#but I don’t see them having will be outright aware of it until a little bit later

[chirpsythismorning]

Byler is a slow burn y’all!

While it’s possible milkvan could break up in early s5, or maybe they consider their fallout in s4 their breakup and are only now addressing it and how they’ve realized they’ve been better off as friends over the last year, it’s still gonna take some time for byler to confront everything over the last few years and both get to a point where they have clarity about their own feelings and finally accept that the other one feels the same.

I don’t think there’s enough time to explore all of that before Mike and El have that talk on the roof, or even shortly after that, even if it’s post-time jump.

It will still be interesting to see where Mike and Will are at in their relationship by the time the time jump rolls around.

It’s unlikely the painting will have been addressed without us witnessing it, unless they decide to throw in a flashback at some point if it happened during the time jump.

Which means there is still a lot they need to talk about, let alone for them be literally dating.

I think it’s also possible Will won’t know Mike and El are over for real, not until Mike or El tell him and the others.

What this might result in is an episode or two of Mike pining for Will (single 😁) while Will is none the wiser and maybe even trying to keep his distance, now under the assumption that Mike wants space to be alone with El since they’ve finally reconciled once and for all.

There’s gonna need to be episodes exploring their dynamic as friends that can be something more if they want to be and how they navigate that and how obvious it is that, in contrast to Mike and El, while they are indeed friends, they work even better as being something more too.

They’ve invested the entire series to building this up, in a way that most of the audience missed. They need to spend some time now making it obvious so that people can rewatch a lot of their scenes for what they truly are (romantic) now that they know the truth, as opposed to just being ambushed with them being together.

I need people that didn’t even want it to happen to have to endure the tension all season long, to the point where they’re screaming at their screen JUST KISS ALREADY! GET IT OVER WITH! JESUS CHRIST!

#byler #stranger things #I could see the tension being insane #leading up to an almost kiss #then maybe a final boss fight for old times sake #then ending all that tension with a kiss #cementing the fact that they’ve wanted to kiss all those tension filled arguments before #that their complicated (romantic) feelings has been the crux of a lot of their problems in the first place #and them finally confronting it being what allows them to both evolve by being true to themselves #and then dealing with the aftermath #I could see them being ‘dating’ at least in a vague sense #after they kiss and are aware of each others feelings #landing us somewhere around episode 5x06-5x07 #but reminder 7 is the episode from the blurry grid that ended with a bunch of green marker… #it’s possible we the audience could be aware of mike’s feelings for will as early on as 5x01 even #but I don’t see them having will be outright aware of it until a little bit later #the angst of witnessing mike pine while will pines simultaneously #asssuming he’s going crazy alone… #😏 #I understand the duality of wanting all of this AND established byler #but byler is already established… #once they realize their feelings and get together #it will re-contextualize all their previous moments in a way that literally establishes they been something more for a long time #even if they didn’t realize it until now

[cerise-on-top]

oh oh oh I’ve seen this going around (didn’t know it was a thing?) but 141 + König and Nikolai when their s/o has a strength kink?

Hey there! To anyone else reading this, only the ask has some NSFW elements to it, the rest of this post is entirely SFW! Again, I don't write NSFW, but I can write something watered down and SFW if that's okay with the person having sent it in, and that's what I did this time! So, this request has instead become something along the lines of the lads with an S/O who simply likes them being muscular!

TF141, Nikolai and König with an S/O who Likes Muscular People

Price: He’s a captain, so naturally he immediately takes notice of how you’re ogling him whenever you think he won’t notice. Though, sometimes you do have the audacity to stare at his chest and, especially, his arms. While he may have a bit of chub around his body as well, he’s by no means insecure. Quite the opposite, he’s well aware that it’s healthier for him to have some body fat. It’s kind of cute to him, in all honesty, and somewhat flattering too. Price knows he’s a strong and capable man, he could easily pick you up or manhandle you however he pleases, but the fact that that sort of gets to you as well, he likes that. You won’t have to outright tell him since he’ll know anyway, but expect to be carried a lot more, to have him be more conscious about what he wears so he can show off his muscles a bit. It won’t really affect too much of his routine, but if you ever want to watch him work out a bit so he can flex his muscles for you, he definitely won’t mind that either. It’s nice to have someone to talk to after all. If you’re ever brave enough to ask him if you could maybe touch his muscles, he’ll chuckle a bit and flex for you as well. He may be closer to 40 than 30, but it’s nice to know that you still think of him as attractive. One of his favorite ways of showing off his strength to you is by giving you a nice and warm hug to make you feel safe and protected.

Gaz: Gaz isn’t as muscular as the other members of the Task Force, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have quite some muscle to him as well. Like Price, he’ll notice when you stare at him a little too much, but unlike Price, chances are he’ll tease you about it. With his shirt lying on the arm of the couch, he’ll sit down next to you on a moderately warm day, claiming that it’s “too hot outside”. This is a blatant lie, he wants to watch you try your darndest to not stare at his abs too much. While it’s not particularly a concern of his that his teammates are more muscular than he is, it does sort of feed his ego to see you be this flustered about it. Is also capable of carrying you around just about anywhere, and don’t you ever dare to claim otherwise. He will do whatever he can to prove you wrong because, as your partner, he is always right about these sorts of things. And if he can’t carry you just yet he’ll call Soap and the two of them will train together. Gaz is still pretty young, so the way he looks to you does still matter to him more than it should, but if you’re a heated mess around him whenever he’s flexing a bit too hard, he knows he did something right after all. Biggest honor to him would be you asking if you could touch his arms. As mentioned before, he’ll pick you up, but will also spin you in circles until you’re dizzy before giving you a kiss.

Ghost: Ghost is tall and built like a brick house, you have an absolute field day with him because of it. Like Price, he has some chub to him. Again, it’s healthier that way, and he also doesn’t want to go to the gym every day, sometimes it’s just nice to sin and sleep in when you can. On a physical level, he’s the strongest out of his teammates, he has an easy time carrying just about anything. Even you weigh about as much as a bunch of grapes to him. While you liking him being muscular doesn’t particularly feed his ego, he’s too mature for that, he doesn’t resent that fact either. He had to become strong at many points in his life, physically and mentally, so he can protect the people he loves and himself. If that’s just something you can love him for, then he won’t say no to that. While he may not flex too much for you, he will occasionally when he remembers how much you love his muscles. Won’t be as cheeky about it as Gaz, but he’ll mention it every once in a while. Besides, if you’re a big fan of muscles and tattoos, then you’ve literally hit the jackpot with him. Tell him that to his face and he might blush a bit and start smiling. Not afraid to pick you up in private or squeeze you just the tiniest bit harder either while hugging you. It’s not very hard to feel small around someone like him, regardless of whether you’re 1,50m or 2m, he’s just a very big guy and has the dignity of one as well. If you’ve been together for long enough, he might show off a bit, but not too often.

Soap: Another guy who will actively seek you out just to show you how strong he is. He thrives on that sort of validation, especially from you, so please do stare at him just a bit longer whenever you want to. Not afraid of giving you a small show either where he simply picks up the heaviest things in the room just to show you how capable he is and how great of a partner he is as well. He tries to not have too much body fat and does his best to stay fit. No, he’s not really overdoing it either, he just has some good genes that allow him to eat literal trash and not put on too much weight. The more he can get you to stare and touch him, the better. Give him the positive attention, he’ll return it to you eventually as well. Will prompt you to touch his biceps just so you have your hands on him. He loves having you around while he works out because not only do you get to have a good show and see just how hot he is, he gets to just have you around. If you let him, he’ll do push-ups while you’re lying on his back. He knows he’s hot shit, having you reassure him is just another reason for him to keep going. Like Gaz, he’ll also be more prone to run around shirtless as soon as he figures it out, but he’ll also do so in the middle of winter. You dote on him, so even you telling him to put on a sweater is good attention to him.

Nikolai: Nikolai isn’t the youngest anymore either, but that doesn’t mean his body is deteriorating. Also has a bit of chub, but he thinks it looks better on him than having no body fat whatsoever. When it comes to strength, he’s a bit stronger than Price still, meaning he has few more muscles than he does as well, so it’s not like he’s weak either. If you come up to him and ask him to flex for you, he will like it’s nothing. He has had people fawning over him when he was younger, so you’re likely not the first. If you’re just sitting next to him, all flustered, then he’ll teasingly ask you if you want to touch them. Afterwards he goes back to whatever it was he was doing. He’s well aware you have a thing for muscular people, but won’t make a big deal out of it. He will wear shorter shirts if you explicitly ask him to, but whenever he can, he will wear one of his bomber jackets. You get a better view of him when he’s somewhere hot, with him slicking back his hair and you giving him all sorts of stares. Something along the lines of that will be the start of him starting to tease you more often. Need a hand opening the pickle jar? Need a strong guy to lift something? Want someone to carry you to bed? Look no further than him. As soon as he sees the chance to make you go quiet, he’ll take it. He might actually just pick you up when you aren’t expecting it either, just to show off in that way, and hold you up in the air. And if you’re taller than him, he’ll still pick you up, this is about his pride, after all.

König: He wasn’t always as muscular as he is right now, he used to be quite a bit softer when he was younger. While he, also has a layer of fat, he has plenty of muscles to spare as well. It’s sort of unlikely you’re taller than him, but on the off chance you do see eye to eye with him, he’ll still pick you up. This is about being the dominant person in the relationship, he needs to be the bigger person or else he won’t know what to do. It’s flattering to him, to know that you like him not only for his personality, but also his body, not everyone always has. He won’t particularly comply with you in public when you ask him to show off, he draws enough attention to himself as it is, but in private he’ll do just about anything you ask of him. He’ll flex for you, he’ll perform several exercises for you, just name it and he’ll do it. While he may not be an overly physically affectionate person, you can ask him to make you feel safer by having him wrap his arms around you. That’s another reason why he likes you: You’re independent enough, but you still allow yourself to be vulnerable around someone like him. Laughs a bit when you tell him you just wanted to feel his strong arms around you. However, in order for him to be able to be such eye candy and protect you, he’ll need lots of good meals too. Your agreement is thus that he’ll do just about anything you ask of him, even something stupid such as flexing for you, and in return you’ll make him a nice meal every once in a while, even if you just order takeout. Love goes through the stomach.

#cod #cod x reader #john price #john price x reader #price x reader #kyle gaz garrick #kyle gaz garrick x reader #gaz x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #john soap mactavish #john soap mactavish x reader #soap x reader #cod nikolai #cod nikolai x reader #könig #konig #könig x reader #konig x reader #thank you for the rquest!

[queenimmadolla]

Maybe could you write a dad Eddie x reader fic where penny wants to have a baby of her own so she can be a mom like reader

You were cuddled up to Eddie’s side on the couch, your toddler playing with her toys on the floor and your newborn curled in your arms, his face nuzzled against your bare breast as he nursed.

  The TV was on, but you and Eddie had long forgone your horror and dark fantasy movies for child friendly films and shows like Sesame Street, which was currently displayed on the screen. It was far from your favorite thing to watch, for either of you, your daughter was entranced with reruns of the show, and had a special love for Kermit and Elmo.

  “I’m telling you, there is no way they’re just roommates.” Eddie remarked with a scoff, during the Bert and Ernie segment.

  “They so are! I mean, the romantic tension is obviously present but neither has acted on it yet. Ernie’s too oblivious to do anything about it, probably thinks it’s only one-sided, and if Ernie’s not showing his interest, Bert’s not gonna make a move.” You countered, sinking further into Eddie’s side. His arm was around your shoulders, hand stroking along your forearm before latching onto his son’s tiny sock covered toes and giving them a gentle wiggle to which baby Wayne curled his feet further into his body, depriving his father of access to his toes. It didn’t distract the little glutton from the task at hand, your baby just mouthed a little at your nipple, head moving around until it was in place before latching once more.

  Eddie chuckled at that, watching with affection as his baby continued to stare up at you with wide eyes while he nursed, before his gaze moved back to the characters in question.

  “Sweetheart, they are clearly in a domestic partnership, they’ve just grown very comfortable around each other. We don’t need to see their affection to know they’re in a relationship.”

  “They sleep in separate beds, Eds.”

  “Okay, you got me there.”

  Penny chose then to get up from the floor, rushing over with the baby doll you’d gotten for her when you’d told her you were pregnant. She leaned against Eddie’s leg, resting her head on his thigh and letting him stroke over her curls before she pushed herself up and held the doll out to you.

  “Is that your baby doll?” You asked, assuming she was trying to show it off and she nodded, continuing to extend it and you realized she was trying to give it to you.

  “Hew you go, mama.”

  You made sure your actual baby was secure against you, glancing down to meet his unwavering stare as he ate, satisfied grunts sounding from him every so often, before you took the doll into your free hand, “Oh, you want me to hold…her?”

  You didn’t know what gender it was supposed to be, you’d heard Penny change it constantly.

  “Uh huh!” She nodded, grabbing onto Eddie’s knee and using it to sway back and forth. Sounded simple enough, you could play along, “She’s hungwy.”

  “You want to hand me her bottle then?” You could see the toy baby bottle, it had come included with, on the floor where Penny had previously been playing.

  “No, you has to feed the babies.” Penny released her dad’s knee to poke at her chest with both index fingers. “Fom wight hew.”

  You could hear and feel Eddie choke beside you, trying to muffle his laughter as you realized your toddler wanted you to breastfeed her doll.

  “Oh. Um.” You tried to think of a way to get out of it, casting Eddie a glare when you caught sight of his wide smirk from your peripheral vision. “Brother is eating right now.”

  “Udda one.” She pointed at your freed up, covered boob rather than the one your son’s wispy curl covered head was blocking for her.

  Damn it, Penny was beginning to become too self aware.

  Reluctantly, and very awkwardly, you held the baby doll’s plastic head against your other breast as Eddie literally started shaking against you. He might as well have just laughed outright with all the wheezing he was doing. Even Penny was casting him a few side-eyes.

  You turned your head towards him, eyes narrowing as Eddie continued to try to muffle his amusement behind a fist, face turning red with his effort but not even his fist was large enough to conceal the grin at your expense.

  Penny, however, looked like the cat who got the cream, happy you were once again complying with her demands. 

  You thought you’d be able to put the doll down once she went back to the toys, no luck, she’d apparently come over with the intention of watching you ‘feed’ her baby. So for like seven entire awkward minutes, you held the doll to your boob, its plastic face pressed against it, while she stared at you and Eddie suffocated on his amusement. The reason he didn’t just openly laugh at you was because he knew Penny would get mad at him. He could tell this wasn’t a game to her and if he laughed at something she didn’t intend to be funny, he’d have an angry toddler on his hands.

  Then you’d be the one laughing. 

  Mercifully, Penny eventually grew bored of watching you and reached up for the doll, which you were all too happy to give back. “You want to burp her?”

  The answer to that was no. Penny adjusted the baby doll in her hands until its face was smashed to her chest. It was half her size, but her motive was clear as she beamed up at you.

  She was imitating you.

  “Look! I A MAMA, LIKE MAMA!”

#pennyverse #pennyverse asks #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader fluff #dilf!eddie munson #girl dad!eddie munson #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x black!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson blurb #dad!eddie munson #joseph quinn #joe quinn #eddie munson fanfic #dad!eddie munson x reader

[bea-does-stuff]

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐣𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬 (𝐦𝐡𝐚 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫)

𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴: 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧

𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵: 541

𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴: 𝘋𝘢𝘣𝘪, 𝘣𝘢𝘬𝘶, 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘶, 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘪

₊˚✩彡 𝐃𝐀𝐁𝐈

Ok but you CAN’T tell me he’s not the jealous type, not because he doesn’t trust you, but because you're the only one he trusts.

He wants you to hold him and only him, he wants to be the one who gets all your attention and love, even though he will never say it out loud. and the fact that you can hug someone who isn’t him pisses him off.

When he gets jealous he will take you to a place where you 2 are alone, pretty much drag you out of the room where you and your friend were talking, then look into your eyes with his ice cold ones, glaring intimidatingly “If you're ever feeling all cuddly and shit, just come to me.. Got it?” After nodding your head, he’ll respond with a cold “good.” and then leave (Secretly hoping you follow him)

₊˚✩彡𝐁𝐀𝐊𝐔𝐆𝐎𝐔

Another jealous type, he sees everyone and anyone as possible competition for your love, and it drives him insane. He's the type of guy to roll his eyes in disgust when talking about your new friend.

He does trust most of your friends, as long as they don't overstep your boundaries or get too close, and he’ll be open about it too, he won't outright say “i’m jealous” but he’ll try to explode anyone who compliments your appearance.

When he gets jealous, you sometimes have to restrain him so that he doesn’t kill your friend “Let me at them!” he screams, mini explosions forming from his hands “uhm- hey no offence but—--your boyfriend has issues..”

          “Yea, I’m aware.”

₊˚✩彡 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐔

He doesn’t really get that jealous, however, let’s be real, this guy got some real low self esteem, he often thinks about how you can do better than him or how it must be embarrassing to be seen holding his hand.

But he does have his fair moments where he gets a little jealous, if that was to happen, he would just glare at the person, observing their every move until they leave from intimidation 

One time, you were getting a little touchy with your friend (let the intimidating glares begin) after a while, your friend looked back at you with a scared expression “uhm, i’ll see you later, ok?” before quickly leaving, when you turn to look at shinsou, he just shrugs, pretending like he doesn’t know what happened, after a minute of silence, he turns to you again and says “Wanna take a nap?” 

₊˚✩彡𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐈

Doesn’t really get jealous often, he’s aware that he’s your only boyfriend, why should he get upset? 

But of course, that doesn’t stop him for sometimes getting jealous when you give more attention to someone else, when that happens, he simply tells you why your giving more time to them and not him, it’s really quite actually, him saying something like that with his usual emotionless face

You would just be having a normal conversation with your friend, then he’ll suddenly hug you from behind, catching you by surprise, he’ll nuzzle the crook of your neck without a single word, your friend just grins “I think i’ll leave you 2 alone” when there gone, he’ll pick you up

           “Ok, now it’s my turn to get your attention”

#mha x reader #mha fluff #mha scenarios #mha headcanons #mha hcs #hcs #fluff #dabi x reader #dabi fluff #bakugou x reader #Dabi #bakugou #bakugou fluff #todoroki x reader #todoroki #todoroki fluff #shinsou #shinsou x reader #shinsou fluff #mha

[mournings-stars]

little songbird

part 2 (prelude) to my orpheus and eurydice angst fic "doubt comes in" — i'm not entirely certain i'll make this a full fic but if yall like it i might end up adding another part (would still be a prelude since part 1 is technically the end unless anyone requests a spin-off-esque addition)

part 3 (prelude pt. 2) part 4 (prelude pt. 3) part 5/finale (semi-alt ending)

includes: heaven lucifer ofc, a little lore, some blending of greek mythology, i don't think there are any warnings besides fluff and luci is a hopless romantic but also the relationship is ambiguous right now, still dramatic just dramatic greek fluff (also I made angels have golden blush because they have gold blood)

When you first met Lucifer, you’d just finished your duties on Earth and were going to come back to celebrate. As a Virtue, your job was to persuade the seasons into change — you sang a melody you’d taken from nature itself, soaring over the clouds and riding the winds until autumn fell over the world and you went back home until nature needed your persuasive help once more. 

But as you were going up, he was coming down. You came face to face, stopping each of you in your tracks. 

You’d heard of him, of course; Lucifer, the Morning Star, with his wondrous creations and unattainable dreams, but you never thought you’d see him in person — it always seemed like he was too busy working to ever come down to Earth. 

Yet here he was. 

You moved out of his way. “Sorry. I didn’t see you coming.”

“No worries at all.” He gave you a very charming smile, making you smile back reflexively. He took off his hat, tufts of blond hair falling in his face as he took your hand, bowing as his wings lifted him higher. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Humility.” He kissed the back of your hand and your small smile broadened. “I can’t believe we haven’t met yet.”

“You know who I am?” 

“Of course.” He pulled a blooming purple flower from his lapel, twirling it in his fingers. “You’re the one that made this.”

You didn’t know what to say, heart thumping against your ribcage with a swell of pride that he, a Seraph — and not just any Seraph — Lucifer, knew and coveted the small flowers you made blossom in a world that was filled with bigger, much more beautiful things. 

“I collect a new one every spring,” he continued, watching your reaction with a smile that he couldn’t help. Your eyes widened, hand gripping his without realizing you were even still holding it. “I came to collect a few of your golden leaves this time.”

“My leaves?” Was all you could think to say as your wings and heart fluttered with pride. You quickly dropped his hand when you felt your wings behind you, suddenly very aware of his presence and gaze. “I didn’t paint the leaves.”

“No, but you persuade nature to make them,” he laughed, tucking the stem of the flower into your hair as he did. “Who knew Humility would be so humble.”

“It is my virtue,” you said quietly, taking his hand to stop him from fussing with the flower he gave back to you. You opened his palm, brushing your hand over it. His wings fluttered the same as yours. “But thank you for your kindness, Lucifer.”

“Honesty,” he corrected as a golden leaf appeared in his hand, shimmering in the light. He stuck it into his lapel, where the flower had been, and grinned. “Such a generous gift and I don’t even know your true name.” You laughed at his tone, hinting for you to keep talking to him just as you were going to leave, and properly introduced yourself. “It suits you,” he said, “someone who creates this beauty,” he deliberately didn’t look at the scenery, “should have that beautiful of a name.”

“Aren’t you kind,” you said with a raised brow, knowing he was flattering you; calling you beautiful without outright saying it, you could easily pick up on his intentions. 

“Too kind for your liking?”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” You said quickly. “I was only joking—“

“I know!” He laughed, soothing your sudden embarrassment with a zealous, maybe overly so, hand on your cheek. “Who knew an Angel of Virtue would be so virtuous,” he joked again, laughing and stroking your cheek with his thumb before he dropped his hand. He was certainly overzealous, but you couldn’t say you minded it. “I should stop teasing you — go on, I’m sure you have important work to do—“

“Your work is far more important than mine,” you blurted, then wanted to slap yourself across the face. “I mean, my work isn’t any more important than yours — I’m sure you have more important things to do—“ he continued to let you put your foot in your mouth, watching you try to make sense of your words with a doting smile and fluttering wings. “—I mean, if you’re staying, I can stay, too—“

“You want to stay with me?” He concluded with a grin and you blanked, shaking your head at yourself as a golden glow dusted your cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he laughed, knowing teasing a Virtue like this was both cruel and profane, “if you’d like to stay, please do… but if you have work to do, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

You looked around, thinking that perhaps nature could use a little more of a push toward fall. The winds could be a little sharper, and the grass a little duller. 

“I’ve always wanted to hear your song,” Lucifer said, seeing the wheels turn in your mind and taking his chances. “If you think Earth could use a bit more help…”

You thought for just a moment longer before offering your hand to him. “You can help if you’d like.” He took your hand, and you rose higher above the clouds, listening closely for the soft melody that nature sang, before flying in the direction the wind took you and singing…

A simple melody. It was a song you knew well; there were no words or swells to make you know what came next, just an endless melody that the winds would sing as they carried the seasons through Earth.

And Lucifer knew just what to sing along, bringing the endless melody a harmony that made it feel so complete. He guided you beneath the clouds so you could see how the seasons changed — and then it came;

Summer rain. 

A tell-tale sign that your duty was complete, though it always came some time after you left. Now, you got to experience the misty rain and watch as animals came out to play. 

Lucifer laughed, wings going over the two of you to shield you from the rain. “Look at that…” He peeked between a pair of wings, reveling in the beauty you’d created together. “As usual,” he said, “a job well done.”

The next time you met was at the Season’s Celebration in The Garden. It was moved a week later to celebrate the summer rain, but it was a quarterly tradition. The other Virtues brought their specialties, but the highlight of the festivities were the heavenly spirits distilled by Charity and Chastity; not a single angel came without taking a bottle for themself. 

Cherubim played music, Seraphim danced, and the Ophanim made an appearance when they could, but the center of attention was on the seven Virtues and their drunk, lively dancing and cheering. 

The seven of you danced in a circle, glasses raised in the air with a flush of gold on each of your faces as you sang along jovially. 

The celebration lasted all day and night, animals coming to join you as wildflowers surrounded the seven of you. Butterflies, chipmunks, rabbits, and the like came out of hiding for a last experience before hibernation and migration. Birds came down from the sky, one in particular flitting around the circle and each of the Virtues before finally stopping in front of you. Pale yellow with red cheeks, tweeting at you until one of your fellow Virtues spoke. “It wants you to sing!” They laughed drunkenly, taking another sip from their glass. “We should all sing,” said another as you let the bird perch on your hand. 

