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papiliotao · 8 months

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꒰ 𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒔 ✩࿐

pairings: alhaitham, kaveh, kazuha, lyney, scaramouche, and xiao x gn!reader (separate)

content: fluff, modern au, college au, the reader is a sleep-deprived student, correction: everyone in this fic is a sleep-deprived student, cuddling, reader is sick in scara’s, venti makes a cameo in kazuha’s part, reverse comfort in kaveh’s

summary: small scenarios with the genshin boys as your roommates! ♡

a/n: this has been sitting in my drafts for a while, so i decided to finally finish it up. i hope you enjoy!

₊˚ପ ALHAITHAM

Tonight, it feels like endless night ebbs and flows into the very core of your being, chilling you with fragments of a glacial atmosphere.

It’s cold.

Even with multiple blankets wrapped around you, you can’t help but shiver, shake like a vibrant autumn leaf in a passing zephyr. Winter is approaching, and unfortunately for you, you may have relished a little too much in the gilded threads of summer warmth that had graced the world a few months prior. For now, you’re unable to stand the gradual freeze that’s beginning to spread throughout your city.

Slumber is tempting. It lures you in, wrapping you in a blanket weaved of starlight and dreams. However, it’s all an illusion. In reality, you’re far from sleep. You know that there’s no way you’ll be able to pass the gateway into the oneiric realm. Not with the sensation of frostbite threatening to consume you whole.

Eventually, you decide to get up. You’re certain that you won’t be able to fall asleep, at least, not without more blankets, so you decide to make your way to Alhaitham’s room to ask if he has any spares.

Although you’d normally feel guilty for rousing someone from slumber, it’s not that late as of right now. Either way, you’re quite certain that your roommate is still wide awake, most likely losing himself amongst the yellowed pages of a verbose book. After all, he always seems to have his nose buried in a complex tome, filled with words that make your brain hurt.

Slowly, you drag yourself out from under the plush covers of your bed. The floorboards groan slightly as you stand, exhaling under the pressure of your footsteps. You make your way down a hallway drowned in shades of midnight, making your way towards the golden light seeping out into the corridor from under the cracks of a closed door.

The door to Alhaitham’s room.

You knock, the sound seemingly echoing down the walls of the hall, repeating in a chorus of onomatopoeia.

A few seconds pass before the door opens to reveal Alhaitham. Strands of silver hair messily frame his face, and yet as the aquamarine hues of his irises meet your gaze, you find that he’s just as dazzling as ever.

“Do you need something?” he asks, his voice as flat and monotonous as always. As usual, your roommate’s front doesn’t betray a single hint of emotion. Not even irritation.

You pause for a moment, still a little intimidated by Alhaitham. Although you’ve been living together for a while now, his apathetic demeanour can be slightly off-putting at times. Nonetheless, you eventually manage to steel your nerves.

“Yeah,” you say. The word comes tumbling out of your mouth like the iridescent droplets of a waterfall. “Do you happen to have any extra blankets?”

Alhaitham pauses for a moment, seemingly deep in thought.

You hold your breath, hoping that he’ll say yes, and you’ll be able to get this over with.

However, he shakes his head, and you feel your heart drop, shattering into a thousand shards of fragmented ruby.

“Oh,” you sigh, trying your best to hide the dejected expression overtaking your features. “That’s okay. Sorry for bothering you.”

You turn away, ready to head back to your room, but Alhaitham’s voice stops you.

“I think it’s safe to presume you wanted a blanket because you were cold, right?”

It’s a rhetorical question, so you don’t bother to answer it. Instead, you freeze, becoming akin to a stunning statue carved of pale blue ice.

“Then allow me to propose an alternate solution.”

You turn around, meeting Alhaitham’s eyes once more. Lakes of turquoise, typically devoid of emotion, are now filled with a particular spark. You can’t quite determine what it is, but there’s a subtle glimmer — barely visible, but it’s there.

“Why don’t you stay in my room for the night?”

Your eyes widen, and you feel your jaw drop. For a moment, you just stand there, absolutely still and dumbfounded.

Perhaps you had heard Alhaitham wrong. Or maybe your mind is playing tricks on you, making mirages materialize out of nothing. The blank expression painted over your roommate’s features certainly makes you think so.

“Excuse me?” you blink languidly, staring at Alhaitham as if he’ll disappear into thin air if you take your eyes off him.

“I said why don’t you stay in my room for the night?” he repeats nonchalantly, the evening chill seemingly intertwining itself into his tone. His gaze remains fixated on you.

Your mind blanks for a second, each intricate acrylic line of a composition painted over, leaving you with nothing but an empty canvas. As you stand still, a thousand scenarios seem to flash through your head, filling up the blank space with a myriad of thoughts — some pleasant and some unpleasant. However, you soon realize that you don’t have time to weigh all the pros and cons of your decision, as Alhaitham is staring at you intently, awaiting your answer.

“Sure,” you blurt out.

You’re not sure what compels you to accept his proposal. Perhaps it’s your longing for the comfort of shared warmth. Perhaps it’s a result of your inability to say no to others due to a fear of disappointing them. Or perhaps it’s because you’ve grown a lot closer to Alhaitham than you’d care to admit.

Although you’re still slightly intimidated by him, you’re certain that he’d never do anything to harm you. And there are even times where he shows he has your best interests in mind (despite the fact that you were initially under the impression that he cared little for others).

You’re snapped out of your trance of reminiscence as Alhaitham speaks once more.

“Alright,” he says, taking your hand and leading you over to his bed. His grip is firm — not suffocating, but at the same time, not so soft that the connection between the two of you would be easily severed.

Alhaitham’s touch sends butterflies, tinted a colour reminiscent of spring blossoms, dancing within the pit of your stomach. It’s enchanting, and at this rate, you’re not sure how you’ll be able to handle sleeping in the same bed as him.

He allows you to climb into bed first, tucking you in with an unexpected amount of care. You know Alhaitham’s not exactly the cold-hearted jerk many make him out to be, but you didn’t anticipate that he’d be this gentle, his touch akin to the caress of sunlight on a spring day.

After the man ensures that you’re cozy, he lies down beside you, embracing you. As he does so, you feel a wave of heat overwhelm you. To your relief, the frigidness that had once gnawed at your very soul is now gone, but unfortunately, you’re faced with a new problem.

Alhaitham’s actions have flustered you, and to your misfortune, it feels as though crimson embers of embarrassment are transforming into flames far too quickly for your liking.

You’ve solved one issue, but in turn, you’ve accidentally created another.

This is going to be a long night.

₊˚ପ KAVEH

It’s no secret that your roommate is a perfectionist.

Whenever his eyebrows knit up in a jumble of discontent and pools of liquid ruby tinged with sunsets glint with hints of frustration, it becomes obvious what’s going on. He’s spent too long trying to perfect yet another assignment. The bags that seem to perpetually line the undersides of his eyes are dark shadows — serving as an eternal reminder to the man’s exhaustion.

There are times where you find him hunched over his desk, teetering on a thin tightrope, walking a line between the waking world and a wonderland of dreams. Of course, he refuses to succumb to the temptations of a golden slumber time and time again, forcing himself to fixate on his projects until he’s finished and happy with the final product.

Today is one of those days. The cold light that leaks through the cracks beneath the door to Kaveh’s room seeps into the hallway, serving as a warning written in a display of molten opalescence.

Stark white. Cutting through the darkness of deep midnights with ease.

It’s jarring, and when you press your ear to the door and listen carefully, you manage to make out the sound of Kaveh muttering underneath his breath.

You know you have to do something. Now. Before your roommate decides to work himself half to death again.

You take a deep breath, inhaling night air reminiscent of the crystalline waters. It’s refreshing, and as you breathe out, a sense of tranquility washes over you.

Steeling yourself, you knock on Kaveh’s door, the sound seemingly reverberating through the corridor in a myriad of echoes.

“[Name]? Is that you?” he asks, his voice ringing out loudly, fragmenting and shattering the quiet ambience.

You hear the sounds of drawers opening and closing, papers rustling, and footsteps falling.

“There’s no point in hiding anything,” you tell your roommate, picturing the distress swirling like nebulae in his vibrant crimson eyes. “I know you’ve been working late again.”

The noises come to a halt, and peace returns to the late night atmosphere once more. Soon, the sound of soft footsteps fill your senses, gradually growing louder in a crescendo until you’re sure that Kaveh is right in front of the door.

And then it swings open to reveal a sleep-looking Kaveh clad in pyjamas.

“Alright, I’ll admit it,” he sighs. “You caught me red-handed.”

Silence permeates your senses for a few seconds, but the illusion of stillness is quickly shattered as Kaveh breathes out a sigh.

“I just can’t seem to figure out this one last thing,” he groans, burying his head in his hands. “I seriously can’t take it anymore. It’s driving me insane.”

For a few seconds, his gaze remains averted, staring down at the wooden finish of his desk, tinted a subtle peach under the topaz shades of light spilling from Kaveh’s lamp. If you didn’t know any better, you would have sworn that he had fallen asleep. However, your eyes eventually meet hues of dulled rose, glittering with a faint spark concealed by exhaustion.

“You should rest,” you tell your roommate, cautiously placing a hand on his shoulder. To your relief, he doesn’t flinch or pull away when you touch him. He simply slumps and begins to stand up.

“I suppose you’re right,” he speaks slowly, his voice laced with resignation. “Perhaps a short break will help me clear my mind.”

Kaveh walks over to his bed, brushing locks of sunshine that threaten to obscure his vision away from his eyes. The mattress sinks like quicksand as he lies down and tucks himself under the covers, enveloping him in layers upon layers of plush comfort.

You turn away, switching Kaveh’s lamp off before you head back to the door. However, just as you’re about to leave, Kaveh calls your name.

“[Name],” Kaveh starts, his voice seemingly amplified by the abyssal midnight overtaking your surroundings.

You spin around, only to be met with the sight of Kaveh’s silhouette outlined against backdrops of navy and black, enveloping the world in curtains of phantasmagoric silk.

“Can you stay with me?” he asks. His voice trembles slightly, and he sounds sheepish — almost shy. “It’s just that, if I don’t have you around, I might convince myself to start working again.”

You freeze.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

It takes three seconds for you to fully process Kaveh’s request, and when you do, you feel your heart skip a beat.

“I would be happy to.”

And with Kaveh’s permission, you climb under the covers of his bed with him. He wraps an arm around you. The position feels far too intimate for two roommates who harbour nothing more than platonic feelings for each other, but you decide that that’s a problem for future you to address.

For now, you decide to close your eyes and seek solace in a realm of breathtaking dreamscapes. Finding joy in each cotton candy cloud, each droplet of crystal rain, and each gilded leaf within a fantastical world found far away from reality.

And yet as you drift off to sleep, you find that there’s one thing in the waking world that has become far more tantalizing than anything your imagination could ever conjure: the warmth of Kaveh’s embrace.

₊˚ପ KAZUHA

Golden ribbons of warmth caress your face as you open your eyes to find yourself awake again. A wave of tranquility washes over you, weighing down your eyelids with a serene lullaby — an ode to quiet mornings spent in the solace of your home. You want nothing more than to stay in bed for a few more minutes, but you have classes.

Groggily, you stretch and then pick your phone up from where it’s sitting on your nightstand in order to check the time. The screen lights up with a cold radiance, a stark contrast to the gilded rays of the sun, as you turn it on.

And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

It’s 9:30 a.m., and you’ve already missed the start of your first class. You grimace internally, but you can’t dwell on your feelings for too long. After all, the longer you delay, the more you’ll miss.

You change in record time, pulling on a comfortable hoodie and jeans, grab a few of your belongings, and rush out the door.

The chilly autumn air brushes against your skin as you make your way to class, and the enticing fragrance of sap hits your nose, tantalizing you with a perfume that carries nostalgic memories. In the corners of your vision, you watch as leaves coloured shades of vivid crimson, marigold, and amber swirl in a waltz signaling the end of summer and the beginnings of harsher days. The scenery is beautiful, and if you weren’t in a panic, you would have stopped to admire it. However, you force yourself to ignore the scenes around you, continuing to focus on your primary objective.

When you arrive at the lecture hall, you’re panting. Simple oxygen feels like ambrosia to you, sweet and satisfying, refreshing in a way that it’s never been before. For a few moments, you stand outside the room and catch your breath. With each inhale and exhale, you get closer and closer to finding a rhythm until finally, you’re no longer gasping for air.

Quietly, you walk into class, trying your best to avoid disturbing anyone. Thankfully, nobody seems to notice as you take a seat near the back of the hall, settling down in your seat. Time passes slowly as class continues on, and it almost feels like universal laws operate differently within the small bubble of the room you’re currently sitting in. Everything seems to take an eternity, and you can’t do anything except watch the minutes tick by, each addition of one moving you closer and closer to the end of a mundane lecture.

It feels like the moment will never arrive, but eventually, you’re dismissed. Thankfully, there’s quite a while until you have to go to your next class, so you decide to wander around for a while.

For a while, you stroll aimlessly, eventually finding yourself back outdoors once more. Now, you can truly savour the beauty of your surroundings, relish in the splendor of each flaming leaf that drifts by and each rivulet of tepid light that pierces through the crystalline coolness of the autumn air.

You stand there for a while, simply enjoying a break after a hectic morning.

Until something else — or rather, someone else — catches your eye.

Under the shade of a maple tree stands your roommate, basking in the glory of a crimson waterfall composed entirely of maple leaves dancing gracefully until they hit the ground. His platinum hair is tied back in its usual ponytail, each strand of silken moonlight swaying as a gentle zephyr blows by, and his eyes are a shade of ruby that flawlessly mimics the autumnal landscape.

He’s as breathtaking as ever.

But before you can admire him for long, hues of starglitter and rose petals meet your gaze, and a small smile dances across his lips. Without a word, he walks over to you.

“Running into you here is certainly a pleasant surprise,” he says, his grin widening.

“You say that as if we don’t already live together,” you remark, laughing a little.

He chuckles, the sound as light and airy as autumn winds swirling leaves around in a waltz of farewells. The lighthearted atmosphere is truly euphoric, especially after such a stressful morning.

Of course, good things never last for long.

“Good morning, Kazuha. Good morning, [name]. How’s my favourite couple?” a cheery voice asks. In the edges of your vision, you see a figure donning twin braids of sapphire and turquoise approaching. It’s Venti — one of Kazuha’s friends.

