#grief also doesn’t mean loss through death

[cerleansky]

My therapist was so real for saying the meaning of life is found in connection.

People hug their friends when they meet up and hug them a little tighter when it comes time to say goodbye. My grandfather rebuilt the broken rocking horse my grandmother had as a child, a gift from her father. There's an indescribable ache that goes along with seeing someone you used to know intimately, the becoming of a common stranger. Coincidences that bind, one time I got an uber and the driver used to live in my home before me. It was the last place he saw his father alive as a child and he nearly cried when I told him the walls were still the same colour.

Has anyone ever gotten over their childhood best friend? Is that alone not a testament to the fact we are more than blood and bones.

It's all about connection, friends.

#writblr #spilled heart #writing #friendship #love #platonic #spilled words #words typed #grief #thoughts #spilled poem #family #literature #friends #lost friendship #family trauma #grief also doesn’t mean loss through death #loss #romance #connection #connectivity #meaning of life #life goes on

[ayyy-pee]

Discord 18+ - Twitter - Masterlist

Pairing: Nanami Kento x Female Reader

Story Summary: Following his mothers passing, Nanami inherits his family's rundown bakery. With the bakery on its last leg, Nanami reluctantly takes on the task of trying to save what his family has worked to keep for decades, but he can't do it alone.

Genre: Bakery/Coffee Shop AU

Warnings: Workaholic meanie Nanami, employee x boss relationship, but also enemies to lovers, death, grief/mourning, profanity, jealousy, fluff, angst, Nanami owns a bakery, parental loss, Nanami is bad at feelings, I don’t know if I’ll do smut for this one but sexual tension, mutual pining, Nanami is sort of an asshole here

Art by: Ilameys + (Unknown artist (right pic). I'd love to credit the artist so if you know who it is, please let me know!)

Chapter 2 - Wienerbrød

Chapter Summary: You try to bake something new!

You kick your shoes off as you enter your apartment. With your phone wedged between your ear and your shoulder, you groan in irritation as you storm into your living room.

“I’m telling you, Shoko. This guy is such a fucking asshole. Shut me down the second I asked him a simple question,” you’re ranting as you flop down onto your couch. “He’s got to be the most pessimistic person I’ve ever met. He did nothing but pick apart the entire bakery and tell me how shitty it was, tried to establish some strange dominance thing in the kitchen after offering me the job… the kitchen,” you stress dramatically, wavering your arms as if Shoko can see you. “My domain! Can you believe him? He doesn’t give a shit about the actual bakery. He’s a total businessman type. Stiff, boring as hell and a dick. I don’t know why I said yes to the position. I’m going to hate my life.”

You exhale sharply once you’ve finished your tirade. On the other end of the line, you hear your friend inhale deeply. You didn’t have to ask to know she was sucking on a cigarette, likely almost finished with it and prepping her second, maybe third. After a short beat of silence, you hear her exhale. “Hmm, is he hot at least?”

“Extremely,” you admit through gritted teeth, rubbing away the tension quickly forming between your brows. “That’s the worst part.”

You hate to think it, you loathe to admit it, but Nanami was so very fucking attractive, like stupid hot and it pissed you off! Those thick arms practically bulging through his dress shirt, those veins that exposed themselves and ran enticingly along his forearms when he rolled his sleeves up. His chiseled features, those sharp cheekbones, even his frown was attractive. And god, you didn’t even want to think about his waist. 

Anyone with eyes could see Nanami Kento was an insanely beautiful man, modelesque even. But it only served to piss you off more. His constant gloomy attitude was so off-putting, it almost took away from his beauty, like a rain cloud threatening to cover a blue sky.

“Anyway,” you sigh, putting a stop to your own thoughts as you stare up at the ceiling.  “That’s beside the point, Shoko. He’s an asshole, but it’s obvious he needs help to get his bakery up and running. I think it’s family owned. He told me that he grew up in the bakery. Seemed miserable about it, though.”

“Interesting,” Shoko manages, though she sounds rather disinterested. “Well if he had to pick anyone, he definitely hired the best person for the job. You’re annoyingly positive.”

“Okay, rude.”

“I just mean you’ll balance his negativity well. Just try not to let him walk all over you. You’ve worked with plenty of dickheads before. What’s one more?”

You hum, your mind already accepting your fate. “I guess you’re right.”

“You know I am. The guy clearly needs help and you love this kind of thing - taking something old, miserable and rundown and making it loveable again.”

You hum again, listening as Shoko blows out another breath of smoke. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll do the same for the bakery, too.”

“Right. Wait– what?”

“I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” She says, voice light with humor. The line goes dead and you roll your eyes at your friends comments as you let the day's events wash over you. Nanami said he wanted to sample some of your desserts on Monday and see some new recipes. You can do that.

The moment you’d stepped into the bakery’s kitchen, your mind raced with possibilities. You felt at home there. The kitchen felt like it had been loved, like it was properly used and cared for, albeit old and a little rundown. That was okay. It gave the kitchen personality and you loved that. You wanted to continue giving the kitchen the love it deserved.

Nanami told you he’d grown up in that kitchen, but he truly seemed to hate even being in the building. You tried to picture a chubby little blonde boy with his arms crossed and a scowl etched across his face standing in the kitchen covered in flour and icing. Adorable, but definitely not the man you’d met today. You wondered how it came to be that he now owned this bakery when he seemed to despise it.

And you wondered if there was a way to get him to learn to love it again.

You shake your head, pushing the thought away. It wasn’t your job to turn his frown upside down, so to speak. It was your job to make sure the bakery was successful as it’s Head Baker and that’s what you intended to do.

- - - - - -

The weekend came and went just as quickly and now you find yourself standing in the kitchen of the bakery with Nanami as the sun barely begins to rise over the city. You pile your notebooks onto the large metal table in the center of the room. Nanami reaches over, taking the notebook sitting atop the stack.

“Are these your recipes?” He asks, flipping through the pages.

“Yep. These are some pastries I created on a whim. I was thinking we could go through and select what you like, maybe tweak some so that they fit more of the vibe you’re going for with the bakery. Or are there any pastries you’d like to keep from the previous owner?” 

Nanami’s dark eyes shoot up from the notebook to look at you. You hold his gaze, trying to find anything behind those eyes aside from the clear hatred he holds for this bakery, but you don’t. It’s frustrating.

“No,” is all he says.

“Okay…well, we can start from scratch then. Let me know what you see that you may like.”

Nanami replies with something between a grunt and a hum. “I’ll review a few of these and will follow up. If you want to get comfortable and organize the kitchen to your liking, go ahead. Please try and have a sample pastry ready within the next few hours.”

He turns to go into his office without so much as a look back.

You sigh, trying to get used to this silence you were sure you’d be working in everyday whether Mr. Nanami was there or not. You couldn’t wait to establish a menu so you could bring staff on. At least then you wouldn’t feel so alone.

You wander through the kitchen with a notepad, looking through all of the smallwares and jotting down what you see in case you need to place an order. There seems to be many of the supplies you need here already and in good condition - spatulas, mixing bowls, flour sifters, icing tips. The bakeware also seems to be well supplied with an array of bread pans, muffin tins and cake pans. This place was fully stocked as far as you could tell. 

You shuffle over to where three mixer appliances sit on a counter against the wall, setting your notepad down to inspect them. They’re a little older, but they turn on and mix just fine. You’d bet they mixed better than some of the newer models. You decide you’ll keep them.

As you lean one of the mixers over to check its condition, you find a small booklet lying underneath the stand. You pick it up, gently setting the mixer back down before you open it to inspect it. It’s a tiny black leatherbound journal with very faded gold lettering in a language you definitely don’t know.

And you? Well, you’re nosey as hell, so you carefully peel back the cover, taking in the elegant writing etched onto the first page.

To my baby boy

There’s some strange writing scrawled beneath this in what looks like English letters. You can’t really tell, but it seems to be some message in whatever language this is. You turn a couple of pages and let your eyes roam over what’s written within. The rest of the pages you can read fairly easily as they’re in English. You can see immediately that these are recipes. The booklet is full of pastry dishes, both sweet and savory. They appear to be foreign pastries and you feel your heart race with excitement as you imagine making them because while you were adventurous with your baking, you’re positive you haven’t tried to make any of these. 

And Nanami did want to sample your baking, so why not give him something he’s not going to see in your portfolio?

Eagerly, you begin moving through the rest of the kitchen equipment, taking out what you need to begin.

- - - - - -

The kitchen is full with the smell of fresh dough baking. The quiet hum of the ovens working calms you as you sift through the recipe in the booklet you’d found earlier. You decided to make one of your original creations while also trying your hand at this new mystery pastry in case Mr. Nanami liked both…or one…or none. Shit, you didn’t want to imagine him not liking either.

You stare down at the ingredients already in the mixing machines.

“Alright. So, water, 2 large eggs, a teaspoon of salt, unsalted butter, active dry yeast…” You read through the remaining list of ingredients until you reach the end. “And now…flour?” You squint down at the notebook, the words scribbled messily on the paper, time having faded the ink. You can’t really make out the measurements written out. It looks like 2 ½ cups. You’ll try it and hey, if it doesn’t work, you’ll simply adjust the recipe to find the right mix. Easy.

Just as you’re sorting through the measuring cups, Nanami emerges from his office with your journals, mouth set in its usual hard line as he makes his way to you. He sets the books down, and you swear you see him inhale the sweet scent of the pastries currently baking in the oven before softly exhaling. You open your mouth to say something before quickly shutting it because he’s back to business in about .02 seconds. You really can’t read this guy, so you don’t try to. You redirect your focus back on to your task.

“These look good,” he tells you, his finger tapping on the book stacked on top. “I placed a post-it note on the recipes I think may work for the soft opening, but I’d like for you to make a sample of them beforehand. Maybe just a few a day.”

You nod, acknowledging his request but far too focused on scooping your guesstimate of flour. Nanami eyes you carefully, brown eyes staring as you carefully run your finger over the top of the flour. The excess falls carelessly onto the table and just before you pour it in, Nanami speaks, his voice halting your movements.

“What are you making now?”

“Hmm?” You ask, glancing over at him. “Oh, something called…” you peer down at the booklet, “Wee-ner-brod?” You’re one hundred percent positive you butchered that pronunciation, but how do you even pronounce ‘wienerbrød’? 

Clearly Nanami knows because he surprisingly lets out an amused chuckle before he asks, “Wienerbrød?” With what you assume is perfect pronunciation. And you’re not sure why, but the sound of his deep baritone laugh makes your stomach twist in a strangely pleasant way.

“Yes! That!” You point to Nanami with your free finger. “I’m making…” you stumble your way through the pronunciation again and get another small laugh from Mr. Nanami which makes your own lips curl up in a smile.

“I didn’t know you knew how to make Danish pastries.”

“I don’t, but you don’t learn without trying.”

“True. What step are you on now?” Nanami asks curiously, coming up to stand next to you. This close to him, you can truly see just how large he is. Not to mention, he smells incredible. You ignore the way the mix of the aroma of baked goods and his cologne almost makes your eyes want to roll back. You’d never smelled something so tantalizing before.

Nanami calls your name and you clear your throat, trying to re-focus.

“Oh, um…well I’ve added mostly everything and now I need to incorporate the flour - about 2 ½ cups.”

“Your calculation is off.” He affirms gently, eyeing the measuring cup in your hand.

You snort, “Are you suddenly an expert in Danish baking or something?”

“I can throw a few things together.” He says and you peek over to see him rolling the sleeves of his very nice (and probably very expensive) shirt up to his elbows. Your eyes roam over, drinking in the sight of those thick veins that you couldn’t get out of your head over the weekend protruding from his forearms, the way his muscles flex with the slightest movement and you wonder for a moment what it would be like to grab onto those arms while he –

“As I was saying,” Nanami’s quiet voice interrupts your reverie. “2 ½ cups is close, but you actually need 2 ¾ cups for this recipe.” He reaches in front of you to grab a ¾ measuring cup and again, you’re assaulted with the scent of his cologne. Your mind erupts with thoughts of nothing appropriate for an employee to be thinking about their boss, but you can’t help it!

You blame it on that damn smile of his and that laugh. It’s thrown you off of your game.

Nanami takes the measuring cup you’re holding and replaces it with another. “You also need to use your hands to mix this.”

You might faint.

“Is that…” you lick your lips, mouth suddenly feeling dry. “Is that completely necessary?”

Nanami slowly adds small amounts of flour into the mixer bowl while kneading with his other hand. “It’s time consuming, of course, but it allows for more control over the dough. You can feel the dough's texture…if it’s too dry or if it’s too wet. From there you can determine if more water or more flour is needed.” You watch as his brows furrow in concentration, a little surprised by his knowledge around dough. Though it shouldn’t be surprising given that he grew up in this very same bakery. Of course he’d know.

And once again, your stomach does somersaults.

Damnit, he was definitely going to need to stay out of the kitchen if you were going to stay employed here.

As Nanami continues working through the recipe, you chat idly about general things. He tells you a bit about his time as a businessman, but doesn’t elaborate on what exactly led him to own a bakery. And you tell him a bit about yourself, trying to keep the conversation light as this was the most you’d both interacted since your interview and you’re surprised by how well it’s going. You don’t want to ruin it by poking and prodding.

As the conversation goes on, you watch him very carefully as he works the dough, ignoring the way your heart races watching him do the very thing you do almost daily.

“The end result should be somewhat sticky,” he states.

And oh god, something was getting sticky alright…and it lay between your legs. Your eyes are glued to the bulging muscles of Nanami’s forearms working the flour into a thick doughy substance between his large, thick fingers. Your gaze moves up his stupidly sexy arms, to his biceps straining against his shirt and you imagine him flexing so hard, it rips to shreds, falling in tatters to the floor. The cartoonish image almost makes you want to laugh. And you would have if your eyes hadn’t continued their journey, higher to his tight shoulders moving in circles as he presses his palms into the dough. Higher to the tension in his jaw, the muscles rippling as he grits his teeth with focus. The kitchen suddenly feels unbearably hot and you’re not sure if it’s the ovens running causing the temperature to rise or the view in front of you.

Nanami had never mentioned he knew how to bake. But why would he? It was your job to know. You also never thought to ask after the sour note your interview ended on despite you still being offered the position. You could not stand him upon first meeting and now here you were practically drooling into this batter over how incredibly sexy he was when he was baking.

Nanami slowly pours flour in again as he kneads the dough with expert precision. The way he grips it in his hands, the way his fingers deftly sprinkle flour into the mix. You wonder what else those big hands can do.

The oven timer dings and you snap out of your lewd thoughts, pretty sure sweat is forming on your forehead from your fantasies. You spin around quickly to slide on oven mitts before you pull the pans from the oven. You’d chosen to make miniature fruit tarts with a vanilla pastry cream. A simple recipe, but absolutely to die for. Setting the tray down, you return to Nanami’s side just as he finishes kneading the dough.

And you try to hide the frown pulling at the corner of your lips when you realize you’d lost your perfect view.

He moves to the sink to wash the remaining dough from his hands, returning with plastic wrap to cover the mixing bowl. “I hope you weren’t planning on completing that today,” He says before turning to head toward the walk-in refrigerator. When he emerges, you shoot him a questioning look.

“I was going to let the dough rise for a few hours while I worked on some other things.”

He hums in acknowledgment, but shakes his head. “For this dough, you need to do a long rise for the best result. Overnight is best.”

“Okay, you’re the expert Danish pastry baker apparently,” you tease, earning you another small chuckle from him and you feel your face heat up at the sound.

What is with you today?

“How did you come up with the idea to make Wienerbrød anyway?” He questions suddenly. “Just seems a bit random given what recipes you’d given me to review.”

“Oh!” You rush back over to the mixers excitedly and grab the booklet, holding it up for Nanami to see, a wide grin on your face. “I found this under one of the mixers. It has some strange language I can’t read in the front of it…I’m assuming it’s Danish? But some delicious sounding recipes from what I could understand when I skimmed through. I decided this would be a good idea to take myself out of my comfort zone to try something new.”

Nanami takes a step forward, squinting hard at the little journal in your hands. Suddenly, his eyes widen slightly and he snatches the book from your hold. He opens it to the first page, where the foreign message is scrawled down before he snaps the book shut, his lips pursing in displeasure.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs in clear irritation. “Next time you find something that is very clearly a personal belonging, please bring it to me before you take it upon yourself to poke through something that isn’t yours,” he snaps, his voice clipped.

The shift in tone takes you aback.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Mr. Nanami. It just seemed to belong to someone who knew their way around baking so I–”

“I didn’t ask for the reasoning behind your nosiness,” he cuts you off and you feel your own irritation begin to slowly rise. “Is this a habit of yours? Digging through people’s belongings and taking things that aren’t yours?”

You scoff, folding your arms across your chest defensively. “If you’d let me finish, I’m trying to apologize –”

“I don’t want an apology. I want you to show up here, bake and leave. Not spend your time digging through someone else’s belongings.”

You inhale sharply, trying to gather your thoughts. This conversation has taken an unpleasant turn and the last thing you want to do is have a blow up with your boss. You feel like you’ve actually made progress with him today and this feels like a setback waiting to happen.

“Again, Mr. Nanami, that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to try something new. I had no idea this book…” you wave your hand in his direction. “...would be such a sore spot for you.”

At this, Nanami seems to bristle. “My sore spot,” he stresses the words, “is nosey employees who don’t just do the job I asked them to do. I asked you to make a sample pastry –”

“And I did,” you cut him off, gesturing to your tarts cooling on the table. “And I had enough time to try my hand at something new, which is why I wanted to try something new and present it to you.”

You sigh when Nanami meets your response with silence.

“What’s the issue here? You had no problem with helping me make this until you saw that book,” you say, pointing at the small black journal he holds. Your gazes lock in an intense staredown and even as Nanami annoys you, you can’t help but find his frustratingly pretty brown eyes completely mesmerizing. 

Ugh, stop.

“The issue,” Nanami stresses, “is you sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Excuse me? It’s just a recipe book. Why are you so upset about it? Is it yours or something?”

“Again, poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Mr. Nanami, with all due…respect,” you grit out the last word because he was really starting to piss you off, “if we’re going to be working together as closely as we are, there needs to be some trust here. It’s just a recipe book. I apologize for overstepping, but you can tell me why referencing this book to make Weenerbrod is such a big deal.”

You could swear you see the ghost of a smile on his lips just before he rolls his eyes, correcting your pronunciation of the pastry again, just as he turns his back to you. “You are my employee, I am your employer and that’s it. My helping you to bake a simple bread does not make us friends. Please complete the sample pastries I requested of you and we can reconvene once they’re finished. End of discussion.”

Nanami heads to his office without another word, slamming the door behind him.

You can only watch him disappear from your sight, seething. Left standing in the kitchen alone after yet another faceoff with your new boss, you’re suddenly reminded of your earlier conversation with Shoko.

Just try not to let him walk all over you. You’ve worked with plenty of dickheads before. What’s one more?

You resist going after Nanami and giving him a piece of your mind, instead following his instructions to finish your samples. You won’t push him. Clearly that little book meant something to him and he had no intention of sharing. And he was right. It wasn’t your business to know…

…But you can’t help feeling upset that the light mood of earlier is now gone.

You sigh, ignoring the pit in your stomach as your anger begins to subside. Instead, you move to the walk in refrigerator, gathering the ingredients to make the vanilla cream for your tarts.

Your mind is still racing with the conversation that just took place even as you mix your ingredients and pack the cream into the icing decorating bags. You realize for the first time since meeting Nanami that he wasn’t only this stoic tyrant that enjoys barking orders. He was someone with interests, someone with depth, someone who clearly enjoyed the art of baking the same way you do. You saw the look in his eyes as he guided you through making this pastry. And while you’ve barely known Nanami, you’re familiar with the look on someone’s face when they’ve participated in their passion. He looked…happy. Clearly, there’s more to Nanami than you know.

More to him than what he was willing to show you. For now. 

You’re annoyingly positive.

Shoko’s words make you roll your eyes as they echo in her head. Because you know she’s right.

#jjk fanfic #jjk fic #jjk x y/n #jjk x reader #kento nanami #nanami x y/n #nanami x reader #nanami x me #nanami kento x you #nanami kento angst #nanami kento x reader #nanami kento x y/n #nanami kento smut #jjk nanami #jujutsu nanami #jujutsu kaisen nanami #nanami x you #kento x reader #kento x you #kento x y/n #anime x reader #anime smut #anime angst #kento nanami x reader #kento nanami x you #kento nanami x y/n #nanami baker au #baker nanami

[humanpurposes]

Sweet Dream

The Sandman AU

Her father means to summon and capture Death, but ends up with the wrong sibling. She becomes fascinated with their prisoner // Main Masterlist

Dream!Aemond x unnamed female character

Warnings: 18+, spells n shit, mild gore, death, lowkey Lima syndrome, smut

Words: 8000

A/n: For my fellow Morpheus and Aemond lovers. Also available to read on AO3.

Roderick Burgess had always been a terrifying man. In grief he has only become more irritable and less predictable. 

The telegram came in the early days of July. She delivered the news to Roderick herself, while he was in his study. Her father did not like to be disturbed and he might have beaten her to remind her of the fact, until those fateful words slipped from her mouth. “Randall’s dead.” Shot down by a German machine gun at the Somme. In the end he had been one of thousands, his body buried in a neat line of tombstones somewhere in France, his name engraved on a plaque in the church at Wych Cross, ultimately unremarkable and indistinguishable from the other men and boys who had lost their lives.

But it was not so for Roderick. He let out a sudden groan and clutched his chest as though his pain was tangible and terrible. He shed no tears– of course he didn’t, but he gritted his teeth, crying out in fury as he dashed his hands over his desk, sending papers, books, fountain pens and empty whisky glasses tumbling to the floor. 

She stood frozen, waiting for his hand to descend on her for being the one to tell him, but it didn’t.

When they held a memorial service for him, Roderick handed her a piece of paper, to read before the crowd of faces she didn’t recognise. 

“Randall was our family’s happiness. He was the bravest, the wisest, and kindest older brother I could possibly dream of having.” Her hands and voice trembled as she read because she knew it was all a lie. In truth, Randall was like their father. They had the same short temper, the same stubbornness and the same cruelty. 

But Randall being dead meant she could reinvent him.

Lately, she dreams of happier memories and looks back on them fondly, knowing they can never be contradicted or disproved. 

While her father has dreamt of Death ever since. 

It’s a brisk afternoon in October when a man in a suit, bow tie and bowler hat arrives at Fawny Rig. He clutches a leather briefcase in front of him and introduces himself as Dr John Hathaway, a curator from the Royal Museum, travelled all the way from London to this quiet corner of East Sussex. She leads him through the panelled halls of the manor, to her father’s study.

Roderick barges in behind them, in a shirt and waistcoat, already smelling faintly of whisky and waving his cane in her general direction. “Tea for our guest,” he orders.

She has the pot ready and strains the dark, reddish liquid into two delicate china cups while her father and Dr Hathaway settle on opposing leather sofas in the centre of the room.

“I take it you have reconsidered?” Roderick says.

“After our meeting at the museum… I know what I said, but–” Dr Hathaway takes an unsure breath. “I received a telegram this morning. My son, Edmund, his destroyer was sunk last week off Jutland.”

It’s a loss Roderick can share, even if he doesn’t really understand how other than a few quick words of condolence. “I lost my son, Randall last year. He was my greatest joy.”

She pauses as she reaches for the sugar bowl. She has never been under the illusion that her own existence has given her father any joy, but then what sort of person would she have to be to earn his respect? She places the sugar on a tray, along with the small jug of milk and the cups, and brings them to the small table between the sofas. The pair don’t spare her a word of thanks or even a brief glance.

Dr Hathaway’s hand lingers on the clasp of his case. “If I give you this, could you truly do it? Could you really–”

“Capture the angel of Death?” Roderick says. “I believe I could.”

She shudders unexpectedly. The old groundskeeper used to say a sudden chill meant someone was walking over your grave.

Dr Hathaway clicks open the clasp and takes out an aged, leather bound book. It has no title on the cover, just gold markings in square, geometric patterns. 

“The Magdalene Grimoire,” her father mutters, his eyes wide in an ominous sort of wonder. “With the spells recorded in the book, we will see our sons returned to us.”

The next night is a full moon. She stands by the door with Sykes, welcoming men and women dressed in midnight blue robes to the manor and directing them towards the door that leads to the cellar. They’re all part of Roderick’s ‘Order of Ancient Mysteries’ which as far as she can tell is a cult of fanatics who still believe in witchcraft. They come to Fawny Rig once a month, to listen to her father read from so-called ‘spell books’ as though he is a preacher.

The fanatics pull hoods over their heads and descend the narrow stone steps into the cellar with lit candles grasped in their hands. Roderick leads the way, the book Dr Hathaway gave him tucked under his arm. 

She shoots Sykes a concerned frown but he just shrugs. He’s paid to organise the household and guard Burgess’ collection of relics, not to ask questions. Questions are a dangerous game with Roderick.

She trails after them and shuts the iron lock on the door behind her.

The cellar is more like a crypt, an expansive room sprawling under the house, held up by pillars and arches. In the low candlelight she makes out a set of markings on the floor in the heart of the room and this is where the Order of Ancient Mysteries gathers.

The shapes and symbols are unfamiliar to her, painted onto the flagstones, twisting and curling over each other to form a circle. Roderick stands at the very edge of it by a brass lectern.

She watches, half hidden behind a pillar as they stand around the circle and Roderick opens the book, his desired page already marked and studied in the hours since it has been in his possession. 

“Tonight,” her father says to his congregation, “we will achieve what no one before us has attempted. We will summon and imprison Death.”

His eyes meet hers through the shadowy space, heavy and sunken with age, grief and months worth of sleepless nights. They glisten slightly too. 

He holds his hands out and looks down at the markings on the floor. “Here, in the darkness.”

The others echo his words, softly and melodically at first. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

And so the ritual begins.

“I give you a coin made from a stone,” Roderick says, presenting the object to the ceiling as though the eyes of God are looking down from the heavens, through the house and the earth, and drops it to the floor, inside the circle of markings.

“I give you a knife from under the hills.” He holds up a thin blade and lifts his other arm so the sleeve of his robe drops to his elbow. “I give you the blood from out of my vein.”

She winces but does not look away as he draws the knife along the skin of his forearm, until dark droplets begin to fall and stain the markings. 

“I give you a song I stole from the dirt and I give you a feather,” he says, raising a white feather that almost seems to glow through the gloom, “pulled from an angel’s wing.”

And all the while the voices persist. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

He drops the feather and it drifts gently down, landing in the very heart of the circle. 

The room is still and she holds her breath.

The feather starts to move. It twists in a circle and floats up, lurching and turning as though it’s being blown about by a breeze she cannot feel or hear.

The voices raise to an urgent chant. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

She clenches her fingertips against the stone of the pillar. She tries to meet her father’s eye again but he is fixated on the feather flying above their heads.

He calls over the chanting, “I summon you with poison,” and the moment he does the feather flickers like the striking of a match. “I summon you with pain! I open the way! I open the gates! I summon you in the name of the old Lords, we summon you together! Come!”

A noise, like a cracking whip splits her ears. The feather bursts into white and golden flames like the flash of a camera. The heat of it rushes over her face and burns her eyes.

And from the flames a body falls to the floor.

It thuds as it hits the ground, silencing the voices save for a few gasps and murmurs. She feels the flagstones rumble under her feet, sees the edges of a black cloak spilling across the floor and a head of long silver hair trailing from its head.

This isn’t an illusion. Roderick Burgess has brought forth a tangible entity, plucked from God-knows-where, lying motionless on the floor. For a moment she wonders if he is dead, until she sees a slight movement in his chest, but even then she fears she could be imagining it.

She takes a few unsure steps to where Roderick stands and the man– he is a man as far as she can tell– is further revealed to her. She can see his face now, his pale skin, the angles of his jaw and cheeks, the curve of his lips, but beyond that she finds herself unable to look away from the jewel that sits where his left eye should be. It is a bright, deep shade of blue and dotted with silver specs, like the vast expanse of twilight when the stars are out but the sky is not quite black. The eye is framed by twisted, red flesh and a scar, slicing from his brow to his cheek. It takes her a moment to realise his other eye, closer to the ground, is closed. 

The only other parts of him she can see are the tips of his fingers, clasped around a small pouch.

“Is this… Death?” she utters.

“That remains to be seen,” Roderick says. He points to the pouch. “Get that for me.”

She stares back at her father. How he can speak so flippantly when a man has been conjured, seemingly from thin air, is beyond her. But he glares back, his dark expression only more formidable with his aged frown.

So she steps forward and begins to lower herself beside the man.

“Careful, girl!” Roderick barks, “don’t break the binding circle.”

She stops and looks down, where her skirt is inches from brushing over the markings on the floor. She shuffles back and, with trembling fingers, reaches for the pouch. It’s not hard to take, the man hardly resists, twitching his fingers to keep it in his grasp. It feels wrong, stealing from someone too weak to hold onto what is his.

She looks into the jewel-like eye. Can he see through it? Perhaps it has something to do with the scar? Did he place it there himself, or was he simply made this way?

Someone snatches the pouch from her. She looks up at her father as he undoes the strings and peers inside. “Sand,” he mutters, and stows it away inside his robes.

“And the jewel,” he says to her.

She means to protest, but finds she cannot.

She avoids the markings as she leans forwards. She presses her fingertips beside the man’s eye. His skin is cold and firm.

She swallows her guilt and the nauseous feeling in her throat, nudging her fingertips into the socket. It takes her a few attempts, but she pries the jewel free, wincing when she feels it come loose. If he feels any pain he hardly shows it. His brow furrows but his other eye remains closed, and he makes no sound.

She stands and offers the jewel to her father.

Roderick holds it to the light of one of the candles, giving a curious hum before he pockets that too.

“Move,” he mutters to her, pushing her out of his way as he stands over the man. He tugs on the black cloak and it falls into fragments that fade away, like dust on a breeze. The man’s body is bare, pale skin running over details of muscle and bone. He shivers and twitches like he has a fever, but still he does not speak, or even let out a breath.

“We’ll let our guest recover,” Roderick says, “and then we shall make our demands.

They leave him there for days. He does not move, or ask for food or water.