It was the song of nymphs, muses, and winds; a sirenic song that each of you knew well. The plants in The Garden blossomed bigger and bigger and the bird in your hand flew to the middle of your circle before a cloud of white puffed around it. 

“Oh, it is you!” Laughed Chastity as Lucifer appeared, laughing along and twirling her as she said, “I didn't think you’d ever come to one of these.”

“How could I resist after such a beautiful change in the seasons?” He said cheerfully. “You lovely Virtues have outdone yourselves this year.” He then laughed, turning to Chastity, “and It’s always nice to see such heavenly creatures so drunk.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere,” said Temperance. 

“Certainly not with you,” said Lucifer and Temperance laughed at his jesting, the rest of them seeming to understand much more than you did, how to take teasing like his. 

“Flattery gets you everywhere,” insisted Chastity, and Diligence and Kindness laughed like they’d never heard anything funnier. “What’s so funny!?”

As the other Virtues started a loud, joking conversation, you met Lucifer’s eyes. He smiled, then looked at the music still being played and went to you. “Shall we?” He offered you his hand, wings fluttering behind him and making that same shimmering gold wash over your cheeks. It made him smile as you took his hand. 

“Patience is a much better dancer than I am,” you said as he led you to an open area. 

“But I want to dance with you.” And the moment your own wings fluttered behind you, he knew you just wanted him to confirm that. “Maybe you’re not as humble as I thought,” he whispered, making sure no other angel heard his taunts. He then changed the topic, hand reaching up to brush across your cheek. “You kept my gift.” 

“Of course I did.” You took his hand, using it to twirl under his arm as his wings lifted him higher than you. Yoy gave a very playful smile. “A gift from a Seraph should be coveted.”

“Oh, I see,” he laughed, shaking his head at you and your teasing. “You misunderstood me.”

“Did I?”

He nodded, a small half-smile on his face. “I wasn’t returning your flower as a ‘gift from a Seraph’—“

“You weren’t?”

“No, and you know that. That’s why you gave one back.” You laughed, a coy look on your face that made him shake his head as you looked at the golden leaf he still had stuck to his lapel. 

The two of you danced with all of Heaven watching as you spun, flew, and swayed to the music. He didn’t overstep, and he wasn’t overly forward with his gestures, but he was deliberate. He held you against him, but did it gently. He held your hand, but made sure you put your hand in his first. He lifted you with a smile and met you in the air, leading you back down as others joined in. 

Their laughter and chatting made it so that your conversation was much more private, giving Lucifer the chance to whisper, “How many gifts do I need to give you before you do understand?”

You hummed in thought. “I haven’t decided yet.”

But Lucifer had decided, since the moment he experienced your first time changing the seasons, he was going to love you; however you ended up loving him — a friend, a colleague, he didn’t care as long as it meant that he knew you. He didn’t even expect anything from you. You’d done enough; your ways of changing the seasons brought him out of his cold and lonely workplace that he’d never realized was so cold and lonely until he experienced your summers and springs; filled with warmth and community. Angels never ventured to Earth so often before you, and he could easily understand why. 

How someone could take on the job of multiple angels and the outcome be something so much more beautiful than he’d ever seen, he had no idea, but he was in awe every time he saw your humble work. He’d watch from Heaven, seeing the way you did things. It was the same as any other, but you didn’t indulge in pride as you did it. You did it for the good of the Earth, rather than bestowing a gift. 

He held the utmost respect for you. 

Though, Sera was certainly tired of hearing about that respect, because just a week ago, when you first met, she was the one to urge him down sooner. 

“You’ll never meet if you wait this long,” she said, brow raised as she stood behind Lucifer at the golden gates, watching from the clouds. “Humility is very kind. You could say hello,” she pressed. 

“Does Humility have a name?” He asked curiously, continuing to watch as the clouds changed. “It seems so rude… just saying Humility.”

“I’ve only ever known Virtues by what they represent; that’s how they introduce themselves,” she said, shrugging. Lucifer hummed, nodding and continuing to keep his attention on the clouds. She gave him a nudge, “You could ask.”

“You must want me to leave.”

“I want you to stop longing like this.” Lucifer laughed. “Go on.” She gave him a gentle push, making him have to open his wings before he fell. “Just don’t come on too strong.”

“Right…” He took a deep breath, smoothing down his coat. “I can do that.”

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel heaven #lucifer hazbin hotel #lucifer angst #lucifer x reader #lucifer morningstar x reader #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin lucifer #lucifer x you #lucifer morningstar imagine #lucifer fluff #lucifer morningstar x you #lucifer magne #lucifer #lucifer morningstar hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fanfiction #fluff #lucifer x reader angst #hazbin hotel angst #hazbin hotel fluff #angst #light angst

[makima4ever]

König & Ghost HCs :3

OK I KNOW THE PICTURE IS KINDA SHIT WUALITY AND IM SORRY MY PHONE ISNT HAVING IT RN

fem aligned can interact js don’t be a bridge troll oktyLOVEU

König & Ghost x Cat-like M!reader HC!!

this is entirely separate from any current stories and might become a multiple post thing :3

KÖNIG!!!

~ When König first meets you, it’d be probably be on accident as you bump into the tall man! who disturbs thy?!???? You then see this hulk and MOUNTAIN of a man as your little brain reminds you of how SHORT you are!!!! your instincts are telling you to climb….. ((NO HATE I LOVE OUR SHORT KINGS AND QUEENS FOR I AM 5’2))

König clearly sees how small you really are in comparison to himself, making him ALSO SELF CONSCIOUS… LIKE HE CAN SEE THE DIFFERENCE CLEAR AS DAY AND IT MAKES HIM AMUSED BUT ALSO REALLY AWARE….

~ You, on the other hand… are also actually kinda INTRIGUED!! very tall man who’s tall as the highest fucking mountain… maybe you should climb?? :3 You attempt to climb up the very tall man using his gear and clothing as footing to climb up his body!!!!

König just sees you strolling up to him, as he wasn’t entirely nervous but he was kinda curious and feeling a little confident with a small smirk behind his mask- UNTIL YOU STARTED TO GRAB HIS VEST AND CLIMB UP HIS TORSO…

~ meanwhile König is shocked and slightly panicked as you climb up his tall beanstalk body, throwing him disarray as you scrambled to get to the top!!! He’s not gonna throw you off but he is definitely moving a bit as you climb to the top!!! :3

This was entirely fun until you hit your head against the ceiling… okay, maybe climbing a 6’10 man who’s height REACHES THE ROOF ISNT A GOOD IDEA…. you recoil and start falling!! You do land on your feet as you recoil in pain from hitting your head against the lovely ceiling lights :3 ((CURSE THE LIGHTS..))

~ König is currently making sure you don’t fall off, until you do!! Then he’s panicking until he turns around so fast he could’ve cracked his neck… then he sees you gracefully land on the ground after falling!!! He’s surprised at how well you moved this maybe does not have anything remotely… and this surely didn’t invoke anything:3

König is stunned for a moment until you make a sound akin to a.. meow? We’re not even sure what sound you made really… that noise creates a feeling that is insatiable…. HE REALLY WANTS TO PET YOU!! :3

- you are currently.. having a weird moment as you are making these weird cat.. noises? not really sure what to call them really, NOBODY DOES

😭😭🥺

then, König slowly lifts a hand to your head as he pays it and scratches it with his hand (THIS IS KINDA CUTE??), just scratching your head and behind the ears as if he were petting an actual cat…

you let out a purr(?) noise, again we can’t tell what noise you’re making but it’s somewhat like a purr… maybe??? KÖNIG IS JS SHOCKED… CAT?!?!?

GHOST!!!!

~ honestly, he had already known your reputation since it was slightly infamous but he generally wasn’t even sure of you in terms of like vibe…

when he does finally meet you in the flesh?? You didn’t even seem off or any different from any soldier in terms of general looks but he did notice your slimmer figure

~ Ghost then has this internal monologue of why the FOOK he notices your body first then he sees you walking on over to him as Ghost continues to idle, chest slightly puffed as he sizes you up although not really… you then lift your head to look up at him as he can see your face

🥺🥺

he’s stunned, like outright stunned as he takes a moment to process this as you poke at his body, like a cat pawing at an arm or kneading someone’s back :3

from that moment on he now fully believes your c/s, but he doesn’t warm up to you immediately but he does find your cat personality amusing a lot :3

#ghost x male reader #cod x male reader #mw2 x male reader #ghost x gn reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x male reader #ghost cod #ghost mw2 #ghost simon riley x male reader #konig x m!reader #konig x you #könig x reader #könig x male reader #konig x male reader

[mossstep]

I’m eternally Interested with Sagau (self aware genshin au for those who don’t know) but god why does all the content need to be weird and dark. Like nothing wrong with that but I just don’t want to only read that :(

So! I’ll toss my hat in the ring with some silly/light hearted ideas!

Note: I AM A MINOR, please don’t be weird with my posts

Tws/cws: Sagau, swearing, (Idk what else, I’m bad at this sorry)

Creator!reader who is honestly just vibing and nothing else. No one realizes they’re a god until they fuck up and get hurt (cue gold blood) and the reader is just outright denying it

Character: was your blood gold? What the fuck

Reader: haha no

Character: *losing their fucking shit*

-

I think scaramouche would hate the creator, and the creator would probably be like “I love you my little meow meow” and scaramouche would just have to endure. Because the creator would probably just wanna get away from the whole god worship thing. Even if it means being around someone who despises them, Especially if the reader doesn’t have their memories of creating teyvat/is just a random Genshin fan from the real world.

-

I like to imagine an aroace creator, or a creator who just avoids dating because yeah, that’s a weird power imbalance, and the creator just wouldn’t want to deal with that.

-

I’ve always interpreted the creator as having the power to, well, create. So they’d probably just create a way to access the real world’s internet, much to the confusion of the characters

-

Oh and the creator would have so much fun just fucking with the archons, especially if they’re pretending to be a human. (Assuming the archons can’t sense the creators godly-ness) like I can imagine the creator walking up to venti, saying something along the lines of “so how’s istaroth?” And venti staring at them like “wtf did you just say?”

And along those lines, I can see the creator walking up to Zhongli, referencing something from so far in teyvat’s past that he’s the only one who remembers. And Zhongli would start talking realize “wait why does this random mortal know that?”

-

Oh, and the creator and nahida would be such great friends. The god of wisdom who was locked up for 500 years, and is now learning about the world, and the random god who appeared with knowledge about some obscure facts about the world, but nothing about the day-to-day life of those living in teyvat? They can bond over their shared lack of knowledge about how the world works!

-

Another thing that’d be really funny is the creator just saying random ass memes, and have their followers try to figure out what the fuck they’re talking about.

For example

In Fontaine

“French people are real?”

Furina: “what the fuck is French”

-

Also, the creator would just say shit from the real world with no explanation, like, I can imagine them yelling “JESUS CHRIST” when something scares them. And the people of teyvat just have to accept that the creator just isn’t gonna explain shit. Because how do they explain the religion of another world? Why would the most powerful god in teyvat worship another god?

#genshin impact #genshin sagau #idk how to tag this

[inkybloom-luv]

"But you're still pretty..!"

♪~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~♪

Somehow I am still alive!! Uhm!! I tried my best for this one! @midnightmah07 requested this randomly on a post so I hope you like it!! Took a while but I think I did well! Enjoy! And for anyone else reading this, requests are still open please check my rules for more info! All my writing works can be found under the "Inky's works" tag if you would like to check them out! Please tell me if I missed a tag susbsjsnsb

Request: Leona, Ruggie and Kalim with a S/O who has pimples

Tw; none that I'm aware of! Mention of bullying (maybe?)

They/them pronouns used!

♪~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~♪

Leona Kingscholar

When Leona made (Name) play his pillow for a nap he didn’t sign up for them not paying attention to him at all. Sure he didn’t outright tell them that was what he wanted but should that not be a given so he could relax with them in peace? He watched them through barely opened eyes as the used their phone camera to inspect their face, or more specifically their pimples, he guessed. He let his mind wander for possible reasons, it didn’t take him long to come to the conclusion that perhaps (Name) was insecure. So now he had to think of a way to start working on the issue, to get the insecurity to go away, even if it was only temporary. They were laying on soft earth at the moment and it was calm enough that (Name)‘s guard was down so.. flick!

With a barely there thump the phone landed on the floor, not the slightest bit of damage on it. In barely a moment Leona pulled them down with him, right to his chest, with no chance of escaping.

“Stop looking at yourself like that, you’ll turn into that skincare obsessed Blondie. Besides, there’s nothing to stress over in the first place herbivore. Those things will go away, I’ve seen them enough on those idiots (read; Savanaclaw students) during training. Don’t pick and you’ll be fine.”, he said and paused, taking a deep breath and getting comfortable before continuing “Anyway, you don’t need to think about that right now, considering you should have been busy being a pillow instead, so you have to make up for that now..!” And with that he fell asleep again, well, he pretended to, just to see if his diversion worked and yes, it seemed to work just fine. He stayed awake a little longer.. but once they were napping, he slept a bit too.

Kalim Al-Asim

“Ooooo! What are you looking at? Did you try something new with makeup?” Kalim asked as he came over to their desk in class, wondering why (Name) was inspecting their face, only for them to shake their head no. “You didn’t? Is something about your face bothering you then?” He asked, which was correct. They didn’t exactly want to admit to Kalim that they were feeling insecure about their pimples, especially since there were one or two Pomefiore students eyeing them that day. Still, Kalim was not someone you could just lie to that easily, especially since he already caught them inspecting their face for the nth time that day. So, (Name) decided, they had to be honest. They should be honest, Kalim did not deserve to be lied to anyway. So they told him that they were feeling bad about their pimples and that said pimples were bothering them. It took him a moment to realise what they meant because really he couldn’t think of a reason that they should be insecure. Sure the Pomefiore students really sucked but they didn’t know (Name)! Therefore they were not entitled to have an opinion about their looks!

He furrowed his brows and pouted at (Name).

“Why are they a problem? I don’t get it.. you look pretty anyway!” And after that, he stayed silent. That is until he got an idea.

“I know! How about we get a facial together?? I can ask Vil for recommendations on Salons and we can have a spa date! I heard facials can help with skin problems so if you really want to get rid of them, let’s at least make it a fun date!” Kalim suggested, kissing their forehead immediately after and giving them a hug. Yes, a date like that would surely be wonderful.

Ruggie Bucchi

Silence followed their statement. (Name) was upset that day and when their boyfriend Ruggie noticed and asked, albeit in his usual teasing tone and followed by his signature giggle. Of course once he realised that maybe it was a bit more serious than that he once again repeated his question but more serious this time.

“I mean.. I guess my pimples are really bothering me lately because they’re just so.. you see them yourself, you get it, right?” (Name) said, which Ruggie nodded at, raising a hand to his chin to think.

“Well.. don’t see why they bother ya, cause you’re still good looking with or without them.. but my Grandma’s got a face-mask recipe somewhere, my mom had bad skin growing up I’m told.. won’t be fancy but if you like, we could make that together

once I get the time to call for it.. buuut my service isn’t free, shishishi~” He teased as he ruffled (Name)’s hair, which made them roll their eyes but nod anyway. They knew just the way to repay him after all, so a small favour like this wasn’t a big deal in that way, but it meant a lot to them. And maybe they didn’t hate their pimples as much as they thought, after all, if Ruggie didn’t care, why should they? Soon Ruggie was off with a quick bye bye kiss, leaving (Name) feeling impatient as they waited and prepared for their little date, smiling to themselves as they formed an all too familiar batter into shapes as oil heated up in a big pot behind them.

#inky's works #twisted wonderland #ruggie x reader #ruggie bucchi #twisted wonderland ruggie #twst ruggie #kalim al asim #kalim al asim x reader #twst kalim #twisted wonderland kalim #leona twst #leona twisted wonderland #leona kingscholar #twst leona #leona x reader

[jaggedteeth]

as the u.s. tour comes to a close, i want to take a moment to talk about a phenomenon i’ve seen taking place within mcr internet fan spaces these last few months, my thoughts on it, and how i think it relates back to digital media literacy.

(before we start, i want to make it clear that i’m just some guy and i am definitely not the most qualified person to talk about this, but i think some of the things in this post really, really need to be said. my hope is not necessarily to change your mind or to “get you on my side,” but to encourage you to think critically and independently, even during your daily scroll on social media.)

————

so, what is this ominous phenomenon i’m talking about? i’m referring to some of the comments i’ve seen mcr fans make regarding gerard’s gender—specifically the public, speculative, and seemingly unironic ones that attempt to put a label or a semblance of a label on his gender nonconformity.

(i think now’s a good time to mention you should read this entire post before engaging with or commenting on it. stay with me. we’re in this together.)

here is a post that i think does a good job of explaining this a little more in-depth for anyone who’s out of the loop.

regardless of my personal opinions on all of this, i understand why it’s happening. much of mcr’s fanbase is trans and/or non-binary, and seeking out representation from familiar, comforting figures is not out of the ordinary. i don’t think anyone involved means harm, and this isn’t a callout post. i’m just adding to a discussion i think has been largely one-sided up until recently.

————

what is the point of me making this post? to put it bluntly, i disagree with how much of the discussion around gerard’s gender identity and expression is being conducted.

(again, please stay with me.)

what is it, specifically, that i disagree with? is it the celebration of gerard’s gender nonconformity? is it the possibility they might not identify, partially or wholly, with their gender assigned at birth? is it the joy their gender expression has inspired in many mcr fans?

no. it’s none of those things; not even close. i can’t even put into words how i, a gender nonconforming trans man, felt when gerard wore his cheerleader dress in nashville. it was a special moment and i was so happy to see him happy.

but something that bothers me about the “gender wars” narrative is the idea that anyone who’s not all-in is, if not an outright transphobe, someone with deep-rooted biases they need to work through. i haven’t seen this from everyone, but it’s floated around here and there.

nuance in conversations like this is incredibly important. the human experience is rarely black and white. and i believe the notion that it must be, especially when it comes to topics such as queer identity, largely stems from closed-mindedness and fear, conscious or unconscious.

i have certainly witnessed people online assert that gerard must be cis, and there’s no way he can’t be cis, implying if he ever identified as anything other than cis that would be bad and gross and weird. i strongly disagree with that viewpoint because it’s transphobic and gerard is a real person who none of us know personally who can do whatever the fuck he wants. in the same way, i disagree with the viewpoint that gerard must be trans, and there’s no way he can’t be trans, implying anyone who disagrees is a transphobe who refuses to pay attention. because gerard is a real person who none of us know personally who can do whatever the fuck he wants.

i’m aware gerard has also made comments in the past about his journey with gender identity, the connection he feels to women and femininity, and even his experimentation with drag while he was in college. he’s said he should be referred to with either he/him or they/them pronouns, he’s an earnest supporter of the trans community, and he’s historically rejected the sexist shithead rock-dude stereotype.

i’m not here to downplay any of those things, nor am i trying to invalidate anyone who has taken comfort in or identified with those things. just a couple of points i would like you to think about, though:

some cis people also question their gender identity and/or use multiple sets of pronouns for a multitude of reasons (i’m not saying gerard has to be cis, i’m just giving you an extra viewpoint to chew on);

i’ve personally met plenty of men or male-aligned people who strongly identify with women and femininity. i strongly identify with women and femininity and i’m still 100% a trans man and will throw anyone who tries to tell me otherwise directly into the sun (again, i’m not saying gerard must be a man or male-aligned);

gender nonconformity and transness are complex, nuanced topics. labels can be useful, but they are not a be-all-end-all;

and i’m going to be blunt here—assuming and/or declaring someone is transfem when they haven’t publicly referred to themselves as such, just because they are comfortable discussing their own femininity and sometimes have a feminine presentation and feminine mannerisms, is basically an upgraded form of gender essentialism and completely disregards the existence and experiences of amab cis-passing queer people and gender nonconforming people. i understand it’s a tough pill to swallow, but intent doesn’t always equal impact, and just because someone may not see it that way doesn’t mean that’s not what they’re doing.

even if gerard is transfem, he’s still a real person who has a right to privacy and autonomy, and he never has to publicly label himself if he doesn’t want to. no one is entitled to seek out the details of his identity, but least of all us, a bunch of strangers on the internet who will probably never have a full conversation with him.

not one of us is an “authority” or “expert” on gerard way or my chemical romance. we can learn about the band’s history and public personas or laugh at the funny, quirky parts of their lore or cry when we think about how far they’ve come in the public eye, but what gives us the right to dig into every tiny crevice of gerard’s work and interactions and public existence searching for “clues” as to whether or not he’s trans? what gives us the right to label his gender identity for him—a process that is incredibly personal? i know “parasocial” is basically just another hollow internet buzzword at this point, but let’s not forget the very real consequences that parasocial relationships can certainly have.

do i think it would be fucking awesome if gerard came out as trans tomorrow? absolutely. do i also think it’s fucking awesome that they’re an older gnc person? that so many queer people have discovered and accepted themselves in part because of them? that they now exude joy onstage and bravely dress and act the way they do? one million times yes. and we can celebrate those real, concrete, factual things without tinhatting, overstepping boundaries, or jumping to conclusions. if they were to come out as trans tomorrow, that wouldn’t invalidate any of my arguments or make the behavior i’m critiquing acceptable, because the point isn’t about whether or not gerard is trans, the point is about how some of mcr’s fanbase is treating them.

gerard has uplifted and respected us time and time again without even knowing us as individuals. so i want you to take a moment to sincerely reflect and ask yourself this question: where is our respect for him?

————

alright. i’m glad you’re still here. let’s talk about what can actually be done about this.

i think a lot of this problem boils down to a lack of critical thinking. yes, that’s thrown around a lot as a clapback on this website, but i don’t mean it as an insult. we’re all guilty of not thinking critically, myself included. especially in the age of the internet, it’s impossible to be perfect all the time, when we’re bombarded with information from every angle.

this is why learning about and consistently practicing media literacy is so important. it’s something i’m passionate about because i’ve seen firsthand, time and time again, how it can make or break a person and their worldview, to the point that i spent hours writing about it for my upper-level journalism courses (before i dropped out lol) and worked for two semesters as an editor for a college newspaper.

if these conversations about gerard were happening in private group chats between friends who already know one another, my opinions on the topic itself would still stand, but it wouldn’t be any of my business and i obviously wouldn’t think to write an entire post about it. but everything changes when these discussions are had on a public platform with little regard for nuance.

“misinformation,” or the unintentional spread of false information—not to be confused with disinformation, where the person spreading it knows what they’re saying isn’t true—might not be a totally accurate descriptor for some of what’s going on here, honestly. none of us can prove what gerard is thinking or feeling. but based on what we do know, what he’s publicly and concretely shared with us, i think it’s as close as we can get. a lot of the posts i’ve seen don’t read to me as “hehe funny celebrity headcanon that’s obviously just for fun.” or even “i relate to this person’s art and/or publicized experiences, but i understand i don’t know them and at least some of that is just projection.” rather, they seem to make invasive leaps and use inaccurate vocabulary while simultaneously taking themselves very, very seriously, and that concerns me more than if a random tumblr user was just trolling to start fandom drama or something.

to put things into perspective, this is why every single one of my journalism professors drilled it into my head that you have to get your news from multiple sources. those sources must have differing perspectives and you need to look at every single one with a critical eye, no matter how trustworthy they may seem (listen, i get it’s way more complicated than that and i could go off on a whole other tangent about the glaring problems with mainstream news media in the united states and not in a cringefail right-wing way, but this is an mcr blog, so let’s just focus on the basic principle here).

obviously, i don’t think anyone should engage with transphobes unless it’s for the sake of making stronger counter-arguments, because their beliefs are provably harmful and false. but someone making good-faith criticisms of speculating about a stranger who has not publicly come out as trans and/or non-binary is markedly different. i’m not the only person who’s written something like this, and i encourage everyone to seek out similar posts and think about the points they’re making, even if you don’t agree with every single one of them.

this speculative commentary on gerard’s identity has spread like wildfire and created a polarizing echo chamber, from what i’ve seen. i understand why. but it’s still deeply worrying to me. seeing as this is primarily happening on tumblr, i’m concerned less because i think gerard will ever see or care about these posts (that’s obviously still important, though), and more because of what this says about how people in mcr fanspaces view celebrities they feel strongly about and engage with information they see online at large.

please do research on digital media literacy, and please use reputable sources with authority on journalism and communications to do so. don’t take what you see on social media at face value. don’t trust any one social media user to feed you commentary or shape your viewpoints, and that includes me. read with a critical eye. think about the possible implications and intentions behind the words other people use, big or small, and why those might be there. be aware of your own biases and blindspots. remember that you’ll never be perfect, not even close. and while you’re at it, learn more about the experiences of gnc people, and the experiences of queer people of all different ages, backgrounds, cultures, races, identities, perspectives, lived experiences, etcetera. if you can, engage in diverse irl lgbtq+ spaces. they put things into perspective in a way the internet never will.

but i still use tumblr in 2022, so what do i know?