Both you and Kazuha freeze, a frigidity crystallizing the ambience into icy fractals. And yet at the same time, you can feel your face beginning to heat up.

Couple?

Before you can clear up the misunderstanding, Kazuha speaks.

“Good morning to you too, Venti,” he says. “We’re doing well, but I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” Kazuha subtly averts his gaze, staring at the ground, but you swear you can see a blush dawning on his cheeks in shades of sunset. “[Name] and I aren’t a couple.”

“Oh really?” Venti asks teasingly, giggling in a manner that sounds almost maniacal, “then why are they wearing your hoodie?”

You look down, and sure enough, the top you chose to wear today was Kazuha’s. He had allowed you to borrow it a few days ago when you complained about the chilly autumn weather, and you had forgotten to return it. Apparently you were in such a rush this morning that you pulled it on without a second thought.

“It was an accident,” you blurt out, wanting to clear up the misconception as soon as possible. “I woke up late, and I was in a hurry.”

“Uh huh,” Venti nods, his tone laced with sarcasm. “Sure. I believe you.”

“No, seriously. We’re not a couple,” you reiterate, sighing as Venti laughs quietly.

“Whatever you say,” he says. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be. I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

Without another word, Venti skips off, jubilantly humming to himself. And now, you’re alone with Kazuha, left to deal with the awkward aftermath of Venti’s assumptions.

“That was… interesting,” you remark.

Kazuha nods.

“I hope you didn’t feel too uncomfortable,” he says, smiling at you gently, a light blush still coating his cheeks. Although you’ll never admit it out loud, you find him quite cute when he’s flustered. Venti would have a field day if he knew you found your roommate so adorable.

“I’m fine,” you reassure Kazuha, “and I’ll return your hoodie to you as soon as possible,” you add.

However, to your surprise, Kazuha shakes his head.

“You can keep it if you want,” he tells you.

“Really?”

Kazuha chuckles.

“Really,” he assures you. “As long as you don’t mind being mistaken for a couple, that is. I know I certainly don’t.”

₊˚ପ LYNEY

“Lyney, if I remember correctly, you told me you perform magic as a sort of side hustle, right?” you ask your roommate.

The question is out of the blue, but you want nothing more than to learn about the man you’ve recently grown to be infatuated with. Besides, he’ll probably think nothing of it. After all, it’s only natural for someone to want to get to know their roommate anyway.

“Yeah, I guess you’d be right,” he responds, averting his gaze from his phone and glancing at you. “Although I’d say it’s more about putting on a good show than the money.”

Lilac hues make your mind go blank as you make eye contact, enchanting you with oceans full of stardust and sunshine alike. Lilac. It’s a colour you’ve come to adore. Before meeting Lyney, it was a shade known to you as the border between night and day, mixed into compositions of dawning sunrises and fading sunsets. But now, it’s synonymous with magic and mystery, and it’s all thanks to your charming roommate.

“Oh, I see,” you mutter.

You’re surprised that your voice doesn’t end up shaking. Simply looking into Lyney’s eyes is causing your heart to beat rapidly, igniting crimson sparks of giddiness and glee with each thump.

Perhaps this is what it feels like to be in love.

“Why do you ask?” Lyney inquires, tilting his head slightly. “Are you interested in seeing a trick?”

Lyney flashes a charming smile at you — a smile embodying the enigmatic charms of various twilight hues. He reaches his hand up to brush the few strands of dusky hair that had fallen in front of his eyes away, and somehow, the subtle action makes you find him all the more attractive.

“I would love to,” you say, “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

You wait with bated breath, feeling the whole world still as you await Lyney’s response. The carefree atmosphere solidifies into something denser, heavier, as tension begins to build.

“Well, I usually don’t do private shows like this, especially not out of the blue,” he remarks.

For a second, you feel your smile fall.

“But since it’s you, I can try,” Lyney says.

A grins dances upon your lips once more, and the elation from before comes back in full force. Unbridled adoration swirls through your heart, taking down each and every glacial barrier in a roaring tempest of rose and vermillion. With every day that passes, you feel yourself falling deeper and deeper into the clutches of romantic fantasies.

“Thank you.”

With that, Lyney rushes to his room. A few seconds later, he returns with some props and a top hat, midnight black adorned with velvety scarlet and magenta detailing, perched upon his head.

He performs for you, and it’s absolutely enamouring. His prowess is incredible, and it’s clear he’s enjoying putting on a show for you. The entire performance is interesting, captivating. However, it’s Lyney’s last act that stands out to you most of all.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what my grand finale will be,” Lyney announces with a fiery sort of flamboyance. It’s amusing because you’re the only audience member, but at the same time, slightly endearing.

He takes his hat off, reaching his hand into the void within. Slowly, he pulls something out.

The verdant green of a stem lined with thorns appears first. Then you catch sight of luscious leaves. And lastly, the delicate petals of a rose enter your line of vision. They’re tinted a vibrant purple, reminiscent of sparkling amethysts.

“For you,” Lyney says, handing you the flower.

Upon closer examination, you note that the rose is unblemished. It’s perfect. You wonder if Lyney put any thought into picking out this particular flower, but you brush the thought off. Embers of newly-kindled feelings of romance brush against your skin.

You’re flustered.

Flustered beyond measure.

Awkwardly, you take the rose from Lyney, your heart fluttering as your fingers accidentally bump against his. His skin is soft, and his touch is tantalizing. You wouldn’t mind feeling his hand in yours.

“Thank you,” you manage to whisper, averting your gaze and looking anywhere but into the very lavender irises that will never fail to enchant you. “It’s stunning.”

“A stunning flower for a stunning person,” Lyney says. The sincerity lacing his tone doesn’t go unnoticed, and you have to stop yourself from melting on the spot. “Do you know what the purple rose represents?”

You shake your head as sudden curiosity and cupid’s final arrow strike simultaneously.

He leans in, moving so close that you can feel strands of silken platinum tickle your skin. A soft breath lightly brushes against your ear as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Love at first sight.”

₊˚ପ SCARAMOUCHE

Weak beams of winter light filter through the curtains of the window beside your bed, illuminating your room with a radiance tinted pale blue. With a foggy mind, you make your way over to the window, leaving the warmth and comfort of your covers to do so. The chill pokes at your skin like a thousand miniature needles of ice, and yet you continue on.

As soon as velvety veils of fabric fall away from glass panes, glacial sunshine spills through. The panoramic scenery that welcomes you is a glazed-over landscape, thick blankets of pure white sprinkled with glimmers of stardust. Even the branches of the tall evergreen trees surrounding your home are dusted with powdered opal. Nothing is free from the frigid caress of winter, and you’re suddenly reminded of this fact as you start coughing.

Oh. You’re sick.

You blink slowly, an unbearable headache making itself known by jumbling your thoughts into nothing more than incoherence. Begrudgingly, you decide to lie back down, pulling a few blankets over you in order to stay warm. However, the layer of plush protection isn’t enough to shield you, as shivers continue to wrack your body.

For a while, you just lie there, huddled and trying to cling onto any remaining heat, any remaining comfort. You close your eyes, feeling absolutely helpless against the coolness that threatens to permeate the very essence of your being. The world around you begins to become distant as grogginess and discomfort plague you, but soon enough, you’re snapped out of your haze.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The last thing you want to do is answer the door.

“[Name]? Are you in there?” your roommate, Scaramouche, calls. As usual, irritation laces his tone, but there’s something new this time. Maybe you’re delusional, but it almost sounds like concern.

“Yeah. Come in,” you manage to respond.

Your voice is unsurprisingly hoarse, and you have to strain in order to be heard. However, in the end, it seems that you were just loud enough because seconds later, the door opens with a click. In its wake, a man with hair reminiscent of desolate midnights walks in. Soon enough, you find your gaze meeting hues of deep twilight fading into a paler shade of periwinkle akin to the colour of forget-me-nots.

“Wow, you look awful,” Scaramouche remarks bluntly, examining you.

You feel yourself shrink under his gaze.

“Can you not?” you shoot back, mustering the strength to glare at him between coughs and sniffles. “I'm kind of dying here.”

Scaramouche scoffs.

“Fine. I’ll leave you alone,” he says, turning away and walking out the door.

Once again, silence envelops the atmosphere, ebbing and flowing throughout the greys and blues of an early winter morning in soundless waves. Although you’re thankful for the serene ambience, you also feel awfully lonely now that your roommate is gone. All you can do now is stare blankly at the wall in front of you and entertain yourself with your own thoughts.

Time becomes a blur, and yet it stretches on as well. It feels like you’re trapped in a sort of limbo — suspended in a mundane reality without any sort of respite or the slightest idea of when you’ll finally find your refuge.

That is, until you hear the hinges of the door creak once more.

Scaramouche is back.

You look up. To your surprise, the glints of starlight that dance within his indigo eyes show a rare sort of softness, and he’s carrying a bowl of soup.

Without a word, he sets the bowl on your bedside table, staring at you expectantly.

“Is that for me?” you ask.

Scaramouche groans, rolling his eyes.

“Who did you think it was for?” he says, averting his gaze.

A small smile dances across your lips. Although your roommate doesn’t want to show that he cares for you, you’re beginning to realize that he’s looking out for you in his own way.

“Thank you,” you respond. However, just as you’re about to reach for the soup, you’re attacked by another fit of coughs.

Scaramouche’s eyes fixate on you once more, and he sighs.

“Do you need me to spoon feed you or something?” Although it sounds like he’s mocking you, you can tell he’s serious to some extent.

“Do you want to feed me?” you say, trying to muster a playful tone. Even though you’re sick, teasing Scaramouche is as fun as ever.

“I will if it means you’ll shut up,” he mutters, taking the bowl carefully and scooping up a spoon of the soup.

With caution and a shocking amount of attentiveness, he lifts the spoon to your lips, and you open your mouth. To your surprise, the soup is actually quite tasty. You didn't expect your roommate to be such a good cook.

“How was it?” Scaramouche asks after you swallow. Not a hint of emotion shows through the veils of apathy he’s crafted as he awaits your response.

“It was amazing,” you remark genuinely. “I’d love to try some more of your cooking, and… thanks for taking care of me.”

Scaramouche looks away, but as he does, you notice a colour reminiscent of delicate rose petals rising to his cheeks, tinting porcelain akin to the snow outside a vivid shade.

“Don’t mention it.”

₊˚ପ XIAO

Procrastination is every student’s worst enemy, and you’re no different.

You had spent the past few days putting off your latest assignments and neglecting your studies more than you’d care to admit. It’s not that you didn’t want to work and study, but every time you tried to start on something, you’d feel put off by the copious amounts of labour you’d have to put in. And unfortunately, now you’re reaping the consequences of the seeds you had previously sowed.

It’s currently 1 a.m., and all you can see outside the window is ebony fragmented by the occasional streetlight or polychromatic star. Your eyelids are beginning to droop of their own volition, but you force yourself to stay awake. You have something important due later today, and unfortunately, you’ve barely even started on it.

So you have no choice but to continue on, allowing yourself to fall into the treacherous grasp of sleep-deprivation all because of your poor decision-making skills.

The minutes seem to count down all too quickly as you toil, yet at the same time, the mundane assignment makes every second feel like an eon. It’s a paradoxical distortion of the universe’s concepts, but it’s something you’ve grown far too accustomed to in your time as a student. Panic and hopelessness set in more and more with every tick of the clock, and eventually, you lose all sense of time, burying yourself in a pile of work.

The next time you look up, you notice that it’s well past your first scheduled break time, and you’re absolutely exhausted.

You stand up, stretching and relishing the sensation of being able to move your aching limbs after hours of sitting in the same position, mulling over boring assignments. However, your momentary respite is ruined, as it isn’t long before the creaking of a door pulls you out from the temporary euphoria that had taken over your mind.

“Hey,” a calm voice utters. It’s melodic like a beautiful song you wouldn’t mind hearing on repeat. “Are you alright?”

You turn around, and as expected you’re met with the sight of your roommate. Honeyed eyes filled with a dandelion warmth shimmer when met with the dim incandescent glow of your desk lamp, and locks of seafoam frame his pale face. Even though his hair is messy, and there are visible bags under his eyes, Xiao looks as stunning as ever.

“I’m fine,” you say, miraculously stringing together a couple of words despite your exhaustion.

“You’ve been up all night,” Xiao observes, glancing at your messy desk — a testament to the few hours you had been chipping away at your work. Somehow in that time, you’ve managed to make it look as though some sort of wild tempest had ravaged your room.

“You’re saying that as if you don’t stay up all the time,” you shoot back.

You flinch. Your tone is harsh and dripping with venom, but you hadn’t meant your words in that way. They were from a place of concern, but it seems that Xiao understands.

“That’s true,” he remarks, “but I’m not as keen on working myself to death as you are.”

A second passes.

Then you realized that you may have gotten a little bit carried away due to your momentary burst of energy — a rush of exhilaration prompted by a sense of urgency.

“Oh.”

Xiao sighs.

“You need a break,” he says, hesitantly walking over to you and intertwining your fingers with his.

His actions surprise you. Most of the time, Xiao avoids touch, but now, he’s holding your hand. The tepidness of Xiao’s skin on yours causes lucidity to wash over you. Suddenly, you feel more aware of your surroundings.

Your roommate pulls you out the door, exiting your dorm swiftly before you can refuse. Truthfully, you wouldn’t have denied him his demand anyway. Although Xiao seems like a tough person on the outside, his heart is forged of silvery moonbeams — glittering lights that illuminate the world with a subtle phosphorescence, not quite as glaring as rays of sunlight, but equally as bright, nonetheless. As a result, you’ve grown to develop a soft spot for him.

When you exit the building, the first thing you notice is the crisp, fresh air. After staying cooped up in your room for so long, it’s relieving to breathe in the liquified stardrops dissolved within the night atmosphere. Your head clears up nearly instantaneously, and finally, you feel a sense of peace wash over you.

“Feeling better?” Xiao asks, noticing the change in your expression immediately.

He’s usually not the brightest when it comes to interpreting emotions, so your prior distress must have been extremely obvious. Nonetheless, you brush off your embarrassment and swallow your pride, nodding to reassure Xiao that yes, this is helping, and yes, you’d like to stay here with him for a while longer.

Xiao seems to get what you’re trying to convey, so he continues walking, leading you under the gold-lacquered light of the lamps lining the path before you. Right now, it feels as though your hearts are connected, and for once, you’re under the impression that Xiao’s let down his walls.

