Definitely burning.” His hands, so large and warm ran up the outer curve of her thighs, marveling at the silky smoothness of her skin. “Because you are far too tempting when wearing them.”

The Flame Pillar looked wild as he leaned forward, pressing his lips against the lower indent between Y/N’s hipbones as he kissed his way down to where she ached the most.

He ducked around the center of her desire in favor of sucking softly on her inner thigh. Y/N’s chest heaved as her hands flailed next to her, desperately seeking purchase, until the Flame Hashira caught them in his hands, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on her palms as their fingers interlaced.

“Rengoku - just fuck me already,” Y/N groaned as the Flame Pillar’s face settled between her thighs, his hot breath against her bare cunt causing her legs to attempt to clench shut.

“Well now, that won’t do,” Rengoku tutted, his hands withdrawing from hers as he wound his arms underneath both of her thighs, spreading them as wide as he could to expose her core to his heady gaze.

Rengoku leaned forward and lightly traced up her damp slit with the tip of his tongue. His amber irises which had been locked on hers, rolled back into his head as he groaned at her taste.

“I’m going to take my time with you. I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time, Y/N.” He warned, hands tightening around her thighs as he pressed a light kiss against her slit, teasing her.

In the back of her mind, Y/N registered that he’d used her first name. But the graze of his lips against her most sensitive flesh had her crying out his name, high-pitched and breathy, and she watched helplessly as the sound made Rengoku’s eyes turn black.

In an instant, he was upon her, and he was ravenous.

His mouth latched to her center as though she was an oasis in the middle of a blazing desert, and he was a man dying of thirst.

The way Rengoku’s teeth grazed her sensitive nub made her abdomen clench, and she fought against his ironclad grip on her thighs as they spasmed, desperate to clench around his head.

Y/N moaned, head thrown back into the soft summer grass as she felt herself grow wetter and wetter beneath the Flame Pillar, her hands desperately tugging and pinching at her breasts in an effort to feel more pleasure.

Y/N felt as though she was hurtling towards a cliff that she could not stop herself from tumbling over as Rengoku increased the intensity of his ministrations against her needy cunt.

“You taste,” he ground out through harsh drags of his tongue up her drenched folds, “like fucking paradise.”

His mouth latched around her clit, giving it a sharp suck that had Y/N seeing stars. She barely had time to recover, to acknowledge that she was at her tipping point when Rengoku thrust his tongue into her core and began to fuck her.

Y/N came apart the moment she felt his tongue enter her, a rush of her juices spilling over his relentless maw, but he held her hips down and continued his feast. His teeth grazed her clit over and over while his tongue pumped steadily in and out of her, and Y/N was close to sobbing at the overstimulation.

The Flame Pillar kept his eyes locked on hers the entire time, the amber orbs glowing almost ominously in the indigo night.

“I- fuck.” Y/N breathed, grinding unrestrainedly against the blonde’s greedy mouth. “Rengoku!”

The Ice Pillar tried to sit up, tried to grab her comrade’s hair to tell him that she couldn’t take it anymore, that she needed him, but Rengoku was faster. Unfurling a steely arm from where it had been locked around her thigh to hold her open to him, he reached up her torso, his large hand splaying across her upper abdomen to restrain her.

“Sit down,” he growled between thrusts of his tongue into her aching cunt, nipping harshly at her inner thigh. “I am not finished.”

Y/N whimpered beneath the weight of his hand holding her down against the earth and the nearly painful ecstasy that Rengoku bestowed upon her between her legs.

Whether it was in praise for her obedience or a further act of torture, Rengoku then pressed his face flush against her core and rocked it harshly from side to side, his nose and the burgeoning stubble along his jaw scraping against her overstimulated and sensitive flesh.

Y/N slapped her hand against her mouth to stifle the howl that tore from her throat. Rengoku repeated the movement; it felt wonderful. It felt obscene. It made Y/N’s thighs contract around his head as her stomach dipped inward and a gush of her juices spilled out of her, more powerful than before, dampening the collar of the Flame Pillar’s haori.

For a breath, Y/N thought she would die of embarrassment until she felt Rengoku’s mouth vibrate against her from his groan of satisfaction. His tongue thrust once, twice more into her aching core before he withdrew completely, satisfaction tugging at the corners of his smirking lips.

But Rengoku looked nowhere near sated as he gazed down hungrily at her, wantonly spread out against the grass, the shredded pieces of her training attire strewn about, save for her haori.

“I will give you one last chance to end this now,” Rengoku whispered, kneeling above her but no longer touching her. “Tell me to stop, and I will. I will walk away, and no one will know.”

Though her body already ached from the intensity of Rengoku’s mouth upon her, she could not fathom stopping here, not when she’d barely begun to taste him herself. The thought of rolling aside to pull on the tattered remains of her clothing, to return to her estate and awake tomorrow as though he had not melted every icy reservation she’d held with his touch, was enough to make her want to cry.

Though her limbs felt boneless, she summoned all her strength to reach toward the Flame Hashira, to beckon him to return to her.

“I want you, Rengoku,” Y/N said, her voice a breathy whisper as tears clung to her eyelashes. “Please.”

Rengoku’s pupils exploded, his eyes darkening as he covered her nude body with his own. Y/N nearly sobbed in relief as his lips roughly caught hers, one hand coming up to cradle her face while the other snaked beneath her head, tilting it to the side so he could deepen his claim over her mouth.

Y/N’s hands rose, shakily, to pull at the buttons of his uniform top, desperate to feel his skin burn against hers.

“On one condition,” Rengoku said, moving his lips from hers to press against her ear, Y/N shivering. “You must call me by my name,”

“Rengoku?” Y/N questioned her mind too fogged by her own desire.

He nipped lightly under her jaw before pulling his face back from hers, smirking slightly at the way she whined when avoided her attempt to kiss him again.

“My true name.”

With clarity, Y/N realized what he desired. But he had teased her far too much already, and she yearned to return the favor.

So she looked up at him through her eyelashes, teeth sinking into her lower lip in such a way that made the Flame Hashira’s eyes darken.

“Please, please, Kyojuro,” she whispered, lancing a hand up his bicep. “Take me.”

The growl that clawed its way out of the heaving chest of the Flame Pillar made Y//N’s thighs clamp together. Rengoku — Kyojuro — pounced on her, and Y/N summoned all her residual strength to rip his uniform shirt open.

Kyojuro moaned into her neck as his shirt gave way and Y/N’s hands came to rest against his bare skin, her nails raking down his taut pectorals to the rigid planes of his chiseled abdomen.

Her lips began descending the path carved by her nails when she drew short at the dark, thick starburst-shaped scar that covered his shoulder and left pectoral. Kyojuro’s breath seized as she pressed her lips ever so softly against it, turning so she could look up at him from beneath her lashes.

Kyojuro was panting as she nuzzled against his scar, kissing it once more before gently gliding her hand over his heart and resting it there, letting herself savor the strong, sturdy beat from within his chest.

Just as he did before, she resumed her trail down his body, her lips coming to the edge of his pants when his hands wound themselves in her hair, every nerve in his body alight as she licked her way up the small happy trail that stopped just below his belly button.

As much as he wanted to feel her mouth around him, Kyojuro had been driven to the brink of insanity by Y/N’s touch, and his resolve was quickly dwindling.

“Y/N — my flame — I can’t wait,” Kyojuro said by way of apology, as he covered her hands with his own to still them on his belt. He slipped his hands down to grip her wrists, bringing them together in one hand and moving her arms up over her head, pinning them against the grasp. With his free hand, Kyojuro loosened his belt and his pants, and shimmied them down, kicking them off behind him. Y/N’s eyes widened at the sight of his proud length as it bounced against his belly button.

Y/N’s breath caught in her throat. She was no stranger to the male body, but this – she’d never had anyone compare to Kyojuro’s size or girth.

Kyojuro noticed her hesitation. “Is this – have you ever --?” Kyojuro breathed, hovering above her. It did not matter to him whether she had or had not, but he wanted to ensure that he did not hurt her.

Y/N shook her head. “No, it’s not my first time – but you are the first one to be so…well endowed.” Y/N flushed as Kyojuro laughed softly above her, and she felt his lips graze hers.

He pulled back slightly, reaching to grip the base of his aching cock tapping it against her soaked cunt in a warning and in permission.

Y/N seized beneath him at the spark of hot pleasure that was sent crackling up her spine as he rubbed his velvety head against the most sensitive part of her core. “Kyojuro,” she hissed through clenched teeth, rolling her hips impatiently towards him.

The mushroomed tip of his cock pushed into her entrance and Y/N felt herself go cross-eyed. It was heaven; pure, unadulterated, blissful heaven.

He was insistent on easing his thick length into her, but the throbbing between Y/N’s legs had grown nearly unbearable. He still wasn’t close enough, not nearly as much as she needed him to be.

Boldly, Y/N locked her ankles against Kyojuro’s backside, and with all her might, hauled him into her in a single stroke.

“Fuck!” he yelled, unable to restrain his volume as Y/N forced him to become fully seated within her. Her core was impossibly tight and so fucking warm and wet that it had been a true exercise of self-restraint not to spill himself inside her right then.

Y/N nearly screamed in pleasured relief at the way her body burned and stretched around Kyojuro’s considerable length, his base pressed flush against her sensitive clit as she began to grind furiously against him, desperate to relieve the friction that made her ache.

Kyojuro was still panting from the way Y/N had slammed him into her, nearly trembling with restraint as he willed himself not to finish before they’d truly begun.

Once certain that he would not climax like some green boy, he laughed quietly under his breath. The dark sound caused Y/N’s eyes to fly open, and her stomach flipped at the wicked glint in his eyes as he stared at her like a hunter stalking its prey.

Kyojuro leaned forward and took one of her breasts, harshly into his mouth, grazing his teeth over her nipple hard enough to make Y/N cry out in slight pain before he lapped at it soothingly with his tongue.

“You want me to fuck you, is that it?” He murmured between his ministrations, leaving fresh marks all over aching mounds.

Y/N could hardly make a sound as Kyojuro withdrew almost completely from her heat before slamming into her once, the Ice Pillar nearly choking on the breath that flew from her chest with his force.

Desperately — pathetically — Y/N nodded, whimpering.

“If that’s how you want it,” Kyojuro growled against her breast, giving her nipple one harsh nip with his teeth before pulling himself off her.

He sat on his knees, back straight as he began to pound relentlessly into her, his hands gripping her backside and holding her flush against his strong thighs. Y/N’s head remained thrown back against the earth, her fingers tearing at the soft grass beneath her.

Rengoku’s movements were just like those he wielded in battle — powerful; all-consuming; relentless; and unforgiving.

Y/N had never considered herself to be a particularly vocal person when engaged in carnal activities, but the way that Rengoku’s cock hammered into her spasming core over and over had reduced her to a moaning and whimpering mess. The only intelligible thing that fell from her lips was his name — Kyojuro.

“You look so fucking beautiful like this,” Kyojuro grunted out between forceful snaps of his hips against hers, the night air alive with the lewd squelching of Y/N’s dripping cunt as he pistoned into her.

Y/N looked to see the Flame Pillar’s eyes locked on her breasts as they bounced with the force of his thrusts. Between the moans and whimpers he pulled from her with every punishing thrust of his hips against hers, she lightly dragged her fingers from their place in the grass to her hipbone, and then up to trace teasingly around her peaked breast.

Kyojuro’s eyes followed every move, his thrusts hardening as she pinched her nipple and let out a breathy little scream, her walls pulsing around his aching length.

“Fuck,” Kyojuro grit, feeling himself twitch within her as he watched Y/N play with herself, spurring him to go faster, deeper within her.

He moved his hand under one of her knees and lifted her leg over his shoulder, allowing him to plunge deeper into her silken heat, and he teasingly drew his fingers up and down her outer thigh.

At that moment, as Kyojuro was poised against the silhouette of the moon, his amber eyes glowing as he watched where he appeared and disappeared inside her, the realization hit Y/N like a storm, and it knocked her entirely off her axis.

She was in love with Kyojuro.

Who else could make her feel so sacred and yet so angry? Who else had been capable of slipping past every wall she’d built within herself, capable of getting her to let her guard down before consuming her so furiously she had not realized she’d ever been in danger?

He was fire, she was ice. One of them had to give to the other. She’d just always thought it would be him giving into her.

Yet there, beneath the moonlight, her climax rising above her like a tidal wave, Y/N realized that she was powerless against the waves that rose to pull her under, to never again let her up for air.

Distantly, Y/N felt the Flame Pillar’s callused thumb find her clit and her climax slammed into her, and she succumbed to the endless sea called Kyojuro.

--------------------------------------------------------

As Y/N broke apart around him, Kyojuro swore he’d never seen anything as beautiful in his entire life.

She shattered over him with the prettiest scream he’d ever heard, and he could barely make out the drawn-out syllables of his name as her hips jerked up against his while her inner walls threatened to squeeze the life from him.

Y/N finally collapsed back against the ground, her body limp from the exhaustion of her pleasure. Kyojuro then moved in chase of his own release, his hips pressed solidly against hers as he rutted his cock deep within her.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his hands tightening around Y/N’s waist. The familiar electricity of impending release tingled at the base of Kyojuro’s spine, and his stomach began to clench as he began his ascent to his climax. “Y/N — I am going to finish soon,” his head was thrown back, and his groans were loud enough to alert anyone nearby of exactly what was transpiring between the two Hashira. “Please — tell me where--”

“Inside,” Y/N gasped, her legs tightening around Kyojuro’s hips in a feeble attempt to keep him within her, to ensure that he wouldn’t yet leave her. “Please, Kyojuro, stay.”

Kyojuro was a rational man, and he knew of one major reason not to allow his seed to spill inside Y/N’s heavenly body. But all those rationalities flew out the window at the sound of her wanton and needy whimpers and the way her heat fluttered around him and Kyojuro did not think he could pull out of her if he wanted to.

Kyojuro’s thrusts became more and more frenzied and bruising, with the Flame Hashira hardly dragging his twitching length out of her as he neared his own climax.

“Hold onto me,” he panted, falling forward so that his chest was pressed flush against Y/N’s, one arm going to wrap around her waist while the other snaked over to where her arm lay in the grass, gripping her wrist to pin it up over her head as his fingers interlocked tightly with hers.

Y/N hiked her legs higher up his waist, crossing them at her shins so that he was buried deep within her. Her free arm looped under the one he had braced above her head to wrap around his back, her fingers digging into the rippling muscle and scarred skin that littered his shoulders.

“Make me yours, Kyojuro,” she whispered against his neck, squeezing his hips with her thighs.

Y/N felt his entire body tense at her words and Kyojuro’s moans turned into shouts as he gave one final, deep thrust within her before he exploded. His hand tightened fiercely around hers with the force of his climax,

The pleasure that surged up his spine had been white hot as he pushed himself as deeply as he could possibly go within Y/N’s vice-like core. Kyojuro was not a novice to pleasure, but he had never finished as hard or as much as he did buried within her.

Kyojuro canted his hips, prolonging his release as he continued to empty himself into her, coming down from his earth-shattering high. Y/N mewled against his throat, her lips brushing against his sensitive pulse point as her legs spasmed. once more around his hips.

He finally stilled within her, arms shaking as he braced himself above her, to keep from crushing the exhausted woman beneath him.

He lowered his head down to her level. “Are you all right, my flame?” He panted, pressing a kiss between her brows before he rested his forehead heavily against hers.

She looked up at him from under her eyelashes and nodded shakily.

He no longer could keep himself from collapsing against Y/N, but as he fell forward, he gripped her and rolled, pulling her to his chest with his leaking cock still nestled deeply between her legs.

“I don’t want to push you away,” Kyojuro murmured softly after a moment, his chest finally easing as his breathing slowed.

Y/N made a show of looking down to where they were still joined, the Flame Pillar’s pearly seed slowly leaking out of her and onto the grass below them. “I think I’m about as close to you as physically possible, Rengoku.”

Kyojuro rolled his eyes and ground his hips slightly into her, causing Y/N to squeak against him.

“Quiet, woman, I’m trying to apologize to you.” He trailed his fingers up and down her spine as she nestled back against his chest, chin perched on his pectoral as she waited for him to continue.

“I was just so angry. After the incident on the train, when I woke up in Kocho’s hospital — I was furious. With myself.” Amber eyes met hers and softened to pools of melted honey. “It was never you I was angry with.”

Y/N held his gaze evenly, her voice firm. “But you took it out on me all the same.” It wasn’t an angry accusation — it was the truth; ugly and sharp. But it was real, and so was the tentative, knowing hope in her eyes.

“Yes,” Kyojuro breathed. “Yes, I did. And I am so sorry for it, Y/N.” His hand reached up to gently cup the side of her face, thumb smoothing over the soft expanse of her cheek. “May I ask for your forgiveness?”

Y/N leaned her head into his warm palm, and smiled, softly.

“You may ask, Kyojuro.”

He brushed his thumb along her lower lip. “Can you forgive me, Y/N?”

Y/N threw a leg out over his other hip, straddling him beneath her, though moving so fluidly that they remained connected at their base.

She rolled her hips against his, and he felt himself begin to harden within her once more. Kyojuro moaned softly, head falling back against the earth as he brought his hands up to steady her, fingers digging gently into her hips as she repeated the movement, again and again, until he’d fully stiffened within her.

“Yes Kyojuro,” she sighed, hands coming to brace themselves against his abdomen as she began to ride him. “I forgive you.”

Kyojuro groaned, his head thrown back as he began to gently grind up into her, goosebumps erupting over his flesh as she lightly raked her nails over his pectorals and the hard ridges of his abdomen.

He wanted so very badly to lose himself within his pleasure, to allow Y/N to consume him whole and never let him go again, but his atonement was not complete.

Because Y/N had given him every opportunity to confess to her before, and he had been careless with them; she would not open that door herself again.

So he would.

“And may I give you my heart, Y/N?” He asked, his hands gliding sensually up from her hips to brace themselves on either side of her sensitive waist, squeezing her firmly.

Her pace had stuttered slightly once his words registered, eyes widening as she looked down at him, and Kyojuro hated that he was the reason the shadow of doubt lingered in her eyes.

“Is it truly mine?” She breathed, resuming the intoxicating rise and fall and push and grind of her hips, breasts beginning to bounce as she picked up her pace.

Kyojuro’s mouth watered, but he restrained himself, holding her gaze. “It was only ever yours, Y/N.”

Y/N cried out then, her hips beginning to drop and roll into his with urgency. By the way her damp heat began to pulse and constrict around him, Kyojuro knew that she was barreling towards her release once more.

One hand left its searing position at her waist to drift down to where they were connected, his rough thumb toying with the sensitive nub that had her heavenly cunt squeezing him for dear life.

“My beautiful flame,” he moaned, “how lucky I am to have such a darling god be the keeper of my heart.”

Kyojuro rolled into her from below again, the hand still braced on her waist guiding himself to push deeper into her, as his thumb began to press harder into the apex of her thighs.

“Sweet tempest, please,” Kyojuro panted, the relentless squeeze of Y/N’s walls around his aching length beginning to drive him to the point of madness. “Please, may I have your love?”

Y/N’s moans were piercing as she half-sobbed above him, head thrown back into the night sky, the hoary glow of the moon making her look like a celestial deity given human form as she writhed above him.

“Yes!” Y/N cried, “Yes Kyojuro, you have always had my love!”

The moment the words fell from her lips, Kyojuro jolted upright, coming into a sitting position as Y/N’s legs instantly wrapped around him. He wound one arm around her waist to bounce her in his lap, the other moving to circle his fingers around her nub.

Kyojuro nuzzled her nose with his own, his lips mere centimeters from hers as he pressed his forehead against her and held her eyes. “Then come for me, Y/N,” he murmured, his breath tickling her lips as he nuzzled her again. “Come for me, my love.”

Y/N seized around him like a vice, her head falling back as she unleashed a euphoric cry.

The force of her climax had caused her to arch backward in Kyojuro’s lap, thrusting her breasts up and forward, and Kyojuro bent to suck one into his greedy mouth, his own release imminent. The warm sticky rush of her pleasure combined with the way her velvety, molten walls constricted around him had Kyojuro seeing stars as his seed shot into her, hot and fast, his strangled groan muffled only by the soft plush of Y/N’s breast as he filled her to her brim for the second time that night.

For a long moment, neither Pillar said anything as they came down from their mutual highs, Y/N’s head pressed against Kyojuro’s shoulder while the Flame Pillar kept his arms firmly around her waist, his fingers trailing up and down her spine.

“Y/N, are you all right?” He murmured into her ear, still buried deep within her heat.

Y/N nodded sleepily against his skin, savoring how full and complete she felt perched in his lap.

“I love you, Kyojuro.” She said so softly that the Flame Pillar thought his heart might break. Kyojuro pulled away slightly to bring his fingers beneath her chin where she lay against his shoulder. Gently, he tilted her face towards his and captured her lips with his own.

“My darling flame,” He murmured against her lips as they broke apart, his eyes sweeping over her face, committing every detail of her beauty to memory. “Thank you.”

Y/N gave him a lazy smile. “I cannot be your flame, Kyojuro,” she teased, “Not when I am made of ice.”

Kyojuro flipped her back beneath him and danced his lips teasingly across the bridge of her nose. “Don’t you know, my beautiful foil, that ice can burn just as well as flame?” He pressed a feather-light kiss against her lips. “And I have been consumed by your silvery fire since I first laid eyes on you at Final Selection.”

Y/N looked up at him in wonder, her hand coming to rest against his face as she adoringly caressed his cheek.

“I love you, Y/N. I am so sorry it took me until now to say it.”

-------------------------------------------------—

Epilogue

Y/N made back it into her room, sight unseen, just as dawn had crept over the horizon.

Feet bare, she padded softly over to her waiting bed, shrugging out of Kyojuro’s uniform shirt and falling into her blankets, not caring at the growing discomfort she felt as the Flame Pillar’s seed dried in her undershorts.

She just wanted to sleep.

Y/N and Kyojuro had come together twice more before the pair realized that morning was imminent, and they needed to return to their respective dwellings before anyone noticed they were gone.

Y/N had lamented that Kyojuro had shredded her chest bindings beyond salvation and had worried she’d be forced to sneak back into the Butterfly Mansion with nothing but her haori to cover her bare chest when Kyojuro slid his uniform shirt over her shoulders.

“No one will think twice if they see me bare,” he’d said by way of explanation, gaze dropping momentarily to appreciate the marks he had left dotted across her breasts before rising back to her face. “I would like to keep you hidden, however.”

Kyojuro then fastened each button one by one, beginning from the bottom as he kissed his way up Y/N’s torso until his lips found the sensitive spot beneath her jaw, which he’d nipped.

It had taken everything in her not to throw him down and have him for the fifth time.

Kyojuro had walked with her as far as the edge of the path back to Shinobu’s before parting her with a sweet kiss and a promise to return to her later in the morning. He had also mentioned, somewhat mischievously, that he would be inquiring into when Y/N could expect to be discharged from the Butterfly Mansion and return to her own Estate.

Her empty, person-free estate.

Y/N collapsed into her bed, ready to sleep for a precious few hours before her training would begin anew.

“So, do you mind sharing where you’ve been all night?” A dangerously sweet voice chirped from over by the door.

Y/N shot up out of her bed, stomach falling out of her ass, as she faced the smiling, enraged Insect Pillar seated primly atop her wooden stool opposite of her.

“I was quite worried, you know,” Shinobu tutted, the honey of her smile poisoned by the violence in her eyes.

Y/N had never been one to be at a loss for words, a quick comment, or a snappy retort always on hand when the situation called for it.