————

if there’s anything you think i overlooked or misconstrued in this post, tell me! i want this to be a living, breathing conversation, not a monologue. these are important issues and they deserve our time and attention. thank you so much for reading.

#terfs and truscum don't fucking touch this post btw you're not welcome in this conversation or anywhere near my blog #tumblr like fucked up the spacing between words for some reason but man idc anymore i've already been working on this for way too long #mcr #my chemical romance #gerard way

[cowboylament]

“Is this alright?” He asked.

I nodded. 

He placed his hand down, nothing but warm hot skin. He slid only low enough to grab the blanket, dragging it back up over my arms and hovering there a moment like he wasn’t sure what to do now. When he pulled away I didn’t stop him. I forgot what it was like to be young, inexperienced. How much weight everything had, the touch of a hand, the place beside you in bed. I’d once spent hours thinking about it, how it would feel to get to sleep beside someone forever. To reach through the dark and grab the person beside you and curl into their body, to find such tender relief whenever you wanted. To be so hungry so long you didn’t even recognize it as need, as want. Not until that first reach where no matter what you imagined, how small you’d convinced yourself it was, you found your hands shaking. 

Or

Lucien has been lying Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Bonus, Ao3

“I have news.”

Rhys had called both Lucien and me into his office. Where he’d managed to find my mate I didn’t know. It had been nearly two weeks since we’d slept on my bathroom floor. The only thing that had changed between now and then as far as I could tell was that the bond had reopened between us and unlike the time before our argument, his emotions surged through the tether throughout the day. Intense and complex emotions, not often recognizable to me until they diminished and I could see with greater clarity their edges, pull them apart, find the individual threads. There was such a weight to them I had seen only rarely. They knocked my knees out from under me, my breath. I don’t know what had changed, but suddenly his feelings were far bigger than they’d been before. 

He could have fooled me, however, sitting to my left so stoic. Had I seen him in the past few days I like to think I’d have at least asked if we were okay, if he was. Maybe not at first, not when I really wanted to, but eventually. With such feeling, I didn’t want him to hold it all on his own but we’d somehow found ourselves back again in the things we did after our fight—doors closing late at night, things going unsaid, the memory of a body, the fear it’s leaving. 

Rhys looked tired, but he laid the news outright. 

“I’ve claimed you, officially.”

Before I could speak a swath of grief, like a cloud passing over the sun, twisted inside of me. Waves of it pushed away thoughts and breath, and between crests, regret, suspicion, something hesitating and withdrawing, only to surge forward like the leaving could be undone. My words were obliterated, the male was fluctuating and balancing a hundred new degrees of feeling every second and the only thing that had changed in his appearance was the slight opening of his mouth. Though he remained alert, his gaze forward. 

“And my father is aware?” Lucien asked. 

“Yes.” 

Out in the hall, a door closed idly. For Beron to be aware of his son, to know his location during accusations of treason was a delicate game. Rhys must have played it very carefully these weeks. Such a burden sat on his face rather plainly, dragging it down, as if it were still there. 

“It took dozens of negotiations, he’s informed the other courts you’re a traitor who can’t be trusted. But to be honest,” Rhys continued, breaking only now to rub at his eyes, “his word will mean very little to most of them as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“I am,” Lucien said. His voice steady, but within there was a stir. Regret, grief unending, but not new grief. It was old, so old, like it had been born with him. Beron the cruelest, the eldest of the High Lords. His youngest son still gentle despite. What had been endured and remains to be endured?

“Normally I’d wait to negotiate with your father but, your brother said that the longer he sits on that night the greedier he’d get.”

My attention shifted away from my mate. Greedier, negotiate, those were specific word choices. I took in a long breath, clearing away any lingering fog of foreign emotions and temporary blindness. This was something I myself had not considered, that Beron wouldn’t become greedy, he already was. The High Lord of Autumn was not rash, not rash enough to invade when he found out where his son was. What were the choices for Beron, truly? Wage a war, lose males, or gain leverage. A blind spot on my part, how foolish I’d been, to have labored under such illusions and fear for so long. War wasn’t imminent. Beron knew for some reason we wanted Lucien, and he’d work out something had to have happened for us to want to fight for him. He didn’t have to know what it was to have guessed it was dire, our need.

We’d given ourselves away.

What could he demand, what did he feel that he was allowed now that we’d given ourselves away? He was cunning, calculated. He’d always wanted power, specifically power over us. My stomach clenched. The least loved son, a perfect token in his game. Beron had nothing to lose. 

The blessing he’d called for that night would mean little in this exchange. I’m sure the only thing it allowed for Rhysand to negotiate was against a war Beron didn’t want to fight anyway. You don’t come here and I won’t go there. It was the way it went, crimes against Prythian were greater than those against its females. There was no use in pretending otherwise, in languishing too long. 

Lucien relaxed back in his chair, unaware of the sickness climbing through my bones, and asked, “What are the terms?”

“As you have known, you will lose your title and you cannot go back to Autumn court. If you do, Beron has sworn a blood duel.”

Lucien crossed his leg over the other, “I’ve no desire to ever see that place again.” 

My own growing grief at once enveloped me, reaching further than my body, reaching out. The strength broke Lucien’s composure. He glanced over at me and I at him. There was no need for either of us to say what we were thinking, he knew what I wanted to give. The irreplaceable thing he’d had almost two months ago, taken in the middle of the night like nothing. I knew that he had always wanted to leave his home, that the loss was always meant to come for him eventually. But I knew something about loss too, about the things we cannot have back. The family you make will never be the family you had, that is their blessing and their curse. So I grieved for him, for what he’d lost and what he’d never had to begin with. 

Rhysand remained wholly ignorant of the private feelings between us, but waited to speak until we turned away from one another.

“He also agreed not to declare war.” 

Whatever Lucien anticipated, this was better. His relief came light but demolishing, easy like a gust, as it moved through my body. I forced in place his feelings like a veil over my own, hiding my wound. It soothed what was rotting within me momentarily, but could not clear entirely the lingering scent. Lucien would never see his home and I could scarcely know it even if I went without him. If I were to go, it would be by force. 

I stilled. A panic ripped through me.

 Life for life. 

The veil was gone. 

Those were Lucien’s terms, but what of mine? I had broken the one rule I knew with Beron I could never break. 

A thin coat of sweat settled against my back. Beron had wanted one thing from me. He could still ask for it. The truly deplorable males, those weak worthless males he called sons, could be betrothed to me. I would not have Eris, I had lost any chance with Eris. I’d live in that house with him, the male who’d cut away at me, next to those woods blood had been shed in. And none of the terrible details would matter because I would go. They wouldn’t even have to ask twice, I would go. Not because of the bargain between some nameless God, but for my mate. He deserves it. He’d given his life, so I’d give mine. I’d hunger for an immortal lifetime.

I found at last the words I’d had before, “What are my conditions?”

Rhys was silent, Lucien too. The thing inside us both had gone still. Lucien wasn’t naive, but in a moment of such intensity, he’d made the mistake of thinking we were lucky. This world didn’t work that way. There was perhaps only one thing Beron hated more than his youngest son. Such despair, such blinding terror clawing its way up my legs, into my heart. I don’t know if I could see the world. I think the fear had reached my eyes by then.

“You are to go to Autumn as an emissary on all future endeavors. You will remain the point of contact and we are forbidden from sending anyone else with you.” Just hearing the first half of his sentence had turned my stomach to lead, made me flinch. I was waiting to hear the word bride, but then he said it, Emissary. I was the point of contact still. That meant I was still Night Court. I forced myself to be present, to listen to the whole of his words. 

“We also cannot prosecute him for the blessing,” even sat down my legs felt weak. I suspected this. I knew this. No war. Rhys opened his mouth with finality, “If we speak of the events to anyone who does not already know, the bargain is void. Lucien will die.”

I gripped the chair. It was like being born again, my relief. Whatever lingering fear had found itself between my ribs and my joints, was washed clean away. I could have wept, such profound relief it rubbed my insides raw. The price was silence. The price was denial. A scar wrapping around my waist like an unwanted hand, the delicate body, the flimsy memory—our only proof it had happened. And even that would vanish eventually into the dust seen only when it passed through sunlight. But we were free and for such a price. Such blind spots, what greater prize to Beron was there than a silenced female. 

“So he gets away with it?” Lucien barked. Rage flared between us to the point that it forced Lucien to his feet. I was not yet strong enough to manage, not yet in my body entirely. 

“We both do,” I said. This was a gift of many meanings. I got to stay here with my family, keep what I’d won. The power to choose, I could marry or not marry, I could stay or go. My mate, he was granted the same. Happiness came wrapped in sorrow. My bargain had been finished. He was no longer in danger. The price had been paid. Lucien could go as he’d always meant to, somewhere he truly loved, and I wasn’t afraid of him leaving anymore. Prythian had opened for him, thanks to Rhysand. My brother did what I would never have had the power to do. Though I had gotten Lucien to safety Rhys would be his savior. 

Lucien’s hand gestured out in front of him like the memory was before us plain to see, his exasperation in every word, “We acted in self-defense it’s hardly the same.”

I shook my head, “Not to Beron.”

Rhys nodded and gestured for my mate to sit. For the rest of the hour, he explained to us what had been happening these weeks of correspondence. How Beron was growing stricter, less malleable to any negotiation. He had asked for a life, but somehow he’d been persuaded to avoid more bloodshed. I did not push for details, it was a terrible business, having to delegate pain and suffering. I placed no blame on Rhys, what hands he had to play for this outcome. I could see it though, how Eris had been right. If we waited too long the price would only increase. Rhys was backed into a corner, he had to agree. No matter the justice he wanted for me he could see the alternative I had seen too, he could see what was so close to being asked. He did not have to say this, we looked at each other after all had been shared, all that could be shared, and we both were aware of what the other knew. Lucien opened his mouth, not doubt to argue our side, but I spoke first. 

“If you have yet to agree, agree to the terms. That night is over and with good reason.” 

I didn’t want to return to that court or its memory. Anyone who needed to know already did. We’d moved on from that place better than we had been before, no longer so hostile or cruel, needing always to have something over the other and trying to win. I was glad to move on, even if moving on meant losing Lucien. I didn’t want him to go, but I had already gotten so much of what I wanted. And regardless, some things were more important. There were fates I could stomach even less, like his being somewhere that made him unhappy. I would not cage him. He loved leaving and I loved staying. Now his life was safer than it had ever been, to do what he’d always wanted. That was something to live for.

Whatever lingering fear I’d been holding onto in all these weeks emptied out of me with such intensity I started to shake. A different kind of crumbling, happy but sad, grateful and grieving. Lucien, to his credit, swallowed his argument, even as a foreign anger clawed at my chest like it could feel the immense relief flooding through me and wanted to sink its teeth in.

My brother, I had no doubt, understood this would be my choice. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. He’d be arguing to Lucien’s point with a male who would never bend. He’d just wanted to be sure. The grave look on the High Lord’s face was the realization I’d already had many weeks ago. That night was always going to be my burden to bear. 

“I’m sorry,” he offered. 

I stood, turning from Lucien. He had my brother’s protection now. My presence would be redundant. I fought the enormity of my sorrow and my ambivalence to his departure. I had to get away, let it out, or I would start to drown in it, lose air, and composure. But I had one thing left to do, I had to put Rhys at ease. I had to be at ease for that to happen. That was always my work, I had to go first.

“There is no apology needed. That male will succumb to the life he lived.”

Rhys began to fumble with his desk. There was nothing he could do and he would suffer for it. I could not help him, could not pull him from his mind, the what if, the hand he hadn’t been dealt. That was his burden. So instead I slunk into his mind and said: thank you.

I hoped he could feel how much I meant it. I wish he knew that this was also a gift.

When he pulled out his ink, wordlessly I made to leave. Lucien trailed behind just as silently. With each step it became clear the level of erosion that had happened these weeks. I hadn’t even known how much worry there really had been inside me until it was gone. It had weakened me. I didn’t know if I could stand, could support the weight of the reality that took its place. I slipped into the library across and stumbled forward, clutching onto the couch, and waited for that door to close, the front door, waited for the tightness in the chest of someone far away and stretched thin, but there.

Someone entered the library and I righted.

“Y/N” Lucien said.

I pressed my hand to the heat of my face, covering my eyes. The one time he thought to say goodbye.

“Will I see you at dinner?” I asked, keeping my back to him. “Or are you going now.”

“I can stay.”

I nodded, “But you don’t have to. Not anymore.”

“I want—” his sentence ceased. Whatever it was he wanted, whatever fell at the end of those words either he didn’t know or didn’t want to say. There was a long pause, a probing gaze, before his hand ghosted my shoulder, but I pulled away. If he was even a little kind to me I’d break. I’d beg him not to go and that was worse than saying nothing. He’d stay just because I asked, because he was loyal to people even when they didn’t deserve it, and then I’d never know if I deserved it. Not when I caged him in a different way. So that was it, this was it. I took two long breaths, caught air, steeled myself as I had before, and turned to face him. 

“I want you to go.”

I knew there was a chance saying that would lead him to lash out in his anger, as he had that night we’d fought. Where for some unknowable reason he’d felt unwanted by me when I was trying to convey the precise opposite. But I could feel something had changed between us now that he stood before me, its occurrence happening maybe over the last few days without our participation. We were no longer fighting each other. Not at least, how we’d always been fighting each other. He stared at me in thought, the sounds of a clock somewhere in the room ticking. Today he didn’t seem far away, he seemed so close.

“I can feel you,” he said simply. “And I have the sense if I go you’re going to fall apart.” 

“I don’t wish to keep you.”

“Nothing is keeping me here besides my desire. Now, please, explain to me what’s going on.”

I shook my head, “If you don’t know then maybe that’s the Mother’s will.”

“No.” He was commanding in his tone, but still gentle. So gentle that I looked up to meet his eye even as I felt my own go glassy, even though to do so would give me away. He studied me before he continued, looked in his way that really looks to consider the image before him entirely. “In your brother’s office, there was a moment of panic for you like that in the woods, and I want to understand why.” He paused then added somberly, “I was there that night too. I felt what you felt. So help me understand.”

I stared at my hands. Thin skin, over flexed muscle and bone, wrinkled where it seemed a long time ago, longer than a life, lips used to go. I blinked away any lingering moisture and dropped my gaze. I could not have it both ways, could not say he should have what he wanted but deny him the explanation he asked for. “Beron was going to ask that I be married to one of your brothers.”

“Okay.” He said calmly, still so gentle and attentive, “What do you know, what am I missing?”

“It's what he said that night. You remember?”

“Yes, but why would he, after everything, ask that?”

When I found his face again he wasn’t angry. Not even for what I’d implied earlier, as if the idea I wanted him away washed clean off of him. I think we’d stopped being angry when it came to matters of the heart. Honestly, it didn’t even feel like anger when we’d fought that night in the foyer, the way a kind animal will bite when injured. I think all along we’d only been scared, wounded. But there was no room, no time anymore, for something so self-indulgent. 

“Because there are rules that I have that you don’t, and I broke the one that with him I’m never allowed to break.”

“What?”

“I won,” I said plainly. “Not minorly or arbitrary, it was absolute. We got away and I had the last word.”

 There was something briefly there, on his face. A kind of denial I’d had those nights ago, where you realize you were so unknowingly close to danger. And it makes you sick, just the possibility of what might have happened if you behaved differently. How the alternative sits stark on your chest and you want to deny it all, give yourself a little distance, maybe find some reprieve, and remember what had really happened.

I explained, “A life for a life. He’d get the last say in mine, and then any power I had was free for him to command. You know this, you know why he wanted me for Eris.”

“I’d never let him.”

“I’d have accepted.” 

He was shielding from me again. I could tell. Nothing came through, not the thing that made him go pale or the force that seemed to send his body moving forward without the help of his legs. How he seemed to have been struck in the back. My shoulders slumped.

“Why?” He asked.

“Because you’re Lucien.”

He searched my face, but the answer wasn’t there. He was lost, the only thing that wasn’t adding up was why. Why any of it? In an attempt to hold myself upright, trying to seem sturdy and sure, I found everything caving inward. He could see that at least, my whole body his to understand, and he did. He stayed because he did, but right now he needed more. 

“It’s all the same. Why do you think I said those terrible things that night in the woods, blaming you, about ‘not letting you make commands?’ Or the lie about the wards. They couldn’t keep you here, I know you knew that, you’re not stupid.” I said throwing my hands up in irritation or maybe still fear. A fear that he hadn’t figured out what everything meant together, and he never would. So I said it outright, “I needed you to choose me. Just until today. Because I don’t have any power, Rhys does.”

“That's not true,” he said, voice slicing through the air with renewed command. 

“It’s true enough. Whatever power I have only works here. If Rhys didn’t like you, I knew my weight. I could persuade him to claim you. That is true nowhere else, I could protect you nowhere else if you left. How many High Lords could take on treason?”

Lucien, exasperated, stepped closer to me, “I had options.”

“I know,” I said, voice echoing. I could see the force with which my perspective met him. I watched each word strike like a fist. “I know that now. But you’re Lucien.” 

“So?” 

“So this was the only outcome that mattered to me, the one where you got out.”

“And what about you?”

“You’re not listening. I need you safe. I need you free. You’re my mate.” 

Then a real fist, my own, struck his chest, as if to show him who I was talking about, like he didn’t know. He grabbed my wrists, tight but not hard, and leaned down to meet me at eye level. His words were clear and desperate enough to straighten my spine.

“I’ve been out.”

“Not to me!” I said, meaning to be strong and clear like him, but what came out was broken and ridiculous. Like a wail. Whatever feelings were beginning to rise obliterated my forced composure, and revealed to him entirely the crumbling form I’d taken. All these weeks, the doors closing, the dread of the final door closing. The thought of him slaughtered, the thought of Beron killing my mate. It had eaten away at me, eaten my form and my fire, and any displeasure that could have been found in having to marry. Until at last the only thing that was left was the one thing that had always been true, even before I knew it: I needed him. 

Lucien’s face, finally, betrayed him. Pain, grief, soft eyes, sorrow carving out his fine beauty. Rough warm hands dropped mine to hold my face. He said, “Hey,” and it was so gentle, so sincere, that at last it broke me open. I cried. Cried for everything that had for weeks gone unsaid. For the pain of what could’ve been, for the relief that it wasn’t. I cried because he was safe and because for so long he wasn’t. We’d crossed a universe, I’d once thought. 

And now he would go and I would stay and whatever sorrow was there connected me to the world and its beauty. The fact that good things do happen here, and what we want is often difficult to predict, stranger up close, and hard to hold, but it’s there in our hands. As he was now in mine, clutching to his shirt as he tucked my head into the crook of his neck and moved me into him so I could fall apart. 

I don’t know how long he held me there, letting me cry into his fine shirt, but it felt like an age. I thought I’d cry until the new one came around, but suddenly I was empty of it all. I pulled away, and when I opened my eyes he was staring at me with such care if I had anything left I’d have cried more. The generosity he gave me. His hand moved the hair from my face like the night we’d come back, like the night in my room two weeks ago when he’d asked if I needed him and somehow I’d said yes. 

Curiosity drove me to do it, what I did next. He watched me, holding his breath. Two options seemed to present themselves to me as clearly as if they were spoken aloud. It would take one look—just one, and the distance which we existed now would feel too large where before it seemed so close. Though if I didn’t, we’d return from this closeness and go about our life as we always did. And I didn’t doubt that the moment would present itself again, but I didn’t know when. 

But I was curious, like I said. He’d chosen me when he walked through that library door and now finally, I got to choose him. So I let my eyes, in their peripheral, find his lips, and looked. 

To be so understood—Lucien’s hand slipped through my hair and rested against the back of my neck. My fists balled in his collar, and suddenly no one was going first, instead we went together.

Our lips met somewhere between need and the patience of wanting to know something. Lucien kissed with an urgency to feel everything, how I tasted, how I moved. Each opening and closing of his mouth seemed to be met in sync with my own like we knew each other but accidentally. He was precise where he kept himself, lingering in the firstness of it. A desire, despite our age, to keep it here, in this moment, until he knew me on purpose. 

And I knew with certainty unlike all the other softness, this was happening in our world and not the other I’d thought was close by. That it was never really another universe at all, but this one right here. The seam by which we slipped through had always been the old boundaries of us, where the tangibility of his kindness had been so potent it pushed me beyond myself and had made me brave. He made me want to be brave. 

Our knowing completed, the urgency changed. Our breaths picking up. I had curved into him, chest to chest, and maybe it was the fact I was on my tip toes, or his height, but our balance went as our need grew and we stumbled backward. He sacrificed one hand and gripped the bookshelf behind us, supporting us fully, the books rattling. Yet his other hold was unwavering, falling down my back, tucking our hips together for relief. If we fell, we fell together. There would no longer be any separation. 

His mouth didn’t trail away, didn’t meet my neck or press lingering kisses into my cheek. We moved like water: naturally and instinctual—anciently. So fluid, he was, his tongue slipping against my own. I almost didn’t notice, could’ve mistaken him for myself. 

When he pulled away I half expected the frenzy, but I found that the moment was complete. I wanted more and yet, not now, this was good and whole on its own. I might not have even known I had wanted if it weren’t for his grip on my body, the shelves pressing into my spine. We were panting like we’d been running to each other since the night we arrived. Perhaps in a way we had been, running and running and running but now we could finally rest. There was a premonition of wanting but for now, the satisfaction filled me, doubling in the presence of Lucien’s.

 I felt it then, the familiar moment his shield dropped. Our realization was mutual and simultaneous. He’s staying, and I need him. Our emotions intertwined seamlessly. Gratitude, longing, hope, happiness, grief, all of it tangled together—No. More woven than anything now. Both of our feelings, a seam down the middle like a choice, made like the space where one side of your body meets the other. 

I understood something now too, the feeling I’d had before, that bone that had been broken then set again. It was our power. His and mine meeting, no more fear, now we were together. There was only one place for it to go. 

“Where have you been?” I asked.

Lucien laughed and I understood how it sounded only after I said it. He didn’t immediately let go of me. His eyes just moved over my face, like it were the first time he was seeing it so close.

“I mean—I meant where do you go when you’re not here.”

The male stood up to his full height and I let go of him. He said simply, “You’ll know soon.”

Just then the house seemed to awaken around us and what had once seemed like a private moment between us became precariously full of others and their noise. I could feel the Cauldron and now the Mother, pulling me across Velaris. My answer inherently understood, just a little longer. The tension vanished, not without a final tug. They knew though, I was never so easily persuaded. 

Lucien backed away and gestured for the door. As I walked past I brushed my hand against his own. I let it hang there between us. He grabbed it, just the very tips of our fingers held to one another and kept in place the intimacy. I led him back, his chest pressing to my spine as we stood before the exit. I hesitated, turned the knob as slowly as I could. Metal ground against metal, his every breath pressing into me, each click prompting me to grip him tighter, become more aware of how it felt for him to be just there, to remember what it felt like to have the option not to leave at all. I took a breath, dropped his hand, and the door opened.

We slipped out into the hall and stood our normal distance. No one was there and I turned to my mate. It probably looked like our usual business, a standoff of wills and stubbornness. It probably was, still, in some kind of way. I crossed my arms and felt the tired and sadness of my eyes, even if I had cried and been kissed and had someone close who did understand what I meant.

Lucien stood, his arms at his side, face stoic but otherwise at ease. We were silent. I think everything had been said that, for now, needed to be said. Lucien reached up and brushed a lock of hair behind my shoulder. 

“I’m not going to visit Gawayn,” I admitted once the long beat of silence had passed.

“I know.”

The front door opened and I knew that whoever it was would see the redness of my eyes and know what had happened. I hoped though our scents had not mingled too much, or despite our separation, it could still be mistaken for living together. 

When Cassian stepped through the door it took him a minute to notice us. Though when he did, his brows creased with distress and understanding. It was obvious what I had done, what I had been told. I don’t doubt he was aware, if only because his silence was needed too. 

“I’ll see you tonight,” Lucien said. A new promise made with the understanding of the fear that had permeated the house in his absence. In any case, I appreciated the goodbye, even now knowing he’d no intention of leaving.

“Bye,” I said as he began to turn with more somberness than I meant. 

