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myseungsunglove · 7 months

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Love without words | Ksm

Pairing: Seungmin x Reader

Warnings: angst, smut, fluff (specific warnings under the cut)

Word Count: 2.6k

𖠫Summary: There is nothing quite like a night with Seungmin to erase all need for words between you.

✎A/N✎: I hadn’t really intended to pair this concept with Seungmin’s accident, but it seemed a good entry into a more intimate moment. There isn’t really any talk or speculation about the accident itself, just the minor aftermath of emotions that lead to the reader comforting Seungmin on his birthday. Just a soft series of moments that lead to a healing experience for both of them. Please understand this in no way reflects any actual events, obviously. Just felt like I needed to mention that in case anyone gets any ideas.

This is probably one of my favorite pieces I have ever written. So I really hope you guys enjoy it.

◠ ◡ ◠᭚ιαᵕ̈

「© October 13, 2023 by mysweethannie」

✘MDNI✘

smut warnings: unprotected sex, soft & intimate

Generally speaking, you aren’t a particularly loud person. So it came as no surprise to Seungmin that when you reach high levels of pleasure with him, all words escape you. You aren’t really one to scream out in ecstasy either. Instead, it’s like someone has stolen away your ability to utter a sound. You are reduced to breathy sighs and airy whispers that vaguely sound like Seungmin’s name. Not to say that Seungmin can’t make you vocal, but during the more intimate moments and less dominating encounters, quiet passion is your default. Your mind, body, and soul seem to melt into Seungmin. You feel as though you quite literally become one. Every touch and movement of your bodies, no matter how big or small, are all you need to express your deepest feelings for each other.

Seungmin is much like you in that regard. He isn’t all that vocal during your most intimate moments either. The two of you are so much alike in some ways it seems unreal at times. In matters of the bedroom, the two of you are generally much more quiet than a “normal” couple which makes for some really intense moments shared between you.

Tonight is going to be one of those nights.

It is Seungmin’s birthday. He was recently in a minor accident that left him with muscle soreness and a few scrapes and bruises, but no major injuries. Even without major injuries, doctors insisted that he cancel his schedule for the upcoming week and rest to practice the utmost precaution. This means no New York and no birthday celebration with STAYs. You had planned an elaborate evening in New York to celebrate his birthday outside of his schedule for the festival. To say that he was disappointed to be sidelined for his birthday weekend would be a major understatement.

“You could have gone with them,” he laments, his voice low and pouty as he stares out the window. It is a gloomy, rainy day which fits the somber mood. Seungmin is tucked into himself on the couch, his knees up close to his chest, a soft wool blanket draped over his legs, bundled up in an oversized navy blue hoodie and clasping a cup of tea with both hands.

“Seung,” you sigh from your place in the kitchen, as you clean up the birthday breakfast you surprised him with. “I wouldn’t have left you on your birthday, no matter how much you insist that you’re okay,” you say, wiping your hands with a dish towel and folding it back properly to lay it over the handle of the oven door. You turn and face him to see he is still looking out the window.

“You may be physically okay,” you hedge, your face revealing you aren’t entirely sure of that statement. He had slept nearly 15 hours the night after the accident and that was after he had slept most of the day that followed the accident as well. So despite his insistence that he was fine, his body seemed to have a different opinion than his brain.

You reach out and grab his chin, slowly turning his gaze up to you.

“But I know you are devastated that you aren’t in New York,” you tell him, your words soft and your eyes caring as you meet his gaze.

“Please don’t pity me, jagia,” he grumbles, trying to pull away from you, his jaw set in frustration, his eyes determined.

You step onto the couch then, your legs crossing in front of you as you sit down in front of Seungmin, one of his legs moving to dangle off the edge of the couch. This leaves room for you to lean into his space and grab both sides of his face with your small, delicate hands and slowly pull his lips to yours.

He groans softly against your mouth. It’s only when he grunts briefly, the sound a little different than usual, that you realize you have partially sat on his leg, which he had felt the most soreness in since the accident.

“Oh my god,” you gasp, pulling away from the kiss. “I’m so sorry, babe,” you say in panic as you move to scramble off of his leg. At some point, Seungmin had set down his tea and his hands were gripping your waist. He held you in place, not allowing you to get away from him. When you look at his face, his eyes are closed and he is gently shaking his head.

“Stay,” he breathes, and if you hadn’t seen his lips move, you may not have heard the next word. “Please.”

“Seungmin,” you whisper, your hands finding purchase in his black hair, your fingers dancing along the nape of his neck as your lips crash together once more. This kiss is more desperate and full of longing as he moves to hover over you, breaking the kiss momentarily as you fall onto the couch, your back resting against the soft cushions, Seungmin’s large hands still firmly planted on your hips, but slowly moving up your torso as he kisses you.

Once settled, he pulls away and looks into your eyes, his walnut colored boba eyes round and dark with desire.

“Happy Birthday, Seungie,” you smile up at him, grasping the bottom of your shirt and pulling it over your head, to reveal your bare chest to him. Without a word, he scrambles off the couch, grabbing your hand and pulling you to a standing position. You don’t have to ask where you are going as he drags you out of the living room.

He leads you down the hallway and into your shared bedroom. Once you cross the threshold of the room, he pulls you ahead of him and guides you to the foot of the bed. The back of your knees hit the mattress at the same moment Seungmin’s lips find yours again, his tongue tangling with yours, eliciting a soft sigh that is expressed more through the rise and fall of your chest than an audible sound.

You grapple with the hem of his hoodie, pulling it and the t-shirt beneath it over his head as he lifts his arms with a small groan, your lips forced to part from his momentarily.

You kiss him quickly and then bend over to rid yourself of your shorts. As you stand, your eyes meet his and he blinks slowly, his eyes roving your body like it is the first time he has ever seen you naked. His pale, broad chest rises slightly with a sigh, his tongue darting out between his lips as he drinks you in.

You move then, crawling onto the bed and coming to rest on the mountain of pillows piled against the headboard, resting on your elbows as you watch him. Seungmin sheds his sweatpants and crawls onto the bed to join you, his body coming to rest on top of yours. He fits perfectly between your legs.

You cradle his face again, looking into his eyes. He holds your gaze long enough for you to know that no words are needed. He needs comfort and right now you need him. You will give him anything in the world to take away the sadness in his eyes. He bends down to kiss you slowly, your chests pressed together and he can’t help but cant his hips against yours as your tongue slips into his mouth, tasting every corner it touches.

Your hands wrap around to the back of his head, your fingers dancing along the now longer strands of hair that are there. His lips leave yours and start a trail along your jaw and down your neck as his now fully hard cock slides through your wet folds. Your hips buck up to meet his movements, your mouth hanging open as you breathe heavily, a reaction to the movement of his lips and hips.

Just when you think you can’t take his teasing anymore, Seungmin retreats from his attention to your neck and grabs his dick in hand, lining it up with your entrance. His eyes watch intently as the thick head of his cock breeches you, your body arching in response, a desperate attempt to draw him deeper into you.

He leans into you, getting the hint that comes without words that you need him. His lips meet yours as he pushes all the way into you, the sweet stretch of his long, hard member pulling a quiet, desperate sigh from your lungs, the smallest hint of a moan present but barely perceptible as his hips finally meet your pelvis. He doesn’t move for what feels like minutes as he kisses you, long and hard, his tongue exploring every inch of your mouth.

It’s not until you bite his bottom lip at the same moment that your hips buck into his, that he realizes he hasn’t moved. He slowly pulls out of you and slides back in with ease, your body following the rhythm he sets. You move slowly like that for a time, the tip of his cock reaching that spongey pleasure spot inside of you as you wrap your legs around his waist to pull him impossibly closer to you.

His hands drift up from your waist and fully encompass your breast as he leans back and pulls his hips away from yours and quickly snaps them back. You can feel his heavy balls slapping against your ass as his movements quicken.

Wanting to take care of Seungmin, you press your hands against his chest that is now glistening with sweat, and push him back so that your positions are switched. He slips out of you, but you are quick to scramble back on top of him, grabbing his cock and lining it back up with you and sliding down onto it, until he is fully inside you once more. Your hands rest on his chest as you take a deep breath. Seungmin’s long fingers are digging into your thighs, his eyes shut tight, his lips closed tightly as he forces himself to breathe through his nose.

You move then, your hips rocking against his, your clit rubbing against his pelvis as his cock moves against your walls. His hands dance up your sides, sending shivers down your spine and causing goosebumps to break out across your skin. You’re hot and cold all at the same time. Both of his large hands grasp your breasts and you lay your small hands on top of his, encouraging his movements as your fingers interlace with his, kneading your soft, ample breasts together.

“Y/n,” Seungmin whispers.

The sensation of his hands on your body and the whisper of your name on his lips causes you to be filled with need. You begin bouncing on his cock, the smack of skin the only sound to be heard in the otherwise quiet room. If you listen closely, you can hear the rain pelting against the window outside.

You feel that familiar coil start to tighten in your gut, your movements becoming more desperate and you clench hard around Seungmin’s cock as you chase your high. No words are necessary for him to understand that you are close so he sits up, his arms sliding around your waist and up your back, pressing your chests firmly together as you ride him fast and hard.

He kisses you fiercely and lifts you at the same moment, your back once again on the bed as he moves relentlessly inside you. Suddenly you aren’t the only one chasing that sweet release.

His hips meet yours with punctuated precision, the need to feel even closer to you growing by the second.

“Seungmin,” you whisper, the quiet signal that you’re close to letting go.

His eyes meet yours and his hips slow, languid and purposeful as he dips down to connect his lips to yours. His tongue slides against yours and that is all it takes for you to explode around him, your walls fluttering frantically and your legs spasming uncontrollably. A small gasp escapes you, your head falling against the pillow, your mouth hung open in a silent cry of pleasure. Seungmin works you through your release, watching you intently as you gasp for air. As your walls’ euphoric contractions dissipate, Seungmin finds his release, burying his face in the dip of your neck, his teeth nipping lightly as he spills into you.

This action prolongs your dissipating orgasim, your hands finding purchase in Seungmin’s soft locks as your bodies quake together.

Seungmin slumps against you, spent. The energy of your releases now gone, your chests both heave against each other, your heavy breathing the only sound to be heard for several long minutes.

As your heart rates slow, Seungmin’s lip travel along the column of your neck and up along your chin. You moan weakly at his feather light kisses before his lips find their home against yours. You smile against his mouth as you hold his face to yours.

“I love you so damn much,” he mumbles against your lips. He slips out of you slowly, earning a whine from you at both the loss of contact and the loss of him. You reach out to him with grabby hands, beckoning him to return to you.

He smiles at you fondly, chuckling quietly. He reaches out and grabs one of your hands, pulling you up and to the edge of the bed.

“Shower first, then cuddle.”

You spring into action and move together to the bathroom to clean up. You're hot and sticky with sweat, so a shower is a pretty wise decision.

With the goal of cuddling in mind, it doesn’t take long to clean up, eager to climb back in bed with Seungmin.

After you dry off, you drop the soft towel and lift the comforter crawling underneath its warmth, closing it quickly and snuggling in. Seungmin takes your towels into the bathroom to hang, and returns naked, a soft sigh leaving your body at the magnificent sight of him. He too lifts the comforter, climbing in after you, his arms wrapping around your waist and pulling your back in close against his body.

“I love you, you know,” you say, turning your face so that you can see his eyes.

“I know,” he says with a slow blink and a small smile.

You turn in his arms and kiss him slowly.

“Happy Birthday, Seungie,” you whisper against his lips. “There is nowhere I’d rather be than here with you.”

He hugs you tighter and kisses your temple softly.

“Me too, love.”

He snuggles into you and you both fall asleep this way, thoughts of the accident and the New York trip the farthest things from your love drunk minds.

It doesn’t matter where you are with Kim Seungmin, as long as you are together, all you’ll ever need is him.

#stray kids #stray kids x reader #kim seungmin #seungmin x reader #seungmin #kim seungmin x reader #Kim seungmin smut #seungmin smut #seungmin angst #kim seungmin fluff #seungmin fluff #skz x reader #skz smut

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amoxxii · 24 days

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"Pernicious Present" Pt.2

Feyd Rautha x Suk Doctor! Reader

Summary: The greatest gift from Emperor Shaddam to House Harkonnen is a ticking time bomb wrapped neatly in a ribbon.

part 1 Warning: Death, Blood, Torture

(I've never read Dune. This is written based purely on the movie and a quick search. + I'm no medical expert, so any fancy doctor talk is just for character portrayal. Enjoy!)

"Out." Feyd barked, bringing you back to the present. You grin as you bow, ready to leave the room. A hand flashes out to grab the back of your collar. "Not so fast," Feyd snarls. "You haven't done your part yet, doctor." You turn back, a wry smile playing on your lips. "I almost have one less shift," you quip. The room is now empty except for the two of you. His eyes fixate on you as you lay out your medical supplies. "I understand that you want to test the blade on real flesh," you break the silence. "But don't you think that's a bit excessive?" you inquire. Just before you can blink, a dagger appears by your nape. "If you feel so sorry for them," he whispers, "why don't you just offer your neck for me to slice? So that I can spare those lives instead?"

You stifle your laugh. "Oh, I didn't mean to act virtuous," you try to back away from the dagger, but a firm hand keeps you in place. "I was simply questioning your lack of concern for resource limitations," you respond. The muscle of his brow quirks to a questioning look. He looks so cute, like a lost puppy. A ridiculous thought pops up, ignoring the fact that he's millimeters away from cutting your tissue. "Elaborate," Feyd orders. "The amount of resources needed to feed these servants till they reach the working age is staggering," you explain. He lowers his hands, bringing his dagger back into the shadow of his pocket. And… a war is likely brewing soon," you continue. A glint of metal flashed past your peripheral vision. "How did you-" Feyd retorts. "Oh, I see," he comes to terms. "Uncle sure is fond of his pet, huh?" Feyd smirks. "I wonder what is so special about you," he says as he brings up a scalpel to his lips, taking a quick lap to clear the bloodstain off. The scalpel, far sharper than anything he has used before, snicks with a horrifying ease as it slices through the soft flesh of his tongue. Your blood, a bright crimson, mixes with the welling burgundy from his wound, painting a grotesque picture on the polished metal. A flicker of surprise crosses his features for a split second, but it's quickly replaced by a twisted smile. Instead of recoiling in pain, Feyd leans into the sensation. A low guttural sound escapes his throat, a sound that could be interpreted as a growl of pleasure or perhaps a dark chuckle, sends a jolt through you. Your eyes widen at the sight. A surge of heat floods your core, a traitorous response. When did he take my scalpel?! He snickers at your expression. Blood trickles out of your neck. You assess your situation. It hasn't reached the External jugular vein yet. Platysma muscle? Maybe…The injury was superficial, a brush against something worse. You regain composure as your hand quickly finds a gauze to stop your blood, his dark eyes never leaving your neck. "Give me back my tool," you snide. "Make me," he breathes out, his voice raspy.