She doesn’t dream in the nights since they captured their ‘guest’. In fact she hardly sleeps at all. Each morning she wakes, already exhausted, having felt like she’s only closed her eyes for a few brief moments.

Then come the stories in the newspapers. They call it ‘the sleeping sickness’. People all over the country, and in fact the world, have been plagued, either to not sleep at all or never wake up.

On a cold, drizzly morning, a stranger appears at the door to the manor.

She listens and watches from the top of the stairs, crouching by the bannister to stay out of sight as a man with choppy silver hair and pale skin strides into the entrance hall, with Roderick following closely behind.

“Do I know you?” her father asks, furiously.

“No.” The stranger’s voice is low and almost seductive. “But I know all about you, Roderick Burgess, and the being trapped in your basement.”

“You mean to intimidate me?”

She sees a flash of a grin and a pair of pale purple eyes through the wooden balusters.

“I am here to help you,” the stranger says. “There are benefits to keeping one of the Targaryens in your confinement.”

“Targaryens?” her father echoes.

“Did you think Death was the only one of her kind? Death has family. Destiny, Despair, Desire…”

“And who have I got?”

“Dream,” the stranger says with a smile that bares his teeth.

A shiver runs over her shoulders. She keeps her jaw tight to stop herself from reacting to it.

Roderick scoffs. “What good is a God who governs dreams?”

The stranger's voice darkens. “There was a saying in the ancient times of humanity, that said the Targaryens are closer to Gods than men. But they are not Gods. They are more than Gods. They are Endless.”

He tells Roderick of Dream’s vestments, the pouch of sand and his sapphire, both of which he says Roderick may manipulate for his own influences. He says the binding circle will not be enough to contain their prisoner, that they must construct a sphere of glass within the circle.

Most crucially of all, he says no one must be allowed to fall asleep in Dream’s presence.

“Why are you helping me?” Roderick finally asks.

The stranger runs his tongue over his teeth and smiles to himself. “Little family dispute, I shan’t bore you with the details. But for your sake, and for mine, he must not escape.”

He offers his hand to Roderick, who returns the gesture after a moment of hesitation.

Before he heads for the door, the stranger’s eyes trail up to where she hides. Her heart leaps with a sense of dread, like she’s seen something she wasn’t meant to. 

She doesn’t trust him, not by the look or sound of him, but her father does. He follows the stranger’s instructions, ordering the construction of the glass sphere, to be welded around their prisoner as it is made. Finally, he arranges a rota of guards to keep watch over him, under strict orders to never fall asleep, lest their prisoner escape into their dreams.

The details of his face are etched into her memory, even after months, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his upper lip, the silver falling over his shoulders. If she could dream, she is sure she would dream of him. Instead she holds onto the flashes of images that appear before her waking eyes, the pale skin of his bare body against the floor, the stars in his sapphire eye, now kept locked away in her father’s study.

She knows Roderick has tried to bargain with him, and each time he returns from the cellar more furious than when he entered it. “He will not speak a word!” his voice bellows through the quiet halls of the manor. “He will not even look at me!”

When she dares to ask questions, Roderick glares at her and tightens the grip on his cane.

The stranger with silver hair was right about something, wealth and admiration have come to Roderick Burgess in droves since he acquired the Lord of Dreams. It’s something about the sapphire, or the sand, something she doesn’t understand, but their family comes across good fortunes, which is almost entirely spent on lavish parties to entertain Roderick’s ever expanding crowd of admirers.

She wakes with the sunrise, from a void and dreamless sleep. The manor is littered with empty bottles, full ashtrays, plates of half-eaten food, odd shoes and playing cards. Her father must still be asleep, which is odd. He is usually an early riser, even after a night of drinking.

A rumbling in her stomach has her heading through the entrance hall towards the kitchen, but she stops when she sees two men waiting by the door to the cellar– two of the guards her father has hired to watch the prisoner, dressed in smart suits with service revolvers just poking out of their jackets. They look restless, peering their heads round corners, shifting their weight on their legs, not wanting to step too far from the door.

“We can’t just leave,” one mutters to the other.

“I’m not staying down there with that… thing one second longer than I have to–”

“Good morning,” she calls.

They look at her in unison, and frown.

“Have you seen Noel and Mauirce?” one of the men asks. “They’re nearly half an hour late.”

The rotation of the guards. They take eight hour shifts in pairs.

Her eyes glance to the cellar door, opened only a fraction. “I could watch him until they get here,” she says, “if you want to leave.”

It doesn’t take them long to agree.

They leave through the front door. When she hears it shut, she finally lets herself reach for the handle to the cellar door. The handle is cold, untouched for hours at a time, and a little stiff. She pushes on it slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible. 

With the cellar door closed, she shuts out the light and warmth of the morning. A silent, icy draft drifts through the narrow stairway. She follows it down, all the way to the dull, eerie light of the main chamber.

The sight takes her breath away, the glass sphere, suspended above the ground, still within the circle of markings that keep his power contained.

He sits in the centre, still bare, his knees tucked into his chest and his hair falling around his face like a veil.

As far she knows, no food or water ever passes the threshold to the cellar, and the cage is never opened. How does he breathe? How does he eat? How does he not wither away? He just sits there, stoic, his face frozen in time like a statue, like the image of a god cut from marble, to be preserved and admired.

A man like that cannot be real, and yet there he is.

“Hello,” she says. 

He does not react to her voice or the sound of her footsteps as she walks further into the chamber.

If he can even hear her. She wonders how thick the glass is, if sound can permeate it, or does he just hear the sound of his own breath echoed back to him, endlessly.

She comes to lean against one of the pillars, tracing her fingertips down the cold, rough surface of the stone.

“Are you really the Lord of dreams?” she says. 

His gaze lifts and turns to her, just enough that she can see his chin, his nose, and a single violet eye. It is not like the stranger’s, it is far more vibrate, burning with with a silent fury that makes her heart flutter and her skin feel tight.

“I have not dreamt since that night.”

She knows it isn’t just her. It’s the sleeping sickness, the war, the cloud of darkness looming over the rest of the world.

“The groundskeeper has a son, he’s only ten years old. He’s been asleep for months now. He can’t even eat. If he doesn’t wake up, he’ll die.”

He does not react, but his eye follows her as she takes a single step away from the pillar, towards the sphere.

“This is my father’s– our doing, yes?”

Her eyes dip to his chest, to the movement of his lungs underneath skin and muscle, a steady rise and fall with a deep, patient breath. 

“My father is a reasonable man, if you could give him something, anything, I am sure he would let you out.”

He tilts his head, until she can just see the point of his scar on his cheek and the edge of his empty eye socket.

He is simultaneously the most terrifying and most beautiful thing she has ever laid eyes upon. The low light only accentuates the harsh angles in his face, the ridges and lines in the muscles and tendons of his neck, torso, arms and legs.

She takes another step closer. “I would let you out, if I could,” she says quietly, like a secret.

He blinks softly, and when her eyes flicker to his lips she sees them curled into something almost like a smile, but not quite. 

“Oh you would, would you?”

Her blood runs cold at the sound of her father’s voice. She whips her head around just in time to see Roderick marching towards her with his hand reaching out. His fist grips at her hair, and when she yelps in pain he hisses at her to be quiet. He drags her back up the steps, away from the cold cellar, to the warmth and the light, to the world without dreams.

She bathes before dinner, wincing as she runs her hands over the fresh bruises that mark her skin. Most of them are red, others are set deep and already turning a greyish purple. 

Her father’s fury still rings in her ears. “Stupid girl! If he escapes he will slaughter us all!”

Leaning on her back is especially painful, it’s where her body took the brunt of his cane. She brings her knees into her chest, hunching over herself.

She hasn’t cried over her father’s cruelty in years, not since she was a small child. He’d always call her weak for it. Randall never cried when he was disciplined, because he knew, deep down, it was good for him. Perhaps she is simply not as strong as Randall was.

Her tears are hot and stinging in her eyes. She blinks and lets them fall onto her knees, to become the dew that lingers on her skin.

“Do you want to die, girl? Because it can be easily remedied!”

She doesn’t wear anything special, a white satin dress, with long, billowy sleeves, and applies some rouge to her cheeks, to make her seem more awake, more alive.

She reaches the bottom of the staircase as the clock in the entrance hall starts to chime. Five times. Marking the start of another shift rotation. 

Two men appear from the hall that leads from the cellar, vaguely nodding as they pass her.

She can see into the dining room from the stairs, an enormous table set with silver cutlery and china plates, for just two of them.

The door to her father’s study is closed, obstructing the voices within. He’s arguing with someone. 

Before she can stop herself, she’s walking towards the cellar. She tries the handle to find it unlocked. With one final look to the door to the study, she descends back into the darkness.

Two guards sit on wooden chairs by the entrance from the stairway, and immediately stand to attention as she walks into the chamber.

“Miss,” one of them calls, “you cannot be here.”

And she seems to have caught his attention too. He looks up from where he sits in the sphere, his forearm resting on his knee. His hair is pushed from his face, and his violet eye is wide, curious.

“This is my father’s house, I will go where I please,” she says, shakily, continuing until she comes face to face with the glass.

He stares at her, somewhat furious, but in a way she knows it is not meant for her.

The men behind her are muttering to each other, she doesn’t hear their words, but she hears their panic.

“It isn’t right for him to keep you here,” she says. “It isn’t right for him to think he can play with mortality. And I am as bad as he is for letting this happen.”

The tendons of his hand flex as he clenches his fist, his fingers restless as he stares at her, intently.

“If I let you out,” she whispers, “would you harm me?”

His face softens as his eye moves over her face. 

He’s studying her, she realises. She imagines him noting the curves of her cheeks and chin, the shape of her mouth, perhaps the faint teartracks and the dark circles under her eyes.

What does he make of her, the daughter of his captor, the one who pried the sapphire from his eye? Roderick could be right, he might slaughter her the moment he is free from his cage. 

“I would like to believe that you wouldn’t,” she says.

His expression gives nothing away.

Suddenly he shifts. His muscles tense as he comes to his feet and uncurls his spine to stand before her. Something about his movements are distinctly inhuman.

The guards behind her are shouting now, telling her to step away, calling for Mr Burgess. Their voices are inconsequential to her, muffled as though spoken behind a closed door. Her heart pounds in her ears. All she sees is him, the intense gaze of his eye, a wide palm reaching out and pressing against the glass.

She reaches up slowly, his eye growing wider with every inch she comes closer to touching the glass that separates them, but not quite meeting it.

His brow furrows as if to question her. Why are you hesitating? What are you afraid of?

She won’t be dragged upstairs again. She won’t be thrown to the floor with nowhere else to go. She will not suffer at the hands of Roderick Burgess any longer.

So she presses her hand to the glass.

Her skin is feverishly cold, her arms weightless. She can almost feel the shape of his palm through the glass, but not quite, like she is reaching for something she will never touch, clawing to the memory of a dream.

She can feel herself slipping into numbness, her eyes and her limbs becoming heavy. She presses her fingernails against the glass, silently pleading though she doesn’t know what for. An escape? An end? Anything.

His face is strangely gentle as he pouts his lips, hushing her, lulling her panic. She can feel her breathing and her heartbeat slowing, but it does not frighten her.

The glass shatters, her knees give way. She is awake enough to know she is falling, but too far gone to stop herself.

But she does not need to.

The world around her is silent– no, a gentle breeze drifts over her skin and whispers in her ear. Sunlight beams onto one side of her face and the other rests against bare skin. She feels a weight around her waist, something propping her body upright.

She tries to steady herself but the ground shifts beneath her. The arms around her only tighten their grip when she stumbles.

Finally she lets her eyes flutter open. They are in a desert, a vast expanse of dry sand, reaching as far as the eye can see.

Her head is moving with his breath, against his chest.

She tilts her gaze up, close enough that her lips barely brush over the base of his throat.

His eye is already fixed on her, holding her firmly in his arms, pulling her into him.

Wordlessly, he releases one arm from her waist, and reaches down, keeping his eye on her face. When he brings himself back up, she looks at his closed fist, where sand slips from between his fingers. 

Her confusion must be visible on her face because he smiles softly at her, letting out a low “hmm” as he does.

She means to blink, but when she opens her eyes the world has changed again.

She lies face down against the ground of the cellar, dust and dirt pressing into her cheek, broken glass littering the floor around her.

She blinks again through the haze of sleep still clouding her vision. She makes out a figure in a long black coat with silver hair falling down his back. He stands over two bodies, lying lifeless on the ground, and stalks towards another.

Roderick is at the base of the stairs. He raises his cane and cries out as the prisoner reaches into his coat.

Her father’s voice fades into a spluttering, retching sound. Then he is silent. His body slumps to the floor with a gut-wrenching thud. When the stranger walks away, she sees her father sprawled out on the floor, blood spurting from his throat, seeping into his shirt, pooling on the floor around him.

She pushes herself up, leaning on her hands as her vision is blocked once again by a black coat. He stands over her, blood dripping from a knife he holds in his hand, his eye a brighter shade of violet than it was before.

He kneels beside her, taking her chin in his fingertips.

“Are you hurt?” he says. His voice is a hypnotic blend of soft and harsh, low and light, chilling in a way that sends a wave of warmth through her stomach.

She looks past his shoulder, where Roderick’s skin is turning from white to grey. “What did you do to my father?” she utters.

He jerks her head back to him. His expression is dark, lips upturned into a sneer.

Does he expect her to be grateful?

“My tools,” he says.

“You’re… what?”

“My tools. The sapphire and the pouch.”

The items that were stolen from him, that her father has now paid for with blood.

“Are you going to kill me too?” she says, digging her fingertips into the stone and the shards of glass beneath her.

He tilts his head and his lips twitch in a flicker of movement. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Tell me where they are. I will not harm you.”

Three men lay dead mere feet from them, and yet she finds herself wanting to trust him.

He offers her his arm as she stands, gripping at the thick, leather sleeve. Her palms are covered in small cuts from the glass, droplets of bright red blood pearling at the edges. He takes her wrists in his hands to have a look and tuts to himself.

“Quickly,” he says, moving towards the steps, leading her along with him, past the bodies of the guards, and the body of her father.

She brings him to the study, her hands shaking, bloody and outstretched before her. The door is wide open, a stack of papers thrown carelessly to the floor.

Roderick’s safe sits in a black cabinet in the corner of the room. She uses her fingertips to open it, wincing at the pieces of glass still stuck in her skin, but she swallows down the pain.

She guesses the combination on the first try. 1895– Randall’s birth year.

There, in the centre shelf, above the Grimoire, below a stack of banknotes, is the pouch of sand and the sapphire.

He reaches for the gem first. She turns away as he fixes it back into his socket, remembering the weight of it in her palm when she took it from him. She sees him reach forward again, but not for the pouch. He takes a hold of her wrists.

With no magic words or spells, he waves a hand over her palms. For a moment she sees a glow in his sapphire eye. The pain vanishes, so does the blood, the glass and the dirt. 

She blinks a few effortless tears from her eyes. Tears for her father, tears of relief, she cannot place a cause.

Cold fingertips meet her skin once more, as the Lord of Dreams wipes her tears away, bringing her gaze to meet his.

He leans in closer, until his forehead meets hers. “Sleep,” he whispers.

She falls into him, to find herself wide awake, clinging onto him as she had done in the desert.

But they are somewhere else entirely. The sky above them is a pale yellow, like daybreak, painted with swirling grey clouds. The land here is… dead. Dead trees, barren mountains and hills, and in the distance, beyond a dried lake, is a castle of red brick, decrepit, falling into ruin.

“You see the damage that has been done to my realm?” he says. With her ear pressed against his chest, his voice is cavernous and she feels everything, the way his words drag through his throat. She feels his pain at being confined, the loss of his home and his creations.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I do not forgive easily, that is why Roderick Burgess had to die. But you…” he pulls away from her so he might look at her properly, cupping the sides of her face and swiping his thumbs over her cheeks. “I do not need an apology from you. We are free of him now.”

“Is that what you think I wanted?” 

He hums with tight lips. “I have seen your dreams, as I see the dreams of every mortal. I see them as clearly as you perceive the waking world. It just so happened that our dreams coincided.”

She had never dreamt of her father’s death and she had certainly never imagined that she might have played a part in it. But she cannot deny the weight now lifted from her shoulders. She will never have to earn his approval, she will never have to endure him again. She is free of him.

“Go now,” he says, “I am sure you have your own business to resolve.”

He releases his hold of her and brings his hands behind his back. As he walks towards the castle the world around her starts to fade. She can smell the musk of the manor, the lingering smoke of her father’s cigars, the distinct scent of a winter evening.

“Wait!” she calls.

The ends of his coat swish around his legs as he turns back to face her. “Yes?” he says, the corners of his mouth curling up into a small smile.

“I want to know your name.”

“I have had many names,” he says.

“And how would you have me know you?”

“Aemond,” he says.

She echoes his name, letting her mouth linger on the final syllable. “Will I see you again?”

He draws the tip of his tongue between his lips. “Perhaps,” he says.

When she wakes she is laid out on one of the leather sofas of her father’s study. She looks down at her hands, traces her fingertips down her face, now free of the dirt and dust. 

She wonders if she might have dreamt all of it, the beautiful man in the sphere, the glass breaking, her father’s blood on the floor…

Her life is never the same after that. With her father dead, his estate passes to her. For the first time, her life is hers to do with as she pleases.

And yet she feels an absence, a hollow longing in her chest.

Her dreams come back to her since she set him free, and each night she dreams of him.

He only appears in brief moments, like lighting, bright and brilliant, but gone in a heartbeat, before she can truly see him. She sees the movement of a leather coat, flashes of silver, violet and sapphire blue. Sometimes she is met with darkness as a pair of lips ghosts over her neck with a contented sigh and a warm breath.

She cannot bear it.

As she lies in the empty manor house, she traces her fingers over her body, her lips, down her neck and her chest, underneath her cotton nightgown, to her navel and the pool of wanting wetness between her legs, trying to imagine they are his. 

She pictures the way his hair fell around his face, the coldness of his skin, the curve of his lips. She imagines them parting in a small sigh, the sound of his breath, the way his chest hummed as she circles over her bundle of nerves. Pleasure sparks at first but it keeps slipping from her grasp.

She circles faster, harder, searching for a spot that will finally give her the release she craves.

She feels heat and a sheen of sweat settling on the surface of her skin, her breathing hitches, her hips twitch under her touches. The pleasure heightens, then fades.

With her eyes tightly shut, she spurs herself on with thoughts of him, breathlessly chanting his name into the empty space and cold air of her bedroom.

“Aemond… Aemond…”

Something changes.

The mattress shifts beneath her and a weight presses against her body, her legs, her stomach, her chest.

A hand clasps around hers, ceasing her movements, and bringing it to rest by her side.

She laments the loss of the friction against her bud, her pleasure pulled away from her, but in its place anticipation blooms within her.

When she opens her eyes he is above her, against her, hovering his face over hers so that all she sees are his eyes, one violet, one sapphire.

“You have my attention,” he says in a soft but unsettling voice.

A thrill ripples through her body.

She whispers his name on an exhale of breath, running her fingertips over his arms, tense and toned as his props himself over her. 

But she is somewhat dazed, her senses numbed by fatigue and the echo of the pleasure she had been chasing.

“Is this real?” she utters.

Aemond leans further into her. She feels a weight between her hips and an unmistakable hardness prodding at her centre as he brings his lips to her neck, pressing a slow, teasing kiss against a sensitive spot of skin that has her body tensing and her fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Does if feel real?” he whispers against her skin.

How much has he truly seen of her dreams, her desires, she wonders? Perhaps she should feel some kind of shame, but she cannot, not when she is on the precipice of something bright, beautiful and damning. She can hardly stand being on the edge of it, having him so close but not close enough.

She wraps her arms around his neck as he teases her with his lips, crosses her legs around his hips, meeting his movements as he torturously grinds his hardening cock against her cunt, dripping with arousal, twitching and clenching around nothing at the anticipation.

“Needy little thing,” he mutters, dragging his nose along her neck as he comes to kiss the hollow of her throat.

His voice sends a shockwave through her body. Her hips buck against his, determined for relief as her fingers thread through the soft strands of his hair, and tug. 

He lets out a quiet growl against her skin. A hand rests upon her thigh and trails up, bunching the hem of her nightgown to her waist and adjusting the other side. 

He sits back, watching her with the same darkness and intensity as when he was trapped inside the cage, intrigued at the least, fascinated if she is presumptive. 

The irony of being laid half bare before him and at his mercy does not escape her.

“I’ve heard you crying out for me, little mortal,” he says. 

“You said you can see my dreams,” she says, “how?”

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he says, “in The Dreaming. I see your dreams as I see the dreams of every other being. I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world. But you…” he muses, settling his hands on either side of her waist. “You are incessant.”

She shivers and writhes under his touch, a pulsing heat settling within her.

She traces her hands over his, where they grip at her waist, along his smooth skin, the tendons and veins. His fingers are long and lithe. She knows they would feel so perfect, wrapped around her throat, stroking over her skin, pushing inside of her wet heat to coax her pleasure.

Aemond smiles to himself as though he can hear her thoughts.

He grips harder into her flesh and pulls his hips back, only to let his cock slide over her slick folds with teasingly gentle thrusts.

Every stroke pushes her closer and closer to the edge, but not enough to find release. She feels the frustrating want pulsing through her body, the coil getting tighter and tighter, her cunt clenching over nothing.

“Aemond…” she says with a breathless mewl, “please…”

“You really want it, don’t you?” Aemond growls, resting his forehead against hers. “Just feel how wet that empty little cunt is for me.”

Her eyes trail along the angles of his face, the line of his scar, the night sky in his eyes as he stares down at her, the gentle curve of his lips and how they settle into a soft expression. 

Her gaze slips further down, over his throat, his collar, his pale, bare chest, the ridges of the muscles on his abdomen, the slight dip in his waist, the trail of silver hair to his cock, long, hard and flushed with need, transfixed by the way it moves against her.

She holds her breath each time he withdraws, stifling her whines into his mouth when he only keeps teasing her.

“I want it,” she groans, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you.”

He lets out a contented hum as he leans down to kiss her. The movements of his mouth are slow and consuming, claiming her with lips, tongue and teeth, wetness and warmth.

She holds him close by the sides of his face. In his violet eye she sees his hunger, his rage, his lust. In his sapphire, she sees oblivion. 

And finally, he eases himself into her. 

He fucks her delicately, dragging his cock through her gently, slowly, deeply. His lips ghost over her skin, her temple, her cheek, back to her mouth with light kisses and strained but soft breaths. 

With a few deft circles over her bud she feels herself come undone around him. Her climax burns through her and she holds him closer for purchase, digging her fingertips into his skin as her resolve melts and her legs tremble around his hips.

Aemond doesn’t stop. He holds her against the mattress with a determined grip, fucking her through her peak until her pleasure settles and simmers once more.

Being kissed by him, held by him, fucked by him feels light a dream, that weightless, numb feeling of being between consciousness and sleep coursing through her limbs. It feels good, it feels deep, it feels perfect.

She cannot be sure how many climaxes he draws from her, she just feels him, his heat, his hands and his skin as he repositions her legs, guides her onto her front, brings her up to her knees, pushes her back down again, until she is a blissful, mindless mess.

He meets his own end when he has her face down on the bed, her face turned to the side against the pillow, his mouth on the underside of her jaw as he pounds into her. 

“You’re doing so well,” she hears him rasp, “you’ve been so good to me… fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”

Her mind is beyond words and coherent thoughts. She utters the only thing she feels, the only thing she can think of, “Aemond… Aemond… Aemond…”

He stills his hips against her rear with a guttural moan, pressing his face against hers, squeezing her waist under his hands. He allows himself a few more shallow thrusts until he is spent. She feels his cock pulse within her, a warmth pooling, his spend dripping from her cunt once he has pulled away.

The weight dissipates from her back and for a moment she lies there, basking in the afterglow, feeling her chest rise and fall against the bed, the softness of her sheets under her fingertips.

She wakes to a gentle breeze running over her skin and slipping down her spine.

She allows her eyes to flutter open and recoils at the pale sunlight beaming through the spaces in the curtains. 

She holds her breath.

She hears no sound or sign of life other than her own pulse. 

She twists herself to sit up, noting that her bedsheets are neat and the hem of her nightgown is where it should be. 

Is it possible that she dreamed it? She remembers it so vividly, but the mind has a way of playing tricks. Perhaps it was only a dream.

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he had said. “I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world.”

How do we determine what is real? she wonders as she pulls on a robe and goes to open the curtains. The morning floods her bedroom. It brings no warmth, but it brings light and life back into the room. 

To dream is to live beyond ourselves, why should that be any less true than the world around me? 

She seats herself before her vanity, reaching for the drawer for her hairbrush.

But something catches her eye, a glint of colour against mahogany wood, a small gem catching the sunlight.

She takes it between her thumb and index finger and brings it before her eyes; a sapphire, the size of a pearl, a deep and vibrant blue. Its edges are uneven and dull, uncut, as though plucked straight from the earth. 

She turns it about between her fingers. It could be a trick of the light, but there is depth to it, a vastness within. The sapphire seems to capture the night sky, dotted with glimmering stars.

His was the same.

As the dazed state of sleep wears off, she feels the satisfied ache between her legs, the spots on her skin marked by him. She smiles to herself and holds the gem in her palm, this precious gift, this reminder, this promise from the Lord of Dreams.

Tags (comment to be added)

Sweet Dream taglist: @solisarium @sirenangelroyal @sabrinasstar @shygardengalaxy @aemondsfavouritebastard @wintrr13 @thedamewithabook @lexwolfhale @rainyforest777

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy @theoneeyedprince @tsujifreya @dreamsofoldvalyria

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen fic #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen oneshot #aemond fanfic #aemond fanfiction #aemond oneshot #aemond x reader #aemond x ofc #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x ofc #aemond targaryen x oc #aemond targaryen x you #hotd #house of the dragon #house of the dragon fanfic #the sandman #the sandman au #my fics

[fixing-bad-posts]

⠀

actually i think the point of immortal characters having no experiences that a regular human couldn’t also understand (losing loved ones, being left behind, things ending, feeling unable to connect to the world around you) is that the ‘tragic eldritch immortal’ trope exists precisely to examine regular human experiences through the lens of elevated fiction.

grief and loss and alienation are banal and the point is to stretch these parts of the human experience to their emotional extremes. doesn’t grief make you feel like less of a person? doesn’t loss make you wish you never had to experience it ever again? doesn’t alienation simultaneously make you feel like a shadow and like a god?

and actually i think death 100% does give life meaning—and that meaning is different for everyone—so taking away a character’s ability to die is a way of exploring what death means to that character.

if your idea of ‘realism’ is to make your immortal characters completely well-adjusted and unremarkable because you think they would experience the world ‘essentially the same’ as any other human, i have to wonder why you’re engaging with this trope at all.

#ask fbp #fbp doorframe #anon ask

[corazondebeskar-reads]

live to rise - chapter two

live to rise series

two: morning will come soon

series masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter

gladiator!Din Djarin x f!reader

word count: 3.2k

summary: As the Mandalorian makes himself a more permanent addition to the barracks, you get to know the elusive man a little more while grappling with the reality of the arena. [We get to know everyone a little better before things kick up a notch in chapter three :) ]

warnings: dark, dead dove do not eat, captivity, forced proximity, canon-typical violence, prisoner of war, slavery, fight to the death, au where the empire wins, discussions of genocide & war, graphic descriptions of violence & injuries, gore, brutality, religious themes, fictional religion, major character deaths, minor character deaths, angst, helmetless Din Djarin, themes of grief and loss, slow burn

Please heed the warnings.

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

He doesn’t notice until his forty-eighth fight, but there are children in the stands. It’s not their mere presence that simmers his bile. 

It’s the glee.

Violence is a wet nurse for Mandalorian children. They witness the raw essence of life turned to food and know the gush of a foe’s blood early in life. But they respect it. 

They respect the fight and honor the lives they take. They weigh each kill and hang it from their ribs. They know what it means to be capable of exposing a being’s innards to the sun, what it means to hold a creature as blood froths in its lungs. 

These children are reared to crave it. They’ll never feel the touch of violence, he thinks, but they’re fed by it. They play with these lives like it's a game.

The distraction costs Din a chunk of flesh but gains him a rotted tooth on the edge of the gash. 

You’re in the barracks when they bring him back that afternoon. You go still and quiet, ducking into the shadows, but, as usual, they don’t bother to check the cells. He saw you, though. You’re inside C-6, and he has a clear view through his window into the cell opposite. 

Once the guards leave, you pick back up mid-sentence into what must have been an already brewing rant.

“—pride. So stupid. The only—punished when you resist—is you.”

The humanoid grumbles something Din can’t quite hear. 

“Yeah, well, —bacta, and I don’t, so—” you retort.

When you slip out of the cell, the automatic lock snaps shut with a resounding clunk. Your hands are wound up in the underbelly of your skirts and come back out dry, at least, if not spotless. 

Not that Din notices right away. His mouth had gone fuzzy when you hiked up the layers to reveal the length of your calf. He shoves the feeling away and watches as you check carefully around the corners before slipping into the chamber between the barracks and the rest of the facilities. 

He shakes it from his fingertips. It’s the post-fight adrenaline, he knows. Mandalorians are no strangers to fucking out their feelings as the world burns around them. He cannot—will not—entertain these thoughts of you, lest he become more of the monster they make him out to be.

And every part of him is too rough for the likes of you. He won’t be responsible for marring you with his too-tight grip and desperate cock. He wouldn’t press his pain into your cunt and learn to breathe again through your cries and moans. 

He wanted to preserve you somehow, press you like a flower between the pages of a book. Even his protection would see you crushed by his selfish desire. 

So instead, he funnels the feeling into righteous anger and determination, pushing himself in his exercises until his muscles ache and scream for oxygen. He slumps against the wall, not bothering to go to the cot, and dreams fitfully of his son.

He had made the call in his own chambers. The ship had left two hours ago, tracking along the path with no issues—yet.

“Who is this? How did you get this line?” snaps a voice he does not recognize. 

“He’ll know. Tell him we’re going forward with operation esk, and the package is on-route.” 

“Message received,” cuts in the voice he was waiting for. “May the Force be with you.”

“May the stars light your way,” Din returns, and cuts the line. 

Grogu’s fast asleep when Din tucked him into the pod. He slipped the stuffed blurrg under one of the baby’s arms. It’s to be a short journey, but there’s a canteen and a tin of snacks.

