#also the way she also uses a hand gesture that was very duke-like after the fake smile breaks me for some reason

[grandmother-goblin]

Enough Time for Us - Part 1

AO3 - Masterlist

Summary: After surviving a daring rescue of several tieflings from Moonrise Towers, you realize just how short your time might be. Between the Absolute, the tadpoles, and the Shadow Curse, you don't want to waste a moment. Although Wyll had expressed his desires for an old-fashioned courtship, you're worried you won't be able to do everything you wanted with him before time runs out.

Relationships: Wyll x Female!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Word Count: 4.3k

Chapter Tags: Kissing, thigh-riding, dry-humping, a bit of navigating a new relationship.

“You should have seen them, Alfira!” Lakrissa said far too loudly. She clumsily set her empty goblet of wine down on the table you shared with her, Alfira, and Wyll. “You’re going to have to write a song about this. Maybe two. I don’t think all of their heroics could fit into just one.”

The light from the glowing hearth in the middle of Last Light Inn gave Lakrissa a mischievous glint to her eyes that told you everything you needed to know: she was trying to embarrass you.

Oh, you would get her back for this. You weren’t sure how, but you would.

Sure, you rescued Lakrissa (along with several other tieflings and some Ironhand gnomes) from the bowels of Moonrise Towers — but she didn’t need to sing your praises to everyone who would listen.

At first you thought she was just being sweet, if not overly appreciative. But now? Now you knew she was just messing with you.

Or she was just repeating herself because she was drunk. It really could have been either, considering that most certainly was not her first glass of wine.

Without taking her eyes off of Alfira, Lakrissa gestured to you grandly, like she was showing off a prized work of art. “That one there took down the Warden herself,” she said with faux reverence. “Knocked her right on her ass.”

You shook your head as heat rose to your face. 

Even though Lakrissa was just having fun, you wished she would knock it off. Or at the very least, turn her attention to someone who was equally responsible for her rescue. Like Karlach, who was chatting away with Jaheira over a mug of ale alongside Lae’zel and Astarion. Or Gale, who also played a crucial role in the escape plan, was sitting at the bar with Rolan, Cal, and Lia — presumably thrilled to have a fellow wizard to converse with.

Perhaps she could gush about Wyll’s part in the Moonrise jailbreak. Out of everyone, he was the most accustomed to receiving all sorts of praise as the Blade of Frontiers.

But for better or for worse, Lakrissa’s attention was locked on to you. There wasn’t much you could do about it, so you decided it was easiest just to indulge her. At least a little bit. 

Wyll’s slid closer to you on the bench you shared and wrapped his arm around your waist. “I’m sad that I missed that one,” he said, gently tucking you against his side. “After the way the Warden spoke to you, I wanted to get a few hits in myself.”

You hummed appreciatively, breathing in the scent of his cologne. It was something like amber and allspice, and so uniquely him that the smell alone filled you with warmth. “I still can’t believe you called her a bitch.”

Lakrissa choked down a mouthful of wine. “The Blade of Frontiers called the Warden a bitch?”

“Not to her face,” Wyll quickly corrected, holding his palm up as if to block the accusation. “Not that I wouldn’t have.”

“She still heard you,” you added.

Wyll took a drink from his mug of ale and innocently averted his gaze. “I fail to see how that’s my problem.”

A giggle bubbled in your chest, but you swallowed it down with a smile. You snuggled closer to Wyll, letting your hand rest just above his knee as you leaned your head against his shoulder.

It had been over a week since you two had officially become a couple, yet could still hardly believe it. 

Wyll Ravengard, the Blade of Frontiers, the son of a Grand Duke — all yours.

You had first kissed him at a party the tiefling refugees had thrown a few weeks ago. You would never forget the electricity that sparked between you the moment his lips brushed against yours. How your heart hammered in your chest or how his hands felt on your hips. 

How you never wanted that moment to end. 

But Wyll was a gentleman. 

He kept things chaste despite how you had wanted to throw yourself at him like a heroine on the cover of a romantic novel.

Then there was the night he had asked you to dance with him. Everything had been so proper between you two in the time between your kiss and that night that his invitation honestly caught you off guard. You weren’t even quite sure what he was wanting out of the dance — just some friendly fun or something more?

But his intentions were made clear soon enough. 

You could see the lust burning in his eye as you circled around each other. It was so intense, you could have melted under his gaze if he weren’t holding you steady. 

When he pulled you in for a kiss, that heat turned from simmering embers to an inferno. A fire that burnt through Wyll’s restraint, turning his kisses from sweet to passionate and his touch from a gentle caress to a firm embrace.

Heat built in your core when his thigh had pushed between your legs. The subtle, almost imperceptible, roll of his hips and his hands tangling in your hair was enough to drive you mad.

He wanted you. You knew, at that very moment, he wanted more than just a dance and a goodnight kiss.

Yet, he still pulled away, smothering the flame.

All he had to do was say the word, and you would have been in his bed that night. He knew that just as well as you did. But he wanted to take things slower.

He wanted to court you properly. Like heroes in those old love stories with ballroom dances and flowers and poetry. 

In ordinary circumstances, you would have let him take all the time in the world. 

Good men like Wyll were extraordinarily hard to come by. Hells, you had been dreaming of a man like Wyll for years. A man who wanted you for you — not someone who just wanted a roll in the hay. 

But your circumstances were far from ordinary.

Beneath the table, well out of view from the two tiefling women across from you, you let your hand coast further up Wyll’s thigh. Just a little bit too high to be considered decent, but not so much that you risked touching him anywhere truly inappropriate for a public setting.

If Wyll had any objections, he didn’t voice them. 

In fact, you swore you saw a smirk tug on his lips.

Wyll’s hand slipped beneath the bottom hem of your shirt, the movement smooth as silk. His thumb drew slow, tantalizing circles on your hip as he continued to chat with Lakrissa and Alfira.

Gods, it almost felt unfair. He could turn you into a pile of mush with just a sweet word and simple touch. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought he was teasing you. Tempting you with all the little touches, but never going further.

You wanted him so badly, but you didn’t want to pressure him. He wanted the fairytale romance — he wanted to wait for the perfect moment and for everything to be just right.

But you couldn’t help but worry: what if that moment never came?

What if tomorrow was the day one of you fell to the Shadow Curse? Or to the Absolute? What if the Artefact’s protection wore out or if Vlaakith’s warriors found you?

What if you and Wyll never had that chance with the each other?

Maybe it was selfish, but you wanted to be more intimate with him. Gods, you dreamed of it. There were nights when you and Wyll would share a bedroll, sleeping in one another’s arms and fully clothed, and you ached for something more.

You just weren’t sure how to broach the topic with him. Not since he expressed his own desires regarding your relationship. A fairytale romance, like those told by the bards.

You wished he had been a little more specific about what his desires entailed, if you were being completely honest. 

“Have we already finished another bottle?” Alfira’s voice pulled you from your thoughts as she picked up the empty bottle of wine from your side of the table. “Should we get another, or call it night?”

Without waiting for an answer, Lakrissa stood up and placed both hands on the table as she peered over Wyll’s horns. “Hey Mirkon,” she called toward the bar in the back of the room. “I’ll give you five silver to bring us another bottle of red.”

The small tiefling boy popped his head up over the lip of the countertop. “Just gave out the last bottle of red — gotta go to the cellar to get more. We got whiskey though!”

Lakrissa’s eyes lit up at the mention of whiskey. “Bring the bottle of whiskey then.”

“The whole bottle?” Mirkon squeaked.

“Lakrissa,” Alfira warned. “Remember what happened last time you mixed whiskey and wine.”

“I remember I had fun,” she replied and gestured for Mirkon to bring the bottle over. “Don’t need to remember much else.”

You shook your head, but you couldn’t help but smile. Lakrissa might be in for a nasty hangover the next morning, but if anyone deserved a couple of drinks, she did. Especially after everything they went through getting out of Moonrise. 

“I’m going to bring another crate up before the whole place decides to switch to hard liquor,” you said, giving Wyll’s leg an affectionate squeeze before you got to your feet.

The crates were too large for the kids to carry safely, but you could manage. Besides, it made for a good opportunity to get a breath of fresh air. The longer you sat cuddled up next to Wyll, the greater the temptation to get even closer to him was. Considering “closer” probably meant fighting the temptation to crawl into his lap and straddle him, it was probably for the best to detangle yourself before that happened. 

If you didn’t control yourself, you knew you’d be regretting it later when it came time to sleep. You’d be faced with the impossible decision of sleeping in Wyll’s arms or getting some alone time in your tent to deal with your self-inflicted sexual frustration.

Yep, a bit of space was just what you needed.

Before you could get a step away from the table, Wyll said, “I’ll come with you.”

Well, so much for that idea.

Wyll swung his legs around the side of the bench and stood beside you, slipping his arm around you once again. “Two pairs of hands are better than one, and besides — ” he leaned down, his breath warm against your ear, and whispered “ — it looks like Alfira wants a little one-on-one time with Lakrissa.”

“What was that, Mr. Blade of Frontiers?” Lakrissa asked cheekily, cupping her hand to her ear for emphasis. “You best share with the group.”

Wyll laughed and replied, “The only thing I’m sharing is another drink once we get back. I’ll look for another bottle of Esmalter Red while I’m down there.”

Lakrissa tapped her chin in mock consideration as she sat back in her seat. “I’ll accept that as a compromise, I suppose.”

“We’ll be back in a minute,” you said and started toward the front door.

As the chatter and the music faded behind you, Wyll’s hand moved from your waist to your hand, intertwining your fingers with his. When you glanced up at him, he was already smiling down at you with so much love in his gaze that made your heart pick up speed.

Gods, you loved him so much. Even if the romantic aspect of your relationship was relatively new, you knew you wanted to be at Wyll’s side for as long as he would have you. And you hadn’t felt that way about anyone else before.

There was something so special, so incredible, about him that you could hardly put it into words. In so many ways, Wyll was everything you had ever wanted — you wanted to experience the world with him but you didn’t know if that same world would give you time.

Wyll brought your hand to his lips and kissed the back of your knuckles. “This hand,” he said with a teasing grin, “was getting a bit adventurous under the table there.”

Pushing aside your thoughts, you blinked up at him innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No?” He pressed another kiss to your hand as you reached the top of the stairs at the side of the building. Without letting go of your hand, he had smoothly positioned you to the side with the railing. “Must have just been my imagination. It has been a little overactive in that regard, as of late.”

“Oh? What sorts of things have you been imagining, Wyll?” you replied knowing full well that he would be far too much of a gentleman to answer if his thoughts aligned with your own.

“You’ll find out,” he said as he helped you down the last step (although you didn’t need the help, the gesture was appreciated). “Just give it time.”

Time.

The one thing that seemed to be running out.

In the space beneath the building, the sounds of water lapping gently against docks echoed off the stone walls. Just a few hours ago, this was the location of a joyous reunion for many — people seeing loved ones they had thought lost over something completely out of their control. If not for the feeling of Wyll’s hand in yours, the whole place felt cold and yawningly empty.

Looking out over the river, you could see that thin border of light that separated you, and the people you cared about, from the Shadow Curse. It was like a singular pillar that held up an entire roof. Without it, everything would come crashing down — no matter how many other support beams were in place.

It all felt so fragile. All it would take is one thing going wrong and… you’d all be lost to the darkness.

Gods, any moment really could be the last, couldn’t it? 

Your hand tightened around Wyll’s, as if you could squeeze out a little more hypothetical time with him. That’s all you wanted. Just some time for the two of you to be together without the looming fear of death.

Was that so much to ask?

“Are you feeling alright?” Wyll asked as he opened the door leading down into the cellar and gestured for you to go ahead of him. “You’ve got a bit of a far off look to you.”

There really wasn’t any point in lying to him or in pretending things were fine. Wyll was much  better at reading you than most people, which was both a blessing and a curse. He always seemed to know just what you needed, but it also meant you could hardly keep anything from him. While he would never pressure you to talk if you didn’t want to, you didn’t like to leave him in the dark.

You took a few steps down the stairs, staring at the way your hand slid along the railing rather than look at the man above you. You could see his shadow against the wall beside you, the subtle tilt of his head and the curl of his horns. An ominous silhouette to most, but a source of comfort to you. 

“I’ve just been thinking a bit about what you said a few nights ago,” you answered, your heart beating in your throat as you slowly continued your descent. “About our relationship, and how you want things to go.”

Behind you, you heard the door gently close against the frame followed by the click of a lock. The stairs creaked under his boots as he took the wooden stairs two steps at a time until he was at your side once more. “This sounds serious.”

You laughed, hoping to ease some of the tension. “It’s nothing serious,” you reassured him. “But it’s still something I wanted to bring up with you.”

“Of course.” There was a hint of nervousness to his voice, but he tried to mask it behind his charming, prince-like smile that could make most people swoon. “I’m always happy to talk.”

When you reached the bottom of the stairs, you shuffled around to face him. The glow from a dim fireplace, one that hadn’t been tended to for a while now, glinted off of Wyll’s scarlet red eye as he gazed at you with a mixture of affection and concern.

Though the cellar was warm, you wrapped your arms around yourself as if there was a chill in the air, trying to muster up some courage. 

Gods, did you even have to bring this up? You didn’t, right? But he was looking at you expectantly and the longer you waited, the worse your anxiety got and —

“I don’t want to wait,” you blurted out before you could talk yourself out of it.

Wyll’s brow drew together. “Wait for what?”

You shifted your weight from one foot to the other, looking past him rather than directly into his eye. “To be close to you,” you said, feeling heat rising to your cheeks. “To be intimate. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow and I — I want to share that experience with you.”

There. It was out in the open and there was no taking it back. The worst that could happen was that he would turn you down again, right?

For a moment, there was nothing but stale cellar air and the sounds of the crackling fireplace between you two. You could hear footsteps from the taproom overhead counting out the beats of silence.

You swallowed. Gods, why did you have to say anything at all? He was giving you everything you wanted, yet you still wanted more?

Then a soft smile tugged at the corner of Wyll’s lip and a sense of relief coursed through you. The back of his fingers brushed against your cheek in a featherlight touch before he tucked his thumb beneath your chin. He tilted your face up, making it impossible for you to look anywhere but at his gorgeous, mismatched, eyes.

“I want to share that experience with you too,” he said, resting one hand on your hip as he took a single step closer. “Though, I’m of the mind that we will have plenty of time, and plenty of chances, to have that experience.”

Disappointment landed light a heavy weight in your gut, and you averted your gaze. 

Well, it was worth a try.

It wasn’t like you could force Wyll to change his stance on such a thing. And it would have been wrong of you to do anything more than simply express your desires.

Still, it didn’t make the disappointment any easier.

“I hope you’re right,” you conceded with a hopeful long convincing smile, not wanting to put any pressure on him.

Wyll sighed and touched his forehead to yours. His horns were cool and hard against your skin and you closed your eyes, just breathing in his scent. 

“I still believe in the old tales of love,” he said as his hand moved to your lower back. “And I want to give you the fairytale because that’s what you deserve. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make it our own.”

You blinked and pulled back just far enough to look Wyll in the eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

A rakish grin spread across his face, sending butterflies to your stomach in a flurry. “I’m saying that if you want to be more intimate” — his hand slipped beneath your shirt, his palm warm against the small of your back — “then we can be more intimate.”

Your heart leapt in your chest as a mixture of surprise and giddiness surged through you. Out of all the things you expected him to say, it wasn’t that. 

At least, you didn’t expect him to agree so readily.

Swallowing your excitement, you laced your fingers with his. You didn’t want to pressure him, and you didn’t think you were, but you still wanted to check…. 

“You’re sure?” you asked and pressed your lips to the back of his hand. “I know you have reasons for wanting to wait, and I don’t want you to change your mind just because — ”

A little huff of laughter passed Wyll’s lips. “I’m sure,” he confirmed. “This is our relationship — we make these sorts of decisions together. I’d much rather you talk to me about things like this rather than just quietly go along with what I said.”

He brought his palm to your cheek, carefully cupping your face as if you were something precious. “Besides,” he added, “I’ll admit that part of me was hoping you’d ask me to change my mind.”

Before you could even think of how to respond, Wyll’s lips brushed over yours in a sweet, silky caress. Light and teasing, if not a little playful at first. Taking his sweet time tasting you. The hand on your cheek slipped behind your head, tangling in your hair as he slowly deepened the kiss.

You couldn’t help the soft moan in your throat as he pulled you flush against him. He coaxed your lips apart with his tongue, sending a thrill of warmth through you with each delicate stroke. Looping your arms around his neck, you held yourself steady as you melted into his touch.

Gods, when he kissed you like this, how could you not want more? How could you be expected to keep your desires in check when his lips were as sinful as they were saccharine?

Wyll guided you backward until your back pressed against the cool stone wall of the stairwell, not once breaking his lips away from yours. He cupped your face, tilting your head back as he kissed you as if he could breathe you in. 

A muscular thigh nudged between your legs, putting delicious pressure where you had long desired it. Heat rose to your face as you rolled your hips, slowly and subtly rocking against him.

Moving his hands to your hips, he pressed himself against you as he guided your movements on his leg to match his. The rhythm alone was enough to make your core clench with need. His parted lips dragged down the side of your neck as he let you grind against him. You let out a small, pleasured, gasp when he gently sucked and nipped at your skin.

Gods, he had barely begun to touch you and you were already trembling. Your body craved him like no other, and you had contented yourself with fantasies for so long. For him to actually be touching you like this? To be pulling closer instead of pulling back? 

It was indescribable.

You brought your lips to his neck, stifling a moan as you kissed the prominent ridges on his throat. His fingers dug into your hips a groan rumbled in his chest. “Those are sensitive,” he said and nibbled at your earlobe. 

You sighed as you closed your eyes. “Sensitive how?” you asked distractedly. 

Wyll raised his hips, pressing himself against you and fully pinning you to the wall. The hard outline of him prodded your lower stomach. “That kind of sensitive.”

Your cheeks burned as his mouth hungrily returned to yours. No one had ever kissed you the way Wyll did. It was reckless and restrained, passionate and patient. And you wanted nothing more than for that patience and restraint to run out.

At least, just for a little bit.

Tension coiled inside of you as you grinded against him, winding tighter and tighter as he rocked into you. You were so close. Gods, you hadn’t even taken your clothes off and you were going to come.

“Wyll,” you whined against his lips, not knowing quite what you wanted. Did you want him to stop you? Or did you want —

“Come for me,” Wyll rasped, his voice unlike you had ever heard it before. His grasping fingers slid over the curve of your breast as he took your mouth in another consuming kiss. 

Your nails dug into his shirt as your movements grew rougher and more erratic. Your breath came in panting gasps as pressure built deep in your core.

Every muscle in your body tightened. Your mouth fell open as you found your release. Your hips moved of their own accord but Wyll’s hands kept you steady as pleasure wracked your body.

“That’s it,” he soothed as you rode out your climax, his voice husky in a way that made your skin prickle. 

He removed his leg from between your thighs just as you began to catch your breath. With his hands still on your hips, he kissed the corner of your mouth and then your cheek, his breathing almost as heavy as your own.

“Tomorrow night,” Wyll said softly as pulled away. His eyes locked onto yours, his good eye dark with barely restrained lust. His hands traced your curves and you could practically see the gears turning in his head. 

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.“Give me until tomorrow night, my love,” he said resolutely. “I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”

With that tiny bit of distance between you, you could see a prominent, hard ridge in his trousers. You must have been staring, because Wyll chuckled and cleared his throat, quickly adjusting himself to hide his erection. Well, as much as he could. 

You swallowed and licked your lips. “Do you — ”

He smiled at you broadly as he brushed a strand of hair behind your ear. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “By the time we pack up these crates, I’ll be all settled down.”

Oh, right. The wine. Lakrissa and Alfira were waiting for them.

But still….

You hooked two fingers around his belt loop and stepped closer. “But what if I want to?”

Wyll cupped your face in his hands and pressed his mouth to yours, chaste and sweet. “Then you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night.”

---

Author's Note: This was meant to be like a 2k word oneshot and it turned into a whole thing. I'm still relatively new to writing in second person POV, so I'm sorry for any mistakes!

#wyll ravengard #x reader #wyll #wyll x reader #wyll smut #wyll fanfic

[nerdpoe]

Of Kindness and Empathy 4

First, Second, Third, AO3

Bruce was, unexpectedly, having a great time.

The doctors had informed him that Tim would recover just fine, that by miracle of all miracles it was only a scattering of first and second degree burns and a mild concussion. He could leave him with Damian and Dick, then, and go seek out Daniel.

Daniel, unknowingly, had actually made his day a bit better.

The teen hero he had come to talk to had managed to get himself and his friends trapped in an elevator with glass walls. 

Once he had realized what had been happening, he’d gone up to the fifth floor via stairs for the sole sake of sipping on a mimosa and watching the theatrics. Sue him, his kids hadn’t messed up this bad in a very long time and it was a sort of cathartic schadenfreude to see.

Daniel Fenton, who was kneeling next to the intercom and frantically gesturing with his hands, had not noticed him.

Tucker Foley, the kid on the ground surrounded by chicken bones and pieces of meat, was hiding under a torn skirt.

Samantha Manson, who had torn off the portion of her dress below the knees and given it to Tucker Foley, had noticed him, was slowly signing at him some of the most vitriolic insults he had ever seen. 

When he’d signed back, she had taken that as permission to speed up her signing to a more fluent level. The insults hadn’t stopped for fifteen minutes, and she never repeated herself.

Which was, honestly, pretty impressive.

He both wanted her to meet Cass and dreaded it.

Watching teens being teens helped ease some of the weight from Bruce’s shoulders. Daniel did not appear to be in a dire situation, no matter his personal feelings on being trapped in an elevator he could not phase through, and he looked healthy.

Jason and Duke had joked that he would be adopting another one, but so far it did not look like he needed to pull Daniel away from any sort of situation.

The technician crews were on their way already.

All Bruce had to do was enjoy the show.

~~~~~

Tim felt like his brain was melting through his ears, for more reasons than the concussion.

“So you trusted an unknown with my secret identity?” He hissed, clutching the blanket in a white knuckled grip.

“Well according to Bruce, he trusted us with his first,” Dick defended quietly, keeping an eye on the door in case any nurses walked in.

Damian didn’t even bother with a response. He had told Dick that if he said it, Tim would react like this, whatever that meant, and then went back to researching something on the tablet Bruce had left behind.

Tim had been fine with being rescued by an unknown meta. Really, he had. He had also been planning on setting up good relations with said meta for future rescue operations, since apparently said meta could teleport. And had density shifting which he could project on others. And invisibility. And super strength, and flight, and super speed. 

In all honesty a treasure like this meta was a fantastic find, and Tim had been very eager to include the new guy on any rescue missions they would need him on.

That had been before his dear siblings had told him that they did not, in fact, receive him from the meta and transport him themselves.

The meta, Phantom, had been the one to take him directly to the hospital after they had changed him into civilian attire in front of him.

Which.

First off a stranger knew who he really was.

Second, a stranger now knew who he really was.

“Again Tim, we also know who he is,” Dick tried to reassure him again, “In fact Bruce just left to go meet with him and get more information on the anti-”

“Richard.”

Dick froze and quietly placed a hand over his own mouth.

Tim narrowed his eyes.

“The anti…what?”

“No,” Damian said shortly, not looking up from his tablet, “you are to rest, not gain a new obsession.”

Tim turned his attention to the easier target.

Dick very deliberately was not looking at him.

“Dick.”

The hand shifted, but did not remove itself from its owner’s mouth.

“...Please?”

The hand twitched and it appeared that deliberately avoiding Tim’s gaze was getting harder.

Good.

“From one brother to another?”

Damian sighed and stood up, walking out of the room. Presumably to report that Dick had lost the battle of wills and was about to tell Tim something that would lead to a new ‘obsession’.

Which it would not.

Tim was mature. 

Tim would not fall into a rabbit hole because it was mildly interesting.

“There’s a government body dedicated to the genocide of Interdimensional beings and legal laws that got passed mandating the report of these beings to government entities so that they can be captured and tortured,” Dick finally spilled through his hand in one breath.

Tim froze.

“I’m sorry, there’s a what?”

Tim needed his computer.

~~~~~

Constantine had not been expecting a call from Gotham.

He really, really had not been expecting a call from one of Batman’s hoard.

“Run that by me again, mate,” he said as calmly as he could, the hand holding the cigarette shaking violently, “Because I could have sworn you just said the American government was trying to start an interdimensional war with the Infinite Realms.”

Red Robin repeated himself.

The wording had not changed at all.

“Okay. Okay. That’s fine. It’s great, it’s fine, this is fine. Great.” 

The cigarette was on the ground now and the shaking hand that had been holding it was rubbing at his face.

“And the powers of the ‘meta’ that saved you?”

With every power listed, John felt another piece of his soul fucking die.

That was a Spirit. A ghost. A right proper one from the Realm of the Dead, or the Infinite Realms. 

No offense to Deadman, but there was a very big fat fucking difference between a Spirit of the Infinite Realms and a ghost who had never been allowed to set foot in said realms.

“Okay. Is the uh…’meta’ open to talking?”

Red Robin gave him an affirmative, and even went so far as to state that the Spirit was currently talking with Batman.

John perked up,

That was…actually pretty good news! He almost never got that type of news anymore!

“Have Batman ask if the King of the Infinite Realms is open for talks, and get Aquaman and Wonder Woman ready for diplomacy if the answer is yes. Here’s hoping he isn’t as much of a rampaging psychotic Warlord as the books make him out to be.”

The line went silent.

“Ah, mate? You there?”

“What?!”

Red Robin’s scandalized shriek could be heard clear across the room. John checked to make sure the phone hadn’t accidentally been placed on speaker.

It hadn’t.

“Yeah mate, the Infinite Realms are where these ‘Ecto-beings’ come from,”John explained as patiently as he could. Which was not at all. “They have a hierarchy based on strength, and a whole royal court too. Some gods as well, now that I think about it. Demons won’t even touch the place, all that constant fighting means constantly shifting territories, so they wouldn’t be able to settle down and build a nice, big lair. Spirits just take the lair with them, so they don’t really give two fucks.”

Oh no, he’s made the little Robin hyperventilate.

“Yeah so if we could set up political talks to avoid a war with a race that is built for it, that would be great.”