You know that once your midnight escapades cease, you’ll have to face a world of pain, but perhaps it’s worth it.

After all, exhaustion is temporary, but maybe, just maybe, this lavender haze will endure forevermore.

thank you for reading!! if you liked this, i’d really appreciate it if you reblogged this fic.

#r.archives *ೃ༄#favoniuslibrary #astronetwrk #alhaitham x reader #kaveh x reader #kazuha x reader #lyney x reader #scaramouche x reader #wanderer x reader #xiao x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin fanfic #genshin imagines #genshin headcanons #genshin x you #genshin fluff

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eilidh-eternal · 4 months

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Hmmm, how about some Little Red Riding Hood reader and Big Bad wolf-shifter Price???

18+ MDNI | This is a DARK FIC | cw: blood, drowning, predator and prey dynamics

You heard drowning is quick. Painless.

Whoever said that has never drowned before.

In the bleak midwinter, when water turns to stone, the blades beneath your feet find fissures and fractures and carve a place for you in the dark depths beneath the ice.

Falling through ice feels a lot like stepping beyond the warmth of one’s home into the howling, biting wind of a winter storm. It hurts, for a moment, before it numbs you. Right down to the bones. But this is an all encompassing numbness, the kind that seeps through fabric and flesh and bone—that kind that floods burning lungs and creeps into your mind.

Layers of winter garb, thermals, sweater, down coat and jeans, all soak up the frigid water and turn to a leaden weight on your body. You kick, claw at the fading sliver of caustic light, but it slips through your fingers like the rest of the water does—flickers and wavers at the disturbance. A sick parting wave as you sink further and further beyond reach. Beyond saving.

The burning in your lungs from the cold is a thousand times worse when you suck in nothing but water, unable to fight the instinct to draw breath 10 feet below the surface. Thrashing against the frigid clutches of the frozen lake is meaningless. A foolish final attempt to fight for life above the surface, to save yourself from a watery grave.

Another burning breath.

More gelid water to fill your lungs.

Another.

The world grows darker. Maybe it’s because the light at the surface is so, so far away now. Maybe it’s your body succumbing to its fate.

One.

Final.

Breath.

Everything hurts. Glacial waters are good at numbing one’s pain in their final moments, but millions of crystallized frozen droplets feel like they’re slicing into your skin as you cough and splutter, heaving up lungfuls of water and bile. Trying to roll, to wretch onto the frozen ground packed with snow to spare your clothes, is a moot point. You’re already soaked.

The whipping wind off the frozen lake is likely to fuse the fabric to your skin too, and the longer you lay here the quicker frostbite, and hypothermia, will set in. You need to get up. Get up and get moving, or whatever miracle that dragged you from the water will be squandered.

Lifting your head is a monumental effort. It throbs, feels like a ton of bricks, and the cold stiffness that’s settled in your bones creaks and pops as you go, until you can see your bare toes, already turning a dangerous hue in the cold. You linger on that.

Bare feet.

No skates.

No thick wool socks.

An unfamiliar jacket draped over your shivering body like a blanket.

Pushing through the ache in your muscles and the cramping from the cold, you manage to get yourself upright and you quickly pull the collar of the jacket closer to you as a gale of wind barrels into you, plastering wet strands of hair to your face. A shuddering intake of breath fills your nose with the scent of pine and musk. Not the synthetic kind you find concentrated in pretty bottles on a perfumers shelf at the department store. Something wild and incapable of being replicated.

There’s a pile of discarded clothing, a man’s by the look of the enormous boots, flannel shirt and canvas work pants, and tracks in the snow leading away from you into the forest. Wherever they came from, and wherever they’ve gone to, is your best chance at finding warmth.

But wait… Someone had saved you, given you their jacket, stripped, and then left? Maybe they’d stripped down before they’d jumped in, no heavy clothes to weigh them down in the water. They look dry, and that’s motivation enough for you to maneuver stiff, frozen limbs through the snow to get to them.

When you twist to drag yourself closer pain slices from your hip up to your ribs and you suck in a sharp breath that comes out in a strangled moan and a cloud of air in front of your face. Peeling away the jacket reveals the tattered thermal that clings to your skin, grey fabric stained a deep crimson where blood seeps from a gash in your side, dripping onto the snow beneath you.

Fuck. Must have clipped the ice on the way down…

Gritting your teeth against the searing pain that radiates from the wound you manage to reach the clothes, dry by some miracle, and strip down as quickly and carefully as you can. Waterlogged jeans are traded for canvas that still feels warm despite laying in the snow for god knows how long, bloodstained and torn thermal for thick flannel, and you waste little time slipping on the socks and boots, lacing them extra tight. It’s all big, you practically swim in it, but you won’t complain about a little extra fabric to bundle up with inside the similarly large jacket.

Getting to your feet feels like twisting a knife in your side, and you take gasping breaths as you push off your knees, bite down on a whimper when you finally get your feet under you and a fresh wave of pain lances through torn muscle. But you’re up. You have dry clothes.

Someone pulled you out of the water. You’re still here.

Bleeding.

Breathing.

Alive.

Trudging through the snow in boots nearly twice the size of your feet slows you down even more than the shin deep drifts, and you have to stop frequently to take a break, to let the pain subside. Blood has begun to seep into the flannel, fabric clinging to your skin beneath the coat, and it drips, stains the beige fabric at your hips, and splatters onto the snow. A trail of blood left like breadcrumbs as you follow the tracks between towering pines.

It would seem your streak of luck has run its course though. The tracks have vanished, come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the forest.

Panic creeps up on you like a prowling wolf, slinking up your spine and lunging, sinking claws and teeth into your terror-stricken mind.

No, no, no! This was supposed to be your way out, dammit!

You twist around, looking for more tracks in the snow, wincing against the stinging pain in your side, and a scream bubbles up in your throat when you find none.

How the fuck do tracks just disappear?!

Gripped tight by the claws of panic your mind reels with worst case scenarios. Blizzards. Hypothermia. Frostbite. Too busy spiraling to notice the very real threat that stands at your back.

A snarl carries on the wind like a knife, slices through the air and buries itself in your back where the hairs stand on end, every single one from your nape to the tips of your fingers.

A low growl, closer this time, sends a shudder down your spine. But you haven’t come all this way, survived this long, just to tuck tail, curl up and accept defeat. So you steel your spine, ball your hands into fists, and turn to face whatever predator has no doubt followed your crimson trail advertising your weakened state.

A wounded little fawn, separated from its herd. Easy prey.

You may be brave enough to face the thing that’s hunted you down, but it doesn’t stop your eyes from widening, doesn’t stop the fresh wave of panic that courses through your chilled veins and drains the blood from your face, when you’re face to face with the massive fucking wolf ten meters away, golden eyes narrowed with a single-minded focus.

His hunt is over. All that’s left is the killing blow.

Part 2>>>

©️Eilidh-Eternal.2024 ~ The intellectual property of Eilidh-Eternal is not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or use with AI technologies.

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mphountitled · 7 months

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𝙎𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙊𝙛 𝘼𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣

Song Mingi x Fem!reader

Summary: Your relationship isn't as vanilla as you initially thought

Warnings: ft. Hongjoong, Language, Established Relationship, Honjoong as his own warning, Teasing, Mentions of Bruises, Possessiveness, Slight!Humor, Fluff, Smut (+18) Minors DNI, Marking, Rough Sex, Praise Kink, DUB/CON, Massive Degradation Kink, Rough Sex, No Aftercare, Breeding Kink, Dom!Mingi, Sub!reader, fingering, PIV, Unprotected Sex, Slight!Exhibition Kink

HE MAKES ME SO DELULU

Hongjoong's voice is loud and frankly hyperbolic when he decides to disrupt the serenity in the dorms by screaming, "What the hell is that?!"

Your head jerks upwards from Mingi's hard chest, effectively ruining your once blissful rest under candle scented clouds as you stare wide-eyed at your boyfriend's friend. Hongjoong had promised to make himself and the rest of the group scarce on this bustling Friday night, leaving you and Mingi alone in the dorms while they partied up the peroration of the weekend.

But he is still here.

Blocking the view of the TV with his blinding Saint Lairent sequence and attire.

Your downtime, your only time, which was meticulously carved out of both you and your boyfriend's busy schedule is suddenly being hijacked by a crazily grinning Hongjoong, cupping the front of his mouth in apparent shock.

"Aren't you supposed to be gone?" Mingi mutters, refusing to spare Hongjoong a single glance as he swipes through his phone.

Your boyfriend continues in his duties as the big spoon on the wide sectional. His other hand, in its callousness and recklessness, is draped over your hip. Throughout his doom scrolling, Mingi's hand has slipped under your camisole and has taken to rubbing, slow circles along your soft tummy, gradually exposing the dark, purple splotches which caught Hongjoong's attention, just as he was about to leave.

"Aren't you supposed to be a human?" Hongjoong replies smoothly before gesturing vaguely towards your exposed abdomen, "When were you going to tell us you're an undercover vampire? I always had a suspicion, but now I know -"

"Jeez-" You stammer, fighting to force out Mingi's hand and pull down your camisole before Hongjoong could get a closer look. Mingi's hand is an iron glove as he pushes you down by your abdomen, effectively securing you against him.

Without looking up from his phone, he says, "He's in our business,"

"Damn right, I'm in your business!" Exclaims Hongjoong, "Did you see the state of those marks, man?! Honestly, I applaud you-"

Sensing Mingi's already glacial patience waning, by the firm grip across your abdomen, you attempt to salvage the conversation. Mingi very rarely felt like speaking at the best of times, even more apparent was his abhorrence for explaining himself and so you do it for him.

"They're just love bites," You attempt to salvage, but to no avail. "And anyway, I think you better get going, now!"

"'Love bites!'" Hongjoong mocks in slight acquiescence as he begins to make his way to the front door.

Despite the flurry of teasing that he had been attacked with, Mingi is still indifferent as he finally places his phone down. In fact, his hand returns to its designated spot underneath your camisole, resting along your tummy, with his blunt fingernails skimming the softness of the skin under your breasts "You love everything I do to you," He murmurs in your ear loud enough for Hongjoong to hear who finally disappears behind the closed door with another loud cackle. Mingi continues rubbing along your skin as he buries his head in between your neck.

"Show them too me," He says, "I like seeing them."

There is no reality in which you could possibly explain to anyone that the marks you sported underneath your clothes are a product of your desires. One glance at your body, riddled with bruises and love bites, would have anybody sick. To you, however, they were a prize.

"I wanna see them," Mingi says, having suddenly found his deep, fiery, sandalwood voice, echoing throughout the living room.

He begins to paw at anything and everything to get to one of his many marks he left on you and once he peeks over your side, and sees what Hongjoong saw, the flurry of blue and purple bruises meshing into the depths of your skin - it has his resolve snapping in earnest as he pushes you easily onto your back, while he moves to hover above you.

He had not always been this handsy or demanding, and you're unable to stop yourself from thinking back to when things had been different...

You remember the softness of Mingi's hands your first night spent together. How he hovered behind your bent over frame, clenching his jaw as he eased his leaking cock inside of you at snail pace,

"I don’t have anywhere to be, Babe, take your time," you had joked with a lazy smile while Mingi's jaw ticked.

"Carry on with your little jokes and I might not be so forgiving," If only you knew that the further your pussy swallowed his dick, the more his patience was waning. His limbs ached with the need to wrap around you. Adrenaline from the earlier performance was still running through his arteries, heightening his senses. He needed to go quicker. He longed to fuck you harder. This gentleness was going against everything in his very nature. His body burened for him to make a mess inside you, clamp his hand around your mouth and fuck you in front of the greenroom mirror until you begged him to stop… until you would have the marks to prove it.

But he liked you too much

And he had never felt this way before.

And as his hand dug into your soft sides, he promised that he would never let his recklessness steal this away from him.

But you felt him twitch inside you, and you peered up at his brown eyes now squeezed shut,

"What are you thinking about," you had asked him softly, as Mingi began a slow rhythm with his hips- the tip of his cock barely grazing that plush bundle of need inside you.

"Don't worry about what I'm thinking about," He blew out a hot and heavy breath, "what the fuck are you think about? You're gripping me like a vice, you fucking slut," He did not mean to say that. He did not mean for the words to slip out.

Or maybe he did.

There is an immense burst of pleasure spanning inside him, having him rut just a little quicker inside you - inside his beautiful fucking slut.

"Fuck,"

"Holy shit"

A dam had been broken. A holy grail was discovered as you watched Mingi and his slightly parted lips through the mirror. His eyes had snapped shut and a pained, completely fucked out expression overtook him. It had Mingi's cock seeking further, more violent entry, while your thighs framing his hips only locked tighter. The noise of post-perfomance celebration outside was no match for the bass in Mingi's voice that night.

"What are you thinking about?" All thoughts lead back to the present with Mingi presently stationed between your thighs on the big, open couch. Your breath is shallow as you reply, "Guess,"

A slow, almost proud smirk lightly pierces the end of his lips as he sits back on his haunches to splay a kiss against your steepled knee. Your eyes flutter shut as his plush, pillowy lips make contact with your skin, "Osaka?" He asks, voice as husky as it was in that deserted green room, where he forced you to take everything he had to offer while still wanting more.

"Osaka." You nod with finality, allowing your eyes to flutter shut as Mingi's kisses grew slightly more frazzled along your legs. Soon, you're gasping into the air as you feel his sneaky hand drift further and further along your inner thigh, like a serpent on a mission. He remains cool and collected on the outside but his bulge is raging against his sweatpants. It's the lack of immediate gratification on both ends that has your wetness seeping onto your underwear while you begin to paw helplessly at your breasts.

"You know…" Mingi's fingers lock onto your underwear, which he gradually pulls down. His kisses cease, and you frown at the skin-to-skin disconnection as your eyes flutter open, "Your skin is looking a little too boring down here. Not a single mark in sight," He peers up at you from between your rattling thighs with unmistakable innocent eyes.

You arch your back off the couch, already triggered by a deep wave of arousal as you bring your cunt to meet his hand while you reply through clenched teeth, "You can't… on my legs- They'll see,"

"You think I care if any of them see?" It is a question asked in darkened curiosity. You moan with ferocity as Mingi's fingers spear your aching cunt as his head tilts to the side, "You think I care if anyone sees how pretty you look when you're covered in my bruises like this?" He's completely sunken into his wayward domspace as his fingers drift in and out of you with complete focus and determination. You're a mewling, moaning mess as your fingers dig into his choppy dyed hair and you lift your hips to meet each and every obscenely cruel thrust.