But to her horror, her mind had gone dreadfully blank, and her tongue was swollen stupid in her mouth.

Shinobu smiled like she knew, eyes slowly looking her over, and Y/N was left with the uncomfortable feeling that her friend could see every way she’d allowed Kyojuro to utterly defile her.

“Will you be in need of a contraceptive?” Shinobu asked lightly, and Y/N felt like she would drop dead right then and there.

“…Yes, please.” She managed to squeak, and the Insect Pillar turned to leave.

“I will bring it with your breakfast.” Her hand closed around the doorknob but stilled.

“And Y/N?”

The Ice Pillar whimpered as her friend turned to look back at her, all smiles and throbbing forehead veins.

“If you ever keep the younger girls awake from the sounds of your activities with the Flame Pillar again, I will poison you both.”

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

2K notes · View notes

mornington-the-crescent · 1 year

Text

The Poll

So, for those who don’t know, I put up a poll of, “Who was the worst American President?” The list was FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It got up to about 13k notes before I deleted it, because I was tired of the notes clogging up my feed. And the results were... telling.

About 75-80% of all the notes were, “Where is Reagan/Andrew Jackson?!?” Many of the rest, though, can be seen below:

What this tells me is that more than ten thousand people didn’t have an education; they had an indoctrination.

You want to hear it? All right, buckle up, because it’s time for a stroll down memory lane.

Why was FDR a bad president?

It is almost hard to know where to begin with this. Let’s start with one of the most basic ones: The belief that FDR got us out of the Depression.

Point of fact, No the fuck he did not.

Making American Depressed

If you ask almost any historian or economist, they will tell you flat-out that not only did the New Deal not end the Great Depression, but that it made it significantly longer and worse than it would have been otherwise. Hoover bears some of the blame for this, but the pseudo-socialist dogshit that was the New Deal bears the brunt of the blame for this one.

The stock market crashed in late October, 1929. Two months later, unemployment peaked at 9%. Over the next several months, unemployment started to fall, down to 5-6% by the spring of the next year. Half a year after the crash, unemployment had not hit double digits. Hoover’s intervention, though, did cause unemployment to reach double digits. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933, and unemployment did not fall out of double digits for the remainder of the 1930′s. The thing that actually pulled the US out of the Depression was the second World War; turns out that removing roughly 12 million people from the labor force to go and fight does wonders for unemployment numbers. FDR even said that Doctor New Deal was replaced by Doctor Win-The-War.

This was hardly the first economic downturn in American history. For the first 150 years of this country, there were downturns all the time. And what the government did was nothing, and the economy recovered on its own. But Roosevelt represents the first massive large-scale intervention in the economy. And government intervention in the economy slows economic recovery; when you have no idea what the government is going to do tomorrow in regards to the economy, it’s hard to make smart financial decisions, so you just don’t bother. After all, why do anything if tomorrow, the rules of the game are going to change?

Separation of Powers Who?

FDR issued more executive orders than any other President of the 20th century. He may, in fact, have issued more than all the other Presidents of the 20th century combined. Rather than letting Congress, the legislative branch of government, you know, legislate, he preferred to try to do everything himself.

The President is supposed to be the weakest branch of the government, but Roosevelt did everything he could to try to establish its supremacy over the other branches. When Congress didn’t give him his way, he used executive orders. When the Supreme Court challenged some of his acts as unconstitutional, his response was to threaten to have them replaced, or to simply pack the court with judges more sympathetic to his aims. This is a man who was openly contemptuous of the concept of the rule of law.

Here’s a fun entry from the notes:

Hey, you want to talk about fascists? Actual, honest-to-goodness Fascists, not just the modern definition (i.e. anyone a nanometer to the right of Noam Chomsky)? Let’s talk about the originals. Let’s talk about the inventor of Fascism, Benito motherfucking Mussolini. And how FDR openly admired him, and was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished”, calling Fascism the “cleanest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery [he had] ever seen”, and that it made him “envious”. And Mussolini, for his part, said of Roosevelt that, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices … Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”

When the guy who fucking invented Fascism is saying that he thinks that you are also doing Fascism, then maybe you’re not a good person.

Concentration- I Mean, Internment Camps

And just like his buddies on the other side of the Atlantic, right when World War 2 kicked off, Roosevelt thought it would be a good idea to take “undesirables” and throw them into prison camps. Roughly 20 thousand Italian- and German-Americans, American citizens, were thrown into camps, simply for the crime of having ancestors from countries we were at war with. And then, of course, there’s the 120 thousand Japanese-Americans who were likewise rounded up and put into prison camps, two thirds of whom were natural-born American citizens.

Almost 150 thousand American citizens, thrown into literal concentration camps, without the bother and expense of due process, stripped of their constitutional rights simply on the basis of race.

As for the concentration camps set up in Europe by the Nazis, however? Despite being told of their existence by people who had escaped, as well as journalists and lawyers from Germany, once American planes gained the ability to attack those camps, to shut them down? FDR refused to grant them permission to do so.

Commander in Thief

Executive Order 6102 outlawed the private ownership of gold, allowing the government to confiscate all of it. Once that was accomplished, the Gold Reserve Act allowed him to change the value of gold, debasing America’s currency (which was on a gold standard at the time), which permitted him to steal literally billions of dollars from American citizens, without any compensation.

World War, Too

There is evidence to suggest that Roosevelt knew about the imminent attack on America by Japan in December of 1941. He discussed with several high-ranking people in the War Department, and in his own cabinet, how to get Japan to fire the first shot in the war, so that he could get America involved. It would make sense: His oil embargo was designed to provoke a Japanese response, so as to draw America into the war. And once America was in the war, ordered the Philippines to be abandoned, outright lying that there was an army waiting to retake it once it had been conquered by Japan.

And as the war dragged on, he got quite cozy with Uncle Joe, Stalin himself. He helped to repatriate two million people to Russia, who very much did not want to go back, many of them ending up either in the gulags, or simply killed outright. And his constant concessions to Stalin helped the Soviet Union hold on to eastern Europe, setting the stage for the Cold War. Even when he was informed of Soviet spies within the American government, and provided evidence of their disloyalty and subversion, he simply let them keep at it.

Racism, Racism, and more Racism

Remember how you cheered when lynching was made a federal crime a few months ago, and asked why it hadn’t been done before now? Well, the main reason was good ol’ FDR himself. A bill was proposed in the Congress which would have made lynching a federal crime, and Roosevelt refused to pass it.

Or what about during the Olympic games in Berlin, when black athletes from America took home multiple gold medals? Roosevelt invited the white athletes to the White House, but not a single black one. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, said, “Hitler didn’t snub me --- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

And then there was his nomination of a KKK member to the Supreme Court; Hugo Black, who had zero judicial experience, was nominated simply because he supported the New Deal.

He also was of the opinion that America was, and ought to remain, a white and Protestant country, and that too many Jews was inherently a bad thing, because of how distasteful he found them. He boasted that there was no Jewish blood in his veins, as a mark of pride. He even went so far as to turn away ships of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi tyranny in Europe.

In conclusion

FDR was a massive piece of shit. He massively overstepped his constitutionally-appointed bounds at every available opportunity, massively expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of all other parts of government, and at the expense of individual liberty. He was openly racist and anti-Semitic. His economic policies brought ruin upon the American economy. He openly praised fascism right up until the moment that it was no longer politically expedient to do so, and switched to deferring to authoritarian communism instead. Almost everything that you hate about the modern United States can be traced directly back to this one man.

The fact that he is remembered as not just a good President, but one of the best Presidents, shows how utterly broken American education is.

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hopefull-mindset · 8 months

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How do you feel about the difference in Nagito's confession in Japanese and English?

In Japanese he kinda pauses saying something along the lines of 'in love with y...' before going on about hope inside.

But in English it's straight to loving the hope in Hajime.

I was hoping I’d be able to talk about this! If anyone needs a further explanation on the translation error, I recommend reading this first. It’s my favorite explanation because it deconstructs the Japanese to English process thoroughly, and the ambiguity of the whole thing really explains why Hajime was so confused. I’ve seen doubt as to fan translations being right at all, so I hope this helps out.

Now there isn’t many new things to say about a game this old with a large fanbase like this, but with new fans means more information to be spread (and misinformation respectively), so I’d be happy to speak!

UMMM I have no idea if anything I said down below is even what you were asking me, maybe you were just asking me about the decision of changing it, which um I don’t blame the official translators for going straight into it because it’s a fairly ambiguous line and most japanese fans go straight into it too when they qoute it, but official translators are not credible for their care of finer details that could be clearly translated into English, so it’s whatever I guess. Japanese fans also shouldn’t be our guide to consuming media of their language since they’re also just people, and I think it’s probably just easier to quote it like that without it sounding confusing the way it does in text.

This has been practically common knowledge by now to know that it was an aborted love confession, meaning there isn’t much to be said on its own. With all that’s been spread about this, a common misunderstanding is with the use of “Aishiteru” (愛してる) being “more romantic” than any other form of “I like/love you” (Suki/Daisuki), which is not true. It’s much more intense than the other two because of it directly using “Ai” (愛) and in turn used less compared to them because of its intensity. In same line of thinking, usually it’s reserved for serious occasions like marriage, a loved one on their death bed, a final goodbye for someone you care for deeply, etc. but none of it makes it anymore romantic because all three can be used platonically. It’s solely dependent on the context it’s used for.

It’s just like how we use “I love you” in English and how many things it could mean at once, albeit we don’t have three separate ways to express it. Well there’s actually more ways to express love, but you only really need to know these three. I know a lot of sources tend to say “Aishiteru” (愛してる) is romantic, but that’s most likely because you’re looking at sources that are talking about it in a romantic context. It’s not platonic in the sense that you’d go up to your friend and say it, that sends a lot of mixed messages and real odd to attempt, but platonic in that someone you truly have a deep connection with, family member or otherwise.

On the contrary, it’s much more common to use Suki/Daisuki (好き / 大好き) in a love confession and everyday life. Usually you wouldn’t even use “Aishiteru” (愛してる) in your entire life, that isn’t uncommon. So typically the most you’ll see or hear “Aishiteru” (愛してる) used is in fictional japanese media or songs. Using it in a confession like Komaeda almost did is like… imagine going up to someone and telling them that you want to spend your entire life together, meet their parents, fully commit to each other, raise children (if that’s what you want), and die together before you’re even in the relationship or even had your first kiss yet. Like obviously you’re not saying all of that, you might not even mean that, but it’s implied with the intensity of it. It’s that extreme and would definitely confuse someone if you tried. It’s not exactly for someone you just started dating either.

Why does “Ai” (愛) make it so intense though? Compared to other ways of saying love like “Koi” (恋) for example (not gonna explain that one), it’s the purest, most heightened form of expressing love verbally in japanese culture because of the giving and profound nature of it. It’s loving in a way that encases a warm feeling all around you, so painfully genuine yet committed. Its something that’s formed over time with much care, and doesn’t ask for anything back. It’s that big to use, but siamotainously it’s awkward and a little embarrassing to use because it’s practically unsaid irl. There is a lot to personal reservations and such, but as a culture, japan is more reserved with their verbal expressions. This doesn’t speak for the entire country, but just in general actions speak louder than something as literal like “Aishiteru” (愛してる).

I had to go over that before I talked about Komaeda because I don’t want there to be a misunderstanding with what I’m about to say. Sorry to break the news to anymore who was star-eyed after learning what “Ai” (愛) meant in context, but the reason I went over that first with extensive context is because Komaeda is not at all liberated when he uses it. Not only does he use it here in the infamous error of all errors in sdr2, he uses it when he talks about hope, talent, and Junko. Shocking I know, but that’s why I had to go over that “Ai” (愛) is not just romantic love so this will be less awkward for all of us.

Ignoring the oddness of it and how dramatic this usage is, it’s incredibly in-character for Komaeda to use it like that considering his sincere and devoted nature when it comes to hope and talent. He says himself that what he feels is selfless, so that’s going to reflect in his speech, but he uses it so casually that it feels like a joke. It’s a quite poetic expression of love, even with all the cultural context, so it’s fitting. He’s pretty no filter with how he talks about it, but with anything else with Komaeda—it’s more complex than that. While being 100% honest with everything he says, his deep connection with hope and talent is borderline obsessive and that brings into question his relationship with love.

I have many thoughts on how his hope/despair stuff works, but let’s stay on topic this one time because a lot is intertwined. With his usage of “Ai” (愛) with reference of Junko, we should all know he doesn’t love her. He doesn’t love the embodiment of despair and despises it in the same breath he even expressed love for it at all. What he feels for Junko is obsession through and through, but what he feels is still genuine connection, it’s just absurdly twisted. It’s why he still uses it, even though at most what he feels for her is contempt. He “loves” it because it’ll be destroyed for what will truly shine in the end. The connection is deep enough for him to take her hand and finally become one with it.

Junko didn’t twist his concept of love completely, it was already a little off, she exploited the potential of it. I’ve mentioned this point before in my twitter thread, but when faced with the motivations in trials 1, 2, and 3 he cannot see past their motivations other than their “hopes”, rather than their actual reasons: various forms of love. My immediate thought while writing was, “was it not really absolute hope that he needed or wanted, but instead the selfless love people like Naegi or Hajime could wield for others?” I can’t tell you how correct that is, but it holds close to when he said what he wanted was somebody’s love before he died.

To really talk about that with more depth, I’d have to do a separate post about his view of people in general. If you’d like to see that, just let me know. I really would like to stay on topic, and you weren’t exactly asking about that.

Now don’t be weird guys, it doesn’t make his confession any less genuine just because his concept of love is kinda fucked due to only being able to feel it through his obsession with hope since all genuine connection is very limited (non-existent) for him, it just puts into more context as to why Hajime was confused. He’s said something similar about his feelings of hope as early as chapter 1.

Does this mean he really did just meant the hope that sleeps inside Hajime? Well obviously not, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about this. It also doesn’t mean that his love for Hajime is on the same obsessive level as Hope, talent, or freaking Junko for the matter. Junko was a whole other situation when his mental stability was at its worst. Here’s what actually happened: right when he admitted he wanted somebody’s love, he immediately backpedaled that claiming everything he said was just something he lied about because he started to see that Hajime might want to grow closer and forgive him, and then then started rambling about total bullshit about Hajime killing him and the potential hope in him, even though he just said that he didn’t get the same feeling from him as other ultimates.

Very funny Komaeda, though I don’t think he wasn’t being genuine there. Maybe he did think that regardless of the “both miserable bystanders” comment because he also thought he himself could be ultimate hope in chapter 5. I feel like we knew this part well enough, so I’ll talk about the confession finally. I don’t know what compelled him to try and confess like that, but maybe he was trying to be more honest after what he did to derail him and backtracked again? Who knows.

He was starting with an actual confession, but why did he backtrack the way he did? I have two potential answers. First answer was that he didn’t want to weigh Hajime down with the burden of his feelings, and made it sound like his typical Komaeda bullshit instead. Second answer is that Komaeda doesn’t know how to express his love for Hajime and derailed it to Hajime’s hope instead because that’s the only context he’s used “Ai” (愛) in and is used to that. Him using it here doesn’t make it less sincere in his almost-confession, it’s just… complex.

Maybe if this was his only hint of loving Hajime, his feelings for him would be more controversial as “canon”, thankfully it isn’t! Maybe both answers are right in their own right, it would definitely correlate with my own thoughts about his stupidly complicated justification’s for getting closer to Hajime and making excuses for him. If you haven’t read it, I said that while Komaeda was catching feelings for Hajime as an individual, he made excuses for himself that the reason he cared for him was because he was an ultimate (meaning someone who carried potential Hope), but the only reason he let himself be close to a “supposed ultimate” was because we felt that they were similar and that he had “an air unlike the others”. Which was probably why he was so confused as to why he still cared after finding out what he did in chapter 4 because his justification no longer worked.

Although we know that Komaeda absolutely does love Hajime, I am relieved that they used different expressions of love here (both Suki and Dasuki) to make sure we know he does love him. Can it be used platonically? Sure, but the context does not position it like that.

That’s my um opinion I guess?? Hope you got more than what you were expecting? I wonder why I keep making long posts when it’s not going to get that much attention…. I was originally going to say that what’s important about him using “Ai” (愛) is the genuine intent there and not the romantic implication of it since context matters more, and that hasn’t changed at all, but this turned into a completely different conversation. My bad.

#danganronpa #sdr2 #hajime hinata #komahina #nagito komaeda #komaeda nagito #hinata hajime #sdr2 meta #sdr2 analysis #why is it when Komaeda is faced with genuine love for someone #he just has no idea what to think of it??#maybe part of the reason he never minded being alone before he died is because he always had hope to rely on to be his only true connection #okay i’m done

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atinylittlepain · 1 year

Text

Of Saints and Sinners - Chapter 8

Joel Miller x f!reader/f!oc

series masterlist

chapter summary: it continues to be a push and pull between her and Joel. Will they be able to overcome each other's steel?

warnings | 18+ canon-typical violence and gore, references to smut, angst

a/n | happy TLOU night :) I consider this chapter to be sort of a set up for the next leg of plot to this story, but there's plenty of angst to sink your teeth into here

Spring has pulled her verdant arms over Jackson, and Summer is close on her heels. The days are getting longer and brighter. The greenhouses are dizzyingly full of fresh produce. Ellie brings home a bowl of strawberries one day, and the taste makes Joel’s eyes water. But it’s not just the landscape that’s been set in a full thaw. She has all but officially moved in with him, each week a few more of her belongings finding permanent residence in his space. There’s a stack of her books on his nightstand, a folded pile of her clothes in his closet, two toothbrushes sitting in his bathroom.

While they go their separate ways in the morning, she is always at his place for dinner, talking easily with Ellie, helping in the kitchen. The first couple of times, Joel had found the scene strange, almost absurd in its domesticity. But, perhaps dangerously, he had easily gotten used to it because he liked it so much. She always spends the night, and when they tangle together, it’s like the first time all over again. He’d devour her if he could, that’s how much he wants her. The way she sighs his name when pleasure strokes down her spine, her nails grazing the expanse of his back, the taste of her and the way she preens into his mouth. They fall asleep most nights bare and slick with the salt of pleasure.

It’s in this position, a tangle of limbs and sighs, that they find themselves in tonight. She rests her cheek on his chest as he grazes his fingers down the length of her arm. His eyes trace the swirls of ink and scar that laces down her back. She no longer hides from him, and he knows it’s no small gift that she has given him.

“Can I ask you something?” She hums at his question, craning her neck to peer at him. He clears his throat before continuing.

“Will you tell me about these? All this ink?” He’s still careful about how much he pries, though she’s certainly been more willing to talk, he never knows when he might have pushed a bit too far. For a moment, he worries that he just has, but she offers him a small smile and nod. She sits up, kneeling between his legs. He still has to catch his breath seeing her bare body before him.

“What do you want to know, Joel?” He tentatively reaches a hand out to brush along the birds that sit below her collarbone, tracing down the swirls of ink on her one arm.

“Do they all have meaning?” Her smile brightens and she nods again. She takes both his wrists to guide his palms to splay back over the birds.

“These I got for my mother. Magpies were her favorite birds. Have you seen magpies before?”

“They’re a kind of crow, right?” She snorts, squeezing his wrists.

“They’re way cooler than crows. Bigger, and smarter. And wickedly loud.” She draws his one palm to her shoulder, down along her bicep where a swirling branch is inked.

“Cherry. And plum on the outside of my arm. My grandparents owned an orchard in Bend. We spent most of our summers there.” She twists in his old, her back facing him as Joel sits up. He doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before, but it’s now clear how the branches on her arm twine across her shoulder blades, following into the twisted trunks of trees that span down her spine. For the first time, he wholly takes in the expanse of her back, the twisting, silvery scars that lay under swaths of ink. He traces his fingers down the branches and she shivers under his touch.

“Alex is one hell of an artist.” She huffs out a laugh.

“He’s been working on a new tattoo gun. Putting it together out of scrap parts. Figure I’ll get something over the fresh scar.” His eyes instinctually dart to the puckered skin on her forearm. It’s healed over, but she keeps it bandaged during the day to keep prying eyes out. He draws his attention to her back again, and his eyes catch on a small figure in the one tree.

“Is that a–”

“Squirrel? Yeah, that’s for Jack.” A heavy silence falls after her words. It’s the one thing Joel knows not to ask about, that she’ll tell him scraps in time, when she’s ready. He knows that Jack was her little brother, and he knows she lost him, and that it destroyed her. He doesn’t pry, instead laying his palm over the inked creature.

“What’re you gonna get, when Alex’s gun is ready?” She turns back in his arms, nudging into his lap and drawing her fingers through his hair with a hum.

“Not sure yet. If you have any ideas, let me know.” She presses a chaste kiss to his mouth to seal her words. She seems to be thinking something over, thoughtlessly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Squirrels were his favorite animal.” Joel’s hands still where he had been skating them up her sides, letting them rest at her hips. He tries to keep his expression steady as he searches her face. She won’t quite meet his eyes as she continues.

“I would take him to the park after school and he never wanted to play or run around, he’d just sit and watch the damn squirrels.” She lets out a breathy laugh.

“I was always trying to get a laugh out of him, or just some reaction. So one day, we went to the park and I brought a bag of trail mix and just started throwing nuts and raisins to the squirrels. By the time we left, we had them eating off the toes of our shoes. It was so fucking weird, but it was his favorite thing, I think. We did it all the time afterwards.” She takes a deep breath, her shoulders slumping with the exhale.

“Anyways, um, yeah, the squirrel is Jack’s.” Joel knows there’s nothing he can say right now that’d be right. Even as she offers him a small smile, he can see the pain laced through her eyes. He dips his head and lays a kiss to her sternum before pulling her into his embrace. They don’t talk anymore that night.

…

The next morning, Joel is not pleased with what Ellie tells him over breakfast. Her old patrol partner is switching shifts and she’s now been paired up with Roger. He doesn’t miss the way she winces when she hears Ellie say his name.

“He’s not gonna be your partner for long, kid. That boy is an idiot. I’ll talk to Tommy today. Get the partners rearranged.” Ellie just shrugs at Joel, finishing her bowl of oatmeal before hurrying off out the door to get to her shift. Joel glances at her out of the corner of his eye, catching her smirk.

“Roger may be an idiot. But I’ve heard he’s good on patrol. You don’t have to worry about her, Joel.” He huffs, taking another swig of coffee.

“I’m still gonna talk to Tommy, find her a better partner. Would you wanna take shifts with her?” She looks taken aback by his question.

“I mean, do you think that’s a good idea? To have us put together?” Ellie still doesn’t know that she’s immune like her, nor does she know that it had been her immunity that had put her in so much danger previously. Joel hadn’t really even been thinking about that when he posed the idea, but now, remembering that day that Alex rode back by himself, without her, his stomach starts to churn. He shakes his head to clear the thought away.

“No, you’re right. I don’t like that idea at all. What about Alex?” She quirks an eyebrow at him.

“You trying to steal my patrol partner, Miller?” A smug grin settles on his face.

“Well, I may know someone else who’d be happy to fill the position.” That earns him a laugh, a sound that sends a giddy sweep up his spine.

“We did make a pretty good team, huh? Alright, I’ll talk to him about it. Pretty sure he wouldn’t mind.” She slips her palm into his. That’s new, the simple touches that they’re starting to share. Joel thinks it might be better than the sex, or at least a close second.

“I gotta go. I’m helping Maria with some new security plans. See you tonight?” He nods, watching her stand and clear her plate away. She sweeps back and presses a quick kiss to his lips, rubbing her palm on his chest.