The male upon hearing the tone looked back. Slowly he leaned down and pressed a kiss on my cheek. I was stunned. Cassian too, seemed to be frozen with the moment. My mate though having all the tenderness in the world pulled away and only upon seeing my face, did he begin to smirk. It was one of genuine joy not because he’d bothered me or because he won anything by doing it. He’d wanted only to soothe that sadness he’d heard, and he had. So even if I wanted to be angry I couldn’t have.

“Cassian,” Lucien said, and passed the male before ducking out. 

The warrior and I remained locked into place, our mouths slightly agape as we stared. Heat reached my neck and face and I tried to find the answer, to say we’d never done that before or that it was all Lucien. Luckily, however, Cassian found the nerve. 

“Given the day you’re both having, we’ll let it slide.”

***

Azriel sat in the library, his back to the door and a knife in his hand. We were meant to convene at the house of wind for dinner. The reason unknown, but I suspected the deal with Beron had something to do with it. With the finery of his clothes, the weapon seemed to be the only thing out of place. I’d heard Lucien return as I was dressing and let myself believe he’d come home early for me more than the obligation. I liked thinking I was allowed such speculation now. Azriel didn’t turn at my entrance or pay much mind. He seemed, as usual, deep in an inner world to which I wondered if anyone but him had access. Even Rhysand, I suspect, was sometimes at a loss.

“Something planned for the evening or should I grab my own blade?” I asked.

“We made a pact did we not? If you don’t marry and I don’t marry then we would marry each other.”

His words recalled our night two weeks ago after the wine had truly taken its hold on us. A moment of somberness, the feeling that my mate was far away. Azriel had seen no one of interest, no one I could even attempt to talk him up to at the bar, so I’d offered the pact. In 500 years it would go into effect. 

I smiled, raising a brow, “So you need a blade?”

“I hear there’s some competition.”

Whistling from the hall could be heard, and I turned toward the male with a damning finger before he could show himself. Casual, cool, Cassian was unphased by the circumstances of his entrance to the room. His whistling didn’t falter and his gaze passed over me as if I were nothing more than a piece of furniture he’d seen a thousand times.

“You can’t keep a secret to save a life.”

Cassian shrugged, “I said I’d let it slide, not keep it secret. Azriel had a bet to collect and I’m a good friend.”

I crossed my arms, turning toward the shadow singer, “I thought you lost.”

But Cassian answered for him, “Just the one. We have to have a few going, otherwise, we’d have no cause to continue interfering.” He winked and made himself a drink, as unruffled as ever, and found a seat. 

I opened my mouth but three voices spoke in unison, “You’re wretched.” The males already knew what I was going to say. Proof, perhaps, that their bets were not badly or so arbitrarily placed. I remained silent thereafter.

We waited for Lucien. Rhysand had gone ahead earlier in the day. Something to do with Mor and Amren, matters in the library. I didn’t pay attention once the word Library had been uttered, but I did expect his guilt had made him want to get away for a while. If that were the case then we’d hear no more about it, not for a good hundred years if at all. Cassian and Azriel exchanged idle chatter and I tried to listen for the sounds of my mate down the hall, but the house yielded nothing to me. Just as it had that lunch I’d found him, the lingering anger of his morning a ward between us. I quirked a brow.

“Go get him,” Azriel pleaded, interrupting my thoughts. His head fell against the back of the couch with boredom. He was more aware than anyone ever of when we were too close to being late to arrive anywhere. 

“Why me?” 

“You’re his mate,” Cassian said. “If he’s undressed we have no desire to see.”

“I’m dressed,” Lucien said, appearing before us in the doorway, fixing a button on his sleeve. He looked at no one else. His gaze was already there against my face, knowing where I’d be somehow before turning the corner. It might have been the kissing, what I knew now, about how his body felt against mine, or that he too had chosen me, but warmth fell around me like a halo. My skin rose against it, like his very presence, just the sight of him, was power enough to pull me clear across the room. Life called to me in a thousand tiny ways. 

He looked happy. He felt happy, a surge of it constrained at my chest. It was so precise the feeling sunk itself into my being, marking it. An added layer of protection and memory, to recognize him in any life, once his happiness met mine. 

Cassian and Azriel must have noticed our staring, because without word between them, the two stood and loudly boasted about their going outside, about how noisy the city was, about what they wouldn’t be able to hear. When they wanted to they could be my best allies. Their footsteps trailed away and all it took was the sound of the door to snap us from our stupor. 

“I can help,” I said, nodding my head toward his hands, clumsily pulling at his sleeve.

“Please,” He raised his arm out, holding the pieces in place and I grabbed the weighty metal, hands shaking. I swallowed, Lucien’s smile in my peripheral, as I could see him watching my face, my neck. We shared a fondness it seemed for moments of gracelessness, the failure of all preternatural skill and reason. No longer a joy born of torment, but the revelation of each of our significance to the other. That we made each other nervous now, that we’d even reveal such a thing. How unwavering we’d once been. This a reminder that our lives were transforming, happening, and would continue to happen, with one another if we so chose.

“I’ll have to teach you to make the drop into the house of wind.”

He hummed, half paying attention. With a clearer voice he said once the words registered, “Mor taught me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Two weeks ago, after Rhys found us in the bathroom.”

“It took me two months to learn it properly. I’m surprised you didn’t come back with shattered ankles.”

“I’d have received no sympathy from you.”

I laughed and secured the button at last. No, he wouldn’t have. His hands reached for the sleeve, adjusting it, while his attention remained fixed on me. Our satisfaction of the afternoon was short-lived. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him just as soon as I saw him again, but unlike before I could tell from the way he was smiling that it would take great effort to pull away. The moment would last longer than I could manage and there were still things to be done. But the more I looked at him the more difficult it became, to convince myself to deny any wanting. I cared less and less about giving myself away to anyone, now that with Lucien I already had. I thought about how his hands would pull my hair from its pins, what it would mean if he ripped the seams of my dress, and when I tried to find embarrassment over who’d know what we’d done, I couldn’t find any care at all.

“We can be quick,” He lied.

“We could.”

We leaned in slow, a poor mimic to the juvenile delivery of before where now hiding was something in us that was enduring. His mouth moved against mine, flat, and for a moment I almost believed our lie. When his lips parted against mine, however, I realized there would never be enough lifetimes to answer the need I found waiting in his mouth. Thus, despite all consequences, I wanted for him to know everything immediately.

My body opened for him. His thigh pressed between my legs parting them with little effort.

He ran the length of my exposed spine, fingers grazing, feeling rolling over bone and pressing into the spaces between them. He settled himself dipping only the knuckle below the low hemmed back but reached no further. We’d barely any control before, but whatever was there that morning had ceased. I closed my legs around him. 

A hum of pleasure escaped him, rich but quiet. It vibrated in my throat and I knew unequivocally that it belonged to me. I held his pleasure in my mouth. His desperation didn’t waver any control he had in his movements. I let no noise escape, not as his thigh pressed further into me, or as my mouth fell open with the sudden relief. Stifling any proof of his effect on me only made Lucien more desperate to hear it. His lips trailed away to make space for my voice, his hands worked harder, moved to my breasts, and revealed his need. He wanted me to moan, but the advantage was mine, having had to be utterly silent so often in this house where ears lingered nearby. He, however, cared little for who heard. How precarious we’d become, how tightly we’d been wound. 

A different tug, one from another direction, began to snag on me. Its own need was familiar. The tension between myself and the rest of the world with its obligations was the only reason I had not fallen entirely into him. This way, take him. We had to go, had to eat. He took my earlobe in his mouth. I grabbed his wrists, holding him in place. 

He whispered, suddenly conscious of the volume with which we wanted each other, “Be good.”

“I can’t.” 

He shifted his leg, pressing his thigh into me again harder. I gasped and closed my legs against him tighter. “I know,” He said. 

My hold became flimsy, even the tiniest movement, the craning of his neck, the shift of his eyes, encased me and released me. As if the echo of my relief returned as, and reinforced, my desire. He watched, attentive as he learned just what he could do. He withdrew from my failing grip and grabbed my waist. Against his thigh, he guided me. His attention was acute and unbreakable, watching my mouth from which I revealed nothing.

He leaned in, placing a lazy kiss along my cheekbone, before he whispered, “You’re going to make me beg aren’t you.” 

It was the only game I could play for now. He knew this and he knew what he was doing to me. The heat pooling under the skin, between my legs—he knew what I felt and needed no sound to tell him so. The answer was so obvious everywhere else. I tried, then, to press harder into him, to find more release, but he held firm, withdrawing with a raised brow. 

In my desperation, where he was stern and commanding I was clumsier. My jaw slack, eyes half open, I knew though, he was desperate too. The need was too heavy to feign anything exceptionally well. We had to give it all away.

He dragged his eyes across my neck, landed on my pulse, and replaced his gaze with his mouth. He nudged my head upward for access, but I’d have given it to him anyway. He ran his tongue flat along the skin before he sucked harshly. One of his hands pressed me into him, moving me as he liked, moving me so he could have me as he wanted. It was an authority he wielded easily. The warmth of him, just the curve of his chest against mine relieved me of something I’d needed my whole life that even had I wanted him to stop, if I were afraid he’d leave a mark, I’d have said nothing. His every gesture answered a question I did not know I was asking. 

It had never been like this. The ease of movement, the knowledge of a body you’d never seen, never quite touched before. He knew where I wanted him. So when he pressed a light kiss where he’d left a purpling bruise no amount of practice silence could keep the whimper that fell from my mouth. 

His laugh, weighed with everything he desired, slid between us to the floor. His amusement heavy on my skin, “Pathetic.” 

It was the only thing that could pull him from his control, an insult, a tease. This dominance he felt to be his was too sure and unchallenged. I shifted his hips against mine and he moaned. I was surprised he let me, the wretch. He grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back and leaning with the momentum he gently placed a kiss on my shoulder where his lips landed. Before I found him in my bed I’d have what it was I needed to win this kind of game. I’d know how to make him beg. But for now, I’d play this hand. I had no other choice. Or more likely, I didn’t have the will to find the other choices with the length of him press against me through his pants.

“How can we stop?” I said aware it would not be so simple. Unlike this morning the Illyrians were outside waiting. We only had so much time.

Lucien’s fingers tensed but released. Trust was not the reason for his withdrawal, but I kept them behind my back anyway. If he thought I could behave it could be to my advantage later. Such fun it had once been, the new irritation we might inspire in each other. 

He turned his head, idly resting his cheek on my shoulder, thinking. I was not so easily fooled. With predatory slowness he crept forward, pulling me back toward his lips. There was a precision to the hold, I would not move unless he willed it. 

“I have an idea,” He bit at my ear. 

“What?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

His voice was almost melodic like he was humming the words, taunting still. A ghost of a smile, twin to his own had just begun to move along my face when Lucien’s teeth sank into me. The thin skin below my ear gave way, easily, as if warped by the heat of him. Yet unlike the inclination of all other injury, my body relaxed into his hold—so aware of the safety, so sure he wouldn’t hurt me. My eyes closed, but by the time I smelled blood, felt his tongue lap at the skin, those instincts retreated in again. I pressed both hands at his chest and shoved. 

He fell easily back and stumbled into the low table behind him. The furniture loudly slid away, scraping across the floor. The world stilled, waiting. He recovered with ease, wiping at his mouth. Something wicked settled on his face. Yes, I’d need to learn to play this game expertly. Such pleasure on those features, waiting for a challenge, waiting to dole out punishment. Like he’d been planning this for far too long. He ran his tongue along his lips and arched a brow. Don’t you play anymore? A dare. He needed only a glance to say it. 

So I lunged for him. 

In a moment of brute rage and lack of thought, my arms wrapped around his waist and my head hit his stomach. His breath hitched as we launched backward onto the table he’d just managed to right himself from. Tight, warm, and familiar arms, grabbed for me and I was pressed securely against him as we fell. The perfected silence was broken first by the splintering of wood, the shattering of glass, and then a laugh. The loudest most joyous laugh I’d ever heard from him. Pure and mine, unwavering, even as we landed. Even as I lifted from his hold, gripped his hair in my hand, yanked his head to the side, and bit back.

Cassian and Azriel barreled in just as I’d withdrawn, “You’re a miserable pig.”

I could taste his blood in my mouth. Lucien didn’t move just kept that genuine joy, boyish even in his amusement at the chaos. Not miserable at all. His eyes brightened as he looked at my mouth. I could see on his face what wasn’t said. Good girl. I gripped his hair harder and he hissed before I was lifted off my mate. The both of us righting ourselves, I pulled from Azriel’s grip once we were standing. 

“I hope you keep your promises,” Lucien said coolly as if the two males weren’t even there.  

“You never fail to be insufferable,” I snapped.

“I learned from my mate.”

All words failed Cassian and Azriel as they looked between the two of us, to the table now in ruins. They did not at once notice the claim, but I’m sure they smelled blood. Their sharp gazes continued to assess, trying to piece together our tension, looking for a wound, yet missing it all the same. The pair exchanged glances, their mouths open in unsaid questions, unsure of what to do, of who to speak to. The room was silent aside from the heaved breathing coming from Lucien and my chest which thus became almost an oppressive sound. And just as it seemed they were about to ask, I saw it. A sharp inhale, they stood up straighter in near sync. Their eyes drew to our necks, knowing. 

The two blinked, wide-eyed. 

Behind the smell of blood, the claims had caused our scents to mix.

Azriel sucked in his cheeks and turned his back to us. His shoulders shook. Bastards, all of them. It was Cassian’s drawl, however, that lazy amusement that fell out of him with such speed and ease that bothered me most. I clenched my fists before the words had even registered. 

“Are you flying with me or does another male have claim over you?” 

“Fuck off,” I said pushing through the group and moving to the door, Cassian’s wide smile no doubt unfaltering. “And get to the house of wind!”

Rhys was waiting for us when we arrived. The fight had made us late. I’d let everyone go first, hoping both to delay the inevitable and to arrive at the house to find Lucien had shattered his ankles. I could slap him. I was not, at that point, prepared to give him credit, but it was true that his idea made going to dinner far more plausible. All need or want for him vanished. But I remembered how it felt, the weight of his hands, where there’d been everything, where there was absence. I remembered all of it. 

Cassian was waiting, and as I landed he walked toward me still as casual as ever. The three males displayed a united pride, endlessly and forever amused by their own worst behavior. Even Azriel, before he’d taken flight, had laughed loudly to the murmured gesture of Cassian. Lucien was waiting unruffled, not a scratch or tear in his clothes—he’d landed perfectly. Two weeks he’d said. I narrowed my eyes. Leaning against the railing he was separated from a long fall. I said nothing. 

“What took you so long?” Rhys asked.

Cassian mused casually, “Oh the usual, these two at each other’s necks.”

“Pathetic, all of you males,” I hissed. The words bounced back at us, even the echo had power. I didn’t even acknowledge Rhys as I passed him. A sharp crease formed in his brow at my sudden hostility. He’d see it eventually. I had no doubt dinner would be a riot to them all into the centuries to come. It would rival even that of the winter in the cabin. No one, though, would find it as funny as Cassian did tonight. 

Rhysand’s bewildered voice floated over to me just barely as I hit the stairs. “What did we do?”

Azriel laughed, “Oh, it’s not what we did, it's what Lucien did.”

***

At dawn the next morning I was awake. I probably didn’t need to be up that early, the village just a winnow away, but it was getting cold. I liked thinking that, for some, this morning would be warmer than the last. I rubbed at my eyes lying there, listening to see if Cassian had risen. Downstairs, the kitchen had movement, plates clinked, so he’d be leaving soon. He was probably already dressed, his own plans to attend. Despite last night, I was glad he was to accompany me, if only until the next morning. The company would be good. Then I’d have all that time to plan. 

The morning light had softened the dark of my room into a nice blue. I stared at the ceiling, not quite ready to move, and ran my fingers absently over the mark on my neck that ached. Last night we’d said our goodbyes, briefly and in secret, with very few words. I’d winnowed into his room, all smugness having vanished, and managed a chaste kiss goodnight. He asked after my plans and I reiterated them and then I was gone. There was no need to linger. There were more answers now than questions. 

I rubbed at my eyes, stretched my arms across the expanse of my bed, and rested my hand on something woolen. It startled me enough that I withdrew like I’d been burned. I sat up. No one else was here. I hadn’t woken, hadn’t heard the wraiths or Rhys or anyone come in to check I was ready and up. I peered into the bathroom but it held no life. The cold air bit at me through my clothes, the blankets falling away, but I reached for the folded wool again on the other side of my bed. I dragged it slowly into my lap, already beginning to understand what it was. 

It was deep green like an endless grassy hill or the leaves when light passes through them on the last days of summer. A scarf, a knit one had been carefully laid along my bed, folded with gentle care in wait. I squeezed the yarn in circles between my fingers, feeling the weight, the thickness of it, and found a hole. I paused, an easy mistake, anyone might make it. I had a thousand times. One finger slipped through it, stark against the green. I wiggled it back and forth, feeling the looseness, feeling for the nothing. The hole was slight, but the stitches around it warped and adjusted to fit the mistake. 

I held the thing up to look at all of it, to scan the rows. Beside me, a tag fell out against the blankets. Even through the dim, even not knowing it, I knew the script to whom the note had once belonged.

To cover the bite.

—Me 

I picked the scarf up, pressed it into my face, and inhaled. It smelled just as it looked, like sunlight over an autumn grass. It smelled like Egrette’s. The night classes. I smiled into the yarn, foolish. I almost wished to wake him, to say now, I know where you’ve been. All my suffering, only for him to be in Velaris, at the classes I’d suggested, learning to make with his hands.

A thread pulled inside of me and I let it move me down the stairs. I didn’t knock, didn’t even check if he was awake. I pushed open the door and there he was, sitting as if he expected me. He was already smiling, at ease with the world. I didn’t let him ask, I knew he wouldn’t. I cut through the quiet morning with a demand. 

“Change of plans.”

Rhysand’s smile grew. 

***

The cold was bitter up here. The inhabitants too. The females who’d I’d been in correspondence over the years were at least warm and welcoming. They were motherly in the way I had once imagined my own mother would be once I’d gotten to adulthood. Time had passed and I could say the things at one time I hadn’t always been able to say. I could complain about males with blanket statements and we would all roll our eyes, only for them to, in jest, try and set me up with their sons. They let an hour go by before they teased me about my scarf indoors. Somehow knowing, as mothers always tend to.

After a cup of tea and some food, I bid them farewell, promising to come the next month with more to give. Outside the village was rather quiet compared to the last visit I’d had at the end of summer. I’d not seen Cassian all morning, he apparently going first to a camp not far from here. Some snow has fallen, light flakes, barely enough to cover the ground, but a few caught on my eyelashes, their size growing. I was rubbing them away when my name cut through the weathered stillness.

Gawayn appeared from behind, hands in his pockets, wings tucked in tight, fighting against the wind and cold. He was a handsome male to be sure, tall and leaner than the others. He didn’t pack on the same muscles as everyone else which had made me like him.

“Rumors were going ‘round saying you were injured,” He said once he was close. “You alright?”

I wondered for a brief moment if it would matter that an Illyrian knew. Who could he tell? For so long he’d been a kind of savior for this reason. There was mutual confidentiality, a desire to keep things between us that some people kept only because they were afraid of Rhysand. I’d come to him and tell him what I felt I could, show him maybe something I was afraid of in myself, and he’d take it without word or echo. There was an old way of moving, of thinking, that leaned toward him. But that was over now, at least in some ways. 

“Terrible sword incident. Cut my side.” Beron wasn’t one to count Illyrians for anything, but a deal was a precarious deal and just the idea of risking anything made my heart strain, causing a panic to settle between my bones again. Even the shadows shuttered. I braved the cold air and moved my clothes to reveal the scar. He frowned then let out a low whistle. 

“If it didn’t heal it had to be bad.”

“Bad enough.” 

His face relaxed some despite the subject and he smiled slightly, all sweetness, “You should’ve come here I’d have taken good care of you.”

“I had good company.”

“How many times did they tell you the story of the 10,000 steps.”

“Less than a dozen but more than a handful.”

“I can venture to guess that it must have been an extraordinary wound rather than exceptional company that I didn’t see you.”

“I was bedridden, believe me, I’d have liked to get away. Not that you could do anything I hear you’re busy these days. Rhys sends his regards.”

He rolled his eyes, a slight break in the tension, “Your brother is having a riot I’m sure. I don’t suppose now would be the time to exercise your talent for persuasion.” 

“And how might I persuade him for your bedding me and lying about it?” I said crossing my arms.

“Well for one thing we bedded each other and we’ve been doing so for years without getting caught.”

“This is the angle you’re going to take, that you’ve been fucking his sister for a century in secret?”

“Rhys should be impressed by my stealth and quick thinking and use it to his advantage.”

“I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”

“I can’t do your job for you.”

I waved a hand, “Let me mull it over and perhaps I can be of some use. I have no desire to be a bother to you if you can believe it.”

“I don’t believe it and you can always bother me.”

I smiled, “I know.” 

That was it, what I’d once needed. This intimacy, the knowing, a weight that almost satisfied. There was a new need within me, but I wanted to appreciate what had once been enough. This friend of my own, this place to practice being. One more time I would feel it, our small intimacy, before anything had been said. How enormous it was in hindsight, what it made me able now to do.

“I’m guessing by your guilt you’re the reason we’ve been caught.”

I scrunched my nose and nodded, “They overheard me telling someone.”

“Figures, you’re a loud drunk,” He mused with a certain fondness. “Who’d you finally own up to, Mor?” 

My shoulders straightened but my mouth pulled into a smile, a rare bashfulness that made me think I’d have to turn away if my feelings got any larger. I knew though regardless the behavior said everything that for now could not be said. The words I had at my disposal were too narrow, friend wasn’t right, but mate seemed despite its rarity even less the word I’d use. The one that remained had to first go to Lucien before it was said aloud to anyone else. 

Gawayn noticed my silence and smiled slightly, arching a brow. His demeanor lifted with a little mischief. “So that’s where you’ve been.” 

I nodded, “Partially, yes.” 

“What’s his name?”

I blushed and had to turn away. He was everywhere, across the snowy peak, in the narrow between two trees. How he’d like it up here I think, among the leaves. Next fall I’d bring him. We could stay in the cabin and we wouldn’t have to see anyone else. It could be just us, as the nights went cold. We’d have to come early when it was still warm in Velaris. Yes, who knows what we’d become by then, but I should think I would be able to ask that of him. 

I turned back to see Gawayn still waiting, watching me intently. My every gesture revealed our fate at last had arrived. 

“Lucien.” 

“Will I meet him?”

“This one? Definitely.” 

His eyes brightened, “Is he nice.” 

I smiled.

“Is he handsome?”

“Stop it.”

A gust blew from behind. The scarf at my neck fell from its place on my shoulder opening it. I knew within an instant, as the cold touched the indents along my skin, pushing the new scent out to the world, that I’d been caught. The Illyrian’s brows lifted into his hairline.

“Any chance this is the same male that put a claim on you.” 

I rolled my eyes, “Yes.”

“Is he brave or stupid?” 

I shrugged.

Gawayn shook his head again, now halfway amused, “I can’t imagine anyone brave enough.”

“My mate might be, but it remains to be seen.”

He didn’t at first seem to process the words I’d said. The confusion came delayed in the wrinkle of his forehead, the downturn of his mouth. He looked me up and down like he could find some distinction he’d not noticed as he’d arrived, one that would reveal to him the truth of my circumstance.

“You’re mated?”

I smiled coolly, “More or less.”

“When did this happen?”

“50 years ago.” The male's eyes bulged and I laughed, “Circumstances have only recently changed.”

A small relief to him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

I waved a hand, “Neither of us was particularly thrilled about the match.”

“And suddenly…”

“Yes.” 

Whatever he was holding back, if anything at all, at once peeled away. He let out a loud yell of joy, lunged for me, and launched us into the sky. I yelled over the roar of the wind but he didn’t hear, nor would he have cared. So I decided not to care either. I tucked my nose under the scarf, eyes watering from the force of the wind. He was screaming, cheering, for the Cauldron, and the Mother, for me. Below us, the inhabitants mulling about didn’t even flinch. The world got smaller as he arced upward and again something enormous revealed itself as we moved into that midday sun. This was my life. Good things had really happened. Someone was waiting for me to get home. For a small moment, I began to believe I’d earned it. So when Gawayn let out another howling cheer, I let out my own. 

We landed after ten minutes breathless, laughing, stumbling in the snow. He placed me down but the energy within him of truly earnest happiness scattered out of his very being and spilled into the space between us. Such feeling not just for me, but for who I’d become. And there it was, I could see it but couldn’t say where. Something had gone, and left behind in its wake, was my friend. 