The rest of his son’s belongings are carefully packed in the small cargo hold of the StarSpeeder 1000 they’d managed to salvage, complete with an RX pilot. Din didn’t favor leaving the child’s fate to a droid, but it had been thoroughly reprogrammed to override its tourist-geared protocol. 

All in all, it’s an innocuous ship with a registered pilot and route. The chain code would suffice under basic examination, and the manifest is set with a handful of false identities. 

He may not understand the Force, but he has to draw faith that it will ferry his son safely into the waiting hands of Skywalker at some destination unknown.

Skywalker had sent the coordinates directly to the droid so they couldn’t be tortured from Din. 

A wise decision, Din thinks wryly, but they haven’t interrogated him yet. 

It makes sour hope bloom—perhaps they think there’s nothing to be gained. In the darker moments, he worries they know there’s nothing to be gained. 

As it was, each of the four of them only knew part of the plan. Din had the main strategy. Vizsla, the backup. Kryze, the route. And Fett—the rendevouz. For a man who claimed no ties to the Mandalorians, he was risking everything. 

Even the loneliest striil is loyal to someone, he supposes. 

He loses count after 60 fights or so. That’s about when he stops hating the idleness of his off days and starts longing for more rest. 

It’s not just the physicality. He does seem to be perpetually bruised and bleeding, but that’s not so much different than his bounty-hunting days. He’s loathe to admit that he’s perhaps beginning to feel the effects of aging. To grow old is an honor for Mandalorians. It means you’ve emerged victorious from your battles. He doesn’t feel he can wear that pride, though.

But no, his weariness is from the killing. He tried to see his opponents as quarry, but it was too hard to maintain. Not when he’d see their sallow faces and sunken eyes. Beings with broken tusks and battered limbs. Rebel starbirds. Shock trooper stripes. Prison numbers and slave brands. 

Yesterday’s fight had him facing a Miraluka who couldn’t have been much past her girlhood. And she wanted to live; oh, she wanted it so badly he could taste it. 

She didn’t know a thing about fighting. Worse yet, their weapons for the day were flails, something even he hadn’t much experience with. He could wield it, but instead, he let it fall to the sands. 

What a terrible way to die.

He saw it before it happened. Telegraphed in the arc of the chain, his brain completing the motion before it became real. She swung her arm out hard, trying to strike him in the chest, but he pushed back on his heel and easily dodged. Without something to crush, the momentum carried.

She grappled at the chain, trying to stop it. If only she had dropped it and moved, Din thought. If only, if only. 

Instead, it wedged itself in her back, spikes between her ribs. She gasped, wavering for a moment in shock, and dropped to her knees. The crowd moaned a collective “ooh” at the turn of luck.

He knelt in front of her, grasping her shoulders. 

“Just finish it,” she said, the trace of a whimper on the end. 

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Biala.”

“Biala, is there a prayer I can make for you? Any rites for your journey?”

She shook her head and coughed. Blood dribbled, and they both knew.

“I’m so sorry, Biala,” he murmured, cradling her head in his hands. 

And then it was over. He laid her body down as the bell rang and rose to his feet. Stomps and cheers from the stands fell muffled around his shoulders, and he sneered into the crowd. 

It only made them chant louder. 

He’s brought back to the reality of today at your entrance, voices buzzing as trays clattered back and forth.

“Come here, girl,” calls a voice from across the way. Din watches as you pause, his own tray of food waiting in your hands.

The gruff old Devaronian in C-4 is reaching his large hand between the bars of the window. 

“One sec,” you tell him, making your way to Din. You go to knock before you spy his shadow between the bars and avert your eyes. 

“Good evening,” you say, sliding the tray through the slot against the floor. “Need anything?”

It’s the same old song and dance. “No, thank you,” he says. 

“Okay, have a good night,” you tell the door politely. 

He doesn’t grab the tray right away. He watches instead as you go back across the hall. 

“Whatcha need, old man?” you tease. Vrar is your favorite, mostly because he’s been around for nearly a year, and you’ve had a chance to know him.

But something about his expression gives you pause. 

Din feels suddenly intrusive as you step closer and let the warrior touch your cheek, his palm much larger than your face. 

He can’t hear what’s said, but something terribly sad comes across you as you close your eyes and shake your head. 

“No, you can’t just give up,” you say, loud enough that Din can hear. 

His heart sinks. He had wondered how many were lost to hopelessness. 

“I’m not giving up,” Vrar tells you. “I’m an old man. I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m tired.”

“No,” you say, a harsh but quiet protest. You want to yell, but the guards will make you leave if they hear you. Tears burn at the corners of your eyes. 

“You can’t change my mind. I just wanted you to know before it happens. To know that I made this choice, that I will be at peace. You’ve been the one spot of kindness in this life.”  

Your voice is softer, breaking, crescendoing at the end as it pitches alongside your urgency,“—how much more you need; I’ll trade another year, please.”

“Absolutely not,” Vrar says. “When your time is up, get out and never look back. Look at me.” He waits for your focus. “You can’t save us.”

You break down into tears. Din feels something sharp pricking at his eyes, too. He shuts them and sits down on his cot, food forgotten. 

He doesn’t need to look to know you stay at Vrar’s door until the guards make you leave for the night. You sit against it, skirts splayed out around you like the rising sun, and talk to him, listen to his stories, even the ones you’ve heard over and over before. Especially those, as you try to commit them to your memory, to carry him with you. 

When you bring Din his breakfast in the morning, your eyes are bloodshot, and lips cracked from biting back your grief. For the first time, you don’t say anything. You rap your knuckles and slide the tray under. 

You stay until they come for him. You wait and stand with your hands wrapped around the bars of his window. When they take him to prepare for the arena, you watch down the hall until he’s gone. As he passes Din’s cell, he looks straight in. 

Neither man says a word, but their eyes meet, and Din nods. Vrar returns the gesture, satisfied. 

When Din looks back, you’re gone.

When you return two hours later, as his own turn in the arena nears, he doesn’t have to see your face to know. 

You’re not crying. But you move so quietly, held so tense, as you open the cell and scrub it clean, fitting it with new bedding. It’s the same routine as a deep cycle, but there was just one yesterday, and your sadness, though smothered, is palpable. 

They take him up before you’re done. Din lives to fight another day. He scrubs clean of his opponent’s blood in the cold fresher and tugs on the stiff, starched clothes left behind for him. When they take him back to his room, it’s been cleaned, but you’re gone, and there’s a new prisoner in C-4.  

You’re quiet again when you bring dinner, and though you do speak this time, it’s void of your usual softness. 

“Need anything?” you say, muted tone bristling his spine.

“I’m sorry,” he says, in lieu of an answer. 

You look up at the window out of reflex before quickly looking away. He’s not close enough for you to see, anyway. “What?” you say. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “for your loss.”

Your eyes close tight, and you cover your mouth for a moment. “I—thank you,” you whisper. Your voice cracks a little, and he feels terrible, like he shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have upset you. 

But you hesitate there, outside his door. You swallow hard against the ache. “Thank you,” you repeat, but it’s stronger, now, and laced with the heaviness of recognizing oneself in another. 

Which is why, when you pass by the newcomer’s door, and he tells you to smile pretty for him, Din snarls, “Shut your fucking mouth.” 

You freeze and look back at his dark door. The man is saying something idiotic, but Din can’t hear it from the pulse throbbing in his ears and his single-minded focus on you. 

You shake your head minutely, and he accepts the request to stand down. Before you turn and leave the barracks, you give his door a small, sorrowful smile. 

He worries a little about the newcomer. You shouldn’t have to be harassed and accosted like this. 

When you had brought breakfast, the man had tried to reach through the bars to grab your face. You had recoiled and dodged his grimy hands but otherwise ignored it. 

It turns out he doesn’t need to worry. The next day, the guards take both him and the creep up to the arena. 

When Din returns, your relief is unmistakable. 

You never ask about the fights, so he doesn’t have to lie to you. He doesn’t have to tell you the truth, either; doesn’t have to tell you how it’s the first one he’s dragged out on purpose. How he broke the man’s hands in his own for daring to try to touch you. How he broke his jaw for talking to you like that. 

It’s unlike him, and he hopes he can shrug it off, that the endless killing of beings he knows are fellow prisoners builds a layer of beskar in his bones each day. But Vrar was right. 

You’re a spot of light here, like the yellow blossoms that push up between duracrete. He’s not sure how you’ve kept it up this long, not after seeing how deeply you’re cut when “your” fighters die. But he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t lose that. Including keeping lowlife scum away where they can’t contaminate the barrack.

He dreams that night of taking you with him when he leaves and isn’t sure what to do with the thought in the morning. 

You paint him, too. Nicolai. The one who made your skin crawl. Even the portrait comes out predatory, and you wish you wouldn’t have to look at it every time until the page is full. 

It’s not the first time a resident has made you feel unsafe. Won’t be the last, either, you reckon. Unlike those of you who are serving criminal sentences, the fighters are all prisoners of war. But just because they were an enemy of the Empire does not make them a friend.

Most of them are good. Not all even raised a weapon against the Imperials. Some were support—medics, pilots, suppliers. Some were strangers who stood up to protect a Stormtrooper’s victim in the town square. Some were no one, who had the unfortunate luck of being related to or seen with a known insurgent. 

But some, well. Some were grifters playing both sides. Some were mercenaries, assassins, slavers. Some, like Nicolai, were druglords who couldn’t be bought—too busy running their own empires to respect the government. 

It’s funny, in that way that makes your stomach bile bite and claw at your throat. Everyone thought you needed to be afraid of the fighters. You have to shut and stow the book, not wanting to smudge Vrar’s portrait any further by thinking of him.

He never liked you being in the servant’s barracks. And for some reason, he never liked your bunkmate. Didn’t like Eli, who had never been anything but kind. Who was maybe your only friend. 

“Just something off about him,” Vrar had said. “But you shouldn’t trust anyone.” 

You had shaken your head. “I’m one of them,” you insisted. 

“Oh, how could I have forgotten,” he deadpanned, “you and your criminal record of… what was it again? Stealing from your own farm to feed hungry children? Being too polite to a trooper?”

“Shut up,” you groaned. “Evading tariffs is considered very serious, I’ll have you know.” 

When he was done teasing you, he had sobered right up. “I still don’t like it. Do you even know how to throw a punch?”

“No, but I’m sure they wouldn’t trust someone dangerous as a caretaker.”

He hadn’t been so sure, but it’s not like they let just anyone work down here. You had done a stint upstairs for a while, like everyone else, serving drinks in the sponsor’s lounge. 

After all, caretaker neglect could (and did) prematurely kill their stock. And it granted access to much more of the complex than most other roles. 

When you deliver dinner, the Mandalorian speaks to you again. You try to take it in stride. 

“If there’s another like him,” he says, voice like the creak of trees at night, “are you safe? Can you defend yourself?” 

It’s not what you expected. You purse your lips, frowning as you weigh your answers. “Harming a caretaker is prohibited,” you say after a moment.

“That’s not what I asked.” It’s firm and compelling in a way you can’t explain. Maybe it's the regality that he can’t contain, a tone leftover from negotiating and persuading or whatever kings do. 

“I don’t have to worry about being hurt by a fighter,” you say. 

He hums, accepting your answer.

You wonder if he heard the unspoken words you swallowed back. 

You eat with them again at Disdraa’s request, though it’s a quieter affair without Vrar’s booming voice. You find you don’t have it in you to joke around. 

She takes mercy on you, setting aside her meal to regale the hall with a story from her childhood on Ryloth. It’s not a happy story, exactly, but it ends with hope. 

You feel warm for the first time since Vrar’s death. “Thank you,” you murmur through her bars when you stand. 

She makes a show of rolling her eyes. “For what? I just like to hear myself talk, little bird.”

You make a show of returning the gesture, including the solemn smile she gave. 

It wasn’t the story, really. It was the way it reminded you of home. When you would visit the families of the dead and dying. When they would share themselves while sharing their love, how they would leap to comfort despite their own grief. 

Even for you, a stranger until that moment, someone they could easily hate for only arriving while someone was leaving. 

But that was not the way of things for your people. They allowed you, for however small a time, to be the vessel for their loved one, to gather and hold the memories until you could spill them on your canvas. To stand between their spirit and the void of the forgotten. 

To love and be loved, even fleetingly. 

Did you wish that just once, that love would stay? That you wouldn’t love knowing it was to be lost? In the dark of night, though you’d never admit it, you ached for it. 

next chapter

*title from "Prayer of the Refugee" by Rise Against

#din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x reader #mando x reader #the mandalorian fic #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x you #mando x you #din djarin x f!reader #the mandalorian x f!reader #gladiator!din djarin #fic: live to rise #if you see me messing around with formatting again no u didn't #did I mention this was a slow burn? lol

[l4long-winded]

vi. the puzzling case of clara grace and intricate, convoluted emotions

summary: there are a few ways that you and sherlock reconcile. one involves a bed, the other involves a carriage, a dance, and then there's the matter of the revolver. what was once unclear begins to be disclosed, but it can only be unveiled to a willing, open, and observant eye. you're going to find what's there as well as what you want to be there (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: i apologize for how long it took me to write this chapter. i also apologize for the behemoth that this installment is, but i had a certain vision that i wanted to portray so desperately. i pondered breaking this chapter up into several parts, but seeing that i intended this as the end, i kept it as is. i have been planning to write more involving this relationship, but i am not sure if i should. if that is something that any of you are interested in, please let me know. i intend to work on other projects as well from a geralt fic and a new idea that i have. thank you to everyone who has read. as always, feedback is always appreciated and encouraged and i hope you all enjoy!

warnings: seamstress!reader, emotionally-stunted!sherlock, reader has a nickname, close proximity, investigation, murder mystery, original characters, enemies to lovers, vulnerability, near-death scenes, sexual tension, kissing, dirty talk, praise, vaginal penetration, vaginal fingering, loss of virginity, implied breeding kink if you squint, rough and soft, grief, past deaths briefly mentioned, angst, fluff, revelations, overthinking, flashbacks (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 19,551

previously: concealed feelings and abstract attitudes

( this work has been cross posted to ao3 )

Teeth, lips, tongue—you’re acquainting yourself with the mouth of another, greeting your moans that Sherlock swallows incessantly, almost like he’s gulping for air. He’s a wall of muscle mass visibly speaking, but it’s a different phenomenon to experience said muscle mass pressing you back into the actual wall of this flat behind, the door nearby since your shared eagerness only carried you both in by a few steps. You’re hardly concerned with how far you’ve made it in, instead wrapping your legs tightly at Sherlock’s waist as he supports you and holds you up. The surface gradually fades away as he deposits you from it to then walk blindly to his bedroom. You’re still hanging on, secure he’ll protect you, and miraculously through listening to his instincts (he’s always right, you’re not shocked), he pushes the door open, his forearm strung around your midsection as he uses his other hand. You can sense his desperation’s desire to cling to you and not let go for a moment.

You’re still connected with him as he lowers you to the mattress. There’s conflict heavy in his shoulders because he’s caught between meeting your affection bar for bar and standing straight up to get a better look at you. You gradually make the decision for him, hands landing on his chest to lightly push him up. You sit up on your elbows as he lifts away from you, his chest heaving in his departure, eyes scanning you over with interest you can only describe as lust. Sherlock removes his undershirt that he was clad in, the buttons already undone, and drops it carelessly to the floor. You’re familiar with the image of Sherlock shirtless, but it doesn’t mean you’re not any less astonished. You’re gazing up at him in awe, awe that is seemingly swimming in his eyes the very same as he turns his attention to his robe adorning your figure. Except where part of the fabric is hanging off one shoulder due to your combined efforts. And said exposure beckons Sherlock in closer; he reaches for the robe’s belt sitting atop your waist, your hips jutted out, body language’s permission granted for his exploration.

“You’re not…” he inhales deeply, like he’s preparing himself. Sherlock knows something and you know it too. You can’t help the sly grin threatening to take over your expression breaking free.

“You’re not wearing anything underneath,” he resigns, saying it as he says every conclusion he comes to as a statement, as a cold, hard fact. Albeit he’s not revealing a mystery’s answer to a curious audience, he’s confirming the thought that crossed his mind at the initial sight of your bare shoulder. He would’ve guessed it earlier if he wasn’t so preoccupied with entangling his mouth with yours. His adam’s apple slowly rises and sinks as he restrains himself, as he allows his hand to divide the seams of his robe, as your naked breasts become visible to him for the first time.

“Surprised?” You tease, but it’s more breathless than you care to admit because of how Sherlock’s drinking you in. Your flesh rises as he offers you solely his fingertips. He lets them linger from your neck to your collarbone, hesitantly traveling down the curve of your left breast.

“Pleasantly,” he finally replies and you think To hell with it and lift yourself up enough to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him back into another searing kiss. His chest hair tickles against you, the thick patch sliding over your quickly hardening nipples. He surrenders to your invitation and follows you up the bed as you scoot up its length in the meantime, until your head meets one of his pillows above.

Sherlock descends and mouths along your jaw and then your neck, he takes advantage of the dip there to suckle onto a spot and taste your skin. Your breath catches in your throat, your mouth falling open as you whimper in reaction, hypersensitive to his every touch and graze. If you thought the light stubble stimulated you before from just kissing, then you’re critically mistaken when it catches on your susceptible flesh as he lowers his head to your clavicle. From gripping his hair for some kind of purchase, you let your hands wander down the width of his back, not wanting to claw down it in your attempts to remain in a semblance of composure. That’s when you feel the waistband of his trousers, the reminder set of how you haven’t seen him without them there, hiding away the arousal you felt heavy against your inner thighs earlier at Mrs. Thomas’s. Depraved, but careless regarding that truth, you whine out your displeasure and snake your hands beneath his frame to work the button of his trousers open. Unlike Sherlock’s sixth sense (learned from the structure of his well-developed cognitive map), you’re not gracefully unlatching the damned thing despite your previous experience with this detail of clothing. You fumble and clumsily brush your yearning knuckles along his bulge by pure accident, fleeting warmth you crave but are unable to indulge in further because Sherlock abruptly pulls his hips away like he’s been stung by a wasp.

Your mouth goes dry watching him rise up from your neck, his jaw hanging slightly open. Your throat wishes to beg for his return back, but you stop yourself from doing so seeing his fingers clutch at the fabric bunched at his crotch, his hips bucking in efforts to readjust himself. You’re affecting him greater than you initially thought. You feel rather petulant under his gaze right now, small for being selfish and pushing, an impatient brat flushing in a richer pigment from your head to your toes.

“Can’t think, can you?” Sherlock asks, but you both already know the answer. “Everything’s done with great difficulty. Breathing, holding still, practicing restraint.” He trails off, observing your features and especially the way he notices your eyes trace down to where his hand is slipping the button of his trousers properly out of its position. He continues to speak with you, intent on watching, commemorating the intrigue in your hungry pupils as he removes the next button, then the next.

“In your case, undoing a pair of trousers…” It’s a whisper and the air of it hits your cheek from how close he is. “You’ve rendered me a mindless vessel for weeks,” he confesses, to which you had no knowledge of, and then he follows it with a gritty promise that has your spine arching, “I’m going to do the exact same thing to you.”

A reply barely has any time to form because you’re being kissed again, your vision blocked from viewing his length. With your fervor and effort, you use your calves to push the material down his waist to his thighs and thankfully, Sherlock pushes them out of the way alongside you until they’re being kicked and shucked away from his legs and ankles. You try to kiss Sherlock back, but your leaking center comes into contact with the crown of Sherlock’s length suddenly and your lips come apart in a gasp, one he takes advantage of by shifting his tongue into the space as if it was his invitation. He grunts in response to the whimper that leaves you as you greedily attempt to roll your hips up to gain friction. One particular roll accomplishes the goal, your weeping slit running up his shaft in one fluid motion, surprised noises vibrating against your mouths from how good it felt, from how needy you both are for each other.

But, much to your dismay, Sherlock removes your legs from his waist to press them down into the mattress at the apex of your inner thighs, preventing you from continuing your forlorn, silent pleas. There’s a slight stretch in the muscles and in a way, you feel shy from how your most sensitive area is being displayed so lewdly, sure to try and close your thighs if Sherlock glances down for a peek. He doesn’t, as much as he wants to seal his mouth around that tender pearl, instead glowering at you with sincerity in his eyes.

“We’re going at my pace,” he warns. You feel like you might lose your mind if he doesn’t fuck you this instant, your lip tucking away in a pout you would normally be ashamed of. Though, currently being at his mercy is making your cunt spill over with desire.

“But, b-but, I can take it—” You babble and protest, to which Sherlock squeezes your thighs to admonish and quiet you down. It achieves its desired effect as you clamp your mouth shut and stare up at him with pleading flutters of your lashes. He almost caves.

“I know, I know, believe me, slow isn’t easy for either of us at this moment,” he breathes heavily, his voice sounds like sex, “but I won’t risk hurting you. You’ll take what I give.” He’s stern and to the point and it offers you a bit of clarity. You completely forgot about your virginity, how this is not only your first time with Sherlock, but your first time with anyone ever. That’s why you’ve felt guilty during this ordeal, because you’ve been rutting up into him for more and more while he’s been successfully supervising his control. It’s not because there’s a lack of longing on his end, his protruding length and orally fixating mouth prime examples, but because in all of this, he’s recalled the seriousness of the situation. Clearly, he holds a candle above you in knowledge of this as he does in everything else, besides sewing, so of course he surmised you a virgin ignorant to the incoming physical and emotional sensations involved with this plunge. And yet, as you watch the dilation of his pupils in real time, the way his biceps flex as he holds himself back, and the light glistening of every sinew and bulk of him from the pure heat radiating between you, you brace your hands at his shoulders and allow need to talk for you.

“Please, Sherlock, I don’t think I can go on any longer without…” Fuck, you’re realizing this is harder to say with his intense gaze fixated on you. Have his eyes always been that shade of deep royal? “W-without you inside me,” you stutter. Your face washes over with fire and you would’ve been embarrassed if it weren’t for the same fire you see flash in Sherlock’s eyes.

“Fuck, stop talking,” he mutters, but there’s extra motivation that trembles the shoulders you’re holding onto as he reaches down to grasp himself at his base. You catch a glimpse, careful not to linger in staring because then you’re positive a fear would grow from his size. Like the rest of him, it’s impressive to the point of where it could possibly cause you to question his insertion, so you focus on his features and wait in pure anticipation.

No matter the speed in which Sherlock complied with your request, he’s still maddeningly slow dragging the tip of himself up and down your entrance. It sears you from the outside, your legs twitching from how badly you wish to slither them back around him, how they convulse from how fervid it feels to inch away from the sensation and conflicting it is to chase it all the same. There’s one hand still wrenched onto your thigh so there’s little motion that you can do. The worst part has to be how you can feel him pulsating repeatedly. Sherlock ignores primal instincts urging him to slide right in, his underlying wish in all of this being your absolute pleasure. He gathers your slick on himself and you’re close to begging him again when you begin to feel a decisive push forward, a spreading sting passing throughout your core as he settles in deeper, slow on his intrusion. You bury your head into his neck as you squeeze your eyes shut, yelping from how the action involuntarily caused your resisting walls to clamp down on him at the same time. Sherlock chokes and finally releases your thigh to slam his fist down into the pillow adjacent to your head, like he did with the desk, a tell in his supposed composure much like the one in his throbbing cock stretching you with every pulse that alerts you how he’s still fucking growing whilst inside of you.

“You feel… so warm. So, so tight,” he gasps, perhaps in a bit of shock of his own, “Relax. Breathe for me, yes, yes, just like that.”

Your inhales and exhales come at his command, but each one is shakier than the last. Due to how lubricated you are, and how Sherlock cradles you caringly against him, the pain from all of this fades into a dull ache. With your attention on your breath, a blissful sigh manages its way through as Sherlock shifts himself, discomfort there, and then beautifully replaced by something you believe feels heavenly. A harp’s twang echoes in your head. Your taut limbs slacken and you didn’t even know how rigid you were until then. Sherlock did, he’s been in tune with every nerve, every flex, and every sound that’s come from your body, willing himself to not only satisfy you, but to act on those pesky fantasies that have snuck on him for almost as long as he’s known you. It’s indecent to think about your estranged neighbor bent over the desk you’re supposed to be attending to professional work on. Sherlock’s immunity to your charms is and was nonexistent and honestly, everything could’ve been easier if he just left the two of you as enemies and ignored your existence until you inevitably moved away. But what a crock of shit that is. He’s nestled so deeply in your folds that he doesn’t care how lost he is, if this is a distraction from getting his much needed night of sleep, he just has this parroting thought blaring in his mind to move, move, move.

Your head slips from his neck, forehead pressing against his. There’s a shyness in how you enclose your arms around his broad neck and shoulders. Maybe, just as he has, you’ve come to the crashing revelation of how intimate this really is, how ultimate and permanent he’s now etched himself into your life. He’s wedged inside of you and whatever is to happen next, it can’t subtract away this physical connection, it can’t be denied that Sherlock Holmes is your first lover. Sherlock listens to his brain and pumps gently, slowly inside of you, groaning like your cunt’s the first he’s ever filled/stuffed. Surely, the ache subsides but battles with another, and that’s the ache of wanton need, each push inwards and each pull out gratifying and yet not enough to kindle the overwhelming shrill of the flame bubbling within you.

“God,” you peck Sherlock’s lips despite the oxygen being driven from your lungs with every undulation of his hips, “please, please,” you say for the second and third time tonight. He acquiesces enough to push in just a little faster, your throat catching on a whine as you tremble from the pleasure overtaking you. Sherlock plants his mouth on yours, halting any other pleas that transform into hiccupping moans against him, such that he captures and reignites with every thrust he offers. You can’t help the yearning in you that increases, working on Sherlock’s time and pace like he promised, so you know he’s drilling into you so sweetly on purpose.

Logically, to you, he did so because he didn’t want to hurt you. You appreciate that sentiment, but from how your heart is racing to the point of where you can hear it reverberate in your ears, slow is winding you up tighter and tighter. It wrings your body up like a rag being twisted and turned to release the moisture sitting in its cloth. You need more and more, stretched and primed for him to speed up and show you what he held back. It almost felt like being let in on a secret, like how you wanted to know about the details of his investigation. You want to know what Sherlock will do if he gives in to his own pleasure, if he will become as single-minded as you are, let feeling and emotion instruct him rather than the inquisitive nature of his mind. You don’t want parts of him—you want all of him.

You lift a hand to cup Sherlock’s cheek, among your continuing please, please, please without anything specific in mind, the holy word chipping his resolve away by the passing minutes, between the kisses Sherlock’s mouth steals from you after each one. They linger, either short or lasting, varying in time, varying in pressure, but never relenting. Using your hold on him as he exchanges a particularly sharp thrust, you mutter an impassioned “uh” against him having not expected it (it elevated you to a new height), one leg coming up at his waist to hook around his hip. Just as you theorized, and just as he knew, it sinks his tip to the hilt. In reaction, he grunts, “how the fuck did you get tighter,” under his breath and you feel prideful for throwing him slightly off track. Using this to your advantage, your thumb presses into the gentle divot in his cheek, and then you experimentally tug his bottom lip between your teeth. He pants and you hear the masculine noise pour out of him at an increased volume. It’s then that Sherlock creates distance between your heads, his forearm tucking under your thigh to lift it higher on his torso, his hand coming to rest at your side from underneath.

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” His thumb digs into your hip bone, his fingers clutched into the flesh gathered at the side of your waist. The new angle begs a deep stretch in your thigh, but he exacerbates the test of your flexibility by using his other hand to pin your opposite thigh to the bed much like he had done earlier when he deprived you. Your walls quiver around Sherlock’s cock, constricting him because of how accommodating to him they’ve become. He fucks you harder, an accumulative speed and pressure that doesn’t have any obstacles or road bumps, just a smooth crest upwards that has you keening beneath him, arching and praying his name to the ceiling. He’s no longer purring out short grunts, but allowing them to slip past his parted lips as he pounds you into the spot you slept in that morning.

“This is what you w-wanted?” He’s completely breathless, but he still manages coherence, not that you’re jealous of it at the moment because you may be forgetting grammar and basic linguistics, but you’re also forgetting your own name. You recall it when Sherlock moans it and you cry out from the utterance, from how he fucks you closer and closer towards mania. 

“yesyesyesyes,” you repeat, your blunt nails scraping over his shoulder as you reach a peak, something washing over you like an eruption. Your arms cling to Sherlock, holding him close as you confine your face back to his neck and feel the shudders of your first orgasm. You don’t understand it, you’ve never experienced anything like it, but you tremble as you feel soft tears gather in your lash line. Sherlock curses from how your body convulses and how it does so around his girth, but he generously fucks you through it.

Your hold loosens on Sherlock, but your clinging remains. You’re clutching him like a savior, whining as he continues to pump in and out of you. He might have continued if he wasn’t so fucking exhausted, close to his climax himself, but he can’t be that irresponsible as much as he wants to fill you with his seed. You gasp as he slips out of you, your channel clenching around nothing, your bud swollen and sensitive. You watch as Sherlock grasps his length and immediately releases himself onto your stomach, his hands detaching from your body to press into the mattress below, to stop himself from crushing you because his frame slumps forward and he has to give in as he lowers himself to his forearms caging your head in. You’re both gasping, inhaling and exhaling air by the mouthfuls, and Sherlock is pressing a majority of his weight into your frame. Somehow, you don’t feel boxed in, but safe and protected. You appreciate how he didn’t roll away from you, how his sweat slick skin glistens with his lamp’s light, how he looks at you in awe and slight worry.

“It was… wonderful,” you say in efforts to appease this aforementioned worry, and you absolutely fucking mean it. It’s not because you’re saving his ego, but because you’re satiated, boneless, floating despite being firmly underneath him in space and time.

“You did perfect,” he whispers, again not because he’s coddling your brain or even heart, but because he’s proud of you, in pure astonishment of you, hopelessly enthralled by you. At the praise, you feel this urge to intertwine yourself further with him as if he isn’t already as close as he is. Your hands cradle his face as he smiles and leans in to kiss you.