"Another finger, Mingi, Please. I need m-more," he was wrecking you with middle finger alone, savouring the way your cunt gripped around him, imagining it was his cock. "Such a cute little slut," He mutters, almost to himself as he obliges and slowly sinks his index fingers inside your soaking walls. Your cunt is eager to pull his fingers in before pushing him out and pulling him in again. Mingi is utterly transfixed, watching you fuck yourself silly on his fingers until they're glistening.

"Lift your top," he says, "I wanna see you." You comply without fail, scrambling to lift your camisole until the cool air flows freely across your hardened nipples. Mingi's breathing becomes ragged when he lays eyes on your exposed breasts, and the dozens of little marks splattered across your torso. Some faded, some blending into the depth of your skin. It is the unevenness of it, the irregularities and discoloration that he put there, that completely blows the lid on his composure.

"Fuck, open your legs," you could not find it in you to tell him your legs were already open. All you do is moan from the loss of his fingers as Mingi crawls up against you. He palms his hardened cock through his sweats as he watches you play with your tits in the most lewd, most lascivious fashion.

"You like acting like such a little slut?" The depth of his voice, had you absolutely weak to the core, like the foundations of earth itself was being enchanted to speak. He knew how wrecked he could get you by simply speaking and it is his most coveted weapon. Mingi's eyes are hooded and glassy as he hovers over you, simultaneously forcing his cock through your wet folds while he looked down at you with fierce conviction.

You're already teetering on the edge as he begins to fuck you hard and rough while his 3 silver chains dangle from his neck, kissing the very tips of your nose.

"Oh- fuck, you're taking me so well," Mingi's voice is absolutely delirious as he pounds into you, his jewelery moving in tandem with his violent thrusts as he brings a hand down on your breasts.

"So, good, you feel so good," He repeats, rutting into you with the same urgency of that very first night you let him get this rough with you. His thrusts are sloppy and erratic as he splays a wayward hand on your inner thigh, prying your legs open to allow his cock to plunge even deeper. Mingi's left arm is beside your head, keeping him afloat while he experimentally brings a calloused hand around the base of your throat, testing. Your back once again peels off the couch as you bring a hand up to his wrist. "Fuck, oh my god-"

"Fuck, Mingi" He corrects, huffing and puffing above you as he urges you to nod along with him, "I want you to say my name, baby,"

"F-Fuck, Mingi," The words escape through pursed lips, accompanied by a whorish moan from you and a deep, rumbling groan from Mingi who begins to hump your cunt with urgency.

For the umpteenth time since you began, you are utterly breathless.

"My dumb little slut is taking his cock so well," Mingi's voice is hoarse as it cracks into a million pieces, "So fucking good,"

He watches with shallow breathing as another moan climbs up and out of your throat... He sends another mindless rut into your pussy, spurred by the knowledge that you are slipping into subspace right in front of him. "You like it when I call you my little slut?"

"Oh fuck-" Your own hips are restless as you lift them to meet his sloppy thrusts.

"That's not an answer," He says before squeezing the base of your throat in warning.

"Yes!" You say, once You're given the gift of breathing, "Yes, I like it when you call me a slut!" Unimaginable pleasure only multiplies as Mingi buries his head in the crook of your neck and bites. He is relentless on your skin- sinking his teeth and rutting his hips until the tip of his cock bruises your cervix. You're completely incoherent and so is he.

"Fuck…I love seeing- love seeing my marks on you baby," Mingi's eyes are half lidded as his lips hangs open, "Fucking love marking my slut and fucking her tight little pussy."

"Oh, fuck-"

"I can't stop," He says, with utter desperation in his tone, enough to have your legs shaking, ready to accommodate your oncoming orgasm, "I can't fucking stop so don't ask me to, okay? P-Please don't ask me to stop," Mingi's words bleed into one another and he feels free. Free to say what he needs to in order to build that well of lust necessary to push him over the edge.

He is so grateful to have found you.

"Fuck, I'm gonna fill your pussy with my cum-" that is the only announcement needed before Mingi completely releases inside you. His words have you slipping into your own orgasm, screaming and clawing at the hand around your neck as your hips lift to milk everything out of him.

The air that settles is still profoundly charged and Mingi finds himself unable to leave the confines of your pussy, so he doesn't.

"I want you to show everyone these marks for me tomorrow," He whispers with his cock still inside you, "Can you do that for me?"

Welp!

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dailyadventureprompts · 7 days

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Dungeon: Grandfather's Hungering Maw

Said to have been carved by an exiled dwarven king after his name and ignominious deeds were stricken from the records of his clan, this brooding edifice contains a darkness far deeper than any normal glacial cave.

The dungeon's name comes from a settlement in the foothills, with a mostly human population ignorant of the monument's dwarven origins. In their myths the face is infact that of a great giant, tricked by the folkhero founder of their village into staying very, very still while he was served a great feast, growing so spoiled and indolent that he was eventually buried by the mountain snow and froze solid. A recent series of avalanches that've buried paths and even destroyed homesteads have put it into people's heads that grandfather might be waking up.

Adventure Hooks:

A merchant caravan the party is riding along with takes a detour up into the highlands, following rumours of a village that's paying a premium for foodstuffs of late. Upon arrival they're strongarmed out of their cargo by a crowd of armed villagers, who heap the provisions on an overburned yak cart set to depart up the mountain on the next day. Fear of the giant has made some of the villagers turn into a panicked mob, emptying the granaries and raiding their neighbour's larders to supply ever larger and hastier "tribute" runs up to the mountain's mouth. Food is growing scarce in the village, and those with the foresight to worry about winter provisions dare not speak up: An old woman was accidentally killed trying to fend off the toughs uprooting her garden, and her still warm body was piled into the yak cart next to her unripe rutabagas.

Seeking the power of her infamous ancestor, a disfavoured daughter of the dwarven throne has ventured to the Maw with a group of sellswords in tow in the hopes of discovering the means of making herself queen. Down into the mountain's gullet they've found a great labyrinth, hewn over centuries by the still shuffling corpse of the nameless king, unable to fully rest until he has constructed a tomb worthy of his hubris. The would be ruler and her entourage are eating well thanks to the unsuspecting villagers' food deliveries, and have a few agents in town helping the process along while they continue their delve.

There's more than a stone worn skeleton and a few fortune hunters inhabiting the depths. A millennia ago Ahlkenahl the Vanquisher was a feared demon of war, thought invincible before the dwarven king forged a ring with the fiend's true name inscribed upon it and forced the Vanquisher to pledge an oath of eternal servitude. Driven into exile along with his mortal captor, Ahlkenahl has resentfully laboured alongside the king as he descended into witless undeath, even centuries after the ring was lost somewhere in the tomb along with the chipped fingerbone it rested on. The demon's occasional demolition filled bouts of rage cause the avalanches on the mountain's exterior, and they've only grown more frequent as he's attempted to stop the Heir and her underlings from finding the ring.

It's a three way race between the players, the dwarven heir, and the fiend to see who can find the ring first, having to not only battle eachother, but subterranean monsters, collapsing tunnels, and freezing glacier caverns along the way. Of course Ahlkenahl doesn't play fair, as the fiend can revive any body that finds its way into the Hungering Maw (such as dead villagers loaded on the Yak cart or slain sellswords) into undead minions, growing in strength as the situation becomes more desperate. The fiend can even send the undead down into the valley to do his bidding, chasing after whichever group managed to get the ring first or even go on a murder-filled supply run to bring back more bodies.

Simply getting the ring isn't enough to control Ahlhenahl, as the war-demon's true name is written in an infernal script that must be researched before it can be understood and spoken aloud. This gives the party a chance to catch up if the heir makes it out of the labyrinth with the prize and vice versa. It likewise gives Ahlkenahl's undead minions time to become a real threat both in number and as he deliberately creates more fearsome versions.

The Vanquisher can freely communicate with anyone holding the ring, an ability originally intended to allow the exiled king to command his bound demon in the field which now allows Ahlkenahl to whisper temptation into the ear of whoever holds it. Think of what he could do for them if they let him out of the labyrinth, the enemies he could slay, the kingdom he could carve on their behalf. Sure it would mean unleashing a walking massacre on the landscape but what's a little carnage between pactmates?

Art1 Art2

#mountain #dungeon #dwarf #mountain dungeon #caravan #fiend #demon #highlands #mid level #low level #undead

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peachesofteal · 2 months

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Dad!John Price/female reader The Ocean anthology Note: The orcas mentioned in this series are based on a real population. Coolest things on this planet.

The strait is quiet.

Fog rolls across glass, painting grey sea smoke on top of clear, hyaline waters, mirror images cast from horizon to cliff. It’s a prehistoric stillness, the kind that’s sung low in the belly of this passage for millions of years, volcanos and glaciers all doing their worst, their best, to shape and carve this land to be as it’s known now.

Granitic wall looms above and below, plummeting into the earth beneath you until the water is too deep to see where it ends and hell begins, water and plants and light refracting into a teal green color. painting the pitch something most only see in magazines. It stretches tall too, forms the base of the islands, of all the land that flanks the strait, and you have to crane your neck to see where rock ends and soil begins.

It’s a marvel onto itself, but you’re not here for the geology.

Where are they?

Your paddle dips, pushes, forging a path through the quiet, preternatural stillness, wrists to ribs moving with hypnotic pace. Left, right, left, right. Dig. Dip. Your lungs burn, muscles ache, and still you paddle, up and down the coast, maintaining your determined pace in the face of exhaustion, forcing yourself past the brink of logic and reason, as always, in the pursuit of passion. You focus on your breath, on the cold, settling it in your bones, falling into the beautiful rhythm that is paddling, cold sea spray dripping down to your gloves.

It’s easy to get lost in the quiet of the water. The fog and the cliffs crowd inwards, silent watchers of a sacred place, protectors of a balance long disturbed and derailed everywhere else in this world. Your paddle strokes in perfect time, kayak cutting through the eerie mists and propelling you forward, focus fixed on the horizon, looking, listening. Waiting. You simmer in the silence, straining to hear the telltale blow of air, the signal of surfacing.

Nothing comes.

Where are they?

Salmon jump in front of the kayak, shattering the serenity in their wriggling flight.

The residents elude you. You say good morning to an otter, a sea lion the size of two men, some curious Dall’s porpoise, but are left bereaved at the noticeable absence of the pods.

It’s the first day. It’s okay, it’s only the first day.

The alarm on your watch goes off, just as the lighthouse, affectionately named Little Rock, looms ahead, faded and chipped green paint calling you back to the cove, a glacial breeze whipping under your goretex and neoprene, cutting to the quick, right down to flesh and bone.

Time’s up.

“Did you see them?!” Aly bounces on her toes at the edge of the dock, running alongside the pace of your paddling.

“No.” Your tone is light, but you don’t hide the disappointment, and she smiles sadly, sympathetically. What a smart kid.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you coming in now?” You nod, motioning to the beach, and she skips ahead, running down the steps onto where millions of little pearled rocks give way under her feet, echoing the same as you run the fiberglass bottom of your kayak aground, popping your legs out on either side.

“I know you wanted to see them.” Her eyes are wide and a little fearful. You frown.

“I’ve got all year, I’ll see them. Don’t worry.” The assurance is tepid, but present, and she shrugs.

“You should ask my dad. He knows where they are a lot.”

“Oh yeah?” You could try. She nods, excited, shiny dark braids gleaming in the mid-morning sun. You glance around, looking for an adult, or someone who accompanied here down here, but there’s no one, and you chew on it, pulling your boat higher up than the tide will reach today. “Shouldn’t you like, be in school or something?”

“I do school online.” She rolls her eyes, gap tooth grin stretched across her face. “It’s for gifted kids but I always finish early.”

“Does your dad know you’re running around this place unsupervised?” She shakes her head, and then sobers, glancing towards the woods.

“I’m not unsupervised.” What? You look the same direction, but all you see is the shadow of the forest, darkness so thick you’re not sure you could see your way in broad daylight.

A chill traces your spine, ice cold and cautious, slow in its discovery, pressing against your skin like it’s moving under your clothes. You gasp, whirling and-

There’s nothing. Only the lapping of the tide, the gentle waves that rake through the shore. Your beached boat. Remnants of the morning’s mists.

Must’ve been the wind.

The Ranger’s daughter giggles. You raise an eyebrow, and then motion up the hill.

“Want to head back with me then?”

“Aly!” The Ranger’s voice reaches you, even a hundred meters away. She sprints ahead of you, and your stomach twists, iced over fear spreading through your veins.

He’s going to freak. He already hates you and now he’s going to think you kidnapped his kid or something.

“Where have you been?”

“Down at the water.” She kicks a rock, beaming. One of his too wide palms sweeps over her forehead, moustache and lips kicking to the side with a sigh.

“Not supposed to be down there on your own, remember?”

“I wasn’t.” She stands tall with her insistence, and proudly points at you. “I was with her.”

John straightens. He stares at you with a scrutiny that you’ve never felt, an intense pressure building behind your eyes, in your thighs, incinerating all the muscle in your body until you’re sure to explode.

The silence is painful, and Aly hops from one foot to another.

“You find ‘em?” There’s no softness in his eyes for you, only a hard edge, hand coming to rest on his daughter’s shoulder.

“No.” You think he’ll turn away then, drift away in the wake of this encounter, but he holds you steady there, caught between him and the earth, crushing weights on either side. It’s unnerving, this stranger, this Ranger, a moon to a tide, and you swallow when he finally speaks, it’s with that rich timbre, the accent that twists you up in boundless knots.

“They make you earn it.”

“You should sleep with your window open.” Aly pipes up, and John’s mouth twitches.

“You can hear them in the cove, in the middle of the night.” He explains. “They hunt and play in the shallow off the beach pretty often. Though it’s too cold to be sleeping with your window open.” The last piece is serious, like a warning, but you’re already vibrating with anticipation, attention fixed through the trees, like you can see down the hill to the harbor.

When you turn back, John is watching you. Hard muscle and tone turned dulcet, there’s less shadow in his eyes, replaced by something wild, willful.

There for a second. Gone in the next.

“Well I’ve… work to do.” Paltry effort. It sticks in your mouth the way this man has stuck to your mind, lurking and wandering, leaving you wondering what he's doing on the other side of your bedroom wall, your living room. Wondering what he’s like, what he’s really like, under the clipped and caustic words, the churlish airs swirling around him whenever he lays eyes on you. He’s the definition of surly, and the reluctance to interact with you stings, even though you shove it down. Secrets lay beneath his ribs, you have no doubt, protected by his thick coat and wide frame, a mass of tenured muscle and strength visible under the heaviest wool.