“Be safe, darlin.”

“Bye, Joel.”

…

The sun is starting to set, and Ellie hasn’t come home from her shift yet. Joel is beginning to panic. He’s getting ready to set out looking for her himself when the front door opens, though it’s not Ellie. She looks just as worried as he feels.

“Have you seen Ellie?” “No, I heard that she hasn’t come back though. Joel, it’s getting dark, I think we need to go look for her.” He just nods, grabbing his gun and following her out into the quick darkening evening.

They don’t make it far on horseback before they see a figure cresting over the hill that lays before them. She keeps her gun cocked, but sure enough, it’s Ellie. There’s no sign of Roger. They set off at a gallop towards her, quickly dismounting when they come upon her. Joel’s on her in an instant, cupping her face in his hands and looking her over for injury. She doesn't appear to be hurt, just shaken.

“There was a cluster of them up near the dam. Jesus– they came out of nowhere. Roger’s dead.” Joel thinks to himself that he doesn’t give a fuck about Roger.

“Are you ok?” She just nods, but her eyes flicker down to her leg and Joel sees blood pooling in the ankle of her sock. He knows right away that she must have gotten bit again, trying to hide it in the presence of someone else.

“Ellie, it’s alright, she knows. About you.” Ellie’s eyes go wide and she shoves Joel away, her gaze darting between him and her.

“What the fuck, Joel? You’re the one who told me not to tell anyone. But apparently that doesn’t apply to your lady friend.”

“Ellie!” She steps forward then, placing a hand on his shoulder before he can bark out anything else, stepping between him and Ellie.

“It’s fine, Joel. Ellie, your secret is safe with me.” The girl scoffs.

“Oh yeah? Why should I believe you?” With that, she’s rolling up her shirt sleeve and unwinding the bandage on her forearm, bearing the still healing bite that wraps around her skin. Ellie is stunned speechless.

“Because I’m like you, kid.”

…

Ellie is silent the whole ride back. Joel goes to tell Tommy what happened while she hustles the girl home. She grabs their makeshift first aid kit and shuffles her into the bathroom, ordering Ellie to hop onto the counter while she sits on the ground to get a better look at her ankle. She pulls off her boot and sock, rolling up her pant leg, and sure enough, a fresh bite smeared across her calf. She lets out a low whistle.

“Got you good, kid. Let’s clean this up, alright?” She glances up at the girl, still nothing. She sighs and gets to work cleaning the wound. As she’s getting ready to wrap a dressing on the bite, Ellie finally speaks up.

“How did you find out?” She pauses.

“About you?” Ellie shakes her head.

“About yourself, how did you find out you were immune?” She sighs, standing up and pulling the collar of her shirt down to expose the top of her shoulder.

“If you squint you can see it under all that ink.” Ellie’s face draws closer to her shoulder, peering at the skin. She can see it in her face when she finally makes out the scarring, letting out a “woah” under her breath before backing off.

“Is that why you have all those tattoos?” She just nods, sinking back down to the floor to finish wrapping her calf. She considers not saying what she’s about to, but goes ahead anyway.

“You remember a couple months ago when I went missing?” Ellie nods.

“Well, it was because some people found out what I am, what we are. I think you know just as well that we have to be careful about this thing. Ellie, I want you to know that I would never, will never tell anyone, ok?” She smooths out the gauze on Ellie’s leg before standing, patting her knee.

“Now, you keep that clean and covered, and when it’s healed maybe we can see about getting you some ink, if you want.” Ellie grins, and it’s a relief to her.

“Oh, I want. You’re like the coolest person in this town and like forty percent of that is just ‘cause of your tattoos, so, hell yeah. Sign me up.” She snorts at that, squeezing the girl's arm before stepping aside and letting her hop down.

“Are you feeling ok?” Ellie shrugs, eyes settling on her feet.

“I mean, s’never a good day when someone dies on your watch, but I’ll be alright.”

“Hey. It wasn’t on your watch. Your da– Joel was right. Roger was a cocky idiot. He was gonna get himself hurt eventually. I’m just sorry it happened when you were around, kid.” Ellie just huffs, but still offers her a small “thank you” before walking off, headed towards her room in the garage. She feels her shoulders slacken from where they had been pinned up to her ears.

…

When he finally gets home, he finds her sitting at the dining table reading. She cranes her neck around to look at him as he enters.

“Told Tommy. Said he wasn’t surprised that Roger got picked off.” She huffs at that as Joel sits down beside her.

“Well I concur with Tommy. You hungry? I made dinner for Ellie and there’s leftovers.” He just shakes his head, letting out a long exhale.

“Joel? Did something else happen?” He pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling a massive headache rushing in.

“He, uh, wants you and Ellie to work patrol together. Sees you both being immune as a strength. I told him to forget it–” he cuts himself off when he looks at her and sees that she doesn’t seem as repulsed by the idea as he is. She shrugs.

“I don’t know, Joel. After today, maybe Tommy’s right?”

“You’re kidding, right?” She holds his gaze, steadfast.

“I’m serious. I mean, face it, as long as that kid is going out with people that aren’t like her, the chance that she comes back and they don’t is always going to be huge.”

“And just why is that a problem, so long as she’s coming back?” He can feel the frustration rising up in his throat at this conversation, the exhaustion and stress of the day pushing his limit.

“She may have come back this time, but I’m telling you Joel. Everytime she watches someone else die while she gets to live just because of the dumb luck of her immunity, another part of her is gonna get chipped away until she doesn’t come back at all.” He runs a ragged hand across his face, tugging at the roots of his hair. He can’t believe they’re actually having this conversation.

“You speaking from experience?” Her face twists up at that.

“Lose a lot of partners, huh? Had to come back alone?” He knows he’s being taunting, cruel even, but he can’t help it anymore, too lost in his anger.

“I can protect her, Joel. In a way that other people can’t. She doesn’t have to come back alone ever again.”

“So what, you’re gonna be some power team, huh? You may be immune, darlin, but you’re sure as shit not invincible. Already learned that the hard way.” It’s harsher than he wanted it to be and he can see the slight fall in her expression, but she steels back up.

“Now you’re just being a dick for the hell of it. I’m going to run patrol with her, Joel. Whether you like it or not.”

“No you’re not! Goddamnit! This isn’t some fucking game, don’t you see that? Quit trying to play the hero, trying to make up for the past. You can’t bring any of them back. You can’t bring him back.” It’s a shot in the dark really, an assumption he makes but it seems to hit the target as her face immediately goes slack.

“You can’t bring Ja–” She’s on him before he can even get the whole name out, her sheer strength taking him by surprise as she hauls him by his shirt collar and shoves him against the wall.

“You don’t fucking say his name. I’m taking patrol with Ellie. But you and I? Whatever this was? It’s over. Go find someone else to boss around.” She shoves him, hard, into the wall before turning heel and stomping out the front door before he can even get a word out.

Joel keels over for a moment, hands on his knees as he lets out a string of sharp curses and he can’t help thinking that he’s been somewhere very similar in the recent past. He slowly rights himself, dragging both his hands down his face. Before he can think better of it, he’s whipping around and punching his fist straight through the wall she had just slammed him against.

Everything goes silent for a moment as he studies his bloodied knuckles.

“What the fuck?” He swears he jumps a few feet in the air, finding Ellie staring at him like he’s crazy. He feels like he’s going crazy.

“Don’t ask, kid.”

…

Joel’s done caring. At least that’s what he keeps telling himself. He doesn’t look for her outside the childcare center, doesn’t ask Maria how she’s doing. If he sees Steve or Alex in the bar he heads home, not wanting to risk seeing her there. One day, he went out on patrol in the morning, and when he came home that night, all her books, her clothes, even her toothbrush was gone. He had broken two of his knuckles that night when he stupidly punched clean through the wall, and the pain is a constant reminder to keep his head down and mind his own business.

For once, Ellie doesn’t bug him about it, seeming to sense how torn up he really is. She does start taking patrol shifts with her, but she won’t tell Joel anything about it. He lets it be, so long as she keeps coming home safe.

A few weeks pass in this fugue state. His hand finally heals. Ellie keeps coming home in one piece. He’s slowly realized that it’s going to take practice, forgetting about her, and so his days are spent trying to forget. He takes on as many shifts as he can, working from sunup to sun down most days. They even elect him onto the town council with how much he’s been working with Tommy on shoring up security.

Spring has fully rolled over to summer, and Joel is starting to accept this life of forgetting until he’s forced to remember. Once again, Ellie doesn’t come home from her shift on time. He doesn’t wait around this time, immediately going to Tommy who agrees to go with him up into the mountains to look for her. The long summer days are to their advantage, keeping it light out still into the evening as they set out on horseback. Joel’s trying to swallow down the frantic panic in his chest. Tommy breaks the silence.

“You gonna tell me what happened between you and her?”

“Shut up, Tommy.”

“Easy, brother. I’m just trying to understand is all. It seemed like you two had a good thing going, then all of a sudden you’re avoiding each other like the damn plague. I don’t get it.” “Yeah, well neither do I. So just shut up and ride.” For once, his brother complies.

They’ve just made it up past the foothills of the mountain when they come across a horse. Joel immediately recognizes it as Shimmer, the horse Ellie likes to take out. He feels sick to his stomach. They dismount and start looking around, but there’s no one in sight. Just as Tommy goes to say something, the sound of a gunshot rings out through the trees. Joel doesn’t even think, already slinging his gun off his shoulder and getting it loaded as he starts to jog towards the sound, Tommy close on his heels. Another shot rings out, and Joel can just start to hear the sounds of shouting up ahead.

Before they get any further, something, or someone, is running smack into Joel, knocking them both onto the ground. He quickly rolls them over, pinning the person down, but his grip slackens when he sees that it’s Ellie. There’s blood splattered across her face and she’s gasping for breath.

“Ellie? Are you hurt?” She shakes her head hard.

“S-she told me to run. It’s a bunch of raiders. They would’ve already killed us, but– they s-saw the bite on her arm, w-wanted answers, how the f-fuck she was still alive.” Joel’s head is spinning as Ellie speaks, but just then another round of gunshots resounds through the trees. He quickly hauls Ellie up, barking at Tommy to get her back to town before turning back towards the sound of gunfire.

There’s a break in the trees, and sure enough, he sees her holding her own against a pair of men, two bodies already dispatched on the forest floor. He puts a bullet through the one man’s head, turning his attention back to her where she’s struggling with the other raider. Joel’s trying to aim for him, but they’re too close together in their fighting and he can’t risk it. She finally gets the upper hand, sending her knife up and into the fleshy softness beneath the man’s ribs, letting him fall to the ground with a gurgling moan. When she finally looks at Joel, it’s as if she’s in a daze. Meanwhile, Joel keeps opening his mouth to say something, anything, but promptly coming up with nothing. The relief he feels seeing her alive scares him into a stunned silence.

But then he sees that she’s bleeding. There are slicing gashes across her forearm where her fresh scar had been. The cuts look deep and he thinks to himself that it looks purposeful and it makes his stomach twist. She follows his gaze down to her arm, lifting it up to look at it in the quick fading light. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks, but still steely cool.

“Guess they wanted to do a little science experiment.” He could drop to his knees, her words make him feel so sick. She glances at him again.

“Is Ellie–”

“Tommy took her back to town. She’s fine, because of you.” She huffs, not acknowledging his last words as she starts gathering knives and guns off the dead bodies. She keeps her gaze down as she moves. Joel swallows hard around the thick pain in his throat.

“Are you ok?” She freezes where she stands. Joel can see the shake in her hands, the weapons she had been collecting clattering to the ground.

When she looks up at him, there’s tears collecting in her eyes. All she manages is a broken whimper of his name before she’s collapsing to her knees in a sob. Joel is on the ground with her in an instant, wrapping her in his arms as she wails into the evening air. Her words crack, punctuated by gasps and shuddering cries.

“I’m so sorry, Joel– I’m so sorry– I–” She can’t even get the rest of what she wants to say out, heaving breaths wracking her body. He pulls back to hold her by her shoulders, dipping his head to catch her watery gaze.

“No sorrys. It’s ok, you’re ok.” She just shakes her head, pressing her clenched fists into her thighs. He pulls her back into a crushing embrace, trying to press stillness into the way her body shakes with each sob until her shudders start to slow. She murmurs into his shoulder that they need to get back to town. He sighs, loosening his grip but keeping his hands wrapped around her arms as he pulls back to look at her.

“I’m so tired, Joel. I’m so tired.” Something in him shatters at her words, and he takes a sharp inhale to try to keep it together. It has become painfully clear that he was never done caring for her, that he probably would never be done caring for her.

“I know you are, darlin. I’m gonna get you home.”

…

Once again, Joel finds himself in his bathroom taking care of her wounds. She was quiet the whole way back, the occasional shaky exhale all he heard to let him know she was still with him. She won’t meet his gaze, not even when she winces as he cleans the gashes. It’s coming out of his mouth before he can even think better.

“We gotta stop meeting like this, darlin.” There’s a beat of silence, and then she’s letting out an incredulous laugh, finally looking up at him. For a moment, there’s a ghost of a smile on her face.

“We really do.” Her smile quickly fades, a crease settling between her brows as she looks at him.

“Joel, I’m so sorry. For everything. I just– I’m no good. I’ve tried so hard to just keep moving– to not think about– to not think at all. A-and because of it I hurt you and put Ellie in danger and– I’m just so sorry.” She’s clutching his wrist as she speaks, and Joel slides his hand to twine with hers, squeezing hard.

“Stop apologizing. Because of you, Ellie’s asleep in her own bed right now.” There’s a whole lot more he wants to say, but for now he settles with bandaging her forearm. She lets out another sigh before speaking.

“Been trying so hard to leave you be. You don’t deserve to get stuck with all my shit, not when I’ve been so awful to you.” His hands stop.

“You haven’t been awful to me–” “Joel.” “No, I was out of line that night. What I said– I just– the thought of you and Ellie heading out together– everything I– I lost my head. It was wrong, what I said, and I’m sorry. Hell, if someone talked to me like that about Sarah, I’d probably– I’d–”

“Punch a hole through a wall?” There’s a slight smirk tugging on the corner of her mouth, Joel huffs.

“She told you about that, huh?” Her smile cracks a little wider as she shrugs. He squeezes her hand again, letting out a laugh.

“That little shit.” They’re both laughing now and it feels impossibly good. Joel lets out a sigh, finally letting go of her hand to finish wrapping her arm. His voice is a low murmur as he speaks.

“I don’t mind. Being stuck with you. Long as you’re ok being stuck with me. Don’t think I can really help it, to be honest.” He presses his palm into the bandage for good measure before looking at her again. She slides her hand along the scruff of his jaw and feeling her touch like this again is like finally coming up for air after all these weeks.

“I guess we’re just gonna have to be fucked up together, huh?” He smiles, tilting his head to lay a kiss to her palm.

“I guess so, darlin.”

They strip down to nothing before getting into bed, pressing as close as they can and letting their steady heartbeats slow the ebb and flow of their breathing.

“Joel? Wanna introduce you to someone tomorrow, can I?” She peers up at him from her place on his chest and he nods.

“Who am I meeting?” Her fingers brush down his arm before taking his hand.

“His name is Will. He lives at the childcare center.”

#joel miller angst #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller smut #joel miller x oc #the last of us #tlou fanfiction #tlou

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callsigndragon · 1 year

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A Rebel In My Soul | Chapter 11: Airborne

Pairing: Jake “Hangman” Seresin x Fem!Mitchell!Reader

Word count: 3.6k

Warnings: MISSION CHAPTER with this, you can know basically all that happens, but here are the warnings. guns, missiles, explosions, mentions of death... you know the deal.

Summary: Y/N “Rebel” Mitchell is one of the best aviators of her generation. She grew up hearing the adventures and stories of Maverick, her father, that he used as bedtime stories. She became an aviator with her best friend Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw and now both of them have to come back to the Top Gun Academy for an important mission. Only the best of the best is called for this mission, including the southern idiot called Jake “Hangman” Seresin. Both of you had hated each other since day one. Now, having to work together once more, you count the days for this mission to be over, not only to never see Hangman again, but to also cut all connections again with your father.

Tag list: @callmemana @theprettytragic @thatoneweirdhorsegirl913 @shrimping-for-all @inky-sun @popcrone818 @blue-aconite @milestellerwife @chaoticassidy @smoothdogsgirl @nemtodd-barnes1923 @bregarc @alanadetigy @starkleila @plutotcles @bradleysgirl @dempy @stinkyjax @justanothermagicalsara @harper1666

All TGM tag list: @tayrae515 @alexxavicryy @xoxabs88xox @girlonfireice @elenavampire21 @littlebadariell

(if you wanna be tagged comment here or sent an ask!)

A/N: You're gonna hate me, but i've decided to make this chapter into two separate ones. So, there's one more chapter apart from this AND the epilogue.

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Sleeping is difficult when you have to fly an F-18 on an almost suicidal mission the next day. You spent all night tossing and turning on your bed, trying not to wake Phoenix, who was sleeping below you. A little voice inside you says that something will happen. Something bad. You try to silence it and go to sleep. Once you manage, your dreams are filled with the worst possible scenarios.

You give up, knowing that nothing will make you sleep tonight. Phoenix's bed creaks when she gets up. She looks at you, signaling with her head to move over, and she sits down with you. She just grabs your hand, holding it tightly. There’s no need for words. She doesn’t need you to verbalize your thoughts. It’s obvious what you’re thinking.

There are seven people going up there. And three of them are vital for you. If you lose any of them up there… You can’t even think of that now.

“Mav is the best pilot I’ve ever seen, Rooster is very careful when it comes down to this type of mission, and Hangman is not the man he was two weeks ago. He has something to fight for now. A reason to come back”

You nod, silently, a single tear going down your face. She’s right. You know she’s right.

It doesn’t make you any less scared, though.

“Hangman, Rebel, I have something for you” informs you Payback after the briefing ends, and you’re preparing yourself to get on your plane.

“What is it?” Hangman asks, very interested.

“Well, I took this the other day, and I thought you should have it. I made a copy” Payback hands you two Polaroids, one for each. It’s the same photo. Jake and you, sitting next to Nat’s pool and smiling at each other. You can see the love in Jake’s eyes. “For the cockpit”

“Thank you, Reuben” you hug him tightly and Jake pats his back before leaving.

“Mitchell” calls Warlock. You quickly hide the Polaroid in your suit and go to him.

“Sir?”

“Your father needs a bit of reassurance. Care to join me?” he smiles.

“Gladly, sir” you follow him to where Maverick is. You and him have many things in common, and overthinking is one of them.

Mav is pacing back and forth in front of his and Rooster’s aircraft. He looks like he is questioning if he has done the right thing.

“Captain Mitchell. This is your place. You’re where you belong” Warlock says, making your father’s gaze move from the floor to your two.

“C’mon, Dad. Let’s go out there and make them proud”

Minutes later, Maverick is ready to get into his F-18. You are next to him, somehow not wanting to leave. It’s the same feeling you had when you were a kid, and he drove you to school. You stood next to him until the last moment, not wanting to let go, in case that was the last time you saw his face. Yet, this time, it feels like it can actually be the last time you see his face.

Rooster gets closer, he tries to say something to Maverick. He doesn’t know how to. He’s spent so many years being hostile to your father, and now it’s like he can’t find the right words to say goodbye.

You put your helmet on, Maverick and Rooster copying your movements. You hit Rooster’s helmet two times, and then Maverick’s.

“We’ll talk when we get back, Rooster” your father says, knowing that Bradley is trying to say goodbye in case one of them doesn’t make it.

Your friend nods, and turns around to prepare his aircraft. You look at Maverick, patting his back and moving away. You want to hug him, to feel secure in your father’s arms just like you did when you had a nightmare. It’s not fair.

You just got him back. And you have to say goodbye again.

“I don’t like that look” says Jake when you get to your F-18. He had been waiting for you to say goodbye to your family.

“It’s the only one I got” you mutter.

“I want to kiss you. But I can’t” he confesses, gritting his teeth, and leaning against the plane.

“Put on your helmet” it’s the only thing you say. He looks at you, not understanding why the sudden change in the conversation. But he does as you tell him to, and then, you hit his helmet. Three times, not two.

“Why three?” he asks.

“I love you has three words, right?”

He sighs, and hangs his head. “Yes, yes it does”

And he does the same. Three hits. And a soft smile. “I love you, too”

You jump into your plane quickly, not wanting to say goodbye to him. You just can’t.

“Dagger one, up and ready” says Mav through the radio.

“Dagger five, up and ready” you confirm your status, and wait until everyone is ready.

Coyote has been chosen as Dagger spare. You just beg whoever's listening that he doesn’t have to turn on the engines. That would mean that something has gone very wrong.

Dagger one, two, three, four, five and six are now airborne. The radio is silent, only Rooster’s breathing can be heard. He’s nervous. More than you’ve ever seen him. It’s an important mission, and he really should have his head on the game. You just hope that he snaps out of it.

Maverick checks with Comanche that everything is okay. Once he has the green light, the mission begins.

“Daggers descending below radar” Maverick orders.

You descend through the clouds. How many times you had thought how lucky pilots were to be able to see these amazing images. Now, you wish that it was someone else here and not your family.

“Here we go, enemy territory ahead” informs Maverick once you’ve descended below radar and got confirmation that you were now invisible.

Rooster’s breathing is getting worse by the second. You don’t like this. Not even a bit. But you can’t say anything, however. Asking if one of the pilots is ready to continue would put the whole mission in risk. So you decide to stay quiet and look out for him.

Comanche’s com officer and Maverick exchange orders. The moment has come. Tomahawks will be launched in a second, ready to destroy the enemy base and their runway, so they don’t have any possibility of launching a plane.

“Dagger attack”

Seconds later, the tomahawks fly over your head, ready to destroy the target. There is no turning back now. Once they hit its target, the enemy will know you’re there.

“Daggers, assume attack formation”

You move just a bit, enough to be behind Payback and Fanboy. Hangman is now behind you. If someone is to have your back, there’s no one else better than him.

Your dad’s the only one talking for now, giving orders. It’s soothing, in a way, to hear the same voice that used to read you bedtime stories, now telling you the next steps to follow. Maverick now orders to turn on the timer. 2 minutes and 30 seconds, just like you did a few days ago. It’s easy, you’ve done it before, right?

But you didn’t have to worry about your boyfriend and your friend in that course.

You keep moving, already increasing your speed to meet the target. The place is covered in snow; there’s even a frozen lake. It would be a good place to spend the winter.

“First SAM site ahead” informs Maverick, making you look at the missiles in the hill. Damn those are big.

“Looks like we’re clear on radar, Mav” Phoenix says. It’s too soon to be tempting our luck.

“Let’s not take it for granted” he answers, agreeing with your inner voice.

You keep moving. Thirty seconds had passed already. You’re getting closer to the target. Your body is already feeling the consequences of the high-g’s. It’s getting difficult to breathe, let alone talk. You think it is better not to talk and save energies for the 10 g’s you’ll be facing in a few minutes.

Payback’s slowing down a bit, instead of going faster.

“Payback is everything okay?” you ask.

“Rooster, we’re behind we gotta move” Payback doesn’t answer you directly, but his words let you know that your fears were right. Rooster is not okay, and he’s not flying fast enough.

“Dagger, Comanche. We’re picking up two bandits. Single group, two contacts”

“Shit, where do they come from?” questions Hangman aloud.

“I don’t know, but let’s keep an eye on ‘em” you answer. After all, your mission is to make sure that any enemy aircrafts are destroyed if they engage with one of you.