“It’s well deserved,” He said, letting out a long sigh. “In case no one told you that. And I wasn’t just going to part with you for anyone you know.” 

“You’ve been looking out all this time?” I said mockingly.

Gawayn got suddenly a bit serious, “Of course. We’re friends aren’t we?”

“I like to think so.”

Someone called the Illyrain’s name and he looked over his shoulder and he waved them off for a moment before he turned back to me with a shrug. He had to go. 

“I’ll see you around. I’ve got stories you’d love to hear.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” I said.

“Don’t wait too long between visits next time, even if you’re injured,” He said walking away. “And don’t get me into any more trouble. Your brother is one thing but I’m too old and precious to be dealing with a mated male.”

“It keeps things interesting,” I yelled back and just before the wind was too loud for me to hear the laughter that came from his tilted head, he said,

“For you!”

I watched him until I could no longer see him. The sky held not a spec of red, nor the Illyrian it belonged. The cabin lay empty. I wrote a note to Cassian and walked outside. Snow was falling heavy now, enough to cover the grass. I did want to sit inside admittedly, curl up for the evening and watch the world go white, but something tugged. Things to do, as always. Just a winnow away, as always. I looked across the camp—no one in sight. Then I took one step through the crease in the universe and was gone. 

***

Even tucked into my scarf, the lashes of wind off the river proved bitter cold. Winter was imminent. I could feel its sting at my cheeks as I walked up the steps of the townhouse the morning I got home. If anyone was around, my arrival was well enough announced by the frantic shutting of the door in attempt to keep the cold out. From Rhysand’s office, the murmured voices of Amren and Azriel flitted through. Too muffled to make anything out, too boring for me to care anyway, I didn’t stop to say hello or snoop.

The wraiths were clearing the dining table, all chairs but my own were pulled out, plates dirty. They looked at each other, a small smile snagging between them before it vanished as easily as they could, as if it hadn’t been there at all. 

I understood then, what such knowing looked like. I tried to imagine how Lucien and I appeared to others, even before. Eyes narrowing, searching through a room and meeting, the pull of a mouth the nod of a head, so much said without a word. How no one guessed at the tether between us I will never know. Most people, I suppose, pay little attention. Up close, however, it becomes obvious the private moments constantly occurring between two people where only a silent look communicates an array of feelings. Even beyond the bond. 

The bets placed by our court produced a sudden and secret fondness then. There was something nice about it, the way they saw such a thing as proof of something good and sincere between us. The quickness, even playfully those years ago, that deemed our knowledge of each other to be born of some endearment. Who can resist such understanding? 

From this perspective, it would make you think such endings were inevitable. They knew what we’d do before we had, so they’d placed their bets. Let them win, I like knowing now that they were right. I watched the wraiths disappear. I liked also seeing such intimate knowledge on other people's faces, aware now we looked the same. 

I retreated to my room and stripped. The cold had reached my bones and being inside was not enough to remedy its settling. I ran a bath, letting my hand fall under the stream. Everything felt warm by comparison. When the water seemed just on the edge of scalding I plugged the drain, dumping contents in it at random. Something to relax, something to revive, something to brighten, any remedy went in. I waited for it to fill, the aroma already of some comfort, while standing before the mirror. The punctured skin at my neck had begun to inflame, just barely closed and healing. Surely something to do with magic, something to do with mates, to heal faster than my side but slower for fae. I ran my fingers over the ridges, recalling his tongue against my skin. My fingers grazed my ear—I turned, bent, and looked at the imprint of my spine.

My three days away had yielded nothing of my desire. I didn’t expect it to, not even when I’d originally planned to let my mind wander in the empty cabin. I’d thought about torturing Lucien, letting my emotions run rampant down the bond, but perhaps another time. It had not been totally worthless to give those three days up, in the end. 

Bargains are a precarious thing. 

My eyes dropped to the skin at my side where a burning had been and nodded at it, knowing no one was watching. 

I hissed as I sat down in the tub. The heat of the bath almost instantly subdued me. I’d be useless, if I were in danger I don’t think I’d have noticed. I draped my hair beyond the side and relinquished myself to the lethargy. There was so much to do, but there was time now to do it. Behind my eyelids, I could see it, that cold beneath my skin vanishing, running, as if chased away. The house settled and I listened to it, tried to find Lucien, stretched a hand down the bond, but didn’t tug.

A fern reached back, unfurling, wrapping around a table.

I saw the harvest. 

“Where’d you go?”

Lucien had appeared from nothing. I might have thought he’d just winnowed if the water's heat hadn’t cooled so substantially between one memory and the next. His smile, though slight, contained the amusement of having caught someone doing something. He’d been watching me a while then. Yes, I’d fallen asleep and he’d found me.

“Hm?” I fought the heaviness of my body, pulled from sleep. 

“You didn’t stay at the cabin.”

I shook my head.

“Where did you go?”

“Day court.”

“Why?” He asked.

I sighed, lifted my foot to turn the knob, and filled the end of the tub with a little more hot water, “To consult Helion’s library.”

“For Rhysand?”

“No, for myself.”

Lucien paused, surprised by my honesty. “Anything interesting?”

I shook my head again and rubbed the tired from my eyes. That had been a waste of time. I had not found what I wanted. The collection was too vast, I couldn’t narrow my search down well enough before I had to be back again. Even with the help of a few of the librarians there, we’d been fruitless. Helion was generous though, just for letting me in.

“Looking up Gods and folktales again?” My gaze snapped to his but he made no move. He let out a small huff of a laugh, “In the dining room you said your book wasn’t interesting.”

“It wasn’t.” I shut the water off. 

Lucien lifted from the door frame, “You say this topic is of little interest to you but you’ve read two other books on similar themes. It’s an easy guess.” He began to roll up his sleeves, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Observant, I thought, but didn’t say. I didn’t have the chance. His languid steps, the casual manner of his being, eradicated all sensible thought. My admiration of his usual beauty falling away into the homely devices he’d begun to reveal did not go unnoticed. His face didn’t show, but it passed between our ribs like a well-known secret. A sincerity threaded through some amusement which said despite his desire from how he’d found me he really did wish to help if he could. The sensation filled the emptiness of my chest. Yes, we were now doing things together. After a weekend of shielding, it was a fine feeling.

“It worked itself out.”

“Oh?” He grabbed the chair near the mirror and set it behind me. I didn’t look, skimming my hands over the top of the water watching it ripple. 

“At least until after solstice.”

“Why solstice?”

“We like to use that time to be together as a family. No distractions.”

“That's nice,” he said with a voice somewhat distant. I let our silence take the place of the grief between us. He pressed his warm fingers to my hairline and without a word instructed me to lean my head back. Warm water slipped through my hair and fell down my shoulders. I’d set some aside and I knew it was only still warm because Lucien willed it. I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of his hands, his fingers, running along my scalp. The hair beginning to weigh with its wetness, he grabbed a soap off the shelf nearby. When he stuck his hand in the bath to wet it I felt immediately the warmth increase as he took care of me, took care of everything. The soap lathered and the bath was so hot I thought I’d sleep again. 

“You’re tired,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re being so compliant.”

His words, closer than before, tucked themselves along my neck. I could feel the smile he had and would have felt it had he said nothing. The quality of air, the shift of a draft, I knew when he was smiling the way you know your own mouth is. 

“I didn’t sleep well,” I said ignoring him.

“If you’re ever restless my door is open.”

“I might have accepted before.”

He laughed reminiscent of the teasing one he’d used before he’d made his claim. “Still mad are we? Think of the perks,” he took a sharp inhale, “you smell like me.”

“Like bastard?”

He tugged at the hair a little and my head angled back so I could see him fully, “Like me.”

“The scarf hid your stench. Somewhat counterproductive on your part.”

“Not in the slightest,” he cooed.

His words slid between us once more and I could no longer resist. I had enough slack from Lucien’s grip to turn my head slightly into him. Our noses nudged, his lips just barely apart from mine. One slight breath and I felt his exhale brush over my lips. Let's see, I thought. When he didn’t move to kiss me I leaned forward but the distance didn’t close. The ends of his mouth quirked up slightly when, on instinct, I leaned in further. His trick was revealed after our mouths didn’t meet again. He’d pulled away. He wasn’t going to let me kiss him, not unless I embarrassed myself first. I feigned a scowl and he sat back. 

“Egrette told me to tell you to visit again.”

“I take it her nephews are suddenly working fewer hours.”

I’d yet to have the chance to ask about the alliance they’d procured behind my back. It took little thought to put together the pieces, after the fact, of her lying about their coming to the shop to get me away. Lucien, no doubt, was in the backroom hiding in the event I came around. I’d been so concerned with the game Rhys was playing I hadn’t thought to look at the other boards. So it seemed we all had pieces we were moving both out in the open and in the wings. 

“She told me you didn’t like each other but who knew I had suitors to fight off. She spent half the weekend finally filling me in on that little history.”

I stilled momentarily, his fingers working through a tangle that had gathered at the base of my neck idly. “Is that what you did while I was away then? Spent your time with her laughing at my expense.”

A test.

“More or less.”

I smiled, the fool. “Well, if you’ve met them you can understand why I had no choice but to tell them you existed.”

“They seemed to think I was a real brute.”

“I’ve got stories.”

“Loudmouth.”

Lucien rinsed my hair again and wrung it in his fist. Water flooded his arms, dripping onto the floor, but he continued until it was damp before he let go. I flipped around and watched him, his sleeves clinging to him. I licked my lips and he noticed, content I suspected. No feeling revealed itself. 

I met his stare, narrowed my eyes. “I lied to you,” I said.

A test.

He didn’t flinch, “When.”

“I said I wasn’t going to visit Gawayn but I had a message to deliver from Rhys.”

“And?”

In my chest something rolled through, small and miniscule. Lucien’s mouth slightly agape. “He wants to meet you.”

“Good. I’d like to meet him too,” He said with the utmost sincerity before leaning in to place a kiss against my forehead. “I’ve just come to check on you. I’ve got to run.”

“Where?”

“Solstice gifts.”

I peered up at him where he now stood. From his place above me, the soap wouldn’t truly hide my figure. The water wasn’t opaque enough and he watched my eyes smiling like he knew this. He didn’t look away. He didn’t dare. 

“I’m glad you’re home,” he said.

“I’m glad you are too.”

After my bath, I found Mor in Rhysand’s office. My brother looked up only briefly.

“How was Helion?”

“Handsome, as usual. Mor,” I said turning to face my cousin. “When did you teach Lucien to do the drop into the house of wind?”

She thought a moment, “The morning after your fight.”

I tutted my tongue, kissed my teeth, “I’d have liked to see that.”

Yes, my mate was lying to me. 

***

The night before solstice I snuck into Lucien’s room. I continuously over the days offered up tests, opportunities for him to tell the truth, but he never did. Down the bond filtered small waves of emotion, endearment, amusement, joy, less grief than before, but still some. He was gone most days but so was I. He’d find me though, wherever I was, and before he left he’d kiss my cheek, tell me he’d see me that night and he always did. Even when he came home late he’d find me in my room, sit on my bed for a while, and talk, before disappearing again downstairs.

Meanwhile, Rhysand watched me with certain suspicion to which I could find no origin. He knew my plans had changed, knew why I’d gone to Day Court, and I suspect it left a certain impression on him. I couldn’t leave the house without coming home to an urgent string of questions at his hand. Something about where I’d been, something about solstice gifts, something about when I’d give him Lucien’s. 

“Here,” I’d finally said dropping the large parcel on his desk. 

“What's this?”

“Gift for Lucien.”

He peered up at me and let out a long breath. I could hear the disappointment but its cause was not revealed. “This is it?”

“It? It’s a rather big gift already no?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What you discovered in Day Court.”

I tapped my fingers, “Nothing.”

“Will you go back?” He asked leaning in his chair. 

“I don’t need to.”

“Why?”

I didn’t reply. Those old folktales had offered only a shallow glance at the entities I was searching for, the answers I needed. Somewhere in the library I had no doubt that what I’d wanted would have been found, but everything visited and revealed itself with time, the right time. And the right time was not in Day Court. For Rhysand, there was a time for him to know what I’d learned too, but it wasn’t now. 

I smiled as we sat through the silence, letting him come to this same realization. That he would know what he needed to know when it was called for. His body slackened, his eyes dimming. I could guess his motivations.

I raised a brow, “What did you expect I was getting him for Solstice, Rhys? A ring?”

He scowled, looking away, damning himself and his cause. He’d placed his bet those weeks ago and I had little doubt of the answer he’d given. He believed I was going to be mated to Lucien by Solstice. When I told him of my reasons to visit Helion he must have suspected the library would yield an answer, or lack of one, that would be cause to bind Lucien and I to one another for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t a bad assumption I could admit. Everything had been going his way, he thought he was winning, but now, time was running out. 

“How much did you bet?”

If I would not answer, then he wouldn’t either. He stared at my neck and said with a grunt of disgust, “How long until that heals, you reek.”

So I left him in his office and climbed the stairs to my room slamming the door. It was good cover, I waited about half an hour until he retired for the evening before I winnowed to Lucien’s door. I was careful to move quietly, with Cassian sleeping across the way. I gave just one knock before I slipped in. I leaned against the wood, shutting the door silently behind me. Lucien sat on the bed, book in hand, his pants unbuttoned, his shirt discarded, The Forgotten Prythian read the spine. His face was laden with surprise.

“Didn’t expect I’d see you,” he said. 

“I can leave.” 

I  opened the door, but he was there, within one blink, pressing his palm flat overhead and shutting it silently again. Half caged in he peered down at me, mouth pulling into what, at another time, would’ve been an imperceptible smile.

“Don’t,” he teased. 

“I wouldn’t wish to impose.”

“Aren’t you precious.”

“You didn’t find me today so one is free to assume.”

He leaned forward, “Y/N, please.” His voice surprisingly desperate, as if he thought I really would leave. “I want you here.”

The thread between us was quiet. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. My mind repeated, even as I turned my head and let him nuzzle into my neck. I ran my hands through his hair, stroking idle pattern. His tired seeped out of him, the weight of his body growing as he used me for support. It is a long game, keeping up such antics. Did he know, like I knew, that we couldn’t continue this way? What he wouldn’t say I would surely find. 

Over his shoulder, I took in his room. Had I come here earlier I might have been less inclined to believe he was on the verge of leaving Velaris. The closet was well-kept, clothes of all his best colors hung with care. Heavy sweaters in deep reds, light shirts made for summer. On the windowsill, the glass open ever so slightly, books were stacked somewhat haphazardly. They seemed to be borrowed, or else, he’d been recently flipping through them because a few others were set on his desk with greater care. 

He hooked his fingers in a strap, dragging it up my shoulder where I hadn’t noticed it had fallen off. He kissed the thin material and pulled back, holding me by my hips at a distance.

“It’s not as I pictured it.”

“What?”

“The dress.”

I looked down, it was the one I’d bought with Mor that afternoon Lucien threatened to claim me. My neck burned with the memory. I wore it with the intention of distraction. I wanted to use his maleness to my advantage. It was too cold otherwise, but I knew his skin was warm. I’d learned that more than once.

“Mor told you?”

“I asked.”

“Why not ask me?”

“Because I wanted to know what became of your little outing after I begged Mor to get you out of this damned house.”

I dropped my hands from him. I’d believed it to be Rhysand, or Mor alone, that had interrupted us that afternoon. Her questions then made sense, if Lucien was so curious about the books I was reading then I’m sure he caught my lie once she’d told it back to him. Another ally revealed, moves from the wings, while I was distracted by my sorrow. 

“You were brooding so terribly over our fight still and Egrette was occupied so I asked her to take you outside,” Lucien said. A smile began to form slightly, “I might have suggested too she buy you something that would tear away easily.”

“You’re vile.”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I didn’t care where she took you. As long as it wasn’t here.”

So he was capable of telling the truth still, at least when he wanted to.

I crossed my arms, “Doubtful.”

“I have no intention of bedding you in a house full of Illyrians.”

“But you do wish to bed me?” 

He smiled, confirmation enough. He was right, not in a house of Illyrians and neither with the lies between us. 

I pulled from his hands, the topic a good distraction, and walked toward the desk. He’d blushed when the moon had passed through my pajamas before. What, by this light, would my body do to him? I felt with acute precision his watching me, but still, he didn’t stop me. Not even as I got close enough to see the scattered papers on his desk, with the same script as a gift tag I found in my bed. My hand slid along the fine wood. Names, names I didn’t know, were scratched haphazardly. 

I couldn’t look long enough. I didn’t want him to notice. He was smart, even distracted.  

He surprised me, however, when I turned around. I expected something heavy and needy, but his mouth had formed such a careful curve, his features softened, as he leaned against the door admiring. I’d seen him happy, joyful, but never like this and it made the emotion difficult to place. The bond revealed nothing. 

I would’ve teased him, but in the low light his skin looked golden and it occurred to me with greater clarity, beyond my ambition, how I’d found him. He was at ease with the world in a room that was his. His warm chest exposed, he was undressed. It was a different desire entirely, to notice him, to look. He was so beautiful, so mine. To think that I was in this bedroom, that I knew I’d lie in that bed beside him and sleep, it filled me with warmth, it made me soften back.

He yawned.

“You’re tired.”

He nodded.

“Let's sleep.”

“Just sleep?”

I smiled. I turned away. I needed more answers. If he wouldn’t tell the truth, then I would find it on my own. My eyes fell on a list of names, I didn’t have long enough to scan them all, just the first letters. I found E, the fourth name on the list began with E. I read. My stomach dropped, my heart picked up speed, but I turned still to face him again in the hopes the new voraciousness against my ribs would be mistaken for nervousness. He looked fondly. Had he always been so easy to fool?

I held my hand to him and said, “Yes.” 

He approached without question.

It was easy with him there to find my composure. He kissed the top of my hand. We separated only to find our side of the bed. In unison, the sheets were pulled back, but he did not immediately join me. The last of the lights needed to be put out, and only then did I see the shadowed outline of him pull his pants off the rest away. If he’d had asked me to close my eyes I would’ve. If he’d asked me to watch I would’ve. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, as he climbed into bed I sensed again the need to keep things in something innocent and first. He did not move toward me, but he laid on his side and we faced each other, hands tucked under our heads.

“Happy solstice,” Lucien said with a faint whisper.

The gesture reminded me of childhood. The excitement for gifts, the not wanting to sleep. 

“Happy solstice, Lucien.”

A breeze from the window filtered through and I tucked my shoulder away from its icy caress. Lucien’s eyes found the spot that had been struck and tentatively he reached across the bed. He hovered over the skin, the heat of his palm already kissing my shoulder without having to touch.

“Is this alright?” He asked.

I nodded. 

He placed his hand down, nothing but warm hot skin. He slid only low enough to grab the blanket, dragging it back up over my arms and hovering there a moment like he wasn’t sure what to do now. When he pulled away I didn’t stop him. I forgot what it was like to be young, inexperienced. How much weight everything had, the touch of a hand, the place beside you in bed. I’d once spent hours thinking about it, how it would feel to get to sleep beside someone forever. To reach through the dark and grab the person beside you and curl into their body, to find such tender relief whenever you wanted. To be so hungry so long you didn’t even recognize it as need, as want. Not until that first reach where no matter what you imagined, how small you’d convinced yourself it was, you found your hands shaking. 

“I went to the cabin.”

The words, though whispered, struck with strange weight. They pulled me from my thoughts abruptly. I asked, “When? Why?”

“Your weekend away. Mor brought me, but  you weren’t there.”

From the darkness I expected that dreamlike look on his face, something far away, but again he surprised me. He was visibly here, with me, in that moment. In fact, his stare seemed hardened, anchored to what he’d begun to unfold. I shook my head, confirming what we both knew. I wasn’t there.

He didn’t elaborate. I pressed a steady hand across the divide and rested it against his face.

“Are you alright?”

He smiled, placed his palm against the back of my hand, and said, “Why did you sit so far away?”

“I was waiting for you.”

He opened his arms and moved forward. It was invitation enough, I shoved across the bed and he enveloped me. The night in the bathroom had been too quick, too sickly, too delirious. We entangled ourselves like there was a risk in the night some invisible hand would pull us away. Perhaps there was. We said nothing more. I took in a long breath and closed my eyes. 

My mind drifted as I felt his hands splay across my back, a different kind of desperation. His heart beat slow beneath his skin. That name repeating with each pulse.

Erinyes

Erinyes

Erinyes

Dawn didn’t arrive quickly, but it came. I woke on my own. I stared at Lucien a long time, craning my neck to watch such peace sit on his face. I wanted to remember—just in case. I wanted to lean in, wanted to kiss him, but even softly I wasn’t sure if it would wake him. I couldn’t risk it. So I just stared for a long time, longer than I had time to do, and it was like a kiss but in a different way. Tonight, I’d ask my questions. We’d have our answers. 

Slipping from bed involved feigning sleep. I moved the way a lover pulls away once they are through with you. It was easy, I’d seen it for myself a thousand times. He let go. Not so reluctantly either, convinced I’d be here when he woke up. 

But I would not. 

At his desk, I stared at the name once more to be sure I’d seen it right. He’d circled it. I’d missed that somehow. Did he know what I knew? I looked back at him, a streak of sunlight through the window cut the reigning night away. He would not like it when he woke, that I’d left without word. He would soon understand. Whatever this was, was over. 

***

“You remembered!” Cassian yelled, holding up the sweater from his box. The one I’d made him years earlier snagged and left a gaping hole last winter. He’d felt so badly I tried to see if Egrette knew of any maneuver to save it but alas it had been ruined. “I’ll wear it tomorrow morning,” He smirked.

“What’s tomorrow?” Lucien asked. He’d not mentioned my slipping away. He seemed happy when he found me that morning in the library decorating with Mor. He’d even helped us hang garlands in the places we were too short to reach. 

“Their childish snowball fight,” Amren said looking at a fine stone Rhysand and I had picked out for her. I knew better than to knit her anything.

“You’re welcome to join us, Lucien,” Cassian said casually, turning to face the male beside me on the couch. I didn’t expect he would, but the nature of these things was precarious. The unexpected thing, what you didn’t plan for and couldn’t know, always makes its appearance. 

Lucien raised a brow at him in pure Autumn snobbery, “I’ll pass.”

“Well aren’t you precious,” Cassian drawled with a wide grin. I stilled at his words. Though I barely believed it, I hoped for a moment it was mere coincidence. That he had not heard us in Lucien’s room the night before, but when he sent me a wink it was clear he had.“Just as well, I suspect you’re tired after last night.”

“What was last night?” Mor asked with genuine innocence. 

Cassian turned toward Lucien waiting, and my mate didn’t even pause, like it were a lie he had been thinking about all day, “I fell asleep in the library and Cassian found me.”

“Precious indeed,” Mor said. 

Cassian’s attention waned from Lucien as he fixed on me, “You seem a bit tense.”

“Haven’t got much sleep these days.”

“So I hear,” Azriel muttered from the chair beside me. I shot him a glance, traitor. Rhysand was in conversation with Mor and Amren, his mind elsewhere but it would be foolish to pretend that he wasn’t at least half paying attention. 

“It seems none of us are getting any proper sleep,” Lucien mused as casually as Cassian.

“Not me,” Cassian replied. “I’ve been sleeping perfectly well.”

“We know,” Lucien said turning toward him with a half smile. “You’ve no reason not to.”

 Cassian’s jaw clenched but the thread of amusement was running through his face. The Illyrian sat back in his chair, “Next time I can’t sleep I’ll come find you.”

“I thought you didn’t wish to see?” I murmured into my drink and Cassian coughed as he took a sip of his, the contents splashing up into his face. It captured Rhysand’s attention well enough that he rolled his eyes and grabbed the last two gifts.

“These are for you two.”

I knew it was from Lucien. He was the only one left. I’d thought, maybe, the scarf had been a gift he’d given early. I’d brought it from my room and hung it carefully in the hall for when I needed to defend him, needed to reveal the kindness. But in my lap now, another gift. It was so finely wrapped I didn’t even wish to open it. I ran my fingers under the seam. Everyone’s eyes on us, and heat rose to my face. I’d never known opening a present to be so embarrassing, but tonight it felt like revealing something intimate that I wanted to be shared only between us.

The paper tore next to me. Lucien began to pull the box out, and so I too lifted the paper. We took the lids off in unison. 

Mittens. 

The same fine green. 