Sherlock yanks a bedside drawer open and removes a handkerchief from it, then he lifts up away from your body to clean your abdomen. He’s delicate as he attends to you and then himself, the soiled rag set aside so he could get back to being settled in with you. Something in Sherlock feels awfully drowsy, the sleep deprivation and his stolen remnants of energy to blame, and he can’t envision laying anywhere else other than where his head sits on your heaving breasts. You run your fingers through his curls, spent, your eyes heavy. Someone should say something in the afterglow, but it’s not about thinking right now. You could feel the silence getting louder, your eyes slipping closed and then gradually coming back open to relish in how Sherlock’s mass blankets you with weight and heat. You only finally let yourself sleep when you can hear the light snores coming from the detective laying atop of you, his rhythmic breath nuzzling the swell of your right breast, content that he’s getting the sleep he’s missed out on for weeks.

Sherlock gingerly rolls to his back when the sun decides to beam its light through his curtain. It disturbs him, but with how high it is in the sky, he wonders the hour of day and how long he had been asleep. Clarity finds him like an old memory. It’s in bits and pieces and then it comes crashing in altogether. He’s missing that impending stress in his neck and shoulders that would usually wake him with a startle when his body felt he slept for too long when he could be tangled with his work instead. He should be plenty able to solve his case like he told himself he would and now his brain is back to its optimal setting and functioning, reset presumably from the mind-blowing sex, but he instead remembers your beautiful face, your harmonic moans, and your welcoming legs.

He sits up and realizes you’re no longer in bed with him at this. He scans along the length of the room, the robe you two got rid of at some point in the night on the floor next to his trousers. Sherlock groggily stands to his feet, he flings on the robe, and then opens the door of the room, the smell of food wafting through the air. His stomach growls, but he’s not padding towards the kitchen because he’s hungry, but because he’s searching for you. He ultimately comes across you there, your back to him, his button-up on your frame that goes just past your posterior. You soon turn around to lay the eggs in the pan on top of the toasted bread on the counter. You both lock eyes and you could feel the blood rising up to your cheeks with how he glances at your choice of outfit. If he could call it that.

“Are you going to be a thief and ransack my closet later, as well?” He wouldn’t be that opposed to the idea. Thus far, you modeled his coat, his robe, and now his undershirt better than he did. There’s also something particularly domestic about how you don his clothes. He feels an inkling of possessiveness. The gestures unspokenly cement you as his in some form and for some reason, that thrills him.

“I don’t have to ransack anything to get into your trousers, Shoulders,” you reply. Your voice is a lot more airy than it usually is no matter the teasing tone you adopted. You’re rather confident for someone who’s still behaving so coyly, especially with the way Sherlock’s jaw slackens at the implication.

Sherlock chooses not to answer verbally. Instead, he slowly approaches you until you could feel the counter press into your back from how you went the opposite direction. It’s not in avoidance, the same goal present to tease as before, and it’s displayed with how you initiate the kiss he intended on doing himself at this close proximity. He hums his approval, lifting you immediately by your thighs. If you’re not mistaken, you’re not, he seemingly has an affinity for your legs wrapped around him. You comply with this silent desire and earn another noise of approval, sighing against his mouth as he leads you to his kitchen table. Sherlock lowers himself to sit into his chair with you in his lap, his hands settling at the small of your back as you use the leverage to press your mouth against the sharp lines of his jaw. Your mouth relocates his in no time, his manspreading legs creating distance between your own as a consequence.

There’s a collective soreness from your affairs, you’re thoroughly reminded from the stretch currently sitting in your hovering thighs, but it doesn’t hinder you from attending to Sherlock. If anything, you wish to guide his hand down where you need him most, shifting your hips against the quickly hardening length underneath. His hands don’t halt your motions, perfectly fine with your bucking movement as it’s allowing him friction. The morning wood he woke with is particularly sensitive so he will indeed be susceptible to receive whatever you could possibly offer him at this moment. As far as aspiration goes, he’s thought about having you in his lap this way countless times. In fact, the thought recently snuck up on him only yesterday while he paced the floor and you laid in his bed completely unaware of the daydream haunting him, the murky image of your frame rising and falling on him while his head and mouth buried into your chest.

He thinks about sex more than one would presume and with you, it crept up on him and stalked him after you met, attacked him while he bathed, while he read, while he was supposed to be deciphering this puzzling case he had no choice but to bring you into. So, now that he’s practiced a mere fraction of these wants and vicious reveries, he’s no longer resisting their insistence and no longer censoring the depictions of your bare form or muffled moans. He’s a primary witness of real stature who holds a firsthand account of how supple your naked breasts are, how you babble nonsense lost in the throes of passion, how you climb octaves when you crest and how marvelous your walls feel through the process. If he thought it difficult to think before, he’s surely in for a debacle regarding anything productive from here on out harboring this intensive, yet fascinating, insider knowledge.

A stomach growls. Neither of you are sure who it came from entangled this heavily, but you sigh out against Sherlock’s mouth and depart from it with great reluctance through pressing your palms against his shoulders.

“Breakfast first,” you murmur, cupping his jaw and stroking his cheek. On the upstroke, your thumb meets the scratch of his stubble.

“It could wait,” Sherlock insists. It’s enough to convince you, really, but then you hear that growl again and now you’re both certain of who it came from. Especially when said perpetrator closes his pretty eyes in defeat. You smile before you steal another kiss.

It’s difficult standing from where you sit, but you do eventually detangle yourself from Sherlock. He relinquishes you as you clamber back to the food you left behind on the counter, adjusting himself in the process to will his current… dilemma to go away. He attempts to shift his focus after he realizes his eyes are lingering where his shirt ends and where your flesh begins, turning his head towards the table in his efforts. His gaze lands on the discarded letter from yesterday that he somehow read a numerous amount of times without absorbing any information. He recalls his humanity during issues like this, scorned by his lack of energy and by his betraying insomnia, by his overactive mind trapped inside a body with physical boundaries despite purposely exercising to combat that. But now that the temptation is there, he reaches for the letter, a glance taken from it to you who returns with two plates, one steaming in front of him. The Sherlock from yesterday most likely would’ve put this away, or perhaps excused himself to read it alone, but after his behavior, and the proper sleep to assess said petulant behavior with clarity, he believes it necessary to at least give you a choice.

“Do you still wish to know the details of my investigation?” He asks, and expectantly, you snap your head in his direction in the middle of placing your own plate down to the table. A clink of the glass resounds and then there’s a beat of quiet, your stare on him searching his face for a sign of regret, for jest, for anything negating his words. As always, he’s as serious as serious gets, never one to mince his speech, compassion embedded in how he uplifts the inner corners of his eyebrows.

You’re blindsided. After yesterday, you were certain Sherlock wouldn’t divulge anything related to his case. After last night, you pushed the concept into the far recesses of your mind to focus on him and solely him. As your head travels back to your interactions together and how he closed himself off, you’re not positive you want to open Pandora’s box. But you would also be deceptive if you didn’t admit to your ever-growing curiosity.

“If… if you want me to, then yes,” you begin, trusting his judgment, “but only if you do. I never wanted to muddle your work. I just wanted to help.” And you still do. You hope that your cautious glances at him can convey that without putting yourself out on a limb in the position of a fool.

Sherlock slowly nods his head and his eyes divert from yours to stare at the letter in his hand. You were tempted to read it, but you didn’t have any time to do so at Mrs. Thomas’s considering your previous predicament leading to her arrival, nor did you in Sherlock’s company traveling back to your shared building. If anything, you quickly disposed of it to quench that temptation and leave the arguments from before in the past to carry on with this intimate connection you and Sherlock transparently have with each other. Whatever it is, it’s deeper than the contents of this letter, than the aspects of his case, than losing his… friendship. Or whatever you two are calling it now.

You almost rush syllables out to deny the question seeing the visible contemplation on Sherlock’s features. This is a vital decision and it could very well be life threatening, because at this point, you’ve educated yourself on Sherlock’s previous cases through small talk with your clientele and old newspapers, all of which he closed in due time despite the danger surrounding. That’s not what scares you. What scares you is becoming privy to this part of his livelihood to then be ostracized, pushed away by his inability to accept succor, by his inability to properly undergo the emotions flitting throughout you and himself. Say, that bullshit you convinced yourself before is wrong, you do have a grasp of how to read Sherlock. It’s that grasp that urges you to waive this all away, eat your breakfast, and distract your earnest thoughts from their incessant need to know more by straddling Sherlock’s lap and having him instruct you when to surge and when to plummet.

Great, now that’s firmly back in your mind. To appease your overthinking, you grasp your toast and take a bite. The crunch is louder than initially thought, but it makes sense since neither of you two are saying anything. You chew slowly to ease the tension, startled when Sherlock suddenly speaks.

“Clara Grace of Beckenham, age fifty-three, was pronounced deceased at the scene at 6:43 pm on Wednesday, September 3rd, 1884. The murder instrument? Presumably, to the police anyway,” he gives you a knowing look, “a simple revolver. To me?” The correct observation, his eyes convey. “It was the revolver M1882, produced exclusively in Switzerland. There were remnants of black powder and the 308 diameter bullet left behind a clean orifice in Clara’s chest. Which would mean our suspect most likely shot her at a close distance, face to face, and they may have an affiliation with the Swiss army and such an outrageous claim could be enough, and was enough, for our dear police officials and her family to subtract yours truly’s aid moving forward in the investigation.” He clears his throat at this, his gaze set on the table, on the food, but you know he’s looking right past it.

So, not only is Sherlock’s involvement unwanted by the police and unwanted by the victim’s family, he carried on with an investigation of his own. Sherlock didn’t tell you these details because of his ego (okay, maybe a small part of it was that), but because he doesn’t have proper authorization and from how he won’t meet your gaze, it’s possible he’s embarrassed. You don’t say anything, waiting for him to continue and leap over this disappointment he carries in his features.

He eventually does with a shake of his head. “Clara’s parents were sparing in their accounts. They left for the theater, came home early, and then found Clara dead. Her father was in shambles, sobbing as they covered Clara’s body with a sheet. Her mother was quieter, however, less hysteric. When I resolved the matter of the murder weapon and how it could have possibly been someone Clara knew given the close proximity, I was soon told by her father, once he calmed, that I would no longer be needed. Thus, I no longer had access to their home nor possible suspects.” Sherlock’s tongue runs along his upper row of teeth, sucking on them so harshly that his jaw pops. You’re not sure what to say to him. The only dead body you had seen in your lifetime belonged to your father and it was after his heart afflictions, not due to someone inhumanely claiming his life. You grieve for Sherlock’s frustration. He barely had anything, it seems, and yet ironically more than the police.

“Regardless,” he continues, “I acquired evidence. A piece of fabric, fabric that you seemingly specialize in because I was unable to locate it in over thirty establishments,” he clicks his tongue at you, to which you shyly grin because he wouldn’t have had to take that journey if you had helped him from the beginning, “and this fabric came with dried blood. Clara’s blood, I’m sure of it. Now, believe me when I tell you that nowhere on this woman’s outfit did it appear to be missing even a loose thread. Which means this fabric came from—”

“The suspect,” you breathe, pieces falling together in your head. You look at the letter and then the other piece of fabric on the table that you.. that you took from Mrs. Thomas’s. The implications of this… you can feel your head reeling.

“Yes… the suspect. This entails the suspect to be wealthy as that factor is the commonality amongst your clientele and as agitating as it was visiting all those businesses, it has narrowed down the possibilities and confirmed it for me. This does not mean that any of your clients are murderers,” Sherlock reaches for your hand. He seems to know what’s currently lurking through your head as you level him with teary eyes. Your trust is breaking the more he explains this. You don’t know what to think having visited these homes so recently of people you thought were at least good natured. While he’s reassuring you of the likelihood, it’s not completely unfound and he knows that. Anyone and everyone could be guilty.

“If they are not involved themselves, then they might have connections to the true culprit. Remember, your clothing is not solely worn by the retrieving consumers, but also by their friends, by their family, by the complete strangers they may have donated it to. Though,” he sighs, his thumb repeatedly stroking back and forth on your hand. There’s always a catch. You squeeze his hand back to try and lessen his worry.

“Though this line of thinking may all change if I read you this letter. I attempted to do so last night, but… I faced distractions.” His grip tightens a fraction on your hand. It’s a lovely memory to recall and since it happened so recently, both of you succumb to the fragments that hit at you. Still, you gesture to the letter.

“You can go on,” you bravely reply. He slants his mouth.

“Are you certain? Whatever may lie in this letter could be telling of your companion and the state of your companionship with—”

“Please, Sherlock,” you contest. You gradually remove your hand from his so you can sit taller, your expression morphing with confidence other than the blemish of ignorance. “I have to know.”

It’s heavy being here at the table with Sherlock like this. The letter you stole from Mrs. Thomas could unveil more than you could bargain for, but there’s this white knight in your heart craving the truth, craving justice for a woman you didn’t know even if it comes at the cost of erasing the idealized image you held of someone you thought you did.

“Very well,” he relents. He flips the letter, “For Blanche, with love,” he announces. A bit of relief floods you at this because it means that this letter is addressed to Mrs. Thomas and not something she wrote. You still prepare yourself as he reads.

“My dearest Blanche, this is quite possibly the longest we have undergone without seeing one another. I know we have faced our trials and distances in the past, but this certainly feels different. If I were to be honest, I would tell you how it feels as if a part of me is missing. I would tell you how lost I am, how heavy I carry my heart, and how I think of you every day. It has worsened the longer we have been apart. This rail system has stolen plenty of my time from you and so I am proposing a plot that requires your initiative and word.

“I have pondered retirement. This would mean we would see each other daily, no longer concerned with distributing our activities, reconciling at our own pace to do our own biddings. I know we were reluctant in our youth to even think of such an endeavour, but now we are blessed with enough wealth to last us and then some for the rest of our lives. I made a vow to spend that measure with you and I hope you share this ambition. I am ready for this next chapter and to say goodbye to the last one, but I can only do so with your hand in mine.

“I ask you to contemplate this decision well. There are many ventures we can accomplish together with this newfound time. We could travel anywhere, we could move to a different country, we could settle down further where we are. We could renovate the house or keep it as is and go on those peaceful strolls that you love. There are endless prospects. I won’t officially retire until I have your input. Seeing that I will be returning Saturday, October 25th, I do anticipate our reunion. Forgive me for being unable to be there earlier in the day, but I am sure I will be arriving just in time for our planned outing. We can continue this discussion then. I will see you at the ball. Travel with caution and mind your surroundings. Love, Edmund.”

The absence of sound is prevalent when Sherlock finishes reading the letter. Truthfully, a portion of you feels corrupt and unsettled for listening to it because of the intimacy the letter described. You hardly knew Mr. Thomas, having only met with him twice in your tenure, once at your family home, and another when you stepped up to take over your father’s business. You don’t know how Sherlock could stomach disrupting the privacies in the lives of others, but it doesn’t leave you with a pleasant feeling. You feel guilty for even thinking Mrs. Thomas could commit such an atrocity when she’s actually a lonely woman away from her hardworking husband. At least, that’s how you view this. You don’t see the connection that Sherlock does so you’re incredibly surprised when he instantly stands from the table, the legs of his chair screeching on the floor from how suddenly he pushed it backwards. You watch with confusion as he knits his eyebrows inwards.

“The rail system. He wasn’t talking about the Metropolitan Railway,” he proclaims out loud. As many of his discoveries are, Sherlock says it more to himself, but he corrects this immediately after and looks to you. You’re still not following, but you do stand from your chair and lean over it to try and grasp ahold of what he means.

“Then which did he imply?”

“The railway network being attended to elsewhere… in Switzerland.”

The hesitation in Sherlock’s voice depicts to you how he must’ve figured this out already while he read the letter. You hold a hand to your mouth at this startling revelation, the familiar lines and wrinkles of Mr. Thomas’s facial structure coming to your head as you think about what Sherlock is leading you towards. That guilt from seconds ago manifests into denial, your head shaking back and forth as you wordlessly stare at Sherlock. You know he’s right in his assumption, and that’s what exacerbates it for you, unable to believe that Mrs. Thomas’s husband could execute someone. There still isn’t a motive, you tell yourself. Maybe on the offhand chance, Sherlock is wrong for once. The connection to Switzerland is a coincidence and Mr. Thomas did not have a revolver specially akin to the nation.

However, as your head spins back to the content of his letter to Mrs. Thomas, you glance down at the lone piece of fabric you found alongside it locked away in that desk full of cat figurines. Your heart thuds faster, your head whipping back to Sherlock who appears as if he’s thinking of comforting words, anything he could do or say in this situation. While you appreciate the sentiment, you tap the surface of the table.

“Where’s the fabric you found?”

“Lily, I know this is a plethora of information, but—”

“Where’s the fabric from the crime scene? I need you to bring it to me at once.” You demand. He seems to catch on to your urgency and he starts to move as he calls back, “In the study,” on his way out of the kitchen.

You ground yourself to reality by placing your palms facing downwards on the surface of Sherlock’s kitchen table. The events from yesterday replay in your mind, the elite class referring to the same ball both Mr. and Mrs. Thomas will be present at. Then you think back to the specific purchases you’ve relayed in the past two months or so, but there’s no direct confirmation when the fabric in question was sold or what it specifically belonged to since you have a scrap and Sherlock presumably also has one too short to recognize. In your desperation, you recall the first time you met Mr. Thomas. He stopped by to greet your father, all smiles, a comical top hat on his head which he removed with enthusiasm as you practically bounced into the room for a better view.

You were too young to understand the business lingo they engaged in, pieces and sentences of their conversation lost, but you weren’t too young to understand the blissful expression on his old face, how he spoke of love and its rekindling because he mentioned struggling at the time with his wife, Blanche. He kneeled down to your level, insisting to your father that you hadn’t interrupted anything important. He beckoned you to come closer with his hand, but as a shy child, you remained in your spot unmoving. That’s when he reached for one of his coat’s pockets, a coat your father made, and then retrieved a handful of farthings that glinted under your home’s lamp. Your eyes widened with intrigue, possessed by your childlike curiosity and greed as you thumped over and took the farthings from him. You counted them as he chuckled over you, still relatively hulking even bent down. His knee popped as he slowly stood and told you the history of farthings and how they were made, much of which you tuned out to stare at the currency in your little palm. When you looked up, you noticed the handkerchief sticking out of the pocket that held the coinage and the way he smoothed his vest like a gentleman.

Sherlock returns into the kitchen and noticing your current gaze, he places the other scrap of fabric alongside the one you’re staring intently at. Side by side, you know what item of clothing these scraps came from and while there is more missing, you don’t require it to comprehend the weight of this observation that Sherlock couldn’t have caught on his own.

“What is it?” He asks.

“The fabric is from a handkerchief. Mr. Thomas’s handkerchief.”

The horse’s hooves of your carriage trot nonchalantly along the busy streets of London, and you assume there are other carriages nearby from the sound of offbeat steps creating something resembling white, background noise. You cross your leg over the other, the heaviness of your dress’s layered skirt becoming apparent during the action since the material ruffles and bunches in the process. Sherlock glances at you at the contention point of the noise and then he awkwardly reverts his gaze forward again to the curtain concealing away your coachman. You wish he would talk to you instead of entertaining this silence you accidentally fell into, but you also understand how there’s an upcoming event you two must remain focused on. It’s vital you don’t stray away from the objective, the possible perpetrator of a murder case Sherlock’s chased at this ball you two were currently en route to. You probably should’ve denied Sherlock’s invitation that he felt he owed you after roping you into his investigation through releasing the nuances and details, but you couldn’t withstand the idea of waiting at home in anticipation as Sherlock brought an old family friend to justice on his lonesome. That’s if Sherlock could find anything through questioning Mr. Thomas directly, the very plan of your night. Sherlock explained to you that he was still missing a motive.

In a twisted way, it offered you the opportunity to get dressed in your best attire. You don’t recall when you last wore something this extravagant, when you last were able to choose from the assortment of clothing at your disposal for your own prerogative. Secretly, you also wished to pick an option that would be eye-catching not only for the ball’s attendees, but for Sherlock. You got your wish since he froze in his spot once you opened the door to your flat and stepped past the threshold. To him, you floated further into his sight as if you had wings, the obsidian bows and tule dipping around your biceps in gentle sleeves connecting to your sweetheart corset brushing him as you walked past and reminded him of the carriage ride you both had to catch if you desired to arrive on time.

Sherlock wore the suit you tailored for him as well as the tie you picked out. The difference became all clear to his regular clothing because of how it hugged the hard lines of him while still highlighting his frame and bulk. It took extra time than your other projects did and you realized you ran low on azure products while placing it together having adjusted an already-made-suit, but the end result was worth it. How you found the time in the midst of developing deep feelings for him, embarrassing yourself to him in a drunken manner, arguing with him, fucking him, and deciphering a mystery case’s answers is beyond you, but you worked miracles in the past before.

“You look…” Sherlock breaks the silence, but his voice is uncharacteristically soft. You turn towards him and he still faces the curtain as he wrestles with what he wants to say. If he looks at you, it’ll be worse for him. You’ve stumped him of his speech and his mind is currently blanking as he tries to locate the words conveying how you make him feel, how one glance robs his breath, and how your appearance commands full attention. As clever as he is, in all his wits and skills, this is seemingly a game he doesn’t excel in. His attempts come with strain, his emotions crumpled for what reason you don’t know, but you nudge your shoulder against his and he looks at you with admiration despite it all.

“Thank you,” you respond to the unsaid compliment that hangs in the air. You slyly grasp his hand and lace your fingers together, the hold led into your lap. His knuckles linger on the golden lace adorning the opaque tule of your skirt beneath it. “So do you,” you finish in a whisper.

You two remain that way. Sherlock’s grateful for how you don’t press, albeit a touch disappointed in himself for not being able to fully articulate what’s in his head. Frustratingly, he doesn’t fully comprehend what’s going on with him, either. There are feelings, that’s already a realm he’s unfamiliar with, but to add further to it, he doesn’t know what these feelings are. They don’t logically spell out their motives nor their purpose like everything else he approaches in his life does. Humanity is exceedingly simple, driven by its selfish nature and complex emotions and so he shouldn’t have any issue with unraveling whatever it is he feels for you, and yet the gossamer web has no rhyme nor reason. It taunts him, it laughs at him, it encircles his head in a vague question he barely can read despite it entrapping him for what feels like ages now. The puzzling case of Clara Grace is coming to its solution, undeniably because of how all answers reveal themselves in time, but what of the puzzling case involving him and you?

“We never slept together, did we?” You question, saving him from his thoughts while simultaneously ushering in others he thought you wished to avoid. He looks at you quizzically and you quickly correct yourself even though he already knows what you’re referring to.

“I mean, before. When I fell asleep in your flat. We didn’t do anything of that nature, did we?” You’re sheepish as you stare at your hand in his, the unit you’ve created still in your lap. He doesn’t know where this is coming from nor if this is the appropriate time to discuss this, but he might as well if you’re willing to no matter the hour or where you two are heading.

“Did you believe we did?” It’s a logical assumption if you wake in someone else’s bed after a night of consuming wine.

“Perhaps. I thought we did something, but I didn’t know what. You approached me with such seriousness and so I attempted to connect lines that weren’t there and..”

“You came to the conclusion that we had intercourse and I was searching for a way to reject you?” He continues for you. You meet his gaze then, because that implies you thought him as someone that sleazy and you quickly clear the air.

“No, no, well, yes, but not exactly,” you clarify and Sherlock furrows his brows in rare bewilderment. “I thought that the conversation could possibly lead there and I wasn’t ready for it. Whatever we did while I was drunk, I wasn’t ready for the consequences.”

Understanding now encompasses Sherlock’s features, much to your relief. He seems to be thinking of something, “That’s why you wanted to pretend as if nothing happened. Self-preservation.”

You chew on your lip. This definitely isn’t easy, almost as difficult as you foresaw it before just as he did. But if you’re going into a mission with grand players and high stakes, you don’t want anything possibly holding either of you back sitting between you any longer.

“And I didn’t want to lose you,” you confess quietly and you can see Sherlock’s shoulders lower in surprise. That’s not what he expected. His mouth parts like he could add something, but he doesn’t. You sigh, your head tilting down in shame. “I’ve lost my father, I haven’t seen my mother nor my sister in months, the friend I made in Mrs. Thomas came because of work and now I’m about to have a hand in possibly sending her husband away to prison. You’ve been a steady factor during this time. Forgive me for trying to hold on as best as I could manage.”

That’s who you are now. You don’t want your world to crumble all over again so you must tighten your vise on what’s present to prevent it from happening again. Yet, the guilt from attempting to control life and its ups and downs, from attempting to control Sherlock and his appearance in your day-to-day activity, it’s catching up to you. You gradually pacify the pressure you have on Sherlock’s hand, because as much as you would hate it, it’s not up to you whether or not he stays or doesn’t. He has his own autonomy and if he believes it as correct, then he can walk away from you when all of this is done and you have to stand by and let him. Not wanting to ruin your makeup by thinking of this, you breathe evenly to halt the tears threatening to fall over your lash line. You only gasp when Sherlock reinforces his hold on your hand, his grip now the dominant one.

“You asked me to lay with you… that night. I didn’t know if it was you or the alcohol in your system speaking, so I chose to forego the opportunity, but believe me, it was with great, great reluctance.” His jaw hardens, his mind begging him to stop talking because of how he’s discussing with you what he held back for days, private information that he wouldn’t tell to anyone else, not even to himself out loud in front of a mirror. “While you slept, I couldn’t bring myself to. My mind preoccupied itself with your safety, with what your reaction would be in the morning, if there was a way to salvage our,” he loses his speech then, not sure of the label he could give the two of you. He settles for gesturing back and forth between you and him in the miniscule space among your bodies with his opposite hand. You get it immediately. “I planned to encourage nothing but friendship. You’ve been a distraction to me. Doing anything with you, whether it was as simple as laying at your side and falling into a shared slumber, I needed to establish our boundaries.”

For a split second, Sherlock notices a tendril of emotion cross your face. He’s never been good at reading these allusive signs, but he recognizes the antecedents before particular behaviors. That tremble of your lip and how you rapidly blink your eyelids, he’s seen you do it. He’s seen you do it before you’re about to cry. That means you’re hurt. He’s not sure why a sense of panic envelopes his chest, hurriedly tucking his knuckles under your chin with his free hand to rectify his words.

“But then you dismissed it and… and I was… I believed… I wanted… ah, fuck,” he blurts. Seldom is he this tongue tied. Seldom is he at a loss for words, able to direct an audience as they hung onto every syllable he uttered. You’re attaching yourself to every one he currently struggles with all the same, but it’s somehow harder. Everything is with you. He can’t think properly, evidently can’t speak properly, but goddamn it, you pull him back with how you flutter your glassy eyes at him, and how you maddeningly tilt your head at him. Enola was right. You’re pretty. You’re so, so fucking pretty. It makes him stutter. It makes him stupid.

“I thought you regretted it. Not just the alcohol intake, but… I thought you regretted what you asked of me. I thought you regretted being with… with me.” It’s Sherlock’s turn to be contrite. He doesn’t do this. He doesn’t talk about the things that make him.. human. He doesn’t expose his weaknesses and this is surely one, his flesh peeled back for your discretion, to pick at his bones, and he’s ashamed of himself to feel anything that isn’t confidence, self-certainty, or inquisitive. But after you laid out your fears, the overbearing trepidation of loneliness that he can relate to (though, he would never say it), he couldn’t remain quiet of what his subconscious desperately needed to release itself of.

Much to his surprise, you don’t stomp on his confession and its vulnerability, you don’t judge him for his antics as Mycroft would, and you don’t tease him for his revelations as Enola would, either. Instead, you smile, and it feels as if the carriage ride stops. You kiss him, his knuckles still along your chin, the movement causing them to touch the delicate, silk choker’s eggshell rose replacing your usual charm necklace for the night. He changes his hand’s position to cup your jaw, inadvertently deepening the kiss by shifting your head for better leverage. Your hand kneads his, your other reaching for his wrist. It doesn’t pull it away as he initially thinks, but it maintains his hold, ensures he remains there. It’s completely unnecessary to him. He’s not going anywhere.

Neither of you have the time to escalate this as much as you both desire it. The door to your carriage comes open to the left of Sherlock and he retracts his mouth from yours. It’s not because he’s embarrassed to be caught like this by the coachman who clears his throat awkwardly in front of you and the carriage, but because Sherlock hates being interrupted. He huffs out his displeasure, releasing your jaw and hand as he straightens his coat and thinks to himself, I surmise the carriage did actually stop.

He descends the single step, peering at the coachman who won’t look at him for some odd reason. Before Sherlock extends his hand out to you, he lifts an eyebrow in question at the other man.

“Does something concern you?”

“No, Sir, I,” the coachman trails off. He glances at you and then back at Sherlock before he ultimately stares at the floor again. “It’s… her lipstick is all over you.”

“Focus. Am I losing you, Lily?”

“I am focused!” You lie, swiftly tearing your gaze away from his sculpted jawline to the crowd of people watching the couples who litter the dance floor, you and Sherlock among said couples who practice the same choreography. Being this close, his scent permeates your nostrils like a pheromone, beckoning you closer to his neck that your lips crave to kiss and drag along. You didn’t know that dancing with Sherlock would rile you this way and render him so desirable, but it’s probably also the alarming fact that he prohibited any other forms of affection since you stained him so horribly and thoroughly back at the carriage. He eventually got himself clean, with the help of the coachman, and he glared at you for snickering to yourself, accusing you softly in your ear of allowing him to enter this event without giving him notice had the coachman not said anything. You protested that your own lips had to be salvaged by the concoction you brought along in your purse, but he’s been weary ever since.

It must be because he’s now in detective mode. As much as your heart soared when he asked you to dance, he reassured you it was because it was the best way to survey the ball’s participants, scope who came in and who went out. Regardless, you couldn’t refrain from swaying to the music, leaning into him closer than necessary, your hand lingering on his chest and shoulders as he pulled you into him after twirling you at a distance. It’s not like he’s in any better shape. You’re so concerned with trying to maintain your composure that you’re failing to notice how his jaw tightens and flexes, how his hands draw your hips in flush against his body, how he inhales your perfume indulgently with every lack of proximity. He’s never enjoyed dancing. Not like he’s enjoying it with you. He should’ve known this experience would be so distinct since you flip every assumption on its head.

“I see Mrs. Thomas,” you alert when your heads are centimeters apart.