“Comanche, what’s their heading?” Phoenix talks to the com officer, wanting to find out if they’re coming in your direction or not. Com officer’s response reveals that they are going in other direction.

“They’re headed away from us. They don’t know we’re here” Rooster says. Has he snapped yet? Is he in the right mind state?

“For now, at least. Wait a few minutes, and they will come back” you state, knowing that is true. Once the tomahawks explode, those two will turn to see what is happening.

“Exactly.” Maverick agrees “They will come to defend their target.”

“We have to get there before they do, Mav” says Hangman, and you know that deep down, he’s trying to make Rooster go faster.

“Increase speed” Maverick orders. And you see Maverick, Phoenix and Bob flying away. But Rooster doesn’t move faster.

Com officer confirms tomahawks impact. Enemy runway is now destroyed and bandits are switching course to defend the target. Just like you said before.

“Rooster, where are you?” Maverick asks. Damn, Rooster, you need to move now.

Payback repeats himself again, trying to make Rooster go faster. “Bandits inbound. We got to make up time now. Let’s turn and burn”

You wait for a few more seconds, to see if Rooster actually does what he’s told to. But he doesn’t move any less fast. It’s getting on your nerves. Maverick, Phoenix and Bob are, surely, way ahead of you, and you’re fearing that they will egress and get in coffin corner without you and Hangman being nearby.

“Bandits are two minutes from target”

“Guys, we’re falling behind. We really gotta move” this time is Fanboy the one trying to put some sense into Rooster’s mind. When you get out of this plane you’re gonna punch him.

“If we don’t increase our speed right now, those bandits are gonna be waiting for us when we reach the target” Payback follows, but it doesn’t work.

“Rooster, we need you to go faster” you’re practically begging.

“Talk to me, dad” it’s the only thing he says.

“Oh shit” you let out. He’s full of fear, scared to end up like his father. It’s understandable, but it’s not the moment right now. His fear is putting everyone at risk.

“Come on, kid, you can do it. Don’t think just do” says Maverick.

It’s funny how Rooster has asked for his dad to talk to him, and the first answer he gets it’s from Maverick… the closest thing to a father figure he can remember.

Guess his dad did talk to him, after all.

His words seem to work because Rooster moves faster than before. Faster than it should , actually.

“Jesus, Rooster, not that fast!”

“I swear to god…” you sigh, regretting that Maverick told him to ‘not think’. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t follow that order to the T.

“That’s it kid, that’s it” Maverick praises him.

“All right, let’s go” Rooster says, as if he wasn’t the one making them slower twenty seconds ago.

“Damn, Rooster. Take it easy” Fanboy practically yells through the radio, making you roll your eyes. It's like Rooster and Hangman had changed personalities. Rooster flying so fast that he’s almost leaving behind Payback, Fanboy, Hangman and you. And Hangman is behind you, quietly following orders and making sure that everyone goes home after this.

“Rebel?”

Speaking of the devil.

“Yes, Hangman?”

“Remind me to whack Rooster later”

You laugh. “Aye, aye, Lt.”

Dagger one and three are thirty seconds away from target. Maverick commands Bob to check the laser, to see if everything is good. Bob assures him that everything is okay. Good. You don’t need more drama in this mission.

You come closer to an aqueduct, or perhaps a bridge. You’re not sure. It seems like an old construction, made of stone. It has big arcs underneath. There’s enough space for you to fly through them vertically.

“Watch your heads” warns Rooster.

Even though you still want to hit him with your helmet, he’s doing better now. That’s the Rooster you need on this mission. Confident.

Rooster goes under the bridge, Payback and Fanboy follow behind. Fanboy seems to be really scared by the sudden proximity.

“Payback, you with me?”

“Right behind you” answers Reuben.

“Rebel, Hangman?” Rooster wants to check on you, too.

“Keep going, Rooster. We’re here” reassures him Hangman.

“Phoenix, get ready for the pop-up strike” Maverick informs Phoenix, as they seem to be near the mountain.

“Be ready, y’all. This is where the funny part begins” you say, knowing that it has nothing funny, but difficult. Two miracles. You need two miracles. The hardest part is what comes later. It’s the one that scares the shit out of you, that makes you have a bad feeling.

Dagger one and three achieve miracle one. You smile when hearing Bob’s excited voice informing Maverick that they got a direct hit. One down. Only one more to go.

“Dagger two, status” says Maverick, wanting to know where Rooster is.

“Almost there, Mav. Almost there”

Has Rooster realized he had just called him Mav? You’ll tell him after this how he went all soft on Maverick. You can see the mountain, moving closer to it by the second. Rooster asks Fanboy to check the laser. And just when you thought things couldn’t be better, something happens.

“Rooster, there’s something wrong with this laser” the wizzo says.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me..” you say. “Can you fix it?”

“It’s dead”

“Rooster, you’re gonna need to go blind” Hangman states. And you know he’s right.

Fanboy and Rooster keep yelling at each other through the coms, but it’s useless. The laser is not working.

“Rooster just go blind!” exclaims Jake.

Rooster drops the bomb. You hold your breath, only letting it out when the whole underground base is destroyed by the explosion.

“Atta boy” you say, taking a deep breath. “All right, guys. This is coffin corner. Nice and easy”

“Reb’s right. We’re not out of this yet. Here they come!”

Jake’s words make you look at your right, to see the SAMs already moving in Dagger three’s direction.

“Radar warning! Smoke in the air. Phoenix, right”

“Hangman”

“Yeah, Rebel. Let’s make sure all these ladies get home for dinner” you say, pulling up the 10-Gs.

Maverick asks for your status, but the fourth of you are being crushed into your seats by the high velocity. It’s like your own ribs are pressing against your lungs with such force that you think they will break. Just when you get out and can breathe again, SAMs launch in your direction. You release the flares, making the SAM explode, and move to help the others. Well, you try to, because it’s almost impossible to escape from them. Seems like every time one of the Daggers gets rid of a SAM, three more appear. Just like Hydra’s heads, cut one and three more appear.

Everyone talks through the radio. Yelling at each other to break right, or left, to throw flares, or to move away, so the other one can help. You can barely understand a thing. Voices overlap through the radio, and it’s like being in the center of a crowded room. You cannot isolate anyone’s voice to try and discern what they’re telling, so you just focus on one thing: survive. You survive and you help the rest. That’s all that matters right now. But the fear in their voices gets to you, they’re scared, the wizzo’s, mostly. They’re not the ones in charge of their plane and even though they trust their pilots with their lives, the feeling of being useless is there.

Fear and adrenaline rush through your body in a dangerous mixture. You know that if it wasn’t for the adrenaline, you would probably be frozen in fear by now. This is different from everything you’ve seen before, and it doesn’t matter how much you have prepared for this. Years of training will never get rid of the fear in everyone’s hearts.

The bandit will be here in any second. You need to be prepared for that, you cannot waste missiles on the SAMs, so it’s all about dodging and using the flares. Once those bandits are here, you’ll be entering a dog fight against a fifth generation aircraft. Let’s hope you can eliminate them soon.

“Shit, I’m out of flares” yells Rooster while being followed by two SAMs.

“Fuck fuck fuck. Hangman can you go? I’m trying to get rid of these two” you say, looking at the ones that are following two, unable to use the flares and causing an explosion because Phoenix and Bob are near you. You don’t want the expansive wave to hit them.

“Negative, too far”

“Shit. Dagger five defending” you speed up, turning your aircraft and moving away enough to use the flares. “Hold up, Rooster! Almost there”

“Rooster, evade. Evade!” yells Maverick, who is flying ahead of Rooster.

“I can’t shake ‘em. They’re on me!”

What happens next, you don’t think will ever forget it. Maverick makes a cobra maneuver so he can use his own flares and save Rooster. But another SAM catches him off guard, colliding into his tail, and destroying the engines. You watch him go down, in flames. It feels like it’s happening in slow motion.

“MAV, NO”

“DAD!”

“Dagger one is hit! I repeat, Dagger one is hit! Maverick’s down” Phoenix says through the radio, for everyone to know.

You hear Rooster trying to contact Maverick, but he doesn’t respond, obviously. His aircraft probably crashed between these mountains. There’s no possible way he could be alive. You feel numb. All the fear that you felt before is gone. There’s no reason to fear anymore, because all the worst scenarios that you had imagined during the last days had one thing in common. Your dad didn’t make it back home.

“Rebel…”

You’re not sure if it’s Jake’s voice. You’re not sure of anything anymore.

“Does anyone see him?” Rooster keeps trying to find Maverick. You kind of want him to stop. He’s gone. He didn’t eject. He didn’t have time. He’s gone.

“I didn’t see a parachute” confirms Payback what you had been just thinking. He burnt in.

“We have to circle back” states Rooster. You just want him to stop. He’s gone.

He’s gone.

“Dagger, Comanche. Bandits inbound. Single group, hot. Recommend dagger flow south. One minute to intercept”

“Jesus, they’re closer” says Hangman. This time you can recognize his voice.

“All Daggers flow to ECP. You have bandits headed for you”

“What about Maverick?” Rooster’s voice is as broken as your heart.

“Rebel, get ready. Those bandits will be here in a minute” you don’t respond to Hangman. “Rebel!”

You hit the side of the cockpit out of frustration. “Rooster, we need to move”

“Dagger you are not to engage” the order comes through the radio. You can’t believe what you’re hearing.

“Can you repeat that?” you say.

“Sir, with all due respect. That’s the reason why Dagger five and six are out here” complains Hangman.

“We’re not losing anymore people today” states Cyclone, who apparently has taken one of the mics from the com officers.

“Dagger two, return to carrier. Acknowledge”

“Rooster, those bandits are closing” Phoenix says, trying to make Rooster understand that you have to leave.

“Rooster, we need to go. Now”

“Rebel, it’s your father” he retorts.

“You think I don’t know that? Of course, I know that my father’s dead body is down there. But he wouldn’t want me to die like this. We need to go”

“We can’t go back” he insists.

“Rooster, he’s gone. Maverick’s gone” Bob says with a soft tone.

But Rooster isn’t having it. He turns his aircraft and moves away.

“DAMN IT ROOSTER WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“I’M SAVING MY FATHER”

“HE’S DEAD, BRADLEY”

“YOU DON’T KNOW, Y/N” Rooster says before he goes radio silent.

“Dagger two is hit” says the com officer a few seconds later.

“Rooster? Rooster, come in!” Phoenix tries, but he’s not responding.

You turn in your seat all you can. There’s a column of smoke a few miles away. He’s going down. Just like Maverick did. You lost your father and your brother in minutes. Just a few minutes. You can't break down now. Instead of acknowledging the fact that you lost another member of your family, you take control over your body and the situation. You move into action.

“Dagger five asking for permission to take team leader role” you say over the com.

“Permission granted”

“Dagger three, with me. Dagger four, with Hangman. We’re going back home. I’m not initiating a suicide mission” you order, and you can see how Phoenix and Bob move to your right.

Once you’re out in the open sea, you feel all the adrenaline leaving your body. You’re tired. You just want to go home and mourn him. Shit, you have to tell Penny about this. How are you going to tell him that he’s dead? What will Carole think of you, wherever she is? You lost his son.

Bradley's gone.

"Jake…" you call to him, your voice shaking for the emotions.

He's on your left, looking at you. He opens his mouth to speak, but his words die when the sound of an explosion shakes all of you.

"JAKE!"

You scream, inverting your plane to see what is happening.

He's going down.

First, Maverick.

Then, Rooster.

Is Jake gone too?

176 notes · View notes

happybird16 · 2 years

Text

Transplant

Levi Ackerman / Reader

Warnings: Grief, fluff, not much else

Summary: Change isn’t always a bad thing.

This is sort of a modern companion piece to Beloved Mother. (Plug Plug) 🤣

Thank you so much to my beloved beta @theferricfox 💕💕

Word count: 6.9k

Ao3 Link

Note: Yes, I like flowers. Also, you might want some tissues?

The metal step stool creaks in protest beneath you, whining and metallic, as you stretch to reach the next box. The cardboard is rough against your fingers, the papery material stiff and sturdy as you pull it forward on the overhead shelf. With a strained grunt, you pull the heavy box down, quickly descending the steps to plop it onto the carpet below with a thud.

“You okay?” Levi calls over his shoulder from the other side of the small closet. “We can switch jobs if you want?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Muscles,” you reply with a huff, crouching down to open the package. “Most of this stuff is mine anyways.”

The hangers clack, loud and plastic, against one another as he works his way through the top row. The bottom, much more easy to reach, metal beam is already bare, forcing him to finally bite the bullet and start the upper half. Socked toes curled into the carpet, Levi has to stretch up onto his tiptoes to reach the higher rack.

“Are you sure you don’t want to switch?” you tease, watching his back stretch as he raises his arm high above his head. “That looks a little difficult.”

“Fuck you, you’re not much taller than me.” Pulling another hanger from the row, he asks, “What about this one? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear it.”

Turning away from peeling open the box, your eyes almost burn at the sight. “Ew!” It’s an absolutely hideous ruffled zebra striped shirt, something an old lady would wear to church and think is ‘fashionable’. “When did I ever buy that? No. Donate.”

With a grunt, Levi throws the article to the quickly growing pile to his left. To his right is a much larger box, the bottom barely filled with clothes you're keeping, a mix of his and yours, still on their hangers. Once everything’s sorted they’ll be neatly folded, the hangers placed in a separate box.

The two of you definitely have way too many shirts. Even though your new place's closet is bigger, this was definitely needed.

“These are my books,” you note, finally pulling open the corners that had been folding the box closed. You hadn’t even bothered taping most of your stuff up when you’d put them into storage, probably a stupid move at the time but something you’re grateful for now.

“We’ll have enough space now that you can actually get a bookshelf,” Levi points out, wordlessly adding several shirts you wear often to the right pile.

“That’ll be nice,” you note excitedly. “I probably won’t keep all of these though.”

Shuffling through the box, you note just how terrible your taste in literature used to be. Some of this stuff has to be from middle school at least, trashy garbage romance books and well worn horror novels. The mangas are definitely a keep though, maybe some of the more tasteful romance books. Hmm…

Pulling what turns out to be most of the volumes, a mix of hard and soft back, free from the cardboard, you add them to your own donation pile. “These ones are definitely going.”

Eying the stack, Levi snarks, “I’m not sure anyone’s even going to want to buy Twilight. Even at a discount.”

“That’s fair,” you agree, pushing the mostly empty box into your keep pile, right next to several boxes of holiday decorations. “We should definitely remember to label these before we leave.”

“I’ll try to find a Sharpie once we’re done here.” Holding up a cute dark green dress, Levi asks, “What about this one?”

“Keep, definitely.” It even has a neat little brown belt to tie around your waist. You’ll have to remember to wear it sometime soon, you can’t remember the last time you did. Maybe on your next date.

Ascending the small step stool again, you grab the next box off the shelf. It’s a bit older, the cardboard a bit lighter and more feathery under your fingers. “I think this one’s yours.”

“Probably all trash,” Levi confirms distractedly, holding up an old shirt in front of himself to access it. It’s a well-worn band shirt, one you’ve never seen him wear, but it must have gotten some love at some point judging by how faded the design on it is. Miraculously, it ends up being a keeper.

“They're yearbooks!” You note excitedly, quickly shifting through the stack to find one from his high school years. Sliding out one with ‘06 embossed on the side, you grin wolfishly at your husband. “Ooh I get to see you all pimple-faced and lanky.”

“As if. My acne was never that bad.” Levi says, pulling an entire armful of his countless button-up shirts to fill the entirety of the keep box.

“Lucky.” If only your skin had remained clear throughout all that stress and drama. Paging through the laminated paper, you quickly find one with your husband on it front and center. There he is, stuck mid-air in a high jump, his hair a flying mess, his face twisted up in anger. One hand raised high above his head, the shot catches him just shy of making contact with the ball. “Ooh you were on the volleyball team?”

Pulling out a new box for the keep pile, Levi starts thoughtlessly, “For two years, I was a spiker -hey don’t flip through it! We still have so much to do after this!”

“But you look so cute!” you exclaim, pointing at the small square photo of his 10th grade yearbook photo. Drowning in all black, the scowl he has in it is almost identical to the one he’s giving you now. “You really have had that same haircut forever.”

Rolling his eyes, Levi decides, “We’re making a new pile, those are going in the garbage.”

“Not happening,” you chime, adding the stack to your mostly empty box of books. “They’re going on my new bookshelf too!”

Levi grunts, throwing another one of his old shirts into the donation pile. “Of course they are. I’m sure our friends will love to see them,” he grumbles.

“Hange will, at least,” you agree, shaking your head at the next shirt Levi holds up. There’s no doubt in your mind that the wild brunette won’t tease Levi endlessly with the new ammunition. Levi didn’t look too different in high school, but you're willing to bet both middle school and elementary would be a different story. If it weren’t for your husband's urgency, you’d be bouncing on your feet, eager to take a look right now. “Erwin knew you back then, right?”

“Mhmm,” Levi nods, “since middle school. If Kenny and Uri didn’t move to a nicer district, Eyebrows and I would probably never have met.” Holding up a shirt from an old favorite anime of yours, Levi works his finger through a tear in the sleeve, “This one has a hole in it, do you want me to try and fix it?”

“Nah,” you shake your head. New beginnings and at all that, you think, pushing the box of your old tiny Christmas tree to your left. “It was nice of Erwin to lend you his truck for the week. Saves us the money of getting a mover.” You probably could have hauled all of the boxes with several trips in your little SUV, but there’s no way the furniture could have fit. Levi’s Harley wouldn’t have done much to help either.

“Nice,” Levi scoffs with a dramatic sneer. “The thing was fucking filthy.”

“Well it is a truck,” you point out. “He mostly uses it to haul lumber, there’s no need for it to be tidy. Though, I'm sure he’ll appreciate the deep clean you did when we give it back to him.”

“Would have been nice of him to offer to help us carry all this stuff down the stairs, though,” you gripe, looking at the steadily growing stack of boxes on either side of the room. Given that the living room and bathroom are already boxed up too, the stacks piled up around the entryway, there’s going to be quite the trip ahead of you. Some of them are really heavy too. At least you only have to carry them down two stories.

“We don’t have that much shit,” says Levi, watching you pull several boxes from the lower shelves. “We can do it ourselves just fine.”

“Oh, so he offered then,” you state with a knowing smirk. Levi avoids your eyes in response and that’s all the confirmation you need.

Some of your old hobby stuff, probably not particularly useful now, donate. “Are you sad to be moving out?”

After glancing at his watch, Levi starts rapidly pulling hangers from above head. “Why would I be?”

“It was your first apartment!”

“I’ve had many apartments, this was just the first one I had alone,” Levi corrects over his shoulder.

“Still, that was a big step. It must be a bit sad to leave it behind.”

Levi only shrugs in response, pulling a sweater from the high metal pole and immediately throwing it to his left.

“Hey, Hange gifted that to you for Christmas last year!” you chide jokingly, eying the hideous sweater on the top of the pile. Levi’s friend -now yours- always revels in getting your husband the most hideous holiday items they can find, enjoying the dread and disgust on Levi’s face. You still remember the cackle they’d released when he’d opened the carefully wrapped holiday paper to discover two reindeer in a provocative position, displayed in finely woven, brightly colored yarn. “They’re going to be upset you threw it out!”

“They probably assumed I already did.” Not an incorrect statement.

“Ya’ know, for a first solo apartment, you sure lucked out!” you exclaim, pausing in shifting through a box of sewing supplies to watch your husband shuffle around. It’s so cute watching him stretch up onto his tiptoes. “It’s not often you see them with walk-in closets.”

“Luck,” Levi scoffs with a click of his tongue. “The previous places I shared with Erwin and Hange were shit holes. This place isn’t much better.”

“It’s nicer than the place I had before I moved in.” Though some of that may be the result of Levi’s obsessiveness. The little building near your old college had smelled like nothing but weed and mildew, no matter how much air you let in. The neighbors were much more obnoxious too, given the university nearby. “You hated the place, remember? The rent is even cheaper here!”

“I’m pretty sure the landlord is up to some shady shit,” Levi huffs, tilting a bright pink blouse towards you. “This place is probably just some money laundering scam.”

Nodding your head at the shirt, you laugh in response, “Money laundering? That sweet old man?” You highly doubt Mr. Pixis is up to anything untoward, other than spending too much time day drinking in gay bars.

“Sweet as a lemon,” Levi snarks with a roll of his eyes. “Plus, you know he was always shit at responding to repair calls.”

“That’s because he’s usually drunk,” you point out. “Well, I know I’ll miss it. I wasn’t here nearly as long as you, but we sure made some memories here,” you note, eyes sliding to the open doorway. In your soon-to-be-no-longer bedroom, there’s now just emptiness. The mattress and bed frame were the first things to go. It creates a sense of urgency, according to your husband.

Right behind that had followed the rest of your bedroom, both of your dressers emptied and sorted through before the sun had even risen above the horizon. The large wooden pieces of furniture themselves had been hauled over in the truck alongside the first set of boxes.

The emptiness both adds to your sorrow and builds your excitement. Moving is always an absolute pain, but not this time.

Levi grunts in response, “There’ll be new ones.”

“I still can’t believe we bought a house. A HOUSE!” you exclaim, happily bouncing in place on the carpet. You were probably a bit too loud, given that the neighbor above almost immediately slams on the floor.

Smirking at your abashed look, Levi snarks, “As if ruining our backs last night, sleeping on the bare living room floor wasn’t enough for that to set in.”

“The sale went through! We’d just gotten keys! I was excited! Besides, you agreed to it!” Still elated, it’s difficult to keep your tone hushed. The words end up more of a stage whisper. “It’s not like you didn’t spend all of yesterday scrubbing the place from head to toe.”

Rising from the carpet, you cross the room to press yourself against Levi’s back. Arms wrapping around his waist, your chin digs into his shoulder as you hug him close. In a soft murmur, you explain, “It just doesn’t feel real. We saved for so long… I know you're excited too. I saw you looking at paint colors the last time we were at Walmart.”

The place is perfect too. A cute two story with powder blue siding and big windows, in a nice safe neighborhood right by a school. A nice cookie cutter with 2,500 square feet and a half acre backyard, just for the two of you. Two bedrooms, two baths, complete with a master bedroom and a master bath. Enough space for all your stuff and then some. Room to grow.

There’s so much to be excited about! A big kitchen, complete with marble countertops and a center island. You want to put in one of those fancy overhead pot racks, right above the center island. And it’ll be nice to no longer park on the side of the street, dreading the day someone inevitably swerves and takes out your mirror. You're already reveling in having a nice warm garage to park in during the area’s snowy winters.

It feels a bit like you’ve just gotten married and are finally venturing off to start your lives together.

Against your chest, you can feel that his shoulders are tight. Far worse than its usual stiffness, his back is ramrod straight with tension. Headless of you invading his space, Levi continues to pull shirt after shirt from the rack. “It’s going to be a big change, that’s for sure.”

Trying to poke at his weak points, you goad, “I can’t believe we’re going to have our own washer and dryer. We won’t have to share with 50 families anymore!”

“That’ll be nice,” Levi answers distractedly. Compared to his exuberance when you’d been touring the place, his response is downright placid.

Now, that’s not the correct response. He seems far too tense, something is definitely off and you have a guess.

“Listen,” you start, swaying in the balls of your feet to rock his body from side to side. “I know you don’t like change. I know that you're stressed -I am too- and you want to get everything packed up and moved over today, but we don’t have to. Both of us took all week off to get settled in, we can take our time. It’s just past noon, let’s take a break and go get some boba at the cafe down the street. One last time?”