He nods.

You turn your back.

"Leave a note, when you're goin' out." He's got Aly in hand, halfway up his side of the porch, breath fogging in the space between your bodies. "Shouldn't be out alone, without anyone knowing, alright?"

Leave a note.

"Alright."

#more vibes and not much else #John price #john price x reader #the ocean anthology

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yaeggravate · 1 month

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in an old offical cn blogpost celebrating kaeya's birthday, kaeya took the traveler to the nameless island.

看到对面的小岛了吗？有没有兴趣过去郊游一趟？ See that island in the distance? Are you interested in joining me for an outing?

…why would you celebrate your birthday on a mysterious hidden island with the god of time's broken moondial, portal like structure and a distorted creepy atmosphere if you weren't connected to it

according to teyvat travel guide, kaeya immediately shut down alice's attempts to blow up starsnatch cliff which overlooks this island. he even asked her to stay away from it.

Ravaged Carving: "Stories brought on the wind will bloom into legends in due time."

that's so funny because kaeya came to mondstadt during a STORM (in the (death) afternoon), and he has several references to the wind. icy featherflight, frostwind swordsman, sailwind shadow, glacial whirlwind, decrease in stamina passive etc. to quote noelle: he comes and goes like the wind. and if you click on the story summary in his hangout you get this fun message:

The wind has brought an old friend of yours here.

further fucking more, the SAME platform can be found in the dragonspine mural room that depicts the huge angel/seelie

who brought kaeya to mondstadt? someone related to fate, time and seelie? istaroth? nabu malikata? mom!? well, right now i think our number one suspect is this wind propeller over here 👇🏽👇🏽

nicole reeyn, famed prophetess, dawn winery teacup and schrodinger's seelie

#.txt #lore bytes #kaeya alberich

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beatyjapan24 · 7 months

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Hirosaki park in Aomori 🍁🩷

#nature #travel #japan landscape #japan travel #japan trip #photooftheday #japan #architecture #beauty

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oldschoolfrp · 11 months

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The walls of the grand entry cavern are carved with scenes of frost giants battling enemies, and hunting dragons and other fearsome monsters. (David Sutherland, AD&D module G2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl by Gary Gygax, TSR, 1978)

#D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #David Sutherland #AD&D #The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl #dungeon #giant #dragon #frost giant #giants #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #TSR #Gary Gygax

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valhikes · 1 year

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Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada

A little more time spent on Lamoille Creek, but this time along the right fork. I hiked from Camp Lamoille to Goat Lake.

#hiking #Nevada #Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest #nature #landscape #travel #hike #outside #day hike #mountains #canyon #Lamoille Creek #Lamoille Canyon #Right Fork #Humboldt National Forest #Goat Lake #glacial valley #glacier carved

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hunn1e-bunn1e · 10 months

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First Act: Episode One

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

In which, [Name], the one and only son of Sakamaki Richter strives to make his dearest cousin's lives a living hell. Or; In which yearns for what can never be his own and will do just about anything to yank it within his reach.

First Act | Ep. One | Ep. Two

🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇

"Father? They're Uncle Karlheinz's boys, aren't they?"

A boy with steel-grey tresses that faded into a pale silver asks his father; his soft voice catching the older man's attention.

The boy was seated at a beautifully carved, dark wood dining table; his father on the opposite side. Atop the table sat a lovely white, silken tablecloth with lace edges; and atop that sat a beautiful porcelain tea set. Said set was from France, according to what his father had told him, a gift from some noble in a futile attempt to curry favor with him some time ago.

Under the glossy varnish finish was painted a breathtakingly intricate pattern in the color of glacial blue. The rims, handles, spouts, and flat bottoms of the set were dipped in gold that shimmered whenever the light caught it. A lovely piece indeed, but certainly not the boy's favorite by any means.

The amber liquid inside the cup was telling enough, It was Darjeeling. Tasteful but boring.

Perfect.

The boy lifts his teacup to his lips; taking a quiet sip and taking in the taste as it rolls over his tongue. His large, round e/c eyes looked up at the man across from him expectantly; clawed fingers drummed gently on the table with impatience and curiosity that bubbled just under his pale skin.

"You are correct. Why do you ask, dearest [Name]?"

The charcoal-blonde-haired man answered, turning his tired eyes from the book in hand toward his beloved son.

[Name] smiled eerily, the corners of his mouth stretching so far it almost looked as if his face was split in two. He leaned forward, sitting the teacup gently onto its platter and leaning on his forearms.

"Can I play with them?"

He asks cheerily in his saccharine voice, innocent eyes wide with hidden depravity.

The man's sharp burgundy eyes narrow at the steel-grey-headed child. He really is just like her, isn't he? The joy they got in tormenting others, the twisted grins and psychotic glint that hid just behind their eyes was so similar, sometimes far too similar.

He closed his eyes; now is not the time.

"I suppose you can. Don't break them, though. Karlheinz would have my head."

The older man warns, picking up his teacup.

Ah... the tea is cold.

[Name] now sat in his favorite spot, a large tree overlooking the Sakamaki mansion. Far enough away from the structure to where he won't be noticed, yet close enough to observe. He sat on one of the thicker branches; choosing this one in particular after making sure it wouldn't snap under his body weight. The steelhead came here fairly often; every day. He would sit and wait and watch. A repeating cycle that he never grew bored of.

Out of all the ones he liked to watch, there were preferred ones by now. The eldest two's one-sided bickering was always a small threat, the triplets fighting over various objects in the residence was another endeavor, and then there was the youngest, Subaru.

The snarling, hollering, wall punching, fight-instigating youngest child of the Sakamakis. With snow-white hair, dazzling sorrow-filled scarlet eyes with thick lashes overhanging them, and pale skin. A true figment of melancholic beauty. A white rose.

Subaru was by far his favorite. Definitely.

Poor, poor Subaru. [Name] always thought that he'd gotten it the worst. Inbred, scorned and ignored. All culminating in violent outbursts to keep himself afloat. The air of suffering just radiated off of him in waves and the vampiric boy found is simply intoxicating.

It was all just so funny. His cousin's suffering was all so fun to watch. It's not [Name]'s fault that his uncle was a child-abandoning whore of a man. He just so happened to stumble upon their residence on his nightly stroll and had some intense sadistic tendencies.

Just like her... just like—

A sudden light caught his eyes. A car? No, a taxi. The vehicle pulled in front of the rundown mansion and slowed to a halt.

The back right door opened after a few seconds and out stepped a girl. The light from the car bounced off her brown hair and lit up the side of her face, displaying her prominent scowl and narrowed almond eyes.

She walked around to the trunk and pulled out a few suitcases as it began to rain. The girl groaned in annoyance and dragged her luggage into the building, seemingly before anyone answered the door.

[Name]'s e/c eyes stare into the door intensely.

Just who was that girl? Surely not another child of Karlheinz's, right? Do they get a sister now too? That's so... unfair.

The wind blew violently through the trees, and [Name] disappeared with the sway of branches; a scowl on his face.

[Name] had always been the curious type. That was something Richter had known since the boy had been birthed. But now.... he couldn't help but be concerned about his only child.

When he was young, [Name] was so gentle and meek; a quiet and impressionable boy who kept to himself most time. Though, that may have to do with the fact that Richter kept his existence from everyone. Almost everyone.

[Name] was only ten years old when Richter introduced the two, but he didn't expect his son to grow so attached. The young boy liked her so much, that he had turned to his father and asked him, "Papa, is this my mother?". And the look of utter despair when he had to tell him no. That she was already wed with her children that she had with the boy's very uncle. [Name] looked so utterly defeated. His heart completely shattered into millions of tiny pieces.

The charcoal-blonde-haired man tried his absolute best to comfort his son. He should've known not to let them meet; [Name] never had a mother figure after all. He had a mother, yes. A beautiful vampire noblewoman of the family Lucifuge whom Richter had fallen head over heels in love with. One he had made sure not to introduce to Karlheinz for fear that she would be taken by his status as the king and his promiscuous ways.

The two had a long-running fling, though it ended shortly after his love became pregnant and birthed their child. She had then informed him that she was promised to someone else, that the two would be wed the next year and he would certainly reject her if he had discovered that she had carried and bore the child of another man.

She rejected her newborn son, "If only he was never born, we could continue our forbidden union. But with pity, I shall grace him with a name.". That's what she said to him as she gathered all of the gifts of lavish gowns and glittering jewels that he had once so selflessly given her. "[Name]. That is what he shall be called." Were the last words she had ever uttered in their general direction.

Richter thought he would never love again, but he always was quite faint of heart and it continued to beat longingly as it hung on his sleeve.

There's something glittering in the trees...

A key....How interesting....

🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇•♡•🦇

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Return to the Cathedral?

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victusinveritas · 6 months

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Discovered in Russia in 1890, the Shigir Idol is one of the oldest known wooden sculptures, dating to approximately 12,000 years ago. It was found in a peat bog, which had preserved it.

The sculpture is 2.8 metres high, but its original height is thought to have been 5 metres or more. It was carved from a larch tree (approximately 159 years old at the time) using the jaws of a beaver and stone tools. On it are faces, hands, and zigzag lines.

It was apparently placed upright next to a lake before it fell into the bog, thus preserving it for over 12,000 years.

According to Thomas Terberger, a scholar of prehistory at Göttingen University in Germany:

“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late glacial to postglacial Eurasia. The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”

It is currently on display in the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore in Russia.

. . .

Picture Credits: Siberian Times

#siberia #meanwhile in russia #paleolithic #archaeology #shigir idol #holy ground #shamanism #younger dryas

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causeitsagame · 11 months

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@hajihiko and I talked about the aftereffects of All Of That (1 / 2 / 3 / 4), and you know what a good whalloping suckerpunch of angst needs? Some incredibly shameless H/C to follow it up.

(Warning for all the topics you'd expect after the physical and emotional trauma in those first posts.)

---

The music had started up again.

Fuyuhiko grimaced at the familiar, bone-deep thumping that ran through the walls and into his body. He could mostly tune out the sounds themselves, but the vibrations were harder to ignore. Instinctively, he moved his pillow over his ear and hoped for the best.

Sleep came only shallowly, and cold soon woke him from it. It'd licked at his shoulder where it poked up over the blanket, but once he became aware of the cold, it was obvious that the blanket wasn't heavy enough to actually keep the rest of him warm.

He could pretend that things were tolerable as he first fell asleep, exhausted by the horrors of each fresh day. But with a few hours' sleep, his body usually woke back up to alert him of all the dangers it faced. That only made things worse. He was in this cell, as alone as he'd ever been, and his captors weren't going to help him warm himself, or heal himself, or feed himself like he really needed. Each night without recuperative sleep just sped his inevitable death a little more.

Fuyuhiko frowned under the pillow he held to his ear. Now that he thought about the music, that song sounded like… those fuckers. They probably thought this was a great goddamn joke to play on him, didn't they? For the first time, they'd gotten their hands on one of the Remnants, and so now they were reminding him of the others. Playing Ibuki's music like that had to be taunting him: we'll get her, too. Remember how she screamed this song at everyone, not too long after they woke up? We'll get all of them. Every last one.

Deeper, glacial cold ran through Fuyuhiko, and he went very, very still.

After they woke up?

He shouldn't know that.

Why did he know specifics? Why could he picture locations? Events? Names? Shit. Fuck. It hadn't worked. The memories were still there to be carved out of him. He was weaker now than he'd been at the start of everything, and he'd do his damndest to hold everything back, but it would grow harder with every passing day.

Fuyuhiko clutched the blanket tight and tried to force himself back into sleep. He needed to shore up his willpower before the torture restarted. He knew he'd be dead, soon enough, so the only control he had was over whether he betrayed everyone he cared about. He couldn't let anyone know anything about the Remnants as a whole, and more than anything, he couldn't tell them one single goddamn thing about Hajime.

Shit. Fuck. FUCK. Why had he let himself remember that name?

Nearly delirious with panic, Fuyuhiko curled in on himself and tried to pass out.

Eventually, the heavy door opened and Knife (or Stain or Red) stepped inside. Fuyuhiko froze, attempting to feign unconsciousness. If it were simply more pain coming, he could bear anything. He'd simply stop acknowledging most of the agony ripping through him, knowing that his body would probably wear out before his resolve did. But if he knew things again, 'probably' was no longer good enough. Torture suddenly mattered, again.

They called his name, and he tensed before he could help it. Damn. That'd been visible. They knew he was awake. It was about to start.

They called his name again, and reached down to grab him by the shoulder. Fuyuhiko flinched, unable to help it, and also couldn't help his grimace when the pillow was lifted away from his head. His good eye screwed tighter shut, like that'd somehow help.

His name. Again. Again. And then he was being lifted bodily out of bed, and Knife's gang was saying…

Saying… what? That didn't make sense. Saying it was okay? That he was safe? What?

Fuyuhiko risked opening his good eye, slowly enough that he could slam it shut if something came at it. What he saw didn't make any sense, either. Who was that? It wasn't Knife, Red, or Stain. Had they brought in someone new? And what was with that look of concern? Were they doing mind games, now? Trying to play good cop, bad cop after spending so long with the same approach?

"Fuyuhiko," the stranger said again, with deep worry running through his voice. "It's okay. It's okay. Look at me."

He did, and confusion slowly ebbed like fog burning off under sunlight. "Hajime?" Fuyuhiko wondered, only for adrenaline to slam into him like taking a punch. "You have to get out of here!" he cried, lunging forward to shove him. "I told you not to come! Fuck! Go!"

"Fuyuhiko," Hajime repeated in an endless, soothing stream. "It's okay. Look around. Look at where you are. You're not there. You're not there."

"Huh?" Fuyuhiko's exhaustion-fogged brain needed a few seconds to respond, and he slowly looked around the room. There were… there were windows.

Windows? His room didn't have windows. Why were there windows, then?

Because… this was the ship. He was on the ship. He'd been back here for weeks, and his memories were back by choice, and Hajime wasn't about to be captured.

Exhaling, Fuyuhiko closed his eyes and relaxed, letting Hajime hold him up with the grip he had on Fuyuhiko's shoulders. "I'm back. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Hajime murmured. "Hey. Wanna look outside? It's sunny."