(to my understanding, if you get External jugular vein cut then it's serious medical emergency. But if you get the Platysma muscle cut it's not life-threatening) @beebeechaos @mamawiggers1980 @avidreader73

#dune part 2 #dune part two #feyd rautha #feyd x reader #feyd x you #feyd rautha harkonnen #feyd rautha x reader #dune fanfiction #dune x reader #dune x you

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starry-hughes · 1 year

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question pressure

nico hischier x reader

summary: nico feels like everyone is mistaking you for his wife and thinks it is finally time to ask you the question

requested: yes!

Since Nico’s rookie year, you had been together. He met you in the city, trying to find some grocery store he was told about, and collided with you. Nico’s a hockey player. Bumping into him sent you stumbling to the ground. He felt bad, but his worry eased up as he was met with laughter as he offered you a hand.

You were moving in with him at the beginning of his sophomore season. Summers were always lonely without him, especially in the early parts of your relationship. It was also harder when he went back to Switzerland to complete his military service. The two of you overcame small hiccups like those and even bigger hiccups like injuries and a pandemic. However, you stuck it out with him. You began traveling with him for parts of the summer and making road trips work by facetime calls and texts.

When Nico was named the next captain in Devils history, you were ecstatic. You wouldn’t say you were expecting a wedding ring or anything, but you thought for a split second he would ask. His first year as captain came and went, and there was still no wedding ring. Being together since early 2018, you would have expected it. You tried not to dwell too much on it, though, wanting to let Nico decide when the best time was.

The Devils were playing pretty well so far. You couldn’t have been happier. Nico was happy and attempting not to be too upset when eventual losses came. He was also happy with you, discussing moving out of the apartment and into a house. The idea of getting a dog was floating around, and Nico was getting baby fever pretty often.

It was an interview when something happened first. After a win against Florida, Nico, with a goal in the game, was interviewed. “We saw you make a little celly stop at your wife, who was sitting on the glass, is she excited about how your season has progressed?”

Nico froze for a second at the idea of someone mistaking you as his wife. “Oh yeah, my girlfriend is pretty excited. She loves watching me and the team make it so far this season,” Nico corrected softly. It was hard to watch the interview and not cringe at the panic in Nico’s eyes when someone referred to you as his wife. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to be with you and have you as his wife. It was more panic from Nico realizing that he had probably been putting off proposing for too long; assumptions were being taken about his marital status.

The interview gained him a few chirps in the locker room for the next couple of days. Nico apologized to you, but you swiftly told him not to worry. It was an honest mistake from the interviewer.

Nico sat at a small lunch restaurant near the training facility with Jack, Dawson, and Dougie. Their waitress mentioned that the restaurant would be closed for a day next week since they were catering a wedding. “So, when are you going to ask?” Dougie questioned, eyes pointed toward Nico. “Ask what?” Nico’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. “An interviewer referred to your long-term girlfriend as your wife, and you have brought up the idea of moving into a house with (Y/N). Shouldn’t you be asking a certain question soon?” Dougie elaborated.

He shrugged, trying not to bring more attention to himself from the group. “Does it feel too early to ask?” Nico pondered aloud, eliciting a groan from Jack and Dawson. “Just ask her! What if she gets annoyed and leaves you?” Jack planted that fear into Nico’s head.

It happened again. Someone referred to you as Nico’s wife instead of a girlfriend. You’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel awkward. You and Nico had dinner reservations at a nice restaurant. Nico felt like he owed you a nice dinner since he had been away so often this month. “Mr. Hischier, you and your wife can follow me to your table,” the host smiled sweetly. “Oh, just girlfriend,” you corrected with a soft, kind smile on your face. Nico’s hand gripped yours a little tighter at that moment as a small pang of guilt flooded into his body.

A few weeks after that, you received a wedding invitation in the mail from your distant cousin. Nico had caught you looking at the invitation a little too long. He couldn’t tell if you were upset or jealous. “Weddings are always fun,” you mumbled to Nico as you marked yes on the RSVP for your and Nico’s attendance.

Nico practically hunted down his new teammate at practice the next week, finding Curtis Lazar lacing up his skates in the dressing room. “I need you and your wife to go ring shopping with me.”

His pocket had never felt heavier than when he was walking into your shared apartment with the ring box. It felt like the small black velvet box was weighing his pocket down. Nerves dripping off his body were soon gone, seeing you curled up on the couch in his t-shirt. “Hi babe, I printed out some more papers about houses that we should go look at!” you said, happy to see your boyfriend home. He smiled, leaning down to kiss your head. “I’ll look at them after I shower.”

Nico shoved the ring box into his nightstand, praying you wouldn’t find it. The rest of the night was normal. You two cooked dinner, watched a movie, brushed your teeth, and snuggled into bed. Your head rested on Nico’s chest, and his arm wrapped around you as the two of you shared small talk. Nico felt a smile on his face as you discussed how you would want to set up the house the two of you were planning to move into.

“Marry me.”

You sat up quickly, looking down at your boyfriend, “What?”

Nico sat up as well, his hands shaking as he grabbed the ring box from his nightstand. “Marry me.” You panicked, “You’re not doing this because you feel pressured, right? I don’t mind correcting people, and if they guys are teasing you, you should just ignore them, and-” Nico cut off your rambling with a kiss. “Marry me,” Nico mumbled against your lips.

Pulling away from Nico, you nodded once before nodding faster. “I didn’t know when or how to ask you, but hearing you talk about our future house just made me think I should ask now. Plus, I might have waited too long to ask, don't want you getting annoyed,” Nico explained as he opened the ring box, took the ring out, and slid it onto your finger, trying to calm down your shaking hands.

With a new piece of jewelry on your finger, Nico and you fell asleep as he mumbled how much he loved you.

#nico hischier #nico hischier imagine #nj devils imagine #nhl imagine #nico hischier x reader #nico hischier fic #hockey imagine #hockey fic #nico hischier blurb

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ninapi · 8 months

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°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。°。

- ̥۪͙۪˚┊❛ Re:Born ❜┊˚ ̥۪͙۪◌

Premise: In a world dominated by androids, the few remaining humans had to fight for survival. Your boyfriend Suguru, wanted to destroy them all and regain supremacy of the lost world, yet things don't always go as planned. A love once lost, solidifies. An opportunity to go back into the arms of a man that has always loved you since the beginning of time.

Word Count: 4024

Note: This is a romance Sci-fi AU, a bit different to what I normally write lol, but hope you like it anyways! It will be a two part story~

Chapter 1: The lost world

Life has changed a lot during the last couple hundred years, after the great war, human nature ended up destroying itself as it commonly does.

Science had been developing at a faster rate when more and more weapons were needed, androids becoming the new soldiers as humans kept dying like swamp rats, one after the other.

Androids were strong, they could be fixed, modified, artificial intelligence was at its peak and adding it to the ‘robot soldiers’ as they were called, was just the easiest call, you didn’t need to program them if they could think for themselves, if they could fix themselves, if they could make their own decisions and save humanity.

At first, it was a great idea, it gave humanity a chance to survive, though the damage had been done. Majority of men died in the intense battles scattered throughout the globe and all there was left were women and children, safe for the injured men with severe trauma and injuries.

And so, humanity couldn’t come back from that.

Giving artificial intelligence to soldiers was far from a great idea, it gave power to those better than men, to those stronger than men, and now that they didn’t need humans for their own preservation, they weren’t needed anymore.

The great war had evolved once more and instead of humans hunting their equals, now they were being hunted by their own creations.

Not many could survive the purge and those who could were caught and gathered in factories to elaborate new parts for their now masters. Of course, as soon as they learned how to make them themselves, the rest of human population was eradicated completely in what is now called ‘Doom day’, also known as ‘Liberation day’ the only holiday celebrated now a days after the creation of the new nation.

No countries were needed anymore, they were one mass now, all helped each other, no need for wars anymore, a perfect functioning society, an elite one at that, yet, humans were not part of said of world.

Some managed to escape before the explosion, mostly children, and those are the only ones who remained, camps with survivors were rarely found and if found by the wrong source, they were annihilated in the spot, though, some of the elite of the old world, those with money and connections managed to save themselves and their offspring, in hopes of returning one day to their rightful place.

══✿══╡°˖✧✿✧˖°╞══✿══

R001-59 was a prototype created to document the past. It was an unnecessary thing to do, majority of them thought, though, you can learn from the past, avoid making the same mistakes, maintain order by following old rules and modifying those that didn’t work as intended.

Recording history was his task, sharing details with those in need of information, his occupation.

Though this android was one of a kind, having to be so immersed in human culture, he developed some sort of interest, an obsession even, with the processing of emotions and why androids weren’t able to feel them.

The leaders said emotions were not necessary, they brought chaos, and that’s what got them eradicated from this planet. But to R001-59, humans were fascinating.

He would spend his time off browsing the data base for old movies and series, things that could get him to understand better the nature of the thing called love, the one called pain and those strange things called hormones.

They were all such fascinating concepts, and even if the theory was there, understanding something you can’t experience isn’t always as satisfying as others are.

There were records about an artifact found on a district far north, in a place desolated, only trash would go there, the living pods and buildings were far away in places where war hadn’t destroyed the beauty of nature and those that they managed to fix over time, but the northern peninsula was designated as a giant trash bin, all the toxic wastes were dumped there, all the broken parts would be left there to rust if they weren’t able to refurbish them.

But this artifact was used to clean teeth, according to the records.

And androids don’t have teeth.

That meant that in that desolated plain of destruction, there was a slim chance of finding a human camp.

Keeping this information to himself would certainly be considered treason. Could get him dismantled and discontinued for this, but curiosity was embedded in his chip, he was made this way in order to promote finding information needed for the community, it couldn’t be helped, if having a dream was possible for an android, his dream was to meet a human, at least once, so it wasn’t surprising to see him hiding in the shadows of tall buildings and crawling in the sewers until the desired destination was reached.

The camp was indeed there, as far as possible from the toxic river, past the mountains of scraps, hidden inside of a mountain range carved from the inside and turned into living quarters. It was unbelievable, all his years of research were proving useful as he was able to open locks, sneak inside the complex and even gave him time to analyze discarded cans of beverages, the drops of the content’s chemical construction not even registered in any database, amazing.

“Who’s there?” a shaky breath could be heard behind the android, a flashlight shining under its feet.

“My name is R001-59, human. Is a pleasure to meet you, please don’t let my presence cause you any sort of distress, I mean no harm.” the terrified look in your eyes made him continue with his reassuring speech, “I was designed to storage human culture, behaviors and past in a data base, always wanted to meet one alive. That’s how I ended up here, after many years searching for your species. I wouldn’t do anything that could harm you.”

You still looked scared, shocked even. How was it possible for a droid to get through the mine field and all the booby traps in place, they were designed to fool androids, only humans could figure them out, that was a fact tested by the previous generation.

“Human woman, what is it that you’re called? I would like to record my findings. Also, what is this dark liquid in this container? I’m intrigued by its content, never seen anything like it before.” that’s all it took to break through your barrier, making you giggle at his question, “It’s called coffee. And I’m (Y/N). I don’t think you’ll be welcomed here, buddy. You’re lucky I’m the one that found you and not Yaga.”

The android waddled to your side, leaving the can of coffee behind, a steel cold hand now holding your face up for inspection. “Why do you have hair on your eyes? I always wondered about that. Your eye hair is also very pretty, didn’t know that was possible, I thought they were all the same.”

“They’re called eyelashes, and thank you, I guess. They are supposed to stop dust and things from getting in your eyes.” you could see lights blinking in his eyes as he inputted the gained information into his data base, your face was fascinating. “How about top eye hair? What’s that for?”

“You mean the eyebrows? Honestly, I always wondered about that too, I guess they’re an extra layer of security for the eyes. Eyes are very delicate they need to be well protected. Though, if you ask me, we would all look better without them.” your light chuckles made his lights turn pink, this was an unknown reaction, his manual didn’t say anything about pink being an option.

Though the pretty lights got your attention, “So blue means recording information, right? What about pink? What does that mean?” it was only fair to share information with you, you were kind enough to reply to all his questions yourself.

“Correct. Blue means recording, green means searching, red means dead battery. Pink has never shown up before.” green intermittent sparkles followed after your question. So there were things not even androids knew about themselves, interesting, they weren’t as different from humans as you had thought.

“(Y/N)? Sweetling why are you here this late?” Gojo Satoru, your childhood friend, could be seen coming from his room, a look of anger taking over his handsome features as his blue eyes darted on the metal scrap by your side.

“What the fuck? How did that get in here? Get away from her immediately if you want to function ever again.” his booming voice alerted the android, stepping away from you as a sign of understanding.

“Satoru, don’t. He hasn’t done anything to me, he’s just a curious android who seems to know more about humanity than we do.” you would never be on their side, they killed your mother, your own boyfriend was now on a surgical table because of them, why were you this calm?

“Must I remind you Suguru is pretty much dead because of them now???” losing his best friend was still a touchy subject for him, it was a recent happening and one that must be fixed with urgency.

“Suguru himself is the only reason he is the way he is right now. Of course it hurts, but it’s not this android’s fault. He is just curious, wants to know about us, has questions about coffee and eyelashes, not about traps and weapons. If he wanted to hurt me, I would be dead already.” R001-59 has never been defended in his entire life, the rest always mocked him for his obsession with the human pest, but seems like the records were accurate, there were different types of humans, you were in the kind and lovable bunch, it appears like.

“They’re dangerous, (Y/N) and why are you calling it a he? It’s a machine, not a man, don’t forget that.”

“Are you jealous of an android, Satoru?” your teasing tone of voice made him blush and stutter, coming closer to look at the uninvited guest closer. “S-shut up. So what do you want here, metal pile?”

“My name is R001-59, It’s a pleasure to meet you. I came here to study real life humans as part of my task of recording human nature, culture and past. Can I ask why are your eyes this colorful? They seem different.”

“What? My eyes? Ugh, I don’t know, man. They’re like this for everyone in my clan.”

“Oh, so that’s what inherited traits mean. I see. I didn’t know eyes could be this beautiful, they look like what is called ‘a galaxy’, even if I haven’t seen one either, but reference says that’s what it should look like.” his blushing just intensified, what a wild experience.

“See? He’s a good boy, aren’t you buddy.” you were petting his head lovingly, amused by Satoru’s reaction.

“It’s not a dog, (Y/N).”

“I know he’s not a dog, but he’s so cute. Can we keep him?” the conversation felt too intimate somehow, even if you were his best friend’s girlfriend, he’s always had a crush on you since you were both young children playing in the toxic pits.

“Well that depends, are you asking me as your future husband, wanting to raise a baby puppy droid? Because if that’s the case I might consider it to make my lovely wife happy.” you couldn’t avoid chuckling at his antics, it’s always been this way, flirting with you was his second nature.

“Are human couples always this tender with each other? In the material I’ve gathered they always seemed to be rough with each other, angry and in the middle of fights.” you were right, this android was cute.