Finally, he stops working, sliding a hanger back onto the rack with a resigned huff. Levi sighs, leaning back into your embrace with a heavy shudder. “I know. I’m sorry if I’ve been curt-“

“You haven’t been-“

“-but there’s just so much to do still. I just want to get everything settled so we can get home already.”

Home. He’s already calling it home. The words make your breath catch, heart stuttering warm and fast in your chest.

“Okay. I understand,” you murmur calmly, smoothing your fingers across his stomach. You can’t disagree with his sentiment. There’s still so much furniture and yard equipment you’ll need to buy this week, not to mention unpacking. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Levi murmurs back, squeezing his hand around yours where it rests on his belly. “Let’s get back to work. We still have the kitchen to get to after this.”

Tilting your head back, you let out a dramatic groan. The thought of conquering the kitchen fills you with dread. It’ll be the last step, but probably the most difficult one. The amount of bubble wrap you’d bought was horrifying, and you have no doubt Levi will want to clean every dish and piece of glassware before wrapping them up. Not to mention all the baking equipment. Once you arrive home and start to unpack, he’ll probably want to clean them after too.

You have no idea how you're even going to begin organizing the contents of the fridge.

“Yeah yeah..,” you sigh, feeling Levi shiver as warm breath dusts across his nape. Before pulling away, you press a quick kiss to the fabric at his shoulder.

Plopping back down onto the carpet, you pull the next box in front of you. Some of Levi’s teapot collection, keep. “Do you want to have a housewarming party?”

“That’s an actual thing?”

“Yeah!” The next box is familiar, you don’t even have to open it before setting it aside. It’s your own set of yearbooks, alongside some family photo albums. Maybe you’ll need two bookcases.

“That just sounds like more work,” Levi points out. “Not to mention the mess.” You have no doubt he’s imagining the hurricane Hange always leaves whenever they come over.

“People bring you gifts, I think. That’d be nice.” The box behind the last is ancient, tucked in the furthest corner of the shelf, the cardboard so old that it’s lost most of its color. “This one looks really old, it’s almost falling apart,” you tell him over shoulder. Stretching to pull at the edges and shift it forward, the resulting spray of dust makes you cough.

“I’ll remember to clean up our storage more often,” Levi clicks his tongue, silver eyes worriedly watching you wheeze. “It could be from middle school. I have some old woodshop projects up there somewhere.”

“Woodshop?” you ask, remembering the odd mix of life-skill classes you were required to take when you were little. “What did you make?”

“A stool, I think? Maybe a birdhouse? There’s an old car in there somewhere. I won first place in the race with it. Erwin was devastated,” Levi explains, sounding far too proud.

“Really? So you’ve always been good with your hands?” The innuendo only earns you a stern glare from your husband.

The box is surprisingly light, compared to the rest of the ones in storage. It must be packed tight, though, because there isn’t even a rattle from it when you set it down on the carpet. Opening it, the sight makes you twist your eyebrows up in confusion. “Its… women’s clothing?”

“What?” Confused as you are, Levi quickly sorts the articles in hand and comes over. Looming over your sitting form, he stutters, “Oh -that -that’s my mothers old stuff.”

He plops down hard beside you, as if his knees had been weak, shoulder brushing your own. Pulling a bunch of carefully folded white fabric from the box, it unfurls to reveal itself as a white dress, the neckline decorated with a tight weave of lace flowers.

“Is this all you have left of her?” Levi doesn’t talk about his early childhood that often, only a handful of times over the years you’ve spent together. Having gone with him to visit her grave several times, you know that she died very young just from her gravestone.

Kuchel Ackerman

Beloved Mother

May 20th, 1973 - April 16th, 2003

She hadn’t even been thirty. Having been born on Christmas Day of ‘90, he’d been just shy of becoming a teen when he’d lost her. You wonder if Levi has even realized he’s older now than she’d been when she’d passed.

“Mhmm,” Levi confirms, running his thumb along the fine silk dress. The look on his face is tight, shuddered, but there’s a fondness dwelling deep in his eyes. Voice soft, he whispers, “I forgot I had this stuff.”

“There’s a photo album,” you note, cautiously pulling the thick leather tome from the box. Despite the weathering of the container, everything in it seems clean and as fresh as the day they were placed in here. “Do I get to see you as a baby?”

“Not exactly,” Levi says, picking up a small jewelry box from the far corner. Flicking the lid open, a soft musical sound grinds out from the wooden box, the sound would be a soft twinkle if not for the aged gears. Levi sighs long and hard at the sound, eyes fluttering as his shoulders sag at the familiar tune.

Opening it to the first page, what greets you is far from what you’d expected. You’d thought it’d be full of old Polaroids of Mama Kuchel and baby-Levi, all naked and plump and pink. Instead, the photo-sleeves are full of flowers, carefully dried and pressed for preservation.

“Flowers?” There's hundreds of them, slid into the sleeves of every page. The book seems to be almost full, every page teeming with petals of vibrant colors. Reds and pinks of every tone, vibrant yellows, stark pristine whites, rich blues and purples, all flanked with soft green leaves of varying shades.

She must have learned as she went, because the first few flowers -some daisies and red roses- are roughly pressed. Her technique quickly adapts as the pages pass, the dried petals becoming a beautiful display. Beside every one is the tight, sharp scrawl of Levi’s mother, her handwriting a bit smaller, but nearly identical to his own. She identifies each flower in her neat cursive, complete with a date, right beside its sleeve.

“She liked to garden in her free time,” Levi explains, tugging a pair of tiny pearl earrings from the twinkling jewelry box. He lifts them up, briefly perusing the studs before replacing them within the wood. A small chain follows, thin and fragile looking as it twines around his fingers.

“Didn’t you live in a small apartment on the East Side?” It’s the poorest neighborhood in the area, you know that. The most dangerous too, if the news is anything to go by. They’re constantly discussing shootings on that side of town, or outright thefts. Right outside of the old industrial district, the whole neighborhood is nothing but old brick buildings, still stained with smoke from the long abandoned steel mills.

Levi nods his head, explaining, “There’d been a small empty lot nearby. I think it was supposed to be a community garden, but no one else really used it.”

You hum in response, drinking in a page of beautiful striped lilies, white with pink and orange with purple. “Must have been nice to have it all for herself then.”

“She found it therapeutic, I think. I remember helping her dig holes when I was barely knee high.” Replacing the jewelry box with a quieting snap and lifting a hand, Levi gestures about the correct height off of the ground.

It’s hard to picture, given that you’ve only ever seen one photo of the woman, tucked into your husband's wallet beside your own. She looked like him, you remember, only with a softer face and longer hair. In your mind's eye, you try to craft the image of a little version your husband by her side, small and energetic, his cheeks dusted with dark soil. “You? Digging in dirt? I can’t even imagine you touching a worm.”

“I mostly just helped pull weeds. I actually enjoyed it -it was nice,” Levi says, scooting across the carpet to rest his front against your back. Curling an arm around your waist, he rests his chin on your shoulder. “Mom was always happy and smiling when she was there.”

He describes her so rarely, but when he does she always seems so soft and sweet. “I would have loved to have been able to meet her.”

“She’d have loved you,” Levi breathes with a soft hum, smoothing his fingers across your stomach in a soft beat.

Continuing to leaf through the pages, the sheer variety of flowers within sends you into a state of awe. Some are quite common, something you’d see in any forest nearby, but some you wouldn’t even be able to identify if not for Kuchel’s helpful labels. There’s some repeating, as if perhaps the first plant didn’t make the winter -judging by the dates- so she tried again. Despite being dried over twenty years ago, you can still smell them, a fresh new wave of sweet and natural perfume filling your nose every page turn. “She grew all of these?”

“Not exactly,” Levi states, “some of those were stolen from greenhouses.”

“Stolen?” Your shock must be blatant, because Levi barely manages to hold in a laugh, the sound coming out as an airy snort.

“Mhmm,” Levi confirms with a soft hum. “We’d go on the weekends. She’d pick flowers that she’d liked and tuck them behind her ear to take home. Sometimes she even grew the seeds from them.”

“That’s not stealing! I doubt the owners even noticed or cared.” you justify, leaning back into his chest. You enjoy feeling the soft rise and fall of his chest, the soft rumble of his voice against your back. “It’s disingenuous at best.”

With a fond smile, his eyes distant and the edges crinkled in joy, Levi continues, “It was always a thrill whenever we went. Our secret little heist that we always got away with.”

You can only imagine the adrenaline surging through his little body, the loud peals of laughter once they’d gotten away with their crime. “That sounds like so much fun!” You always loved when your parents did stuff like that. Something harmless, but meaningful. A memory to cherish. “She sounds like a great mom.”

“She was,” Levi fails to hide a sniffle, grey eyes a bit watery. As you turn to the next page, Levi jolts behind you, pointing towards the page. “That one was her favorite.”

It’s a giant, red flower, taking up an entire page all by itself. The trumpet shaped petals, all five of them, surround a long yellowish-peach pistil. “A hibiscus?” you note, reading the little label beside it. “Why?”

“She liked to swipe more tropical looking flowers, imagining that we somehow managed to go somewhere nice. They didn’t always take, most of them couldn’t grow here. That one, though, grew like wildfire. We had to build a little wooden trellis to help it thrive.”

Whenever he speaks of her, Levi always seems so happy. Somber, no doubt, but with a fond smile curving his lips and a bright shine in his eyes. He’s mentioned before that his earlier memories have faded, to his absolute dread, making his time with her spotty at best. You're glad that he at least has these little pieces of her.

“Would it be alright if we displayed these?” you ask, still paging through the thick book. Long stems of lavender greet you about midway through, the scent still fresh and earthy. “We could put some in a picture frame in our new living room, right next to the couch?”

“I’d like that,” Levi hums, silver eyes drinking in the tight scrawl of his mothers handwriting, the dried petals of her hard work. All of his urgency gone, Levi rests heavily against your side, chin tucked tight to your shoulder.

“It’s a shame there isn’t a baby book though…”

“One’s been sitting on the shelf in our room this entire time,” Levi points out, a bit smug that you never noticed.

“What?”

Laughing at your surprise, Levi softly pats your shoulder before rising, “Let’s take a break after we finish up here. We can go get that boba before we start in the kitchen. One last time.”

Living in the suburbs is an adjustment, that’s for sure.

Everything is just so eerily quiet. There’s no neighbors, bouncing around or yelling, right on the other side of your wall. There’s no constant buzz of traffic, of horns and sirens blaring in the distance, only the soft hum of an occasional car passing by. The air even tastes fresher.

All of your routines were immediately ruined. It’s only a forty minute drive from your previous place, but everything was immediately so different. Every place you frequented, all the little mom&pop shops lining the sides of the busy city streets, every beloved take-out place, all now completely out of the way.

It was unsettling to you, at first, but Levi took to it like a duck in water. Spreading himself out to take up the new space, even heading to the nearby park to go on long runs in the mornings before work. You really should get fit and join him, make it a bonding activity. Given that the basement is quickly progressing its way into becoming a home gym, there’s really no excuse not to.

He’s even sleeping better now, out here where nights are nearly silent, save for the occasional buzz of a cricket or drone of a cicada. On the other hand, you almost miss the noise.

It was a revelation just to have so much space, with an actual back yard to boot. You have tentative plans to buy a hammock to put under the tall, flowering tree in your backyard. It would be a nice place to cuddle up together, lounging for hours beneath the white petals, fluttering softly in the breeze. Even though summer is just approaching, you can’t wait for winter, with long nights of sipping hot chocolate cuddling up in front of the fireplace.

On a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon, as you pull into the driveway, Levi is mowing the front lawn in tight, meticulous lines. You should have known that he’d be obsessive with lawn care. It’s been a solid month since you’ve moved in, but the sight never ceases to surprise you. No doubt, the weed wacker will follow, trimming all of the edges to a perfect point.

Given that the warmer months are quickly approaching, the growing heat, alongside the exertion, has him working shirtless, sweat shining bright along his muscle-packed torso as he pushes the noisy mower across the uneven terrain of your front lawn, winding around tree after tree. You hadn’t even realized how much more work a hilly lawn would be, but Levi seems to enjoy the challenge week after week.

Not even bothering with the garage, you park about halfway up the driveway, waving at your husband as he curiously turns off the mower mid-pass. As you exit your little SUV, he quickly approaches, pulling his goofy little earplugs from his ears to wrap the cord around his sweaty neck.

“Levi,” you greet excitedly as he jogs up to your side. “I got you a surprise!”

Pulled forward by a soft clasp on your shoulder, he greets you with a quick kiss. Brows drawn tight in curiosity, Levi’s gaze his firm on your own as he asks, “Didn’t you have plans with Hange? Did they cancel on you again?”

“Come here! Come here!” you wave at him excitedly, ignoring his questioning gaze. Continuing to wave, you lead him around the backside of your car.

As he follows, frowning down at the mud-coated knees of your jeans, the smattering of darkness coating the front of your t-shirt, Levi asks, “Why are you covered in dirt?”

“Don’t mind that- Look!” With a click, you pop open your trunk, the back end swinging high overhead with a loud creak.

“You bought flowers for the garden?” Levi asks, eyeing the collection of plants packed tight into the trunk of your car. There’s so many that the cheap black plastic containers are all right against one another with no space in between.

“The little lot was still abandoned, but everything was still there. It was crazy overgrown with weeds, but I managed to pull these ones from the mess,” you blurt excitedly, the words coming out a bit too fast.

“Wait -what are you talking about?”

“The little trellis was still there by the way,” you continue unheeded. “Though it was mostly just wooden bits.”

“Have you lost your mind? The fuck are you even saying?” Eyes searching your face, Levi seems to be assessing whether or not you’ve suddenly gone insane during the few hours you’d been away.

Pointing a finger into your trunk, you urge, “Look! Do you recognize them?”

Levi takes a moment to eye the collection, silver gaze drifting across roses, red, yellow, and pink. Lavender in pastel purple, tall and straight in its containment, high enough to brush the roof. Tulips, both monochrome and striped, miss-matched all into one group. At the sight of the big, robust red petals of a hibiscus, his jaw openly drops. “Wha- you- what?”

It looks like his brain has fried, something backfiring along the back of his skull and short circuiting his system. Wide eyed, brows drawn up high behind his bangs, Levi seems to be at a loss for words. His jaw works, mouth opening and closing, lips pursing, but nothing escapes. Chest heaving with deep, rapid breaths, he leans forward to caress the soft red petals.

“I know you were planning on planting some tea, but I think this wouldn’t be too much more work. You could easily do both.” Hopefully this isn’t too much of a burden for him to deal with. Maybe you didn’t think this through completely.

“You,” Levi’s voice is so small, quavering as he struggles to comprehend your gift. He sounds like a small child, awed by the perfect present. “You brought Mom’s garden…”

“It’s not that much, I could only separate out some of it-“

“-oof!” You're cut off, pulled in by a frantic embrace. Levi’s arms pull you hard into his chest, wrapping around your waist and across your back with such strength that it steals all the air from your lungs. Face pressing against your collarbone, you can feel a wetness from where his face burrows against your skin. “Are you crying?”

You haven't seen him cry since your wedding day, several years ago, and even then it’d been quiet. Merely a light shedding of tears, no noise, and even then he’d waited until the two of you were alone to do so. Now, he’s gasping, shoulders shuddering as he sobs into the divot of your collarbone.

“You brought me Mom,” he warbles, almost a whine. The fingers at your shoulder blades become claws as he tries to nuzzle further into your embrace. “I couldn’t go back, not after everything that happened, but you brought her to me.”

“You loved her, more than anything, and she loved you too. But she was taken from you too soon,” you explain softly, patting his back. “We can visit her grave, and yeah we have some of her things, but I- I wanted some part of her to be here, living with us. For you.”

Smoothing your fingers along his bare back, the man practically trembles within your embrace, pressing his whole weight into your form. “All of it might not survive, transplanting can be a bit rough. I did my best with their roots.”

“I love you,” he states, firm even as he hiccoughs. Pressing a wet kiss to your neck, he continues, “I can’t believe you did this.”

“It’s nothing,” you state, firm and simple, even as your eyes start to tear up. Pressing a kiss to the crown of his head, your words are a bit watery as your eyes begin to leak a lazy trail along your cheeks, “We’ll take care of it together.”

Taking deep breaths, Levi struggles to calm down, eyelids fluttering against your sternum. “You're covered in dirt,” he notes again, nose curling up as he peels away from your torso.

“And you're all sweaty,” you chide right back, curling up your nose in mock disgust. Part of you wants to comment on the wet mark he left on your neck, a mix of snot and tears, but he struggles enough with expressing his deeper emotions as is. “Why don’t we take a bit of a break, get some tea, and then start digging holes.”

Levi shakes his head in response, still sniffling a bit, “I don’t want them sitting for too long. That can’t be good for them.”

“They were strong enough to survive on their own for almost 20 years, I’m sure it’ll be fine if you need a break.” Levi shakes his head in response, eyes already accessing the mostly bare stretch of your garden, so you say, “Let’s at least find something to wipe off your face with.”

“It’s fine,” Levi says, “I have a towel folded up on the porch for once I was done with the yard. I can just use that.”

When he wanders back, a bit less sweaty and snotty, his nose is still bright red, the skin around his eyes flushed a bright pink. “Where do you want them?” you ask him.

“Most of them need a lot of sun, so along the front of the house will probably be best.” It’s amazing to you just how much gardening knowledge Levi remembers, despite being so young at the time. “They’ll need water almost daily at first.”

Nodding your head, you decide, “I’ll set a phone alarm so I remember when I get home from work.”

“I’ll get it, you’ve already done more than enough,” Levi replies, waving you off as you begin to pull out your phone.

Pulling the dirty shovel from the back seat of your car, Levi suddenly turns with a start, pointing at you with an accusing finger, “You lied to me!”

“I -uh…,” you start, stuttering at the sudden, absolutely correct, accusation. “I’d merely been in the area..,” you try, the words sounding weak and defeated.

“With a shovel and the trunk of your car lined with a tarp?” Pulling twin sets of cloth from your back seat, the fabric flops around as he jerks them towards you, “You even had gloves!”

Raising your hands in defeat, you concede, “Okay, okay, you got me! I had this all planned out. Hange was totally going to back me up if you’d called them.”

“You went to the East Side by yourself?” At the words, Levi’s sharp gaze drags slowly across your firm, trying to find any sign of injury. “Do you know how dangerous that was? Remember, I got stabbed down there once? I told you about that right?”

“It’s fine! It’s fine!” you soothe, mind picturing the light white skin of the scar decorating the left side of Levi’s belly. “The most I got was some scratches from the thorn bushes.”

“You shouldn’t have gone alone!” Levi asserts angrily, but you know it’s just concern. “You could have actually brought Hange at least, they’d make a good meat shield. I hope you at least had something to protect yourself!”

“I have a taser somewhere in my car? I think it’s in my glove box?”

“You think?” Huffing a loud sigh, shoulders sagging in defeat, Levi pleads, “Next time you do something like this, at least tell me first okay?”

“I’m an adult, I could handle it. I didn’t even really see anyone anyways. The whole apartment complex seems to be abandoned,” you explain. All the windows on the first floor had been broken and the brickwork had been coated with graffiti, but the whole area had been eerily quiet other than the yowling of some stray cats. There’d been a handful of ominous pops in the distance, but that’s something you’ll only mention when you tell this story years down the line. “Honestly the sketchiest part was finding a place to park.”

Shaky hands pulling a pot full of hibiscus from the trunk, one of many since you’d tried to get as much of that one as possible, he remarks, “I can’t believe you sometimes.”

Helping unload some red roses, you say, “The risk was worth it, to bring some of her home for you.” It almost feels as though, this way, she’s still alive. You never got to meet her, but this way your mother-in-law would get to greet you as you came home every day.

You hope that it brings Levi a sense of comfort, having her here with you. That the lingering, distant memories of her blossom and grow alongside them. Her flowers, her garden, brightening up the front of your new home.

Maybe, one day, when your family grows to fill the empty rooms, your little ones will help take care of them with the both of you, tending to Kuchel’s garden just as Levi did.

“Thank you, I -I don’t have words,” Levi stutters, carefully putting the leafy hibiscus on the cement of your driveway. Bluster gone, tears are suddenly building in his eyes once again. “I’m going to pay you back for this.”

The words sound like a threat, but just the warble in his voice tells you he wants to do something sweet for you. “It’s really not necessary.”

Sniffling again, Levi thumbs the soft edge of a red petal. Over the passing years, the plant seems to have grown and grown. Whereas the previous blooms had been big enough to fit on a page, these ones almost dwarf Levi’s entire face. Smiling down at them, soft and sweet, Levi murmurs, “I don’t know how, but I will, just you wait.”

Tag list: @levmada (I should really do one of those polls to get names)

#sad and soft #levi/reader #Levi x reader #levi ackerman #kuchel ackerman #sfw #tw; grief #attack on titan #aot #fanfic #levi

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deusauris · 10 months

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There’s absolutely no order or sense to this, I just threw together sea slug reproduction facts and called it a day. Okay here we go:

First of all, sea-slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites so they can play both roles at the same time, it often resulting in a strange daisy chain of sea slug reproduction. This is very commonly seen with the sea hares especially, in which many sea hares find each-other using their chemical trails in the spring/summer seasons and then coming together to form this chain, in which they can both give or receive, or even do both at the same time. The black sea hare is also the largest sea slug species to exist currently! One is pictured below.

Now, let’s look at this one particular species of sea slug: Siphopteron makisig. (Pictured below)

What makes this little guy interesting is that it Stabs its mate. The mating process is pretty normal with the usual expected penetration. Traumatic penetrating (penetrating a part of the partner’s body that isn’t necessarily a reproductive organ for better/more effective insemination) has been noted in certain sea slug species however, this is the only noted species to stab its partner between the eyes, with one of the prongs (stylet) of its penis that is almost needle-shaped.

Both of the partners stab each-other between the eyes. This is seen as an attempt to ensure that the other sea slug lays as many eggs as possible by injecting the hormones directly into the nervous system.

While we are on the topic though, traumatic mating is also usually used to “ensure success” as the injury is thought to prevent further mating and therefore ensuring the offspring or further descendants of the slug who already got the chance. This “ensuring” is a pretty common theme in sea slugs from what I’ve seen? Though there are different methods. Take the Chromodoris Reticulata, for example.

This sea slug is mostly known for its detachable and regrowable penis, which it has coiled up and spiralled inside of their body, and it disposes the exposed part of after use. This is why they can repeatedly mate about 3 times, as a day is usually how long it takes for regrow to. I am pretty sure that it’s the only known creature to be able to regrow the penile appendage too? Insane.

Also I wasn’t sure where to put this but I remembered this right as I was typing so, the reproductive organs of all sea slugs are on their right sides — both of the organs — so they kind of just, connect to each other. One fits into the orifice of other, while the other fits into the orifice of the first. Kind of like legos.

Their penises also have hooks, though that goes for most sea slugs that I have heard of. They have little “spines” on them which hook on to ensure, like I said before, most effective insemination. And while we are on this topic! Let’s note that the first insemination attempt has been speculated and considered to actually be an attempt to remove the previous given sperm of their partner’s previous mates so that, again, more effective insemination from that mate in particular can take place. It pretty much scoops the rival sperm out of its partner to replace with its own, so that it is the one whose genes are passed.

Also I didn’t get to talk about traumatic mating so much, so, hopping back to it for a second. Did you know there was a whole article and an accompanying video based on traumatic penetration in sea slug reproduction? Specifically that of the Phidiana Lynceus. The article carries a beautiful title, “Love will tear us apart.” Which is quite fitting for this species, as it’s one of the most violent ones around when it comes to sea slugs. They approach each other with much hostility and aggression but will choose to mate anyway; however they will keep this sense of hostility throughout their mating, as you will know in a second.