"I'm fine," Fuyuhiko said shortly, and pulled back. "I didn't have a damn nightmare or something. I was just… confused."

"After what you went through, it's normal to—"

"I'm fine," Fuyuhiko said in an increasingly tight voice, and pulled further away when Hajime reached for his wrist. "Ibuki screaming in the middle of the night just woke me up. S'normal to be tired when you can't sleep. Gonna let me get dressed?"

Hajime hesitated, then nodded and stepped back. "Right, sure. Sorry. Glad you're fine."

Fuyuhiko mutely nodded, and made a show of waiting for Hajime to leave so that he could dress for the day.

They'd sailed back north, at least for now. There was a military base the group knew of with pickings too good to pass up. That must have been where Hajime got the supplies for his dumbass (spectacular, overwhelming, incredible) move with the satellites.

This wasn't a commitment to settling up here, but they couldn't stay back on Jabberwock for long, and this little bay had apparently served them well enough. It was getting colder each day, though. Pretty, Fuyuhiko thought as he leaned on the railing and looked up at how very low the snowline had pushed into the evergreen forest surrounding them. But cold.

He folded his arms, enjoying the warmth of a sweater that he never would have been seen in while representing the clan, and appreciated the view. For about three minutes.

It wasn't unusual for Hajime and Peko to talk at length. For one, she'd trained herself on a lot of monitoring equipment, as had others. She, the Imposter, Mahiru, Nagito, Kazuichi, and Sonia all took shifts watching and listening for anything of note.

But those two were also the most likely to be concerned about Fuyuhiko. After his embarrassing confusion this morning, that had better not be motivating their latest conversation. Fuyuhiko watched them from a distance, talking and nodding and gesturing, and frowned when Hajime walked off first.

Toward Ibuki.

Goddammit!

"No," he hissed as he ran across the deck and grabbed Hajime by the arm.

"I just thought I could tell her to keep it down at night." Hajime shrugged. "Everyone else would probably appreciate it, too."

"I said I could handle it." Fuyuhiko's eye narrowed. "Don't say one fucking thing."

"Fuyuhiko—"

His eye drew into a mere slit. It glinted warning.

"Fine," Hajime relented. "But I think you should know that this is normal. I'm just trying to help, and it's nothing to be ashamed about."

"If you don't stop Ibuki, then is Peko gonna?"

"I…" Hajime rolled his eyes and walked off. "I'll talk to Peko."

Okay. Good. Fuyuhiko watched until he was sure that neither of them would attempt to talk to Ibuki, and wandered off toward breakfast.

That night, it was cold again.

Fortunately, music didn't blare, but the metal walls creaked ominously with the same winds that kept Ibuki below deck. Winter had arrived with a hunger, by now, and the narrow inlets along the coast funneled gusts right toward them.

Fuyuhiko curled into a ball under his blanket and tried to think of anything but cold running through his mind on repeat. Logically, he knew that it wasn't truly that bad in his room. A vent over the door radiated heat and he'd worn warm enough clothes to bed. Even so, his bed was up against the metal wall and it seemed to leech heat directly out of him and into the Canadian winter on the other side.

And all those dark memories coiling themselves around his mind thrived in the cold.

His door clicked. Annoyed, Fuyuhiko turned toward whoever had come to wake him up.

One of two expected faces was there, and it was the one who wouldn't just hand an extra blanket to him and make a silent exit. "I raided an empty room," Hajime explained, gesturing to the blanket in his hand.

Fuyuhiko sighed, about to argue that things had been spread evenly through the cabins, but stopped his own argument before he made it. It wasn't like they needed to keep those empty cabins stockpiled; they wouldn't be picking up any passengers any time soon. "Thanks, but…"

"But?"

But. But. He didn't know. The protest had been instinctive.

Hajime nodded slowly, closed the door behind him, and walked further into the cabin. "Mind talking?"

"Maybe," Fuyuhiko said wryly, and sat up. The blanket came with him and his legs folded snugly inside where it draped off his shoulders. As he sat up, he noticed an odd glow outside the portholes, like moonlight and starlight had been smeared flat against the glass. At some point, it'd started to snow. The gleaming reflection off each individual flake was dim, barely there, but there were so many of them.

Hajime sat on the other end of the bed and draped the blanket he'd brought around his own shoulders. "I'd keep waking up with his memories as my dreams."

Ah. Fuyuhiko considered Hajime, aware that his expression had slid toward sympathy in the not-really darkness, and said nothing.

"That happened again a few weeks ago, actually," Hajime continued. "When I did the satellites, I just kind of shut down all of my emotions so I wouldn't chicken out. That night, Sonia looked at me like I was… like I was someone else. Well, we started sailing for Jabberwock. A few nights into the trip, I thought about the satellites again. I remembered how she'd looked at me, and pretty soon… it wasn't me, that night."

Fuyuhiko shifted his weight on the bed and adjusted his grip on the blanket he held. "You didn't say anything."

"Right." Hajime shrugged. "I'm used to it. And I'm pretty practiced with coming back around, by now. But I guessed you weren't, yet."

Fuyuhiko laughed darkly, remembering how hard Hajime had needed to work to shatter the memories that had captured him. "Yeah. Well. What gave it away?"

"How'd that memory thing work, again? The one your dad taught you?"

The topic change caught him off guard, and Fuyuhiko needed a moment to catch up. "Uh… when there's enough pain that your brain can't think about anything else, you force an image into your head. From that point out, if you get asked about what they were trying to carve out of you, all you'll be able to remember is the new image."

Hajime's hands tightened around the blanket he held until the knuckles went tight and pale. "Right," he said after a measured pause, in a strained voice edged with outrage. "Sounds… really… handy."

Fuyuhiko smirked. It had been, but after a few desperate 'thank yous,' Hajime would never sincerely admit to that again.

"Anyway," Hajime continued, visibly trying to squelch his anger. "Think about what you just said: 'your brain can't think about anything else.'"

"Yeah, and?"

"Our brains have limits. They can only take so much. You know that, because you deliberately used your brain's limits as part of your plan." He scooted a little closer. "Well, this is just the other side of it, I guess. It's what came along as part of using that plan to." Hajime halted, swallowed, and needed a moment to continue. "To save me."

When Fuyuhiko remained thoughtfully quiet, Hajime reached for where Fuyuhiko's hand held the draped blanket shut. He ran his fingertips along a raised line on the hand's back. "You're not weak if you get a scar after you're cut, right? That's just how it works."

Fuyuhiko sat in silence for a while, then snorted faintly. "Don't pull out your Ultimate Therapist on me. Jerk."

Hajime smiled.

Sighing, Fuyuhiko tilted his head back and studied the ceiling. These stark cabin walls did look unfortunately similar to the place he'd been held for months. "So. How long's it last?"

"There are treatments we can try, if you want to."

Fuyuhiko looked uncertainly at him. "Treatments? Would I… what, have to bring Mikan into the loop?" Because there was no way.

"Don't have to. I haven't, for me."

Well. That was a positive, at least. “Didn't you say you had another bad night just recently?"

"Yeah," Hajime acknowledged. "Now that you mention it, next time we hit that military base, maybe we can check what they've got stockpiled in the pharmacy. For both of us. But even with just some mental exercises and techniques, it's a lot better than it was. I'll probably always have some bad nights, but if they're only an exception, I can deal."

Fuyuhiko nodded slowly. "Okay. So, I'd just talk with you, then?" He wouldn't with anyone else, but he could do that.

"Right. As much as you'd be up for."

Shifting awkwardly below his blanket, Fuyuhiko hesitated, then met and held Hajime's gaze. "Would you be up for it?" That earned a confused look, and he clarified, "If I start talking about exactly what they did to me, and you know it was for your sake, what's that gonna do to your own head?"

That apparently hadn't crossed Hajime's mind before it was pointed out. Concern, sympathy, and heartbreak passed through his expression in equal measure.

"Right." Fuyuhiko laughed faintly and pulled his knees tight against his chest. "We make quite a pair, huh?"

"I… look, if it helps, don't worry about my reaction. Really. It's exactly like you said: you did that for me. If me hearing about it helps you, then that's what we're gonna do."

Except that the most likely option would be Hajime needing to squelch his emotions to handle what he was hearing, and locking down his feelings did fuck-all for his mental health. "It's just gonna be you and me cycling around like this, huh?" Fuyuhiko drawled. "Each of us shoving the other out in front."

Hajime went quiet again before looking back up. His shoulders slumped slightly in resignation, for he apparently admitted that his plan had bit off too much, too early. "Okay. Then… we'll do that some day, but let's compromise right now. Let's just try to figure out what sets off your bad nights so we can hopefully avoid them. That's a good first step. Right?"

"Fair enough. But one of them is loud music, and you're not gonna mention one goddamn word of this to Ibuki. If she knows something, the whole ship'll know."

"Right," Hajime mused. "It's quiet tonight, but…" He trailed off, then asked thoughtfully, "What about ear plugs?"

"That's…" Fuyuhiko considered what it would be like if he could only feel the vibrations without any music. It might feel close enough to a ship's ongoing movement that he could convince himself that's all he was feeling. "That could help, actually." He probably should have thought of that, but he'd tried to forget his bad nights as soon as he woke from them.

Hajime grinned. "Okay, good start. Anything else?"

Fuyuhiko looked away, uncomfortably aware of how he'd been gripping his blanket like some child in a crib. "…Being cold."

Sympathy slammed into Hajime's eyes: the same overwhelmed look that Fuyuhiko remembered being directed at him while stuck in a hospital bed, when he didn't know who was staring at him in broken disbelief. "Oh. Right. Of course."

Fuyuhiko's grip flexed around the blanket. It wasn't like he was that invalid, still. It was fucking winter in fucking Canada, of course he couldn't shake off the cold.

"Uh…" Hajime scanned the room with increasing concern, clearly aware that he'd run up against the edges of Fuyuhiko's mood. "Here."

"Here?" Fuyuhiko repeated, expecting the other blanket to be draped around him. Instead, a warm set of arms embraced him around the blanket he wore, and Fuyuhiko blinked in surprise. "Uh," he managed.

"Mikan tells me I run a full degree warm," Hajime said with a grin. "Can you feel it?"

Still too surprised to protest, Fuyuhiko sat there and felt the warmth seep through the blanket, and then through his clothes, and then into him. It seemed to unknot muscles that had been tight ever since they returned to northern latitudes. "Yeah," he admitted, and relaxed.

The heat burrowed deeper and a long breath sighed out of him. "This is nice," Fuyuhiko conceded. He probably wouldn't let himself say that if he'd ever been able to get a full night's sleep. As winter's presence became inarguable, a full night's rest became impossible. Most nights weren't bad ones, not like the day before, but he always woke up midway.

He was soon so slack, so relaxed, that it took him a minute to realize his position had changed. "Huh?" Fuyuhiko blearily wondered as he looked up from the pillow he'd been laid against. Once made comfortable, his body had apparently decided to reclaim the sleep it'd missed. Immediately.

It took him another moment to realize that Hajime was also reclining, having arranged the blankets on top of them both. He noticed Fuyuhiko looking at him and lifted his eyebrows in silent question. This okay?

Fuyuhiko blinked at him in slow motion, still in awe of what it felt like to be warm, again, and to not feel alone and abandoned inside a steel cage. "You don't have a pillow," he pointed out, like it was suddenly, deeply important.

"Could raid another empty room."

He tried to say 'if you go, hurry' and 'don't lift the blankets too much.' All that actually came out was a soft, sleepy, "Mmmm." It was kind of funny, Fuyuhiko thought as he drifted off with surprising speed. Here was the person he'd gone through hell for, and yet, next to him, he had confidence that his memories would be kept safe from returning there.

Hajime grinned a little at the noise that had come out of Fuyuhiko as he toppled rapidly off the edge of consciousness. "Maybe tomorrow for a pillow."

"Mmmm," Fuyuhiko agreed, and felt his body relax out of the tight knot he'd automatically made. It was warm, finally. And no one could ever find them. That was good. That was…

Sleep took him gently but deeply, and lasted until morning.

#my fic

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darklydeliciousdesires · 7 days

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Nobody's Girl - Chapter Nine.

Another week, another chapter, besties! Thank you all so much for your love for this story. It really means so much to me :)

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight

Taglist - In the comments, please DM to be added/removed

Words - 3,869

Warnings - Adult content throughout, minors DNI!

The high of it rushed over him, swathed him in its warm tingles, senses soothed from all that had led up the moment there with her. Laying worship upon her body with every press of his lips, hands praising in stroke, she was like opium pouring warm over a persistent ache. Her arousal lapped at her like a gentle influx of water soaking a shoreline, fingers tangling into the soft black of his hair, jolting as sweet affection made way for the razor edge of his lust, teeth nipping at her hip.

His mouth trailed lazy licks to swirl over her skin, lips pressing against the soft, neatly trimmed blonde curls at her apex, until those licks dipped low and pressed firm. Honeyed throbs of pleasure swelled, his tongue rolling slow, hands stroking blazes up and down her thighs, her pretty little moans adding further sound to the noise of his mouth moving keenly over her slick.

Velvet heat rubbed greedily through her folds, bringing focus to her clit, shouldering her thighs to drop parted again when they closed in on him, his elbows pressing down to keep her spread while he held her hips still. She arched, humming a seraphim’s sonnet, the tingle of her arousal glimmering through her core, the silky nectar of such beginning to run dewy onto his tongue, evoking a baritone rumble from somewhere deep in his chest.

He panted against her, cock rapidly swelling, fingers digging crescents onto her hips as his eyes found hers over the rise of her heaving tits, winking, sucking her bud until she cried out over and over. It pulled full bodied trembles from her, shaking like she’d been plunged into glacial waters, his mouth locked tight as he sucked harder.

The crest ploughed hot through her veins, his hands running over her, two fingers pressing into her mouth, depressing her tongue as she sucked them, Luca keeping her jaw in a tight grasp as he moved to kneel before her, cock snagging her opening, a hard push daggering into her deeply. There was no containment, each thrust him carving out room inside of her, filling her wholly, making her whine in bliss around the suck upon his fingers. Emptying her mouth, his hand curled to her throat, pushing her into the bed beneath his grasp, smiling at the grey fire that flickered in her seductive stare.

“Like it when I hold you down, don’t you, bella donna?”

“Ah, ah fuck, yes!” she cried out, hands smoothing down his arms in a torrid glide as he drove her hard into the bed. “I want you deeper in me, please, please!”