“We aren’t a human couple. Just friends.” your rosy cheeks were a bit misleading, confusing the android.

“In my database, friends pull pranks on each other and be there for you when you cry. I didn’t know flirting was in constitution of such term as well, I’ve learned so much already and I’ve been here for such a short time. This is beyond amazing.” his definition wasn’t wrong, you’ve always known things with Satoru weren’t quite normal, but Suguru was always there to keep him at bay.

“Buddy, come into my room, Yaga should be doing his rounds around the premise soon, he’ll kill you on the spot if he sees you.” you were holding his hand gently, bringing him over to your quarters, followed by an irritated Satoru.

This would get messy.

══✿══╡°˖✧✿✧˖°╞══✿══

Suguru and you have been a thing for years, since your sixteenth birthday to be exact.

Before that date, everyone thought you and Satoru would end up together.

He, being the heir to the most powerful clan of the whole compound, was the only one allowed to do whatever he wanted, even if the remaining activists from the other generation opposed to his reckless behavior quite often.

But Suguru’s kind hearted nature won you over.

He was always the sweetest friend there is, and even sweeter as a boyfriend. Always caring, making you nice things out of scraps, always there to hold you throughout the uncertainty of the world you lived in.

But things started going south when the attack on the east compound hit.

They were your neighboring human camp, and weren’t as prepared as you were. Unlike you, you had Yaga who was always on top of the max security of the place, older than you, the first child born out of the previous generation, always leading the youngsters around, always invested in adding extra layers of security to your quarters. They on the other hand had an elderly leader, he was awful beyond words, not at all willing to invest in their security. Kids would constantly run away from his tyrant ruling, having them killed within hours by the droid army.

Suguru would travel there from time to time to share rations with the youngsters, that’s when he realized all the young children were missing.

They were found by some of the ‘cult droids,’ as you call them, worse than the army, those who had deficient chips and loved to hurt humans, they had a strange belief system almost like a religion of their own. The children were kept in cages for their amusement, and they would kill them once per day in the most awful of ways.

Suguru’s gentle nature ended up being his demise.

He tracked them down and ended up dismantling every single one of the droids enjoying such a horrid entertainment.

After returning the children to their parents, he went back home, only to realize something was wrong with him.

In the process of destroying the evil machines, one of them had implanted something behind his ear. He felt the pinch but was preoccupied trying not to get killed and finish the others, he didn’t really think anything of it.

Yet, he ended up collapsing not long after arriving back home. His other wounds were nothing to worry about, but he wasn’t responding, as if he had been turned off. His vitals kept going down as time went by and it was said you should be prepared for his last breath to come any time soon.

Your father was the only trained physician in the facilities. You came from an elite family of doctors, that’s why they were spared and saved from the world’s end. And even if he was quite fond of head trauma, they just didn’t have the tools to look into his brain properly and see what the problem actually was.

He was just not responding, something was interfering with the brain’s proper functioning, but opening him up like that would end up killing him.

“R-chan, do you perhaps have any medicine knowledge?” it was worth trying. He’s been staying with you for weeks now and it’s been quite the task to keep him away from wondering around or others finding him, he was like a toddler, everything amazed him and was difficult to contain, without Satoru it would have been impossible to achieve.

“I do, what seems to be the issue? Are you unwell?” lasers scanned you from head to toe, causing you to giggle at his concern, he was adorable, pretty much part of your family already.

“Not really, I’m fine, don’t worry. Is just…well I’m sure you’ve heard from Satoru that my boyfriend is ill, we don’t know what’s wrong with him, just know something is wrong with his brain, I was wondering if your database had some information we didn’t in the subject…” his searching lights turned on, a little paper printing out from his behind, startling you. That was a new function you didn’t know existed.

“I printed the major causes of brain damage for you to see. Though, I could also scan him and see what the cause is.” getting him to Suguru would be a difficult task, but maybe he could be saved by it, you had to try it his signs had been debilitating further this past week.

Taking him to the doctor’s facilities was complex, you even had to involve young Megumi and Yuuji, even your old friend Nanami helped creating diversions for you to sneak out without others finding what was going on.

Your father was scandalized by the fact that you had been keeping a droid in your room, one did kill your pregnant mother, the love of his life, resentment towards his kind was out of this world, yet you seemed to think fondly of this one, if he could help save Suguru, he would have to suck it up just this once.

Scanning him brought more than one answer, none of them pretty.

The device placed within him by the other droid was slowly turning off his brain, its electromagnetic waves and their damage was irreversible, the only way to stop them from killing him would be removing his brain, or part of it at least, but that was clearly not a viable option.

In the middle of the second scanning however, a bright red light began to shine, coming from your friend, paralyzing his work.

“R-chan…red means battery, I remember that. How do we charge you? Do you have like a plug or something?” your hands kept running through every single port on his body, looking for anything that looked like a charging cable, but your friend didn’t reply right away, worrying you.

“R-chan…?”

“We don’t use plugs to charge, but pods. We must go into our sleeping pod and charge for days when red turns on.”

“Your sleeping pod…is that not in your house…?” he just nodded, silence following your question.

“R-chan…how long does it take to get to your house from here…?”

“It took me two months…”

“And how long will your battery last when it starts glowing red…” tears were running down your face, your hands reaching for one of his.

“About eleven hours…” your knees gave in, collapsing onto the cold tiles of the surgical room. He’s become such an important part of your life, the only light you had in it since the demise of your boyfriend, it even strengthened your lost bond with Satoru, something you wanted to do for the longest time but wasn’t to Suguru’s liking.

“Pumpkin get up, you’re gonna catch a cold.” Satoru’s gentle embrace pulled you back together, your face burying onto his chest, sobbing uncontrollably, one of his hands rubbing your back with affection, feeling just as devastated as you were, the droid did become one of you, losing him would be like losing another friend.

“Father, do we have a way of charging him?”

“We do not, dear. They require very high end technology; we don’t have such a powerful source here…”

“But he…he’s going to die if we don’t do something!” you looked into Satoru’s beautiful eyes looking for an answer in them, like they were some sort of database. He just rested his forehead on yours, heaving a deep sigh and closing his eyes, “I don’t know how to help him, baby girl. I’m not some crazy scientist…” it broke his heart to pieces seeing you so desperate, he wished he could do something, not just for you but for his wired friend as well.

“There’s something you could do. It could save your friend, but it has only a 10% of a success rate according to the simulation I just ran.”

Your father intervened, it was a goal of his to bring Suguru back, he was a very important asset in the community and the one promised to his daughter for the continuation of the species, even if another strong candidate had comeback from the dark. “What is it? Give me the details.”

“If you replace the damaged part of his brain with mine, it would make him a cyborg but if programed successfully, it would save his life. His memories would also stay with him as that part of his brain still remains intact.”

“But that would wipe you out, R-chan…”

“Not entirely. He would have everything stored in my current database, though, he wouldn’t be able to use my search features, meaning he wouldn’t be able to learn anything new.” that didn’t sound like a bad deal, he was already a grown man, knew everything he needed to know by that age, plus would have a bunch of knowledge that could help your community to grow in the right direction. Suguru’s dream was to end the droid regime, that was entrusted by his parents and strengthened as time went by and the killings started. Having a droid within him didn’t sound like something he would like, but it could save him…

“Would he have your memories too then…?”

“(Y/N) there’s no time for sentimentalism. We must act now if we are to save any of them. Suguru’s blood pressure has been dropping at an alarming rate today and your friend here has less than half a day to make this work. If we are going to do it, we need to start right away.” This could get you to lose both of them at once, it was definitely not an ideal situation.

“Please don’t talk to her like that, doctor. I understand the circumstances, but your daughter is unwell right now…” Satoru gathered you in his arms, lifting you up gently and stopping in front of your friend. “I guess this is a goodbye, buddy. I really hope this works…” his words just made you cry even harder, not wanting to think of this as the last time you’d see each other.

“Just in case the 90% wins, I wanted to thank you both for letting me stay with you and share all your knowledge and love with me. I think I can understand better what love is thanks to you. I hope we get to see each other again soon.” without letting you answer, he started printing the information on how to preform such a difficult procedure for your father to begin to work, Satoru bringing you outside with him.

“It’s ok, love. Everything will be just fine…” he sat down outside the main doors to the operating room on the floor, bringing you to sit on his lap facing him. You stayed there for hours, falling asleep on his chest while the odds were at play.

══✿══╡°˖✧✿✧˖°╞══✿══

No one was sure if the surgery actually worked.

Suguru’s vitals had been getting better, but he hasn’t regained consciousness. The remaining parts of the droid were stashed away safely in case they were needed at a later time.

Living without your friend around brought darkness back into your life, but also brought Satoru even closer. He would now stay in your room at night, your nightmares wouldn’t stop hunting you and having him by your side helped you calm down afterwards. It became a norm for you to be together, it became normal to use pet names between the two of you, it became a routine of some sorts to wake up in his arms, to have him pressed against your back every night, to feel safe and even happy in his presence.

Things had changed quite a lot around the compound, just as Suguru’s fingers started moving in a separate cold room in the medicine ward.

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sweetrevxnge · 1 year

Text

Ghosts In The Snow

Chapter Four

Pairing: Vampire!Kylo Ren x Reader AU

Summary: Six long years had passed under the reign of the First Order. The bitter winters grew longer, and as they did, hope faded from the hearts of the citizens of Hosnian Prime. As a lieutenant in the Resistance cavalry, it was your duty to nurture that ember of hope. After a mission takes an unexpected turn, you are taken prisoner by a commander in the First Order, a mysterious man with an insatiable appetite—for violence, power, and you. In the coming days, you must keep the spark of your own hope alive from the dark confines of the Commander's castle.

Warnings: sexual content, violence, blood kink, gore, mentions/descriptions of injury and death

*concurrently being published on AO3 and Wattpad as well!

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Spotify Playlist

Word count: 3.3k

Chapter-specific CW: excessive drinking, vomiting

A/N: "oh he's kinda cute... HE'S A MURDERER! but he's kinda cute..." -y/n

───────── ❅ 🦇 ❅ ─────────

“You’ve barely touched your food, dear.” Commander Ren’s low voice pulled you from your trance as you poked at the lamb shank on your plate. A fitting entrée for tonight.

“I haven’t much of an appetite,” you muttered, setting the silver fork down beside your dish. You were almost catatonic, and despite your contempt for him, you felt betrayed. It was for that reason that you hadn’t so much as looked in his direction since sitting down, instead choosing to study the other guests in the dining hall—including the stormtroopers stationed at every exit. It was an impossible task—you knew that—but you’d sooner die trying than comply with this farce of a treaty.

A low laugh rumbled in Ren’s chest. “I have no stomach for lamb either; it’s far too tender for my liking. Perhaps you would prefer venison? Or roasted vegetables?”

“No, thank you. Just wine will do,” you said as you tipped your cup back and gulped down the remaining liquid. You imagined you would need many more if you were going to endure this evening.

“If you insist.” He pushed his chair back and lifted his hand, summoning one of the servants. A boy with short, tawny hair rushed over, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Yes sir?” he asked meekly, his eyes darting between yours and the Commander’s. Although he stood with his shoulders back and chin high, his age was obvious from the fat in his face and the pitch of his voice. Anger boiled beneath your skin.

“Fetch more wine for my bride,” Ren instructed, nodding at you as he spoke. “And for me, as well.”

“Of course, sir.” The boy’s fear rolled off of him as he turned on his heels and disappeared into what you assumed was the kitchens.

You narrowed your eyes. “Why am I not surprised that the First Order uses children as servants?”

“Only those whose families owe us a debt. No different from the New Republic’s operations,” he said calmly, tapping the empty cup in his hand.

You shook your head slightly and turned back to your plate. “That’s hardly justification for continuing to do so.”

His eyes followed you as you watched the rest of the guests dine. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, either lost in conversation or filling their plates with the assortment of meats, cheeses, and fruits set out on the table—all but one. Across from you sat a red-haired man, with hollow cheeks and a scowl twisting his features. Given his proximity to the Supreme Leader, you assumed he was another commanding officer.

Beside him was a woman, but unlike the other ladies in the hall dressed in elaborate gowns, she was wearing the same regalia as the men. You furrowed your brows. Was she…? No, she couldn’t be.

Ren leaned in close to your ear, his cold lips brushing your skin. “Captain Phasma of Parnassos, to answer your question.”

His breath sent a shiver down your spine. “Get out of my head,” you snapped, your knuckles white around the body of the cup in your hand.

“How else am I to make conversation with you?”

You scoffed, redirecting your attention to the servant returning with a pitcher of wine in either hand. It was clear by his unsteady footing that the weight of both of them was nearly too much for his small arms.

As he approached the table, you reached for one of the decanters to save his shaking arms. "Thank you," you said, mustering up a smile. Gods knew the poor boy needed some kindness.

“No need, my lady,” he replied quietly, pouring the rich liquid into your cup before reaching for the other pitcher. “Commander…”

Ren presented his empty cup and nodded for the boy to fill it. He obeyed, pouring the dark wine with trembling hands. For such an ordinary exchange, the boy was tense, utterly frightened. Not that you could necessarily blame him.

Once it was full, he set the pitcher down between your plates and quickly returned to his post along the wall. In the hopes of quickening the evening, you finished the cup in a few sips, reaching for the pitcher beside your plate.

A gloved hand seizing your wrist stopped you before you could. “Careful, dear. You might find that mine is a bit too strong for your taste.”

Part of you wanted to try his wine out of defiance, but the rational part of you heeded his warning. With an empty stomach, your wine would be more than enough as it was. You pulled your hand free and reached for the other pitcher. As you poured it, you allowed yourself to feel everything—the anger, the disappointment. How Leia had seemed to so easily forget you. But beneath it all, there was still the ember of hope, buried under the weight of your emotions. It needed to be protected, locked away in the recesses of your mind until you could ignite it once more—until you were free. Once the cup was full, you returned it to its locked box, stowing it away for another time.

“You can’t ignore me forever, you know,” Ren said, taking a sip from his cup.

“I can try,” you countered, doing the same.

He exhaled softly. “I’m sure you will.”

Over the rim of your cup, you could see the red-haired man looking at you, his green eyes locked onto you. You wondered how long he had been watching.

Covering your mouth with your napkin, you asked, “Who is that man next to the captain?”

“That would be General Armitage Hux of Arkanis.”

You hummed. It wasn’t difficult to imagine such a seemingly pompous general coming from a place like Arkanis. “Does he always look so sour?”

Ren scoffed. “Usually less so. He’s been openly displeased about our arrangement.”

“Perhaps he and I have more in common than I realized,” you murmured.

“I think you’d find yourself more outraged with his proposition—gods know the Supreme Leader was,” he said with a light laugh, running a hand through his dark hair.

You cocked an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

He mimicked you, raising his eyebrow in surprise. “Unless you would prefer to be wed to a bastard son.”

“I hardly see how that could be any worse.”

A hand resting on your shoulder immediately pulled you from the conversation. You recoiled, half-expecting it to be General Hux, slinking across the room while you were distracted. You couldn’t have been more wrong.