Your gaze is over his shoulder, his own in the opposite direction. He nods, still searching through the crowd. He only has your description to go off with Mr. Thomas and his memory of a photograph that sat at Mrs. Thomas’s shared residence. You would definitely know him and could assess if you saw him, but Sherlock knows how dangerous that could be and he’s not letting you anywhere near the man if he can help it. Your part in this is to lead Mrs. Thomas away while he confronts and restricts Mr. Thomas without making a scene. He did tip the police off of his discoveries, but with how they excluded Sherlock from this investigation already, he doesn’t know what time they will show up if they even decide to. Like most things, which were more apparent when he started this career, he has to do this all himself. In all his credibility and fame, it’s been ages since he’s been shunned this way. It proves to him that he only has himself to count on.

Well. Himself and you. You, who looks up at him, ready and willing to carry out your set duty while he carries out his own. He’s suddenly regretting that rule he implemented, reluctant to depart from your frame. He eventually slips his arms away and fights off the demand within him urging him with great pressure and insistence to kiss you.

“Good luck. Find me if you feel anything is wrong or if you happen to run into Mr. Thomas.” He walks with you from the dance floor, a few glances taken your way that have been conducted from the moment you stepped in here together. It’s probably because Sherlock is such a renowned and “eligible” (according to the papers, anyway) bachelor. Pride sinks into your posture.

“I will. Be careful, I’ll see you soon.” Although you two can’t kiss, you do embrace Sherlock. It’s decisive and as quickly as you slotted yourself into his arms, that’s how quickly it’s over. He yearns for the attachment, your lips close to his ear as you murmur “time will explain” and flee from him thereafter.

He soundlessly parrots your words to himself and watches as you cut through the sea of people. He weaves among the patrons himself to ensure you find Mrs. Thomas with his own eyes. From this distance, he sees you greet her and she beams when she recognizes you. After a bone crushing hug, she looks around and then stares at you, presumably asking about where Sherlock is since this is not an event you attend alone and only days before, you lied to her and said you were dancing with him. He can only imagine what the conversation is between you as you hook your arm with hers and begin to walk her away from the thick of the people. He cranes his neck to view until you’re out of sight and while he would rather be in your company, he braces himself for what’s to come.

Sherlock is unable to pass through the attendants unnoticed. Without you at his arm, the attention from unmarried women comes in heaps, one after the other asking him to dance, some not-so-subtle caresses of his biceps as he does his best to appear dapper and without an ulterior motive for his visit. Then there are the officials who realize it’s him, among them by the name of Inspector Lestrade, whom Sherlock doesn’t recognize, who tries to apologize for the expulsion he had no part in, to which Sherlock asks if Lestrade received his note from the night prior. Lestrade confirms it, ready for Sherlock’s signal, and then they part as Sherlock continues his search. At least more than two individuals are searching for Mr. Thomas and he notices other police officials sipping away at glasses of champagne. It’s both irritating and relieving to see. Irritating because this case could have possibly been solved sooner had they just involved Sherlock from the beginning. Relieving because their presence and abundance means your safety is guaranteed and for once, his top priority isn’t bringing someone to answer for their crimes, it’s you.

He grows impatient as he scans more faces, greets people with politeness Mycroft taught him, speaks fondly when they ask him about you since they saw you enter with him and dance with him. In his haste, he pauses at the glasses set for champagne and wine. There are usually service providers who pour and distribute, but he doesn’t see any in sight and concludes to himself that they must be attending to other elites and people of importance. So, he partakes in opening a bottle himself, the smoke from the chilled glass rising up and stroking the length of his nose in pure, fleeting cold. As he chooses a glass, he hears a nearby exchange between a woman in pearls and another woman in rubies. So much for scolding Enola about eavesdropping. What she doesn’t know cannot be used against him.

“Did you attend the funeral?” Pearls inquires, her hand tucked at her elbow, the other nursing a glass of champagne.

“No, her father wasn’t quite fond of inviting his ex-mistress. Or perhaps her mother wasn’t,” Rubies replies and Sherlock has to blink away how staggering that statement is. They’re in public, this should be the last conversation they engage in. He’s aware he shouldn’t continue listening, but he does anyway to occupy the void that comes with pouring his glass to his desired volume.

“Shame. You missed out on the entertainment.” Pearls slyly nudges her friend and masks a wicked grin with a sip of her glass.

“Oh, please. A funeral filled with weeping men and women over a harlot? How depressing,” Rubies mutters aloud. Sherlock can’t believe what he’s hearing. Well, he can. He’s heard outrageous sentences come from wealthy mouths. It’s the entitlement.

“Clara was not a harlot,” Pearls retaliates in a hushed voice through her gritted teeth. At this, Sherlock’s head snaps up. They still haven’t caught wind that he’s listening nor how invested he now is in this topic of discussion.

“That’s up for debate,” Rubies says, but she leans in closer. Like she wants to hear the secret Pearls desperately wants to tell her. “But go ahead. What was so entertaining? Did Clara rise from the dead?”

Pearls lightly smacks Rubies on her arm. Sherlock is sure it’s in good nature since they both snicker.

“No, no, no, nothing of the supernatural sort,” she drops her voice an octave. Sherlock has to strain his ears to hear. “Get this… I was sitting with Peter during the ceremony when suddenly he taps my thigh. He says, ‘Darling, darling look,’ and I look around and do you know who I saw?”

“Who?” Sherlock is not religious, but he finds himself praying silently as he steps closer.

“Edmund. Thomas.”

“No, no he did not,” Rubies gasps, and Sherlock’s eyebrows fly to his forehead. What the hell was Edmund Thomas, the possible murderer, doing at Clara Grace’s, the victim’s, funeral?

“He was standing like a ghost meters away and he had to be chased off by Matilda. It was embarrassing and even more so when she tried to explain herself to Nicholas,” Pearls continues. Sherlock recognizes those names. Matilda and Nicholas Grace. Clara’s parents that Sherlock barely had time to question before they and the police excluded him. Sherlock is no longer concerned with the glass of champagne he’s poured himself. He doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s listening now, his mind racing as he attempts to deduce why Edmund would possibly attend Clara’s funeral.

“Guess love really does make people do crazy things. I think Matilda is taking that secret to the grave with her before she tells Nicholas.”

“Hey, and so are we. Clara didn’t want anyone to know. Especially not Blanche.”

Both women abstain from their gossip at the sound of glass shattering. One even gives a shriek that Sherlock hears having rushed away from the table right after he accidentally bumped into the corner of it. Neither of them noticed him, their eyes locked on the puddle of champagne on the floor, heels clacking as they maneuver away from the shards of glass that burst near them. A servant hurriedly runs over and calls for help to clean the mess, and that’s the last that Sherlock hears because he’s dashing through the crowd now, his thoughts crashing against each other in waves grander than the ocean could muster. His heartbeat drums in his ears, his target in Mr. Thomas not his intent now because doubt is filling him. Not the doubt that Mr. Thomas is not the culprit, he fucking knows that now, but the doubt attempting to convince him that maybe he is and not the hunch Sherlock currently has. Sherlock is doubtful because for once in his fucking life, he wants to be wrong. He wants to be wrong more than he can feel his heart rate quickening.

If I were to be honest, I would tell you how it feels as if a part of me is missing, rings in his head, the convenience of finding the fabric in the desk, the disappearance of one old woman, being coincidentally locked in a room where said fabric and other evidence lied. Everything repeats itself and it doesn’t stop at one time. He can hear voices overlapping, his own, yours, Mrs. Thomas’s, Matilda’s, Nicholas’s, Lestrade’s, Enola’s, Mycroft’s. They’re all trying to tell him the same thing. Images flash, the letter, the fabric, the key, the blood, Clara, the letter, the key, Clara, Rubies, Pearls, Mrs. Thomas, Mr. Thomas, you, you, you, you, you, you, a handkerchief, Switzerland, the revolver, you, you, Clara, the key, the letter, Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mr. Thomas and Clara. Mr. Thomas and Clara. Mr. Thomas and Clara.

I would tell you how lost I am, how heavy I carry my heart.

I am ready for this next chapter and to say goodbye to the last one.

How could he have been so blind? He has a motive now, perhaps the most important part of this investigation besides the murder weapon, which he still did not have. Love is a vicious motivator, he’s known this, and yet, he didn’t realize it despite reading the letter and dealing with the trapping door days ago. Edmund was talking about Clara in the letter, an emptiness referred to that had initially puzzled Sherlock, but it’s becoming clearer to him the more he runs around the ball.

I remember when Edmund and I would dance randomly. Being in love and all, made you spontaneous.

Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas.

He catches up to Lestrade, and Lestrade attempts to question what’s gotten into Sherlock, but Sherlock cuts him right off.

“What, what is it? Did you f—”

“Never mind Mr. Thomas, it’s not him, it never was.”

“But your note and explan—”

“I know what the hell I wrote,” Sherlock snaps and earns a few concerned looks thrown his way. He doesn’t care, his hand grasping Lestrade’s sleeve in a death grip. “It’s Blanche Thomas, she’s the one. She shot Clara, she… she…”

Sherlock abruptly stops speaking. He could hear his panting, but at the same time, he doesn’t feel any oxygen being driven out of him. Everything surrounding him goes mute, even Lestrade who pats his shoulders and demands he tells him why Sherlock thinks it’s her. He ignores Lestrade, his expression going blank as he contemplates what he had just done. He got the murderer wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong. But as that word echoes through the recesses of his brain, he mulls over its implication. And that’s the horrid, stomach twisting implication that you’re currently with said murderer. In his diligence and caution to ensure your safety, he led you right into the danger’s arms. He did the exact opposite of what he originally intended and now Mr. Thomas is the last person on his mind.

Sherlock speaks your name. He says it again after Lestrade repeats it in complete confusion. Then, he’s gripping Lestrade again, fury in his irises.

“She’s with Mrs. Thomas, we have to find her!” He orders, breaking into a sprint as Lestrade stumbles backwards.

In the midst of Sherlock opening door after door in the building, Lestrade signals his men and then they’re on the hunt themselves, the entirety of the ball in shambles as women screech and men protest. There are slams of the doors they push open, others ushering out the people who fail to form single file lines marching out of the establishment. No one understands the fiasco that’s ongoing, but due to the police being frantic, every patron within the building becomes so. Eventually, Sherlock climbs up a staircase leading up two flights. He attempts to search through the endless amount of rooms, catching couples off guard who took to them to engage in what they should be engaging in their private houses. He rolls his eyes as they try to explain themselves, slamming the door to then do the same with the next and then the next and the next.

There’s one white door with a golden frame that he tries and as soon as he steps through, a gun points right at him. He stops in his tracks, his blood running cold and not for the plain fact of how Mrs. Thomas points a M1882 revolver at him, but for how she’s wound an arm around your waist, the two of you right up against the balcony’s handrail. He doesn’t move a muscle. At least, not in his legs or arms, but the ones in his jaw flex in unbridled anger, his stare intense as he locks it with Mrs. Thomas. Gone is the facade he first saw when he met her outside of your shop, gone is the forgetfulness she feigned when he broke her door’s handle, gone is the sweet and tender expression of an old woman, present is the slickness of a master manipulator and a scorned lover. She’s been right under his nose this entire time.

“You were right, dear. He did figure it out,” she states, hinting that she must’ve unveiled herself to you before his discovery. He wonders why you didn’t come find him, her patronizing tone causing him to step forward only for her to point the gun from him to you, and that alone tells him all he needs to know. The tip of the revolver presses into your ribcage and he once more refrains from coming any closer, every morsel within him screaming for him to think, Think of something, anything. He eyes the balcony, the revolver, and then your face. There’s fear, but there’s also disappointment.

“It’s over, Blanche. Release her, she has nothing to do with this,” he declares, willing for the police to not enter at the wrong moment. If she’s crazy enough to murder Mr. Thomas’s mistress at close quarters, he doesn’t put it beneath her to try and do the same to you. He has to separate you two first. It’s crucial you’re away from the mayhem before there is anything enacted.

She laughs. You once thought it to be sweet, but now you can’t think of any other adjective to describe it besides deranged. “She doesn’t? Isn’t she the reason you visited me two days ago? Isn’t she the one who stole from my desk?”

“You planted that evidence for us to find,” Sherlock spits, his teeth grinding as he watches Mrs. Thomas press that revolver into your covered flesh harder as a consequence. Mrs. Thomas clearly doesn’t appreciate being patronized. He wonders how she held herself back from people consistently underestimating her and fawning over her in her old age. You do nothing but grimace, pleading with your eyes for Sherlock to stand back.

“And who are you to judge me for it? Who are either of you to judge me?” She asks, her gaze hardening. Sherlock misses that confused elderly act she pranced around in before. “I wrapped up the evidence for you practically in a bow and both of you still managed to muck it all up. She could’ve left with you unscathed, but no, she had to guide me here. Ask question after question about my marriage, try to run off when she caught an unlucky glimpse of the gun in my purse that is now going to be acquainted with her guts.” Mrs. Thomas clicks the hammer back, her expression serious, although regretful. You gulp as you stare at Sherlock, the concern on his features ripping away at you more than this terrifying predicament.

“Stop, stop,” he bargains, his hands flying in front of him to indicate his surrender. “You don’t have to do this. You care about her, I know you do.”

“I care about her? Look at you, you care about her!” She exclaims in hysterics. “Here you are, close to groveling when you hardly know her,” Mrs. Thomas turns her head towards you, “Here he is attempting to save your life, he’ll promise you the world, dear, he might even marry you and kiss the ground you walk on for the first few years, but it all ends the same. You’ll find him years from now with someone younger, try twenty years younger, and you’ll feel the same rage that I do. Women in love never win. We lose. We always lose.”

She’s bitter and vengeful, it’s a dangerous combination. Sherlock hates how you’re caught in the middle of it and you hate that even though she’s pressing a gun into your ribs, you mourn for her struggle. She didn’t deserve what Edmund did to her, no one did… but Clara didn’t deserve to be hurt, either. You’re conflicted since Clara clearly knew about Mrs. Thomas and still met with Edmund anyway, from what you gathered from Mrs. Thomas’s ramblings before Sherlock arrived, murder and framing someone else for it couldn’t be the solution. You’re not sure what exactly that solution could’ve been, but if she had confided in you, maybe you two could have found it together. This is what you told Mrs. Thomas before Sherlock appeared. You attempted to reason with her and appeal to the scraps of humanity left within her, but Clara and Edmund have rendered Mrs. Thomas into something you couldn’t bargain with. The sole reason you kept up your efforts to persuade her into freeing you was because of the glimmer of restraint in Mrs. Thomas’s eyes. She didn’t want to do this. She pointed a gun at you and threatened you to be silent, but she did it with hesitation, with shaking hands, with longing glances confirming she thought of the same memories you had with her along with your father and mother.

Your empathy gallops valleys, it shouldn’t end like this, and you think you should say something else so Mrs. Thomas won’t take any drastic actions. You certainly don’t wish to die today, but it would be much worse to die in front of Sherlock, powerless despite his size and intellect, to which Mrs. Thomas knows because she’s not breaking her grip on the revolver for a second. If Sherlock gains any leeway, then Mrs. Thomas would not stand a chance. He’s stronger, younger, faster, and because of this, Mrs. Thomas digs her gun until it uncomfortably greets the bone underneath all your layers.

“You’re right,” Sherlock says, and you blink at him in reaction because of all the things he could’ve said, that’s not what you expected. He’s always so keen on proving himself right rather than declaring someone else with that title, so you and Mrs. Thomas stare at him dumbfounded. There were a string of things that Mrs. Thomas said as well so you’re both wondering which in particular he’s referring to.

“Not about the affair part, but about me… caring. I do care for her. Eminently. Undeniably. Profusely,” he looks at you, steady despite how hard this is for him. You think back to the carriage. How his lips moved, how no words came from his mouth, how his shoulders fell in defeat as he allowed you to take the reins. “You can condemn all men, brand and categorize women according to your philosophy, but I would never, ever do that to her. If you pull that trigger, you’re not punishing Edmund—you’re punishing me. You’re punishing her. And I will make sure that I thoroughly pay it back tenfold.” Sherlock states this as he states everything. As a cold. Hard. Fact.

Dissension collects on Mrs. Thomas’s face. Sherlock is sure he can see her bottom lip wobble, but then the gun is back in his direction. He sucks in his breath, straightening his posture to accept his fate because at least it’s not pointed at you. He readily stares at the barrel of the gun, catching through his peripheral as you begin to move and with a decisive push of your hands, you knock the gun right out of Mrs. Thomas’s hand. You don’t know what possessed you to act so bravely, but this is the leeway you and Sherlock needed. Sherlock cuts across in the opposite direction of its aim, a bullet shot at the floor and ricocheting into the wall behind. The gun hits the floor with a thud, and so does Mrs. Thomas, the force of your shove enough to propel her to the ground since she is still a feeble, old woman. Neither you nor Sherlock dive for the gun to get it away from her, instead running into each other’s arms. The breath you held sputters out sporadically, breathing as if you just ran miles upon miles as Sherlock cups your face into his large hands. He examines you for any injuries, tilting your head as you grasp his wrists.

“Are you alright?” He asks, but it’s rushed, almost pained. He presses his forehead to yours, eyes shutting.

“I… I apologize,” he croaks, the first time you’ve heard it from him, but it doesn’t even apply, “I shouldn’t have- I should’ve known-.. It’s all my f—”

“Don’t, you’re here now. I’m okay, we’re okay, it’s you and me.” 

Sherlock latches his mouth to yours, breaking his own rule, his broad arms wrapping around your waist to haul you into him, distance nowhere to be found between your warm bodies. Your arms find their home at his neck, and as impassioned as the kiss is, it’s more than longing or desire. It’s all the things he can’t say, it’s trembling from how close you came to the worst, it’s his and your shared fear of losing one another when you just found each other. You’re so enraptured with Sherlock and he with you that neither of you notice Mrs. Thomas crawling for the gun. It’s the rotation of the cylinder that alerts the both of you, your gazes landing on Mrs. Thomas who aims the gun at you two from her seated position on the floor.

Sherlock steps in front of you, much to your dismay, his arms pushing you back behind him. You look over his shoulder, your head shaking for Mrs. Thomas to not do this, to have a second thought, and you can see her reluctance as her eyes meet yours. Then, the door bursts open, Lestrade leading the charge of men bolstering in with firearms. They push past you and Sherlock and surround Mrs. Thomas and from Sherlock’s sheer size, he can see over the officials and watch as she lowers her gun in defeat and raises her hands. Sherlock holds you in his arms protectively as they book her, even as he explains everything to Lestrade.

As they have her in bound wrists, that’s when the ever elusive Mr. Thomas arrives. He was late because he stopped to visit Clara Grace’s grave.

Blanche Thomas confessed to the murder of Clara Grace and to the attempt of framing her husband Edmund Thomas for it. Edmund had no idea Blanche found out about his affair, but she insisted this had been ongoing for years, solely acting out after he sent her a bouquet of flowers when she knew he was with Clara. She waited for him to leave for his job in Switzerland and then she struck once Matilda and Nicholas Grace left home to catch a train. She cleaned the revolver of Clara’s blood with Edmund’s handkerchief and intended to leave the gun behind, but couldn’t do so due to how Matilda and Nicholas came home early. Inspector Lestrade and the police force agreed that Sherlock would’ve solved this case sooner had he been granted access to the case’s witnesses and the preliminary suspects and because of this, they apologized thoroughly to Sherlock and after Sherlock told them of your involvement, they apologized to you as well. For having to become entangled as an expert advisor in clothing manufacturing and for not finding your location sooner. Clara’s parents, on the other hand, refused to comment. It was the sound of the gunshot that ultimately led the police to find you, Sherlock, and Mrs. Thomas on that balcony.

After everything, that’s the part that enraged Sherlock the most. If it had not been for their negligence, you could’ve possibly died, and he answered every question and remark with visible irritation he didn’t bother to hide. The self-blame bloomed throughout his chest, but you reassured him how nothing happened and how Mrs. Thomas’s deception was on her and no one else. A portion could be blamed on Clara and Edmund, but Clara met her bitter demise, and Edmund’s affair would be soon shared in the papers as there were journalists and reporters at the scene initially attending the ball for their own sake, later leaving with yet another one of Sherlock’s adventures, and another case closed. The masses would go wild when they found out about how Mrs. Thomas was skeptical about Sherlock when he coincidentally first appeared to ask about Mr. Wright’s beautiful daughter and how she counted on the both of them finding the planted fabric and letter in her desk drawer. They would get a kick out of how she shoved the end of a small fork into the keyhole of her door to trap Sherlock and you inside of her living area while she hid the revolver in another room. Sherlock wasn’t so pleased learning that certitude, either.

To appease the impact of Sherlock’s rage and gain his favor back, Lestrade recruited an officer with the task of giving you and Sherlock a carriage ride home. You accepted it seeing that he wouldn’t utter a word without agitation thick in his accent, hanging onto his arm as you were both escorted to it. The entire time, the rouge from your lips covered Sherlock’s mouth. He knew. You wondered how he could still be so intimidating to Lestrade in that state.

He doesn’t say anything during the carriage ride home. He’s not mad at you, more so at Mrs. Thomas for what she tried to do to you and what she did do to Clara, at Mr. Thomas for being unfaithful, at Clara for harboring the secret, and at Matilda and Rubies and Pearls and whoever the fuck Peter was for not alerting the police of this connection. At most, Sherlock grasps your thigh through your dress’s skirt and his hand never leaves until the carriage strides into a gradual and smooth halt. That’s when he acquiesces, slips his hand from you, and then offers it to help you out of the carriage. He doesn’t hold your hand as tightly as he held you back at the balcony, but his grip isn’t wavering, either. He walks with you to your flat, still wordless, still littered with worry as he looks at you, and as you unlock the door, you turn towards him.

“My bed isn’t as substantial as yours is,” you crack, playing with your fingers instead of meeting the intensity of his gaze. A storm’s actively brewing in his pupils, clouds of anger left behind from everything tonight, lightning flashing as he recalls. His knuckles uplift your head by tilting your chin up, steering your gaze back to his with tenderness contrasting the hurricane lurking in his eyes. While his irises are practically cobalt in his grudge, his affinity for you lingers there somehow, somewhere among the clouds and impending disaster. His care. Eminent. Undeniable. Profuse.

“But?” he resumes where you paused. Of course he knew there was a but. There’s also the diminutive victory that is his first utterance of the night since the fiasco absent of irritation and his temper, something for you alone to relish in. His voice is as velvety as you remember, and that sounds melodramatic, but considering how you faced death and escaped her clutches, you deserve to be.

“But there’s sufficient space for the two of us if you wish to come inside with me. I could utilize the help in removing my dress as I definitely required it by donning it earlier.” You deem this the correct response as Sherlock’s thumb traces your bottom lip, the leftover rouge on it staining his thumb just as it did his blemished mouth.

“Pity. I would’ve certainly helped. I suppose I could rectify it by aiding in your conundrum now, it’s only fair.” Your smile widens, removing his hand from your chin to guide him into your flat, the door shut and locked behind.

It’s dark in your home, so you depart from Sherlock to light your oil lamp nearby. Once it glows with life, you pivot on your heel and collide with his broad chest. Through the almost pitch black, he followed you here to this spot, and you can see the flame dancing in shadows on his features. The storm’s officially melted away and now, you sense the aftermath. There are hints of grief with how he drags you into him by your hips, and you understand him because just as he almost lost you tonight, you almost lost him. You want to ask him about what he said, what he declared to Mrs. Thomas with finality and belief in his words, but it’s transparent neither of you are going to be able to talk about this until you’re both comfortable again. That may be tomorrow or a week from now, but near death experiences don’t have specific timelines for how quickly one can move past their atrocities. For now, the both of you can indulge in one another’s company, indulge in what you both could’ve gone on without through one person’s skewed judgment.

You moan into Sherlock’s mouth, his hands on your hips keeping you flush to him while his body contrastingly backs you up until your dress meets your sofa’s back. He turns you around in one fluid motion, your hands grasping the edge of the backrest, pulse after pulse rapidly thrumming against your ass even through the layers of your skirt. You shudder as his hand traces the lacing of your corset, eager for him to release you of your clothed prison, arching as his fingertips draw along the lines of your shoulder blade.

“Fine, fine work,” he compliments your dress, or perhaps some higher power for your figure, two of his fingers maneuvering upwards until they’re able to tuck under the thick band of your choker and you inhale shakily, it holds your esophagus down just right for your head to become delirious with need. “I don’t think I can remove it. I think I want you just like this,” he breathes next to your ear, gooseflesh trailing your skin at the severe implication of what his words mean. He kisses the point where your neck and shoulder meet sweetly as his hands begin to toy with the golden lace. “I’ll be careful not to rip it.”

By the handfuls, Sherlock bunches the first layer of your skirt up until his hands meet the next layer of obsidian tule. Then that fabric starts to push up and in the midst of it, you attempt to step out of your heels and from how close Sherlock is and how he’s exposing part of your legs in this endeavor, he pinches your hip in warning. You freeze where you are, noticing how he’s stopped bunching the fabric up as he originally intended. You almost whine, but you remain quiet because you know from his arousal that he can’t wait for long.

“Leave them on. Like I said, I want you just like this,” he repeats and then to punctuate his sentence, the heel of his palm slides right between your shoulder blades and he pushes down on that spot until you bend at the waist and use the couch for support. You’re standing on your tiptoes, the heels of your shoes barely meeting the wooden floor beneath, but you consider this the point of Sherlock’s manhandling. He needs this sharp and he’s setting you up to where you will feel everything he wants you to, a thrill bubbling in your belly the more you think about it.

Once the tule is out of his way, next comes the fleshy netting, and then finally the silk that glided along your smooth legs with every step you took tonight. Those same two digits that further constricted your choker a minute ago find your dirty secret, and that’s how you decided against your bloomers, a hopeful feeling within you that something like this would happen. His reaction doesn’t fail to meet your standards, a curse flying from under his breath as he curls his fingers in the crevice between your outer lips. You whimper at the touch, bracing yourself on the couch because you have nowhere to turn to in this position.

“No undergarments, no decorum. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scheming for me to fuck you in that carriage, or perhaps at the ball in some private room,” he circles your entrance with his index finger. The wetness that he collects is then properly used to smother your clit and you keen, desperately moaning his name, gravitating a majority of your weight on one foot.

“Shh, shh,” he quiets you. You do your best to lower the volume of your voice as he slips his finger away from your clit, back to teasing your clenching hole. “So, which was it? The carriage? The ball?”

Before you can answer, Sherlock’s index finger plunges home, your walls gripping it immediately. You rock your hips for friction, but he remains stagnant as he awaits your reply. You’re already wound up tight, maybe from the corset hugging your ribcage, or maybe from how you teeter on your footing, or maybe from how your cunt should be filled, but you’re not ashamed of succumbing so quickly to his teasing.

“Both, both,” you confess, your voice high pitched and strained. You sulk as he slides his finger out, panting along the sofa. This interlude of nothing doesn’t last thankfully.

“Good answer. I’ll save the knowledge for next time,” he whispers, and you would’ve ruminated with this imagery if it weren’t for how you peered at him from the side of your head and saw him undoing the buttons of his trousers. Unlike your coyness two nights ago, you opt to watch him free himself, but his opposite hand turns your head away, “just feel me” mumbled near your ear.

You oblige him, not just doing so by ensuring your head’s positioned forward, but by gradually closing your eyes shut. The low light and warmth of the oil lamp adds onto the experience, a mostly opaque void behind your eyelids as you hone in on how he skillfully holds the layers of your skirts at your hip and eventually guides himself to your entrance. The head of him breaches first, your lower jaw falling open with a hushed breath that remains that way through the entirety of Sherlock’s cock filling you. Your walls grip him with soft spasms, and although you can hear the hiss that comes from him, he doesn’t push in faster, nor does he halt, it’s just a smooth and perpetuated glide until he’s as deep as he can be, the action resembling a train pulling in to its station. You’re unbearably warm through all of this, warmed by the layers you still have on, by the layers Sherlock has on, by his frame curving along yours, by the overwhelming and comforting heat of his girth, by an invisible and unidentifiable wave washing throughout your chest. He expands further within you the more you two relish in and savor this moment, the time between each of his pulses increasing, but the pulses themselves are heavy and achingly acute against your stretching walls.

“Tell me I can move,” Sherlock heaves, his voice as strained as his control currently is, a sign he’s been holding his breath for as long as he’s been sheathed inside of you. Even now, he’s holding himself back. His feelings and where they are only presented themselves because of how dire the circumstances became, from how he viewed you as close as you were to that revolver and that balcony. Without saying it, he’s ushering his resolve into your capable hands, not willing to hurt you unless you ask him to do so. If today, and the days that have passed, has told you anything, it’s how almost everything is out of your control despite how both you and Sherlock have tried to hang on with gritted teeth. Him and the prowess of his intellect, you and the prodigal responsibility bestowed upon you. Your life hasn’t been easy and with the addition of Sherlock, it’s bound to become more difficult, but for once, as this man buries his nose into your neck to hold himself off, you don’t care about soft and easy. For the first time in a long time you’re in control and it’s your overwhelming aspiration to have Sherlock lose his entirely.

“You can move,” you swiftly grasp his hand on the sofa’s edge after you feel him slightly shift, stopping him so you can convey what you want. Sherlock stares into your eyes, confused, but waiting regardless. The pace of his pulsing speeds. “But no thinking. I want you to feel me, too,” your lips graze his, a trembling sigh spills into your mouth from him. You can feel that tremble in the hand you hold, the ensnarement on himself he won’t dare to release. “Give me everything.”

“It won’t be gentle,” he admonishes, catching onto what you’re implying and what you’re asking for.

“I don’t need gentle,” you rebuke, watching how his expression goes from confusion to self-discipline and finally to pure lust.

Something plays at his lips, but whatever it is he fails at saying, it’s soon forgotten as he presses his mouth against yours, his hips surging back and then forward with poignancy that leaves you teetering all over again. You break the kiss to cry out as Sherlock begins to do as he was told, as his instincts steer him and not the thrall of his all-too-consuming thoughts. Your hands find purchase on the edge of the sofa your hip bones are scraping against, white knuckling the backrest as Sherlock thrusts into you without abandon, with the pressure and pace he sets being above what you imagined. He pounds into your cunt without constraint nor pause, the sofa’s legs lightly skidding against your floor from the sheer force. You can feel your eyes rolling into the back of your head as your back arches and seemingly grants him the access necessary to thrust in deeper, your mouth agape to accommodate a succession of incoherent moans. As for Sherlock himself, he’s focused on fucking you into the same oblivion he finds himself in when you come across his mind, panting as he chases after what his body craves instead of what his usual contemplation convinces him into. The tule of one of your skirts scratches at him and in reaction, he juts his palm out to push it and the other layers up again, the provocative image of his cock spearing in and out of you greeting him in its tantalizing view.