Lucien held up the sweater. I’d gone back to the tailor and found out what colors suited him. It was a rich olive color, even just holding it up drew the attention of the room. His skin was warm, glowing against it. I’d had to hide the project when Lucien came home and stationed himself in my room if it were late. I’d been up most nights rushing to finish in time. I’d been half asleep most days, but it was worth it, to see his face. I thought maybe he’d find it superfluous. I’d already given him one, but I wanted to make it with clearer intention. I wanted to make it for him on purpose. 

“So you’ve met Egrette,” Rhys said, and I realized how quiet we’d all gone. I huffed an awkward laugh as the room resumed its usual noise and splendor. The cover was just enough to give a reprieve, to offer a veil of privacy for which we could feel and speak freely. Lucien had the same soft smile he’d had the night before.

“I’m supposed to tell you, Egrette helped me with the cast-off.”

I laughed, “Did she help pick the color too? It’s my favorite yarn of hers.”

Lucien shook his head, “No. I saw it through the window that day you took me to get new clothes. It reminded me of the night we met.”

My brows furrowed, “In what way?”

He rested his head against the soft back of the couch, the memory just there for him. As easy to conjure as a smile. Pulled back into the past he spoke with an endearment I didn’t think he’d have reserved for that time, it contradicted everything, but I understood it nonetheless. To be at the beginning, to know how it ends, to hold those facts beside each other—it could wind you, such grief and gratitude together.

“When you arrived that night I was admiring the trees overhead. It was the Autumnal Equinox. I was sad to miss it for an eternal summer but just before you walked in I noticed the leaves were a deep green they tend to get just before they change and it made me think of home. When I looked away I saw you, talking with Mor.” His eyes looked around my face like a caress, half in memory. “That green was the color of the world the first time I saw you.”

I’d remembered wrong.

He had looked at me. I’d wanted for something that had already happened, something I’d missed. I was wrong. I doubt it would be the last time with him, but it was the first. We’d begun all wrong.

“I was afraid what my brother might do if he saw, if I looked too long.” He said absently like he knew what I’d been thinking. “So I looked at the leaves for a long time that night.”

If he saw me he’d said once of his father. Now too of his brother. Just to look at someone was a risk. The way you witnessed me, gave you power over me and for some reason you never used it, he’d said also. How brave he had to be in all those years just to let me be his witness. It’s any wonder what we might do with such bravery and power together, where we might go with it. 

“There’s a note,” He said pointing to one of the mittens.

I reached for it and a finger poked through a hole. A big one at that. More than just a mistake.

“That one was on purpose.”

I laughed, “Why?”

“So I could still satisfy your hunger.”

I turned away, hiding the deep red of my cheeks at those words. It had felt like an age between that first kiss and this moment. Standing alone in the hall after dinner at the house of wind. My fingers latched to the note and withdrew it.

For what I can’t chase away.

—Me

I smiled and the joy erased all notions of private feeling. It was obvious that anyone who looked, even those who didn’t know me at all, would know the intensity of the joy I was feeling. I peered around the room. They were watching Mor as she leaned into the dramatics of a story—all but Rhysand, who was watching me. If it were another time, the time of before, I might have turned away and hid that joy from him. But Lucien, it was Lucien who had made me feel I could be brave. So when my brother’s surprise eased into deep joy and esteem, I was glad I hadn’t missed it.

***

I winnowed directly into his room this time. I landed directly next to his bed where I’d found him the night before. Midnight was closing in, the boys were headed for their rooms, their voices carrying down the hall. Mor and Amren remained in the library. It was time.

Lucien went to speak and I rushed my palm against his mouth. We were close, my knee on the bed beside him, our noses nearly touching. Rhysand and Azriel’s conversation carried far away until their doors closed. But it was Cassian who I was worried about. He walked toward his room whistling. I needed to know what he could hear. I’d anticipated he’d heard the knock on the door but not much else. When I saw him this morning he looked between Lucien and me and I knew I’d had that much correct.

The door across the hall shut and I shifted my attention back to Lucien, one eyebrow raised at me as if I were being ridiculous, as if Cassian hadn’t revealed he’d heard everything. A stroke of dumb luck that the male couldn’t keep a joke to himself. Last night was practice, tonight was the real thing. I slid into his mind.

Come to apologize for leaving me this morning?

No. It was deserved. 

Really?

I narrowed my eyes at him. You’ve been lying to me Lucien. 

His mouth opened against my hand and before any noise, any confirmation or denial, could be pressed into the skin of my palm I wrapped my other arm around his neck and fell backward through the universe. 

It was a stumbling really, just as it had been through the wards, as it had all begun. A risk I knew, we could land flat on our faces, but after the table incident, I could better predict his instincts. So when we landed on the doorstep, Lucien’s hands shooting out to catch the brick, his other curved so tightly against my back, I smiled for having guessed correctly.

“By the Cauldron,” he swore getting his footing just barely to let me go. He glared at me before turning to see where we’d landed. I realized then he was wearing the sweater I’d made. The new one. I’d forgotten to tell him inside the collar I’d stitched the words less drab. If after all this was over I could tell him I would. He turned a few times as if he expected us to be somewhere else, the cabin maybe. I could’ve winnowed inside but I wanted him to know where we were, wanted really for him to see it. His eyes slid over the brick and looked to the right where Velaris lay in scattered excitement, the warm glow of Solstice settling behind the windows and seeping out into the world. His brows furrowed in confusion he looked toward the Sidra next to us, cutting through the lawn, curving out toward the sea. Not the cabin, not with the boys headed its way tomorrow. 

So began an immediate shift, where turning back it wasn’t that he didn’t trust me, it was something else entirely. Like he needed always, to find the margins of a place to know the boundary of access, where he felt allowed to go. Starting on the outskirts where nothing was, he seemed to believe he had to earn his way in. I wish I’d seen him that first night walk into his room, to compare it now to the way he looked at me. So unsure, a bit uneasy that a door was about to slam shut and he’d no longer have access to what he’d been shown. He didn’t seem to want to get comfortable, didn’t want to let his other place in the world out of his sight lest he lose them both at the same time.

I nodded my head toward the door. The warmth, once I opened it, was immediate and I let out a sigh of relief. Things were going unnervingly to plan. Lucien and I crowded inside the small entry. Even the cold that night had been a little much for him to bear. Though I felt him close, I knew his attention was nowhere near me. He was taking in everything he could see. The ornate, albeit old, carpets trailing the short hall. Jackets hung in the open, the somehow free and yet cramped space where rooms dueled for attention across from and beside each other. As we walked further in Lucien turned to each.

“Is this a family home?” He asked running his hands up the exposed wood, the cottage itself a little more rugged. If the townhouse wasn’t High Lord-like, then this was an even further cry.

“No. It’s my home.”

Lucien’s eyes slid over to mine. I nodded ghosting a smile with his surprise. It was not extravagant, it wasn’t even big. It had a small sunroom next to the garden that looked along the Sidra and that was about as luxurious as it got. It didn’t even have a library, but there were books, plenty. Along shelves where they fit and in stacks where they didn’t. Decorated with paintings and art collected at the rainbow, candles along the windows, ticket stubs and scrap papers in frames of the court’s most extravagant mischief, a kitchen I’d cooked just once in before I went home. Lived and not lived in, proof of having been alive but not really there in those rooms.

“When my mother and father died I bought a home. I needed a project, somewhere to go, somewhere alone, and mine. No one aside from Rhys knows it exists. Took about two years to quietly move in but I don’t stay here that often.” 

“Why?” Lucien said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Once all the builders cleared out I remembered I was alone.”

We moved into the sitting room. Two couches sat opposite each other. Maybe he sensed it, that we should be apart for this, because he sat across from me even though we were alone. Or perhaps it was all manners, that's how he was. When I met his face again he had the look he always had from before Velaris, before all of it. A trace of softness still there, a touchstone to what we’d become—to what we might be. I didn’t know which way this would go, if he’d detest me, if I would detest him, but there were things to be said and we could no longer not say them.

“So,” he said, “you’ve brought me here to lay it all out then.”

I nodded, “It won’t entirely be unfair. I’ve been lying to you too. But nothing will make sense until you tell me yours first.”

He thought a moment. In the weeks leading up to this, the feeling of inevitability seemed real and present. Everything I did, every question, every moving piece had been effortless and unwavering. I’d imagined this conversation not to be simple but somewhat the same. Only as we arrived at it did I find there was a kind of impasse. We’d both need to reveal ourselves, to want the same thing. We’d need to do the things we’d only just recently learned to do. This was the very last test. 

He took in a long breath, tutted his tongue like a kind of tic while he thought. He held something before him, a hypothetical, whatever he believed he’d lose by going first. He didn’t want to. Not until he turned to me. The reluctance lifted as he fixed himself upon me, his mate, sat across from him, like he was placing a bet on me too.

“Where should I begin?”

He saw the breath I let out. He didn’t join in the relief. 

“The night we arrived when it was revealed that my emotions were running down the bond you said you’d lower your shields too. But you didn’t, not really. Why?”

I don’t know when I began to suspect it. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. But the moment his emotions were building in Rhysand’s office to which the only tell was the slight opening of his mouth I began to wonder. He’d given himself away in the bathroom. Gawayn’s name had struck deep in his chest the morning of our walk after I’d mentioned him. Only for him later, after our affections deepened, on the tale end of a lie, to hear his name and feel almost nothing. That primal thing seemingly vanished. 

“Do you know what your emotions feel like?” He said blinking slow. “They’re like notes, like music. Your feelings hum really, and they build into chords. I can tell when you’ve made sense of something because I can feel the harmony in my ribs. My emotions, they’re not like that.”

“I didn’t know what my emotions were like. How could you know yours?”

“I’ve watched you. In Rhysand’s office, I saw them wipe your thoughts clean away, like a wave. Or that night in the foyer, you winced. Moments where I wasn’t or couldn’t withhold from you the intensity of my feeling. Your words, they’re very important to you. I would hate to be the cause of your silence, even accidentally,” he said plainly. “But you can correct me if I’m wrong.”

“You could’ve let me try,” I said, by way of confirmation. His emotions often built rapidly, striking with full force, indeed like a wave. “I’m not so weak you know, I would’ve figured it out.”

His eyes became swallowed with pain. “I know,” he said.

“I’d assumed you were unhappy, that this place was not agreeable to you. Or worse, at times I thought you felt nothing.”

“No. No, it was the opposite,” He said. “I didn’t mean to shield entirely. I only wished to diminish everything enough for you to think.” 

That mutual vulnerability I believed us to have was a lie. Perhaps the most devastating realization, that it was all on the line for me, from the beginning. How much joy had I missed, intense complex and beautiful joy, for what he’d seen those first weeks? It was something I could never get back. My brows furrowed.

“But your end of the bond has been quiet since the beginning, before you saw what your emotions could do. I didn’t feel you fully until after our night in the bathroom.”

He huffed a laugh. It wasn’t malicious, in fact, I think he was almost impressed. A testing of our limitations, of my noticing continuity. There were things he didn’t want to say, things perhaps he wouldn’t offer up unless asked directly. I frowned.

“You seemed unsure of how things had changed between us that first night. After you asked me to hold your hand I hesitated because I was very sure of what had changed but I couldn’t tell if you desired it or not.”

“What was it then?”

“I wanted to stay,” he admitted, shoulders slumping. “I thought perhaps it was just Velaris, being rid of my father and brothers, but then Mor found me in your room, told me to leave, and I realized I actually just wanted to stay with you. But I didn’t know what was to come of me, Rhys didn’t want me there, you’d given no indication you were to have them claim me. I thought, eventually, I’d have to go. And for the first time, I had no desire to.” He said, breathless eyes focused, here with me. “But I couldn’t bear it if you knew my desire, so I diluted everything to you.”

“How?”

“It’s like setting a ward really.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want the bond to be laborious to you, for my emotions to weigh in your decision. If you decided to ask me to stay I needed to know it was what you wanted, not an obligation you felt bound to.”

“You believe me so easily persuaded?”

The corners of his mouth creased but if it were a smile or a frown I wasn’t at all sure. “You said once you acted as you did because I’m Lucien, well my reasoning is just the same. You’re you, you’re good and you want to do good. You are singularly motivated to ease suffering. You wanted to marry Eris to save my home, stepped between your brother to save me, even the hobbies you choose benefit other people. That Night Court business didn’t fool me. I’ve known for a while that though you are cunning, you are never cruel.”

“I’d let anyone stay if they wanted to, if they needed to.”

“Then you understand why I felt the need to hide from you,” He said. When I didn’t answer he shook his head, “You’re so good you don’t even notice it, not as I do. It’s simple, really, I wanted you to pick me. I needed you to do it not because you’re kind or for the same compulsion with which you act toward everyone, but because you wanted me there.”

“It isn’t for everyone.”

Lucien didn’t even reply, he just gave me a look and I conceded. 

“So you made me tell you I wanted to see you, you asked me to ask after you.”

“Yes. For you to reveal yourself to me a desire, a feeling, anything about me really, it would have to be something you really wanted. I believed though you’d do it and once you told me that you held your own hand at night and I began to see the weight of my being here, the threads which pulled at your feelings, I was less afraid,” he said. His eyes which had settled on my two clasped hands lifted to look at me, unsure. “But…”

“But what.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, “The morning after we had dinner at the house of wind I had to test you, just one last time.”

“Why, was it something I said? Did I do something to make you feel I didn’t want you?”

“No.”

In a way I had hoped it had been me who misbehaved. I didn’t want the alternative to be true, a remaining loose end with which I had not inquired further when I should’ve. That I had not been there to do anything was worse than being the very reason he’d felt the need to test my feelings again at all. At least then it would be another misunderstanding. At least if it were me it was something I hadn’t even meant to do in the first place.

“What did my brother say to you that morning at dawn?”

“That he’d been in your mind,” He said curtly.

“Lucien.”

He sighed, “That he’d been in your mind and there was something old there, a pattern of thought he recognized from years ago that had made a return. You’d been distracted, talking to other people, thinking about the court, but there was an underlying sense of powerlessness. But that was not how I knew you, not as I had ever known you, I was sure that he was wrong. So I waited for you to come get me, for you to assert yourself after our conversation as you always have, but the longer I waited the more convinced I became that there was some truth to it. So in the foyer after breakfast I baited you.”

And you wouldn’t let yourself be so powerless, would you? 

“When you told me to tell Rhysand that you could make your own decisions, what did you mean?”

Lucien sat back, waving a hand, “Rhys had tried to tell me things you liked, how I should go about talking to you, where in the city I should have you take me. He wanted me to act and do things in a specific way which, I’m sure, was well-meaning, but I knew how I wanted to court you.”

Court me

I sat up. My whole body heated, culminating in a sheen of sweat on my back. In the weeks that had passed had that been his motive? The walks, the going to Egrette’s, the lips pressed against the skin of my hand. How plainly he said it, that he wanted me, that he wanted me the way that he did. Even as it replayed in my mind it was hard to imagine him saying it, having really said it.

He smiled, his voice soft, “You’re surprised.”

“I just. I didn’t think—”

“Probably because I didn’t get to do what I had wanted, what I had planned after I left your room the night before. You’d know if I was romancing you I would hope.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I murmured and he laughed.

“No, think better of me, of my efforts at least.”

I laughed then and the breaking of the tension relieved something in the room, added a little knowledge to what had seemed unknown to me before. Looking at Lucien I got the same sense that he got when he’d looked at me, it made me decide that, yes, I would tell him everything. It all seemed inevitable once more. 

“What happened then, that you couldn’t do what you wished?”

Lucien grew serious again, “Rhys said the feeling was old, but that it had returned. He believed I was responsible for it. Whether it was my distance from you or something that happened in the woods, he didn’t know. By the time you’d found me I was so annoyed that he’d been right about the first thing, I had to collect myself when it occurred to me there may be some truth in the other too—that it was I who had caused it.”

“It isn’t so simple, the origin of that feeling.”

“I know,” Lucien said. “After you told me of Gawayn and your brother I suspected that it was, indeed a very old feeling.”

Curious really, the more I thought about it. I have a terrible feeling I’m to blame in part for whatever’s going on between you two. One had to wonder if Rhys had not heard Lucien sling his insults, call me powerless, and felt the guilt of a century renewed. To have, at last, overstepped so overtly, so foolishly, that he’d realized too late what had so constantly happened.

“Due to the nature of our relationship before, I never told you really, how impressive you actually are. The way you use your words, the attention you pay to things, the balance you manage in the private and public duties is something to admire. Even my father knew it and respected your ability in whatever way he is capable of.”

“My words are a shield more than a weapon. I’m not often brave enough to hold real power, to let anyone really know me.”

“You’ve always been braver than me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s true enough,” Lucien said staring at me for a moment, thinking. His eyes narrowed, “The problem isn’t that you have no power, it's that we see what real power is very differently. Power to you has a ceiling that cannot be surpassed and as such fluctuates, moving in and out of hands but there will always be only the amount that you began with. Knowing the stakes, controlling them and what was revealed, seemed by your logic to nullify anything your opponent had,” He said sitting up, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“And what do you believe?” I asked.

“Real power has no finite amount. That, actually, there is more to gain when we meet someone else's power with our own. Then whatever leverage there was becomes obsolete. You use your position this way all the time.”

My brows furrowed, “When?”

“The night we got here when you called me handsome, revealing your thoughts to me, it opened something new to us both where we no longer needed the upper hand. Or with Cassian, as Madja stitched you up, when you asked him to try you were revealing a fondness that created a door for the court to meet you where you were. It’s why at breakfast I became more agreeable. You looked at me. I’d have never looked at you. If it had been me reading and you wanting my attention, before coming to Velaris I’d have never given in. That was better though, for your power to call to my own. It showed me what life could be if we came at things, bad moods and feelings, together. So, yes, you’re very powerful because you invite people into your power. You know how to play your cards even when you keep them close.”

I attempted to swallow the dryness in my mouth to no remedy. I understood and perhaps had known this definition before tonight, since that moment after our kiss, where it seemed something between us had met and suddenly we were together in ways I could not ignore. A meeting of power, a touching where I had never once been touched. I understood him, yes. 

 “After we spoke in the den I realized your brother was right in a way. It was me. My coming here obliterated our dynamic. Suddenly there was more power in play than ever. There was no way you could know how it had been divided between us at any time. For you to find me at all and say what you said, I imagined it had been hard, terrifying even. So after we almost kissed, after the lights went out, I wanted you to see yourself as I did and that became the motivation of everything.”

A serene silence came about the room. The both of us slumped against the back of the couches, the Sidra quiet behind windows I knew were thin enough for it to be heard. As if everyone was listening, the world holding its breath, the walls standing taller, waiting—all of it waiting for the moment we didn’t wish to address. I licked my lips and swallowed again with nothing to swallow. 

“So why then, did you use those words against me in the foyer?”

Lucien rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, blinking a few times. I could almost imagine him as a child, could see him young and laughing, full of life. He seemed to recede just a moment to a boy in trouble and afraid of what would happen. It tore me in two. I wanted to tear the whole world in two.

“I waited on you to ask for me for another reason which I haven’t said.”

“Lucien—”

“I must say this, it explains everything,” he began. “My father married my mother when she was very young. She had little say in the arrangement, in what she could become. I lived within the consequences of what she was not given and it made me determined, at all costs, to avoid becoming anything like my father. I was content to remain alone if I had to. I was the seventh son there was no urgency or attention placed on my duty. But even the last son must produce strong heirs.” 

That look of disgust when the bond snapped, it had never been for me. Mates, they are not always gifts. Yet sacred they are. I did not often like to think of it, how young my mother was when she was mated. All that life she hadn’t lived. What her life became. 

“Our fates became intertwined that evening in Day Court.”

“So you proposed we tell no one,” I said.

“Then you got your freedom as you wanted and I would never be the male who trapped an unwilling female. It was a convenience that our motives aligned, but I never deluded myself into seeing my decision as a noble choice. I acted entirely in my own self-interest and I went about my life enjoying it in silent rejection of the bond. I smothered all feeling, all possibility of feeling, until two months ago when my father cut into you. The first thing I felt from that tether after 50 years was unimaginable despair.”

I’d already told him what had hurt so badly, that he was there and Eris, that these males I believed could be better had, for a moment, appeared precisely the same as everyone else. To reiterate for him the origin of the despair would change nothing. It was the first thing he felt that was mine from what between us he believed to be a wretched link, proof that he could not outrun his long-feared fate. 

“That is how you saw me then. I stood for everything you resented,” I said quietly.

“You are not the bond,” He said with cool control. 

“You cannot sever the two. They are interwoven, it exists because I exist, it feels what I feel.”

Lucien shook his head. I gripped the cushions of the couch tight in my fist, his eyes drawn to the small movement in the otherwise still world. When he looked back at me there was nothing but pain and pity in his eyes. It turned my stomach, it helped nothing.

I said, “I don’t understand.”

Lucien’s eyes softened, “I wish that it was different, that it was more romantic, but it isn’t. I liked the life we had together, which was a life apart but unlike the bond, I could not rid myself of you. That, to me, is the difference. After I shielded, things reverted back to what they had always been. You still had what you had always had which I remain inexplicably compelled and annoyed by. You were still witty and charming and smart and irritating and when I’d see you at court I was glad as I’d always been to have someone to play the game. What happened in Day Court was confirmation of something I’d always known to be true, that you and I were equals, intellectually and emotionally, but that was it.”

I squeezed my hands once more into the cushion. This time he didn’t look but I knew he was aware of it. He retreated ever so slightly, and for a moment I wanted to stand, cross the room, take him very carefully into my arms, and forgive him for everything. But it was not time for such things. 

“I meant it on the terrace, I knew how I wanted things to be different,” he explained. “After dinner at the house of wind, I wanted to feel everything. You’d laughed for the first time, really laughed. Not the polite one you use at court and I felt it between my ribs. Those building notes of your joy…You misunderstood me, when you asked me how I wanted things to change. When I said ‘you’d laugh’ that wasn’t me worried that you’d laugh at me, I was asking you to.” He shifted uncomfortably, “That was what I wanted to be different, I wanted no more illusions. I began to understand something that I’d never understood, how precious it all was and I swore never again to waste it—to resent that inherent beauty and intimacy.”

I swallowed, “But I made you resent it again, in the foyer, didn’t I. When I shielded?”

Lucien’s jaw flexed. “You made me feel like I was my father.”

He could’ve said anything else—anything, and it would have been a more gentle demolition. It swept through me with a clean break. On one side a perfected before and on the other a new moment in which I had learned something I would forever have to know. That despite all intentions and lines drawn when we were two mates with no desire between us, I had done what I had sworn I would never do. No one in the whole of Prythian was unaware of the animosity between the High Lord of Autumn Court and his youngest son. It was not news to me that his motivations stemmed in part from his terrible father. His words tightened on my throat like a carefully pulled noose. I could not undo what I’d made him believe and what in consequence resulted after, all that suffering. 

Speechless still, Lucien continued quietly, “Mor reminded me, of the world you inhabit. She referred to your ‘private definitions,’ but you must understand something, when you said burden it devastated me, it was everything I had been trying not to be.”

My cheeks heated and I pressed my palm against my forehead, rubbing at it. Lucien’s gaze burned into me with such intensity that my palms began to sweat.

“It wasn’t what I meant,” I said looking up at him. “Burden, I meant something else.”

Lucien huffed a laugh with great effort, “You couldn’t have picked a more loaded word.”

“The one I wanted was even worse, but I was scared.” 

His throat bobbed, swallowing the question I knew he wanted to ask. I would tell him the other word, but he was not finished yet. So I asked mine, “She found you that night and she taught you how to make the drop.”

He nodded along in confirmation, “A few things happened before that, however.”

“What things?”

“She agreed to help me. I told her with much embarrassment what I’d originally planned to win you over and we conspired to get the court away from you so I might try again. I had already been going to Egrette’s classes and I had a small disadvantage in that I didn’t know anything of the city, so I used the time away from you to know it. Sometimes I spent all day with Egrette, listening to her talk about you, other times I went with Mor in search of places I thought you might like, tea shops I could take you, bookstores.”

“Sometimes you were with Cassian,” I said.

“I wanted to find an apartment. It was important to me that I have something to give you. I wanted to be ready, I wanted you to have as much privacy as possible and control over the pace of our relationship and if you ever desired to consummate it then we had somewhere to go.”

I raised a brow and turned my head to the side to reveal the very obvious bite at my neck which had still not entirely healed. Every conversation I’d begun since it happened started with eyes drawn to the curve of my neck. Even Rhys who dared mention nothing had finally acknowledged it that evening in his office.