“My sweeting, it is so lovely to finally meet you,” Supreme Leader Snoke said with an unnerving smile. His touch was cold—even through the fabric of your dress. It felt unnatural, as if he had been trapped in a winter storm for a week.

“Supreme Leader,” you replied, forcing down the bitter taste in your mouth. “What a pleasure.”

It had been over six years since he had murdered Chancellor Villecham, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. He was untouched by time—not that he was youthful by any means. Despite his age, there was no silver in his hair or deep creases in his face. Perhaps the wolf skin cloak over his shoulders served as his own personal fountain of youth.

Snoke let out a hoarse laugh, one seemingly loud enough to rattle the crystal chandeliers above. “The pleasure is mine. I take it you’ve found your new chambers more accommodating than your last?”

Rage streaked your vision. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that he was trying to provoke you—as if you needed reminding that you were nothing more than a bargaining piece to the First Order.

“Yes, thank you for asking,” you replied, bowing your head slightly. “Though I must admit, I had grown rather fond of the rats.”

Snoke let out a short, unamused chuckle. “Such misunderstood creatures, they are.” His gray eyes narrowed as he spoke. He quickly shifted his attention to the man beside you, a wall of ice now standing between you. “My boy… I have faith that you will treat our guest well.” He squeezed Ren’s shoulder tightly, threateningly.

“Of course, Supreme Leader,” he said, the usual color in his voice absent.

“Good. I would hate to have to marry her to Armitage, should you disappoint.”

Ren’s eyes flashed with something akin to envy. “That won’t be necessary.”

Snoke grinned. “I should hope not.”

The air felt thick, as if the room had filled with smoke. You shifted in your seat as the two men stared at each other, locked in silence. Snoke lingered for a moment longer before finally releasing his grip on Ren’s shoulder.

“Please, do enjoy the celebration. The wedding will be held in a fortnight. I had hoped for it to be sooner, but we must allow ample time for our guests to arrive.”

His words fell on you like stones. It wasn’t enough time. A fortnight was hardly enough time to finalize battle strategies—let alone to devise an escape. The flame in your heart waned.

With that, the Supreme Leader crossed to the other side of the table to greet the other guests, starting with Captain Phasma of Parnassos.

Silence stretched between you and Ren, your minds occupied with different concerns. Habitually, you finished your wine and pushed the empty chalice away. “How long should I expect this evening to last?”

“Eager to leave, are we?” Ren teased, taking the liberty of refilling your cup. “It might be wise to eat something. Celebrations like these have a tendency to be drawn out.”

The wine was beginning to take effect, making your skin warm and your mind hazy. Against your better judgment, you continued, draining each cup in a matter of minutes. Truthfully, it was a relief—allowing you to drift to a place far from here, to a place by the sea. A cobblestone home perched on the cliffside, surrounded by vines like veins around a heart. A place that always had a fire in its hearth and a stew simmering above it.

A warm tear hitting your hand pulled you from your reverie. You quickly blinked them away, not wanting anyone to see your emotion—least of all Commander Ren. Empathy wasn’t exactly his strongest virtue.

The night passed in a blur of drinks, hollow introductions, and avoiding your betrothed. It was nearly midnight when you finally staggered back to your chambers, barely lucid. Against your wishes, Ren had accompanied you, ensuring that his prized bride reached her chambers unscathed.

You fumbled with the doorknob for a moment, all too aware of his lingering presence. You continued to ignore him until a sobering realization fell over you.

“Does the Supreme Leader expect you to bed me?” you asked, frowning. The wine suddenly felt heavy in your stomach.

“No,” he said, a flash of humanity in his dark eyes. “Not yet, at least.”

“Oh.” Heat rose to your face. Of course he wouldn’t bed you tonight. If that were the case, the two of you would have been wed during the feast.

“Besides, I don’t intend to take you in this state,” he added, stepping closer. His fingers brushed your cheek as he pushed back a piece of hair that had fallen from your updo. You shivered at the sensation.

“This,” you hissed, stumbling backward until you collided with the doors, “is the only state that would make it tolerable.”

An amused smile played on his lips. “We’ll see.”

Dawn cracked the sky early the next morning, a fateful sign of the long winter ahead. As much as you longed to relish the fleeting sunlight, you were damned to spend the day with a pail in your arms and a cold rag on your neck.

“Are you feeling better at all, my lady?” Rey asked, wringing out a washcloth after soaking it in cool water.

“If only I were. I can’t imagine that there’s anything left to expel,” you said with a shudder, pulling your head from the basin.

Rey blotted your forehead with the cloth, her touch as light as the feather pillows beneath you. She had been silent for most of the morning, which you didn’t necessarily mind. There was an unspoken understanding as to why you were so ill this particular morning.

Hours had passed like this; with her encouraging you to take sips of water and you immediately spitting it up. At this point, it was difficult to tell if the culprit was the constant flow of wine or the extended time you had spent with Commander Ren. Perhaps a bit of both.

After what felt like an eternity, your stomach had settled enough to hold down the water Rey was offering. Once you were able to finish a roll of bread and a cup of broth, she returned to her quarters, allowing you to sleep away the rest of the aches.

When you finally woke, cool moonlight was spilling through the windows, casting shadows on the floor. The fire burning in your hearth had been reduced to a pile of embers and ash, but despite the cool air in the room, sweat coated your skin.

The night terrors that had plagued your sleep in the dungeons were relentless, managing to wake you even after a night of drinking and a day of illness. Every night was the same dream, the memory of the night in the forest. Without failure, the terror always ended with Commander Ren’s mask inches away from your face, close enough to show your reflection in the silver ridges around his eyes. The sight of you, bloodied and bruised, was always enough to wake you from the dream.

Tonight was no different, only this nightmare had a different ending. Instead of your armor, you wore the gown from the feast. Standing before the Commander, you looked at him not with horror, but with admiration. His hands were firm on your waist, holding you tight against him. You were unrecognizable in the reflection of his mask—with ruby lips and dark eyes. Piled around you were the bodies of Resistance soldiers—your soldiers—blood spilling from their ripped throats, staining the snow beneath.

Slowly, you pushed his visor up, but before you could see the man behind it, you jolted awake.

Immediately, you kicked the covers off and ran to the chamber pot, coughing and heaving in an attempt to settle your stomach. Nothing came from it, except possibly waking every occupant of the castle. Before returning to your bed, you used the washcloth and water basin that Rey had left behind to blot your face and neck, hoping to cool the heat under your skin.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed as you stared at the canopy above you, trying to erase the image of the dream from your memory—a task proving to be impossible. With each minute that passed, your breath felt more strained, as if the walls of your chambers were shrinking, suffocating you. It was beginning to feel like you had traded one cage for another.

The wedding was at the forefront of your mind, and you knew that every minute you spent laying awake was precious time slipping away. Despite Ren’s orders to stay in your chambers, you left the warmth of your bed, determined to familiarize yourself with the castle. Even if you couldn’t do it tonight, knowing the layout would benefit you when you did.

Hanging in the wardrobe was a long, dark cloak—perfect for concealing your ivory nightgown from the world. You pulled the hood over your head and carefully cracked the door open, scanning the hallway before stepping out into the unknown.

Flickering candles lined the corridor, but only a few were still burning. No one tends the candles past midnight, you noted, creeping towards the familiar spiraling staircase. As you reached the threshold, you peeked into the main chamber, expecting to find guards posted by every door. To your surprise, the room was empty—other than the portraits of the Supreme Leader gracing the walls. But you were no fool. The First Order was more concerned with outside threats; it only made sense that their guards would protect the exterior of the castle. Until you could be more certain of a safe exit, you would only roam the upper halls.

The corridor leading to your chambers seemed to stretch endlessly, leaving much to be explored. You followed the path, passing by quiet rooms and elegant artwork, committing every detail to memory. The cloak fluttered at your ankles as you crept around, feeling like a marauder trespassing on the grounds. If only you were.

The glow of candlelight dwindled the further you ventured, a sign that you had explored enough for one night. With no help from the drawn curtains, you were blind in the darkness. The threat of being caught outside of your chambers loomed over you as you turned to walk back the way you came, eager to return to the safety of your room. After a few steps, you discovered that the carpet beneath you was entirely different. You froze, searching along the walls for familiar fixtures, but found none. Panic began to swell in your chest at the realization that you were lost.

You tried to retrace your steps—understand how you had managed to get yourself to where you were now, but to no avail. Your breath became difficult—as if your ribs were tightening around your lungs. How could you have been so stupid? What had possessed you to step foot outside your room? Forfeiting the luxury of a proper bed for what—the possibility of finding an escape route?

Adrenaline burned your veins like magma as you swiveled on your heels, clutching your cloak tight around your chest to run. The solid frame of a man standing behind you quickly put an end to your efforts. An involuntary gasp escaped your lips as you collided with his chest.

“Lost, are we?”

Your heart plummeted through your chest. You didn’t need to look up to know exactly who had found you. In a moment of pure instinct, you answered with a half-lie. “I couldn’t sleep. I was only trying to find a bit of fresh air.”

Commander Ren chuckled as he gently pushed the hood of your cloak back. The material shifted on your shoulders, revealing your nightgown beneath. Even under the veil of darkness, you felt exposed.

“Were the windows in your chambers insufficient?” he asked, moving his hand to tip your chin up.

“Yes,” you said, reluctantly meeting his gaze. His eyes were an abyss, drinking you in as you stood there. He looked ethereal, with messy, black curls and a loose sleep shirt to match. As your eyes roamed his figure, you were reminded of the night terror that had incited this predicament.

At that, he released your chin and offered you his hand. “Perhaps you would prefer to go for a stroll outside, then?”

Outside? You couldn’t recall how long it had been since you had even been outside—since you had felt the crisp winter air kiss your skin or listened to the song of cicadas in the dead of night. As enticing as his offer was, you hesitated. Was this another trick? Was he luring you outside of the castle walls to lock you out as punishment for disobeying his orders?

Your fingers twitched at your side.

Noticing your apprehension, he sucked in a deep breath. “Do my intentions seem so insincere?”

Silence followed. You wished for a mountain of bricks, ones you could use to barricade your mind from his sorcery.

Finally, you said, “Forgive me for being mistrusting, Commander.” Regardless of the frequency with which you said his title, it never failed to make your mouth bitter. Carefully, you slipped your hand into his, a chill running up through your body at his touch. “I would like that very much.”

Through the darkness, you watched as his gaze lowered to your joined hands, satisfaction burning in his eyes. “Allow me.”

#don't drink the kool aid (commander ren's wine)#also sneaky broom kid cameo bc he’s my king #ben solo #ben solo x reader #kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x y/n #kylo ren x you #ben solo x fem!reader #ben solo x you #star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars self insert #kylo ren smut #ben solo smut #my writing #vampire!kylo #vampire kylo #vampire kylo ren

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7-wonders · 23 hours

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Requiem

Michael Langdon x Reader (Mad Love Act II, Chapter XVI)

Summary: It's all led to this, and now, you have to face off against Michael to get your world back.

Word Count: 6.3k

A note from the author: This chapter is so, so dark. Sorry? Also, this chapter relies a lot on the she/her pronouns this story was first started with btw. (more notes at the end)

I noticed when posting this that it looks like the previous chapter didn't load a lot of tags. If you got tagged in this and are like "wait how did we get to the fight already?" you missed the last chapter! Click on the Mad Love Masterlist to read Chapter 35. :)

Content warnings for this chapter include graphic depictions of injury and death. Reader discretion is advised.

Mad Love Masterlist

Mallory warned you prior to leaving your room that the residents of Outpost 3 were all dead, murdered at the hands of Ms. Venable and her poisoned apples (you try not to dwell on your own poisoned apple experience). All the preparation in the world doesn’t prepare you for the shock of seeing two dead bodies, those of Coco and Dinah, in the large foyer of the Outpost. Shock turns to revulsion as one of Mallory’s friends and other witches yanks a knife out of Coco’s skull with little more than a wince. When she stands, she points the knife at you.

“She gonna help us?” she asks warily.

“She is.” Mallory turns to you, pointing first to the woman with the knife and next to another woman standing near the stairs. “This is Queenie and Zoe.”

You wave sheepishly. “It’s nice to meet you two.”

Zoe smiles kindly, but Queenie just appraises you with a look that says she doesn’t trust you. You can’t say that you blame her, though you wish she didn’t have a reason for this reaction. Mallory leaves your side to kneel in between the two dead women, and you watch as she takes a deep breath and breathes out onto Coco’s face before repeating her movements with Dinah.

It takes mere seconds for the two to shoot up, gasping for air and trying to get used to once again inhabiting a body.

“Welcome back,” Mallory says.

“What just happened?” Coco asks, her elaborate hairdo impressively staying put after all of that.

“You died. And now, you’re no longer dead.”

“Oh.” She frowns, rubbing at the spot where a knife sat moments ago. “Fuck, that sucked.”

“Are you going to explain why you tore us from our afterlives?” Dinah snaps, standing up.

“It’s time to fix this entire mess. To defeat Michael, we need all the help we can get.” Mallory eyes Dinah specifically. “From both of you.”

“You’re on your own with that shit,” Dinah declares. “I’m not here to defeat anyone.”

Maybe it’s not your place, but you feel like you can help to convince Dinah. You take a step toward here. “Please, I really think that—”

“How can any of you defeat me, when I’ve already won?” A voice, so familiar to you that it could be your own, comes from the stairs.

You almost don’t want to look at him. If you don’t, maybe you can remain in this stasis where you’re simply preparing to undo the apocalypse, instead of being faced with the reality that you’re about to fight your own husband, the man who, despite all of the horrors he’s committed, remains your love. When you do tear your eyes away from Dinah, you see that he’s not even taking notice of your presence. No, he only has hate-filled eyes for the Supreme.

Michael’s changed into a blood-red jacket, which makes it obvious that he was expecting this showdown to happen. Ms. Mead stands off to his left side, ever the small, imposing bodyguard. Mallory steps forward, along with most of the group. You can’t bring your feet to move, so you remain back with Dinah.

“You haven’t won,” Mallory says.

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed the state of the world.”

Queenie scoffs. “At least the world can be saved. Unlike your bitch ass.”

Michael smirks proudly. “The seventh seal has been broken. Wormwood has fallen from the sky and turned the rivers to blood and fire. The bottomless pit has been opened and my swarms of locusts and scorpions have ravaged humanity. The world has been remade in my father’s image.”

When he speaks like this, of biblical imagery and prophecy, he turns into a person you don’t care to know. He turns into the Antichrist.

“Almost.” Mallory smiles. “Pretty sure he didn’t imagine a world where there were still witches, so you failed there.”

Michael finally takes in the full group, and his haughty demeanor falters when he sees you. Softly, he utters your name. “What are you doing?”

You swallow thickly, willing your voice not to shake. “I think you know.”

“I do. You’re going to betray me?