He was going to find the scientists that Red Robin was talking about and strangle them with his own hands.

~~~~~

Bruce’s phone went off.

As his hand was reaching for his pocket to grab it, it went off again.

And again.

And again.

Good feelings gone, he held up a hand to pause Samantha’s insult tirade and looked at his messages.

Tim: 

Bruce we need to ask Daniel if 

we can talk to the King of the 

Infinite Realms

Tim: 

Bruce this is really important

Tim: 

Daniel’s entire race is built for war 

they are very dangerous without 

even being threatened

Tim: 

I think that’s why the government 

wants them but Constantine says that 

we’re probably about to start an 

interdimensional war

Tim: 

I’ve already contacted Aquaman 

and Wonder Woman for 

diplomatic talks they're on standby

Bruce took a deep breath in through his nose. Held it. Let it out slowly.

Then he looked up at the technicians prying the doors apart on the elevator.

Their apparent only hope to avoid war was ‘helping’ the technicians and desperately trying to make it look like he wasn’t much help at all. Daniel was single handedly pulling apart the doors of the elevator, and acting like the technicians were doing all the work.

A great moral boost for them, to be sure.

Samantha’s parents were waiting on the other side, and looked like they were out for blood.

Bruce hadn’t wanted to get involved, had resigned himself to just going to Daniel and Tucker’s hotel room as Batman and handing the phone back.

But this was beyond urgent if true.

They had been antagonizing a very dangerous race for one to two years, and to correct this mistake time was of the essence.

His eyes met Samantha’s, who had actually paused in her insults at his request, and she glared back at him imperiously.

With unnaturally purple eyes that reflected the fluorescent lights of the elevator back at him.

For a very small moment, a fraction of a second, it felt like he was being stared down by a predator.

Then it was gone.

The elevator doors had been forced open, and she had deigned him not worth her attention.

Bruce:

It isn’t just Daniel. I’ll see 

what I can do.

He put on his best Brucie smile and hurried to the elevator, just in time to catch the Manson’s hissing at their daughter about befriending ‘disappointments’ and how they were a ‘bad influence’.

Their daughter who was probably a citizen of these Infinite Realms.

Their daughter who was probably already a terrifying person to fight, and was friends with a confirmed, actual denizen of said Realms.

‘Daniel’s entire race is built for war’ Tim had said.

“Hello there,” he introduced himself, successfully distracting them from scolding their daughter, “Bruce Wayne, but my friends call me Brucie. I’m afraid I’m at fault for making them rush down to meet me, I know how it is, but I wanted to talk with Mr. Fenton here about his parents' inventions!”

Bruce very much did not know how it was, and was barely aware of whatever bullshit was coming out of his mouth, but he really needed to stop these kids from being carted away by a pair of very angry, very human parents.

Whatever he had said had been the wrong thing to say, if Tucker’s head snapping towards him with an unnatural speed and snapping vertebrate said anything.

Too late to go back, though.

“Oh, Mr. Wayne, Why I-”

“Please, Call me Brucie! How about instead of just talking to Mr. Fenton, I also take his two friends here with us down to the 24/7 breakfast bar and get their two cents?”

Samantha’s parents stuttered, clearly not expecting The Bruce Wayne to want to talk to their daughter. A bit rude, but he would use it if he could.

“Of course Brucie!” Mr. Manson interrupted his wife, shoving a hand into Bruce’s face, “Let’s talk business while the little tykes run off to get ready! In clothing more befitting a man of your stature, of course!”

And with one sentence Mr. Manson had just dismissed all of the teens present as children without any real opinion.

Bruce was starting to understand Samantha a bit more. Constant dismissal like this from an authority figure would have driven anyone to anger.

Luckily, he wasn’t stuck in an unfruitful conversation with the man for long; the kids had finished changing relatively quickly and rushed back. Hushed tones came from them as they argued quietly among themselves.

Bruce caught a few phrases; “-can’t trust him-” and “-against us too-”, only to be quieted by Daniel’s soft murmur of “-not everyone is bad, let’s give him a chance, it-”

And a tension Bruce hadn’t realized was being held in his shoulders loosened.

At least Daniel, if no other entity, was willing to talk. Things hadn’t been irrevocably damaged between their races.

There was hope.

“Well thank you so much for this talk, Mr. Manson, but it looks like it’s time for me to take these kids down to-”

“Of course, of course! In fact, we should be thanking you!” Mr. Manson interrupted him, laughing heartily as he patted his daughter’s shoulder. She had apparently been forced into a very unappealing pink dress, and looked like she was going to rip off her father’s hand.

Literally.

Bruce couldn’t even remember what he’d said as he herded the kids away from the man who hadn’t even asked where a veritable stranger was taking his daughter, which he would be looking into later, and down to the gift shop, not the restaurant.

Daniel looked around, confused. Tucker and Samantha just glared at Bruce with full on distrust.

“You don’t need suits or evening gowns for the breakfast bar,” Bruce quietly explained, dropping the Brucie persona, “There’s clothes over there and dressing rooms over there. My treat.”

Finally, Samantha eased up on the distrust, giving a quick nod of approval before grabbing Tucker and Daniel’s hands and dragging them with her to the clothes.

He sat down and started continuing research on Phantom, Amity, and the Anti-Ecto Acts,  anticipating a half hour wait. Bruce was pleasantly surprised when Tucker tapped on his shoulder fifteen minutes later, dressed in something that looked much more comfortable.

“We’re rung up at the counter, Mr. Wayne,” he explained, not as hostile as before but still a bit distant.

Bruce glanced at Samantha and Daniel as he stood up and went to pay. They were both dressed in clothes that far better fit their personalities, what little he knew of them.

Good.

It was key to make sure all parties were comfortable and ready to talk if he wanted the talks to go well. Having them in clothes they hated in a place where it was going to be blindingly clear they did not have to dress like that would only make things harder.

The merch they chose also would say what heroes they valued, another small glimpse into their personalities.

More useful information to store away.

Foley was more drawn towards Signal merch, Manson to Poison Ivy, and Fenton to Nightwing.

He could work with this.

No.

He would make this work.

Earth would not fall into war with another dimension because of one country’s mistakes.

~~~~~

Danny was so, so happy to be wearing a hoodie again. It wasn’t his NASA hoodie, but it was close enough.

Nightwing understood his need for puns.

Mr. Wayne, on the other hand, looked like he was about to vibrate out of his skin with nerves.

At a distance he probably looked fine, but Danny had already seen him in…a very bad mental place, and could sort of tell if the man was stressed now that he had seen him at his worst.

Sam and Tucker stuck close by him, finally willing to give Mr. Wayne a chance after the man had gotten them some normal clothes, making the seating at the table very off balance. Three teens on one side, one Multi-Billionaire on the other.

After the server had left with their orders, the man had leaned on the table, ready to begin.

“My deepest apologies for what those laws have done to you and yours,” Mr. Wayne started, eyes serious and unwavering, “Rest assured we are taking steps to get those laws abolished. This will not happen again.”

Sam eased up a little, nodding.

Danny let out a nervous chuckle and rubbed at the back of his neck, not wanting to make it a big deal but understanding that it undeniably was.

“We would also like to ensure that the King of Infinite Realms is willing to overlook this slight,” the man continued, his knuckles going white with tension as the man very clearly focused on only grabbing his other hand and none of the breakable tableware, “Do you know how we can get in contact with him, and if so would you be willing to introduce us?”

Danny froze, unsure of how to proceed.

The King was currently asleep, and unable to wake up or he absolutely would start a fight. Not for any real reason, of course. Just because it was Pariah Dark, and if there was a chance to fight he’d take it.

Maybe Clockwork?

Nah, he wanted to speak with the King, not a maybe-god.

Tucker, bless him, stepped up to the plate.

“So Mr. Wayne, sir, I’m really sorry but we can’t do that and you don’t want us to try.”

“Yeah, Pariah Dark doesn’t give two shits about laws like that, he just wants to conquer anything that moves,” Sam added in.

Danny could see that Mr. Wayne was not taking that news well.

“What they mean is that Pariah Dark is currently asleep,” he butted in before Mr. Wayne could get the wrong idea, “And he has been for a very long time. To see him and talk to him would mean waking him up, but there’s a reason we had him locked in an eternal slumber. Guy’s a real jerk, ya know?”

Some of the tension eased from Mr. Wayne's shoulders. Danny counted that as a win.

The small interrupted that the food being delivered provided enough time for the man to pull himself together.

Sam and Tucker still hadn’t been told who Mr. Wayne was, and probably just assumed he was a concerned citizen.

Danny was not going to out the man. He was not.

Then Danny’s phone slid across the table to him.

“I put my number in there as well as Tim’s,” Mr. Wayne started, nodding towards it, “He may want to speak with you. If you have any trouble or need any assistance, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Danny nodded, pocketing the phone and awkwardly deciding if it was an appropriate time to dig in.

Tucker answered it for him by shoving a forkfull of egg into Danny’s mouth.

Tucker then ran interference by asking a million questions about Wayne Industries, and when he ran out of questions Sam took over a grilled the man on how someone so seemingly incompetent managed to run a company that large.

Danny gave a small smile and shrugged in apology, but was forced back to eating by his friends.

He could have sworn he saw Mr. Wayne smile back. Just a little.

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#dcxdp #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #danny phantom #danny fenton #batman #bruce wayne #tim drake #dick grayson #damian wayne #tucker foley #sam manson #john constantine #phanfic #of kindness and empathy

[ladytauria]

trick or treat!

thank you for asking! 🎃

have a snippet from the vampire!tim wip~ tentatively titled icy hands, icy heart, and based around this summary:

Tim assumes the others know he’s not, and never has been, human. He's wrong.

tentatively am thinking it's going to be jaytim but right now all i have is 2k words of jason, damian, and duke discovering tim's vampirism, and tim discovering that, in order for people to know things, you have to tell them.

in his defense, he did tell alfred, bruce, and dick. (& maybe babs)

“So you’ve been a vamp this whole time?” Jason is scrutinizing him—particularly his neck.

“I was born one.” That gets Jason’s eyes on his face again.

“Vampires can have babies?” Duke blurts.

“Yes,” Tim says. Though not without difficulty. If one of his parents had been human, it would have been easier—but they weren’t, and it hadn’t been. His parents were… protective as a result. Their jetsetting hadn’t been born out of a desire to see the world at any cost—though, Tim was sure it factored in—but, rather, decreasing the possibility they could be exposed. It’s hard to suspect someone of vampirism if they’re never around, after all.

That was also why they had so little in the way of domestic help—especially after a near-miss with Tim’s last caretaker. And why they moved him schools so often. (He had to miss so many days, especially in the summer and spring months, when everything was bright and sunny. Online school would have been easier, perhaps, but inspired its own problems. Tim needed to be as normal and human as possible.)

Tim isn’t sure those had been the best decisions—and neither, in the end, had his father. But it was too late to go back and change them now.

“I’ve… definitely seen you out in the sun,” Jason says, though he sounds as if he’s suddenly doubting his recollection.

“You have,” Tim agrees. “It’s… taxing. I have to feed well before I head out, and even then, I make sure to cover up as much as is reasonable. It helps that Gotham is the way she is, though.” Nearly perpetually cloudy, the sky clogged with pollutants despite environmentalists’ (and Wayne Enterprises’) best efforts.

“I’ve never seen you drinking blood, though,” Duke says.

“Yes you have,” Tim counters. “You just didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. I don’t usually feed from people. I buy pig’s blood from a local butcher.” A discreet one, who catered to people like Tim. “I don’t drink nearly as much coffee as it looks like I do.”

“Oh.”

“But you do drink coffee,” Jason says, the skin around his eyes creasing suddenly. “Don’t you?”

Tim remembers the bag of expensive coffee grounds Jason left at the Nest, a few weekends ago, and smiles. “Yes. I can drink and eat human food. Mostly for the taste, but I do have to be cautious with caffeine and alcohol. Hits my bloodstream much faster, you understand.”

“You don’t feed off of humans?” Damian asks, scrutinizing him again.

“Not usually,” Tim repeats. “There have been a couple of emergencies, and I’ve had to drink from Bruce and Dick a time or two.” And, of course, there had been Tam, during his time away. That had been the most he’d ever fed from a human before, and he understood why some of his kind refused to feed from anything else. The taste had been exquisite, and the power—

Tim mentally shook himself.

“What about…” Duke gestured vaguely towards the medical bay. Everyone—except Tim—had a cache of blood there, to be used in case of emergencies.

Tim shakes his head. “Too processed. It’s like eating a snack cake, except it also tastes disgusting.” He had tried it once, during that first emergency. He hadn’t wanted to bother Bruce. Just the smell had made him want to wretch, but the actual taste? Ugh. And even draining the entire bag had done very little to quell the hunger. He hadn’t tried it again since.

Jason snorts. “Tracks, I guess,” he says, like he’d never thought of it before. Which, to be fair, he probably hadn’t. “So, s’that how you were able to stalk us for so long? Vampire magic?”

Tim snorts. “Oh, no, I didn’t have the energy for that,” he says, shaking his head. “It maybe helped that my reflexes were quicker, and I was still a bit faster than a human kid, but. No, that was all me.”

“What do you mean you didn’t have the energy?” Damian crosses his arms. “You were going out into the field impaired?” Despite being a head shorter than Tim, even with Tim being seated, he still managed to look down his nose at him.

Aw. Baby bat is worried.

“No,” Tim says. “Well—yes? I guess? Kind of?” He grimaces, and tilts his head. It’s been a long time since he’s had to explain any of this. “My parents didn’t want word getting out that we were vampires. There’s a lot of stigma, still. Few bad apples spoils the bunch, you know how it is. So, we pretended to be human, as much as possible. That meant I had to go to school. During the day. Which, like I said, is draining. I wasn’t—“ He paused, raising his cup to his lips. It’s coffee, this time, though now that he’s no longer consumed by his work, he can tell he needs to switch to blood soon, if he wants enough time to get down to normal strength for patrol.

“I wasn’t impaired in the way you’re thinking. By the time it was time to chase Batman and Robin—or, later, be Robin—I usually had time for a nap and some blood.” He didn’t always take the nap. “I wasn’t at ‘peak performance’ per se, but, I wasn’t exactly impaired, either.”

Damian’s face is pinched.

Tim sighs. “Look, physically, I was fine. Magically, I couldn’t do much. That’s all that means.”

The skepticism on Damian’s face gives Tim a bad feeling. Oh well. That's future Tim's problem to deal with.

#ngl it was v hard to cull the snippet down to this #but i think!! i have shared the beginning section somewhere #i will try to dig that up #asks and answers #lovely anons #icy hands icy heart #tauriawritesfanfic #also this is kinda rough i’m sorry #a lot of the repetition will be fixed once i do edits <3

[kxlinthesky]

EPISODE 6 PART 2 LIGHT NOVEL Chapter 5-6 English Translation

“... I’m sorry.” Jack removed his stethoscope, his voice carefully devoid of any emotion.

Owl refused to give up hope just yet. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Jack shook his head. “Not with how far she’s progressed, no.”

“But she’s still breathing. Her body’s still here,” Owl pointed out, perhaps a touch desperately. “And she wasn’t completely Demonized yet, right? Since Demons usually turn to dust when they die.”

“No, she was completely Demonized. She burned through the last remaining bits of human life force she had. What you probably saw was her trying to restart her heart with whatever magic she had left. It would’ve looked like she was still breathing for a bit... though that’s only a guess. I haven’t seen many cases where the body was left in this state.”

“So all we can do is wait and watch?”

Jack blew out a sigh, mouth twisted in a pained line. “... Unfortunately, yes. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

Seeing his own frustration mirrored on his friend’s face, Owl held his tongue. His hands balled into fists.

“There’s nothing more we can do for her,” Jack continued. “She... was probably dead before she even met you. The Black Rose Disease marks had spread over her entire body.”

Owl’s jaw fell open. His clenched fist fell limp.

They were back at Owl’s agency, and there was an unconscious woman lying stretched out in front of them. It was the harpy who’d attacked them earlier... well, she had been a harpy. She was just a regular woman now. After all that had happened, Owl and the others had swiftly transported her back to the agency and called for Jack in the hopes that he could help her. And he’d tried, to the best of his abilities... but it was just too late.

That very night, she’d used up the last dregs of her strength. There was nothing left inside her now.

“I just don’t understand.”

Owl all but fell onto the couch, his hands almost clawing at his scalp. The Demonized woman had suddenly attacked them mere seconds after he’d had that odd hallucination, and on top of that, she might in fact be the duke’s missing daughter.... He felt completely justified in being just the slightest bit frazzled at the moment.

Jack’s voice lowered a touch. “... Owl, do you remember the servant at the McCreech’s estate? The one who collapsed in the chapel?”

“The servant...? You mean the one Cain experimented on who got their soul removed...? Whatever happened to him?”

“He passed away, unfortunately. I only bring it up because there were traces of something in him that are also present in her.” Jack gestured to the unconscious woman. “Traces that her soul was pulled out of her body by unnatural means.”

“What?”

Jack held out a medical certificate. As Owl grabbed it and started scanning, his finger tracing the text, Jack went on, “She showed up as a Demon, then reverted back into a human in front of you all, right?”

“That’s right. She turned back right as she was about to attack us.”

“I see....” Jack trailed off for a moment in thought. Eventually, he haltingly continued, “This is just a hypothesis that came up when I was speaking with Sir Tristan before, but... maybe she turned into a Demon before she attacked you all, and someone pulled her soul out then?”

“Huh?”

“She would’ve died the instant her soul was removed, but maybe that’s not enough to actually kill a Demon... or maybe she was moving through some other power....” Jack shrugged, eyebrows furrowed in a pensive frown. “Either way, maybe what happened is she rampaged for a while without her soul, and when she finally surpassed her limits she turned back into a human in front of all of you. Her body ceased functioning... essentially dying a second time.”

“A second death....” The words sounded almost foreign to Owl’s ears. How miserable, how painful would it be to experience that sort of agony not just once, but twice? Hs couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“I’ve been thinking about that device in the McCreech estate this whole time,” Jack admitted.

“Device... you mean the one in the chapel.” It wasn’t phrased like a question. Owl knew what Jack meant.

“Yeah, that one. A device that switches souls around as a way to cheat death... but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that the way it returns souls to their bodies is pretty risky. So I wondered, did the old head of the family create it just to live forever? Or was it used for some other reason? Did someone order them to build it?” As he spoke, Jack raised his arms to hover around him like wings... and not just any wings, not butterfly or bird or anything like that, but the wings of a very particular being. “And so on and so forth.”

Owl dipped his head. He had several thoughts on that front as well. “Mastema... he wanted to turn Eliza and Anastasia into Demons. He said he was collecting it, farming it. Meaning he was cultivating them to try and make something.”

“Make something... Demons, you mean?”

“... No, not Demons. At least, that wasn’t the end goal. Demonization was just a side effect, or an end result, I guess, of whatever he was trying to grow.” Owl’s hand rose to cup his chin. “That apparatus is meant to harvest souls from their bodies. Cultivated souls, grown souls, are unusual – altered in some way, most likely. And once a soul from a Demonized body undergoes that alteration, that’s the optimal time to harvest.”

“... An altered soul,” Jack repeated.

“Yeah. And if the crystallized form of a soul like that is azoth....” Owl was the one saying it, but a chill ran down his spine nevertheless at the thought. He had a bad feeling about this....

“Hey Owl, Doc, why don’t you guys take a break?” called Nick’s voice from the kitchen. “There’s tea on, you want some?”

Owl and Jack traded glances, then nodded as one and moved into the kitchen, taking their seats at the table. Identical massive sighs fell from their lips. Nick handed them each a cup of tea, lips pulled in a contrite frown. “I’m sorry,” he told them.

“What are you apologizing for?”

“If I was faster... if I figured out she was the duke’s daughter earlier....” Nick wrung his hands. “If I brought her to see Owl earlier and we found out she was infected, then maybe....”

Owl cut him off with a firm shake of his head. “There’s no use worrying about what-ifs. You only had that sketch to work off of – there’s no way you could’ve figured it out. You didn’t do anything wrong, Nick.”

“... Mm.” Nick didn’t sound too convinced.

“Ellie already went to bed, right? You should get some rest, too.”

“But –”

Owl reached out and clapped Nick on the shoulder comfortingly. “Tomorrow we’ll get in contact with the duke and have him identify the body, and then we’ll go back there. We’re all worried about Ritz – we have to go get her.” He tilted his head into the agency.

“Thank you for the tea,” Jack chimed in. “Sleep well.”

Nick glanced at both of them, then nodded. “Fine, okay. Lemme just make sure the pub’s locked up tight first, then I’ll go to bed.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen.

Nick shuffled downstairs with a storm cloud hanging over his head. He quickly made his way down to the pub and opened the door. Good thing we were closed today anyway. I don’t think I could’ve handled customers like this, he thought to himself as he walked through the shop. He headed straight for the entrance, but just as he passed by the counter –

“Hey, did you make this lemonade?”

“WAAH!!”

– someone’s voice suddenly spoke up from behind it, and Nick jumped, his heart kicking into wild overdrive. He hadn’t thought anyone was here! He leaped over to the window in a single bound, squinting in the direction of the voice.

“Ahahaha, wow, you just leaped away,” chortled the voice. “Like a cat who saw a snake or something.”

“Ah...!” Nick’s eyes went wide, and one arm shot up to point an accusing finger at the young silver-haired man snickering behind the counter. “You – LOUIS!!”

“Evening,” Louis greeted him amicably. The young man had shadowed Nick on the job the other day, but he’d vanished shortly thereafter... and now he was here in the pub. He raised his hand, revealing a cup of lemonade, and took a sip. “You know, this is really good. It could give Byron’s a run for its money, probably.”

“Hey, don’t just take that! Thief!”

“Now, that’s just rude. Anything that’s left in Byron’s pub is technically mine. He even left me my own key to the place.”

“Okay, but I’m the one who made the lemonade!”

“But the recipe is Byron’s, right?”

“I bought the lemons!”

“And used Byron’s stuff to make it.”

As they continued to verbally spar, Nick drew closer to the counter and deftly swiped the glass out of Louis’ hand. “Why are you even here?!”

“‘Why’... don’t tell me you forgot. You’re the one who said to come back later if I wanted to meet Owl.” Louis leaned his head in his hand, elbow resting on the counter, relaxed as anything. His eyes flicked over to the door leading up to the agency as he added with a huff, “But it looks like there’s another client here. My timing is just awful.”

Nick blinked, then gasped. “Oh, right! Something terrible happened!” He leaned in close to Louis. “That nice lady died!”

“What nice lady?”

“The one who let us run away the other day. We went to go see her today, and... she turned into a Demon, and then she died. I feel awful for her.”

“... I see.” Louis nodded once.

... That was it? Nick squinted at him. “What kind of reaction is that? Are you not surprised at all?”

Louis shrugged a shoulder, almost like he’d been expecting this kind of news. “No, I’m not. There were a bunch of Black Rose Disease infectees coming out of that area, right? It’s not weird at all to hear that she ended up infected, too.”

“I mean, yeah, but....”

“More importantly, if you went to go see her, that means you must’ve been walking around near that hospital place, right? Was there anything off around there?”

“Such as?”

“Anything strange that you might’ve seen or heard.”

“Strange, huh...?” Was there anything stranger than a Demon? Nick opened his mouth to say just that, but then he paused. Right, there was that.... “Actually, yeah, Owl was kinda weird. He said he could see and hear carriages going by, but there was no one on that street but us.”

Louis leaned forward, eyes widening. “That, that, yes! He did see the carriages!”

“What?”

“I saw them, too! I saw carriages rattling around over there!” Louis stepped out from behind the counter, half-forced Nick into a nearby chair, and plopped down on the chair next to him.

Nick thought back to when he and Louis had visited that place together. He did recall Louis saying something about a carriage going by, now that he thought about it. “Right, you did... I remember you saying that,” Nick said.

“Yes, because there was one. I distinctly heard the wheels clattering on the cobblestones. But you didn’t see it.”

“Right, ‘cause there wasn’t one. Ellie didn’t see anything, either.”

“But I did.”

“You sure you weren’t just dreaming?”

“Would you be able to go upstairs and ask Owl the same thing?”

“....”

“Neither of us were dreaming. And neither were you, of course. But there was clearly a difference in what you could see and what we could see. Why do you think that is?” Louis met Nick’s eyes, a challenge in his gaze. “What does the great detective’s assistant think?”

Nick’s jaw snapped shut. He glared at Louis, his mouth puckered like he’d just tasted something bitter, and snapped, “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Well, the simplest answer would be that one of us was shown an illusion, or put under some sort of suggestion... perhaps?”

“I mean, I dunno about you, but d’you really think Owl’d get ‘put under suggestion?’”

“Maybe it only works on geniuses?”

“Wooow, you really said that, huh. Toot your own horn some more, why don’t you.”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And, just checking, did you figure out what exactly it was I gave you?”

“... ‘It’ as in... that test tube?”

“Correct.”

Under Louis’ expectant gaze, Nick averted his eyes. “Doc... uh, Ellie’s physician said he ‘felt something from it,’” he answered.

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. He said, ‘Is the gas laced with alchemy?’ and Owl said, ‘It’s not concentrated enough,’ or something. They sent it in for analysis, but I don’t think they’ve got the results back yet.”

“Hmm, I see.” Louis leaned back again. “I think there’s some sort of hallucinogen mixed in with the smog, personally.”

“Hallucinogen? Is that the ‘poison’ the cats were talking about? It’s not a drug turning people into Demons?”

“Correct. It’s a psychedelic drug making people see carriages. You remember what was under the dress at that building, don’t you? That mechanism under the skirt? I think the Demon Parade might be spraying hallucinogenic drugs around while they’re marching around the city,” Louis explained. “At first I also thought they were spreading the Black Rose Disease, but I haven’t heard of anything that can extract the source of infection... and it’s not something a normal person with no technical know-how could operate, anyway.”

“But if it is a hallucinogen, why would they be spreading it around? What good does showing everyone illusions do?”

“Hiding a tree in a forest, probably. Illusionary carriages would mask any real ones trundling around.”

“Huuuh?”

Louis leaned forward again. “You’ve been investigating in that area recently, right? You didn’t see any weird carriages around?”

“Hey, too close! Back off!” Nick shoved his palm into Louis’ face and pushed him away with a dissatisfied glare. “And hey, you’ve been asking questions nonstop this whole time! You better not be thinking you’re getting all this from an informant for free! I’m not cheap, you hear?”

“Aw, come on, don’t be so stingy.”

“Nuh-uh, this is give and take.~” Nick retracted his hand from Louis’ face just enough to drop it in his line of sight, palm up.

Louis stared for a moment at the hand so eagerly awaiting payment and considered... then, instead of money, he pulled out some of the alchemic cards from before. “What if I add these to the pot?” he asked. “And not just any kind – these are sun-aligned. They fit Owl perfectly.”

“They do?”

“Oh, yes, they fit your beloved partner like a glove.” A broad smile slowly unfurled across his face. “Though, well, they’re nowhere near as effective as him.”

“... Fiiiine.~~” Nick swiveled in his seat and pulled a notebook from his pocket.

“Then we have ourselves a deal.”

Louis traded his cards for Nick’s notebook. As the informant pocketed his new acquisition, the student opened the little book and flipped to a map of the city. Nick commented, “Weird carriages, huh... you know, now that you mention it, I do remember seeing some around with these huge machines or something strapped on top of ‘em. Feels like they’ve been cropping up more and more for the last month or so.”

“Huge machines?” Louis echoed.

“Yeah, you remember the one we saw in front of that building, right? It had that big old device on its roof, with that weird shape. I thought someone was moving house, but... it was really weird. I’ve been seeing ones like that parked all over the city. And none of ‘em had any horses attached, so maybe they were abandoned.”