“You have such a pretty cunt,” he mutters, much to your surprise. If the heat before was bad, it’s attacking you cruelly now from his praise, fire tempering within you, licking at your skin from underneath. Sherlock reinforces his grip at your hips, his hands claiming you under your dress on top of your bare skin. His thumbs stroke along the flesh of your posterior, over the top swells of your rounded cheeks because otherwise, his hips are forcefully clapping against them. The backrest’s edge has found the same thumb shaped bruises Sherlock left behind days ago, a soaring sting that you welcome with the influx of sensations that come with being railed wide open for Sherlock and his withstanding stamina.

“Pretty back, pretty hair,” he says, rambling on with items you never thought would come from Sherlock. He could barely compliment you back at the carriage, but then again, the circumstances are massively different. You can’t form your own words of praise and what you feel for him, not with how he’s thrusting into you, so you have no choice but to hear him, but to whine as one of Sherlock’s hands leaves from your hip, his digits tracing your bare shoulder.

“Pretty throat,” he gruffs, his fingers trailing higher and higher along your shoulder until they brush along your nape. You shiver at the touch, craning your head upwards. Whilst doing so, Sherlock’s hand rounds to the front of your neck, his palm pressing flat against your larynx, flat against the silk rose of your choker, smashing the fabric you cautiously sewed in place as his fingers drape and almost engulf your throat in the process. It’s not enough to choke you, the corset is doing a more efficient job of that, but when you swallow, Sherlock feels it. He feels the way it shifts your esophagus, and suddenly, he adds a guiding pressure to your neck, straightening your posture by it with your compliance.

You gasp for air as you stand taller, now more weight back on your heels that were teasing your floorboards before. Your head falls back into one of his broad shoulders as his hand remains atop your neck, the other abandoning your hips entirely to press into your abdomen, right above where the backrest’s edge digs into your corset. He can’t pull his hips back as much as he wants at this angle, but he’s now undulating them against you, the tip of his cock endlessly and frustratingly flirting with a spot inside of you that’s pushing you closer and closer to that unfamiliar euphoria you only felt once, and that was with Sherlock.

“Fuck, f-fuck, you’re so fucking pretty, it infuriates me,” his hand goes along the boning of your corset until it reaches your heaving chest, “it haunts me.” He dips under the corset, past the ebony fabric holding your breasts up, and the calluses meet your skin as he explores until he’s able to cup one of your tits from underneath. The lack of space already is propelling the air from your lungs, as is his cock and heavy hand on your neck, so this isn’t helping you any. But he soon grants you a semblance of reprieve by slipping your breast out of the corset, your reward in how his thumb rolls along your pebbled nipple.

You’re a goner. You’ve been a goner. Since the very moment you marched up the staircase and confronted Sherlock over his fiddle, you’ve been subject to falling. Now, you are subject to fall off the cliff’s edge he’s pushed you towards. He doesn’t cease the delicious thrusts he gives you, nor the soft hold he has on your larynx, nor the stroke of his thumb on your nipple, and there’s something about your head becoming dizzy as you near your climax. It could be due to how you can barely breathe. It could also be due to how your legs are shaking. Whatever it is, you stutter out a breath, his name, and squeeze your eyes shut as you hit your peak with something close to a shriek. You clamp down on Sherlock’s length, hiccupping and close to downright sobbing as you feel electricity in your spine, in your clit, tingling in spots of static in every portion of your being.

“That’s it, I’ve got you,” he says, supporting your weight as you drench his cock in your cum, as he continues to fuck you through it, as his hold on your breast keeps you from falling forward. You’re twitching, panting in the aftermath, bracing yourself on the sofa.

He can’t last much longer. Not at the rate he began, or the way your heat tightened around his cock. Once he’s certain you won’t crumble on your baby deer legs, he retracts from you, one hand bracing on the sofa’s backrest, the other pumping himself twice. Although he is no longer seated inside of you, he imagines your wet heat surrounding him. He imagines shooting his seed while sliding his cock inside to your hilt. It’s not the same, but it’s over for him. He cups what he can in his hand as he finishes himself off, inhaling and exhaling deeply behind you. To appease his breaths, he rains a trail of affection with his lips along your shoulder. Both the air he expels and the drag of his mouth kiss at your sensitive flesh.

“Are you alright?” God, his voice still sounds so heady, most likely hazy from his orgasm, and from what you two just did. It’s deeper than it usually is. “Didn’t hurt you?” He speaks against your skin, unable to truly depart from it.

Adrenaline is what helps you pivot back around. You’re still wobbly on your own two feet, but you gather enough strength to grasp his tie and pull him in for a kiss. He sputters, but returns it. Your arms wind around his neck and one of his attempts to wrap around your waist, but it stops itself. His other hand lifts near the space away from the both of you and even though your eyes are closed, you can feel the motion. It causes you to cease your kissing, your eyes finding his stained hand that he sheepishly glances at and then back at you.

“As much as I wish to hold you,” he gestures, though, he seems bashful of the pearlescent mess there and on his fingers. Sherlock fully expects you to sneer or at least mimic the bashfulness he’s sinking into, but you don’t. He’s in the midst of lowering his hand when you reach for his handkerchief, the one in his pocket matching his tie, and then utilize it to clean it. Sherlock observes as you cleanse his hand of his cum, perturbed by the benignity, by how many strands of defiant hairs have slipped free from your updo, his doing. He’s staring at you in fondness, with a soft grin on his features, and although you want to ask why he’s visibly jovial, you’re too pleased with the fact that he’s assuaged in the rage built from tonight. Besides, you don’t need to be a detective of his skills to understand what possibly conciliated his irate mood.

“Thought I said no thinking,” you pipe up, discarding the handkerchief, your gaze looking up at him from under your lashes.

“How do you know I’m thinking?” He hums as you begin to remove his tie. Then the buttons come undone to his vest by your fingers.

“Well… you get this far away look in your eyes. Your eyebrows pinch together… the bridge of your nose slightly scrunches, your lips fall into a flat line. I can see your dimples flash as your jaw tightens—”

“Are you deducing me, Lily?” He narrows his eyes at you, shrugging the vest off as you push it off his shoulders. He feels far more liberated by the action. You busy yourself with the buttons of his undershirt now. It’s possible that an image of you and him undressing one another in a domestic routine floats by.

“Funny way of pronouncing seducing, but yes, I am. I’ll be sure to welcome you naked in my bed if you would so kindly take this off,” you remove the last button of his shirt, and there isn’t any hesitation in how Sherlock removes that next as well. It falls to the floor as forgotten as his vest is. He gently laughs at your cheeky response, a bit of pride in him that you’re starting to pick up on his habits, nevertheless if you use them against him. It’s quite possible you’ve been looking at him as much as he has you. Then again, he’s vastly attuned to you, so you have some competition.

“You think yourself clever,” he muses, “In my defense, I presumed the no thinking law only applied to the sex we just had.” He watches as you are in the midst of removing a clip from your hair, your head slightly jolting from the blatant use of that word. But there isn’t any reason to be vague, you two have now seen each other naked, and he knows what your face looks like when you cum. Regardless, he revels in the pigment of your skin adopting a rosy hue. The clip in your hair is removed and then another, and another. Soon, it’s down, free of any tools, of any worries. You stretch the choker around your hands and then pull that over your head. Then you gesture for him to help, turning your back towards him. He begins to undo the lacing of your corset.

“No, it applies when I opt for it. And I am currently opting for it. You’re much more carefree when you think less.” You breathe correctly and evenly for the first time since you adorned your dress, each lacing that he pulls free giving you relief. The soreness settles further in so you know you’ll have to deal with that in the morning. You don’t think Sherlock would oppose relaxing for a day after everything you’ve both gone through tonight. He might need some convincing, but you’re learning what exactly persuades him and how you can institute it.

“If I thought less, the world would tear itself apart,” he replies, finally reaching the bottom. Then he aids you in its elimination. You’re pivoting on your heels, stepping out of your skirts, and then your shoes. During this, Sherlock is dropping his trousers to become as bare as you are. The sheets are going to be incredibly warm tonight. You lose the height that brought you closer to Sherlock’s face, but unlike when you first met him, you’re not intimidated. You stare up at him with the same gleam in your eye that you find in his.

“Ah, ah, there you go, easy, detective,” your hand pats his bare chest, but it lingers there once it touches. “Don’t think about the world. Think about me.”

“I was thinking about you,” he says before he can stop himself, clearing his throat at the intimacy his confession entails. It seems as if thinking less prompts the vulnerability he hates to display to anyone. Except, you aren’t just anyone. He sees your gaze soften, your hands cupping his cheeks.

“Thinking of how pretty I am?” You mean it as a tease, a reference to how he babbled on and on about how pretty you were during sex. But with how he’s looking at you, it came out a lot softer than originally intended. Tenderhearted. A whisper, even. You didn’t know you could feel so cherished in something once described to you as uncomfortable, the source being an elderly woman who wanted to advise you about the affairs of man and woman. You’re glad Sherlock’s proved her wrong.

“Yes,” he confirms and your head swims. “I’m thinking about how pretty you are.”

There isn’t anything else left to say. You can see and feel the sincerity radiating off him. There are a number of ways that either of you could ruin this, but you’ve had enough of the talking, instead reaching up to kiss him with fervor. He kisses you back, naturally, his arms lifting you as he clumsily navigates the space of your flat. He’s unfamiliar with the floor plan, so you’re kind enough to whisper directions along with sweet nothings into his ear, giddy that he follows and lowers you into your bed. You shift the blankets so you can travel underneath them, holding the sheets away from your body as an invitation for Sherlock to join in.

He doesn’t tell you the truth, the full truth, behind his thoughts, the ones that formed as he gazed at you with post-orgasmic clarity. Sure, he knows you’re pretty, that’s something he’s always known, and it snuck up on him heavily while he buried himself inside you and allowed his hands to roam your body through their own discretion, but there were other ideas bursting into his head. Concepts, really. He couldn’t decipher them and their complexities still, but whatever it is that you make him feel, it’s beyond answers, it’s beyond concrete and definitive laws. There is not one straightforward result nor explanation for him to pick apart and analyze as a scientist, or a physicist, or a chemist, or even a logician. Deductive reasoning can only take him so far and if he is to look back on the year he’s had, there are limitations to how he views the world despite his heightened awareness and inability to miss the details. This is raw and indistinguishable for someone like him. You’re a woman who he’s drawn to magnetically, a phenomenon he never thought would happen to him. And as he looms over you, those… concepts spring back to life. Admiration. Wonder. Affection. Worry. Care. Avidity. Humanity. Beauty. Lust. Luck. Loss… L…

He normally would scrub his brain if it dared to consider that last thing. But here you are, blinking up at him with those long lashes, nuzzling your nose against his, kissing his mouth with enthusiasm and adoration he hopes he replicates, gratifying him with the parting of your legs so he can be as close as your bodies can warrant, and he thinks he can. He can let his brain stray there. He thinks he might be in…

He doesn’t know if he is. But as his cases have taught him, anything is possible.

#henry cavill #l4l.writes #sherlock holmes #enola holmes #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes x reader #beyond answers #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill imagine

[autumnmobile12]

All right, this scene is a contentious one to say the least.

I want to look at the elements that make up this part, starting from the very beginning.

After waking up in Gresit, Alucard had one goal:  Kill Dracula.  Throughout Season 2, he’s determined, he has points of dry, sarcastic humor, but as a whole, his personality is pretty grim.  He is absolutely unwavering in his determination.

Once Dracula was dead, though, he now has to live with the guilt of not only killing the father who loved and raised him but also the guilt over being unable to save his mother when she needed him.  When Lisa was taken, Alucard was traveling, and though he never explicitly says this, I would bet anything that ever since that night he has asked himself, “Why wasn’t I there?  What could I have done differently?  If I had done _______, she would be here right now and none of this would have ever happened.”  Alucard is a rational character.  He understands that what happened to Lisa was a cruel accident of fate.  She was accused of witchcraft, and he and his father were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They couldn’t have predicted her death, they couldn’t have changed it.

But this is how the Bargaining Stage of Grief plays out.  This is what sets him apart from Trevor and Sypha by the end of Season 2.  Between the three of them, Sypha still has her family waiting for her.  She still has her people and the optimism to still see the brighter future.  (Which is a trait she never fully loses.)  As for Trevor, he had already lost everyone he’d ever loved, and so he definitely already went through all the messy stages of grief to the point of sad acceptance that his family is dead and now he has to live with that.

Alucard can’t identify with that kind of acceptance yet, for either of his parents. The grief is too raw, and so I believe his decision to remain behind while his companions left without him was a form of self-punishment.  In spite of the understanding it wasn’t his fault, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy after everything that happened.  Sure, he says he needs to protect the accumulation of his father’s knowledge, and while that might have been true, I feel like he had other options.  The show demonstrates that magic is capable of the impossible, so I feel like there should have been some kind of spell that could be engineered to keep his father’s/the Hold’s collection from being destroyed or looted.  If he asked Sypha and Trevor to stay and help him, I think they would have.  Instead, he watches them leave without asking them to visit or even expecting to see them ever again.  And we leave him finally breaking down over his losses.

All this to say he was not in a good headspace when Sumi and Taka showed up, which they picked up on and exploited to their advantage.  (The guy was talking to dolls he’d made to resemble his friends, and he was mimicking their voices in pseudo-conversation.  Funny conversations, yes, but damn, that coping mechanism…)

The first thing Alucard tells them is he ‘will not be hunted,’ but there is a disturbing irony here.

Attacking them indicates that his guard was up and he was ready to end lives if he had to.  Self-preservation is on point.  It’s Sumi and Taka who de-escalate the situation.  “We mean you no harm.  We came to ask you for help.”  They’re smiling and laughing by the end of this initial encounter.  They tell him their story.  “We’re these poor, innocent waifs from a distant land searching for a way to save our people.  Pity us.”  They present themselves as non-threatening, wide-eyed victims who only need help, which is a ruse he unfortunately falls for.

“It’s time for your reward.”

It makes my skin crawl how despicable that one line of manipulation is.  This is the chink in Alucard’s armor:  the idea of guilt that persists after the mother he couldn’t save and the father he killed, especially the latter.  Understandably, although Alucard recognizes what he did was necessary, the fact he’s committed patricide is weighing on him.  There was Sypha’s words of comfort at the end of Season 2 that was it was ‘okay to love the man,’ but neither she or Trevor are around.  This leaves the opening for the toxic, false comfort of Sumi and Taka’s manipulation.  Here they are introducing the conflicting idea that what he did is worthy of praise.

Couple that with the factor that at this point, he’s only known them for a few days at most.  Obviously, that’s nowhere near long enough to establish an emotional connection that’s strong enough to say,  “Yes, I want to be with this person.”  But his silence is not consent; in fact, I see this as fear that if he does not go through with this like they want, it will make them leave him like Sypha and Trevor did.  Again, they are playing on that fatal loneliness.  Coercion.

Soft words, soft voices, and that is he what he needed to hear.

And Sumi and Taka knew exactly what to say.

Back in their flashback about Cho, Sumi and Taka talk how they ‘studied’ her, studied the way she fought, and learned about her weaknesses for years.  This is the subtlest bit of foreshadowing I’ve found so far in the series.  It shows that Sumi and Taka don’t hunt vampires the way Trevor does.  They’re formidable fighters, yes, but they were not born and raised to hunt like the Belmonts were.  They don’t have that specific training or discipline, so they make up for it with deceit.  They ingratiate themselves with their prey, observing them and looking for the weak point.

Alucard said he would not be hunted.

But he was.

The entire time they were there, Sumi and Taka were studying him the way they studied Cho.  They saw Alucard’s loneliness and they took full advantage of the trust he gave them.  He invited them into his home, fed, and looked after them, he saw himself as their friend while the whole time they were looking for a way to kill him.  They were continuously asking about weapons, magic, off-limits rooms in the Castle, when the Castle could be fixed, etc.  They were trying to zero in on the ‘kill room’ where he would be at his most vulnerable.

It’s hard to say how much of Sumi and Taka’s story was true given the outcome, but I’m inclined to believe it was but with one caveat.  I don’t think they helped their fellow prisoners escape.  I think they were the only survivors.  There’s no evidence of this other than the fact I think it’s suspicious that they left their friends behind to seek help.  Okay…Japan is a long way from Wallachia.  They couldn’t find anyone closer?  They didn’t try to smuggle more people away?  They don’t even mention their people in their angry ranting before they try to kill Alucard.

There’s also the brief line where they say they were given to Cho’s court as children.  It’s not clear whether or not their parents were forced to give them up as tribute to Cho, but that’s irrelevant if they themselves felt betrayed and abandoned by the people who should have loved and protected them.  There is the later line where they say everyone lies to them.  With that, I think they were so far in the fog of grief and anger that in their minds, they were unable to recognize Alucard could have been a genuine ally to them, and they only saw him as just another vampire who was evil and needed to be killed.

The beauty and the tragedy of both Alucard and Lisa’s characters is that they are both so incredibly kind and selfless, and they want to believe in people.  Even when the Bishop’s henchmen came to her home, Lisa didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion of witchcraft and fear.  She asked if the Archbishop was ill and if they needed her help.  When they started tearing apart her home, she told them whatever they wanted she would give it to them.  She didn’t try to run.  She tried to explain calmly about her medical practice and that what she did helped people.  Her undoing was a man who meant her harm.

Lisa’s arrest is mirrored in the moments before Alucard kills Sumi and Taka.  Even though he realizes what’s happened and the situation he’s in, realizing they aren’t with him out of love and this was all a manipulation, a trap, and even rape——even though he realized all that, he still wanted to help them.

Right before they die, he is begging them to listen, that is their friend, and he can help them. The world is not against them.  These aren’t the words of a man trying to save himself.  He is living admirably up to the virtues he learned from his mother.  He waited until the last possible moment before choosing to save his own life over theirs. And his last line to them is, “I never lied to you.”

There’s no condoning what Sumi and Taka did to Alucard, that is an undeniably fucked up thing to do to a person and the plot accounted for it by killing off their characters.  However, I do feel these two are a testament to how anger and hatred will destroy a person and are a kind of foil to characters like Isaac. Isaac was horribly abused in his past and he had every reason to resent humanity, and yet by the end of his arc, he was beginning to let go of his anger and start a new life where he could be happy.  This is the lesson Isaac learns by the end of Season 3 whereas we leave Alucard again weeping alone with the memory of people he couldn’t save:  his mother and father and the two people he thought were his friends.  Again, he is grieving.  “I was a good friend to them, wasn’t I?  I helped them, didn’t I?  What did I do wrong?’

The answers are yes, yes, and no, he did nothing wrong.  Grieving is coming to terms with that.

And finally, we have the gruesome way in which he ‘displays’ their bodies outside the Castle as a means to warn off other travelers or intruders.  Impalement was a very degrading means of execution.  It was excruciatingly slow, extremely painful, and those who faced this sentence would suffer for hours if not days in public.  You see the rage and humiliation he feels, and so by impaling the corpses, he in turn inflicted that humiliation on Sumi and Taka.  It’s probably as close to the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality as he gets.

A recurring theme throughout the series is innocence against the brutality of a cruel world.  Characters like Sypha, Alucard, and Lisa can give all the kindness they have to offer, but they can’t change the fact that people like the Judge and Bishop exist.  Characters like Trevor and Isaac lost their faith in humanity and found it again with the help of people like Sypha and the Ship Captain.  And characters like Dracula, Carmilla, and even Sumi and Taka, lost their way entirely and were swallowed up by their rage and pain.

#castlevania #alucard tepes #sumi and taka #lisa tepes #cho #castlevania netflix #character analysis #character development #alucard and lisa #isaac #castlevania dracula #character comparison #trevor belmont #sypha belnades #grieving characters #grief #this one was hard to write

[ficsfromthebigchair]

Riding In Cars With Boys (18+)

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x F!Reader

(Smut, Mentions of Loss, Grief, and Death) 

Word Count: 6.7k

Summary: “My only question is, can you drive as fast as you fly?” you try to bait him. He scoffs, “You wanna find out?”

Author’s Note: Hi everyone! this is my first dabble into writing Top Gun fan fic. I seriously couldn’t have done it without my two beta readers/editors/co-writers (you know who are). So I’d like to thank them profusely. I also wanted to add the pronunciation of a name of a character in this. Her name is “Sire” pronounced like “Sigh-Er.” I also created a playlist of songs mentioned in the fic and songs that also go with mood of this fic.  If you enjoyed this, leave a like, reply, or reblog and if you have a request, my inbox is open! Thank you so much again!

Playlist Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1kydfNGEE9aRg7WCSDorCM?si=cf88f9adc2964f30

It’s Friday evening at the Hard Deck dive bar. The busiest night of the week. The bar is usually slammed with barrages of naval officers swarming into the bar, looking to get wasted or lucky. You just hoped that one man, in particular, would show up. 

5 pm on the dot, the blur of khaki uniforms rush through the door, wasting no time to get to the bar. 

Penny, your boss and close family friend, hired you as a semi-permanent employee. You help her with rowdy nights like these, and you help her with the money and numbers aspect of the business. You’ve felt a sense of gratitude since she took you under her wing after your dad passed. She was one of your biggest supporters when you went off to college. She was some of the only family you have left. So it only made sense for you to help her out.

You polish a beer glass absentmindedly as you focus your attention on the commotion over at the door.

‘Maybe, just maybe….’ you prayed.

“Looking for someone?” a voice takes you out of your thoughts.

Leaning against the bar with one elbow and his hand languidly resting on his hip is one Lt. Jake Seresin, more notoriously known by his call sign, Hangman. The sly son of bitch.

“Hello Jake…” you greet him, redirecting your attention from the door to the navy man decked out in all khaki with the largest shit-eating grin on his face. 

He laughs a cocky laugh.

“Awww, don’t sound so disappointed to see me…you’re my favorite bartender ya know…” he slaps his hand on the bar playfully.

“Don’t let Penny hear you say that…” 

You roll your eyes at his actions; slinging the rag on your shoulder,  you take a freshly polished beer glass to fill it up.

“Such a shame….” you finished filling up the glass, back turned to him. 

You feel his piercing lustful blue eyes checking you out from behind. 

“Right outfit, wrong pilot…” you say with your back turned to him

You turn to face him, lips forming a perfectly straight line, with one brow arching up.

‘Because you’re not my favorite airman…’ you place his beer in front of him with a smirk on your face. 

He scoffs, sliding his beer toward him,

“You’re ice cold baby” he takes a sip, still making heavy eye contact with you. 

You narrow your eyes at him and shake your head at him.

“Where your buddies at?” you remove the rag from your shoulder and buff the mahogany bar. 

He takes a long swig of his drink, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“You mean where’s Rooster?” He lifts the drink from his lips. 

You look up at him slowly, still polishing the bar, trying not to garner a reaction. 

You finally make eye contact, his lips growing into a devious smirk.“You know…” 

He places his beer in front of him.“If it makes you feel better, He’s got it bad for you.” He leans in closer. 

You stop polishing the bar, “Oh yeah?” you raise your brow up at him. 

“Yeah…” he reciprocates. 

“And you know what?”  he eludes. 

You raise your brow higher, nodding at him to elaborate. 

“If he doesn’t have the balls to ask you out…I might just have to swoop in for the kill. They don’t call me Hangman for nothing.” He grins ear to ear. 

You scoff at him, “In your dreams” 

“Nah, I don’t dream, I do.” he stands up from the bar taking his glass with him. 

From the corner of your eye, you see a woman also in uniform making her way toward Hangman. Her blue eyes are dead set on him. You can’t tell if she is glad to see him or angry. Knowing Hangman, it’s probably the latter. 

“Can’t say I’m surprised to see you here,  Jake” she narrows her eyes at him and crosses her arms over her chest. 

‘Oh yeah, she’s mad,’ you look between the two.

He adverts his attention to her, 

“Hello baby, you know everytime I see you just keep getting more gorgeous, right?” he attempts to flatter her. 

She nods her head in disapproval at him.

“Pet names aren’t gonna get you outta this Jake.” she grins at him.

Hangman laughs a nervous laugh, looking back at you.

“Y/N, this is Sire…” 

You look at her and then back to him. 

‘That name sounds familiar,’ you pause. 

Then you remember. One night, when you and rooster were talking, he mentioned there was some drama going on in the Dagger Squad. One of the members, callsign “Dirt,” or now that you’ve been properly introduced, Sire,  and Jake have been having a rivalry. Rooster told you they are constantly trying to one-up each other in training any chance they get. If Hangman flew high, Sire would fly higher. If Sire flew fast, Hangman would fly faster. Rooster and the others had a bet going on what would happen. They were all in agreement that they, 1. Haven’t slept together yet. 2. Have almost slept together, but Hangman said something dumb and ruined it. Or 3, which is the most likely scenario; they have slept together (more than once) and are unwilling to quit the chase because it's too much fun for them. 

Looking at the way he scans Sire up and down with a giant smirk on his face, you’re guessing option number three.

Sire steps closer to him until she’s in his personal space.

“I should punch you right here, right now, in front of everyone, so that they know that Lieutenant Jake Seresin is a punk bitch who can’t keep a woman to save his life?” she scorns him. 

“Who can’t stop his dick from leading him around.” she continues, with pure venom in her tone. 

“Imagine, if you thought with your brain for once. You’d better be a pilot and partner…” she finishes, tossing her sandy blonde/brown hair over her shoulder in victory. 

Hangman is rendered speechless. He glances at you for backup. 

“Hey, if you punch him…I didn’t see anything.” You explain to Sire, holding your hands up.

Hangman’s head snaps back to you. His face was ridden with betrayal. 

He looks back down at Sire. They stare each other down. Sire stares at him up through her long lashes. Hangman’s face softens. She wins their silent staring contest. 

Sighing, he places his hands on his hips, “Alright baby, let’s go talk”

Sire’s face lights up. She allows him to drape his arm over her shoulders. Before they make their way toward the pool table with the other pilots; Sire looks at you, 

“It was nice meeting you Y/N. Rooster talks a lot about you. I can see why. You’re a force to be reckoned with.” 

You smile and wave at her back.

“I’ll see you later.” Hangman winks at you. Sire notices and elbows him in the stomach

“Ow!” you hear him mutter as they rejoin the other khakis surrounding the pool table. 

…………………………………………………

The clock continues its treacherous passage of time. 

“Where the hell is he?” you mutter, glaring at the clock. 

You glance over at the door and then at the groups of officers at the pool table.

Nothing.

You sigh in defeat, running your hands through your hair. 

“You okay honey?” Penny brushes past you, holding two shot glasses to serve at the other side of the bar. 

You rest your hands on the bar's countertop, shaking your head. 

“Yeah…”

Penny makes her way to your side, rubbing your shoulder for comfort. 

“He’ll show up. I promise.” She turns away to fill up a shot glass of whiskey. 

You turn toward her, backing and leaning against the bar.

“How is it that he's so easy to read but so difficult at the same time?” you ask. 

Penny laughs, “Yeah, that’s Bradley for you. He’s been like that his whole life, according to Mav anyway.”She turns to face you, holding the shot glass out toward you. 

“Take this, it’ll give you strength…”

You sigh, slamming down the shot and then handing the empty, cold glass toward her. 

One of the officers makes his way to the jukebox. The music in the bar goes quiet for a few seconds. Not that anyone in the packed bar noticed. Only a Fool Would Say That by Steely Dan plays softly in the background. 

Our world become one of salads and suns 

Only a fool would say that

A boy with a plan, a natural man

“It’s just…” you speak up, “I’ve known him so long and he’s so wishy washy…like I mean he’s a great guy but damn, he needs to make up his mind…” Penny hears you out. She turns to face you with a smile forming on her face. 

“I know we’ve had a thing for each other for so long but…” you continue to ramble. You stop when

Penny stares toward the entrance of the door. You notice her attention drifting.

“What?” you ask.

She gestures her head toward the door. Before you could turn around to see what she was gesturing towards, Penny spoke up. 

“Hey Bradley…” she looks between you and him as he makes his way toward you at the bar. 

“Hi Penny.” He stops short of the bar.

Penny holds in her smile, patting your shoulder gently, “Have fun…” she whispers as she leaves you and Bradley alone. You turn slowly to face him. He sits himself down on a barstool, looking directly at you through his dark hazel eyes. God, he was gorgeous, tonight especially. He forwent the Naval uniform and instead wore an open white Hawaiian shirt with a tank underneath, revealing his dog tags resting on the exposed part of his broad chest. 

“Hi…” he greets you warmly. 

“Hi…” you coo. 

You rest your hands on the bar counter and lean into him slightly. 

“I missed you…” he broke the silence. 

You admire him for a moment before you answer. Taking notice of how his slight tan glistens in the soft evening California light or how his perfectly disheveled brownish, sandy blonde is well complemented by his well-groomed mustache.

You laugh.“Didn’t I just see you last week, fly boy?” you poked fun at him. He laughs at your nickname.

“Yeah, I did. But It was the longest week of my life…” He leans into you. You lean closer into him, resting your chest on your arms, bringing attention to your low-cut red tank top. He notices. You see him lick his bottom lip, trying to keep his cool. 

“Well, now that you mentioned it, I did miss my favorite pilot. A lot.” you grin at him. His mustache curls up with his lips. You got him right where you want him.

“So…” he clears his throat, trying to keep his composure.“What time does your shift end?” He plays it cool. You push yourself off from the counter and turn to grab a glass. He eyes your every move, eager for an answer. You turn to face him, smiling at him. 

“10…” you finally say. 

Bradley glances over his shoulder at the clock. “7:42”, the arms are positioned. He sighs and drops his head in loss. Penny makes her way over. 

“Hon, I got it covered for the rest of the night.” she interrupts. Bradley’s head snaps upward to Penny.

“You’re serious?” you ask her. 