Mallory tries to grab your arm as you move in front of her, but you can’t be stopped now. “This is not betrayal. I’m doing this because I love you, and I can’t bear to be faced with the monster that you’ve become any longer. Now, we have a chance to save the world, Michael. Help me undo this mess.”

“Michael,” Mallory gets his attention once more. “Your father never commanded you to end the world in this way. Jeff and Mutt, the two that ran Kineros, were the ones who thought a nuclear apocalypse was the solution. They controlled Ms. Mead and gave her the commands to tell you that this was Satan’s plan. Satan was just happy to take credit when he realized that you were going to cause anarchy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Michael says.

“Is it? They told me so themselves, when I went to Kineros to ensure that Coco would be in this Outpost.”

He rolls his eyes. “This is such an obvious lie, I’m a little offended that you would think I’d fall for it. Right, Ms. Mead?”

Michael looks to his left, expecting to be backed up, only to see Ms. Mead with a look of bewildered shame on her face.

“Ms. Mead?”

“They—I do as I’m programmed,” she stutters.

You gasp at the revelation. Satan didn’t come up with the plan to end the world like this? All of this could have been avoided?

Instead of being faced with the same reckoning, a look of absolute murder appears on his face. “I’m going to do what I should have done that day in the Murder House and kill you all personally.”

“Mallory,” Dinah calls, walking towards the Supreme. “You raised me from the dead so that you would have the power of voodoo on your side. But if you know anything about who I am, you know that the only choice I’d pick would be the winner.”

She comes to a stop just before the stairs, bowing her head respectfully. Michael raises a hand out to her, ready to welcome another acolyte. You throw Mallory a panicked look, but she’s barely holding back glee.

“You’re half-right, Dinah,” she admits.

“She needed the help of a powerful voodoo queen,” a deep Southern voice says. You turn and watch as a tall woman with long braids struts up to Dinah. “But that ain’t you, sis .”

“The former Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau,” Mallory whispers into your ear.

“To release me from hell, Mallory promised Papa Legba the darkest and most corrupt voodoo queen’s soul for mine. You’ll serve him well in my place.”

“You’re a fool, Marie Laveau,” Dinah spits. “You would have done no different if you were queen.”

“No!” Marie says, before disappearing in a puff.

Not even a second later, she reappears behind Dinah wielding a machete. When Dinah turns to face her, Marie brings the machete down in one swing on her throat. Dinah gasps and screams as blood begins to gush out of her neck, falling to the floor and bleeding out in a matter of seconds. Nobody else seems to be affected by this, but you feel a little faint, and you hold onto Mallory’s arm to keep from collapsing.

“Out with the trash!” Marie declares. “Give Papa my regards.”

Michael, apparently having enough of this, nods to Ms. Mead. The android removes her hand to reveal a machine gun hidden underneath it. Though you want to say something along the lines of, “What the actual fuck?” Zoe says a word in what you assume to be Latin before you can.

Instead of shooting, Ms. Mead begins to shake and whir mechanically. Mallory uses Michael’s confusion to usher everybody back towards the open fire, where you watch as Ms. Mead explodes and sends Michael flying over the railing. He lands harshly on the floor below, staring in horror at Ms. Mead’s head next to him.

It’s only a matter of time until his horror turns to rage, and Queenie scrambles forward to grab Ms. Mead’s machine gun hand. When Michael rises, she rises with him, gun trained on his chest.

“Sorry about your little toy,” Queenie says before placing her finger on the trigger.

Michael turns to be met with a firestorm of bullets, more than enough to kill even the Antichrist. You scream in horror at the sight, his blood spattering against the wall as he falls and comes to rest against it, very obviously dead.

“Michael!” You try to stand, wanting to save him even though he probably (definitely) deserves what’s just happened to him. Before you can, Mallory pulls you to her.

“This won’t keep him down,” she assures you. “He’s too powerful to be truly killed. But this will buy us time.”

Though you don’t know if you believe her, you need to in order to keep from emotionally collapsing, so you nod.

Queenie walks to Michael’s body, kicking his foot as she checks to make sure he’s dead…for now, at least. “Do we need his hair or something for this? Because I’m more than happy to rip off a chunk of it.”

“No. The spell only requires that we have something personal of his.” Mallory smiles at you. “And we have the most important person in his life here with us. As long as you’re still in?”

You force yourself to look away from Michael, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths to recenter yourself. Finally, you look at her again. “Of course, I’m still in.”

“Good. Have you picked a time that will work to stop him?”

“I think so,” you confirm. After some internal deliberation, you think that the best way to get through to him is going to be when you had the big fight about the poisoned apple, before you stormed out and got yourself kidnapped by the witches. He wasn’t too powerful or too far gone with his father’s plan yet, but you were both in love with each other—albeit, you hadn’t actually realized it at that point.

“Alright. I’ll need you to focus on that, okay? Then I’ll say the spell, and we’ll be able to go back in time. We just need somewhere safe to cast the spell, somewhere with a large tub we can fill with water.”

You definitely found a room like that when you were exploring the Outpost your first couple of days here. “Okay. Follow me.”

Everybody stands, but hesitates when they remember the issue of Michael. If he’s going to come back to life like Mallory says, shouldn’t there be some safety measure in place to buy you more time?

Queenie sighs and rolls her eyes, realizing that she should probably be that safety measure. “Go,” she urges, readjusting her grip on the gun to ensure she’ll be quick to the trigger when Michael rises again.

Mallory darts forward to hug her quickly. “Thank you.”

“Enough with the sappy shit.” Even as she says that, you can see the affection in her eyes when she looks at Mallory. “Go!”

You do as she says and hurry up the stairs. Before you turn the corner, you allow yourself a moment to meet Michael’s open, lifeless gaze.

The hallways are much less of a maze than they were when you first arrived here, but the layout is still unfamiliar to you. After leading your group down what you thought was going to lead to the door you were sure contained the room with the tub, you’re met with a dead end.

Sheepishly, you look over your shoulder at Coco. “I think I’m a little lost. Isn’t there a room with a really large washtub for laundry around here?”

Her eyes light up, and she lightly pushes you to keep you moving. “Yes! We’re super close.” It’s going to take a bit to get used to her actually being helpful, you think as you follow her directions. “We’re going to go down this hallway here. Now, the weird little junction up ahead? Take a left and then it’s the third door on the right.”

Now you know where you are. “Thank you! I found it my first time going through the Outpost, but I haven’t lived here for eighteen months like you.”

You’re just about to turn left at the junction when a man appears from the other side of the hallway, jabbing a knife into your abdomen before you can even be surprised at the sight. You cry out, the pain sharp and sudden as he pulls the knife out of you with nothing but malice on his face. When he looks up at you, his scowl is replaced by a horrified shock.

“Oh my god, I thought you were—” He sees Coco, standing just behind you. “She was supposed to be you !”

Your shaking hands try to press down on the wound, but blood rushes out through your fingers, and your knees go weak as you crash into the wall. Down the hall, you can hear Mallory scream your name. She runs for you with Zoe hot on her heels.

“What the fuck did you do?” Mallory yells to the man, landing next to you on the floor and gently pulling your hands away so that she can assess the damage. By the way her lips start to tremble, you assume it’s not good.

The man that stabbed you ignores her, instead focusing on Coco. “You ruin everything!” he yells at her, lifting the knife once more.

Coco pushes him over the railing before he can do any more damage. He screams the whole way down, and Coco peers after him. “Sorry?” she calls with a grimace, no love apparently lost.

“This is…a lot of blood,” you note, watching your black dress becoming even darker from the rapidly expanding bloodstain. You’re also in a lot of pain. Fuck, you didn’t think being stabbed would hurt so much.

“It’s okay! It’s alright!” Mallory soothes; you can’t tell who she’s reassuring, herself or you. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to—I’ll heal you, and then you’ll be fine.”

Your heart is pounding from a mixture of fear and adrenaline. For the first time since your arrival to this Outpost, you’re truly scared. This is a different fear from when you were worried about Emily and Timothy being executed, or when you realized that Michael wanted to have a child with you. It’s even different from the fear of knowing that you and Michael would be on opposing sides now. This is primal—this is terror.

Mallory’s hands hover over your abdomen as she begins to chant in Latin, eyes screwed shut in concentration. Nothing happens, and as the seconds tick by, your entire body starts to go cold. It’s like somebody’s taken a syringe of ice water and injected it right into your veins. You become more faint than before, and decide that laying flat will probably be the best way to rid yourself of this feeling.

“Why isn’t this working?” Mallory cries in frustration, catching your head and placing it in her lap. Tears begin to build in her eyes as she tries the same breathing technique on you as she did Coco and Dinah to bring them back to life, to no avail. You cough wetly, and when you wipe your mouth, your hand comes away red.

The realization hits you then: you’re dying. The overpowering cold, being unable to sit up anymore, the faintness—your body is beginning to shut down against your will.

“Mallory, I’m scared,” you admit.

“I know. I’m sorry. I promise I’m trying.”

“I know.” You smile at the repetition even as you begin to feel so, so tired. Maybe if you close your eyes and rest for a moment, you’ll be able to get enough strength back to help you fight to stay alive.

Your eyes barely close before Mallory starts shaking you. “No, no, please don’t close your eyes!”

Marie Laveau appears at the far end of the hallway you first ran down and yells something to Mallory, but you can’t quite make out what she says over the rushing in your ears. Mallory takes one of your arms and Zoe takes the other, both working together to pull you down the hallway. You watch dizzily as Coco runs to Marie, your vision warping as the two disappear around the corner.

Mallory continues trying to heal you once they have you in the room where you’re meant to go back in time. Her hand, soaked in your blood, runs over your forehead comfortingly as she becomes more frantic in her chanting. Even Zoe tries to help, pressing down on your abdomen in the hopes of slowing the bleeding as she joins Mallory in spellwork. It’s becoming more difficult to hold on as you become weaker, the two taking turns making you open your eyes again.

“Please, please, please,” Mallory begs any and all forces beyond her power that might be listening.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, the effort to produce sounds near herculean.

“Don’t apologize,” she says sternly through tears, earning the smallest of laughs from you.

“Yes, ma’am.” Your hands shake as you feel around for Mallory’s, and you weakly squeeze when you find them. “I love you, Mal. I’m so happy I got to see you again.”

“Stop saying goodbye. I’m going to bring you back, this isn’t goodbye.”

For now, though, it is, and you both know it. When your eyes close this time, they don’t open again, and you feel yourself being dragged down, down, down, away from consciousness and life itself.

With your last remaining strength, you become introspective. You have so many regrets, so many words that you’re going to leave unsaid. You wish you had gotten the chance to actually complete the spell and go back in time, sure that you would have been able to change Michael’s mind. You want to thank Queenie and Zoe and Coco and Marie for their help, for believing that you can help fix the mess the world has become. You wish you could—

•••

Michael has had enough of witches on this Earth, he thinks as he blows Queenie’s head clean off her shoulders after coming back to life. She had been distracted by a body falling from two floors up—whose body it was remained a mystery that Michael didn’t care to solve—providing Michael the element of surprise. Even if she were still prepared, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’s too powerful for anything to stop him now.

Maybe he was naive to believe that a simple nuclear bomb or two could kill them. No, he was definitely naive. After all, Mallory knew that the world would be ending, and soon. That was more than enough time for her to gather her chosen forces and figure out a way to survive. He knows now that his path, the one that Satan had created before he had even created Michael, was always meant to lead to this. In order to truly inherit this new world and rule Hell on Earth, he must eradicate the remaining witches with his own hands.

But what to do with you? You’ve chosen your side for this battle, and it’s not his. He nervously hopes that you’re simply mad at him after how your last conversation devolved into a fight, that Mallory reached you at a vulnerable time and used that to her advantage to recruit you. Once he defeats the witches, you’ll come back to him and he’ll concede that he was perhaps wrong to bring up the idea of having a child at such an intimate moment. Still, seeing you standing in solidarity with the witches hurt, which is likely what the Supreme was planning.

When Michael makes it up the stairs, the reanimated voodoo queen blocks the hallway that he knows you and the witches have gone down. Grabbing a pouch off of her belt, she pours a powder into her hand and spreads it in a line in front of her with a chant.

“You shall not pass,” Marie declares with a smirk, wiping her hands of the powder. Michael juts his hand forward, prepared to rip her heart out of her chest, but an invisible barrier stops him. “You’re dealing with the HBIC now.”

He smiles ruefully. “Clever,” he admits. “Normally, that would work.”

He’s about to show that voodoo magic is no match for him anymore when his blood runs cold and his heart drops. At that same moment, he becomes aware of sobbing coming from far behind Marie. Though Michael’s never felt anything like this before, he can feel the certainty of what it means down to his very core: something’s happened. Specifically, something’s happened to you.

“Let me through,” he demands. Marie falters, taken aback at the fear in his eyes. “Marie Laveau, if you value your second chance at life you’ll let me through.”

She recovers from her hesitation with a haughty laugh. “Nice try.”

Michael makes quick work of her with a simple snap of his fingers, snapping her neck and sending her right back to the Underworld. He’s just about to clear the barrier and figure out just what is going on when he feels a presence behind him. Rolling his eyes, he turns around to face this distraction as well and comes face to face with Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt, who was with you when he was shot. Surely she must know something about what’s going on.

“What’s happened?” Michael asks. The knife that Coco was prepared to stab him with goes limp in her wrist, and she gapes at him. “Where’s Y/n?”

“She was…Brock…” She weakly mimes a stabbing motion.

“No.” He feels sick at the mere implication. “No!”

Coco now the least of his worries, he runs down the hallway, the whole time hoping that it’s a mistake, that Coco misinterpreted what she saw, that the cold emptiness now residing in his chest is simply a fluke. The sobs that become more clear as he nears the entryway, however, don’t do much to reassure him.

“Mallory!” Michael gasps.

The Supreme is on the floor with you in her lap, and for a moment, Michael can delude himself into thinking that you’re okay. The excessive amount of blood on the floor—your blood—and the unnaturally limp way that your hand is lying force him to face the obvious. Michael’s knees give out, and he falls to the floor harshly.

Mallory looks up at him, forgetting that they’re meant to be enemies right now. “She got stabbed, and—” a sob rips from her chest, “my healing spells aren’t working. And neither is Vitalum Vitalis. It should be working, Michael, I’m the fucking Supreme.”

“Okay. Um, let me…” Michael’s brain is fighting a war between shutting down from the agony of this situation and kicking into overdrive to figure out how to get you back. After a moment, he thinks he might have an idea. He tries to pull you out of Mallory’s arms and into his own, but she refuses to loosen her hold on you. “Mallory, I need to hold her.”

While he does need to be able to touch you for the spell, he’s not really asking for that purpose. He feels that he might soon lose his grasp on sanity if he can’t hold your body. No, he needs you as close to him as possible, to try and capture the warmth of your body so that he might remind himself that you’ve only just left, that he can still get you back. Begrudgingly, Mallory allows him to hold you, but she still keeps one of your hands in hers.