“... Do you remember where they were?”

“Oh, for sure, I make it a rule to jot down anything even a little out of the ordinary. This map here has all the places marked down.” Nick produced another map from his pocket. Louis whistled and made to grab it, only for Nick to yank it out of reach and hold out his hand again. “That’ll be another card,” he said pointedly.

“... You really are a shrewd one,” Louis sighed, stuck somewhere between awe and exasperation. He did, however, pull out another card and place it in Nick’s waiting palm.

“Thank you!~” Nick pocketed the new card and spread the map open in front of them. This one had marks dotted all over its surface.

Louis peered at the map, eyebrows shooting up. “Heeh... I guess a first-rate informant doesn’t do things by halves, huh.”

“What, were you doubting me?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Louis squinted, then pointed at one spot on the map near one of the marks. “... Hey, what does this say here? The chicken scratch is hard to read.”

“Oh, I didn’t write that, that was Owl. He writes notes like that sometimes that only he can read.”

“He writes in your notebook?”

“Just on the maps. He’s got absolutely no sense of direction, so when I’m not around he reads the maps funny.”

“Ahh....”

“He even made a note when we came back today.”

“Heeh...? A note from the detective himself, hm... hmm?” The second he heard it was from Owl himself, Louis dove into his perusal of the map with renewed fervor. His fingers traced from mark to mark, comparing the distances between each location and muttering to himself. “... They’re spaced evenly apart... is something built into the carriages themselves... or maybe there’s some kind of antenna...?”

Nick watched him examine the map for a moment. He kinda reminds me of Owl, he thought to himself.  Out loud, he murmured, “I wonder if all alchemists are just like that....~”

“A nursery rhyme....”

Nick jolted out of his musings. “Hm?”

Louis raised his head from the map. “Do you know a nursery rhyme about London Bridge?” he asked.

Nick had to take a second for his brain to digest the completely out of nowhere question. “Well, yeah,” he eventually replied, “I mean, there’s the obvious one, right?” He raised his hand and began waving his finger around like a baton, humming the tune to himself. “Falling down, falling down, my fair lady~, that one. What about it?”

“What are the last lines of the story?”

“The last lines?” Nick sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Uhh... I mean, I never actually learned the song properly, so... umm, I think, the people try to build the bridge out of all sorts of materials. They start with wood and clay, but then it gets ‘washed away,’ so then they plan to build it with bricks and mortar, or something?”

“Right, but ‘brick and mortar will not stay,’ so they move onto iron and steel, but even then ‘iron and steel will bend and bow.’” As Louis explained, he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “And last they try silver and gold, but ‘silver and gold will be stolen away,’ so they ‘set a man to watch the night.’”

“Is that how it went?”

“Yeah, and the next verse is ‘suppose the man should fall asleep.’”

“Man, this song’s nothing but naysaying.”

“You’re not wrong. But the next verse is the last – ‘give him a pipe to smoke all night.’ That’s where it ends.”

“Heeh? So a pipe solves everything?”

“Well, it’s possible... but there’s an interesting little rumor about this story.” Louis’ face suddenly shifted into a grim mask, his voice taking on a noticeable, almost theatrical tremble, the kind meant to frighten children in their beds. Nick leaned back just a touch, a little on edge despite himself, as Louis’ voice dropped lower and lower until it was a mere whisper. “It’s said that in order to complete the bridge, the man became a pillar himself... a human sacrifice....”

“... Heeh...?~ A human sacrifice?” Nick rolled his eyes doubtfully, still leaning back. “You mean they killed him to make the bridge stay up? C’mon, that has to be fake.”

Louis’ voice rose back up to its normal pitch with a disappointed frown. Guess Nick didn’t scare that easily. “Well, it’s more or less a baseless rumor,” he agreed. But his expression was as grim as before as he placed the paper he’d pulled out onto the counter and slid it over to Nick. “But she told us to ‘not become like that song.’”

“Who?”

“The woman we met.”

Nick gasped. He meant Maud. The paper on the counter in front of him had to be the note she’d passed Louis as they were leaving the other day! He grabbed it and opened the folded note to find some kind of scribbled map and the words “London Bridge” scrawled across the top. “What’s this?” he wondered.

“A map leading to a factory near London Bridge,” Louis replied.

“A factory?”

“One that makes carriages, specifically. I went there earlier today. It’s not all that big, but it’s not small, either. There was this circular symbol on it of three blooming flowers, so it was easy to spot.” Louis gesticulated with his hands as he spoke. “They were making these pitch-black carriages inside... with strange machines attached to the roofs.” He mimed the shape with his hands.

Nick’s eyes widened. “Just like the ones I saw,” he breathed.

What was going on? Why did Maud give them a map to the carriage factory? What was with their odd shapes?

“... What do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“About what she said. ‘Don’t become like that song.’ Do you think she meant ‘don’t be a person who smokes a pipe and gets turned into a human sacrifice?’”

“Uh....”

“If the smoke from the pipe is some sort of metaphor, then....” Louis tapped the note, his face falling even more –

Ding!

Nick jumped. That was the bell over the door. He’d forgotten to lock it. “Ah, sorry, we’re closed today!” he called. But then he took a closer look at who’d just walked in and his jaw fell open. “Wait, RITZ?!”

“Good evening, Nick.” Ritz – for it was Ritz, perfectly safe and sound – held up a small bag with a quiet smile. “I apologize for the other day. I brought some tea to thank you for serving me that lovely brand before.”

Nick launched out of his chair in a flash and rushed up to her, eyes wide and wild. “Ritz, you’re okay?!” he yelped. “We saw you go in that weird building and we were so worried!” “Weird building?” Ritz repeated, befuddled.

“You really shouldn’t go there anymore!”

“Huh?” Ritz blinked, her head tilted. Why was Nick so panicked? Then her eyebrows shot up, a certain stiffness setting in her shoulders. Now that was the old Ritz, the usual Ritz, with her rigid posture and her chest puffed up with pride. “... Are you referring to the support institute?” she asked. “Don’t be so rude. That place is a perfectly safe salon that provides women in need with the most wonderful system of support they could ask for. Everyone there is fighting hard to secure rights for women. I won’t tolerate any slander against it.”

Nick breathed out a quick sigh of relief at her attitude even as she efficiently shut him down. He shook his head, though, and insisted, “It didn’t look like that to us! If you go back, you might get caught up in all the crazy stuff, too!” He jabbed a finger behind him at the counter. “Even Louis over there thought it was suspicious!”

Ritz peered around Nick, then glanced back at him with her head tilted even further. “Louis? Who is that?”

“Who – the guy sitting at the counter? Look!”

“... There’s no one there, though?”

“Huh? What?” Nick whirled around to find no one behind him, no hide or hair to even hint someone had been there in the first place.

One eyebrow arched on Ritz’s face. “Are you sure you aren’t daydreaming, Nick? Or did you perhaps have a bad dream?” She spread her arms. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. Does it look like I’ve been caught up in something strange to you?”

“I-I’m not daydreaming!”

“Then why are you insisting it’s so dangerous? Are you perhaps fine with a society where women don’t hold rights? I may have misjudged you!”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all! I’m just worried about you! I don’t want you going anywhere that’s not safe!”

“And I am telling you that it’s not dangerous, and it’s not suspicious! The head of the salon, Krinos, is a wonderful person!”

Their back and forth was slowly growing more heated, unable to see eye to eye with each other. Perhaps because he heard the commotion, Owl came down the stairs to investigate, his eyes widening as he noticed Ritz. “Oh, good, you’re all right,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest with a relieved sigh.

“Oooowl!~” Nick turned to his partner pleadingly, halting in his tracks. “You tell her not to go there anymore! It’s actually....”

As Owl strode up to the pair of them, Ritz eyed him with naked caution. “Are you also against the movement for women’s rights, Owl?” she queried with a tongue cold and sharp as an icicle.

“What are you talking about?” Owl replied, distinctly wrong-footed. When he noticed just how angry Ritz was, he dropped his voice to a more pacifying tone. “Ritz, we’re not against women’s rights – we’re for it, if anything. You’re on equal footing with us. That’s exactly why we’re so worried about you, as your friends.”

“,.. Friends....”

“Yes. There was a woman outside that building you’ve been visiting that Demonized – she was infected with the Black Rose Disease. We just don’t want you to end up like her.”

“A Black Rose Disease infectee? Is that true?!”

“Yeah.”

“It can’t be....” Ritz’s anger melted away, replaced by flustered confusion. “Th-There are several infectees in the facility as well, all of whom can’t find work because of their condition. Perhaps the woman you saw was one of them.”

“Probably.”

“Where is she now?”

“She passed away. She collapsed right in front of us and lost consciousness, so we brought her here and called a doctor, but by then we were too late.”

“No...!”

Ritz stumbled away in shock, her eyes flicking everywhere but Owl and Nick. But it wasn’t long before she straightened up again, clearly trying to buoy her own spirits with her posture alone. “If a death has occurred, then the police will need to investigate,” she announced, turning to Owl. “I will likely need to call in a coroner as well.”

Nick nervously tugged on Owl’s sleeve. “Owl... she was Ritz’s....”

Owl took a few seconds to collect himself. He stepped aside and gestured at Ritz toward the agency with a nod. “... Go ahead, Officer Ritz,” he murmured, head bowed. “You should see this for yourself, as an officer of the law. I believe in you.”

Ritz shot him a faintly perplexed glance, but she stepped past him without hesitation and climbed the stairs up to the agency. Nick fell in step after her, but as he passed by the counter he glanced over with a frown. “Oh, right, where’s...” he mumbled to himself.

There was no one there, though, just as there wasn’t anyone there this whole time. Even the lamp had been dimmed at some point, as if the place had been completely silent and untouched from the very start.

“... I wonder when Louis left,” Nick muttered, before turning and following Ritz up the stairs.

“Miss Maud...?”

The bag slipped from her grasp and thudded to the floor.

Ritz walked into the agency, exchanged greetings with Jack, then saw the woman’s body lying in the living room... and stumbled to a halt, her jaw dropping and her face rapidly paling. She stood there in dumbstruck silence for several seconds, too shocked to even breathe, too shocked to remember she’d come up here as a police officer intending to do her job.

“Maud? It can’t be – it can’t be Miss Maud? No! Why?!” With a shrill screech, Ritz hurled herself toward the body, her hands desperately reaching for the woman –

“Don’t, Ritz.” Owl grabbed her and pulled her back.

But Ritz struggled against his hold, her focus locked on the corpse in front of her. “It can’t be, it’s a lie – no, this can’t be real, Miss Maud!”

Owl’s eyes flicked down to the woman in his grasp. “So you did know her,” he murmured sadly.

“Know her? She was my friend! She was the kindest person at the salon, she always listened to me... ahh, no, why, how?!” Ritz wailed.

“Calm down! I know you’re upset this happened to your friend, but....”

“I can’t! Miss Maud was... no, no, she can’t, she can’t be dead! She never said she had the disease, she never said anything like that! I can’t....” Ritz slumped in Owl’s hold. Her knees thumped against the floor. She stared at her friend’s body in despair. “I can’t believe this... ahh...!” Her hands rose to claw at her scalp as she broke down sobbing.

“I didn’t think the lady we were looking for was gonna be Ritz’s friend,” said Nick at Owl’s side. He pulled a folded sheet from his pocket – the picture of the duke’s daughter.

Ritz raised her head. Her teary eyes sought out the slip in Nick’s hand. She knew that slip; it was the same picture Nick had shown her before.

“Hey, Ritz, did you – did you know? That she might be the duke’s daughter?!”

The second she laid eyes on the picture, all remaining blood drained from her face. “Ah... I... ahh...!!” Fingers rose to claw at her face again as she shook her head back and forth, the very picture of anguish. “I, I did something so terrible...!!” she screamed.

“Ritz?” It wasn’t like her to lose herself like this. Nick gently grabbed Ritz’s arm and leaned in, studying her face intently. “What’s wrong?”

In between hiccupping sobs she replied, “I... thought there was... a slim chance that, that she....” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch. “Maybe she was her, she was the duke’s daughter that... that you were looking for...!”

“Huh?”

“But I told myself that couldn’t be right, because, she was so much thinner than the woman in the picture, and, and I – even if she was the duke’s daughter, I thought... it’d be better for her if I didn’t tell anyone... because she was being mistreated at home! She said she was locked away in the estate and never allowed even an ounce of freedom, so I...!”

“Ritz....”

“But... now this happened....”

Ritz’s shoulders hunched, trembling head to toe. This time, it was Nick and Owl who couldn’t find the words to speak. How could they, when they had no idea where to even begin consoling their distraught friend?

A different voice, frigid enough to freeze even a waterfall of tears, spoke up instead. “Oh, here you are.”

“The duke?!”

“Duke Fitz?”

The pair turned toward the door to find a black-haired man standing there wearing an haute couture indigo jacket with nary a wrinkle to be seen and shoes polished to a high sheen. The faint scent of perfume clung to his frame. It was the same man who’d been by the agency the other day... their current client, Duke Fitz.

Owl stepped forward, confusion wrinkling his brow. “May I ask why you’ve come?” he inquired. He hadn’t told the duke about his daughter yet, so he was surprised to see him come calling again so soon.

“Ahh, good timing. I thought I’d come and cancel my request to find my daughter... though I certainly didn’t expect to find you here with a corpse.” He glanced the dead woman’s body up and down. He huffed a single chuckle through his nose.

And then he opened his mouth again and said, without a hint of grief or sadness, “Well, she certainly makes a pitiful sight, for a member of the Fitz family.”

“... Your Grace,” said Owl slowly, “are you positive that this woman is your daughter?”

The duke nodded. “Without a doubt,” he confirmed. “That seedy-looking face of hers is the spitting image of my dead wife’s, especially now that she’s so thin – it was harder to tell back when she was fatter. This is my daughter.”

Owl’s face clouded. “... I can’t apologize enough for our failure to locate her while she was still alive,” he murmured, head bowed. “I deeply regret that our cases piled up to the point that we were unable to start our investigation immediately.”

The duke waved him off, still cool and collected. “I don’t mind. I’d thought the woman died two years ago – finding out she only died recently makes no difference to me.” He walked up to the body, his hand hovering over her collarbone as his eyes flicked back and forth as if searching for something. A cheerful smile unfurled across his face as he glanced back at Owl. “In fact, if anything... because you were late, you managed to deliver me a product of superior quality. I really should be thanking you.”

“Huh?”

The duke sounded so calm, almost peaceful, like a disciple whose prayers had reached their god... completely and utterly fulfilled. It was most certainly not the face of a father looking at their dead child. “You see, I was quite discouraged two years ago when the merchandise disappeared right before delivery. I even admit to resenting my foolish girl, but now I realize that was an unseemly bout of pride. My prayers were answered after all. Their messenger came to me earlier and praised my efforts. He said, ‘They have obtained a jewel more magnificent than any in the history of your family.’ To think she had hidden herself right by their side....”

“Your Grace...? What are you...?”

“Well, then, I’ll take my leave now; I have a soiree to be getting to. Ah, I will pay you for your services up till now, of course.” Fitz handed Owl a blank check without waiting for a reply. “Go ahead and write whatever amount you like in there. Good evening to you all.” He turned to leave. Owl and the others stood there silently watching his retreating back, utterly flabbergasted....

Except for Jack, who called after him, “When will you be back to collect your daughter’s body?”

“I won’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t need it anymore,” the duke said, like he was talking about a broken piece of equipment instead of his own family. “Just toss it in a public cemetery somewhere, you can do whatever you want with it.”

Jack’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Wha – Whatever we want?! She’s your daughter, isn’t she?!”

“That was a disgusting, immoral woman who chose to tie herself to a filthy servant, of all things,” Fitz shot back without turning around. “I could never inter her in the family grave.”

Ritz shot to her feet, incensed. “That... that is taking it too far!” she shouted. “You kept Miss Maud confined in your estate ever since she was a child, did you not?! How selfish can you be to refuse to even bury her just because she fell in love with one of your servants?!” She rushed up and latched onto his arm, still screaming. “Miss Maud told me how her father abused her from birth! How she would be beaten if she took even a single step out of her room! I was her friend! She told me everything! I will not stand by and let you treat her like this!!”

Fitz stared down his nose at Ritz like she was a particularly disgusting cockroach. “Don’t touch me,” he said icily, shaking off her grip with a glare. “I gave her a life of luxury – I fed her, I clothed her, she wanted for nothing. How could that be called abuse?”

No one could deter Ritz that easily, though, not even a duke. “How could it be anything else?!” she screamed. “Yes, she may not have been hungry, and she may have always had lovely clothes, but how could anyone be happy living alone locked in a single room for their entire life?! All Miss Maud could do was stare out the window day by day, and the only light in her life was the chimney sweep who would come to visit and sing her nursery rhymes from the rooftop! Is it so wrong that her heart fluttered at his kindness?! Do you know what she told me?! She said, ‘It was only for a short while, but the days I spent living with my husband were the happiest days of my life. We were poor, yes, but his singing was enough for me.’”

A deep crease appeared between Fitz’s eyebrows. But Ritz’s tirade wasn’t yet done. “But her husband passed away... he was murdered...! Was it perhaps you who –”

SLAP!

“Hold your tongue, girl, lest you say something you regret,” hissed the duke. He’d lashed out without hesitation or mercy, sending Ritz stumbling back with a single strike to the face. It had all happened so suddenly she couldn’t even shout. Three, four steps back she went, until her back hit the wall and she slumped to the floor, one hand dazedly pressed against her cheek, her pupils blown wide. She didn’t even seem to fully process the pain, too stunned by the sudden blow.

Nick immediately rushed to her side with a panicked shout. “RITZ!!” As he kneeled down to grab her by the shoulders, he yelled at the duke, “What are you doing?!”

“Slapping away an annoying bug,” Fitz replied calmly. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, carefully wiped his hands with it, and carelessly dropped it to the floor. “Let me tell you something, girl. That woman’s name was Matilda. Matilda Lee Fitz. Not this ‘Maud.’ Do you know what that means? It means that while you may have thought of her as a friend, she certainly did not see you as one. You didn’t even know her real name. How pitiful.”

Ritz went white as a sheet. That had struck far harder than any physical blow. She opened her mouth, perhaps to try and refute his claim, but all that came out was a trembling gasp. Her lips quivered.

“Hey! That’s enough!” Nick spat. He shifted to shield Ritz behind his back, his voice quaking with rage. “Are you even really her father?! How could you say that to your daughter’s friend?! Maybe this is exactly why she ran away from you, ever think of that?! You heartless bastard!”

Nick’s red-hot ire was a mere candle flame against the duke’s impenetrable ice, though. “That’s a rather impertinent thing to say to a client, don’t you think?” he said imperiously.

Nick’s voice rose even further. “What’s wrong with you?! You’re treating your daughter like garbage and you even assaulted my friend! You’re definitely not our client anymore! You’re nothing to us!” he declared sharply. His eyes flicked over to his partner. “Right, Owl?”

“... Hm? Did you say something?” Owl glanced up from the check he’d been systematically ripping to shreds. Scraps of white paper were already fluttering to the floor in a tiny heap at his feet.

Nick stared at his handiwork. A slow grin spread across his face. “... Awesome,” he breathed.

Owl walked up to Fitz, his expression perfectly unruffled. He stared the duke directly in the eyes as he asked apropos of nothing, “What would you say to a quick medical examination, Your Grace?”

Fitz’s eyebrows furrowed. “A medical exam? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m perfectly healthy.” He clicked his tongue, meeting those violet eyes dead on. “How rude.”

“No, I remember encountering someone like you before.” His gaze never wavered. “I saw your relatives once... like you, they also kept cool heads and didn’t grieve in the face of death. The women heading toward their tragic fates... and the cruel men who were always waiting nearby. They were the devout folk of a certain island.” Owl’s eyes flashed. “Sometimes their descendants display similar temperaments.”

“...!!”

Fitz’s eyes twitched. Nearby, Jack’s eyes widened in realization. He knew a man like that as well – the man who’d poisoned his own father and attempted the same with his brother and niece for the sake of profit and power. The duke did indeed seem rather similar to that man.

“Research into neurosis is proceeding apace, so what say you, Duke Fitz? I have a rather considerable interest in your bloodline.” Owl took another step toward the duke. “Who or what were you going to offer your daughter to, that caused her to flee from you? What kind of jewel did your daughter become? By all means... I would love to hear it.”

Those violet eyes... they were the unblinking, piercing eyes of an owl.

The eyes of a creature swooping down on its prey cowering in the dead of night.

The eyes of a hunter approaching on silent wings, talons outstretched, poised to strike the heart.

The eyes of a predator.

“Don’t come any closer!” Fitz instinctively raised his voice and shoved Owl’s shoulders away. “I won’t forgive any insults against me, boy! Go ahead, keep going, say something else! I’ll call my lawyer here!” Threats spilled from his lips as he glanced down at the shredded check lying on the ground by his feet. He sniffed out a mocking laugh. “I don’t know what sort of relationship you have with that cheeky little girl, but heed my words... you’ve all made fools of yourselves!”

He turned on his heel and strode away, fully intending to leave this time. Nick wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy, though, and chased after him, shouting, “And what’s wrong with that? Ritz is the nicest, most reliable police officer in the city! Maybe even the world!”

Fitz scoffed. “A police officer? A little girl, a police officer. Hmph. She doesn’t know her place. What could a stupid woman like her possibly accomplish? I would wager she has the easiest job in the precinct, listening to citizen complaints all day long.”

“You...!”

“And since she’s got such an easy job, she doesn’t even realize that the woman the detective was looking for is someone she knows,” he continued spitefully. “If she’s that incompetent, she could at least find someone she could eke out an agreeable life with. And if she can’t even manage that, then she has no value whatsoever, the useless thing.”

“Shut up!!” Nick’s hair was starting to stand on end, his eyes flashing. “Don’t talk to my friend like that...!”

“I’m only speaking the truth. A woman can’t possibly carry out a proper investigation!”

“What did you say?!” A scarlet hue was bleeding into Nick’s eyes... but just then, another voice spoke up.

“I....”

It was Ritz. She’d finally recovered enough to clamber to her feet again, though she was still leaning against the wall in a daze. Her voice was quickly rising from a whisper to a scream. “I... it’s always like that, I don’t notice cases under my nose, I can’t solve anything...! E-Everyone says I can’t, that it’s because I’m a woman –”

“Ritz?”

“– I couldn’t... my friend, I couldn’t even save my friend...!” Ritz sobbed wildly, one hand pressed against her swollen cheek. Her eyes were growing dark, and not just in the emotional sense – the scleras themselves were slowly turning black, spreading outward from her irises in a marble pattern at a concerningly rapid pace.

Owl noticed. “Oi, Ritz?!” he shouted. The instant he thought he saw the telltale signs, though, she dashed away toward the exit as though yanked by an invisible string.

“Ritz! Wait! Where are you going?!” Nick glanced between Ritz and the duke. “The next time I see you, I won’t let you off so easy!” he hissed at Fitz with bared teeth before he chased after his fleeing friend. “Hold on, Ritz! You don’t gotta listen to a jerk like that!”

He might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Ritz didn’t turn back.

Owl stared after the two, biting his lip, then with one last glare at the duke turned to Jack. “I’ll take the daughter’s body,” he told his friend.

“What? You will?”

“Contact Father... Tristan, please.”

Jack nodded. “Y-Yeah, okay.”

With no time left to waste, Owl dashed off after Nick and Ritz.

original written by Nagaya Kawaji here

#kotonoha project #part 2 babey! #featuring what might be owl's best moment ever!

[triviareads]

ARC Review of When the Viscount Wanted Me by Lydia Lloyd

Rating: 3.75/5 Heat Level: 3.5/5 Publication Date: January 16th

Premise:

Lady Henrietta Breminster's indiscretion with her friend Lord Hartley is coming back to haunt her. The indiscreet lord won't stop hounding her for her hand in marriage, and the only person who can intervene is her brother's friend the Viscount Tremberley. Henrietta has long harbored feelings for Trem, and during the course of handling this situation, it turns out Trem is not so indifferent to Henrietta either.

My review:

I'd been looking forward to Trem and Henrietta's romance ever since they were teased in When the Duke Loved Me, and it doesn't take very long for them to get together in this book, that too, inadvertently thanks to another man.

I appreciated this book's treatment of sex and female sexuality; Henrietta is curious about sex and decides to experiment with a friend (who is not the hero), and her experience is a good one. You don't see this in a lot of historical romances, namely, the heroine having premarital sexual experience before the hero, or if she does, the experience is a positive (and consensual) one. When Trem demands to know why she did this, Henrietta quickly impresses on him that "because I wanted to" is an absolutely valid answer, like it always has been for men. And Henrietta explicitly acknowledges the pregnancy risk and states she would be fine with having Trem's child out of wedlock, which, again, isn't something I see very often in a historical romance. Also, I did find it funny that while Trem felt suuuuper guilty about debauching his best friend's sister to the point where he sent ye olde batsignal to his other friends to counsel him, that didn't stop him from doing it over and over again (not that Henrietta was complaining)

Here is where I became a bit confused about the direction of the plot and conflict: Henrietta and Trem quickly become engaged without revealing they've had sex to Henrietta's brother John (the previous hero and Trem's best friend). John is happy at first but becomes suspicious about why they've suddenly decided to get married. After that, he devolves into this almost comic state of immaturity and freezes out Trem. On top of that, Hartley is demanding Henrietta marry him and goes as far as to make a public fuss, but he's never quite treated as a villain and is instead treated as a mere nuisance. Eventually, Henrietta runs away to see her birth mother, with Trem chasing after her, however, even that conflict is quickly resolved between them as well as Henrietta and her birth mother. Hartley ends up making a random, final appearance where he does actually try something dastardly, but there's still no explanation or motivation for his actions.

There were also a couple plot points I think could have been explored further: Henrietta is given an opportunity to run a ladies' magazine, and she wants to expand its offerings to include political articles on subjects such as abolition. In addition, Trem comes to the realization that he's, well, an indolent lord, and he could be doing more with his life, but there isn't much development or discussion on that front apart from his one grand gesture near the end of the book.

The sex:

Plentiful would be the best way to put it. Trem seduces Henrietta by asking her to show him exactly what she did with Hartley which I thought was just great, and after that, nothing can stop these two: Not being at a public ball or the middle of the woods, not cockblocking siblings, not even gunshot wounds (as Trem tells Henrietta, "I could fuck you with a bullet in both [arms]").

Funnily enough, this will be the second book this year I'll be recommending by saying if you felt cheated by that scene in A Wallflower Christmas by Lisa Kleypas where St. Vincent insinuates he's going to use a pearl necklace on Evie but we never read the follow-through, this is your book.

Overall:

I'd recommend this book for anyone looking for a historical romance with instalove, plenty of sex, and a relatively low-stakes plot.