Hauling her hips up, he shunted his thighs beneath them, cock arrowing to her very depths. “Better?”

“Oh my god, yes it is!” she wailed, watching him grin before he leaned to kiss her with wild heat, hand once again moving to grasp her throat as they moved against one another with wild friction. Her cries began to louden, drifting through the top floor of the house, reaching the ears of a woman walking up the stairs on her way to the bathroom. Filomena winced, hoping they would be finished soon, but knowing from personal experience they likely wouldn’t be.

She paused at the bathroom door, rethinking her desire to soak in the tub before dinner if the those were the kind of sounds that would continue reaching her ears, sadness and jealousy colliding as she heard the beautiful young woman enjoying all that she still coveted. She missed him, no matter how terrible a husband he’d been to her with his infidelity, and there he was, having a great time, balls deep in his new girlfriend.

The bath could wait.

While she walked away with hurt prickling her chest, Emily was experiencing the surge of pin pricks skittering up her spine, her lover’s hand fisted hard in her hair as he held her head back, pounding her esuriently from behind. Her walls radiated heat, Luca slowing, his lust blown eyes drawn to the sight of her twitching around him, hand landing in a hard spank on her ass.

The noise it pulled from her made him repeat it again in an instant, his thoughts thickened, heart hammering, her moans lower, primal, his insides throbbing in response. The grasp woven tight in her hair slackened, his hand sliding to cup beneath her jaw, pulling her up until her back was against his chest, knees pivoting them slightly to the left.

“There,” he rasped, mouth planting hot, open-mouthed kisses across the column of her throat, watching her eyes find their reflection in the huge mirror located in the corner. “Now you can see what I do, how goddamned beautiful you look while you’re gettin’ fucked, amore.”

Those words sizzled over her marrow, her hand reaching to grasp the back of his head, turning to meet his mouth in a fever-hot kiss, his groan like summer thunder rumbling a darkened sky. Their bodies moved in perfect sync, everything winding tight, Emily fixated on the mirror glass, the visual of seeing herself being sexually domineered so thoroughly only adding to the scalding pleasure.

The sound of his cock daggering into her soaking plush sounded lewdly, their moans culminative, sweet nirvana pulling them both into its abyss. Afterwards, they lay happily entwined, his leg draped over her hips as he stroked the path of her cleavage with a fingertip, her hand idly trailing over the dark hair upon his thigh.

“I wish we could stay up here, avoid the rumbling storm downstairs,” he spoke quietly, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.

She turned, a small dent of confusion dimpling her forehead. “What I saw from the window didn’t look like bad weather?”

“It wasn’t,” he confessed, sighing. “It’ll likely be on the way again, though. She told me that she wanted us to try again, and that I should send you packin’.” He waited for her to react with trepidation, maybe even concern, especially after the events of that day and how shaken she’d been left by them for a time, but it didn’t happen.

“I’m going nowhere.” What they had just shared upon the bed cemented that for her more than any other words he could have spoken.

“I know, cara mia.” Another kiss was placed upon her shoulder, his hand moving to lavish at the side of her neck. “I told her that, too.”

“Do you think she really means it, or is it more a case of her playing some kind of game because I’m here, and she has to witness that?”

He thought for a moment, stuck between the knowledge her usual form and the sincerity he’d seen in her eyes when she’d revealed her desire for reconciliation. “I think that she believes it’s what she wants. How bona fide that is, I don’t know.” He pulled her close, lips meeting hers. “Don’t care, either.”

They basked a little longer before moving to dress, going downstairs to find his children all sitting at the large dining table on the back porch, being entertained by Greta performing simple little magic tricks for them. It was how she’d met Angelo, being a magician’s assistant, hired for a party he was at with his family back when they were both in their late teens.

“You lookin’ forward to tomorrow, boys?” Luca asked, his question directed at Jack and Harry, Angelo and Greta’s nineteen and seventeen-year-old sons.

“Yeah, uncle Luca,” Jack replied, beaming with enthusiasm. “I get to use a real gun for once, it’s gonna be swell!”

Angelo had raised his boys exactly as he was with his; not to turn out to be wiseguys. Being kids of poor Italian immigrants, it had been a natural progression for him and his cousin, with very little in the way of genuine prospects. The money they made meant their kids didn’t have to choose that path, not unless they truly, truly wanted to. They’d been sent to the best schools in New York, Angelo’s boys were in college, too. It was definitely a more favourable climate than what they’d grown up in.

“Please can I come too, pop?” Guiseppe asked, his big, hazel eyes full of hope that a shake of his father’s head dashed in an instant.

“No, boy. You’re too little still for handling a shotgun. Maybe next year, alright?”

He huffed, folding his arms while kicking his feet in annoyance beneath the table. “I guess.”

“Your dad is right, son. Leave it a little while longer.” Filomena spoke, sequestered at the other end of the table. With a martini within her clutches, mouth set to slightly puckered, Luca looked at her in assessment for only a second, noting that she looked more sad than bitter. Throughout the dinner, he did attempt to engage her in conversation a few times, Angelo and Greta, too, but she only really spoke at any length to her children.

In her quietness, she observed, watching the way her husband interacted with his new love. Luca was never overstated when it came to publicly displayed affection, and still wasn’t, but Filomena noticed a difference in him for certain.

While he and Angelo spoke of what trail they would take with Robert, the local guide coming to collect them at 5am the following morning for a day of buck hunting, his eyes might have been on his cousin, but his hand rested to Emily’s wrist, fingers gently circling while she and Greta chatted between themselves. A while later, he had her feet pulled onto his lap, idly stroking her from ankle to toe, looking at her with pride as she enthused over the works of Walt Whitman to Angelo, who remained unconvinced, not being much of a reader.

Emily was everything she wasn’t, and how sorely she resented the lovely young woman for it. It was made even harder by the fact that truly, there was nothing to hate. She was sweet and kind, involving the children in the conversation, Guiseppe and Alessio seeming to take to her very naturally. Her only triumph was that Milania remained indifferent towards her love rival.

Getting up from the table, she lifted Alessio into her arms, a little wobbly on her feet.

“Get off, I’m fine,” she snapped when Greta put a hand out, helping steady her. “I can carry my son to bed without any help. C’mon, Guiseppe. You too.”

“But mom! That ain’t fair. I bet Milania gets to stay up,” he whined, earning an eyebrow raise from his father.

“She’s older, when you’re fourteen you can stay up past nine, too. Go on, go with your mom,” Luca advised, the boy huffing before he rose, saying goodnight to everyone. Finishing his drink, he looked over to his daughter, noticing the look of worry she wore in her eyes, eyes identical to his as she watched her mother enter the house, chewing her lip a little. “What’s with that face, tesoro?”

The girl sighed, looking conflicted as she fiddled with a loose thread on the sleeve of her dress. “Can I speak with you privately, daddy?”

His forehead creased with concern, nodding as he stood up. “Of course. C’mon.” Holding his hand out, he waited for her, Milania grasping it tightly as he led her back into the house, walking through to the deserted kitchen and switching the light on. “Now, tell me what the matter is.”

Sighing, she let her shoulders drop, folding her arms. “It’s mommy. I’m worried about her. Ever since you told her about Emily, she’s been acting funny. Not ha, ha funny, but strange. Like she’s sad. The doctor gave her some pills and she was better for a little while, but she’s drinking a lot, too. Like, I know adults like a drink and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I saw her drinking neat gin the other morning. She lied and said it was a glass of water, but I smelled the glass afterward. Wasn’t water.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a long, deep breath through his nose. “She just needs time to get used to it, honey. She’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

“I think she wants you to come home. Says she misses you all the time,” she confessed, her eyes pleading. “Won’t you ever come back?”

He shook his head. “No, sweetheart. That door closed a long time ago. I wasn’t the best husband to your mom, you’re old enough now to know that. You three kids were the best things to ever happen to us, but us together, we weren’t a good fit.”

Milania snorted softly, rolling her eyes. “And I suppose Emily is?”

Oh, that attitude. She was a teenage him in female form. “Hey, you cut that out. Emily ain’t done nothin’ bad to you, or anybody else. And yeah, she is a good fit. You should try and get to know her a little, you know.”

“Don’t wanna.”

He couldn’t force it, he supposed. “All in your own time, I guess. Listen, you keep an eye on mommy for me, though, right? If she gets worse with the hooch, you let me know first.”

She nodded, moving to hug him. “I will, I promise.”

“Good.” He kissed her hair, stroking her forehead as she pressed herself against him tightly.

“Love you, daddy. I miss you, too. Wish I got to see you more often.”

A little sharp tug pulled in his chest. “Love you too, cuore mio. And Brooklyn ain’t the moon, you know. You wanna see me more? Just call and I’ll send a car. Come by whenever you like, you hear?”

She nodded, smiling up at him, receiving a kiss to the forehead. “I will.”

Milania headed up to bed, Luca going back outside, noticing Emily’s questioning look. “I’ll tell ya later, doll.”

He did when they’d turned in for the night, stroking her arm as her hand lay in idle press against his chest, seeing the understanding in her eyes. Of course, this would strike a chord with her. “If it is a problem, then she certainly hides it better than Bertha ever did,” she began, referencing her mother. “She couldn’t even stand up half the time, just lying there on her chaise, wallowing in self-pity and rum. Maybe it’s just a few nips here and there to ease her sadness?”

“That’s what I was thinkin’, too,” he spoke, “but either way, I told Milania to keep an eye on her. Not that a fuckin’ fourteen-year-old kid should have to, but there ain’t anybody else.”

“Has she always liked the drink?”

He shook his head, remembering how it was usually her having to put him to bed if he was in a state, back when he did used to drink a lot in his wilder, younger days. “Nah. She barely touched it the entire time we were married, except wine with dinner and the like. That’s why I gotta little spark of concern, y’know? Don’t want the broad plastered outta her head while she’s meant to be takin’ care of my kids.”

Kissing his shoulder, she cuddled into him closer. “We have all weekend with her, too. I’ll keep a discreet eye on her, see if I can tell the signs. Back when my mother was still trying to hide it, I learned to read her like a book. I’m sure she’ll be fine, though. One thing I can tell very evidently about Filomena is how much she loves those children. I doubt she’d ever get in the kind of state where she couldn’t take care of them adequately.”

Luca could only hope she was right. He rolled onto his side, wrapping an arm around her, extra thankful for the fact the woman he loved was so simple and uncomplicated. He rose at 4:30am the following morning, washing and dressing, laying a kiss to her head as she slept, he and Angelo eating a quick breakfast and filling up on coffee before they were escorted out by Robert in search of anything with antlers.

Emily woke up at 8am, a small hand shaking her.

“Emily, can you come? Mommy is still asleep, and she locked the door.”

Coming around more, she rubbed her eyes and yawned, nodding while climbing out from beneath the covers, picking up Alessio. “Sure, I can. Come on, little guy.”

Walking right to the other end of the house, Guiseppe and Milania were also still in their nightclothes, the latter viewing her with the same mild contempt as she had since they’d met the day before, Emily placing the youngest of them down and reaching to knock the door.

“Filomena, you awake yet?” Nothing. Holding her ear against the smooth, white painted wood, she listened carefully, relieved to hear the sound of her snoring. Turning back to the children, she fixed a big smile on her face. “I think your mommy is tired and enjoying a lie in. Tell you what, if you guys can go and get yourselves ready, I’ll go and sort you out some eggs. How’s that?”

“We have a chef for that,” Milania pouted, folding her arms while lifting her chin defiantly.

Emily took it completely in her stride. “Alright, then I can tell the chef what you’d like, and meet you downstairs?”

“We can tell him ourselves, god! We’re not imbeciles!” Off she huffed down the hall, Emily sighing. Guiseppe looked on at her with an apologetic smile, reaching for his brother.

“I’ll help the tyke here, make sure he brushes his teeth and all that. And can I have my eggs scrambled? Alessio likes ‘em soft boiled.”

At least two out of three children weren’t so hostile. “Of course, you can. See you downstairs.”

Once washed, her curls pinned up save a few free strands framing her face, eyes darkened with kohl and an outfit of her wide legged slacks, a white blouse and deep green cardigan were chosen, she went downstairs, finding Greta positioned in the dining room with a cigarette and a coffee, reading the newspaper.

“Love those pants, dolly,” she began, giving her an appreciative sweep with her eyes. “Didn’t know Chanel did ‘em in kid's sizes.”

Oh, her beloved Greta. She was such a tease. Reversing back from where she’d entered the kitchen, Emily raised a single, well-groomed eyebrow. “Less of the attitude towards my little legs, huh? But yeah, Luca’s cousin took them up for me since they were touching the floor.”

“Vincenzo is a master with a needle and thread, I’ll say,” she spoke of the man who made the custom-tailored suits for her husband as well as Luca. “Are we the only ones up?”

“The kids are getting ready,” Emily replied after a few moments, coming back in and handing her a bowl containing the other half of the grapefruit she’d just sliced for herself, the chef otherwise engaged in organising the pantry. “Filomena is still sleeping off the martinis, though. I didn’t say that part in front of the kids, so keep it under your hat.”

Her eyes widened, leaning in across the table. “Well, yeah. I nearly followed her up the stairs last night, just in case she dropped the little one.” Picking up the coffee pot, she poured out a cup, pushing it across the table. “We all like a good drink now and again, but she seemed a little messy.”

“I don’t mean to judge, but it turns out it’s been happening a lot.” Keeping her voice low, Emily revealed all, Greta cocking her head with ever widening eyes as she learned of the latest.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she exclaimed softly, lighting herself another cigarette, offering one across the table that was accepted with thanks. “And to think the woman barely drank for so long, too. Wine with a meal and a cocktail here and there, as far as I remember.”

Her ascertain was confirmed with rapid nodding. “Yes, Luca said exactly the same thing!”

“What did my daddy say?” Milania asked upon entering the room, fixing her icy stare right at Emily.

“Nothing important, sweetie. Are your brothers on their way?”

“They are, and I’m not your sweetie either.”

“Hey!” Greta pointed, Milania jumping a little. She’d thought her sass would go unreprimanded, with neither of her parents around. “Now you remember your manners, you hear? Don’t think you’re too big not to get your ear clipped. Show some respect, young lady.”

“You’re not my mother,” she sneered, turning to Emily, “and neither are you.”

“No, we aren’t, but if you carry on, your father will hear all about you and your smart yap, missy. I’d button it if I were you,” Greta warned, Milania rising from the table with a huff, flouncing towards the back doors and heading outside. “Kids, eh? All full of hormones, especially at her age.”