She nods her head.“Yeah, I could handle it before you were hired. I can definitely handle it now.” She cleans a part of the countertop. You look at her in surprise, opening and closing your mouth a couple of times. 

“Go, I’ve got this!” she gestures her hands for you to go.

You threw down your rag and made your way to the end of the bar with Bradley following you. 

Before you leave from behind the bar, Penny gently grasps your shoulder.

“Hey…” she smiles, “have fun…” she whispers and pats you on the back to go. You exit from behind the bar, and Bradley waits for you. 

“So…” he claps his hands together.“You ready to get outta here?” 

You make your way in front of him, holding your hand out.

“I thought you’d never ask, fly boy.” you smile wide. His face goes red. He blushes. That’s the Bradley, you know. 

Bradley catches up, his hand still in yours. Before you could exit the bar, an all too familiar voice has you halted. 

“Well, somebody’s getting lucky tonight…” Hangman grins wide, revealing his eerily perfect teeth.

Hangman and the other airman crowd around the entrance, snickering at his remark. He waltzes up to Bradley, sizing him up.

“Who would have thought, little rooster had it in him…” he sneers. Bradley puffs his chest out as a silent act of war. 

‘Oh god, here they go…’ you mentally panicked.

You notice the two men sizing each other up.You let go of Bradley’s hand, and he looks down to notice you filling the space between him and Hangman.

“I don’t think you wanna go there, do you?” you ridicule him. 

“I never lose and I don’t plan on startin’ to now…” he stares Bradley down. You laugh dryly at his attempt to rile Bradley up, which wasn’t hard to do.

“Listen here, As moving as this display of macho, high testosterone, big dick measuring contest that this is . You can’t afford to have your ass ripped into a new one TWICE in one night. Plus, we actually have places to be.” you grab Bradley’s hand, forcing him out of his staredown. 

The airmen laugh at your joke. Sire, who is standing to his left, slaps his shoulder sarcastically.

“Yeah, by the time they're gone it’ll probably be the fourth or fifth time” she announces to the other airmen. Hangman is rendered silent.

“So, why don’t you take yourself and your group of boy scouts back to your silly little game of pool and let us go our way.” you jeer at him.

“Ooooooo…” the airmen let out. Hangman, still silent, nods his head, lips drawn in a straight line. 

“Oh, what’s that? Got nothing to say? One might call that defeat, "Mr. I don’t lose.” you mocked. 

The airman surrounding the encounter burst out into laughter. You and Bradley make your way toward the door, and you stop and turn to Hangman.

“See you later, Mr. Pearly Whites” You lead Bradley out of the bar. 

As you exit the bar, Bradley flips Hangman the bird, causing the airman in the bar to laugh hysterically.

‘This was gonna be a good night…’ you thought to yourself. 

……………………

Bradley’s bronco was parked out near the front of the Hard Deck. Still holding his hand, he leads you toward it. Following you to the passenger side, he opens the door for you.

. 

“Always the gentleman you are Bradshaw.” You remark over your shoulder.

He laughs, rushing in front of the car to open the driver's door.

“Yeah, I got it from my dad.” He slides into the driver's seat. 

You smile at his remark. You look over at him, fixing your hair slightly. He looks over at you, sliding his arm around the back of your seat. 

“So, where we headed fly boy?” you look him in the eyes. He pauses, nodding his head as he thinks. 

“I’ve got an idea, do you trust me?” he questions you.

You inspect his features, the way his hazel eyes search yours. How they soften and droop at the corners when he looks at you. You can’t help but smile. 

“Always,” your smile grows.

He grins back at you, patting the steering wheel for a second. 

“Let’s not waste any time then,”  placing the key in the ignition.

He pulls out of the sandy, beachfront parking lot of the Hard Deck. Hangman, who returned to his game of pool with the other pilots, notices the headlights of the car shining temporarily through the window. Lifting up his pool cue, he directs the other airmen outside of the window.

“Well would you look at that.”

Coyote, one of the airmen, laughs.“Yeah, somebody’s getting lucky tonight, and it sure as hell ain’t you man.” he pats Hangman on the shoulder, returning to the pool table to play his turn. 

He clenches his jaw, glancing back to Sire who watches Coyote intensely contemplate his shot at the pool table. 

“Night’s still young Coyote. Anything could happen…” He winks at Sire, causing her to roll her eyes dramatically.

“Yeah, like my pool cue up your ass if you keep talking like that.” 

Hangman scoffs at Sire’s comment, walking back over to the table. 

“You wanna know what he has that I don’t?”  he says, referring to Rooster. Coyote laughs. 

“A mustache?” 

“Common sense?” Sire butts in the conversation, leaning against the table and swinging back a beer.

Hangman shakes his head.

 “No smartasses, history. They have history. You can’t split up the two people who have a long-standing history..it’s scientifically impossible.” he explains.

“That’s a weak excuse for having no game, man.” Coyote finishes his turn. 

“Hah!” Sire shouts. 

Hangman walks to the pool table, leaning over, lining up his shot with his pool cue.

“No game huh?” He shoots the ball, knocking all the balls out.

“Tough talk for someone who just lost a game of pool.” Hangman flashes him a grin.

—---------------------------------

There’s a reason why California is romanticized the way it is. There are millions of songs and poems dedicated to its’ oceans, beaches, people, and its’ natural beauty. But right now, the only beauty Rooster could focus on was you.

You and Bradley glided down the California coast; Suavacito by Malo plays softly on the radio.

I never met a girl like you in my life 

The way that you hold me in the night 

The way that you make things go right 

You lean back into the passenger seat, taking in the warmth from the evening sunlight. Bradley’s hand gently entwined with yours on your thigh. You see him staring at you out of the corner of your eye. You let him continue a little longer and then look back at him. His eyes are finally back on the road. You smile at him and let out a small laugh and continue to appreciate the scenic highway. 

He observes you again, revering you like a work of art. You catch him staring.

 “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” you joke.

He snickers, focusing back on the road.

“I don’t think a picture would do enough justice of how beautiful you look right now.”

You turn your head to fully look at him, blushing. He notices. “You’re too smooth for your own good, Bradshaw.” you beam at him.

He glances at you, “Is it working?” he grins.

You tap your finger on your chin jokingly, “Hm, maybe a little bit…” 

“Only a little bit, huh? He chuckles. Suavacito, on the radio, slowly ends. Hush by Deep Purple begins to play. 

“My only question is, can you drive as fast as you fly?” you try to bait him. 

He scoffs, “You wanna find out?” he taunts, changing the gears of the bronco.

You reach over to the radio and turn the radio's volume all the way up.

Bradley reves up the car, propelling you both down the California coastal Highway 101. Your hair blows majestically in the wind as you laugh. 

I got a certain little girl she's on my mind

No doubt about it she looks so fine

She's the best girl that I ever had

Sometimes she's gonna make me feel so bad

You unbuckle your seatbelt, which catches Bradley’s attention. He shoots you a confused as you begin to shift in your seat, hoisting yourself upwards toward the open sunroof of the car. Holding on tight, you tuck your arm over the window cherishing the moment. You look to the coast at the crashing of the glistening waves on the sandy shore. You look up towards the sunset. When you see the sky, you think of your dad, who was also a Top Gun graduate. He was taken from you and your mother far too early. You lean against the window in deep thought. Bradley notices your change in demeanor.

“You alright?” he shouts over the whirling wind. 

You glance at him. “Never better,” you assure him. 

The song continues as the sun sets in further. You slink back into your seat, covering your eyes with your hand and gazing at the sky. 

“What’s it like up there?” you ask, nodding up to the sky. 

Bradley turns the volume on the radio down.

“Up there?” he reiterates. Bradley’s grip on the wheel tightens as he tries to think of a response.

 “It’s dangerous, exciting, and terrifying all at the same time, but” he starts. “I feel free when I’m up there. I feel closer to my dad. It’s just,” he begins to stutter. You reach out to his shoulder and caress his arm to comfort him, causing him to relax visibly. 

“Sometime’s when I’m up in the sky, I can feel him there, trying to talk to me or give me some sign.” He laughs, “I know it sounds dumb, but when I start to miss him, I look up to the sky and see him there.” He finishes. 

“Bradley, that’s beautiful. It’s not dumb at all.” you encourage him. “A pilot and a poet,” you joke, causing him to laugh. 

“Your dad was one of us, too, right?” he asks. 

You breathe in deep, “Yeah, he was. Callsign Grizzly. He was a wildman but a good pilot, father, and husband. Just like your dad. I wish I had more time with him, but fate had other plans, I guess. Time’s such a funny thing you take for granted. One minute he’s here, and the next minute, my mother and I are standing in front of his casket at his funeral.” 

Bradley pulls off into an exit, the sign reading, “Black’s Beach.” Driving into the oceanfront parking lot, he parks and then takes the key out of the ignition.  Still sitting in the driver's seat, he shifts himself toward you, arm resting behind your seat. 

“I remember that feeling. The feeling of being confused. I remember my mom gripping my hand as they lowered his casket. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.” he admits. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to start our first official date out on a depressing note.” he apologizes.  His sorrowful eyes are glued to the middle console as he reminisces momentarily. You reach your hand out to his cheek, forcing him to make eye contact with you. 

“Bradley, you don’t need to apologize. It’s good to get these things off your chest. You can’t shelter them forever. I know how it feels. I know the feeling of trying to bury all of those emotions and hoping they go away. But you don’t ever have to be stronger than you really are. You don’t have to hide these feelings from me. I want to be in your life. Hell, we’ve known each other since we were kids, and I always knew I wanted to be around you.” you pause, taking his large hands and pulling them into your chest. “Let me in. I want to know what goes on in that deep beautiful mind that is the mind of Bradley Bradshaw.” 

You study his face for his reaction. His eyes are relaxed, gazing off to your side. His amber eyes flick up to meet yours. A single tear cascades down his cheek. He pulls you in for a tight embrace, holding onto you as if his life depended on it. You gently cradle his head on your shoulder. He’s so close you're sure he can hear your heart race. You both were silent. Only the sounds of the seagulls and the soft waves crashing on the shore can be heard. Bradley finally pulls away.

“Better?” you soothe him.

“Much better,” he replies. 

“Now,” you unbuckle your seatbelt, “where to, flyboy?” He reciprocates the same action. 

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

Hand in hand, you and Bradley walk the sandy shore of Black’s Beach. The sun has almost completely gone out. The late evening kisses your forehead as Bradley tells you more about the drama in the dagger squad. 

“I just can’t believe they weren't reprimanded for that! They did it in the barracks and we all heard it!” he laughs, and you laugh along with him. 

Listening to him talk about his fellow airmen, you had a moment of realization. He likes being a part of a team. He feels a connection with them. But most significantly, he feels closer to his dad. He honors him by following in his footsteps. 

He holds both of your hands in his and scours your face, trying to remember all the small things. He fixates on the crinkling by the corner of your eyes when you laugh. You have been his life for so long, but it’s only now, at this beach, as the sun goes down, that he really sees you for the first time. He feels something deep down. An aching, unfamiliar feeling. He swallows deeply as the feeling washes over him. Then like a ringing in his head, he places the feeling. It’s love. 

His arms slide up your forearms as he closes the gap between you. He stares deeply into your eyes, silently asking permission. He leans in and kisses you deeply. His kiss isn't dominant or aggressive but gentle. He is trying to get a feel for you. So he takes things slowly. You wrap your arms around his broad neck. Bringing him down to you in an attempt to deepen the kiss. You both pull away from each other momentarily. You’re both breathless. His chest heaves as he stares you down, eyes full of longing. His eyes linger on your lips briefly and then flick up back to your eyes.

He pulls you in again for another kiss. His muscular arm snakes around your neck, pulling you up to him. You close your eyes and your lips meet for a kiss much more passionate than the last. Your mouths work together harmoniously while also still fighting for dominance. His free hand gropes at your hip, causing you to moan in his mouth. You feel his mustache curl up through his kiss, he grins. But you aren’t willing to give up the fight just yet. You drag his hand down from your hip to the curve of your ass and then quickly back to your hip. He pulls away from you, huffing with frustration. 

“You’re killing me” he huffs.

Still breathless you stare him dead in the eyes, “Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?” you egg him on. 

You stare at him expectantly. 

“I need you, can I take you home?” he pleads. 

You pull him in, resting your forehead against his

“I thought you’d never ask” you let out shakily.

—----------------------------

The ride back to your apartment is tortue. The silence is staggering, with tension in the air so thick it could be cut with a butcher knife. You didn’t dare to even glance at him. You know that if you locked eyes you’d never make it home.. It didn’t help that he kept inching his hand up your thigh; until he was teasing the hem of your shorts. 

He finally pulls into the parking lot of your apartment complex and its game on. Hastily unbuckling his seatbelt, he exits the driver side slamming the car door behind him he rushes to your side, opening your door. By the time you’re unbuckled, you grab his hand leading him up to your apartment. Guiding him by the hand, walking up the stairs felt like an impossible task. When you finally reach your apartment you fumble with your keys.

‘Why the hell do I have so many keys!’ You mentally curse. Bradley leans against the wall next the door, sunglasses on, watching like a hawk as you struggle to find the right key. Finally, after succeeding, you unlock the door to your apartment and without hesitation Bradley is hot on your heels. Without breaking eye contact, he shuts the door behind him and he pulls you toward him by the hip. 

In an instant, his mouth collides with yours in a desperate kiss. His large hands move from your hip to your torso, slowly slipping them under your shirt. You grab him by the collar of his Hawaiian shirt, shrugging it off of him revealing his white tank top underneath. You take your arms off him and raise your arms up as his hands begin to peel your tank off from the hem. Your red tank top joins his Hawaiian shirt on the floor. You break the kiss to catch your breath and both kick your shoes off.  Bradley, taking the lead, picks you up from under your knees and carries you bridal style down the hallway of your apartment. After opening the bedroom door, gently lies you down on the bed, boxing you in with his arms. His eyes are blown out fully with lust. You prop yourself up to meet him, placing your hands on his face and kissing him. His hands slide up your thighs, stopping at the zipper of your jeans and slowly unzipping them until you clasp your hand on his wrist to stop him. 

“Not so fast, you’re practically still fully clothed” you remove your hand from his wrist and nod your gesture your head to his tank top. “Take it off” your order. His brows shoot up and he grins. He slowly pulls off his tank top, revealing his perfectly sculpted body. Your eyes go wide at the sight, perfect tan with only his dog tags swaying on his chest. Your hands slide up his abdomen, feeling his abs. He grins widely as you inspect him. You feel warmth beginning to settle deep in your lower belly. His hands are back on the zipper of your shorts. 

“No no no, take it all off. Lieutenant…” you command. Oh he definitely liked that. You can feel him from under his jeans. Not only is his physical stature huge, but from his growing erection from his pants you know for a fact he's big in more ways than one. 

“Yes ma’am” he jokes, unzipping his jeans and letting them drop to the floor. 

You finally allow him to take off your shorts, leaving you both in your undergarments. You lie back on the bed taking him with you. He admires you. 

“You’re beautiful” he remarks.

“You’re not so bad yourself, fly boy” you leave a chaste kiss on his lips while you unclasp your bra and throw it to the floor. 

Bradley drops his head to your neck kissing his way down, stopping at your jugular, kissing it intensely until a red mark forms. The build up too much. He’s not where you need him. Your core aches, you clench your thighs together as he slowly begins to kiss his way down the valley of your breast. You reach around his neck and try to pull him down where you need him. He pulls his lips away from you lower stomach and grins at you. 

“Who’s the needy one now?” 

You laugh, throwing you head back onto the bed. He makes his final descent and stops right at your entrance. You feel his hot breath against your slit through your underwear. He pauses. Your eyes snap to his as he stares at you for a reaction. 

“You’re such a tease!” You squeal.

He temporarily lifts his head, “Oh I’m the tease huh? You were wearing the red tank top tonight and I’m thankful I had my sunglasses on because I couldn’t stop staring at them.” 

“Pervert” you smile. 

“Only for you” he winks. 

He lowers his head back down near your thighs, spreading them. You feel his mustache tickle the smooth skin on your inner thighs. You moan softly at the sensation. He leverages himself further near your core, throwing your legs over his shoulder, pulling your underwear off. Without any warning his tongue is in you. Licking a stripe down your folds. You let out an exasperated moan as you try to squeeze your thighs to resist. His tongue finds his way to the sensitive bundle of nerves between your thighs, experimentally flicking it a few times with this tongue. 

“Bradley…” you cry out. 

He licks circles around your clit, your hands to grip his hair tightly in response. His pace becomes more domineering. You feel your throat clench as you grow nearer to the edge. You throw your head back deeper into the bed, shutting your eyes so tightly you see blue dots. He pops his mouth off you for a moment and goes back in, sucking on your clit. You cry out in intense pleasure, pushing you over the edge. Your back arches against the bed. The orgasim washes pulsates through your entire body making your throat gasp for breath. Once you start to come down, he pops off from you again. 

He pulls himself back up to you, adjusting a piece of hair that sticks to your forehead. He rests his forehead against yours and closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. You stroke the baby hairs on his neck and bring his head to your shoulder. 

Your mouth begins to trail down his neck, before stopping just below his ear and sucking a mark into the skin. 

Bradley lets out a breathy moan, and distracted from the small burst of pleasure, you take advantage and flip your positions so that you’re straddling his hips.

Your nails rake down his toned chest as you shift your hips and lean down to trail your tongue across the red marks you just left.

You can feel the hardness between your legs and grind back onto it.

“Y/N….” Bradley moans out his work hardy hands coming up to grasp your hips and squeeze them tightly in his grip. 

Grasping onto his wrists you pry them off with a smirk, and push them back onto the bed over his head.

Leaning down you place a rough kiss against Bradley’s lips, and he cranes his neck up to meet you halfway. 

Long gone is the gentle intimacy of the evening, now replaced with a fever of tongue and teeth.

You release your grasp on his wrists and reach down to tug on his dick which had been left neglected up to this point.

A punched out gasp leaves his lips as you begin to work over the head, his hips canting up with each stroke. Chanting your name between kisses, you feel the desire burning in the pit of your stomach burn brighter and harder.

“You look so pretty right now.” You whisper into Bradley’s ear before he seemingly has had enough and throws you onto your back, the bed bouncing slightly with the force that he used to switch positions.

“If I hadn’t been waiting for this moment for weeks I’d be teasing you all night darling,” he pants into your mouth, “but I can’t wait much longer to be inside of you.” Bradley leans down and reconnects your mouths.

You nod fevorently and reach over to your bedside table, blindly grappling around in the drawer before you feel the plastic of a condom package catch your fingers. Breaking the kiss, you tear open the packaging with your teeth and Bradley takes the condom from you to put on.

For a beat, the only sounds in the room are your labored breaths mixing together before Bradley moves between your thighs and begins to enter you.

Both of you let out breathy moans as he fills you up. Bradley’s hand makes his way up your face to cradle your cheek which you muzzle into.

“I’m so full.” You murmur into his lips, and grab into his shoulder when he begins to thrust. 

Gentle at first, his hips meet yours in slow tandem, both of you grasping onto each other like the other is a lifeline.

“Faster.” You say, looking into Bradley’s lust filled eyes. He gives you smirk and leans down to peck your lips. 

Grabbing your thighs he pulls you down the bed closer to him, or legs draped over his thighs. 

The change in position hits something deep and sensitive within you, “Fuck!” You cry out.

Bradley stops and looks at you in concern, “Was that okay?” He asks, cupping your neck with both hands.

You nod enthusiastically, “Fuck yes and if you don’t start moving again I’m leaving you for Hangman.”

Bradley scoffs and thrusts in hard, pushing out an unwillingly moan from you.

“You wouldn’t dare baby.” He says, diving back to your lips with a new ferocity, his hip slamming into yours.

You grasp at his back, nails digging into his shoulders, and knowing that those marks will stay there for days to come and marking him as yours.

“Shit baby I’m going to cum.” Bradley cries out. You clench down and begin to feel your own orgasm wash over you, the sweat and need between your bodies urges you both on.

“Fuck!” You cry out, pulling Bradley close to your chest as you cum. 

His hips continue to thrust into you for several more seconds, his face pressed against your neck leaving small and wet kisses against your skin. 

“Shit baby,” Bradley begins to chuckle, his mustache tickling your now over sensitive skin.” 

“Yeah..” you whisper, a gentle smile on your lips as you catch your breath. You lean your head down and press your lips against Bradley’s forehead.

Slowly and with a groan, Bradley lifts himself off of you, and you miss the weight of your lover against you. “Let’s get us both into the shower darling, we’re a mess.”

You laugh and agree, pulling your self up off the bed and reach up to wrap you arms at wound Bradley. Your eyes connecting. A moment passes between the two of you that feels more intimate than the acts you just performed in bed. 

Bradley smirks and leans down for a short kiss, your hands making their way into his curly and sex-mused hair.

“Round two in the shower?” He suggests between kisses. 

You pull back and grin, stepping away from him and towards the bathroom door, naked as the day you were born.

 “Come on Lieutenant, I’m waiting.” You say and walk through the door. You hear quick shuffling behind you and the door click shut behind the two of you.

It was going to be a long night.

———————-

The morning light peeks through the sheer curtains of the window, signifying the start of a new day. 

You and Bradley are fast asleep, his strong arms curled around you in a protective embrace. 

your solitude was abruptly interrupted when the ring of your phone began to blare. You pull yourself up, Bradley’s arm still hanging around you as you blindly feel for your phone. You sigh in defeat as you sit up, sheets dropping to your waist. Bradley stirs as he senses the change in your position. 

You sigh, 

“Hello?” You ask half asleep. 

“Hi, Y/N.” Penny's cheerful voice greets you over the phone. 

“Hi, is everything alright?” You look at the clock on your nightstand reading “7:03” 

“It’s 7 in the morning on Saturday. The bar doesn’t open until 5.  Are you okay?” You panic. 

Bradley shifts over to your side blinking his eyes a few times trying desperately to  wake himself up. 

“Oh everythings fine!” You sense some slight insincerity to her tone. 

“Who the fuck’s calling this early on a Saturday morning?” Bradley squints his eyes against the opposing sunlight. 

“It’s Penny” you crane your head to look at him. 

“Is Bradley there with you?” You can hear the smugness in her voice. 

“Yes…” you exhale. 

“You hear that Mav?” Penny asks on the other end of the line; To which Mav replies, 

“Hah, see I told you they were gonna be more than fine. You owe me 20 bucks.” 

#top gun #rooster top gun #top gun x reader #bradley bradshaw x female reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #top gun maverick #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #bradley bradshaw smut #bradley bradshaw x y/n #rooster smut #rooster x you #miles teller #bradley rooster x reader

[cerleansky]

Do you ever think about grief? The way it stains you and never leaves? The mark of it becoming intwined with your soul? How someone can be dead ten years and you can still cry like they died yesterday? How can people say love isn’t real when our world is filled with ways to remember the dead?

#my grandpa died when he was 58 and my grandmother lived to 90 #she still wept for him in her last year #I miss her #grief #spilled heart #writblr #writing #grief/mourning #thoughts #writers on tumblr #writers and poets #family #platonic #grief also doesn’t mean loss through death #the loss of friendships haunts me #scarred me to the bone

[zukkaoru]

oooh prompt 28: “It’s okay, you will move on. We will move on.”? with whatever fandom you want lol

ummm it's bungou stray dogs bc this prompt just gave me post-doa arc kunidazai feels fdgfhgjhk also it got a bit longer than intended but it's fine we're fine we're doing great!

tw: dazai-typical suicide mentions/suicidal ideation

-

“It’s okay,” Dazai whispers, his fingers carding through Kunikida’s hair. He isn’t good at this—he has never known how to comfort another person—but he refuses to leave Kunikida to suffer alone. Not when there’s something hanging heavy between them, not when Kunikida is trusting Dazai enough to be this vulnerable around him, not when Dazai is the only one Kunikida will come to for help.

Kunikida sniffs, but he doesn’t respond verbally, so Dazai continues.

“You will move on,” he says, because he knows this to be true. He knows what it is to face the empty void of loss and not see a way forward. He knows what it is to be trapped in the darkness, unsure if you’ll ever make it through to the light. “We will move on.”

Kunikida nods, faintly, which Dazai feels more than he sees. He stares at Kunikida’s glasses, abandoned on the floor nearby, unsure if he should say more. Unsure if there is anything else to say. It’s been months, and no one in the Agency has fully recovered. Kunikida is not the only one losing sleep to nightmares and spiraling anxieties. Dazai would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the growing bags under most of his coworkers’ eyes.

“How do you…” Kunikida’s muffled voice trails off. He tightens his grip on Dazai’s shirt, then lets out a shaky breath. “How do you deal with this?”

“The trauma?” Dazai asks, his tone lighter than it should be for such a topic. “Or the insomnia? Or the knowing your body will never work as good as it used to?”

“I don’t know. All of it?”

Dazai snorts. It’s not funny, really, except—

“I don’t.”

Kunikida lifts his head. He offers Dazai a half-hearted glare, made weaker by the wetness of his eyes. “That can’t be true. You’re still here.”

Dazai blinks.

Something in his chest tightens. It’s almost painful, but vaguely pleasant too. He scoffs, looking away.

“I don’t deal with it,” he whispers. “I just ignore it. It’s not healthy, but I’ve never planned on living long enough to deal with the consequences. So.” He shrugs. “It’s not genuine. No part of me is genuine. Not for as long as you’ve known me, at least.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Kunikida argues. He sighs, leaning his head back against Dazai. “And anyway, how can you assure me I’ll move on if you haven’t?”

“Well…” Dazai frowns. Instead of answering, he pinches Kunikida’s arm and mumbles, “You’re mean.”

Kunikida hums. The lack of an argument is enough to tell Dazai that he’s still shaken from whatever nightmare woke him. So Dazai swallows down a joke that wouldn’t have landed and searches for something honest to say. If Kunikida thinks he can be a truthful person, maybe he should give it at least half a shot.

“It takes time,” is what he finally settles on. “Grief, loss, pain—only time can lessen the weight. And even if they never go away, you will learn to live with them as time goes on.” It’s a miserable sentiment, knowing that there is nothing you can do to ease your ailments. Knowing that the only solution is to wait them out and hope death doesn’t come for you first.

(Or, in Dazai’s case, hope death does come for you.)

But it’s the only advice Dazai has that is true. Any other claims he could make would provide Kunikida with nothing but false hope.

“I was afraid you might say that,” Kunikida whispers. “I don’t have time.”

“Nonsense! You’ve got your whole life planned out, and I’m sure you didn’t plan your death before thirty.” Dazai pokes his cheek. “That gives you at least seven years.”

“Not what I meant.”

Dazai ignores that comment. “Me, on the other hand? Well— I’ve only got til about twenty-five before I—”

“No,” Kunikida cuts him off, lifting his head sharply. He reaches for Dazai, then stops himself midway, curling his hand into a fist and dropping it back into his lap. “Don’t…don’t say that. If I have to take all that time to heal and move on, then so do you.”

Dazai grimaces. It sounds nothing short of torturous—living to thirty? Three decades spent walking through such miserable existence? He never even wanted to make it to eighteen.

But he did make it to eighteen—he made it past eighteen. And now he’s twenty-three, still putting in the effort to navigate the new life he’s found himself in. Maybe hanging around for a few extra years wouldn’t be the worst fate he could suffer.

After all, his dream of a completely painless suicide cannot be fulfilled if the people he leaves behind will grieve him.

This isn’t about him, though. This is about Kunikida.

“Fine,” he relents, the lie falling easily from his lips. “But that won’t make it any easier to pass the time.”

“It will,” Kunikida says. And before Dazai can argue, he kisses him softly. “It’s easier, knowing I’m not alone.”

Dazai’s brain short-circuits, for a moment, and then he buries his face in Kunikida’s shoulder to his whatever horrid expression he must be making. “Stupid,” he mumbles, his cheeks burning. Traitorously, his heartbeat won’t slow like he wants it to.

Kunikida chuckles. “You said yourself that we will move on. That means you have to be there too.”

“Shut up.”

“My point still stands whether I continue talking or not.”

Dazai purses his lips. Kunikida doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t need to, because he’s right. He already made his point. Dazai included himself in Kunikida’s healing process, and he can’t quite bring himself to regret it, though he knows he’ll be no good at helping. Even now, when he was trying to offer Kunikida comfort, the conversation got turned onto him instead.

He sighs, allowing his eyes to slip shut. “Kunikida-kun?”

“Hm?”

“You’re too kind to me.”

“I’m not,” Kunikida argues. “But perhaps we can have this conversation when it’s not two in the morning?”

Dazai nods. Then, for good measure, he turns his face so he can press a kiss to Kunikida’s neck. “In the meantime, can we—?”

“No,” Kunikida interrupts. He peels Dazai off of him, and Dazai whines, but he allows it to happen. “We still have work tomorrow. Or…later today.” He shakes his head. “We should try to fall back asleep.”

Dazai pouts, but when Kunikida only glares back, he gives in with a melodramatic sigh, flopping back down on the bed. “Fine.”

He goes completely limp, forcing Kunikida to maneuver him back into a normal sleeping position. He half-expects him to just give up part way through, turn over onto his side, and leave Dazai to sort himself out. But he doesn’t, of course, because Kunikida is too kind and when he’s finally comfortable, his head is lying on Dazai’s chest.

“Goodnight,” he whispers.

Dazai’s response gets stuck in his throat, so he just resumes running his fingers through Kunikida’s hair and listens to his breathing until it evens out and he’s drifted back to sleep.

#kunidazai #bsd #bungou stray dogs #kunikida doppo #dazai osamu #loosely this takes place in altocbto universe so maybe one day i'll clean it up a bit and post it to ao3 #but for now i'm just throwing this out here with zero editing #ty for the ask!! #kaylynn tag #ask game #grace's writing tag

[mashed4077]

I’ve had a thought nagging at me ever since I first watched ‘Death Takes a Holiday’ and it’s been driving me a little crazy.

My thought is this: when the wounded flood in and the nightmare starts up again, Father Mulcahy, for all his purity and good-naturedness... takes on the role of an angel of death figure.

When Mulcahy tries to do the last rites on the dying soldier in ‘Death Takes a Holiday’, B.J. tells him, “No. You can’t have him yet.” It made me realize that from the doctors’ perspective, if Mulcahy closes in because things are looking dire, that means that they lost. They have to give their patient up. They failed.