Thank you to Tule Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

#arc review #Lydia Lloyd #Tule Publishing #netgalley #historical romance #arc #romance novels

[cratlord]

Prince of the Seas - Chapter 12

Pairing: Bucky x Ruby / Some Bucky x Killian

Summary: Things did not get better for Bucky Barnes after he and Sam had their adventure. They got worse. After years of living only through stolen moments of his own life, he is given a chance to build a life in a whole new world. The catch? That life is going to be a very, very long one. This is the tale of the life built in the Realm that will one day be known as Misthaven, or the Enchanted Forest.

Warnings: Depression, Anxiety, suicidal thoughts, violence, Sexual content

The horizon was just beginning to see the first tinges of predawn as he made his way back into camp.  There was a moderately large clearing travelers often used to camp in on the road.  It was the first of three such clearings on the five day journey home.

Already, Alana was awake and giving soft orders to organize a small group of women who were stoking the fires to get a good breakfast going.  They wouldn’t be stopping much that day since the next clearing was a good distance and they would be pushing to get there before dusk to make their next camp.  That meant they would have a walking lunch, and likely a light one at that.  

Bucky approached the ladies, already hard at work getting the pots settled into the embers, already filled with water from the well which the Duke’s people maintained for the use of travelers on the road.  

Alana gave him a huge grin when he rounded the wagon silently, finally putting himself into view of her.  “Lord Eldar,” she exclaimed softly.  “I had wondered where you’d gone off to.  What’s all that, then?” she said, gesturing to the sacks currently over his shoulder.  

He closed the rest of the distance to where the ladies were working and set the bags down.  The first he held out to a woman currently holding a deep cast iron pan with a lid which wasn’t full of water and porridge yet.  “I caught some fish.  The children were looking a bit pale still yesterday.  Some fresh meat will help them, I think.”

She took the bag, lurching at how much heavier it was than he made it look.  “Bless you, Eldar.  I’ll get to cleaning these right away,” she said before turning to another of the woman and enlisting her help.  

From there he turned to the women at the fires tending the pots which would eventually hold enough porridge for everyone.  Bland and boring porridge.  It was good for travel, but it left a lot to be desired.  He pulled the other sack off his back and opened it.  He pulled out a couple of large jars which had been empty when he left, but now contained freshly gathered honeycomb and honey.  He handed them and the bag to the women.  “I could hear some hives nearby, so I figured I’d grab some honey for the kid’s breakfast.  I also got some blossoms for the porridge for us.  No sense in bland food in the spring.”

“Well that’s just lovely of you, Lord Eldar,” Alana said quietly.

“Though when you had time to do that is beyond me,” came Lisbeth’s voice as she came to her feet and rounded one of the other wagons.  “Especially since it’s been even longer since you’ve rested than any of us.  And don’t think I missed how you handed off your plate to Timothy last night.”  

She took a moment to eye him critically as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot.  He could feel the judgment rolling off her in waves, making him cringe back from her gaze.  

“You look like shit,” she stated baldly.  “You’re pale, you have rings under your eyes, and you really do need a shave.”  She squinted at him.  “And a haircut.”

“Uh…” he said, dying a little inside at his inability to talk to this gorgeous woman.  His cheeks darkened.  Again.

The entire previous afternoon and evening had been the same.  He and Lisbeth had been walking right next to each other, and he had been a tongue tied idiot the entire time.  He knew she noticed.  Fuck, he knew everyone noticed.  It was the whispered talk of the entire caravan, much to his mortification.  And these women knew he heard them saying it too, which made it even worse.  

Alana looked like she was trying to keep from laughing as she shook her head and walked off towards the lead wagon.  It was the one with the weird cages on it, still full of animals.  The kids had been put in charge of taking care of the animals there.  That was also the wagon that had the few items the marauders had taken with them.  

He rubbed the back of his neck under his ponytail while she stared him down.  He hadn’t been scolded in centuries.  It was odd.  The last person to scold him had to have been Aggie.  He cleared his throat and did his best to meet Lisbeth’s eyes without any shame.  

“What I was doing was more important,” he said simply, though his Brooklyn accent somehow managed to slip through, a sure sign that he was stressed.

Lisbeth narrowed her eyes.  “Did you get any sleep at all?”

He licked his lip, using his tongue to draw it into his mouth to bite it.

“And when was the last time you slept?” she asked incredulously, her own cheeks starting to pinken in her ire.  

At that point Alana strolled back over, huge grin on her face.  “Little Sammy found this on the wagon last night while they were feeding the wee birds.”  

She held out a rolled up leather kit of some sort to Lisbeth with a roguish wink.  “Looks like the only mirror got shattered in the fight though.  You’ll have to help him.”

With that she strutted off to get back to the business of making breakfast.  

Lisbeth snorted as she eyed the kit in her hands then shook her head in amusement.  “Well, that’s decided then.  I’ll go get a warm towel and you get this razor sharpened,” she ordered, closing the distance between them and handing him the shave kit.  “Get settled right over there,” she said, pointing to a large log near one of the fires over by the well.  

He stood there stunned as the Lady walked away towards the wagons.  He was feeling pretty railroaded and he wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.  His face was itchy though, even if he could have gone without being chastised for keeping a night watch.  

He wasn’t stupid.  There were dangerous things in these woods.  Magical and dangerous things.  Things that tended to have a taste for virgins, of which he was traveling with a caravan full of. This part of the road swung a little too close to some enclaves of rather nefarious and evil beings.  There was a Sorcerer lord which ruled the mountain pass to the East of this region, and the edge of his domain was within twenty miles of this specific stretch of road.  He really should take care of that asshole at some point, but he was half hoping the ogres next swing through the region would end up taking care of it for him.  Maybe the evil bastard would actually be of some use in thinning the tribe.

He sighed as he turned and made his way to the log and sat down on it.  He unrolled the shave kit and grabbed the razor as he’d been ordered.  Luckily, it had been kept in good condition.  He only really needed a few swipes on the strap to hone it to a fine edge perfectly adequate for the task at hand.  He was just finishing and getting the tin for the soap open when Lisbeth approached with a towel over her shoulder and a large bowl of lightly steaming water.  She set the bowl down on his other side then draped the large towel around his shoulders.

“You don’t have to do this,” he mumbled as she leaned over to grab the washcloth in the bowl.  She squeezed out a bit in the soap tin and sprinkled the powder in it, then used the rest of the warm water to prep his face.

She met his gaze for a brief moment as her hand gently tilted his chin so she could wet his neck as well.  To his amazement, her cheeks burned bright red and she looked away.  She put a hand on his shoulder to balance herself as she leaned to the side to grab the soap and brush.  As she started to lather his face, she met his eyes again, this time holding his gaze despite her own blush.  

“I’ve only ever done this for my father,” she said softly as she lightly brushed the lather over the entire bottom half of his face.  “He broke his dominate hand and realized he couldn’t shave without cutting himself with the other.”  

“Were you any good at it?” he asked, his brow furrowed.  “I’m normally a bit uncomfortable with people having razor blades to my throat.”

She dropped the brush into the little tin and set it back down, finally braking eye contact.  “He survived the experience, and he wasn’t a literal immortal god, so I think your odds are good.”

Her blush only darkened when she had to reach down and grab the straight razor from his thigh.  She tapped his knee with the closed razor, prompting him to spread his knees even further apart than he normally did.  She stepped right into his personal space and knelt down between his legs so that she was right at eye level with his chin.

The tension that thrummed through him as she finally set the blade to his chin was both nerve wracking and oddly pleasurable.  He’d never let anyone do this for him before, and it was erotic in a way.  Either that or just having a gorgeous woman touch him at all was enough to get him excited considering how long it had been.  Her fingers were gentle as they nudged his face where it needed to go.  Her hand on the razor was steady, and swipe by swipe he felt his beard getting sliced off.  When she finally got to his neck he had to focus on ogres to keep from getting an erection.  He was mostly successful, but it didn’t stop him from very briefly imagining a life where she did this for him multiple times a week.  The intimacy of having this woman cut hair off his neck, right over his jugular, was titillating in a way he had no idea he liked.

He felt her gusty sigh tickle his face when she finally finished.  She wiped the razor off one last time on the towel on his shoulder and then grabbed the warm washcloth again to wipe off any remaining soap.  He let his chin fall as the warm cloth cleaned off his neck.  His eyes sought out hers.

Her hand froze when her eyes finally lifted to meet his.  Her heart fluttered as she gasped a breath softly, like she only just realized exactly how close she was.  How she could feel the heat from his thighs warming her sides.  How the air she inhaled smelled entirely of the man she was almost completely folded in to.  Her pupils dilated and a shiver went down her spine.  

He wanted more than anything, in that moment, for this beautiful woman to trust him as much as he had just trusted her.  He was tired of going to bed alone.  Tired of the cold.  He knew she would die.  It was the curse of his living, that he should watch everyone die, but she was young still.  Of all the lifetimes he had lived, maybe this once… maybe just this one he could live with someone else.  Maybe for a little while, he could be happy.  Then he could spend the rest of his long existence remembering the beautiful girl who gave her life to him.

“I was standing watch,” he muttered quietly, holding her gaze intensely.  “There’s an evil sorcerer who’s built a castle in the pass east of here.  I didn’t want to alarm the children, but he likes to experiment with chimeras.  There have been some abominations that have come out of the mountains in recent years.”

He lifted a hand to delicately trace her jaw while he spoke.  

“This part of the road swerves closest to his castle.  It’s the most dangerous stretch until I have time to kill the sorcerer.  I couldn’t risk you and the kids.”

His fingers delicately traced the edge of her jaw before sliding down to cup her face so his thumb could trace her cheekbone.  Her eyelashes fluttered and her heart sped up.  He allowed himself to get lost in the moment, taking in her beauty and completely ignoring the increasing bustle around him.  

“I know I’m not very good at this,” he whispered, leaning slightly closer to her.  “For lifetimes I have watched over my people.  I’ve built them homes, helped with the harvest, hunted for them, and kept them safe.  They help provide for me too, but I never ask them for anything.  I don’t even charge them for my work.  But you…” he trailed off.

Her eyes fluttered open again.  He could see the question in them.  He reached out with his metal hand and wrapped it delicately around her waist.

“I would ask you for the most valuable thing you have to give.  The only thing truly yours to sacrifice in a place like this.”  His words were spoken gently as he pulled her in closer.

“And what sacrifice is that, that my god would ask of me?” she asked in a breathless voice.  Her hands were gripping his shoulders.

Her breathless whisper sent a shiver down his spine and he pulled her the rest of the way in so that she was pressed against his chest and he had to look almost straight down to meet her gaze.  

“I would ask for everything from you,” he muttered in awe at her wide eyed expression.  “That you would give me your life, every single moment of it.  That you would share with me my home, my table,” he swallowed thickly as his eyes darted down to her lips for a brief spell before flicking back to her eyes, “my bed.”  His breath was heavy as he met her shocked gaze.  “Give me every moment you have left, and I will take care of you.  I will keep you safe, and make sure you never need for anything again.”

Her eyes somehow seemed to grow even bigger for a moment before her brows furrowed.  He held her very close, but as impressive and attractive as his warmth and firmness was, it wasn’t enough to distract her from the words he had uttered.  “You say you will make sure I never need for anything, but what of my wants?  What sort of life would it be, to be yours?  Would I be the only one?”  She bit her lip and broke eye contact, turning her face to the side away from his hand.  “What of love?”

He let go of her waist and lowered his hand.  His stomach felt heavy and his chest tight, but he forced his face to smooth out until it was expressionless.  He leaned back away from her.  “My apologies Lady Lisbeth, if I misread the situation, or made you uncomfortable.”  He forced a breath into his lungs and swallowed to wet his dry throat.  “Just know, I would never take anything which wasn’t freely given.”

He carefully pulled back so he could stand without jostling her.  She stayed exactly where he released her, still on her knees, as he turned away from her and made his way back to the campfires closer to the road.  He didn’t look back. 

Next Chapter

Chapter List

#bucky barnes #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes series #mcu fanfiction #once upon a time #once upon a time crossover #crossover fic #mcu crossover

[elysianluv]

content warning/s: claudius being awful at flirting :/

a/n: ok so nonnie i assumed you meant claude as in claude from wmmap, please correct me if i'm wrong! sorry if this took a while, and very merry christmas to everyone!!

PRETENDING TO BE THEIR S/O! ft. claude de alger obelia [wmmap]

you remember the days when all this noise used to be unsettling. the constant buzz of conversation, the fixated eyes, the deathly hollow movements. word and words and words all spilling towards you with a vague clarity you did not dare attempt to decipher.

now, your mind is accustomed to reducing it to what it is: mindless chatter. background noise, chaos unending but also unrelated to you.

instead, you focus in on the girl beside you, her hands fiddling with her dress. athanasia de alger obelia is no stranger to the social scene, especially not with the past few months she's had. but there is a hesitance to her movement today, a weight on her mind that you suspect may have something to do with a certain magician.

from across the room, the palace mage catches your gaze. your eyes narrow, and he straightens. as discreetly as you are able, you gesture towards your moping pupil, watching his eyes linger on her. he then snaps out of his trance–like state, turning to you with a shake of his head.

you raise an eyebrow. one.

lucas' brows furrow in faux annoyance. two.

and... he sends you a pleading look before sighing. the young(?) mage stands, preparing to make his way towards you. three.

   "i hope you've practiced your dancing, love," you murmur, a fond smile rising to your lips as athy huffs.

   "i have, don't you worry. but–"

you send her a look. "your father isn't going to explode in the duration of a single dance, athanasia. he'll be fine, so just enjoy the night, alright? i'll send for you if anything happens."

if there's anything she's learned after ten years of being under your teaching, it's that you aren't to be argued with. reluctantly, the princess nods. you step away as lucas approaches her, retreating towards the drinks — god knows you'll need some.

on the other side of the refreshments table, duke calis joins the emperor along with a few nobles. you are not sure who you feel sorry for more — claude, being hounded ever since his return from his break and the entire scandal, or the nobles about to be on the recieving end of his fury.

your mind clings onto a recent memory with the desperation of a drowning man — you attempt to repaint the smile you'd seen his face adorned with in the gardens only a few nights ago, a serene moment you had caught on a rare midnight stroll. he had been standing by the angel statue beside which he'd first met his daughter, the sight no doubt being the reason behind such a carefree, nostalgic smile. heat rushes to your face at the memory, and claude glances upwards from his drink, meeting your eyes.

your breath catches.

confused, and trying to calm your heart, you avert your gaze, suddenly finding the hall's tiling pattern intensely fascinating. distantly, you can hear marquis leonore mention his daughter as an excellent dance partner.

   "are you enjoying yourself, m'lady?"

and, the moment is gone; your jaw tenses at the familiar voice. you can't help the way your fingers tighten their grip on the delicate glass, and forcing a smile onto your face, you turn to the man to your right. "i was."

he doesn't seem to notice your use of past tense, instead asking, "would you care to dance?"

it occurs to you suddenly that you can't use your duty to watch over athanasia as an excuse any longer. attempting to shut him down hurriedly, you smile politely, "i'm afraid, count renault, i must keep an eye on the princess. her safety is paramount, you see, and i cannot under any circumstances allow anyone–"

   "–but she is with the royal mage," he insists, taking the chance to step closer to you.

you grit your teeth. "regardless, sir, i must decline your offer. i do not wish to dance."

   "only because you haven't given me a chance, lady (y/n). i assure you, i am an excellent dancer."

his adamant refusal to accept your decision serves as a perfect reminder for why you so loathe having to attend such gatherings, and it almost stuns you into silence. you raise an unimpressed eyebrow, perplexed by his inability to process your rejection. his plain stupidity is enough to keep you from noticing the new presence behind you – renault, however, doesn't spare a moment lowering himself into a bow.

   "an excellent dancer?" the voice muses, and you spin around, coming face to face with the emperor.

   "i– your majesty...i don't mean to brag..."

you wait for claude to allow the man to rise, but the order never comes. instead, his eyes are focused on you, even as he processes renault's words.

   "a shame, as it seems she'll be spoken for this next dance."

the entirety of the ballroom quietens as claude extends a hand towards you.

you glance upwards to meet his eyes, to confirm he is aware of what he is doing – the man hasn't danced with anyone but family for more than sixteen, perhaps seventeen years? has he finally gone insane? – his brows knit at your hesitance.

steeling your resolve, you place your gloved hand in his. claude gives it a slight squeeze, leading you to the floor.

   "you look anxious," he states, as the musicians begin their music. over claude's shoulder, you spy athanasia and lucas, both giving you a subtle thumbs–up.

   "i am. you make me anxious." strangely, the answer seems to satisfy him – claude's lips quirk upwards in amusement and you find yourself growing increasingly disappointed in your male company tonight. "what are you playing at, your majesty?"

the song picks up, and you find there is energy to your step. with the hint of a smirk that rises to claude's lips, his grip on your hand firming slightly is all the warning you have before he brings you into an elaborate twirl. for the nth time tonight, your lungs fail you.

there are hundreds of eyes still burning holes in the back of your dress, though it is difficult to pay them mind when claude holds you closer by the minute. there is a strange curiosity he regards you with, his expression something teetering on the edge of asking a question.

when the silence stretches, you voice yours instead. "you've given rise to a wildfire, sire. asking me to dance in such a public setting – people will assume a relationship of some sort between us, there will be misunderstandings affecting both our reputations, rumours difficult to quell."

his reply is reluctant. claude inhales deeply, allowing the music to bring you closer until his lips are level with your ear. your blood pounds. "and, would turning this misunderstanding into the truth remedy the situation?"

#claude de alger obelia x reader #wmmap x reader #who made me a princess #suddenly became a princess one day #x reader #sera's fluff tag <3

[wallflowerimagines]

Could you maybe write something with an s/o that is super hands on? Like, if they wanna see Moreau's cool teeth or Heisenberg's scars they'll really get all up in their business, grab their faces and take a look? They're not mean, just curious and handsy

PS, this Anon sent an update for all 4 Lords plus The Duke!!!! So first time duke imagine add on, let's get handsy!

Alcina Dimitrescu

Please keep your hands out of her mouth, Darling.

Alcina is... barely tolerant of this behavior, but also a little amused. You are fascinated by her canines, despite the fact that they aren't particularly sharp or pointed like you keep assuming they are. You have this image of "vampires" I your head, and while Alcina is close to certain stereotypes, she doesn't meet all of them-- specifically the sharp teeth. You cannot seem to get over it, no matter how hard you try.

She will occasionally indulge this little habit of yours, but it's mostly because she loves you. Keep your hands clean and your nails clipped, or else she'll flick your fingers away.

Still, as much as she loves you, Alcina does have her limits when being poked and prodded.

She will only let you do it in private. Alcina won't let you stick your fingers in her mouth in public-- it's not appropriate or befitting of her station.

If you're too enthusiastic, she will playfully nibble on your fingers as a warning, and lick up the small bead of blood that comes from the cut. Is that vampiric enough for you? After all, you taste divine, Darling.

If you're so fixated on the fact that her teeth aren't as long as they are "supposed to be", well, Alcina is happy to show you the error of your ways💕💕

She will definitely use your fixation as an opening excuse for intimacy. I hope you're ready for it...

Donna Beneviento

Not okay with it.

Donna's veil isn't just for mourning-- she's also cripplingly self conscious of the scar on her face, and the Cadou mutation did not help her self esteem at all.

If you try to run your hands over her mutation, especially without warning her first? Donna will just shut down. Normally Donna and Angie will both chat and spend time with you, but after this Donna will completely back away from the relationship, and let Angie take over for her completely.

Angie is her safety net, after all. And you've just crossed a boundary she was not ready for, or even aware that you wanted to cross.

You have to explain that you mean no harm, but even then it's not a great scenario. Donna regresses almost completely if you don't warn her beforehand. You're back to communicating through Angie until you give her a genuine, meaningful apology.

You really need to push the idea that 1) you love her unconditionally and the scar will not affect that, and 2) you were only interested in touching it because you love her so much and you want to be familiar with every part of her.

Essentially: Always, always ask for consent with Donna before you go poking around. She can be alright with it in specific circumstances, but never assume, and never engage unless you have explicit permission. She needs to psych herself up beforehand.

(Still, if you ask and then press a kiss to the writhing mass that she hates so much, she will absolutely cry. There's something about that gesture that really gets across how much you adore her. It's... reassuring. Safe. It makes Donna feel adored, unconditionally. You love her to pieces, and this a gesture that reaffirms that.)

Salvatore Moreau

You... want to mess around inside his mouth? That's a little--WAIT HOLD ON NOT YET!!!

You have to warn him first, for your safety.

Moreau's mouth is full of acid, and as much as you want to get all up in there to check out his neat chompers, you have to warn him first so he can make sure you can examine him safely.

He's proud of his mutation, to a certain extent. The fact that you love him not only despite it, but because of it? It strokes his ego a little bit.

Still, he wants you to be safe. No sticking your hands in there without warning! Moreau would never forgive himself if he hurt you, so do give him a heads up if you want to take a dive in his mouth.

If he's feeling brave, he might actually use this as an excuse for intimacy like Alcina. He might wrap his tongue around your fingers or pull you in for a kiss if he wants too. You've got this focused expression on your face, and it's entirely centered on him... Salvatore couldn't resist even if he wanted to 💗

If you choose to mess around with the growths on his back, it's a little less romantic. They are very painful some days, and unless you are giving him a massage he will say no. It's not because he doesn't trust you! But Moreau needs to manage the pain, and depending on how bad the pain is on that specific day, that means you can't touch his back. Just remember to ask beforehand, and you're golden 💛

Karl Heisenberg

Hell YES

Heisenberg isn't self conscious about his body at all, to be honest. Sure he has scars, and while not All of them have good memories associated with them, he has a surprisingly healthy mindset about them. The scars are there because he's alive. He survived everything life threw at him, and he's still going strong.

While he won't tell you all the stories behind his scars, he will share the more palatable experiences. Some are from dumb mistakes he's made while doing metalwork, and he's more than happy to tell you the less painful stories when you have your hands all over him.

Because, yes, that is the best part about this whole thing. You cannot keep your hands off of him, and it is EXCELLENT. Karl loves it. He's a pretty handsy guy himself (to the point where you're starting to suspect he's a little touch starved), so he does not mind that you return the favor.

You trace his scars with this focused expression that's just so entirely absorbed, so fascinated, Karl gets hit with this weird mix of fondness for you and pride in himself. Seeing you so absorbed in him and his body makes him really want to do the same with you. He wants to return the favor.

The light touches you give his torso are so delicate... It makes him feel important and valuable to you.

Honestly, it's almost intoxicating. Heisenberg will absolutely trail off in the middle of a sentence if you run a hand across his chest. The feel of your hands on his body is so, so good. He likes physical contact with you, but if you specifically trace his scars? All bets are off.

9 times out of 10 he just can't hold back and pulls you in for a make out session. The last 1 out of 10 has a tendency to... escalate😈

The Duke

More than happy to indulge your impulses.

You being handsy is something that the Duke actually really enjoys. He likes to keep you nearby, and when you seem so obsessed with running your hands all over him it's much easier to keep you close and safe💖

You're the most focused on his hands and fingers because...uh...whoo... something about him with all those rings just really does it for you???

It's really nice to weave your fingers in between his, giving little kisses to the inside of his wrist or the tips of his fingers, and the Duke is always happy to oblige.

It's very charming, watching you coddle his hands like they're something precious. He feels a little overwhelmed by the reverence in each gesture, so he does his best to repay the favor.

The Duke will definitely smooch the tips of your fingers to reciprocate any affection you give him, and the kisses will continue up your arms, past your shoulder, and climb up to your mouth. It's a half silly, half romantic, but 100% genuine.

He loves you, and it's always entertaining to watch you squirm in anticipation as his kisses slowly approach your eager lips. The waiting is half the fun💕

#lady dimitrescu x reader #alcina dimitrescu x reader #donna beneviento x reader #lady beneviento x reader #salvatore moreau x reader #lord moreau x reader #karl heisenburg x reader #lord heisenburg x reader #re8 #resident evil village #resident evil 8 #resident evil #the duke x reader #the duke resident evil #alcina dimitrescu #donna beneviento #salvatore moreau #karl heisenberg

[hintofelation99]

The Justice League Hangs out with Duke

Bruce: Duke, it's time we had the talk.

Duke: Uh... nope. No thank you. I'm not getting the sex talk from Batman.

Bruce: What? No! The Robin talk.

Duke: But, I'm- I'm the Signal now? Isn't it a bit late for a Robin talk?

Bruce: Son, it's never too late, not for this.

Duke: Um. Ok.

Bruce: When Dick, Jason, and Tim first started as Robins they created a tradition. A tradition that continued with Stephanie, Damian, and now you.

Duke: And that tradition is?

Bruce: Taking down the Justice League. By being annoying and slightly terrifying.

Duke: OHHHHHH. Is that why no one from the Justice League talks to me?

Bruce: Yes, yes it is. But don't worry. I made an arrangement that will allow you time alone with league members to continue the tradition. You have a week to prepare.

——————

Duke: Cass, what do I do?

Cass raises an eyebrow at Duke.

Duke: For the Robin tradition thing. I have to take down the entire Justice League in a night using creative, outlandish, and original methods. But it's already been done by Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, and Steph. So what do I do? How can I be better than all of them.

Cass smirks: Take them down too.

Duke looking at Cass like she's crazy: What?

Cass: Take. Them. Down.

Duke: Holy shit, you are terrifying.

Cass just smiles and leaves.

-> One Week Later <-

Wonder Woman, Superman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Martian Manhunter, Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, and Steph gather in the Watchtower.

Duke: Hey guys, Batman just wanted to go through some training exercises with everyone. He'll be a little late. Harley and Ivy escaped Arkham and are trying to grow penis shaped shrubs in all the public parks. But, don't worry he asked me to go ahead and start with out him.

Green Lantern: Why are you leading this meeting?

Duke: Batman is running late and he wants me to practice leading meetings.

Green Lantern, glaring suspiciously at Duke: Are you about to do that stupid Robin tradition where you torture all of us?

Duke: What Robin tradition? Also, I'm not even a Robin? I'm the Signal.

Green Lantern continues to glare at him.

Superman: Calm down Green Lantern, the Robins never do this in front of each other.

Every League member seems to relax at this.

Duke acting confused: Uhhh, yeah. Ok, we have a few housekeeping things to do according to the list Batman left. So, I'll have everyone pair up for sparring while I handle these individually.

------

Everyone is in the training room working out or sparring. Duke approaches Tim.

Duke: Hey Tim, Bruce wanted you to look in to that Bludhaven case. Is that ok with you?

Tim: Yeah, why wouldn't it be?

Duke: Oh, I just thought it might be difficult considering what Dick did.

Tim: ...What did he do?

Duke: Wait, you haven't noticed? Oh no, I'm sorry I shouldn't have said anything.

Tim: Duke. Tell me what he did.

Duke: Well, Jason said that he replaced all your coffee with decaf.

Tim: THAT BASTARD. No wonder I've been feeling so tired! I'm going to kill him!

Duke: Wait, just stop! I heard that he hid all of it in Green Lantern's room.