“You really do believe I’m such a brute,” Lucien smiled a little, still smug about it, but he took on a more endearing quality. “Once we realized you were not, in fact, bluffing about going to the Illyrian village we met and made a plan. I asked Mor to take me to the cabin once Cassian left but we know how that worked out.” He shot me a glance, “This was also the night I made the plan for her to walk in on us fighting, under the guise of getting you out of the house and I asked too that she orchestrate Rhysand and Cassian so that we could be interrupted, so that all three of them would hear the threat I made against your neck. I didn’t want it to appear as anything more than a ploy to annoy you. Then if, with the time we had alone, something happened, our scents had already mixed. No one would know unless you told them.”

The clock in the hall began to chime. 12 bells rung out into the silent house before it even occurred to me that I might have something to say, that there was something to be said to the male who’d done everything, had thought of everything. 

Lucien sighed, “I’m not so territorial over you, and I know that it hasn’t always been so obvious, but you have me and have had me so all that was left to give you was the moment. I wanted to give you what you were denied the first time, I wanted it all to belong to you entirely. That's why I went to the cabin it's why I bit you it's why I’ve been lying.”

I cleared my throat, and despite how badly I wanted to I did not look away from the intensity of his stare as he admitted his feelings. It was not a mercy to anyone, no. I was being cruel.

“There's one more thing you need to tell me.”

Whatever he thought I’d say or do, that was not it. His whole being deflated. But we could do this no other way, it had to go as planned, as it had been. I could spare nothing, not even his feelings. 

“What's that?” He asked. 

“Why did you have Mor teach you to make the drop?”

Lucien sat back, his voice flat and uncaring, “In the woods when you overpowered me despite your injuries it felt as if something were going on that I didn’t know about. I suspected that you were reading about Gods because you believed something happened too so I went to the library to see if I could find anything. After our night drinking, when you told us you’d made a bargain, I narrowed my search some and started going more frequently.”

My eyes fell to the small table. A fern was laid across it—green and full of life, of new beginnings. There was no water. It had sat there two weeks, still alive. 

It was my turn now, to emerge from the wings.

I brought him to the kitchen and he waited by the counter. Dejected and yet curious all the same he stood before me with certain sternness. His even breaths were in contradiction to the waves of emotion that passed off him. He pushed his sleeves up, the kitchen warmer than the sitting room from use. I bent before the oven, its low fire just enough for the occasion, and from the dull heat, I pulled out braided bread. 

“One other person has a key to my house,” I explained as the bread slid into the light of the counter. “Egrette. She lives next door. I knew you were lying when you said you spent the weekend with her because she’d spent the weekend here, with me, helping clean the house so I could bring you and teaching me to make this.”

They made it in the Autumn Court on the equinox. Vegetables inlaid swirling toward one another, an image of an Autumn harvest. I’d been betting on Lucien, that it would all go as it should. Believing the worst of him was a habit I no longer had. If he was lying to me then I believed he had good reason. I just didn’t know how good it was. 

“I’ve been waiting, really, for everything to be done, for the circumstances to be right so that we could have time alone. That's why I left this morning so early, I had to prepare the bread. I asked Egrette to warm it in the oven for you.”

Lucien straightened at those last words. I could hear his heart, pounding furiously, as if in echo. For you for you for you for you. 

“Yes I suspected that my bargain in the woods was legitimate but unlike my court’s magic, there was no marking on me. I’d been reading to try and figure out who was there with us but once you gave me the scarf I felt more urgency. My own, yes, but there was also a thread being pulled but from a different direction, toward the house, like the Mother wanted me to come here. But I didn’t want to mate you without knowing the precise terms so I went to Helion who offered me his resources. Though I found nothing, when I got back to Velaris that night, our…audience made an appearance.”

“Erinyes.”

I nodded, “Just one, not all three.”

“Which?”

“Tisiphone,” the avenger. “She and I spoke for a long time, about that night, about what I’d done. The Gods, they do not mark bargains the way we do. Ours once they are finished disappear. We are no longer bound by their terms and circumstances. The oath I made in the woods, to protect you, it is a different standard,” I swallowed, “I am bound forever to the promise I made. Not just in this life, but the ones that follow too.”

Lucien stared blankly. I’m sure when I learned I’d looked the same. The counter between us became a chasm. I don’t know what I thought he would reveal, but I wanted something from him, anything. I did not wish to be cruel with my silence, with the direction I took or didn’t take the conversation, but he had a freedom I did not have and I don’t know if he was aware he wasn’t using it. I wanted him to, before this. Before the hardest part of all. I wanted what could be our last words to be different. I steeled myself, I refused to reveal the pain of it, the fear. He must again choose me on his own. 

“She met with me to tell me the terms, but specifically this last one. The nature of fae mating, it is a union of souls. If you eat, if you accept, it will result in you inheriting the same oath over me. You will protect me and I will protect you, we will forever be each other's keepers. We can never move fatally against each other. Our purpose will always be divided: The thing we were born that life to do, and then this, the oath I made.” I let out a breath, paused, and with conviction said it at last. “If you mate me I will always be your burden and you will always be mine.”

It was cruel really, as the Gods can be, that his fate was reduced eternally to be the thing he feared most. That he had to choose between having and not having. The weight with which we existed now would rest somewhere beyond this kitchen, in rooms I wouldn’t know as myself, where Lucien was not Lucien. He did not have to be bound because I was, however. I refused to cage him as he had not caged me.

“How can you be sure that this is true? That it was not a dream?”

I turned toward the living room, from the kitchen, the table could be seen. “She was holding that fern stem when I arrived. I watched her watch me sleep and she placed it on my chest. I woke to it, brought it downstairs, and it's been sitting there ever since.”

His eyes wandered from the living room over to the bread, then back to me, but he himself didn’t move. From the sunroom, a fine mist had gathered on the windows. Too early to be dew, but it seemed the outside world with which we’d been trying to hold back from us had at last ducked behind the curtain to give us privacy. No one was listening for his answer but me. His chest rose and fell with the breath that he took instead of giving me one. 

“I know this changes things,” I said eventually, when the silence stretched too long. “I won’t hold you to what you said or felt before this was revealed. But the food, it’s there, and the offer will always be there if you should change your mind.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it then?”

“My resentment toward the bond, I don’t understand how you feel.”

I clapped my hands together to brush away some crumbs. They fell at the counter and seemed loud by comparison to the silence that had come in and out between us. 

“It's a nice idea, that the time before this was more agreeable to what we’ve come to realize, but it isn’t true and I don’t want that life anyway. I want this one where you are you and I am me. It’s been a long time since that dinner and I have no desire to let any more time pass us by. I want to end it, this thing we’re doing or not doing, for good. I need no romance and no convincing. I know you and have known you all this time.” I smiled, small, with all the hope I had left, “You said it once, knowledge like ours is a burden and that to know someone risks love, to me that night they became interchangeable. I didn’t mean burden. The word I was afraid to say was love.”

That careful rise on his chest ceased. I had been meaning to tell him. 

I shrugged, “So, you didn’t like the bond, well luckily for me I never desired your good opinion.” The words struck a familiar tune and I allowed myself a bigger hope, a different smile—the kind that broke the tension just as his laugh had before. An invitation, something that couldn’t be misunderstood. He’d known such looks since we’d met. “Besides, I can’t break my oaths now. I think it’s only fair that I see through my prayer to the Cauldron. If we have children they should have a chance at being more intelligent than us and the libraries here are very fine.”

His eyes didn’t leave mine, mouth slightly agape, bond silent, still shielded. I could see our life together so clearly it made my mouth water. The sudden weight of a mate more palpable than ever, the food before him waiting. In the pause before the decision was made, I was given one last moment to feel what it would mean if he ate. And it would be okay if he decided against it, but it would be nice if he did too. I’d begun to believe in such things, that I could be happy, that life would give you what you wanted. And what I wanted was Lucien, entirely and wholly. So eat, I thought, and let’s be done with this. The time we took, it was good, but let’s be rid of what fear and secrets keep us here. 

Lucien’s eyes which had remained fixed on the bread rose to my own. His breathing returned just before he gave his answer.

“You’re my burden.”

At last, he understood everything. 

Then Lucien stepped forward, cut the bread, and placed a single bite in his mouth. 

I saw it, the change. Familiar and unforgettable, the joy he’d had that night in the library after he bit me. The kind that had pulled laughter from his chest, truer and more pure than anything I’d ever heard, ever held. His mouth moving with a sensual slowness. Swallowing the present so it became forever. He stepped out from behind the counter between us, my body trailing his, turning like the shadow of a sundial. 

I do not know who lunged first, but suddenly the distance between us was not so large, the heat of two bodies too real, and the taut string of need that had been pulling us closer for a lifetime snapped and he had me in his arms. Where once there had been absence, there was everything. 

He walked aimlessly hands sliding the hem of my dress down my thighs. The bedroom upstairs, the world beyond his immediate body seemingly vanished. He did not ask and I did not tell him where to go. To do so would be too much space between us. Landing only as far as the sunroom he dropped to his knees. We were careless, yes, but with a sudden clarity of intention, he laid me against the ground with all the tenderness in the world. It was the only reason I could imagine the parting of our mouths.

He lowered his face, nudging along my waist, kissing me through the thin fabric, I wanted it to be easy, if he accepted, I wanted to feel him immediately even with clothes. His nose found my hips, the heat of his mouth pooled beneath the seam of the dress. His fingers found either side and pulled, tearing the stitching in two, exposing the skin beneath for his mouth to reach. He rose and met the place between my breasts with a moan, his voice deeper than I’d ever heard it, weighed and so needy it rattled between my ribs. 

The firmness of his kiss contradicted the laze of his tongue as it swirled along the slope of my breast. I arched into him, the whole world warmer. 

I couldn’t have had him any sooner, but I couldn’t fathom it, how long I’d been without. I’d become so hallow with need I no longer knew how to be just one person. My hands fumbled with the buttons of his clothes, and the clumsiness of our bodies, hip bones sliding along hip bones, the rough feel of his thigh, he turning and I following. 

If we could get closer I’d do it. 

If he could devour me then I’d devour him. 

I could no longer wait. There had never been so little between us. The veil had been lifted, there was no margin, just a layer of want beyond measure. 

His fingers splayed between my shoulder blades as his hips shifted. I felt him just there. His nose against mine, he paused and stared at me, questioning, like I could ever go back. 

I nodded.

Our mouths open, pressed together, first pressure, then 200 years of relief. 

#lucien vanserra #lucien x reader #acotar x reader #acotar fanfiction #acotar #lucien acotar #lucien fanfic #night court #high lord rhysand #rhysand!sister #25K later #okay its not going to be fade to black I swear just the moment seemed to me good as it was and I don't know how to write smut very well yet #I didn't wanna ruin it #a court of thorns and roses

[traxanaxanos]

Re-watched the first 20 minutes of Caretaker to see Lieutenant Stadi and her minute and a half of screen-time, as you do, and I’m trying to contextualize her scene with Tom within the conversations I’ve been seeing on my dash recently about both Tom’s treatment of B’Elanna and the show’s treatment of B’Elanna as always angry and unjustifiably so, and that the anger is because she’s a Klingon, who can only ever be angry.

The first half of Tom’s conversation with Stadi is:

"Stadi, you're changing my mind about Betazoids." "Good." "Oh, that wasn't a compliment. Until today, I always considered your people warm and sensual."

So Tom here is using a base stereotype of Betazoids to inform his interactions, and specifically his sexual advances with a Betazoid woman, and then later repeats this pattern with a different set of stereotypes in his interactions and sexual advances with B’Elanna, where he continually reduces her to his (and the show’s) base stereotype of Klingons and Klingon women specifically. I’m not really sure that the writers knew they were making this a reoccurring trait of Tom’s, given that the Stadi interaction is basically nothing and was all the way back in episode 1, but it still is then a reoccurring trait of Tom’s in that he interacts with women with alien heritage by reducing them to whatever stereotype about their species is most convenient and sexually alluring to him.

Betazoids as a fictional species mainly suffer from the misogyny in their writing; they’re at the nexus of many of Roddenberry’s sexual interests. They can read your deepest desires, they become bonded to a partner, they don’t have cultural taboos around nudity, they have looser sexual mores than the average American viewer. I think they also tend to be exoticised, not so much with the few Betazoid men we’ve seen, but when they’re women. Specifically between Deanna (played by an British-American woman of Greek descent) and Stadi (played by an American woman of Italian descent), there are these occasional attempts at coding Betazoid women as vaguely Mediterranean, exotic and different, but not too exotic. Different in a way that is sexually alluring but “safe” to a White gaze. 

Tom notes that Stadi is not performing his stereotyped version of a Betazoid correctly to try and bait her and shame her for not being receptive to his advances. He uses a similar tactic in many of his interactions with B’Elanna, only instead tells her that she is performing his stereotyped version of a Klingon correctly to shut her down, belittle her, and minimize any conversation she tries to have that may be a little uncomfy for him. B’Elanna is just being angry which is how all Klingons are. B’Elanna just has a violent personality, like all Klingons do. B’Elanna is flying off the handle over nothing, just like a Klingon would.

This stereotyped version of Klingons is rooted in the racism that is frequently present in depictions of Klingons, which is rooted in the creators racism towards people of color. B’Elanna is explicitly Latina, and the way the show and Tom positions her as being too angry pulls from the “fiery Latina” stereotype. Klingons are also either explicitly or implicitly Black, and the anger and hostility Tom reads onto B’Elanna maps onto a white racist stereotype of Black people being inherently violent or destructive.

I don’t think the show is aware that Tom has this racist essentializing tendency, and if it is, it doesn’t necessarily think its a bad thing. Trek is a series whose reach exceeds its grasp - Infinite diversity in infinite combinations has become a cornerstone of the show (or at least in the imagined truly utopian version of the show), but Trek so often uses broad stereotypes to talk about groups of people, and frequently seems unaware that this is reductive at best and outright racist at worst. At the end of the day most of the people in charge of Voyager had the most in common with Tom Paris.

#star trek #star trek voyager #B'Elanna Torres #lieutenant stadi

[gingersforeverbox]

May I ask for silco and Viktor with a lover who has a glass eye? And maybe it's a bit magical so in tense moments or just for the creep of it, the glass eye will sometimes suddenly move towards something/someone if that makes sense? Thanks!

Howdy my dear, thank you so much for the request and I am so sorry for such a ridiculously late reply! I hope you find this somewhere!

A/N: None that I am aware of! Just some good ol' fluff!

Viktor and Silco (Separately) if they had a partner with a magic glass eye:

Viktor:

Viktor is a curious person at heart, so naturally when y’all first meet, he would wonder why you have such a fascinating eye. However, he would not ask you outright about it until much later into knowing you in fear of being rude. 

After wading the waters of close friendship, he finally yet politely asked what happened to warrant you needing such a beautiful eye (after specifying that both eyes are gorgeous to him, but he already knew about the origins of your organic one).

Regardless of your story, he will listen attentively, offering his hand if you ever feel like you need him throughout the ordeal. He will be nothing but reassuring and insist that if it is too painful a story to tell, don’t worry about telling it. He would much rather live in curiosity than cause you pain from said curiosity.

I'm not gonna lie to you, he will spend hours looking at your eyes if you let him. Yes, even when he should be working, which is saying a lot, and Jayce thanks you for managing to pull Vik away from work for a minute when you come to the lab.

He may not be an artist by trade, but he will always compare your eyes to the most beautiful of things in the world around him. Your eye is blue? The boundless skies that share the same color make him think about how free he feels around you. Brown? He lives on coffee and he is reminded who he lives for with every sip. Gold? He pictures golden halos that would hang from your head to match your spirit and body. Grey? Thunder storms have no might like you when you are passionate about something. No matter what color, he will always find something that reminds him of you when he sees the color around him.

As someone with a disability, he would be understanding that it can be frustrating sometimes and would do what he can to make it easier for you, whether thats having cleaner on hand or at his apartment for you or an ice/ heating pack for when your socket gets irritated. 

When it comes to your eye moving, he would get a little freaked out the first time it happened because he thought something was wrong and you were hurting. As you explained to him the situation, he is more relaxed about it, but he tries to learn situationally when it happens that way he knows what’s going on. For example: If you’re anxious when it happens, he will try to help you relax if he can. 

Now if you do it for humor, he will be a little cautious because he doesnt want you to cause yourself any unnecessary discomfort, however, if someone is being rude to you he is 100% on board with you using it to freak them out.

The bottom line is that he loves you for you, and this includes your beautiful eyes.

Silco:

As a man with an unordinary eye himself, I feel that it goes without saying that he would be the most empathetic of the two due to personal experience. He would also find your prosthetic to be fascinating, magic or not. He would enjoy seeing the details in the iris and would insist on eye contact so he can find these details while talking (but lets face it, its kind of intimidating to have that much eye-contact with the Eye of Zaun).

He has a business to run and a city-state to liberate, so he would not hesitate or beat around the bush to ask about the origins of this magic eye and how it came to be in your possession. He would also determine if your eye’s magic could be used to his advantage. Could it be used for espionage? Was it just a simple prosthetic? How could this play into his favor?

If it were a sadder story, he would quietly sympathize with you, but would not let that be known until he knew he could trust you. If it were a simpler story, he would nod and change the subject likely back to business at hand.

As time crawled on and as you proved your loyalty not only to him but to Zaun, he would open up more to you. After a while of seeing you as a “very close individual” (aka he caught feelings), he would tell you the story behind his own eye. Depending on your reaction, he may tell you about other aspects of his past if it means that he can get closer to you.

He would absolutely pamper you with the best medicine money could buy. If it were an emergency, he would even see Singed for you about getting you help. Nothing is too high a cost for his lovely. I’m not saying he would use this as a way of showing his love and affection for you and as a way to win you over, but yes I am. This man has very few morals left and subtle manipulation is basic affection to him. I do genuinely think he would love you though, he just has an odd way of showing it.

If your eye moved after him thinking it was stationary the entire time would definitely throw him off. Since he happens to wear some emotions on his face rather openly, he would furrow his brow in confusion before continuing the conversation. Towards the end he would question you about it. If its a situation where it only happens when you’re feeling a certine way, he would file that away for later uses, whether thats just looking out for your wellness or as an indicator of mood. If you do it for fun, he would kinda just go “ah,” and leave you to it. If it made you happy then so be it.

This man will absolutely adore your eyes, even if he isn't as romantic about it. He secretly loves that he found someone with something in common with him. He would do anything for Zaun, but most importantly, he would do anything for you.

#arcane #silco #silco arcane #silco x reader #viktor #viktor arcane #viktor x reader

[nani-nonny]

How would the Peepaws that don't have a Donnie spirit with them react to seeing their F!Donnie again? (Poor guys haven't seen their twins in so long)

I would also like to present them with their favorite apocalypse foods.

And little Raph plushies. Because I love them and definitely don't want to see them cry. :3

Oh! This is good >:) (wasn’t sure if this was for bymh or not lol and I didn’t see this until after I posted the recent bymh hehe I’ll tag it as a bymh solely because of the gifts)

Anyways, a bit of a long post, kind of.

But easily, DMD would cry so, so hard. He would absolutely crumble and hug his twin so hard that he might break F!Donnie’s battle shell (if Donnie was wearing it). He would be unable to speak coherently and the only word that would be easiest to understand is the constant stream of “sorry”.

Reunion’s a cheater and got his brother back already, lol, but when the reset occurred, he and the entire family all hugged each other so tightly for hours. Tears were shed and bruises formed from how hard they hugged each other.

LCD, ohhhh, LCD. Life doesn’t get easier despite how much time passes. When he saw F!Donnie, he felt sick. It felt as if guilt and anger began to churn in his stomach in the worst way possible. And Donnie, ever the inquisitive fellow, was only intrigued by this reaction. Donnie died protecting him, so all Donnie is aware of is that he successfully saved his brother. Leo is reminded of his faults and how he wasn’t the leader smart enough to protect his twin.

(A)PAF is incredibly happy to see his twin. Through Donnie, he sees a chance. A chance to understand where the baby came from, because if anyone knew what Draxum was doing in that lab or anything in general, it would be Donnie. Unlike the others, Donnie didn’t die on regretful terms. He’s so happy he gets to rely on someone again.

And apocalypse foods…

DMD gets rat meat and beans from a can :D

He looks at the crudely plated meal with a nostalgic smile. The way the meat is still steaming and the beans that remain in the can boiling. It’s a bit charred, like he remembers, and he picks up his fork. He raises the fork slightly and says, “Thanks,” before digging in.

Reunion gets grilled roaches on a stick hehe

Reunion raises a brow, “Um… I feel like this is meant to be nostalgic or meaningful in some way, but this was last week’s dinner.”

Reunion don’t fucking lie

He snickers playfully and raises the stick, “Want a bite?”

LCD gets rat soup

He doesn’t say anything as he picks up the spoon and takes a sip. His breath hitches when the broth rests in his mouth for a few seconds before he swallows. Without a second to spare, he digs in quickly, as if on a time limit.

WDS gets rats on a stick

WDS stares at the steaming stick and the charred ends of the rat meat. He looks, rather displeased, but doesn’t outright show it. He takes a bite and nods, “Yeah, just like I remember it… you know, now that I’m back in time, I really took spices for granted. I can’t believe I used to live off of food like this.” He rubs his tympana on his shoulder as his siblings speak, and when he stops he finally says, “I mean, thank you for the food.”

Now, Raph plushies!

Awww, I feel they’ll be so cute and warm to hug!

DMD:

He stares at the plush in his lap. His breath is… tense. His entire body is tense. His gaze remains fixed on the small plushie, as if trying to stare directly into the plush’s soul. He swallows as his hand slowly reaches for his throat, his breath hitches for a second, and his other hand begins to shake. He shuts his eyes tight before his hand pick up the plush. His voice is small when he greets softly, “Hey, big brother…”

Reunion:

He smiles wide and almost childlike. He lifts the plush into the air and catches it with both hands. He spins with the small plush and laughing, “Look how small! It’s so tiny!”

LCD:

He stares at the plush. He taps the plush’s plastron with a glare. He doesn’t say anything, but he sighs. He removes his sword from his hip and unties the braided hilt. He untangles the red bandana and ties it over the plush’s red mask, returning the mask to its original owner. He doesn’t pick up the plush, but leaves.

WDS:

The slider picks up the plush, holding his hand over his mouth. He snorts, and clears his throat as he picks up the plush by its arm with his thumb and forefinger. “Hey, Raph, how do we feel about this little guy? You think he makes the perfect replacement for you?”

APAF:

He picks up the plush as his sight blurs with incoming tears. He tucks the plush in one of his belt pockets and leaves.

#between you and me and him #rottmnt #nonny’s corner of peepaw multiverse #nonny peepaws #rottmnt future leo

[momo-t-daye]

For the ask game - 1, 8, 12, 16, 19, 23, 25, 28, 32, 34, 37, 40 😁 just threw a bunch of numbers in there because I love your opinions!

1. Canon I outright reject

You know, I don’t think there’s anything in the books about Snape that I outright reject all the time (I can’t say as much about the movies because I am very bad at paying attention to movies and didn’t watch all of them but the movies aren’t exactly canon).  There’s plenty of things I like to use as divergence points, to think about how this or that change would alter a character’s trajectory and whether that would be sufficient to escape the gravitational pull of the narrative, but I tend to think of canon as a scaffold and fanwork as a mirror (kind of like those mirrors dentists use to look at things you can’t see directly you know?  But also in a funhouse way because I enjoy silliness).

8. Unpopular opinion about them

Hm…. Snape is a very very weird dude who has never been anywhere near “cool” in his life and a virtuoso petty asshole, but that’s what I enjoy about him as a character???

I don’t think he’d be able to live alone in the woods/Jamaica/Antartica/etc. relishing his well-earned peace and quiet. He needs other people around him, partially as an audience to see just how little he needs those other people and partially because there is nothing quite so energizing and enjoyable as intentionally annoying other people (I’m not saying he’s an extrovert, but he sure isn’t 100% pure introvert either…)

12. Crack headcanon

He sleeps with his eyes open. He is only aware that he sleeps with his eyes open after Lily (on behalf of a too terrified Tuney) asked him why he did that.

As a kid he was very proud of his ability to mentally calculate a running total cost even though he had no money or intention to pay for his parma violets.  He dislikes decimalisation, which hit shortly before he went to Hogwarts (because other people keep insisting that base-10 is so much easier to use), and value-added tax, which hit while he was in Hogwarts (because it messes with his mental math and budgeting).

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

He desperately wants his father’s approval.  No matter what praise Albus Dumbledore or Lord Voldemort or any other substitute father figure might place on him, the unobtainable opinion of a working-class muggle man holds so much more weight.

Has everyone seen this lovely picture by the very talented @sneverussape?