It’s not just that episode. It’s also in the way he’s always present in the OR, as crucial a presence as the doctors or nurses, always lingering... in case someone dies. Waiting for someone to die. He’s also there to help if he’s needed for orderly duties, of course, and I’m sure he’s also praying for things to go well - but the main reason he’s there every single time, on hand even when there’s only a few causalities and everyone’s assistance isn’t necessary, is if someone doesn’t make it. He considers that a sacred task, and within his occupation, it is. But for the doctors, his stepping in to do his job means that they failed at theirs, and they lost the life.

On a spiritual level, really, if the healing of the physical body by the doctors fails, then the priest steps in to try to provide benediction to the soul, right? Being a man of faith, Mulcahy believes that’s just as critical, that a soul’s just as if not more important than the body, and it’s a solemn task but one that probably gives him a modicum of consolation, that he’s provided a service that’s essential within his world, and that he was there to provide that to the fallen in their final moments. But none of the surgeons who’d be torn up over losing a patient (aka all of them except Frank) are particularly religious. We don’t know if they believe in a heaven or not. It doesn’t matter to them that Mulcahy’s providing something to the soul, or that the soldier they couldn’t save may be in a better place. At the end of the day, they’ve still got a dead kid on their table, and that weight’s on them.

And it’s not just the last rites. The doctors handle the wounded living; Mulcahy is seemingly the person within the camp who’s in charge of the deceased. In one episode he explicitly mentions serving as the Summary Court Officer for one of the fallen young men: a Summary Court Officer is “a commissioned officer appointed to handle the personal property and effects of deceased personnel.” We see him do this in multiple episodes; Radar and other corpsman usually take care of the living soldier’s belongings (which Mulcahy sometimes assists with), but Mulcahy’s the one we see boxing up the belongings of the deceased to ship them back to their families. He’s often the one who writes the letter that lets them know they’ve lost a son. 

As much as all of them hurt for the lives they can’t save, Hawkeye and B.J. get to escape back to the Swamp right after and drown it away with booze, and Radar gets to stare down at a statistic in his report and wonder how a little number could possibly constitute an entire human being - but Mulcahy’s the one shifting through the remnants of a stolen life, trying to find a way to be tactful about something heart-breaking and maybe even life-ruining. He has that burden on him. He’s the one holding the hands of murdered eighteen year olds as they breathe their last breaths, something arguably more personal and intimate than rifling around in anonymous insides like the surgeons do - but that’s not even the end of it. It doesn’t end there. Because afterwards, in his duty to inform the families of their loss, he’s forced to inflict an impossibly painful wound. Can you imagine repeatedly writing letters that, when opened, will bring people to their knees with grief? Worse yet, the depersonalization of it? Especially for someone as people-oriented as Mulcahy. Maybe it’s better, not having to look them in the eye when you tell them, not having to see their initial pain, like a doctor would at a normal hospital after a surgery proved fatal or a person succumbed to a sickness. In both cases, you don’t have to see them after. You tell them the news and you don’t have to stick around to see the years and years of grief.

But there’s a different pain, for the surgeons and for Mulcahy, in how much they care about people, in being forced to do this repeatedly, endlessly, until the causalities all blur, until the deaths don’t even hurt anymore, until forgetting is possible and you realize the family would’ve got the letter last week and you forgot to send a prayer their way. He doesn’t just feel useless - he’s being forced to actively inflict pain. No other priest besides a war chaplain would have that responsibility. As often as a confession goes well and he offers a recovering soldier some peace, does it even balance out? Does a smile and some relief make up for being forced to play ferrymen to the dead?

It’s an impossible task... and it’s never even dwelled on or given focus. He just lives with that. 

Really makes me think about all those times he’s stood in such a way that one of the OR lights lit his head up like a halo.

#mine #father mulcahy #txt #meta #mulcahy #he's such a tragic figure to me #i wrote this back in march im finally posting it

[reiverreturns]

the thing that really breaks my heart about arthur and sadie's friendship is the fact it's so rooted in loss. they're two characters who love deeply and know the pain of losing that love, know there's no going back to being the person you were before it. you see this instinct in both of them to want to pull back and be alone, and yet they never do it with each other. it's like they can't. like they need each other to reflect the loneliness, to acknowledge the empty spaces but also their deep-set capacity for love. they remind themselves of the worst and the best in one another. they remind themselves that, they can't go back, but maybe they aren't all changed either.

and it fucking kills me that when arthur dies, sadie loses that. she ambles around, blindly reaching out for that marker in her life that tells her that awful pain and meaningful connection can co-exist, and she doesn't have it. she reconciles with the thought of dying. she even welcomes it. she's alone and angry and chasing the worst of the worst and seeing no evidence that the hurt fucking means anything.

then she reconnects with john. she sees his love for abigail and jack. for arthur. sees his effort in building something new from ashes and the stale stench of gunpowder. and suddenly she can reflect again, see the good in them, in herself if the light shines just right. she can protect the things she had loved so very dearly as a different sadie long ago. she goes from wanting death to gritting her teeth and refusing it because yes she's a ghost but she's brought into flesh and blood through the goodness of the people around her. their love. their connection. she's real. she can make something good happen here.

in the end she can't stay. she doesn't belong, not really. sadie's great tragedy is that she believes she can't hold those wonderful things in her chest anymore - it's too full of death and regret and long, long grief. but i'd like to think she learns in the final chapters that she's still tethered to the living. there's a life for her out there, as joyous and awful as her last, if only she would reach out her hand.

#*checks watch* #oh look it's sad cowboy hours again #i just have so many feelings about sadie adler #especially her and arthur together #i think there's just like #an unspoken understanding #that sadie knows arthur understands her loss #it's a literal life defining friendship for both of them #she can't be around people and yet she needs them so very badly #im ok i swear #*sobs* #sadie adler #arthur morgan #rdr2 #long post

[la-was-here]

A note about Loki and Thor

After years of reading fanfiction where Loki is portrayed as a psychopath and a cunning scoundrel (for some reason this is the majority of fanfiction in my bubble?), I accidentally decided that this trope was canon. But damn, how wrong I was. Hiddleston's Loki is a very sensitive, vulnerable character who needs support and love.

Unfortunately, his mother's recognition and love are not enough. The boy needs recognition from the male part of the family. He always felt abandoned. I would like to read more fanfics where Loki is a sensitive character.

(His vulnerability is so desperately visible. The 2012 version of Loki is brutal, but we don't know what crap and heartache the character went through.)

Loki's in the series.

Disney's Loki reveals even more of the character's sensitive side. We see his pain as he looks at his life story, we see his sincere friendship with Mobius (honestly, it's amazing)

And we see how he wants to keep Sylvie safe, which could also be a hint that he is finally ready to support himself ( literally damn he supports himself) and we see his sacrifice for the sake of all loved ones and strangers.

This is what Loki would have ended up with if he had not died in Thor 3. One way or another, this version of Loki would have become the god of stories (whatever that means).

Thor

And I would also like to see a more interesting Thor, who often thanks his brother, consults, and treats him with respect.

Thoughts on Thor. We know that Thor cares about Loki, but I got the feeling that for a very long time, before Thor 1, he treated Loki like a child who doesn’t understand anything (while Thor is a teenager) and this prevents Thor from accepting him as an equal and allowing him to show Thor's mistakes.

After the 1 chapter, Thor finally matures through grief over the loss of his brother.

I really don't see much of a role for Jane Foster in his changes. I think initially he treated her as one of his hobbies, respected her intelligence, but still... I think she was more fascinated than he was.

(After all, in The Avengers he 100% had the opportunity to drop by for tea, which he didn’t take.) I think the fact that he had a lot going on and the loss of his brother played a role in his attachment to Foster.

In The Avengers and Thor 2 we see that Thor does not know how to communicate with Loki, his brother grew up the same way as him, there is awkwardness around.

Later on Sakaar we see Thor let his brother go. I imagine that he doesn’t want to witness another fake death, doesn’t want to relive it again. He is calmer knowing that Loki is somewhere, he is alive and doing his insidious deeds.

In the third part there is a feeling that they are finding a connection and an understanding of how to communicate, although this is not the end yet. Loki returned to Thor precisely when Thor let him go, allowing his brother and himself to “be themselves,” took up the affairs of his people, and took responsibility.

At this point, their growing up against the backdrop of a showdown can be considered almost complete.

I think in the end they would manage to become a good team. But it would take them a long time to learn to fully accept each other’s shortcomings. And I think one day Thor would say that he got too excited by blaming Loki for his father's death.

Oh I don't know, I just want a fanfic written by a psychologist XD

#loki #loki laufeyson #Thor #Marvel #About loki

[intriq]

Grief

batfam grief fic that i've been working on for far too long! is finally here! im back with the angst bois. i'd also like to apologize if this is insanely inaccurate/ooc of them bc lol its me

characters: Bruce, Dick, some of Tim

dividers thanks to cafe kitsune as always

There are five stages of grief. Bruce knows this. He’s dealt with them before.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Acceptance isn’t a stage Bruce has really gotten to yet. He doesn’t think so, at least. Not sure he ever will. He’s faced the anger and depression before, when his parents died. How he’d taken his anger out on the criminal underbelly of Gotham, using his anger to cleanse her streets of crime. Then spend hours in front of his parents grave, unable to think nor speak.

Now he has another grave to sit in front of, too. Jason’s grave. His second Robin, the one who he wants to make the last. He doesn’t want to doom another boy to death, not when he’d failed Jason.

Some days, Bruce can’t help but wander Crime Alley. Like he was hoping that someway, somehow, he’d run into that scrawny kid Jason had been back then. He’d give anything to see him trying to steal a tire off the Batmobile again. Anything. Hell, he wouldn’t even mind being hit with the tire-iron again.

He also sometimes wonder if Dick blames him just as much as he blames himself. If only he’d been a little faster. If only he could have been quicker, then he could’ve saved him. Saved his son.

Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he can still see the explosion before him. The bright glowing hues, vibrant enough to leave specks of color behind his eyes for days to come. The sudden wash of heat, the ringing in his ears. Some days he can still hear and see the explosion that took his son from him, left him as a failure of a father and mentor.

He makes himself remember his failure by putting up a memorial of Jason in the Batcave. Curse him if he ever dared to forget his greatest failure; the failure to save his son.

The failure of not being able to protect him.

Dick could never blame Bruce. Bruce hadn’t been the one to set that bomb. Bruce hadn’t been the one to beat Jason senseless. But that didn’t mean he had the courage to go over and visit.

Not when Jason’s memorial, even his own grave would be there to taunt him. To give him a bitter reminder that his little wing was gone. He wishes he’d visited Gotham more often before Jason died, spent a little more time there. His way of grieving Jason’s death is quiet, with his emotions doing all the talking behind the doors of his apartment.

Dick is broken by the loss, but he is nowhere near as shattered as Bruce. Dick is used to working alone now. Bruce has to grow used to the quiet. How he can’t turn to ask his Robin a question to keep him on his toes and alert.

He also has to see how Alfred sometimes forgets to not set out an extra plate where Jason would sit to eat. Pot roast doesn’t taste quite as good as it used to; no matter how good of a cook Alfred is. It just makes him nauseated by the smell of it; and now it had been Jason’s favorite.

Criminals whisper and talk about how Joker seems to have broken Batman, with the way he wanders. The Gotham Gazette talks about how distanced and quiet billionaire Bruce Wayne seems. Citing testimonies from Wayne Enterprises employees of how he seems to look out the windows if his office; as if he were in a different place. In a trance.

Of course, Bruce doesn’t try to let this impact his work. He works more than he used to. Makes a record of locking up criminals and going through dizzying stacks of documents in mere hours.

Bruce busies himself. Drowns himself in work he knows that can be easily delegated to Lucius. Works himself until he’s dead tired, unable to keep his eyes open a moment longer. Even with the aide of caffeine, he still manages to fall asleep. Most nights his efforts are fruitful, and he doesn’t dream. That’s what he wants, to dream of nothing but a void. But that’s only most nights.

Other nights, Bruce dreams. He dreams vivid memories of that night. It’s an endless loop, though. Each time he thinks he gets close enough to save Jason, the warehouse explodes before him and he’s right back to where he started. Running, failing. Running and failing. Running, failing, repeat.

Over and over again. It’s the same ending each time; plays out the same each time. All until he finally wakes up and is freed by the waking world from the relentless cycle.

Bruce once dreamt that he succeeded; saved his son in time. Cradled his son’s broken body in his arms and told him he was sorry, holding him as gentle as he can so he doesn’t hurt him further. That time he’d even told his son, in that dream, that it’s okay to fail sometimes. He didn’t have to be the perfect Robin. That he didn’t need to be as great of a Robin as Dick was. That he was good enough in his own right, in his own way. Even apologizing for never saying it when he should’ve, promising to say it more often.

And then he woke up.

He woke up and remembered that he hadn’t saved his son. That he didn’t get to him in time. He’d been too late, just like his apologies were coming far too late.

When Tim first comes into the picture, taking the mantle as Robin via means of blackmail, he wasn’t expecting the void it had left for him to fill. Bruce always seemed careful around him, sometimes nearly calling him by a name that wasn’t his. Jason. It happened quite a bit the first few weeks, and Alfred had almost mistakenly had him sit where Jason used to.

Tim does his best to learn about Jason. Trying to find scraps of information throughout the manor, trying to piece together what he needed to figure out just how big the void he was filling was. And it’s hard to find much of anything, besides pictures. But he did learn more from the library, which had been neglected since his death. Alfred came in to clean it, of course. But it otherwise was devoid of people.

Tim learned about Jason through the books he’d read, reading his annotations. Noting how some books seemed more loved than the others. And what he deduced was simple.

He could be Robin, but he could never be the same Robin neither Dick or Jason were. He could never completely fill the shattered void left by Jason’s violent death. And he hoped he never would.

Sometimes Tim can’t help but feel like he doesn’t belong. The way the memorial for Jason stands in the Batcave, almost like a hovering promise to tell Tim that he had no right to be here. What good had he done, forcing a man to take him on in the same role his dead son once held? What right did Tim have to sit in the mantle of Robin? What audacity?

Perhaps even now, Tim will wonder what right he had. What right to demand to be Bruce’s next Robin. Because he’ll never know, truly. He may think of himself as better than Jason, but is he truly?

tags: @brucewaynesspouse @fallingwaynes @mysticalemmi @slutforjasontodd @sylvemooniet @ceyla016 [<---hi there!]

i feel like im forgetting some people to tag lmao

#dc fanfic #dc universe angst #dc universe #oneshot #angst #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #timothy drake #tim drake wayne #tim drake robin #richard grayson #intrique's dc things #may be ooc #may be non canon compliant dc universe oneshot #may be non canon compliant

[lovingdabeessss]

YESSS YOU GET IT

Like it would have set such a different tone for volume 9 with the other characters, like think about it:

1. Ruby wouldn’t just be dealing with her feelings of failure, she’ll be dealing with the loss of her sister, a literal mother figure AGAIN

2. Weiss would not be able to say a thing about Penny’s death now that they have definitely loss of a teammate and arguably her best friend

3. Blake just not having a good time at all, and you can’t convince me that as a literal book lover she doesn’t instantly compare Adam and Yang dying and have to deal with the instant backlash of the unresolved romantic tension and the tragedies surrounding her love life

4. There’s literally no way to comfort any of them since they all know girl got stabbed, so any suggestion that Yang survived the fall AND the stab has to be immediately prefaced with the potential delusion of ‘maybe she got help! Let’s go to the next town’ And that’s the only thing that fuels them with hope until they find Jinxy and the illusion really just shatters for real

Now I’m just curious about the logistics of Ascension cause in terms of emotional acceptance did this mean Alyx accepted her death and that’s why she left a piece of herself for Jaune? But ascension is also about becoming what you need as seen with the genial gems, so then I guess the question becomes how would Yang go through the ascension process

But then like imagine if she actually somehow came back as something different, maybe a dying wish gone wrong or something like that like the POTENTIAL DARN IT

THE POTENTIAL

God I have always been so upset at the lack of fics centering yang basically just dying that episode despite all the potential

Blake would be going crazy I do think that she’d be constantly refusing to believe Yang is anything but alive and would probably be constantly a twig away from completely snapping violently

Ruby would be going THROUGH IT after losing her sister and being in this new place would make it so much worse cause it’s constantly dangling the hope of yangs possible survival above their heads and then ripping it away

Weiss is probably be keeping them sane and together considering the vibe of Weiss having to keep Blake from jumping off the actual deep end after Yang fell trying to talk everyone down and just get through it

They’d essentially be denial depression and bargaining of the stages of grief

It’d be soooo good

#rwby #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #bumbleby #ruby rose #weiss schnee

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Grief, Guilt, and Defying Death: An Analysis of the Twisted Tale of the Shroud Brothers

***Massive spoilers for chapter 6 of the main story and various vignettes!***

***Trigger warning for discussion of death and suicide.***

Losing a loved one is never easy.

Death is a concept that is pervasive in the world, regardless of culture, socioeconomic status, age, gender, race, or other factors. We all experience death in some form, but perhaps one of the most difficult kinds of death is the loss of a loved one, be it a relative, a pet, a friend, a mentor… The people we care about most pass on, leaving us behind with to deal with the aftermath and its emotional scars.

Not even fiction is free from the touch of death. Chapter 6 of Twisted Wonderland addresses grief and how one copes with it through the internal and external struggles of both Idia Shroud and Ortho Shroud. 

To be clear, experiencing and reacting to grief is non-linear and different for each person. In this post, I only intend on discussing and analyzing death as it applies to the Shroud brothers.

Let’s begin and prepare a box of tissues for this.

Prior to chapter 6, I think a lot of us had inklings that something was “up” with Idia and Ortho based on implications in a few vignettes. To begin with, why is Ortho specifically a robot, not an organic being, not a “real boy”? Given that Idia is very reclusive and antisocial, it didn’t seem likely that he’d build a little brother because he was lonely, or on a whim. However, in Ortho’s Precision Gear (equivalent to the Labwear) vignettes, Idia states: “Y’know, I wonder what I was trying to accomplish by giving you so many different functions. Installing the latest medical tools in you now can’t change the past… […] I mean… I mean, it was originally me who…” This, along with our knowledge of Idia’s personality, seems to imply that he originally HAD a younger brother, but something terrible must have happened to the original; medical science was not able to save him, and Idia seems to hold himself responsible for said incident. We get even more ominous hints in Ortho’s Birthday Boy vignettes. In them, Ortho tells us that he has memories of playing with Idia when Ortho was five years of age eleven years ago. This gives us a rough idea of when the aforementioned incident occurred. 

I believe that Idia holds a lot of internalized guilt over what happened. If we observe his behavior with the current Ortho, Idia seems doting but also emotionally dependent on him, as Ortho is one of the few characters that Idia doesn’t stutter with and can just “be himself” around him. Ortho, meanwhile, is extremely bright and supportive, always pushing Idia to step out of his comfort zone and make memories with him and others. The problem is that Idia is extremely closed off to other people, often preferring to hide out in his room and avoid as much social interaction as possible. He retreats to anime and video games as comfort. These appear to be hobbies that he enjoyed as a child and shared with Ortho, and in modern day, they appear to be forms of escapism for Idia to cope with the loss.

Idia has a very… unique relationship with Robo!Ortho leading up to chapter 6. I think many of us presumed (when Dead Ortho was still just a theory) that Idia was using the robot version of his brother as another coping mechanism. Then chapter 6 rolls along and Idia makes it clear that all along, he was very cognizant of the fact that Ortho is just an AI and will never be able to fully replace the original; Idia implies that he has never seen Robo!Ortho as his brother, but just a robot meant to simulate his brother. (This may explain why true Ortho has sharp teeth; a physical trait shared by the Shrouds, whereas robot Ortho has normal looking teeth; Idia, as a genius inventor, could have easily given robot Ortho sharp teeth like his own, but made the conscious decision NOT to.) To some degree, I think Idia is aware that what he’s doing is maybe not the healthiest, but he doesn’t want to outright drop it because… well, it’s hard to do that. It’s so much comfier to live in denial, in this alternate reality where his little brother hasn’t died.

But that isn’t the full story.

In chapter 6, we get Idia’s full background. It turns out that he also had a very strict upbringing like Riddle. As the eldest son to the Shroud family, Idia’s future was already decided before he was born. He was a child genius that easily excelled in his studies, but disliked that he didn’t have the freedom to choose his future career. Young Idia also expresses sentiments that are the total opposite of present day Idia: as a child, he wished to go outside of his home, outside of STYX facilities, and go on adventures in the world. He wished to be a hero, just like the protagonist of Star Rogue, his favorite video game. The original Ortho convinced Idia they should go on an adventure together, so Idia goes and backs into security to make it easier for them to escape. Unfortunately, a Phantom escaped when the security system was compromised, and it was this Phantom that killed Ortho.

“Give me Ortho back. Every part of Ortho… Return his body, his personality, his memories, his everything!!” It’s devastating and confusing for such a young child to experience the death of a sibling. Idia is, naturally, in shock and denial. He blames himself for the accident; he was the one who wanted to go on an adventure. How can he be called a genius if he can’t do something as basic as protecting his own brother? How can he ever be a hero? If he had been born into a normal family, could he and Ortho have led normal lives? With friends, with each other? Adventuring the world together? Could he have been a real hero to Ortho?

This guilt powers Idia through the next 2+ years. In this stretch of time, STYX researchers remark that he has not left his room, only occasionally asking for magical parts. He has shut people out of his heart after losing Ortho, which includes physically keeping away from people and even later turning down multiple lucrative job and internship offers. Keep in mind that Idia is just barely a teenager at this point in time, and has been left basically ALONE to suffer with his own grief. He’s just been stewing in those complicated feelings, left to fend for himself (on TOP of, presumably, continuing his training to succeed the Shroud family one day). That is so much stress on a kid, and he was likely not given the time or the space to properly cope and come to terms with what happened.

The fact that Idia’s parents aren’t mentioned at all in the flashback gives me the impression that the Shroud parents are either very busy with their own work or very “hands off” in their parenting approach. They’re barely mentioned, even in modern day, they don’t seem to directly communicate with Idia often (he says he was surprised to see them in person), and they mainly seemed to have reached out to their son concerning work. Idia himself states that, “Prioritizing results over their son’s feelings sounds like my parents, alright…” This lends credence to the former option. As for the latter, it’s very possible that perhaps Idia’s parents decided to cope with the loss of their younger son by bottling up their emotions, never discussing the matter, and hoping that it would just go away. Everyone deals with death differently, so if this is what the Shroud parents did, I don’t blame them for doing so… It just maybe wasn’t the best option, considering that they had a surviving son that was still dealing with the trauma and NEEDED their support to get through that difficult period.

When Idia finally completes Robo!Ortho (who was still extremely robotic and not human-like at all) and shows him off to the STYX staff, who react in an appalled manner. They tell Idia that what he is doing is wrong, that it’s an affront, that it’s taboo–and Idia lashes out and defends the Ortho that he built, bragging about how this new Ortho cannot be easily hurt or lost, how this new Ortho can someday go to space one day (which does end up happening in the event Wish Upon a Star). He soon devolves from laughter into crying, and it becomes clear what he’s doing. He’s not only defending his “perfect” creation to the STYX researchers, but he’s also trying to convince himself that this Ortho can fill the void left by the original. It’s reinforced by his constant mentions of the improved features of this Ortho, and how the same mistake won’t happen again. Not this time. Now, Ortho is strong enough to stop anything. In that moment, Idia was still very much dealing with the consequences of his loss.

Over time, Robo!Ortho learned more about the world and how to better simulate human emotions using his advanced artificial intelligence. Even then, it seems that Robo!Ortho was aware of his purpose as a “substitute” to help Idia cope, as he doesn’t seem shocked when Idia remarks in chapter 6 that Ortho is “just an AI”. He, however, becomes inspired to act on his own and free Idia not only of the future he has been assigned, but also of his self-imposed guilt. It’s unclear if this is because Ortho is acting like how the original would, or if this is because his AI has just advanced to the point of granting Robo!Ortho a consciousness outside of his programming, but I choose to believe the latter, as Ortho refuses to turn back on his decisions after Idia confronts him about them. (The other characters also remark that Ortho seems “different” after rebelling against his programming, specifically citing that he “acts like Idia”, which may imply Ortho and the OG!Ortho have merged.)

All of Idia’s guilt eventually culminates in his Overblot, which is spurred on by Ortho, who thinks that this route will make Idia a “hero” (that can make many friends by saving people from Phantoms). If you reference the Ignihyde PV (English subtitled version can be found here!), you can see Idia being consumed by what is presumably his blot. Strangely, his expression seems fearful at first, but then changes into THIS:

That’s not fear anymore, that’s a look of resignation.

It’s almost as though Idia knew this was coming sooner or later, and has accepted his fate, finally embracing his own guilt, his dead brother, and the weight of his family’s responsibilities and his role in it… and willingly Overblotted. Idia’s OB form interestingly resembles the Ortho that he built, and his own Phantom IS Ortho, the anchor and the shadow that looms over his shoulder. And what do Phantoms do? They use their host like a magic battery until the host is dead. If that’s not enough proof that Idia’s own guilt has literally consumed him, then I don’t know what is.

When you fight OB Idia, there’s a few details that are very… interesting. Note that you use spears that generate lightning (aka the TWST equivalent of Zeus’s thunderbolts) to attack him. If you look at Ortho’s official in-game profile, his pet peeve is lightning. You are literally attacking an already dead child with something they dislike, and may even be fearful of. How does Idia react when you attack him? He always checks to make sure that ORTHO is okay first, and THEN he proceeds to get angry with you. Idia is placing the safety and the wellbeing of his brother above everything else, including himself. The other OBs we’ve seen so far have mainly been attacking in a blind rage, but Idia retains enough self-awareness to care for and to defend his brother, even when his own emotions and mental stability are spiraling out of control, even when he’s screaming about how he’ll finally be “free”–free of the shackles of the Shroud family, and free of the guilt that’s constantly eating at him.

After OB Idia is finally defeated, we not only get his backstory, but Idia gets to speak with his brother one last time. Now, here is where it gets… somehow even more morbid. I’m aware that Yana/the devs can’t say certain things or touch certain topics because Big Brother Michard Mouse is trying to keep its clean image, but during the conversation between Idia and Ortho in the white void… I distinctly got suicidal vibes. Think about it: aside from Idia already demonstrating some of the common behaviors related to suicidal ideation (closing himself off from others, feeling great shame, hopelessness, anxiety, or the general feeling of being trapped/being a burden), Idia researches blot, so he is well aware of the consequences of Overblotting, yet when he finally did Overblot, he didn’t seem to resist or to fight it. In his Overblot state, Idia even gleefully talks about Overblot like it’s some great thing (how exhilarating it feels, all his power, etc.) when very clearly it isn’t. Then, when he dives after Ortho, he KNOWS they’ll be falling into Tartarus, which drains the life force of living beings, while dropping the ominous line “This time, I’m not going to leave you.” When Idia speaks with Ortho for the final time, there’s several more suspicious lines like Ortho (remember, DEAD Ortho) telling Idia “you shouldn’t come yet” and Idia responding with “I will go with you; we made a promise to each other.”

Idia follows up by cursing out the world and implying it is not worth staying in, and that he hates it. Despite this, Ortho reassures him that they will be together again “someday”, but that day is “not now”; which implies that Idia had every intention to end his life early just to be with his brother again. Ortho reminds Idia that there are many things to live for, and that Idia shouldn’t give up so easily anymore.

There is a future for him. There is a reason to keep living to see tomorrow. It won’t be easy, but it’s possible, even if it’s 0.001%. The chance is there, he only needs to seize it for himself. Idia can go from zero to hero, just as Vil said he could.

Before Ortho’s soul departs, he gives his final words.

“It’s okay. I’ll be with you forever, so don’t give up.”

Ortho is saying that even if he is no longer physically here, he will continue to live on in his brother’s memories. In this way, he will always be “with” Idia, cheering him on in his endeavors. Idia will never be truly alone anymore.

He is free from the past, and he can make his own future, just as Vil said he could. “Reality is harsh and it doesn’t always end with a ‘happily ever after’… but that doesn’t mean that you can’t try to change your future.”

That freedom extends to Ortho as well–Idia rebuilds Robo!Ortho with his memory card that now allows for free will. With that memory card, Ortho becomes “whole” and gains “heart”, encompassing both the original and the robot. Like Pinocchio, he becomes a “real” boy and then formally enrolls as a new first-year student of NRC. Idia declares that Ortho is now free to be his own person. Something to note is that Idia initially made Robo!Ortho in the image of the Ortho he lost; this explains Robo!Ortho’s childish appearance and the manner of speech that he adopts. Idia never got to know what kind of a person his brother would become, because his life stopped so short. He’s disillusioned and wants to retain the “best” parts of the Ortho he remembered from childhood, which is why I think he kept Robo!Ortho in a child-like body, rather than continuously “age” him with new gears as they grew up together.

In setting Robo!Ortho “free”, the effect is twofold. Idia is finally moving on from the childhood Ortho he fixated on. Meanwhile, Robo!Ortho can finally be his own person, using his AI to develop his own identity rather than constantly be nothing but a support system pretending to be another person. (A nice detail is that Ortho ends up deciding to join Film Club, which may be a reference to him first learning how to emulate human emotions by watching movies, which we learned in his Birthday Boy card vignettes. After all, what is acting if not resonating with the audience’s hearts? As a robot, Ortho wants to explore if he can do such a thing.)

Idia accepts Robo!Ortho as his brother while making peace with OG!Ortho and his passing. He doesn’t need to cling to the past anymore.

He’s slowly acclimating to coming out of his shell again. He’s making new friends, even if it’s difficult to do. He’s growing, just like Ortho is.

That is chapter 6: a tale of love, loss, and a brotherly bond that transcends time and death.

And with that, I will end this post on an insightful quote from a movie with a certain blue alien–a quote that I think summarizes chapter 6 and the tears it has brought us very well: “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Thank you for reading.

#Ortho Shroud #Idia Shroud #Ignihyde #twst analysis #twst character analysis #twisted wonderland analysis #twisted wonderland character analysis #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #MAN OH MAN CHAPTER 6 WAS SO GOOD #I WAS CRYING SO MANY SILENT UGLY TEARS #tw // depression #tw // suicide #tw // suicidal ideation #tw // death