Tim: Wait, why there?

Duke: Something about you being afraid of him.

Tim: WHAT?! I'm not afraid of the Green Nightlight! I'm gonna find that coffee then make Dick pay.

Duke: Oh, well cool, good luck!

------

Green Lantern: Um, what are you doing in my room?

Tim: Where is it?

Green Lantern: Where's what?

Tim: You know what I want. Give up now or face the consequences.

Green Lantern: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Tim: Fine. Consequences.

------

Steph, sparring with Duke: So, what's it like being the first meta bat?

Duke: Not too bad, but I could do with out the whole 'predict the future' thing.

Steph, laughing: What? You can not see the future.

Duke: I bet you $50 I can

Steph: Your on.

Duke, makes everything around him light up and uses a weird voice: In the next thirty minutes Green Lantern will flee the Watchtower in fear. Soon after Dick will be attacked by Tim.

Steph, snorts in obvious disbelief.

Steph: That was so fake-

Green Lantern runs out of the tower looking terrified.

Steph: No way.

Tim tackles Dick and they start fighting like three year old's on the floor.

Steph, handing Duke $50: Holy shit Magic Man.

Duke makes things light up and does the voice again: Oh my god.

Steph, looking excited: What?!

Duke: The- the sushi. The sushi you brought today, it's made from-

Duke pretends to choke back a sob.

Duke: It's made from the fish who was the maid of honor at Aquaman's wedding.

Steph: HOLY SHIT.

------

Steph and Aquaman sit beside each other for lunch, she pulls out her sushi and looks at Aquaman sadly.

Steph: I am so, so sorry for your loss. But just know that her sacrifice is not in vain.

Aquaman, looks confused for a second then sees the sushi: NOPE. Not this again! I'm leaving.

Steph: Wait! I'm sorry!

Aquaman leaves as Steph tries to chase him down.

------

Jason is laughing and filming as Dick and Tim fight.

Duke, whistles: Man, imagine if that video went on YouTube.

Jason, looking confused: What?

Duke: I'm just saying if the video of Red Robin and Nightwing fighting like kids ever got on YouTube, it'd go viral. Oh and they would be so pissed!

Jason, laughs: Too bad B would kill me if I uploaded this.

Duke: Yeah, I guess so. And you can't upload it here because then Superman would get in trouble.

Jason: Why would the boy scout get in trouble?

Duke: Cause he always uses his YouTube account on the Justice League computer. So it'd look like he uploaded it and B would find out that Superman watches cat videos while he's on monitor duty.

Jason, smirking: Huh, so you're saying if I upload this on the League computer I'd piss off Bruce, Tim, and Dick and get Supes in trouble?

Duke, acting innocent: Huh, I guess so.

-> A Few Minutes Later <-

A call from Bruce comes up on the main computer.

Superman: Hey Batman, what can I do for you?

Bruce: You, Red Hood, cave now.

Jason: What? Why me?

Bruce: Because I saw that little home video you uploaded of your brothers.

Jason: What, that wasn't me!

Bruce: I could hear you laughing while you filmed.

Jason: Dammit.

Jason and Clark leave for the cave pouting like kids.

------

Duke: Hey, Black Canary?

Black Canary: Yes Duke?

Duke: I'm sorry to do this on such short notice, but I'm very worried about Dick and Tim.

Black Canary: Why?

Duke: Well, Tim keeps claiming that Dick is out to get him. Something about Dick messing with his coffee? And Dick feels like he's just being attacked for no reason and is worried about Tim's health. Is there anyway you could intervene?

Black Canary, looking sighing and looking exhausted: Usually I have three days of preparation before dealing with bats.

Duke: I know it's just-

Duke gestures to Tim and Dick rolling on the floor fighting.

Duke: They really need help.

Black Canary: Alright, I'll see what I can do.

Black Canary attempts to intervene only to get pulled into the fight. Now the three of them are tangled in a huge, confusing fight, that's filled with yelling and hair pulling.

------

Duke: Damian! Quick!

Damian: What is it Thomas.

Duke: I think somethings wrong with Dick and Tim and maybe even Black Canary. They're all fighting and won't stop! Can you help me contain them so that we can figure out what's going on?

Damian: Fine. I shall help.

Duke: Ok, just try to herd them into this containment cell.

Damian joins the fight managing to get everyone, including himself, into the containment cell. As Damian is trying to leave Duke closes the cell. Damian angrily yells and bangs on the sound proof walls.

Duke: What? Sorry, can't hear you! My hand slipped!

------

Wonder Woman: Very well done Signal.

Duke, acting innocent: Hm?

Wonder Woman: You tricked Red Robin into scaring Green Lantern away, then into fighting Nightwing. Once that fight broke out you tricked Red Hood into uploading a video to the internet using the Superman's credentials. By uploading that video he caused both himself and Superman to face Batman's wrath. You also used the fight to trick Stephanie into annoying Aquaman to the point of leaving. Then you involved Black Canary in the fight, which was her downfall. And, as a final touch, you managed to get Robin into the fight and trapped all in a containment cell. You successfully eliminated 9 foes with one trick.

Duke: You mean 11.

Wonder Woman: What?

Duke: 11. You see, I didn't trick Red Robin, I tricked Nightwing. I had a week to prepare. In that week I convinced Dick that Tim needed to cut back on the caffeine and that Dick should help by switching all of Tim's coffee with decaf. I also convinced him to hide that coffee in the watchtower, in Green Lantern's room. So that was all true.

Wonder Woman: But, that still does not make 11?

Duke: It does. Because This morning I moved the coffee. I replaced the Flashes decaf with Tim's ultra caffeinated coffee. You see Tim has it specially manufactured to increase the caffeine levels. And, while Flash doesn't usually drink his coffee in the morning, he's always running late and forgets, he does drink coffee during training breaks. Which is now. So in about five minutes we will have an incredibly caffeinated speedster in the Watchtower. And since you're the only one around right now with a chance of catching him, that's your problem.

Right as Duke finishes Flash runs by, majorly hyped up on caffeine.

Duke: Checkmate.

------

Martian Manhunter: It appears that I am the last remaining League member.

Duke: Yeah, I don't really understand this tradition but apparently every Robin ends it by picking a favorite league member.

Martian Manhunter: Out of all the League members, why have you chosen me?

Duke: Your smart and have a lot of cool powers. Also, I dunno, I hear you sometimes feel like an outsider with the league. Cause, the whole martian thing. And I know it's not the same but, sometimes I feel like an outsider with the bats, being the only meta and all.

Martian Manhunter: You have chosen me so that we may bond over our lack of connections?

Duke: Uhhhh, yeah?

Martian Manhunter: Hm. Very well, I assume that this is your “Robin Weakness”. Apparently every Robin has one.

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

<- Previous |

#martian manhunter #duke thomas #j'onn j'onzz #the signal #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #robin #stephanie brown #spoiler #batgirl #dick grayson #nightwing #bruce wayne #batman #wonder woman #diana prince #superman #clark kent #flash #barry allen #green lantern #black canary #dinah lance #mypost

[ijustwant2write]

A Secret Romantic-Benedict Bridgerton x Reader x Eloise Bridgerton (Platonic)

(GIF credit to @aryaofoldstones​)

Requested by anonymous: ‘Hello! I saw your looking for Bridgerton requests, I would love some Benedict x Eloise sibling fluff! They have such a good dynamic in the show and I need more’

(I wouldn’t mind making another part of this if people want it tbh)

Characters: Benedict Bridgerton x Reader, Eloise Bridgerton x Reader (platonic)

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

(Y/L/N)=Your last name

Warnings: Fluff, fluff, fluff

                                     *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Eloise’s gloved hands clung onto her book as she and her family arrived at yet another social event, a ball once again. Her mama had ensured she was dressed to catch the eyes of men, and Eloise knew that meant there would be no room for intelligent conversation. With Daphne now married to the Duke, Eloise had more pressure on her shoulders than she imagined, having to find a suitor of similar standards. However, it wasn’t just her on the market, her brothers were too, especially Benedict (Violet knew it would be extremely difficult to marry off Anthony first, opting for the second eldest son).

Eloise smiled whenever her mama looked her way, though it quickly disappeared once she turned around. Benedict had been instructed to escort her sister around the ball to help seek out suitors, the men knew each other or something about someone; he could help her meet the right one.

“I cannot believe I am here.” Eloise moaned as she looped her arm through her brothers.

“Believe me sister, I do not wish to be here either.”

“Why must you parade me around like a horse at a dressage in order to find a new owner?” Eloise kept catching the men’s gazes, turning up her nose in disgust.

“So dramatic.” he chuckled.

She scoffed.“Well, if you’re going to advise me on who I should be marrying, I shall do the same for you. Now let’s see...”

Eloise looked around the room at all the women, wondering who would be the best match for her brother. Most of these women had no personalities, relying on their outfits to express themselves. Eloise knew of some ladies that were nice, though had nothing in common with her brother.

Eloise shrugged, tugging on her brother’s arm towards the door.“Ah, there’s no one here for us. Let us make haste and leave-”

“Oh no you don’t,” Benedict pulled her back,“we have been strictly told to stay for the night, even if it is just to socialise and...get our names out there.”

Eloise groaned a little too loudly, Ben ducking his head in embarrassment.“How long do these balls go on for?”

“I have never stayed for the full duration.”

“That’s not the answer I want to hear.”

Benedict glanced down at her, somehow only just realising that Eloise had brought a book with her.“Is that book sewed to your hand sister?”

“I brought it just in case I became bored. Which I am already.”

“I shall go and grab us some refreshments. Might as well enjoy them whilst we’re here.”

Eloise let her brother slip away, quickly finding a hiding spot by leaning up against a wall, away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds. She opened her book, continuing where she left off, happy she brought a pencil to scribble down notes for later. The studying never stopped for Eloise. 

“Excuse me?” a woman’s voice interrupted her too soon.

Eloise tried her best to be polite, though her smile came off as sarcastic.“Yes?”

“Sorry,” the woman looked taken back,“I thought you were reading a book that I am reading at the moment, but I was wrong. I’ve disturbed you, I shall leave you alone-”

“Wait,” Eloise had now sparked an interest. No other lady had ever approached her like this,“I don’t mean to be rude. What book had you expected?”

“It’s oh so obvious, but I’ve been reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen. It’s the newest book out at the moment, and my mama lets me read it seeing as it involves a woman finding someone to marry. Although, it’s definitely about something deeper, that’s just what I told her.”

“I don’t indulge in romantic novels myself, but I am glad to hear of a female author selling her work.”

“It’s fantastic. And it’s nice to be able to read something without it being snatched out of my hands. Oh, where are my manners? I’m (Y/N) (Y/L/N). Sorry, I’ve been dancing with men all night and none of the conversations have been as riveting as this so far.”

“Why am I not surprised?” they both laughed.“I’m Eloise Bridgerton.”

(Y/N) tried to not show her shock when she heard the surname. They were only the most talked about family, her mama had gone on and on about them, especially when Lady Whistledown mentioned them in her writings. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Might I ask what it is that you are reading?”

“It is to do with my studies. I truly hate these events, so I thought I would ensure my mind was being worked properly.” Eloise realised that could come off as rude, squeezing her eyes shut in embarrassment.“I did not mean to offend you by that.”

“It really isn’t any bother.” (Y/N) giggled.“I rather enjoy these just for the dancing and drinks, I find promenading to be more successful in finding a suitor. Though I would much rather sneak off and see if I can get a few more pages in of a book I shouldn’t be reading.”

“Eloise, why must you go wondering off like that...” Benedict’s words trailed off as he approached his sister, spotting a beautiful woman stood by her.

Eloise’s eyes flickered between the two, and she smiled when she saw the adoration in her brother’s eyes. Cheekily taking the two glasses from his hands, she passed one to (Y/N), who awkwardly took it. (Y/N) had gazed upon the Bridgerton men in passing, they were very nice to look at. Of course, she never divulged in any fantasies about them, that would be silly. But seeing one in front of her had taken her breath away.

“Thank you brother.” Eloise said, taking a sip.“This is Lady (Y/N) (Y/L/N), a new friend of mine.”

He gently took her free hand in his, bending forwards slightly to kiss it. (Y/N) had this done to her many times, but this was different. Benedict made her feel butterflies in her stomach. Eloise could tell her mama was going to love this.

She cleared her throat.“We were just speaking of art, actually.”

(Y/N) furrowed her eyebrows.“We were talking about books.”

“I was about to move the topic along.”

“What kind of art would that be then?” Benedict asked, knowing what game his sister was playing. 

“The...drawing, kind.”

“Isn’t all art drawn?”

“No, it is also painted.”

“I think artists may sketch out a rough idea before painting.”

“Well you would know brother, seeing as you yourself are an artist.”

“I wouldn’t say that-”

“You paint, Lord Bridgerton?” (Y/N) asked.

“Ah, yes, and I sketch.” he hoped his cheeks weren’t turning red. 

“Anything in particular?”

“Mostly people.”

“Are you both attending the art exhibition my family are holding next week?”

“That’s your families’ exhibit?” Benedict became excited.

“Yes, my father collects a lot of art work. Then mother realised she could make a social event out of it, but at least everyone will be able to admire the work.”

“Would you believe it, we already have it noted down in our social calendar!” Eloise informed (Y/N). Benedict could sense her over-reacting, trying to keep a smile as (Y/N)’s face lit up in excitement. 

“Perfect!” (Y/N) looked back up at Ben, making him stand a little taller.“It will be nice to have someone there who knows about the artwork. It will make for an interesting conversation. Just don’t let my father lecture you, he will talk for far too long! And I know you will be too polite to try and get away.”

“My brother is very polite.” Eloise said.“In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t-”

“Excuse me for the intrusion,” a young man said from beside (Y/N),“but I was wondering if we could resume our dance lady (Y/N)?”

(Y/N) was smiling, but Eloise knew that look; it was the face women made when a man who made them uncomfortable approached, but they had to remain ladylike and polite.

“Actually my brother just asked her and she said yes. You two best make your way to the floor before the music starts again.” Eloise nudged her brother.

Benedict was confused at his sisters offer, until he locked eyes with (Y/N) again. They were pleading him to sweep her away, she was even leaning away from this man. He had been disrespectful in some way, and he wasn’t letting (Y/N) go through that again (despite only knowing the girl for a few minutes). He smugly smiled at the man, holding out his arm which (Y/N) took a little too quickly. Eloise was happy with herself as the pair walked off, sending the man a death glare when he asked her to dance instead. Once he left, her eyes went back to find her brother, who was already dancing with (Y/N), both smiling and laughing. Her mama was going to be ecstatic about this. 

                                       *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Eloise sat in the drawing room, obviously lounging with a book. Her younger siblings were being irritating as usual, running around her in circles. Before they arrived, she had peace. Eloise wanted a few moments alone, because she knew her mama would be bursting with questions about the night before.

“Ah, there you are.” Violet said as she walked in.

The book flopped into Eloise’s lap, a frown on her face. There goes her reading time.

“So, how was last night? Did you meet anyone?” her mama sat beside her.“You two, go play outside if you’re going to run around please.”

The children stopped as their mama spoke, sending each other devilish grins before they ran out of the room again, their giggling echoing down the halls. Violet went to shout after them, but decided to leave it be, there were more pressing matters.

“Well mama, do you see any suitors?” Eloise gestured around her.

Violet sighed.“Did you even try last night?”

“My life will not be reduced to a single night where I was forced to peacock around in order to please a man.”

“Oh, Eloise, must you make everything so dramatic?”

“Funny, Benedict said the same thing.”

“Actually, where is your brother? I have not seen him all morning.”

“He went out.” Eloise was relieved that the focus would now be off of her.“He’s calling upon a lady.”

Violet’s eyes widened.“What? When? Who?”

“Lady (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

“(Y/L/N)? They are quite reputable.”

Eloise rolled her eyes.“Mama, she is a lovely girl. I don’t think you should just judge her on what family she comes from.”

“Oh, so you approve of this girl?”

“I...I mean...Well, I only spoke with her for a mere few minutes.”

“But?”

Eloise let out a huff.“I enjoyed her company. I think Benedict likes her. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night until it was time to leave. He spent all his time with her.”

Violet became overjoyed.“Oh, what marvelous news! I wish he had told me. Do you know what he took to her? Flowers? Food?”

“I have no idea mama. Just wait for his return and he will tell you all the details. I am not a psychic.”

Violet was impatient as she awaited the return of her son. Poor Collin had also been questioned when he showed up in the drawing room, but he had overslept in bed, waking with a terrible headache. It seemed that it was about to come back to him when his mama bombarded him with questions as to why he hadn’t called upon anyone that morning. Eloise kept her giggles quiet, ducking behind her book when Collin sent her daggers.

Poor Benedict had no idea what was in store for him. His cheeks were aching from how much he was smiling. He wasn’t surprised when he arrived at the (Y/L/N)’s house and saw multiple callers for (Y/N). However, jealousy rose inside him when he thought about these men dancing with her, trying to convince her that they were the man to marry. He held a beautiful bouquet of flowers, remembering that (Y/N) had mentioned her favourite the night before. Looking around at any other flowers she received, he was glad to see no other gentleman had chose it. Surely that would show he was listening? He endured sonnets, stories, songs and boasting from the other men, trying not to show his dissatisfaction as each one stepped forward. There was pressure that her parents were there, especially when he realised he was the last gentleman, everyone else had left.

(Y/N) had been incredibly anxious when she saw Benedict that morning. He had been the only man she genuinely smiled at, hoping he came at his own will, not forced by his mama. The night before had been the best ball (Y/N) had ever been to. Benedict was sweet, charming, handsome and interesting. They were able to talk about anything and everything, no small talk involved like all the other men she danced with. He had swooned her, and here he was, calling upon her. 

Back at the Bridgerton house, Violet had not sat down since talking Collin’s ear off. Eloise was still in the drawing room with her, as were her two youngest siblings, munching on biscuits as they threw questions at their mama. She did not have all the answers, sometimes not even hearing them speak for she was too deep in her thoughts. At one point, she did sit, but beside the window, o the lookout for any signs of her son. When a carriage pulled up in front of the house, Violet leapt out of her seat, startling her children. She made a beeline to the door, standing there with her hands clasped together. When Benedict walked in, he too flinched, not expecting his mama to be there.

“Mama, how long have you been stood there?” Benedict asked as he walked past her, pinching a biscuit from his brother’s plate.

“She’s been waiting for you.” Eloise explained, also excited to hear about his calling.

“I hope you sat down at some point.” he joked, sitting beside Eloise and slouching.

Violet hurried to sit on the sofa across him.“You didn’t tell me you were calling on a lady this morning.”

“Well, we got back late from the ball yesterday evening, and I had to leave early to ensure I got there in good time. Though it seemed every other man thought that too.”

“There were many men there?” 

“Yes, quite a few.”

Eloise straightened up at her brother’s grumpy expression.“You really like her!”

“How wonderful!” Violet gushed. 

“Do not get ahead of yourselves.”

“But you do, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have called on her.”

Ben was lost for words. He couldn’t argue with that, and he did like seeing his mama happy.“Yes, yes I do. And it would seem she reciprocates the feelings.”

“This is such good news! I must see what our social calendar looks like, we must ensure you two spend time together.”

“Actually mama-” Eloise went to tell her about the art exhibit until Ben interrupted.

“Good idea mama.” he nodded, smiling at her as she walked away, a spring in her step. Once she was gone, he let out a big breath.“I just needed a moment without questions from her.”

“Well, you’re going to have questions from me.” Eloise angled her body to face him, her elbow perched on the sofa with her face resting in her hand.“I didn’t think you were going to call upon her. Are my match making skills really that good?”

“I hate to admit it, but yes, you have done an excellent job.” Benedict felt relaxed thinking about (Y/N).

“So, what happened this morning?”

“I took her flowers, she told me her favourites last night, and then I had to sit there whilst her other gentleman callers desperately tried to impress her. It was agony! Finally I was able to have time with her, and it was just...I don’t know how to put it into words.”

“Did you bring her anything else?”

Benedict became bashful.“I brought her a sketchbook, like the one I have. She mentioned how she used to often sketch when she was younger. I thought it would be a unique gift.”

“Benedict, you truly are a romantic at heart.”

“For her I am, yes.”

Eloise smiled for her brother, until a smirk fell on his face.“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Aw, is someone also a secret romantic?”

“No!” Eloise protested, quickly grabbing her book again.“I am just happy you found someone.”

“And you helped, because you secretly want everyone to find someone.”

“No I don’t! You’re ruining this moment now Benedict.”

“Don’t worry Eloise, you’ll find someone.” Ben joked.

She groaned.“You are insufferable...but I still want to go to that art exhibit.”

“To see love bloom?”

“N-no, to see the art work.”

“Of course, of course. But, thank you Eloise.”

She tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it.“You’re welcome.”

#benedict bridgerton #benedict bridgerton imagine #benedict bridgerton imagines #benedict bridgerton one shot #benedict bridgerton x reader #benedict bridgerton fanfiction #benedict bridgerton fan fiction #benedict bridgerton fanfic #benedict bridgerton fan fic #eloise bridgerton #eloise bridgerton imagine #eloise bridgerton imagines #eloise bridgerton one shot #eloise bridgerton x reader #eloise bridgerton fanfiction #eloise bridgerton fan fiction #eloise bridgerton fanfic #eloise bridgerton fan fic #bridgerton #bridgerton imagine #bridgerton imagines #bridgerton one shot #bridgerton x reader #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton fan fiction #bridgerton fanfic #bridgerton fan fic

[gliphyartfan]

@yandere-linked-universe @stars-for-thought @linked-heroes @ice-cream-writes-stuff

@imprisioned-in-the-hole I loved your prompt and couldn't resist! Hope I did it justice!

Wind has a strong presence in this one, that wasn't planned by the way.

Enjoy!

'I'll be fiine guys.'

She totally should have saw this coming.

'This is Wars' era, wandering the market won't that bad.'

Yep— these past few days had been too damn calm for the all of them,

'I'll be gone for an hour! Two hours tops! Promise!'

Of course something like this was going to go and happen.

'This. fucking. sucks!' She grunted, slowly slide down the rope she made out of the sheets in the room she was trapped in.

This is what happens when you jinx yourself.

'Everything will be fine!' Oh suuure, the first hour was delightful.

Saw some items,

Chatted with some folks,

Even got to pet a few dogs!

But the second hour-

'His Grace wishes to discuss some things with you.'

'Sorry, you got the wrong person. Plus I don't feel comfortable with-'

'That wasn't a request.'

'...-!!'

She should have know there would have been someone behind her.

It's always when it's out of your mind that it happens.

And now she was trying to escape her own wedding. And the crazy Duke that wanted to marry her.

She wasn't a hero damnit!

'I'm gonna get lectured so badly after this!' She grunted as she reached the end of the rope, her feet dangling in the air for a moment as she tried to figure out what to do next.

'Damn you laws of physics and gravity!' She whispered to herself.

Physics and gravity decided to take her insult personally as the rope loosened its hold on the railing, causing her to fall into the bushes two feet below her.

'Urk-branch! Branch!' She hissed in pain, reaching underneath and removing the branch poking at her back.

As she rubbed the area, brushing the crumpled sheet from her head, she checked her hand to make sure she wasn't bleeding.

Before she could plan her next move, she stilled as she heard the heavy thuds and clanks of armour approach nearby.

The movement came closer, she used her place in the bushes to keep hidden. Slowly parting the leaves next to her with one hand, she used what visibility she had to discover that yes, it was a pair of guards and the conversation that flowed through the air confirmed they weren't Hyrule guards.

Drat.

'Is the Duke really gonna marry that girl?'

'Seems to be the case. He's been very pleased with himself too. Looks like he's trying to get the wedding done by tonight.'

Double drat.

'I don't blame him, you've seen that girl? Bet he's eager for the wedding night.'

Okay. NO.

'Haha! A beauty like that for a wife would be quite the status boost.'

The guards walked past the bush and it's hidden occupant.

Had they looked back, they would have seen a displeased glare directed their way.

(y/n) huffed and looked around, trying to remember where the exit was.

With another glance around, she picked up her dress and slowly made her way out of the bushes, pausing momentarily before taking off the heels she was forced to wear

'I can't run and climb in this dress.' Trying to think about what to do next, she looked down at her clothes.

'Hmm...'

--

'WHERE IS SHE.'

'Link please-'

'Don't tell me to calm down Zelda!'

Wind bit his lip as Warriors marched up to the princess' face and growled.

'Impa is having her men search the castle and surrounding areas, we will find her.' Zelda tried to reassure him, taking a step back when he glared.

'It's been a WEEK and you have nothing to show for it!' He ran a head through his hair, taking a deep breath to calm down.

'You know I've been busy with-'

'With the Grand Duke of the farther kingdom who is here as a token of peace and unity between kingdoms.' Warriors recited irritably. 'Yes, very understandably important when someone went missing under the watch of YOUR men.'

'She was last seen in the market, we have blocked the gates and are inspecting every individual leaving the city.' Zelda gave Warriors a look.

'And might I remind you that they are also your men?'

'Apparently not anymore with how you let them slacked off!'

'Excuse me-'

Wind sighed as they started arguing again.

They were getting nowhere.

'This is going nowhere.' Wind turned and saw Hyrule coming up next to him, watching the arguing duo.

'Any luck with the others?' He asked quietly, not surprised when Hyrule shook his head.

'Twilight is using Wolfie to catch any scents but the storm has made that difficult. Time is with Legend and Wild speaking to the merchants and Four is with Sky speaking with the guards.' Hyrule replied, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

Wind felt the same way.

None of them were able to sleep well since she went missing. The only reason they slept at all was because they needed to be rested enough in the event a fight comes their way.

But the lack of her presence was deeply felt.

'Any luck here?' Hyrule asked hollowly, already knowing the answer but still asking.

Wind simply gestured to the still arguing duo.

'Is she even still in town?' He couldn't help but ask, not wanting to think of the possibility that she was far away, but it was necessary.

'She has to be,' Hyrule reassured,smiling weakly. 'The town went on lockdown almost immediately.'

Wind returned Hyrule's smile with a weak one of his own.

They turned back to the duo, feeling more tired as they listened to the princess justify her duties.

'I am already dealing with the Grand Duke and I can't give anymore of my attention to this than I already have.' Warriors just gave her a look.

'I wouldn't be bothering so much if you allowed me access to his guest quarters.' It was Zelda's turn to glare at him.

'You know I cannot do that, he is a guest and has nothing to do with her disappearance.' Only Wind and Hyrule noticed the way Warriors hand twitched, as if desiring to reach for his sword.

Not that they could blame him.

'I am not accusing him Princess,' he said through gritted teeth. 'I am merely requesting-'

'That I allow you access to his quarters.' The displeased expression on the princess' face only matched the captain's.

'Annnd they're arguing again.' Wind muttered, watching them fall back into another verbal brawl.

'The only place we haven't looked is the guest wing.' Hyrule whispered, wringing his hands.