19. Vices/bad habits

Severus lives off of spite (not a brassica vegetable despite what he might tell Madame Pomfrey), black coffee, and cheap cigarettes.  He avoids alcohol, if only because of his father, but he has his own addictions (one of which is self-denial). 

23. If they were a scented candle, what would they smell like?

As an adult in Harry’s era, rust and withered grass- the disquieting hint of blood spilled and the temporary sweetness of chaff left behind after the harvest would smell like being haunted by a time that has already passed.

For my self-indulgent AU young Sev I think there’d be more river muck and apples ripe for scrumping.

25. 3 things they’d want to take with them if they were dropped off in the middle of nowhere

Severus would try to claim that a full set of cauldrons and a closet full of potions ingredients should only count as two items and his wand could be his third item.  Whatever magical entity or event that was dropping him in the middle of nowhere would probably not agree.  His next attempt (his wand, a portkey back to his quarters at Hogwarts and/or Malfoy Manor and/or Spinner’s end, and a well-stocked RV to wait in until the Portkey was ready to go) would get his ass dropped in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the clothes on his back (if he’s lucky).  He’d survive just fine and get back to somewhere other than “the middle of nowhere”, but he won’t have fun and anyone he encountered on his way out of the middle of nowhere wouldn’t have fun and everyone is back home is going to know just how little fun he had getting dropped in the middle of nowhere.

(He grew up with so little, he has a bit of a tendency to hold onto whatever he has and be deeply suspicious of anyone trying to make him pare his belongings down.  Yet in the 1997-1998 school year, he spent his time slowly winnowing down his belongings and tidying up his affairs on the assumption that he would not survive and no one would want to or care to clean up after him).

28. How they feel about [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]

Instead of rambling about Sev and Lily and how they were best friends and how much I want to jump up and down and scream that they were best friends and how entangled and enmeshed one can get within the intensity of childhood friendship, I think I’ll plunk Nymphadora Tonks in those brackets!

He thinks Tonks is wasting her talents working as an Auror for the Ministry, claims her habit of mimicking him was deeply annoying even if it did come in handy when he needed to supervise three detentions (including hers) at once, and professes complete disinterest even though he refuses to use any mug in the staff room other than the humorously oversized “student’s tears” mug her NEWTs cohort bought for him.

…at some point I’ll get around to writing a one-shot about how Nymphadora Tonks became one of the leading experts on Polyjuice Potion that I’ve had semi-outlined for over a year now… 

32. Something guaranteed to make them smile/laugh

Ooh, this is a tough one- particularly for Harry-era Severus Snape!

I think when a student who has been trying and putting the effort in suddenly gets it, when something clicks and they get excited about the implications and the possibilities provided by potions.  He isn’t equipped to deal with impatient and distractible children that treat his subject as mandatory torture, but someone else being excited about academic points and caring and being a nerd about someone he cares about?  I think that would make him smile.

34. How they react when they are feeling X emotion (sad, angry, excited, scared, etc.—can specify as many as you like)

As a kid, I think he talked with his hands (particularly after meeting Lily who talked with her hands and never got walloped for taking up space) and the more excited he became the more his hands and arms moved trying to corral the world into his enthusiasm.  There were times when Severus and Lily were both so excited Tuney would swear there were seven hands waving around between the two of them.

A great deal froze on Halloween 1981, calcified, and many emotions could only exit via the anger expressway.

37. What they really think about themselves

Oof…

Especially as an adult, Severus does not think very good things about himself.

I think, as an act of self-defense, he tries very hard to not think about himself at all…

40. Favorite book

Not a book, but still media: I think Star Trek aired on the BBC at a very formative time for Severus.  As a Hogwarts student (and after) he probably scoffed at fantasy fiction for not portraying magic as he knew magic, but science fiction was something he could sink into.  Did he try to recreate melange/spice from Dune in his third year?  Maybe. Is he mortally offended that Harry only knows Dune as “that movie with Sting wearing the, uh, you know, the, erm, well, thingy…”?  Yes.

#ask game #Severus Snape

[x-amount-verbs]

A Helping Hand - Part 25

[start here] || Part 24 || Part 25 || Part 26

[Silco POV for between 23-24 if you missed it]

[silco x f!reader] [3.3k words] [no y/n] [during timeskip] [touch-starved reader] [henchwoman!reader] [NSFW] [D/s] [glove kink] [hair pulling] [light humiliation] [hint of drooling] [discipline] [corporal punishment] [impact play] [cane, crop]

(Unrelated, if you like this you may or may not enjoy Secretary (2002))

AO3 Link

“Bend over the desk.”

You blink. For a second you’re in shock, head whipping around to face him. Look, you knew this would get into some sort of power play, but the blatant—

It’s—

Look, you can’t not see it as sexual, as going 0 (or maybe 10) to 100 in an instant.

Are you gonna fuck me?

The question occurs to you, but you don’t quite have the courage - or audacity - to ask it outright. You aren’t sure which answer would be more humiliating, the prospect of him being so disgusted by you that he says no, or the mortifying prospect of—

Those fantasies had been just that, you didn’t expect them to—

Skirt bunched around your waist and panties around your ankles as he drives into you relentlessly, wrapping a hand in your hair for grip, teeth bared with the ferocity of it.

Your slightly parted lips snap shut, swallowing hard. The rueful thought occurs to you that at least if you bend over right now he won’t witness the obvious sign of arousal tight against your blouse.

Apparently your dumbfounded look prompts clearer instruction. “Face front, forearms flat, and bend over the desk.”

Heat burns on your cheeks, cursing yourself for wearing a skirt last night even as you try to argue with yourself that this is somehow a win, that this will make it that much easier to prove your point.

When you don’t immediately respond, Silco adds, “Can you do that for me?”

Brows pull together slightly, confused why he’d word it in that way. Then you face front and slide your palms forward, leaning onto your elbows and—

“I asked you a question.”

Ah. That’s why.

“I’m already doing-”

THWACK

You fall forward, legs knocking against the desk as they give out, mind gone blank at the sudden sting across the back of your thighs. Did he… Did he just hit you?

Silco is silent for a moment as you regain your breath, pulse hammering in your throat in some messy combination of shock and pain and fear and— and something else. Something dark and pleasant, that you aren’t sure is a good thing.

There’s a noise beside you, and your gaze slides sideways to see a thin cane - too thin for walking - coming to rest by your side on the desk. Clearly showing you what caused the sudden pain.

A knot forms in your gut. You’re not sure how you feel about this.

This may be too much too fast, maybe you’re in over your head, maybe you need to stand up and say no, maybe…

“That’s the worst of it.” Silco’s voice is even, calm. Almost reassuring in its certainty, and… rounded. Free of any harsh edges. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he may even be apologizing.

For a second you think he’ll say something else, but he doesn’t. Still, it feels like a promise, somehow.

Swallowing hard, you take another second to breathe, then pull yourself up onto your elbows, legs getting under you again.

You make no move to leave the desk.

Silence. Tense silence. You can feel his stare on you, making you even more aware of your own body, of the burning welt cutting across the back of your thighs. In that instant you crave his touch, need his hand on your stinging skin, rubbing away the hurt.

Knelt behind you to soothe the marks left in his wake, lips pressed to the reddened lines, kisses working up the back of your thighs, then the inner curve, until his nose brushes your core.

“…Are you ready to continue?”

Are you? …You nod.

“Words.”

“Yes, Sir.” Your voice is a little breathless.

“…Good girl.” There’s a hint of softness, of unacknowledged apology. It makes your stomach backflip.

Another brief pause, before Silco walks back to his side of the desk and half falls into his seat.

A niggling annoyance blooms at the back of your mind as he opens a different desk drawer. He hits you, then leaves you to stew in it, bent over his desk while he continues his work? Rude.

But Silco doesn’t pull out papers. Instead, he pulls out a pair of leather gloves that immediately make your ears burn as you avert your gaze to the desktop. You still can hear his smirk. It makes you wonder if he’s aware of what exactly you did with the one he gave you.

A gloved hand fitting between your legs, finding you slick, sliding digits through your folds to grind teasingly around your clit, then back, then forward again as a leather-padded finger presses into your entrance-

Gods. Everything in your mind today is just… filthy. Sandwiching lips between your teeth, you close your eyes and take one steadying breath.

“Have you been practicing?”

Eyes snap open, face burning. “No,” is the immediate emphatic response, only half a lie.

The pale eye narrows. His seat rolls closer, gloved hand lifting to finger a strand of hair, twirling it. “I told you to practice.” Tighter around his finger, until the pressure tugs gently at your scalp. “Are you saying you’ve disobeyed me yet again?”

“No, I—”

Fingers fan to grab a thicker handful of hair, close to the scalp, and tug you forward across the desk. “There’s that word again,” a grimly amused hum.

You should not enjoy his hand in your hair nearly so much, but you can feel that helpless thrill fluttering behind your navel, despite - or perhaps helped along by - a low level of fear at the threat of the cane beside you. So close. He’s so close, and yet those stupid gloves stop real skin-to-skin contact.

The hooked smirk curls his lip as he tugs you closer by the hair, and you have to go up on tiptoes to reach across the desk as he brings his face just slightly closer to yours. “Let me be clear: you’ve disobeyed me again.” His voice is silk tightening around your throat and the danger is intoxicating. “I gifted you my glove for a reason, and I find it hard to believe you’ve been using it.”

Eyes widen without meaning to, and you quickly look down at his collar to avoid his too-observant gaze.

Too late.

“…Unless you’ve been using it for something else…”

Shit.

Cheeks burn. Just once. Only the once. After his rejection you’ve tried to avoid thinking of him in any positive way, even if it’s just your unfortunate (and seemingly inescapable) attraction. It’s frustrating that his guess is right on a technicality: ‘used,’ not ‘been using.’

“Well?”

You flick your quizzical gaze back to his, and his brow raises expectantly.

“Have you been misusing my gift?”

“No—” The word is hardly out of your mouth before Silco’s grip tightens. To your mortification, the noise that crests your lips isn’t a hiss of pain, or even a grunt of discomfort. It’s a breathy little “nh!” that’s transparently wanting. Or perhaps even wanton.

His soft huff of hidden laughter has you shooting him a sharp look, only to find his smirk not-so-hidden as he reaches his other gloved hand down to slide a drawer open. You can’t see it all from this angle, just the edge of the drawer, but that apparently isn’t necessary, because the item is soon pulled out, then neatly laid across the desk in front of you. Blood pounds in your ears, face flaming as you see it, undoubtedly to be used in the same manner as the cane.

A single riding crop.

It’s— humiliating. That’s what it should be, anyway, the prospect of being treated like a damned horse—

Rode hard and put away wet.

Oh gods. Your breath is a little faster, gaze lifting back to his face, as if you can read his intentions specifically.

Hungry eyes follow the line of your jaw down your neck. You are suddenly glaringly aware that at this angle he has a perfect view of your cleavage, probably straight down between your breasts as well, thanks to gravity.

“First manners, now honesty. We have quite a bit of discipline to teach you, hm?”

You can practically feel his eyes playing across that expanse of skin, tracing the curve, though soon - all too soon - they slide down your arm to the prosthetic hand flat on the desk.

The fingers in your hair loosen, slipping away and letting you rock back onto your heels. You swear you’re not disappointed.

“Again. Have you abused the gift given to you in good faith?”

You frown. “No, I told you-” Your words are cut off with an involuntary flinch as he plucks up the crop, even if he makes no move to strike you.

Instead, Silco leans back in his seat and waits for you to settle, then slowly brings the folded tip of the crop to your hand. It traces the reverse path his eyes took. Up your arm - making you startle as it trips from ceramic to fabric-covered flesh - and across your chest, then sliding up your neck to rest below your chin. Lifting your head with the slightest pressure.

“Open.”

Holy fucking hell.

Is he serious?

That hellfire eye seems to bore into you, and your own shocked gaze quickly cuts sideways to avoid it.

“Look at me.”

The blush burns, a shame that tightens every inch of your skin, as you find his unwavering stare. You wanted attention: you have it.

“Open.”

Slowly, you let your mouth drop open, seeing his gaze drop to it immediately. Suddenly you have the intense need to swallow, but can’t without breaking his rules.

The crop slides to the tip of your chin. Holding you in his unapologetic gaze as he drinks in the sight of you, the thick labor of your breath, the way saliva gathers in your open mouth, and your obvious anxiety over that fact. It has to be purposeful when the tip of the crop runs up your chin and past your lips, delicately pressing to your tongue.

To your absolute mortification, your first instinct is to suck. You quickly curb that instinct, but the alternative is possibly worse, as he exerts the slightest force on the crop and your jaw obediently drops wider— only for a thin line of drool to spill from slack lips as you let slip a pathetic whimper.

Humiliating. So why the fuck are you so turned on?

“I’ll reiterate our rules. ‘Please, Sir,’ ‘thank you, Sir,’ or ‘yes, Sir.’ If you cannot answer truthfully, do not answer at all. If I need you to speak freely, I’ll ask it of you.”

How did you get here? All the power plays were so silent, all implied - though just as intense - and now here you are. Bent over his desk with a crop on your tongue, and uncomfortably aware of your own arousal.

“Is that clear?”

Chills down your spine. Toes curling. Heat flows through you making your body practically hum with awareness. Gaze fixed on his, you only see that expectant quirk of brow.

Oh. “Yeh thuh,” you manage, followed by a short involuntary whine at hearing your own failure to speak with the implement in your mouth.

As soon as the crop is removed from your tongue, your head drops to hide the shame as you hurriedly swallow and wipe your chin against your sleeve. When you raise your head again, Silco is already halfway round the desk, just barely in the corner of your eye, and the crop hasn’t been returned to its place. Goosebumps break out over your skin as you register that meaning.

A second later, your theory is confirmed— and more.

“So.”

You suck in a tight breath of surprise when the still-wet crop teases up the back of one thigh, making you jerk forward despite barely touching you. That quiet tell of his amusement is audible, if only just, above the blood pounding in your ears as it slides higher, breaching your hem and—

A little hiccup catches in your throat as he outright lifts your skirt.

“You very clearly haven’t been—” His words falter.

After a pause, the crop pushes fabric further, until your skirt is fully against your back as you hang your head, eyes screwed shut, horrified that your arousal may be visible through your underwear.

“…Where’s the bruise from?” There’s an edge to his calm: confident swagger settled to a simmering restraint.

You’re trying to think of literally anything except his gaze on your ass, unable to figure what the fuck he’s talking about, when a leather-clad hand cups your thigh - eliciting a squeak as your brain stops functioning - and presses a thumb to a spot on the back of your leg that immediately throbs.

The pain serves to ground you even as Silco’s touch attempts to pull all your focus, and you’re left floating somewhere between the two. Gaze cloudy, but still present.

“It’s—” Now it’s your turn to choke on your words, mouth pressing closed.

“Speak freely.”

(Why does his control feel so— like this? Some kind of— gratifying.) “It’s nothing. I fell,” you explain.

His hand falls away— and in that moment you tense for a slap across your ass, a jolt of anticipation kicking your adrenaline up.

But it doesn’t come. Instead. The crop drags its wet edge over your other thigh. “Did you do this to yourself?” His tone is dark, lower than usual, and you can imagine the glare he’s leveling on you even if you’re not seeing it.

“No,” you assure him, though there’s some plea to it. “No, Sir.” Like that will help your case. “I didn’t have a spotter and my ladder fell, but the hand is fine, I swear.”

“And the host?”

Something in your chest squeezes. Flutters. “…I’m fine,” you say, quietly. “I’ve had worse.”

A moment’s pause. Then his flat look is audible in the sardonic tone. “Yes, I’m aware: that’s what brought you into my care to begin with, you’ll remember.”

…Right. Okay maybe the I’ve had worse was obvious, given the missing hand.

He said care.

Quickly you push that thought aside. He meant it medically. No need to have any kind of feelings about—

THWAP

It’s much less intense than the cane, at least, though it still makes you jump. The soft tress of the crop rests in the spot it hit on the opposite leg than your bruise, mirroring its placement.

“I think we’ve previously established that my investment isn’t to be endangered.” The crop rubs gently against the sting it caused.

A pause. The next slap of leather on skin draws the reply he’s waiting for. “Yes, Sir.”

“And your carelessness and impetuous nature seem to be putting both my property and my investment at risk.”

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

The crop stills from where it’s been soothing heated skin, then resumes. Oops. Not one of those approved phrases. And yet he still accepts it. …Makes you curious what else you can get away with.

What will it take for him to put down the implements and touch you? You refuse to ask for it outright, refuse to beg. You had a point, once upon a time, even if the gentle pain is the only thing keeping you grounded from slipping into a mindless fog now. You wanted to prove his words a lie, to prove he wants to touch you just as much as you crave being touched. So he has to initiate.

So far, so good, in that respect.

“...I’m sure you’ll make it up to me,” he murmurs, the tip of the crop tracing the curve below your ass.

You can’t help but squirm at the sensation, that area far closer to pleasure than pain. His disapproving hum makes an image flash through your mind; a hand pressing your torso down to the desk to keep you still, as the other pets between your legs.

The image is jarred from your mind’s eye as the crop slaps at your inner thigh and you let out another little sound. There isn’t enough space to build up momentum, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? Sensitive skin in delicate areas— it doesn’t have to hurt to make his power clear.

“Impertinent little minx.”

thip thip thip thip

One thigh, then the other, each a little harder than the last until you’re widening your stance with a whine.

“Nhnn-” Your tongue presses to the roof of your mouth and you censor any words as the next sharp snap of the tress hits that curve he traced earlier, and the reverberation lights you up. Another, and you feel your muscles flutter, rocking forward like you can escape the little electric current that links the spot he struck to your clit.

The strikes pause. Give you a moment to breathe. Your heart rate is up. Those last two strikes hit just right to give you a plethora of mixed signals making your arousal go haywire.

“Six days of subpar obedience. Two days of late reports. One day of truancy. One drunken display of willfulness.” Silco tallies up your offenses. “That’s ten.”

The next words out of his mouth take extra long to process, because the edge of the crop has traced that delicious curve again, and this time he takes advantage of your widened legs to press the flat of it against the cotton of your underwear. You can’t think for a whole second, legs shaking, a hunger itching behind your navel. A needy little whine pulls in your throat before you press lips together in an attempt to stop from pleading. He has to initiate. You need his hands on you so damn badly, but he has to be the one to do it of his own volition.

You may not be able to control much, but that’s the one goal you have.

Finally the rest of his words register.

“…Add in your failure to complete the tasks I assigned, and a stunning inability to follow simple guidelines for behavior today… and I think we can tot it up to fifteen.”

The crop taps gently between your legs, and you can’t help the little noise you make. The next tap is less gentle, a firm slap along the length of your slit that makes you cry out, hands curling into fists on the desk and head bowed. Need throbs in you.

“Fifteen strokes.”

When he pulls the implement away, you can hardly stop the thin whine as you bite your tongue.

He replaces that pain momentarily, the leather tress of the crop snapping against your ass. It’s better than your thighs, though not quite so good as the spot where both meet.

“One,” he counts.

Not so bad. Neither is the second, on the opposite side.

The intensity of every other strike amps up, slapping against already reddened skin. And then the unthinkable happens.

“Seven-”

“Th—” You quickly press your lips between your teeth, stifling the words that very nearly escaped.

Silco stops. Heated flesh burns, and you just want him to soothe it away, but the crop leaves your skin entirely. As soon as it’s gone, you crave contact. Any contact. You press your forehead to your fist, swaying hips back as you shift impatiently, eyes squeezed shut.

For a moment, the only sound is heavy breath, and you’re not sure it’s yours alone. Silence seems to ring with the echo of leather against skin.

“…Speak freely.” It’s unusually quiet. Maybe even careful.

“It—” Your own realization brings another rush of heat to your face. “It’s nothing, I— it’s fine, you can— You— nnh.” Nevermind naming what exactly he’s doing to you.

The way he says your name makes your stomach flip. Firm, but soft. Warning, but not intimidating. “What were you going to say?”

Swallowing hard, you have to clear your throat before the words come. Because you hadn’t stopped yourself from begging, hadn’t stopped the please from your lips. No. You’d been about to say-

“Thank— thank you.” It’s weak, choked out, embarrassment making your extremities tingle with pins and needles.

Silco goes still and silent.

—

[next part]

[Ahem. So uh. Yeah.

Anyway, I posted earlier than I meant to, cause I’m not done with 28 yet, but y’know what I wanted a sinday release. And the goal is for 26 to go up on thirsty Thursday, but tbh it may be a week-long wait and for that I apologize. I promise it’ll be worth it for what’s coming up. 4k+ smutty smutty content.

Standard begging applies: please boost this post if you like it! I load up posts with links and I think sometimes that affects what makes it to the main tags. And after this I am in need of REACTIONS, PLEASE. I know some people aren’t into impact (in which case uh… something else is coming next chapter I promise 👀) so please reassure me if this is something you DID stick around for. 😅 All tags are devoured, and all comments on ao3 get replied to (and most here as well).

If you missed the reverse POV for what happened between 23 and 24, you can find it here: Sobering Thoughts. And if you want to be notified when the next chapter and/or reverse pov posts, you can join the tag list by commenting on this linked post.

Sorry if anyone felt uncomfortable with this chapter >< ❤️ -verbs]

Tag list: @hawk4president @mello-jello29 @jennrosefx @dad-dumpster @ellhd-imagination @zuckerwattencupcake @meep-moop-mystic @of-the-argonath @ariaud @witxhy-lexx @mazikomo @leave-me-alone-doctor @antoine-tte @emprixnix @imalovernotahater @eriseffigy @leorioaki @artificialwords @hehicular-hanslaughter-lecter @ironandglass @ughhhh177 @faraige @ilikemymendarkandfictional @jennithejester @insult-2-injury @iz-zy5 @rinadragomir @queenofspades6 @cuddlejeongin @differentladynerd @alternativeforensicscientist @leo-the-undead

#silco x reader #silco #silco arcane #silco x f!reader #silco smut #wip:a helping hand #a helping hand #x-amount-writes #smut #mdni

[wooahaes]

I asked for coups with #35 but would also be SUPER down for the same prompt but with jihoon instead if you’d like! - kwannies-boo

little steps together

pairing: non-idol!woozi x gn!reader

word count: 0.4k~

warnings: n/a just skinship and fluff. intentional lowercase + no proofreading.

daisy’s notes: i changed the wording slightly!! my list my rules >:3

it genuinely didn’t take much to make jihoon flustered early into your relationship. since you were usually the one to initiate things (you had asked him out, you tended to be more forward with planning dates--which wasn’t to say he didn’t, just that you took initiative more often--you initiated skinship through hand-holding...), you had worried a little early on into your relationship that jihoon was just humoring you with the whole dates-and-skinship thing. that maybe he only agreed because he didn’t want to reject you outright.

when you asked him about it, he shut that train of thought down immediately. his friends all knew how enamored with you he was. that was part of the reason why he wasn’t going to introduce you to them until a little later, because he knew that soonyoung would gladly start gushing about the stupid way he smiled to himself when you walked him back to his apartment, or the way he outright said that you had soft hands one day when soonyoung asked how the date went.

he liked you. he wouldn’t go out with you if he wasn’t enjoying things, and he outright asked if you wanted to be official.

even still, despite his insistence that everything was fine and that you could hold his hand and kiss his cheeks all you wanted, jihoon always would get this cute little smile on his face whenever you reached for his hand. he’d always take it in the end, because you always needed the surefire sign that he wanted to hold your hand (his shy smiles and reddened ears came after), and he’d hide that cute smile when you intertwined fingers.

“you always get so flustered, jihoony,” you teased.

“i don’t.” as if his ears weren’t red. as if he wasn’t squeezing your hand.

so you sigh, swinging your arms. “what am i going to do with you?” but he could see that playful glimmer in your eyes, and the cute way you smiled at him. “i guess you’ll just have to get used to it.”

and he ran his thumb across the back of your hand. “i will,” he said, hiding his own shy smile. “just give me time.”

“i know. you’re jihoon.” you giggled. “you can do anything you put your mind to.”

he brought your connected hands together, pressing a tiny peck onto the back of your hand. “thank you,” he said softly, “for taking it slow.”

“of course,” you said, fully aware that was the first time he’d kissed you in any way since the two of you went official. “i like you, you know? i want you to be comfortable.”

maybe he would kiss you the next time you walked him home. it’d only be on the cheek, but it was a step forward.

#wooahaes.fic #seventeen imagine #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #svt x reader #svt imagine #svt x you #woozi reader insert #woozi x reader #woozi fluff #woozi x you #lee jihoon x reader #lee jihoon x you