He’d like to say that it looks like you’re sleeping, comforting himself with the platitude most mourners claim upon seeing a body. He’d be lying, though, because he knows what you look like when you’re sleeping. The way that your face scrunches at the smallest sensation, how your eyes move under their lids and your mouth forms silent words when you’re dreaming particularly deeply, the intermittent light snoring that you swear you don’t do. If you were simply sleeping, he’d play the prince to your Sleeping Beauty and wake you with a kiss, revealing your amused smile and your fond gaze.

Now, there’s none of that. You’ve been dead for mere minutes, but already the signs of death are here. Your face is as slack as all of your muscles now are, making your cheekbones more prominent and your mouth hinge slightly open. A sallowness has started to take over your skin, and he finds himself tracing the apples of your cheeks in a futile attempt to coax blood back to the surface. He even swears that he can feel your body growing colder, just like he feared.

It takes Michael some time to remember what he’s meant to be doing. All of this grief and pain will hopefully be for nothing, so long as he can hold himself together for a little bit longer. He takes a deep breath, hesitating for a moment before dropping his forehead against yours. Tears are threatening to fall, and when he closes his eyes to try and hold them back, it only hastens their arrival. They roll, hot and thick, off of his face and onto yours, and he wipes them off with a silent apology.

Finally, Michael slips into a dissociation as he begins to walk between the realms of living and dead. He’s done this more than a few times now for varying reasons, becoming pretty adept at finding a soul and bringing it back to the living plane. The hardest part by far is always calming his mind enough to be able to attempt this in the first place; the fact that he’s been able to achieve it in this circumstance is a small miracle.

Now that he’s in the so-called in-between, he begins his search. Every single soul has a signature to it, so as long as he knows who he’s looking for, he usually finds the rest of this process to be pretty straightforward. Since your soul is so near and dear to him, he’s expecting this to take a couple of minutes at most.

A minute passes, then another, as he tries to track your soul down. Michael begins to grow concerned; considering you just died, he shouldn’t be having to search this hard. There’s a complete lack of you anywhere, and he begins to shake as he’s faced with the increasingly likely potential that your soul is gone. But how? Why? With a chilling clarity, he knows exactly what’s happened.

His father has become displeased. Whether he’s had enough of your and Michael’s collective disobedience over the years—Satan holds a grudge like no other, after all—or your declaration that you would never bear Michael’s child or be the perfect wife that Satan had planned for you to be. He’s had enough, and now, he’s taken this opportunity to make good on the threats he first warned Michael about during the poison apple saga. He’s made sure that you’re out of the picture for good. If Michael knows Satan, he’s probably already picked out some girl back at the Sanctuary to be wife number two, and this time, she would be the most devout, demure Satanist who would never even think of going against Satan’s will.

But Michael doesn’t want another wife. No, what he wants is to lay here on the floor and die right along with you, following you into whatever afterlife you’ve found yourself in in the hopes that he can continue to love you there. How can he ever be expected to love another person that’s not you? What kind of a life is there for him to live if you’re not here to share in it?

“Is everything okay?” Mallory asks, reminding him that there’s another person in this room, one who’s going to feel her own devastation at this news.

“I can’t find her. My father…” He chokes on his own words, unable to actually say the fate that’s befallen you. Instead, he can only cry.

Mallory picks up on the context clues, and her face drops. “So that’s it? She’s gone?”

The nod Michael gives her is the most painful movement of his life. When Mallory collapses, he also forgets the pretense of enemies and allows her to fall against him. It’s mainly for his own benefit—were he not using Mallory for support, he would be in a heap on top of you.

They remain without words for a while. Distantly, he’s aware of Zoe talking to Coco down that damned hall, the two wondering what to do now. He hopes that they come up with an answer, because he has no clue. In his opinion, there’s nowhere else to go from here. Though he may not have physically died, his life has ended along with yours in this room.

“Were you telling the truth?” Michael asks finally, making Mallory look up. “About Jeff and Mutt?”

He almost doesn’t want to know, but before he can change his mind, she nods. “All they cared about were themselves. They were fed up with minor inconveniences—having to wait for coffee, traffic woes—and wanted to ‘wipe the slate clean.’ They thought that they could reshape the world to how they wanted, and they used a vulnerable Antichrist to do so. Ms. Mead changed her tune from magic to fire and blood because Jeff and Mutt were feeding her the commands.”

He so badly wants her to be lying, but even if he couldn’t sense her truthfulness, he has his own memories to rely on. How suddenly Ms. Mead suggested that world destruction was preferred to world domination (and that the two cokehead idiots would be the guys to talk to about that) had always seemed a little odd to him, but he simply went along with it, believing Ms. Mead to still be his trusted advisor. This revelation simply makes Michael cry harder until he’s almost matching Mallory’s earlier sobs. She puts her free hand on his shoulder in comfort. Though he appreciates the gesture, nothing can bring him comfort.

All of this pain and death and destruction has been for naught. Michael spent years chasing his father’s approval and doing terrible things, things that made him so sick to think about that he forced himself to compartmentalize them in order to not drown in his shame. He’s shirked friends, love, and basic morals, only to find out that his father didn’t even care if the world ended this way. No, all Satan wanted was power and sin, which he got in spades these past eighteen months.

“How were you going to stop me?” he asks.

Mallory hesitates. “We…we were going to go back in time. There’s a spell that I found when searching through the coven’s grimoires to help with your Cordelia issue. I practiced it a few times before the bombs dropped, trying to figure out the right way to do it. Y/n was going to be both your personal tie and the one convincing you to stop the apocalypse. She had a time in place where she thought that you would be most willing to listen, to change your mind.”

It’s a smart plan, and it probably would have worked. After all, you likely know (knew, he’s reminded harshly) him better than he knows himself. As he thinks about the what-ifs, Michael realizes that this doesn’t have to be something that never happens.

“So, if you and I were to go back in time together, then we could change all of this?” Michael asks.

Mallory gapes at him. “You’re willing to give all this up?”

“What, this empty, decimated kingdom that I don’t even want?”

In the eighteen months since the apocalypse, Michael had found that he was not suited for being a ruler—he didn’t like the pomp and circumstance, nor did he like people fawning over him. Still, he pretended to be the cold, uncaring king of this “New World,” because he thought that was what Satan wanted, that he was fulfilling the destiny that he was born to.

Now, there’s nothing left to fight for. The world didn’t even need to be ended, let alone in this way. He’s been nothing but a pawn to people his whole life—the Satanists, the warlocks, the stupid fucks that ran Kineros, even Satan himself. He’s done. Done with this stupid, useless path he’s taken, done with hurting everything and everyone, and done with bowing to the whims of anybody.

After all, what has he got to show for any of this? He’s been a good little soldier, doing unspeakably horrific acts and acting like he wasn’t affected, like he wasn’t the Michael that he was before the apocalypse. How did Satan reward him? By ensuring that he would never get back the one person in his life that he has ever truly loved, and who had ever truly loved him.

“I can’t—I can’t live a life without Y/n. There is nothing without her. What do I need to do to help you?”

“Promise me,” she says. “Promise me that you will not use this second chance to end the world once again.”

“I just found out I ended the world for no reason, Mallory. A world that I was slowly coming to love, before Cordelia informed me that I needed to speed up the apocalypse plans I had been led to believe were created by my father. Before I was upset by people trying to convince me that blowing everything up was a bad idea.” Because of course, Satan would take credit for those plans if it meant that he would be closer to getting the complete chaos it would create. “Why would I try to end it again?”

Mallory searches his face for a moment before nodding. “I believe you.”

She’s known him for long enough now to know his tells, and she sees none of them. Right now, he’s too much of a wreck to even consider trying to lie, not that he was planning on it.

Mallory slowly stands, but not before kissing the back of your hand and laying it gently on your chest. “Come on.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael whispers to you, kissing your forehead. “I’m so, so sorry. I’m going to make this right.”

It takes strength he didn’t know he possessed to lay you down and let go of your body. Even as he walks away, going against every instinct and leaving you on the floor, he can’t take his eyes off of you.

Mallory climbs into the large washtub in the corner of the room, flicking her wrist and filling it with water. Michael follows her in, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation of sitting in wet clothes.

“Think of a time that you believe it will be easiest to completely stop the apocalypse before it goes too far,” she instructs.

There are many times in the past two years that Michael can see as a good time to stop the apocalypse. First, he’s tempted to go back to the beginning of this mess, when the witches killed Ms. Mead. Plans for the end of the world hadn’t even been drawn up yet, and he would have the added benefit of having Ms. Mead back. Plus, you wouldn’t have gone through the trauma of being kidnapped and forced to be the Antichrist’s bride.

It’s incredibly selfish, but the more Michael thinks about that avenue, the less he wants to take it. While it’s unfortunate how you came to know each other, he wouldn’t trade the way that you and he fell in love with each other for anything. But on the practical side, he wouldn’t have the influence that he has over important people and organizations were he to go back that far, and he needs that if he’s going to have enough power to keep the world from ending altogether. That’s off the table, then.

He wishes that you had told Mallory of your idea before being fatally wounded, because he probably would have agreed with your assessment. If it was any time after you moved in with him, he was already so in love with you that he could easily be swayed. What makes the most sense?

Finally, Michael has it. The time where he can be most effective at changing the fate of the world and ensuring there will not be an apocalypse by his hand, can remain powerful enough to not be usurped as Antichrist (for he’s sure that Satan will be very displeased by the change of plans if he finds out about Michael changing fate), and can still have you.

He opens his eyes and nods. “I have it.”

“Okay,” Mallory says with a hopeful smile. “Focus on that as hard as you can, place us both there.”

It’s all he can think about now, but he does as she says and recreates that time in his head. The sights, the sounds, the smells. How your hand felt in his, and the brightness of your smile. The possibilities that, at that time, seemed endless. Mallory holds her hands out and Michael takes them, feeling their magic bouncing off of each other like sparks from two exposed wires.

“Balneum infinitum. Dona salui conductus.” Mallory repeats the chant two more times, the water bubbling around them furiously and turning darker with each word.

Michael knows even without Mallory’s instruction that he’s needed to say the last part of the spell, and what that last part is. Just before they submerge themselves under the water, their voices join together to cast the most important spell of their lives.

“Tempus Infinituum.”

•••

Endnotes: Wow. I thought this would be a particularly tough chapter to write, but as I got going, the story flowed easily. I think because I've had this scene stuck in my head for so long! My FBI agent is definitely concerned by how thoroughly I read those "what happens to a body after a person dies" articles.

ALSO the Jeff and Mutt thing is canon!

Anyways, I'm gonna go watch some cute animal videos to feel better. Take care of yourselves, alright?

@ajokeformur-ray @iamavailablesstuff @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @nsainmoonchild @redroses07

@xo-angel-ox @littleangel4996 @iamlivingforturner @thatonehumanbeing05

@codycrazy @love-on-the-murder-scene

#michael langdon #michael langdon imagine #michael langdon x reader #american horror story #ahs imagine #american horror story imagine #michael langdon imagines #mad love musings

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class1akids · 1 year

Text

So now that we have a better scan - let me just elaborate a bit more on the details:

Bakugou:

The chest scar is definitely from his current injury, no face scar means he probably won't have one.

He is pointing either to the goat-skin on his shoulder (an All Might reference) or his sword, which has the same dragonscale pattern he and Izuku share on opposite shoulder pads (win and save? or OFA?)

The sword he's holding is different from the big All Might-sword from the 1st art, which then got divided between him and Izuku in the second art.

He's wearing the blue outfit from the second art, but got new orange arm wraps and his jewelleries changed too. Seems to have lost the cape.

Deku:

Deku lost the green vest and his cape is tattered, just like in the main story

His red boots have a goat-pattern too (All Might's "insignia")

He exchanged the big flaming sword for two smaller ones, but neither of them is drawn.

Shouto:

Shouto wears the same cape as Deku, with the same kind of gold button.

He doesn't have a dragon scale, but the shade of his outfit is the same colour, instead of his usual blue

His wearing black shirt and pants (unlike his previous white) just like Endeavor, but there is still a small white lace at his wrist left from his first outfit

The "black ice" curse / corruption from the second art turned into his hear-piece (which is shaped like a "V" either as a reference to victory / peace sign / or All Might"). It also became extra armor at the elbow of his left arm

His sword is drawn, just like Bakugou's

His hair is swept out of his left eye - displaying his fire side

He wears little loop earrings, similar to Dabi's

The Origin Trio are looking straight at us - nobody else is.

Endeavor:

Got rid of the white cape, but his fire is extinguished.

He wears all black with red accents

No weapon is visible

Iida:

Iida has a green Deku-cape but no gold button on it

His armor has been upgraded, there are three silver wings on it (will he get flight?)

His sword is also drawn

Kaminari:

I don't have much there - it's his first Fantasy AU appearance. The shape of his hat is also a bit like a "V"

Aizawa:

No weapon, wearing black like in the first art

Interestingly, he has also a tattered "Deku-cape". (could the green cape be the "saviour squad" - those characters with villain counterparts?)

He also has a "V" on his hat

Hawks:

His outfit changed to black

Same folded armed pose as Endeavor, no weapon

His wings are white with gold tips (like an angel)

Kirishima:

Biggest change is the dragon-bone head-piece with the feathers. No idea.

Uraraka:

Got a small Deku-cape and horns on her hat

There's a pink mark on her cheek - either a blush or a small scar

So, to summarize:

All Might's all sword seems to have been divided up into smaller ones

The dragon was slain, Bakugou and Deku both have pieces of its scale and very big Goat references to All Might

The Origin Trio is looking at us and only they share the purple accents (OFA reference?)

Deku, Shouto, Iida, Ochako and Aizawa all have the green cape (Saviour Squad? with villain counterparts?)

Shouto, Endeavor, Hawks and Aizawa are in black

All the kids have weapons, while none of the adults do

There are "V" / All Might references maybe on all the kids, but at least on Deku, Bakugou, Shouto and Ochako and Aizawa. (Class: 1-A aka. One for All?)

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shenanigans-and-imagines · 2 years

Note

Congratulations on the milestone!! You deserve it. Thank you for all of your hard work and amazing writing you share with us. I absolutely love your Thrawn pieces. He has such a unique voice and you really let it shine through. I have to admit I swooned about 100 times reading through the different prompts and imagining them with Thrawn, but in the end I am nothing if not a sucker for the hurt partner trope, and the thought of Thrawn taking care of a potentially injured reader just Does Things to my heart. So I humbly request the prompt “taking the other’s hand to look for injuries” with Thrawn x reader.

Again, thank you so much for putting these incredible pieces out there for us to enjoy. Your hard work is appreciated and thoroughly loved.

💙, stars-suns-and-spaceguns

A/N: Thank you so much for all those kind words. It really means so much to me. 💙

You were a mess and it was all Captain Reeves fault.

You were still just a junior lieutenant; a glorified mechanic really. Compared to the rest of your peers, walking around in their finely pressed uniforms, you were often sweating and partially covered in oil. Captain Reeves made it her mission to point out every instance you were out of uniform, as if you could be expected to keep a jacket on when you were upside down in a TIE-Fighter for hours on end.