'You think we should sneak in?' Hyrule looked at the arguing pair and nodded.

'Yeah...it's better than assuming nothing is there.'

'Alright...Wars!' The angered captain looked at them, a scowl on his face.

'Rulie thinks he has a lead at the market so I'm heading out with him.' Wind kept a casual look on his face, staring Warriors in the eyes.

Warriors was quiet for a brief moment before he grunted and turned back to arguing his case with the princess.

But he was less tense than he was a moment before.

He understood what they were going to do.

'He'll keep her distracted.' Wind murmured, tugging Hyrule out of the room.

'And Impa?' Wind sighed and rubbed his shoulder.

'Still searching the market place I bet, we gotta be quick.'

And with that, they both headed to the guest wing of the castle.

---

The guest wing wasn't too far away, probably for the convenience of whatever foreign guests came to visit.

But it was walled off and the Grand Duke's personal guard was patrolling the area, forcing the duo to sneak their way in.

'I really hope we find something.' Hyrule whispers, the two stilling as a guard passed by their hiding place.

'Best place to look is the most obvious place.' Wind reassured. 'And the most obvious place is a area that's being guarded by enemy guards.'

Hyrule didn't correct him about the guards.

If she was here, they were enemies.

'Let's look through the rooms! Top or bottom floor?' Hyrule hummed.

'We're good at escaping from higher levels, and there's only two floors, let's start low and move up.'

They worked together, both alerting the other when a guard was close.

Soon they snuck passed the majority and reached the first set of rooms.

Then the second set.

Then the third.

They moved up to the second floor and quietly searched through each room.

It was in the Grand Duke's room that they found incriminating evidence on his desk.

'I can't read this language,' Wind whispered harshly as he glared at the papers in front of him. ' but I know (y/n)'s name anywhere!'

'Take it, we can sure it to the princess.' Hyrule whispered back, keeping watch at the door. He tensed when he saw a couple of guards round the corner. 'We need to go!'

'This is the last room and we haven't found her!'

'We found evidence and that's a better than what we had before, now move!'

It took some time to shuffle out the window and climb down, but they were successfully able to make their escape from the guest wing without notice.

'A lead, that's good.' Wind gasped, hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

'But still no (y/n)' Hyrule bite his thumb nervously. 'I hope she's okay...'

'We can't lose hope!' Wind grunted, stretching his back and sighing.

'Let's go, we need to show these papers to the others before we give it to the princess-'

The sailor went rigid, eyes snapping forward, widening.

'What's wrong Wind?' Hyrule asked worriedly, hand on the younger teen's shoulder.

The teen bit his lip to keep his expression from crumbling and his breath was shaky,

'(y/n)...?' Hyrule's own eyes widened and his head snapped to look when Wind was staring.

There, in a torn dirty white dress, no shoes, and messy hair, was their beloved goddess looking around, visibly distressed.

'(y/n)..?' Wind raised his voice, hope as visible in his tone as it was in his eyes.

Hyrule's heart felt such relief as their beautiful goddess' head snapped in their direction.

The smile she gave them was simply magnificent as she immediately ran toward them.

The moment she was close, she wrapped her arms around the both of them and began to cry, relief filling her.

'You have no idea how happy I am to see you two!' She hugged them closer.

'WE'RE happy to see you!' Wind sighed happily, resting his head in her shoulder, both him and Hyrule hugging her as tightly as she was hugging them.

Just having her in their arms was a blessing they treasured so much.

'Where have you been? How did you escape?' She sighed and shook her head.

'I'd rather tell it one time.' She looked around.

'Please tell me the others are near by?' She whispered, absolutely exhausted and didn't want to deal with any more drama.

'Well...no. They are looking for you in town. We snuck into the guest wing to look for you.' Hyrule answered apologetically, heart clenching when she sniffled.

Wind frowned for a moment before he gasped in excitement.

'I'll rally them up!' Hyrule and (y/n) looked at him in confusion as he reached into his pouch.

'Wild has the slate! And if he has the slate-' he pulls out what he was searching for.

'Then we can reach him with this!' (y/n) tilted her head.

'A...stone?' Wind grinned at them, the pirate's charm dangling from his fingers.

'A COMMUNICATION stone!' (y/n) gasped in delight and gave Wind another hug.

'Call him! Call him!' Wind laughed and activated the stone.

'Um, I've been meaning to ask...' Hyrule quietly said to (y/n) who looked at him innocently. '...About your..outfit...'

Wind ignored them for a brief moment as Wild's tired voice came from the pirate's charm.

'What is it sailor?'

'Guess who me and Hyrule found!' Wind grinned as he heard gasps.

'You found her?! Is she safe?!'

'They found her?!'

'She's okay! We're by the-'

'HE WANTS TO MARRY YOU?!'

Wind turned his head so fast, he winced at the pop he felt, the loud yells coming from his charm filling the air.

'WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS?!!' (y/n) winced as she realized the panic she just caused

'Uh-'

He couldn't help it, Wind laughed, soft and just a little hysterical.

Of course an insect had to pop up when they let their guard down.

---

'Where is she.'

'Sir, we have our men searching for her this very moment.'

'I want her found by TONIGHT, the wedding will go as planned.'

'Of course sir!' The Grand Duke scowled as his guard walked off.

He is so close to raising his status.just another day and he would have been on top of the social world. He sneered, like a child, storming down the halls of the guest wing.

'Should have simply left with her when I had the chance.' He ran a gloved hand down his face.

To think he had one of the heroes of legend in his grasp only for her to have slipped through his fingers.

He'll have to make sure to teach her a lesson.

'Sir!' He sighed irritably, turning to see another one of his guard approaching him.

'What is it? Did you find her?' The guard looked nervous.

'Sir, Princess Zelda is requesting your presence in the throne room at once.' The Grand Duke tensed and stared at the guard.

'Are you sure?' The guardsman nodded, stepping back when the Duke growled.

'Of all the times...' He looked back at the guardsman. 'Continue looking for the girl.'

After the guardsman nodded, he decided to get it over with and headed to the throne rooms.

--

--

'Grand Duke, thank you for coming at such a short notice.'

'Your Highness.' The Grand Duke bowed to her, as he rose he noticed the nine gentlemen standing to either side of her.

The heroes of legend.

The Grand Dukes greed brought to mind the rise in his status at what might be a possible meeting with the legendary nine.

He was to arrogant to realize the cold looks he was receiving from them.

She smiled, nodding in greeting. 'I apologize for disturbing your day Grand Duke, I understand how frustrating it can be, but I heard of a strange rumor recently and I had hoped you would clarify it for me?'

'Please rest assured Princess, I will do all that I can to assist you.' He said, smiling openly, the perfect gentleman.

'Splendid. Now,' She dropped the smile. 'Did you conspire to abduct the heroes' companion and force her to wed you?'

The Grand Duke froze, paling as the question registered in his head.

'Wha-'

'Ah. Before I continue, allow me to properly introduce the gentleman before me-'

'There is no need your Highness,' calmly interrupted Time, coldly gazing down at the nervous Nobleman. 'He is as aware of our identities as we are aware of his.'

'I-'

'And you seem to be very aware of the identity of our most dearest companion.' Legend hissed from his place next to Time, glaring daggers at the unsettled man.

The Grand Duke's expression twisted into fear, anger, and panic.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides as he cleared his throat. 'I'm sure I don't know what you're speaking of.' He calmly answered.

'Perhaps a misunde-'

' A misunderstanding? I'm sure.' Warriors scoffed, looking at Zelda with a raised eyebrow.

She sighed "Lets not fool ourselves here, we all know what this is about.' She stared sternly at him. 'You abducted the young woman known as (y/n) and were conspiring to wed her for...status?'

'She isn't very happy about being kidnapped.' Wild said casually, as if he was not wishing he could jam a bomb down the Grand Duke's throat and detonate it.

It seemed the arrogant man could barely handle being talked down in such a way. His clenched fists trembled in anger.

'I will not allow such accusations to be made against my person!' He looked at Zelda, face flushed in anger.

'If you believe that our kingdoms will be allied after this, I assure you that-'

'If your kingdom is full of noblemen like you, than Hyrule would benefit by NOT allying with you.' Warriors interjected, ignoring Zelda's stern look towards him, looking down his nose at him.

'You have no proof!' Warriors sighed and nodded.

'I suppose I don't.' He was silent until the Duke looked smug before he matched his expression with one of his own, pointing behind the Duke.

'But she's proof enough.'

'Oh, so I'm demoted to proof now, am I?'

The Duke went rigid, his mouth snapping shut on the words just spoken as he slowly turned his head-.

An dispassionate look directed right at him.

'Apologies my Angel.' Warriors smiled softly at her. 'No insult meant.'

'Hmm.' She raised an eyebrow, a brief glance at Warriors before looking at the Grand Duke.

'(y/n) I ask for complete honesty.' Zelda commands. 'Was the Grand Duke the man behind your abduction with intention to force you to wed him?' (y/n) nodded.

'Yes your Highness.' Zelda closed her eyes and sighed.

'Very well, I will arrange for his departure tonight.' The Grand Duke's face a unique combination of red and enraged yet also paling.

'T-This will not stand! When my king hears of this-.'

'We have already sent your king the information of your crimes.' The princess proclaimed to the unsteady nobleman.

'Y-you-'

'You are no longer welcomed within the borders of Hyrule Kingdom and are henceforth outlawed from ever returning. Impa shall escort you to the guest wing to retrieve your belongings.'

Zelda then turned and strode away, but not before sending an apologetic glance at Warriors.

He simply returned her look with a blank one.

(y/n) walked passed the royal knights that now surrounded Grand Duke and made her way to the group.

'I'm so glad you guys found me.' She said with relief in her voice.

'You ended up saving yourself dear.' Time chuckled, reaching up and cupping her cheek. 'And we were panicking like we lost our minds.'

'I was panicking when Wind and Hyrule popped up.' She admitted. 'Trust me, I was so happy and relieved to be found by you guys.'

'We'll always find you (y/n)!' Wind chirped, wrapping his arms around her waist, causing her to giggle.

'Well I guess it has it's uses.' She clapped her hands.

'I'm hungry and demand all the cuddles! I hated this week!' Wild was already pulling out his slate and looking through his inventory.

'I'll make a meal that'll taste so good, you'll forget this week ever happened!' (y/n) grinned in delight.

'That's what I want to hear!'

The Chain surround her as they guided her out of the throne room, the angry cries of the Grand Duke not worth notice.

Yet two members of the group lingered behind.

And they were eyeing the fuming nobleman with calculating eyes.

'We could have been a bit more...hands on with his punishment... ya know that don't you old man...?' Wind commented, his treasured wind waker in one hand.

'As enjoyable as it would be, I don't want to spend a moment longer away from Her.' Wind sighed but nodded in agreement , crossing his arms, tapping his wind waker against his chin.

'So the storm will kill him?' Time nodded, inspecting his Ocarina casually.

'I have more than enough magic to conjure one strong enough.'

'You've already had Wild damage parts of the ship correct?' Wind nodded. 'Than once I summon the storm, make sure the winds finish the job.'

Wind hummed. 'Kay.'

They both looked at the shrinking form of the dead man walking.

'Ugh, I hate bugs.' Wind huffed, a disgusted look on his face.

Time stared at the Duke until he could not see him no more.

'Hm..So do I...'

That night, the group of nine celebrated the return of their most beloved member, lavishing her with their affection and as she requested, all the cuddles she asked for.

(That night, reports were received by two kingdoms that notes a vicious storm appeared as the Grand Duke's ship sailed beyond the Hyrulian sea borders. Destroying the ship beyond recognition. There were no survivors.)

#timeline two au #linked universe #linkeduniverse #yandere linked universe #lu #lu hyrule #lu time #lu wild #lu legend #lu artemis #lu wind #lu warriors #y/n

[soulmate-game]

Maribat March 2021 @maribatmarch-2k21

Day 1: Found Family

“Ah! Bonjour!” A cheery voice called, as a short Eurasian girl bound over to the unfairly intimidating mob of tall people with sharp eyes. Chloe had called in a favor. “My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Chloe told me that your tour guide cancelled at the last minute, so she blackmail—sorry, begged me to fill in for them. You are the Wayne’s, non?”

The one at the front of the group, clearly Bruce Wayne since Marinette didn’t live under a rock and had seen the man on several American news broadcasts before, nodded and cleared his throat. Man, was he intimidating. Even when he shot her a dazzling smile that was sure to blind Paparazzi with fake cheer. It was a nice smile, Marinette wasn’t about to deny. But it was empty. Distant. And Marinette wasn’t going to buy it for a second.

“Yes, that’s us. Mademoiselle Bourgeois mentioned she had asked a close friend of hers to take care of our tour.”

Marinette nodded again, clasping her hands behind her back. “I guarantee, you won’t miss anything the tour guide would have shown you. In fact, Chloe mentioned that you all were very curious about the now retired Parisian heroes, right? My former best friend ran the Ladyblog back when they were active. I am more than confident that I can answer any questions you have while we go through the city.”

A boy with a white streak in his hair rose his hand, as if he was in a class and needed to wait to be called on. Which, considering the sheer size of their family, Marinette was actually grateful for. But damn, this was another imposing figure. Slightly taller than even the six-foot-three-inches that Bruce Wayne owned, he was solidly built and rocked a brown leather jacket and ripped black jeans. Marinette smiled and nodded for him to speak.

“How old are you? Because I don’t know if twelve year olds are allowed to do guided tours,” there was an obvious tease in his voice, but there was also legitimate concern in his blue-green eyes. Marinette almost missed that concern amid her quickly building annoyance. She even felt her eyes twitch.

“I’m turning eighteen in a few months if you need to know, Monsieur,” she evened out the bite in her voice with an overly sweet smile. “And if you want to get lost and possibly pickpocketed in the busy streets of Paris, then please continue to make comments on my height. If not, we can begin our tour and you might even enjoy it.”

Several Wayne’s snickered at her comeback, one man in particular elbowing the white haired gentleman with a little too much glee. Even the stoic Bruce laughed softly, and a boy with enough bags under his eyes to make the airport jealous nearly fell over himself with his suppressed laughter.

The man himself just snorted, sending her a lopsided smirk that oddly radiated approval. It was almost as if she had passed some sort of test.

“My name’s Jason, Pixie. You already know B. The guy trying to break my ribs,” he pointedly shoved off the one who had elbowed him, “is Dick. He’s Bruce’s first adoptive casualty. The one that looks like a zombie is Tim, we might need to take a break to get him more coffee before he passes out halfway through. The one who hasn’t stopped glaring at you is Damian, the badass redhead is Barbara but we all call her Babs. The annoying blonde is Stephany, the other cool badass over there is Cass. She doesn’t talk much. And the one trying to pretend he doesn’t know us is Duke.”

Each member he introduced gave her a little wave or nod. Even Damian managed a short nod of acknowledgement before resuming his glare. He looked to be a couple years younger than her, so she just brushed it off as teenage drama.

“Alright then! It is very nice to meet you all. Now, Chloe did inform me that you guys are very multilingual, which is another reason she asked me instead of one of our other friends. If you ever need it, I obviously am fluent in both French and English. But added to that, I am fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian, and I know basic survival Japanese. I also know French Sign Language, though I’m not sure if that’s very useful for you unfortunately. If you ever need to communicate non-verbally, I will do my best to accommodate that. Now, I believe you guys were scheduled to start the tour with a visit to the Louvre, non? Right this way.”

As Marinette led the large group out of the Grand Paris, they didn’t bother taking time to admire the sights before asking questions.

“Have you ever met one of the heroes?” Dick, who might have been shorter than Jason and Bruce but was muscular enough to still inspire caution (and admiration), asked. His blue eyes seemingly stared right through Marinette as he continued; “If you’re almost eighteen, then they must have been active through a lot of your school career.”

Marinette smiled. “They did only retire last year,” she agreed with a nod. “Yes, I have met all of the Parisian heroes at least once,” she snorted at a stray thought. “In fact, I met Chat Noir quite a lot. You see, my old College was basically ground zero for a lot of akuma attacks. And by a lot, I mean a majority of them,” she shook her head before pausing to get everyone to cross a street. “After a while, Chat Noir started calling me ‘princess’ to make fun of how often he had to save me. He’s an annoying ass.”

Despite her words, everyone behind her could easily hear the fondness there. They all traded glances. What if this was a Lois and SuperMan situation? Regardless, they all had a suspicion that Marinette knew more about the heroes than she let on. Or, at least more about Chat Noir.

“When you say that your school was a hotspot for Akuma attacks,” Bruce spoke up cautiously, his Dad Senses going haywire. He didn’t like how nonchalantly she had said it— she was far too casual. Sure enough, he watched as the muscles between her shoulders stiffened slightly at the conversation change. “What do you mean? Surely it couldn’t have been that bad if the school is still around.”

Marinette sucked her teeth, grimacing. “The school is still there, yeah, but only because of Ladybug’s ability. You’ve heard about the Cure, right?” It was Tim who answered her;

“Yeah. It fixed the damage done during a fight, right?” He asked, tilting his head a little. Marinette ignored her brief thought that the gesture made him look like a curious puppy. She sighed.

“Yeah. But when they say damage, they mean everything. Injuries, collateral. Death,” she said the last example darkly, far too much weight behind the word for it to be meaningless. She heard Jason hiss in sympathy. “But there are good things. The Cure also erased anyone’s memories of dying besides the vague knowledge that it did happen, so there isn’t much trauma there to unpack. Not as much as there could have been anyway,” she assured them. “And I’m one of the lucky ones. I never died, and I was never Akumatized.”

“Hmph,” Damian’s voice cut through the brief silence that followed her admission. She looked back at him to see his sharp green eyes staring right into her. “You don’t honestly believe that’s lucky.” It wasn’t a question. Marinette clenched her jaw, turning around and ignoring him.

Because, no. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t lucky that she was the only one that remembered everything— all of the deaths, all of the Akumatizations, everything that others mercifully forgot. Since she lived through all of it, she remembered all of it. And survivor’s guilt is nothing to scoff at.

But she wasn’t about to reveal her trauma, or at the very least the full scope of it, to people she had just met and was leading on a tour.

“If you look to the left, you’ll see a statue that was made depicting Ladybug and Chat Noir back during the first years of their activity,” she suddenly told them, gesturing to the still-standing statue. Nobody missed the obvious topic change, but nobody commented on it either. Turns out the statue was something they had been looking forward to seeing in person, Tim even went up to take a few photos with his camera. Barbara took a few circles around the statue, easily pivoting her wheelchair around it as if she was trying to see every angle and imperfection possible. Marinette couldn’t help but chuckle fondly at the sight.

“Your family are pretty big fans, huh?” She asked Cass and Duke, the only ones that had stayed back with her. Duke snorted, and Cass gave her a small grin.

“They like to keep up to date with all the heroes,” Duke answered with a shrug. “Since we’re so high profile, it isn’t weird for us to be saved by one here or there even when we’re away from Gotham.”

Marinette just gave him an odd look, furrowing her brows. “But the Miraculous team has been disbanded since HawkMoth was defeated,” she reminded them. “There’s no need for them to save anybody anymore.”

“Old habits,” Cass spoke up softly, her voice barely a whisper. Her eyes locked with Marinette’s. “Not easy to break.”

The smaller woman had a feeling that Cass wasn’t talking about her family’s habit of keeping up to date on heroes.

“Alright! We need to head to the next stop or we might not have time to see everything!”

The tour went pretty similarly. The walks between stops were pleasant, and filled with questions about the period of time where HawkMoth was active. Marinette wasn’t even the least bit surprised nor put off; everyone was curious about those years now that the tourism restriction was lifted and people could ask freely about it. Besides the many questions about the Heroes, Marinette found the group to be very pleasant company. They were polite, but also rowdy in a very endearing way. She caught a lot of inside jokes they had with each other, and a lot of good natured teasing and fighting. They even managed to rope her into it somehow, and she found herself snidely teasing Damian or casually threatening Tim with not allowing them a coffee break. She even got to ride on Jason’s shoulders for a bit after he made another comment on her height that she Did Not Appreciate. But the ride she got made it worth it.

But soon the sun was high in the sky, and it was about time for them to take a lunch break. They had all been walking for hours with only a few chances to rest, and honestly Marinette was impressed that none of them seemed too tired out by it.

“Alright,” she put her hands on her hips proudly. “Since some of you won’t stop whining about needing coffee or being hungry— Dick, don’t you dare buy anything from that vendor! I’m gonna lead you all to my parent’s bakery so we can have lunch and caffeinate all of you. And conveniently enough,” she smiled widely. “The bakery is right across the street from my old College! So you’ll be able to get a look at where the majority of Akuma attacks happened, and maybe I can tell you a few specific stories if you want,” she offered. There were a couple cheers (Tim and Dick) from the crowd and everyone seemed pretty pleased with the next step in their tour. Smiling, Marinette turned and began to lead them in the direction of her home.

Sirens blared, a fire truck zooming down the street next to them.

Headed in the same direction.

Marinette frowned, watching it go. “That’s weird. I hope everyone’s okay, whatever happened,” she mused idly. But as they kept going forward, the sirens didn’t get any softer. If anything, they started getting louder again after a while. Marinette was visibly concerned by then, her pace picking up. “This is my neighborhood,” she told the solemn group behind her. “I know everyone on this street—“ they rounded the corner, and Marinette stopped in her tracks. Her world ground to a halt.

There was the fire truck, stopped right in front of her bakery.

Which was completely ablaze.

A string of curses flew out of her mouth, the little Eurasian wasting no more time before sprinting towards the building. She could hear people yelling at her to wait, slow down, stop! But she ignored them. The only thing on her mind was that her home was on fire.

“Marinette! Wait!” Dick reached out to grab her arm, but like a snake Marinette easily slipped out of his grip and continued forward. Steph was next, deciding to just tackle Marinette— to no avail. The Parisian just shouldered the bigger woman off of her with pure adrenaline fueling her muscles, and everyone else knew by then that they could not stop her. The Wayne’s decided all they could do was jog behind Marinette, keeping her in sight as they tried to gauge the damage.

“The top floors don’t look like they have even been touched by the fire yet,” Tim whispered, though his eyes flew between the building and their tour guide. Marinette was speaking rapidly with a firefighter that wasn’t immediately busy, trying to get information. But before anyone could decipher what was said, Marinette tore a large strip off the bottom of her shirt and tied it in a hasty mask around her mouth.

“Wait!” Bruce was the first to realize what was happening, with his years of experience with self sacrificing children and their stupid stunts. But Marinette managed to kick him away before he could grab her, dashing into the inferno without paying any heed to the many protests that followed her.

The group of Gothamites could do nothing but watch the flaming building, then. If they went inside, it would only overcrowd a hazardous area. Minutes passed, and there was movement in the fire. Out of the doorway came Marinette and a firefighter, both having to work together to carry the body of a large man outside. The sight of the man made the Gotham family blink— he was as big as Bane! And that was nothing to scoff at. But despite his unusual size and muscle mass, the man had all the signs of being a normal civilian.

Marinette didn’t stop there. She ran back in. Coming out a lot more quickly this time with a barely conscious Asian woman— everyone saw the resemblance between her and this new woman immediately.

It had to be her mother.

“Shit,” Duke hissed. Nobody else could say a word. It wasn’t looking good, and this wasn’t a situation where random vigilantes showing up out of nowhere could actually help. Not this late into the fire. Bruce’s hands curled into fists.

The woman that everyone guessed was Marinette’s mother was suddenly struck by lucidity; she gasped and grabbed at Marinette’s hand without seeming to see who she was even talking to. A single word that none of the Waynes could hear left her throat, and judging by Marinette’s returning panic it hadn’t been good.

She rushed right back into the building, and came back out with the last firefighter who had been searching inside.

Marinette carried a child. She screamed out in panicked French;

“She’s not breathing! I need first aid now!”

That was their cue. The firefighters started their hoses, focusing on getting rid of the flames now that nobody was left inside the building. Bruce and Damian got to Marinette first, and this time she listened as they instructed her to set the child down. Damian, being smaller and having more hands-on medical knowledge, took charge of the resuscitation. Marinette sat there silently, eyes riveted to the small child— a girl.

But Marinette wasn’t reacting like a normal civilian to tragedy. She was eerily calm, eyes focused and barely concealing a terrible rage. She took over chest compressions when Damian started to lose momentum, not giving up.

But then the EMTs arrived, and it was only five minutes with the child hooked onto oxygen that the news arrived—

Marinette heard the monitors on the ambulance flatline before she even registered what people were trying to tell her. Manon. Manon was—

Marinette didn’t register Nadya Chammack at first. She was just another body in the quickly growing sea of them. That is, until she heard Nadya’s pained shriek. A mother who had just lost her baby girl.

“Perhaps we should head back,” Bruce offered softly, giving Marinette space but keeping a keen eye on her. He saw her begin to tremble, then shake. He was pretty sure he could hear the grinding of her teeth for a second before she went still. Just… all movement stopped, the tears that had been building just falling silently for a second before they ended.

And he recognized that carefully practiced emptiness in her bluebell eyes. The same emptiness he had seen in Damian’s eyes when he had first arrived at the Manor. The same emptiness he saw in Dick’s eyes in the days following his parent’s deaths.

The same emptiness he saw in the mirror, every time he had another nightmare about the day Jason had been taken from him, years ago.

Suddenly he could imagine all too well exactly what kind of strength she had to have, to avoid her negative emotions ever being used against her during Hawkmoth’s reign. Especially if she had constantly been dealing with her friends and family being Akumatized and/or dying on multiple occasions.

She didn’t even seem to have heard him. Bruce sighed.

“I called Chloe,” Barbara informed everyone solemnly, holding up her phone for emphasis. “She’ll be here in five.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Chloe hadn’t come alone. With her had been Adrien Agreste, former model when his father hadn’t been… well, in prison. Nowadays he was just a normal student who occasionally gave lectures on neglect and child abuse, and how to help children in those situations.

And, apparently, he was also Marinette’s closest friend. Even more so than Chloe. As soon as they arrived back at the Grand Paris, Chloe herded everyone up into her suite and she and Adrien surrounded Marinette with pillows and blankets. Adrien curled around Marinette like an affectionate cat, and Damien even swore he heard the guy purr at some point

“We should probably leave,” Bruce whispered to their hostess, who looked inbetween him and her friends for a moment before jerking her head towards the door.

“I wanna talk to you first,” Chloe whispered back. Once they all filed out into the hallway and the door was safely closed, Chloe took a breath. “First, I want to tell you that I got a call from the hospital. Marinette’s father is stable, but in a coma right now.”

“Is that the man who looked like he could bench press a car for fun?” Dick asked, earning a weak grin from the Bourgeois heiress.

“Yeah, that’s him. But…” Chloe’s face fell, and she looked around as if to double check nobody was eavesdropping. She still lowered her voice anyway. “Her mother, Sabine. She…” Chloe swallowed a lump in her throat, images of the extremely kind Chinese woman flashing through her mind without permission. “She didn’t make it.”