The 3 minute video (I tried to attach the link but it didn’t let me so, ask me for it separately if interested) included them eating and consuming one another’s cerata quite aggressively while they mated, after throwing each-other’s penis against their partner. Ceratas are basically used for defence + attack (or decoy in some species, who drop them to distract predators!), and nudibranches such as the pictured species eat stinging celled creatures and passed those cells to the tip of its own cerata. Anyway, they try to consume and ingest as much cerata of one another possible but sometimes it’s only torn, in which case the partner will just suck the contents through the wound. This goes on for a few minutes after which the insemination process gets over with.

#sea slugs #nudibranch #sea life #marine life #okay that's enough tags #🖤.txt #do not start with me on this i had to fact check everything & now my search history is a mess.#pov ‘sea slug penis hook’ ‘sea slug sex stabbing’ etc etc. hell world #suggestive #little guys

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margindoodles2407 · 7 months

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for your emoji ask game, 💥 and 👫? For twilight princess, and tp Link and Zelda :)

Okay SO

I’ll answer this probably in more detail when I can charge my computer because it takes a long time for me to text on my phone (dang autocorrect)

BUT ANYWAY

Spoilers below! (I already tagged it as zelda spoilers but sometimes tags are iffy so. here’s a cutoff too.)

💥: Well, Zelda becomes queen a few weeks after Midna’s departure. Her first act as queen is to name Link captain of the royal guard, and her second act as queen is to commission a mural in Hyrule Castle depicting the Twilight War. A lot of her early queenship is spent trying to rebuild the Kingdom, including the restoration of a Statue in the middle of Castletown that has become so weathered so as to become unrecognizable but was once a memorial to the Hero of Time.

👫: OKAY. I HAVE MANY FEELINGS REGARDING THIS. SO PREPARE.

I am a Zelink ADDICT so of course I ship them, but this might be the most complicated ship imo because there’s so many moving parts. I might go into detail in a separate post later, but the gist of it is this:

The Triforce of Wisdom allows one to see past physical appearances. This is how the Young Princess Zelda of the Era of Time was able to see past Ganondorf’s charming demeanor to his dark intentions. It also allowed the Princess of the Era of Twilight to see past both Midna and Link’s curses to their true selves. She immediately felt drawn to the kind, gentle, determined soul of the Hero of Twilight, and before long she realized she was madly in love with him- the first- and only- time in the history of the Hero and the Princess in which she fell in love first.

But Link had too much on his mind to entertain the idea of romance, much less with a princess who was probably far out of his league. He did, however, form a very close bond with his newfound friend Midna- and when the war was finally over, the revelation of her True Form was a push over a boundary he hadn’t even seen coming. He fell in love with the Twilight Princess- unfortunately for him, a love that was unrequited; at least, romantically. Midna loved Link too, but she was not- and had never been- interested in a romantic relationship with anyone. She did not want to break her best and truest friend’s heart by pretending to give him a kind of love she did not feel and could not reciprocate.

She always had, however, been extremely good at picking up on other people’s feelings. She saw how deeply the princess of Hyrule loved her dear friend, and she hatched a plan. Though she knew it would devastate him, she decided to leave the World of Light and sever its connection to the Twilight Realm. Though it saddened her to leave him forever, perhaps if he thought she hated him he would lose affection for her. Perhaps then he could see what was right in front of him. She did, though, write him a letter in which she properly said goodbye and explained herself, which she left in the jail cell where they’d first met, for him to find someday.

Link, as predicted, was utterly devastated by Midna’s loss. It took him several years to properly learn to live with it. But in those years, he developed a close friendship with the now Queen of Hyrule- who herself missed her friend dearly. As he began to move on from Midna, he became closer with Zelda. By the time they were in their mid-Twenties, he realized the love he’d felt for Midna was love he now felt for the Queen. They were married at 26 and lived a long and very happy life together. Their first child, a daughter, was named Midna, in honor of their friend.

And when Link was an old man, and Zelda had been laid to rest, and their beautiful daughter Midna was now the Queen of Hyrule, he visited the dungeons where his quest had began all those years ago. In the dungeon cell where, so many years before, he had awoken as a wolf, he found a handwritten letter, almost perfectly preserved by the cool, dry conditions of the basement. Though his eyesight had waned, he knew what the letter said and who it was from.

And though years before he might have resented the Twilight Princess for her actions, now he thanked her- for giving him a life he’d never have been able to have had she stayed.

…okay so forget what I said about that longer post. It’s all right here.

so Yeah, that’s my extremely complicated take on TP Zelink. Hope you enjoyed!!! Thanks for the ask!!!

#whyoneartheven my dear #ask game #margin rambles #margin absolutely RANTS #twilight princess #tp #zelink my beloved #zelda spoilers

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youssefguedira · 2 years

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got lotr au on the brain it seems (for @spacegirlsgang <3)

Yusuf finds Nicolò in a small alcove not far from where the battle still rages on, sitting against the wall with his bow resting beside him, his eyes closed. He looks just exhausted as Yusuf feels, but they do not have long to rest - they sleep in shifts for a few hours at a time. It’s nowhere near enough, but it will have to do. They’re losing more and more soldiers every minute, and the enemy is moving closer and closer to the fortress’ wall.

It is quieter here, at least.

Nicolò opens his eyes as Yusuf approaches. The dark circles under his eyes are not new; before Helm’s Deep, they had almost lost Andromache, and before then, the hobbits, and Booker, and before then, Quynh. Yusuf is tired of losing people, and he knows Nicolò is too. But they cannot rest yet, at least not until this battle is won.

And if they lose, well.

Nicolò doesn’t say anything, but moves his feet to make room for Yusuf at the other end of the alcove. Yusuf takes the offer.

“How much longer do you think we will hold?" he asks, just to break the silence.

“I cannot tell,” Nicolò says. “If we can keep them from reaching the wall, there is hope, but…”

They cannot hold out forever. And somehow, the enemy’s forces just keep coming.

“How have you fared?” Nicolò asks, turning the conversation to a slightly lighter topic.

“Twenty-eight,” Yusuf says.

Nicolò hums. “Thirty-five.”

“Come on. You expect me to believe that?” Yusuf asks, feigning outrage; it gets the shadow of a smile out of Nicolò, the closest thing to one that Yusuf has seen from him since Andromache made her way back to them. He’ll take it.

Nicolò runs his hand over his hair - his braid has loosened since Andromache did it for him earlier, to the point where the flyaway strands are beginning to fall into his eyes. He reaches behind himself and undoes the tie holding it in place, running his fingers through it to tease some of the tangles out.

His hands are trembling as he does it, but Yusuf doesn’t mention it. Nicolò curses softly as he drops the tie, and then drops it again a moment later.

Finally, he seems to accept defeat, and looks up at Yusuf. “Will you…?”

He doesn’t finish, but Yusuf holds out his hand for the tie and gestures for him to turn so his back is to Yusuf, facing the opposite wall. Nicolò is perfectly still as Yusuf runs his fingers through his hair to untangle it as best he can, separating it into parts once he’s done.

They are both silent, at first, then: “Tell me something,” Nicolò says.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Your home, maybe.”

"Khazad-dum?” Yusuf asks. “It’s…” It’s funny, sometimes: his job revolves around finding the right word for things, yet he still struggles. “It’s beautiful, Nicolò. There are- there are places where you can see the veins of gold or silver or diamond in the stone, where the ceilings sparkle like the night sky. There are waterfalls deep below the earth, even gardens. One of them” - he smiles at the memory of it - “one of them, when the sunlight filters through the stone just right, the water becomes like liquid fire. In all my travels, I have never seen anything like it. My sister, when she was young, she thought it became real fire.” The thought of Amira brings a sharp twist of homesickness, and he trails off.

Nicolò is quiet for a moment. “I’d like to see that, I think,” he says. “Someday. If we win this.”

“You can come with me, then,” Yusuf says. “When this is over.”

He doesn’t see Nicolò smile, but he hears it anyway. “I’d like that.”

Yusuf smiles, too, and ties off the finished braid. “There. All done.”

Nicolò reaches behind him to touch it, stands and turns back around to face him. “Thank you, Yusuf.”

“It was nothing," Yusuf says, even though they both know it wasn’t.

Nicolò offers him a hand. “We should go.”

Yusuf is tired, and aching, and homesick. But he takes Nicolò’s hand anyway, because the battle’s not over yet.

At least he isn’t alone.

#neon writes #the old guard #kaysanova #tog lotr au #this is joe pov so he doesnt Know but this is like. a major event for nicky #the long story short is that hair is a big thing for elves (i think thats canon anyway) n usually quynh would have done nicky's and he #would have done hers it's a Thing. later andy does it for him #in both cases theyre people he loves and trusts right. and so this now is a massive sign of trust especially now when he's tired and #grieving still. it's got Weight. this is also what in my head is the turning point for their relationship from 'you annoy me but i should #try to get along with you and also keep you alive' (with the exception of a few moments) to 'you still annoy me but i would die for you'#its. yea #userlyde

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howlingday · 1 year

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The Queen in Black

"Hey. Hey, wake up."

Adrian opened his eyes, only finding a few hours of sleep before his 'uncle' woke him. Jaune Arc stood over him, a maelstrom of negative emotions roaring in his eyes. But no tears. He never had any tears.

"It's time to get up." Jaune said. "It's-"

"I know." Adrian interrupted. "I can feel her coming." He climbed out of bed, quickly finding his shoes and putting them on. He followed Jaune out the door to the bunker below. His mothers were nowhere to be seen, no doubt already evacuated before he fell asleep. "Are my moms going to be okay?"

"They're in Atlas." Jaune replied. "If there's anyone in this world I can trust to keep them safe, it's your aunt Weiss." A click in his ear went off, and Nora spoke to him. Adrian could hear her rattling off about her bombs going off, signaling the start of the attack. Jaune nodded. "Understood."

"How long will I be in here?" Adrian asked as Jaune stood at the hatch.

"Not long, Adrian. I promise."

"Please come home alive," Adrian's eyes welled with tears, "I love you, Dad."

"I love you, too, Adrian." Jaune shut the door, leaving Adrian alone in the darkness. With his Grimm blood pulsing through his veins, the boy laid himself down, and hoped this was all a nightmare, and he would wake up.

It was all Adrian could do until Salem arrived.

---------------------------------------------------

"I will make this simple," Salem crooned, her monsters swarming from beneath her foul shadow, "bring me Arc, and I shall make this as quick and painless as possible!"

"I'm right here, Salem!" Jaune roared as he charged forward, slaying Grimm left and right with ease. His hair was bone white, and his skin ivory with the blackest of eyes tainted only by the pools of blood-red irises centered within.

Of course, Salem intended for him to get close. He tossed a grenade at her, where it exploded into a blue barrier. With little more than a lazy swipe, her claws tore through the hard-light structure. It was then that Jaune came down with his sword.

"Ah, here you are, little one." Salem said in an almost sing-song voice. She had a wicked smile across her face, as all witches do. She clicked her tongue as she held his throat, as though she were a very, VERY disappointed grandmother. Although, such an analogy was not too far from the truth. "So much life, and yet so easily snuffed."

She then paused, as though she were working a puzzle in her mind. She then chuckled. "Ah, now I remember you. You were the one who slew my Nuckelavee. Impressive work, my dear descendant."

"Wh-What are you talking about?!" Jaune choked out. "You came for me!"

"Ah, my apologies. Do forgive your dear ancestor." She shook her head, then brought him closer, reveling in the horror in his eyes. "I should have specified which Arc."

Jaune eyes widened with the most terrifying of terrors. "N-NO! LEAVE MY SON ALONE!" He thrashed in her grip, finding her claws digging deeper into his pale flesh. "Your fight is with me! I'M the one you want! FIGHT ME!"

With a separate and free hand, Salem dug her fingers deep into the skin of this host. Soon, his ivory skin receded to his human tone, albeit much paler than usual, and his hair to it's usual golden locks. As he continued his writhing, Salem took note of the shield in his hand. His family crest staring back at her. She returned her gaze to his eyes, finding rage mixed with his fear. She felt no pity for this creature. No anger. No malice. No hatred. She looked at him, and saw only a nuisance.

"No." With an agonizing sound akin to the tearing of flesh, the black tar of Jaune's Grimm seed was ripped from his chest, as ebony ichor dripped from the gaping wound in his armor. Just as the day he was born, the warrior screamed in bloody, excruciating pain. Jaune Arc was human once more. "Remember this for as long as you can remember, little one, for it will be the last words you will hear. I will take your child as easily as I have taken mine." Jaune wheezed, his entire being in shock from the torture he suffered. "And I have no use for a human in my affairs."

"N-No..." Jaune mustered his strength to speak. "Please... don't..."

With a flick of her wrist, the nuisance was gone, sent far and over the horizon of her view. She stepped forward, approaching the city, her army snarling and howling around her with anticipation. Then she stopped, and sighed.

"How hard is it to kill one man?"

#rwby #rwby au #marvel #the king in black #jaune arc #adrian cotta arc #salem #jaune is a descendant of salem #jaune is salem's descendant theory #grimm jaune #grimm jaune au #king in black

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fullmetalpotterhead · 1 year

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Hey, I've read quite a few of your tcgf posts, and they're all so thought-provoking. So now I have to ask, what are your thoughts on HC's relationship with divinity? Like, we all know he descends basically immediately after he ascends, but I've seen that some people headcanon that he can still hear prayers because he does have worshipers, and the nature of descension is not particularly explicit in the novel. Ascension doesn't seem to be a voluntary process at all, and while it does imply that gods can choose to become fully mortal again, it seems odd to me that if they really could just "turn it off" - for lack of better phrasing - XL didn't do so at certain points, like when Ruoye was "born."

Sorry for the long-winded question! My brain's been stuck on this for a while.

Okay so spoilers for full novel and Fmph rambling below (glad you’ve been enjoying my rambles by the way!)

1- I do think HC can hear prayers, I also believe that’s separate from his ascension and descension? This is one of those points where I can really feel my lack of knowledge of Chinese folklore (for lack of a better term right now, I’m sleepy).

I have a very vague knowledge of Taoism having an idea about if you pray to something long enough you can kind of… create it? Like a thing will fill that energy space and start taking your prayers so be careful to actually dedicate your space so something nasty doesn’t take it kinda thing which carries over into various belief systems so I might be getting it confused but that sort of idea plus the ongoing “the people call me blank, so I am blank” that the book has going in the beginning had my understanding of how it worked being HC can hear prayers simply because enough people pray to him and he’s powerful enough. Also you can pray to your ancestors, why couldn’t you pray to some Ghost King if you wanted? Again, I feel like this is almost certainly leaning on some things that just come more obviously to the Chinese audience this novel was written for that I’m just lacking cultural understanding of there.

2- Yeah there does seem to be good indication gods can give up godhood! I’ve seen some argument about whether HC actually gave up godhood or just gave up HEAVEN but I tend to lean towards him giving up his godhood completely? More on that in second.

XL couldn’t have given up his godhood when Ruoye was born though, he didn’t have it. He was banished and forcibly stripped of his godhood, the reason he didn’t die is because JW gave him an immortal body completely separate from mortal-godhood dynamics.

Quote from chapter 181:

“Once banished to become a mortal, other than aging slower than normal humans, there weren’t many other privileges. However, when Jun Wu first fabricated Xie Lian’s cursed shackle, he still showed some mercy, and left him room for accommodations.

While this cursed shackle locked away his spiritual powers, it also sealed his age and flesh body at the same time, allowing him to neither age nor die. Furthermore, Jun Wu told him: if you manage to ascend again, then everything in your previous life shall be forgiven, and this thing will be removed.”

Which JW was almost definitely doing because he needed to torment XL in ways no mortal would be able to withstand in an effort to break him. So of course XL wouldn’t have any control over the shackle or the “gift” attached to it.

ANYWAYS you asked about HC’s feelings about divinity so back to the reason I tend to lean towards HC giving up not just Heaven but godhood when he jumped back down immediately after ascending.

Actually I guess for my thoughts I don’t necessarily require him to give up the intrinsic quality of godhood so much as I think he would not consider himself a god and I’m kind of equating those?

So because here’s the thing: XL is the only god to him. HC has met and fought many gods but to him, XL is The God. The man is inventing monotheism, love that for him, it’s very funny.

As a result of that though, I think HC wouldn’t see himself as a god even while doing godlike things? Which is a little bit I think he’s spent so many centuries playing into the dichotomy between Ghosts and Gods that others are pushing and he holds so little respect for the other “so called” gods that I just really don’t see him caring about his own potential divinity? I don’t think he’d be ashamed about it or anything, I just don’t think he finds it particularly noteworthy? He’s seen the other people who ascend, he’s not impressed. Being a Ghost has been more helpful to serving his god than the red tape in heaven could let him be.

Also while HC is worshipped and becomes someone you must worship with XL eventually post canon his root is decidedly ghost which might be sleepy nonsense but he’s just like. On purpose he’s the pinnacle of the Obsessed Female Ghost. On purpose he’s just so very full of longing and his fanatic devotion just means so much that godhood to him just would be XL so divinity is wonderful, god is what he lives for, but it’s not what he is. And I feel like part of the point of tgcf is there isn’t really the clear boundary between gods and ghosts that heaven wants to pretend there is?

That being said I really believe he has a very straightforward emotional energy towards his own godhood in the same way he has this straightforward emotional energy towards anyone besides XL’s godhood: he’s completely uninterested.

Divinity = Xie Lian

God = Xie Lian

Heaven = those annoying fuckers who didn’t deserve XL

Anyways post-canon I also think their auras rub off on each other so XL is a little ghostly (which… actually we know in canon that this part is true) and I think HC would eventually get a faint divine aura to him by proxy/prolonged contact. And possibly sex too I guess.

So yeah was that the answer to the question?

#oof it’s a Fmph rant #once again I will not reread that for any sort of coherency so hope it worked #HC loves divinity he’s very into godhood #kisses godhood every morning and falls asleep in a divine embrace #now I’m thinking about divinity the candy though and god those are good but a bitch to make #is this enough that it won’t appear in the main tag?#let’s hope so because I like this for my own purposes #tgcf

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separatist-apologist · 2 years

Text

Last Young Renegade

Summary: A war on the continent is looming. A Death God approaches, his curse slowly unravelling. A firebird screams through the night.

And Elain Archeron can see it all.

Read More: Chapter 1 | AO3

Chapter Summary: This sort of thing only happens in my dreams

One horse. Just like everything else, Elain was expected to share. Lucien didn’t acknowledge it at all, only offered her a leather gloved hand to help her into the wide, dark saddle. Elain went up and Lucien came right behind, the black hood of his fur lined cape falling from his face. She’d put on a sapphire blue dress and Lucien had worn a silver jacket, complementing the colors of her own clothes so nicely she would have thought he did it on purpose had they not dressed separately. He’d been up before her, lounging in a chair reading the paper with a cup of tea. He’d wordlessly given her access to the tub first, following behind when she returned.

It had also been Lucien, coming out in said silver jacket looking every inch the kind of man she’d once daydreamed about, who had dried her hair without needing to be asked. It was hardly the same level of elegant care offered by someone like Cerridwen and yet better than the sopping mess it had been mere moments before.

It was good enough to meet royalty with, at any rate. Elain shifted in the saddle, ignoring the way Lucien’s large body conformed to her own, tucking her neatly between his thighs. Looming over them was the massive, sprawling palace that seemed to stretch to the Gods itself. Gleaming white spires tipped with snow reached for the sun, casting glittering, luminescent light over the winding mountain road.

Rask wasn’t like Prythian. One king ruled all of the fae territory here with the exception of Vallahan and Montaserre. Lucien had explained over breakfast, his voice quiet as he sat beside her in the booth. They’d been the picture of quiet lovers, heads practically touching as Lucien showed her the map. King Gunnar commanded all the magic Rask had to offer much the way Rhysand commanded all of Night. They experienced seasons as well, though his capitol was purposefully placed in the mountains to make it difficult for enemies to encroach on.

Lucien had said they would be the first emissaries from Prythian that the continent had seen in almost a century. She understood his meaning plain enough—don’t share anything Rask didn’t need to know unless it might benefit her in some way. That, she assumed, included her Cauldron gifted magic. Elain had almost told Lucien the wind seemed to sing to her here, calling her name like a chant—Elain, Elain, Elain. It drowned out his persistent heartbeat, if nothing else. Lucien didn’t need to know about the wild, ancient wind that often filtered through her bloodstream, replacing her air and shared the stories to come. He might send her straight back home rather than try and deal with the power she didn’t know how to control.

So up they rode, Lucien steering the massive white and brown horse beneath them. While she wiggled, uncomfortable and nervous, Lucien was unmovable, a steady rock for her to break against. He didn’t complain—though he did sigh loudly more than once—as they approached. Elain stiffened at the sight of a wide stone bridge connecting one part of the mountain to the palace, her stomach falling into the cloudy drop below.

“Don’t look,” Lucien warned, tightening his arms around her as they clopped over the white arched moonstone. He didn’t, both gold and russet eyes staring straight ahead. She couldn’t help it, peering so far over the edge Lucien all but dropped the reins to grab her. There was no danger, not with the road so wide around them or the thick railing she could have sat comfortably on. Still, his fingers gripped her arms tightly, as if for a moment he’d been sure she’d go falling to her death. “Don’t look,” he repeated, his voice tenser.

“Why build a castle like this?” she asked, righting herself against him.

“Because they could,” Lucien replied with a long, heavy breath. He relaxed as they made their way towards a snow covered gate. It swung open of its own accord, though Elain noted the navy coats of the guards watching with muted expressions as they came up. The first emissaries from Prythian in almost a century. He’d said Morrigan spent her time in Vallahan trying to convince their monarchs not to ally with Rask. Was King Gunnar aware?

King Gunnar was waiting just outside his iridescent palace, marked by the silver pointed crown set atop a curled head of ice blonde hair. Lucien swung a long leg from his horse with ease, falling to the stone ground gracefully. He held out a hand and Elain knew she would be expected to allow him to help, to let him put his hands on her waist and lower her gently.

From behind the King was his Queen—Hilda, Elain remembered. Her hair was a softer shade of red compared to Lucien’s, swept off her stunning face to highlight not her beauty, but the silver and sapphire circlet held atop her brow. She stood two paces behind her husband, hands clasped in front of her as she watched with a mix of one blue, one green eyes.

“Lucien Vanserra,” Gunnar boomed, his voice like the howling wind itself. Lucien swept into an easy bow, prompting Elain to curtsey beside him. “And your mate?”

Lucien nodded, the picture of masculine pride. “Mate and wife,” he said with an easy smile as Gunnar bowed over Elain’s ungloved hand. She noted the way his thumb brushed over the ring Lucien had given her before he pressed a polite kiss against her skin.

“Where did you find a sunstone?”

Elain glanced up at Lucien, careful to keep the surprise off her face. Lucien merely smiled.

“I have my ways.”

“It seems Prythian is filled with more than just beauty. Who knew it housed such treasure?”

“You should see it for yourself,” came Lucien’s easy response, his eyes shifting to the retinue of courtiers all watching with curiosity. Gunnar, too, turned and gestured for his wife, who smiled as Lucien and Elain bowed before her, too.

“Prythian is so quaint,” she murmured, reaching for Elain’s arm. “I am desperate to hear of your little island. Perhaps you could start with the tale of how you defeated Hybern?”

More than a few heads perked up. Elain merely smiled. “Hardly a tale at all given the strength of our land and armies.”