“Yeah, and resentment because in her mind, me being in her father’s life is causing her mother to behave the way that she is.” It was only Saturday and already, Emily wished for nothing more than to hightail it back to Brooklyn, after what had already come to the surface so far. “She’s too young to get it, that they were broken long before I came along. She likely wouldn’t hear of it being mostly her father’s fault either, since she idolises him so very much.”

Greta sat and marvelled, thinking to herself how Emily might have been quite soft and naive in a lot of respects, but god, she had a very strong root tethering her to reality. She made no excuses for the truth of the matter concerning the man she loved, which was a rarity, especially in a relationship only sixth months into its tenure.

“She’ll come around in time. The more she sees how happy you make her dad, and when her mother pulls herself out of this little blip. It’ll all be okay, dolly. I’m certain. Now, what are we doing today? I thought we could take the car and head into town? There are some beautiful, quaint little stores in Linlithgow we could venture down to?”

Emily smiled, liking that idea. “Yes, that’d be nice. Let’s get breakfast out of the way and wait for Filomena to rise, and we can head out.”

That rising was another half hour from then, the women having successfully drank a pot of coffee between them and also been talked into a round of eggs Benedict each by Hubert, the chef. Walking into the dining room, Filomena acknowledged them with only a nod, heading through to the kitchen.

“Hubert, can I get some bacon and my usual eggs, plus a bloody Mary?” She hung around by the kitchen doors until being furnished with her drink, taking it and glugging back a mouthful before leaving the room without word. Greta leaned as far as she could in her seat to see through the open doors into the lounge, witnessing the concerning sight of her topping off the drink with yet more vodka.

Turning to Emily, she made a drink motion with her hand. “Yeah, I think the kid is right. Her ma has a problem.”

#luca changretta fanfiction #luca changretta smut #peaky blinders fanfiction #peaky blinders smut #luca changretta fanfic #luca changretta fic #luca changretta x ofc #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fic #nobody's girl #luca and emily

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onlycosmere · 1 year

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OUTSIDE by Brandon Sanderson

Snow is falling. So I look up.

The world mystifies when you stare up through falling snow. Even standing still, you can soar. Even alone, you are surrounded. Even mundane, you find magic. I’ve spent my life chasing the fantastical, yet everything I’ve ever imagined can be casually matched by someone tilting their head up. The soft. Settling. Aspiration.

Of snow on an otherwise ordinary day.

When I was eighteen, I moved from Nebraska to Utah. Here, snow is fleeting, embarrassed to be an obstruction. But in Nebraska, snow squats. It claims land, builds empires. You fight it all winter, carving pathways, reconquering your sidewalks. The cold digs inside, frosting your bones with a chill that lingers, even after you return to warmth.

I often think of those snowy days, now that I live in a desert. But each year my memories are a little less fresh. We build our lives with layer upon layers of years, like falling snow. And like the new snow, most experiences melt away. In interviews, I’ve been asked to recount my most frightening experience. I struggle to answer because it’s the lost memories that scare me—the unnerving knowledge that I’ve forgotten the majority of moments that made me who I am. Those dribbled away when I wasn’t looking and joined the spring runoff of life.

Fortunately, some experiences do remain. In one, I’m fourteen, and it’s a cold night in Nebraska. My best friend at the time was a boy we’ll call John. Though we went to different schools, he was one of the only other Mormon kids around, so our parents often had us play together. When you’re very young, it’s proximity—not shared interests—that makes friends. This often changes as you age. By fourteen, John had found his way to basketball, parties, and popularity. I had not.

On that day, after a youth activity, another friend suggested we leave to go have some fun. I don’t remember where. Strange, that I’ve lost what this was about, though the rest of the scene is etched into the glacial part of my brain. One of us was old enough to drive, so we headed out to their car.

Five seats. Six teens. They’d already counted.

Without a word to me, the others climbed in. John gave me one hesitant look, then settled into the front passenger seat and closed the door. They left me on the curb. The car vanished, taillights flaring in the night like lit cigarettes.

The memory settled in for the long winter. That night. Watching. Remembering John’s face, which was so strikingly conflicted. Half ashamed. Half resigned.

I was no stranger to being outside. It happens when you’re one of three Mormon kids in a large school. You’ll be at a birthday party, and the wine coolers will come out. Everyone stands there worrying you’ll judge them—while you just want them to stop staring. But you leave anyway, because you know they’ll enjoy themselves more if you and your unusual morals aren’t there to loom.

It should have been different that night though, watching John and the others drive away. They were in my church group—ostensibly, my tribe. They’d still left me outside.

This event shocked me in how dramatic it was, as I wasn’t generally bullied. I tended to be adept at social settings. People generally liked me. At the same time, there was something I’d begun to notice. Something distancing about me.

It happens still. It isn’t that people shun me or don’t want me around; indeed, they seem to appreciate me. When I join a group, I generally end up leading it in some way, and I never sense resentment to this fact. But I also have an air around me. Some writer friends call me the “adult in the room.” I tend to attack projects too aggressively, tend to be the one who steps in and gets things done—even when they don’t need to be done immediately, and when everyone else would rather relax.

This comes, in part, from a certain…oddity about me that started in my young teens, around the time that John drove off. As my friends grew hit puberty, they became more emotional. The opposite happened to me. Instead of experiencing the wild mood swings of adolescence, my emotions calcified. I started waking up each day feeling roughly the same as the day before. Without variation.

Around me, people felt passion, and agony, and hatred, and ecstasy. They loved, and hated, and argued, and screamed, and kissed, and seemed to explode every day with a pressurized confetti of unsettling emotions.

While I was just me. Not euphoric, not miserable. Just…normal. All the time.

Often, it genuinely seems like I exist outside of human experience. It’s not sociopathy. I’m quite empathetic—in fact, empathy is one of the ways that I can feel stronger emotions. I’m not autistic. I don’t have a single hallmark of that notable brand of neurodivergence. It’s also not what is called alexithymia, which is a condition where someone doesn’t feel emotions (or can’t describe them).

I care about people, and I feel. I’m not empty or apathetic. My emotions are simply muted and hover in a narrow band. If human experience ranges between a morose one and an ecstatic ten, I’m almost always a seven. Every day. All day. My emotional “needle” tends to be very hard to budge—and when it does move, the change is not aggressive. When others would be livid or weeping, I feel a sense of discomfort and disquiet.

My emotions do go a little further than this on occasion, maybe once a year. It takes something incredible—such as being deeply betrayed by someone I trusted.

I’m not looking for sympathy; I don’t want to be fixed. I appreciate this aspect of my makeup—and it’s part of what makes me so consistent at writing. When everyone else is in crisis, I’ll just steam along. At the same time, when everyone else is elated by some good news…I’ll just steam along, unable to feel the heights of the joy they feel.

It makes people uncomfortable sometimes. Makes them think I’m judging them. While I’m absolutely not, I do try to be careful how I talk about my condition. Not as something to fear. Something, instead, I’m proud of—not because it makes me better than anyone else, but because it’s me. I like being me.

My neurodivergence came up in a recent interview I did. The interviewer latched onto the fact that I don’t feel pain like others do. (More accurately, some mild pains don’t cause in me the same response they do others.) I asked the interviewer not to mention it in his article, as I felt the tone to our discussion was wrong. I worry about my oddity changing the way people think of me, as I don’t want to be seen as an emotionless zombie. So I try to speak of it with nuance.

As the interviewer ignored my request, I thought I’d talk about it here. Profile myself for you—because this aspect of who I am has deep ties to another happening from my teenage years. In this, I want to answer a big question for you, the one everyone wonders about. The key to understanding Brandon Sanderson.

Why do I write?

Why do I write so much?

Why do I write so much fantasy?

Let me tell you about the first day, that beautiful day, when I found myself inside.

It was when I opened a fantasy novel. I was an isolated kid whose emotions were doing something bizarre. Even John leaving had left me feeling…disturbed more than angry. Alone, and outside. Then I opened a book where I found emotion.

In that story about dragons, and wonder, and people trying impossible things, I found myself. I felt a variety of powerful emotions through the characters—emotions that I remembered from when I’d been younger.

I hadn’t tried reading fiction in a long while, so I was blindsided by this perfect book. The experience transformed me, quick as a boy tilting his head back, looking up, and finding a new world.

When I read or write from the eyes of other people, I legitimately feel what they do. There’s magic to any kind of story, yes—but for me, it is transformative. I live those lives. For a brief time, I remember exactly what passion, and agony, and hatred, and ecstasy feel like. My emotions mold to the story, and I cry sometimes. I legitimately cry. I haven’t done that outside of a story in three decades.

Stories bring me inside.

My second published novel is called Mistborn. It’s about a world where ash falls like snow, and I can linger, looking up through it via a character’s eyes. Near the beginning of Mistborn, the teenage protagonist finds herself standing outside a room. It is full of light and laughter and warmth. But she knows, she knows she doesn’t belong inside that room.

She’s wrong.

Nearer the end of the book, I linger on as similar scene—only now, she’s sitting with the others. Light and laughter. Warmth. Mistborn was the first novel I wrote after getting the call offering me a book deal. Finally—after slaving over a dozen unpublished manuscripts—I knew I was going to be a professional writer. With that knowledge, I wrote Mistborn, the book about a girl who learns to come inside.

While writing Mistborn, I changed. Now that I’d made it inside of publishing—now that I’d joined those authors I’d loved for so long—why would I keep writing? I needed a new goal, and I discovered it that year.

So let me tell you why I write. It isn’t about worldbuilding; that’s a mistake everyone makes about me. Assuming I write because of worldbuilding is like assuming someone makes cars because they love cup holders. It’s also not because I’m Mormon, as some profiles bizarrely conclude. My faith and cultural heritage are both important to me, but if I were any other religion, that aspect of me would rightly be a footnote—not a headline.

I don’t write for plot twists, or dragons, or clever turns of phrase—though I enjoy all of these. I write because stories bring people inside. And I sincerely, genuinely believe that is what the world needs.

Lately, I’ve seen a resurgence of something that genuinely disquiets me: an attempt by some members of our community to hold others outside. Science fiction and fantasy is forever gatekeeping what constitutes good or worthy stories. Like my old friend John, who sought cooler friends, we renounce anything accessible—part of our perpetual (and largely fruitless) plea for legitimacy with the literary establishment.

Thing is, I can’t really get mad when someone does this, because I’ve done it myself in the past. The unfortunate truth is that we all probably have at times. The moment a group finds cohesion—discovering the warmth and peace of being inside—we decide there aren’t enough seats, so we start muscling and pushing. Readers who came in because of the latest popular teen novel? Outside. Fans of the film version of a story, instead of the book version? Outside. People who don’t look the same as the supposedly conventional fan? I suspect they know this struggle far better than I do.

To use a thematic metaphor, it’s like we’re dragons on our hoard of gold, jealously keeping watch, worrying that if anyone new enters, their presence will somehow dilute our enjoyment. The irony is that there is infinite space inside, and if we open the way, we’ll find many of these newcomers are the very treasure we’re seeking.

Fantasy, out of all genres, should embrace the different, even if it doesn’t match our specific taste. This is the genre where anything can happen—and should, therefore, be the most open genre. Only fantasy offers me the full range of emotion. The wonder of exploration. The magnificent highs of epic scope and the miserable lows of cataclysmic terror. In writing it, I can learn. Monomaniacal, I hunt experiences of people different from myself, then explore them in prose until I feel—in some small part—what they do.

This is why I write. To understand. To make people feel seen. I type away, hoping some lonely reader out there, left on a curb, will pick up one of my books. And in so doing learn that even if there is no place for them elsewhere, I will make one for them between these pages.

Those who interview me seem to have trouble understanding this fundamental part of who I am: that writing for me isn’t so much about performance as it is about exploration and elevation. I love prose both literary and commercial. And I think I write great prose. I’ve slaved over my style, practicing for decades, honing it for crisp clarity. My prose is usually intended to convey ideas, theme, and character, then get out of the way—because this is how I strive to bring everyone inside.

That said, I know my goal is impossible. Occasional strolls through the outside are part of being human, and I can’t eliminate that. And even I have to admit that there are lessons to be learned on those lonely paths. For example, contrast is the only way to appraise growth. Emotional alien I may be, but that very alienation has motivated me to understand. I value the connections I’ve made so much more for that struggle.

Moreover, I find that occasionally looking in through a window at everyone else gives a person a more complete perspective. Inside, things can get messy, and a streak of color finds it hard to comprehend the painting. I’m a better writer because of my time spent looking in. I don’t know that I could have written Mistborn if I hadn’t been left on that curb.

This isn’t to discount the pain of those who have been forced outside. Nor is it an advocacy for extended periods spent in the cold. I also don’t know if I could have written Mistborn if the wonderful people of the science fiction and fantasy community (including many of the friends I now work with) hadn’t latched on to me in college and—at times—forcibly pulled me inside to be with them. Beyond that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve found people like Emily, who love me in spite of (and partially because of) my quirks. Blessedly, because of this, my times outside have been increasingly brief.

My goal here is merely to point out (as I’ve had occasion to remember recently) that beautiful moments do accompany the isolation. You can only watch the snow fall when you’re outside. Only then can you look up and experience that mystifying world, where fragments of the sky drift past and lift you toward the heavens.

I’m forty-seven now, enjoying desert snowfalls in early April. The man I am is separated by distance and time from that boy who stood on the curb, and I’ve forgotten most of the steps that led between the two. I still don’t feel strong emotions outside of stories—but I did tell an interviewer lately that I sometimes cry when writing scenes in my books. They just aren’t the scenes that I thought he’d expect.

I don’t necessarily cry when characters die, or when they marry, or even when they find victory. I cry when it works. When it all comes together, and in a beautiful shimmering burst of humanity, I feel what it is to be that character. At those times, I remember what I learned twenty years ago writing Mistborn. That there’s a reason I do this. And even if I’ve lost more memories than I retain, each of them had a point, because they collectively brought me here.

So when you find yourself in the cold, know that sometimes, there’s a purpose to it. Trust me; I’ve been there. I might be there right now. Feeling the cold on my cheeks—but these days, no longer in my bones. Knowing that this will pass, and that it might be for my good. Most of all, looking up so I can appreciate it. The still. Solemn. Perspective.

Of one who stands outside.

#brandon sanderson #cosmere #cfsbf #root #branderson #wob #kind of #long post

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