Several people took a sharp breath, acknowledging everything that had gone so wrong for Marinette on a day that had started so perfectly.

“The smoke?” Cass asked gently, but Chloe winced and shifted on her feet.

“No. They… there were rope marks on Sabine’s neck,” Chloe clenched her eyes shut at the admission. “Marinette’s dad might be big, but he’s not a fighter. Sabine, though… Sabine was. She was raised in a martial arts family back in China. I’ve seen Sabine take down five men at once, all twice her size,” Chloe kicked her lips, shaking her head in disbelief. “Somebody knew… somebody knew that the little Chinese woman was a threat but the big baker with tons of muscle was harmless.”

Nobody took that well. Not only had Marinette just lost her home and half of her family, but her father was in a coma and it had all been foul play.

“Okay,” Bruce nodded once the news had time to sink in. They could help with this; this was their specialty. They might have only known Marinette for six hours, but she had made a big impression. It wasn’t just anybody that could mesh with his family so seamlessly in that short span of time. “Is there anything else?”

“I want you to get temporary custody of her,” Chloe said it the way only Chloe Bourgeois could. With her back straight, chin high, and the tone of a woman who expected to be listened to or else she’d make life Hell for the person that didn’t take her seriously. Bruce could only blink.

“Can I ask for your reasoning?”

“Marinette has been closing herself off more and more over the years,” Chloe admitted. “Hawkmoth’s reign was hard on her. Only Adrien really knows everything she went through during those years. But even after the disbanding of the team, she hasn’t… she hasn’t allowed herself to get close to anybody new. That’s why I tricked her into doing your tour. She needed to socialize with new people, and if she wouldn’t do it herself then I had to pull some strings.”

A few eyebrows raised at the admission that Chloe had fully planned for Marinette to be their tour guide the whole time. It honestly seemed like the kind of well meaning manipulation that one of them would try to pull off.

“She likes you,” Chloe’s voice went soft again, showing how uncharacteristically serious she was about that fact. “She was comfortable enough to let you guys carry her back here. To let you try to help Manon. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but it says a lot to me and Adrien. And… getting her away from Paris for a while is probably a good idea. She was planning to go to Gotham for university anyway.”

The Waynes traded glances before Bruce crosses his arms and asked some more questions first. Doesn’t Marinette have other family? Answer; only her grandmother, who travels all the time and nobody ever knows where she is until she shows up. Bruce agreed that Gina Dupain didn’t exactly seem like a good candidate for Marinette’s new guardian with that description. But finally, to none of his children's surprise, he did end up agreeing.

“But,” he held up a single finger. “We’ll Wait here in Paris for a week, so that she can try to salvage everything she can from her house and so we can get an idea on how her father is doing. There’s still a chance he’ll come out of his coma fairly quickly. And of course, we will only go through with this if Marinette agrees when we ask her tomorrow.”

Chloe agreed to those terms, looking like a weight had been lifted off of her.

Chloe never cut corners when taking care of her hive. And if that meant making sure that her brave soldier bee could move on to start a new hive, one that was better equipped to take care of her, then Chloe would do everything she could to help that move. And really; Chloe was far more resourceful and observant than people gave her credit for. The butts definitely matched, and Bruce Wayne was her last hope to get Marinette the support she needed. Outside of Adrien, anyway.

Chloe took a breath, watching the Waynes trickle off into their own rooms. Marinette was like the little sister she never wanted, but grew to love more than anything. Though, Chloe knew she really chose Marinette as her sister the same way they both chose Adrien as their brother. She just didn’t want to admit she was sentimental like that. But Chloe knew that someone like Marinette needed a bigger family. More support.

She could only hope that Marinette and the Waynes grew to become family for her like she and Adrien had. Kwami knew that Marinette needed all the help she could get for the foreseeable future.

“You did good, my Queen.”

“I know, Pollen. Now we just have to find out who dared hurt my hive.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Dude this took so long to write, but I’m actually really proud of it. Probably gonna take this Maribat March a little differently than last year, and make a few longer stories by connecting some of the prompts together. Maybe each week will be a full story? Idk I’ll figure it out. I know I’m behind but I’m working on it.

I tried to keep the angst out, but it found it’s way in here anyway. Oh well!

#mlb x dc #ml x dc #maribat #maribat march 2021 #Maribat March 2k21 #platonic brucinette #found family #day 1 #Maribat March #day 1 found family #I was a little late but oh well

[lepusrufus]

Double edged scalpel ch. 7

Ch.1 ch.2 ch.3 ch.4 ch.5 ch.6

Summary: in which Cassandra gets bullied and other sappy shenanigans

---

"Oh Nicole dear, so happy to see you again!" Duke's voice was cheerful as ever, tone masterfully crafted over years of being a businessman.

Nicole, taking small steps inside the ornate and now full of items room, greeted him with uncharacteristic giddiness.

"Duke! How's business?"

"Same as always, I'll be heading to Beneviento later tonight to deliver some tools for her," he took a long drag of his cigar and, noticing green eyes scanning over multiple items and said, "I also have your order."

With a childish grin on her face, she approached him, hands shuffling inside the small bag attached to her belt that all staff members had. She pulled out the money owed for her package and, in return, the Duke placed a decently sized box in her arms. With an oof she shifted it in a less precarious position, it's heavy contents seeming to plot against her small frame.

"Unfortunately I can't stay, duty calls. But thank you Duke."

"No worries, I do understand that your employers can be quite," he took another drag of his cigar, looking for the right word. "...demanding"

Nicole chuckled. That was one way to put it.

"Well until next time dear. Or if you find yourself in need of something else, I'll be here until six."

---

She was only wearing a long white towel when she heard a knock on the door. Assuming it was another maid, or even Anita inquiring about whether or not she'd be joining the rest of them for dinner, she opened the door just a crack.

It was a surprise to see none other than Cassandra standing there, her elegant frame in odd contrast with the modest corridor. She flung the door open, letting the brunette inside and took a quick glance down the hall, making sure no maid was on the floor after fainting due to fright.

"What are you doing here?"

"Aw, are you not happy to see me?" She was pouting, but her tone was joking.

Nicole rolled her eyes, but the small smile on her lips betrayed that she was indeed happy to see her. Cassandra only laughed instead, a beautiful melodious laugh, so unlike the dark cackles heard by prisoners down in the dungeons.

"Just sit down, I need to get dressed," Nicole pointed to the bed before moving to the small dresser and pulling out a clean uniform.

Cassandra went to sit on the slightly disheveled bed, eyes following the redhead's form as she let the towel drop to her feet and started to put on the various layers of her uniform. Then golden eyes darted to the box sitting on the bed. The tape sealing it had been cut not long after Nicole brought it back to her room to make sure all its contents made it safely. Not that she didn't trust the Duke, but postal service was postal service.

"What's this?" Cassandra inquired, trying to read the label but having no success as it had been scribbled over with a marker.

Nicole stilled for a moment, hands frozen on her white button up. She cleared her throat and shyly admitted:

"Actually that's for you. Do open it if you want."

Cassandra's eyes widened, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks. The gesture had really caught her off guard. She gingerly lifted the lid, inspecting it's contents for a moment and then hummed.

"And here I was thinking you like my hair. With how much you love to pull on it and all that."

Nicole, now fully clothed and sporting a deep blush, marched to her and plucked the two boxes of red hair dye from gloved hands. She placed them on her nightstand and, with her voice just slightly more high pitched, she turned to the brunette.

"Those are mine, I meant the rest of it." And, after a chuckle, "I mean have you seen my roots? They're horrible!"

Cassandra only gave her a deadpan look and, after a long moment, said: "I think your hair is beautiful."

She didn't wait for a reply, not that it would be anything more than a stammered mumble of course. Instead she chuckled and returned her attention to the box. She examined the rest of its contents and then gingerly lifted one of the few tomes inside. The cover was glossy and malleable, it's pages shiny and with a distinct typography smell to it. It was so unlike her other books, it's pristine white state making it feel extremely out of place in the castle. She glanced at Nicole inquisitively.

"I do appreciate the gift, don't misunderstand me, but surely you know there's a small bookshop's worth of medical books in this castle."

"With all due respect, from what I've seen most of them are at least somewhat outdated. Interesting, yes, but I thought you'd like to learn something more...modern." Then she pulled out another book. "This is the same one I used while studying forensic pathology. It would make teaching you some things easier. Uh… assuming you want that."

Nicole averted her gaze, suddenly unsure of the usefulness of her gift. Cassandra however grabbed her chin between two fingers and pulled her gaze back on her. She smiled, finding the shy demeanor beyond endearing.

"I'd love that."

A small smile appeared on thin lips and Nicole leaned in to kiss Cassandra. It was soft and short, but no less intimate than the deep kisses they shared so many times in Cassandra's bed.

They had to go anyway.

---

Let's go to the library, Cassandra said. It'll be empty, she said.

When Cassandra swung open the intricate door, only to find the other two sisters lounging on one of the couches, it's not like they could do a one eighty and leave the room. That would've been both impolite and highly suspicious.

Instead, Cassandra grabbed her arm protectively and led them to the reading spot farthest from the other two. They placed one of the textbooks on the small desk and Cassandra took out a notebook. This would've been a lot more fruitful with an actual body on hand, but there were still a couple days until the human flesh supply had to be replenished and Cassandra was beyond eager to start on some things. So, for now, they had to settle for theory alone.

It took all of five minutes for the other two sisters to make their way to their desk. Daniela had a giddy yet curious expression on her face, while Bela seemed as unreadable as ever, if not for a glint in her eyes that betrayed her interest.

"Whatcha dooooing?" Came Daniela's voice, who cocked her head not unlike a curious puppy would while looking at the book's contents.

"Working," Cassandra replied, a slight growl accompanying her words.

"Could've fooled me," Bela spoke from behind the youngest sister, eyeing the hand protectively placed on Nicole's waist.

Cassandra snapped her eyes at the blonde, looking ready to throw her notebook at her head but Bela ignored her sister's ire and addressed Nicole instead.

"What are you studying?"

"I uh- just some basic anatomy concepts. Thought it would be a good idea to start with the things that the older books in the castle don't cover."

Bela only hummed, grabbed an ornate chair nearby, and plopped herself at the desk, opposite from the pair. Daniela mimicked her sister, but instead chose to sit down right by Nicole on the small couch. It took more willpower than she would admit not to glue herself to Cassandra's side when Daniela's face came uncomfortably close so she could look over the book's diagrams. She stood still as a statue though. After a couple seconds of silence and Nicole trying to figure out what she was supposed to do, Daniela drew her head back, looking at her with what was possibly the most serious expression she had seen on the youngest sister.

"You do realize we're not going to hurt you right? How could we lay a finger on our dear sister's lover hmm?"

Nicole's breath caught in her throat. She wasn't sure if it was due to the word used to describe her or how Daniela apparently knew that she was utterly terrified of her. Cassandra sighed beside her and, seeming to at least partially read Nicole's thoughts, clarified:

"Your heartbeat."

Oh. Yeah. Yeah her heart was beating a million miles an hour. And apparently the other three vampiric occupants of the room were able to hear it loud and clear. It did very little to ease her mind.

"Please do calm down, it feels like someone is having drumming lessons. Bad ones," Bela complained, head resting in one of her hands like she was already bored.

"Then shove a sock in your ears," Cassandra snapped.

Bela simply leaned back in her seat and stretched her arms above her head. "And risk not hearing my beloved sisters sing along to some pop song?"

Cassandra shut her mouth, a blush now slowly spreading across her cheeks while Daniela burst out into laughter. Even Nicole couldn't help betraying the brunette and letting out a giggle.

"I didn't know you could sing."

"I can't."

"Au contraire dear Cassie! Should I remind you of the last time Dragostea din tei came on the radio? The pathos!" Daniela reached over Nicole's lap to lightly shake her sister's knee through her giggles.

Cassandra only let out a long groan, face now hidden in her palms. "I hate you both."

"Mhm, we love you too," came Bela's reply, accompanied by a chuckle.

Nicole couldn't keep a small laugh while she snaked her arm behind the brunette to show some form of support against the merciless assailants. Maybe not a complete betrayal.

The scene really had something deep within her heart aching beautifully. It reminded her of the countless times she and Alex would mercilessly tease each other, but still have each other's backs through thick and thin. And for this familiarity to come from people that any sane person would consider bloodthirsty monsters? Hell, maybe they should start considering her a monster too, for the only word she could use to describe them in that moment was endearing.

"So," Bela lightly clapped her gloved hands. "Now that your pulse isn't giving me a headache anymore, what are we doing?"

She had a confident smirk on her face, but her eyes betrayed curiosity. Same for Daniela and, although mixed with a hint of annoyance, Cassandra. She opened the book in front of her, one of general human anatomy, and decided that the digestive system would be a good enough starting point.

---

Their little impromptu lesson didn't last more than two hours. Two hours that proved to Nicole just how oddly human all three sisters can be. Of course she had gotten familiar with Cassandra, intimately so, but the other two still felt like two looming monsters hiding in the shadows. At least up until now.

Bela seemed oddly intrigued by Nicole's explanation, although unlike Cassandra, she seemed to view it more like a story than anything. Daniela seemed slightly more interested, asking questions here and there and even starting to giggle like a middle schooler when they got to the rectum section. That got an eye roll from the other two. Nicole just laughed, finally understanding Mrs Hawkins, her private biology teacher from before she was allowed to step foot in any public school.

After they were done, Bela simply stood up and bid them good night. Danila instead excitedly proposed the skeletal system for next time and picked up the books she abandoned earlier. Then, with a small tower of tomes she went through a door tucked at the very back of the room. Her study, Cassandra had pointed out as they made their way out of the library.

"I didn't know your sisters were interested in medicine too." Nicole kept her voice low, almost as if talking too loudly would disturb the shadowy hallways.

"More or less. Daniela likes it and has a bit of hands-on practice but she has her nose in romance novels more often than not. Bela finds it interesting but botany is what she really loves. That and classic lit." She added the last part with a grimace and Nicole had to wonder which author had offended her personally.

Before she could continue that train of thought though, her gaze moved to the windows, the cloudless sky beyond thick glass panels full of twinkling stars. Her mind kept going back to a few hours earlier and at what Daniela had said. Lover. Did Cassandra truly see her as one or was the youngest sister just being her over the top self. Did she see Cassandra this way? Nicole had not allowed herself to dwell on that up until now, the idea that the brunette saw her as more than an over glorified lab partner with whom she occasionally scratched an itch seemed almost laughable. But the small gestures of affection shown in ways Cassandra seemed to know best were undeniably there. And the familiar flutter in her chest at each of said gestures was also undeniably there.

"What's wrong?"

Cassandra's voice, accompanied by the slight echo through the empty hallway, snapped Nicole out of her thoughts.

"Oh um- nothing." She sounded as convincing as someone trying to sell you a fork while showing you a spoon.

And Cassandra didn't seem to buy it. She moved in front of the redhead, walking backwards with no concern over possible furniture to collide into along the way.

"You always get this… face when something's bothering you."

"I do not-" the indignation in her tone was weak, little more than an attempt to change the subject.

"Mhmm you do. You normally look focused. Kind of like, if someone tried to scare you by throwing an eyeball at you, you'd laugh." She would. "Now? Now you look like a rabbit that has no time to run and is just laying low hoping whatever's hunting it passes by."

Nicole shut up for a moment, only looking at the brunette in front of her incredulously. Maybe she was far more attentive than she gave her credit for.

"Uh. Just thinking." At a raised dark eyebrow, the no shit went unsaid, so Nicole tried to elaborate. "About earlier. When we were with your sisters and Daniela uh- Daniela called me your lover."

Saying that the words felt awkward on her tongue was close to the year's biggest understatement. It felt like pulling out teeth would be an easier task. Nicole had never been good with her words, having learned since childhood to keep her mouth shut. But the fact that Cassandra seemed to share her struggle brought some semblance of comfort.

"And?" As if they were talking about the weather.

"And… was she right in describing me as such?"

She couldn't help a small gulp when the brunette stopped walking, looking at her with a frown. Any sane person would be at the very least somewhat afraid in this situation. Sanity however was scarce these days as Nicole was afraid, though not of the bodily harm that may come from her inquiry, but rather of Cassandra's answer.

"Nicole, your tongue has been in my mouth." Amongst many other places.

The redhead's cheeks turned a slight shade of crimson and she mumbled for an answer. She wasn't sure how to tell her that sleeping together did not automatically make them lovers. But then again, Cassandra's thoughts remained a mystery more than anything.

Thankfully the brunette took the metaphorical reins of the conversation and stepped forward. She wrapped her hands around Nicole's arms, gentler than one would imagine possible from her, and bent down to whisper no more than an inch away from her ear.

"I'll have you know, I'm not particularly fond of letting anyone I don't deem important touch me. Especially not the way you do."

The words made something flutter in Nicole's chest, an unfamiliar and comforting warmth. Said warmth got chipped away at the slightest bit when Cassandra pulled back to look her in the eyes.

"Should I take it that it's not mutual then?" Cassandra's tone was nonchalant, almost as if she didn't truly care about the answer. She could keep doing whatever she wanted either way, afterall who was going to stop her? But to someone who got familiar with all her small quirks and habits, the waver in her voice was more than clear.

"No." The world slipped from her lips with no hesitation.

No hesitation, because the more she thought about it, and she didn't need to think a lot mind you, the more Nicole realized that she couldn't remember a time when she felt the way she did here. Sure the initial threat of death looming over her head was anything but pleasant, but once that melted into affection and nights spent in Cassandra's arms the thought of leaving didn't as much as graze her mind.

"No, no. It is," she repeated, more certainty making its way into her tone.

At that Cassandra smiled. A small, almost shy one would say if they knew her well enough, smile. Her shoulders seemed to lose some of their tension when she leaned down again, her lips stopping not even an inch away. Nicole wasted no time leaning forward, their mouths meeting in a kiss that mixed softness and need beautifully. Their lips slid against each other until, surprisingly, it was Cassandra to pull back and sigh.

"Come sleep, we have some cutting up to do in the morning."

Nicole frowned. "Tomorrow? Wasn't that supposed to be due in a few days?"

A devilish grin appeared on black lips, fangs shimmering ominously in the low light. "Bela caught a foolish man-thing sneaking around the forest on the castle grounds. She's really excited to turn this one into a nice steak."

The redhead only let out an oh in acknowledgement. Foolish indeed. At least they could finally put into practice a few autopsy tricks Nicole had been itching to show her.

She let herself be guided back to Cassandra's chambers and into her bed, that she had grown intimately familiar with. The last thing she felt before falling asleep was the brunette's cool skin, pressed against her own. A welcomed comfort among the myriad of soft pillows that surrounded them. Nicole wondered briefly if being undead meant it was hard to keep yourself warm, but the thought quickly slipped away as she fell into a dreamless sleep.

#cassandra dimitrescu x maiden #unhinged maiden™ my beloved #bela dimitrescu #daniela dimitrescu #double edged scalpel #fanfic #the dimitrescu daughters

[heyitsjay03]

Headcanons about each of the lords (+the Duke if you're writing about him) if they ever happen to adopt a little child?

THANK YOU ANON MY THE UNIVERSE BLESS YOU WITH PILLOWS THAT ARE COLD ON BOTH SIDES

okay okay okay okay this has definitely been on my mind so lets get into the thick of it

Alcina Dimitrescu

(im starting off with alcina for obvious reasons)

Alcina would be on the way to the church with the slimy moron, the demented doll, that disgusting manthing and Mother Miranda

She'd kiss her daughters goodbye and head off through the snow, quietly muttering about how cold her ankles were

while Moreau is literally up to his chin in snow but its fine

as she gets closer to the church she keeps hearing this. thing. it sounded familiar but she couldn't exactly put her finger on it.

she strays from the path to find it because it was just so familiar

as she weaves her way through the snow, her dress gets caught on something. she leans down to get her dress unstuck when she realises its this tiny basket.

like seriously. just a little woven basket in the middle of the snow. and it doesn't look like its been there for that long- there's hardly any snow on it

when she tugs at her skirts again, the basket makes the same noise she's been hearing

she stands back up to her full height, staring down at the basket with narrowed eyes

this cannot be a good idea, can it? opening a strange basket in the woods after being lured out here. it's probably some village manthing's trap.

she's about to step away when she hears the sound again- much more intense and much more clear

Alcina leans down and opens the lid of the basket

inside is this tiny thing- all soft and warm in a padding of blankets

a baby

she stands and looks around

who on earth would be so moronic as to leave their baby in the snow? it's much too cold for a baby to survive-

oh

she sighs, getting onto her knees to pull the baby from the blanketed basket

the meeting will have to wait. it's too cold even in the church for this tiny thing.

when she finally makes it back home, she's greeted by her daughters in a swarm of buzzing flies.

as they manifest in their true forms, they're asking what- or who, rather- their mother brought for dinner

Alcina smiles and shakes her head, unwrapping the small bundle clinging to her breast

"this... is your new sibling" she announces, "they'll be staying with us from now on."

and the sisters are ecstatic. a new sibling!

Daniela especially is happy that she is no longer the youngest. she usually is the one to parade around the castle with her sibling on her shoulders, showing them the coolest hiding spots for hide-n-seek and the windows with the best views

Bela is incredibly protective. like. incredibly.

she smelt blood from across the castle and when she found her little sibling sniffling about a skinned knee earned from a game of tag with Angie, she lost her shit and almost broke the damned thing with her sickle

And Cassandra has been caught reading bedtime stories by nightlight multiple times. she tries to play it off but everyone knows that she loves- absolutely adores- her newest sibling

we all know Alcina is such a wonderful mother to the girls so adding another baby to the mix was a guaranteed success

she's so doting and careful (a little overprotective at times but she means well) as she is with her girls

as the child grows into a teen, she panics a bit because "my beautiful baby is growing into such a beautiful, talented adult" so expect a lot of late night visits when she just sits on the edge of her bed and just admires how much you've grown

Salvatore Moreau:

now this one is an easy one too if i'm 100% honest

think Moses type beat

(if you don't know, Moses was found in the riverbank in a little basket)

apparently i really like baskets

anyways

Moreau was so out of his element when he found this tiny, screaming, writhing piece of soft flesh

the first few weeks were rough

but he eventually got the hang of it (with Alcina's help of course)

he would take his child fishing every now and then- just the two of them out on a boat for a few hours

the kid would literally swim more than walk and that little fact would make Moreau so freakin proud

also this kid would be so well-versed in movie and film history it's stupid

like expect this little 4 or 5 year old babbling not about toys or snow or how many sticks they found but instead about the copyright war over the film Nosferatu and the destruction of its copies

Moreau, as the child gets older (like 11 or 12) would have just a tad of trouble trying to keep the kid out of the village

he'd wake up one day and go out onto the lake, expecting his child to be swinging their legs off the dock and watching the sun rise over the water

and when he finds that they were not, in fact, swinging their legs off the dock and watching the sun rise over the water, he p a n i c s

i mean, full blown red alert

all of the lords are summoned to help Moreau look for his missing kid, the lycans are given an article of clothing to help find the scent, Mother Miranda goes to search the village herself- the whole shebang

and when the kid is found playing with the village children, Moreau bursts into tears

needless to say, the kid isn't allowed to go to the village anymore

until they're fifty (Moreau's words, of course)

but the kid sneaks off more and more as they get older, using Alcina or Donna or Karl as an excuse to be away

and Moreau knows but he never says a word

seeing his child happy and free with the kids their age makes him happy, even if he is a tad, a tad, a tad bit nervous

Donna Beneviento:

when Donna found this child huddled up against the base of the stairs leading up to her front door, she at first thought it was a doll of hers

it was only when she actually walked outside that she realised it was this shaking, shriveled child in tattered clothes

she spent a good five minutes just staring, wondering how on earth she's supposed to react

that's when Angie jumped in and pulled at her skirt, telling her to "let the kid inside, already!"

Donna went immediately to work on some clothes- why on earth were they wearing such ragged things?! it's freezing outside!- while Angie entertained in the parlour

honestly, it didn't go well

the kid was a little bit unsettled by the floating doll that moved and spoke on its own FOR GOOD REASON

and when Donna walked back in with her measurement tape and some fabric, the kid backed themselves into a corner of the room with their gangly legs tucked into their chest

Angie sighs from the opposite side of the room, letting her little feet fidget as she gestures to the kid. "they're no fun" she pouts, "wouldn't even let me know their name"

Donna puts her materials down slowly and lifts her veil back before attempting a small smile

it takes a while but upon the offer of food, the kid finally lets Donna make them some clothes while Angie makes conversation

she works in silence, only offering small awkward smiles

Angie finally brings up the topic of where their parents are when the kid's clothes are done

when the child goes silent, Donna nods in understanding before hurrying off to make a room for them

as Angie helped tug the blankets up to the child's ears, they promised they'd be gone in the morning

Angie was the one to tell them off.