Luckily, any complaints Captain Reeves might have had were dismissed by Grand Admiral Thrawn. He had taken note of your improvements on the fighters, as well as the droids and other sections of the ships you had repaired. This attention had sparked an unwanted rivalry between yourself and Reeves, one you were paying for now.

You straightened your jacket, trying desperately to look passably professional as you approached the Grand Admiral's office.

Reeves had informed you, quite last minute, that Thrawn had requested a report on your progress. You were surprised as usually such reports were given by the hanger officer, but Reeves insisted Thrawn wanted to speak to you. You were doubtful at first, but it was obvious how annoyed she was at being passed over. It was likely the reason she gave you no time to shower or attend to the cut you had gotten just minutes before.

You had rallied though, making a quick bandage around your hand and grabbing your notes before running halfway across the ship.

The door to Thrawn's office slid open.

You allowed yourself one last deep breath and stepped inside.

Thrawn stood behind his desk, his attention on the projected schematics in the center.

Your shoulders relaxed, the mystery of why you were summoned resolved. He wanted to compare your improvements to the standard TIEs to his TIE-Defender project. No elaborate presentation required.

"Junior Lieutenant Y/N," he acknowledged, stepping out to meet you. "I thank you for your promptness. At ease."

"Of course sir," you said. Suddenly your training didn't seem so bad. You hadn't even realized you were standing at attention. "Captain Reeves told me your wished to speak to me."

"I do. I understand you have been able to improve the TIEs gunner accuracy by fifty percent."

"Yes, sir," you said, a warm feeling spreading through your body at the praise. "I have the notes here, if you care to look them over."

You handed him your data pad. To your surprise, however, he did not take it. His lips pressed into a fine line as his eyes narrowed.

"You're injured."

You looked down, suddenly remembering the bandage covering your palm.

"Just a scratch, sir," you said.

He didn't say anything for a moment, taking the data pad out of your grip.

You thought that would be the end of it, but instead of continuing your conversation, he placed the pad on the desk before offering his hand to yours.

"If I may."

It wasn't an order, but you were in no position to refuse him.

You tried your best to ignore the sudden heat in your cheeks when your skin met. He handled your hand with care, turning it over to examine your work.

The blue of his fingers looked so strange compared to your own. They were long and elegant, but there was a roughness to their texture. They held the scars of combat and wire burns just as yours did. It was a similarity you should have expected, but surprised you all the same.

He glanced up at you, silently asking for permission.

You didn't trust your voice, only managing a small nod in response.

Gently he pulled away the now red stained cloth until the only thing surrounding your wound was air.

You winced at the sight. You hadn't thought it was bad as all that.

Thrawn's frown deepened. "Why did you not report to medical?"

"You requested my presence, sir," you said, lacking a better excuse. "I was told it was urgent."

Why didn't he just let go of your hand? Surely by now he could feel how your pulse was racing.

He shook his head. "Captain Reeves should have given you leave for a proper examination. I will speak to her later."

"Please, don't," you blurted, unable to stop the words.

Thrawn's eyes met yours, forcing the air right from your lungs.

"Part of a captain's duties is to ensure the health and safety of those under their command," he said, simply. "If she's been neglecting these duties, disciplinary action must be taken."

Your throat was dry, but it was clear he was waiting for some kind of answer.

"I only meant..." You swallowed. "I don't think she was aware, sir."

"Perhaps, but this is not the first time something similar to this has happened."

Your silence was answer enough. He was right, of course. Any little inconvenience Captain Reeves could send your way she did. There was a reason small nicks and burns covered your hands and arms. Nothing life threatening. Nothing that could be considered a true neglect of duty, but enough for you to keep your own med-kit in arms reach at all times.

You hadn't thought anyone noticed, but Thrawn had.

"I will speak to her," he repeated, firmly. "In the meantime, report to medical. Once you are cleared for duty, we may continue our conversation."

"Yes, sir," you said, with more breath than you meant to. "Thank you, sir."

He nodded in approval and it was only then did he release your hand.

"Dismissed."

You did not wait a second longer. Cradling your injured hand you swiftly made your way to the med bay, your feet carrying your forward while your mind remained with Thrawn.

It was nothing. Grand Admiral Thrawn was unique in the Imperial Navy for actually caring about his crew, even a low ranking officer such as yourself. He simply wished for you to remain efficient in your duties. It wouldn't do well for the mechanic to not have use of their hands.

Still your thoughts lingered his touch and the intensity of his gaze. It was a moment, but a one only you and he shared. Perhaps, if you were lucky, you would have another. At the very least, it was very likely you would be dealing with Thrawn directly going forward instead of Captain Reeves.

Things were about the change. You just knew it.

(8/20)

#star wars #thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #thrawn x reader #grand admiral thrawn x reader #star wars: rebels #the thrawn trilogy #5k followers #5k celebration #2022 fic

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likealittleheartbeat · 8 months

Text

I perhaps sacrificed clarity for wit in the wording of my poll: Which queer fiction experience would you prefer--queer representation without queer themes or queer themes without queer representation? "Queer," after all, has been famously hard to define among its theorists. On of the founders of its theory, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, does some work to articulate the history of its definitional flexibility in her article "Queer and Now." But I think Heather Love's introduction to Feeling Backwards gets at the heart of it, "When queer was adopted in the late 1980s it was chosen because it evoked a long history of insult and abuse--you could hear the hurt in it." This is what I mean when I say "queer" themes, messages that invoke and evoke the hurt.

Of course, as @irresistible-revolution pointed out in a question in the comments of the poll, "don't queer themes produce queer subjects." If queer is understood as the queer theorists define it, this is inevitably true. Words wrestle away from the theorists, though. If you do a tumblr or google search for queer representation, you can imagine what you find. LGBT identity--Q with it's variation between questioning and queer, though often included in the label, fails fabulously in crafting a workable identity; note it's lack of a pride flag or stripe--requires an affirmative action, which is why certain pieces of the narrative are so important to its politics. You need to come out, you need to make your identity visible (either visually, with public actions like marriage, dress, etc. or with speech, which brings us back to coming out), you need to have pride. Any failure to follow through with these acts puts your access to identity at risk. Identity is a potent political mobilizing force and has led to some pretty incredible legal changes in the past 70 years (although, as far as queer identity mobilization, the AIDS crisis certainly kicked that into overdrive beyond simple identity politics). This is what undergirds the general usage of "queer representation:" lgbt identity made visible and explicit. Identity, in this case, requires from its media the same as its subjects. They must be total and pure in their positive identification--positive, meaning additive, here, although the need for emotionally positive depictions seems to often follow--which is why so much discourse erupts about the quality of representation. The legitimate identification of the characters and the work in total is being debated.

If "queer" as the theorists posit it is about the hurt, it's about the open negative spaces where the barbs stuck in. To wrestle the word away from the academics for a second to talk about real life, instead, we LGBT-identified individuals might remember a time before our identity emerged or crystalized, when experiences of strangeness, difference, pain, and alienation were the markers we could recognize. Can this recognition exist in a representation, either a character or a human being's census marker? Perhaps--especially if we consider that's what the word queer is supposed to mean according to the academics lol. But, as the theorists realized when they tried to define it, the definition was liquid and dodged their attempts to pin it down. Describing it involved putting individuals in relationship to their hurt, to those that hurt them, to their attempts, failures, and successes to make peace with those injuries. I hear a proud voice in my head complaining that LGBT individuals should not be defined as disabled, deficient, or inherently traumatized by their gender or sexuality. Queerness, the hurt we hear in it, while it derived from the language hurled at certain gendered expressions that deviated from the conservative norm, elaborated a more general difference and expression of that difference in relation to others, so it wasn't limited to LGBT individuals (which is why it was so functional a theory for literary analysis that preceded those identity categories and tucked experiences and meanings into subtexts). You see, unlike identity, queerness is not individual but relational, relational with those with similar kinds of hurt but more importantly relational with the individuals and institutions opening the wounds.

This queer relationality blossoms into strange solidarity across what we would consider typical identity groups, because the shame or injury they experience because of their marginalization is familiar and understandable (Zuko and Aang are great examples of this). It also means that engagement with narrative is vastly more important than engagement with signifiers and visibility. Relating takes time. Even more dangerous to the tribalism of identity (that's often, as in the case of LGBT identity, established in the face of oppression) is the encouragement that queerness can engender to relate to those that caused them harm, to even empathize with the harm they might have incurred which caused them to project their hurt onto others or to the harm they feel but work to ignore caused by hurting others. In a way, this strips persecutors from their perceived sense of "normalcy." It queers them and returns them to profane, queer, humanity.

I created my poll while watching the anime Fruits Basket. It made me consider other animes like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Revolutionary Girl Utena, which draw LGBT-identified viewers in. All three shows depict cross-dressing and same-sex attraction but, two out of the three, conclude with heterosexual coupling for their happy endings, and Utena doesn't end with any of its same-sex couples together, exactly.* Despite this, the shows are rife with queer themes around parental abandonment, abuse, gender deviance, attachment, etc., more so (and much more successfully, I'd add) than a lot of proper shows with LGBT representation.

Closer to home for this blog, Avatar the Last Airbender is adored by LGBT identified people even as it lacks any LGBT representation (I won't compare it to LoK because it's more complicated than matters of representation to compare the sequel series quality and the subsequent admiration or lack of it). What moves these people in the show? I could be wrong, here, many people watch shows with a much less analytical and empathetic style than me. Yet, it's hard to ignore how prevalent the queer themes of Avatar the Last Airbender are. These narratives of disappointing and losing parental figures, attempting and failing to live up to expectations, betraying your own values in response to alienation and grief, embracing victimhood or villainy or savior status to garner a sense of self even if it is false until you find something truer. These are deeply queer themes not because only LGBT-identified people experience them but because they are in response to deep wells of hurt. What they result in when probed, however, is a world much more open to LGBT practices and queer practices. It's often thought said Katara and Aang's final kiss feels tacked on, as if it furnishes this queer text with a conservative heterosexual ending. Focusing merely on their genders, this ignores so many aspects of Katara and Aang's journey, of course, that make their particular heterosexual dynamic quite queer (their colonized status, their gender expressions, the development of their relationship beyond simple dynamics of hero and damsel in distress), not to mention the embrace between Zuko and Aang at Zuko's coronation that offers possibilities like 1800s style romantic friendships beyond the last scene. It's quite possible, I'm saying, that we love ATLA because its more queer than other explicitly LGBT offerings.

If it isn't clear, when choosing between the two options, I'd choose queer themes without queer representation. I appreciate the inclination toward the other. I want to see character allowed to have fall for and have sex with the same genders. I want to see characters who explore and transition with their genders and gender expressions. I yearn for characters like myself. But I recognize how hollow that can quickly turn. Who I am is more complex than a simply LGBT identity. In fact, there are plenty of LGBT characters and people I feel no personal connection to. Aang feels much closer to my personality than any explicitly gay character I've ever encountered. And I've often related to people who experienced marginalization because of their race and intellectual intensity much easier than I've related to anyone over their LGBT status. Representation is cool and interesting and can be explored in so many cool ways, and I love it and obsess over it, but it has it's limits, and one of them is that representation doesn't render good fiction. It's just a demographic. If you're into that stuff (and it's intricacies, like me), cool. Fiction just needs to take a little more time, breathe a little more, be a little more weird and long-winded and hurt, and by all that I mean queer.

#meta #queer theory #atla #ish

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orchideae · 3 months

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"Okay, I ask you a question, you have to think of the answer, where do you look? No good. You look down, they know you're lying, and up they know you don't know the truth. Don't use seven words when four will do. Don't shift your weight. Look always at your mark, but don't stare. Be specific, but not memorable. Be funny, but don't make him laugh. He's gotta like you, and then forget you, the moment you've left his sight."

Let's talk about inspiration for a second, though I'm not saying with this that Rusty Ryan is a direct source of inspiration for Yelan, but there's numerous things from this scene that I want to point out for a moment.

One. How much each detail matters when it comes to a 'person'(a). I know that in this quote/scene's context it's about where you can find uncertainty and proof of one's deception, but by that same account, it shows how many elements of ourselves carry our authenticity and thus our 'essence'. This shows the rather thorough knowledge that one has to possess in regards to human nature to be able to bring such thorough (and thus believable) personas to life. There will be moments when Yelan will simply throw up a quick lie as to her identity like she does in her SQ in Liyue Harbor when she simply needs some quick information but nothing beyond that; but for more elaborate missions that require a specific consistent and/or recurring presence? You'll see her live that as much and as naturally as she lives her own self, it's where you'll see a whole different level of craftsmanship, her craftsmanship.

Two. The arts of being perceived and deceived are rather intense. I mean, this also plays into the previous/first point, because it's honestly all about how the devil is in the details. But with this I aim to indicate how in control of yourself you have to be, to show signs of nervousness that may fit the persona in question perfectly. As an example: an experienced salesman will usually have natural charisma and confidence, because one's energy will draw customers in and the way a pitch is presented, will be what will make the sale; but one that's entirely new to the field will likely be lacking in both of those traits out of sheer inexperience. The latter will (likely/usually) find him or herself with a bundle of nerves caught in their throat which will afflict their speech and will likely keep their hands grasped together to not show the shake of them— living these little traits will allow one to blend into many different locations and scenarios (imagine too, how these would then also ripple effect into their personal lives). Any way, I digress. Even if we're speaking of a very temporary role or persona, falling into the latter example of character allows one to much more realistically bump into boundaries and excuse themselves; their nerves are a motivator and inhibitor for many things. But to able to present this realistically, every single layer of nuance needs to be closely and tightly understood. It's much more of a challenge than people might think.

Three. Those last lines, and that very last line in specific is so utterly important:

"Look always at your mark, but don't stare. Be specific, but not memorable. Be funny, but don't make him laugh. He's gotta like you, and then forget you, the moment you've left his sight."

Initially, I wanted to bring up Yelan's first character story as an example of this, that these novice pharmacists don't seem to realize that they've all likely treated Yelan for one injury or another already in the past and have forgotten; but it isn't the best instance to enforce the above quote, as each of their attention is drawn away from the obvious due to Yelan's endurance to endure the pain the treatments subject her to (yes, I will touch on this 'light addiction to pain' soon, and no, it is not 'kinky' as a portion of the fandom makes it out to be, or at least in my opinion; but more on that in a later post as it plays into a consistent thing across the board). Instead, the best example is likely simply: Liyue Harbor. This is where she lives (well, she technically resides just outside of the city), this is where people see her cross the street and yet in her SQ, numerous seem to not exactly recognize her. Even children who are known to frequent the wharf over and over, aren't familiar enough with Yelan as to be able to recognize her, and yet saying that they wouldn't have crossed paths is rather unrealistic (as she literally works for Ningguang, Liyue Harbor is the first port of call for intelligence gathering for numerous things). This tells me that she's either rather good at drawing their eyes away from her face or any other parts of her that people could rather quickly identify her by, or she's prone to disguising herself just enough. Now I do also have to note that the exact opposite may also be craved in certain situations. Sometimes, all you need is to be a memory that is much too vivid, a fever in someone's mind—— sometimes, that is exactly the persona that needs to linger.