Lucien’s appraising smile told Elain she’d done a good job. She knew she could. Hilda, who could have been centuries old for all Elain knew, squeezed her arm conspiratorially, all the while leading her from the cold into the huge archway of the palace. “We are all secretly grateful you weathered that storm on our behalf.”

“That’s what neighbors are for,” Elain replied easily and oh, she’d forgotten how fun it could be, talking to another lady like this. It would be a mistake to forget that Hilda was the most powerful lady in all of Rask, one who would report back to her husband regarding the oddities of Prythian and still, Elain’s whole body warmed at the talk. It wasn’t sparring, wasn’t barbed. Elain detected nothing but honesty from the queen.

Elain had never seen anything like the palace Hilda walked her into. Everything seemed to glimmer the dreamiest shade of lilac. Built of a mixture of moonstone and mountainside, the palace was wide open and gleaming, its arched ceilings creating the feeling of walking among literal clouds. Open windows that kept the cold out, much like Rhysand’s palace, filtered in the foggy morning until Elain wasn’t sure if she was awake or dreaming.

It was Lucien’s hand on her elbow that drew her back to reality. “Rare indeed,” he was saying. “We’ve been blessed.”

“It is happy, then?” the Queen asked curiously, pausing in the middle of the great hall beneath an iridescent chandelier to look at them both. “My parents were mates and they were miserable.”

“Very happy,” Elain assured her before Lucien could offer up a half-truth. This was their ruse, was it not? They needed to just lean into it. Enough interested eyes poured over not just her, but Lucien too. People would be looking for weak spots, would want to exploit the pair of them. They could exploit them right back.

“Your High Lord said he was unable to join,” the King pushed them forward, past a grand, sunlit staircase that spiraled upwards into what might have been oblivion. “He said he’d had a child?”

“Yes,” Lucien agreed easily. “Very recently.”

“But none for you?”

Lucien glanced down at Elain with soft affection. “If we are lucky.”

She nearly snorted. They’d need more than luck for that sort of intervention. Lucien would need a miracle given how they were only touching to present a united front. Not that he wanted them, either. It was their little game. The doting mates from the curious island, come to plead with the continent not to start another war for territory. She could barely imagine Gunnar and Hilda as the greedy types and yet she was well aware of how ugliness could hide behind a beautiful facade. Had Rask owned human slaves once, too? Was Elain walking over blood stained floors?

She didn’t dare ask, not as Lucien continued his casual conversation, ever careful with what he offered up and what he asked.

“Zosia will show you to your room,” Gunnar interrupted Elain’s thoughts again, dropping them at another wide marble staircase that could have been made from the sky itself for how opalescent it seemed.

“Join us for lunch,” Hilda urged, looking only at Elain. “I would love to give you a tour.”

Elain nodded, following behind Lucien and the strawberry blonde who leveled a stare at Lucien just a beat longer than necessary. It prompted Elain to really look Lucien over. Zosia had hardly been the first to drag her eyes over Lucien’s form. Clad in silver and black, Elain could see what was appealing about his body. He was broad and muscular, taller than the King by a good two or three inches. His auburn hair had been swept off his face, trailing politely down his back. His chiseled jaw was nice enough, his lips full, his one good eye the same color as the embers of a dying flame. And Elain could admit Lucien’s cheekbones only served to make his face seem stronger, more masculine. Even the scars down his face seemed to testify to some innate courage that Elain suspected was enticing.

“Lord,” Zosia murmured, looking only at him when they reached the oval door set against cream and lilac. Lucien barely spared a glance, brows furrowing at whatever he saw.

“Ah…thanks.”

She smiled with gleaming teeth, dipping into another bow that was needlessly deep, offering him a perfect view down her dress. Lucien didn’t even notice, pushing open the door instead of doing what Elain did and peer into the dreamy yellow fabric. Zosia, still looking at Lucien’s retreating body, didn’t notice how Elain flushed, having just seen this strange woman's breasts. Whoops.

How many times would that happen? Did women just throw themselves at him like this? He didn’t react, barely looked over his shoulder and only to ensure Elain was trotting after her. Elain offered up an apologetic smile, unsure what the etiquette was when another woman was all but propositioning your fake husband.

Lucien, unaware of what was happening, snapped the door shut behind Elain. If he saw Zosia still standing there he didn’t say. Maybe Lucien didn’t care. Elain didn’t dare ask lest he think her jealous, which she absolutely was not.

“That went better than expected,” he said the moment they were alone. “I guess Feyre had a point.”

“What do you mean?” Elain replied, drinking in the beauty of their bedroom. It might have been its own apartment for the largeness of it. The bed was obviously the first thing Elain saw, draped in dreamy opalescent linen lined with amethyst. Another door, like the one at the inn, opened to a massive balcony that had, among other things, a wide pool overlooking the mountains around them. Their things had been hung in a closet large enough for another bed and Elain privately wondered if she couldn’t banish Lucien there if he bothered her. Cozy cream colored chairs and a table looked towards arching windows and a fire toasted the room cheerfully from the white marble mantle.

“I suppose you wouldn’t notice,” Lucien murmured, drawing Elain’s attention back to him. He was contemplative. “Gunnar is a collector of rare and beautiful things. Your ring, for example…and maybe you, if he has an inkling that you are anything but an ordinary faerie.”

Elain looked down at her ring. “You gave this to me on purpose.”

He shrugged. “Did I know Gunnar would see it and think twice about crossing me? Yes. Sunstones are nearly impossible to find anymore.”

Elain curled her fingers into her palm, not daring to ask anything else. Lucien’s jaw was clenched tight and she suspected it would have started a fight if she had. “You won’t let him keep me, right?”

“His own laws forbid it but I wouldn’t go anywhere alone with him,” Lucien replied easily, dropping into one of the chairs. “And I wouldn’t admit we’re not actually mated.”

“And if he finds out?”

“Let’s not worry about what I might be forced to do if we’re caught in a lie. No one but your family is aware we haven’t accepted the bond…as far as the rest of Prythain knows, we did it last week. I never said when, only that we had. Though…” Lucien began unbuttoning his jacket quickly while Elain watched, rooted to the spot with terror. She exhaled at the black short-sleeved shirt beneath.

“Put that on.”

“Why?”

“So you’re drenched in my scent. Let them think we are mad with lust,” he replied in clipped tones.

“I’m not wearing your jacket,” she snapped, recalling the memory of the Cauldron and being dragged away by Morrigan, his green jacket still draped over her body. She’d burned it months later, unable to stand how it reminded her of Hybern and why she’d had it to begin with. Lucien, unaware, twisted in his chair, his anger a living thing.

“Why make things easy?” he all but sneered, turning away to look towards the window.

“I’m already in your bed,” Elain whispered, resisting the urge to cry. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked and you still push—”

“Because I see how this ends,” Lucien interrupted without daring to look at her.

“Oh you see, do you? Maybe I’m not the one who needs to change, Lucien. Maybe you should consider that I am very aware of what my face looks like and how people react to it. You should learn to trust me instead of assuming I’m so stupid I’ll get caught up in a man’s lustful affections. I’ve been dodging men since I was nine years old.” That drew his attention. Lucien’s face paled, his mouth opening and closing again.

“Stop treating me like a child and this will all go a lot better,” Elain added before she lost her momentum. Lucien arched a copper brow. It was stupid to say it out loud but perhaps Lucien needed the reminder.

“We’re mates for a reason, right?”

His smile was mischievous. “Alright, Elain Archeron. Show me what you’ve got.”

Elain meant to.

Lucien:

Lunch was a tedious affair. Lucien learned several things right off the bat. Elain was immediately popular with every male at court, the king himself included. Lucien made mental notes of all the males who stared just a little too long while resisting the urge to pull her into his lap. Her beauty was just another weapon, one he might wield if he was skilled and careful. He’d always just assumed she was oblivious to the effect she had but Elain’s own words still rang in his head.

I’ve been dodging men since I was nine years old.

He could see the ladies wanted to hate her. Elain outshined even the queen without even trying. The problem, of course, was how genuinely nice Elain was. She threw herself into conversations with wide-eyed optimism, inquiring after everyone in her sweet, interested way. Luicen had wanted someone like Nesta, who could wield her words like a blade without tripping into another's trap.

Elain’s skill set was different. No one trusted him but her? Elain was interested and seemed so utterly unaware of the words that flowed from her mouth that Lucien could see the way the ladies assumed them to be true. He, of course, heard the lies for what they were. She was far too loving when she discussed him, for one.

“So,” Gunnar turned the full weight of his pale blue eyes onto Lucien. “Your father is Beron Vanserra, is he not?”

Lucien resisted the urge to spear his meat violently. “You know Beron?”

“Not well. I met him once when he was still the High Lord's son. He was killing his way through his brothers, then,” Gunnar said with a feral smile.

“How does one of his sons end up in Night?” Gunnar pressed. Ah. Of course. Lucien nodded towards Elain at the other end of the table, eyes sparkling as she touched a pregnant female's stomach. His chest clenched at the sight.

“My mate’s sister is mated to the High Lord of the Night Court.”

True enough.

“Your father didn’t mind?”

“Did you ask your father for permission to marry?” Lucien asked instead, earning a chuckle for the king.

“My father was long dead by the time I took a wife. Had I known what existed over the sea, though…”

Hilda looked up, eyes narrowing for only a moment. Gunnar was such a bastard. Hilda was truly stunning, barely sixty. Gunnar had been married to her for three decades, a blink in their time. Not so easily shed, either.

“How did you defeat Hybern?” Gunnar continued. “We heard he had the Cauldron.”

“He was careless with its power,” Lucien said. “And even immortals like us can die.”

Of course, Lucien didn’t mention it had been Elain who’d struck that killing blow. There was no need to put that sort of thought into Gunnar’s head, to tell him of her whispered nickname. Kingslayer.

He didn’t think she’d be embraced so openly if his court knew what she might be capable of should she be pushed.

“What do you plan to do with the mortals?” Gunnar asked.

“Nothing.”

Lucien wasn’t stupid enough to think Gunnar would make a suggestion. The king was merely getting a feel for Prythian and the kind of defense they might be willing to put up…what kind of army they possessed. There would be time to feel them out, to make himself useful to Gunnar and, ideally, convince Gunnar that war was in no one’s best interest.

“My wife likes your wife,” Gunnar told Lucien instead, affection lacing his words. Perhaps, deep down, there was something other than just acquisition to their marriage. Some genuine feelings. Lucien had thought that about his own parents, once. His father could be kind to his mother, could speak so sweetly about her only to turn around and take a parade of lovers right in front of her before striking her in the stomach for complaining.

“Everyone likes Elain,” Lucien told the king, offering a glimpse of emotion he would have sworn on his life didn’t exist. Elain glanced over, smiling with prompting when she caught him looking. Her whole face erupted like the sun, scattering brilliant light over the long, carved table. He could only stare, unsure what to make of the gesture.

“I remember when Hilda used to look at me like that,” Gunnar said with a nudging grin. Lucien looked away, embarrassed he’d been caught. “If you’re looking for fun, though, let me know. I know just the females. And if she’s looking for fun…” his voice trailed off with a dark chuckle. Lucien resisted the urge to beat Gunnar to death with his own arm.

It’s just a joke.

Still, Lucien bet he did. He’d seen Zosia in the hall, her tits practically spilling to the floor. Even if he had been tempted he liked to think he wasn’t so easy he’d pounce on the first willing female lifting her skirts. Lucien merely smiled.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Lucien immediately forgot the offer once night descended upon them. He’d been eyeing that pool on the veranda from the moment they arrived and he’d be damned if Elain’s modesty kept him from stripping to nearly nothing and climbing in while she was using the bathroom. He hadn’t expected her to come out, arms folded against her body.

“It’s cold,” she complained.

“Go back inside,” he replied, wading towards the edge so he could stare out at the view. The last time he’d come it had been in search of an army. He’d roughed it, running over rugged terrain and sleeping beneath the stars. This was far nicer. Maybe the nicest accommodations he’d ever had though Dawn Court ranked fairly high. Warm water contrasted with frigid air nicely while snow capped mountains set against an inky sky offered for a stunning backdrop. Lucien wanted to float in the water until he was nothing and no one. Only a black ledged railing kept him from just sliding out and falling into the fathomless depths just over the edge.

“I want to talk,” Elain said, her voice soft enough to draw his attention back to the door.

“Get in the water?” he asked, well aware there was no way Elain was going to come anywhere near him when he was wearing nothing but a tight pair of wet shorts. She shook her head and Lucien sighed, swimming towards her. “Sit down,” he grumbled, throwing up a bubble of warmth before resting his arms on the lip of the pool. Instead of sitting in one of the chairs, Elain sat on the edge, hiking her dress up to her knees and dipping her toes into the water.

“You know, I don’t have to be your enemy,” Lucien told her, watching her kick her feet, churning warmth over his body.

“Do you know that?” Elain retorted. “Because you have been nothing but hostile since we left.”

“You don’t speak to me–”

“I don’t know what to say!” she interrupted with exasperation. “But I don’t insult you, either.”

He looked down at his hand, suddenly ashamed and embarrassed.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I just assumed you hated me. “Let’s start over. Hi. My name is Lucien Vanserra.”

She almost smiled, rolling her eyes though she took his hand. “Alright, Lucien Vanserra. I’m Elain Archeron. It’s nice to meet you.”

He had to resist the urge to roll his eyes too. He doubted she found him nice to meet.“What did you think?”

“They’re strange,” she offered quickly. “Everything here is really beautiful and everyone is really beautiful and it makes me wonder where they hide the ugly.”

“Gunnar was trying to feel me out. He was asking about the war…about the Cauldron. They’ll push us in the coming weeks to reveal more information.”

“How much should we share?” she asked, swinging her legs gently. Water swirled around his torso, tickling his skin.

“Nothing. I don’t want them to question our strength. They have three Kings, all divided by their own self-interests. We have seven High Lords which, as far as they know, are the equivalent to kings. All seven of them united for the last war and we might again.”

Elain nodded, eyes half hidden in shadow. “They don’t know if we’d help them or the mortals.”

“Neither do I, to tell you the truth. What they do over here has little to do with us. I could see more than a few High Lords choosing to wait out the continent and see if they are content with what they get.”

“That would be a mistake,” Elain agreed, her words a sigh. She withdrew her feet from the water to stand, yawning heavily. “I’m going to bed. In the morning I’ll see if I can’t infiltrate some of the lady’s games. I hear they have tea every mid morning. There will be gossip.”

“Spoken like a good wife,” Lucien murmured. “I think in a week or so we should plan to see more of Rask. Get a feel of the scale, the people…what might prompt Gunnars people to rally behind a costly war with mortals.”

She nodded. “I…” she trailed off.

“Yes?” he prompted, watching her pad away, her wet feet soft slapping against the stone.

“I always wanted to see the tulips.”

Oh. “Always?” She had said something about that before, in one of the inns. Lucien had assumed it just a story.

“When I was a human, I mean. I meant to go…before.” she trailed off, rubbing the back of her neck and Lucien, despite five years of trying to give her things only to see them rejected, decided to try one last time.

“I could take you,” he offered nonchalantly, catching how her steps stuttered. “I know where they are. They sell the bulbs in a little village nearby so if you like what you see, you could bring some back home with you.” She looked over her shoulder, face gilded from the light streaming from the open door. “That would be nice.”

And that was that.

Elain:

Elain jolted awake to the sound of someone calling her name. Not just anyone. “Graysen?” she asked stupidly, rubbing her eyes against the heel of her hand. She was supposed to be in bed, should have been tucked between the silken sheets in the mountain top palace, Lucien breathing steadily beside her. Had it been a dream, she wondered as she lifted herself from the picnic blanket she’d been napping on? She’d been here before.

“You dozed off,” Graysen said with a smile, offering his hand to help her to her feet. Elain brushed off her pink skirts, unaccustomed to the feel of the petticoats beneath.

“For how long?”

She was struggling to remember where else she was supposed to be. Lucien? The name was fading, along with the feel of cold air and the smell of pine. A dream. She’d dreamt the entire thing. Graysen, with his soft brown eyes and his dark hair, dressed perfectly in his long-sleeved black silver coat…wait. That wasn’t right, was it? Still, he offered her a black gloved hand and Elain had the strangest sense of deja vu. She could hear a soft thudding in her head, the sound of a heartbeat or, perhaps, hooves on the ground. She twisted, looking for the source but only Graysen and his easy smile greeted her.

“Not long at all,” he assured her, abandoning their picnic for a line of trees in the distance. “But we’re running late.”

“For what?” she questioned, turning over her shoulder to look. Rolling green hills expanded into nothing but an empty blue sky. She’d never seen them before and yet swore there was a familiar coppery tang to the cool air. The wind slid over her skin like steel, caressing the side of her neck like a lovers kiss.

“For our wedding.”

Elain looked down at her dress again. White. Why had she thought pink? “We came out here before the wedding?”

Thumpthumpthumpthump.

Where was that sound coming from?

He led her into the forest without a word, walking with such surefooted steps she knew he must be right. Graysen glanced over his shoulder, smiling so sweetly. Elain blinked, trying to figure out what was happening. His face was almost right. It was all in the eyes, she thought as they plunged into the shadowy darkness of the woods. They were just a shade too dark, just like his hair. Still, that dimpled smile made her press on until he reached the wall, her heeled shoes stumbling and slipping and—was the ground wet? She could feel it seeping like ice against her feet.

“We’re in Prythian?” she asked, watching how easily he slung his body over it, legs first with a casual, elegant sort of grace. Like sliding from a horse—no, wait. That was wrong, too.

Thumpthumpthumpthump.

The sound had become louder, panicked almost.

Elain had to scramble, pulling herself up the rough worn stone just to stand on the precarious ledge. “How did we get here?”

“You wanted to see the tulips,” Graysen told her softly, stretching out his arms. “Jump to me, Elain. I’ll catch you.”

In the distance, Elain could hear someone calling for her. The wind, maybe? She started to turn her head but Graysen pressed closer. “Jump,” he ordered, eyes flashing. Elain froze, listening to that voice, the wind, the warmth. Home.

ELAIN! It beckoned. ELAIN!

Graysen’s face morphed, his fury shifting his face into terrible shadow, twisted and fanged and terrifying. “JUMP!”

“ELAIN!” Lucien’s voice cut through the dream, his arms tight against her body as her eyes flew open and oh, she was standing on the ledge of the balcony, about to tumble into the dark abyss of the mountain. She meant to scream, her heart leaping into her throat, but Lucien, still holding her, yanked viciously until the pair fell into the warm water of the pool below. He never released his hold, kicking off the bottom for a breath of crisp mountain air. Warm water invaded her senses, stinging her eyes and flooding her mouth.

“What were you doing?!” he demanded, his golden eye shuttering wildly in the dark. His hands smoothed hair from her face. Elain forced herself to breathe, clinging to his body like a child. Lucien’s heart thudded in her ears, the same from her dream.

“I couldn’t feel you,” he told her when she didn’t respond, walking her towards the steps, careful not to touch her more than he had to. “The bond went dark in my chest. It’s what woke me.”

She hadn’t thought to reach for him. “I could hear your heart,” she managed, dragging herself from the water. Lucien immediately averted his eyes though for the first time, Elain didn’t care if he saw her naked body. “You couldn’t hear mine?”

Lucien only shook his head, trailing water into their room as he went to the bathing chamber for a towel.

“Oh.”

Lucien grabbed a change of clothes from the closet before vanishing behind the bathroom door, leaving her to change her own clothes, too. Elain swallowed, unable to get the final moments of that dream from her mind. It hadn’t been just a dream. It had been real. She’d been in that forest, could still feel the cold stone of the wall under her fingers. She might have jumped, even, had…

Lucien returned in loose cotton pants and a long shirt, his hair dry. He flicked his fingers, drying her hair, too, before joining her in the bed.

“What happened?”

“I have nightmares,” she lied. Lucien clicked his teeth impatiently.

“Nightmares that compel you to jump to your death?” he demanded. Only, she had when she’d first been turned. It was why Nesta had begun sleeping outside Elain’s door, terrified Elain would one day do it. She’d wanted to.

“I don’t know how else to explain it. In my dream I’m not meaning to hurt myself…”

Lucien’s face was visible in the dying glow of firelight. “Do you still have visions, Elain?”

She couldn’t face him. “Yes.”

He rose from the bed again, looping his belt through the sliding door in an effort to keep it locked. “You need to learn to control whatever it is the Cauldron gave you.”

“They’re just dreams.”

“If I hadn’t woken up…” Lucien shuddered violently, sighing as he padded back to the bed. “That was more than just a dream.”

“How did you learn to control your magic?” she asked when the mattress dipped beneath his weight. It was wrong to wish he’d wrap his arms around her again. Elain knew if she asked him to hold her, she’d regret it in the morning. She just missed being touched, especially then, shaken from nearly plunging to her death. She thought he would and yet she didn’t think he’d enjoy it and Elain couldn’t risk their budding truce on her wobbly feelings.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s something we’re taught as children. I’ll help,” he added quickly, sensing her despair. “There can’t be lies between us, Elain. Not when we’re surrounded on all sides by people we can’t trust.”

“And how can I trust you?” she asked, not out of malice but genuine curiosity. Lucien ran a hand through his thick hair, blowing out a frustrated sigh through his nose.

“Because you’re my mate,” he finally offered, his voice helpless and soft.

“You can’t betray your mate?” she questioned.

Lucien shook his head. “No. It would be like cutting off my own head. I…it has always been that way, though I know you don’t want to hear it. I stayed as Rhys’s emissary for you and not out of loyalty to Feyre. As long as you don’t tell me to go, I will continue to do so.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” She wished he hadn’t, even.

“I did,” he replied simply. “So while we’re here, no lies. You can keep your secrets when we return to Prythian.”

“And you? Will you vow to tell the truth to me as well?”

“I haven’t lied to you yet.” He was too quick to reply. “No matter how ugly my words might be.”

There was a vulnerability to agreeing she wasn’t sure she liked and yet Lucien had woken, hadn’t he? He’d come for her, had kept her from plunging to her death. Elain swallowed. “I can’t wear your jacket.”

Lucien went utterly still beside her, the only proof of life was his still beating heart.

“You put it on me in Hybern and when you offered it today I…”

“It’s fine,” he said too quickly. “It can be anything. Sleep in one of my shirts.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “Tomorrow.”

He shifted, laying against the pillows. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Elain hesitated. She knew he felt it. Graysen’s terrible face, his wrong eyes, wrong hair…beckoning her to join him. “Nothing else.” Lucien sighed. He knew she’d lied.

“Very well. Good night, Elain.”

“Good night, Lucien.”

Lucien:

Boring.

Lucien was stuck in what amounted to a gentlemen's club, smoking with all the other male courtiers, a glass of whiskey in hand. Gunnar had promised hunting before a surprise avalanche ruined their plans. The females were off having tea and likely having a far more interesting time than Lucien and his cards. He was losing and not on purpose. Lucien could not stop thinking about Elain standing on that precarious ledge, her feet hanging off the smooth railing, hair whipping in the wind.

She’d turned right before he’d grabbed her and Lucien had thought she’d died. No eyes ought to look like that, so empty, so…so…so cold. There had been no life, no warmth, not even the usual anger he’d grown so accustomed to. The whole ordeal terrified Lucien and when he pulled her from the heated water, he’d expected to see that same vacant expression.

But she’d come back to him and the darkened bond in his chest stuttered back to life. How long had it been going on? He couldn’t feel her when they were separated as they so often were. If their mating bond winked in and out of life, Lucien doubted he would have sensed it.