"You'll stay as long as you need, you silly goose!"

and the child did

Donna would let them tag along for meetings so long as they promised to keep quiet and help keep Angie out of trouble

most of the time, it didn't work and they both would end up in trouble but Donna let them come nonetheless

and when the other Lords question where on earth this little kid came from- all dressed in black fabric that matched Donna's dress, she just shook her head and let Angie chase them off verbally

she'd spend literal HOURS locked in that workshop making new little friends for her child and when they were old enough, she'd let them into the workshop

and when they were even older, she'd walk them through making their very first doll on their own

she'd just watch with pride as they carefully painted the freckles with a shaky hand while Angie danced around their ankles singing of how excited she was to have another friend

The Duke:

he would be setting up shop near the base of the Dimitrescu castle when he catches a kid trying to steal some his wares

he wouldn't be terribly upset, more concerned

it wasn't something shiny or expensive that they were trying to steal

it was some of the steaming-hot food he had left to cool in the wintry air

he confronted the child gently and with a warm smile

"That's cordon bleu," he says, gesturing to the steaming plate. "I can make you some if you'd like"

and as the child eats, the Duke continues tidying up his shop for any future customers

the child, through a mouthful of food, points to different items and asks their purpose, their price, their possible enhancements

the Duke answers each question with patience, happy for the company

but he doesn't just let the questions go one-way

"How about a trade?" he asks as the child asks about the strange-looking bottle of green liquid. "An answer for an answer."

the child agrees and the Duke starts to peel back layers of why the child was here looking for food

they had been orphaned by the last lycan attack, only barely making it out by fleeing into the woods

they tried to forage off of berry bushes and successfully managed to kill a pig- only for the blood to attract lycans before they could properly eat it

the Duke nods and continues busying himself with his shop, feeding the horse that pulls the wagon

the thought had hit him when he watched the child petting his horse

that horse hated everyone. including him at times.

maybe...

when he offered to take the child in, the kid nearly burst into tears and thanked him repeatedly, swearing to earn their keep

and they did, seven times over

what started off as a purely business venture morphed into something more as time went on

when the child would come back from selling smaller household items like gasoline and the occasional package of bullets, the Duke would have them climb onto the roof of the wagon and watch the sun set together with a plate of food

speaking of which, like Moreau, the Duke would raise the most cultured child

this kid would know how to prepare and identify different dishes and their ingredients just by looking at them or smelling them

and their palate would be far more sophisticated than most adults

the Duke, as the child gets older, would eventually allow them to choose destinations to set up shop- even outside of the village

wherever his child wants, the shop would go

it allows them to see the world and its earthly wares together- something the Duke had lacked in his life before the child was brought into the picture

Karl Heisenberg:

listen to me very very carefully

this man would be the most chaotic father ever to walk this earthly realm

when he finds this kid in the elevator of his factory, he's kinda standing there like 🧍 "what the hell-"

and when the kid starts spamming the button while maintaining eye contact, he kinda snaps out of it and starts chasing after them as they drop down to a different floor

it goes on for a solid twenty minutes before he finally managed to track them down in the corner of his office

and when i say this man is confused, i freaking mean it

i mean

why the HELL would some random kid be in his factory? don't they like... play with ponies or something at this age?

to be fair, this man literally has never been allowed a childhood so

obviously he starts scolding the kid ("what the hell are you doin' in here? it's dangerous and there's some really freaky shit here, kid"), dragging them to a nearby sink because "holy shit kid, you're filthy"

the kid is silent essentially the whole time, just kinda staring into his eyes

and of course Karl's gonna be like "...the fuck're you doin'?"

the kid's face is cleaned off and Karl sends them back out towards the village with a scratchy blanket he pulled out of the bottom of his desk drawer

he's working on his 'equipment' one day when he starts reaching for a wrench, keeping his focus on the body on the table

when i say this man jumps skyhigh at the kid asking a question, i mean it

he drags the kid back out, yelling about how dangerous it is and how "you shouldn't do that! you're gonna get yourself killed! go back home!"

the kid doesn't listen

it becomes a regular thing- Karl finds the kid wandering around the factory, Karl brings the kid out of danger, Karl tells them to get lost

eventually (day thirteen of this) he asks why the child keeps coming back

and he hates the answer he gets

it was something along the lines of "it's warm and there's nowhere else for me to go"

so Karl reluctantly eagerly lets them stay

it's a lot of rules at first (a kid shouldn't be allowed to just wander around a bunch of mindless cyborg killers, let alone a factory) but eventually the child learns to mind Sturm and the others

doesn't mean Karl does not have a fullblown heart attack when he walks into his workspace to find the kid tracing their finger along the center of the battery for the Soldats

after a very long talk (and some deep breathing) Karl reluctantly eagerly lets them sit against the very far wall to watch him work on the machinery- not, under any circumstances, the actual bodies

as the child blossoms into a young adult, they start to help out with certain aspects of Karl's work

exclusively machinery because Karl could not physically handle having his kid watch him get elbow-deep into a corpse

and Karl is so freaking proud of it

when the Soldat is kicked to life, he's got his kid in his arms and cackling like the proud dad he is

yeah. paternal Heisenberg>>>

#anon ask #anon #karl heisenberg #alcina dimitrescu #donna beneviento #salvatore moreau #re8 #resident evil 8 #the duke #resident evil village #resident evil #resident evil village fanfiction #gender neutral #headcanons #re8 headcanons #resident evil headcanons #resident evil village headcanons #yeah i had a lot of fun with this #thank you again anon

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Trick or Treat

The next A Very Bouncey Halloween installment and a belated birthday gift to my darling @veritasrose. Thank you so much for the last year of friendship, I look forward to celebrating with you again. <3 you are much loved.

tw: curses, Geralt is an idiot, competent Jaskier

---

Light flashes through the room and momentarily blinds Jaskier, who stumbles back against Geralt. He mumbles an apology to the ever-sturdy Witcher as he waits for his vision to return and when he blinks clearly for the first time after a few long moments, the bard feels utterly and totally confused by the scene unfolding before him.

The Duke’s grandest ballroom, which had been bustling with excitable party guests only moments ago, is now flooded with ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and monsters of all sorts. A woman with swan’s wings is huddled in one corner, squawking angrily at anyone who tries to draw near. A minotaur stumbles through the center of the dance floor, lowing in frustration as he tries to control his bulky limbs. Two werewolves wrestle for dominance atop the furthest banquet table to their left. As Jaskier takes it all in, he feels Geralt’s hands wrap suddenly around his bicep; the Witcher is clinging to Jaskier fiercely, leaning his not insignificant weight against the bard’s side as his eyes grow round and watery.

“What’s happening?” Geralt finally asks. His tone of voice seems breathy and high, filled with a terror - almost totally foreign to Jaskier’s ears. Geralt fears nothing and yet… “Let’s get away from this dreadful place, please!”

“Aren’t you going to try and solve this problem?” Jaskier asks, glancing at his companion. He gestures at the various monsters roaming freely past the buffet table. “You’re likely the nearest Witcher, after all.”

“I’m no Witcher,” Geralt declares. He splays a hand over the very center of his blue velvet doublet (a nearly perfect imitation of the way Jaskier reacts to a perceived offense). “I am a Count. Witchers are dirty things, not meant for such a public life as my own.”

“For fuck’s sake, Geralt, now is not the time for a prank of this nature,” Jaskier huffs. “Something is clearly going on here. We need to help these people!”

“I know something is wrong,” Geralt sniffles - fucking sniffles - and squeezes the bard’s upper arm even more tightly. The sound of Geralt crying shakes Jaskier into understanding, even as Geralt begs: “But I don’t know how to help! Please get me out of here, Milord, I’m scared.”

Milord? Jaskier mouths to himself, even as he wraps one comforting arm around Geralt’s waist and ushers him away from the growing chaos at the center of the ballroom. Jaskier hurries them down one suspiciously empty hallway after another until he reaches the small suite that he had accepted as payment for his performance at the party. Jaskier ushers Geralt inside and locks the heavy oak door behind them.

“My Lord Geralt,” he gets the not-quite-Witcher’s attention. “Do you mind taking a seat by the fire for now? I’ll be right with you as soon as the room is secure, and then we can figure out what’s going on and what to do from here.”

“Yes, Milord,” Geralt nods. He hurries to comply with Jaskier’s request, to the bard’s continuing shock and awe, and stays still and quiet as Jaskier removes his doublet and rolls up his sleeves. Using the strength he’s spent twelve years at Geralt’s side developing, Jaskier shoves a bookcase, a dresser, and an unfortunately designed roll-top desk in front of the locked doors for added protection.

Moving behind Geralt with practiced efficiency, Jaskier also closes, shutters, and locks every window in the room, pulling the curtains closed to keep any light from spilling out and alerting stray creatures of their presence.

When he’s finished locking down all of their room’s possible entrances and breathing hard from exertion, Jaskier tugs the Witcher’s xenovox from his bag and flips it open, waiting with bated breath until Yennefer’s irritated voice snaps: “What do you want, Geralt?”

“Who is that?!” Geralt cries from his place near the fire. He has a white-knuckle grip on the overstuffed armchair he’s perched in and his clothing is mussed; Jaskier motions for him to be quiet and Geralt bites his lip, worrying the soft pink skin between his unusually dull canines.

“Was that Geralt?” Yennefer asks. "Did Jaskier summon me?"

“Yes and yes,” Jaskier replies. “I think he’s been cursed or enchanted or something. I was hired to play at the Duke of Rinde’s All Hallow’s Eve celebration and Geralt accompanied me - even dressed up for the occasion - but something happened at the party and now he’s acting strangely. I don’t know what to do.”

"What's happening?" Yennefer prods.

"Geralt is acting rather out of sorts. He’s speaking strangely, he wanted to flee the party rather than investigate the source of the changes-”

“What changes?”

“Everyone sort of… Well, a good portion of the party guests suddenly transformed into their costumes,” Jaskier explains, his speech stunted by his disbelief. “I know it sounds incredible, and it was! One moment we were all enjoying the music and the next… there was a minotaur and a mermaid and a faun… Geralt went nearly mute and started clinging to my arm like some sort of aristocratic maiden!”

“Oh shit,” Yen groans.

“Who is that?” Geralt repeats. Jaskier continues to ignore his companion. He knows that the moment he turns his attention to caring for Geralt, he won’t be able to tear it away again, and he needs to finish this conversation with Yennefer first.

“Why are you swearing?” he asks the sorceress. “What is it?”

“Geralt asked me for advice about this stupid ball a few days ago, while you were busy making arrangements with the Duke. He wanted to impress you with his All Hallow’s Eve costume and prove that he could be just as fancy and well-mannered as all the other men of your status.”

“Why in the world would Geralt want to dress up and act like a nobleman? It makes no sense! He detests small talk, he hates vanity, and he finds most men of my station to be cowardly and overly delicate - myself included! I just- I don’t quite understand why he’d go through all of this just to impress me. Or why he thinks this kind of thing would be impressive in the first place.”

“Jaskier, please tell me that you aren’t as stupid as our mutually beloved Witcher…”

Jaskier considers for a moment, pondering the things that he does to impress Geralt: gathering wood, learning to cook with game meat, preparing the Witcher’s potion ingredients while he's out on hunts, organizing their packs when they're spiking camp, brushing Roach’s mane… Realization dawns suddenly and all at once. He has a moment of pure understanding, a moment much beloved by every poet, bard, and playwright across the Continent: “Oh.”

Yennefer gives a tired laugh. “Yeah.”

“So he’s stuck as… a noble?”

“I suppose,” she sighs. “I’ll portal you to my location and we can figure things out in peace. Get your things together, I’ll open it up in precisely five minutes.”

“What’s happening!?” Geralt demands. Jaskier pulls the Witcher/Count to his feet and bows shallowly.

“I am Jaskier Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. I will be your protector and chaperone for the foreseeable future, Your Lordship,” Jaskier bows shallowly. “I’m going to gather our things together and then we are going to meet up with a very lovely sorceress, Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

Jaskier barely manages to hide his surprise at Geralt’s utter lack of recognition. His memories of Yennefer have also been taken, then.

“She’s a mutual friend.”

“Are you my friend?”

“I would like to think so,” Jaskier smiles. Geralt remains oblivious to the bard’s heartache, even as he curls himself against Jaskier. He tucks his face against Jaskier’s shoulder and sobs quietly. The bard runs his hands comfortingly up and down Geralt’s spine for a long, soothing moment. The smooth, royal-blue velvet tickles his fingertips. “Shh, dear heart. I’ve got you. Everything will be alright, I swear.”

“I trust you,” Geralt whispers.

Just as Jaskier is about to reply, Yennefer’s portal snaps open in the center of the room. Jaskier hands Geralt a set of bags and hauls his own over his shoulder. “Time to go, Your Lordship. Just take one little step…”

---

“Do you know who I am?” Yennefer asks. Geralt shakes his head before burying his face in the back of Jaskier’s shoulder-blade.

“I’m so frightened, Milord.”

Frightened? Milord? Yennefer mouths. Jaskier shrugs nearly imperceptibly and makes a panicked gesture in the Witcher’s general direction.

“I don’t know what to do either!”

“Well, start from the beginning. Tell me what happened at the party before all of… this.”

Jaskier recounts every detail he can remember in the most straightforward way possible, momentarily renouncing his poetic skills in favor of efficiency - for Geralt’s sake, of course, not Yennefer’s. When he's finished he asks: “And you said he did all of this to impress me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?” Jaskier repeats his earlier question. Yennefer understands that his meaning is different; Jaskier understands that Geralt is interested in him romantically, but the bard can't seem to get it through his head that Geralt has deemed him worthy. Although, knowing the Witcher, he isn't even sure how to go about doing such a thing in the first place.

"I just... I don’t quite believe you," he adds.

“He loves you,” Yennefer reiterates. "And now he’s stuck like this until the effects of the spell wear off, so I suggest you take his precious Lordship to one of my spare rooms and make yourselves comfortable. I’ll see you both for breakfast, providing the magic is null and void by then.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“I hope you enjoy small talk, you bardic bastard.”

Yennefer smirks and disappears from the room in a whirl of black and white silk, the scents of lilac and gooseberry curling through the air in her wake.

Geralt clings to Jaskier’s bicep again as the exhausted bard stands, keeping his larger body pressed against the human’s side as if Jaskier is the one who wields the Witcher’s swords. “So I’m under a spell?”

“Yes, darling.”

“At least I have you here to protect me, Jaskier. You’re so brave and strong; my hero!”

“It’s usually the other way around, dear heart, but I appreciate the sentiment. Now, how about we find a comfortable place to bed down for the night, Milord?”

"Alright."

Jaskier moves Geralt's hand so that it's curled around the inside of his elbow, the proper etiquette for a platonic escort, and leads him quickly down the long hallways of Yennefer's sprawling manor house. He chooses the blue-themed bedroom at the back of the East Wing, far from the sorceress' own suite of rooms.

He has to help Geralt change out of his lordly costume, the Witcher-turned-Count fumbling uselessly at the laces and buttons as if he'd never seen a fastening before in his life. Geralt whispers shyly as Jaskier pulls a nightshirt over his head: "Thank you again, Milord Jaskier. I feel as if I can't help but continue indebting myself to you."

"Think nothing of it, dear heart," Jaskier smiles, ignoring the pang in his chest. "I am happy to help you."

Jaskier tucks Geralt into bed before changing into his own nightclothes, tossing his things back into their travel bags as he swaps outfits. He feels Geralt tense up when he sits on the edge of the bed and his eyebrows narrow in concern.

"Are you alright, Geralt?"

"Are you going to share a bed with me?"

"Would you rather I didn't?" Jaskier answers with a question of his own.

"I... I wouldn't mind it if we shared."

Jaskier wishes he had Witcher sight, so he could catch a glimpse of the blush no doubt attempting to stain the Witcher's face. Despite the mutagens, Geralt's face still went pale pink when he encountered a strong emotion. It was adorable. And incredibly rare.

As soon as he pulls the covers over his chest, Geralt glues himself to Jaskier's side, snuggling close. "Feels safer," he says in lieu of explanation.

"Goodnight, dear heart."

"Goodnight."

---

"Fuck," Geralt groans, sitting up in bed. Jaskier sits up beside him, wiping the sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Good morning, Milord," he teases.

"Shut up," Geralt groans. Jaskier does get to see him blush this time, and the bard revels in it; he would trade all the gold in the world to see Geralt flush like this. "I can't believe I cried on you!"

"It was rather adorable, actually."

"Hmm."

"Still..." Jaskier reaches out, tentative, and cups Geralt's cheek with his palm. He turns the Witcher's face and locks their gazes together, blue meeting gold. "Still, I think I prefer you as you are. My big, strong Witcher who cares so much about defending the little guy. Willing to step in and help wherever and whenever he can."

Geralt's eyes get a little glassy and he leans forward, pausing and letting Jaskier make the final decision. The bard meets him halfway, pressing his lips against Geralt's without any sense of urgency at all. It's warm and sweet, time fading away as they let their feelings pour through this one simple gesture. When they pull apart again, Geralt gives a surprised, lopsided smile. "Oh."

#geraskier #geraskier fluff #a very bouncey halloween #geraskier first kiss #geraskier and buffy #btvs au #geraskier fluff and silliness #curses #cursed geralt #nobleman geralt #yennefer was there #bamf jaskier #competent jaskier

[hannigramficrecs]

Newly Added Fics 5/16

Hello everyone, sorry again for the slight hiatus! I’ve replied to all the messages in my inbox (at least the ones that were sent to me before this past friday), so if you asked me something before that, be sure to check out my replies!

As usual, I’ve emboldened the fics I really liked and italicized the ones that are incomplete.

Looks Like Love by luvkurai [words: 5,987] — (AU)

After his sister's wedding, Will kisses his childhood housekeeper (and first love).

Betrothed by slashyrogue [words: 3,932] — (AU)

In one month he would marry a total stranger.

Titan Arum by ProxyOne [words: 64,614] — (AU)

Will is a botanist, working in the greenhouse of the local Botanical Gardens. He is getting his life back on track after his divorce, but he can't help but notice someone who keeps coming back to his greenhouse to draw, day after day. A man who seems to have been paying very close attention to him...

Find Me In The Dark by Rising_Phoenix [words: 40,131] — (AU)

After a fateful accident, the marriage of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter has reached its end. Grief and the inability to stop them from falling apart has brought an irreconcilable distance between the formerly deeply devoted couple. While Hannibal is apathetic towards his husband, ignores him, and is withdrawn, Will has started an affair with fellow teacher Francis and drowns his desperation in more and more alcohol. 

Light of All Lights by whiskeyandspite [words: 20,377] — (AU)

Dracula-like fic without any of the vampires

The Stage Just For You by CarnivalMirai [words: 6,494] — (AU + Age Gap)

Will has landed himself the role of Odette for world-famous choreographer Hannibal Lecter's rendition of The Swan Lake.

There Will Be Bells by Entropyrose [words: 36,639] — (A/B/O)

In Georgian England, male omegas are very rare diamonds. Baron and Baroness Graham have a plan to build their wealth and social status by offering their son Will's hand in marriage to a mysterious older Duke, an Alpha named Lord Hannibal Lecter. Will's personal feelings need not apply.

Alpha Mart by slashyrogue [words: 63,164] — (A/B/O)

Will needs an alpha. After years of fake knots, half-assed suppressants, and his own damn hand during heats he’s reached the end of his rope. He doesn’t do dating so he decides to waste his life savings and hype with the current trend. Alpha Mart.

Enchanted By Your Name by CarnivalMirai [words: 9,207] — (A/B/O + PWP)

“Now, my husband would prefer it if I got the job done quickly.” He says, slashing down the back of each gag as he passes each man, watching as the silk falls gracefully to the floor. “However, I want to have some fun. Considering you’ve troubled my husband so much… it’s only fair, right?” One of the men whimpered fearfully. Or: The name "Will Graham" is a name you'll only ever hear once.

I've Been Building Black Ships by cloudsarefluffy [words: 8,116] — (A/B/O + AU)

Alpha Hannibal moves to the States with his sister Mischa after being overtly done with the fancy life of a count, and his blind omega neighbor gives him an insight into love that he never quite expected.

A Rare Find by hit_the_books [words: 5,379] — (A/B/O + AU)

Life as an omega bookseller can be quite lonely. However, as the owner of Graham’s Books, Will Graham is reasonably content. That is until he meets—long-time customer and crush—Doctor Hannibal Lecter in person for the first time. Attraction blossoming between them both, Will agrees to a dinner date with the good doctor.

We All Have a Hunger by 1ntothew1ld [words: 12,260] — (A/B/O + Age Gap)

Hannibal will ensure a properly slow and painful death for an alpha who allowed a beautiful young omega to go to waste as this one has. Too skinny for his own good, a stuttering and humble mess. The likes of the omega in front of him belonged at Opera houses and in million-dollar mansions, not scrounging for his next meal. Meek and afraid in some disheveled row house. When he finally looked back up the alpha had to conceal the utter punch to the stomach that meager glance was, blue eyes full of innocence but also hunger.

The Doctor Is In by Kummerspeck7 — (A/B/O + PWP)

Will nearly scoffed. "You can't expect me to believe you'd want anything other than a delicate flower to adorn your side, keep your ostentatious home, bare you the exact number of children you want--No more, no less-- all while being available at your whims." "Not at all." Hannibal disagreed. "I would no more put a wilting flower in my home than in a bouquet given as a gift. Tell me, Will, is that how you are treated? Forbidden from work, cloistered inside and used at Mr Brown's discretion?" "My Alpha's discretion." Hannibal looked pointedly at the curve of Will's neck, free from a single scar. "Not yet he isn't."

Teenage Wildlife by writtenbyizzy [words: 10,163] — (Age Gap + Sugar Daddy)

While reluctantly prowling Grindr for a sugar daddy to pay for his dog Bean's vet bills Will comes across Hannibal, and gets far more than he bargained for.

Just As Poised As I Remember by CarnivalMirai [words: 5,721] — (Age Gap + School)

When Will was in high school he had an incredibly handsome psychology teacher-- tall and sharp with a thick European accent. And now, a decade later, said psychology teacher-turned psychiatrist... just swiped right on him.

We Can Chase the Dark Together by K_R_Closson [words: 16,615] — (Fantasy)

Will tips him and Hannibal off the cliff. Instead of hitting the water, he wakes up in his bed, several years in the past. His first, and only, priority is to find Hannibal again.

We Killed a Dragon Last Night by inameitlater [words: 88,150] — (Fantasy)

Will remembers falling. He wakes up months before Jack got him to work for him. Months before he met Hannibal for the first time. Free from his past he decides to change events and meet Hannibal again.

My Only Constant Is You by TheSilverQueen [words: 25,369] — (Fantasy)

Hannibal Lecter is an immortal who can never die. Will Graham is a time traveler who can never stay in one place. Perhaps that is why they are perfect for each other.

Motinos Kalba by Lyla_Joy [words: 6,040] — (Fluff)

Five times Hannibal Lecter spoke Lithuanian on accident and one time he meant too.

You Make Me Feel (Good) by sourweather [words: 7,190] — (Fluff)

Will Graham has sensory issues. The world gets too loud, he gets overstimulated easily, but most of all he hates being touched. He never expected someone to work so hard to make him comfortable, to be so patient with him.

Pick Me Up by sourweather [words: 6,053] — (Fluff)

Will doesn't go to bars much. He doesn't end up needing a ride home much. But when he does get drunk, he always wants to ask Hannibal to pick him up.

Hard to Get by JSinister32 [words: 5,561] — (Jealousy)

Will and Hannibal had been broken up for six months. When confessions are made during a work function, can they find it within themselves to forgive?

Polar Opposites by Lyla_Joy [words: 19,513] — (Kidnapping)

“Says the cannibalistic serial killer who knocked me out and is now holding me hostage,” sassed Will. The Ripper didn’t smile but his eyes crinkled in the corner. “Please call me Hannibal.”

Fate Is A Keen-Eyed Hound by LydiaFearing [words: 5,890] — (Mischa)

Hannibal may be a successful, charming psychiatrist but Mischa worries that her brother is lonely so she gifts him a puppy. Hannibal reluctantly falls for his little dog but wants to get involved with time-consuming FBI work and not just anyone can be allowed to look after his pet. Luckily, Alana can recommend a boarding kennel in Wolf Trap.

The Significant Other: The Will and Hannibal Edition by house_of_lantis [words: 18,431] — (Murder Husbands)

After their terrible and abrupt break up, Will and Hannibal attempt to maneuver through their social circles, side step ongoing gossip, and deal with the fact that Will knows the truth of Hannibal. Through impossible odds, Will and Hannibal do find their way to each other again.

Dancing with the Beast by proser [words: 86,347] — (Murder Husbands)

In order to catch a mediocre serial killer, Will must pose as Hannibal's date for a series of pretentious social events. Hannibal is dramatic and jealous as ever, and Will is having a great time without the encephalitis. Of course, it's a love story.

Arriving at the Crossroads by HigherMagic [words: 7,558] — (Mpreg)

"You haven't been my psychiatrist for a long time," Will echoes. "But you've been my friend. You've helped me. With…" He gestures vaguely to his head. "When my brain was on fire. On consults. When it's dark and I need a guiding light." "It pleases me very greatly to be a source of comfort and reassurance for you, Will," Hannibal says. "I have wanted to be that for you, for a long time."

The Hanged Man by justhavesex [words: 13,076] — (Mpreg)

Will Graham had never wanted children before, but he had never considered it to be a consequence of his omegan brain not finding anyone worthy, but the moment he had met Hannibal Lecter he had been filled with want. In which a dinner party one-night stand results in a pregnancy that changes Will's entire life.

I Don't Even Like Lana Del Rey by perpetuallycaffeinated [words: 4,328] — (PWP)

The tension and low thrum of arousal were making Will speak impulsively. He knew this, but he’d just finished his drink. There was nothing he could use to stop the question, blunt and presumptuous and rude. “So, what, you’re my daddy?”

A Bad Combination In The Dark by perpetuallycaffeinated [words: 1,957] — (PWP)

When a nerve wracked Will Graham accidentally cuts his hand on Dr. Lecter's letter opener, things quickly get out of control.

The Best Bait by sourweather [words: 3,327] — (PWP)

Will is a good fisherman, he knows which bait to use for his catch. Will seduces Hannibal at a party by being sexy.

Whimsy by justheretoreadhannibalfics [words: 3,001] — (School)

Doctor Hannibal Lecter is standing in as a teacher while Professor Graham is out of town on a case. The students start to kind of like him, and become very invested in his love life.

Callipygian by ProxyOne [words: 2,260] — (Season 1)

Hannibal has a lot of sketches of Will, which he normally keeps safely away. One day though, Will shows up unexpectedly and Hannibal is caught unawares, and unprepared.

L'appel Du Vide by sourweather [words: 5,413] — (Season 1)

Will is hiding things from his coworkers. From himself. But Doctor Lecter knows.

Friends Don't Frame Friends: A Lesson for a Clueless Cannibal by LadyFelixTristis [words: 5,041] — (Season 1)

Ear? What ear? Will Graham doesn’t try to thwart Hannibal Lecter’s plans for him. He just does. By accident. And then on purpose.

For All My Pride, You Were the Fall of Me by nobetterlove [words: 13,212] — (Season 2)

After being released from the BSHCI, Will grabs the dogs he can't live without and leaves without a trace

Letters to God by CarnivalMirai [words: 4,698] — (Season 3+)

Will writes letters to Hannibal every day after his incarceration. But they never make it.

Blankets, Coffee Cups, and Christmas Morning by sourweather [words: 6,352] — (Season 3+)

Hannibal wants to enjoy the domesticity. The love, the closeness, the being Known. But something about his life with Will makes him want to lash out.

All These Fictionary Tales by ProxyOne [words: 18,492] — (Season 3+)

After the fall, Hannibal is presumed dead. Will has been declared dead. But Will isn't willing to believe that Hannibal would just abandon him like that 

Seduction by BloodunderMoonlight [words: 7,086] — (Season 3+)

“For fuck’s sake, Hannibal.” Will glared at him, brimming with wrath he had only seen behind Will’s gun. He had no doubt Will would draw out a knife from beneath the duvet or pillows, but clearly words were enough to make him gobsmacked—“Are you a fucking virgin or monk? If all these can’t get you to bed then I don’t know what can.” Hannibal stood gaping at Will.

Blood, Cedar and Dog Hair by sourweather [words: 3,351] — (Season 3+)

Something terrible happens while Hannibal is in prison. Something he never prepared for.

Hidden Potential by sourweather [words: 20,789] — (Soulmates)

The first time you make eye contact with your soul mate, you see a vision of their greatest accomplishment. They call it your Peak. Unfortunately for Will Graham, his soul mate's Peak is a vision of blood and horror. Fortunately for Hannibal Lecter, his soul mate's is too.

Karoliai by slashyrogue [words: 4,577] — (Sugar Daddy)

Will works at a jewelry store. He has worked there for three months and sold less than any other person there. His boss tells him to sell something by the end of the day or he may not have a job tomorrow. If there was one thing Will hated more than having to talk people into buying jewelry they didn’t need, it was trying to do it two days before Valentine’s Day.

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