What can I say, the game is a complicated one to play. For a woman who is so good at this craftsmanship, where every little aspect of these personas rests in a firm grip of control; no wonder she lives her life outside of that by the roll of a dice.

#[ meta. ] the chances are if i open this door; there can be no witnesses left alive. is that a sufficient reason for you?#[ every single element of this character is an element that i love so very dearly. god. /god/. ]#[ all that i need now is to shake the dust off my feathers. which will happen after numerous replies; i know. but until then. ]#[ have more thoughts! ]

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41319kbex · 2 months

Text

Hell Hath No Fury (6/?)

Thank you to all who made it through the most case-heavy chapter I think I’ve ever written! But as so many of you have been kind enough to point out, it was necessary to get to this point in the story…which I hope you will all enjoy, and maybe see as a bit of a payoff for sticking around past the last chapter!

Thank you for all the reviews and kind words, and especially to those who reviewed as a guest that I wasn’t able to thank personally.

Unfortunately, I still don’t own Castle…

xxxxx

Stepping out of her car in the driveway of a huge house, Beckett only had a second to take in the view before a sharp pain shot through her side. Nearly 3 hours in a car with 2 badly broken and 1 slightly fractured rib had not been the best choice; then again, she realized as far as bad choices go, she’d made a lot worse recently. She leaned forward with her forearms bracing herself against the car and had to take a few moments to breathe and try to stretch out just a little before she could stand completely upright again and shut the door.

As she slowly walked around to the trunk of her car, she had time to finally really take in the full view of his house. Damn, Castle…you rich or something? Of course, she’d known he was well-off…the way he dropped money so freely, had so easily dropped 100 grand at the shot to catch her mother’s killer like it was not much more than a penny to him. But seeing this house that was borderline mansion territory really kind of smacked her in the face with his wealth.

She grabbed her bag with her left hand out of habit and instantly dropped it, wincing in pain and grabbing at her ribs. Right side, Kate…you can only lift with your right side. Granted, she’d been told she wasn’t supposed to lift anything at all, but she wasn’t about to not carry her own bag inside. She’d honestly fought with herself over whether to leave her bag in the car, just in case she decided she didn’t want to stay; she’d decided instead to go ahead and carry it inside. She could leave it at the door and make it clear to him she wasn’t agreeing to stay yet; she just didn’t want to have to go back out to her car to get the bag if her decision was yes.

She waited another moment for the pain to subside a little before grabbing her bag with her right hand this time. It was still painful, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t manage as she made her way to the door and knocked. When the door opened and she saw Castle standing there, the pain in her side was momentarily forgotten…because he looked better than he had in the hospital; he looked almost, almost like himself again. And she’d missed him. “Hi…” was all she could think of to say in the moment, and she realized that was definitely not her finest hour.

“Hi,” he returned, offering her a small smile before stepping back so that she could come inside. “So you’re staying?” he nodded toward the bag in her hand.

“Uh…you did offer,” she pointed out, though it wasn’t an answer. She set the bag down beside the door as she stepped inside, her eyes widening as she looked around. She felt like she was so far out of her league here, that it wasn’t funny.

“Right, I did…I do…I just thought…” Castle was stumbling over his words.

“That I wouldn’t say yes?” she finished his thought for him as he closed the door.

“Yeah,” he admitted, studying her for a moment. She had a scabbed-over cut on her lower lip and looked like she had a few scrapes on her like she’d been in some kind of fight. That wasn’t like her; she was too good of a cop, too good at defending herself to get scraped up by an average suspect. He was curious, but he wasn’t sure asking her about it was the best way to start the afternoon.

She saw him looking, and knew he was going to wonder. “I’m fine, Castle. Just a few scrapes.” And broken ribs. She downplayed her injuries, seeing no need to elaborate on how hurt she was just yet. “Where’s Martha and Alexis?” she changed the topic.

“They left about an hour ago to go back to the city. Alexis has school for another couple of weeks, so they come out Friday afternoon and go back Sunday morning,” he answered.

So they were alone. Nothing and no one to interrupt them. No case for her to be able to bury herself in and hide behind. If they really wanted to sort through everything unspoken between them and deal with the fall out of…well, everything…it seemed like it was now or never. “So…just us…” she breathed deeply, her eyes searching him.

“Just us,” he nodded, his eyes meeting hers and holding her gaze for a few moments. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you…” he added quietly.

“I understand why you didn’t,” she offered a small smile of understanding. Because she did understand why he’d been upset; this case, her mother’s case…the way she acted when she investigated it, the things it did to her…add to that the fact the shooter had been after her and shot him instead; she hadn’t been lying to him when she told him she couldn’t pick it up for the same reason a recovering alcoholic didn’t pick up a drink. “I didn’t exactly call you either.”

He was quiet for another few moments, just watching her. “I should show you to a guest room,” he realized, finally tearing his eyes away from her.

“Right.” Even though she hadn’t completely, officially agreed to stay. She was careful when she knelt down to pick up her bag, making sure she used her right hand. She was also careful to mask any pain she felt, in no hurry to reveal her medical status to him just yet. She wasn’t going to lie to him about her injuries, but she also wasn’t going to just volunteer the information either.

She figured it would come up when she told him about the shooter anyway, and she would tell him about the shooter.

The way she was moving was not lost on him, but he didn’t comment on it yet. He’d ask her later. He led her upstairs, not moving very quickly at all. He was still supposed to be taking it easy, and stairs weren’t exactly his friend at the moment.

“If you tell me which room it is, I’m sure I can manage to get there on my own. You don’t have to come up the stairs,” she told him, noticing the difficulty he was having. Of course, the stairs weren’t necessarily her best friend with broken ribs at the moment either. They really were quite a pair, weren’t they? In another scenario, this would have been laughable.

He shook his head. “I’m good. The stairs are good for me,” he insisted stubbornly.

She eyed him for another moment. “Ok, but if you fall on your ass, I’m saying ‘I told you so.’ And I’m taking a video.”

“That’s fair,” he agreed. He continued up the stairs slowly, careful to keep his breathing and heart rate slow. Once they finally made it to the top, he took another moment before walking down the hallway and giving her an abbreviated tour and finally stopping in front of one of the bedrooms. “You can have this room. There’s a bathroom inside…and a view of the ocean. You’ve got complete privacy.”

She stepped inside and moved to place her bag on the bed. It was a beautiful room, but the view she saw from the window was the most spectacular thing about it. “Castle…” she breathed.

“It’s extraordinary isn’t it?” he said softly from his spot in the doorway. He hadn’t entered the room, not wanting to intrude on her space. “It’s the perfect room for you.” Because he thought she was extraordinary; In spite of everything they had said to each other, everything they had been through, every way she frustrated him or pissed him off, he still thought she was the most extraordinary person he’d ever met.

Meeting his eyes when she turned back, she blushed slightly at his words coupled with the way he was looking at her. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?” she raised an eyebrow.

“I’m still medicated,” he shrugged with a smile. “I’m going to let you get settled. I’ll be downstairs if you want to talk before dinner.”

She returned his smile with one of her own. “We probably should, don’t you think? We have a lot to talk about.”

He nodded. “I’ll make us some coffee,” he agreed, turning to head downstairs and leaving her to

her own thoughts until she was ready to join him.

xxxxx

She took some time to try to prepare herself for the several discussions they needed to have, figuring they should start with what she’d been doing the last two weeks. After what she figured was enough time for him to have coffee made, she started down the stairs, following the smell to find the kitchen since she hadn’t had a tour of the lower level yet.

“Why don’t we take our coffee outside?” he suggested, handing her a cup made just the way he knew she liked it.

She brought the mug to her lips and inhaled the aroma deeply before taking a sip, savoring it. No one could make coffee taste the way he could; she didn’t know what he did that was so special, but even fancy coffee from coffee shops didn’t taste as good as his. And she had missed it recently. “Sure,” she agreed to his suggestion.

He led her outside to the back porch, gesturing for her to pick her seat before he sat down in a seat opposite her. “I need to talk to you about your mom’s case,” he started.

Taking a deep breath, she released it slowly. “Actually, can you let me go first?” she asked him. Seeing him nod, she took another deep breath. “The shooter's dead.” Seeing his eyes widen slightly, she continued. “I didn’t do it,” she told him. “I wanted to…I almost did. But I didn’t.”

“Then how?” he asked, not following.

“Another sniper took him out.”

“Another sniper? You’ve got another sniper after you?” he asked.

“No…I don’t think so. I think the sniper was just after Maddox. He screwed up by shooting you instead of me. I think the other sniper was cleaning up his mess so that the case could be buried again.”

Castle was quiet for a moment, digesting the information she’d shared with him. “Could be. Maybe not,” he told her. Seeing her questioning look, he took a deep breath. “I got a phone call yesterday from a man claiming to be a friend of Montgomery’s,” he started. “The man told me Montgomery sent him a file before he died…a file that had all the names, all the proof someone would need to bring down the man behind your mother’s murder. The file is supposed to be used to keep you safe,” he continued, watching her, trying to judge her reaction.

“Well it didn’t work since Maddox tried to kill me more than once,” she murmured.

Castle took note of her words to ask her about them later. He needed to finish with his explanation before he lost his nerve. “He told me he didn’t get the file until after the shooting. But now that he has it, he struck a deal. If they come after you, he uses the information in the file to expose the person behind your mother’s murder. But you can’t go digging into your mother’s case anymore. If you do, they will come for you.” He gave her a minute to digest the words. “He said he’s already taken measures to make sure you’re safe,” he added. “So, maybe it was him who took out the shooter…Maddox, did you say his name was?”

She stood and began pacing with her coffee cup as she digested the information Castle had just given her. She supposed it was possible this man who had called Castle had been the one to take care of Maddox and clean up the files; it made just as much sense as her theory that it was Maddox’s employer cleaning up his mess. Either way the case got buried again.

He watched her pace, watched her thinking. “Beckett…” he started.

“Do you believe him? This…man who called you?” she asked, turning to him then. “Do you believe that if I stop digging, I’ll really be safe?”

“The way this man talked…yeah. Yeah I do,” he answered honestly. “Look, I know what the case means to you…but I don’t want to see you killed for this. Your dad doesn’t want to see you throw your life away for this.”

She narrowed her eyes at the mention of her father. “What does my dad have to do with this?”

He sighed, realizing he hadn’t told her about that either. “Your dad came to see me…before Montgomery was killed. He asked me to try to convince you that your life is worth more than your mother’s death. His words, not mine,” he told her quickly, not wanting to be on the receiving end of her wrath for words he hadn’t said.

Great. Her father was conspiring with Castle against her now too. “What else did my dad say?” she finally asked.

Well, she wasn’t yelling at him. Castle took that as a positive sign, at least. “Not much, really. Just that he was worried about you. That you cared about me. That unless I was dumber than I look, he knew I cared about you too. And that I should stop you from throwing your life away. Again, his words, not mine.” He was quiet for a moment before he had to ask. “How mad are you right now?”

She glanced at him before taking a deep breath, wincing slightly at the inhale. “At my dad? A lot, actually. But at you? Not as much,” she admitted softly.

He noticed her wince and couldn’t not ask anymore. “Are you okay? You haven’t seemed

quite…right… since you got here. You said Maddox tried to kill you more than once, and you’re too good at your job to get scuffed up by some random arrest. So the split lip, the scrapes…I’m going to assume are from Maddox?”

She knew it would come out sooner or later. And she’d promised herself she wasn’t going to lie to him about it. “Yes,” she nodded. “And some broken ribs.”

“Broken ribs?” he immediately took a step toward her, only to be stopped by her holding up her hand.

“I’m fine.”

“Broken ribs is not fine,” he shook his head.

She sighed. “They hurt, but I’m fine, Castle. It’s nothing I can’t handle. It just hurts to breathe a little too deeply. The doctor said they’ll heal in about 6 weeks.”

“So you’re off work for 6 weeks…which is why you were able to bring a bag to stay for a few days,” Castle began to put the pieces together.

Beckett looked down at her coffee for a moment. “It’s a little longer than 6 weeks,” she admitted, taking a slow drink of her coffee. Seeing his questioning look, she bit her lip slightly. “I kind of got suspended. I’m not allowed back until September.”

“What?!” he almost laughed. “I’m both outraged and impressed by that.”

She rolled her eyes at his reaction. “Shut up.”

“I’m sorry,” he chuckled. “What happened? How did you get suspended?”

She sighed. “The new captain hates me.” She shot him another look when he laughed at her words. “I’m serious, Castle! She did her whole hostile takeover and decided to use me to make an example out of so that everyone else in the precinct would see what happens when you go rogue.”

He couldn’t help but laugh some more. “You did go rogue…”

“It was my case! You’re my partner! She didn’t want to let me go after the shooter!” She cut him a look because his laughing was not helping. “Castle, if you don’t stop laughing, I swear to God…” she threatened him.

“Okay, okay…I’ll stop,” he held up his hands in surrender. “So September, huh?”

“Yeah, September,” she answered, her eyes daring him to start laughing at her again.

He gave it a few moments before getting serious again. “What are you going to do with your mother’s case?”

She was quiet for a bit, unsure of the answer herself. “I think for now…I don’t rock the boat,” she finally decided, looking out over the beach. “Whoever that second sniper was cleaned up the mess and took all the evidence. I don’t have anything to really run with. And this guy who called you says I’m safe for the time being…” she trailed off with a shrug. She wasn't going to abandon the case, but she was going to put it down for awhile...at least until she could find another lead.

“Is that enough for you?” he asked her seriously.

“It’s enough for now,” she answered, turning to him with a small smile. “I’ll get justice for my mom one day. I’d like you there when I do.”

He met her smile with one of his own, stepping closer to her and taking her hand in his. “I’d like that too.” When she didn’t pull her hand away, he felt a little braver. “So…what are you going to do this summer?” he asked curiously.

Finishing the coffee in her cup, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never not worked for more than a week. I don’t even know what to do with that much free time,” she admitted.

“You could stay here,” he suggested.

“Yeah, right!” she laughed.

“I’m serious, Kate,” he told her. “I’ve got the space. You need to heal, I’m healing. It’s peaceful. You brought a bag.”

She laughed again, shaking her head. “I brought enough clothes for a week, not the entire summer, Castle.”

He shrugged. “I have a washing machine. And you can go get more clothes. Or go shopping here.”

She shook her head again. He really wanted her to spend the summer with him. In the Hamptons. Her. “Why don’t we just see how this week goes?” she finally suggested. It wasn’t a yes. But it wasn’t a no either.

xxxxx

Thanks again to all who read and review! I truly love knowing your thoughts on my chapters. And I hope this gave you a bit of a payoff for the buildup through the story so far.

#caskett #castle #richard castle #kate beckett #beckett #caskett fanfiction #castle fanfiction

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