In the aftermath, Elain had rolled away, arms wrapped around her chest. He’d almost offered to hold her before he thought better of it, not wanting to start a fight when he knew she was still keeping secrets. It didn’t matter—Elain came to him once she fell asleep, whimpering softly and Lucien, despite his frustrations, had pulled her against him,if only to keep her from running off again. He wondered, staring blankly at his cards, if he might convince her that they should be tied together at night so he’d be alerted if it happened again. After all, Elain had managed to get onto the balcony before Lucien shrugged off sleep.

“I’d quit while I was ahead,” Gunnar laughed, taking more of Lucien’s coins and pulling him from his thoughts. “You look wrecked.”

“I didn’t sleep much last night,” Lucien admitted, earning chuckles from the table around him. Beside Gunnar was his right hand man Silas, a male who looked four hundred years old somehow, despite his easy youth. There was a heaviness to him that Lucien found unsettling. What had Gunnar asked of him to make those blue eyes look so heavy and worn?

Kendric was Gunnar’s general, a beefy male with wispy blonde hair so reminiscent of falling snow Lucien kept mistaking it for such out of the corner of his eye. He was losing on purpose which annoyed Lucien. Was Gunnar such a sore loser he couldn’t stand if his friends beat him?

Their group was brought up by Marcellus, Lucien’s least favorite of the four, if only because Marcellus did not keep his interest in Elain a secret like Lucien thought he should. For all the male knew, Elain was happily mated and married. She didn’t need his gaze on her body and certainly didn’t need his musky scent trailing around her. Of the five, Marcellus was the youngest, related somehow to Hilda if his match-matched blue and green eyes were any indication.

“Wife keep you up?”

“She always does,” Lucien replied easily, reclining in his chair with a self-satisfied smile. “The mating bond is still riding her hard.”

Marcellus’s lip curled upwards but the reminder was good for them all. Elain wasn’t just his wife—she was his mate. It was one thing to chase after a female when her ties were merely written on paper. Still an affront to the male who all but owned her, but clearly allowable to some extent. But a mate was tied to a male by the Gods themselves and if another male touched her, even if Elain invited it, Lucien could challenge that male to a blood duel.

And he might.

Cards forgotten, Gunnar leaned forward, ignoring the coins that were rightfully his by his winning hand. “How did you know?”

Lucien saw all the males shift, their curiosity getting the better of them. Mates were rare. It was unlikely any of the group sitting at his table, let alone in the parlor he was in, had ever even met a mated pair. “It’s a physical feeling,” he finally said, unsure how much he wanted them to know. “Like a muscle you can feel.”

“And all the rumors,” Gunnar continued. “Like the frenzy. Are they true?”

Lucien didn’t dare let himself shift with discomfort. Holding himself utterly still, he smiled, hoping they saw the feral edge. “Yes. It is very true.”

More appreciative chuckles punctuated the otherwise tense silence before the conversation shifted back to mundane things. It wasn’t gossip but merely a discussion of this lord or that, along with some of their troubles at the border with their own shattered wall. The wall, bound up by the Cauldron all those centuries ago, had crumbled to ash when Hybern took it down in Prythian and it seemed Gunnar was struggling to keep his own people from crossing and doing what they liked to the mortals in the bordering villages.

Lucien also got the sense that none of them cared very much, despite the protests from the ruling human monarchs. They had their own problems—two of them had vanished, not that Rask knew what had actually happened. They knew Vassa was back in Scythia with Jurian and had likely pieced together something had happened between the other five and Vassa, but as to what, Gunnar likely didn’t know. Lucien betrayed nothing and was eternally grateful when a servant called for lunch. He beat Elain to the dining room by mere moments, body going absurdly tight when she strolled in smiling and laughing with several other ladies. She wore a pretty red dress, the skirt fluttering about her legs and Lucien was hardly the only male who had noticed.

Unable to resist, he reached for her wrist when she passed, yanking her into his lap. Elain giggled, the clever little thing, twining her arms around his neck to bury her face in his hair.

“What until you hear what I found out,” she whispered, breath fanning against his neck. Lucien released his grip on her as if she’d burned him. He smiled, still, sliding his fingers through her silken curls, suddenly desperate to touch.

“Go on, then,” he murmured, letting her hop off his lap and scramble after her still laughing friends, grateful Elain did not recognize the way his scent had shifted. The males around him did and it was Silas who put hand on his shoulder.

“Looks like the bond is riding you hard, too.”

Elain heard, her head snapping in his direction. She betrayed none of her feelings though Lucien could guess them well enough. He merely smiled, grateful when a plate of food was set in front of him. The bond had always ridden him hard. That was hardly a secret. Elain could have asked anyone back home and they would have testified to that.

Sitting beside Marcellus, Lucien was treated to a full hour of his mate smiling and giggling at the male. At one point, Elain ran a finger over his pale, bare forearm, touching a swirling tattoo that Marcellus was obviously very proud of. Still, she was the picture of polite interest all the same. No wafting scent, no innuendo, nothing but a female who was clearly pretending to be dumber than she was. Too friendly but harmless.

Lucien had to resist the urge to haul her over his shoulder while snarling at the room. Instead, Lucien finished his meal like he’d been raised with manners—because he had—before he coaxed her out of the room.

“We want to take Lady Elain to the hot spring!” Axelle complained after his retreating back. “She has never seen one!”

Elain, holding his hand, twisted to look over her shoulder. “Wait for me! This won’t take long.”

Which sent her group of waiting friends into a peal of loud laughter, all of which was directed solely at him.

“I didn’t mean–” Elain spluttered but it was too late.

“You’ve wounded my pride,” Lucien grumbled, shoving her into the bedroom and locking the door behind her.

“I was trying to explain we would only be talking!” Elain insisted, her cheeks flaming red.

“Now I must keep you here for the rest of the afternoon,” Lucien told her, trying to make his words sound joking and light. Elain flopped into a chair, eyes bright.

“What did you learn?”

“That no one in this court has ever seen a mated pair and everyone is hoping to have sex with you,” he said quickly, occupying the chair across from her. “I am going to end up in a duel if they cannot keep themselves together.”

Her eyes widened. “The ladies have never met a mated pair either…and two of them offered to join us in our bedroom, if you’re looking for a diversion—”

“I’m not,” he said quickly. Elain’s smile turned smug, if only for a moment.

“Well, if you change your mind—”

“Is this what you have for me?” he teased. “An offer to set me up with the available females at court? I hardly require assistance on that front—”

“Yes, you’re so desirable,” she interrupted with an eye roll. “I have heard it all morning, Lucien and having spent the last four days with you, frankly, I do not understand the fuss.”

“Would you like to?”

Elain scowled. “I’ll pass, but the offer is too kind.”

Lucien drummed his fingers on his knee until she spoke.

“Okay, here is what I do know.”

“Finally,” he grumbled.

Elain’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh? Finally, is it? What was it that you said to me again? That I would be the one, to quote you, fuck this whole thing up. What do you know, again, Lucien? What information have you gleaned in all your centuries of wisdom?”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry I said that, alright? Now tell me.”

Elain leveled a stare before smoothing the fabric of her dress over her knees. The ring on her finger caught in the afternoon sun and Lucien squirmed from pleasure at the sight. It was hers. He hoped she kept it when the entire thing was over.

“Did you know Hilda was from Montaserre?” she asked. Lucien smiled.

“I did.”

“So is Marcellus. They’re cousins and he’s here to keep her father’s interests in check. To hear Hilda explain, he’s an incredibly powerful warrior with a magic that seems similar to the Illyrians. He doesn’t need siphons but it gives him an edge in battle. She has that same magic and Gunnar hopes their offspring will, too.”

“So your average political alliance,” Lucien agreed. “My parents wed for similar reasons.”

“When I was talking to Marcellus at lunch, he mentioned he’d just come from squashing a rebellion but not from where. I didn’t dare ask and seem too interested when he was clearly trying to impress me, but I wonder if Rask is already pushing into the mortal lands as a test.”

As Lucien digested that, Elain continued.

“Gunnar knows your father.”

“Yes, they met when they were young,” Lucien began but Elain was shaking her head. “He knows him. Beron has been here in the last year. Hilda could speak of nothing but how little you resemble him, how strange your coloring, how much more handsome you were. I don’t think Beron shared any information about you but I’ll bet Gunnar has written him since we arrived.”

“Fuck,” Lucien swore. Elain tucked her legs beneath her dress.

“We didn’t tell them anything Beron could contradict,” Elain murmured, brown eyes watching him carefully. “For all he knows, we did get married.”

Lucien pressed a hand over his mouth, resting his chin against his palm as he considered the implications. “I know Beron allied with Briallyn…but he’d be stupid to think someone like Gunnar would honor any alliance they made. At best, Gunnar would set Beron up a regent and not a king in his own right.”

“Maybe he’s not trying to form an alliance. Maybe he just needs access to something Gunnar has,” Elain replied. Their eyes met.

“He’d be fucking stupid to see Koschei himself.”

Elain sighed softly. “This is more complicated than I originally thought.”

Lucien nodded. “If Gunnar brought Beron to his palace, I’m sure he didn’t understand Beron’s intentions. We’ll have to keep our ears open, untease this little mystery.”

“Beron’s not the only one they’ve been in contact with on Prythian,” Elain murmured, her eyes shifting with unease. “Helion has agreed to loan Gunnar one of his scholars.”

“For what?” Lucien demanded. “Does Rhysand know?”

“Is Rhysand our High King?” Elain snapped. “I don’t think Helion thought he needed to ask permission. Hilda didn’t say, only that she would be arriving in the next week or so.”

Lucien blew out a loud breath. “Wonderful.”

“I’ll befriend her,” Elain said brightly, always looking on the bright side while Lucien imagined every possible way this trip was going to get them killed. “One of us should do their job.”

Lucien waved her away with a soft growl. “Don’t you have a hotspring you’re supposed to be drowning in?”

Elain leapt from her chair. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell everyone it was me who pleasured you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, unconcerned with the state of his reputation given what Elain had revealed. Beron. Would his father truly make a deal with the devil himself just to rule Prythian? Would he not realize whatever bargain he made would be skewed to favor the death lord or did Beron think he could someone survive whatever horrors Koschei might inflict?

With a sigh, Lucien rose for a piece of parchment and a pen.

He’d need to tell Rhysand what they’d learned.

Elain:

If Elain learned nothing else over the following week, it was that she absolutely could not trust any of the women at court. Not even Hilda, who was perhaps the most visibly married woman around Elain and yet not hearing Elain clearly when she made a complaint.

“I found Ione in my bed,” Elain was protesting. “Naked.”

Hilda waved a hand. “Was she alone?”

Elain had to swallow a scream. “That is hardly—”

“Perhaps Lord Vanserra invited her,” Hilda continued from her place in the library, eyes firm on the stocking she was knitting.

“Did he also forget her?” Elain demanded.

“Males are stupid creatures,” Hilda offered breezily, the first smart thing she’d said all week. “Maybe he hoped you might–”

“He didn’t,” Elain interrupted firmly. She knew Lucien wouldn’t be so careless and certainly not so brazen he’d skip straight over kissing for a threesome. She couldn’t tell the queen that without admitting her and Lucien decidedly did not touch, which left Hilda dismissive and uninterested.

“Your mate likely lead her to believe—”

“He breathes and they imagine his interest,” Elain snapped, tired of how all anyone wanted was to speak about how handsome and tall and muscular Lucien was. What happened to his eye, Elain? Is he quite the warrior? His scars are so fascinating, however did he get them? Tell me about his cock—she’d had enough.

“He is new and we are bored,” Hilda finally told Elain with some amount of pity. “Males take mistresses. They are merely hoping he might choose them.”

“Not where we are from. It would be an insult,” Elain insisted, hating how Hilda’s pitying expression only deepened.

“Males are the same everywhere. Choose your own lover, if it bothers you so. But I cannot stop the ladies in my court from crawling in his bed anymore than you can. You will have to make peace with the circumstances eventually.”

Elain opened her mouth to protest but a servant strode into the open space, eyeing both Hilda and Elain with interest. No one bowed to the queen here or offered her any respect beyond acknowledging she was married to Gunnar. Hilda had very little power save for the control she exerted over her ladies and it was a control she wielded very infrequently, careful not to disturb some imagined imbalance. How many of them had crawled into her own husband's bed, Elain wondered?

“The scholar from Prythian has arrived.”

“Oh good. This is why I called you here, Elain,” Hilda added, rising from her chair. “I want to meet her before Gunnar.”

“Any particular reason? Elain questioned, falling into step beside Rask’s queen.

“I don’t trust her,” Hilda murmured. “Or her High Lord, no matter what Gunnar says. After Beron…” Hilda didn’t follow up what had happened with Beron to make her distrustful and Elain wondered why Hilda trusted her. “I just want your opinion on her. I can trust you not to lie to me.”

She couldn’t, but Elain suspected what Hilda could trust was Elain not to sleep with her husband. No one in this court were friends, a jarring realization after four years in Night. Backstabbing and two-faced, honeyed words were par the course. Elain had watched Zosia saunter in the morning before drenched in Gunnar’s scent and utterly unrepentant as she joined everyone for tea. They all discussed him as if he were some paragon of masculinity but Elain thought him little more than a toad, putting his slimy hands wherever he could in order to mask the insecurities he so clearly had. What good was being handsome if his personality was so dreadful?

“What,” Hilda breathed when they stepped into the drawing room, “Is in the water over in Prythian?”

Elain understood what she meant, exhaling a grateful breath at the sight of the glowing, beautiful woman standing on the black and blue rug. Elain had been imagining an older woman, graying and ancient, having spent thousands of years studying in Helion’s libraries but this woman couldn’t have been any older than Elain and, to Elain’s dizzying delight, twice as lovely.

“You’re the scholar?” Hilda asked, closing the drawing room doors behind them. “Arina?”

Arina’s pine green eyes danced with amusement. “I’m older than I look, lady.” Hilda cringed when Arina dropped into a polite curtsey, her long-sleeved, white dress fanning about her body. It wasn’t done on the continent like it was in Prythian. Everyone respected the ladies married to High Lords the way they did their husbands, if nothing else.

“Was the journey difficult?” Hilda asked politely when Arina righted herself. Elain studied Helion’s scholar, wondering why he’d picked this particular woman to come. Arina, with her waist length golden hair and her bronzed skin, looked laughably out of place. The men were going to love her. It was perhaps an uncharitable first thought and yet Elain was relieved to have some of that attention fall off herself.

“Not at all. I winnowed in a few moments earlier. Colder than I expected, though,” Arina admitted with a pretty laugh. Elain decided right then and there that she liked Arina, if only for her attempt to bring levity to the tense atmosphere.

“My husband explained why you’re here?”

“Well, he explained to my High Lord,” Arina offered, taking a seat on the floral settee behind her when Hilda gestured. Elain remained at the door, watching the whole scene as best she could, if only to transcribe everything word for word to Lucien later that night. “About the Cauldron–”

“Yes, of course, that fucking Cauldron,” Hilda snapped, smoothing out her violet dress with irritation. “His obsession knows no limits. I need you to do something different, though.” Arina lifted a delicate brow, her full lips quirking upwards. “I assume this stays between us?”

“If you value your life,” Hilda all but snarled. “There is a sorcerer living in these lands. Bound to it. No one can translate the original text and when Gunnar asked your High Lord for a scholar, it was for his best. I am hoping that means you are adept at languages. I want that creature gone. Surely the original curse explains it.”

Arina’s eyes slid to Elain who, despite knowing better, shrugged her shoulders near imperceptibly. I didn’t know about this.

“Gunnar thinks he could be reasoned with if we had the Cauldron,” Hilda said, taking both Elain and Arina by surprise. “Men are foolish, stupid creatures.” Said with such hatred, such vehemence that Elain wondered the true manner of their marriage. “That we could wield their power but I know better. Do what you must but do not tell him you are looking.”

“And you trust this female behind you?” Arina asked gently, biting her bottom lip.

“Elain Archeron—” Awareness flashed over Arina’s expression when she heard the name— “Is also from Prythian. She knows the nature of the Cauldron and for that precise reason can be trusted.”

Hilda rose. “Gunnar will try and seduce you. I would ask you don’t believe his lies.”

Arina grinned. “I promise not to sleep with your husband, lady.”

“I told you it is not done in Prythian,” Elain added pointedly.

Hilda rose. “Well, tell that to Lucien Vanserra—”

“Lucien Vanserra is here?” Arina asked, eyes alight. Hilda twisted to look at Elain as if to say see? Males are males no matter where you go.

“He owes me fifty gold coins,” Arina added with a grin. “He’s been dodging me for decades.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“You do that,” Arina agreed, following behind Hilda. Back turned to both women from Prythian, Arina mouthed, Let’s talk later.

Elain dodged Hilda and Arina, all but running to the throne room where she knew Lucien would be, surrounded by males talking casually. She needed a way to get him out without making herself so totally obvious. Elain’s eyes swept into the room, glittering that same simmering white and purple that was starting to feel so fake. The white moonstone throne lay abandoned so Gunnar could cavort about with the men, his crown abandoned somewhere in the palace. For a moment he seemed so normal, so young. Sitting at a long, carved table set beneath the glimmering chandelier, he could have been any other man.

His eyes found her first, cutting through the ladies dancing and men playing cards. His smile faltered for only a moment before he beckoned with two fingers, scooting just enough for her to join him. Elain flounced forward, not to Gunnar, who she loathed more than she’d ever thought possible, but to Lucien. His arm shot out as she passed just as she knew it would, hauling her into his lap like he always did. It was meant to be affectionate, to remind all the men he was playing cards with that she was undeniably his wife. It had irritated her the first time he’d done it, but then, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face into the crook of his neck, Elain was grateful.

“I’m going to touch you,” she whispered in warning, still able to feel Gunnar’s eyes on her body. She got the sense their little display amused him more than deterred him. Lucien didn’t react, not when her hand slid down his chest before resting against his upper thigh. Hardened muscle shifted beneath her palm, adjusting her ever so slightly so she wasn’t so close to other things.

“Put me over your shoulder, pretend to be consumed with lust.”

Lucien glanced down at her, his one russet eye practically burning with flame. “Can I help you, sweet mate?”

She was sweating. What was wrong with her? “I miss you.”

Lucien smiled, rising from his seat just as she’d asked. “I’m out.”

“Come on, Vanserra,” came a few voices of protest but Lucien hauled her up over his shoulder.

“Duty calls, I’m afraid,” he said, ever the conquering hero. Elain ignored the way people watched, how their scents shifted as he strolled by. Lucien had the decency to at least put her on her feet when they reached the stairs though his agitation was unmatched.

“I was in the middle of something,” he grumbled.

“Yes, losing more coins,” Elain agreed. “You are quite talented at that.”

Lucien shut them in their bedroom, his fingers flying to the golden buttons on his sage colored jacket.

“We’re not actually doing anything,” Elain reminded him when he shrugged out of his clothes. He pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it at her face.

“You’ll wear my scent and you’ll like it,” Lucien informed her, striding across the room in nothing but his fine pants. Elain had to turn to avoid staring, hated the way her traitorous body immediately brightened at the sight of his carved pectorals, at the defined muscles of his abdomen, his back.

He returned with another shirt, tucking it hastily into his pants. “Put that on,” he all but barked. “What was so important you had to drag me—”

“Helion sent a scholar,” she said. “Arina.”

Jealousy pricked at her stomach when Lucien visibly brightened just as Arina had. How did they really know each other? He was lovely…she could begrudgingly admit that. And Arina, well…Elain didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone quite so pretty. Elain squashed it. Who cared?

“Did she happen to mention what Gunnar wants her for? Outside of sex, which he seems very certain he will be getting.”

“Why?”

Lucien shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed as Elain pulled the fabric of his shirt over her head, letting it drape over her dress. The fabric hung loose around her body, nearly touching her knees. “Day Court has a very…specific…reputation. I know he requested someone beautiful. I suppose I should have assumed it would be Arina that came. She is Helion’s right hand, after all. She’ll be reporting back just as we are.”

“I’m surprised all of Prythian isn’t sending emissaries,” Elain murmured as she tried hard not to inhale the heady, masculine scent of him. Gods, he smelled good.

“Tarquin and Kallias know me well enough, I think, to wait out what happens. Tamlin has no one to send and Helion has Arina. I would guess he’s already talked to Thesan, who might also trust Arina or at least, Helion, to act in the Solar Court's best interests. That only leaves Beron and who knows…maybe he’ll trot over himself and save me a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble how?”

“If Beron shows his face, he might as well admit he’s got his sights set on territory that doesn’t belong to him,” Lucien explained patiently, his eyes far away. “It would be enough to force the other six High Lords to act. Beron borders more than just Spring. Winter and Summer both have relatively new High Lords and Summer was devastated during Hybern. If Beron means to sweep into Spring, what’s stopping him from going into Summer, too? He’d control half of Prythian with relative ease.”

“Hilda asked Arina to look at the ancient spell that binds Koschei. She wants him off the continent…and Gunnar—”

“Wants the Cauldron,” Lucien finished heavily. “I gathered as much. He thinks Rhysand has it which benefits us for the moment. He’s not certain he wants to go up against Rhys…but he might consider going up against Drakkon.”

“So what now?”

Lucien shook his head. “We’re in the middle of whatever is happening,” Lucien murmured thoughtfully. “Leaving would be a mistake, I think. For better or worse, we should try and direct things as best we can. If Hilda trusts you enough to tell you her intentions, even if it’s only a half-truth, I think you have a duty to try and help her, if only to protect our own home.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“In a way. Whatever Beron might have suggested regarding our strength, the fact remains that we beat back Hybern with the Cauldron. Gunnar is more careful with what he says to me. Perhaps it was a mistake to say we were married.”

Elain surged forward, shoving the sleeves of his shirt up to her elbows. “What do you mean?”

Lucien eyed her for a moment. “You are lovely and unassuming…and Gunnar might reveal more than he means to in his own bedchamber.”

It was so practical, so unemotional…and yet it hurt her feelings. “Oh?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Is that why I found Ione in our bed today?”

Lucien’s brow furrowed. “Did you?”

“She was naked,” Elain added, condemnation dripping from every word.

“Maybe she was here for you,” he dismissed. “I don’t think I’ve spoken one word to her.”

“Enough to let her think you were interested.”

Lucien rose to his feet, walking slowly towards her with what could only be described as predatory intent. She held her breath when he reached not for her, but around her for his jacket hanging over the chair. “Our bed, is it, Elain?”

“I sleep there, don’t I?” she all but whispered. His smell was so much stronger here, practically overwhelming her. She almost wished he’d take his shirt back off, that he’d…that he’d what? She cleared the through, swallowing it roughly. She didn’t want him to touch her, would have hit him if he tried. The idea was abhorrent and fascinating all at once.

“I’m sure she smelled nothing but you when she climbed into our bed,” Lucien murmured, shrugging back into his jacket. “I almost pity her.”

“And if you’d found her?”

“What did you do?” Lucien questioned, stepping out of her space, back facing her so he could button his jacket.

“I told her to go!”

He chuckled. “Well, next time take advantage of what she’s offering. Don’t stop on my account.”

“Is that what you would have done?”

His back tensed. “I’m a mated male, Elain. I’m perfectly content with what is already in my bed.”

He strolled to the deck, leaving her standing there in his shirt more confused and flustered than before. He had nothing at all.

What did he mean by that?

#elucien #elucien fanfiction #elucien fanfic #elain x lucien #love how dumb they are #cherish it even #also no one ever says this but plot is so hard #where are the PEENS?#tucked away politely #hate it

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